The worst of both worlds

Have you been to dinner theatre lately?

About a year and a half ago, we went to a dinner theatre show with our BFFs.  On the way there, we had such great expectations for some great food and fun entertainment.

In the end, we got food.  And entertainment.  (dear reader:  note the lack of adjectives).  I won't say where we went, but it starts with J and rhymes with Mubilations.

Dinner theatre is just a disappointment.  You get food that has to be mass produced so that it can be served to the entire "restaurant" all at the same time.  And it has to be bland enough to accommodate both the seniors (of which there are plenty) and children (of which there were a few).  Side note - who shells out the cashish to bring a child to one of these places?  So that means either 1) fatty prime rib or 2) dry mushroom-sauced chicken.  Maybe this passed as great food back in the days when you'd go out for dinner and a dance?  I dunno.  Not so good anymore.  I need my food to have strange combinations (what?  Lamb in cheese fondue? yes please!) or in awkward presentations (shrimp on a lollipop?  How novel!)

And as for the show - well, you get the BFA grads who had a GPA of 4.  And by 4, I mean 4 out of 9.  (Yeah, shout out stanine!)  Every time I go to a show there, the plot/songs/jokes all follow the same formula.  I'm pretty sure they use the DJ 3000 to write them (hot dog!  we have a wiener).

But the worst part, by far, is the service.  Now, everything is usually pretty prompt, since they have to have the meals served, pepper ground and plates cleared in the space between acts.  I'm talking about the fact that your server is "in character" as they deliver your fatty beef.

Do you remember those days in Drama class in High School where there were those kids who just played a character the whole class, and how annoying that was?  Ok, wait.  Maybe only I have those memories due to the fact that I'm a High School Drama Geek.  ANYWAY... I don't want Sandra Dee or Jack Bauer asking me if I want a refill on that cola based beverage I'm drinking.  I want my server to be there when I need something, maybe with some good inane chatter (see above), but not to draw all the attention to themselves for the ENTIRE TIME that I'm eating and/or watching the program to count how many songs are left before dessert.

But P.S.  It must suck to work at one of those places and just be a server, and not be a server / (stroke) performer in the show.  Just like bus drivers, there's probably a hierarchy there too.

As an aside, I have never worked as a server, so I don't really understand what the job entails.  Sorry if I offended any of you who work in hospitality.  Now go fetch me another coke.

So, maybe, like Greg, I'm turning into a grumpy old man.  (no maybes about it).  I think I'll stick to one of these options in the future:

1)  Go to a super-nice restaurant, get take-out and watch some HBO television series on the DVD player in the van or
2)  Go to a show at the Citadel or the Jube and sneak in some jujyfruits and/or duck breast.

And maybe pretend I'm Clive Bixby the whole time.

Slurptegrity

Ok,  good parent moment.  Not on my part though.  This one (surprisingly) (wait, I shouldn't say that - I guarantee a punch for that) goes to Kathryn.  In a nutshell, Emily can ride a bike now - all thanks to some technique and a lot of patience that Kathryn dug up from somewhere.  I know what you're thinking - Kathryn actually had patience for Emily?

But I digress...

This post isn't really about that parenting moment - that's just preamble.  For those who don't know, we live in a cul-de-sac.  Which is great, since we have this nice keyhole loop where the kids can ride their bikes starting at the corner, past our house, around the bend, past the house on the other side of the street, and then end up at the alley.  Then, they stop, turn their bikes around and ride back.  They do this because we forbid them to cross the road because we are either:

A) Good parents who don't want their kids to get run-over or;

B) Paranoid, over-protective crazies.

Now, I could digress more here and talk about the stupid kids who insist on playing ball hockey in the busy part of the road, when there's a barely used section of road 10 FEET AWAY!  And who don't move their nets or their bodies when a car approaches.  (Come on - don't kids know anything about proper street hockey these days?).  But I will not, because that would end up with me smashing the computer.

What I will talk about is differences between what I did as a kid and what I let Emily do.

For starters, and this should be apparent to anybody over, oh, let's say 20?  We never used to wear bike helmets.  It was just run out the back door, grab your bike and off you go.  Nowadays it's a long process of getting the helmets down from the closet, adjusting their hair to fit the helmet on their heads.  Adjusting the straps to fit the children who have inherited my big head syndrome and then finally forcing them out the door because they've changed their minds about wanting to ride bikes after all.  I'm not saying that our childhood was better, cause let me tell you - blunt force trauma to the head ain't that nostalgic.

What I wonder more about is that I can remember taking my bike and actually leaving my parents' sight-line for the whole afternoon.  We would ride ON THE STREET!, or even worse, IN THE ALLEY.  In fact, my friends John, Anthony and I used to ride in circles up and down one alley driveway, across the alley, up another driveway, and then down this wicked little slope that for some reason was built in to the edge of the driveway.  You could get your bike up to about Mach 0.5 for a brief second before (and this was the smart part) shooting out into the alley from a hidden position right beside the garage.  I can see now why the owner of said driveway got mad at us for riding our bikes there.

The other main activity with our bikes was riding to the store to buy copious amounts of candy.  There were two places you could go in my neighbourhood for your sugar fixes.  The first was Sprague Drugs at Petrolia Mall.  This was the officially sanctioned place.  And by sanctioned, I mean that this is the place that my mom said was ok to go to.  Sure, you did have to cross the busy street (40th Ave) - but there were medical professionals there at the store to watch out for us.

The place that we usually went, however, was the little convenience store in the tower at Lord Byron.  For some reason, my mom HATE HATE HATED it that we went there.  First off, we would normally take a side trip through a ravine.  And then there was Lord Byron.  I guess it was my mom's middle-class snobbery that assumed people living there were all child molesters?  I don't know - sincere apologies if you lived in Lord Byron in the early 80's.

The store there had the most amazing selection of candy ever.  There were the usual things like blue fish, cinnamon lips, etc... but then there was weird and crazy crap that you have never seen anywhere else and I have never seen again.  I remember one thing that was this little foil-topped plastic rectangle that came with a little plastic spoon.  Inside the foil was basically Nutella - but two different colours.  That stuff was effing amazing.

The store there didn't just have awesome candy, it also had an arcade game.  The one I can remember playing the most was this super-awesome cowboy game where you fought people on top of a moving train.  Yeah, that's right mofos - a MOVING EFFING TRAIN!  I used to think it was the pinnacle of arcade games.  Then I Googled it (arcade game western train) - and found out it was this:

Which is pretty lame.

As I was reminiscing about this - I wondered about where I got the money for my candy-fueled train-punching escapades.  I had absolutely no idea, other than pennies found on the ground.  We didn't get regular allowances.

As I got older, we graduated to playing video games in the basement on my Nintendo, or my friend Craig's Sega.  (note to reader - we're talking 8-bit here - the original Nintendo Entertainment System and Sega Master System).  We did not, however, graduate from our need for candy.  By this time, a new 7-11 (pronounced Sev) clone had opened up at Petrolia Mall - which must have made both my mom and me happy, since it probably had the best candy selection AND it was away from pedo-bear.

As a huge plus - it also had Slurpees.

The one Slurpee story that I do remember is getting to the Sev on our bikes, selecting our candy and getting our Slurpees.  Usually, the candy selection took a while - it was a delicate balancing act of what you really wanted vs. what you could actually afford.  It was an awesome lesson in economics.  The candy purchase usually ended up in a plastic bag that you could hang from your handlebars.  The Slurpee was usually held in one hand, so you could drink whilst riding home.

This one time - the candy selection took so long that the weather completely changed from mostly fine:  shorts, t-shirts, etc.  to not-at-all-fine downpour.  And P.S.  you can't return a Slurpee.  I remember getting on our bikes, candy bag secure on the handlebars and just riding as fast as we could to get home.  I learned a valuable lesson about Slurpee cups that day.  They are very very very good at keeping the liquid and wetness in the cup and very very very bad at keeping external wetness out.

I'm pretty sure that by the time we got back to Craig's house - ready for a marathon session of Wonder Boy in Monster Land - that my Slupee cup's integrity had completely collapsed and that what was actually holding my Slurpee in place was my frigidly cold hand, covered in a thin layer of wax and cardboardish mush.

I'm pretty sure that I still drank the Slurpee out of my hand though.

Weekly cooking - great friends, great food

Ok, so I've been slacking on blogging in general, and more specifically, blogging about food.  So, today, you (and by you, I mean me, because who are we kidding, I'm writing this for my own ego) get treated to a smorgasbord (if you will) of recent menus.

First off, our besties (BFFs IYW) The Heart-Ds are moving to Australia for a couple of years.  Before Greg left, we decided to do a "best of" meal with them.  As a surprise, we made this cool shrimp cocktail:

Which looked really cool and tasted even better.  The next course was this amazing cold cucumber and avocado soup that you top with red onion, cucumber, avocado, cilantro and yumminess.

The problem with this recipe is that it uses like a tablespoon of plain yogurt.  And plain yogurt only comes in those giant one litre containers - so then you're stuck with a ton of gross, unflavored yogurt in your fridge for a month, until you decide to throw it away... or until this happens:

Let me tell you - that ess was C-O-L-D!

Anyway, next meal....  another friend of ours, Tanya, is also leaving us to move to Saskatoon.  Before that, she was off to Thailand to have an amazing elephant farming (herding?) experience.  We were told that her favourite foods were bacon, cheese and bread.  So we decided to make a meal centered around bacon:

(well, not the salad, cause come on - something had to have no bacon in it).  But the chicken was stuffed with goat cheese and bacon and the little puffs are from this recipe.  You MUST STOP EVERYTHING YOU'RE DOING AND MAKE THESE RIGHT NOW!

For dessert, we had chocolate bread pudding with bacon-infused creme anglaise.  No bigs.  We got the idea (and recipe) from watching an episode of Bobby Flay's Throwdown at my sister's house.  The bread pudding was great - but the chocolate overpowered the bacon in the custard.  Such is life.

Last meal.  Kathryn invited a new friend, Taylene over for dinner.  We decided to try a new recipe for pork loin (read wang) with a cherry salsa on it.  Ok.  So.  Cherries aren't in season anymore.  I experimented by buying dried cherries and soaking them in water overnight.  They puffed up, but looked kind of nasty, so I decided that I needed to cook them up in a Port reduction.  Yeah, that was awesome!  The recipe came from Bon Appetit magazine, which my sister Janine gave me as a gift.  To compliment, we had domino potatoes, which is basically roasted potatoes with bay leaves, but cut into little squares like dominos.  They were seriously delish and super easy peasy.  Basically just rub the pan with butter, put the potatoes in, put bayleaves in, season, top with melted butter and bake until done.

Also, we had spinach and goat cheese souffles.  We didn't have enough little ramekins, so I decided to make them in cappuccino cups.  I was super nervous that they wouldn't rise and I forbid anyone from opening the oven.  Luckily, they turned out great:

For dessert, angel food cake (store bought, cuz really - have you ever made an angel food cake from scratch?  It takes, like, a whole carton of eggs).

Ok.  Caught up!

Bonus:  Strawberries

PJ20

Ok, so a couple of weeks ago, we went to the Pearl Jam concert.  First off, I can't believe that Ten came out TWENTY YEARS AGO!!  I still remember driving around in high school listening to the album.  P.S. - why did we think that just driving around all night was such great fun?  Nowadays, driving is a careful balance of listening to Ke$ha in the car whilst trying to not throw something at the kids in the back who are constantly fighting and stroke or being annoying.

Anyway - back to the concert.  It was probably one of the best concerts I've been to.  Combine that with the last time they played here and it makes the ultimate PJ experience - they have now played almost every song that I've wanted to hear live. 

Here are my comments on the band:

1. Eddie gets way crazier as the concert goes on - depending on how much wine he's drinking right out of the bottle!
2. Mike McCready sure is pointy.  As in - he was constantly pointing at fans.  Also, I loved how he gave high fives to the audience right in the middle of the guitar solo in Alive
3. Stone Gossard looks like a statue.  Dude - you're a rock star.  Rock out!
4. Jeff Ament must get dizzy with all the twirling he does
5. Matt Cameron - you are the drummer in TWO ultra-successful rock bands - please buy a shirt that fits you.

And my concert highlights:

1. They played some awesome songs - I finally got to hear Alive, Not For You and Wash live.
2. Singing the whole first verse of Betterman as a crowd
3. The emotional moment of Waster Reprise and Life Wasted
4. The awesome epic fail as the lead singer from Mudhoney tried not once, but TWICE to get Mike McCready on his shoulders
5. Come Back - as requested by dude in the hockey shirt - that's becoming one of my fave PJ ballads
6. The songs from Backspacer were awesome - Just Breathe and The Fixer.  wowzers!

The 5-year plan

Have you ever been asked the question in a job interview "where do you see yourself in 5 years?"  (aside:  what a stupid question).  (aside aside, good answer:  I see myself interviewing some sorry ass newbie and asking them ridiculously inane questions).

Anyway, back to the 5-year thing.  Anyone who's taken CALM 20 in high school will know that you should set yourself some 5-year goals and then work towards them.  While I've never really sat down and made goals (except at work, where the annual review system forces us to), we do have a 5-year plan.  We're currently just about to start our third 5-year plan.  Let's look at a history of the 5-year plans to date:

Plan #1 - Ok, this one was basically "Let's stop being poor and eating beans on toast every night for dinner.  Also, maybe we should start a family".

When we first got married, Kathryn and I were still in school.  Neither of us had a job, unless you count sitting at Sweetgrass school every Saturday being a janitor while community basketball was being played in the gym.  We thought it would be an awesome idea to buy a condo when we got married.  You may or may not know this, but banks don't like to lend you money when you have no income.  We managed to qualify for a mortgage with Kathryn's parents co-signing.  Thus, the 5-year plan was born.  My goal that I had in my head, though I never said it out loud, was to have her parents off of our mortgage.

Five years passed and our mortgage was up for renewal.  Based on Kathryn's excellent banking skills (meaning, she deals with the banking and makes sure our credit rating is awesome) we were able to get a mortgage all on our own.  Of course, what the bank didn't know is that my dad lent us a bunch of money to pay off a credit line in order for us to qualify for refinancing.  5-year plan #1 complete!  (p.s., we had some kids by then too).  A new 5-year plan was born:  "Pay off my dad".  Also, "get the mortgage away from the only company that would give us one 5 years ago and move it to our bank".  Also also, "maybe we should think about paying off those credit cards too".

Now, five years later, we just made the last payment to my dad.  And guess what?  The mortgage is up for renewal again.  We're in a lot better shape than we were 10 years ago.  We're renewing our mortgage again, and can actually negotiate with the bank for a good rate.  As a bonus, we can up the amount and get rid of all the debt.  We'll be debt free (cause really, who counts a mortgage as debt).  So, now it's time to formulate the new five year plan.

What's great about the new plan is this:  "Emily will be old enough to babysit the other two in 5 years".  Yes - I call that the "Freedom 40" plan.  Once we can just leave Emily at home with a bag of chips, money for pizza and Popsicles in the fridge, we're golden.  What else can I add to the plan?  What about "Buy an Audi?"  I will add that, but I think it may translate to "Build a garage" or "paint the bedroom"... oh well, maybe in 10 years.

Learned behaviour

Do you ever catch yourself doing silly things that you laughed at your parents for doing?  I caught myself twice in the last little while, and both of them were strangenesses passed on from my mom.

First, I will NEVER (said Eve style) drink the end of the milk.  I will go out of my way to avoid using the last part of the carton / jug.  (as an aside, that last part should read carton stroke jug - not carton slash jug - sounds more posh that way).  I don't actually believe that inheriting this one is a bad thing - have you seen the nastiness on a milk jug at the end of its life?

The second one is definitely weird.

Kathryn was hogging the sink in the kitchen doing dishes or something, and I needed a cup of water for something (maybe a recipe?).  Anyway - I went in to the bathroom to get the water from the tap there.  Then I paused.  Could I possibly consider using bathroom water to cook with / (stroke) drink?

What you need to know is that my mom NEVER drank water from the bathroom tap.  NEVER!  It took me a long time to work up the courage to use that bathroom water for my urgent needs, even though I've seen the pipes in my basement and know that it all comes from the same place.


Makes me wonder what I'm passing down to my kids.

Weekly cooking - things in a pie

This installment of weekly cooking involves two things we make in a springform pan that aren't cheesecake.  (P.S., I have yet to use the pan for a cheesecake).

The first is Gordon Ramsay's Fish Pie.  I don't generally go for fish, especially in pie form, but this one has a cup of wine, a cup of vermouth and a cup of heavy cream in it.  How can you go wrong with that?  It was delicious.

Bubbling fishy goodness  I tried to draw a fish with fork holes on top, but it didn't really work out.

The second one is far more interesting (and has a much more interesting story).  A few months ago, we were visiting my sister in Calgary and they took us to a Moroccan restaurant.  The food was great, and what's better is that you eat it with your hands.  It was a lot of rolling up couscous into a sticky ball and cramming it in your pie hole.  Janine and I had no problems with this.  James and Kathryn, however, being first-born children, had a real hard time accepting the Moroccan lifestyle and had to use forks.  Haha, I laughed at them through a food-covered face.

Anyway, we ordered B'Stilla, which is a chicken dish in pastry garnished with cinnamon and icing sugar.  Yes, icing sugar!!  Desert and entrée all in one!

A few months later, we had a package of pastry left over from something else, so I decided to make our own version.  I had to combine two recipes - something new for me - but it turned out really great.  We've made it a few times now and I think our guests have enjoyed it.

More bubbling goodness

Here's the first recipe and here's the second.

Basically, follow steps 1-5 of the first recipe, except use one or two onions instead of four.  Don't buy Phillo pastry, instead get puff pastry.  Once the chicken is all ready, start with step 4 of recipe #2.  When making the layer of pastry in the middle, top it with cinnamon and sugar - be generous.  Top the last pastry layer in the same way.  Serve it with icing sugar dusted over the top.  Or, if you're me, coat the entire slice with icing sugar and add more as you eat.

Sdrawkcab

Ok, so I've talked about strange things I do, like going through the alphabet in street signs.  Well, here's another fave passtime (read OCD tendency) that drives Kathryn absolutely bonkers.

I love to spell things out backwards in my head and then say them out loud.  And by love, I mean LOVE.  But really, I should say evol.  This really helps pass the time when you're watching live TV and have to wait for commercials.  I like to see ads for Atoyot and Drof, Elppa and Yrrebkcalb.

The real fun comes from trying to pronounce the words properly the first time.  I get endless hours of fun out of this.  Of course, as with all my strange tendencies, I wonder if anyone else does this?  Does anyone else know their name backwards like I do?  (P.S., Lawobab Divad and in case you're curious, Lawobab Nyrhtak)

The other day, I was texting with Kathryn, and she wooted me.  So in reply, I sent her a toow.  Which made me decide that from now on, my standard response to woot will be toow, as in "Toow, I acknowledge your woot".

Then she loled me, to which I replied lol (but a backwards lol).  And then I spend the rest of the night thinking about palindromes.  An evening well spent.

Obsolescence

I was searching online for books at the library the other day, and it struck me that kids these days have no idea what a card catalogue is.  Do you remember going to the library when you were a kid, probably do do a research project on Bigfoot, and having to go through the catalogue to find the books you needed?

I remember how awesome it was to learn that such a categorized fount of knowledge worked.  I also remember how it smelled - dusty paper mixed with wood finish.  Delightful.  But nowadays, you just find it all on the computer - infinitely more efficient, but lacking in that certain cachet that the old paper cards held.

Librarians must love it - no more sitting down at a typewriter (another obsolescence) to type out the various cards.  Also - remember those strange white-out strips for typewriters where you could erase what was typed?  Also, remember White Out, Liquid Paper and its more-funny counterpart, Liquid ape?

Somehow, the scene in Ghostbusters when they're in the library wouldn't be as good without the cards flying all over the place (I'm sure that scared librarians more than the ghost!).  Flickering computer screens just don't hold a candle to that.

But what else is this generation missing out on?  Videocassettes.

Actually, I don't miss them all that much (truth be told, we still have TWO working VCRs in our house).  But remember when you rented a video from the video store (hi, there's another thing that's on its way out) and someone wasn't kind before you and didn't rewind?  Do you remember being charged a fine if you weren't kind?  Did your family own a tape rewinder?

Speaking of tapes - remember when you were about to play the latest mix tape that someone gave you, and you had to look at the tape and flip a switch on the boom box (gone as well) if the tape was "metal" or "normal"?

I even have a faint memory of having to fill out this giant booklet of questions for homework - things like who was the first Lieutenant Governor of Alberta - and there was a special number you could call and some mysterious lady (probably a librarian on leave from card-catalogue typing) would look things up and answer some of them.  Or, you would have to look in the Encyclopedia your family devoted a whole shelf to (if you were rich) - or three volumes to if your sister won them on Hi-Q.

Anyway, I had fun thinking about these old technological relics.  I think I'll go Google some more obsolete technologies (and try not to ponder the oxymoronic nature of my search).

Workmares

Have you ever had a workmare?  I used to get them all the time.  Mostly while I was still in school.  Nowadays, not so much.  I think it's because when you're a student, you spend all day in school, and then all evening you do homework, so it stands to reason that you go to sleep and dream about school all night.

My recurring school-based workmare was that I was registered in a class that I didn't attend all year, and then I found out that the final exam was the next day.  Usually, the class was held in some strange location, like an empty swimming pool.  I've spoken with Matthew and he's had similar dreams - must have something to do with either A) being in Engineering or B) being spectacularly smart.

Funny aside - my workmare came true once.  In second or third year, I was in this ridiculous class - CMPUT 114 - Algorithms.  Wow, it was terrible.  The CS faculty decided that Modula-2 would be the language to use in the class.  P.S.  Modula-2?  That was written in 1977.  Most of the class was devoted to sorting algorithms.  That's why I like writing in a third-generation language.  I can say ArrayList.Sort() and it does a quicksort for me.  I don't have to first write it myself.  But I digress.  I happened to be on campus during exam week and thought that I would double-check my exams on those big green pieces of paper that they used to hang all over campus (do they still do that?  Probably not - it's not 1977 anymore).  Turns out that my exam for CMPUT 114 started in 10 minutes.  On the other side of campus.

So, I ran to the car, peeled out, drove around to the other side of campus, parked at Humanities and tore in to the building.  I borrowed a pen using the most panicky sentence ever uttered by man and made it in to the exam room shortly before the door-closing deadline.  Let me tell you, I tore through that exam.  (and P.S., what's worse than a programming exam where you have to write code.  And by write, I mean ACTUALLY write, longhand).  I was the last to arrive and the first to leave.  Awesome.  I managed to get a 4 in that class, totally based on my exam mark, since I didn't do so well on the assignments (see Modula-2).

But I bring up workmares because I had one the other night.  I haven't had one in a long time.  This is because when I leave from work, I spend the bus ride home thinking about work, then push it all out of my head until the next morning.  Work is work.  Home is home.  Which reminds me - I often hear people say how they want to be students again.  NO WAY.  Do you remember how time-consuming it is?  I like to be done my day at 5 (well, maybe 3 some days) and then not have to spend the evening doing more work.  Of course, I can't really say to my clients "well, I got most of the project working, I'll just take 80% instead of 100% on this one).

Back to the workmare - in this one, I was growing tulips.  How does this relate to my job?  Well, my tulip garden was planted according to customer specifications.  There was a review done to ensure that the tulips were growing at exactly the right rate as specified in the user stories.  Yes sir, this tulip is supposed to be exactly 1 inch tall at this time.  I think this one came after a day of sprint planning (read: soul-sucking) meetings.

I'd much rather spend my time dreaming of new musicals...