Posted by Zoom! on September 7, 2007, at 2:52 pm |
If you don’t like Mayor Larry O’Brien, you’ll love Dr. Dawg’s recent thrashing of him: Bull in a China Shop.
On the other hand, if you’ve ever wondered how a bull behaves in a china shop, I think you’ll find this quite illuminating: .
(You might need to click the arrow twice.)
And finally, since we’re on the subject of China and shops, several local bloggers have blogged recently about not shopping for goods made in China. I think I’m going to boycott China too. It seems like a fairly easy way to do the right thing, since I don’t shop much anyway. How hard can it be, right?
Oh, by the way, I seem to be experiencing an influx of visitors from Nortel over the past few days, as someone posted a link to my Mayor’s Place post on their Chief Technology Officer’s blog. Something about the real estate agent saying Nortel’s CTO was a great catch. Anyway, I’d just like to extend a warm welcome to the visiting Nortelians.
Posted by Zoom! on September 6, 2007, at 8:44 pm |
The bankers
TD Canada Trust has made some pretty spectacular mistakes with my mortgage over the months. It’s my first-ever mortgage so it took me awhile to notice.
For starters, they took my first few mortgage payments out of someone else’s account. This worked well for me, but somebody, somewhere, must have complained.
Then they failed to execute an instruction last winter which would have increased my mortgage payments and decreased my ammortization period by four years. (And I didn’t notice until 8 months later when I went to increase my mortgage payments again, and wondered why the impact was negligible.)
Then they said they had no idea how they came up with the amount of my bi-weekly mortgage payments, and were unable to determine whether my interest rate was 5.9% or 5.4%. They asked me to check my files for the original paperwork and let them know. They were also mystified about why they had been overcharging me by $40 a month on property taxes.
But the woman I deal with is genuinely nice, and so apologetic. The other day she pounded away on her calculator for five minutes and then gave me $38.10 by way of compensation for these screw-ups. In cash. Because she couldn’t figure out how to apply it to my mortgage. So sweet.
The roofers
Remember a few weeks ago I showed you some photos of my newly shingled roof, and asked if it looked okay? I ended up contacting Sanderson Roofing, who did the job, and describing to them what it looked like and asking if I ought to be concerned. The nice man said they would send someone to my home immediately, right that minute, to inspect it, and then they’d call me at work to let me know what they thought.
A week later I still hadn’t heard anything, so I called them back.
“Oh,” said another nice man, “we sent a crew over to your place last Thursday and they re-shingled the part that wasn’t done right.”
Hmmm. So I checked it out that night after work, and sure enough, they’d reshingled it. But they hadn’t reshingled the part I was concerned about; they’d reshingled the entire edge, from front to peak, where it tied into the neighbour’s roof. (I was concerned about a row of shingles near the front that seemed not to be lying flat, and which still seems not to be lying flat.)
At any rate, I find it much easier to tolerate – and overlook – mistakes when it’s friendly, good-natured, genuinely apologetic people making them. I am a sucker for anyone who can say “I’m sorry, it’s my fault, please let me fix it.” The world needs more people like that.
Posted by Zoom! on September 3, 2007, at 10:47 am |
My old friend Smabulator sent me a link to a review of Canada, by Jeremy Clarkson, a UK columnist who usually writes about cars, but who recently vacationed in the Ottawa area. Here’s an excerpt:
“We’re told that no one in Canada is ever robbed, butchered, stabbed, murdered or blown up by a doctor. And I don’t doubt that all of this is true. But by the same token no one in Canada ever wins on the horses, or escapes from a knife fight with their life, or has an orgasm. It is Switzerland with wheat.” …read more
Smabulator grew up here in Ottawa, and I knew him from the local BBS scene. BBS stands for ‘bulletin board system,’ which was what ‘online’ was before the internet came along. This was before Freenet, before the web, before Google, before spam, before blogs, before any of this. This was the Olden Days.
I got my first computer in 1989. Then I bought a 300 baud modem. I wasn’t even sure what it was for, I just knew I wanted one. I messed around for days trying to get it installed and working properly (something about IRQ conflicts), and finally I got a dial tone.
A 300 baud modem is how we connected online in the late 80s, in conjunction with a phone line. It was replaced by a 1200 baud modem, then a 2400 baud, and so on. There was no such thing as high speed – everything happened at a snail’s pace. It didn’t seem slow at the time, but every time you got a newer and faster modem, man did it feel fast.
A BBS was typically someone else’s home computer. It was like a mini text-based internet on which people had to take turns, because only one person could be connected at a time. Usually there was a one-hour time limit. All of a BBS’s users would live within the same area code, because to call elsewhere meant long distance charges.
Popular BBS’s were busy all the time. I’d set up an auto-dial list of all my favourite BBS’s and tell my modem to keep dialing one after the other until it found one that wasn’t busy. Then my modem and the host modem would do a mating dance and make wonderful screeching noises and that BBS would be mine for an hour. All mine.
Since everything was text-only, the BBSs tended to attract writers. Because that’s what you did on a BBS: you wrote. You socialized in writing, you wrote on message boards, you contributed to collaborative never-ending stories, and you wrote email. (Oh, you could draw pictures too – but it was ascii art, ie art made out of keyboard characters. You wrote art.)
I was known as Dr. Sooze on the BBSs, and I socialized online with people like Crass Nirvana, Flog Sonata, Smabulator, Athena, Painkiller and Mel Pheasant, on systems like The Sanitarium, Another Roadside Attraction and Bob’s Back Room. I wish I could remember more of the names. It was such a long time ago. (Flog reads this blog; maybe he can remember more.)
Each BBS was its own little community. I participated in many, but my favourite was the Sanitarium. (The last time I saw Crass Nirvana, who was the Sanitarium’s sysop, he told me he still had backups of the whole system. If he could find an old computer, he could restore the Sanitarium, and all its discussions, to exactly where it left off all those years ago. It would be like time-warping back into a party that ended many years ago.)
By today’s standards the technology was incredibly primitive, but we really were on the cutting edge back then. BBSers were using home computers to communicate with each other. Hardly anybody was doing that. It was revolutionary.
Anyway, that’s how I met Smabulator, who has since sailed solo to Scotland and is living happily ever after with his Scottish bride and baby-in-progress. He still, however, keeps one eye on Canada. And he might start writing a blog soon. I’m looking forward to that; he’s an excellent writer.
Posted by Zoom! on September 2, 2007, at 1:02 pm |
Earlier this week I wrote a post about a mentally ill homeless woman in Westboro. Several commenters and I mulled over how she could best be helped. (Followed, sadly, by another commenter who declared the woman to be a crazy bitch who should be overpowered and locked up forever.)
Coincidentally, two days later, The Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI) released a new report called Mental Health and Homelessness, which is freely available online.
I think it’s a little disappointing that this report takes the approach of individualizing homelessless, and virtually ignores its structural causes, such as poverty. Nor does it get into the recent regression of housing policy in this country, such as the dismantling of our national housing strategy in 1993.
That being said, it was still an interesting read and it does provide a useful overview of the issues. If you don’t feel like reading the whole report, here are some of the main points.
Pathways to Homelessness
People who are homeless are more likely to experience mental illness. In some cases, the mental illness may have been a factor in them becoming homeless. In other cases, the homelessness may have been a factor in them experiencing mental health problems. Mental illness can become worse with continued homelessness.
Unhealthy streets
People who don’t have homes are more likely to suffer a variety of physical health problems too, including respiratory infections, arthritis, infectious diseases such as tuberculosis and HIV, skin and foot problems, poor dental health, injuries and poor management of chronic conditions such as diabetes.
People who don’t have homes die younger than people who do. One study showed that half of homeless women in Toronto died before their 40th birthday.
Homeless people tend to be subjected to more stress than people who have homes, and are more likely to have low self-esteem and insufficient social supports.
Suicide attempts and suicidal thoughts are more common among homeless youth than those who have homes. (In Ottawa, 4% of non-homeless male youth and 21% of homeless male youth report at least one past suicide attempt.)
Mental Illness
There are higher rates of schizophrenia among the homeless population than in the general population. Less than 1% of the population reports having been professionally diagnosed with schizophrenia. Equivalent data is not available for the homeless population. However, in Toronto, 6% of 300 shelter users surveyed reported a psychotic disorder, primarily schizophrenia.
In 2002, a street needs assessment project was undertaken in Ottawa, and 80 homeless people who do not use shelters were interviewed. Of these, 33% said they have mental health concerns (20% depression, 6% anxiety disorders, 4% schizophrenia and 3% personality disorders.)
Toronto’s Pathways into Homelessness Project found that 29% of shelter users met the criteria for anti-social personality disorder, often in combination with other diagnoses such as depression or post-traumatic stress disorder.
Substance Abuse
Rates of substance abuse are higher among the homeless population.
Some people have both substance abuse disorders and mental illness diagnoses (‘concurrent disorders’). Homeless people with concurrent disorders are likely to remain homeless longer than people with just one disorder.
Depression
Depression is more common among homeless people than people who have homes.
One-third of Ottawa’s adult street people report mental health problems; of these, 20% report depression.
In Kitchener-Waterloo, almost half of the street youth in a study reported a decrease in their depression since leaving home; 28% reported an increase.
Barriers to Getting Help
Some of the barriers identified by Los Angeles street youth who felt they needed help but didn’t get it:
not knowing where or what services to use (53%)
embarassment (47%)
money (36%)
fears the service provider would contact family (36%)
fears the service provider would contact police or social worker (36%)
thinking the service would not help (33%)
Emergency Departments
Mental health and behavioural disorders is the most common reason for Emergency Department visits by the homeless (35%).
The #1 reason for inpatient hospitalization of the homeless is mental diseases and disorders (52%), followed by significant trauma (7%). That’s a huge gap between the most common reason and the second most common reason.
Policy and Programs
History
In the 1800s, the mentally ill were often warehoused in prisons or poorhouses. By the end of the century, asylums were developing.
Starting in the 1960s, psychiatric patients were being discharged into the community when there wasn’t room for them in the hospitals. This move towards deinsitutionalization was prompted by several factors: economic contraints, human rights, and pharmaceutical improvements.
Community mental health services did not increase at the same rate that patients were being released into the community.
Current and future developments
In 2006, a Senate report recommended establishing a Canadian Mental Health Commission and a national mental health strategy [and Harper announced its establishment just this Friday.] The report noted that affordable housing is a key issue. It said that the percentage of people with mental illness who need access to housing is double that of those who do not have mental illnesses.
Two housing models
Continuum of Care Models (Treatment First)
Three stages: outreach, treatment, housing. Essentially the housing is offered as a reward for the successful completion of the psychiatric or substance abuse treatment.
Housing First Models*
The homeless and mentally ill are offered housing that is not contingent on treatment or sobriety. They tend towards harm reduction approaches rather than abstinence. Other community services are offered but are not compulsory.
Outcomes
American research indicates that participants in the Housing First model remain housed much longer than participants in the Treatment First mode (5 years later: 88% vs 47%). Another study found that homeless participants with a major mental illness such as schizophrenia or bipolar disorder who were in the Housing First program spent more time in stable housing and less time in hospitals than their counterparts in the Treatment First programs.
Existing programs are typically only able to serve a small number of the homeless, despite large numbers of homeless people across Canada.
*My note: The Housing First Model may not be as appealing as it might first appear. It’s actually being widely promoted here in Canada by Bush’s Housing Czar, Philip Mangano. It’s deceptively simple, and it’s also just plain deceptive, as in the US it’s accompanied by deep slashes to social housing budgets, along with punitive crackdowns on the homeless, such as legislating them out of the downtown core and introducing laws against feeding them. For more information, see Cathy Crowe’s newsletter, or this Wellsley Institute backgrounder by Michael Shapcott, or this article in the Toronto Star.
However, it could be reasonably argued that this is not a failing of the model itself, but of the way it’s being implemented in the US. Maybe this model – combined with a respectful and pragmatic attitude towards people who are mentally ill and homeless – could help meet the Westboro woman’s needs.
Posted by Zoom! on September 1, 2007, at 7:33 pm |
I made soup today. It was a lentil soup with carrots and onions and garlic and swiss chard, topped with minted yogurt. While it was simmering, I went out for my first run in about ten months. (I’ve gained about 5 pounds since I quit smoking 40 days ago, and I don’t like how those five pounds feel. They’ve got to go!)
I took it easy – ran a minute, walked a minute, ran a minute, and so on – along a bike path that goes through a meadow at the Experimental Farm. The meadow smelled good. Then I came home, feeling very pleased with myself, only to feel doubly pleased with myself when I walked through the door and smelled the soup simmering on the stove.
I felt so damned virtuous making soup and going for a run!
Speaking of virtue and things that smell good, check this out:
David Scrimshaw told me once that despite my cloaked identity it would just be a matter of time until all my friends, family and coworkers found out about my blog. In retrospect, I think he might have been right.
Over time, more and more people I know have learned, through various channels, of the blog’s existence. Most recently:
A few months ago my son learned about it at a wedding.
A few weeks ago my boss asked “Are you Zoom??”
A few days ago my mother emailed to say she liked my blog.
Each time I was startled, and I felt a bit panicky. But it’s a familiar little panic now. I just take a deep breath and remind myself that even though I’m fairly open on the blog, I’ve never truly lost sight of the fact that it’s a public space. (Of course my boss stumbled across it the same week I confessed to having been a drug addict, because, as you know, life is just funny that way.)
I’ve discovered there are things I’ll tell you, dear sweet trusty old internet, that I won’t necessarily tell my family and friends. I don’t why that is. But I guess it doesn’t matter anymore, now that most of my family and friends are here too.
It’s an odd thing, blogging. It’s personal and it’s public, and I often find myself exploring the shifting geography between those two spaces. Where does the personal end and the public begin? How much overlap is comfortable? Is personal the same thing as private?
There’s also the question of other people’s privacy. It’s one thing if I decide to make my own life an open book, but to what extent is it ethical to blog about other people in my life? Different people have different privacy thresholds, and I sometimes find myself trying to estimate other people’s privacy requirements.
I have a friend who got mad at me once because I mentioned in casual conversation with a mutual friend that she was working towards her Master’s degree. I was stunned that she was upset. How was I to know she considered it private information?
While I blog under a pseudonym, I’ve always known that the cloak of anonymity isn’t real. It’s the illusion of anonymity, just a thin veil really. A wisp of smoke, a whispered hint.
Still, the illusion of anonymity is better than no anonymity at all, right? (Or is it? Illusions can be dangerous. On the other hand, they can serve you well as long as you don’t believe in them.)
Have you ever had that dream about walking around naked in public, but nobody seems to notice except you? Maybe blogging is like that. Or maybe blogging is more like the opposite of that, where everybody else notices you’re naked, but you’re oblivous to it.
1) Have any of you ever had any training from a company called Eliquo in Ottawa? I’m looking for high quality Dreamweaver CS3 training. If you’ve ever taken a course (Dreamweaver or anything else) from Eliquo, I’d appreciate hearing your thoughts about them. Also, if there are other training firms in town that you have opinions about, please let me know. You can leave your comments in the comments or email me at soozoom(at)yahoo.com.
2) Hartman’s YIG at Bank and Somerset is advertising half a bushel of eggplants for $7.99. How’s that for a sale, eh? Just what I always wanted, half a bushel of eggplants.
As I was walking through Westboro on Sunday, someone stopped me and said “Can you help me out? It’s awful being homeless.”
It was a woman with a cart, holding out a box lined with a clean paper towel. As I reached into my pocket for some change, she said “Even $20 would help, I’m trying to get enough for a motel room but they’re $90 a night.”
I thought that was kind of nervy, asking for $20. I put $2 in her box. She didn’t say thank you.
On my way back home I saw her again, but now she was sitting on a bench, writing in a notebook. I walked past her, then stopped, turned around and looked at her again.
She was dressed in rags, but she was clean and well groomed.
I looked at her cart – everything was neatly wrapped in plastic, and there was a fly swatter, a pair of clean garden gloves, and a can of Lysol sitting on top.
“I just want to read your sign,” I said, gesturing at the plastic-wrapped cardboard sign attached to her cart. It said something about transmitters and perverts.
“Sure,” she said, “But there’s a big unexploded bomb that could go off at any time.”
“Where?” I asked.
“Inside me,” she said, “They put it in during minor surgery; my ex paid them to do it. It’s not easy living with it, knowing it could go off at any time.”
Her fingernails were clean and painted mauve.
“Transmitters too,” she said, “They put transmitters in. They can see through my eyes, and hear through my ears. They intercept my thoughts.”
“How long have you been living with these things inside you?” I asked.
“At least ten years,” she said.
“It must be hard.”
“It’s not easy being homeless,” she said, “especially for a woman. It’s not bad for men, they own the world. They can go to the bathroom anywhere they want.”
“Where do you sleep?” I asked.
“When I can, I sleep in a motel, but that’s not very often. It’s nice just to have a place to get organized and do my laundry and read the newspaper and have a little break for a night. But that’s just once in awhile. The rest of the time, I stay outdoors. I don’t really sleep. I have a chair, I just sit in there at night.”
Her chair is folded neatly in the cart, next to the laundry detergent, both neatly wrapped in plastic.
“Maybe you could stay in a shelter,” I suggested.
“No, it’s not safe,” she said, “They have cameras in all the bathrooms. I always turn the lights off when I go into a bathroom. I have to wash under my clothes. They’re all disgusting perverts in there.”
“What about a women-only shelter?”
“Lots of women are perverts too,” she said.
Her brown hair is clean and combed and lightly streaked with grey.
“If you could get a place, would it be here in Westboro?” I asked.
“Yes, I’m almost always here. I had a room once, in a lady’s house. I paid her money for it, but she’d go into my room and steal things.”
“Could you get another room?” I asked.
“No, they all steal things,” she said, “They all have cameras. It’s not safe.”
“What did you do before all this happened?” I asked.
“I worked. I had lots of different jobs. I wasn’t lazy either, I worked hard, because I never wanted to be homeless. I was afraid I’d end up homeless. And look what happened. I ended up homeless anyway.”
“How long have you been homeless?” I asked.
“Five years.”
“What about in the winter?”
“Same thing. I just wear lots of layers.”
Her legs are bare and she is wrapped in layers of rags.
“What’s the Lysol for?” I asked.
“I have a lot of allergies,” she said, “and there are a lot of germs out here. I go through about a bottle of Lysol every day.”
“That’s a lot of Lysol,” I said.
It must be awfully hard keeping herself and her possessions so clean and tidy without a home or a bathroom.
“The politicians, they’re no help, all they care about is the immigrants and trying to teach them to be human. Niggers aren’t people, you know, they’re minotaurs. Jesus Christ Almighty told me so himself.”
“What are minotaurs?”
“Half human, half goat, I think,” she said, “They’re the worst.”
A couple passes with a baby in a stroller.
“They put the transmitters in babies too,” she said, “And parents aren’t always what they appear. Lots of them are cannibals.”
There’s a flash of anger, then a sigh of resignation and a long pause.
“Do you think you can help me?” she asks sadly.
“What kind of help do you think you need?”
“Financial. And I need a person of science. To remove the things inside me, or at least deactivate them.”
“Maybe a doctor could help you,” I suggested.
“Most of them are in on it,” she said, “Sometimes they put me in the hospital. I entertain the doctors for a little while, then they let me go. They’re all in on it, they make a fortune exploiting me. I know all about their pharmaceutical pedagogy. The doctor said he wanted to help me, but he was really a vampire. Jesus Christ Almighty told me so Himself.”
“How do you know who to trust?”
“I can’t trust anybody. How could I?”
“Except God?”
“Yes, I trust God. But I don’t always trust my own interpretation of Him. I worked hard to have a good relationship with God, but they interfere with our intimacy. They intercept our communications and try to twist them. So sometimes God has to speak in ways I have to figure out, so they won’t know what He’s saying to me.”
“It sounds complicated,” I said, “but at least you’ve got God on your side.”
“Yes,” she sighed. It was a troubled sigh.
“What would you do if you were me?” she asked.
I pondered this question for quite awhile, and then answered “I don’t know.”
I honestly don’t know what I would do if I were her. When you see everything through a lens of paranoia, you can’t trust anybody enough to let them help you. I’ve had bad dreams in which I couldn’t trust anybody. It wasn’t fun. At least I got to wake up; I think she’s locked into this nightmare all the time.
I wanted to take a picture of her, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t even ask her her name, for fear of frightening her. And I wanted to help her, but how do you help someone like that? How can anyone help her? I suspect her life would be difficult no matter what her circumstances, but I can’t imagine a more challenging set of circumstances than being both paranoid AND homeless.
I don’t know what the answer is, but it’s just not right that a woman this vulnerable is living on the streets of our city.
UPDATE: AUGUST 30, 2007: In a strange twist of coincidence, I got an email today announcing the release of a new report from the Canadian Institute for Health Information. The report is called Improving the Health of Canadians: Mental Health and Homelessness. I’ve only had a chance to scan it so far, but I’ll read it this weekend and post the highlights.
I don’t know if any of you are participating in the Ottawa Citizen’s Worst Bus Route poll over on the Greater Ottawa blog, but I see that my local bus – the #14 – is a strong contender for first place. It’s got some fierce competition from the #2, but both these bus routes seem to be almost universally reviled by passengers and drivers alike.
I live near the western end of the route. Many of the complaints I’ve read are from people who work or live at the eastern end.
Up until this weekend, I don’t think I’d ever taken the #14 past the Rideau Centre. But on Saturday evening, I took it to Sandy Hill to visit Janet, and then back again.
An interesting thing happened to the eastbound #14 at the Rideau Centre: every freak in Ottawa got on the bus.
I’m not saying we’re all normal at my end of the route. Far from it. But at the beginning of the evening – before I even knew what was going to happen at the Rideau Centre – I snapped a picture of this guy, who is a more-or-less typical character on the western end of the #14. Just some harmless guy minding his own business, deeply engrossed in his Betty & Veronica comic book.
I didn’t take pictures of the people who got on the eastbound #14 at the Rideau Centre because they were kind of scary. There were so many of them and they didn’t seem quite right. They just swarmed on board, and the next thing I knew, the bus was jammed full of freaks and weirdos of the unappealing sort.
They weren’t all disagreeable, of course. Some of them were just pitiful. And a few just looked exhausted and miserable. The ones who sat in front of me seemed unusually itchy.
They were a pretty motley, bedraggled collection of survivors, for the most part.
Later that night, when I left Janet’s, I took the #14 again, this time heading west towards the Rideau Centre and ultimately Carlington. Several people straight out of Trainspotting were on the bus. They were entertaining. This young woman got on at the Rideau Centre. Her name is Sherrie and she’s 23 years old – I read it on her hospital bracelet after she lost consciousness. She looked pretty sick and miserable up until then.
I didn’t see the Bandanna Guy. Jen, from Please Pick Up Your Socks, described him in the comments over on the Greater Ottawa blog. Apparently he rings the bell with his chin for every bus stop in the east end, and then rearranges all his bandannas.
Anyway, if you take the bus and you haven’t already weighed in on Ottawa’s Worst Bus Route, you still have time.
Do you remember a couple of months ago, when my friend Janet decided to start eating beef, but thought you could leave raw ground beef in the fridge for three weeks? And then she subsequently froze, defrosted and refroze the beef? And eventually she would have eaten this meat and suffered horribly had I not intervened?
Well, the other day she emailed me and invited me for dinner on Saturday. “I thought I might actually make some beef,” she said.
Tendrils of terror crept up my spine.
I emailed her back:
“Um, about the beef. Tell me more.”
Because, you know, I don’t want to eat beef that has had a long and colourful history.
“Ha!” she wrote back, “You fear Death by Janet’s Beef, don’t you?”
And then she assured me that the previous beef had been discarded and this new beef had been rushed from Loblaw’s straight to her freezer, where it still remained in its icy slumber.
So I graciously accepted her dinner invitation, and showed up at the appointed time with a bottle of fine New Zealand wine.
This bottle of wine, unfortunately, was virtually unopenable. Eventually I did succeed, but it took half an hour and an assortment of tools, and there was some bloodshed. Instead of a cork it just had a thin plastic seal covered with an impenetrable metal wrap.
While I battled the bottle, Janet fought with the food. Apparently she was having a bit of a ‘Calamity Janet’ day, and more than one glass container had shattered on her floor. We kept our shoes on.
Here she is having a bit of a sugar mishap while making the teriyaki marinade for the beef.
Oh, and here’s the beef, which was appropriately defrosted in the refrigerator. (She admitted to originally putting it out on the counter to defrost, then immediately having doubts that sent her to the internet for more information, and then racing back to the kitchen to put it back in the fridge.)
The Beef Boycotter (remember her?) arrived a bit later with an easier bottle of wine and a story about her great-grandfather’s leaky canoe.
We spent the next couple of hours drinking wine, chatting and shucking peas at the dining room table. Meanwhile, the beef – which Janet had hacked into thin strips with a letter opener – marinated in the fridge.
Dinner was running late, but suddenly, when we were least expecting it, Janet announced that some food was ready! It was a Lentil-and-Kale soup. I didn’t think to take a picture of it until I’d almost finished eating it. There are some very good reasons Gourmet Magazine doesn’t show photographs of half-eaten food, and I’m going to take a page from their book by not posting that photo. Suffice it to say the soup was both delicious and beautiful.
Shortly after the soup was consumed, it was time to cook the beef. We all gathered in the kitchen for this event, Janet, the Beef Boycotter and myself. Janet said the recipe was too vague for the uninitiated: “Cook the beef briefly.”
We discussed whether the thin strips of beef were fully cooked yet (they were, but Janet still finds beef a bit disturbing, so she wanted to make extra sure). Janet explained why beef is good for you (iron) and why it’s good to eat some beef with things like Lentil-and-Kale soup (there’s something in the beef that helps you absorb the iron from the lentils and kale).
I love beef myself, but I got the impression that the others were still trying to talk themselves into eating it. Like me and seafood: I have to psychologically prepare myself for it, because I find it kind of gross.
Anyway, suddenly everything was ready and dinner was served. Look! Stir-fried teriyaki beef, saffron rice, sweet peas, mushrooms, and a cool cucumber salad.
Janet watched and waited while I took the first bite of beef.
“It’s delicious!” I said, and she looked so happy and relieved.
And it really was delicious. Everything was.
There was dessert too – fresh strawberries and blueberries! I love berries.
We ate it all up while emptying a couple of wine bottles and talking about all kinds of interesting things. It was an excellent evening.
The bankers
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