I’m off to Toronto for a work thingy and will be out of the blogosphere til Thursday. In the meantime, if you’re so inclined, you can read about my last trip to Toronto on the proverbial turnip wagon.
Cheerio.
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Watch my life unravel...
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I had about five things I wanted to blog about, and suddenly I can’t remember any of them. I’ll just take a peek inside my camera and see if it reminds me. Hmmm. From the “Things I Do So You Won’t Have To” file, here’s a short clip of St. Paddy’s Day at the Carleton Tavern. Speaking of St. Paddy’s Day, GC and I went to the Go Green show at Lansdowne Park this weekend. Here are some of the highlights:  Earth Head 2) We saved a lost little girl who was petrified of Earth Head and who had lost her mommy. 3) We sampled some “almost organic” wine. 4) We bought Buckwheat pillows. 5) GC bought me a Bat Bag. With bats on it.  Photo taken from INSIDE a Smart Car! I’ve been wanting a buckwheat pillow ever since my optometrist told me he stopped getting headaches when he started using a buckwheat pillow. They’re made right here in Ottawa too, by the Perfect Pillow Company. GC was in bed first on Saturday night, and I asked him how his new buckwheat pillow felt. “Um, not really like a pillow,” he replied. “More like when you’re camping and you use your knapsack for a pillow.” That didn’t sound promising. But then I crawled into bed and laid my weary head on my buckwheat pillow, and it was like my head had finally found a place to call home! I felt all the stress draining out of my neck and shoulders, and I felt my head start to really, truly, finally relax. I LOVE my buckwheat pillow. (GC’s not convinced the buckwheat pillow is for him, but he’s going to persevere for a few more days before casting judgment.) The Go Green Show was fun (and free), but I couldn’t help but appreciate the irony of a Green show in which you end up with all kinds of glossy advertising pamphlets and free samples and STUFF. On Friday, GC and I went to the Raw Sugar Cafe for Board Game Night. We were meeting Woodsy and the Fourth Dwarf. It was only when we got there that we learned the event had been organized by the Young and Active Adults of Ottawa. According to the Young and Active Adults, a young adult is between 25 and 40 years of age. (“This will be our last year then,” said GC as we slipped past the raised eyebrows.) We claimed a table, ordered some Beau’s beer and butterscotch-banana cake, and set about refamiliarizing ourselves with the rules of our games while waiting for Woodsy and 4D. Active young adults kept coming in, gaping at our board games, and asking us if we were part of the board game event. Some of them even tried to sit at our table. We had to spell it out for them that we were actually sluggish middle-aged adults waiting for others of our kind. When Woodsy and 4D arrived, we immediately launched into a rousing game of Mousetrap. 4D was in charge of understanding and enforcing the rules and making sure nobody got any cheese to which they were not entitled. Cheese is an important commodity in the end-game, and somehow 4D ended up with a great big pile of it. But Woodsy, despite her meager collection of cheese, was both brave and lucky, and she took out GC and 4D in one swell foop. But the game wasn’t over yet! No! I rounded the corner like a virtually cheeseless dark horse and sprung my diabolically clever trap on Woodsy. Here, see for yourself: Next we played Clue. I got to pick my character first, since I won Mousetrap. I chose Colonel Mustard, which made 4D grumble a little bit, which made me even happier that I’d chosen Colonel Mustard. GC was in charge of the rule book this time, so the rules weren’t enforced quite as strictly as they had been under 4D.  4D Cleans Up in Clue I’d like to do this again. Is anybody else interested in coming to an Ageless Games Night, somewhere, sometime? Remember the sophisticated and elaborate version of Punch Buggy I told you about in December? You know, with the VW Bugs (Punch Buggies), Smart Cars (Smartiepants), faux-wood-panel cars (Woodies) and yellow cars (Bananaramas)? A grand slam is when you get all four of them in an uninterrupted streak – ie, before the other person gets even one. So far, neither GC nor I have ever scored a grand slam because Woodies are so rare. In all our months of playing the game, we’ve only seen four Woodies. (Not that I’m competitive or anything, but I spotted all four of them.)  Middle of the Night Smartiepants! Well. The other morning I was walking to work and THESMART sailed right past me at the intersection of Somerset and Lyon. I even caught a glimpse of the person who drives it! I immediately phoned GC and told him about this rare and wondrous sighting. It didn’t count towards the game, of course, since GC wasn’t there to see it, but he was kind of vicariously thrilled. I could tell. That very same evening we were driving down Merivale Road when suddenly GC spotted the spring-green VW Bug with the license plate BEVM851 driving behind us. This particular Punch Buggy lives about six blocks from me, which is why I’ve memorized its plates. GC and I were bouncing up and down and screaming PUNCH BUGGY and straining our necks trying to get a look at the driver. After the excitement had died down and the shrieking and pummeling had stopped and we were just cruising down the road like normal people, I reflected more soberly upon the experience. “I wonder,” I said, “what the owners of THESMART and BEVM851 would think if they knew there are people like us who think of their cars as celebrities, and who have memorized their license plates, and who phone each other and punch each other and scream ‘SMARTIEPANTS!’ whenever we see their car?” GC reflected for a moment. “Maybe there are people out there,” he said, “Who think of my car as a celebrity and who have memorized my license plates and who phone each other and punch each other and scream ‘RUSTBUCKET!’ whenever they see it.” It’s entirely possible, you know. There are some strange people out there. *After writing this post, I sifted through months of photographs looking for a picture of THESMART to illustrate the post, but couldn’t find any. GC, being the world’s best boyfriend, suggested that we drive down to Cooper Street – in the middle of the night – to photograph THESMART. So we did. 😉 I just found out that some readers using Internet Explorer haven’t been able to visit my blog lately. They’re getting the following error message: “You are banned due to suspicion of spamming the site and/or by choice of the blog administrator. If you believe this ban to be in error, email the blog administrator.” Of course it doesn’t give an email address for the blog administrator or anything helpful like that. And when I google the error message to find out more about it, the only place on the entire internet where this exact error message appears is on my blog. Astute readers might recall a similar problem on my blog a couple of months ago. The temporary fix at that point was to go to knitnut.net (without the www). This time the temporary fix is exactly the reverse: go to www.knitnut.net, with the www. In the meantime, I’ll try to sort it out….again. Thank you Hella Stella and Carole for letting me know. Okay, I think I fixed it. I had to deactivate Super Cache in order to do it, but that seems to have solved the problem. So you can disregard this entire post, okay?  Hella Stella, Loving Tofu A bit of background. One day I made the mistake of saying to Hella Stella that I hate tofu, and she immediately came up with the idea of a Tofu Challenge. I’ll be the first to admit I’ve never given tofu much of a chance. My first encounter with it was probably 25 years ago when I ordered a dish in a restaurant on Elgin Street and had to call the waiter over to inquire why there were all these disgusting hunks of fat floating in my food. “That’s not fat,” he said. “It’s tofu.” After that I avoided tofu. Fast forward to 2009 and Hella Stella’s Tofu Challenge. We would go to this restaurant in Chinatown whose name I can never remember, and we would order the Salt and Pepper Tofu, and I would love it, she said. If I loved it, I would make a video of myself or my cat Duncan performing acrobatic tricks, and I would post it on my blog. If, on the other hand, I failed to love the Salt and Pepper Tofu, Hella Stella would make a video of herself or her bulldog, Morty, performing acrobatic tricks, and she would post it on her blog. So. On Friday the 13th, Hella Stella and I, along with a panel of six independent and objective adjudicators and photographers, descended upon this restaurant in Chinatown whose name I can never remember, and we sat at a circular table and ordered Salt & Pepper Tofu and a few other things. Then we starved for like ever while they grew a crop of bean curds out in the back yard and shaped them into little chunks and deep-fried them and sprinkled them with salt and pepper.  Zoom, Not Hating Tofu I’m telling you, I was famished. Seriously. Otherwise I know I would have hated those tofus. As it was, I did not hate them and I ate about seven of them. Here’s where things get a little iffy. We should have written down the contest rules in advance and agreed to them in writing, because Hella Stella remembers that in order for her to win I had to Not Hate the Tofu, whereas I remember that in order for her to win, I had to Love the Tofu. There’s a big difference between not hating and loving tofu, and our Tofu Challenge has fallen into this vast grey area. Who do you think won the Tofu Challenge? The Polling Booth is now open. (If you’re reading this in email or a feed reader, you’ll have to click on over to the blog to vote.) My Facebook friend count dropped from 140 to 139 the other day and I can’t figure out who I lost. It was really bugging me too. Eventually I conceded that it’s too late: there is no way of determining which friend dumped me. But I’ve since jotted down all the names of my current Facebook friends so if it ever happens again, I’ll know who it is. (And yes, you’re right, this is just as pathetic as it sounds.) I should strive to be more like my buddy Theor, who is the lead male vocalist in my band, The Blue-Eyed Hermits and One Black Guy. I was his very first Facebook friend. He has a self-imposed limit of eight Facebook friends. Whenever a ninth person wants to be his friend, he either says no to them, or he dumps one of us eight. I’m sure he sleeps easier at night knowing there’s no way anybody’s ever gonna dump him without him knowing who it is.  Tom Ato is a local DJ  One of 1,011 photographs of Kati There are only 706 Facebook pictures of my other gorgeous niece Lindsay, who is pregnant with the first baby of our family’s next generation! This is going to be the world’s best loved and most photographed baby. I’m going to be Great-Auntie Zoom! I’m going to knit an umbilical cord hat and the sweetest little booties and a sheep blanket. The baby is still a secret since Lindsay’s only been pregnant for a day and a half. We’re allowed to blog about it but we’re not allowed to say anything on Facebook just yet because the baby’s paternal grandfather is out of town and they don’t want him to find out on Facebook. Have you noticed there’s a distinct look to the vast majority of Facebook pictures? Someone did a study of Facebook profile pictures of guys named Ryan in New York City, and I think the results can be generalized to guys everywhere. It’s called The 20 Male Poses of Facebook. (Hat-tip to Schmutzie for this one.)  Girls night out One last thing before I head off for the Tofu Challenge: How do you like the brand-new Facebook format? Personally, I think Facebook has been over-zealously over-improved. Either that or I’m just rigid and inflexible and stubbornly resistant to change, which is entirely possible. Today my skull feels like a graveyard for spent headaches. (This is a dramatic improvement.) I’ve spent 15 of the past 17 hours in bed with Duncan and a wicked headache. The other two hours involved stuffing Duncan into his leopard-skin carrying case and dragging him over to the vet’s for his annual checkup, where it was revealed that he has gained two-tenths of a kilo and now weighs 9.5 kilos, or 20.9 pounds. He needs to lose 15% of his body weight, starting tomorrow, and he should have dental surgery, but other than that he’s perfect. I had this headache all day yesterday, but it was tolerable and I worked. Last night I went out for dinner with Max, which I enjoyed even with a headache because he’s such an interesting and personable young man. I learn all kinds of things from him. But the thing I learned last night that stuck with me the most was that his mom found out about his addiction by reading about it on my blog. Can you even imagine that? After I got home last night my headache suddenly shifted. Instead of being evenly distributed throughout my whole head, it turned into an intense beam of pain in the left side of my head. Fortunately I can sleep through it, so I’ve been sleeping a lot. I’m going back to bed now. Dr. Samantha King, author of Pink Ribbons Inc.: Breast Cancer and the Politics of Philanthropy, spoke about the commercialization of breast cancer at the Centretown Community Health Centre last week.
Even though heart disease and lung cancer are much more prolific killers of Canadian women, breast cancer benefits from not having its causes fully understood. There’s very little victim-blaming in breast cancer, since we don’t know what causes it. Unlike lung cancer and heart disease patients, women with breast cancer are seen as ‘innocent.’ In recent years, women with breast cancer have acquired – or had foisted upon them – a positive image of ‘survivorship.’ As Dr. King pointed out, the cheerfulness of breast cancer culture can be very alienating for those women who either can’t afford to participate in it or who are dying (the campaign does not acknowledge death), or for those who don’t identify with the Pink Ribbon image of a woman with breast cancer, which is generally white, young, well-groomed and upbeat. Not only that, but the Pink Ribbon Campaign doesn’t raise as much money as you might think once overhead is factored in, and it hasn’t had an impact on breast cancer rates or mortality rates. While it does raise awareness, perhaps it’s only a very superficial and not quite accurate awareness. Collectively we donate a lot of money to the Pink Ribbon campaign, and it makes us feel good but do we really get good value for it? Are the marketers deceiving us? Is our money going where it’s most needed? What’s most needed, according to Dr. King, is more research, better breast cancer treatments, and more emphasis on prevention (some products are directly linked to breast cancer – do we know what they are? Some of them are products that actually sport the Pink Ribbon logo See Breast Cancer Action for more info.). I’d never thought about any of this until I heard Samantha King speak. I’ve run in a couple of races to end breast cancer myself, and I’ve sponsored other women who were running in them. I’ve always associated the Pink Ribbon with positive things, such as supporting women with breast cancer, looking for a cure for breast cancer, etc. I’ve always been touched by the imagery and the whole survivorship thing, and I’ve never questioned any of it until now. It was quite the eye-opener for me. |
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