Flotsam and Jetsam

Psst! Flotsam has moved!

2010-05-24T19:40:00.000-07:00

As I suggested last week, I have made the decision to move my blog to a hosted WordPress version to replace this blog. I'm not moving over the content, just the operations. I'll be reorganizing all the blog pointers and feed tweeters and all that so, fear not, if you don't come to this page directly to read Flotsam, you'll still get a reminder. In the meantime, here's the new Flotsam & Jetsam.

Thanks for nothing, Google

2010-05-20T08:52:00.000-07:00

Dear Google,

Your Kool-Aid is tasting bitter these days. If you don't want to be seen as EVIL, please bring your Blogger service up to standard.

After trying WordPress, I now understand why people questioned my staying on Blogger. One very big difference is in the ability to moderate comments and users. On WP, comments are moderated by default, but once someone is recognized by the blog owner, they can post freely ever-after. So when I, for example, pick up a nasty troll, I can simply ignore the comments. Poof! I can also block or moderate specific IP addresses, email addresses, names, words -- so much more flexible.

Seriously, Google, you are GODS in the arena of info tracking, how come you make this so difficult? Sure, there is a "report abuse" button but that is only to be used for reporting an abusive blog -- which mine is NOT. In fact, there is nothing in your terms of service that covers comments specifically and yet many people sign up for Blogger primarily to comment or follow blogs.

I have had this blog for six years and it will tear a big part of me out to abandon it for a new address but that seems like the only option you are giving me. I do not blame the troll for this; I blame you, Google, for failing to support Blogger and its users.

Sincerely,
Cheryl

Oh good, my troll is back.

2010-05-20T07:53:00.001-07:00

OK, everyone. I apologize but "Anonymous" is back and filling my comments area with obscenities. Please don't feed the troll.

My new Garden History blog

2010-05-17T08:48:00.001-07:00

While I listened to the presenters at WordCamp on Saturday, part of my brain was whirring away, plotting out my new blog. Yes, it was to be a "niche blog" -- it combines three of my interests:

gardening+books+history

Originally my thought was to basically transcribe and annotate the text of the "Profitable Instructions..." book but I knew that was too focused. As soon as the words "garden history" escaped my lips, I knew this was the spark I'd been seeking.

I wrote the About page first -- I started drafting it in a Google Doc on Saturday evening -- so that I could really get an idea of how the site might evolve. While the inspiration was one book the goal I settled on was,

"This blog aims to glean some history — not only about gardening but also about gardens themselves — from books and other writings from the past 400 years, give or take."

With that in writing, I could then start thinking about where the blog might go in the future which may be why my brain would not shut down on Saturday night, long after I walked away from my laptop.

Sunday, I asked Hubby how to do the WordPress install on one of my domains (I chose my personal one, for the hell of it). After some initial fumbling to find my admin panel login and password and later realizing I needed more space (Hubby reallocated things and increased my capacity tenfold), the install was ridiculously straightforward. I spent the next little while fiddling with various templates until I found one that will do just fine for now.

To cut the tale short, I finished a shareable product by 11:00 last night and if you haven't already seen it, you can check out Garden History: Looking back at backyard gardens.

Reflecting on WordCamp

2010-05-15T20:46:00.000-07:00

I had no idea what to expect going in but I have to say that WordCamp Victoria was well-organized, well-run, and informative. It was broader than I was expecting; the content of the sessions went beyond Wordpress itself to cover topics such as picking what to write, keeping the user in mind when you write for the web, and dealing with comments -- good, bad, and ugly.

The session I most enjoyed was the first session I attended: "Knowing & Knurturing Your Kniche Blog: Starting & Running A Successful Niche Blog in WordPress," presented by Mike Vardy. Refreshingly, his presentation did not rely on tech -- he used the blackboard. The basis of his talk was to pick something that you care about, that you know something about (and are prepared to learn more about), and then build it and promote the hell out of it. Kind of a Field of Dreams approach.

When I asked him what to do if the thing you pick is in the scrum -- one of a thousand blogs on a given topic -- he had two words of advice, "Write well." OK, Mr. Vardy, I will try.

I may even apply some of what I learned from Cathie Walker who talked about the way (most) users read websites (short answer: they don't -- 80% skim), what level they read at (generally below grade 8) and how you can cater to their needs.

That tied in well to what Lorraine Murphy had to say about moderating comments on a blog or forum. It made me think back to how I managed that ridiculous troll thing last year and how I have handled other tricky interactions online over the years. I'm still thinking.

I also attended sessions more specific to Wordpress -- about themes and plug-ins and alternate posting tools.

What now? Well, I am going to try to put my planned Wordpress niche blog into action -- sooner than later -- plus Hubby and I are scorching and rebuilding ThoseDeWolfes and (drumroll, please) we have set Kiddo up with her own blog. Cue the Yakkety-Sax...

EDIT: Cathie Walker's presentation, Writing for the Web is available as a pdf

How I am spending my Saturday

2010-05-14T22:55:00.000-07:00

Yeah, I know. Drupal, Blogger, and now... Wordpress? Hubby and I signed up before we left for Drupalcon because... well... you know honestly I don't know why, but I am sure I won't escape the day without learning something.

However, I do have a plan. Do you remember that Kitchen Garden book from 1603 that opened with a poem? I plan to use Wordpress to make a blog of the book. At least that's my plan right now; I'm sure it will change before the conference is over tomorrow.

On the other hand, there will be about 120 people there, many of whom I follow on Twitter but whom I've yet to meet so it will kind of be an unofficial Victoria "Tweetup" and an opportunity for some networking on coffee breaks.

I'm going to see if I can dig out my felt name tag to wear and make sure I have a handful of cards.

Another thing Those DeWolfes do

2010-05-13T08:02:00.000-07:00

The Cramped Chef seemed like an appropriate name for a cooking show when we started it in the cramped little kitchen at the townhouse. Impossibly, it seems, the kitchen in our current house while more open, actually seems to have less room to cook* so The Cramped Chef continues to be an appropriate name for the series.

We filmed the most recent episode back in March but Hubby's computer was tasked by the challenge of editing the HD footage created by my FlipHD so the process was completed in small chunks over many weeks with a lot of breaks in between! The best part of this creation was finding that Moby has a bunch of music available just for the purpose of non-profit independent video productions so Hubby signed up and found an appropriate piece for the background. The worst part of this is seeing how clearly we need to get proper studio lighting -- or even something close.

The Spring Rolls (aka Egg Rolls) episode is now available for your edutainment (embedded below) and you can find the recipe on Hubby's blog along with other recipes and Cramped Chef videos.

Egg Rolls from Mike DeWolfe on Vimeo.

*Our current kitchen is so cramped that I don't seem to have a photo of it. How odd. It is also the big reason we want to do a reno on that corner of the house.

Definitely a Monday.

2010-05-10T22:26:00.000-07:00

My Monday morning started before my alarm rang; I was dreaming about being late for work. Not wanting to actually be late, I got up instead of hitting snooze. I did my morning thing, getting the coffee going, feeding the cats, throwing on something suitable to wear to work, turning on the morning news and getting breakfast started.

I found the frying pan, slapped in some butter, put in the bread (hole cut, ready for the egg), reached for the egg aaaaand...

SPLAT!

I cursed. Cracked another egg into the frying pan, then grabbed my camera -- because how often do you get to take a photo of egg spatter?

After breakfast was cooked, I threw some veggies into the frying pan with a little sesame oil to accompany the leftovers I was taking for lunch. Packed that up, poured my coffee and finished getting everything together to head out. Glancing at the clock, I knew I was cutting it close but should have had about 3 minutes to walk up the block to the bus instead of the usual 5.

It was pouring rain but I figured the bus would be there almost right away. Not so much. 15 minutes later, I decided it must have been early and that I had missed it. I pondered going back home and waiting for the next bus and being late (about half an hour) but instead sucked it up and hiked up through the park over the hill. It's usually a 15 minute walk but I made it in 12 because I didn't want to stand in the rain any longer than I needed to. 10 steps from the crosswalk to the next bus stop and WHOOOOOSH! there goes the 7:38. Sigh.

I stood in the rain another 12 minutes for the next bus and arrived at work 10 minutes late and soaked through to the point that my toes were wrinkled. So I guess, in some twisted way, my dream came true.

Yeah, definitely a Monday.

-=|=-

On the plus side, Kiddo was eager to get out of her bath quickly tonight so that she could work on the story she is writing. She fell asleep writing it then woke up when I tried to move it so she didn't choke on her pencil. I read what she'd written and I have to tell you, I am excited.

It's sci-fi.

Awesome Alphabets

2010-05-08T22:23:00.000-07:00

I love ABC books and at one time wanted to build a collection. I stopped because I realized I would need a very big library in which to hold them. However, I still love finding interesting alphabets. Feast your eyes on these:

Badass Alphabet -- inspired by comic books, it features gems like "H is for Hagar the Horrible Hacking Hello Kitty in Half"
Mad Scientist Alphabet Blocks -- not only do these rock (F is for Freeze Ray and P is for Peasants with Pitchforks!!) but the blocks themselves are little laser-cut works of art.
Palaeobet by Bird and Moon (Rosemary Mosco) wants you to "know your prehistory" (X is for xenacanthus) -- I really want the poster.
Digital Alphabet -- no big surprises here but at only two years old, it may already need updates. (Oh, wait, here's a 2009 version.)
Star Wars Alphabet -- crisp graphic illustrations by tweedlebop (aka Michael Fleming) covering the whole Star Wars universe are fantastic and plenty of people have requested that they be made available for sale... so far I haven't found them.
the Rock Alphabet by Rose Stallard is an inspired collection of musicians (Z is, of course, for Zappa) available as a limited edition silk-screened print.
Of course my favourite alphabet of all time is Edward Gorey's Gashlycrumb Tinies (N is for Neville who died of ennui...) -- if you don't own it you really should buy the book!
Follow the link from Craft to the tutorial for an alphabet art project that you can do with your kids -- it involves a digital photography outing and transferring a photo print on to canvas. Very cool.
Prefer to hear the alphabet? Mental Floss rounds up celebrities reciting and singing the alphabet on Sesame Street. That Cosby one? I totally remember it.

I also have very fond memories of the alphabet song because in my 4 a.m. feeding / postpartum addled brain, it was often the only song I could think of to sing Kiddo back to sleep (it was that or my variation of the Mockingbird Song -- I would inevitably get to verse three and forget the rest so I started making things up.) At one point, I remember staring down at the unsleeping one in her crib, and as I got to "L-M-N-O..." she said "OH!" I sang that again, "L-M-N-O.." "OH!" and I was no longer concerned that she wasn't sleeping. I consider "OH" to be one of her first words, even if she was just mimicking Mommy.

Press Clipping Day!

2010-05-04T23:28:00.001-07:00

Two quick notes:

1. With my Frugal Victoria hat on, I was interviewed for the Globe and Mail last week -- the story, Extreme Frugality: Can you outcheap 'em all? ran in today's Life section. Despite a couple of minor misquotes, I'm pretty happy with it (as in, for the most part, I don't seem to sound like a crazy person).

2. My Coffee Haiku Minibook was featured at The Fifth Street Palace in an ongoing blog series $5 and Under.

Thoughts on Freedom of the Press

2010-05-03T16:59:00.000-07:00

Freedom of the Press is a favourite theme in television drama and feature films -- most often, citing the American Bill of Rights rather than the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms but we frequently take it for granted in North America. The only time most of us think about Freedom of the Press is when it is being squashed (think of how often China, Iran, or North Korea shows up in the headlines for crushing free speech or imprisoning journalists).

I don't know whether it was my upbringing or 25 years of working in libraries or just wanting to be assured of some protection for what I might write but for whatever reason, it's usually not far from my mind. It might even be from my early exposure to being censored -- in grade 6 I was part of the editorial team for the school paper and one issue contained a section ("seen in passing" I think) that would barely pass for the tamest version of Overheard in x today but which our principal felt was gossip and possibly libelous. He was not amused and charged us with actually cutting the section out of every copy that had been run off on the Gestetner by our teacher the evening before. Of course that meant that every issue sold for that run -- another interesting lesson for an 11 year old to learn. (As an adult, I wonder whether our teacher was disciplined for not talking to us about it or just editing the content before printing.)

Most recently, I've been watching the case against Jason Chen (who reported on the Apple prototype that was bought by Gizmodo/Gawker Media and whose home was later raided). I firmly believe that, while criminal charges might be appropriate, they should be targeting the person who signed the cheque and bought the lost/stolen prototype and/or the engineer who let it get away rather than the reporter doing his job.

On the global scene, Reporters Without Borders tracks infractions* and reports on the state of press freedom each year. In 2009, Canada registers at 19th of 175 nations (way down from 7th in 2002) but doesn't come close to the big offenders.

May 3rd is World Press Freedom Day, as declared by the UN, a day to "celebrate the fundamental principles of press and media freedom that are articulated in Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights."

Go read (or watch) some award-winning journalism and ponder what we stand to lose:

Mohammed Omer, 2007 recipient of the Martha Gellhorn Prize, writing from Gaza for the Inter Press News Service.
Cecelia Dugger and Barry Bearak, winners of many awards, largely for their coverage of social unrest in Zimbabwe and South Africa. Some articles: Anti-immigrant violence rages in South Africa, Complex ties led ally not to condemn Mugabe
A UBC Journalism class has won a top journalism prize for their documentary, Ghana: Digital Dumping Ground (view clips here)

Wanna know more about Freedom of the Press and Freedom of Expression? Check out these links:

Freedom of Expression in Canada at U of Ottawa
Canada's Free Press topic for educators from CBC Archives
Poster (pdf) of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights
Freedom of the Press -- for Kids by Dave Munger

Also, here's more about the Apple vs. Gizmodo issue just 'cause it's under my skin:

The Investigation into that Missing iPhone from Gizmodo
What is Apple Inc.'s Role in Task Force... on Yahoo News
Apple vs. Gizmodo from LA Times
...Apple's Dangerous Game on Conceivably Tech

*From the Reporters Without Borders press release on the survey used to rank countries, "It includes every kind of violation directly affecting journalists (such as murders, imprisonment, physical attacks and threats) and news media (censorship, confiscation of newspaper issues, searches and harassment). And it includes the degree of impunity enjoyed by those responsible for these press freedom violations.
It also measures the level of self-censorship in each country and the ability of the media to investigate and criticise. Financial pressure, which is increasingly common, is also assessed and incorporated into the final score."

Strange Synergies and Curious Coincidences

2010-04-30T23:00:00.000-07:00

Skip back a bit first, to Earth Day (April 22). We were on the road. We left Grant's Pass Oregon in the morning and when we checked out, the desk offered us some bottled water for the road. Normally I would decline but as I knew we were likely to be in the van for most of the next 8 hours, I accepted it. Before I stashed it in the back seat, I looked at the bottle and snorted because it had traveled about as far as we were going to; the water had been bottled in Hope, B.C.

Sticking with the Earth Day theme, further along the highway we hit a stretch where there was a lot of paper swirling around and a few miles later, we hit a flattened cardboard box -- I watched as the box exploded into shrapnel in the rear view mirror, shrapnel that thankfully seemed to keep close to the ground. Another few miles and we caught up to the culprit. A flatbed semi-trailer was laden with bales of recycled mixed paper, one of which had come undone and was leaving a trail of recyclables along the I-5. "Happy Earth Day," said Hubby.

Today is Tax Day here in Canada -- most of us had until midnight tonight to file (we filed yesterday). Coincidentally (or maybe not) Kiddo's school hosted a "Math Arcade" tonight (though I was dismayed when one of the problems she was asked to answer gave her the "correct" answer only when BODMAS rules were ignored. Grr.). Anyway, she was keen to go and proved it by doing all the upper grade sections first (and correctly, I might add). Hubby asked her at one point why she hadn't done our taxes. I told her next year she could -- I'm sure she can't be any less accurate than H&R Block.

Anatomy of the Drupalcon Roadtrip

2010-04-24T10:50:00.000-07:00

I thought I would record some numbers about our trip... forgive me if this is boring. From home to the border it is a 30 minute drive, a 90 minute ferry ride, and another 30 minute drive; add in any wait time at the ferry plus at the border and you're looking at 3-4 hours, so the following times and distances are outside of those:

On the way down, we did the trip in three days:

Blaine, WA to Portland, OR: 285 miles.

Portland, OR to Redding, CA: 421 miles. (through mountain passes)

Redding, CA to San Francisco, (via Mountain View, CA): 284 miles.

Total: 990 miles

On the way back, we did it in two:

San Francisco to Grant's Pass, Oregon (via Eureka): 438 miles.

Grant's Pass to Blaine, WA: 528 miles.

Total: 966 miles

All told, we spent approximately 36 hours in the car -- of that, I drove for about 5 hours while Hubby did the rest (something for which I am very thankful).

We crossed the border with a half tank of gas and came back with 3/4 tank; along the way, we spent about $315 for about 103 gallons of gas. (If we'd bought the same amount of gas in Victoria it would have cost us about $420.)

Along the side of the highway, I saw hundreds of shards of tires, three huge piles of diapers (possibly used, eww) inside a one mile stretch, roadkill including one coyote, three cats, countless raccoons, and half a deer. Yes, just half -- the back half. Eww.

I also saw vineyards, olive groves, turf farms, cows, goats, alpacas, signs telling me that God Forgave Me and that Farm Tours were available weekly. We drove through places with populations below 2,000, towns that sprawled through valleys, and cities offering everything one could want inside the city limits. We passed National Guard armories, army bases, hospitals, universities, and headquarters of major corporations. We ate at small cafes and four star restaurants. We saw folk art and fine art.

We left here tired and returned just plain exhausted.

Of Conferences

2010-04-19T22:38:00.000-07:00

As conferences and training go, I am used to two models: the academic (DHSI, Women's Conference, etc.) and the union (CUPE, CLC, etc.)-- both styles are hyper-organized and tend to run like well-oiled machines.

Drupal registration ran the same way (especially as I registered early, on Sunday) so I had no foreshadowing of what was to come. However, Hubby attended a pre-conference training day that was delayed by nearly 90 minutes as attendees tried to download and install the required software that was not suggested prior to arriving. I think the main difference is that Drupal is all about "the community" and empowering the people to lead their own -- which they really do best in the "Birds of a Feather"(or "BOF") meetings where people gather to discuss common challenges, applications or other aspects of Drupal.

But let's get back to the disorganization... this morning, the opening session was booked for one room -- one room that did not hold all 3,000 attendees. So they simulcast it in two other rooms but that was still not enough for all those who wanted to see it. After that, the next session ran very well but, not surprisingly, it was run by an academic -- all the other sessions I've attended have been run by techies and designers, many of whom seem to be either completely overwhelmed by the crowds or completely ignorant of any variation among the attendees. There has been much discussion over the fact that this Drupalcon is double the size of the last one which itself was double that of the previous one. Part of this growth is that they have moved beyond the open source fanatics and on to a wider variety of web-designers and developers. Drupal now powers roughly one percent of the web.

Oh, and moving 3000 people around 8 classrooms means a lot of full classrooms -- and by classrooms, I really mean rooms filled with chairs, a handful of electrical outlets and a whole lot of people trying to balance laptops and type without enough elbow room. The only time I opened my laptop was during the keynote when we sat at the lunch tables. There were traffic jams during each class change and lots of grumbling. Watching the #drupalcon discussion on Twitter (from my iPod Touch), I could see that wifi varied greatly from classroom to classroom.

Worst moment though was the last session we attended today, called "From Photoshop to Drupal Theme" that ran from 5:30-6:30. I had really been looking forward to it -- as had Hubby -- so we stayed. Unfortunately, 40 minutes in, when the presenters got to the point where we expected them to fire up Photoshop and show us the details, they said, "So that concludes our presentation, any questions?" There was a collective WTF murmur from the audience and several people asked them to walk us through it but the presenters refused telling us that they felt we all had the design skills -- DUDE!! If we had those skills would we have stayed late for your presentation??? I think not. Grr.

That said, I'm still learning lots -- plenty about accessibility testing, security settings, and planning for re-theming a site -- that I can apply to the CUPE 951 site and my other sites, so I'm not worried; I'm definitely still getting my money's worth. Hubby though? He should probably be on the podium instead of in the audience, and that's definitely something to chew on.

Coffee and Google and Cars, OH MY.

2010-04-17T20:55:00.000-07:00

So.... yesterday I uploaded this photo:

And I think it about describes the amount of coffee I need for each leg of this roadtrip. Today was not a good coffee day. It started with the the in-room coffee at La Quinta -- Maxwell House, which I made with 3 cups instead of 4 to make it stronger (sadly, that was my best coffee of the morning); then the breakfast bar served some barely-drinkable swill (which I drank) and then I stupidly followed that up with McCafe(TM) on the road. I think I finally found a Starbucks at around 3:00 which I followed at the next Starbucks with a mediocre iced coffee. Ugh.

At least today's travel was (mostly) less taxing than yesterday -- wide straight stretches and, once we left the I-5, almost no transport trucks to jockey around. We made our way to Mountain View, to see the Google campus. Alas, though we pulled into the visitor parking, the lobby was closed today . We did poke around the outside of the main buildings, though, and I was very pleased to see a row of containers full of herbs and edible flowers growing around the patio adjacent to the cafe.

Back on the road after Google, we headed for the hotel. All was going fine until our GPS told us to turn left and we ended up one lane over -- I thought it was two lanes that both went left. Unfortunately, one went sharp left (where we wanted to go) and one went on to the Bay Bridge. We had no choice but to drive allllllll the way across and back -- in rush hour -- paying the toll in the process and adding an hour (to go on a 16 km round trip) to the travel when, had I actually not misjudged the lane we could have been at the hotel in about a minute's time. I tell ya, that GPS narrowly avoided a watery grave. It was saved only by our being sandwiched in the centre lane between many, many other cars.

Sigh.

However, once we arrived at the hotel, handed the keys to the valet, and checked in, things started looking up. We called Kiddo (we miss her SO much) and went for dinner (Thai food, including a very tasty curried fried rice (with pineapple, chicken, shrimp and cashews... mmmmm) and tofu with a sweet and sour dipping sauce. Now 4 hours (and most of an in-room movie) later, I feel much, much less tense.

And then, there's the view, too:

Cars everywhere

2010-04-17T06:33:00.000-07:00

There was an odd symmetry yesterday as we listened to the audio book of Superfreakonomics; we were listening to the section where they discuss traffic fatalities and the introduction of the seat belt as we were winding through the mountain passes that lead up to and away from Siskiyou Summit, passing truck after truck and being passed by faster cars driven by people obviously more familiar with the series of corners than we were.

As it turns out, that summit is the highest point on the I-5 at 4310 ft. Now, I have trouble with pressure in my ears driving the Malahat-- the summit of which is only 1155 ft so by the time we were back down to about 500 ft above sea level in Redding, my ears were shot. Hubby's too. It doesn't help that we both are still suffering the latter part of head colds.

This morning, my ears are still ringing but I can hear clearly. It may have been a blessing last night, because when we rolled into Redding, we landed in the midst of a huge car festival -- Hilltop Avenue looked like the Vegas Strip, jammed with flashy cars, playing loud music, and the street lined with people watching, walking, and drinking. Turns out we arrived only an hour after the street had been closed for a two hour "cruise":

Normally, I'd have been happy to take photos but all I wanted to do last night was check in, call Kiddo, then go eat. It took us about 15 minutes to push through the traffic and turn into the hotel. By the time we got back from dinner an hour later (at Cattlemen's -- a restaurant that is almost certainly the inspiration for the Montana's chain), the roads had mostly cleared so there is hope that this morning will be calmer. After breakfast, we head further south, with a goal of hitting some landmarks in Silicon Valley before we loop back up to the hotel in San Francisco.

Return and departure

2010-04-14T21:58:00.000-07:00

Remember Hubby's Cthulhu sculpture? We had shipped him out of the patio when it was time to show the townhouse and tucked him away in a (very patient) friend's back yard. He finally returned home today -- this time however, we hired professional movers so as not to break anyone's back (well no one who wasn't insured).

All things considered, he weathered the elements pretty well. Aside from a missing toenail and broken ... er... beak thing, he's in tact, too. We shuffled him into the back yard and there he will sit until Hubby has time to restore him then try to find a "forever home" for the Old One.

***

I've been sick all week, coughing, snorting, generally feeling like hell, and, aside from a half day on Monday, have been at home. Naturally, I am procrastinating further by blogging when I should be packing. We leave tomorrow for a road trip across the border again -- but this time without Kiddo. It'll be a long 9 days for that reason alone, but we've set up plans and counter plans for her care and for the cats and house. Luckily there is not too much going on garden wise so I haven't actually asked anyone to water things (in the unlikely event of a 9 day drought). We also set up Skype on a computer for her and one that is coming with us.

Our trip should take us through Portland and San Francisco (plus a detour to Silicon Valley) but the stops in between may be determined by any of the following: good food, convenient hotel, too damn tired, or coin toss. I can't promise regular updates but there will definitely be an overview on the other side.

Weekend Wiki Wormhole

2010-04-10T18:16:00.000-07:00

The internet is full of one thing: wormholes. They are easy to find: just start clicking. If you aren't sure where to start, try Wikipedia, the links will lead you on a magical mystery tour into the weirdest places.

Today, my journey started with a Facebook status update by Hubby. His use of an implied double-entendre by ending a phrase with "[blank]" reminded me of the 70s era Match Game so I suggested in my comment cuing the Match Game music and added something about Charles Nelson Reilly. That's where things got interesting. I went looking for the Weird Al song, CNR from his latest album (no, I'm not kidding, it's embedded below) but got sidetracked reading the Wikipedia entry for Charles Nelson Reilly. Turns out, he survived a horrific fire I'd never heard about, the Hartford Circus Fire.

In July 1944, a Ringling Bros.,Barnum and Bailey show under the big top was destroyed by a fire -- seems the typical waterproofing of the era was paraffin dissolved in kerosene spread over the canvas tents! After the event (which killed over 160 people and injured hundreds more), Reilly never sat in a theatre audience and Ringling Bros., Barnum and Bailey left the tents for good, performing only in buildings or arenas as they toured. A few clicks brought me to this page of magazine articles, some contemporary to the event -- I particularly liked the breakdown in Volunteer Firemen Magazine which includes a map of the Big Top (better scan here) showing the origin of the fire, the exits, and basically what went wrong.

One more click into the wormhole and I was watching a clip from Charles Nelson Reilly's stage show, the Life of Reilly about the event -- a lifetime away from the bawdy CNR I knew from syndicated reruns of the Match Game. (If you only click on one link, follow that one. It's well worth the two minutes or so.)

So, anyway, that's how I spent my Saturday afternoon. How about you?

Related fun stuff:

CNR, in the style of the White Stripes:

Typical Match Game tomfoolery:

And to turf it returns.

2010-04-09T11:18:00.000-07:00

I am home today, sick with a killer head cold, but that didn't stop me from finding out that overnight the "People's Garden" had been returned to bare land, re-seeded, fenced off, and marked as an area under restoration. As yesterday was the last day of classes prior to exams, it makes sense as far as timing goes.

Not letting being away from campus get in my way, I put a call out for someone to take me a photo ("pics or it didn't happen") and within an hour I could see for myself that it was gone (left, photo by C. Newell).

As soon as I got the original message, I immediately checked the Victoria Food Not Lawns blog. While I found nothing about this event, the most recent entry concerns Wednesday's "semi-facilitated" discussion -- originally planned to take place by the fountain, near the "people's garden" but moved at the last minute to the Student Union Building. It also mentions that several of the students involved in the protest had been singled out by UVic Administration and had been sent letters earlier this week -- VFNL calls the tone threatening; I'm not sure they could have been worded differently in order to be perceived otherwise by the students.

Throughout this exercise I have been torn. While I support guerrilla gardening of vacant lots, unkempt boulevards, and abandoned spaces, I can't quite see past the trespassing angle that is suggested by many proponents. I cannot accept that anyone or any group has the right to tell me how to use my land. Of course as soon as I typed that I thought, "But people do tell me how to use my land; there are all manner of land use restrictions and bylaws and undersurface rights to which I have to adhere." I may have to rethink my position.

Getting back to the campus situation, I believe the administration had no choice but to remove the gardens -- it was only a question of timing -- to have left the garden in place would have set a curious precedent. There would be nothing to stop gardeners from taking over every square foot of open land -- or, on the opposite end of the scale, to prevent others from paving every square foot and declaring it improved parking or from setting up commercial activity. The University released an update today, stating again that

The university will continue to work with student organizations on campus to hold a public meeting at an appropriate time in the future to enable all interested members of the campus community to receive accurate information, provide their perspectives on sustainability, gardening and food issues on campus, and learn about the variety of initiatives underway.

I was also very happy to read in the same announcement that,

The plants retrieved from the site have been relocated to the underutilized areas of the existing campus community gardens where they may be replanted by students interested in on-campus community gardening.

Hooray! There were a number of lovely plants in that garden and it had been heartbreaking to consider that they may have just been plowed under or composted. Now if only we could see the University commit to a permanent food production space on campus that would truly serve the whole community... that would be the best possible outcome for this protest.

Chef Mike

2010-04-06T12:30:00.000-07:00

From our first afternoon together, I knew Mike's secret: he can cook*. I thought I could cook -- I can at least follow recipes and I can bake but I cannot hold a candle to Mike's abilities. That first afternoon, we visited Fisherman's Wharf where he bought fresh crab and cooked me an amazing dinner in my tiny little bachelorette kitchen. He still amazes me weekly.

Our friends are also regularly amazed by the spreads he put on -- he even went so far a few years ago to hold the Cobalt Chef challenge for his birthday. (You can view the original page for the challenge but it's from 2002 and I warn you, I used a really bright colour for the background; you may need sunglasses.)

Fast forward a few years and we started doing the Cramped Chef series of videos and Mike started collecting his recipes on his blog.

Fast forward again to this week.... In much the same way that I quietly puttered away and pushed together Haiku Miscellany, Hubby quietly created his own book, Impress The World Before 11 A.M. which is all about brunches! Have a peek:

I'll be sure to let you know when the Food Network comes knocking.

*He has never formally trained and technically is not a Chef -- hopefully I won't get run out of town for using the title lovingly.

Creative Miscellany Overload!

2010-04-05T20:43:00.000-07:00

This weekend, outside of all the family-filled Easter celebrations and a little bit of work in the garden, I focused on getting all my Creative Miscellany ducks in a row. Why? Because tomorrow is the release date for Regretsy: Where DIY Meets WTF and

Late last year, Helen Killer (a.k.a. April Winchell) put out a call for anyone willing to let their crafts stand up against her mad snark skillz. I put forth my Nightmare Clownbot plush toy because, frankly, that thing creeps me out, but I also told her to have a look through my store for anything else that caught her eye. She selected RockBot and after several emails and contracts and release forms were signed, he was in. I haven't yet received my copy of the book so I don't know exactly what she's said about RockBot. Yet.

Anyway.... In preparation for an increase in traffic and (hopefully) sales, I tidied up the Creative Miscellany website, built my storefront on Zibbet and added some stock (more this week, I promise), and redesigned my Etsy banner and Facebook icon so that everything "matches" -- "Look, Ma, I overhauled my brand identity!" -- and even did some SEO maintenance on the main site. Go me!

Turf War Continues at UVic

2010-04-03T21:42:00.000-07:00

As promised, Resistance is Fertile/Food Not Lawns took up shovels and re-built "the people's garden" on Wednesday.

There was a huge crowd watching -- some supportive, many just hoping the cops would show up and sort things out. Oh, and dozens of cameras including news crews from almost every media outlet in the city. There was a pile of tools, plants, and some wood near the fountain. Someone wearing a suit and a clownishly large top-hat emblazoned with the UVic logo was speaking into a megaphone, "Return to your classes, nothing to see. Please do not try to think for yourselves. Do not engage in conversations about food security," and so on.

Four people got to work raising a banner between the trees that read, "Reclaim the Commons" and below it another reading, "Resist Bureaucracy." Around 12:15, someone shouted, "SOIL!" and a half dozen people marched off to the parking lot, bringing back black plastic garbage bags full of dirt. I peeked around the corner, curious as to the source, and spied a blue VW transporter pickup truck -- how cliché.

Once the dirt had been delivered and shovels placed in a line, ready for action, a few people took turns on the microphone, speaking about the group's intentions and the reasons for the protest. Looking around I could see only two Campus Security officers at a distance though I did suspect plain-clothes Saanich Police were in the crowd. At 12:30 the call was made to dig, and dig they did:

I went back to work but the crowds remained, watching, for about half an hour then gradually dispersed. The work on the garden continued. When I checked in later, on my coffee break, much progress had been made, and the ringmaster was announcing that there was to be a potluck later that night. There was also a call for supporters to camp overnight in hopes of preventing the University administration from bulldozing "their garden" again.

When I left work on Wednesday, I fully expected that arrests would be made overnight and the garden would be removed. Imagine my surprise the next morning when I arrived to see the garden still in place and campers just rising from their tents:

They had even continued to improve the garden, adding plant markers and other signs. I had to wonder, was it an April Fool's prank by the Administration? The supporters were now calling it a "Victory Garden."

Ultimately, I think the University just changed its approach. They issued an update to their press release/statement, adding that, "The university is reviewing the level of disciplinary action it will be applying to those responsible for damaging university property." For the most part, however, they seem to be leaving the activists alone, hoping they will get bored without an audience.

Thursday was pretty quiet -- when I left at 4:00 there were only a few people on the garden site. When we visited the site out of curiosity on Saturday (midway through the Easter weekend), it was completely untended:

As I have stated before, I doubt that the people who started this garden would be around to harvest. That is made clear within a statement on their own blog, "I hope people will continue to interact with it, by taking care of it and dialoguing about it..." Just like every co-operative and volunteer group with which I've been involved, there is a call for many hands to do the work and, just like every co-operative and volunteer group with which I've been involved, I can tell you that very few will step up to do the work. I'm betting even fewer will step up when there is a risk attached to the work (discipline, criminal charges, or what have you).

Next Thursday is the last day of classes; after that there will be great stretches of time where there is little or no traffic near the library. Eventually, I suspect, there will be no one either willing or able to watch the garden -- they will have moved on to other protests, other projects, maybe even day jobs -- and the university will quietly direct facilities management to dismantle the garden and re-sod the land.

I can still teach.

2010-03-30T20:19:00.000-07:00

From the time I was 6 until sometime in the midst of my third year of university I wanted to be a teacher. (Actually, there was also a brief year or two when I wanted to be a neuropsychologist, until I realized how many biology classes I would have to take.) I clearly remember announcing in first grade that I wanted to be a teacher when I grew up, in part because my teacher, Mrs. Johansen, was great. I never really outgrew the idea but instead circumstances changed.

When I worked in England, assisting the house mother in looking after about 30 boarded kids under the age of 12, I grew restless during the day and convinced the Headmistress to let me assist in the school. I taught drama class in the junior school and eventually took on whole sections of math and English classes in the senior school -- completely unsupervised! I was 18, with a (Canadian) high school education and I was teaching classes of 14-16 year olds (8-10 year olds in the junior school). Even then I thought it was bizarre that they would let me do that, but I loved it. More than anything it convinced me that I was on the right track.

When I returned to Canada and entered University, my initial plan was to get an English major and a math minor then follow up with the Post-degree Professional Program (teaching certification). I figured while I wanted to teach English, I would be just as content teaching math. That didn't pan out because I had so much trouble with calculus; I changed course and ended up pursuing the History major/English minor that I completed. In third year my plans changed again as it became clear that 2 out of 3 of my classmates were planning to follow the same crowded path as I was in a province that was laying off teachers.

I never did that certification. Instead I worked in the library shelving books for a while then tried my hand at plumbing after which I returned to the library and stayed. Even through plumbing, I tutored several classmates through the algebra and geometry sections and from time to time, I still get to use the teaching skills that I always knew I had in me.

A few weeks ago, realizing that I needed to train several people how to edit the union website, I wanted to use one of the library classrooms. I offered to build an Introduction to Drupal session and open it up to library staff. Last week, to my surprise, I found the class was full!

Over the weekend I pulled together the outline, built a Powerpoint presentation, and tidied the original handout I had built for training the content editors. Though I was nervous and I realized later that I didn't even introduce myself (doh!), I got into the swing of it and even though I hadn't even done a dry run through, I finished with time enough for questions. I got some good feedback, too.

Sometimes I wonder whether I would have been better off as a teacher; most of the time, I look at "kids these days" and think, "not likely," but there's always peers to be taught. And... if you believe in personality typing, I sit on the cusp between INFJ (which lands me squarely in teacher territory) and INTJ (typically scientists and strategic planning-types but also teachers and professors). Either way, I would probably still do OK.

p.s. if you are curious, the Introduction to Drupal presentation can be downloaded in pdf format

Guerrilla Garden Drama Continues

2010-03-27T15:46:00.000-07:00

One thing I missed on Thursday: after a relatively peaceful memorial at the garden/lawn site, the group marched over to the Administration building and seemed threatening enough to those inside that Campus Security instigated a lockdown.

Here's a follow-up article in the Times-Colonist: Garden Protest at UVic Heats Up, and a piece run by CBC News: UVic Rips out Unsanctioned Student Garden -- some of the comments on the CBC piece (both pro and con) really got me annoyed. Here is one voice from inside the protest group: Resistance is Fertile UVic Students and Community Members Seek to Remake Campus.

I wish that the Food not Lawns/Resistance is Fertile group would accept that they have the spotlight and use it to their advantage. They are calling for more action on Wednesday and I suspect it will be more confrontational this time.

I'm sure there are ways that they could work with both the Campus Community Garden and also the Administration if what they truly wanted was a resolution. Unfortunately, I think they just want attention.

If their issue is about growing food, they could join the CCG -- there are collective plots available to all students and the community -- or they could sign up for the Sharing Backyards project coordinated by LifeCycles, or they could even go big or go home by working with Linking Land and Future Farmers through the South Island Orgainic Producers Association. Both Sharing Backyards and LAFF seek to match people with land they cannot work with people who lack land to work.

If it's about helping the CCG find a new location, why not work with them -- start a garden on the Cedar Hill /CJVI lands. This area, adjacent to Mystic Vale is pretty much the last remaining farmland from the HBC Uplands Farm [see Planet U for a great description] and is currently used as a dog park and a disc golf course. This area has been set aside for "future development" for a long time. The 2003 Campus Plan (which is still being used to drive development) notes:

The primary area reserved for future development is the CJVI site. This 12.4 ha (30.7 acre) property of open-space land adjoins Cedar Hill Cross Road at the southeast corner of the campus. The property is surrounded by residential neighborhoods on one side and by South Woods on the other side. In view of the moratorium on natural areas, the timing of permanent development of this property may be advanced.

The following policy directions provide guidance on the urban design and landscaping matters. Wherever the ‘A’ symbol appears, this denotes that there is a corresponding action item in Section 5.

Policy Directions – CJVI Property

LB#26 Potential Uses The CJVI Property has potential for temporary uses and permanent development, including academic expansion, faculty and student housing, sports and recreational facilities, parking, and any special opportunity uses that may arise.

LB#27 Master Planning Study – ‘A’ Prior to any permanent development taking place, a master plan for the CJVI Property will be prepared with these caveats:

The plan will be guided by the vision and principles of this plan, as it may be amended from time to time.

Permanent development will provide landscaping and visual buffering to minimize its impact on nearby neighbours and on the adjoining forested areas of the University.

Creative thought must be given to the best way to provide links and connections from these lands to other areas of the campus.

The use of this area for communal agriculture in one way or another has been well documented for about 15 years and if the protesters are aware of all of these plans then I can understand their frustration. However considering how slow the wheels sometimes turn at UVic, I also understand that we are likely some months (or years) from a decision.

If you find this subject as interesting as I do, here is some additional background reading:

A Path Less Taken: Planning for Smart Growth at the University of Victoria (pdf discussion paper, 2002 -- see esp. page 18 "missed opportunities")
Uncommon Ground: Creating Complete Community at the University of Victoria (pdf, discussion paper, 2005)
University Cedar Hill Corner Agriculture Facility Proposal (pdf, proposal 2008)
Students Plot Agricultural Change (Martlet, March 2009)

Guerrillas on Campus

2010-03-25T11:26:00.000-07:00

Regular readers know I am not one who loves lawns. They are great if you have kids or pets who need somewhere to run but in a city like ours, there are far better uses for land and I don't mean houses with bigger footprints. And don't get me started on golf courses.

I mean gardens. Food is ideal. Landscaping with native plants is good too. Hell, even reclaiming one's yard as a Garry Oak ecosystem would make me happy. That said, I'm not about to go ripping up someone else's lawn to make my point.

That's exactly what a Facebook group called "Urban Agriculture at UVic" did yesterday:

They started over the lunch hour and inside two hours, they had built an impressive little garden. Campus Security officers watched from a distance and called the Saanich Police who also observed before returning to other duties. Gardening continued. When I left work at 4 there were still people working at the details but the musicians had packed up and the crowds had long since dispersed. A coworker noted that when she left a lab at 9 pm the garden was still in place. On arriving this morning, it was all gone; it had been leveled before the janitorial staff arrived around 6 am:

The event was called Resistance is Fertile: a Food Democracy Teach-Out. Planning for the guerrilla garden/flash mob looks like it started last fall. The activists brought shovels, plants, musical instruments and a soundsystem. It's not clear where the dirt came from but the buckets I saw being used were the smokers' ashtrays (wonder where they dumped the butts?) and the rocks were removed from the retaining pond on the other side of the library.

I don't think it is a coincidence that this event was timed in the same week as a Campus Food Forum, hosted by the Campus Urban Agriculture Collective, part of the UVic Sustainability Project (which is student run and not affiliated with the Office of Campus Planning and Sustainability though they do work together on some fronts) and the Food Matters! Regional forum on food security, hosted by Capital Region -Food and Agriculture Initiatives Roundtable.

I do think it is unfortunate that all of this takes away from the very real issue of the relocation of the existing Campus Community Garden -- an issue which, coincidentally, prompted Hubby to suggest exactly this location as an option for the relocation; others have suggested the Cedar Hill Corner (aka CJVI lands).

While Twitter was a-buzz with the goings-on yesterday and my co-workers kept an eye on things out their office windows, the media was largely silent. Nothing was reported on either local evening newscast -- the only UVic story was about the rabbit problem on campus. However, this morning I did find a brief piece in the Times-Colonist: "Budding Gardeners Spring into Action at UVic."

So, what's next? This morning, as we sipped our coffee in the Bibliocafe, we watched a small subset of yesterday's guerrilla gardeners gather at the scene. Will they try again? Possibly. Will the University administration remove it again? Most definitely. Everything on campus needs to happen according to a plan -- it's not all about bureaucracy, either. Issues such as access, safety, maintenance and much more all have to be considered before any project begins whether it's a warehouse or a greenhouse.

To plant a garden is one thing, to maintain it is quite another. Even the most laissez-faire gardener like me has to devote a certain amount of time to weeding, thinning, watering, fertilizing, and general care. A lot happens between seed and harvest and I suspect that the enthusiasm these gardeners showed at the outset would wane long before the first carrot was ready to be plucked.

If you want to support urban agriculture on campus, please write a letter in support of the Campus Community Gardens. They've been growing food on campus since 1996 and any extra food is donated to the student food bank. There is currently a waiting list for plots -- tell Campus Planning and Sustainability that local food matters.

EDIT to ADD: At 1:00 today, a small group planted makeshift gravemarkers and three signs in the remains of yesterday's garden. They stood in a circle and held a memorial, leaving the signage behind.

Well, it isn't orgainized.

2010-03-23T21:04:00.000-07:00

... but it isn't ugly, either.

Above is part of my garden last summer-- it's pretty typical of all the gardens I've kept. Sometimes, I look out over my garden and think "it's beautiful" -- in the same way that a forest, marsh or other natural ecosystem is. When everything is working together and producing life, that is the pinnacle of beauty. And while that may seem a little melodramatic, it's nothing compared to the gutter-sniping in the blogosphere these days over ugly gardens.

In the article that started it all, Robin Ripley says, "If gardeners are going to approach grocery gardening in that lackadaisical way, I suggest they find another hobby."

First of all, who decided to call it "grocery gardening" -- that makes it sound like food stamp collecting and frankly I find it condecending -- like Marie Antoinette suggesting cake to the hungry -- I'll take eggplants over orchids any day.

Secondly, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, sweetheart, and order does not always equal beauty. When was the last time you saw a field of wildflowers in even rows? And did you think it was ugly? I guess Mother Nature needs a new hobby.

Which reminds me, much like the term "grocery gardening" calling gardening a "hobby" dismisses everyone who is gardening because of food security issues or out of the need to stretch a budget.

Mary Schier suggests that ugly gardens might be a feminist issue -- hell, yes it is! Ripley's article reminds me of 1950s postwar ideals of housekeeping that led to the proliferation of jellied salads among other atrocities. In my mind, laying down landscaping fabric is the equivalent of putting on pantyhose -- you are not likely to find me doing either.

Do I plunk and plant? Not entirely. Do I plot out one foot squares in grids and allow for perfect spacing? Not a chance. My method lands somewhere in the middle and I get a decent amount of food and enjoyment for my (minimal) efforts. I also cut corners; I use and reuse whatever I can to get the job done -- last year I used plastic forks as plant markers; I pull weeds only when it is necessary or convenient. I have a laissez-faire attitude to gardening and I am totally OK with that. I think if I were to fret over row placement and companion planting and soil acidity and balancing plant heights and colours and persistent weed control, I would never plant another thing.

Yes, there are some important issues that need to be considered, especially for first-time gardeners but Ripley's offhand comments only serve to add a layer of guilt to an otherwise relaxing activity and do nothing to encourage new gardeners to give it a shot.

Book News

2010-03-22T18:01:00.000-07:00

Two book-related items of note today --

1. I got my proof copy of Haiku Miscellany today:

I was so excited to open it and hold it in my hands!! Now that I've approved it, it will be sent to various publishers' catalogs and online sellers like Amazon for listing. Of course you can already order a copy at Lulu:

2. I got this email today:

"Dear Cheryl,

We're thrilled to inform you that your submission, Rockbot plush robot, made the cut and is included in the Regretsy book, which will be published on April 6th.

During the weeks ahead, you'll receive your copy of the book, directly from Random House. We'll also be sending you information on the free week of advertising for your Etsy store or web site on Regretsy.com.

This has been a very exciting time for us and it would not have been possible without your enthusiasm, support and sense of humor. We greatly appreciate it and look foward to hearing your reactions to the book.

Best Wishes,

Team Regretsy"

If you are interested, the book can be ordered now through Amazon or your local bookseller: Regretsy: Where DIY Meets WTF.

Honey Do List Day

2010-03-20T23:27:00.000-07:00

While we didn't get everything on our list done, we made a few dents.

We finally replaced the bathroom basin partly because it was broken (the faucet was useless and the basin itself had a crack on the outside) but mainly because it's a really cramped room and the new basin gives us an extra 5" of clearance even though we lose some storage area from the sides of the old basin. We'll figure it out... consider it a work in progress. Of course most people won't notice ("I can't see the difference. Is there a difference?"*)

We also put together the IKEA Mosjö entertainment unit we bought last week to give us a little more streamlined storage for our media centre; the unit we replaced was designed to fit in the corner of a room so, again, we gained a little extra elbow room. In the process of moving everything, I cleaned a LOT of dust off the PVR -- probably a big part of the reason it's been sluggish.

Meanwhile, Hubby had a peek at what is under our lower deck. We've been talking about digging down and building out, adding a room below (with hopefully another bathroom) and putting a new kitchen above then turning our current kitchen into a dining room. Anyway, if we found a big rock under there, it would change our plans somewhat. He has yet to start digging to find out.

Otherwise, it's just been a day of sorting, tidying, and organizing stuff... plus some hanging around, gaming time.

*this quote is from a laundry detergent ad (a series of ads, actually) for ABC detergent -- it hasn't aired for 20 years but it is still stuck in my head.

Well, that week flew by.

2010-03-18T19:06:00.000-07:00

I'm not going to bother trying to catch you up on everything but if you missed it, I did review Tim Burton's Alice and Wonderland, over on the Medianook. I've also been failing to find the time to finish the review I started of Up in the Air, which we saw in a double feature with The Hurt Locker last weekend.

Also in the mix was Kiddo's birthday party, for which I baked and decorated 20 cupcakes (not from scratch, but close enough) -- the birds and butterflies are paper on toothpicks and they match the liners (both by Wilton).

The remainder of my evenings have been spent fighting the stupid timechange and trying to find my way around Drupal 6 since Hubby was kind enough to upgrade my FrugalVictoria site (that was still stuck back in version 4.7)

Work has been crazy busy -- we are almost done scanning and uploading the backlog of theses (we have about 60 remaining out of about 400 when we started focusing on them in November), we snuck in a side-project that turned out to be really interesting (I'll post the link as soon as it's officially "live" -- hint: it's related to the Abbey Theatre in Ireland) and we are trying to finish our other outstanding projects while shoehorning in another rush and... well, you get the idea. Busy.

Kiddo is Nine Today

2010-03-12T10:36:00.000-08:00

I can hardly believe how fast she is growing up. She had a great time at Great Wolf Lodge and even managed to feign interest when we detoured to the geek-tacular Science Fiction Museum in Seattle; she preferred the Experience Music Project upstairs in the same building.

We went out for dim sum for her birthday treat (and later we will be making nachos for dinner) and she was showered with gifts -- LEGO, a Build-a-Bear, an iPod Nano and Skullcandy headphones plus a half dozen volumes of Yotsuba and a giant bubble wand. She'll get more on Sunday from other relatives and friends at her birthday party.

Craft fair chronocide

2010-03-06T21:29:00.000-08:00

While today wasn't a complete bust -- I made a sale and got a commission -- it was largely customer-free. Much like the Little Shop of Horrors in the fall, the LoudSpeaker Festival Market lacked promotion but it also ran up against a beautiful day and a half dozen other events, including the torch's return to Victoria ahead of the Paralympic Games and the annual Be A Tourist in Your Own Town promotion.

On the other hand, it was as good a place as any to focus on creative things so I whipped up the felt "Hello" badge that I've been meaning to for a long while -- I will likely start selling these as custom items on Etsy:

I also set myself a goal of writing 100 haiku while I was there. I got to 38 and, while they are not all keepers, there were a few good ones and a few more that could benefit with some polishing. I'm back tomorrow (come visit me at the Victoria Event Centre on Broad St!) and suspect I will get to 100; I'll share more tomorrow.

On a side note, look at these wonderfully-creepy "Beaster Bunnies" from another member of the Monster Etsy Street Team!

Soapbox Moment

2010-03-05T23:42:00.000-08:00

I get really tired of people thinking that free speech can be demanded and denied in the same breath. What got me on my soapbox this time is the UVic Student Society (UVSS) versus Youth Protecting Youth (YPY), a pro-life group whose opinions make me curl my nose in a funny way. While my own views on the abortion issue generally fall under the pro-choice banner, I stand firmly in the YPY courtyard in defending their right to have and make known their opinions.

However, the UVSS chose to deny club funding to this group because of their opinions. More precisely, it is because their posters are "offensive" and make women "feel guilty" for choosing abortion.

This is quite plainly bullshit and it makes me grumpy.

I feel guilty every time I see a poster for a yoga group -- and I am offended (as a "person of size") that the women pictured are usually very muscular and slim -- but I'm not deluded enough to think that I can crush their right to a campaign because I feel threatened by the messages implied by the posters.

-+-+-

Over the past few days, the students have been voting and it has been (at least from my vantage point), brisk. This subject is one of the issues dividing candidates and I hope there is some change in the board that will support a more reasonable application of the concept of free speech.

Haiku Miscellany is ready for the world

2010-03-03T08:03:00.000-08:00

The project I was working on that I didn't want to talk about until it was done is DONE! I think I annoyed hubby because I wouldn't even tell him what I was doing, but the tactic works so I may employ it again.

Anyhoooo, Haiku Miscellany is a collection of 25 haiku poems acompanying 25 photos of 25 of my creations from Creative Miscellany. It's available through Lulu.com in print or as a download.

Next on the to-do list: Craft Market this weekend, followed by spring break, then I can set up my Zibbet shop!

World of Tomorrow interlude

2010-03-01T18:08:00.000-08:00

aww, this stuff makes me sooo happy! This is a little featurette from the Seattle World's Fair that focuses on the telephones of tomorrow :)

Craft Market next weekend!

2010-02-28T09:38:00.000-08:00

So, I took the plunge and signed up for the LoudSpeaker Festival Market on both Saturday and Sunday -- I am hoping it will be busy. It's free so if you're downtown next weekend (which is also Be a Tourist in your own Hometown), please come visit me at the Victoria Event Centre on Broad St. Saturday 1-6 pm, Sunday 1-5 pm.

The available table is smallish (only 30 inches in diameter) and round, so I set up a test table to see how much stuff I could get into that space. I think I will be fine, thanks to the carousel I picked up (where, I can't remember, but I didn't pay much for it). I am working through a short to-do list in order to get everything ready -- worst case, I will do the last prep on Friday as I am off work.

One of the things I need to pick up is more small bags for things that need to fit on the carousel like the catnip mice -- in small bags, I can get three or four in each side; in larger bags, just two. I also want to pick up some more sleeves for my art cards (ACEOs) -- I know I bought a package of 100 but do you think I can find them..? Sigh. Actually, I was pretty impressed that I pulled together enough stock for this show in a very short time. After the show, a lot of what doesn't sell will go up on Zibbet as my start over there.

creative overdrive

2010-02-24T19:11:00.000-08:00

Shhh, I'm creating!

Actually, I am working on a little project that I thought would take almost no time and instead is taking me... well... more time. But that is all I am saying about it because it seems whenever I discuss details of my projects, they disappear into the ether of woulda-shoulda-coulda. So mum's the word until it is done (hopefully by the weekend).

In the meantime, I also signed up to sell my wares on Zibbet -- kind of like Etsy but no fees! Seriously. I did however spring for the premium account -- right now on offer for $7 per month (nearly half off the regular $15), plus if you sign up now, use the code 30FREE to get 30 days of the premium account for nothing. If you want to sign up, please consider clicking the banner below so I get credit for spreading the love :)

I'll let you know when my store is ready and when my other project is done. Woo!

Oh, and I also got an email from the coordinators of the LoudSpeaker Festival asking if I wanted a table at the market. It's a busy weekend and I'm not sure I can fit in a random sale day or two, but I have asked for more information, just in case. Again, I'll put out the word if I'm going to be there!

Poetic Preface

2010-02-20T21:46:00.000-08:00

On Friday, I wandered over to the gardening books in the stacks, not sure what I was looking for really, but I found a gem.

The book is a reprint of a 1603 manuscript, "Profitable Instructions for the manuring, sowing and planting of kitchin gardens" by Richard Gardiner. References vary in the exact title and some sources list its publication as 1599. It is credited as being the first English text devoted to vegetable gardening.

The work opens with an author's preface, in which he humbles himself before both God and reader, imploring anyone who knows of better methods to share them with his neighbours for the glory of God.

Following that is another preface, in the form of a poem by Edward Thorne:

Reading it, I was immediately transported back to second year university, to my Medieval Studies class on manuscripts. Of course this book is not exactly Medieval but it is still printed in a typscript that poses a challenge to modern readers where the initial s looks like an f and the v and u are routinely interchanged. Add to that the lack of standard, accepted spelling, capitalization or punctuation and it can be quite a challenge. For the heck of it, I transcribed the whole poem/preface -- you can compare it to the original above (click to open it at Flickr) -- it's really quite a lovely opening for the book (which, itself, is an entertaining read). My transcription leaves the spelling in tact save for the v vs. u issue.

Edward Thorne Gent. in commendation of the worke and the Author thereof.

He that desires with skilfull hand,
to frame a Garden plot,
And to manure and make it apt
For Herbes that serve the pot,
Or choice to make of seeds and Plants,
and best of both to know:
And them in seasonable time,
to plant, to set, and sowe,
Let him peruse this little Booke,
which undertakes the charge,
Of all the fore recited points,
to shew the course at large,
Of Carrets first, and Cabbage close,
and how to keepe them sound:
And Parsnips also to preserve,
and Turnips faire and round.
Of Lettice next, and garden Beanes,
and Onions of the best:
Of Cucumbers and Artichockes,
and Radish with the rest,
These and such other hearbes and seedes,
hath Gardner, in good will:
Unto Sallopian neighbours his,
entreated of with skill,
His talent lent he doth not hide,
if all were understood,
But sets it foorth with willing minde,
to doe his neighbours good.

The poore which late were like to pine,
and could not buy them breade:
In greatest time of penury,
were by his labours fed.
And that in reasonable rate,
when Corne and coine was scant,
With Parsnip and with Carret rootes,
he did supply their want.
The rich likewise and better sorte,
his labours could not misse
Which makes them many times to thinke,
that Salop London is.
Then rich and poore in friendly sorte,
give Gardner all his due,
Who shewes himselfe in all his acts,
so kinde a friend to you.
And wish as he doth well deserve,
his welfare and his health,
That hath so greatly profited,
Salopians common wealth.

You'll note Thorne's use of italics for proper nouns: the author's name, shown here as Gardner instead of Gardiner and Salop/Salopians which I couldn't figure out at first. Turns out, Salop is another name for the county of Shropshire, where Shrewsbury is located, and Salopians refer to the people who live there.

I'm not done with this book yet, it's fascinating, so you may see more clips here, or elsewhere.

the start of something....

2010-02-18T21:09:00.000-08:00

... not sure what yet... but something.

(And, if you are interested, Frazz is for sale in my Etsy store.)

Duck, Duck, Goose?

2010-02-15T20:26:00.001-08:00

Actually, I am thinking chickens, but ducks and geese could be included in this discussion.

We have been thinking about chickens (the back-yard variety) for some time (pretty much ever since we moved in here).

As we get closer and closer to making a final decision, I decided to re-check the laws. I know City of Victoria allows urban chickens and I know there are no roosters allowed. I thought there was a limit of 10 but now I can't find any reference to any limit.

The city bylaw on Animal Control states:

37. No person shall own, harbour or keep any farm animal or rooster within the City of Victoria.

where "farm animal" is earlier defined as "any domesticated animal normally raised for food, milk or beast of burden and includes cattle, horses, swine, sheep, goats, mules, donkeys, asses and oxen;" -- i.e. excluding poultry.

It also says owners are not to allow their animals to be on any private property other than their own (e.g. your neighbour's flower bed).

I've been through other possible by-laws that might mention the issue and found nothing more. No limit, nothing about structures to house them -- heck it doesn't even preclude keeping them inside one's home. (I would not keep them inside -- eeek and eww.)

Surf over to Victoria Animal Control Services however, and you can read this (if you scroll waaaaay down to the Bylaw Regulations section):

"Farm Animals are prohibited with the exception of chickens, ducks & geese. These fowl can only be kept as pets or for personal egg consumption. Eggs cannot be sold or advertised for sale. Excessive numbers of fowl will bring into question intended use. Roosters are prohibited. If you are thinking about keeping chickens call us and we will tell you the issues and potential problems to avoid. Potbellied pigs are considered Farm Animals regardless of where they are kept (indoors or outdoors)."

I'd sure like to find actual By-laws that state anything about the fact that excess eggs cannot be sold and what exactly an excessive number might be. I'm not even thinking that we would likely come up against any of these issues but I would like to know exactly what limitations are, within the law.

Laws aside, we do have to ponder how to house them, how to deal with potential rodent and predator problems, and what to do when the hens stop laying. For housing, I am partial to the Eglu Cube by Omlet but Hubby is prepared to build a DIY variation. I still don't know if there is a "season" for buying new hens. I kind of suspect there is. Sigh. At least Kiddo is reading Storey's Guide to Raising Poultry that I borrowed from the library. Maybe she can fill us in on the details.

[photo by sarniebill1 on Flickr.]

Valentine Lunar New Year

2010-02-14T10:52:00.000-08:00

If you choose not to take part in the Halmark Card Day, take a moment to celebrate the Lunar New Year and welcome the Year of the Tiger. Here's a New Year wish from Cheap Cheap Real Estate (in Philadelphia) -- it made me smile:

And if you are pondering romantic love, here's Matt Damon, singing My Funny Valentine, from one of my favourite films, The Talented Mr. Ripley:

Finally, to my American readers, may you find a good mattress sale tomorrow, on President's Day. ;)

In Bad Taste

2010-02-13T18:59:00.001-08:00

Regretsy is fantastic for questionable content but I was stopped in my tracks by this particular Valentine card. Wait! Before you click that link you should know it features the Twin Towers, mid-strike, with the text "I'm falling for you."

It's by an artist living in Wisconsin. I wonder if she knows/knew anyone affected by the collapse?

And then there is the issue of the death of Georgian luge athlete, Nodar Kumaritashvili just prior to the opening of the big event on the mainland. The IOC was lighnting fast in getting footage pulled from YouTube but my guess is that it had much more to do with marketing and trademarks than common human decency because the footage* continued to air on CTV and NBC, the big official media partners. Today, even after cries of, "Enough, already!" erupted, the NY Times featured an "interactive" look at the accident: freezing 8 frames of the footage and matching them to the track.

You'll notice I'm not linking to these things.

I'm not that old, but I remember a time when the news didn't show people dying -- outside of war zones, and then the footage was preceded by warnings that it might be graphic or disturbing.

A quick search of Google News finds opinion pieces with titles like "Gravity of News Seems to Escape NBC" and "Is a Georgian Life Worth Less than an American Life?" and "Are we Just Crash Test Dummies?" -- good questions. VANOC seems certain of one thing, though, it was not their fault but they will make changes anyway. Unfortunately, Kumaritashvili's death was not the only incident on the track -- there were complaints that it was far too fast. Will VANOC pay any price for this? Only in salaries and bonuses to their spin doctors.

*Some comments have started referring to the footage as a snuff film but I think, technically, it escapes simply by virtue of being captured in a documentary action, not story-boarded.

New Podcast Episode

2010-02-07T22:57:00.001-08:00

I finally got around to re-recording the vocal track and mixing the rest then uploading it to the Internet Archive: Flotsam and Jetsam The Podcast - Episode 1: Mountain from a Molehill is now available as an m4a (Quicktime) track (I think that's because I dragged artwork into the thing which meant it was not just an audio track. My bad.).

I've also embedded it at the end of this post. Credits and links are below (next time I will insert these into the podcast):

Background image: Westcoast Flotsam (by me)
Opening track: Heaven on a Dish (uncredited composer/performer from the Open Source Audio collection)
Closing track: Triple Funk (by Wilhelm, Gub, Bigmoon from the Open Source Audio collection)
43Things.com
my list of 100 Things that Make Me Happy (besides money)
"My Favorite Things" from the Sound of Music

The production took a lot of planning (most of a week) and I spent several hours combing through the Internet Archive for suitable music. I recorded one version of the vocal tracks earlier in the week (but I decided it was not good enough) then re-recorded and mixed tracks this evening -- about 4 hours work in Garage Band. The finished project runs about 7 minutes and 15 seconds. I enjoyed it but should I do more? Let me know...

One Hundred Things

2010-02-06T10:02:00.000-08:00

I started this list of "100 Things That Make Me Happy (Besides Money)" about 5 years ago after selecting it as something that seemed simple enough when I first joined 43 Things. Last November, I added it to my PeGeStuDoMo list, again thinking it was a simple task. When I finally got to number 75 in the last week of January, I decided to commit time to it every day until it was done -- even if I just added one item. I finished it on February 2nd.

Parts of this list have been blogged before but here's the list in full:

Walking alone in shaded woods or gardens.
The sound of moving water in nature (ocean waves; streams and rivers; winter runoff or waterfalls).
Observing nature, with or without a camera in hand.
Finding something “hidden” in plain view.
Identifying plants, bugs, and animals.
The smell and taste of a well-made cup of coffee.
Smooth dark chocolate melting in my mouth.
Walking into a house filled with the smell of baking or cooking.
Teaching my daughter cooking skills.
Making soup!
Sunrise or sunset on a slightly cloudy day.
A warm, purring cat in my lap on a cold day.
Reading a story that makes me laugh out loud or cry.
Getting (positive) feedback on things I’ve written; especially if I have made someone smile, or laugh, or think.
Sharing a book I’ve “discovered” with someone else.
watching trashy TV without feeling guilty
watching great TV without feeling guilty
digging into a big bag of fresh popcorn
sharing a big bag of fresh popcorn
pulling together a meal out of whatever’s on hand and having it turn out to be a new favourite
planting vegetables and helping them grow
eating fresh vegetables that I have grown
seeing a great photo or other piece of art—especially in unexpected settings
seeing a deer from the bus or an eagle fly over a schoolyard
bopping along to ridiculous songs in my earbuds
scraping batter from the bowl or licking the beaters
biting into a cookie still warm and soft from the oven
the smell of fresh baked bread
the taste of a fresh strawberry
clipping herbs from the garden to use in a meal
picking fresh fruit from a tree
making pickles, jams and other preserves
judging a book by its cover and being right
finding a new author and going back through their whole catalog
reading e-books while waiting for the bus
reading a free newspaper on the morning commute
wandering through the library just browsing
curling up in bed with a graphic novel
watching full-length animated movies
window shopping
zipping downhill on my bike
all the memories that rush back when an old favourite song is played
the first rain after a dry spell
the smell of the ocean on an overcast day
the sound of a train whistle or horn in the distance
the sounds of a steam train
taking an afternoon nap
realizing I can still learn things, at any age
that a-Ha moment when a concept becomes clear
explaining a concept to someone else then seeing that a-Ha moment
the smell of wet leaves in the fall
the sound of rain on a tent when I'm inside
building and stoking a real wood fire
the sound of rocks being pulled over each other by receding waves
reading and re-reading poetry
writing poetry, especially haiku
taking on a writing challenge and finishing it, even if it doesn't get me anything
crossing things off lists -- in general -- but especially things that have been a long time coming
finding a new use for something
using something I have repaired
watching my daughter sleeping
going to bed the night before I know I don't have an alarm set to wake me
waking up before everyone else and having a quiet house to myself
mushrooms and onions sauteed in butter -- it's always the start of something yummy.
seeing someone wearing or using something I've made
making something without a pattern
following a pattern and succeeding
finding a great tip and sharing it
fancy printed book endpapers, especially marbled ones
holding old books and thinking about all the people who have turned the same pages
marveling at the intricacies of nineteenth century prints from etchings
the peace of walking through a graveyard
trying to unlock how an artist made a given piece of work
playing silly computer games
playing sudoku now that the trend has faded
going out for a date with my husband
fresh-baked apple crumble made without a recipe -- different every time
watching a show on Canadian TV, without bleeps or re-edited dialog and sometimes even with unpixelated nudity
browsing through Etsy and eBay at all the amazing, weird and banal things that people sell
finding and sharing useless trivia
being challenged on a useless fact and being able to find and show proof I was right
looking at architectural details and learning how to identify an architect's style
writing reviews and sharing my opinion
getting results from a strongly worded letter to a company, government body, or other corporation
watching a production line in action whether it is human or mechanical -- I always think of the Looney Tunes "assembly line" music (Oooh! Useless trivia moment, that music is called "Powerhouse" by Raymond Scott.)
rainbows
the idea of unicorn chasers, even if I don't particularly like unicorns
getting lost on the web by link-hopping (easiest on sites like Wikipedia)
watching clouds moving and shifting
watching dew turn to steam on warm summer mornings
having a job that allows me to wear sassy t-shirts and jeans and pays more than $8 per hour.
watching our cat play like a kitten
catching up on tv shows with marathons of a season in a week.
realizing I know enough about a given program to get the result I expect when I am using it
the smell of laundry that has dried in the fresh air
breathing deeply on a crisp, clear morning
standing on the deck with a mug of coffee, just listening
finding the answer to something particularly tricky
imagining what cats are really thinking
finishing this list and realizing there's a lot more I could add.

And, after crossing this off my list, I smiled thinking about item #58.

New Coffeemaker

2010-02-04T20:56:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I came home and noticed that there was coffee left in the coffee maker. I asked Hubby if he'd made another pot in the afternoon. He said he hadn't. Unfortunately, the carafe was just a few degrees cooler than molten lead and from this I surmised that the "auto off" feature had failed, completely. I unplugged it and the clock stayed on for 30 minutes -- about 3 times longer than it should have. I decided it was possessed by a boggart and we made a note to use the French Press in the morning.

This morning I realized what I thought was our French Press on the shelf was in fact our Bodum milk frother. Doh! Since I really needed coffee, we gave the possessed coffee maker one last go (but I made Hubby promise to unplug it when the carafe was empty). Tonight we bought a replacement. We had actually looked at coffee makers on the weekend (maybe ours knew it was doomed) -- and had come home with a new grinder -- so we had already narrowed our choices. Big bonus, one of our front runners was priced $30 lower at London Drugs so we went with that one (this Oster model).

I threw caution to the wind and brewed some coffee when we got home. It was gooooood. I'm enjoying it now and will be cursing it at 1:30 a.m. when I am still awake.

Speaking of awake, the sunrise this morning was lovely:

Contest Update:
To everyone who added a heart to my Etsy store, Thank You! -- Anne was #100 and will be getting a special something in the mail.

Not for a fistful of hundred dollar bills

2010-02-03T18:16:00.000-08:00

I think I've already made this clear, but I am not a supporter of the big boondoggle set to kick off in a few days. After reading the list of items banned from venues (which will have airport-style security), I commented that you wouldn't be able to get me in a venue with a free ticket and a fistful of unmarked non-sequential $100 bills.

Included on the list

Water balloon launchers (really? this happens often enough to need a separate listing?)
Leaflets, pamphlets, non-approved publications and promotional material (this just plain angers my inner librarian -- what exactly is a non-approved publication?)
Banners containing religious, political, provocative or obscene content and or visible branding and trademarks of sponsor and non-sponsor companies (guess what part of this annoys me? yup, that pesky branding and trademark stuff! What amuses me most is they don't even want logos of the participating sponsors visible -- my guess is they are paying for every reference)
Flags of non-participating countries (non-participating in the games or non-participating at that event?)
Strollers (because transportation is going to be a challenge but if you want to take your toddler to a once in a lifetime event, the kid is going to have to walk or be carried)
Umbrellas (because it never rains in Vancouver)

Etsy Heart Contest

2010-01-31T10:58:00.000-08:00

This is the easiest contest ever. My Etsy store has 99 Hearts (i.e. fans) but I want a few more...

...so just go to my store and give me a heart (click on "+Add seller to favorites" in the right hand column, registration is required). The 100th and the 123rd and the 147th people to heart my store will get a free Creative Miscellany gift* in the mail!

If you are already a fan -- Thank You! -- you can still win: just tweet or blog or share on Facebook your favourite listing in my store and leave a comment below that points/links to it. I'll use a random number generator to pick up to three comments for more free gifts*!

Become a Fan of Creative Miscellany on Facebook and I will draw up to three more names for free gifts* from there.

Finally, if you do all three things, you'll be put in a grand prize draw for a yet-to-be-sewn, one-of-a-kind Huggitz doll!

*Free gifts will be stuff I can ship flat or in small packages including ACEOs, greeting cards, Monsters and Aliens colouring books, Coffee Haiku mini-books, or even finger puppets!

You have until midnight PST on Wednesday Feb 3, 2010 to enter.

Kids being kids

2010-01-29T23:37:00.000-08:00

Tonight we took Kiddo to one of the PAC* "social nights" which is basically an excuse for the kids to be out of their uniforms and ramming around in the gymnasium. One of the first things the kids went for were the "scooter boards" (photo to the right) Here's where I get to look my age because these are totally a new thing for me as far as gym equipment goes.

As you can see, they look kind of like an oversize cutting board with casters on the bottom and handles on the sides. Well, without gym teachers and rules, the first thing the kids did was make themselves into real-life bowling balls, ramming themselves on the scooter boards into the large plastic pins. Next, they found hula hoops and skipping ropes. Before long, they were tying the boards together to make longer centipede like creations and winging each other around the room, because it's more fun when you make it dangerous! (As I was searching for these, I found that some models are made to interlock, presumably to offer a safer alternative to the DIY combos.)

At any rate, it was about 15 minutes before the first kid flew off and skinned their knees. Happily, since it was parents and not school administrators, no one overreacted, or put an end to things (well, I did tell Kiddo at one point not to tie the ropes to the board but instead to slip the rope through the handle); everyone pretty much just let their kids be kids. There were a few tears amid squeals of pure glee, bumped heads, parents who will be feeling a few aches in the morning, and near misses between different sets of kids being wung around in offset circles; from above I imagine the place looked like a Busby Berkely musical influenced by fractal theory.

Actually, it was pretty close to that at ground level.

*(PAC = Parent Advisory Council -- the type of group that used to be known as the PTA -- Parent-Teacher-Association -- ... which reminds me of Harper Valley PTA and Barbara Eden. Weird that I remember that.)

giggles and Photoshop fun

2010-01-27T19:31:00.001-08:00

OK, so I have to start with the fact that Apple needs to send the iPad name back to the boardroom for reconsideration. Almost immediately, the topic #iTampon leapt into the trending list on Twitter (and stayed there throughout the State of the Union Address).

I just put together the above image using a photo of Steve Jobs by James Mitchell, a source image of Kanye West that has been kicking around since the meme went viral, and my fave of the Twitter hacks courtesy @WewillroastU. Rather than reinvent the wheel, I will point you to this Squidoo list that gathers all of the jokes flying around the 'net today, along with the MadTV sketch that lampooned the name before Jobs launched it.

iFail

EDIT to round-up some of the stuff said by people who paid more attention to the hardware than its name:

From Gizmodo: 8 Things that Suck about the iPad
From Core77: The iPad, they're on to something... we're just not sure what.

And one that paid attention to the name, but not in a feminine hygiene way:

From the NYT: iPad? That's so 2002, Fujitsu says. (i.e. not only did Apple not check for stupid names, they didn't check for trademarks.)

Work Hard and Be Kind

2010-01-25T18:24:00.000-08:00

This odd fragment of a speech, of sorts, is spreading like proverbial wildfire. It was part of Conan O'Brien's last words as host of the Tonight Show (hence the Keep Calm and Carry On - inspired graphic at right, designed by Clay Larsen).

Say what you will about pop culture and the manufactured distraction of the "Late Night Wars" but it really was a shitty way for NBC to deal with low ratings that, from my point of view, were entirely their own doing.

Watching the last week of shows, I felt sad about the situation -- and while Conan kept telling people not to feel sorry for him I couldn't help but feel sorry for his staff (190 people all got their pink slips because NBC thinks Leno is a better bet for late night).

And, as often happens with this kind of public circus, I got wrapped up in it all. When Conan sat at the Tonight Show desk for the last time and actually said nice things about the company that was currently kicking his ass to the curb, I got teary-eyed. In fact, just re-reading his closing remarks, I got teary again, especially over this:

To all the people watching, I can never thank you enough for your kindness to me and I’ll think about it for the rest of my life. All I ask of you is one thing: please don’t be cynical. I hate cynicism — it’s my least favorite quality and it doesn’t lead anywhere. Nobody in life gets exactly what they thought they were going to get. But if you work really hard and you’re kind, amazing things will happen. As proof, let’s make an amazing thing happen right now.

Is that amazing, or what? He followed it with a monster of a jam session, perhaps a nod to the band which played even as the Titanic went down.

So, yeah, I think as an addendum to not paying for the gloom, I'm going to rethink my attachment to cynicism.

a change in course may be required

2010-01-23T23:07:00.000-08:00

I think I may have come to the end of my fascination with the end of the world. At least I think I need a break from it. We saw The Road on Thursday evening -- at times, I could not even watch the screen it depressed and infuriated me so much. I told Hubby on leaving the theatre, "if it comes to a time where all vegetation has been destroyed, I'm out."

Honestly, I think it's the first time I've left feeling anything other than "entertained" by an apocalyptic film and that's saying something because I've seen a lot of them -- several in the last year alone, including Knowing, 2012, Daybreakers, and Zombieland.

I spent my teen years convinced our world would be obliterated by the exchange of nuclear warheads between the US and the USSR, with Canada being collateral damage in the middle. By the time I was in university, the Cold War was drawing to a close and the hands of the Doomsday Clock were drawn back. I relaxed a little. Sure, I was still convinced we were going to hell in a handbasket but not at full speed.

However, since 9/11 (and OMG, how I hate that phrase, but I promise I am using it only in a historical context here) Hollywood has been pulling out the stops, greenlighting movies that forecast the future, however bleak. Sure, they still crank out the mindless fare, but I've always considered fluff not worthy of big-screen viewing. Maybe I've got it all backwards. Maybe I need more Hugh Grant and Sandra Bullock.

So bring on the happy, Hollywood, I think I'm going to stop paying for the gloom.

Thank You TCM

2010-01-19T19:51:00.000-08:00

For unearthing and sharing this lovely time capsule: travel bumf for Victoria and Vancouver from 1936 -- almost 75 years ago!!

Where have all the junk stores gone?

2010-01-16T18:17:00.001-08:00

(long time passing.... sorry, got distracted there)

As the child of two pack-rats, I inherited their habit of never passing up a yard sale or second-hand store. My favourite stores were always the ones where you never quite knew what you might find and where the hunt was part of the fun: rummaging through bins and baskets; lifting up one piece of junk to reveal whatever was hiding underneath; finding the perfect teacup and then finding the matching saucer three shelves over. Sometimes you left with a treasure, more often with nothing more than the thrill of participating in urban archeology, building stories for "who owned this stuff?" as you go.

In more recent years, the thrift store circuit has become more popular. It may have started with hipsters but now, "in these difficult economic times" (ACK!), I'm hard pressed to find anyone who hasn't at least wandered through the aisles of a thrift/second-hand store or pawn shop, etc.

Over the same time, thrift stores started getting picky about what they would accept -- for example, I don't think there is a single store in Victoria that will accept used sofa beds, even in pristine condition, despite the fact that there are many people who would be happy to have a spare bed. (Hence the rise in Freecycle and postings on UsedVictoria and Craigslist for free items.) The stores also started to de-clutter, adding better retail shelving and displays, putting aside the "good stuff" in an area close to the service desk, and ditching the bins-of-bits sorting method.

The most recent example of this is Re-Store here in Victoria. Re-Store is a second-hand store that focuses on the home-renovation market and supports Habitat for Humanity. When it opened, I was in heaven -- aisle after aisle of hard to find hardware; replacement doors, windows, cabinets and lighting from every imaginable era; all manner of funky plumbing fixtures; flooring; and a huge supply of paint. Last year, they closed up the Douglas Street location and moved out to a warehouse in Langford. Today was the first time we had a chance to investigate the new location and I was very, very disappointed.

I got a little worried when I read all the things they are "not currently accepting" but I thought perhaps they just had too many of those items. However, instead of overflowing we found the shelves to be well organized, the aisles wide, and the selection.... thin. Sure, if you were looking for cabinet doors, bathroom sinks, or paint you would be in luck. But, where the old location had shelf after shelf of used lighting fixtures, there was a pallet loaded with what looked like contractor returns. Where before there was a wall full of bathroom fixtures (faucets, towel racks, even bins full of washers and those chains that hold plugs) the new location had one small area on one shelf dedicated to the same items. Even the one thing we most wanted to grab, a mid-size single pane window (to build a seed-starting greenhouse) was nowhere to be found because they only accept and sell double-pane windows now.

Needless to say, we left empty-handed.

The photo at the top was taken last October at a junk shop in Sooke. That place had all the junk you could ever want to find -- from huge satellite dishes to 1980s era microwaves to a mountain of Coleman camping stoves to bins full of every size wrench ever made. Stuff was packed floor to ceiling in a huge warehouse with more stuff out back. It was amazing and maybe that's where we will have to go to get the junk we need.

Tin Foil Hats All Around!

2010-01-12T20:17:00.000-08:00

Sometime in my late teens or early 20s I started planning for the inevitable -- the collapse of civilization as we know it. (I had high hopes for Y2K but, alas, it was not to be.) I started learning how to do stuff myself and to collect books on pioneer and DIY skills. An earlyish version of my website included my luddite skillset -- stuff like building fires, growing my own food, and knitting. Heck, years back Hubby and I even joined Victoria LETS (Local Exchange and Trading Society) -- basically a barter group -- but were disappointed by the lack of variety and activity in the group. We also tried making tofu and could do that again, if we had to -- right now, I'm happier to pay the $3 for someone else to do it.

Tonight, I spent some time sorting through and doing an inventory of my seeds, spawned in part by a discussion on Facebook about the movie Collapse (my take: the guy is probably a nutbar but has some decent insights, too. It's playing at Cinecenta next month and I plan to go see it, despite its potential effect on my psyche) and in part by some Frankenfood Fear thanks to finding a study that revealed organ damage in mammals linked to three varieties of Monsanto corn currently being used for food and for animal feed out there. Gah.

Happily, now that my seeds have been inventoried (there were almost 60 packets, varying in age and amount used, ranging from personally saved seeds to some purchased at local markets to certified organic to basic, er, over the counter seeds) and my goal this year is to use as many as I can through the season. I have a LOT of mesclun mix seeds -- probably because I like having greens available year-round -- and I am planning to grow at least some on the deck where I can pick them in any weather. I also sent Hubby some tutorials on mini-greenhouses for starting seeds and to extend the growing season (right now my cabbage and broccoli are struggling but the leeks have perked up).

Outside of gardening, I am still proud of the number of things I know I can do if need be, though there are a few I have yet to master, or even try. While I believe I could maintain or even (re-)build a home and make do with what I had on hand for some time, I am lacking some pioneer skills. (For instance if there is no one with whom I can barter meat or fish after civilization falls, I will become a vegetarian pretty fast. ) I think I could manage to raise chickens as long as I didn't have to kill them so at least I could have eggs. If I could figure out how to shear a sheep (this does not look comfortable for either party), I could probably get from there to yarn somehow. And I might be willing to try my hand at raising a goat I could milk.

**While I am on an agriculture tangent, I have been considering whether I can donate to the Land Conservancy to save Madrona Farm (I really do want as much local farmland as possible to stay as such) without getting on a sucker list. (Oooh, looks like I can give money to some lawyer-types to hold in trust. Pondering.)**

Anyway, if I had the right supplies I could make or mend clothing, make candles, soap (though I've never tried, I understand the principles), and bread. I can preserve food, make paper, and perform basic first aid (Hubby is the star on that front though). I can do math long-hand, use most hand tools and make a bird-feeder out of a milk jug.

So, start saving your tin-foil kids, you're going to need it for the hats.

***

p.s. Would you rather celebrate the end of the world? Do it wearing a Haiku for the Masses t-shirt. ;)

thoughts over tea

2010-01-10T18:37:00.000-08:00

I'm sitting here enjoying a cup of tea as I type (basic orange pekoe, Salada, I think), reflecting on a busy weekend.

Friday night was pizza and a movie (date night -- we went to see Daybreakers). We almost gave up when we got to the theatre; a combination of the credit union debit card system being down across BC and the armies of people buying tickets for Avatar (when we arrived at 7, all showings up to 10:30 were sold out; by the time we left, it was sold out until sometime on Saturday) the line-ups stretched almost to the parking lot. We persevered though and saw the movie which, I am not sure was worth the full admission price (now up to $11.50).

Saturday started off nice and lazy but worked up to a small panic when we realized the dryer was no longer working (after weeks of the washing machine limping along, I never guessed the dryer would give up first). We have purchased a new set and are awaiting their delivery later in the week.

We also found time to see another movie on Saturday, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs (whole family, at Cinecenta -- btw, you need to check out their new website, it seriously rocks) -- which was better than I had been expecting.

Today, while Hubby helped a friend film a short subject, Kiddo and I went shopping (with a purpose -- she needs some boots with heels for riding). We struck out at the mall (in all of Mayfair there were only two places selling kids shoes in her sizes and neither had anything close to appropriate footwear) and after some consideration, decided to bus into town to check Value Village -- I should have checked there first! We found two pairs of short boots (but with the right heels, hooray!) and a few other things that, together, cost less than one pair of boots new would have cost, even on sale. Yay!

Ribbons and Bows

2010-01-07T20:51:00.000-08:00

As a rule, I don't wear ribbons or rubber bracelets, or poppies, or crosses, or much else that says anything about my beliefs, support, or alliances (aside from sassy t-shirts). I also don't generally play along with the other sheep when asked to "copy and paste this into your status update" so when status updates among my Facebook friends started showing up as a single word that was a colour, I was suspicious. When it was revealed to be viral marketing for "awareness of breast cancer" I was irked.

If you have lived in the Western Hemisphere at any point during the past two decades and you are not already aware of The Cause, please raise your hand.

Yeah. That's what I thought.

Problem is that most of these campaigns, they don't do much. Maybe they help some people feel better but not everyone (thank you Anne for that link). For example, I am the kind of person who gets angrier when someone tells me to "turn that frown upside down" and I am pretty sure that should I ever fall prey to breast cancer, a pink ribbon is going to mean jackshit to me.

I am not anti-research (though I may be anti-pinktarian -- thank you, Chair, for that term) but I am really tired of the constant focus on boobs (and let's be clear, it is boobs society is fixated on; no one talks about men who get breast cancer) -- lots of body parts can fall prey to cancer.

And while I am at it, please, for my daughter's sake, lay off all the pink. I don't care what anyone thinks, wiping one's ass with pink toilet paper is not helping anyone.

Ten Year-end Lists

2010-01-01T19:43:00.000-08:00

In no particular order, here are the lists that I've been reading today -- some of these will be re-read and referenced for some time.

Core77: Our Favorites from 2009 -- my favourite design blog
Best Films of the decade -- care of Roger Ebert. I have seen 3 of his top 10 but half of his full list.
Great Best of 2009 Recap -- Lifehackers best of the best including DIY, photography, re-purposing and more.
Top 100 Craft Tutorials of 2009 -- bookmarked!
50 Best Albums of 2009 -- from NME, apparently I am out of the loop as many of these artists are completely new to me.
Buzzwords of 2009 -- from the NY Times; while American in focus, a number of these made their way north of the border.
Top Scientific Breakthroughs of 2009 -- from Wired.
Top 25 Censored Stories for 2009 -- from Project Censored
20 Worst Foods of 2009 -- Eat This Not That lists its top 20 "calorie bombs"
Google Zeitgeist 2009 -- billions of searches aggregated and compiled into a snapshot of global curiousity.

2009 in Review

2009-12-30T10:40:00.000-08:00

While I've done month by month reviews before, I think I will break from that format this year. Instead, here's a thematic look back:

notable stuff: I was shortlisted for CBC's Canada Writes, I celebrated turning 40 by watching Hubby smash the hell out of a cake, I got sucked into Twitter, I got a lot of food out of the garden, and we safely navigated the H1N1 scare.

web finds: This year, I fell out of love with Go Fug Yourself after several site redesigns and a new ad partner meant the site itself was fugly and annoying. However, I still like snark and for that, I now go to Regretsy which skewers some of the quirkier things listed on Etsy and Cakewrecks which does the same for "professionally designed cakes." The primary difference between the two is that Regretsy content frequently skirts an NC17 rating whereas Cakewrecks barely rates a PG so I can share the posts with Kiddo.

While I dearly miss At the Movies (and its follow up, which I refer to as the Ebert and Assclown years), I continue to get Ebert's reviews via a weekly email newsletter from the Chicago Sun-Times. I don't know why I hadn't noticed it before but Ebert also has a blog -- and it is full of awesome that is sometimes but not always related to movies. Speaking of awesome (and occasionally NSFW) the comic/info stuff at the Oatmeal often makes me laugh. I finally added it to my Google Reader yesterday after reading this post.

new toys: In the spring, I got a bike but I am a weather sissy and will not ride when it is overly hot, overly cold or overly wet so I have used it less than would be ideal. In the be-careful-what-you-wish-for category, I won an OTTO coffee machine. While it is very pretty, it's a pain to use. For Christmas I got two new toys: a Flip UltraHD Camcorder and a serger both of which come with learning curves. As a family, we also got a PS3 (which I love), a Macbook (for app development), and a Wii Balance Board with Wii Fit, which promptly told me I was fat and should exercise more. (Well, duh.)

escapes: Early in the year we went to Vegas. Bad idea; that city is not our kind of place. As a family, we like elbow room and clean air, two things that are at a premium in Vegas. We cleansed our palate with a weekend at Beach Acres, a few trips to Vancouver, a family weekend in Nanoose Bay, and a much-needed anniversary retreat to Sooke Harbour House. We also spent Christmas at Beach Acres, though that trip was probably more ambitious than the season called for.

play time: Over the year, I spent a lot of time caring for my Moshi Monster and, inside Facebook, playing a trio of addictive games: Lexulous, PackRat, and Bejeweled Blitz. While I have a bunch of games on my iPod, my faves are still the PopCap games -- Bejeweled, Bookworm and, of course, Chuzzle -- I highly recommend all three for any platform (and Zuma, too, which we bought for the PS3.)

I read a fair number of books, though there are still many unfinished tomes beside my bed. I found that Charlie Huston's crime novels are great fun to chew through, as was a novel based on characters from the TV series Bones (which I've never watched) -- I found it among the books at the Beach Acres cabin. I also read a number of books by local author Karen Rivers. Her blog and twitter feed regularly make me laugh (and snort) but her books... well, I won't likely pick up any more; they're well written but not to my taste.

I've been struggling to recall which movies I saw in the theatre this year. I know we saw plenty; here's what I remember (after searching the web for 2009 releases!): Race to Witch Mountain, Watchmen, Coraline, Up, Julie and Julia, Monsters vs. Aliens, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, Paul Blart: Mall Cop, Public Enemies, Inglorious Basterds, 9, Star Trek 11, Zombieland, A Christmas Carol, and 2012. You can probably guess which ones we saw with Kiddo.

***

Happy New Year!

Happy Christmas, 2009.

2009-12-25T11:50:00.000-08:00

We are hiding away in Parksville this year -- us and the inlaws in two cabins -- and I think I am going to go take some photos down at the beach. My new gift is recharging so you'll have to wait for that -- but expect more YouTube fun in the new year ;) Actually, I got two big gifts this year (I am very spoiled) -- I also got a gift certificate from Hubby which I used to buy a Janome serger that I will set up after Christmas.

Getting up here was an adventure -- we rented a Thule carrier for the top of the van -- thank goodness because even with it, we were packed full. Hopefully, going back we can re-pack things (like unwrapped gifts) and we won't have as much food (we brought enough to feed 9 people for three days) so that at least people can stretch their legs.

I of course will do my part to lighten the load by drinking coffee and eating chocolate...

Merry Christmas All.

A Dickens exception

2009-12-20T18:28:00.000-08:00

Some of you may recall that I really don't like Charles Dickens (or most of his contemporaries) but there is one notable exception and that is his novella, A Christmas Carol. Earlier this year, I did go to see the filmed-for-3D version starring Jim Carrey. I was expecting utter crap (like, say, Jim Carrey as the Grinch) but was pleasantly surprised -- aside from one ridiculous sequence, it kept close to the original text. Very close, actually. I would recommend seeing it (3D is not necessary to the experience, though.)

Tonight, we've been watching the George C. Scott version (from 1984) and to answer a question (how specific Dickens was in his description of the Ghost of Christmas Past), I looked up the original text on the internet archive (here's a very nice Putnam edition you can read online). Kiddo was reading it over my shoulder and asked to read the whole thing -- so I found a Project Gutenberg edition through Stanza and downloaded it to my iPod. She's now curled up on her bed reading Dickens. How awesome is that?

Of course, my favourite version is probably the Muppet Christmas Carol ("Light the lamp, not the rat!!") which I will watch sometime before the 25th.

Furniture and appliance compromises

2009-12-19T20:30:00.000-08:00

Sigh.

Our washing machine is on its last legs; mid-week I was pretty sure it was pining for the fjords. Before springing for a new washer, we decided to try a small load. Hubby used the perma-press setting and to my surprise, it made it through. We tried another, and another, and decided that this was the way to go. So, for now we just have to compromise and do more smaller loads until we can afford to replace it (and likely the dryer, too). I'm not too concerned, of course; the appliances were all included in the house purchase and the washer dryer were old and beat up when we inherited them.

Sigh #2

Ever since Kiddo was wee, and we bought a non-standard size crib (which she outgrew almost immediately), we seem to have made consistently questionable choices in beds for her. The only really good bed we had for her (well, we still have it, up in the attic) was the captain's bed but in her tiny room here, we felt like she needed more space so we bought the Tromsö loft bed from IKEA. But the clearance from the ceiling once the mattress was in place made it mostly useless. Still, she slept there until she came down with the flu (and flu+ladder=disaster). For whatever reason, we never put the mattress back up on the loft, letting her play up there with the padding of a couple of blankets.

So, when friends of ours let us know they had to get rid of an almost new twin bed because they are moving, we decided to buy it. Today, I manhandled it home (tied it to the top of the van and hoped that we would beat the rain -- we did) and into the house. I shoved things around in her room and heaved her mattress back up to the loft then started to move the new bed into place and wouldn't you know it? it didn't fit under the loft! I was ready to blame it on IKEA and their non-standard sizings (at least not standard in North America) but when I measured it then did a web search for "standard mattress sizes" I discovered that the new bed is an "extra long " twin. Huh. Never knew such a thing existed.

So, we have turned the new bed 90° under her loft -- it'll do for now but there is less than a 12 inches of clearance between the foot of the bed and the wall so it's far from ideal. Like the washer and dryer, we're just going to live with the compromise until after Christmas.

The Vancouver Embargo Begins

2009-12-13T21:15:00.000-08:00

A while back, we earned a free night with our "usual" hotel chain and we had to use it before Dec 25th or lose it. We chose to use it in order to facilitate one last shopping spree in Vancouver before the International Sporting Event That Shall Not Be Named (ISETSNBN) descends, bringing with it all manner of neo-fascist f**kery¹.

We rolled out on a 9 am ferry, dining in style in the Pacific Buffet. After a brief stop to fuel up, we headed for Aberdeen Mall -- Hubby hung with Kiddo in the play zone while I did some damage in Daiso. As luck would have it, Friday turned out to be Midnight Madness at IKEA -- specials every hour and crowds to go with it, but we got two new cabinets and more media storage for the living room plus a few other bits and pieces.

After all that, we returned to the hotel exhausted. Sunday we picked up my Mother in Law from the ferries and ventured into DressSew Supplies downtown -- frustrating to get there but we left with two bags of fabric, trim, notions and costume pieces. Next stop was T, then lunch and a few stores in the Kits neighbourhood. Our last stop was to stock up on some Asian imports at Yaohan Centre in Richmond before it was back to the ferries and another trip to the buffet.

Today was planned to be a quiet day but turned out to be a lot of work as we built and installed new IKEA purchases, sorted and reorganized our crap (why? to make room for MORE crap, of course! Sigh.) and swept up two or three rabbits worth of dust bunnies from the corners. That was followed by an attempted computer rescue for my Mom (her machine froze and she had no way to get past the blue error screen without a rescue disk). Unfortunately, there was to be no rescue -- it's still in limbo. Once home, there was still filing and laundry waiting. Ugh.

This week will be busy: five days of work and Hubby has meeting-palooza this week plus Kiddo has two evening performances of her Holiday Concert. At least Friday is my last workday and Kiddo's last school day until January.

¹Yeah, I'm more than a little bitter after actually trying to navigate through the "transportation improvements" -- slowly crawling past the many signs stating No Stopping Feb-Mar.

contrary logic.and random thoughts

2009-12-07T21:21:00.000-08:00

Apparently, I had PeGeStuDoMo all wrong. I shouldn't have told anyone what I was doing and that is why I failed. (Actually, I figure I failed because I am a gold medalist** in procrastination)

* * *

Kiddo has requested all vegetarian meals this week --perfectly doable but it's making me crave steak and click on every link that mentions food -- which meant I found this curiosity (that would be great if I liked peppermint lattes) and this wonderful tale of determination not to waste food.

* * *

Finally, just for fun, here's a great ad from LG -- more or less a PSA asking people to think before they text, "Give it a ponder." There is a whole series of these. They make me smile.

**hey, here's hoping VanOC doesn't come after me for saying "gold medalist."

Troll Maintenance.

2009-12-03T11:10:00.000-08:00

Those of you who follow this blog will be aware that I picked up an internet troll last week, someone who felt compelled to spew vile text over recent posts all because I shared some random thoughts about a 40 year old television special.

Since I don't want to give him any further power, comments are now moderated until further notice and comments on this post are closed.

[The image accompanying this post is the Troll of Norway, uploaded by Flickr user Christoph Grothaus, used through a CC-BY-ND license.]

What is it about Gorilla Suits?

2009-11-30T18:43:00.000-08:00

I was looking for the song about the "lime in the coconut" -- and now I know it's a Harry Nilsson song called Coconut. It's one of those songs that gets stuck in your head, possibly because (according to Wikipedia), "the entire song is played using one chord, C 7th." (weird). Anyway, I found this video of a performance of it from 1971... in gorilla suits.

Gorilla suits always make me think of the end of Trading Places -- my favourite non-Christmas Christmas movie. :)

Rankin-Bass season

2009-11-28T22:02:00.000-08:00

With less than 30 days to Christmas, it's the time of year we dig out the Rankin-Bass holiday specials. My niece had never seen Santa Claus is Coming to Town so I plunked in the DVD and hit play. A few minutes in, she asks, "Why is the bad guy called Burgermeister Meisterburger?"

I thought for a moment and said, "Because this show was produced at a time when there was still a lot of bad feelings towards Germans and Germany."

A few minutes later, during his anti-toy tirade, she says, "Oh, so toys were his Jews." It was impossible to watch the rest of the show without making Schindler's list comparisons.

Today, we were watching Rudolph and all we could think about was eugenics.

Hmm.

Happy Thanksgiving, America.

2009-11-26T08:15:00.001-08:00

Balloon Inflation
Originally uploaded by alicia954

We celebrated Thanksgiving last month, of course, but that isn't stopping Hubby from cooking turkey tonight, too.

The photo at left is from a Flickr friend, Alicia, who makes wonderful crafty things. The photo shows something I never really thought about: the preparation for the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. It took me a while to figure out that the balloon on the left must be Snoopy in his "versus the Red Baron" aviator outfit. On the right it looks like Mickey Mouse. Nifty.

Enjoy your turkey and pumpkin pie my American readers, and thanks for stopping by.

More stop motion love.

2009-11-25T19:05:00.000-08:00

In the Brick Film tradition, this is a sequence from The Matrix; I especially love the way they show the slow-motion bullets.

The above sequence (just under 90 seconds) took aproximately 440 hours to make. Here's a brief behind the scenes clip of that bullet sequence. Awesome.

Kudos...

2009-11-25T10:58:00.000-08:00

... to the New Zealand Book Council for this effective (and lovely stop-motion) ad:

weekend that was

2009-11-22T20:35:00.000-08:00

Friday, we got Kiddo to school then packed our bags to head back to Sooke Harbour House. The room was ready to go when we got there (early check-in, yay!) so we dumped our stuff (this time in the Driftwood Room, next door to the room we stayed in on our anniversary) and headed back to the kitchen for our "adventure."

As it is off-season, things are a little quieter (fewer than half the staff of the busy summer and wedding season) but that's why the package is only offered October-May. At any rate, we got "suited up" in cook's jackets and aprons (we were allowed to forego the checkered pants -- phew!). After meeting the chefs and a quick tour of the kitchen, we were put to work -- basically we were prep cooks for the afternoon. We cleaned and chopped a lot of mushrooms (some so fresh that foragers were still signing off on the delivery when we arrived) then I got to sautee them while Hubby moved on to making tartar sauce from scratch. Next I helped to make a chunky golden beet and hazelnut pesto and fishcakes while Hubby was rolling up springrolls containing the mushrooms and other veggies. We also looked on while the chefs created asian-style braised lamb shanks and an amazing soup made with squash, root vegetables, and quince. I had expected a little more instruction and/or some time with the pastry chef but perhaps they were waiting for us to ask? It all seemed very.... organic in its (lack of) structure.

Later, as we ate dinner it was interesting to see which things we had prepped ended up with which dishes on the menu. (Kiddo and my Mother in Law joined us but apparently it was all too much for Kiddo -- she and Hubby ended up eating in the room instead of the dining area). When it was time for dessert, I just asked to have that sent to the room as well and went down to see what was up. Kiddo was already curled up in bed.

While waiting for breakfast we went out and watched the waves rolling in along the shore but once we were done eating we basically packed up and headed back to town. On the way in, we stopped and waited in a big line with a few hundred people to get H1N1 vaccines (yes, I decided ultimately it was the lesser evil) since as of Friday it was available to the general public. It didn't take too long (just over 90 minutes from door to jab) and now it's done so I can bring my internal panic level down a notch.

Worst thing about this weekend? Between the standing in the kitchen Friday and the standing in line Saturday, my left hip is really sore.

Tonight, we decided to "take advantage" of Hillside Mall's special "Night before late-night shopping" event. The key was that it was ticketed entry only at $5 per ticket (kids under 10 free, proceeds to BC Children's Hospital) and there were oodles of door prizes, appetizers, fashion shows, etc. plus special sale prices at most stores. Well, lemme tell you, I feel like a rube. The place was PACKED. Like December 23rd, no-room-to-park packed. Insane. We took advantage of 25% off everything at the dollar store plus bought a few other things (most of them at Bolen Books where stuff was 10%-15% off) then got the hell out. Seriously, not worth the savings.

True.

2009-11-19T23:06:00.000-08:00

Somewhat related: Clients from Hell.

Work and other interruptions.

2009-11-18T20:09:00.000-08:00

Have I mentioned that work has been crazy busy of late? One of the digitization projects that has been coasting for ... well a long while ... has been bumped up to top priority, and with the stepped up timeline come a whole lot of staff who need to be trained to do (part of) what I do.

Last night, we went out to see Jann Arden in concert. I enjoyed the music (especially the songs off her new album, even if I don't think that "Free" was the best choice for a title) but really, truly wanted to take the teeny folding chairs we perched on and launch them into the sun.

This evening, as the wind and rain rattles the house -- enough of a worry that I brought out the candles and lanterns "just in case" -- I have been getting stuff done that got snugged in between the stuff I was supposed to be doing this month. Sigh. I was also watching CBS detective dramas (Criminal Minds and CSI NY) that were distractingly entertaining this week.

Speaking of distractingly entertaining....

Getting stuff sort-of done.

2009-11-15T19:35:00.001-08:00

It's halfway through the month so I thought an update on PeGeStuDoMo was in order. The book project is somewhat stalled at the moment. I thought I had a plan to deal with one issue but am not sure that I can make it work.

On the other hand, I did finish the one specific craft challenge -- a first attempt at catnip nunchucks!* -- and have written the specific tutorial (for reusable produce bags) but it needs some editing before I publish it. I have also made headway on the first of the three articles in the B section of the plan and published one of 6 FrugalVictoria articles (another 5 are in various stages from notes to ready to go).

I am not feeling very positive about my progress but I am still making progress so I suppose it's all good. We have some busy nights ahead (this week includes the Jan Arden concert and our Sooke Harbour House do-over) and I also have to squeeze in some prep for an upcoming craft fair... so the jury is out on how much I will finish!

*my only regret with the nunchucks was using a dark brown fabric -- it is unfortunately the same shade and shape as a kitty accident on the floor. Eww.

Just watch it.

2009-11-09T12:13:00.001-08:00

If you liked the Incredibles, you will love this short film. Totally worth the 6 minutes.

Scientific tangent

2009-11-08T09:14:00.000-08:00

I am making progress on PeGeStuDoMo -- yesterday I spent several hours adding content to the book and I have been puttering toward the other goals too -- but this post is not about that. It's about science.

Specifically, this tangential post is about chemistry and the periodic table. Kiddo has expressed a keen interest in chemistry (currently "chemist" is her answer to what she wants to be when she grows up) or possibly biochemistry (she has also showed a lot of interest in how medicines are created). However, that's not how we got to today's "awesome time-sucking and deceptively educational site of the day." We got to that site by way of a smoke detector.

The battery had started to bleat, so I pulled it down to change the battery (it's a model that clips into a base that is attached to the wall -- I like this design because I don't have to change the battery while standing on a chair or ladder). While it was down, Kiddo noticed the radioactive symbol on the side. I said it contained a tiny amount of radioactive material called, according to the label, Americium 241.

In the quest to find out more about how the smoke detector uses ²⁴¹Am, we came across the Los Alamos National Laboratory's Periodic Table of the Elements pages and spent an hour clicking and learning wonderful chemical trivia.

I read the page about Platinum (Pt) which got me curious about the precious metals market wherein I realized that I clearly have not been paying attention to the news**. Gold (Au) closed at about $1100.00 per oz this week! It reminded me that for years I thought I should be buying gold but never had enough cash. Look at this chart of the past 10 years. Crazy. And in case you are curious, compare this to Platinum, which closed the week at about $1350.00 per oz and Silver (Ag) (clearly the "poor cousin") which closed at about $17.50 per oz.

Oh, and all of this also reminded me that I totally want a periodic table shower curtain.

**However, this does explain the proliferation of ~~scam artists~~ entrepreneurs buying "your old gold" by mail.

November plan

2009-11-01T18:24:00.000-08:00

I have identified 5 areas where I want to get stuff done during PeGeStuDoMo (Personal Getting Stuff Done Month):

a. A non-fiction book I've been working on for just over a year -- slated to be an e-book I just need to finish and publish it on Smashwords (basic version) and Lulu (deluxe? edition).

b. Unfinished documents -- I've identified 3 documents that need to be finished; one tied to a 43 things goal and two tied to (potential) apps that Hubby may work on.

c. Craft projects -- one specific item, one specific tutorial, and some Etsy maintenance fall into this area.

d. Preparation and planning -- here the goals are a little more shady; to identify (and write?) 4-5 tutorials and to write 6-8 articles for Frugal Victoria. I have a few ideas for each but they are not well-formed yet.

e. Other -- for lack of a better term, these are other web-based goals; replacing all the short reviews on my Victoria Guide that were leftover from the upgrade, and writing two specific reviews that will take some careful thought.

Can I do all of that inside a month? Unlikely, but I can give it my best shot. I got a couple of books out of the library to help with inspiration and motivation and I have a good supply of coffee and tea in the house.

Falling back and such

2009-10-31T23:13:00.000-07:00

Since we still haven't solved that whole Daylight Savings nonsense, tonight we'll be changing a bunch of clocks (and the rest tomorrow). Right now, I am making the most of what is left of Halloween by watching Practical Magic. I stayed home to hand out candy while Hubby took Kiddo around the neighbourhood and then off to Oak Bay to see the bonfire.

She loved her costume this year -- Ahsoka, from Star Wars: the Clone Wars -- but was frustrated by how often she had to explain it. She had more fun earlier when she tried on Hubby's V for Vendetta mask:

(BTW, I saw several people wearing that mask yesterday among the many protesters in Centennial Square (some of whom later caused enough of a ruckus that the route for the Olympic Torch Relay had to be adjusted to avoid them).)

***

Bonus: linkdump!

Supernatural Collective Nouns by Wondermark -- I immediately bookmarked this for future reference and amusement.
Star Wars zombie art -- yeah, I think I am over zombies now... but this is still an amusing set.
Cell size and scale -- if you haven't already seen this, go look, play with the slider, and break your brain a little. Then show your kids. It's edutastic!

Oh, and if any of you are on Google Wave, let me know. I can't invite others (yet?) and I'd like to see if more people would make it suck less. (Right now, it seems kinda sucky and pointless.)

Starting tomorrow, it's PeGeStuDoMo!

Torn

2009-10-28T20:49:00.000-07:00

For the first time in a long while, I am absolutely torn on a health issue. Usually, I can sort my way through the hype, find some decent research papers and make an informed decision.

I thought I had done that with H1N1 -- I was pretty confident that this posed no greater threat than the seasonal flu, something for which I have never bothered to be immunized. I usually get a bunch of colds and the odd bout of flu every year so it never occurred to me to be concerned.

Now that I am seeing the results of this flu hitting people I know, making its way through my workplace and my city, I'm not so sure. Throw in the never-ending media microscope and FightFlu.ca, the Public Health Canada website I was accessing in order to send out info on the Union listserv and I caught myself in something close to a panic, trying to decide if I already had H1N1. Now I've read almost every document on the site plus a lot more around the web and mostly convinced myself that the vaccine is better than the virus.... and yet part of me is still torn (admittedly more about the fact that there may be some truth tucked in the sensation that the media is peddling.)

However, my biggest worry is Friday. We are planning to be in town to watch (and photograph) part of the torch relay and the protests that are bound to accompany it (Kiddo will be going to school as usual). My worry is that people who would otherwise stay home because they are sick and that's the right thing to do will instead be crowded shoulder to shoulder in order to witness a once-in-a-lifetime event. Sigh. I'll have to check my paranoia level Friday morning.

Almost got sucked in....

2009-10-27T20:10:00.000-07:00

I just managed to lose about a half an hour on YouTube... I got distracted looking at 80s ads then classic LEGO ads then I found this:

We had a good number of those sets (my brother now has them -- I got to keep the "town" LEGO sets). By the way, if you are in Victoria, did you know you can buy LEGO bits in bulk at Cherry Bomb Toys? They let you pick through bins and tuck the pieces into a plastic cup for $7. I got some nifty pieces last week....

Facebook Fix

2009-10-25T22:55:00.000-07:00

For those of you annoyed by Facebook's latest uninvited "improvement" -- i.e. the evil that is the News Feed versus the clutter that is the Live Feed, I'd like to share with you a way to fix it. Someone else posted this on one of the three or four protest groups which have popped up; his name is Russian (in Cyrillic font) so I really can't give the right credit here but he gets a big THANK YOU.

Basically, what you can do is step back to the way it was two "improvements" ago by making friends' status feeds your default view. Here's how:

1. Go to your main page. Probably it's set to News Feed or Live Feed.
2. Look to the left column, where your friend groups and apps are listed, click on "More"

3. Find Status Updates in the list and drag it to the very top. Now click on it to close the list and make it your default view.

And that's it! Now you don't have to choose between a jumbled list of postings and updates or an amalgamation of information overload. For now, at least.

Little Shop of Horrors Market

2009-10-24T11:58:00.000-07:00

Hubby and I are off to the Little Shop of Horrors from 3 p.m. to 8 p.m. -- we have a table at the Zombie/Halloween Market being held at Logan's Pub, 1821 Cook Street...

I'll be taking Creative Miscellany monsters, a few other odds and ends plus the Special Zombie edition of Bümfmag.

Drop by if you can -- say you saw it on Flotsam & Jetsam and I'll give you $2 off a minimum $10 purchase.

PeGeStuDoMo

2009-10-23T11:53:00.000-07:00

There's a buzz among friends and followers on Facebook and Twitter... it's time again for NaNoWriMo. However, I will not be participating. I tried, a while back, and it was ... painful. I'd been inspired by Star who had been so supportive of my writing and had suggested that I try it. I did, but life derailed the writing. As with so many of my projects, I lost interest and put it aside for a couple of weeks. I picked it up again at the start of December and thought, reasonably, that even if I didn't meet the challenge of NaNoWriMo, the story was still salvageable. I planned to email Star to tell her I was still working on the story but I didn't get the chance. I've tried revisiting the story a few times but I still can't quite approach it.

However, just because I'm not doing NaNoWriMo doesn't mean I can't set a goal or two... so I introduce to you PeGeStuDoMo -- Personal Getting Stuff Done Month. It's been a while since I really looked at my/our Big List o' Projects and it bears revisiting and revising. There are a few things near the top of the list that just seem to hover and I am determined to finish them even if it means (gasp!) turning off my computer for a few hours -- or at least disconnecting from the net. I am proclaiming November my PeGeStuDoMo because I still have sewing to do for Halloween costumes and other committments in the next week.

If I drift off tangent next month, please feel free to give me a virtual kick in the pants.

Zombies, zombies everywhere....

2009-10-21T21:33:00.000-07:00

Victoria used to be known, jokingly, as the home of the newly wed and nearly dead but I am starting to think it may be the home of the newly dead and nearly wed.

This year, the zombie walk has tried to go "legit" -- complete with permits and sponsors. They also chose to move the officially-blessed walk to Halloween day; in part to coordinate with the Comic Convention that is one of the primary sponsors (those in costume get in for reduced rate. woo). Unfortunately, this move pissed off those who think a zombie walk should be closer to a flash mob than a parade so they have organized a separate walk on a different day -- I am currently getting event invites for both on Facebook.

On top of that, there is a little thing called the Olympics. The torch relay starts here on October 30th and there will be plenty of protests to go along with it including, you guessed it, another zombie walk -- this one "in memoriam" for missing women, residential school survivors, those who have died at the hand of police, and so on.

Oh, and did I mention, a zombie craft fair, too? (it was supposed to follow the official zombie walk, hence the other date) Hubby and I will be participating in the craft fair; Kiddo and I are working on a special Zombie edition of Bümfmag for the occasion. I tried to make some plush zombie stuff... but so far it has been a "pit of fail"... but I will at least be there to keep him company and hawk his wares.

I think after October ends, though, I'm going to need some zombie-free time.

Tomato bounty

2009-10-17T18:05:00.000-07:00

So... for all my whining about my never-ripening tomatoes, we ended up getting a lot of bang for our buck. If you remember, we bought six (eight?) seedlings and also tried starting some from seed then got a bunch of seedlings from a friend, which resulted in a tomato forest in our garden. However, the weather this year was a bit weird and most people in the area had to wait a long time for any ripe fruit.

I got a bunch of yellow cherry-sized tomatoes off our plants and a few larger tomatoes that, once inside, eventually turned orange-red. However, last week, when the forecast threatened frost, I pulled all the remaining plants and harvested a HUGE mountain of mostly green tomatoes. We also got a couple of pounds of ripe tomatoes from the same friend who gave us the seedlings.

I found a quick-and-dirty recipe for pickled green tomatoes from Martha Stewart of all people -- basically just dunk them in leftover pickle brine for a week. I did that with about a cup of sliced tomatoes but then I went looking for other recipes. I finally decided to wing it after looking at oodles of recipes. I made two quarts last week and another three quarts today. I sure hope they taste OK... ;)

I put aside a few of the nicest tomatoes that remained then the rest went into a tri-colour tomato sauce -- I didn't measure at all and it came out a full quart.

So, we have two pounds of green tomatoes waiting to ripen in paper bags and about a pound of ripe fruit. Truthfully, I'm almost as tired of tomatoes as I am of cucumbers but I am still thankful for the bounty that my garden provided in the end.

I wanna flip camera

2009-10-14T22:23:00.000-07:00

Since I've started using Twitter for FrugalVictoria, I've found (and been found by) all sorts of other Canadian freebie sites including CanadianFreeStuff which is currently holding a contest for a Flip Video Camera that I would be happy to win.

There's also a forum at CanadianFreeStuff where you can earn points toward stuff based on your level of participation. If you sign up there, tell 'em "triviaqueen" sent you ;)

As with the other sites I've found, there is overlap but there is good info on all of them and I still feel like FrugalVictoria fits nicely into the mix. (Phew!)

Vacation's End

2009-10-12T20:18:00.000-07:00

All told, this was one of the best fall vacations we've had.

This time last year we had just moved in. It seems hard to believe it's been a year, so hard that until I looked it up on the blog I wasn't completely sure what day we had moved in (it was October 9th).

With the getaway at the start of the week off, we got back relaxed for the rest of our week off. We balanced some hang time with getting-stuff-done and some time with friends and family (though Thanksgiving was extra tense this year -- not sure what really was going on there...). Kiddo and I did some crafting together including a "rag doll with Coraline eyes" that she designed and we collaborated to finish:

Hubby made lots of headway on getting the new deck stairs underway (the "deathtrap stairs of doom" have to go -- the new stairs will go down the back of the deck, toward the apple trees and easier access to the bbq. It's the first step toward prepping for the addition.

Today, Hubby pulled down most of the weird carport skeleton over the driveway to reclaim the wood for the project, too. And you know what? I really wish we had pulled that sucker down earlier. After it was down, I moved and re-stacked the wood we had hastily thrown there, and our driveway looked pretty good.

We had an unseasonably warm and dry week, too; tomorrow we are expecting rain with frost forecast for this evening. We turned the gas fireplace on today for the first time in months and I decided I had best get in the last of the cucumbers (the vines were dried up anyhow) and pull out the tomato plants. There were 6 cucumbers left and I don't know how many pounds of mostly green tomatoes... I think I may try pickling them...

Back to work tomorrow. Sigh. At least it's a short (if busy) week.

Sooke Harbour House escape

2009-10-07T22:44:00.000-07:00

To celebrate our 12th anniversary, Hubby and I splurged and booked two nights at the Sooke Harbour House which is one of the top 100 hotels in the world, as voted by Conde Nast Traveller readers -- and it is in our back yard, less than an hour away.

And you know what? It was one of the best experiences I've had both for accommodation and dining, despite a major, though completely unexpected hitch.*

Our room included a large shower (large = half the size of our bedroom at home) and a private jacuzzi tub on the deck. Add a fireplace and a queen size bed plus high ceilings and lots of little extras and I could have been happy with just that.

Of course there is also a 5 star restaurant on site that specializes in fresh, local fare; the hotel is situated on the water's edge, not far from the Southern end of the West Coast Trail; and the hotel boasts an impressive and ever-changing array of art by local artisans and a big library, free for guests to use during their stay. They even offer small televisions and dvd players and had an impressively eclectic selection of films (including two we hadn't seen).

Would I go back? Heck yes, if our budget allowed. Would I recommend it to others? Absolutely.

And you know what? If you live in the region, you should go have a peek anyway -- through the "quiet season" (i.e. now) they have an open house every Sunday from 1-4; you can peek in the rooms (each one is decorated to a theme -- ours was the Phycologist's Study) and see all the artwork.

*We had selected the "Kitchen Adventure" package which included three hours in the kitchen with the chef and staff along with a tour of the gardens. Unfortunately, just a short time before we were set to meet in the kitchen, the chef was called away for a family emergency and the sous-chef was out of province and understandably unreachable. We were extended a gift certificate for a "do-over" of that portion, including another night in the hotel -- far beyond the minimal service I have come to expect from the hospitality industry in recent years. (I'll let you know when we take advantage of the do-over.)

October arrives

2009-10-01T21:24:00.000-07:00

I love October. Why?

Our anniversary is in October and I always take vacation to go with it.
I finally get to tell people to stop complaining about the rain, "it's October; it's supposed to rain."
The weather is cool enough that I can bake without suffering all evening in an overheated house.
Thanksgiving turkey and pumpkin pie.
Halloween means that when we put weird things on our lawn fewer people freak out.
It's close enough to Christmas that I don't seem wacky for working on Christmas projects and far enough away that I actually have a shot at finishing them.
October's colour is orange and I look good in orange.

thankful

2009-09-27T22:20:00.000-07:00

I just updated my Facebook status, "...is thankful for a slower Sunday, my family, my garden, my neighbourhood, photography, and popcorn." I should also add "and Eureka."

After yesterday's stress-filled day, it was nice to slow down. We went out for brunch (actually dim sum) this morning to celebrate a birthday and from there, things slowed down even further; we lazed around for a couple of hours before walking Kiddo to a birthday party. The party was held in a small playground just a few blocks from here -- I had no idea it existed before today!

Since the playground was at the edge of this month's Grid, we wandered a little further, trying to track down the house where I was born (alas, I didn't get a photo because I thought it was the house on the right, not the left of the landmark, Doh!) and found another park I didn't know about. Peacock Hill Park isn't much to look at, but the view... is astounding. While looking for more information, I found this panorama. I will definitely be walking back up there again.

Home again to process the photos we took. After retrieving Kiddo, I spent some time in the garden, harvesting some carrots and tomatoes and checked on the spinach and other fall/winter crops. Hubby made a lovely dinner, including some amazing ginger-glazed carrots while Kiddo watched Kung-Fu Panda. After dinner, we tidied Kiddo's room, did a few other chores, and then I curled up to watch a few episodes of Eureka with a big bowl of popcorn.

sigh.

2009-09-26T20:12:00.000-07:00

Today was more exhausting than a Saturday needs to be.

It didn't start well -- when we arrived to pick up a compost bin and the dirt inside it, we ended up disturbing a wasp nest. It was surreal -- the wasps just streamed out of the top and bottom of the bin, angrily buzzing and chasing Hubby who was the unfortunate one holding the shovel that made the fateful hit. He was also running toward Kiddo to get her out of the way but that meant they both got stung (8 between them). I managed to escape their wrath. Happily, we now know Kiddo is not allergic but what a crappy way to find out.

Things didn't get much better -- lunch sucked and we were rushed for the rest of the afternoon. One good thing: Kiddo is enrolled in more Science Venture stuff -- clubs instead of camps. Another good thing, I was reminded that Hubby is generally very good at dealing with crises, despite my ... uh... deficiencies in the same situations.

AAAAAAnyway.

Tomorrow is birthday-palooza (one family celebration, one party for Kiddo to attend) and then I have one week to work through before we take our usual anniversary-vacation. Which reminds me, we decided not to do the road trip now -- instead we will do almost the same route next spring when we head down to Drupalcon 2010, in San Francisco.

Here's a shot from this month's Victoria Grid Project grid:

I do love our city.

Car-free musical musing.

2009-09-22T08:35:00.000-07:00

Apparently today is World Carfree Day (memo to organizers, that looks too close to carefree -- I'd put in a dash). I took the bus today and Hubby is walking Kiddo to school but that's just the way we usually roll. I thought I would whip together a little video playlist for you on alternatives to car travel. Enjoy!

Good old-fashioned Garden City rant.

2009-09-21T20:22:00.000-07:00

To quote the Joker in Tim Burton's Batman, "This town needs an enema!"

Yeah, it's been said before but in trying to do our civic duty tonight -- just getting to the open house that City Hall was hosting on the ridiculously costly infrastructure project to replace the Johnson Street Bridge -- it took us about 4 minutes to get close to City Hall and 20 minutes to find a place to park. Even the nearby parkades were packed because of an event at the McPherson Theatre -- in fact one parkade was the biggest part of the delay as idiots blocked the road for no fewer than 5 traffic light signals trying to enter. We finally got around that mess and found a spot that was barely big enough to pull into but Hubby managed it.

The meeting itself was a mix of boosters, detractors, and people who wandered in off the street to get free coffee. Local media was there as were a few councillors (no sign of Mayor Fortin though. Too bad -- I'd have told him how hard it was to park on a Monday) watching a powerpoint presentation and looking at the same drawings that have been circulated for months -- all of which were drawn up by a UK based architect (what -- Victoria, BC, and even Canada didn't have an architecht available???). Council will vote this Thursday. I'd be tempted to go but they rammed through the funding issue at nearly midnight last time and frankly I don't have much faith in this council to do what its citizens want.

There has been NO consideration of repairs to the existing bridge, only talk of the $63 million (some of which may be a Federal Funding carrot) to build a new bridge (that may still be subject to a toll). We took Kiddo to put in her vote because she will likely still be paying for it when she is our age if she stays in the city.

After the open house, we decided to detour to Serious Coffee -- generally a great place to get a quick coffee. Unfortunately, it seems that their management does not pay staff long enough to allow them to properly clean up so they shut down the espresso machines and stop brewing coffee long before closing time -- tonight nearly 20 minutes before closing. To make matters worse, we had ordered a "child's hot chocolate" -- most places will steam this at a lower temperature or add cold milk to temper it. Instead it was scalding hot and Kiddo was brought to tears burning her tongue. At least when Hubby asked, they brought her some ice water. (She was still crying when she went to bed.)

On the way out there were four people headed in for coffee. Hubby told them, "They've already shut down" and they turned and left. While they might have put up with what the dregs left from the day's brew, we didn't think it was fair that anyone pay for that.

Further up the street, three bewildered tourists were trying to figure out where to eat. They were standing on Broad Street outside the fish and chips place that had closed for the night sometime between 7:30 when we walked past the first time and 7:50 when we returned. We directed them to the Irish Times Pub after explaining that the city kinda rolls up its sidewalks weeknights.

It comes down to this: if you can't find many businesses open and you still can't find a place to park in the city, something's broken and a new bridge is not going to fix it.

Cost of a garden

2009-09-20T10:24:00.000-07:00

The news is full of stories about the "new trend" of urban gardening and now people who have jumped on the bandwagon are now crying foul that they haven't got back what they spent. I never expected to get back what I put in the first year or two but once the beds are established, I should get plenty back.

Even this year, we did pretty well despite having lousy dirt (not soil, just dirt) and not really knowing how the light would (or wouldn't) fall in our yard.

Big winners:

two cucumber seedlings produced about 25 cucumbers
two zucchini seedlings produced about 15 large zucchini
two bags of onion sets are still producing, pretty much 90% success rate
radish seed tape produced plenty of radishes -- almost too many to eat.
carrot seed tape produced lots of carrots but too close together
potatoes each produced at least a pound of potatoes in return -- we easily got 12 lbs of potatoes
eight scarlet runner bean seeds produced many pounds of beans plus attracted hummingbirds to the yard.

Jury is out:

two eggplant seedlings produced only one eggplant but a lot of amusement and pretty flowers
a dozen strawberry plants produced few berries (two pints?) but those it did produce were ridiculously tasty
four summer squash plants from seed (we planted more but only 4 sprouted) produced about 12 small squash plus several that rotted or were eaten by slugs, etc.
a half-dozen peas planted from seed produced about 4 pods each -- not much but enough for lunchbox snacks
lettuce -- seed tape produced closely grown plants that were great for a while then all wilted at once.
six pumpkin seeds produced two plants which yielded three pumpkins, one of which rotted on the vine. However, they are pretty and will be useful for Halloween.

Big disappointments:

tomatoes -- lots of seedlings, some purchased, some given to us -- produced almost no ripe fruit.
edamame -- 6 seedlings produced some beans but not enough to make a side dish for the three of us plus I mistakenly left them on the plants too long and they dried there.
spinach -- I planted it too late and what grew just bolted.
peppers -- killed by the heat of the greenhouse because we didn't un-pot them and plant them in the garden.

For most of the summer, we haven't had to buy too many vegetables, just supplemental. I figure we got about $100-$125 in vegetables out of the garden after spending about $70 on seeds and seedlings (I'm not counting what we spent on dirt or materials for the raised beds). Not a fantastic return, admittedly, but the seeds we bought will last us through one or two more seasons, to be supplemented by a few seedlings. We have also tried saving a few seeds to plant next year.

The biggest value of course is not the actual cost of the food but knowing where it comes from and having the freshest possible food available.

Two Great Things

2009-09-16T17:52:00.000-07:00

Quite by accident today, I found two great pop culture things on the internet. One is relatively new -- discovered through Darren Barefoot's blog -- and one goes back a long way -- discovered by searching for "The Complete Works of Lewis Carroll" on archive.org.

The former is a series of video essays collectively called The Evolution of the Modern Blockbuster. This series is fantastic for anyone who was paying attention in the 80s. It contrasts two summers: the peak of Reagan's America in 1984 and the building unease with consumer culture and subsequent rise of Generation X's distaste for Boomer ideologies in 1989. Each segment is about 8 minutes long and is very much worth your time -- if only for the nostalgia factor.

The latter is my New Favourite Thing, a radio program called Crap from the Past (I kid you not). Basically, it is made for me -- pop songs that span the full spectrum of classic to oh-my-god-where-did-you-find-that?? It runs on public radio in St. Paul, Minnesota and the archive has shows all the way back to 1992, pretty much 52 shows a year. That's a lot. However, I fell in love with it immediately when I opened the show for September 4th and found a playlist that included Barenaked Ladies, Styx, Harlequin, Chris DeBurgh, Howard Jones, and Big Pig (the song featured is Breakaway but I think I was one of about a dozen people across North America that once owned the whole album).

Each show is about 90 minutes and is split into three parts. I listened to several shows at work today and apparently, it was exactly what I needed because I got a lot of really tedious work done.

Making Plum Jam

2009-09-13T22:58:00.001-07:00

After picking so many plums yesterday, I searched around for some basic recipes -- I found the perfect one at astray recipes, Italian Plum Preserves. Ten cups of chopped plums made almost 2 1/2 litres of jam. And it's really darn yummy, too.

getting stuff done

2009-09-12T17:54:00.000-07:00

Today has been a getting stuff done day. This morning, I brought in more bounty from the garden -- fruit and veg including about 9 lbs of plums. Looking for a way to store the plums I found that egg cartons work wonderfully and each carton holds between 14 oz and 1 lb of plums, depending on their size.

After that, Hubby helped to take down the canopy on the back deck (as we get closer to the rainy season, I wanted to make sure we took it down while it was dry) and helped get the table inside and downstairs. Then I attacked our mountain of boxes -- emptied some and moved others -- to make room for the table. It's in place, with part of the mountain underneath, and with about half the surface usable. Yay! I am however, too exhausted to take a photo just yet.

I had planned for crafting, too but I am really tired so I may just watch a movie. Oh, but speaking of crafting, check out these cute earrings our friend made using LEGO® bats!! I am debating whether I would wear them if I asked her to make a pair with clip-on posts.

Friday Free-For-All

2009-09-11T11:33:00.000-07:00

Yeah, it's Friday. It was a short week but in the name of all things holy it was busy. Packed buses, packed campus, crowded streets (I biked to work today, forgetting about the extra people, bikes and cars I'd have to navigate), and a task list four feet long. So here are a few things I found along the way to distract me from all that:

Clever anti-theft stickers -- make your bike or car look like it is a rusted out pos to deter potential theives.

Funniest thing I've read all week (though maybe not as funny for carefree, kidfree readers) was a post from ispuddle.com, "So then there was the preschool picnic." The blogger is also a writer who has published a number of youth and YA books plus one adult novel; I'll be looking for them the next time I am at the public library. (Hey, cool! We actually have some of the titles in our library! I'm gonna walk down the hall and grab em!)

From the "Huh. Clever." files is the promotional bike seat cover. I noticed these earlier in the week, blanketing every bike seat I walked past on campus, they were printed with the RBC logo. As clever as I think they are, I suspect they also pissed off a number of cyclists but not before the point was made:

You may be aware that I am a sucker for behind-the-scenes stuff: dvd making-of featurettes, shows that lay bare how stuff is made, and seeing the back rooms of almost any operation. So I was pleased to see this playlist from the NFB of 8 short films with a how-to theme.

Waaaay back, I had a website called Chronocide** -- filled with links to all manner of ways to kill time. One of those was to a novella-in-progress called She Hates My Futon by Craig Mitchell published on his personal site, My Boot. I actually enjoyed reading each chapter as it came out but he stopped writing it in 2000 and My Boot slipped under the virtual waves about 4 years later.

For no reason but the title popped into my head today, I searched for the novella through Google. The site is gone but someone helpfully collected the chapters and published them as a Feedbook (memo to self, download to iPod) -- after attempting to contact the author with no luck. Through the Feedbook page I found that there is a (small) Facebook group of people who want to see a conclusion to the story... so, Craig, if you happen to see this, what do you think? Can you give us an ending?

It may not be Edwin Drood... but it was a decent story and I've always wondered if she learned to love that futon. Probably not.

**you can see the remaining shell of the categories page here -- I imagine many of the links are now dead.

Your input is requested....

2009-09-08T23:31:00.000-07:00

We are plotting a potential road trip from here to Cupertino, California and back by way of Portland, Oregon. Along the way we are pondering stops in Eureka, Eugene and Redding. Is there any reason we should avoid any of those stops? If so, can you suggest an alternate option?

Is there anything we should try to see on the way there or back? We won't have a lot of room for detours because we are trying to do the whole trip inside a week. We will have a full day in Portland, though it will be a Sunday.

Thoughts?

Bag of holding completed

2009-09-07T20:38:00.000-07:00

After uttering many, many curse words, ripping a few seams, and acknowledging my defeat at the hands of what looked like a straightforward pattern, Kiddo has a new messenger bag.

Unfortunately, I failed to read the instructions properly and ended up boxing the corners three inches from the edge instead of three inches across. The resulting bag is much boxier than it should be but at least it is consistent. However, it may not fit her agenda which was the goal. OOps.

The other big fail? Poor choice of fabrics. The main fabric is heavy and slippery and frays easily; the poly-cotton tshirt was too stretchy; and the cotton I used to line it all was thin and slid away from the main fabric. Grr.

Aside from the unintentional cornering modification, I made one other change to the strap. Due to the various qualities of the main fabric, sewing a quarter-inch seam along a four inch wide piece of that stuff was very tricky -- tricky enough that I eventually gave up, cut a piece 8 inches wide and folded the edges into the middle then folded it in half. The finished strap was a full two inches wide.

In the end, I am happy to have finished the bag but content that I will not be attempting anything similar any time soon. Happily, it is functional which means it is not going to be sent to Craft Fail either. Besides, Kiddo seems to like it.

Cabins are good.

2009-09-06T20:33:00.000-07:00

For the past few years, we have been invited to a family get-away at a camp up-island (with Hubby's extended maternal family) and this year we were able to go -- my only concern was that we not have to camp in a tent. Happily, we didn't need to; there was a cabin available.

As a family, we seem to like cabins and as compact as this one was, it suited our needs:

We spent most of our time in the lodge with the rest of the family but this provided us two little bedrooms, our own kitchen, and a private bathroom we could call our own for a couple of days.

The weather was a little random -- plenty of heavy showers and lots of wind early on Saturday morning -- but we had a little time to explore the grounds and the adjacent beach. I even helped Hubby collect some shellfish.

My favourite thing was the built-in mini-golf -- nine little holes of astro-turf goodness.

With all the Douglas Fir cones, needles and branches, it was a bit challenging. My best round was 23. Kiddo loved the trampoline and the strange tire sling swing ...

Lovable Labels

2009-09-02T23:50:00.000-07:00

September is ~~around the corner~~ already here which means parents everywhere are getting everything ready. One of the biggest tasks is making sure everything is labeled! School supplies, lunch kits and containers, clothes, and anything else that might be put down anywhere on school property. Since Kiddo wears a uniform, it's especially important for us to label her clothes -- last year she lost two cardigans which cost almost $30 each. Ouch.

Faced with this task, I jumped at the chance to review a Back to School Mega Pack of labels from Lovable Labels! The pack includes shoe labels, sticker labels (not shown; same style as mini-labels but larger), mini labels, clothing dots, binder labels and mini metal tags:

For the trial pack, I was able to select a colour (Kiddo chose black), an icon (UFO), and get the labels printed with her name.

Last year, I had bought labels from another company -- Stuck On You -- and while there are similarities, their clothing labels were iron-on. They worked great on everything except the knit cardigans so I was curious to see how Lovable Labels' clothing dots would work.

Happily, they seem to work well once you get the hang of sticking them on (or in my case, peeling them off the backing sheets). The labels are a very thin vinyl (or similar plastic) that is easy to fold back on itself but after the second time that happened, I figured out a better way to approach it. My other issue with the dots were that there were very few pieces of clothing on which I could use the large size; I'd have preferred more of the smallest size instead. The nice thing to note about the clothing dots is that the care or content labels can be snipped off when passing clothes on to siblings or other families.

The small labels fit nicely on school supplies (again, they are the same material and can fold back on themselves if you aren't careful) -- we even put one on each pencil crayon -- and on other items, like lunchbox plastics. Aesthetically, I would have liked clear labels for the plastic goods but the coloured labels do stand out.

Overall, I was very happy with the number and variety of labels in the Back to School pack and the physical flexibility of the label material (especially noticeable in the shoe labels which conformed nicely to the shape of the shoe). I really appreciated the small metal tags, one of which is on Kiddo's backpack and the other on her pencil case.

If you are thinking of buying school labels, Lovable Labels has been kind enough to offer you (my readers!) a discount code, good for the next two weeks. (I believe the discount is specifically for the Back to School Mega Pack from www.lovablelabels.ca.) When you place your order, enter the code "dewolfes" to get 10% off!

NOTE: The Back To School Mega Pack is only available until September 30th.

Here's a direct comparison between Stuck on You and Lovable Labels; I think you'll agree that the better value is the Lovable Labels pack:

Stuck on You Label Pack, CDN$49.95	Lovable Labels Back to School Mega Pack, CDN$44.95
25 small vinyl labels 20 shoe labels 25 clothing transfer labels (iron-on) 2 plastic bag tags.	15 sticker labels 60 slimline labels 48 press and stick clothing dots 16 shoe labels 2 mini metal tags 5 book/binder stickers