Long Weekend

Took this past Friday off work, as J. was down from Montreal visiting with her folks in the Valley. Had quite a good long weekend with her.

Went down to the Valley Thursday night after work and stayed over at J.'s parents' place so we could go riding early the following morning. J.'s mother keeps her new horse at the stables of Evangeline Trail Rides, near Canning. It was a beautiful sunny day and we spent about an hour riding through the woods - much fun. And we rode Western, so I wasn't too sore the following day (as I would definitely have been, had we ridden English!).

After stopping in at Stirling's for lunch and yet another delicious piece of pie (I had peach-blueberry this time), we headed back into the city as we had appointments down at the Interlude Spa at 4 pm. We both had the Healing Stone massage - I hadn't had one of those in about a year and a half. I tell you, if money were no object, I'd have one of those every day! Heavenly.

Friday night we hit Onyx for another fabulous dinner. This was our second time eating there and it was even better than the first. Good wines, very nice service, and the Digby scallops I had to start were probably the best scallops I've ever eaten. Yum.

Late Saturday morning, we jumped into the car and headed down the south shore to Chester. The historical society down there was holding its annual Heritage House and Harbour Tour, which neither J. nor I had ever attended. It was great - a good mix of properties from different time periods and architectural styles. One house in particular was one I've admired for years, so it was great to be able to have a look around the interior. The weather was absolutely perfect, we had a scrummy lunch at Julien's, and hit the outdoor art sale which was also on in the village that day, before heading back into the city late in the afternoon.

It was Girls Nite Out on Saturday, so we met up with A.D., as well as P., who was in town from St. John's for work. Their friends T. and C. joined us that evening in the lounge at Seven Wine Bar for drinks and some food. I've been meaning to try Seven for a long time and I was quite impressed. It's very chic, and the menus were very good. Next time we go, we'll have to try out the dining room upstairs.

We ended up going to Rain afterwards in the hopes of dancing, but the music wasn't that great. We just ended up having another drink, then calling it a night around 1 am. I knew we should have gone to Reflections instead! This city desperately needs a club that caters to the thirtysomething crowd - given the large student population here, it's well-nigh impossible to escape the hordes of scantily-dressed, drunken college kids everywhere you go. *sigh*

Oh well. Given my social life these days...there's always next year. ;-)

Free Books = Totally Sweet

Since my sessional teaching appointment has been confirmed for next year, I'm now able to take advantage of a wonderful perk - free books from academic publishers.

Nearly all publishers provide "desk" or "inspection" copies of their books to qualified instructors teaching courses in relevant areas. The idea is that if they send you a free book and you like it, you might then adopt it for your class, and the publisher will sell lots of copies to your students.

Some publishers have cut back on this service in recent years, and will only give you an inspection copy - meaning that if you don't adopt the book for your course within 90 days or so, you have to send the book back to them (in perfect condition). Happily, though, there are still quite a few publishing houses around that will send you a free desk copy, with no requirement that you definitely adopt the book.

Blackwell's is one of the latter, and my very first desk copy arrived today in the post. I got their Companion to Eighteenth-Century Britain, and their Companion to Nineteenth-Century Britain will be sent to me in a couple of weeks (as it's due for release in paperback imminently).

Needless to say, I've ordered a bunch of other titles as well. Routledge are proving rather miserly, but Longman and Penguin have both been quite cooperative. I should be able to put together a decent course reader, at this rate. Which reminds me that I really need to get back to work on that!

Back from Dildo

Returned this evening from a long weekend in Newfoundland - a mixed bag of events, but a good time was had by all, in the end.

Friday, all my family (on my mother's side) gathered to see off my grandmother, who passed away in December. It was her wish to be interred with her parents and siblings in the family plot back in her home village of Dildo, NL. So we did that - there was a beautiful and very personal service in the United Church there, followed by the interrment of her ashes in the family plot (a very peaceful spot high on a hill, overlooking Trinity Bay and a farmer's field). We had a beautiful sunny day, weather-wise, and though it was very sad, we all felt that we had done right by her. Couldn't have gone better.

Afterwards we went back to the house that we'd rented for the week - a heritage B&B in Spaniards Bay (about 20 minutes from Dildo), built by one of our ancestors in 1901. The place had 8 bedrooms and there were 14 of us in the house - the remaining 4 family members stayed at another B&B in Dildo. So needless to say, a crazy family weekend ensued, with a lot of big meals and laughter.

On Friday night, after dinner and a fair amount of liquor had been consumed, the owners of our B&B screeched-in all 18 of us. As a Cape Bretoner, I was a bit embarrased to be included in such touristy goings-on - so when it came time for me to kiss the cod, I went one further and gave it a big lick (takes more than a slimy, smelly, half-frozen raw codfish to put me off. Heh.) I was rewarded with a double shot of screech for my efforts.

Saturday was another lovely sunny day (we were so lucky the weather was good), so I joined my aunt, uncle and cousins and went for a drive south along Conception Bay. We visited Cupids, which was first settled in 1610 and was the second-ever English colony in the New World. Then we went on to Brigus, a beautiful, historic and well-preserved fishing village, where we took pictures and wandered around the streets for a bit.

By 5 pm, all of the family reconvened in Dildo, where we were due to go out on a boat tour of Trinity Bay at 5 pm. We ended up being out on the water for three hours, cruising up the coast. We spotted four bald eagles (including a young one which hadn't yet grown its white head feathers). The last hour, we put out some rods and jigs, and had a go at fishing. After a slow start, we ended up catching about a dozen good-sized codfish, which the boat owners cleaned for us so we could take them home. After docking, we staggered off the boat en masse (I was just about the only person who wasn't wasted!), got some take-out, then headed for the hall owned by the boat owners, lured by the promise of karaoke (argh!). The captain of our boat turned out to be an Elvis impersonator, and came onstage in a sequinned jumpsuit before belting out a few tunes. I must admit that he was not too bad. Things went rapidly downhill after that, however, when various relatives got up to have a go at the microphone. I haven't laughed so hard in ages - it was great.

This morning, my aunts and I all got up to meet with a local man who has been researching the genealogy of my grandmother's family, the Gosses, for over 15 years now. His knowledge was quite encyclopedic - he has traced the Gosses of Newfoundland back for eighteen generations, to the first Gosses who came to NL from Dorset, England in the late seventeenth century. Absolutely amazing stuff. He's written a book about it which all of us happily purchased.

And by then, it was lunchtime, and time for my mother, uncle and I to head for St. John's Airport and catch our flight back to Halifax. They dropped me at home earlier, and decided to head straight for Cape Breton tonight. So I'm here on my own, playing with the rabbits and getting settled. I wish I didn't have to go back to work tomorrow!

Thank God for PBS (Again)

Today, whilst idly surfing, I discovered a treasure trove of wonderful lectures, available online at the website of WGBH (PBS in Boston). They were all delivered originally at the Boston Athenaeum, and cover many of my favourite subjects - British history and culture, libraries, art, and architectural heritage.

Exciting stuff - and very welcome, given that there's bugger-all on television at this time of year. Now that we have wireless internet, I'm going to enjoy curling up on the couch at night and watching these lectures, in the weeks to come.

Unbelieveable!

I just heard from my mother that one of the winners of the Lotto 6/49 jackpot from Saturday night - the second-biggest ever in Canadian lottery history, at over $43 million - is someone we know. I can't believe it!

But it's true - I just found the story and photo online in the Toronto Star. JP and his wife VP have been friends of my parents for nearly 30 years. JP bought the ticket in a regular lotto pool at work, and that ticket was one of four winners in the draw Saturday night. That means he's won $1.3 million. Awesome. Couldn't have happened to better or more deserving people! So happy for them!

EDIT: Just found this video online at CTV, featuring JP doing the 'dance of joy' - as well he should. Heh.

Take THAT, Maclean's

Memo received from the university president at work today. He was writing to inform all faculty and staff that Dalhousie has joined eleven other Canadian universities in withdrawing from the university rankings compiled annually by Maclean's magazine. His justification, and a copy of the letter sent to Maclean's, is online here.

It's a principled stand, and one which I support. In the fifteen-odd years since Maclean's started its university rankings, I've always been uneasy about its methods, which often seemed rather arbitrary and smacked of a consumer-driven, American-style approach to higher education. Fundamentally, the group of eleven institututions now withdrawing from the rankings (including UBC, University of Alberta, Simon Fraser, McMaster, and University of Toronto) is protesting against the methodology used by the magazine.

It's not sour grapes, either. Most of the eleven are classed by the magazine in the medical-doctoral university category, and they form eight of last year's Top 15 medical-doctoral institutions (with Toronto tying for first place!).

It will be very interesting to see how Maclean's responds to this action.

Freakin' Oogly Shoes

I've been meaning to compose a polemical blog rant about the "Crocs" phenomenon. You know Crocs. They're the Birkenstocks of the Noughties - those bloody ugly sandals that everyone seems to be wearing these days, viz.:
Yes, I know they're comfy. And yes, I know they are made of wondrous space-age foam-type stuff that resists the growth of fungus, toejam and myriad other foot-related nasties. And I grant that in certain settings, they are an excellent option - at the beach, on the boat, in the garden, or on the job if you are required to be on your feet all day.

But increasingly, over the past few months, I've begun to see people of all ages wearing them all the time. Thanks to our uniquely North American compulsion to consider comfort over all other sartorial factors, Crocs have now made their way to the street, where in my opinion they emphatically do not belong. Stroll along Spring Garden Road - supposedly the smartest street in this city - at any time of day or night, and you will see endless numbers of adults and kids in rainbow-coloured Crocs. And while people are free to do as they wish, I am likewise free to pronounce this trend to be ugly and inappropriate.

Keep 'em for the garden, folks. That's all I'm saying.

Blueberry Time

August is blueberry time in Nova Scotia. When I was growing up, I spent time every summer combing the woods and fields around my parents' house (and around the community generally), picking blueberries to be brought home and whipped up into pies, crumbles, muffins and pancakes. As a result, I developed a taste for wild berries - cultivated ones taste like cardboard to me. But that means I hardly ever eat blueberries anymore, since wild ones can be hard to come by in the city.

So, needless to say, I was delighted when I walked into the grocery store last night, and found they had 5 lb. boxes of wild NS blueberries for sale. Bliss! They cost $12.99 - which is cheaper than the Farmers' Market, surprisingly. I snagged a box and put them in the freezer straightaway.

We've got a number of friends coming round on Sunday for dinner. I'll definitely be making blueberry pie for dessert. Yum.

Goin' to the Stones

On Monday, I bought tickets for the Rolling Stones show that's happening on the Commons September 23rd. I couldn't blog about it right away, though, because I'd bought tickets for my parents also, as an early Christmas present. I let them know about it a few days ago and they were really happy. My dad is a huge Stones fan and my mother really likes them too. I was very surprised to find out that my dad has never seen them live - I thought he had, in Toronto back in the 60s. So I'm even more pleased with myself now, for getting those tickets!

The support acts were confirmed yesterday - Alice Cooper (ehhh), Halifax indie heroes Sloan (mmm), and Grammy-winning hip-hop supahstah Kanye West (holy CRAP!). Not that I'm a massive Kanye fan or anything, but he's HUGE - scoring him is another major coup for this humble city.

Memories of Rome

Just getting around today to reading the travel section of last Saturday's Globe and Mail. This week's Travelblog - which invites submission from ordinary humble readers - was titled "Eat, Ask Questions Later" (it doesn't seem to appear in the online edition, so I can't link to it). It was one woman's story of dining at a restaurant in Rome called Ristorante dal Pallaro, known for the quality of its cooking, but also the fact that it does not have a menu. You simply turn up and eat whatever the owner/chef has decided to cook.

The restaurant this woman described sounded very familiar to me. So I went back and checked the travelogue I wrote after we went to Rome for Christmas in 2001. And sure enough, I discovered we'd eaten dinner at the very same place, on Boxing Day (our last meal in Rome). This is what I wrote:

[The restaurant we're going to tonight] is called Trattoria del Palaro [sic], and all we know about it is that it has no menu - when you go there, you eat whatever it is they decided to make that day. We sit out on the terrace out front, next to a large outdoor patio heater. After ascertaining that we understand the concept of there being no menu, the waiter nods and then disappears inside. Soon a bottle of white wine and a bottle of water appear on the table; the wine is a little ropey at first taste, but in the true tradition of plonk, it tastes better after the first few sips. A few minutes later, the waiter emerges again and the feast begins.

He sets four plates down in front of us, filled with a selection of appetizers. There are slices of cured Parma ham; hard, piquant little green olives; some soft white beans; slices of fennel bulb drizzled in oil. As we are loading our plates with these goodies, a fifth plate arrives containing sizzling little croquettes, hot from the frying pan; our best guess is that they contain lamb and potato, but whatever they are, they're delicious. All this food disappears in a trice.

The waiter clears all the dishes, and shortly thereafter our pasta is placed before us. This is a simple but very flavourful dish of bucatini (tubes) with a tomato ragù and lots of cheese. The meat course follows swiftly on and is really superb: slices of succulent roast veal, served with potatoes sliced thinly and then deep fried, so they're a bit like kettle chips, only thicker. There are also slices of grilled eggplant. All this soon disappears, and the tasty juices from the veal are mopped up with slices of chewy dense bread. To finish the secondo, there is a slice of mild pecorino cheese to enjoy.

We're both feeling pretty stuffed, but everything has been so delicious so far that we can't possibly pass up the dessert. We have a break to finish our wine, then the waiter comes, bearing slices of a custardy and slightly boozy lemon cake, and to finish, a delight - tiny glasses of freshly-squeezed mandarin juice.

It's a superb meal - we've definitely ended on a gastronomic high point - and all for the ridiculously low price of less than $25 each. Our only regret is that we only discovered this place tonight - if we were here longer, we'd have definitely come back.

The moral of the story? Maybe in future, I ought to think about editing, then submitting, some of my travel scribbles to outlets like Travelblog in the Globe. Other people seem to do much the same thing, so why not me?

In the Garden - July

With A. being away for most of July, things got a little raggedy in the garden, but I think I managed it OK. He did some intensive cutting back last weekend, which will continue this weekend. Some of the hedges, bushes and shrubs were starting to get a bit out of control. Even the trees are huge - we may need to bring in a pro to tame our big maple tree at some point. I love it, but it's grown enormously in the last two years and now provides a bit more shade than we want.

Anyway, my garden pics for July are here now. I added in a few snaps of the 'kitchen garden', as well as the front deck, where we're spending a lot of time these days.