So it looks like if you want ice cream while you're at my house, you'll either have to warn me ahead of time or bring your own. D. can't eat much dairy these days, and my main use for it is the scoop of vanilla that I put into my cocoa-fied coffee each morning. When Breyers was sticking to their promise of cream, vanilla and sugar as their sole ingredients, I always had a carton in the freezer. Once they started to slip tara gum into the mix, I started looking for an alternative (much to the kids' dismay). With said kids now out of the house at least until next summer, I switched to whipping cream. A tablespoon puts back the fat that my non-fat cocoa mix is missing with fewer calories than the aforementioned ice cream. But earlier this week, I discovered that my newest carton was one day past its buy date. What to do? I didn't want to pitch it, it wasn't going to last more than another day longer, and I really didn't have the time or interest or ice & rock salt required to pull out the ice cream maker.

Ah ha! I have a solution. A year or so ago, I bought a gazogene* to make whipped cream. I 'whipped' up my whipping cream and squirted it into two quart boxes, and popped them into the freezer. It's definitely not 'ice cream' by any means, but it serves my purpose. One box, I swirled with chocolate syrup to make a sort of fudge ripple, but the other I left plain.

What, no sugar, you're asking? Absolutely. We found years ago with salt that we tend to use less if we sprinkle it *on* the food instead of mixing it in. Less is needed because the salt that is there hits the taste buds, rather than being 'hidden' inside the other foods. Turns out that sugar works in a very similar way. There is enough 'sweet' taste in the cinnamon sugar that I sprinkle on the ice cream floating on the cocoa/coffee that I'm good.

Why use the ice cream or the whipping cream at all? Originally when I skipped my daily latte, I found that my feet would start cramping. I assumed it was the calcium, so when I started making my coffees at home, I made up a dried milk/cocoa/cinnamon/vanilla mix to add to it to make kind of a non-sugary mocha. Unfortunately my feet cramps started reoccurring, and adding more mix (i.e., more calcium) didn't fix the problem. It appears to be a low-fat issue. I don't eat a lot of fats normally during the course of the day, so I've resorted to the ice cream (now whipped cream) as a means of putting the milk fat *back* into my non-fat cocoa. So far, this seems to have solved the problem.

* a devise using compressed CO2 to aerate fluids, similar to a seltzer bottle.

Our rabbit Lucy is back home now, after having major surgery to have a tumor removed. We had left her with our rabbit expert in July while we were traveling and all of a sudden what had been a fairly robust rabbit came down with all sorts of health problems. When packing her up to take her to BunnyBytes(.com), we discovered a very large tumor on her tummy. Immediately after the move to her temporary home, she developed a head tilt and started favoring her left paw. Turns out that she had a very persistent ear infection, and somewhere along the line, she developed a palsy where she shakes until she falls over, at which point she pretty much returns to normal. Once Jen finally got the ear infection under control, we had the tumor removed. Her staples came out yesterday, and we brought her back home last evening, two months after this all started.

We almost left Lucy with Jen, and Pica home instead. Pica was one of the rabbit litter born at BunnyBytes(.com) the spring before the TigerGirl went over to Japan , so he's almost four years old now. He's a small rabbit with little tiny ears, and bunnies his size can live almost as long as cats. D & I decided that we'd rather stick with our current rabbit, gimpy as she is now, rather than committing to another 7-8 years of having hay all over the house.

Lucy's wobbly and deaf, with apparently continuing ear infections. I'm supposed to squirt stuff into her ears twice a day which makes her shake her head which makes her fall over again. Hopefully this is progress. She can't romp outside at this point (and may not ever be able to go out again), which means that we need to pull all the cords in the living room up out of the way so that she can romp inside instead. We need to be doing that anyway at this time of year, as it is getting too cold and wet to let her outside now. We'll see how all this goes.

At last! This past Friday was the last multicultural education class. Huzzah! Yesterday we started on a Classroom Instruction, Management and Assessment class that looks like it will be much less sitting around talking and much more doing and learning. I am relaxing and enjoying class again.

I still have a paper due this coming week for the Multicultural class, and I'll have to push myself to overcome my persistent resistance to the subject and get the assignment done. In theory, we need each other's Lesson Plans, and I've only got mine and one other at this point. But regardless, I'll have to write the paper with or without the other material, so that's not a very good excuse for putting it off.

So today, instead of homework, I put the chore lists together into some form that might result in my actually starting to do the chores again, and that took far more time than I really should have spent on it. Towards the end of the day, D. & I went out to tackle the jungle on the south side of the house. We've cleared another six feet or so. With any luck, we'll actually break a pathway through to the side door so that I can get to my old fashioned roses before the blooming season stops. Right now I can see them outside of the windows and they look lovely. Progress is being made. We keep uncovering 'nests' of flattened grass, and I continue to wonder if the kittehs appreciate our uncovering their hidey-holes.

So I'll make up for skipping so many days by posting twice today, I guess. I got to substitute for a first grade class today. Man o man, there is nothing like a bunch of 6 year olds who are just going into their third week of class. We definitely had problems listening, and it was a noisy afternoon after lunch, but they were fun, and I'd do it again in a heartbeat.

And as expected, it's nice to be back in the classroom, and remembering just why I'm slogging through all these social-sciency studies on how kids learn and how their background impacts them in class and whatnot. It's also nice to start seeing how teachers set things up in their classrooms. I'm makiing notes on both what I want to do AND what I want to do differently. All in all, it was a good day.

Man, I'm slipping. Between the Differentiated Instruction classwork and stuff starting up at AHS, seems like I'm always scrambling to catch up. Got a start on our Remote Sensing work for the AHS Science Olympiad team, studying maps, and I've had my first mentor meeting. Looks like I'll be helping with a lot of college applications this fall. ;-) Which is good.

The good news is that for our CIMA II (Classroom Instruction, Management and Assessment, I think) class which starts on Saturday, we just have to make sure we've reviewed some of the things we went over in CIMA I. When I originally found out on Monday that we had to read 4 chapters by Saturday ON TOP of this thing we're doing for DI, I was not a happy camper. But happily, they're chapters we've already gone over. I do need to e-mail a couple of teacher-friends for example formative assessments, though (yes, a huge part of this is a new vocabulary of buzz words)

So now all I have to do for Friday's DI class is: 1)finish the lesson plan; 2) find the attachments I want to include; 2) pull together the presentation slides; 4) read the three technical papers for discussion. Non-trivial. Blah.

We finally got a start on pruning back that jungle that now makes up the south side of our house. It's hard to believe that earlier in the year, you could actually walk between the house and the property line. I've got a lovely batch of blackberries growing there this year that I can't really get to, and I haven't been able to bring in any of the roses from the bush by the side door either. The blackberries are a new phenomena, but I really miss the roses. They've got a lovely scent.

So we went out with the yard waste barrel and pretty much filled it, without getting much more than three feet into the overgrowth. But at least that's three feet more than was accessible yesterday.

While we were pruning, we uncovered that nest that Jazz sleeps in during the day. D. says that she's got another one out back by the bamboo. I can't help but wonder if she'll move and start sleeping further down the walkway, now that we've 'daylighted' her current hidey-hole.

It's a lovely evening, warm and clear, and it's supposed to turn rainy again tonight. I wanted to take advantage of it, so D & I tried taking a walk down through the park to the beach... except the furries took it into their little fur heads that they wanted to come with us. We headed off into the west to go down the hill, but once the cats crossed the street to come along, we decided we'd better not risk them following further and backtracked to the front of our house. Then we started walking south up our block (the wrong direction from the beach, but at least there were no streets to cross). The kittehs galloped along after us, playing tag on the various front yards. Midway up the block, we turned back again as I was getting nervous about them 1) following us up to the end of the block and 2) not being bright enough to continue following us home if we looped back down the back alley. When we got back down to our yard, Yar cat was still bouncing, but the Cat with a Thousand Names was starting to look pretty tuckered.

So D & I headed out once more, but east this time, along the other side of the house and in completely the wrong direction from the beach. The Yar cat followed us around the first corner, but plopped down beside the garden gate. The Cat with a Thousand Names wasn't to be seen. We got a bit of a walk, but never made it to the beach. We continued to walk up the street over from ours and on the far block as we were heading west back towards our street, we had a nice chat with a neighbor we haven't seen for a while. The sun was starting to set once we'd done, so we figured we'd gotten as much of a walk as we were going to, and headed home.

I'd consider this a potential way to exercise the Cat with a Thousand Names, but the first thing he did when he saw we were home was to head to his food dish. The Yar cat is still guarding the front steps, even though he knows we are back.

Ooh, it's a foggy September morning today. I love living in a maritime climate.

Finally finished re-reading the Harry Potter series. I was watching the first movie on the way back from Scotland, and that got me started. We picked up copies of the British version that we were missing while we were up in Vancouver. Now that that's done, I might finally be able to get something productive done.... presuming that I don't do something foolish, like start the Taran Wanderer series.

I also re-watched the first four movies, up to the Order of the Phoenix, which we now own but I haven't yet seen. The last three books are so dark, though, I'm thinking about waiting until all of the movies are out (yeh, I know, that's about three years from now) before I watch the last four.

Man that was a big spider! About a week ago (some time after the boy had gone back to college for the second time), I glanced across the room and there was a huge spider scurrying from beside the MacBox over towards the stereo. I estimated its leg span to be over 3 inches, easily. I mean, come on, it was big enough that I could see it easily from about 9 feet away. It wasn't one of those grass spiders with the tiny body and the long, spindly legs either. This was a spider that made me very glad it was over there and I was over here. A mental note was made to be very, very careful the next time I needed to go over by the shelves of CDs.

But that was then, and this is now. And just now, I looked down and here's the giganta-spider again, only this time, it's right beside my chair, less than 12 inches away. That will wake you up, in a hurry. AND distract you from the critique that you're supposed to be writing for class, you can bet.

Thanks to a postcard that had been conveniently left on the floor and a custard dish that had been holding tea bags*, the spider is now claiming new territory outside by the lamp post. Hopefully the kitties have enough sense not to go hunting there, but I don't think they sleep in that part of the periwinkle. I'll just have to make sure that I wear gloves and good shoes the next time I'm pruning over there.....

* proving that neatness is highly overrated

Feeling punky; the boy came home a week after having the flu, but I really don't think I caught this from him. I think it's the result of too many nights staying up late reading when I have to get up early the next morning. Too many nights with only five hours of sleep will do this to me. The cats are happy to have someone sleeping in this morning with them, though...

I survived the second of two WEST-E tests this morning. These tests are required to prove that I have enough basic knowledge to teach 3rd graders and the answers that I tend to want give often aren't of the choices. At least for the social studies class I don't run into the 'wait, none of these answers could possibly be correct' like I did with the math. This set off another bout of 'why am I doing this? why aren't I working on a masters in math?'. Social scientists and hard scientists just don't think alike. Hopefully, now that the school year is in swing, I can get back into the classrooms and remember just why I'm putting myself through this.

The boy was home to see friends over the long weekend; he came in while D & I were in Vancouver. (...was he really able to get tickets? ...will he be able to get home from the bus? ....will he really have his key? I need to stop worrying so much - he was fine) He spend most of the time out and about, but we had dinner together and hit Half Price Books the evening before he left again. His absence left a bigger hole this time, probably because we went from 'having him here' to 'not having him here', without the intermediate step of having the drive over and back. The Cat With A Thousand Names is sure chatty now that the boy's gone again. I've spent the morning playing fetch with him and his mouse.

The rest of our trip was nice. We saw a play at Bard on the Beach each evening. Othello (main stage) was *very* well done and I enjoyed it much more than I had expected. We had been delayed going over the Lions Gate bridge and so were late to the performance. They slipped us and another couple in shortly after the play started, so we had seats down in the front left, which was a very different perspective that we normally have.

I enjoyed Comedy of Errors (main stage) less than I had expected. It was set in an exaggerated Elizabethan-time period, with anachronistic asides and music thrown in and it didn't work well for me.

Richard II (Studio Stage) was the first of their upcoming 'history series' and I hadn't seen it before. It was interesting, although the reasoning for Richard II to yield his throne to Henry was not clear. I'll need to read up on the Henry's before we head up next year. Bard is going to meld the two H-IVs into one play for 2010 and the three H-Vs together into one play for 2011, and I'm curious how that is going to work.

Finally, we say Alls Well That Ends Well. (Studio Stage) which was pleasant enough. I've finding it interesting that I'm enjoying the 'serious' plays more and the comedies less these days and wonder if it is a function of 'growing up', or whether it is just that I've seen most of the comedies several times and so the 'dramas' are fresher for me. Of course, the quality of the Bard on the Beach productions is amazing and that may part of it as well.

Beyond the plays we did a mix of standard things and new. We stopped by ABC Books and browsed. They lost one of their cats last fall and so only have the one now. I found out that bookstores actually keep their cats for a reason: otherwise mice will get in and nibble the bindings. We also swung by Stanley Park and looked for black squirrels and went shopped at Indigo Books (I've caught up with my collection of 'British' Harry Potter editions).

Among the 'new' things: we went on some of the Stanley Park trails which is something I've been wanting to do for years and D. suggested we see the VanDusen Botanical Gardens. It's similar to the Butchart Gardens, and is made up of various 'themed' gardens but on a smaller scale. We ran out of time, so didn't get to see all of the different areas, but did make it to the Maze (and found the center!). Pictures will be up on Flickr some time later this week.

(post updated - Monday 7 Sept)
Parking at Stanley Park just wasn't lucky for me yesterday. I went to buy a parking permit (all day, mind you), and came back to find that my electronic lock system had frozen in the 'locked' position.... with the door OPEN. We tried a gazillion things (locking the car, unlocking the car, turning the car on, turning the car off, driving the car...) couldn't get it to unlock. We finally looped my belt around the door handle to give D. something to hold the door shut with, drove around for 15 minutes until we found a gas station, found a Saab place in the yellow pages, drove the 20 minutes to get the Saab place, and of course he was completely booked for days. But he came over to look at it, and presto, it unfroze. I'm definitely going back *there* if ever the need arises again. ;-)

When he poked it, a small plastic piece also fell to the ground. He said that it was just a guide piece and that the lock should be fine without it. Looking at where the similar piece is on the driver's door, I think the piece had partially broken and gotten in the way of the lock releasing. Either the driving or the poking or a combination was enough to let it break completely and fall out of the way.

So with most of the afternoon gone, we went back to the park, found a map at the Information Booth, and went off to explore some of the paths. Ninety minutes later, we come back to my car, and it has a ticket on the windshield. Did I forget to put my all-day parking permit back on the dash? No, turns out that I was in a poorly marked 15-minute parking zone. The very small '15-min parking' sign had been hidden by the van in front of me and the curb wasn't painted or marked in any fashion either. I've got some snaps of the situation and will submit them with an appeal requesting that it be turned into a warning. We'll see. What a day!

Update: we're back home and I've sent my appeal off. With the holiday, I'm hoping that I meet their deadline. What a mess. Of course, now that we're back, I find that their office was actually very convenient to stop by while we were in Vancouver, but I didn't take that opportunity. Rats.

I brought home an heirloom tomato last night from PCC (also know fondly as Politically Correct Consumables). It was chopped up and was stirred into a wonderful vegetable-noodle dish for our dinner. I saved the seeds, and went out onto the internet to see just exactly what I'm supposed to do with them to keep them to plant next year. Amazingly, I found several sites that told me I was supposed to leave them in a pool of water for several days until a moldy scum formed on the top. Apparently this will kill any seed-borne diseases before drying them.
I can *do* that. In fact, I'm really good at letting things sit until they get moldy. Finally, a project that plays to my strengths!