Highland exams- They're over!

*sigh of relief* Phew, exams are finally over! I had them this morning and surprisingly enough they went pretty well.
Theory, was waaaay easier than I thought which unfortunately means that, once again, my dance teacher was right. I did flub up a couple questions, but I think it'll be okay.
I wish I could get my results sooner than this Wednesday...

~Dorothy

I officially love Threadless T-shirts!

My friend over at Running With Scissors had the link to an awesome T-shirt site called Threadless in his blog so I decided to check it out.
Well, yesterday the 3 shirts I inevitably ended up ordering came and they're even better than I could've imagined!
It's official, I seriously love that place.
Check them out...But be warned, you'll probably end up ordering some!
Maybe I'll post pics of mine later...
Thanks for reading this rather boring entry!
~Dorothy

Mail Experiments- Someone in the postal system loves me!

A little over a week ago, I hastily created and mailed an even teenier envelope than my last:


(with my address removed in this photo)

Doesn't really look Canada Post worthy, does it?
You can imagine my surprise to find this arrive:



Some poor postal worker had carefully taped it to a piece of blue card and then to a regular-sized envelope.

My only logical conclusion to the success of these rather crazy experiments is this: Someone in the postal system loves me.

Dear Canada Post labourer, if you are reading this, I would like to thank you for your patience with my insanity.

I wonder what I should try next...

~Dorothy

Toronto-Days 3 and 4- ROM and Eaton Centre

Because I'm home now, and I'm lazy, I have combined days 3 and 4. There was also a day 5, but that consisted of taking the bus to the airport, not the most photographic and exciting thing.
Anyway, day 3 my sister and I went to the ROM (Royal Ontario Museum) for the day.
It was a fairly long line-up to get in, but it moved faster than I thought, so I had to eat the hotdog I had purchased really fast. That was one thing I thought was awesome, how many hotdog vendors there were. They all had veggie dogs too! And yes, "hotdog" usually has a space, but I like it without one better and this is my blog. Muahaha...
Okay, getting off-topic. Anyway, we got into the ROM and there was this funky balloon-dinosaur:


As we went through, we saw many cool things, most of which have escaped me now, maybe because I didn't end up taking to many photos for some reason.
Anyway, here are the 2 photos I did end up taking!

(The ceiling in an older part of the museum)


(This awesome turtle thing!)

On to day 4! Since it was just going to a mall, there's not as much to blog about, but I took a couple nice photos, so I figured I may as well share them. Eaton Centre was a pretty cool place, but when you come from a city that has a huge mall (like I do) it's just not as exciting.
There were these...Plastic birds that apparently are very famed or something. So I took a photo of them:


And then this photo:



Okay, well, sorry for a rather boring blog entry, but I couldn't think of much to say in this case!
Thanks for reading,
~Dorothy

Toronto-Day 2-CN Tower

Okay, technically this is now Day 3, but I was too lazy to post yesterday, so here it is!
Yesterday me and my sister headed out to the famed CN Tower.
It was a wee bit crowded because of the long weekend, but not bad.
Their security measure was surprisingly not a metal detector, but this little gate thing that blows air on you. I'm not sure how exactly it would detect a bomb, but apparently it does:

(Sadly, due to poor photography skills, people constantly stepping in front of me, not much time and a second-hand camera, this is the best photo I got.)

I thought I would be extremely freaked out going up the glass elevator (I tend to get freaked out in glass elevators), but we were going so fast that it didn't really bother me.
I didn't really enjoy the observation deck as much, there were more people and while you could go outside there, they had put up a large safety net so people couldn't fall or drop things, but it was kinda annoying because you couldn't really take photos or see stuff as well.
We then went up further to the Skypod. Other than the annoying line up (there was only one elevator) it was fantastic!
The people in front of us in the line, however, were just hilarious. Some quotes:
"If your feet are sore, just take your shoes off. That's what I did." (He really did take his shoes off!)

"Ugggghhh, this line is so long. At least we're getting exercise!"

"Wow, that vending machine is sooo cool! It's worth the $3 just to watch it!" (It was just one of the newer Coke machines.)

Anyway, I'm sleepy and may not make sense if I continue any further, so I think I shall just finish with some of the photos I took:


(The view of Toronto Island)



(Heading toward sunset- some of the lights of the city are starting to come on)


(And another sort-of sunset photo.)

Anyway, thanks again for reading!
~Dorothy

Toronto- Day 1- Cheese and Poorly Translated Packaging

Today is/was my first day in Toronto, not including last night.
We headed up to Orfus Road to look at some of the outlet stores and Grande Cheese, a huge cheese factory and store.
It was really cool, there was cheese hanging everywhere and many shelves laden with the stuff.
If you know me well, or even if you don't, you probably know that I am rather obsessed with cheese, so this store was truly a must.

(We bought Beer Cheese, Stilton with Apricots, Pomegranate and Raspberry Goat/Cow Cheese, Oka with Mushroom, and regular Goat Cheese.)

Okay, now onto the poorly translated packaging.
Another store we wandered into was a party store, and in it was one of the most hilariously packaged products I have ever seen:


(I have never heard of "Purpie" and last I checked coffee was a beverage, not a colour. Maybe I'm not using the "Nuance method" properly...)
I think I'll send this along to Engrish Funny.

Thanks for reading!
~Dorothy

Other people's mail experiments!

I did a quick Google search of "postal experiments" and came up with this hilarious page of a group testing the limits of the US postal system:

http://www.directcreative.com/postal-experiments.html

Now, I don't have quite enough guts to try much of what they did on Canada Post, but perhaps I could try putting the stamp on the other side of an envelope. I don't think it would be a problem as I've managed to mail envelopes without stamps before, plus my tiny envelope had the stamps on the bottom, rather than the top and that went quickly and without even a note.
Letters with incorrect postal codes or none at all have also made it, so I don't think that's really an issue either.
I remember being taught in Girl Guides that you had to veeeery carefully put the person's address in big capital letters in a very particular spot, and that the stamp had to be placed exactly. We spent probably half an hour learning about that, though it would seem that it really doesn't matter.
Something I think would be really cool would be to know a postal worker and hear about the stranger things that people have tried to mail- and how they handled it.
Also, if anyone has any ideas for experiments, or has done any before, I'd love to hear about it!

I think that's all for now.

~Dorothy

Online Course- Practice Class

Earlier this morning I had my first class of the online course I'm taking.
Today was just a practice class to get our microphones working and meet each other, and it went pretty well. My instructor sounds pretty good, and the tech got everything working properly.
The funny thing is that this Friday I'm going to Toronto to visit my sister, so the next class will be from there the day I leave. Hopefully I won't have to sign out early to get to the airport...
I'll also have a 15 minute tutorial with the instructor once a week to go over my work and get feedback.
So yeah, I'm looking forward to getting my assignment next week and will give you an update on it when it happens!

~Dorothy

Mail Experiments: Tiny envelope and coinage

Okay, so for a while now I've had great fun messing with Canada Post, so when I read about someone mailing a letter with coinage instead of stamps I decided to give it a try.


Here it is before it was mailed. I wrote on it "Sorry, didn't have a stamp!" and below "Here's a quarter for your troubles"

I think it was put in the mail either yesterday or the day before, and today we found it in our mailbox, unharmed, with a post mark overtop of the coins:




The "tip" was still there and it seemed that either they didn't notice, or plain didn't care.

I also mailed the tiniest envelope I could find and that made it no problem as well:



Maybe I'll mail another coinage-ladened envelope from Toronto when I go on vacation (this Friday) and see if their post office catches it- or takes the tip.

Thanks for reading!

~Dorothy

My beloved laptop

I was moderately bored, had a camera, and my awesome laptop right near by, so I decided to take a couple photos of it!
This is the device I use most for my new-found hobby of blogging (I've used the family desktop once, too), and I love it very much.
Plus it has a cool skin that my friend Nicole wanted a photo of and I thought you guys might like to see.

(This is it open)


(And closed!)


(And a close up on the skin.)


Okay, well that post sounded better in my head, I hope it wasn't too boring!
Thanks for reading!

~Dorothy

Why I can no longer wear dangly earrings to dance...

Not because they wack me in the face when I jump or spin...Okay, well, they do, but that doesn't really bug me.
To explain, I will start my story from the beginning. Today I wore these earrings to my ballet class:



Cute little hearts just in time for Valentines Day! Plus they look like cinnamon hearts, something I've been eating a ton of lately...But I'll save that ramble for another post.
Anyway, my ballet teacher started told me to relax my shoulders a couple times. This in itself is not an unusual critique for me, I'm rather tense through the upper body, but normally it's something that my Highland or piano teacher would say to me more than he would.
Eventually he says that he was able to tell that my shoulders were up because my earrings gave a measurement from the bottom to my shoulder and he could see if one was higher than the other! *facepalm* That guy notices everything!
So, yes. I can assure you that I will be wearing studs to tomorrow's class. :D

~Dorothy

Highland Dancing Exams

I have my biannual Highland Dance exams coming up this month.
It basically consists of an examiner coming from Scotland, my dance teacher setting up one studio with a table, and then you go in and do dances for her with progressively harder steps as you make your way through the levels.
Sounds okay, right?
That part is.
The part that really drives me nuts is the theory exams.
You have to memorize things from the text book, take first position for instance (same as Ballet):

The heels are together, with the weight equally distributed on both feet, which are turned out to form an angle of 90 degrees (each foot being at an angle of 45 from the line of direction). The dancer may be standing with both feet flat on the ground, or may be poised on the balls of the feet.

I dunno, I don't know anyone who would describe your standard first position that way.
I'm still attempting to get out of this particular exam, but my dance teacher really wants me to do it.

Dreading this exam,
~Dorothy

I'm evil...

I just lost the game!
Muahaha...
If you have no clue what I'm talking about, then go here: http://www.losethegame.com/

~Dorothy

My Cats

Okay, so I may as well tell you about my cats, Corbridge (Corbie) and Vindelanda (Vinda).

Corbridge was named after a town in the north of England in which we got lost in on vacation. Because we were so jet-lagged at the time, we found it hysterically funny that we had mis-interpreted my great-uncle's directions to go around Corbridge, we thought one was to go through Corbridge. So we ended up in this little town for probably half an hour. Why we named Corbie after it, I'm not really sure, but the name's stuck ever since.
Corbie is the more easy-going cat, eating literally anything, and especially loving dairy.
It takes a lot to irritate her, and even then she'll simply walk away.
Here's a photo of her:




Vindelanda is named after a Roman wall, again in the north of England, Vindolanda.
Unfortunately, we miss-spelled this, so her name is spelled with an 'e' rather than an 'o'.
We visited Vindolanda on the same trip as the one where we got lost in Corbridge, however this time it was not notable due to poorly-interpereted directions, but simply because it was an awesome historical site. Also because we had just been to a seriously crappy one so anything after that seemed positively brilliant.
Vinda is definitely the skittish one, afraid of socks in improper places and out-of-place objects.
She generally sticks to cat food, gets irritated much more easily, but strangely seems to be generally more affectionate.
We suspect that she is mostly Russian Blue, but not completely, however we can't be sure as both cats were adopted from the local SPCA.
Here's a couple photos:

(when she climbed into the Christmas tree box)

(and a full photo of her)


Alright, well, I think that's all for now, thanks for reading!

~Dorothy

My Cactus Pen

A few days ago, I purchased this awesome cactus pen from a local toy store, that sadly, was closing out.
It appears to be your average plastic cactus, just maybe with a neat little pot, but in actual fact, it is a working pen:


I have been rather obsessed with such a cool pen ever since, and have written as much as possible using it. It is actually quite a comfortable writing utensil as the spikes are made of soft rubber. Made by a company called Fred, this thing really rocks. Check it out on their webpage:
http://www.worldwidefred.com/spike.htm

Basking in cactus-full bliss,
~Dorothy

First post!

Today I was looking at my friend's blog (phapboy) and thought, hey, why don't I make a blog?
I'm bored, have some spare time on my hands, and it sounds pretty darn fun.
So yes. This is my first post on my blog and I hope I won't forget about it and start ignoring it, I'm crap at updating stuff...
Anyway, welcome to my new blog!

~Dorothy