Captain Save-A-Ho

...got jacked.  AGAIN.  We're 95% sure that it's the resident of one of the subsidized houses on our street, since a neighbour has seen her testing door handles before, and less than a month ago, she was caught red-handed, going into another neighbour's mini-van, in BROAD DAYLIGHT, at like, 3 pm on a Saturday afternoon.  KEEP IT CLASSY, SUBSIDIZED HOUSING RESIDENT, KEEP IT CLASSY.


Whoever the culprit is, also broke into our other neighbour's car and took his GPS.  This is what they stole from us:  our new GPS, our booster seat that we keep for restaurants (that our neighbour gave us) and, most galling of all, my homemade car emergency preparedness kit, which was a rubbermaid bin with some rope, some towels, candles, band-aids bottled water, stale granola bars, kitty litter, an umbrella, and a first aid manual.  LAME!  Who takes that shiz?!???  This is just further evidence that it was the ho-bag on our street.  Who would want to carry that around?  


Anyway, it's super-duper annoying.  Look: I get it.  I'm a lefty.  I'm pro-subsidized housing.  I want my street to be like Sesame Street - a melting pot of different socio-economic strata mixing together into a happy melange.  However!  TAKE YOUR THIEVING ONE STREET OVER!  That's all I ask for!  Don't send your billion kids to my house for trick-or-treating and then STEAL FROM ME!  It's the worst.


Also the worst?  Filing a police report.  I spoke to the dispatch officer and I was like, "So...are you guys going to come and take some prints or what?" (100% guaranteed that lady has priors.)  Him: "Well, we only do that if 6 cars have been broken into on the same street in the same night."  (Sidebar: WHO CAME UP WITH THAT RANDOM METRIC?!?)  Me: "Well, seeing as how this is the second time this has happened on our street to us, and that over the course of the year, more than 6 cars get broken into, then what do I have to do to get increased surveillance or something?" Him: "Uhhhh...I just take down the report.  You could go to 55 Division and speak to the Sergeant and try to get him to take an interest in it, but it's a man power issue."  Me: "Well, if this was happening on YOUR street, WHAT WOULD YOU DO?" Him: *mumbles*


DON'T GIVE ME ANY BULL ROAR ABOUT A MAN-POWER ISSUE!  How come whenever I have to rent a cop for $250/hour or whatever for a freakin' wedding, there's no man power issue?  How come when I go to Square Boy and try to get a chicken souvlaki on a pita and the parking lot is clogged with Toronto's finest, there's no man-power issue?  I'm incensed!  Mostly because I just bought that GPS like, two weeks ago!  And because I don't want to have to go to Babies R Us to get another booster seat!  


It's just so demoralizing.  As Dr. Rei said today, being a decent, hard-working person in contemporary society hardens you.  As soon as you say, leave academia and get a job, it basically turns you into a fiscal conservative.  I don't understand why I pay out the nose in taxes, when people I know, don't work, receive government grants, and don't PAY INTO THE SYSTEM THEY'RE USING!  Believe me, I'm all for the redistributive powers of the state.  At the end of the day, I live under the spectre of Marx.  And yet...and yet...I can totally understand the frustrations of the working stiff when they see people abusing the luxuries of a system they don't contribute to.  Instead of work to rule, why don't they do like, volunteer-to-rule?  Why do we spent time making high school kids amass volunteer hours, but people on the dole don't have to account for any of their activities except for how they COULDN'T get a job?  As someone who likes to follow the rules (when convenient, ha!) I get very aggrieved when people can succeed by circumventing them.  


This is what we've been eating lately:

 Friday night the roomie came over and we had spaghetti and meatballs.  We then watched L'Armi's new show, The Big Decision, which is kind of a Dragon's Den spin-off.  She made a delicious arugala salad and I made us a salad of raw shaved brussels sprouts with a cole-slaw-y dressing.  Delicious!

Saturday the Dotytron made us his special Swedish pancakes - the version he turned in that morning was a personal best.

Saturday night Lolly and SMckay came over and I made us an impromptu St. Paddy's Day feast. We had baked corned beef, cabbage sautéed with apples and bacon, smashed tatties fried in duck fat, and roasted maple-glazed carrots.  We also had that chocolate budino with salted caramel for dessert.

Sunday dinner I went into Jewish grandma mode, on account of the Dotytron and I both waking up and feeling sick.  I made a giant batch of chicken stock and threw together a modified version of Italian wedding soup, with sweet potatoes, carrots, leeks, celery, orzo, kale, and meatballs made with ground turkey and parmesan.

I promise you an NYC round-up post shortly.  My laptop is in the shop and we've been busy trying to you know, NOT BE SICK AS A FAMILY.

Did I mention the Big Yam has walking pneumonia?  I didn't even know that was a thing!  From what I can understand by the doctor in our clinic who saw us, it seems to be pneumonia that doesn't make you hate life.  The Boobla has been amazing lately.  He had a really good experience outside with a ball the day before we left for NYC and thus, the whole trip, anytime we went from outside to inside, he would start doing his jackknife-spasming thing and crying out, "BALL! BALL-BALL! BAAAAALLLL!" and we didn't put it together that "ball" was synonymous with "outside" until day 2 of the trip.  What a mensch.

He's also started saying, "Da Da Doooooo" which we can't decode for the life of us.  It *seems* to be a catch-all phrase for something he wants or desires.  It gets applied to everything (food, outside, being picked up, the phone), and it creates a fair amount of frustration from both sides trying to decode what the actual topic in question is.  It IS however, tremendously cute to hear him going, "Da Da DOOOOOOO" repeatedly.  

Fin.

whoa.

so i just looked up the bridal shop, it's called "white toronto" (subtle!) it's all the big guns of bridal. reem acra, badgley mishka, lela rose, monique lhuillier, carolina herrera, and oscar de la renta. dr. rei and i are both predicting that we're going to get treated like crap.

my project management class looks like a cakewalk. the prof seems super nice, although he goes on tangents and is kind of an over-sharer. at one point his phone rang during class and he said that he wouldn't normally take the call or leave the phone on, but he'd just gotten his daughter out of a "really" (his words, not mine) abusive relationship the night before. HEAVY! it's a mid term, an exam, and then a group project, where you do a project charter and a project plan. easy! the class is 90% asians and brown people - all of whom seem serious about success. the hard part is going to be trying to convince my group that we should work on a FUN project and not the canned one the prof put up online for us. ideally, i kinda want to convince people that we should use my performance as a project. lol! it's called multi-tasking, people! plus, those are practical skills that most of the people in the class are going to use, or have used. we'll see. it's going to require considerable use of my persuasive charisma (aka...leadership skills!)

anyway, apparently there's a project management professional certification that i can get, which involves writing an exam (multiple choice), taking a course, and acquiring 4500 hours of project related experience. according to my prof, they're pretty liberal about what they consider project related experience. i figure that my job consists of micro projects, so i think i can just count my work experience towards it. if i'm going to take the classes, i might as well get the certification, as it has a certain degree of market value.

the pissy part, was that i left early, and showed up LATE for yoga class...which was super-annoying, so i didn't end up going. i didn't want to not get my money's worth, and be frazzled when i started. i was mad. so i came home, edited the dotytron's resume and cover letter, packed for markham, and ate 2 butter tarts, a glass of milk, and a bowl of light microwave popcorn, which is made substantially less light by the dotytron's insistent doctoring with melted butter and additional salt.

i've finished reading a TONNE of books lately. i'll post reviews shortly. in the meantime, after doing errands, it's all about prepping for biggie night with the goosetang clan! i'm super excited!

fin.