Outtakes

Here are some photos from recent travels and sojourns. This is the Dotytron and T as another public pool/wading pool in our 'hood:

Some photos from our exciting adventure in stinky tofu land, aka "T & T Nightmarket":

My people love them some giant toast (see the "giant toast" dessert at Phoenix for reference.) This stand was selling toast fingers with all kinds of crazy flavorings - we got the coffee caramel one:

This place was selling store bought ice cream with some fairly pedestrian toppings. I think they were getting mad traffic because they hopped on the bacon bandwagon AND because of the cutesy graphics and names for items (my people have no resistance to the cutesy! None!):

We got a "ninja panda" - which is black sesame ice cream with condensed milk and sugared crushed peanuts. I got her to add some coconut - but this was pretty ho-hum all things considered:

Tuesday night's dinner was tuna macaroni salad with a raw beet, apple, and horseradish salad alongside some blanched beans in a sharp mustard vinaigrette:

This is a photo of the Big Yam rocking the very Frrraaanche swimsuit JSculls bought for him - he modeled it for the first time at our pool hang yesterday - looking pretty cute!

We had the outlaw parents babysit so that the Dotytron could take me out for an early birthday dinner. We went against our gut instinct (our gut instinct is to ALWAYS go to Guu or Guu Sakabar) and tried a new place in the neighbourhood, Le Canard Mort, which is owned by the same people who own Le Rossignol, also in the neighbourhood. It was so-so. The service was a little scattered and inexperienced. One of the servers was too busy chatting up a regular about inane things to notice that we were ready for drink refills and that we wanted our check. I also took the liberty of ordering a cocktail for the Dotytron and inadvertently emasculated him by getting something that didn't come in a lowball glass. I thought a gimlet was a classic, manly drink! How am I supposed to know?!?

This is the girl who didn't understand my neighbour's specification that she was bringing "punch for the adults" to the street party and started took three big gulps of what I thought was juice punch, only to INSTANTLY start to feel a little light headed. BECAUSE IT WAS ABOUT HALF VODKA. I haven't had vodka since an ill-advised trip down puking-vodka-cooler-on-my-friend's-driveway's-lane in grade 11. So of course I got all red-faced and my heart was pounding and I realized I very much DISLIKE the sensation of tipsiness and I yammed a million carbs to soak up the light mist of booze in my belly and went up to our bathroom to splash cold water on my face and drank a million glasses of water to flush out my system. The Dotyron insists that the paranoia of being the slightest bit drunk has a greater affect on me than the actual effects of the alcohol itself. It was precautionary - nothing is more unseemly than a drunk parent at the block party, am I right?

Le Canard Mort was so-so. Kind of ho-hum. We got the sweetbreads appetizer, which is served buffalo chicken style - breaded and deep fried and doused in a buttery-hot sauce. Pros: big chunks of sweetbreads. Cons: the sauce made everything a little to soft undermined the breading. This would have been spectacular if it was crispy.

We also split an order of the potted prawns, which featured chopped prawns swimming in a buttery, rich, cheesy sauce with toast for dipping. This was quite tasty, but you just read the description, so it's a bit of a no brainer. It's like the Obvious Mayor of Obvious Culinary Combinations-ville:

I ordered the duck breast, which, as you can tell from the photo, was delivered well over the medium-rare I was informed (rather smugly I might add) it would be served. I hate that. I hate when the server says to you, "Just to warn you, we serve our duck [lamb, salmon, pork, etc.] medium rare...are you okay with that?" and then they inevitably go over. Actually, it's incredible how that invariably happens - the restaurants where servers tell you that they serve their meat "medium rare" are the ones who have no idea what medium rare is or how to get a protein to that point. The "raspberry sauce" was terrible - literally a glop of barely cooked raspberries that had been mixed with the pan sauces and then pureed - like a glob of unnuanced jam on the poor, unsuspecting duck breast.

The Dotytron ordered the chicken cordon bleu - which he said looked like a melting owl:

True! This was okay. Again it was overcooked (you can see how the breading has separated from the meat because the meat has shrunk from loss of moisture) and under seasoned. The vegetables accompanying our meal though, were perfectly crisp-tender. The desserts were underwhelming to say the least: an earl-grey lavendar creme brulee, lemon shortbread with chantilly cream, and some chocolate banana cake. I am definitely in NO hurry to go back and we decided we should have gone with our guts - our guts filled with Guu. We ended up getting a key lime pie and a coconut cream pie from the Great Canadian Pie Company and scarfed it at home watching Friday Night Lights, which is still a damned perfect evening.

It was nice dining a deux though. I like that guy.

Today we're going to see the Dotytron's culminating concert and then doing some more cottage prep.

Fin.

Lit review

Marcelo in the Real World is high-calibre, genre-transcending YA fiction in the vein of John Green's best work. Marcelo has an Aspberger's-like condition that makes it difficult for him to interpret the nuances of conversational speech and also manifests in the ability to hear music that no one else can hear. Marcelo's dad, who has never believed that Marcelo has a condition, makes a deal with him that if Marcelo spends the summer working in his dad's law firm, he'll be able to finish out his high school career at the special-needs school he has been attending. When Marcelo enters the "real world" he comes up against the sad, complicated, morally ambiguous choices that come along with it, and has to navigate his way through the "real world" while maintaining his sense of self. The book is fantastic mainly because it represents the unique voice of Marcelo without speaking down to the reader or demeaning the character - and Marcelo is a great character. Funny, smart, empathetic. For any English teachers - this would be a great addition to the curriculum and I think there's a lot that you could pull from the book to make it work for a few grade levels.

Anthony Bourdain's Medium Raw is a collection of essays of food and the world of cooks. The Bourdain of 2010 is a lot more traveled, less bitter, and more moneyed than the Bourdain of Kitchen Confidential fame. With the fame, he's toned down the roiling machismo and hyperbole (some) of Kitchen Confidential and I devoured this collection of essays gluttonously - because few people write for cooks. This book is for cooks. The essay on David Chang, Bourdain's "Heroes and Villains" chapter, it's all for those who have known the sweet kiss of the salamander's heat and who have donned the checkered pants. The collection can be a little insider-y and name-checky, but that's just how he rolls now, and he makes a point of acknowledging his luck. His writing is on point, better now that there's less vitriol and his position is gentler and less about the adversarial dick-measuring contest.

Matched is being touted as the next Hunger Games - because everyone (read: publishers) are all desperate for the next Hunger Games. I liked it, but didn't love it. The novel takes place in a near-future America where all your agency, including who you will marry, your job, and how and when you die, are controlled by "officials." The protagonist, who is somewhat passive and lack's Katniss Everdeen's grit, finds herself matched to her lifelong best friend, until a blip in the system matches her accidentally with this strange boy, setting off a series of events that results in her growing realization that having EVERY ASPECT OF YOUR LIFE CONTROLLED IS KINDA FUXZ0RED. Like I said, the main character is kind of passive and annoying and her brain-fuxz0redness is kind of annoying, but it was still pretty good reading and I'm intrigued enough to want to know where it's going (it's going to be a 3-part series).

Jennifer Egan's A Visit from the Goon Squad won the 2011 Pulitzer Prize. This "novel," made up of individual chapters following a different character in a loosely connected web of relationships, is a deeply affecting work that exhibits both Egan's considerable writing chops and works as an elegiac, wistful, incisive snapshot of our times. It's difficult to describe - it reminds me of some of the best television writing around now - similar to Treme where you're dropped into a moment in a person's life that is about them navigating that moment but also stands in for where they've been and where they're going. It's not surprising that HBO picked it up to turn into a series - it's perfect for that treatment. The book follows people navigating the music industry in the late 70s into the next millenium - it's about being young, messed up, and growing into an older, differently messed up iteration of your younger self, with new responsibilities and decisions and regrets and small triumphs. I really loved this book and can't recommend it enough.

Getting ready for the cottage is nearly breaking me - but tomorrow SMckay is coming over to go swimming and brunching with me and the Big Yam so I'm super-pumped to go on cottage prep hiatus for that.

Fin.

Minute to win it

Sorry it's been radio silencio - it's been a real corker of a week. Preparing for being away for two weeks at a cottage with a bambino, and planning the street party, and an adjustment to the Boobla's bedtime routine, and the - heat! - resulted in me on Friday just out of sorts. I had a headache, my joints hurt from going too buck swimming laps, I was definitely dealing with a bit of sleep deprivation and basically ended up forcing the Dotytron to skip softball to look after me while I moaned and groaned and worried myself into a fit about having fibromyalgia or lupus.

Good news: I don't have fibromyalgia or lupus. What I DO have is a need to take things easy and not spend the hottest day in recent history schlepping around town to visit with my friend M and her baby, the Rev. Al Sharpton:

I also baked up a storm for the street party AND chose Friday as the day when I had to can my chipotle BBQ sauce in order to make room for all the cottage stuff I was going to be buying at Costco. My house was a sweatlodge. No matter - what made me feel infinitely better was Friday Night Lights, watched in bed on the netbook. Guys, this show is THE BOMB. The running joke is how the one pilot episode we watched was (is) a billion times better than the sum of EVERY Mad Men episode we've ever watched (endured). Mad Men is the BORINGEST SHOW IN ALL OF CHRISTENDOM. AND THEY DON'T EVEN GIVE US BOOBS. Worst. Friday Night Lights is the best. Seriously, the best. The characters, the writing, the depiction of small town America. So good. Such top notch TV. It's all I want to do now.

Saturday we hauled our butts up to North York to visit with my dad's sister and brother who are visiting from HK - my cousin hosted that side of the family:

After calling in advance to make sure my dad wasn't going to be there - we had a really fun time and it was great - considering this will be the most time I've spent with this side of the family since I was under 5. It did make me sad for what a dips**t my dad is - but I was glad to still feel a part of this family. We felt really welcomed and it was quite sweet.

Then the street party happened:

I was running "Minute to Win It" challenges for the older kids at the square table on the left. For everyone who pooh-poohed my Minute to Win It aspirations (*cough* The Dotytron *cough*) - let all you naysayers be informed: the kids went APES**T and mad hilarity ensued. I make a natural Gamekeeper (Hunger Games reference, what!) - mostly because I really, really, really ENJOYED being in control of the distribution of prizes and denying kids I find annoying whenever they got all whiny on me.

This is a photo of the Big Yam sporting his "loot bag" item (all the kidlets got a little loot bag). Isn't it the best? Dollarama coming through.

We had a lovely, long bike ride on the Leslie Spit this morning. I couldn't love the Spit more - it's seriously a marvel of urban conservation - it's basically a dump that's been turned into a conservation area and is now home to a bird sanctuary and foxes and coyotes and other urban wildlife awesomeness.

Now it's dinner with the outlaws and then hopefully the T&T Night market.

Fin.

Do you

The new favorite saying around here revolves around variations of "do you." As in: "Do me?!? Do YOU." Or, when I'm complaining about somebody/something the Dotyron likes to say: "She's doing her right now, you focus on doing you." LOL. Love it. Words to live by.

In good news: our Cleveland pictures came back from the ether!!! Huzzah! I've put them pon the FB - don't know how to put them on Google+ yet but when I do, they will magically appear.

We had Poh Poh and my mum over for dinner last night. I made us that grilled Vietnamese pork meatballs with rice noodle salad dish - nice and cool for a HOT day. For dessert I buttered and grilled slices of pound cake and then topped it with grilled figs and a maple-syrup sweetened whipped thickened yogurt:

It's hotter than a witch's butt out there today. I spent most of yesterday driving around to three (!!!) Canadian Tire locations on an agonizing search for air conditioners. First Canadian Tire was out of stock, even though the website showed in stock. They check their system and tell me to go to Canadian Tire #2 in North York, which purportedly has NINETEEN of the model that I'm looking for. I show up, and OF COURSE they don't have it. So they send me up to Richmond Hill where I finally get it, but not until I've wasted like, 3 hours driving around town dealing with inept retail staff. I was so mad I left a poop-filled diaper in the parking lot of Canadian Tire #2. They're lucking I didn't chuck it at the front doors.

Then we drove back downtown. I needed rice noodles to make the dinner, so since I already had the car I figured I'd break my usual, grocery-shopping-at-multiple-stores-on-the-Danny rule and go to the Loblaw's near my house to get the rice noodles and the rest of my groceries for next week. I have a full cart and I can't find rice noodles. BECAUSE THEY DON'T CARRY THEM. BECAUSE THIS LOBLAW'S MUST BE FREQUENTED BY RUBES. I was soooo mad that I left my full cart of groceries to melt in the aisle. WHAT GROCERY STORE IN TORONTO DOESN'T CARRY RICE NOODLES?!!!???? Brutal.

Came home super hot, super mad, super frustrated. Dinner with my mom and Poh Poh helped. That is until my grandma locked our bathroom door on her way out of the bathroom, thereby rendering us bathroomless. We tried picking the lock with paperclips for half an hour before I knocked on my neighbour's door and he went to town and busted the handle with a pair of vice grips. Lesson learned - better that it happen now before the Big Yam locks himself in one day. It's just the motivation we need to get those glass handles on our doors, stat.

I'm supposed to hang out with my friend M and her baby C today...but it might be too hot to do anything but loll around in the a/c reading books. We'll see. I'm also supposed to head out to get some grocery shopping done...but it's already hot as a mother out there, so I might avoid until tomorrow. I have a passel of book reviews to do - I've been reading up a storm and don't plan on stopping anytime soon, what with two weeks at the cottage looming. Wahoo! Two weeks, mother effers! Although I will miss my Dr. Rei something fierce.

I'm deep in the middle of trimming up my chevron blocks for my quilting project - I'd really love to take my sewing machine to the cottage if it was at all feasible...then I'd be able to get my quilt top finished sometime during the two weeks...hopefully. At this point, the car is so packed to the tits it's not going to be likely.

Fin.

Clevelanded

The good news: our car got fixed Friday morning and we eventually made it to Cleveland. The bad news: my camera ate all the bomb-a** photos we took and left us some pretty nondescript ones. Totally bummed about that, but what can you do.

We got there Friday evening (it's about a 5 hour drive sans baby, a 6 hour drive avec - so the equivalent of going to Montreal, but I would say more fun than Montreal). We had dinner at Otani's, which is this Japanese restaurant owned by my friend H and his mom, Auntie J - who is my mom's childhood friend from school. Otani's is AMAZING. I'm sure rolling up with the owners helps - but we had beef tataki, their famous volcano roll, big slices of hamachi and salmon, delicious scallops and shrimp from their teppanyaki side, uni with quail egg yolks, this Hawaiian roll with macadamia nuts and this jalapeno roll which was straight incendiary.

That night we went to this speakeasy fundraising night held by Ingenuity Cleveland - a non profit organization that funds the arts in Cleveland. It takes place on a bridge that spans the Cuyahoga river, on the part where their now-defunct subway trains used to run - so cool! The night was fun - they had drinks and people dressed up in period garb, a photo booth, a dj, some art installations....and black jack tables. Me: "How much is the table minimum?" Random dude giving me a bewildered look: "Uhhh...a dollar?" Dotytron and I bought chips ($5 for 6!) and went to town. By the end of the evening, the Dotytron was up like, $40 after a $10 investment, so we decided to "cash out". The Dotytron goes to the table where we purchased chips and watching from afar, I can see his growing confusion as the woman manning the table, instead of giving him money, starts counting out raffle tickets. When the Dotytron asked for clarification, she pointed to the SMALLEST SIGN IMAGINABLE that said "chips can be cashed for raffle tickets to be entered to win a $100 gift certificate to the Greenhouse Tavern." The Dotytron was none too pleased to say the least and H & A were cackling about how we got "Clevelanded." LOL! I have to say, it IS a very unorthodox way to run a charity casino. As we left, I pointed over to a dude playing at the table I had been at, who was playing 3 black jack hands at once and had amassed a stack of about $100 in chips, "should we tell him?" We decided that we didn't want to be responsible for his disillusionment and the recipients of his (justified, probable) ire so we slinked off into the night.

Saturday morning we checked out The West Side Market, which is their equivalent to St. Lawrence Market. Unlike St. Lawrence market, the West Side Market is much more representative of Cleveland and has a sense of place. The vendors lean towards the Eastern European side, reflecting the Polish and Slavic immigrants in the area. We picked up crepes, cupcakes, double smoked bacon, sausages, beef jerky, and pepperoni sticks galore. So good. Then we had a little driving tour of Cleveland and checked out their wee little Chinatown and the Cleveland Cultural Gardens. For dinner that night, we went to this Polish placed called Sokolowskis - which has been in business for the past 88 years. It's the kind of place where everything is served cafeteria style, which might be repugnant for those of you unfamiliar with the charms of the old style American cafeteria-style restaurant, but is manna from heaven for anyone who loves to eat real, home cooking. In true style, you grab a tray, and make your way down the line (desserts are served first, natch). I had a slice of coconut cream pie, picked my main (breaded pork chops) which came with 2 sides (beans and perogies), unlimited trips to the salad bar, and the best bowl of beef barley soup I've ever tasted, the flavour goosed by liberal lashings of thick cream. It was delicious. Found out later that this Cleveland institution has been visited by no less than Anthony Bourdain and John Oates of Hall and Oates fame. So good.

That night we watched Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2. First, the theatre where we watched it was initially having major problems with the sound - the commercials and previews all sounded like it was happening under water. Not good. The Dotytron, H, and I all went up individually and spoke with the useless tits at the theatre to complain and were assured that it was only the commercials and previews and that once the film started, it would be fine. Guess what? It wasn't fine. You couldn't hear the dialogue over a weird grinding/whirring noise and when we were whispering to each other about who would go up and complain next, we were actually SHUSHED by other people in the theatre! What freakin' idiots. We're trying to fix the problem here, you nincompoops!!! I couldn't believe those tits were shushing US. I was livid and of course I get all irate and in my head I'm all like - this complacency is how you end up going to war, blah blah blah. Anyway, they subbed the celluloid print for the digital one and then it was fine.

What wasn't fine, however, is the movie. I'm going to be liberal with my review so if for some reason you haven't read the books and don't know what to expect, then go someplace else. Also: you've had like, 10+ years to get this shiz done...so really? This film was a disappointing conclusion to the series, especially after the highs of Deathly Hallows Part 1. My principle critique is that moments of emotional impact weren't given the proper treatment, so you lost your investment in the events transpiring. What you have instead is a wooden race to the finish, where significant moments weren't highlighted. For example:

1) the battle of Hogwarts should be epic. The culminating battle is a well-worn cinematic trope, so there's no excuse for one done poorly (ie. see The Two Towers' battle at Helm's Deep for reference of a culminating battle done well). When the staff at Hogwart's first raise their wands into the sky to conjure the force field I was so adrenalized my blood was singing in my veins and I get goosebumps remembering it even now. Unfortunately, that initial excitement is soon quashed by the lack of attention paid to the battle. In the book, the battle sequence is when all these characters that you've grown to love over 7 hefty tomes all come out and mobilize together. Professors Trelawney, the creatures of the Forbidden Forest, the ghosts, the people in the paintings...anyone connected to Hogwarts both great and small come together to fight for this central symbol of the world of Harry Potter. What we got instead was a barely-there fight focusing too much on Neville Longbottom. It was such a let down.

2) The deaths. The death of Fred (or George) and Lupin and Tonks is a BIG DEAL. I cried in the books. What do we get instead? A glimpse of their dead bodies and a 10 second reaction shot of Ron Weasley. LAME!!! SO LAME! Lupin and Tonks I can kinda understand because their relationship isn't super-developed, but Fred (or George)?!!!???? Come ON! Their sacrifice is just as big of a deal as Harry's. Also - how the crap are we supposed to know that Lupin and Tonks already had their kid? Why bother mentioning it at all?

3) In the service of more emotional impact, I would have cut back on the scene with the whole Rowena Ravenclaw's daughter's interview on the location of the diadem. Seriously. We've SEEN ghosts do that whole, evasive-and-then-suddenly-shriekingly-angry thing before (see Moaning Myrtle). Why was that episode so long? Why was the sequence with Crab (or Goyle) burning down the Room of Requirement so long? Instead of that - how about more Battle of Hogwart's????

4) The epilogue. Worst. Hated it in the book. Hated it in the movie. So awkward. Don't need to see it. And you're telling me they STILL haven't gotten rid of Slytherin House?

5) Snape's memories in the pensieve bring me to TEARS every. single. time. I read it in the book. To tears. This is a character who's been with us from day 1 and this is how you do him in the end? By making him look like a fat, pasty drag queen with too much pancake makeup and eyeliner? By glossing over the importance of his patronus being the same as Lily's? By making his sacrifice for Harry (and really Lily) a rushed montage afterthought? SERIOUSLY?!!!???

6) Anyone who cares about Ginny and Harry's relationship raise your hand. *sound of crickets* Exactly.

Anyway, I was disappointed. These were things that could have easily been fixed to give us the movie that us Potterites deserve.

We left the Big Yam with A's mom, who provides babysitting services as part of her retirement. The text message we got from her at 9:10pm (about an hour past T's bedtime) showed a photo of a beamingly happy Big Yam climbing the couch and giggling a gap-toothed smile. When we got home, we found out why, as A's mom reported that she gave him THREE BOTTLES of milk and let him finish all the Cheerios (about a cup's worth). LOL! The Dotytron was a little concerned about the fact that he had quadrupled his before-bed intake and I was a little concerned about my breast milk surplus being wiped out, but as I told the Dotytron: when someone else is watching your kids for you, you kind of have to let that shiz go and let them do whatever keeps them and the baby happy. Just gotta go with the flow.

Sunday morning H & A cooked breakfast and then we napped and then headed to Michael Symon's burger bar, B Spot. Delicious. We split an order of amazing onion rings (so crispy!), twice fried skinny frites, their namesake Lola burger, a fried bologna sandwich, and some beers (they had a beer called Brother Thelonious!) I had a vanilla-apple-pie-bacon shake. So good. Thick vanilla ice cream with apple pie blended in and topped with crispy bacon bits. B Spot also has a full service pickle bar and a suite of homemade sauces for topping your burgers. It was really good. Then we walked around this quaint little town called Chagrin, which is where all the Cleveland rich folk live. Lots of pokey antique stores and high end boutiques. We sampled ice cream from Jeni's which serves bougie ice cream flavours like goat cheese & cherries (so good!) and brown butter almond brittle (also really good!). As we were backing out of our parking spot, H's car got honked at, and he wigged out. He was all like, looking back, and opening his car door to lay some smack down, until we looked back and realized it was an OLD LADY - like giant polarized shades, dyed hair, barely could see over the steering wheel, rich, leaving her inheritance to her cats old lady. So the running joke became about how H almost fought an old lady.

We ate our last meal at Skyline Chili - an Ohio institution that started in Cincinnati. Basically it's variations on chili, served either with cheese, with onions (3 way) and with beans (4 way) on a limited number of bases: coneys (hot dogs), spaghetti, baked potatoes, fries. The log type thing in the second photo is a burrito (filled with spaghetti) and topped with the chili, cheese, etc. It's kind of trashy but also hella delicious. It's also a quasi-fast food joint with table service. Keeping it classy, Cleve.

We spent our last night in H & A's backyard, with a fire going, playing games and with the boys smoking cigars and shooting the shiz with the sparking light of fireflies in the dusk. We also had a cupcake tasting and a Handel's ice cream tasting.

These guys are totally our doppelgangers. H's scotch and cigar collection is insane, he's a chowhound like we both are, we travel the same way, AND H just sent me his excel spreadsheet bugout bag list for emergency preparedness. LIKE IN CASE OF THE APOCALYPSE. It's serious and insane and I was thrilled (thrilled!) to find a kindred emergency preparedness spirit. The Dotytron (on the drive home, of which bugout bag/emergency preparedness talk make up 95% of all conversation): "I wasn't sure whether the bugout bag talk was scaring you or motivating you" (it did BOTH, people!) A believes in the power of vinegar as the solution (double entendre) for all things AND is notable for her dogged determination to always do what's right. Not what's easy. Not what's quick. What's right. Love that. They're total nerds like we are.

Can't wait to go back to the Cleve. I'd love to do a Harvey Pekar tour and not go to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame again. Plus, there's still so much to eat!

Massive heatwave in the Tdot right now. Staying cool is the name of the game.

Fin.

Fail.

1st try getting to Cleveland - fail. We're on the Gardiner, in Mississauga, lunch packed (Italian cold cut sandwiches with lots of butter, cherries, butter tarts, ice cold water, chips), tunes blasting, when the Dotytron feels the Captain shift into a higher gear and suddenly we're running at 4000 RPMs. So he pulls off at the Erin Mills Parkway exit and slows down to get it to shift down, and then the car dies. Just stops dead. He tries to turn on the hazards and it makes a weird grinding noise and then everything kaks out. Can't turn the key in the ignition, can't change gears, nothing. We're stuck in the middle lane of the off ramp on a bleeping hot day. We call CAA, he stops traffic so that me and the Big Yam can climb out of the car and wait in an Eggsmart, and then the Dotytron proceeds to deal with shadesball tow truck drivers.

Why are tow truck drivers such lowlifes? Tow Truck Driver #1 (TTD1) shows up, pulls in front of our car, gets into position, and tells the Dotytron that the OPP are going to show up any minute now and will consider the car stopped in the middle lane a safety hazard and will make him get pulled to the shoulder. TTD1 says that he'll cut the Dotytron a special rate to pull him to the shoulder now, but that if he waits until OPP makes him pull over, then he's going to have to charge him full price. Dotytron reports this back to me 'pon the celly and I tell him, "Tell him to go F**K himself." Then, Tow Truck Driver #2 (TTD2) shows up and says to the Dotytron, "Listen, I know TTD1 and he's a crackhead. An actual crackhead. He just sits in his house all day, listening the scanner, waiting for the call. Then he'll take your money, immediately go buy a rock, and then sit doing crack all day. I'll tow you to the side of the road FOR FREE just so TTD1 doesn't get your money." LOL!!!!!!!!! How hilarious is THAT?!??? Then OPP does show up and is saying that TTD1 is already in position and Dotytron's explaining the situation about how TTD1 wants to charge him and TTD2 will do it for free and OPP says that he's aware of the long standing feud between these two and the problem is that TTD2 isn't licensed to tow on the highway (even though we were stopped about 6 feet from Erin Mills Parkway - gah!) and just when things are about to come to a head, CAA shows up and tows our car to our mechanic.

What a shizshow. Meanwhile - Bruce Wayne shows up and gives us all a lift back home. So we stayed home and hung out with the neighbours and I drowned my sorrows by eating 4 (FOUR!!!) hot dogs and half a box of KD. And then we walked to Ed's for ice cream. Needless to say, I watched the final episode of season 2 of Treme feeling VERY thirsty. Haha.

We're hoping our mechanic can have us back on the road (apparently our alternator is blown) and then we'll stay an extra day so that this entire weekend isn't a write off. I just really didn't want to be in Toronto this weekend and moreover, was REALLY looking forward to hanging with H & A.

Fingers crossed.

Tempting the fates cautionary tale - because I'm a novice driver and fear cars, I'm always freaking out whenever I hear the slightest rumble/creak/whathaveyou in the Captain. The Dotytron is always saying that I'm "irrational" and "if something's wrong with a car, you'd know - it appears gradually, it doesn't just die in the middle of road while you're driving." After yesterday, I'm all like, "SEE! SEE!!!!!!!!!" *a million fingers stabbing in his direction*

Ai ya.

Fin.

Done.

For realsies this time. Finished my final take home exam for my Public Accounting and Finance course, which was as scintillating and uninformative as the course title would suggest. It's kind of alarming how many paragraphs I can fill with sound and fury, signifying nothing. Worked hard on it all day Monday and Tuesday and now I'm DONE! So now I can embark on my weekend in good conscience. What's that you say? The weekend is still three days away? That today is only the proverbial "hump" day? FALSE! My weekend starts today - with a trip to work to celebrate a colleagues 60th birthday (and to eat cake for breakfast!), a visit from Lolly and JSculls (with sweet baby V in tow) so that we can loll around by the pool and eat brunch and otherwise be ladies of leisure, and the inaugural meeting of my Knit Club tonight.

Knit Club features a lot of overlapping members of Academic Book Club - except this time, we bring a crafting/sewing/knitting project and sit around flapping our gums and getting work done at the same time. Fun! I'm toting my sewing machine to start piecing together my blocks for the chevron quilt I'm making for the Big Yam.

A Big Yam, who, quite possibly, is lagging behind on his fine motor skills. We took him in for his 9 month well baby visit (no shots!) where our Doctor asked me a series of questions about his development. He's killing it on the gross motor skills front - crawling, he's been pulling himself up to standing for a while, etc. But fine motor skills? I dunno. Pincer grip? Not so much. Passing an object from one hand to the other? Meh. Putting his arms up to be picked up? Nope. Although I have to say, those skills seem pretty arbitrary. Take waving "bye bye" - we just don't have much of an occasion to do that around these parts. We don't leave him on a regular basis with other people. He's with me all the time! We're past the point of saying "hi" and "bye" - it's like waving hi and bye to your roommate. It just doesn't happen. The Dotytron thinks that he passes an object from one hand to another, but I haven't seen it. And when he wants to be picked up, he crawls over to us and hoists himself up, looking cute. Why isn't looking cute a fine motor skill?

Monday was a bit of a rough day. I was feeling stressed about the pinch on our finances, about some drama with my bros, and to cap it all off, I received a letter from my bio dad saying that after the series of dramas we've been having for the past few months (which I had thought we had come to a workable resolution to at our last in person meeting in early July), his wife had informed him that that she would divorce him if he continued to see us and that the stress and upheaval weren't worth it to him. So I guess I'm effectively estranged from my big poose of a bio dad. And the Big Yam will have seen him all of one time in his life, and that when he was less than a month old. Ah well. It's not like the Big Yam's missing much. I will say that at our last meeting, when I questioned why my dad wanted to be involved with us at all, seeing as how his interest in us was diffident at best, he said that he wanted to keep tabs on the Big Yam because from the first time he saw the Boobla, he could read his future on his face (there's a Chinese expression for it) and that the Big Yam was/is/will be destined for a "remarkable" future and remarkable things. When he said that, I flashed to images of the Big Yam looking like this:

and like this:

and I was like, "remarkable? Really?" LOL. I'm kind of sad about the whole thing - I think it's unfortunate but ultimately, it's my dad's loss. I feel sorry for him and his sad, lonely life, where these are the kinds of choices you make.

Onto a happier subject: tomorrow we're leaving to visit H & A for a long weekend in Cleveland! Yay! H has apparently planned our weekend down to the minute. According to him, Cleveland is actually pretty cool (for a weekend) and he wants every second to count. Friday night we're apparently going to some 20s style speakeasy party under a bridge. How cool is that? Love those guys - can't wait! Road trip!

Onto even more happier subjects: dinner! Tuesday night I made us a seared steak caesar salad:

Last night we had breaded and fried tilapia fingers with homemade tartar sauce and a red cabbage/scallion slaw:

Tonight the plan is lamb burgers with some kind of salad.

Fin.

Yowza wowza.

Busiest summer weekend to date. Holy cats, this was epic. I'm going to recap things chronologically. Thursday night's dinner - torched salmon sashimi rice bowl with spicy mayo, based on something I ate at Guu Saka bar. There, they make these little cream cheese balls and then lay a thin slice of salmon on top and torch it with a blowtorch so that it's lightly seared - the singed tips of the salmon chunks have a deliciously charred flavour, which contrasts really nicely with the cool, limpid, raw salmon underneath. Delicious!

Friday night we had softball (we won! Finally!) where we broke our diamond 2 curse (we consistently get placed on the s***iest diamond in this park and lose every game), but only because we were playing on a new diamond. The rest of the games are on diamond 2, so we'll see how we fare. I'm turning into quite the second baseman, if I do say so myself. I like playing the same position because it's a lot easier to learn the game this way - I only have to think about certain plays and get my reflexes in gear for one position, instead of switching it up all the time. Second base is perfect for me because I don't have the arm to get stuff in from the outfield in time - although I do miss catching those pop flys. I'm also helped by having the best rover possible backing me up. I also tried my hand at pitching for the first time - we have a rotation of 3 pitchers but if the batting order is just so, then they get called up and we're screwed - so I pitched one inning - it was pretty boss. I feel like my bocce experience helps me and I did pretty good - it's kind of a big deal because none of the other teams have female pitchers.

After the game we went to our teammates' B & M's condo for a bbq. This is what it looks like late Friday, after a few hours of drinking on the diamond and drinking at a bbq:

Sloppy. Late night for us and the Big Yam. Saturday morning woke up at the crack of dawn to put together final preparations for demo day. It was epic and heart-warming in equal measure. Dudes from the street came to lend a hand with tools and smashing stuff, compelled by the seemingly genetic guy-need to smash things to smithereens and to make things with their own two hands. The delivery of the disposal bins created much interest on the street and everyone came together to lend a hand. Tillers, Uncle Jesse, our Discerning Coyote friend, B, Gaz, and this guy Big Dave together took down our deck roof and the raccoon brothel/former sweatshop that was our garage. Here are some before and afters:

Crazy, huh? It's so spacious back there! Nevermind that we're probably going to rebuild a shed/studio for the Dotytron over the space, for now, we have a prime location to hold cock fights or to put a rusted down Trans Am up on blocks. We can make an ice rink in the winter or an outdoor kitchen in the summer. It's pretty great and already makes the space so much nicer and more usable. We can't thank those guys enough.

While the Dotytron was heading up that operation, I was representing our family at a party for the Dotytron's Uncle's 1 year anniversary of receiving a kidney transplant (kidney donated from his sister). Truth be told, I think I had the harder job - hanging with the outlaw family all day in the sun with the Big Yam. I did miss smashing things but it was nice to see the family. So we were gone all day up in Aurora from 11:30 until 6pm. I came home, packed up a dinner for the Big Yam and then toted him to a housewarming party for our friends M & M, who bought a place around the corner from us. Stayed there for an hour and then got picked up by the Dotytron for an impromptu dinner with our friends B & G and S & P at Aravind on the Danforth. The restaurant specializes in southern Indian, specifically Keralan, cuisine, which is VERY different from a lot of the northern Indian and Pakistani food that's de rigeur in Toronto. Much lighter, lots of seafood. The food was prepared with care and attention to plating (rare for Indian cuisine, I find), and served al fresco on a lovely, private patio out back. It was a great way to end what had been a VERY long day. Big Yam was a trooper beyond compare.

That's my crab cake appetizer and the Dotytron's pickerel main with cassava. So good! We were both EXHAUSTED by the end of Saturday. We had each put in a very long day, but I'm so glad we got to end it by having a nice dinner out with dear friends. I love those guys.

The name of the game on Sunday was sleeping in, eating Swedish pancakes and bacon, cleaning the house, tidying up outside, hanging with the neighbours, and putting the fake tattoo that comes with our box of freezies on the Boobla's chest - so badass. As Hanbo pointed out, the freezie mascot looks like old skool Chris Bosh. Then Dr. Rei and Hanbo and Dr. Rei's bro came over for a swim and then Bwong came over and we hit some balls with our Louisville slugger and played catch at the diamond and then met up with the Roomie for dinner at Florida's on Pape - which is a classic Greek diner style place where they do rotisserie lamb and pork and sell it by the kilo and serve beer in little glass cups. Super cute, kind of divey, but a fantastic dinner deal

And that, my friends, was my weekend. Now I've got to catch up on a million things - calling daycares, filing, finishing a stupid take home exam for my stupid program, getting details in order to go to Cleveland, etc. etc.

Fin.

LL Cool J goes swimming!

Here's a shot of the Big Yam on a family swim...we call him LL Cool J when he wears this sun hat and the brim is down over his eyes:

I've been plugging away at my take home exam these past couple of days. Part 1 is done, Part 2 I'm going to start tomorrow or during afternoon nap today. These past few days have also been about resigning myself to the fact that we're going into debt this summer - maternity leave top up well has run dry and the Dotytron is back to his meagre half-time salary with no possibility of supply teaching gigs to top him up. We saved a good chunk of change, but that's basically all going towards stuff for the Big Yam (I spent $100 on baby gates!) getting our car fixed up for our upcoming Cleveland trip, and the other life stuff that you need to spend money on. It hurts my frugal soul, but what can you do? I'm not even thinking about the tuition payment in September or my pension payments for the time when I'm not getting topped up. Things are looking pretty grim.

It does look like the Dotytron has wrangled enough hooligans to help us demo our garage and the roof of our deck this weekend. You can tell he's a bit nervous about it - he keeps looking for an out (which I'm not giving him.) If we're going to undertake any home improvement this summer, getting rid of the raccoon motel that is our garage is a good one. Then hopefully next year when we've begged and prostrated ourselves before the bank for more money, we can do our kitchen and deck/fence!

In other news: I've started cutting out squares for the quilt I'd like to get done as my summer project. It's going to be a chevron quilt for the Big Yam, in bright orange robot/rocket fabric (from the same line as his crib bumper).

In other other news, my bike kakked out on me on Tuesday, on my way to my lunchtime bocce game! I only made it a few blocks from our house before the gears seized up. Booooo!!! So I had to find a place to take it in to get it fixed. Unfortunately, the closest place I found is this fancy-pants place that sells bikes for racers and triathletes - who were less than impressed with me coming in with my Toronto Police auction repo-special. Serious bikers are the worst. They're such jerks about their Shimano gears and $5000 frames. Why can't they be more inclusive? Serious eaters and music lovers are inclusive! Sheesh. We'll see what the damage is. They charge by the hour and I got them to clean my bike while they're at it. If they do a s**t job on the cleaning I'm going to be mega pissed.

We ate last night's dinner outside, on our neighbour's lawn on a picnic blanket. Our neighbour's kid joined us. Super cute! We had pan-fried smoked, cured pork chops and sweet, creamy, boiled new potatoes from our CSA tossed with creme fraiche and scallions (my new favorite starch) and sugar snap peas steamed and then tossed with sesame oil and fleur de sel (my new favorite veg). So good!

Tuesday night's dinner was that quinoa and brown rice salad with scallions, soft boiled egg, and avocado, dressed with scallion mayo:


This is a video (a short one!) for a change, featuring the little dance the Boobla does when he's grooving on some tunes. We're not particularly fond of the song the cookie jar makes, but we're reassured by the fact that he also does his little butt-bop to Brahms and old skool hip hop and jungle. When the butt-bop is in full swing, it features flappy arms as well:

I love that guy.

Fin.

A quickie...

had our first dip in the pool yesterday - LOVE OUR POOL! LOVE IT! LOVE IT HARD! What's better than a free pool a 2 minute walk away? Answer: NOTHING! NOTHING IS BETTER IN THE SUMMER!

Pingy and I took the Big Yam there. He was a little tense - it's only his third time in a pool and he's used to the warm bath waters of indoor pools and not the bracing freshness of an outdoor pool. It was so much fun. Pingy also did a Uniqlo run on behalf of the Dotytron's work wardrobe which makes her the best of the best of the best. She just got a gig teaching high school math at this super crazy private school on the upper east side of NYC. Fancy pants! So Gossip Girl!

I love Pingy. She's so cute and nice and fun and patrician. LOL! I made dinner and we packed it up with us and ate it on my roomie's deck. It was grilled Vietnamese pork meatballs on a rice noodle salad with cucumber, carrots, lettuce, scallions, and mint doused in homemade nuoc cham:

For dessert I made us strawberry shortcakes on sugared biscuit filled to the brim with Ontario strawberries. Ontario strawberry season is almost over and it makes me sad!!! Don't go, Ontario strawberries, don't go! I'll miss you so! I'm going to feverishly buy up as many as I can before the go away. Is it a bad foodie confession to admit that I don't use them in jams and jellies? I always use California produce because I feel like the sugar in jams masks the flavour of the Ontario goodness anyway. So Ontario strawberries get the baked in desserts or eaten out of hand treatment in my house.

Anyway, we have a big day today - bocce at work and then meeting my friend M and her baby C at Riverdale Farm, then picking up our CSA and then swimming again and then hanging out with Pingy and the roomie. Phew!

Fin.