Today is Ian's birthday! HAPPY BIRTHDAY IAN.
In other news, I am blogging again. It has been a long time so let's start with an exciting and important hair update. In Oregon I got it dyed red. Now I will continue the series of photobooth pictures where I am looking down because otherwise I always make some awkward face:

I really hated the colour cause it looked washed out and weird so when I got back to Toronto I dyed over top of it:

Yay! Now it's a nice dark pinky red that's a bit lighter than in the photo.

I didn't make any new years resolutions. But I remember last year I said I would learn how to cook. I don't think this has been a complete fail since I know how to make very basic things without a recipe now. For example, last night I made pasta and vegetable sauce and when Matt came in he said "that smells amazing!" So I am going to count this as a win.

Let's talk about tea! Okay! How about herbal tea. Also known as... TISANES!
Basically an herbal tea is any infusion that doesn't contain anything from the Camellia sinensis plant. So it's not really "tea" and some people are all "actually herbal infusions are not TEA, they are infusions so when you call them 'herbal teas' you are actually very wrong, they are herbal infusions." That's annoying though. Don't be that guy.
Herbals teas have a long medicinal history and were first used by healers thousands of years ago. They're still heavily used in traditional medicine. Basically no matter what's wrong with you, there is an infusion out there that is used to treat it. Here are some of the most popular ingredients in herbal teas and their benefits (okay, well these are just some things that I've noticed a lot in teas. I'm not sure if they're really the most popular or whatever.)

• Chamomile - Calming
• Ginger - Good for circulation and upset stomach
• Peppermint - Good for digestion
• Lemongrass - Also calming
• Rosehips - Good for colds (since rosehips have a ton of vitamin c)

Personally I hate chamomile and it reminds me of babies (not that I hate babies) and lemongrass tastes soapy and detergenty to me. But whenever my stomach hurts, a mug of lemon ginger tea with honey usually makes me feel a lot better pretty quickly.
You can throw anything natural in hot water and call it herbal tea. Not all herbals are flowery or fruity. One of my favourites from Davids Tea is a mulberry leaf tea that tastes like cake batter. They also have one called Wintergreen Woods made of big leaves and pine needles and you have to just throw a bunch of it in your mug or teapot because it won't fit in an infuser. It tastes like a forest! I think I will make some after I finish writing this.
It's possible to make tea with marijuana. Some people try to make cannabis tea by just throwing it in a mug and pouring boiling water on top but obviously that doesn't work. Maybe it would make a nice (??) tasting infusion but there would definitely be no high involved since there needs to be some fat present to bring out the THC. So if you want to make cannabis tea the right way you need to use butter in it, or I think alcohol also works. Then you'll have a teapot full of pot tea... sorry.
Another interesting herbal is pennyroyal tea. I guess pennyroyal is supposed to induce abortions. A lot of people have tried to use it this way but basically they all just die. So don't do it. Also the Nirvana song.

A few days ago my mom's side of the family was all in Etobicoke so I went and spent the day there. I went to Ikea with my aunts and FINALLY bought my two bookshelves! I built them yesterday with Marshall's help and my room is looking less and less disastrous. I still need a few Ikea things, like inserts for one of the shelves, so I'm excited to go back there and eat princess cake.

Important Hair Update

Hi! I'll probably do a normal post soon. But I re-dyed my hair yesterday or the day before or something and I really like how it turned out.
Recall, if you will....
Original blue hair:

 

Which faded in a month and a half or so to this:

 

Which I liked but was getting a bit too green. Also my roots were starting to come in more. The blue-green was confusing to me because some people thought it was blue and some people thought it was green. On the same day a homeless guy yelled at me, "I like your SMURF HAIR!!!" and an old woman on the elevator told me I was all ready for St Patrick's day.
I didn't want to bleach again yet, so I decided to just go over it with blue but mix in some purple dye so that the red would cancel out the green. COLOURS!
Apparently blue dye + purple dye = purple dye. But since it went over already-blue hair, it turned out this awesome dark blue/purple/indigo colour. And it's super shiny yaayyyy

Awkward photobooth picture:

It's less dark and more purple in person. I very much like it.

Creative Title

I dyed my hair blue! There's also some greenish parts, it looks kind of oceany. I am pleased.

Yay!

Pictures from Nova Scotia, thoughts from Toronto

Hi! It was 70 degrees the other day so here are some celebratory photos from the summer, taken with the golden half in Nova Scotia.
I don't feel like these are strong as a set, so I'm going to type a bit between them as I sometimes do. This allows me to separate the photos and also lets me hear the rattle of the keyboard keys, which is one of my favorite sounds. It sounds productive and makes me think of rain. So this is really an everybody-wins kind of situation, except that only I win.


So a few of my things have gone missing from the kitchen in the past couple months. My roommates and I all have our own labeled cupboards where we keep our stuff, so it's not like it's just lying around. First it was one of my two Holga-print tea towels I got from Mom for Christmas. Then my tiny cutting board disappeared. This was distressing because it was what I always used to cut up the oranges I smuggled out of the dining hall. It was so little and easy to wash and practically brand new. My baking sheet was next to go, which was infuriating because in my quest to learn how to cook (which has taken a bit of a dive but once I move I assure you it will be back with a vengeance, I mean I will literally live upstairs from a grocery store), I discovered that baking can be tremendously therapeutic and something that I very much enjoy. I even made a baking mix on 8tracks. So the loss of my baking sheet was inconvenient. Soon after this incident, my bigger cutting board vanished, and then some of my tupperware.


Recently things started reappearing mysteriously. I wandered into the kitchen one afternoon to find my tea towel next to the sink, all dirty and folded up. The cutting boards materialized hanging from a hook on the wall. One of my tupperware containers appeared right back in my cupboard. My baking sheet, however, is still gone. I've looked everywhere it could be in my suite and it is for sure not here, unless it's in one of my roommate's rooms or something. Why would someone steal a baking sheet? That's such a weird thing to steal from a dorm kitchen. Now I have to go back to Canadian Tire to buy a new one, but that's alright because I like going to Canadian Tire. I like all those giant stores with really high ceilings and bright lighting. I usually like the walk there too, but recently someone got stabbed right along where I walk and now I'm afraid to go there.


I dyed my hair black a couple weeks ago and I'm still getting used to it. I wanted to try jet black instead of just going back to my natural colour. I don't think the roots will be noticeable so this way I can just let it grow out too. So far only one person has actually told me it looks good. My other friends say:
"It makes you look really goth..."
"You look so PALE"
"Why did you do that?"
"At least it matches your eyebrows now"
They say I should have gone back to my natural colour instead of jet black. Even though I did not ask for their opinions, obviously this is very valuable and constructive criticism of my important hair choices and their remarks will come in handy for cutting me down when I start to get too full of myself.


An unexpected dilemma came up a little while ago. I often hang out at Indigo (Canadian version of Borders) (although I heard Borders is going out of business, wtf?) and there's a book there that I read a little of every time I go in. I'm about 60% of the way through it now. But a few weeks ago I went up to the fiction section only to find that the very last copy had been taken. I stood and stared at the shelf for a good two minutes or so feeling lost. I thought they would restock it, but it's been a few weeks now and it's still gone. So. Guess I'll just start a different Indigo book or something.


Do you know what's really noisy? Toronto. Toronto is so fucking noisy all the time, ALL THE TIME. Especially when you live right next to like four different construction sites. Besides the construction it's mostly car noises. Douchebags like to drive down my side street really fast, revving up their engine like hell just so they can make sure that everyone knows that they own a car and they are driving it pretty fast right now, so the world can just step aside and make way for them and their loud, loud car. There's always sirens and car horns and people yelling and the occasional swearing hobo making his rounds. Garbage trucks and street sweepers and airplanes. But the other day I woke up in the morning and the intrusive, obnoxious racket was fuzzy background noise to a much nicer sound. Right outside my window I could actually hear birds chirping. And that's why I'm happy it's spring.


These are my last four days of being a teenager. Being 19 was pretty fun. Once I'm 20 I'll no longer be among the youngest people at pubs or 19+ concerts or liquor stores. I'll be closer to 30 than 10. Dear god, I'll be halfway to 40. In a week I'll be moving into an apartment where I won't have a meal plan or a floor don (RA for you Americans), where I'll write rent checks and have a room where my bed doesn't take up half the space. I won't be surrounded by only students and I won't unpack all my things knowing that I'll be packing them up again in less than a year. I'll be a person in her 20's and it will be weird but also maybe kind of cool.


That's all, sorry this post was so long and rambling. Bye!