The Added Touch

You may remember the time Hammacher Schlemmer was trying to sell me a two million dollar submarine.  Well, lately it seems that they have shared my address with several other catalogues (all from the same mail-order service address in Oakville, ON) and some of these catalogues seem to now think that I'm not a high rolla anymore, but a grandmother.

The latest catalogue I've been receiving (and I called to have my name taken off the list, don't worry) is called The Added Touch.  If you would like to laugh at some stuff, check out their website.  However I have found a few items that really represent the overall feel of the catalogue so that you can see what I mean by they think I'm a grandmother.

The Added Touch seems to specialize in things old ladies might wear, furniture old ladies might buy, figurines old ladies might put in their china cabinets, and stupid gifts old ladies might buy for their unfortunate grandchildren.  Listen, I love grandparents to death but sometimes they don't always realize that kids don't have the same taste in placemats and crystal unicorns as they do.

Let's start our journey into The Added Touch with a set of wine stoppers with adorable puppies on top:

For only $16.99 plus shipping and handling you could own one of these hand painted resin canines!  GUARANTEED if I ever own one of those dog breeds my grandma will buy me one of these or something very similar.  GUARANTEED.

Next, we have something just perfect for entertaining at your holiday party:

I don't know about you but I would not spend 70 bucks on a pair of pyjamas, let alone wear them to a party.  Yikes.

Next:  feeling like your current vanity stool needs a little glamming up?

It sort of looks like one of those cakes where a Barbie is poking out the top of a giant icing skirt, don't you think?

I like cats.  We all like a cute kitten, right?  Well WHAT IF you could hear a cat meowing EVERY TIME you took a sip of your morning coffee?

Now you can, people, now you can.

And finally, I KNOW you have been stressing about what dress to wear this weekend:

RELAX.

Almost tempted to keep getting these... almost.

Baby Pumpkins!

Cuuuuuuuuuuute!  Baby pumpkins!  As Sherri described, "The middle one is so happy.  The one on the right is so proud of his teeth.  And the one on the left maybe has a cold sore, but he's still happy."

The Best Breakfast Burritos

I've been on a bit of a breakfast burrito kick for the last few weeks when I've been home, and today I definitely made the best ones yet.  You MUST try this out for yourself - I was actually amazed at how good it tasted with no salt, almost no seasoning, and no meat or onions.

Usually I do put in some green onions or onion powder but today I forgot, and I sort of thought that any scramble or omelette was not complete without ham or some other breakfast meat... but I don't think I'll ever go back!

My recipe for the best breakfast burritos ever:

In a small frying pan, grate a small potato into some hot olive oil, fry until it is crispy.
Add some chopped green and red peppers, mushrooms, and diced fresh tomatoes.  Season with a bit of pepper.  Stir until veggies are cooked to your liking.
Add eggs and scramble.
Separate the pan mixture into "sections" for however many burritos you are going to make.  Put a slice of cheddar cheese onto each pile of ingredients.  Cover with a lid to melt the cheese.
Heat a whole wheat tortilla in the microwave for 15 seconds.  Fill with the burrito mixture and wrap.

So good!  The eggs absorb all of the juices from the cooked peppers and mushrooms and tomatoes and everything goes together so well.  You COULD add ham or bacon or sausage but in my experienced opinion meat doesn't blend as well with these flavours and takes away from it.

Grandma stuff

One time when there was a family gathering at my grandma's house she poured all of the grandkids a glass of milk and then casually mentioned that because we are kids we shouldn't be drinking skim milk (note:  we are all over 18, most of us in our 20s) so she makes us 1% milk by mixing skim with half-and-half cream.

Well, I have a math degree so I am going to do a few fancy calculations here.  Let's assign a percentage of 1 to skim milk (because you can't take an average of something and zero) and half and half, which is 15%, then becomes 16% if we up the fat content by 1 of everything else after skim.  The average of 1 and 16 is ACTUALLY 8.5, not 2, which would correspond to 1% milk.  MATH FACTS MATH FACTS

Something else very important to my grandma is that the Ellen DeGeneres show is always winning the Emmy for best talk show, but it's a VARIETY show, not a talk show.  Oprah and Dr. Phil are talk shows.  Ellen is a variety show.  So she should NOT be winning the Emmy every year for best talk show. 

Follow Up to the Greatest Picture Ever Taken

"Sidney?"

I really wish he would have said "Nice bread" or something baaahahahahahaha oh man funniest everrrrr

Tea Presents

Something really great that I do sometimes is make tea and then forget that I made it.  I can't drink it right away because it's too hot, so I might leave it on the counter or coffee table or something and the sucky timez of this are when I forget about it and remember when it's gotten cold so I have to heat it up in the microwave.

But the BEST is when I remember I made it and find it again and it's exactly the right temperature.  Not too hot so that I can only take tiny sips but not quite on the road to lukewarm either.  This is awesome because a) it's like getting a present of tea that someone else made for me because I totally forgot the work I put into boiling the water and putting tea in the cup and b) it's not only a great tea present but it's tea that I can drink right away.

Tea is the best.  Coffee is sort of gross and makes me feel sick, unless it is good coffee from McQuarries or a real coffee shop and not Tim Hortons or Starbucks where they pump in sugar syrup so I can't even taste the coffee.  This year I became a little bit of a coffee drinker after not ever touching coffee during university except the one night I stayed up all night doing a thermodynamics lab, but it didn't really stick.  I'll drink it if I have a chance to have some good coffee but I won't drink it just for the sake of drinking something and getting caffeine.  Woooo

The Greatest Picture Ever Taken

Splurging

Last week at work, everyone was like "So, what are you going to blow your first paycheque on?" which was not something I planned to do.  By the end of the week they had talked me into buying a DSLR camera, which is something that I have always thought I would like to have, but by the time I got home I decided to wait that one out for the time being.

I have never been a big spenda, no matter what Hammacher Schlemmer and their two million dollar submarines might think.  Even when I was a little kid I just kept all my money in a jar in my room.  Birthday money?  I saved it.  My grandparents always got annoyed when they'd ask me what I bought with the 20 dollars they sent me and I just said I saved it.  However by the time I actually started working summer jobs and stuff after high school, thanks to my savings and some graduating scholarships, I had a good chunk of money in the bank to "get ahead" with so that I was always able to not need to work much during school except during the summers.  This was obviously supplemented by living a pretty minimalist lifestyle in regards to buying a lot of stuff and going out, but it worked great for me and somehow all the way through university, even during this last full year of unemployment, I've never really had to stress out about money.  I was still able to buy most of the things I really wanted, go on a few vacations, etc. - I was just really good at figuring out how to stretch and save an approximate $12-15k/year income.

But now that I do have a real-live disposable income, I can't suddenly just change who I am and start spending left right and centre.  Will I eventually buy a DSLR?  Most likely, and probably sometime this year too.   But I remembered that I've had other things I've wanted to purchase for a while and haven't been able to afford, like printing off a bunch of pictures from Europe and getting a painting framed and making a charitable donation.  And I need to get an oil change in my car.  And buy some jeans.  So that will be my splurge, and no doubt some people may roll their eyes at these routine things being the way I "blow" part of my first paycheque, but I just can't bring myself to buy something just for the sake of buying it.  I definitely want that camera and I will buy it, but when I really feel like I want it, not just because I have the money to do so.

Earplugs

I have to wear earplugs a lot for my job, and I have decided that the worst thing about earplugs is that I can almost never get them both in "the same."  One earplug is always plugging my ear better than the other earplug, so then I keep taking out the bad earplug and putting it in better until finally IT is the good earplug, so then I have to adjust the earplug that used to be the good earplug, and this usually goes on until I give up and have one ear way better plugged than the other or hearing protection isn't needed anymore.

Earplugs!  You are so annoying!