But the one little duck, with the feather on his back...

... man, that duck can bake.

Tomorrow is my last day of work before this wee one arrives. My co-workers said an early farewell today; a smart move, since it's day to day lately on whether I'll be there at all. My feet have been swelling up every afternoon, and I've been contracting like crazy.

To say goodbye, Shae volunteered to bake a cake. Shae is the resident foodie at the office, a very funny guy, the general bane of my existence (it's like having my brother in the next cublicle sometimes), and a good work friend.

Now, a normal layer cake with "We'll miss you!" or "Congratulations!" on it would be beneath the dignity of our intrepid baker. Banal pastry would not do. Instead, Shae went to his favourite cake store (that phrase says everything, doesn't it?) and rented a 3-D ducky cake pan.

The results were amazing and adorable.

I feel loved.

Garage sale city

I am a devotee of the garage sale and of secondhand living, and it's all Yellowknife's fault.

When the Hubby (then Fiance) and I moved North, we needed many, many things to furnish our first home. We owned no furniture, no cutlery, no pots and pans. We essentially owned the clothes on our backs and an old dresser my former roommate gave me.

What we needed we got from friends, the secondhand store in town and the Yellowknife garage sale circuit.

You see, in the North, furniture is an expensive and precious commodity, since it has to be shipped from down south to get there. It doesn't matter if the local furniture store is selling it or if you order it from IKEA in Edmonton, it still has to travel, and the consumer pays up the nose to get it there. That goes for lots of other stuff, too, such as brand-name clothes and chic baby gear.

Conversely, when people leave, it is often more expensive to ship their Northern furniture and other items south than it is to buy all new and shiny stuff at their destination. That means you have people desperate for cheap furniture and other items, and other people desperate to sell their stuff for any price, just to get rid of it.

It's garage sale heaven.

We furnished our apartment on the Saturday of the May long weekend in 2000, with the help of our friend Julie and her trusty truck. She'd just moved North too, and with her wheels and Hubby's lifting skills, we all did well.

When the Hubby finished his basic training, I held a massive garage sale a week before he came home to move us to Victoria. It was raining, so the turnout was small. For two hours my front yard was stormed by about a hundred furniture seekers, clothes shoppers and pregnant women.

So imagine my dismay when I saw the Victoria version of a garage sale: a few paltry tables of worn-out toys and kitchen stuff, with one lonely and disgruntled shopper digging through the wreckage.

We are holding a garage sale tomorrow to sell some old furniture (Northern vintage!) along with a tonne of awesome kids' clothes and shoes (including two pairs of Robeez), a bike, some DVD stands, computer games, a computer speaker system, etc. If you live in town, come on over. Whatever is left will be free for the taking after noon. (This never would have been an issue in Yellowknife.) Wish us luck!

First meme!

I think this is the first time someone has tagged me in a meme. Here goes...

1. Four places I go over and over: my workplace, the grocery store, Super A.'s school and Big I.'s preschool. Exciting life, I know.
2. Four people who e-mail me regularly: Megan, the nanny agency, Stacers and Hubby texts me.
3. Four of my favorite places to eat? The Vietnamese place around the corner (Saigon Harbour -- order the spring roll and the Chicken curry with rice, amazing), the Broughton Street Deli (great soup), any Thai place, but especially Sod Sai Thai on Douglas and Baan Thai on Blanshard, and the Noodle Box (Malay-Style Fried Rice, brown rice, no prawns, medium hot.)
4. Four places you’d rather be? Close to my mother and father, back in Yellowknife during the summer, Paris in winter and working in a newsroom.
5. Four TV shows I could watch over and over: Entourage, The Hills (guilty obsession), the fifth estate and (this is a radio show, but I'm putting it in) White Coat, Black Art on CBC Radio One.
6. This tag is passed to four people I know in person: I don't know any other bloggers in real life except the ones Megan tagged, so I'll tag the Catholic women blogger I read: Arwen, the Summa Mamas, Pansy and Alicia.

Check it out! My wordle

Megan over at Reflections in the Snowcovered Hills has been playing with Wordles, which are pictures made from words used on an Internet site.

Here's the one she made for Ready Aye Ready.