Birthday Briefs

Cupcake Cake made for the Birthday!

A co-worker had a birthday this week which meant multiple cakes in the office in addition to cheese cake one evening.  I have to admit, I never would have guessed that offices are as bad as they are for baked goods, sweets and generally unhealthy food.  Before Christmas we had potlucks and cookie exchanges and chocolates left by clients on our table every day.  After Christmas everyone is purging their cupboards at home only to fill the cupboards in the office with their left over unwanted, non-resolution conforming boxes of cookies and chocolates. After getting addicted to sweets all over again over the holidays, I have to admit that it’s been really tough to avoid these foods and more than once my will power has all but vanished in the presence of cake….and spinach dip…and maybe the occasional Quality Street chocolate.  Who am I kidding, I don’t really have any will power when it comes to food.  And today someone parked their truck and left it running all morning right beside the intake vent outside of our building so we’ve been inhaling diesel fumes all day.  They got so bad that the hospital told everyone to go for an early lunch while they tried to air out the building.  Early lunch means long lunch and the Public Health gals all ended up going to a local diner for burgers and fries, despite the fact that I had a lovely salmon and spinach salad with fresh veg and avocado packed in my lunch box that I’ve been salivating over all day.  I’ll eat it for dinner but I easily could have passed on the burger and eaten my packed lunch.

Autographed Birthday Briefs

Wednesday night we celebrated Stacey’s birthday with a low key wine and cheese party that consisted of the aforementioned cheese cake and spinach dip. Did I mention the spinach dip had bacon in it? Stacey end up getting a pair of autographed Buffalo Airlines briefs!  I thought this was hilarious! The Buffalo guys are kind of local celebrities from the show Ice Pilots: NWT on the History Channel.  Another show that is putting Hay River on the map is a CBC show called Arctic Air.  It’s essentially the fictionalized version of Ice Pilots, about a small airline based out of Yellowknife, Northwest Territories.  They even fly all the same old World War 2 planes that Buffalo famously still flies. The first episode was like déjà vu…at one point they were debating whether or not they’d be able to land on a sand strip….which happened in an Ice Pilots episode.  I’ll probably keep watching the show simply because I want to see Hay River on tv and how it’s portrayed, plus a coworkers husband has some cameos in the background as a member of the ground crew which is kind of fun.  It’ll be interesting to see if the show lasts more than a season and if people get into it or not.

Every day at some point I glance at my shoulder or arm and there is a tiny little feather growing out of my sweater or sleeve and I have to pluck it out and get a flashback to the scene in Black Swan where she pulls the feathers out of the back of her shoulder. The first few times it happened it really creeped me out because it never occurred to me that my coat was shedding. I thought my clothes were randomly sprouting feathers and I had no explanation as to where they were coming from.  I think this is a sure fire sign that I need to watch less TV.  I’ve been trying to watch less tv here in Hay River because I find that since I started living by myself, the tv always seems to be on, regardless of if I’m even paying attention to it or not.  I’ve been trying to read more to prevent myself from watching tv but I always find it so hard to decide between reading or knitting. At least if the tv is on I can knit at the same time.  I was talking to my sister-in-law about this yesterday and we both agreed how annoying it is to have to prioritize.  On one hand I really want to finish the project I’m working on so that I can say that I knitted something to completion, which has not yet happened...I’m new to knitting and when I tried to learn in the past my attention span was that of a gold fish and I’d get bored and move on to something else after  a few measly cumulative hours. On the other hand I’m reading a really great book and want to finish that too just to find out what happens.  I guess I’m lucky that the biggest dilemma I currently have is choosing between knitting and reading.

A friend is lending me her car for the next two weeks so that I’ve got some wheels while Geoff visits me next week and we can do lots of fun stuff that requires a vehicle to access.  I’m picking it up tonight which means I get to ski and snowshoe as often as I want and whenever I want this weekend without having to bum rides off people to the ski club!  It’s going to be a good weekend!