advanced procrastination techniques

1. Here it is Sunday, and all over my MSN window people are saying things like "SO MANY PAPERS OMG" or "Nothing gets my room cleaner faster than papers!" or "Procrastinating, distract me PLZ". Some of these people are upper year students and should know better, but I'm willing to give people in the first two or three years of their degrees the benefit of the doubt. Just for you, guys, the art of procrastinating at this very special time in your school year:

• Don't advertise that you're procrastinating. This is for people who aren't really committed to procrastinating and are just being all emo so someone will tell them to get on with it, or else people who don't actually have anything overdue or immanently due, but want to look like they're living on the edge like all their friends. Losers.
• You should try to move beyond the "cleaning my room so I don't have to study" realm of procrastination. It's alright for rank beginners, but replacing work with work isn't really what we're going for here. It's certainly nothing to brag about.
• What kind of activities you bring into procrastination says a lot about who you are, and what you stand for (aside from being lazy). While keeping away from the replacing-work-with-work strategy mentioned above, you should try to tailor the experience to fit your tastes.
  
• Like sports? You could go for a jog... but for more points, you should spend the evening/afternoon/month playing Wii Bowling or some sort of crappy hockey game on your couch.
  
• Social? You could go for coffee with friends, but ideally you should spend the day on Facebook, joining or even creating arcane groups like "Fredericton Drivers Make Me Violent", or "I Will Go Slightly Out Of My Way To Step On That Crunchy-Looking Leaf" (both of these, in fact, exist).
• Musical? You could practice an instrument or go to a show, but real procrastinators spend their time organizing their iTunes into exciting categories and rating every song they have in the name of an efficient shuffle playlist.

You get the general idea.
But Sensei, you ask - what do you do to avoid work? The answers are many and varied:

• playing with my cats. Cats make excellent co-conspirators in this kind of endeavour; we should all hold up the laziness of cats as an example to guide us.
• napping. I incorporated this from years of keen observation of my cats, and it has served me well.
• reading unnecessarily long books. Several weeks ago I went on a The Cat Who binge, but having worked through about twenty of them, I have started on the Lord of the Rings, and happily ensconced in the Two Towers.
• playing unnecessarily long games of Civilization, or in my case, FreeCiv, which is an awesome little open source networky sort of variant.
• cooking, which I usually avoid like the plague, except when it involves researching for hours to really define the true spirit of a vegetarian curry, and then modifying it for a slowcooker.
  
• writing long and silly blog posts.

2. The neighbours, clearly angsting about something either school-related or crazy-girlfriend-related, stomped across the floor this morning with enough force to knock down our Ikea lamp.

3.

I meant to take pictures of this a while ago, but the graffiti was painted over, and then replaced in large letters with "AFFORDABLE HOUSING NOW". The housing situation in Fredericton is pretty brutal if you don't want to pay at least $500/month in rent and basic heating/electricity. It's taken a few years and quite a few apartments for us to learn the finer points of not getting screwed by landlords, and not paying rent that compels you to sell kidneys on the black market.
The billboard itself was for a condo complex that was built quite close to here, on my walk home from work; it was designed to mimic historic buildings nearby, but it's actually pretty hideous, with fake towers and faux adobe siding. It's finished and occupied now, as is the condo complex on the other side of York. I wonder when the old "luxury" apartments will have their rent lowered?

4. Procrastination Curry:

This is a pretty hippyish curry, being veg and mostly made from organic things, as our Sobeys has gotten better and better about stocking organic goods.

1 largish carrot, sliced into coins
1 medium parsnip, sliced into coins
2 small yellow onions, diced
5 cloves garlic, diced
2 or 3 tbsp Patak's curry paste, depending on how hot you like your curry
olive oil

3 medium potatoes, peeled and cubed
2 small zucchini, cubed
1 14 oz can of chickpeas (or garbanzo beans, as they are known now), drained and rinsed
1 large can diced tomatoes, drained
2 cups vegetable stock
1 tsp coriander
1/4 tsp cayenne


Cook the first five ingredients in as much olive oil as you feel prudent, until the carrot and parsnip are softened; I threw them in on low while I chopped the rest. Throw everything else but the stock into the slow cooker, then the cooked carrotty curry goodness; use the stock to rinse the bits of curry and olive oil left into the slow cooker from the pan. Give it a good stir and turn the cooker on high. Leave alone for 6-8 hours, serves approximately four over basmati rice.

I can't actually vouch for this curry yet, as it's still cooking, but I thought I'd write it down before I forgot everything. Here's hoping, no?