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.