Dispatches from the Arctic

Early January 2015:

It's cold. I mean really cold. Oh well, good excuse to hang out indoors and watch some Netflix. It's kinda nice to have to stay indoors and cocoon. Bring on the cold weather!! We love winter!!!!♥!!

Late February 2015:

It's a wonder we're all still sane. Or alive really. No one goes outside anymore unless they need to -- except the dog, and he has to pee fast or the stream will freeze up and stick him to the deck. We have to dress like this to go to work and school:

Even indoors we dress in more layers than a Winchester. We lurch around the house like Joey wearing all of Chandler's clothing. 

We are all pale and tired-eyed from too much TV. We have watched seven seasons of Friends, four seasons of The Walking Dead, and have nearly exhausted our Netflix show options. God help us, this is up next:

We are not only pale, we are dry and scaly and chapped. I am even tempted to take this guy up on his offer.

I gave up wearing makeup a couple of weeks ago. Walking into the frigid and never-ending polar winds getting from my car to my office turned my eyes into small crow's-footed Niagara Falls, and I'm damned if I'm going to let my tears wash off $5 worth of Yves Rocher every day.

Ottawa Catch-22: It's so cold the ice conditions on the Canal are perfect. It's so cold that anyone actually skating on the canal is quickly captured and placed on a 48-hour psych hold.

The days blur into each other. We get quite inordinately excited when the daily high goes up to -9, but our hopes are cruelly dashed when the windchill makes it feel like -22 anyway. We begin to wonder if this winter will ever end.

"Friends" post pictures of their tropical escape vacations online, or pictures of where they live their carefree snowless lives. 

We hates them. We hates them forever.

We descend into a scary hell of bad 1980s sit-coms and barely repressed profanity.  In fact, our feelings for winter can best be expressed like this. 

We no longer love winter. We wait patiently for Spring. Or death. Or the next season of House of Cards.

And this is why I am not a photojournalist for Rolling Stone magazine

Well, first of all, because I hardly ever go to concerts.

And second of all, when I did go to a concert, last week, I drove up to the venue in a borrowed minivan full of children.  Actually, two of the children were borrowed as well. 

Not much rocker cred there.

Third of all, I didn't bring my camera, so the only pictures I could take with my Blackberry Curve 8520 that has no flash and about 0.0002 megapixels were....somewhat less than stellar.

So here you have Alan Frew, lead singer of Glass Tiger, doing an amazing acoustic set.  He's not only a great musician, but a really funny guy.  He's the whitish blob on the right of the stage.  The left-hand whitish blob is a guitarist.  Honest.

 

This is Tom Cochrane and Red Rider, still making audiences scream, rocking Scotiabank Place.  They are somewhere in the light.

Oh, this one's better.  Tom is the middle figure in black with the guitar, who appears to have no head.  I can attest that he does, in fact, have a head. 

I saw it.

Yeah, I know. Don't quit my day job.

 

It was Rae's first concert. After each song, she would clap and 'wooohoooo' like it was Lady Gaga up there. She was going wild. So I asked her, "Isn't this great?". She looked at me and shrugged and said, "Yeah, it's OK."  It was all about the screaming and clapping. That's my Rae.

 

Concert admission: free.  Parking: $8. Four Slurpees for the girls: $17. (Now I know why I never go to concerts, other than the whole 'not being a music photojournalist' thing.) Watching the girls listening to great Canadian 80s rock and new wave: priceless.  A week later hearing Rachel singing 'Sinking Like a Sunset' to herself: beyond priceless.

 

 

The Dave Brown Traffic Report Drinking Game

My apologies to the  legions of  many six readers of this blog who live outside Ottawa, but this post will only make sense to people living in or around the nation's capital....if they listen to CBC Radio One on their way to work.

Drinking games are a long and honoured tradition.  From back at university when we'd watch Cheers and swig beer whenever anyone in the bar yelled "Norm!" to Facebook memes like this one:

I think we need a new one.

I have a radio crush on Dave Brown, who does the traffic reports for CBC Radio One in the mornings. Dave has fun with the traffic report.  I can't wait to hear the new ways he'll describe how traffic is moving. Or not, as the case may be.

So here it is:

The Dave Brown Traffic Report Drinking Game

Fill up your travel mug with a Timmie's double double, a Starbucks chai latte, a Bridgehead fair-trade Americano, or just the plain old coffee that comes out of your Procter-Silex, get in your car and get ready to play.  Turn your dial to 91.5 FM and make sure your mug is handy when the traffic report comes on.

Take a swig whenever he says:

- It's a tough sled on all the bridges.

- There's a collision on the go. (But really, Dave, we need to talk about this one -- it's an oxymoron.  When there's a collision, it's definitely on the stop.)

- And that's where the magic happens.

- 417 westbound is clogging up.

- Whenever he calls 'the Split' 'the Merge'.

- Eastbound 417 is packed to the gills.

- Keep your head on a swivel.

- Patience is a virtue. (while describing the bridges)

Take a large gulp whenever his prose gets extra-descriptive.  You know what I mean.  Examples of gulp-worthy lines:

- Highway 50 strikes a pose at Montée Paiement and vogues all the way down to la Vérendrye.

- The 417 westbound dashes from Boundary to Innes.

- Carling is all tangled up with pockets of congestion.

- The 174 is only a slight headache this morning, you'll only need one Advil or Tylenol.

- The 416 northbound is a tableau.  Not much go, but lots of stop.

- The 417 eastbound Usain Bolts out of Kanata.

- The 174 is in need of some flaxseed oil: it's backed up from Blair to the Split.

- Volume builds up through Kanata, reaches an apex at Bayshore, then deconstructs by Woodroffe.

- The 417 westbound is as thick as a bowl of chili coming up to Scotiabank Place.

- The Queensway stuffs up at Place d'Orleans, but you'll get relief by Innes.

- The 174 is in leather pants mode: tight as it approaches the Split.

You might need a bigger travel mug than usual.  I'm usually out of coffee before I get to Carling and Maitland. :)

******************************

If this catches on, we might need a return-commute All in a Day drinking game.  Beverage of your choice.

Sip every time:

- Alan Neal says he's posting something to Twitter.

- Laurence Wall says 'People's Republic of Nepean'.

- Kate Macnamara says 'at the minute'.

You get the idea. :)

"Wolf nipple chips. Get 'em while they're hot. They're lovely."

On Sunday I had an experience that reminded me very much of a bit in Monty Python's Life of Brian. 

I wonder if you remember the scene where Brian is a food vendor at a gladiator match, selling exotic finger foods to the spectators, including Reg, Judith, and Francis of the People's Front of Judea:

BRIAN (calling out his wares): Larks' tongues. Wrens' livers. Chaffinch brains. Jaguars' earlobes. Wolf nipple chips. Get 'em while they're hot. They're lovely. Dromedary pretzels, only half a denar. Tuscany-fried bats.

BRIAN: Larks' tongues. Otters' noses. Ocelot spleens.

REG: Got any nuts?

BRIAN: I haven't got any nuts. Sorry. I've got wrens' livers, badgers' spleens...

REG: No, no, no.

BRIAN: Otters' noses?

REG: I don't want any of that Roman rubbish.

JUDITH: Why don't you sell proper food?

BRIAN: Proper food?

REG: Yeah, not those rich imperialist tit-bits.

BRIAN: Well, don't blame me. I didn't ask to sell this stuff.

REG: All right. Bag of otters' noses, then.

FRANCIS: Make it two.

********************************

Well, I didn't nosh on otters' noses, but I did get to sample some really delicious and, in some cases, very creative and/or exotic cuisine.  I won tickets to the Ottawa Humane Society's Summer Harvest Garden Party fundraiser. Lots of the top chefs from Ottawa restaurants, as well as the chef from the Prime Minister's residence, and chefs from the Algonquin College Culinary Arts program were there, cooking for the guests.  The event raised more than $35,000 dollars for the shelter!

My friend Debby and I dressed up in our best garden-party outfits, dispersed our children to various other events, and set off into Ottawa.  Of course nothing goes off without a hitch, and when I got to her house to pick her up, I managed to fall down her front steps onto the patio stone pathway, grazing my knee and hurting my wrist.  Fortunately there were no grass or blood stains on my dress.  Two extra-strength Advil gelcaps later, and we were on our way, with Deb driving, since my wrist hurt.  We decided that if an ER visit for wrist X-rays was necessary, we would do it after stuffing our faces at the party.

I felt a bit like a Jim Carrey character as we drove up behind a Lexus and a BMW to the valet parking area in my tan 1999 Mercury Mystique with the big dent in the passenger-side quarter panel, but soon we were accepting a glass of Prosecco and gliding (Debby) and limping (me) gracefully into the shelter where the Garden Party was being held.  The shelter is only a year old and is a beautiful facility!  It's clean, bright, and spacious, with plenty of room for each dog and cat, and no cages in sight.  The hallways were filled with tables of goodies from each chef or restaurant, and we were soon sampling all the deliciousness on display.

The gorgeous Deborah.

I snapped these pictures surreptitiously with my Blackberry, which doesn't have a flash, so they aren't the greatest. These sesame-crusted chicken sausage bites with Asian slaw and beets were from the Algonquin College Culinary Program:
 

and these phyllo port-soaked strawberry cup thingies too:

And then it was on to oysters!  From Whalesbone Oyster House.  Raspberry Point oysters (from Prince Edward Island) with a squeeze of lemon.  Mmmmmmm:

We filled our plates with appetizers. (I ate the shrimp out of the shrimp étouffée before it occurred to me to take a picture of my plate.)

And that's when things got all Monty-Python-otters'-noses-y:

Yes. Smoked duck tongues with spicy mayo.  They were in a tempura batter and deep fried and were quite tasty.  Though I did prefer the Kentucky-fried quail legs.  (I can't believe I just typed 'Kentucky-fried quail legs', or ate them for that matter.)  They were really, really good.  Not Tuscany-fried bat, but still, pretty close. :)  The food in the picture above was from Atelier, except for the gazpacho.

I didn't take many pictures of the main courses -- it was hard to juggle the plate, the utensils, the wineglass and my Blackberry, but these were good:

And so was this (from Urban Pear):

But my absolute favourite dish was this -- deconstructed sushi from K.W.Catering:

I was one happy camper.  And kind of red-faced since it was really hot.  I imagine the air-conditioning doesn't usually have to deal with a few hundred extra people, some of whom were cooking.

Laureen Harper, the wife of the Prime Minister, (below, in the blue-and-white dress) is a long-time patron and supporter of the shelter.  She was there chatting to all the chefs and shelter people. Not in the picture is her RCMP protection officer, who was very good-looking -- really tall, nice hair, ice-blue eyes and cheekbones you could cut paper with. He caught me staring at him a couple of times, but his attention was purely work-related. I was tempted at one point to throw myself at him yelling "Frisk me, I've got a knife", but I thought better of it.

We managed to leave without taking home any animals.  Though it was touch-and-go for Debby and a year-old German Shepard called Sasha.

So, thanks to 93.9  Bobfm, who ran the caption contest that I won the tickets on:



Just put the spray bottle down, and no one gets hurt.

It was a lovely afternoon.  And we didn't have to go to the ER after all.