The Story so Far

Let's have another recap, shall we?

I've been living without my husband for more than ten months now. In that time I have spent a total of 18 days with him, over the two times he has been to visit (and that first time we were actually expecting to be crossing the border together, so the tone of that first visit was rather more dour than the second).

We have been misinformed all over the place so we have a hard time trusting what information is correct, as the process for getting a green card is handled by five different government organizations and they don't all know what the other is responsible for, it seems. Add to this mix, the process is changing, an ever-moving target.

In early January we were told "five months" until I have my green card. We are almost through three of those five months now - when will we receive our Third Notice of Action? When will I receive instructions for setting up appointments with the US consulate in Vancouver for an interview and a health check? Assuming that gets approved, how long will it take for my green card to be printed and sent? And once I have all my permissions to enter the US in my hand, how much time will Dan need to make travel arrangements for our big trip?

I don't have answers to any of these questions. I get asked a lot. So does Dan. Every day he checks his mailbox to see if there is something from the government.

In the last ten months, I have lived in four different places. I was a month in Ucluelet, where we were living when Dan was offered the job, but I did not want to stay in that big house by myself, and without his income I could not afford to pay the bills, so I entered my period of couch surfing.

I was three months at my sister's in Alberta, then two months with my in-laws in Victoria, and I'm nearing the four-month mark with friends of mine in Cowichan Bay.

A few months ago, I put a bug in my sister's ear about coming out to visit before I leave. She knows it will be quite some time before I can get back up to visit her again once I move, and an equally long time for her to come visit me. She made the decision and booked the flight yesterday - she'll be here to visit in a couple of weeks! She'll stay three nights only, but it will be kid-free sister time and we are going to have a blast.

Every time my sister and I get together, it is required that I make her my pizza. I learned how to make pizza years ago from Ursa, have been working on and refining my recipes and techniques, and it was the first pizza that my sister had ever had without meat that she enjoyed. (oat bran crust, corn meal and sunflower seeds underneath crust, stewed tomatoes, fresh herbs, three kinds of cheese, that's it). As I have been working my way through The Breadbaker's Apprentice, I have changed the dough I use in my pizza, so it will be a different version but I'm sure she will love it.

Did I ever tell you the story of the five cent candies? A long time ago, when my sister and I were both still single, I visited her in Red Deer. For some reason we decided it would be a good idea to walk down the road to the gas station and each spend $2.00 on five cent candies. At 11:00 at night. And then eat them all. Yes we did. So naturally we were both on a sugar high and ill from eating so much acidic sugar, but it is one of our fondest sister memories as adults. (To this day we both have a weakness for gummy candy).

Toni asked me a few days ago if my sister would be okay with how we eat. It occurred to me that I don't know how adventurous my sister is with food. She lives with three picky eaters (her husband and two children), and she herself doesn't enjoy cooking much. There aren't any good restaurants near her (they are all chain restaurants) so she hasn't really had much exposure to good food. So I asked her yesterday: have you ever had Indian food? She said she didn't know. (How could you not know? I'm guessing she hasn't). Are you okay with fish and seafood? Yes, I'm easy, she said.

So this could be a grand food awakening for my sister. Maybe I'll introduce her to sushi made at home. I'll show her how to make chilaqueles. Last summer she got interested in good coffee and has been expanding her coffee horizons (Yay!). Vancouver Island has a lot of local roasters, tons of good coffee to be had here.

I asked her what she wanted to do while she is here. She said "buy rye bread". I know what she means. Not just any rye bread. Last year when she came to visit us in Ucluelet with her daughter, we stopped into the Coombs Country Market. What a feast for the senses! She bought this massive beautiful loaf of Triple Spiral Rye, with three shades of rye swirled up. And it was delicious. More fond memories. That loaf lasted the four of us (Dan too) for their entire visit of five days. So naturally we have to go back and get more.

She also said "be silly". Well THAT'S easy. We haven't had any kid-free sister time since, well, I don't even know. We had a few hours last September when we dropped off her kids at another auntie's house, but Mum was with us, so I don't think that counts.

She'll arrive on a Monday evening and leave on the Thursday evening. That's three days/nights. We could do the village tour - Cowichan Bay, Maple Bay, Cobble Hill, Chemainus. We're definitely going to Coombs. I want to show her downtown Duncan. Toni suggested I take her to Saison. Yes. If for nothing else, she needs to try the lemon tarts. I'm sure we'll get in a visit with my in-laws in Victoria. What else? I don't want to over-plan. I'm sure she'll also want to rest. The weather may be a determining factor too.

It's good that my sister will come for a visit soon. She was worried that she might not get to see me before I go, so this visit had to be done soon, because by late May they have to start getting their grain in the ground and farming season gets really busy. And I might be gone by then. You never know.

WordCamp Victoria 2012: a brief recap

I love conferences. I love going to these kinds of events where a whole bunch of interesting brains are in one space and having one big gigantic brainstorming love-in, with lots of different options of which session to go to. During and after each session I always feel like I want to press the "pause" button so I can run off and write in my journal about all the thinks [sic] I'm thinking. But there is no pause button alas, and I just simply have to take copious notes and hope that I remember to revisit every detail later in writing. Is that even possible?

Here is what happened: On Thursday, someone retweeted that there were extra tickets available for WordCamp Victoria if someone wanted to attend but couldn't afford it, just go to the website and contact the guy. This was a right place-right time situation, and I was on it. I contacted the guy, was registered and two days later I was there.

So were 300 other people. Holy cow, this was a thing! This un-conference (as it was billed) is for WordPress enthusiasts, but I figured there would be lots of content for people who are social media fans and bloggers in general. I knew that I might perhaps be lured to move my blogging activity to WordPress. You have been warned. There is an actual Social Media Camp in Victoria in June, but by then I'm sure I will be long gone to North Carolina with green card in hand.

I will do another post about the specific sessions I went to, because there really is just way too much content to put into one post (and you might not be interested in it anyway) but there were some general observations and themes throughout the day that I would like to share with you.

Who was there? Good question. I didn't actually interact with a lot of people in person, believe it or not. I spent most of the day being an audience member, and as so many people were live-Tweeting, it meant that those same people (I was one of them) were not interacting with other attendees. That did feel admittedly odd, since the whole point of an unconference is to interact with people. But that's the thing, right? It's about being online. I did get to meet a few people from Twitter (was starstruck by a poli sci prof from UVic, @janniaragon who is interesting and prolific, she later referred to me in a tweet as "statuesque"!) and made a bunch of new Twitter friends. It was kind of surreal. In one session, someone I follow on Twitter (@scribbler9) was tweeting about the same seminar I was in, so I tweeted "where are you sitting?" she said "second row, red water bottle", and I said "I'm in the third row, blue water bottle". Then later, a new Twitter friend/follower asked if it was me knitting with the pink yarn (I think I was the only person knitting there). It was like public stalking, but in a good way. In terms of demographics though, it seems everyone was proportionally represented, given the demographic of Victoria. I would say more than half the attendees were 45+, more than half were women, there were not many visible minorities. Lots of technogeeks (as evidenced by the sheer volume of iDevices) and WordPress superfans. There were writers, photographers, graphic designers, social media junkies, academics and laypeople. And all of them were Tweeting.

There were seven sessions, one per hour between 9am and 5pm, plus lunch. There were two keynotes and I missed the first one (I think I was confused about the schedule) but everyone was live tweeting the content so I felt like I was there. I'll talk later about the specific sessions.

What surprised me: people schedule their blog posts. Then they schedule the tweets announcing their blog posts. There is software to do this for you. Does this seem weird to you? It did to me. Some people tweet about their blog post three or four times to make sure everyone reads it. Then there was talk about linking from all the social media sites, Twitter and Facebook being the main two, but Google + being a leading contender and people are actually using LinkedIn. (For the record, I hate LinkedIn, never found it useful when I was on it and would go back with a great amount of resentment if I had to). There is a feature in WordPress that gives you suggestions on what to blog about. Um, what? Toni and I were talking about this the day before, about what an odd thing that was. Why blog at all if you can't think about what you want to write about? What I found hugely surprising is that no where in any of the presentations I saw was there any attention to language skills, to grammar, punctuation and spelling, or to the conventions of writing. Is that a given? Is it even an issue for people who blog that if you don't have the language skills that you might not retain a sophisticated readership? As a word nerd, I was rather shocked by this absence.

It also gave me cause to give some thought to why people blog, tweet, and otherwise engage in being an online presence and social media. There was a very clear message early in the day about being your own PR manager and creating your own personal brand, because everyone, it seems, has something to sell. Lots of people want lots of people to come to their blog so that they will attract advertisers so they can make money from blogging. This made me uncomfortable and I have to do some thinking about why I blog. At the moment I blog to keep people up to date with what kinds of adventures YarnSalad is having, and I hope that will always be interesting. While I think I have lots to say and I am delighted that I get more than a thousand hits to my blog every month, I do need to think about the future of my blog. A future employer or publisher could be reading my work here so this must be a consideration. I'm sure if you Google my name this comes up high, and it is true that potential employers and landlords are using Google to see what kind of person their applicant is. I am one of those people with a unique name (and not a Kevin Miller or something like that) and a solid internet presence, so I do have to be very mindful of the content I put on the Internet.

At any rate, by the end of the day my mind was full and exhausted, but I am so glad I went. I will start paying attention to more things like this in the future because I think unconferences like this will proliferate and, well, you know me, I like to be on the cutting edge (that was sarcasm). Something to consider though, is how to keep the balance of being a smarmy salesman engaged in shameless self-promotion and being a sincere human being behind the keyboard? Hopefully, dear reader, I will keep it real and that will mean you will continue to hang out with me.

Am I 1% or 99%?

Normally I don’t like to write about political issues. Not any more. I spent a lot of time in the 1990s as an activist, first as a student and then later when I got involved in the labour movement. I was all wrapped up in my activism and found myself simply being tired and angry all the time. When I discovered rampant hypocrisy and utter lack of integrity by leaders of these movements, I walked away. Life is too short to spend all my energy on negativity.

I can’t ignore this Occupy movement. I mean I can, technically, by simply not physically going by Centennial Square in Victoria. But I do think about it. A lot. I suspect that if I went down to the #occupyVictoria site, I would see a bunch of people I used to attend protests with a decade ago. Well, maybe not now, maybe in the early days of this Occupy movement I would have seen those familiar faces of people who just show up to every protest, but rumor has it the demographic of the people at the site has changed. 

Victoria and Vancouver have issues of homelessness and safe injection drug sites, as do many major cities. When the Olympics came to Vancouver last year, the city of Vancouver proposed to ship all the homeless somewhere else (read: Victoria) to sweep them under the rug and away from all the tourists coming here for Olympics. There has long been a call for more services to this disadvantaged set of individuals.

From the beginning I have been puzzled by the Occupy movement. I mean, Okay I get that people are angry about the rich not being taxed fairly while the middle class and lower have suffered greatly. But you know what? That is a trend that has repeated itself historically ever since humans could build. One group oppressed another*. One group enslaved another. Ever seen St. Petersburg? That entire city was built on slave labour. So were the Pyramids. North America’s early railroads (mostly Canada, but probably at least in the western US too) were built by Asian immigrants looking for a better life but were instead treated as expendable.  I’m not saying that slavery is good or something we should continue (thanks to @idreamnsweaters for catching me on this), but just that it’s not new. Read any Jared Diamond and you'll see how societies come and go, usually at the hands of this kind of movement from an egalitarian to a huge chasm between the haves and the have-nots. The way our current global economic situation is moving will probably lead to collapse eventually. But it is not just the result of our economic and political systems. (Hello overpopulation!)

I’ve been reading lots of the links that people have been posted on Twitter, with opinions on either side of the Occupy movement. One interesting YouTube video posited that the people behind the Occupy movement are some whiny poor-me Gen Yers who have a sense of entitlement and don’t know where their food or their IT gadgetry even comes from (i.e. the corporations they rail against). I have also been reading the comments of the news stories that are posted on my local media sites. The people who are largely against this movement, in Victoria at least, seem to be those who are supposedly in the 99%, that is, average people. When the City of Victoria turned off the power and water that the Occupy protesters were using, there was public outcry from both sides. What? The city was providing water and power for these people who claim to represent the 99%? No, more like they just took it without sanction. 

We have municipal elections coming up in a few weeks in British Columbia, so the Occupy movement in Vancouver and Victoria have turned into what the Vancouver Mayor calls a “political football” because it is no longer about “sticking it to the man”. The Occupy movement in British Columbia has turned it into yet another platform to draw attention to the issues of homelessness and drug use on our province’s streets. For this reason, both Victoria and Vancouver want to shut the encampments down and I have to say I can’t blame them. This is supposedly drawing criticism to both Vancouver’s and Victoria’s mayors and council. So says the media. We’ll see what happens on Election Day, as this is like to be the largest issue on which people vote. 

A woman at the Occupy Vancouver site died yesterday, allegedly of a drug overdose. Two days ago, another man from the Vancouver site was treated for a drug overdose. What the media hasn’t reported is which kinds of drugs were responsible, prescription or illicit, but it is largely assumed that it is street drugs that are the cause. This is the reason the people, the 90-97% (a number I made up) of the 99% can’t get behind this Occupy movement. So many people who are not the 1% have said “these people do not represent me”, and I think that is an interesting thing to consider.

Ah, percentages. As a scientist, I am very interested in statistics. Not only the numbers themselves but just how the numbers were arrived at. As someone who studied Humanities early on, I have a loathsome disdain for simple dichotomies, such as the proposed 1%/99%. In my brief foray into feminism, and other minority labels, I grew to dislike labels, which coincided with my growing away from being a political activist altogether. So if you ask me or label me as being on one side or other of these issues, I will tell you I fall into neither category. I don’t question whether “one percent” is representative, because I think it is. And 99 percent may be representative if we are only talking about monetary wealth, BUT, that does not mean my ideologies fit within the framework that the originators of the whole Occupy Wall Street movement envisioned. So this is where I get annoyed, because I hate being lumped into a category against my will.

I expect a number of books will be written about the Occupy movement in the coming years. It will be an interesting thing to look at all this in hindsight, and to see from which vantage point this hindsight will come from. Will there be a further breakdown of the 99%? As in 37% of the 99%ers are behind the cause, 54% aren’t, and the rest couldn’t care less?  How will this data be gathered? Who will be the objective independent third party responsible for collecting, analyzing and reporting this data? We will never know, and we must be content with never knowing. That’s the problem with history – like it or not, we are in an age where multiple histories can and will be written and sorting out who is right or wrong is too nebulous to comprehend. 

I do believe I am rambling now. I will summarize by saying I do not support the Occupy movement because it does not make any concrete specific realistic suggestions about how our global society can achieve financial equity. Trying to guilt the corporations and the rich will simply not work, and, as I see it, that seems to be the only tack the protesters are taking. I do not support the Occupy movement because, while it thought provoking, it is also causes people like me (who have had all kinds of bad luck and shitty things happen despite my best efforts to get out of poverty and debt, and who is also highly educated and motivated to improve myself) to resent any sort of political movement that claims to want to help people like me. I’ve been a part of a union and I’ve seen how unions as a whole protect the mediocre and the lazy (I’ll save that diatribe for another time, when I’m feeling sufficiently mad enough again), and the whole Occupy movement seems to me to be like one large union that forces you to sign the union card and take the oath, even though you absolutely disagree with every word of that oath. I also think that if the Occupy movement had any real teeth, you would see WAY more people out there on the streets. Since it doesn’t, I will continue to bust my ass to make ends meet, to get ahead, and to be the best human I can be.

 This post will no doubt piss some of my readers off (see, I'm even using expletives, which I abhor doing on the Internet, but this a highly charged issue), but I am tired of being silent on this issue. And I want it to be known that I don't support the Occupy movement. If I'm "missing the point" of the movement, that's not my fault. It's the fault of the people behind it for not making it clear for an intelligent person to comprehend. Even then, I might not agree. Gotta love free speech.

* An immediate response from a Twitter follower challenged me on this point. She said "Also you said for any other group to get ahead is to "oppress" another group. That isn't true." I don't think I said or implied this. I believe it is true that one group oppressing another has happened historically.  I am very careful in my choice of words when I write. I said "I agree. But it also happens that some groups often do get ahead by oppressing others, which is the point of Occupy, no?" And she replied "NO that is not the point. I think you need to do more reading because by your blog post I see you haven't."  So there you have it. Flack. I was expecting that. And this is all my opinion anyway, which I have a right to.

confused

I have lived in a few places in the last two years and it has me confused about recycling, garbage & environmentalism.

In the greater Victoria area, it is common for people to not flush the toilet unless there are solids in it. This has changed somewhat with the advent of low-flow toilets, with a little button for pee and a big button for poo, but on the whole, only brown goes down.

Victoria also has a sophisticated system of recycling. Everything. Whatever doesn't get picked up at the curbside, there is the Pacific Mobile Depot that makes its rounds in the capital region each month where you can take your soft plastics, your old computer parts, your Styrofoam (why did my computer insist on capitalizing that?). For many people in this area, they will only have one grocery bag a month that goes to the garbage, for all the recycling and composting they do.

When we lived in East Sooke, we had (I had) a great compost system. I had the black compost bin that I threw kitchen scraps into, and that was only if I didn't give them to the chickens first. (Having chickens around is awesome. They eat slugs). I also built a three-bin compost system for processing large batches which gave my garden lots of yummy nutrients for my plants.

Things were a bit different in Ucluelet. They do have garbage and recycling curbside pickup, but you couldn't put your stuff out before 8am on collection day because of the bears and raccoons. Very few people had compost bins for the same reason. And they did not accept glass for recycling. Water was plentiful, so there was no concern about water conservation (it is, after all, a rain forest).

Then I spent the summer in Alberta. On a farm. No such thing as curbside anything. No compost. Garbage went out to 'the pit' to be burned at some point in the year. Very few farmers recycle, but my sister does. In fact, she has quite an elaborate system of recycling whereby there is a place in the garage for everything that the recycling depot in Camrose will accept. Once a month or so, my sister will drive it all in. As for water, it's on a well. A stinky sulfurous brown water well, but there was plenty of water. Flush the toilet every time, please.

Back in Victoria, I have to overwrite and re-learn all the rules from before. Where does everything go?  What are the rhythms of the house? What can and cannot be recycled? I'm confused, see, because I'm in a borrowed space trying not to upset the fine balance of the people who live here. They are very forgiving, thankfully, and not tyrannical in the slightest. It's an interesting thing to think about though. 

got my run on

Please forgive the bad grammar in the title. I just couldn't help it.

Last week Dan bought me new running shoes. I think they are the first pair of running shoes actually purchased in a running store, not from a shoe store. Today I broke them in.

I forgot when we were shoe shopping that I wear an orthotic in my running shoe. I don't wear the orthotics in the rest of my shoes, so never thought to bring it with me when we were at the store. I pulled them out of my old shoes and slipped them into the new ones today. The fit was slightly different but not in a bad way.

As luck would have it, I went out for my run before the torrential rains began today. I haven't run in two and a half weeks (between moving, travel, spending time with Dan, and resettling in a temporary location) but instead of doing an easier run, I continued on the plan with the Couch to 10k app on my iPhone.

I don't recall if I have mentioned this program before. I did it years ago (before there was such a thing as iPhones) when I was training for my first 10k race in 1999 or 2000. I'm up to week 6 day 1 today, which after the 5-minute warm-up has me running 3min walking 2min 13 times. I was working my way through this program when I was at my sister's house, on the treadmill. What a difference to be outside!
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I ran through the Ross Bay Cemetery, then turned around and headed back south on Dallas Road. Near Ogden point I turned in to the streets, ran through James Bay and Beacon Hill Park before heading back. I logged 5.47 miles with my Runmeter app.

I'm seeing Victoria through new eyes. When we left the area (living in East Sooke) a year and a half ago, we were desperate to leave. After living in two quite different rural and remote locations since then, I have a new appreciate for the city. Everything is within walking distance. I can ride my bike. There are still flowers in October. Gourmet and Asian food.

As I ran by the peacock in Beacon Hill Park, I resisted the urge to say hello "haawOOOw!" (I can do a mean peacock impersonation) and it reminded me of Spilly Jane. (Why? I think she mentioned something about peacock coloured nail polish on Twitter sometime this summer).

In slightly unrelated news, yesterday I was invited to and attended a Thanksgiving dinner at a friend's family's home. I keep forgetting how different I looked when we moved away. I was 30 pounds heaver and had brown hair. I sure don't get tired of the compliments. :-) However, I have remained at the same weight for about three months now. I've gone up and down a pound or two, but I haven't really been logging with my LoseIt! app (what got my whole weight loss started in the first place). So in one sense, it's good that I haven't gained any weight back. But I still have 20-30 pounds to go until I'm where I want to be.

So I'm training for a marathon. Victoria is a great place to get going on that because there is TONS of support. I have people here I can run with. Kinston, when I get there someday, is also full of runners. I don't know which marathon I'll end up running but I am determined to do it before I turn 39. 

what a week it has been

It's hard to believe that a week ago I was on the way back to the Island with Dan. That two weeks ago, I figured by now I will be settling into my new life in North Carolina.

Well, if there is one virtue that Dan and I share, it is our adaptability. We seem to be able to cope well in a crisis and to support each other in times of need. Yes getting rejected at the border sucks. So did having the cat try to wriggle her way out of her harness at a roadside stop, forcing me to clamp down on her hard lest she run away and climb up a tree in the forest. This left me with deep gashes, bleeding, with a torn (favourite) shirt, and a wicked bruise on my knee. But I was not going to risk losing my cat. I'm mostly recovered from my lacerations, and the bruise is getting smaller.

As I'm getting used to the idea of being here at least until Christmas, I am actually excited about the things I can do while I'm here. On the top of my list is visit all my friends. That alone could take until Christmas! (I am so lucky). I'll spend all of next week looking for jobs and I expect to have at least one offer by the end of the week - there are tons of jobs in Victoria right now. While it would be great to get a job in health informatics research or at least something to do with writing, I can do just about anything I set my mind do. Mountain Equipment Co-op (Canada's REI) is hiring.

Dan and I were walking around in downtown Victoria today. Oddly enough, that's something we haven't spent much time doing. When we lived in Victoria and East Sooke, our downtown Victoria experience was largely just parking somewhere and going to a restaurant. We love food, after all. Today we decided to go down to Munro's Books, a long-standing institution of Victoria. Again! We made off not having spent any money but I have decided on the slow cooker book I want - the one by America's Test Kitchen. When half of the house's current inhabitants clear out in the next few days, I will set to my cooking experiments.

I don't know what it is, but I can't stop thinking about food. As in cooking, technique, and gourmet flavours. Dan has been experimenting with food and watching all those cooking programs for years and I was the happy guinea pig for all his experiments. This last week since we've been together in a food lover's paradise, I too am taking a ravenous interest in honing my skills. I'm already thinking about what the family might have for Christmas dinner (our Pizza Christmas was a hit in 2009). I guess Dan and I have been able to distill what is really important to us in our life, which is each other, and food. Would the family be okay with okonomiyaki for Christmas dinner? What about a line-up of slow cooker dishes? Thinking, thinking...

Oh, Munro's. It's such a great book store. I love Bolen, for it's massive selection and proximity to bathrooms (it's in a mall), but Munro's has a more focused selection, not chosen for mass appeal but for the discerning reader. There were easily five books in the cooking section I could have walked away with. I also had a chance to see Melissa Morgan-Oakes' newest book about knitting socks toe-up 2-at-a-time. I learned how to knit socks with her first book, so I'm a big MMO fan.

But I can't buy stuff right now. Can't. Need an income first. Victoria has so much to offer to people who have money. I'm not even allowing any yarn shop indulgences until I can confidently pay my bills. But when I do have a bit of extra cash for my knitting habit, I will need things like a shawl pin, some buttons, some Trekking and Wollmeise yarn. It would be nice to someday be able to afford enough nice yarn for a sweater - I've never knit a sweater for myself before.

Which brings me to Christmas again. It's terrible. I usually start thinking about Christmas in July - as in what I will knit for everyone. I don't need to knit for everyone (and in truth, this year, if I do have money, I have some fabulous gift ideas for everyone. It's very helpful to live under the same roof as someone to know what they would appreciate as gifts). I just like knitting. For everyone. And that might mean the projects for myself get set aside until Selfish Knitting Season (in January).

While we were in Mountain Equipment Co-op, Dan encouraged me to look at winter coats. I don't have one. Not any more. Got rid of all my cold weather stuff in anticipation of moving to a hot climate. I found one I like, and as it happens, it is only $145.

I fit into a size Medium! I didn't want a black one, but I wasn't fond of the plum colour, so black will have to do. I will have to wait until November to buy it (money) because today we bought me new running shoes.

We went to Frontrunners and I must have tried on 14 pairs. I have had bunion surgery on both feet, one of which is coming back, and my feet are wide. They are also pronating slightly so I need a bit of arch support. I tried on every suitable women's runner that came in a wide size, and they were all too tight. Tried a few men's and voila! A perfect fit of asics. Turns out they were the cheapest pair.  Not only that, but with the Victoria Marathon happening this weekend, I got an extra 20% off. I will keep a log of how many miles I put on these shoes, because marathon runners advise that after 300-500 miles, shoes need replacing. I have never suffered any real running injury, and would like to keep it that way, so I follow all the advice of the marathon runners that have come before. I am determined to run a marathon before I turn 39 in 2013. Join me?

yarnsalad goes to Victoria

Oh it was fun. So many friends, so much food, so little time! I was exhausted by the time I got home but had to plunge right into work today, and I'm still rather tired so I'll keep this short. I will say, however, that I actually cooked dinner for myself tonight, did two loads of laundry and started another knitted lace project. Dinner, in case you were wondering is the Saigon Salad from the ReBar cookbook (if you're from Victoria or elsewhere on Vancouver Island, you'll have this in your kitchen). It was yummy and I'll have it for lunch tomorrow!

And the knitted lace project, another from Victorian Lace Today, is the Victorian Ruby (p.92) and I'm using yarn that Candice sent me (@felyn), it's Andre's Alpacas 114g, 494 yards, 2ply. It's perfect for this pattern! I'm setting aside the Shoulder Shawl in Syrian Lace pattern (p.130) which is proving to be less interesting and more difficult with the fine yarn (Diamond luxury Alpaca lace). Photos to come when I have something to show!