Tag: Travels and Other Places

Sunday Without Travel

I am sufficiently dimwitted to have not twigged to the fact that this weekend is a single break amongst six where I am not on the road in some way or another. How luxurious is the ability to do nothing. And I have. But this is something you really ought to try. Frozen scallops. Get your morter and pestle out and fine grind some good crackers like stone ground or water crackers. Then make a paste of chives, olive oil and garlic. Hot sauce, too. Mix in the cracker dust until you have a glom. Pat dry the scallops and roll them in the tasty glom. Put in a pan and bake in a 500 F oven for three to five minutes. Lordy lordy. Even the scallops are grateful for having given up their bivalvey lives in such style.

And yet I missed the 25th Northeast Dulcimer Symposium.

World Cup: The Greatest Day Of Your Life

Did I mention that I am excited about this game? That I have had my 1986 flags from Holland couriered and have pulled out the 1996 orange jersey, set up the big screen and ordered the taxi to get me to it? Holland is an extraordinary place, a nation which exists from hundreds of years of national will, where ships float past your front door, where people actually wear all orange, where total football was born. I may have Gouda for lunch.

And not only do I like the Netherlands because I lived there 20 years ago, but I like Argentinian football. Fox Sports World Canada shows a highlight show from the Argie leagues every Friday at 7 pm during the season and it is the classiest sports show there is. The first five minutes are without commentary and are just highlights of fans getting to the games set to latin music. Snazzy as la pasión por el fútbol no es casual. Then there are the teams. The economy is so bad there that even some first division teams get a tiny crowd at the games. Others like Boca Juniors or Independiente have massive stadiums with tens of thousands of massed standing fans flowing back and forth with the game like Nick Hornby described in Fever Pitch in the Arsenal stands of his youth. They were also set up by the English around 1900 so there are teams called Arsenal (accent on the “se”) and Banfield and even one called Newell’s Old Boys.

So far these are the best two teams in the league – Dutch control v. Argentinian explosive power. It should be amazing.

I Went And I Didn’t Blog It…


Team GX40

…but now I am so I am a big loser. We zipped across and I didn’t even take a picture for you:

  • TnT ties! Reminds me of how I felt on 16 June 1990.
  • Got made fun of by a US border guard again and got the chilly and very professional treatment from the Canadians on the way back. The difference in style still is weird.
  • Note to file: Fairgrounds Inn in Watertown is good. I am coming to the understanding that there is a thing called New York Italian that is different from Canadian Italian and Italian. It is also different (thankfully) from East Side Marios phoney baloney roadhouses. It is just a family restaurant that offers food of their fathers with a comfort diner angle. Not unlike the best small Chinese-Canadian places in a way – the Shanghai in Ottawa or the Lucky Inn in Pembroke come to mind. Anyway, encountering an excellent cream, red pepper, parsley, garlic and mushroom sauce on a $5.99 dish is dandy. Plus eight pies, most of which have confounding undescriptive names like “Kentucky Derby Pie”. Here is a link to lists and lists of “You haven’t lived in Watertown if you haven’t…” stuff.
  • The Antique Boat Museum at Clayton, NY was amazing as well but on a dreary 10C day likely not the best for photos. It reminded me of another principle of difference in small museums on this side or the other. Yesterday was family free day. Otherwise we would have had to pay at least $30 USD for us as a family. That ticket price shows up in the quality of the facility and exhibits – you are paying to support not just enter the place. And I now have a keen desire to have a woodstrip sailing canoe from 1910. 250 boats in all including mid 1800’s first nations canoes and dugouts.
  • We then proceeded to hang around the Salmon Run Mall at Watertown, mainly because of the George Rhoads of Ithaca sculpture. Here is a site about his ball-drop clangy pieces. There is a short short movie of the one at the Ithaca Sciencentre here.
  • Got canned Indian pudding, Beal St. BBQ sauces and even oyster chowder at the Hannafords. Nice having a New England grocery store so close by.

You are permitted to use this space for World Cup chat today. Gotta conserve post templates, you know. Only got so many. Big hopes for Serbia v. the Netherlands for a good game.

Upstate Blogging And Me

I am happy to see that NYCO has reorganized the Upstate Bloggers map. I am pleased to note that I am an honourary upstater – upon which badge [Ed.: …and you do get natty badges] I earned one tiny gold star recently as I helped organize an NCPR outreach session here in Kingston. Who knew there was a blogger in Watertown? If they wave will I see them?

Next trip south to the north comes Saturday to the Antique Boat Museum in Clayton which has a natty new website. Then, on Friday the 16th, Watertown plays Genesee Valley. Good field. I just figured out that Wakefield started his career in Watertown. Who knew?

Do We Work Too Hard?

An interesting article in this morning’s Toronto Star on Canada’s combination of relative low productivity and low levels of time off compared to Europe:

Sweden’s very high productivity levels — it boasts the highest ratio of industrial robots in the world — allow the society to value leisure time, Schonning said. Based on total economic output, adjusted by population and purchasing power, Canada’s gross domestic product is very similar to that of many European countries, and below some. The Irish, for example, work 6 per cent fewer hours, on average, yet the economic output per person beats ours by 14 per cent. Most Canadian provinces require employers to provide only two weeks of vacation per year.

While we know that Europe is a fraud, a liar and evil and stuff…they sure do make good wages, get sweet vacations and drive nice cars. Maybe we have it all wrong.

Friday Post-Spam Clean-Up Chat

Nothing like waking to a manual spammer who has left 47 identical comments on 47 separate posts. The decent spammers, the ones you would kick in the shin rather than higher if you had the chance, post a bunch of comments on one post so they are easy to delete. But no, the Romanian spam sweatshop has a new keener and he wants to comment on separate posts. Anyway, eleven minutes of my life gone but at least the place is clear and tidy again. That is what they say about me: he sure keeps a tidy blog.

  • I will not see The Di Vinci Code and not because it is trendier not to that to go. I really see no movies, considering such evenings an opportunity to go to pubs or practice lawn bowls. But this is weird:

    The 23-year-old University of Guelph graduate is one of a hundred or so Campus Crusade for Christ volunteers who’ll be visiting theatres across the country trying to get moviegoers to listen to a “Christian response” to Dan Brown’s bestselling book and the blockbuster movie it has spawned. “We’re not out to protest the movie at all,” Mr. Bellingham says. “We think this movie gives us a great opportunity to talk about Jesus Christ.”

    Jesus would be pleased. As He was pleased by the swarming to Mel’s movie as some sort of authorized version. Would the time not be better spent shoeing the children and feeing the poor and doing justice as the actual directions given might suggest? Harass movie goers…which letter of the apostles was that in exactly?

  • Coffee going. What else is going on? The Globe’s Harper kissy-kissy didn’t last long. I think the guy’s is getting a raw deal. Seeing as he campaigned on the “Government of One” slogan, we should not now be saying that the one desk in the PMO running everything is bad. Here, however, is what I think is going to happen. Sooner or later at question period, questions directed at anyone other than the PM will have the tag line at the end “sure you do not want to check with your boss?” Sooner or later his own backbench and cabinet will stop liking being treated like children. But that will be rude buecause there was that slogan…right?
  • Dang spammers. I hate being behind on Friday mornings. What else is going on? Here is a somewhat Canadian headline, though perhaps sharable with Norwegians and Wisconsinianians:

    Beware of moose, mayhem on holiday drive

    More than a million vehicles will hit Highway 400 alone this weekend in one of the busiest — and deadliest — weekends of the year, police say…

    I tend to beware of moose every weekend. But this is the holiday weekend that does start off the whole summer thing. We have no access to cottages but will be going to Ottawa to praise our rural overlords in the streets check out the trains at the Museum of Science and Technology. I have never understood why in a country so many thousands of miles across all the Federal museums are in one spot but there you have it. I can see the big trains so I will see the big trains. I will also have to find a statue of Queen Victoria and leave a few nickles at the base. I strongly highly urge you to do likewise just in case.

  • Mr. Lovery is apparently going to stay at Arsenal for the next four years, years of his prime, which is good. I missed the Champions’ League final this week in which we was robbed but as Morton has missed that game once again my expectation of disappointment has long been commonplace.
  • This is good breaking news but I wish we had Taleban and Al Queda packs o’ cards like we did for Saddammy and his pals back in 2003. It was a great PR piece as well as informational and wonderfully foreshadowed the growth of poker as a TV spectator sport. So can the power of the internet tell me who Mullah Dadullah is and what he did? This clip from the front page of the Google search is almost bad James Bond rip-off:

    Two of the council members, Akhtar Mohammad Usmani, a confidante of Mullah Omar and the one-legged former intelligence chief Mullah Dadullah, are also names…

    He is also former two-legged. Anyway, nice to see him in a tiny cage.

That is it for today. Dang spammers. Get me on the nerves.

The Road Of An Evening

Sir John A, 401, 12, 7, 407, 427, 409, parking garage access road, garage, parking garage access road, 409, 427, 407, 7, 12, 401, Sir John A. Getting someone at Terminal 3 is a piece of cake even if a 575 km piece of cake. Thank God the Sox beat the Yankees and the Buffalo signal on 550 AM was clear until the New York City signal was clearer on 880.

What or who was a “bramp” anyway? The suit, the mailbox moneied and the tappers of ground and tree ought to witness Brampton from the 407 once in a life to see the deal. It doesn’t matter if you have got a million tonnes of this or that – if it doesn’t get packaged and shipped out it is just a pile. Brampton is the hive.