hi,

i'm looking for a FREE old computer for my grandparents. will pick up anywhere in vancouver. needs to be able to open up a browser.

help my grandparents join the digital revolution.
thank you! :)

Gently bumping a frying pan, half filled with water, against the side of the sink or other objects in the sink, filled with variable levels of water or other liquids, makes quite an enjoyable pinging sound, like that of a 'piiiiioing', that you might hear if you dropped a penny into a well, while thinking of summer. Just kidding about that last bit.

So I just got my yearly lipid panel done and while my bad cholesterol levels are now down (it was 265+ last time, wtf), my doctor is concerned because my GOOD cholesterol went and took a nose dive with it.

The only recommendation I can find online for increasing my HDL cholesterol is to, "exercise, lose weight and quit smoking." These are not adequate to my needs! I am very physically active, maintain a careful vegan/low processed diet and certainly do not smoke.

To the other wonky cholesterol vegans in this group: suggestions?

Thanks!

http://www.asofterworld.com/index.php?id=457

Here is today's comic! We hope you like it.

i'm sick.

fuck.

I was on a boat, at any rate. On Friday after beers on Third Beach (for Adam's b-day) with Josh, Mo, Trent and friends, we were riding along the seawall somewhere east of Yaletown when Trent spotted what he was pretty sure was Drew's boat. "Drew!" he called, and Drew called back, "Hello!" So we went and hung out on Drew's boat for a while. People were eating ginormous freshly-trapped crabs, drinking beer, listening to music inside the boat and listening to Drew and his friend play guitar and muted trumpet, respectively, on deck. The view was beautiful and it was just generally a really fantastic fun time.

This weekend I played several more hours of Final Fantasy II (IV for the purists), and read a couple hundred more pages of Quicksilver. In other words, I was fairly sedentary. Quicksilver is pretty awesome so far, although people's (I think specifically trochee?) descriptions of his sex scenes are pretty accurate. They're all mechanical and physiological and overall extremely un-sexy. Sorry Neal, you win at a lot of things, including awkward nerd-sex.

My uncle is on the cover of the Vancouver Sun today, playing trombone.

Everyone, this is Bettie! She is a single speed/fixed built from a stripped Raleigh Capri. Bettie is a classy, flashy broad who isn't afraid of a little bling.



( Charmed, I'm sure! )

I've seen lots of questions lately about inexpensive vegan sunscreen and whether or not sunscreen can get an SPF rating without animal testing.  I'm always on the lookout for something good myself, so I was very excited to find a tutorial for making your own, including a chart on how much of the active ingredient to use in order to get specific SPF protection. 

http://www.instructables.com/id/Homemade-Sunscreen/

I can't post the text of the entire tutorial, but there is this helpful hint in there:

If you want your sunscreen NOW, and you don't want to mess around with making your own lotion, just buy your favorite lotion from the store, and add your zinc oxide or titanium dioxide to that!
This means you can make sunscreen that's sensitive enough to use on delicate skin, or is already your favorite scent or creaminess.

• 8oz lotion
• Zinc oxide or titanium dioxide (see shopping link above) - follow chart below for appropriate portions, and following the remaining directions

That would put the price of vegan sunscreen at the cost of the active ingredients + price of the cheapest vegan lotion you can find.  The full instructions include making your own (vegan) lotion.  The directions seem a bit tedious (gloves and mask?!), but I'm willing to try it for the sake of knowing for sure that my product is cruelty free. 

my fourth with leg (sorry ab the crappy camera phone quality)



( burp )



so other than the fourth, i finally got my IB scores back. I don't know how many of you took IB or AP or whatever but i wound up getting my diploma along with 37 credit hours!
I got credit for every class I took, so I'm really excited.

other than that, i am currently reading breaking dawn. it is soooo bad but i want to know what happens. were any of you all in the same boat?







also, if anyone has any indie movie titles or foreign films or even any good movie for me to check out, hit me up.

I am looking to buy a raincoat... not the camping kind, and not the type which is just made of a thin layer of nylon. I saw some nylon raincoats on the American Apparel website, but the hoods are very small... I want something that will cover my hair very well and hopefully be made of rubber or plastic. I can fit a kids size 10+ so this is an option too. Where can I find something like this for less than $100?

Developer orders construction review as confidence wanes for athletes village
Vancouver may shelve plans 252 units of post-Games social housing in the village

The developer of the billion-dollar Olympic athletes village has ordered a construction review of the project, while insisting that the inspectors and engineers stand by their work.

"All of us agree that for public confidence we need to do an evaluation for those field reviews and the work in the field," said Roger Bayley, senior principal of Merrick Architecture. That, he said, "means going back in and taking a look at a series of particular focus points and making certain there is no validity to the notion that what we have here is a mouldy mess."

Politics, economics and now construction concerns are eroding public confidence in the athletes village, but residents must not give up on the idea it will be a positive legacy, the design manager said. But that too is partially at risk if the City of Vancouver shelves 252 units of post-Games social housing in the village, he said.

"I think we all began this project with a commitment to build a sustainable community and that requires a social component, an environmental component and an economic component," Mr. Bayley said.

"It would be most unfortunate if we couldn't carry through with that aspiration and come to understand how to build integrated and socially equitable communities."

Cost overruns have pushed the bill for the social-housing component of the village from $65-million to $110-million. While the city recently approved spending the money, there's still the possibility it will sell the units instead because of the high cost of maintenance.

Millennium Development Corp., paid the city $192-million and there was an Olympic contribution of $30-million, which Mr. Bayley said should be enough of a financial safety net for the city.

"Those windfalls are really what should allow them to feel okay about what it took to actually create this socially mixed and diverse environment," he said.

Part of the high cost is linked to the fact the entire project is seeking LEED gold status, the highest mark of environmentally sustainable construction.

Certification requires rigorous construction specifications, which the developer is carrying out under the watch of full-time inspectors, Mr. Bayley said.

That's how areas of concern around pipe insulation were caught in April and reported to the general contractors in a review published a day after union officials raised the same concerns in May, he said.

Executives with Heat and Frost Insulators and Allied Workers Local 118 took photographs over a six-week period that suggest pipes were being walled in without the necessary insulation to prevent mould or energy leaks.

"We can tell you that the common areas, we can tell you that the residential suites, we can tell you that the underground parking, some of the mechanical rooms, certainly don't meet the specifications and standards the work was tendered at," said Lee Loftus, the union local's business manager.

"The mechanical insulation is either missing or its done at a substandard level."

He said the only way to ensure no corners were cut on finished sections of the building is to do a full review of construction.

Mr. Bayley said what the union saw was a combination of works-in-progress and probably some human error.

With the volume of pipes, cables and the like required for each suite and the extremely tight deadline for the project, the co-ordination between trades people sometimes falters, Mr. Bayley acknowledged.

But, he said, "it's very, very unlikely that boarding would be put onto a suite where those elements had not been properly reviewed and signed off."

The public sparring over the village is the latest in a long line of controversies that stretch back all the way to when Millennium won the bid to develop the site.

The financing for the village nearly fell apart entirely late last year when the original bankers refused to keep paying out on their loan. The city then secretly took over payments before publicly taking over as the primary banker in December.

The Olympic organizing committee has distanced itself from all of the issues surrounding the village, but says it remains confident the 1,100 units of athletes housing will be delivered on time.

i am feeling a little bit frantic and not at all interested in working this morning. 5 more weeks. 5 more weeks. 5 more weeks.

yesterday we tried to go to ikea but the skytrain died so we missed the bus so we walked from braid to ikea and it was really hot and there were a lot of cars and i did not like that part. the city is slowly killing me. i am getting homesick. i miss the forest. the real forest. not parks masquerading as forests.

i am going to go rub my face in bert now before i have an anxiety party. i applied to shaw yesterday. i hope they will hire me and let me work part time so i will not be so so poor.

Calgary, I need your help!

Any ideas where I can find white cocoa powder for baking? I lost my cake baker and need to make a white chocolate pound cake for my wedding!

Thanks any and all!

L

It's that time of year again - July's full moon weekend and the 120-mile ride from central London to Dunwich on the Suffolk coast. This year, on the back of a great year for bikes in the UK and some fantastic weather, there was a record turnout of up to 1000 riders.

The Dun Run is the nicest, funnest overnight century you could hope to ride, so the plan this year was to do it on pennyfarthings. Alas, my penny's cranks fell off, and another rider's bike broke, so Charlotte had to do it on her own - I rode a Brommie and did support along with Phil (in the picture - click for a set). Nobody's done it on a penny before.

The ride's always a sort of CM-with-a-plan fun fest, a bit of a gathering of the cycling clans, and it was lovely meeting lots of friends in passing. We soon dropped back to the penny's 18kph steady pace and arrived to a round of applause after C had ridden for fifteen and a half hours.

Chapeau, dear heart!

Highlights this year: Gerald's inflatable boat (so he could go for a little row afterwards); Wobbly John's wobblebike (designs pinned to the Cliffs of Insanity); 4th July fireworks in Moreton; great craic at the last pub stop; wearing a glowstick in my newly gauged lobe; the filthy innuendo around dawn's rosy fingers; glowstick smiley faces on road bikes; stopping under a village doctor's eaves for a power nap and a coffee-and-whisky brew up; the sheer pluck of some non-cyclists having a go anyway (getting lost, going slow, having fun); the skinny-dip at the end (nothing, not one thing, beats a sea-swim on a bike-ride-battered arse).

But mostly it was Charlotte's night, and well done to her: the penny takes lots of upper-body to ride (you push against the bars opposite your pedal to keep it straight; more power = more pushing, so hill climbing is a sort of 7-foot-high benchpress argument). Next year I'll have mine ready, oh yes I will...

Were any other pirates on board?

Please guys, help save Stu, a non-aggressive dog being held by Los Angeled animal services for 4 years. They plan to kill him in two and a half weeks.

7/5/09: UPDATE - Stu Dies July 23. Stop Them. Act Before 7/13/09.


Kinship Circle's 6/18 Stu alert asked you to flood Los Angeles offices with
pleas for the dog's life. Now, a 6/23/09 court decision leaves Stu with a
July 23 execution date -- despite testimony from acclaimed animal experts
that Stu poses no threat to humans.( Read more... )

x-posted

Please guys, help save Stu, a non-aggressive dog being held by Los Angeled animal services for 4 years. They plan to kill him in two and a half weeks.

7/5/09: UPDATE - Stu Dies July 23. Stop Them. Act Before 7/13/09.


Kinship Circle's 6/18 Stu alert asked you to flood Los Angeles offices with
pleas for the dog's life. Now, a 6/23/09 court decision leaves Stu with a
July 23 execution date -- despite testimony from acclaimed animal experts
that Stu poses no threat to humans.( Read more... )

x-posted

So, a friend of mine is doing a bike tour to Halifax from Ottawa. She's in Montreal now. She left a twitter (tweet? I don't know these things) on her twitter account last night saying that her bike was stolen... Sucks so bad. I'm not sure if anyone can help out, but here's a photo of the bike, it's a 47 cm kona sutra with a little rainbow flag sticker on the top tube, and Sara, it's owner.

It also has the stock front and rear racks, and a handle bar bag mount that is black with a red button (it's called "KwickClik" or something like that.) It has SPD pedals. I believe there's a little blinky on the front fender stay too. Pretty stock, but still, I doubt there are any other bikes that match it exactly in Mtl.



F-ing heck.

Where in Vancouver would I find pin backings like this:
http://huecountsspecialties.com/images/upload/Pin%20backs.jpg

I have a pin from long ago that I want to wear again but I lost the backings. I live on Commercial Drive and go to UBC if that helps narrow down a location. I thought I'd find an image and post here because it's hard to phone a store and describe what I'm looking for by voice.

Thanks!

Just finished this pic right as I checked my friends page and saw phooeykid's artpost, so I thought I'd show you all how much more fail birl-art can be. For the record, I *can* draw pretty good, just... not humans, for some reason.

The blur was an indulgence in pretentious symbolism gone awry. Although the eyes were supposed to be that creepy, so it's not an utter faility.

 

( Onward to artz! )

 

 

EDIT: Damn. LJ fail. Putting up links and smallpic.

my lady friend did a drawing of me. I think it's pretty much dead on. She's doing custom art work and will ship stuff. hit me up if you want something. 8x10 pencil drawings are about $25 with a mat and can also be done in color:)

Here is an interview that I did with Adam Morgan over at Bookslut. There were lots of questions about formative writerly influences, and so I talked about video games and Tupac and can-lit written by a 15 year old Gordon Korman.

Hey all,
Just wondering if anyone from this comm was going to be attending this conference: www.mindinganimals.com/
I realise this is probably a long shot, but I thought I might throw it out there anyways. This conference is happening on my local university campus and if anyone at all from here is attending, please hit me up in comments or private message if you'd like to meet for coffee or whatever while you're in town. Otherwise, feel free to read the conference programme and WEEP my friends. lolz.

Peter Singer AND Carol Adams both presenting (among many other lovely peeps).

=)

I am throwing a bday party this weekend for my roommate and I need some hors d'oeuvre ideas. I haven't got a big budget and the crowd will be mostly omni (including the birthday boy), with a few vegans and vegetarians. I want to make sure there are plenty of veg options that our omni friends will eat too. The last thing i need are a ton of leftovers!
I need recipes that are cheap, simple, and classiness is a definite plus.
any ideas?

I'm starting a new cruelty free website that will include interviews, recommendations and more. Although I only bought the domain name yesterday (took me a while to think of a name that hadn't already been taken! All the best ones have been bought already!) I'm planning on hopefully getting the first incarnation of the site up within the next couple of weeks. I'm interested in getting in touch with anyone who is involved in a vegan company of any sort, organisation, a vegan/vegetarian musician, anyone who has any vegan products they may want to be recommended etc, etc.

The website will be called Save A Scream (and will be found at SaveAScream.com) - the concept for the name being that I hope to inspire people to save a scream - the scream being that of an animal being either murdered for food or fur or other product, tortured in a laboratory etc. If I can help save a scream and convince others to try the vegan lifestyle or to be more considerate to animals that would be awesome.

If anyone has recommendations of who to feature on the site feel free to post a reply - or if as I said you have a product or are involved yourself in an enterprise, get in touch. I'm open to suggestions.

http://gunstreet-girl.blogspot.com/2009/07/04-july-09.html

Alice's 20th birthday in the Ridge. I kept taking photos in the smoking room because the lighting in there made everything look amazing. This is Nick, proving that smoking makes you look 40% cooler.

You guys always have the best recipes. Do any of you have a cheesecake recipe that even omni cheesecake lovers will enjoy?

I asked someone to pick up some tofu for me and he bought a ton of mori nu silken tofus. i need to do something with all these. Everyone here wants cheesecake so HELP PLEASE. :)

anyone up?
i'm feeling like being an insomniac tonight.

kenziesayrelax

aim it up :D

yep. I got kinda self conscious towards the end so I edited that part out which is why it cuts off abruptly.

Today I hung out with Chris, and he introduced me to the vapourizer. I didn't think I was actually getting anything, like when you smoke out of a bong and it's not lit properly and all you're doing is inhaling smelly air, but actually it was just the smoothest smoke of my life- and it tasted delicious. As Chris described it, "it's like you've been smoking burnt toast all your life and now you finally get to taste fresh bread."

I'm going to go edit photos from my sister's birthday until I get tired and go to bed. Goodnight, my lovelies.

thought a post would Cheer me up.

( Birls boi with tattoos and glasses . )

I am appealing to the hive mind for as many sources of white or some kind of calico fun fur as possible, please.  I was at Dressew yesterday, and anything of *decent* quality was $40/meter.  I need something more affordable because I suck at sewing and there's a good chance I will need more than I anticipate!

So, where else can a gal go?  It's gotta be transit accessible and MUST HAVE CONFIRMED FAUX FUR SIGHTINGS. (I don't have time for wasted trips!)  I heard there's a Fabric Clearing House on Fraser St - anyone know if it's worth the trip?  Any other goldmines in town for a hobby costumer?

Thanks for all leads!

Does anyone here listen to and/or love Brandi Carlile?  I have loved her stuff for a while and sometimes go with not listening to her then when I'm re-reminded of her, I fall back in love with her.  Has anybody else done that with other artists?  Sadly though, "Grey's Anatomy" has made her kinda too popular.  I tried to see her in concert here in Chicago and literally within 4 hours of tickets going on sale, they were all sold out.  I just thought y'all might like her because yes, she is a queer!  And she's gorgeous!  WOOT!  And she's just amazing.  Go listen to her if you haven't or if you have, listen again!

( Read more... )

Sorry, I would've done a cut and I used to know how, but I have forgotten.  Whoops!

Hi Vancouver!

I am looking for a place in Vancouver which sells picture frames with the right dimensions for vinyl record sleeves.

We've tried Urban Outfitters (sold them long ago, but now don't) and Zulu Records (might have them in stock in a few weeks).

Any help is greatly appreciated!

I am cleaning out my mother's refrigerator and in the process looking for some vegan friendly staples to help in my cooking while I am here. For some reason, she has a God awful amount of BBQ sauce. I'm talking, five or six bottles. She's not veg, but is totally down with anything I cook. My question is... What can I whip up with some BBQ sauce?? Any ideas will be helpful, since someones gotta use this stuff up. Thanks so much in advance.

Hi everyone,



I live in Paris at the moment and was wondering whether anyone here would happen to know the french word for nutritional yeast? I think it's silly to wait till I'm in London each time just because I don't know the word to look out for in shops here :)



cheers..



Crossposted in ukvegans

Is there anywhere (or anyone) in the city holding some kind of get-together (or has made a shrine, or whatever, like those in other parts of the world) to honour Michael Jackson here in Calgary - especially Tuesday? :\

And please to just be answering the question and not starting any wank, okay? You may have hated him, but this girl didn't and she's broken and would rather not have to deal with any shit. Thank you.

Hello~
I'm Sylvia, 18 years old, and currently living in Wisconsin, more specifically the Milwaukee area.
I'm mostly looking for like-minded people to chat with and make friends.
I was also intrested in finding out about the A.R. scene in the area?
Is there even one?
I'm really interested in activism, I just don't know where to start.
It would be awesome if there was already a group or something set up.

If anyone has any info or just wants to chat (even if you're not from my area!) feel free to message me.


x-posted.

I'm going on tour tomorrow! Kick off show tonight! Yeah, summer!

the last few days have seen me:

drinking wine on a long bus trip,
curled up in a robson street hookah bar,
kissing on downtown sidewalks,
camping out in an east van city park alongside an Angry Dude and a Confused Dude who hung around forever and spat,
sprawled out in on someone's private beach in deep cove, and
cutting my feet on sharp rocks in the water,
dancing to fabulous live music (delhi to dublin - amazing) in a sea of people on a breezy evening,
drinking cheap beer in an a sketchy bar where i saw a friend's band play.

today's started a nice sunday slow. i've shuffled belongings around from bag to bag, i've walked around downtown listening to elliot smith, i've picked up an amazing pair of compact portable speakers from a girl on craigslist. i'm headed to granville island for some more free live music.

i think i'll buy an ice cream cone.

Haven't posted here in a while but I just got a new custom track frame from our pal Tony (napalmandroses) aka LMNO Cycles.

( Lightning Bug! )