Yesterday’s Achewood tickled my funny bone. First, a funny-because-it’s-true poke at Volvo owners…
…followed by a little fun at the expense of Trent Reznor, Mr. Nine Inch Nails…
I myself drove a brown Volvo 245DL station wagon when I was in high
school, commonly known to my friends as “The Deathmobile” (named after the car used in the final prank in Animal House).
It must be spring. When it starts getting warm, people hit the sidewalks of Accordion City more often and my bike trips to and from work become like the opening scene from Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure,
with me biking down the street to or from work and a near-perfect
guarantee that at least one person will wave “Hey, Joey!” or “Yo,
Accordion Guy!” en route.
For no other reason that to celebrate the fact that it’s highly
unlikely that we’re going to see snow for many months, here’s a photo
of my trusty bike, The Scorpion King, after the last serious snowstorm hit town in March:
At a meeting earlier today:
Meeting Chair: Have you got those metrics yet?
Metrics Guy: Yes, except for the numbers.
While running around picking up items for our mother’s day dinner,
I noticed that many of the ubiquitous Queen Street West posters were
covered with little mini-posters that read “I love you Mom!”:
An “I Love You Mom” mini-poster. Click the photo to see a slideshow of my photos of these mini-posters.
I didn’t get as many pictures of these as I wanted, but I got four good
ones and put them into this photo gallery [click here for a slideshow].
Whoever did this, I salute you with a filet mignon on a flaming sword!
Yesterday, I helped my brother-in-law Richard prepare a fancy mother’s
day dinner for Mom, my sister Eileen (mother of 2 little boys with a
third on the way) and Dad’s sister Autnie Beth, who has done so much
babysitting for two generations of deVillas that she counts as a mom.
Richard, whom I suspect is a frustrated restaurateur, planned and printed out menus while I played the role of dutiful sous-chef.
Dinner started with scallops on a bed of mâche with three dipping sauces:
I prepared the mango relish and plated the appetizer; Richard
sautéed the scallops. The photo below shows the dishes just before we
put the scallops on top of the mâche:
We then moved to the main course, which consisted of:
For wine, we had a viognier that Richard picked out. It was really good, and I’ll have to bug him for the name.
For dessert, a tarte (whose name also escapes me) from Richard’s and Eileen’s favourite patisserie and caffes lattes which my nephews Aidan and Nicholas made (with a little assitance from Eileen).
After dessert, I called Wendy’s mom, because she is, as far as I’m concerned, my mom too.
It was an absolutely delicious meal. I’d like to thank Richard for
planning the whole thing and inviting me to join in and to congratulate
Mom, Eileen, Auntie Beth and Wendy’s mom — happy mother’s day, ladies!
This recipe is simple, but labour intensive. The ingredients are:
Chop the mangoes as finely as you can without their turning into
mush. Chop the onion finely. Blend the chopped mangoes, chopped onion,
vinegar and olive together and let the mixture site in the refigerator
for at least an hour. The longer the relish has time to sit, the better
it tastes.
We served this with sauteed scallops, but it should be equally at home
with any seafood, chicken, pork or if you’re a vegetarian, grilled
eggplant, portobello mushroom or squash. As with any recipe, the better
and fresher your ingredients, the better this will taste. I got French
wine vinegar from a gourmet food shop (Max’s Market on Bloor Street,
just west of Runnymede), the oil was a good brand from Richard and
Eileen’s pantry and the mangoes and onion came from store that
specialized in fruits and vegetables.
Bon appetit!
Chris recently posted this picture taken somewhere in my neighbourhood on a file-sharing site…
— the location of the vegetarian speed dating night — is a vegetarian
restaurant on Queen Street West, not far from my house. Speaking as a
happy eater of meat, I like the food there; it’s good enough to change
vegetarian dining from sanctimonious misery to a tasty and satisfying
side-dish-only meal. Fressen is also German for “eat”, or more
specifically, “eat heartily” or “gorge”. Not without some frickin’ meat, bubby.
I once dated a vegetarian and often took her here. In between bites of
their delicious portobello “steak”, I’d tease her — a biology major in
college — by reminding her that evolution would never have happened
without carnivores: “After all, it doesn’t take much brains to sneak up
on a carrot.”
In the age of ATMs and internet banking, there are few reasons for me
to drop by my bank branch, but talking to a manager about a line of
credit and mortgages is still — thankfully — a high-touch
“face-to-face” kind of thing.
While flipping through The Economist (the issue with oil as the cover story) in an easy chair in the waiting area, I overheard two suits by the ATMs:
Suit 1: “I gotta stop watching porn, man. If I keep watching it, I’ll never be able to have normal sex again.”
Suit 2: “Yeah. I know what you mean.”
I was reminded of the old article from The Onion titled Romantic Comedy Behavior Gets Real-Life Man Arrested and I wondered: do people who watch too many “chick flicks” and “romantic comedies” get turned off normal dating?
Here’s a recent posting from MetaFilter that’s related
:(all links safe for work) Some
once hypothesized that as pornography became more accessible and more
mainstream, men in turn would become uncontrollable, ravenous sexual
beasts. I always thought this myself: a man will see something in porn
that a real woman won’t give him—Internet porn now caters in a click to
every fetish you can imagine—and he will find a way to get it.
My ex-girlfriend, observant and intelligent beyond her years, always
used to tell me the opposite: it wouldn’t turn men into beasts, having
their way with every woman they saw. No, it would turn them away from
women completely, libidos and their ability to connect with real
females weakened by the hardcore acts and impossible bodies that only
porn stars could give them. The porn would crave some intrinsic desire,
but leave both people in the couple lonelier and less fulfulled.
Now I think she was absolutely right.