A Few Quick Notes 423

-After several days of sub-par weather today has been quite beautiful. The skies have been quite clear and the temperature almost perfect (meaning the low to mid twenties). Unfortunately, we seem likely to switch back to somewhat overcast/rainy and cooler weather in the coming days. What a bummer.

-On Friday night Peter and I attended the Old Man Luedecke concert at the Rebecca Cohn Auditorium. Unfortunately, as both of us were somewhat tired we managed to sleep through portions of most of the songs in the first half of the show. Fortunately, due to an intermission sugar hit, we were able to wake up for the second half of the show.

-Part of the justification for my renewed absence from the blog this past weekend was that I was helping two friends move. On Friday I helped Peter get his things out of residence. We then stashed quite a number of his belongings in my closet for the summer. On Saturday and Sunday I helped another friend move, a move which first required us to do some shopping and cleaning. Anyway, it was definitely a busy weekend as far as moving was concerned.

-Neil and Rebecca will be returning from their trip to Regina this evening. I am hoping to have the apartment in order and food freshly prepared for their return. Hopefully I don't get too lazy between now and then.

-A few days ago I walked into our laundry room to find one of the components of the coin injection part of washing machine on the floor. It was immediately clear that this washing machine was definitely going to be out of order. Unfortunately, several days have passed and the washing machine is still out of order. Though this wouldn't normally be too much of a problem, not having access to two washing machines has definitely slowed down some of my washing attempts. I really hope that they will get around to having this fixed in the very near future. That the machine is out of commission is particularly frustrating as I know that the washing component of the machine is still fully functional (as I have seen it in use over the past few days).

-After a few weeks of failing to read my newspapers very thoroughly, it has been great to finally get back to my daily newspaper habit. I am hoping that in the coming days I might even be able to catch up on a few unread obituaries that piled up over the past year and a half.

A Few Quick Notes 397

-Today was close to 0 for quite a number of hours. The result of these near-freezing (but not quite freezing) temperatures is that much of the snow that we did have has now melted. While this means that Halifax doesn't look particularly wintery, it does mean that walking on sidewalks is relatively easy and safe.

-We had another Ultimate game tonight. Though we started with a seven point deficit (we picked up a player from another team) we somehow managed to forge ahead and win by several points. While I didn't have a particularly impressive game, I did manage to make a few nice catches and floor burns on my elbows.

-On a related note, it seems that the inventor of the Frisbee, Walter Frederick Morrison, died on Tuesday.

-I have some school work that I should be doing at the moment.

-I finished my grading today. Now I just have a few administrative tasks to complete before I return my marked exams to my supervisor.

-We had roast beef and roast potatoes for dinner last night. I was pretty pleased with how things turned out.

Blog-off Score

Neil:0
Cameron: 26

A Few Quick Notes 240

-Yesterday and today have both been quite wet. Both days have been marked by periods of heavy precipitation. Fortunately, I seem to have managed to avoid some of these downpours on my way to school, which is nice as I am never a big fan of starting my day wet.

-A few days ago Neil, Rebecca, and I watched the documentary American Movie. The film follows Mark Borchardt as he attempts to complete Coven, an independently produced and financed short film. While there are many moments of humour, the film is in many ways strikingly sad. Not only does the viewer witness the mental and physical deterioration of the the protagonist's uncle, but the viewer also gets a rather close look

-It seems that the New York Times is reporting that in the near future the Christian Science Monitor will transition from a daily newspaper to an online newspaper with a regularly published magazine component. While this is not the largest of daily newspapers in the US, this change may be a sign of things to come in the very near future. One wonders how long other papers will be able to hold out in an era of declining circulation and increased competition from the online news media.

-My uncle was kind enough to forward me Gerard Damiano's obituary. For those of you who are not porn aficionados, Damiano was the director of the classic porn film Deep Throat. Surely fans of the film will be saddened by this news.

I am now curious to see if the Globe will carry his obituary, and if so how long it will take to appear.

-I managed to get through my lecture on Monday. While it likely wasn't the world's best lecture, I also don't think that it was the world's worst lecture. I am hoping that tomorrow's lecture on the American presidential system and elections will generate at least a modicum of excitement in the class. On Friday I will get the pleasure of talking to the class about writing and citing, with particular reference to the assignment that they have to do for me.

-For much of the evening I have been reading critiques of the work of George Grant, a Canadian political philosopher. Unfortunately, I haven't found these works particularly illuminating or accessible. I keep skimming my eyes over the page without getting much information. Hopefully I will eventually get some sense of what is going on by the time I decide to pack it in later tonight.

A Few Quick Notes 188

-Though things started off poorly today, by mid-morning we were in the midst of a rather fine day. Again, we had clear skies and reasonable temperatures. As far as I am concerned I can deal with the crappy, overcast mornings if the afternoons and evenings were always this nice.

-As I was preparing my lunch this morning I noticed that we were out of carrots, and peppers. While in past months this wouldn't have been too much of a problem, I am presently in this midst of a quite the vegetable surge. So for the first time in almost a month I didn't have to prepare vegetables with the rest of my lunch. On the consumption end this was also a little frustrating, a few carrot sticks would have gone quite nicely with my sandwich and piece of gingerbread.

-It seems that I missed the first episode of the Gordon Pinsent obituary show. More troubling is that I may have completely misunderstood when it was to air. It now looks as though I was 12 hours off the scheduled time. Even worse that just missing the show or the correct time is that I have now learned that it is likely that the show will only be broadcast during the work day, making regular listening almost impossible.

-Last night my parents, sister, and I played Pictionary. My parents played on a team against my sister and I. More than ever before it seemed as though there were a ridiculously large number of all-plays. It seemed that we could hardly go a turn without an all-play hitting.

Even worse than the large number of non-category specific all-plays was the one that Kirsten and I were stuck on for about 30 minutes. We couldn't seem to catch a break. Do any of you know how hard it is to draw 'hangover' for a 12 year-old girl? Another one that we were hit with, 'box cars,' was particularly hard considering that we haven't had trains in this province for longer than Kirsten has been alive.

Not surprisingly, we were smoked. I am not sure that we even made it half-way around the board. I guess my desire to exchange Cranium for Pictionary as the family game isn't quite about to happen.

-At about 2:00 PM today Kirsten called to see if I was free to go to Mount Pearl. At first I wasn't exactly sure what they were talking about, particularly as I was then at work and would be for the next few hours (and I knew that they knew this). Eventually I was able to piece things together and confirm that they were in fact just about to head to Mount Pearl, and seemingly thought that I could just drop work and take the trip out with them. They didn't seem to quite understand that being at work means that I can't just take off with no notice, even if I will eventually have to head to Mount Pearl at some point this summer to get a new driver's license photo taken.

-For a second Thursday in a row my weekly ultimate game will fall on a Thursday. Though I am likely in a minority, Friday would really be preferable to this. Furthermore, this is likely to be a hard fought game against one of the more experienced teams (More Cowbell) in our division. Hopefully we will be able to pull out a victory.

A Few Quick Notes 187

-For the third day in a row we have had pretty decent weather. While we now have blue skies, they were not visible when I awoke. Strangely, the temperature seems to be higher than predicted, but still not particularly hot and unpleasant.

-At some point during the night before last I was awoken by the ka-chunk feeling of a kidney stone moving through my innards. Fortunately this wasn't a bothersome enough experience to truly jar me from my sleep (probably because I knew that there was nothing that I could really do about the matter at that point in time). Anyway, after a few brief, but sharp, spurts of pain I seem to have reverted back to my status quo antebellum (and the 'bellum' would be a reference the mono that I experienced last summer).

-While looking through the Globe today I saw an article about a new CBC Radio One show to be hosted by Gordon Pinsent. My understanding is that the show will basically be radio obituaries for individuals who are not particularly well known. As I am a big fan of obituaries and CBC Radio One I will have to make an effort to tune into the first show this evening (though it would really be better if the show was available via podcast).

-The newspaper also gave me some surprising news about George Carlin. It seems that Mr. Carlin passed away on Sunday.

Just a few days ago I listened to an interview that suggested that Mr. Carlin played an important role in the growth/changing of American comedy. His use of 'obscenities' might be the aspect of his comedy that is most famous, and, at the time, groundbreaking.

-Yesterday, while looking through my wallet I noticed that I had a few unused Roll-up-the-Rim winners that I hadn't used. All three of them were doughnuts. I guess it would seem that I might not eat as many doughnuts as I once used to.

-While at work today I competed in a long putt competition. The goal was to get one's ball as close to an 'x' on the ground as possible. Due to a slight mis-understanding of the rules I didn't take advantage of the fact that I could bounce by ball off the walls as well as the door behind the 'x.' The result was that my balls were pretty wimpily swatted done the course for poor results while other were really rocketed a the target for fair degrees of success.

A Few Quick Notes 155

-Today, as predicted by Environment Canada, was quite warm. As far as I can tell, there wasn't a part of the day during which a full winter coat was needed, and when the sun was out during the middle part of the day things were really quite pleasant. Since that time there has been some deterioration in the form of precipitation, but nothing major.

-As regular readers of this blog will know, for years I have had an inability it cook beans and other legumes in a personally satisfactory manner. Somewhat surprisingly, this does not mean that I have stopped trying. Actually, my culinary efforts have been quite to the contrary, bean dishes spring forth from our fertile kitchen with a surprising rapidity. The problem is that most of these dishes verge on inedibility.

Remarkably, for dinner tonight I managed to make a bean dish that was more than just edible, it was actually tasty.

For some reason I decided that I would try to make chickpea curry. To find out how to do this I slotted both words into a handy Google search box. If I recall correctly I examined only the first entry and found that I had all of the needed ingredients (why go further just to find that I wouldn't be able to make another version of the same thing).

Of course, being me, I decided that I didn't really need to follow the recipe and would rather just use it as a form of guidance.

Within a few minutes I was on my merry way, frying onions and tossing in unmeasured quantities of spices.

One early, though major, modification was to add a chicken breast. This was mainly because I had earlier in the day thawed the piece of meat and felt that it would be best to use it before it spoiled. Also, who wants to eat a meal that doesn't have at least some form of meat?

After allowing the meat, chickpeas, and spices to simmer for some period of time I added a few stalks of celery. I didn't have a particularly good reason for making this addition, but I guess I felt that I should have some fresh vegetables with my meal.

Anyway, after allowing the celery to cook with the rest of the dish for some period of time I served myself a generous portion on top of a bed of rice. Immediately I was surprised to find that it was edible. As I continued to eat I learned that it was not just edible but tasty. Maybe I will have to try this again in the future, or maybe I want to stop cooking beans/legumes on a high note.

-For some reason all of people covered by today's Globe and Mail Obituary section were quite young. If I recall correctly, the oldest individual to be profiled was 67, while one or two were in the 56-57 range. Such a range of ages is much more depressing than the typical coverage of ninety year-olds.