In other news, I’m consistently surprised at the quality of photos that I’ve gotten out of the iPhone 3G camera.

It’s interesting, if a bit dry. Currently I am learning about what to do if you are lost in the woods.

That’s right kids, soon I could tramp out into the bush, get lost, and survive until I was found again. Or, better yet, not get lost and have a rather comfortable night out thanks to my reading of this book. Huzzah!

Remember how I said that I was going to bake pie again this week for a dinner I am going to?

Success! I made three!

And now it’s late and I have to be up early, so I must sleep.

It’s known far and wide, or at least in certain circles, that I loves me some pie. And who doesn’t, really? Pie is fantastic. It’s fruit covered in sugar and sandwiched between tasty tasty pastry.

I’ve never really been any good at it though. Probably from lack of practice. My mother had insisted that I learn to cook when I was a kid so that I could fend for myself —then and now— but not so much with the baking.

That was fine though, she baked and it was always good. Great, in point of fact. But since I’m not able to enjoy my mothers baking anymore I decided to learn a few things for myself, starting with my favourite: apple pie.

Baking isn’t like cooking at all. I like cooking because I can improvise and make changes on the fly and make things better by adding something here or leaving something out there. Baking is a precision art, everything has to be exactly right or it simply doesn’t work. That’s a bit daunting for me, and always has been. But with the guidance of my sister, who is far more talented in the kitchen than I am in any capacity, I was able to make enough pastry for four pies and I-didn’t-count-how-many butter tarts.

The interesting, and probably obvious, thing was that while the pastry was quite precise (proportions must be pretty exact, water must be ice cold, whole thing must he handled as little as possible) the filling bit is stupid easy. Cup up apples. Mix together the appropriate amount of flour, sugar and cinnamon, then mix it all in with the apples and you’re done.

I did make one minor mistake in that I mixed up enough of the sugar-flour-cinnamon coating for 6 pies worth of apples and used it on only 4 pies worth of apples, so things turned out a bit sweet, but you know what? Not in a bad way.

Plus, the whole house smelled amazing for a few hours afterward.

The true test will be that I’ve offered to make pie for dessert at the Christmas dinner I’ve been invited to on Christmas Day, so I have to do it all again completely solo this week. If that works out, and I honestly think it will, then I’ll deem the task of learning to bake a pie a success.

That is all.

On the up side, as I mentioned before, I received the CORE manual in the mail and I’ve had a bit of a chance to skim over it. Not as much as I’d like as to be honest it’s too fucking cold to read in transit now, but what I’ve been over so far is at least interesting. Some of the stuff it covers —such as, say, basic CPR or how and why knives/axes might come in handy in the bush— I already know, but there is still a fair amount of stuff I’m learning from it.

Really though I’m going to have to buckle down on a day off or two and just read it all and take notes to let it all sink in. Then find an examiner and get the thing done.

In other news, I’ve been watching both Long Way Round and Long Way Down and it’s really really been making me want to go get my motobike license and start planning trips. I’m kind of wary of this actually, given that the last couple times I got onto bicycles I ended up with broken limbs, but on the other hand even if I don’t end up liking riding as much as I think I might, as much as I hope I might, I don’t want to regret not going for the training/license, so I am gonna do it. I even found a place that does the training already.

But for now, I need to sleep, since I haven’t had a good nights sleep in a week. Or two. Probably two.

I’ve also decided to go and take a gun course. I don’t really have any desire to hunt with a gun at this point, but what the hell I might as well actually learn to properly shoot one. For whatever reason when I was a kid I never really did despite being one of those kids who could have borrowed from his grandfathers arsenal if he’d wanted to.

Again, no real interest in hunting with one, but being somewhat of a history buff, historical weapons are something I might like to collect at some point since most of my interest in history is interest in the history of warfare.

So the list grows. Again. I should probably make a page for it. I’ll get right on that.

1. Get Fluent in French, not just stumble about with the broken version I use now.
2. Another language (or two), I’m not sure which one but given the city I live in and the city I work in, some dialect of Chinese seems like it might be the best choice.

Jebus it’s gonna be a busy year.

1. I start to lose interest and slow down posting.
2. I lose interest completely and stop posting entirely.
3. I pull an etch-a-sketch on the thing: erase it all and eventually start over.

That is the cycle of Matt blogging, and this is the start of a new cycle.

This past year has been the year of “yes.” Whenever possible, I’ve said yes to basically any request made of me. Yes, like that Jim Carrey movie “Yes Man,” except that it seems to have cost me more than it did him and I didn’t get the girl in the end. Or the big promotion. And I spent more than I probably should have. Not that I regret any of it, it was a good year and I’ve more than a few good stories, a new hobby and a steady volunteer gig out of it. Time to change though.

So what is the next year going to be? I’ve been pondering this for a while now and I think I have decided on it being the year of learning. In the year of yes I took two major courses, WSET Level 2 (intermediate level sommelier training) and an archery course. Both of them were well enjoyed this is the reason that I’ve decided to take more over the coming year.

To that end I’ve been doing my best to come up with a list of things I want to learn, and here is that list so far (in no real order):

1. WSET Level 3, which will see me become a certified sommelier.
2. Conservation and Outdoor Recreation Educaton (C.O.R.E), which will see me get my BC hunter number and gain the ability to purchase a hunting license.
3. Archery, I don’t know that there is another course I can take but I intend to purchase a bow of my own (I’d been using loaner gear while I learned) and join a local range.
4. Motorcycle License, because I’d like to get a motorcycle.
5. Boating safety/radio course, not that I get out boating that much, but I’ve always had it in the back of my mind that I’d like one so I figure I should learn some proper procedures for emergencies and whatnot.

So that’s what I have so far, and the plan is to keep up to date here while I do it. There’ll hopefully be some other stuff too, while the year of yes is over I do have plans to keep trying random new things, but mainly I hope that I can keep up with the writing it all down.

Maybe I should invest in a video camera or something, so I don’t have to write at all.