On fire alarms and the setting of them off...

A few days ago, my friends Nicole and Tim gave me a ride home from work, but they needed to stop at the store for some ingredients in the icebox cookies she was going to make. Since they wandered down the frozen foods aisle, I picked up a pizza thing for dinner. Then we spotted the Disney pizzas. One was shaped like Mickey Mouse. Tim convinced me to get it.

Until today I had never tried using our gas oven, afraid of pulling a Sylvia Plath. I put the pizza in it and was rewarded by seeing the blue flames at the bottom of the thing. (Google assured me this was normal, as I cannot describe it accurately). So I let the pizza cook for abut eight of the fifteen minutes as recommended by the box. At the eight minute mark, the smoke alarm goes off.

First instinct was to check the oven. Pizza was cooking along normally, nothing wrong. So I did my Standard Operating Procedure in these situations: Open up the kitchen door to the outside, and yell at the Alarm.

This time the technique failed, and it continued to go off. Still frightened by the powers of the gas oven, I turned it off. It did not help. So I turned off the kitchen light and tried to find the smoke alarm. Side note: I did not know where the alarm was, let alone that we had one til I set it off one night. I did not find the source of the noise until today. I stood up on a chair and surveyed the kitchen and finally found the goddamned thing on top of a shelf. I wrenched the battery out of it and it shut the fuck up.

I then ate my delicious delicious pizza and declared victory over the smoke detector. After I finished making dinner tonight I put the battery back in the smoke detector, but now I know thine enemy.

(I know Candice and Ash will appreciate this: when I was yelling at the smoke alarm, I thought of the infamous "SHUT UP, STOVE, THE OVEN'S ON FIRE!")

Current music: Dropkick Murphys - Boys on the Docks

Oh dear god why

OH GOD
I AM WATCHING THE MPREG EPISODE OF ENTERPRISE
TRIP HAS A NIPPLE ON HIS WRIST.

OH GOD WHY.

T'Pol: This engineer wanted you to see her planet?"

Trip: "So?"

T'Pol: "Perhaps the next step would be for you to meet her holographic parents. If I'm not mistaken on some planets, that's a precursor to marriage."

Trip: "WE TOOK A RIDE IN A ROWBOAT."

--

T'Pol: "One of the first things a diplomat learns is not to stick his fingers where they don't belong."

On books and of endings.

So I'm going to apply for this position, which thanks to the heads up from Jen , I learned about tonight.

I'm still working on my Peace Corps application, but I have no idea how to find out how much / where my student loans are from. Any ideas? I know where two of them are but there is more money than those two.

Some of you may have heard that LJ is making some cutbacks. While I don't anticipate it shutting down anytime soon, I decided that I will also be crossposting entries not only to Facebook, but to my much neglected Blogspot. You're welcome to follow me on both. Or not.

In other news, Borders sent me a 40% off coupon on a book as long as you spent $20, and I had a $10 gift card. I think you can see where this is going. I ended up getting Suite Francaise by Irene Nemirovsky, and The Road, by Cormac McCarthy. This is on top of the books I just ordered that should be here in a couple of days: The Children of Henry VIII, by Alison Weir; A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini; and Water for Elephants: A Novel, by Sara Gruen.

This is on top of the fact that I am still waiting to read Across a Hundred Mountains, by Reyna Grande and Four Queens: The Provencal Sisters Who Ruled Europe, by Nancy Goldstone. Um yeah. I have a minor book addiction?

Montréal Photographics.

Went up to Montréal in April to see a friend of mine from Vancouver and another from Peterborough ON. Here are some pics from our trip:


Molson practically owned everything in Lower Canada in the 1830s. He was one of the driving forces behind Canada joining the US in the 30s, because he thought it would be better for business for him. Today we mostly know him for his beer, now owned by Coors.


Jean de Maisonneuve is one of the founders of the city, a "martyr" if I recall correctly. Defended the city from Iroquois attacks in the early days of the city. Several streets and towns are named for him.


Lord Byron Nelson has a whole square devoted to him, I'm not entirely sure why.


'e even has 'is own garden. "Jardin Nelson" in English, for the record is "Nelson's Garden."


I love random images.


Queen Victoria's Statue.


A bit of graffiti I found interesting -- "Voitures = Suicide" is French for "Cars = Suicide." The sign is written on a parking lot.


A street performer with his marionnette and house on Rue St. Denis.


I'll admit it, I snickered at the name of this pub. 1642 is actually right around the time the city was founded, so this pub is ancien....

These are for Aunt Karen mostly here:




These are in the foyer to the Pepsi Centre, the old home of the Montréal Canadiens. They now play in the Bell Centre.

In the lobby...

Winter Plattsburgh Pictures

Gouverneur picspam.

World AIDS Day

http://www.light2unite.com/
Click on this link, for every person who lights a candle Bristol Myers Squibb will donate a dollar to AIDS research. It's a great cause, and what better way to honour World AIDS Day?