A Few Quick Notes 581

-At first I was thinking today wouldn't be particularly hot or unpleasant, it seems I may have been a little off.  It's just past noon and it already feels like it's in the low 30s.  Gross.

-It seems that the Ottawa Fringe Festival is taking place in our neighbourhood.  Despite my best efforts I haven't yet been able to convince Jeannette to attend any of the shows with me.  Hopefully sometime between now and the end of the festival I'll manage to talk her into seeing at least of of the shows.

-As another week as passed I thought I would post a few more photos of our container garden progress.

Not surprisingly, the largest portion of our container garden is where we've seen the most growth.  The largest tomato plant keeps pumping out flowers (and immature tomatoes), as do our four pepper plants.  And our runner beans ran right up a line I set up for them.  Maybe most amazingly, our mini-pumpkin plants keep adding new leaves and buds (though only male buds so far) to their pot.  Almost every morning when we head our for the first inspection/watering of the day we find new and exciting developments.

Or, if you were looking for the angle I've posted for the past few weeks.

And if you needed more evidence in support of my claim about the presence of immature tomatoes.

The bathroom wheat continues to grow, but I think the less-than-harsh environment that is our bathroom didn't condition the wheat for some of the wind that we had earlier this week.  To try to overcome the weakness of the plants and fix the damage that was done I installed this new rigging system.  Hopefully this will encourage the growth patterns we are looking for.

We've also had some success with some of the plants I haven't spent as much time documenting.

For instance, a few days I noticed that one of our bean plants had a juvenile bean.  I would guess that we now have at least a dozen or so beans in various stages of not-quite-ready-to-pickness.

And after a slow start our lettuce has finally started to come into its own.  Maybe if we'd used a reasonably sized pot we'd have even more success (but I'm still hopeful that even with this small pot we'll have enough lettuce for a few salads).

And finally, maybe our most exciting garden development is that we finally had our first harvest.  When we went out to check on the plants this morning we noticed that two of our strawberries were ripe.  While even if you combine them these guys won't be much of a meal, it's nice to know that purchasing those plants wasn't all for nought.

-One of the things I've really like about our subscription to the Ottawa Citizen is that it means we're regularly supplied with new crossword puzzles.  Not that either of us is particularly adept at crossword puzzle solving, having the opportunity to spend a few minutes each morning on such a puzzle can be quite pleasurable.

Oh, and maybe the best thing is that on Saturday and Sunday two such puzzles are included.  They seem to know that when we have more breakfast time on our hands we will want more puzzles.

At least there's no tax?

Just a few minutes ago I learned that Cirque du Soleil will be visiting Ottawa this summer with their new Michael Jackson show.  I was curious to see how much tickets are so I followed the links to the online vendor associated with the performance venue.

Not surprisingly, there is quite a range in ticket prices.  While some tickets are available for $50, quite a number of the tickets for seats closed to the stage are $175.

When I used their system to calculate the price for two $80 tickets I was surprised to see that the total price was much higher than $160.

Apparently there are a few fees associated with each ticket.

I realize this position isn't particularly new or original, but what's with a $13.50 ticket fee?  That's more than 25% of the value of a $50 ticket.  Is it just me or does that seem a bit high?  And what's with the separate $3.50 Capital Replacement Fund fee?  Why don't they just roll the ticket fee and Capital Replacement Fund together, or, even better, just include both of these items in the price of the ticket/rental?  I know that I'd rather see a $67 ticket price than a $50 ticket only to find out that it will cost $17 more than advertised.  I have a hard time believing that I'm alone on this one.

Oh, and then the other great thing is that they include an order charge of $3.50.  As far as I can tell this is basically the customer paying for the privilege of shopping with them.  Again, if the business model isn't sustainable without this additional fee why not just include it in the rental or ticket price up front?  Why risk pissing customers off in this way?

Of course maybe I'm the one who's got it all wrong.  Maybe they've learned over time that a lower ticket price is what matters and that people don't respond negatively to an almost %40 difference between the advertised ticket price and total cost.

So while I might have been willing to pay $68.75 for a $68.75 ticket I am much less inclined to pay $68.75 for a $50 ticket.  At the end of the day it's maybe a good thing that I find these fees so offensive because I probably shouldn't really be paying $68.75 for any ticket, no matter its sticker price.

A Few Quick Notes 296

-Today was a pretty great day. I know that at one point the high was expected to be 11, I am pretty confident that the temperature made it that high. Though there were a few cloudy periods, for much of the afternoon the sun was shining brightly. As far as I can tell, the forecast is calling for similar conditions for tomorrow.

-It seems that I have now fallen to 1/14 in this year's Roll Up the Rim to Win competition. My mid-week spurt of five cups seems to have done nothing to help me win. I am starting to think that my hear may not be in it this year, which is fine, as it likely means that I will buy less pre-made coffee (but more whole-bean coffee).

-Neil and I bussed ourselves over to local commercial district and made a few purchases. The main reason for making the trip was to purchase a step stool for $9.99, but we ended up acquiring a few other items while we were there. For a few product demonstrations check out the following video.



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We also purchased another bag of potting soil as well as two packages of seeds. Not surprisingly, I purchased some scarlet runner beans to replace the plants that I had to cut down, and also a package of tomato seeds so that I can try to grow some tomato plants for Neil.

-The plays we saw last night were much better than I expected them to be. A few of the plot points were a little far fetched, though I didn't always pick up on this until after the play had ended, but on the whole quite watchable. Maybe I shouldn't be so surprised, but I don't think that there were too many non-theatre students, or friends of theatre students, in attendance. Actually, I feel pretty comfortable that we were the only individuals without a connection to someone involved in the production.

After the plays we checked out the schedule for the music student's graduation recitals. If things work out well we might be able to catch a few of these free shows.

I should also mention that Neil didn't like my joke about being "more cultured than yogurt." I have no idea why he found this so troubling.

-Apparently this evening was 'Earth Hour.' For some reason I still don't have a good handle on exactly what this is. Maybe I will know more by next year, as it does seem to be somewhat of an annual event.

-I have a gut feeling that we will either be having chicken or beef for dinner tomorrow night. I guess I should try to decide in the near future as I will have to defrost something either way.

The Theatre

What a week.

On Wednesday night Neil and I attended a stand-up show at undergraduate bar. Tonight Neil and I are going to try to make it to a student theatre production.

Actually, the event we are hoping to attend is likely to be comprised of a few productions, somewhere between 1 and 9 one act plays written by the Dalhousie theatre students. At the moment this is basically all of the information we have, we don't know anything about any of the plays we might be seeing.

The key element in our decision to attend is that admittance is free.

Hopefully Neil can manage to get out of the shower and dressed quickly. I would really rather not be late.

Given that I also attended two public lectures this week, it is beginning to appear that I might be more cultured than yogurt.

A Few Quick Notes 95

-Today was wonderful. It was clear with blue skies from the time I awoke until now. On top of that, the temperature was quite reasonable. While not hot, it was warm enough for me to eat my dinner sitting on a patio. Unfortunately, I am not sure if the weather will hold all weekend, though I hope it will.

-Last Friday a few people came over to play Settlers. We managed a relatively quick 6 player, though at the moment I can’t remember who won (though I know that it was not me). Afterwards the remaining four of us decided to play a game of Seafarers (a modification of the base Settlers game). As I was somewhat out of practice with the set up it took a few minutes.

After this delay we were underway, though with a bit of a slow start. For some reason all four of us continued to fail to acquire valuable resources. For about three hours all of us were sitting there not really doing much. The only thing that was happening was that Peter was occasionally getting screwed by sevens (he was never able to do anything with his brick and sheep).

Somehow, after about three hours the end clearly began to approach, though I had managed to build only about one settlement and no cities. Peter finally put us out of our misery and won.

-Since my return it has been my plan to bake bread. I keep thinking that I have all kinds of time in the evenings and I am not doing all that much of consequence, so it seemed like baking bread would be the thing to do.

So, last weekend I thought that I would finally get down to the bread baking. I had the place to myself. It seemed a perfect time to go ahead with my plan. Unfortunately, only then did I realize that my plans for making a huge batch of bread were reliant on having freezer storage space, something that I did not have.

Back to store bought for me (though fortunately it has largely been purchased from Georgetown).

-On Monday night I saw my second Joel Hynes performance and my first Joel Hynes one man show. As some of you may know, Mr. Hynes seems to be from the Southern Shore, Calvert if I remember correctly. This one man show is presented from the point of view of an individual who killed a woman in his small home town on the Southern Shore.

I was generally pleased with the show, though I was surprised that Mr. Hynes did not take more advantage of the stage. At times it seemed as though he had been standing in the same place for 20 minutes, just speaking. Additionally, one or two of the relationships might have been fleshed out, because as they were they did not add all that much.

-Sorry for the infrequencies of my posts recently. Though I don’t have all that much on my plate it seems hard for me to find the few minutes to sit down and take care of my Montifax business. To a large extent I attribute this to my lack of proper working space in my room. As it is right now, my room is filled with children’s books and extra furniture. These unwanted additions make even finding or storing clothing more complicated that usual, they make working in my room almost impossible. The cause of this material backlog was supposed to be taken care of this week, though of course this did not happen. So for some indeterminate amount of time I will have to live with all kinds of extra crap clogging up my room and workspace.

Back in Newfoundland

I made it safely back to Newfoundland sometime early this morning. Yesterday evening the airline staff members had lead me to believe that their could be some problems with my flight, fortunately nothing funny happened.

Based on various factors I ended up not getting to sleep until about 4:00 AM, a bit later than I had originally hoped. This was somewhat troublesome as I had to get up a make a few final changes to a paper that I had to submit today. Once the changes were finalized and the paper submitted I had to start to prepare for an showing of the Nutcracker that I was to attend at 2:00 PM.

As some of you may know, for many years I took part in this annual production. What encouraged me to go back this year to see it is that the artistic director/producer/founder will be leaving the province after almost 30 years. It was also enjoyable to see which elements were the same and which had changed in the few years since I was last involved.

It seems that most of the formal activities of my day ended after the show. The four of us in attendance came back and have largely been lounging around since that time. In a short while I hope to check out the mini-series in which I was an extra and then head to bed, though I managed to forget all three books that I am reading recreationally. So I have now started a fourth.