A Trip To The Snowy South

A few months to go yet.
 

A nice bomb down to the great state of Ithaca where we had diner at Moosewood with Gary and Maude as the greatest Charlie Brown snow in history fell outside. I wanted to sing “Hark the Herald” to loo-lo-loo-lo-looooo as roundheaded cartoon kids skated. We split a jug of draft Cascazilla which was entirely the right drink at the right time. The Ithaca Holiday Inn has solidified itself as the place to stay. We are down in Ithaca there a lot and others have thrown everything from the hallways that smell like a nursing home, to a “pool” that was about 15 by 22 feet, to that light that flashed all night, to the other pool with the green water and the sandbars forming naturally in the deep end. Go with the Holiday Inn. Room 265 works for kids if you are not in the Room 1000 bracket.

We ended up at State Diner on, no question appropriately, State Street and had a great breakfast. We often end up at Ithaca Bakery for breakfast where I have a bagel with sprouts, guack and a formed veggie patty so between that and Moosewood I have to make sure I balance my man-drum pretend-Ithacan with my townie pretend-Ithacan. State Diner can do that for me now. I eat corned beef hash and poached eggs but only on the road. This was a good one. Solid move on the toast as well with 3 slices per order and a light touch on the butter. But it was butter. Coffee is better at the Ithaca bakery but not by much. The staff are kind and helpful at both.

Next time, we hit the Shortstop Deli.

Which Is The Mildest Cantillon?

Attentive readers will know I have not enjoyed Cantillon’s sour beers but that I do love Finger Lake Beverages in Ithaca, NY. Well, I am down here again and will load up tomorrow for the spring’s tastings and noticed yesterday that FLB has a good range of these sour things in stock.

Which – if any – are a little more approachable?

Doug Mientkiewicz On My TV


Come over to the dark side, Doug. Resistance is futile.

I watched the Yankees-Twins pre-season game last night care of the glory that is cable TV. If the Web 2.0 had a quarter of the success of cable TV, it might amount to something one day. Like that miracle of the 1990’s, pervasive email, the miracle of the 1980s, pervasive cable TV, has changed our lives so fundamentally we do not even notice it anymore.

Last night, the miracle transported me to a small baseball field in Florida to watch the Yankee hopefuls beat up on the hopefuls for the Twins. One of the former who used to be one of the later stood out – Doug Mientkiewicz. He stood out not only for his horrible grapefruit league batting average of well under 0.100 but his incredible catching at first, stretching out with last second splits to grab the ball a tenth of a second earlier than if he let it come to the glove.

I don’t know if that is enough to earn him a spot, though, given his batting. But one thing about pre-season baseball, compared to say NHL hockey, is there is a lot more potential for fluidity at the far end of the bench and with the farm team system more opportunity for parking people for specific purposes later in the season so we will likely see him play.

The NTY has a good story on Mientkiewicz (Ment-KAY-vich to you non-Slavophones) in this morning’s edition.

New Science From The New Government

Isn’t it great when politics can solve issues in science:

…a pair of Environment Canada bureaucrats said they don’t even know who’s responsible for climate change policy anymore. They said the now-defunct directorate was specifically in charge of overseeing all new climate-change policy, and that its 10 employees are being reassigned to various quarters.

“Even the people working here say, ‘Who’s really accountable for making climate change policy anymore?’ They don’t even know,” said one bureaucrat who requested anonymity. “Right now we don’t know who’s accountable.”

While that is admittedly a lot of ways of saying it, it appears the results of New Science is in – no worries – move along! Bloggers and politicians have settled the matter so let it be. Hopefully so they will have the vision to apply the same understanding of which knowledge can be to medicine and engineering.

No, I meant the other sort of engineering.

Knut Goes Nowhere And Hangs Around His Mailbox

[This post was written by Knut Albert Solem aka “Knut of Norway”]

knutOn the outskirts of Europe there lives a peculiar tribe of people. Like most other nations, they feel that they have the solution to every problem on the planet. Other small nations have had to bow to the necessity of adjusting to their surroundings, but Norway had the curse to find oil and gas in the 1970s, giving them the possibility of constructing their own reality.

One of the inhabitants of this country is a contributor to A Good Beer Blog, sending his impressions from his travels across Europe. When the generous editor Alan managed to find some sponsors for his blog, he wanted to share some of the spoils with his contributors. One sponsor is the Cracked Kettle in Amsterdam, and Alan figured that they could probably send a few beers to two of his European contributors. Packages were dispatched in early February, and the one sent to England arrived within days. Here is what happened to mine:

The package to Norway was first returned because the shipping company couldn’t deliver outside the European Union. Fair enough, they found an alternative.

Two weeks later, I get a letter from the Norwegian Postal Service, Posten. They can tell me that they have received a package from abroad, and that they can do the customs clearance for me. For a fee, of course. I sign a form authorizing them to do so, and wait for the package to arrive.

Another two weeks, and they send me a new letter, telling me that I should provide them with a receipt, an invoice or similar documentation for the package. I reply with a short handwritten note that this is a gift, and I do not know the value of the package.

Another two weeks, until yesterday. A new letter, cheerfully telling me that I must fill in a form. This is an application that has to be processed by the Directorate of Health and Social Affairs, which decides if I should be allowed to receive the gift. In the instructions following the form, I am told that the maximum amount of alcohol I can receive in this way is 4 liters. Luckily the package only contains 2 liters. For more information, see the back of the page. The back of the page is blank.

I do not know which criteria the Directorate of Health and Social Affairs use to determine if I should be allowed to receive the package or not. Will they check if I have been prosecuted for bad behaviour in public places? Will they ask the neighbours if I beat my wife? The answer is probably written in invisible ink on the back of the form, or possible posted somewhere in a basement as in the Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. I faxed over the form today. If the Directorate of Health and Social Affairs decide in my favour, I will then receive a permit to import the beer. This permit will then be mailed to Posten, who will then talk to the Customs people.

It would be interesting to find out how many hours of work it will take for various government employees to process this package containing two litres of beer. And I have a strange feeling that there might be more efficient ways of combating drunkenness and alcohol abuse. But what do I know?

Monday And Coffee

I think I just disproved that theory about coffee. Consider this:

  • Monday.
  • Monday after the clocks leap forward.
  • Monday after the clocks leap forward and I “sleep in”.
  • Monday after the clocks leap forward and I “sleep in” and there are seven kids in the house because it is March Break and my nieces are visiting.
  • Monday after the clocks leap forward and I “sleep in” and there are seven kids in the house because it is March Break and my nieces are visiting so I can’t make coffee as we have a grinder and that will wake the nieces.
  • Monday after the clocks leap forward and I “sleep in” and there are seven kids in the house because it is March Break and my nieces are visiting so I can’t make coffee as we have a grinder and that will wake the nieces so I have to get it at work meaning a foggy drive in.
  • Monday after the clocks leap forward and I “sleep in” and there are seven kids in the house because it is March Break and my nieces are visiting so I can’t make coffee as we have a grinder and that will wake the nieces so I have to get it at work and I get to work meaning a foggy drive in – and there is no coffee when I get to work.

Somewhere, somehow, I earned some credit of some sort.

Chatteriffic Bullet-a-rama For A Friday

A fabulous day is here. The Friday that begins the great final melt, the weekend the rains come. Soon we will be smelling things, things that have been out there under the snow and ice for months. Soon car windows will be down, we will notice sounds from a distance as we sit in our houses, dogs a few streets over will interrupt our thoughts, the neighbours fights will introduce new words to the kids. Tra-la!

  • Update: Did you know that Kingston has the lowest unemployment between Halifax and Winnipeg? 5.0% percent.
  • Update: I had never heard the phrase “pimp my Zamboni” until I heard this story.
  • I am a broken record, I know, but sometimes you still here the music between the skips and so it is with great pleasure that I give you the greatest conversation of the week making fun of Web 2.0. An argument between people who want pornier porn and those who can advocate this with a straight face – “beware the coming misappropriation of the phrase ‘social software’.” Fabulous in its meaninglessness.
  • Indeed – what has Ghana done anyway?
  • Here is new information I did not know before. With all the talk of hands off our resources, the right way is the only way, and Alberta is taking the lead…now they are begging to not have their special case Federal tax break taken away:

    Alberta Finance Minister Lyle Oberg warned Thursday against any move by Ottawa to scrap a special tax break for the oil sands, saying it would be the final punch in a triple whammy blow to the energy sector. The Harper government, which needs Opposition party support to pass its March 19 budget, is reviewing an NDP call to scrap what’s called the accelerated capital cost allowance program for oil sands…tax expert Jack Mintz of the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management estimates that oil sands projects would pay $165-million more in federal and provincial corporate income tax a year if the income tax rules applied to them were the same as conventional oil and gas investments. But, he adds, if oil sands investments were treated the same as Alberta’s non-energy projects, the additional tax would be $440-million a year.

    Maybe we can have these bonuses put on the table when we have to deal with the insufferable self-promoters of the West that lies between BC and Sask next time. Nice to have been pulling their weight so they can tell us how self-sufficient they are.

  • Speaking of meaninglessness, apparently Red Sox veteran pitcher Curt Schilling is blogging.
  • A couple of travelers sent me nine photos of their trip to Belgium. I like their travel planning.

That is it for now. Maybe more later. I have some planting to plan and I have start working on my spring festival outfit. And thinking about who to invite to the cheese roll.