Come, join us

A couple of weeks ago, I was lunching at work with Deanna (the college's associate archivist). She was enjoying some cinnamon raisin bread that looked good, and I said so.She looked at me, thought a moment, and said: "Would you like to try some?"

I tried a bit. It was delicious. She said: "Sue in periodicals told me about a new way to make bread and I tried it. Go to you tube, search for 'no knead bread.' Then you will understand."

And so I did, and it did look amazing -- 5 minutes' prep the night before, 45 minutes in the oven in the morning, and you have delicious crusty bread. I immediately forwarded the link to G, writing "We have got to try this." Deanna came by, and I told I checked it out and she said "Right? I tried it and now I do it all the time." You do need a dutch oven, though -- Deanna offered to lend me hers so I could try it out.

Well, we had some "Kohl's Bucks" left over (Canadians: translate to "Zellers Bucks") and so G went out to get a dutch oven yesterday. Over lunch yesterday, I told mentioned to a group of colleagues that we had got the dutch oven for the "no knead bread," and they said "Oh, yes - the no knead bread. We're all doing it. It's wonderful. In fact, it's spreading like wildfire across the country." I had no idea!

Ken leaned over: "But you know who really knows about this -- Sue in periodicals. She's the one who's really in to this." Deanna, on the bus home that night, confirmed this: "Yes, Sue knows. She's found secret ways of making it even better." Sue in periodicals.

So last night, we gathered the kids around the laptop in the kitchen, and listened together once again to the video. "A six year old can do it" said one bald man. "Six? A four year old can do it!" said the other bald man. And so, we mixed the ingredients together, and put the bowl upstairs to rise overnight.

Morning, Sam woke us at 6:30 - "time for the bread!" We turned out the dough, put it in the dutch oven, baked for 40 minutes. (all these testimonials end with a money shot. Here's mine:)

I must say, you must try this. It's wonderful. It changes everything. Nothing will be the same.

It's delicious crusty bread, but I know it can be better. Deanna knows some tricks, but Sue is the one I must see. Sue knows the way to perfection. Sue in periodicals.

About that accent

In Canada, I occasionally ran into Americans who were fascinated by the local accent; at one point, I had some kids tell me "say aboot! Say aboot!" I knew from U.S. TV that Canadians were supposed to say "aboot", and so I obliged the kids, but I really thought that to be some cliche that didn't really exist -- except maybe in some corner of Newfoundland I hadn't heard of.

Soon after I moved down here, I had a neighbour ask what I was up to with the boys, and I said that we were "out and about", and he immediate exclaimed: "You're Canadian!" I guess this confirmed the existence of the "-oot", but I still didn't really know what distinguished "about" above the border. Maybe a lack of drawl?

Then, one day, after about 2 years of living down here, I was listening to CBC radio, and for the first time, I could hear the Canadian accent. It was an odd feeling, to hear your own pronunciation as strange, and I was left wondering if my ears were turning American (they're not -- U.S. pronunciations are still pretty clear to me).

For Canadian readers (hi Mom!) who are curious what this whole "aboot" thing is, um, about, with my newly minted U.S.-audio-sensibilities, I can now report first hand on the "-oot".

Canadian "about" is not "aboot" (that would be just silly) -- but it is something along those lines, more like "abau-oot", with the partial oo occurring just in the final moments before the t. Hope that cleared that up.

I hope to report on other quirks of Canadian pronunciation as I encounter them for the first time.

One in a million

You know, you generally live your life secure in the knowledge that you are a unique, singular individual; like a fingerprint or snowflake, you are Special. Others are Typical, people who fall into big social categories like cliques in a John Hughes highschool, and who follow, glassy-eyed and slack-jawed, various social trends and advertising appeals.

But you! You're aware of all this, much too post-class, post-race, post-fashion, clever and Special to be lumped in with the Crowd. And so, secure in your Special Position, you settle down on a Sunday morning to sip your cappuccino and enjoy the Sunday Times (man, I love the Sunday Times), and are confronted by the following advertising insert:

Oh my.

I'm so depressed, I'm going to have to get in my Honda Civic and head to the local mall to do some consolation shopping. And hey! Maybe the Apple Store has a sale on!

Marching on Harvard, dressed like a panda

It takes a certain kind of man to walk publicly in front of hundreds, probably thousands, from Tufts University to Harvard, dressed as a panda, fuzzy ears and all. Today, I discovered I am that kind of man. The occasion (as if one needs one!) was honkfest, a "revolutionary street spectacle of never-before-seen proportions" -- basically a good old fashioned protest parade with live marching bands mixed with floats. More of a good-natured dadaist freak-out than a "madder than hell" political protest, it was loud, colourful, cheerful, and loads of fun.

We were told to come "dressed like endangered pandas", which meant facepaint + black-and-white clothing approximating panda colourations + bandages indicating injury.

The group was called "Endangered Animals with Lipstick", and the float was a giant syringe marked "STICK IT TO ME BABY" riding on a hospital gurney, and the overall political message was something to do with health care, the environment, and Sarah Palin. For or against? Not sure, really. Whatever it was, we were mad as hell and weren't going to take it any more. At the end, Sam asked "Pat, did we win the protest?" "Yes!" I replied.

I was the designated flag-bearer, which meant that if I had any sense of self-consciousness whatsoever I was at the wrong place at the wrong time, as I was placed front-and-center. The size of the banner may have been some help in this regard, unless someone recognized my shoes. Here's me and Karl Marx:

(photo cc Chris Devers)

G and the boys followed up near the float. The crowds were thick along the full length of the march to Harvard Square, and there were many people with cameras; I am sure that a quick search on flickr will reveal many interesting artifacts.

In the end, lots of fun; the kids would have had a great time, if it they hadn't been frieked out by this guy, who was part of our group:

(picture cc kharied -- thanks!) See also some nice photos from a better photographer than I.

Remember when?

Remember when we went camping on the cape, went on a bike ride, and stopped for ice cream, and I was so excited because Orleans had saturated wireless service (before Google saturated the globe with satellites), and I was so excited to try out the then-newfangled netbook, and we had ice cream and cappuccino, and I posted something to the blog after snapping a picture.

That may have been one of the best days of my life ...

What lies beneath

Today I was digging a hole to plant a potted rhododendron in the back yard. The yard, it is said, was part of an old Victorian dump back in the day, and this would appear to be borne out by the amount of dated garbage I dig up every time I even scrape the surface.

This time, I hit what appeared to be an old plastic bag. Things got stranger when I saw that there was knitted material inside that plastic bag. Things got stranger yet when I poked the material with the shovel and found there was something hard inside that knitted material.

Now, I grew up in the pacific northwest at the time of Clifford Olsen and the Green River killer, and I've seen my share serial-killer TV shows, so -- while I knew the odds were against it -- I did immediately think that it was possible that this may be a foot in a sock, or an infant cranium. Meanwhile, Ben -- who was "helping" me dig the hole -- started whacking at the hard thing with a trowel, saying "Oh, a mitten! Look Patrick, a mitten!" I could feel the very beginnings of a panic onset.

I decided to do what any stiff-lipped, steely hombre would do; I went and got G., who just happens to have a passing professional interest in forensics, bodies, and The Gruesome in general. She looked at it, and said "oh", and after a minute of discussion I decided "we should see what it is". I also decided that she should be the one to check.

G carefully unwrapped the still-half buried fabric and -- sure enough -- it was a skull, probably of a small dog.

"Oh, good," said G. "It's not human" and walked away.

I filled in the hole, moved over a few feet, dug a new hole, and planted the bush there.

Rest in Peace, friend.

Chocolate and forsythia

Magic realism is hard to come by in the suburbs, but it can be found. On Monday, me & the lads took a bike ride to Borderlands state park (the park comes from an old estate -- the mansion & grounds are still there) and en route encountered the fabled Mansfield Chocolate factory.

 

Yes, it is an active chocolate factory ("Like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory?!" asked Sam).

 And -- so it is said -- you can always tell when it is about to rain, for the air in Mansfield smells like chocolate.

Here are some snaps of Borderlands in the spring:

 

... the last shot is of the estate swimming pool, build in the 1930s (now filled).

Gettin' dirty

Okay, there is apparently more to home ownership than clearing the driveway. We've begun to enjoy the pleasures of tilling our patch of earth which, by downtown Toronto standards, is huge (by suburban Massachusetts standards, about average).

While we did engage in some first attempts at gardening at York U and the Co-op (with some success),  the condo rental we've been living in subsequently had a strict "look, don't touch" policy when it came to landscaping. In all seriousness, to post a bird feeder required clearance by the board.

All that is behind us now, and we are free to kill whatever plants we want to. In scattershot fashion, we have planted hydrangeas, hostas, lilacs, forsythia, Rose of Sharon, pansies, a Japanese something-or-other bush, various woodland plants -- all before May 1. Seeing as how we don't really know what we're doing, most will undoubtedly die. But some will survive, and next year, we'll plant more of the survivors, and so on it goes.

Our crowning achievement thus far? Three veggie boxes, meticulously constructed by a certified engineer (thanks, Drew!) and overseen by Deanna (college archivist-come-taskmistress, who kept us going despite whines of "man, am I ever tuckered out" and "my hands hurt from hammering").

Thanks to you both! As someone who mostly sits with his head in the nebulous ether of computer-space, going out back and getting just filthy feels pretty darn good.

Campus life in the first world

As just overheard outside my office door:

Her: Oh, hey, how's it going?

Him: I'm okay. Tired. You?

Her: Yeah, alright. I'm doing some research on human trafficking.

Him: Oh, yeah? Wow.

Her: Yeah, it's really depressing.

Him: Yeah, I'll bet...

(pause)

Him: So, we should get together and party!

Her: Yeah, totally!

Bored on a snow day - the results? Art!

Last Monday was a snow day in which the boys and I were stuck at home for the day.

By lunchtime, we had emerged with our first feature film. Now I'm hoping the Oscars come out with a category for "Best picture based on the near-incoherent ramblings of a 5-year-old".

Zagat for the five-year-old male

Regular readers of this blog (both of you -- hi Mom!) may recall an early post on Norton fine dining, which featured a place called "Patty's". Patty's has since become a favourite with Sam, who regularly asks that we go to "the place with pancakes".

Out of curiosity, I asked him today why he loved Patty's so much. "Is it because of the pancakes?" I asked.

"No, not the pancakes", he replied.

"The breakfast sausages?"

"No."

"The eggs?"

"No."

"Well, why do you love Patty's so much, then?"

Sam sighed. "Because the bottle with the maple syrup is shaped like a rocket ship."

Home ownership so far: mostly digging

One thing that you can say about living in a condo unit: there is a lot less digging come winter. Where once we merely huffed about how long it was taking the bulldozer to clear up to our driveway, now we are responsible for clearing our driveway.

The driveway is stupidly wide -- allied tanks had less room as they liberated Paris -- and as a result, the shoveling job is somewhat onerous. And so far we've had 4 major snow-dumps. And, along with a shovel, I am the household snowblower. In that capacity, I have been doing plenty of blowing.

But no matter; it's really the only exercise I get for 5 months and I get to post a smug "I dug this" picture of myself on my blog:

Broke-my-back Mountain

  

Those piles are about 6 feet high. 

Does this give me macho-cred? Probably not.

 

Some gratuitous winter porn: 

just a reminder that winter really is lovely

A brief Montreal fling

A couple of days ago we spent a brief 2 days in Montréal to drop off G's Father at the airport and renew our visas as we returned across the border. Any excuse to enjoy Montréal at Xmas!
The next morning, we headed out amidst winter conditions through a route that took us through Vermont, New Hampshire, and northern Massachusetts. It probably would have taken us 6 hours had we driven straight, but we renewed our visas at the border just as a tour bus came through (we sat at the border for 3 hours). Anyway, the drive was gorgeous; here are some snaps. Here's the full Flickr set

Disturbing at so many levels

While reading a kid's nature book called "Creatures that Glow" I came across this passage regarding the Angler fish (which you may recall as the deep-sea fish with a flashlight from Finding Nemo):

During mating, the tiny male attaches himself by his teeth to the female. His body then fuses into hers--all that is left of the male is a small pouch on the female's side. The pouch contains the male's reproductive organs, which will fertilize the female's eggs.

Here's wikipedia's take on it:

When scientists first started capturing ceratioid anglerfish, they noticed that all of the specimens were females. These individuals were a few inches in size and almost all of them had what appeared to be parasites attached to them. It turned out that these "parasites" were the remains of male ceratioids [...]

When it is mature, the male's digestive system degenerates, making him incapable of feeding independently, which necessitates his quickly finding a female anglerfish to prevent his death [...]

When he finds a female, he bites into her skin, and releases an enzyme that digests the skin of his mouth and her body, fusing the pair down to the blood-vessel level. The male then atrophies into nothing more than a pair of gonads [...]

This extreme sexual dimorphism ensures that, when the female is ready to spawn, she has a mate immediately available.

Weird.

I'd better watch myself

We're settling into our new house and, by extension, our new life. It's kind of hard to deny that we have a certain commitment to our changed circumstances when you've just signed a 30-year mortgage. Anyway, it got me thinking about the last decade in Toronto, and a few flashbacks came to me:

• Port Hope, Ontario (a lovely small-ish town to the east of Toronto), I am walking down the main street with G., and saying "You know, I wouldn't mind living in a small town at some point. Something on a transit line to a city. Just to see what it would be like." "You'd hate it," says G. "Well, maybe. But would be interesting," I say.
• Antigua, Guatemala, 2005, I am walking the cobblestone streets with Cyp, an instructional technologist. "You know, I am thinking I want to get into this education and technology field. How do I go about that?" Cyp is offering some good advice; I would later apply for an Instructional Technologist position at Ryerson and not get it
• Toronto, probably around 2000, G. and I are musing over coffee, and I am saying "You know, I'd like to try living in the States. Just for a year or two. Just to try it out, see what it's like." "Well, you never know," says G. "You never know," I say.
  

Now I look at where I find myself; an instructional technologist in a small town in the intellectual heartland of the U.S., on a transit line to two major cities.

Before I do any more casual musings, I've got to start being very, very careful.

No kidding, Sherlock

This morning, amongst the mayhem of a typical weekday, Ben (freshly-turned 3-year-old) descended the stairs with his pants dragging around his ankles.

"I poo'd inda potty," he said, "... and took de lego OUT of the toilet."

Racing up the stairs with Ben under my arm, I hear G. call: "remember to wash the hands!"

Another truly gross moment brought to you by Parenthood™.

Harper vs Longoria

It's impossible not to get caught up in election fever -- unfolding now as I post -- even as a somewhat bemused Canadian (although, now that I am a resident, suddenly the election does seem a tad more relevant than it did before).

A couple of political aspects have struck me about the States. First, as everybody has noted, politics is far, far more passionate and divisive here than in Canada. The levels of hostility are somewhat alarming to behold, although I've mostly either observed them through the media or anecdotally. Truth be told, I have yet to meet an out-of-the-closet McCain supporter (they're hard to come by on Massachusetts Liberal Arts campuses), but I have heard one first-hand account of a woman in Texas reporting that a terrorist was parked nearby because she had seen an Obama bumper sticker.

People here do not vote Democrat or Republican, they are Liberals or Conservatives. Political affiliation is a far, far greater part of one's personal identity than in Canada. Combining this with the extreme emotions that have built up over the last 8 years has resulted in a weirdly intense climate that doesn't really compare to election time North of the border.

Enough about the divisive nature of the political climate here: other Canadians have blogged about this topic already, and better (this link points to a fascinating post from an American Liberal who finds his hatred of the Right to be approaching the bigotry and intolerance he himself opposes).

I though I would mention an aspect of all this that has really impressed me: people take their democracy very, very seriously down here. Not long after we arrived last year, there was an election for mayor of the town next to ours, and crowds of placard-carrying chanting supporters filled the downtown.

For the federal election, various state-level "propositions" are voted upon. Months prior to today, government-printed booklets with detailed examinations of the issues behind the propositions were widely distributed. Each proposition contained a (relatively) intelligent argument for and against (the online versions are here, here, and here). I have never seen anything close to such material in Canada.

Mind you, all the material and placards in the world does not result in informed voting or high voter turnout; nevertheless, I've been genuinely impressed by how democratic processes are (in some ways) taken more seriously here.

Plus, in terms of sheer entertainment, Election 2008 has been the best damn soap opera I've seen in a while. Frankly, comparing it to Election 2008: Canadian Edition was like comparing Desperate Housewives to CPAC.

Exotic local delicacies

A while back at work we got into a conversation about twinkies, and my American colleagues were shocked (SHOCKED!) and bemused to find that I had never had one.

(An aside: I think health Canada may have actually outlawed them. I do remember reading the comic book ads from the 70s advertising twinkies and Hostess Cup Cakes and wondering: cake? in a bag? How does that work?)

Anyway, to their delight and my horror they presented me with a real-life twinkie, all livid sponge cake and creme filling. I tried it and unbeknownst to me, somebody was on hand with a camera (thanks, Scott) to record the moment.

 

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, it is just that good.

Please note that it is evident that the kreme filling is not milk-based in any way, but some sort of petroleum product.

So was Goldilocks Canadian, or just a fairy tale American?

I uncovered another weird linguistic variation between Canada and the U.S. the other day. During an everyday discussion of "so what do you eat for breakfast?" with a colleague, I mentioned that I usually have porridge.

"You have what?" he exclaimed.

"Um, porridge," I said.

"That's hilarious! I've never heard anyone use the word 'porridge' before."

"Okay, what do you call oatmeal porridge?"

"Oatmeal!"

"Okay, and if it's not oatmeal, what do you call it?"

"Cream of wheat!"

"So, no one in the U.S. calls that kind of food 'porridge'?"

"Only in fairy tales."

Looking for a house, Part II

Today we checked out a real bargain — close to transit, decent size, enormous back yard - all for $240,000 (a good deal for Mansfield). We toured the house with mounting interest (a new addition with potlights, that's nice; a new kitchen, that's a plus; okay, the bedroom has wood paneling; we can work with that).

Inevitably, Beny has to use the toilet (I swear, for Benjamin house-hunting is the world's most potent laxative), so we go to the small bathroom off the kitchen. While I'm overseeing the process, I notice that the floor has significant sagging in the middle. What's more, small toadstool mushrooms are growing out of the middle of the bathroom floor. "That's odd," I think.

(Sorry, no pictures! I wished I'd brought the camera now)

Meanwhile, G. emerges from a tour of the basement with our agent, saying "Uh, you have got to check out the basement. Look up and to your right." So I finish up Ben and go downstairs to a dirt floor basement. I look up at the beams, which run under the first floor (including the bathroom). They are completely rotten; I can sink a fingernail into one easily.

It's a miracle the house is still standing, and we get the hell out as fast as we can.

Caveat emptor