Thank you, Universe!

This has been a pretty good week, let me tell you.

I’ve been busy taking orders – baking orders, that is!

Today I woke up to a friend asking if she could order a birthday cake from me, and I told her I was already making Pumpkin Cheesecake for another order, so she went for that as well.

Then I called the person who ordered the first cheesecake to check on what else it was he wanted to order, and he wanted his entire Holiday Basket order to be just Pumpkin Banana Loaves and Pumpkin Cheesecake – 10 loaves, and 2 extra cheesecakes, for a total of 3!

Tomorrow (or rather today, as it’s already 1:26am) is Harmless Innovation’s Holiday Basket delivery day, and I don’t think I’m going to be sleeping between now and making our little elf rounds, since I still have Pink Lemonade Cupcakes, Mint Chocolate Fudge, Peanut Butter Cookies, Gingerbread Cookies, another Pumpkin Banana Loaf, and of course icing to make.

Hooo weee! I might regret no longer being a coffee drinker by tomorrow at 7pm – which I just realized is when I’ll get my first chance to go to sleep, since I have a medical appointment at 6pm.

PLUS, I’ve been fortunate enough to not only find $20 (literally) blowing in the wind as I was walking from my car to the bank on Tuesday, but also to get a free Amy’s No Cheese Pizza tonight because it scanned at a higher price than it was supposed to (and this is actually the second time that this has happened to me, at different stores, but the same pizza).

So thank you to the Universe, and to all the little elves who have been helping the Universe help me along this week (including the person in line tonight who pointed out the store policy to me, the man at the dollar store today who let me go ahead of him, and whoever gifted me the $20 – you are all greatly appreciated!).

Holi-daze

Well, it’s almost that time! (Cliché much?)

Christmas is just sleeps away, and it looks like I’m going to be rather busy in the lead-up.

Tonight I put up my Christmas Tree, it looks something like this:

(I lost my camera, so I have only my cell phone to rely on for photographic preservation at the moment. This is why my blog is lacking in colourful self-captured photography.)

I also made myself a youTube playlist of Christmas songs, so score one for me on my list of things to learn how to do.

This afternoon Tara and I fulfilled our first to go order for Harmless Innovations, and just a little while ago the woman we made it for emailed us to let us know she fed 7 people with what we made for 5, there were left overs, they all loved it and she said everyone wants to be vegan now if that’s how vegan food tastes! (Which is actually one of our goals – to make things taste so good that omnivores will be eager repeat customers and spread the word).

So tomorrow Tara and I will be going grocery shopping (have I ever told you how much I love grocery shopping? It’s my idea of a good time…and a good date) for ingredients to fulfill our Holiday Basket orders on Wednesday when we do all of the baking. We’re delivering on Thursday, so there’s still time to get an order in, so long as we receive it by Wednesday at Noon.

That should keep us busy through Thursday, then on Friday I think we might both be on the Animal Voices Radio Show, so clearly, the fun is just beginning! (And hopefully so is our success!)

Too Legit to Quit

So today was an awesome day (well mostly, but I’ll leave out the non-awesome).

First I woke up to a little write up about Tara and I on the VegNews website in the VegNewsDaily section, then I went to the library (always a good time), and this afternoon I got to realize a journalistic dream by interviewing author Will Ferguson.

I’ve wanted to write for VegNews since the first day I happened upon the June 2006 issue at the Chapters in Langley, so I always thought the first time I would see my name published in the magazine or on their website would be during the internship I’ve been planning on doing at their San Francisco headquarters ever since. Obviously this was a wonderful surprise to wake up to on a Monday morning.

So far we have three orders for Holiday Baskets for Harmless (2 of which are pretty huge), and today I began a dialogue with a producer about us bringing a film screening to Vancouver.

Dreams just kept coming true today, as I got a chance to talk to Will Ferguson, who was on my list of people to interview (which now that I think of it, should probably be a blog post in and of itself).

I’ve been a fan of Will Ferguson’s for a long time now, and have most of his books, including “I Was a Teenage Katima-victim,” which is about his experience in Katimavik. It’s also what inspired the interview, as I’m profiling the organization for an assignment for my Journalism Research class.

I wanted to know how the program shaped his life after he completed it, and it turns out it shaped his life in a big way.

Having never traveled before Katimavik, Ferguson was exposed to the Canadian experience outside his small Northern Alberta town and soon developed a love for Canada that has since been channeled into several books about trekking across this vast land of ours.

Initially intent on a career in politics, which Ferguson almost laughed about today, Katimavik redirected him to instead pursue a life in the arts.

Ferguson said all of his traveling and travel writing can be traced back to Katimavik, and that he was prompted to write the 1998 memoir by his publisher asking him for more Canadiana in the wake of his breakout success with his first book, “Why I Hate Canadians.” He recalled that he had notebooks documenting his time in the program, as he said, “our first Project Leader was really adamant that we keep a journal.”

So thank you, “Joyce,” wherever you are. The book really is an hilarious account of what life is like in Katimavik that other Katima-victims can relate to.

Will said he was torn about if he should remain true to the surprising bitterness and anger he found in his journals on closer look, or write from the perspective of time lapsing and seeing it as a great experience in the big picture. He decided to stick to his 19 year-old self’s experience, and anyone who has been in Katimavik and has read the book would likely attest that he made the right decision.

A lucky Katimavik group had the chance to dine with Ferguson after a writing event in Toronto he spoke at a couple of months back, and he said he was struck by how “Kids today are much cooler and more put together than we were” when he did the program in the 1980s, and that he noticed this group was “very articulate . . . very together. They got along as adults rather than kids.”