So once Natasha got to a certain point in her french lessons I started being of less and less use to her. I can do business, navigate around, order food and talk you through setting up your modem, but most of the poetic subtleties of the french language go over my head. It occurred to [...]

[Read more →]

After years of suspicion, I’ve finally had an allergy test to confirm that I have a severe tree nut allergy, and a litany of less dangerous allergies to pollens, grasses, trees, pets , mites and bugs. I’ve been prescribed an Epi-pen in case of an emergency, so if you spend a lot of time eating [...]

[Read more →]

I discovered a week ago while messing around on the guitar that the sometimes unintelligible song “Blinded by the Light” was written by Bruce Springsteen but made popular by Manfred Mann, the same psychedelic pianist who popularized the Exciter’s “Do Wah Diddy Diddy“, Bob Dylan’s “If ya gotta go, go now” and the completely bizarre [...]

[Read more →]

I’ve been having really crazily vivid dreams lately. There’s a bunch of elaborate storylines every night, but they all seem to share an aspect of tremendous physical effort. I’m either running flat-out to catch a train, or trying to lift construction equipment, or leaping through windows in desperation. I wake up feeling exhausted. Which is [...]

[Read more →]

So I was meandering around in Google Maps looking up hiking trails in the Adirondacks, and stumbled on a really weird mountain formation in southeastern Quebec called “Mont Mégantic”. This led to a whole string of Wikipedia and geology site searches. I learned a bunch fascinating geological history I didn’t know about!
It turns out Mont [...]

[Read more →]

I was at the Mountain Equipment Coop this afternoon buying a “waterproof breathable” (read “Raincoat”) to bike into work with. I ended up picking a blue Hyrdrofoil 3, which looks pretty fab, and comes highly recommended. No more bussing on rainy days!
The MEC have their “outdoorsy lifestyle message” highly polished – more than a few [...]

[Read more →]

Andrea turned me on to a very clever graphic novel called “Scott Pilgrim“, which is drawn by a Canadian author, Bryan Lee O’Malley. I tried describing it to another co-worker and it came out like this: “So this guy is in a band and he’s a rocker and he’s dating a girl who’s too young [...]

[Read more →]

Natasha and I discovered the TV show Glee a few days ago, and apparently so has everyone else I’ve mentioned it to. It’s one of those guilty pleasures that I’d recommend wholeheartedly! Underneath the totally formulaic high school cliche runs a clever and deeply sardonic wit. Jane Lynch, the evil cheerleader coach, is hysterical. The [...]

[Read more →]