Tired? You betcha.

Work has been killer the past two weeks. I'm working 8 shifts this week, and I worked 8 last week and I kinda just want to curl up in my bed for a while with a good book, and just block out the rest of the world. It's been stormy out, which makes me sleepy and want to be somewhere warm even more. On top of that, I'm trying to finish my latest novel while endlessly rewriting my first one. Woot.

Alright.

So because I'm tired, I'm just going to show a little national pride.



Canada=Awesome.
Woooooooooooooooooooooooooo.

Womans Best Friend.

For those who know me, they know I love cooking. It's one of my favourite hobbies.
And what goes hand in hand with cooking? Eating.

And today, I'ma talk about something I wish I could make, but love to eat.




That's right, chocolate.

But I don't have a lot of time to right about it today, unfortunately. I have a lot to do, and a very busy weekend work-wise. (It's Mothers Day. The one day people decide to show appreciation for their mothers by taking them out on the busiest day of the year where the food will be rushed and the service sub-standard. Do I sound cynical? It's because I am.)

I'ma be brief.

Chocolate is made primarily from the cacao bean from the cacao tree, originally found in brazil and venezuala, but now found all over the sub-tropics. The pods are left in the sun to ferment, and then the beans are removed and roasted at 250-350 degrees for varying lengths of time dependant on the bean. After that, the outer shell of the beans are removed and sold as animal feed. The inner nib is crushed to extract cocoa butter. A thick paste, this stage is called cocoa liqeur, but there isn't any actual alcohol in it. To make cocoa powder, a heavy press is used to extract all but 15-25% of the cocoa butter. If making baking chocolate, the chocolate liquer is molded and hardened.

Cacao Beans



Depending on what type of chocolate you want (flavoured, white, dark, milk) more ingredients are added to the cocoat butter; milk, sugar, flavouring, vanilla, delicious. After the mixing, the chocolate is refined, molded, and packed away for later eating.

The Chocolate Molding Process. Oh, Yummy.

Chocolate has a long and extensive history;

I highly suggest you check it out. The history of chocolate is an interesting one.

Why is chocolate awesome?
Because it's filled with delicious. It can have many different fillings that are also filled with delicious. Chocolate is something that is a comfort food for me and others world-wide. It melts in your mouth (sometimes with bubbles!) and is bloody wonderful. Not only that, but it releases the chemical seratonin and other endorphins within the brain, quite literally cheering you up. And it makes sex sexier.

What do you think?


Clearly, Chocolatiers are pimpin'

Say Hello to My Little Friend the Cactus

Today, I will write about a spiky little friend of mine.

My dad and I have a thing with cacti. (Cactuses? Cactupi?). I buy him them whenever we’ve had a fight, or just when I want to tell him ‘I love you’ without actually verbalizing it. I have a few cacti he’s given me as well. My favourite one is named for my old boss back when I worked at a diner. He was a thorny, cantankerous old Greek man. Haha. She joked. But no, really. I collect them. Even now, as I type this from the safety of my sun-bench, I am watching one I’ve named Mariel. I have a habit of naming inanimate objects.



The cactus is a member of the plant family Cactaceae. They are, with one sole exception, native to the America’s. They are an unusual plant in that they thrive in dry, arid regions. (That means desert, though they can also be found in the rainforest, savanna’s, and mountains. weird.) There are over 2,000 species of cacti, with various shapes and forms.

Say hello to the nice Saguaro cactus, everyone.

A perennial plant, they can grow as trees, vines and bushes and come in a wide variety of shapes and sizes. Some of them will be no bigger than your thumb, while others, such as the mighty saguaro, can grow up to be 15 metres. They generally have no leaves, or greatly reduced leaves (many of which are microscopic…neato!), and many have a covering of thorns, which again differs with the variety. The thorns are not only used as a form of self-protection against being devoured or damaged by local or passing fauna, it is a highly effective method of preserving water and thwarting that evil process known as precipitation, in a process known as transpiration through shading the plant.

The life of a cactus is interesting; it has a long dormancy and a short growing season. They have a largely spread out system of shallow roots that respond within two hours after a heavy rain that can trigger an enormous growth spurt in a short time. A full-grown saguaro cactus can absorb up to 3,000 litres of water in ten days. (No wonder the desert is dry…the cacti are stealing all the water. Evil bandit cactuses!) Many cacti will flower after a rain, or after a certain age with the flowers ranging from very small up unto 30 cm in diameter in bright and eye-catching colours. Some cactus flowers stand for several days, others die in just one day. Some cactus flowers open only at the sunset, others only in the daylight. Cacti are pollinated by insects and hummingbirds. Some red cactus flowers spread a stenchy rotten meat scent, attracting insects. They can live anywhere from 25 years, to 300
.

flowering cactus.
But what if there is no rain? Cacti suck up their moisture through their extensive root systems, and in the desert there is plentiful dews that fall at night. But one of the most amazing thing about the cactus is that it can suck up moisture through its skin, through small areoles (NIPPLES!?) that open and close. Desert night fogs allow for a little more moisture to be sucked into the cactus. But because this is a low-water diet, many cactuses have a round, thick shape so that they can better store water.

Mostly they are used as ornamental plants, with others being used as food, foraging, fruit, and other uses. I know of an artist who used to make paper of cactuses. They can also be used as a fence if materials and cost is an issue. Some of the bear fruit, such as the prickly pear and the dragonfruit. (Alright, I did NOT know that came from a cactus. I have to eat some now.) Peyote, long used as a vision-inducing psychoactive agent by the Native American Peoples, is a cactus. Many common cacti that you can buy at any garden centre also contain mescaline. The trunk of some cacti is used to make a type of Argentinian drum called bombo leguero. The wood of some cactus species is used for making walls, roofs and as reinforcement wood. The fruits of Cereus repandus from Peru are called cactus apple or tuna and are prickless. Syrup can be made from cactus fruits.

I don’t know about you, but I find cacti to be amazing. These are plants that have evolved over millions of years in order to survive in a harsh and unforgiving landscape. A lot of times, we don’t think of plants of as evolving, or self-defensive, but then we have the cactus, that reminds us that plants are changing at the same rate as everything else. They are incredibly adaptive, and still manage to be beautiful. It’s just awesome.
What do you think?


'Sup?

I'm Back! And so Are They.

yeah...I was gone for a month. What of it? :P Work was suffocating, and I was finally nagged back into doing this.
Back to doing these daily.

Now, for today's topic (and a celebratory song about my return from one of my favourite childhood movies) re; the video below.



Yes, that's right. We're talking dinosaurs. The movie clip you saw is from the movie We're Back! Plotline includes the following; dinosaurs brought forward in time and made good by dino-cereal, sausages, a bubble producing wish maker, a howls-flying-castle machine, apes, an evil circus run by a guy named ScrewEye, competitive brothers, an absentminded museum director. All of it wrapped up in sweet pre-adolescent romance.

Really.

Now, anyone can tell you (especially my boyfriend BlueEyes) that I have an obsession with dinosaurs. I've watched every documentary, every show, and a million internet/book things. I collect dinosaur movies obsessively. I even used to have some dinosaur coprolite hanging around. That's fossilized feces, folks.

Also, I had a psychic tell me in a past-past life that I was an allosaurus. Which explains my temper.

More specifically today we're going to be talking about Dakota, one of my favourite dinosaurs of all time. Why this specific dinosaur? Why pick a Hadrosaur, one of the most common dinosaur skeletons ever found? Easy.

Dakota is one of the rarest dinosaur finds; a mummy. If that's not freaking awesome, I don't know what is. One of three dinosaurs mummies ever found, Dakota was discovered by 16 year old wanna-be paleontologist Tyler Lyson on his family farm in, you guessed it, Dakota. The body had survived sun, scavengers, weather and time, until it mineralized and survived millions of years. Upon acquiring his degree, he went back and excavated it, and the discovery was announced in 2007.


This is less-dead version of Dakota the Hadrosaur

Hadrosaurs were 8 tonne duck-billed dinosaurs that lived in the Late Cretaceous period. A common snack for t-rex, they were herbivores that stretched across Europe, North America, and Asia. Hadrosaurs were divided into many subgroups, the most popualr being the maiasaur, or the 'Good Mother Lizard'. Ducky from the land before time was also a hadrasaur; more specifically a parasaurolophus.




Most dinosaurs are known from their fragmented and scattered bones, so this kind of unheard-of-amazing-completely-complete-skin-organs-and-soft-tisse discovery rocked the science world and updated a lot of knowledge concerning hadrosaurs and the dinosaur world. Considered the most complete dinosaur find since 1908, it was the largest skin-imprint ever found and can tell us a lot about the movement, size, and speed of the dinosaur. Scientists even had to alter how they look at a hadrosaur; they walk differently then we first believed them to do.

I'm pretty sure that the mummy of a dinosaur is epic, and needs to explanation to why it is here on this blog. It's. A. Dinosaur. Mummy. Who DIDN'T play with dinosaur toys when they were a kid!?

If you want to learn more about the process of mummification, and the discovery and unearthing of a dinosaur mummy there are many articles on the web, as well as many documentaries. Here are some ones of interest that I highly suggest you check out.

Here's one about Dakota's autopsy. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sJZaOsnf5nI&NR=1

This one is entitled 'Secrets of the Dinosaur Mummy'. While it doesn't talk about Dakota, it does speak of her contemporary, a juvenile male duck-billed dinosuar mummy named Leonardo. It's pretty fascinating stuff, and I suggest you look over it. He was found with his organs intact. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6weSeCsZLD8 <- Part 1.



Here are some of the autopsy reports of Dakota.

Until, next time.

-Bananahead.

'Bambi'

Stag in Antler

Pay attention class. We continue today with our week on local fauna.

Today's Lesson is on Odocoileus virginianus, more commonly known as the Virginia deer, or white-tailed deer. Also just called 'the deer'. It's another common animal found throughout North America, South America, and it has been introduced to New Zealand and some European countries, mostly in the East.There are about 30 subspecies of the white tailed deer, all of them highly adaptable.

I've always considered the deer to be my good luck charm. They're soothing, and there's something about their gracefulness and shyness that are enchantining. Their big, soft, warm brown eyes don't hurt, either. The day I had to put my first dog down, two does and a young fawn came to browse at my living room window. They made me feel so much better. Just last weekend, the boyfriend and I went for a country hike and saw a herd of five does.

Deer are ungulates (hooved) mammals with a red-brown to grey coat. Their tails are broad and about a foot long, with a characteristic white underside. When running or alarmed, the deer's tail becoems erect, flashing the white side like a little warning signal/surrender flag. Male bucks can weighs between 130-300 lbs, while the female doe generally weighs between 90-200 lbs. They can be as high as 40 cm at the shoulder. As you head south, specimens tend to get smaller.


The characteristic 'flag' of the white tailed deer

One of the most notable and well-known physical aspects of the deer are the stag's antlers, which are shed each fall and regrown every year. Only 1 in 10,000 does have antlers. There are a variety of different types of antlers with varying numbers of branches, with food supply and habitat contributing to growth. When the antler's begin to grow in Spring, they are covered with a tissue called 'velvet' which covers the hard antler and is scraped off by the buck. Shedding starts in the fall, after all the does have been mated. The antlers are for the purpose of mating (duh.), and used as both as a display to attract females and to combat rival males who either challenge for the right to mate a doe or compete for control over a harem. During the rutting season in October/November, bucks rarely eat or sleep, mating feverishly. (Woah, what a honeymoon.)

Females give birth to 1-3 spotted fawns in May or June after a seven month gestation period. The fawns (the most famous being Bambi of Disney fame) have small white spots on their back, and are able to stand up within minutes of birth. However, they remain feeble for their first week of life until they have drank enough of mama deer's rich and delicious milk. When their mother's leave them periodically while searching for food, they curl up in the grass (the white spots help with camoflauge) and remain motionless for hours.

Fawn hiding in the grass

Contrary to popular belief, deer are not silent creatures. They use a variety of sounds to communicate, including bleats, snorts, and huffs. They are herbivores, with their diets consist of leaves, grasses, shrubs, bark, herbs, mushrooms and berries. They are primarily nocturnal or crepescular, meaning they feed at dawn or dusk.

hi mom!

Deer interact with humans often, despite their natural timidness and fear. Being highly adaptable and migratory creatures, they often come into contact with farmers and motor vehiclists (though the latter encounters often lead to injury and death on both parts). Deer are often found grazing in farmer's fields and have been known to come into urban areas. Deer are also popular for hunters and cooks, with venison being considered a delicacy by some.

Deer are awesome. There's just something about them that has a hushed, magical quality that makes you hold your breath. You just want to stay as still as possible and watch them.

What do you think?


And do you recall, the most famous whitedeer of all?

Vulpes Vulpes; The Red Fox

Adult Red Fox

I love foxes.

I wrote my first 'book' when I was in grade 8. It was called 'foxheart' and I got about 40,000 words in before I gave up. I have it collecting dust around here somewhere...Foxes have always captivated me. Last year, I went for a walk in my yard around sunset. In the back 4 acres, I had been kneeling down to look at some particularly purple nettle-flowers when I looked up and saw a dog-fox not 50 feet away. He was large, and his fur was an amazing shimmery red-gold. I could see his pupils. I've seen a lot of foxes, but this one was large; easily twice the size of my largest cat. We both just stood there for 5 minutes while we took each other in before he loped off and was quickly lost to sight.

Like I said, I love foxes, and I'm hoping that I can have another such encounter soon.

The red fox, or Vulpes Vulpes, is a small-dog like mammal found throughout Europe and North America and Asia, as well as Northern Africa. Because of their recognizable traits and wide-spread habitat, many times they are just referred to as 'the fox.' Male foxes are slightly larger than females. Sizes vary somewhat between individuals and geographic locations—those in the north tend to be bigger. Adult foxes weigh between 3.6 and 6.8 kg and range in length from 90 to 112 cm, of which about one-third is tail. Their tales are long and bushy and -insert lisp here- FABULOUS.

Contrary to popular belief, not all red foxes are red. Many of them are brownish, and the colours vary according to geographic locations. These include brown, silver, red, orange, black, and grey. Many have black feet/legs and a white tip on the end of their tails. Fox eyes tend to be golden.


Silver Fox

Oppurtunistic eaters, foxes are omnivourous and will eat everything from mice and small rodents, rabbits, cats, to berries. Roadkill and human garbage are also free for the picking. They primarily feed on invertabrates such as insects and crayfish, and have also been known to eat birds and reptiles.

Fox temperament and behaviour is vastly different due to geographic locations. No two fox populations are the same. Some hunt during the day, most at twilight, with many becoming nocturnal in area's of human development. It is a solitary animal and a solitary hunter, forming a mostly-monogamous relationship with a vixen (female fox) each year. The vixen gives birth to a liter of 4-6 kits, also known as pups, who leave the den upon achieving maturity in 8-10 months.

Historically, foxes have held both positive and negative positions with humans. The Japanese revered the fox, and stories of fox-maidens, or 'kitsune' were popular. In popular fiction, the fox is seen as a wily and conniving trickster, a little brother to the native american trickster coyote figure. They feature prominently in many fictional and children stories, such as Reynard the fox and Aesop's fables.


Japanese Kitsune

Many farmers used to see foxes as chicken-poachers and pests to be elimnated. While foxes will carry of the occasional chicken and lamb, farmers now tend to now see them as beneficial as well, feeding on the pests that can destroy harvests and get into grainaries. Fox hunts are particularly popular in England, when a bunch of fancy-pants on horses run a fox to the ground and have it torn to shreds by a bunch of exhausted hounds while their horses break their legs. Fun for everyone except the animals involved. Yay.

Fox furs are also very popular, with silver fox fur being used for linings, cuffs and collars and with red fur more commonly used for full-fur garments. In the time of traders, a single fox fur was worth up to 40 beaver pelts.

'Vulpix' and 'Ninetales', based on kitsune, are also admired by pokemon lovers and anime buffs everywhere.



Gotta say, red foxes are awesome. And adorable!


D'awwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww

That New Book Smell....

What are you doing here?

Its a balmy 15 out, and it's supposed to go up to 18. Why on earth are you on your computer?

Granted, I haven't posted in a week, but my long-distance boyfriend came down, and we spent the days cuddling, watchign Scrubs, going for walks in the sun, going out for dinner and wandering around down-town Paris. Twas delightful. But this post is going to be short while I write a few more to catch up with my absence. And then I'm going outside. Or I might just grab a few reference books and go outside and write there. :)

My last post was on the mourning dove, a common sight here in the Paris countryside. I think for the next few days I'll keep up on writing about some familiar flora and fauna, since with Spring being here (for those people who say we have more snow or the temperatures going to plummet to regular March weather, shut up. Just shut the hell up.)so many amazing and ordinary things are coming out of the woodwork. So, starting tomorrow, I'll be working through a week-long list of familiar flora and fauna that will seem totally new by the time I'm done with them. I might even start tonight.

Now...for fresh book smell.
This isn't so much of an informative post. It's more of a 'I FREAKING LOVE NEW BOOK SMELL'. I love the smell of fresh-printed ink, glue, white paper. I know many people will agree with me on that, especially book-lovers. IF there ever was a smell that was about fresh-adventures and what not, it would be new-book smell. :)

It's pretty awesome.
What do you think?