BEHOLD!

Jasmin picked the room colour, it’s “Melon” by Behr. Even though I know Behr makes really good paint it took four coats to even out the colour. I can still see areas where there is colour variation but I’m trying not to get all OCD about it.

Here is another shot of the main wall. I’m not in love with the bedspread, but it’s good enough for now. I picked up the lamp at Value Village for $12 and sprayed it white.

Here are some of the things you can see around the bed area. First is one of three Zelda posters:

The posters were free from “Club Nintendo”. If you register your games and things with Nintendo you earn points and can redeem them for things like posters and toys. The poster over the bed is also Nintendo-related, but this time it’s Pokemon:

Right now instead of a bedside table there is a small rolling cart. Here’s a decorative cushion Jas got for her birthday:

Above the dresser is another Zelda poster. This one was an odd size and didn’t fit a standard frame:

Swinging to the right you can see the door to the closet. The closet is actually NOT done right now so you can’t see inside. When I do finish it you’ll be amazed though.

The white dresser with the mirror was a freebie from a previous roommate. Until last week it was blue and brown. I really like it in stark white. The mirror is pretty beat up but will have to do.

Tucked away in another corner we have two bookshelves. Everything in the room is mostly empty right now because I’m going to let Jasmin put her things where she wants them. Hanging in front of the bookshelves is a hammock chair. Jasmin has been pleading for one of these for a while, so I expect she’s going to flip out when she sees this.

And finally the last of the Zelda posters. This one is to the left of the bookshelves.

I’m really happy with how everything turned out. It really came together just like I pictured. Here are some of the items in the room and how much they cost. Almost everything was bought on sale. It wasn’t all bought at once. We started out with the bed, two dressers, and one bookshelf. Some of the purchases were:

Paint (melon), 4gal @ $45 each, Home Depot
Paint (white), 1pint @ $20, Hope Depot
Curtain panels, 2 white @ $15 each, Wicker Emporium
Curtain panels, 2 white @ $20 each, Wicker Emporium
White bookshelf, $80, Zellers
Frame for Pokemon poster, $18, Liquidation World
3 other poster frames, $80, Michaels’
Lamp, $12, Value Village
Spray paint for lamp, $8, Home Depot
Hanging chair (and hardware), $30, Canadian Tire
Overhead fan/lights (not pictured), $50, Canadian Tire
Comforter, $16, Value Village
Lime Green Throw, $10, Liquidation World
Black area rug, $35, Liquidation World

So overall it was about a $600 project. Not too shabby in my opinion. Now if only she can keep this room clean…

This is my go-to recipe for salmon. It’s easy, tasty, and healthy. We have this in the house almost every week. It pairs exceptionally well with anything green, whether a hot stir-fry or a cool salad.

4 salmon fillets (about a pound)
3 tsp sherry, wine, or any asian vinegar
1 tsp ginger root, minced
1/4 tsp salt
1 clove garlic, minced
1 Tbsp black bean sauce
1 tsp sesame oil
4 Tbsp chopped green onion for garnish

Mix the sherry, ginger root, salt, garlic, black bean sauce, and sesame oil. Set aside.

STEAM METHOD: Set each portion of fish on a piece of parchment paper skin-side down. Top each portion with a small spoonful of the sauce. Spread the sauce to the edges of the fillet. Lift fish by the parchment and place in a steamer basket, evenly spaced. Steam fish 10-12 minutes.

PAN FRY METHOD: In a nonstick frypan or wok heat a few teaspoons of peanut or canola oil over medium heat. Place each portion of fish skin-side up in the pan and cook just for a few minutes, just enough to cook the tops of the fillets. Flip the portions skin-side down. Top each portion with a small spoonful of sauce and spread sauce to the edges of the fillet. Cover the frypan and cook another three to five minutes, until fillets are just cooked through.

Plate the fillets and garnish with green onion. Serve hot.

Makes 4 servings.

Having now established my fanaticism I will go on to actually talk about the movie. Overall it was good. It wasn’t great, it wasn’t spectacular. There were lots of little disappointments, but there were some things I was really pleased with.

I thought the CG was amazing, but it was done by Industrial Light and Magic so I guess that should be a given. The animation of the bending was spectacular, absolutely everything I could have imagined possible. Perhaps if I had just put in some earplugs and watched the movie in silence it would have been a better experience. The creatures truly came alive in this film as well. Jasmin didn’t like their interpretation of Appa the air bison but I thought he was perfect. That pretty much wraps up everything that was great about this film.

Now I know a fanatic tends to be a bit more picky about film adaptions than the average movie-goer, but I don’t think the flaws in this movie are just things the fans are going to notice. The first and biggest downfall was the lack of character development. The TV series is almost a perfect balance of character, story, and action. The Airbender movie puts magic into the action sequences but forcefully shoves the story line into you with a pointy stick and has locked character development up in a closet somewhere. Aang should be a youthful and exuberant kid, but they’ve turned him into a quiet and sullen little emo boy. Saka and Katara should exude compassion and morality from their pores but instead you kind of wonder why they are even following the emo boy around. I want to tell you everything that is wrong with uncle Iro but it’s too painful. Let’s just say that my favorite character no longer exists – he is dead to me.

The story is driven so forcefully fast I’m sure that anyone not familiar with the series would leave the movie theater still wondering what bending actually is. Update: Uh, yeah, I guess I’m right about that. I get it, there was a lot to explain and a lot of story to move through, but there were also twenty minute chunks of movie that could easily have been left on the cutting room floor to make way for more character development. There were lines in this movie that sounded like a ten year old wrote them. To make things worse, the lines were delivered with the kind of emotion reserved for phone-book recitals or “grocery on line one, grocery on line one” calls from the checkout. It was truly cringe-inducing.

The 3D fad does nothing to make this movie better, but that can be said for just about any movie these days. I will be so glad when this trend dies.

Lastly I will mention what will surely be the most annoying feature of this film for fellow fans: pronunciation. For whatever reason (probably clinical dementia) the filmmakers decided to change the pronunciation of many of the lead character’s names:

• Iro: pronounced “eye-roh” in the series is now “ee-roh”.
• Sokka: pronounced “sa-ka” in the series is now “soak-ah”
• Aang: in the series the name rhymes with “twang”, in the movie it’s more like “ankh” without the “k”.

I’ll tell you what; if you want to make a movie based on a (popular)TV series, how about you DON’T MESS WITH THE MAIN CHARACTER?!!!!??

So yeah, I was kinda let down by this movie. Maybe the saddest thing was that I didn’t get my hopes up in the first place, knowing what movies are like these days. Always the optimist I am still going to look forward to the next movie. I mean, they can’t possibly screw Toph up that badly, can they?

As I was leaving Oromocto on Friday I noticed two ladies at one corner of a busy turning circle holding signs. I had just enough time to catch the print on one. It read “5 men, 1 woman, 0 charges”. My curiosity was piqued so I pulled into the nearby parking lot and had a chat with the ladies.

The lady pictured above is Jenn. Jenn lives in New Maryland and is a mother and a cub scout volunteer. Jenn was assaulted by three Oromocto RCMP officers and two hospital security staff while at the Oromocto hospital. Within the space of a minute she was thrown to the ground and had all of her clothes stripped off. Since then she’s been trying to have the incident investigated, all to no avail. She says she’s never even been asked to give a formal statement about the issue.

Her friend carries a sign covered in pamplets about coping with abuse and sexual assault. “These are useless for her” she says “until someone finally does an investigation. They just want to pretend nothing happened.”

I know there are two sides to every story and I’ve only heard one, but unless she had a bomb strapped to her chest I cannot think of any legitamate reason why five men would have to strip a woman. She’s not asking for charges or penalties for those who are involved, just an investigation. As I was leaving a car honked and a young man leaned out an open window and yelled “woohoo” at the ladies with his fist pumping the air.

I thought about being in a situation like that. Being in a situation of abuse brought on my an authority like the RCMP, and how hopeless it must feel to want some recognition that it even happened. I thought about how much strength it must have taken for Jenn to be there that day. I told Jenn I would post this on my blog and twitter even though my readership is small at least a few local people follow it. You can help Jenn too, by retweeting this or sharing the link. Maybe if it gets enough attention something can be done.

My daughter Jasmin wanted a cheesecake to celebrate her 14th birthday and I was not going to disappoint my little girl. I don’t have to tell you this cake is a few steps away from my normal health-focused cooking endeavors. Basically this cake is insulin sensitivity on a plate. It was damn good too!

I will give credit to the baking & love blog for the recipe framework, but I made some modifications. I didn’t stir any cookie crumbs into the batter, I used three times the nutella, and I used a layering technique to try and keep the Mars pieces evenly spread through the height of the cake. I think it turned out really well.

Nutella Mars Bar Cheesecake

makes one tall cheesecake

Crust
1/2 box (200g) oreo cookie crumbs
6 Tbsp melted butter

Batter
4 blocks cream cheese (or 2 lbs or 32 oz) at room temperature
4 eggs
1/4 cup sugar
1 1/4 cup heavy cream (I used whipping cream)
a pinch of salt

Fillers
3/4 cup nutella
8 Mars bars, chopped into small pieces

Preheat oven to 325 degrees.

Combine cookie crumbs with melted butter. Press into the bottom of a 9-inch springform pan. Set the pan in the center of a large sheet of aluminum foil. You will be cooking the cake in a pan of water and the foil will keep the water out of the cake pan.

With beaters or a mixer combine the cream cheese and sugar and beat until smooth. Add the eggs, one at a time, and continue beating to incorporate. Gently beat in the cream and salt.

Heat the nutella in a small bowl in the microwave or in a small pan on the stove. Heat it just enough to make it easier to spoon/stir, but not too hot.

Pour 1/4 of the cake batter into the pan. Drop 1/4 of the nutella in spoonfulls onto the batter. Use a knife or toothpick to swirl the nutella into the batter. Spread 1/3 of the chopped Mars bars evenly onto the batter. Repeat with 1/4 batter, swirl in 1/4 of the nutella, and 1/3 of the chopped Mars bars. Once more and you’ve used up all the Mars bar pieces. Pour the remaining cake batter into the pan, swirl in all of the remaining nutella.

Bring the foil up the sides of the cake pan and set the whole thing in a larger pan with an inch or two of water. Bake the whole contraption for about 80-90 minutes. Crack the door of the oven and turn off the heat. Let the cake cool in the oven for an hour, then remove it to the fridge to chill for at least a few hours before unmolding and serving.

Deadlift:
* 5 x 45#
* 5 x 115#
* 5 x 125#
* 5 x 130#
* 5 x 120#

Press:
* 5 x 45#
* 5 x 60#
* 5 x 55#

Cash Out: Run 400m, followed by four rounds of:
100m farmers carry (25#), one-handed
20 one-handed KB swings
Finished with run 400m
Time: 15m 08s

Good times at the gym. It was more crowded than expected, I think some of the units held their PT in the afternoon. There were a lot of people; some playing racquetball, some playing floor hockey, and some in the CF area. I saw a guy doing jumps on the big box, I think it’s 48″. I wasn’t the only person doing farmer carries around the track either.

Deadlift:
* 45# x 5
* 95# x 5
* 115# x 5
* 125# x 5
* 115# x 5

Press:
* 45# x 5
* 55# x 5
* 50# x 5

Power Clean:
* 33# x 3
* 45# x 3
* 65# x 3
* 85# x 3
* 95# x 3
* 105 – FAIL

Front Squat:
* 45# x 5
* 65# x 5
* 85# x 3 (FAILED 4TH)
* 65# x 5

BOO WAH DAMN CRAP SOB

I went into the workout hoping for a 3-digit power clean and a few sets of 85# front squats. I guess today was not the day. I am so mad at those power cleans. I have it in me, I’m sure I do. Frustration, fatique, and mental block kept me from landing that goal today, plain and simple.

OK so now something funny so I can stop wallowing in self pity:
I got to the gym late so just as I started into the cleans the lunchtime crowd filled up the area I work out in. My rack was close to the corner that the cushy gym mats are stacked in. So this old lady goes over to the corner and grabs a mat. Fine. Then she just lays it down right there next to the weight rack and starts cranking out a million crunches with her head about a foot away from where I’m trying to power clean a hundred freaking pounds! I figured she was going to do like twenty and then go away, so I waited. Then I waited some more. Then she started talking to me while she was still going. She did complement me on “lifting a lot of heavy weight”, so I gave her a pass and waited for her to finish but seriously. There’s a big sign right by the racks that only has three rules, one of them is “stay clear of the Olympic lifters.”

Buy In: Overhead Squat
* 3 x 33#
* 3 x 45#
* 3 x 45#

Deadlift:
* 5 x 45#
* 5 x 95#
* 5 x 130#
* 5 x 120#

Press:
* 5 x 45#
* 5 x 60#
* 5 x 55#

Cash Out: Row 500m, max effort
Time: 2:01.9 (PR by 3 seconds!)

Note: damper on rower set to 3.5

PR ON 500m ROW!

I love using my big colorful PR letters. Still plugging away at PTP and keeping mostly paleo. I’m feeling OK. The deadlifts and presses are getting harder, but not hard. My energy and focus are good. I think I’ll do a more consise evaluation of how I look, feel, and perform when I hit the halfway mark.

Suitcase deadlifts were neato, I love learning new moves. I didn’t do the sets of five as prescribed because even at a light weight they were kinda shaky. At one point I spilled one, then the second bumper plate off the bar. I used some collars after that.