Today's Karma

Christopher and I got back from Montreal (and Quebec City), yesterday. We specifically planned to return on Saturday so that we could have a day to recuperate, do laundry, and readjust to being at home before the week started. Christopher's sister picked us up at the airport last night with food and drink in hand (she made pumpkin "whoopie pies" with buttercream frosting filling, and brought them with sodas), and it was one more meal to add to the list of amazing food we'd had all week. 

I promise to tell you all about that trip in the next couple days. I'll fill you in on walking through the rainy port in Old Quebec and marvelling at the Chinese lanterns in the Montreal Botanical Gardens. And I can't wait to tell you about the food! We ate and ate, hoping that all of the walking would help our pants keep fitting. We were treated to everything from an amazing "potluck" which was part of the four-course "snack" my aunt made for us the first night we got in, all the way to a ten-course meal (with six different wines) which we had our final night in Quebec City. Oh. And the Maple Sugar cotton candy. And the aperitifs. And cheese courses. And macarons. And...

But that's for the next post (or three). For right now I have my own little story to tell:

As many of you know--and some of you may have guessed by now--I enjoy the idea of Karma and how some kind of cosmic balance often works out for people. This is not to say that good things always happen to good people, but sometimes the world does even itself out.

I was at the grocery store this afternoon. I was shopping to fill the fridge with milk and yogurt for the coming week, and also buying some supplies to try to duplicate a dessert my aunt made for us while in Montreal. I was standing in line getting ready to check out, musing on the amazing meals of the past week. And then I saw it: The display of "food shelf" bags--the ones you can buy for $5 and donate to the food shelf either at the grocery store, or somewhere else. 

Mind you, I saw them, but I didn't pay the closest attention. Instead, I was looking at my grocery cart, longing for the amazing cheeses and meat we bought in Montreal. And I was looking at the ingredients in my cart and imagining how bad for my health the Chewy Bars would be to have in the house. 

But then I thought about how much I had spent on travel and food in the past week--and how much I was going to be spending on the ingredients for those bars alone--and I grabbed one of the bags and put it onto the conveyer belt. 

Five dollars isn't much. It's less than a meal at McDonald's. It's even less than a meal at Taco Bell. It's not like I was doing anything all that great. But when I walked toward the door and dropped the bag into the almost-empty donation bin... well... it felt really good. 

I figured that warm fuzzy feeling was my Karmic return. It felt great. Just what I needed on my first day back from vacation. 

As I was walking outside, I stopped on the sidewalk so I wouldn't be hit by the ever-present rush of cars going by. It took a moment for me to realize that the rush wasn't present. I looked up and a young guy in an SUV had stopped off to my left--He was waiting for me to push my cart into the parking lot. I looked up and he waved me across. I smiled and waved back as I crossed the lanes to my car.

Karma. Some days it makes life worthwhile.

Dateline: Montreal, September 16

Christopher and I are having a great time in Montreal visiting my relatives. We've lucked out with great weather, and have been eating like kings. It's great.

The only problem is that we're a little short on internet access, so you'll have to wait a few more days for a newsy blog from me.

In the meantime, feel free to talk amongst yourselves...

A bientot.

It's All About Baggage

Have you noticed that the theme of many of my past few posts have been about baggage? Or... rather... "baggage."

After all, while I was travelling back into the past with my friends and family last weekend, I was dealing with all of the interactions which came before. Even yesterday when I was working on my toilet fill valve I was dealing with my past history of never having done that kind of thing before.

Today, on the other hand, my partner (by the way... have I mentioned that his name is Christopher?) and I are working on packing for a one-week trip to Canada--specifically Montreal and Quebec City--which we're embarking on tomorrow. We're stumbling through the newest round of regulations about which airlines charge for bags and figuring out which ones do or don't allow carry-ons. Frustratingly, we also have to deal with memories of prior bad luck with lost luggage when having to change planes while travelling. All of which means we're both rethinking our packing methods. Of course, we know that the days of bringing home bottles of maple syrup or Canadian beer are long gone, but we'd like to at least be sure that our socks and undies make it to and fro at the same time we do. (Please wish us luck... think good thoughts... cross your fingers... whatever you can do to help!)

So we're seriously under-packing and hoping to do laundry while we're there. We're putting all of our 3-ounce bottles in their Ziploc bags. And we're using some of our precious space for packing munchies just in case we get stranded somewhere along the way. 

Maybe there's a life lesson to be learned there, too: Pack light. Take only what you need. Bring munchies. 

Even so... I think I'll still miss the maple syrup.

Fixing a Toilet Fill Valve

Ever had a toilet that wouldn't stop filling? You know... it runs and runs and runs and just doesn't stop? Well, if you have, you know that it is probably being caused by one of two things: The piece that plugs the tank (aka the "flapper") or the floaty thing that tells it when it's full (aka the "fill valve"). The dilemma is, what do you do when you find out that it needs to be fixed?

A few months ago, I had to change the flapper on our downstairs toilet. That's the easy one. You simply turn off the water, flush the toilet and have at it once it's empty. "Having at it" in this case is basically snapping the old one off and snapping the new one in place. You may end up with a little blue toilet water on your hands, but it's easy.

In the past two weeks, though, we've found that the fill valve has been inconsistent. Sometimes the toilet simply does it's thing, and sometimes it has been running and running basically wasting a ton of water down the overflow pipe. Since I'm the primary user of the toilet in the downstairs bathroom, I've been noticing the tell-tale sound of running water from time to time and I've tried to fix it by adjusting the height of the float. Well, as you might have guessed, that finally stopped working. So today I found myself picking up a $6.48 Toilet Fill Valve from Home Depot.

I "read" (okay... mostly they are diagrams--some of which made NO sense at all) through the instructions and it looked easy enough, so I turned off the water, flushed the toilet and started the job of replacement. Turns out it was pretty easy. There's a "hand tightened" nut on the bottom of the valve which attaches it to the water supply, and--at the same time--seals the bottom of the toilet tank so it doesn't leak out. Open and shut case... errr... tank... right?

Well... It wasn't quite that easy...

You see, I found out the hard way that the water shut-off didn't actually completely shut off the water. Of course I found this out when water started pouring out onto the floor while I undid the coupling. The water being clear, not blue, meant that it was clean new water. So no nasty blue dye, but water pretty much going everywhere. With more turns of the shut-off offering no more help, I went to work. 

Yep. There was a constant running of water as I frantically removed the coupling, pulled out the old fill valve, twisted the new valve into place and breathed a sigh of relief as the water stopped running out onto the floor, and started going into the toilet tank, instead.  (Thank god that I was in a bathroom, sitting on the floor next to a shelf filled with towels!)

But I'm happy to say that here I am... 5 hours later... and the toilet has been quiet the whole time. The towels (and my pants) have gone through the washer and dryer. And I can now add "emergency plumber" to the list of things I've done during my unemployment. 

You might even say I'm "flushed" with pride. 

A DW(u)I Day

Due to the fact that there is (at best) spotty cellular phone service between my parents' home in South Dakota and my home in Minnesota, I spent most of my day with only myself as company. In other words, I spent it "Driving While un-Interrupted" or DW(u)I.

I've done this drive many times in the past 5 years, going both directions down the same road. That's enough times to know where the no-passing zone sections are, where the rest areas are, and even where I know I can stop for soda on Christmas Eve.

Today, though, I was simply watching the world go by. Enjoying the early fall scenery. It was nice to sit and ponder life without the radio on or my cellphone ringing. I had a few CDs playing as I drove, but the great thing about playing a CD you already know is that you don't have to listen to it to... well... listen to it.

In some circles, this would be referred to as some kind of zen moment. In other areas, it would be "zoning out." But for me, it was just a really nice relaxing 5.5-hour drive.

Unfortunately, since I spent a major part of my day DW(u)I, I seem to have run out of imponderables to ponder tonight in this blog. Not that I think that's a bad thing. After all, when was the last time you were lucky enough to end your day without something to complain about?

The Misses Potter and Pettigrew

On my last day at home in South Dakota, we have enjoyed a leisurely day, capped by the watching of two Netflicked movies: "Miss Potter" and "Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day."

I had shuffled both of them to the top of my queue to bring on my trip because they both seemed... well... entertaining (as opposed to enlightening or thought-provoking). I thought the idea of them both being period pieces and at least mildly romantic would be nice. They both lived up to those expectations. And I further came to find that they both, at their cores, have a message of following your heart and living in the moment. Unfortunately, although they were both quite nice films, I have to admit that I came away liking one more than the other.

"Miss Potter," which stars Renee Zellweger as Beatrix Potter (the creator of Peter Rabbit and his friends), is a very nice bio-pic. It has some wonderful animations through which her characters interact with her--although I had really been expecting more, since many of the reviews mentioned "lush animations." I found myself enjoying the auxiliary characters almost more than Miss Potter, herself. And, now that I think of it, I liked them because of the actors (Emily Watson, Ewan MacGregor, and Lloyd Owen), and not for the roles they played. Which is too bad, because I did want to like the movie.

On the other hand, "Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day" was quite wonderful. Frances McDormand plays Miss Pettigrew--a woman who loses her position with a nanny agency, so she insinuates herself into a position as "social secretary" for an American starlet living in London. The starlet (Amy Adams in a breathy, ditzy role) has a bit of a problem: she has three men who all want to marry her--each of which can help her career in his own way. This is where "Miss Pettigrew" pulls so quickly away from "Miss Potter." 

In "Miss Pettigrew," I found myself wanting to know more about all of these "extra" characters who filled her one day of living. Although I know the names of a few of the actors, I found myself talking about them by character names while the credits rolled. From the three suitors to the starlet's conniving "friends," they were all so well-drawn and multi-faceted that, at the end of the movie, I wanted to know more--to know what happened next to each of them, and whether they got what was coming to them (good or bad). 

Did they both live up to my requirements of being entertaining, mildly-romantic period pieces? Yes. Unfortunately, at the end of "Miss Potter," the audience is given a few lines to fill us in on the rest of her life, and yet I felt like I was missing out on something. "Miss Pettigrew," on the other hand, gives us only hints to what happens after the curtain falls, but leaves us ready to give our applause and exit the theater, thankful to have been along for the ride.

"Salad" Days

File under: When is a salad actually a "salad"?

I woke up this morning craving vegetables. Which, if you know me, you realize is pretty amazing.

If you've been following my past few days, you know that I'm currently in a small town in South Dakota visiting my parents. 

When I got into town yesterday afternoon, my mom was volunteering at a church supper at the Catholic Church. (Yes. I had been forewarned.) So my dad and I got to hang out at home for a while and then went over to meet up with my mom and have dinner. We dutifully paid for dinner (just $7.50 per adult, which makes me wonder how they make any money), and then stood and/or sat in line in the church waiting for spaces to open up in the parish hall. (Oddly enough, I realized after-the-fact that I neither genuflected nor crossed myself with holy water on the way into the church--it just didn't seem necessary since were there for dinner, not mass.)

I knew in advance that dinner was going to consist of a tried-and-true meal which has been served at the Catholic Church for years, and I have to admit that I was enticed by the catered (and, remember, this was all only $7.50) main course: Broasted Chicken and Ham, served with "special" chees-y potatoes (which had a top crust of cornflakes--that's the special part, but don't tell anyone... I think it's supposed to be a secret). Unfortunately, as we entered the hall to be served, it dawned on me why a lot of people in the States may have problems if they try to lose weight by eating salads.  

**sidenote** Have you ever had Broasted Chicken? I don't know exactly what they do to it, but it's amazing. Somewhere between fried and roasted. I've never had a dry piece of broasted chicken. Yum. **end sidenote**

But, anyway... Back to the salads. Or... rather... the "salads."

The side dishes--along with green beans--were a pasta "salad" which was oddly sweet, and a fruit "salad" which consists of all sorts of rather-expensive fresh fruit stirred into a base of cherry pie filling (which results, sadly, in all of the great fresh fruit tasting vaguely like canned cherries). I did eat the pasta "salad," but simply used the sauce from the fruit "salad" as a dip/glaze for my ham, for which it was perfectly suited.

Luckily, for dessert we were offered our choice of a slice of one of the pies which had been donated. Mom had stashed a slice of whipped peanut butter pie with chocolate shavings on top, which she figured I'd like. 

Mom was right, that pie was great--the perfect contrast to the sweetness of the "salads."