News blackout again

It’s that time again – time to take a break from US political news. I’ve had enough for a bit and I feel that hearing more will do nothing positive for me and lots negative. On the positive side, I’m feeling really inspired about the upcoming year and what it can bring – and what I can bring to it. But that’s a subject for another entry – probably tomorrow…

Here in spirit anyway

No entry yesterday and possibly none today as well. Paul has a bit of a chest cold and laryngitis and so we’re all hanging out together. I have been reading aloud (rereading Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH) and we’ve been visiting the bathroom every few hours to turn on the hot water in the shower to high, and sit in the steamy room to help with the cough.

I’m also giving some thought to cutting down computer time in general just to enjoy some offline time a bit more. I dug up the old alphasmart that I used to use to write entries in the yurt years and so I can keep on writing without ending up writing an entry, visiting a million other blogs, checking up on news and spending (before I know it) a couple hours sitting in front of the computer. For those not familiar, by the way, with the alphasmart, it is a really cool tool. Essentially it is a keyboard with a small LCD screen with a memory. You can type whatever you like into any of 7 different files and then, once you’re at the computer, you can plug the alphasmart in, press “send” and all of the text in memory is feed in through the keyboard connection as if you are typing at superhuman speed. It runs off of two AA batteries that seem to last forever (I think we still have the original ones in it). Ours is a much older version than the one on the website, though. It actually doesn’t look like much that we’d care about has improved, except for the design, since our version.

Anyway – hope everyone has a happy new year – I have a few thoughts about the new year I want to get down but at the moment, I have a bit of reading to do and breakfast to make. Have a great day!

Yum!

I made pho last night (see this entry for a link to the recipe and to other good recipes also). As I’m on about taking photos, I took a couple as I went.

One of my favourite things about pho are the accompaniaments. Some restaurants put herbs right into the soup while others provide a plate of fresh herbs for you to add as you wish.

On the plate are bean sprouts, basil, sawtooth herb, some herb whose name I don’t know (click on the photo above to see see which one I mean and identify it if you can), and fresh thai chilis. Normally I would also include lime wedges also but I was out at the moment.

The soup itself had the broth, noodles, and fried tofu that had been marinated in tamari. The finished product looks like this:

Normally I would also include a bit more broth but fool that I am I made about half the broth I should have. Usually I double the recipe when we have guests but for some reason I didn’t this time. Silly me.

New Toronto Photos

I took a trip across the harbour today to the Toronto Islands where I wandered about taking photos and recording potential podcast material. The podcast isn’t ready yet (and may not happen – I had a few technical difficulties that I might not be able to recover from), but the photos are available for your perusal and have been added to this flickr set.

Party On, George

Check out this video. It is absolutely hysterical – and sadly, though it is obviously doctored, it is all too believeable.

Albuquerque Photos

I used to take lots of photos back when we lived in Albuquerque. Sadly, many of them were lost after a computer crash without a decent backup. Still, I dug up almost 30 photos I took on various walks, hikes, and other outings with Paul. Look at the flickr set here.

Updated at nearly 11:00 PM to say that I found a CD with a bunch of my missing ones. Now there are also photos from our trip to Monument Valley, Valley of the Gods, and a few of the other places we visited when we lived in the southwest.

Yurt Years Photos

I went through a bunch of our old CDs this weekend and came across a number of photos from the yurt years. Not wanting to keep them to myself I made a flickr set of them. Have a look.

Close Call

I try not to be too superstitious – I really do.

Yesterday afternoon, when Sage and I needed to go to the health food store and an Asian market and so we talked to Kite who was happy to hang out with Paul while the two of us went downtown to do our business. Paul, however, was having none of it. He didn’t want us to go, didn’t want to come with us, didn’t want even just one of us to go. “Both of you just stay here.” he calmly said. Finally after several minutes of going back and forth, we convinced him that he would have fun with his Granny and Badger if he stayed behind. And so we left. On the way we decided we were both too hungry to go shopping without eating first and tried to make a decision. I suggested Ginger over on Yonge street, but Sage wanted to be home as soon as we could and so we resolved to go get something over in Kensington Market instead. As we ate, Paul called us on the phone a few times, just to hear our voices or to tell a quick story.

After we ate we wandered over to the market and picked up everything we needed for a few different meals including Tofu with Fresh Tomatoes. At a little before 5:00 we headed over to Whole Foods. And let me just take a quick detour from the story here to have a short rant about Whole Foods. When we lived in Albuquerque, we lived for a short time in walking distance from the Whole Foods there. The food was good, the prices decent (not too much more than the co-op downtown) and so we did most of our shopping there. Imagine my surprise when I go to this Whole Foods, shop as I normally would (since in my experience the prices differ very little from the other health food stores) and find that about $30 worth of groceries cost us close to $70. I should have guessed – what with it a couple doors down from the Rolls Royce dealership, but still. I mean – here’s an example. At our usual health food store we can get a small container of raspberries for about $3.00. We picked up the same container at Whole Foods – same brand, same variety. For $8.00. Okay – rant is over.

As we were in Whole Foods, Paul called a couple more times – just checking in. Sage and I finished up our shopping, got on the subway and headed home. At around 5:30, we arrived at our “home” subway station. Paul called again. “What do you need, Paul,” said Sage. “I just wanted to see where you were. We told him we weren’t far from home and satisfied, he got off the phone.

Whe we got home, I found out that there was a shooting over on Yonge street while we were out. (Parenthetically – what’s wrong with people that they feel the need to do things like this) It was a bit freaky – with Paul being all concerned and calling over and over checking on us. A few years ago (I know I wrote about it but can’t find the entries) there was a potential business trip to Maryland back in 2001 or 2002 that I planned to take the train to. Paul was vehement – “No,” he said, “You’re taking an airplane”. Well, the job fell through so I didn’t take either way. However, the train I would have taken derailed and several people were killed. On the other hand, as a disclaimer – Paul just learned how to use the phone to call us so it could have been that but still, there have been times in the past where things like this have happened.

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It is, however, a little disappointing, to see the level of violence in the city going up like this. While I am not fearful yet, it doesn’t seem quite as idyllic as it did when we first arrived. When we first arrived I felt like we could go anywhere during the day without fear but now there are a few places I avoid. Sure, we’re nowhere near the rate of violence that we had in Albuquerque but I don’t want it to get any worse, either. While not the prime motivation for choosing Canada, the relative safety of the cities was definitely a part of the equation. And sure, we could move to the suburbs or even a small town but I doubt we’d be very happy living in a small town after living this life. So we’ll just cross our fingers and hope that something can get done to make things a little safer.

Breaking News: The War on Blogs

Okay – I admit it, I was called into Sage’s office last week and asked not to release this story until after Solstice but I can’t hold it in any longer. Folks, there is a war going on. This war is going on in at the deepest levels of our apartment. It is a war that threatens the very fundamentals of our online culture.

Welcome to: The War on Blogs.

Yes, friends, Sage has declared the word “Blog” forbidden in our household. It is not permitted to use it as a verb (“I should blog this”), nor can it be used as a noun (“Did you read my Blog today?”) in our house. Why? Because, in Sage’s words, “the English language must not include words created after 1986.”

You guessed it, folks. Sage is a supporter of Intelligent (Language) Design and not linguistic evolution. You heard it here first.

How I spent Christmas

Low key doesn’t begin to describe it, though it was quite lovely just the same. Sage and I played a bunch of backgammon in the morning, and then, since I had only had one cup of coffee I went to bed for about three hours. It was lovely – the kind of sleep that feels like a ton of bricks just fell upon you. I was in and out of consciousness for some of the time, picking up the sound of Paul walking up and down the hall with the Little Tikes Megaphone he had found at the Goodwill yesterday. It was a bit annoying but I was so zoned out that I drifted in and out of sleep without the motivation to actually get up and ask him to take it elsewhere.

After I woke up we (you guessed it) played backgammon a bit more. Realizing that playing for money (that we both used to pay off our library fines) was not particularly good role modeling and so we decided to play for control of the music. The rules? Winner goes to pandora and chooses the music for the next game. Once it plays you can’t change it or skip songs (which can be a bad thing sometimes, believe me). Winner of the next game chooses the next music and so forth. Interestingly enough, my game improved vastly with this motivation over simply money. Now you know my priorities.

Tonight, Sage and I went out in the world for “Christmas Dinner”. Paul, Kite, and Badger stayed behind while the two of us headed over to Little India for dinner at Udupi Palace. Dinner was fabulous – I got a thali with about 10 different dishes, each more delicious than the last. Sage got her usual, vadai in yoghurt, samosas, and a masala paper dosa. The latter was quite beautiful – a thin pancake (for lack of a better description) rolled into a cone easily 2 1/2 feet long and opening to about a foot wide at the wide end. Inside were delicious spiced potatoes.

It was a bit disturbing to be out on the one hand, though. I hadn’t seen so many drunk people in one trip out all my life here in Toronto, including the saddest looking Santa (with natural beard and red outfit) I’d ever seen. He looked as if he had just sold his reindeer and sleigh to fund his bar tab and that’s why he was on the subway. Hopefully the number of drunks on transit was not an indication of how many drunk drivers were out there.

When we arrived near home, the cold miserable rain had finally changed over into snow. But it was snow unlike any I’d ever seen. The flakes were so enormous you could hear them splat on the ground and they actually left shadows behind in the streetlights. When they’d land in your eyes they’d cover your entire eyeball they were so huge. It made for a lovely walk back to our building, though – far better than being in rain.

I will definitely be glad when the holidays are over, though. The season always weirds me out as the city doesn’t feel its usual self. On Christmas day everyone seems closed within themselves – like they’re nesting. And anyone who knows me also knows that I am hugely conflicted about the holidays anyway. On the one hand, I hate the commercialism, am not particularly fond of the whole “Santa” thing, and am not a Christian so there are not any reasons to celebrate the holidays. Still, every year I do feel a bit left out even as I feel glad to avoid the whole thing. I know – I’m strange. Still, it is only a day or two and then things get back to normal. Still, it feels better being here than in other places we’ve lived. In the Ozarks, where everyone was Christian, it felt really weird and desolate – streets were empty and there wasn’t much good on the radio (and even things on the net slow down a bit). Here, though, there are many places I can go – like Little India – and feel as if I’m not the only person who doesn’t celebrate Christmas.