So I’m stuck at home with a bad cold and need to eat. I don’t have anything my fridge but fortunately this morning Mark Bittman published his easiest recipes in the NYTimes. One of them is for Socca, an Italian flatbread made from chickpea flower, olive oil, water, and a ton of pepper. I have all these ingredients and Mr. Bittman assures me it’s 99% foolproof so I decide to give it a shot. The batter is easy to put together and I pour it in my pizza pan and get it in my hot oven. Two minutes later I open the door and smoke pours out – the pan is warped and the batter has shifted to the right, leaving the thin remains to burn under the element. I close the door and tell myself it will be fine, it’s 99% foolproof. Sure enough, 7 minutes later the smoke has stopped and the batter is baking nicely. The instructions say to put the pan on the top shelf under the broiler for the last five minutes to crisp it up so that’s what I do. The next time I open the oven door the bread is on fire. The charred bits lit up under the broiler and set it all off. I’m laughing so hard that on top of my cold-infected lungs, I barely have enough air to blow it out. I manage to get it under control and still save 1/2 the bread which although slightly charred tastes quite nice. My apartment stinks though and it’s now official that I am a fool.
Archive for the ‘At home’ Category
Old Friends Reunited
In At home on March 24, 2010 at 8:04 pmSo this is what a terrible sister I am. Back in 1996 I was packing up my apartment and moving to Amsterdam. I had borrowed (taken) my brother’s bike to use while he was living in Ontario. I’d never bothered to clean it so it was rusting away, and it was also very heavy. He still lived back East so instead of sending it back to mom and dad’s for safe keeping, I just left in the apartment storage locker and didn’t tell him.
About one or two years later, Andrew asks me where his bike is. I told him it’s in the storage unit at the Margaret Rose. “You mean where you don’t live anymore?” he asked. Uh, yeah, something like that. And I never apologized to him for doing that.
Fast forward to spring 2010. I’m thinking of buying a new bike and so is Andrew. In fact he’s already bought one is just waiting to pick it up from the shop. As he walks to work that morning he sees a red bike in a bike stand, unlocked. On closer inspection he realizes it’s his old bike from 1996! They must have finally cleaned out the storage locker and put all the junk in the alleyway which is right around the corner from where he lives now. He takes a few pictures and posts his find on facebook. I see the pics because I’m at work and have nothing to do so I surf the web. A lot. I go tell the story to my co-workers and my boss orders one of them to drive me to where the bike is so I can check it out. I do better than that. Albert drops me off and drives away because he does not want to be complicit in my non-theft of an unlocked bike which used to belong to a close family member. I hop on it to take it back to work. The chain is so stretched it’s an elastic band, the gears don’t work, there aren’t any brakes and the wheels are wobbly. But I manage to get it back and store it in the bike locker at work.
Two weeks later it’s Easter Sunday and after church I tell him I need to go to my office to pick up some work. He drives me into the parkade and parks right beside the locker. It takes a second or two but his eyes widen and all he says is, “You. Did. Not.” Yes I did!!! I got your bike back, I yell at him. Oddly enough he doesn’t seem overly thrilled by this. He gets out to take a look at it and then asks what he’s supposed to do with it. This time, I ACTUALLY ASKED if I could donate it to a bike store for refurbishing. He said yes, that’s what I did, and now we know the end of the story.
So proud of myself for finally getting the bike back!
Andrew’s not sure what to make of this. He seems rather disappointed to see it again.
Opening Ceremonies
In At home, Canada on February 12, 2010 at 9:29 pmThe energy and excitement in the city has been steadily growing over the last weeks as athletes, journalists, and tourists have descended. Judging by how many people were walking home at 3pm it would seem the entire business district was shutting down for the opening ceremonies. Dawit came over to watch on my TV and we enjoyed the entire show, even the phallic totem poles rising majestically from the floor of B.C. Place. As Wayne Gretzky jumped in the truck to light the hidden torch everyone started guessing the secret location. It turned out to be at the foot of Thurlow Street in Coal Harbour which is not too far from my apartment. We grabbed our coats and ran outside to head down and check it out. As I turned around to look back the scene was a zombie movie – everyone leaving their apartments at the same time, turning onto the street at the same time, and walking determinedly towards their target. It’d be creepy if it wasn’t so funny. We got there just after Wayne left and people started singing the national anthem.
Our first view of the outside torch just after Wayne lit it.
The torch up close.
Spontaneous bursts of “Oh Canada” everywhere.
The party continued well into the night and all over the city. We cruised up Granville Street and it was an absolute rocking environment. Two more weeks of this? I think it’s going to be better than we ever thought…
Crowds gather on Granville Street at the end of the night.
Mom and Dad Forever
In At home, Canada, Family, U.S. on July 6, 2009 at 8:15 pm
Mom and Dad on a date in 1958
This past June we celebrated my mom and dad’s 50th wedding anniversary. Although they don’t like big celebrations in their honour, at our prompting they hosted a small reception for family and close friends to mark the occasion.
Can’t find a shot of the parents together but here’s a nice one of me ‘n my hot mama 🙂
A few weeks later we celebrated just as a family when they took all of us on an Alaskan cruise. We boarded the ship at Canada Place on a sunny Sunday afternoon and slowly headed out under the Lions Gate bridge for a week heading north. What a nice way to hang out together, no meals to plan, we’re all in the same place, and some excellent sight-seeing opportunities. A very different experience from India, it’s a bit of a culture shock really…
Andrew. Ketchikan
What Andrew saw.
Old Juneau
Ice flows on the way to the Sawyer Glacier
People crowding on deck to check out the glacier
Up close and personal with the Sawyer Glacier
Turquoise water at the Sawyer Glacier
The port in Skagway.
My sister and three nephews on the train in Skagway
A Good Old-Fashioned Bus Whipping
In At home on April 15, 2009 at 11:56 amOn Dec.1, 2009, I met my brother after work for dinner. Nice dinner, butter chicken and apple pie for dessert. Afterwards I decided to walk home, it was a pleasant early winter evening, cool and clear. I was wearing a brimmed hat to keep the cold off my head and I was listening to my favourite group, Outlandish, as I crossed the bridge. About 3/4 of the way across a trolley bus was heading towards me when I noticed a cable flying through the air. I have bad depth-perception at night and was thinking that was kind of weird when I felt a thump on the left side of my neck, similar to being whacked with a hockey stick. I don’t remember exactly what happened after that, I didn’t black out, but I found myself on my back on the bridge sidewalk. I started looking for my head because I thought maybe it had been taken off. Fortunately it was still attached to my shoulders and I managed to sit up. The bus had stopped about 25 metres up the bridge but there was maybe only one other vehicle close by. I got up and walked towards the bus, the cable was dangling off the trolley pole. People were getting off and one guy yelled at me, “Did you see that??!” I said no, but the cable hit me. He looked at me like I was on drugs and then told me they had heard an explosion and seen a flame shoot off the back where the cable blew. Nobody would listen to me, they were too excited about what they had seen. Another bus pulled up and everyone got on that one to get to the next available stop. I hopped on the bus that was out of commission and told the bus driver what had happened to me. He was already shaken up from his experience, it didn’t help that I had come to tell him I’d been hit, but to his credit he took my name and number and treated me like my story was true. I didn’t know what else to do so I continued walking home. I phoned my brother and he said he was on his way to meet me. I got home about 10 minutes before he arrived at which point I finally broke down and started crying. We walked to the hospital a few blocks away and by the time I’d checked into emergency he’d calmed me down enough that I was starting to see the funny in the episode.
I was admitted and the doctors started coming to take a look. At that point the impact site was pretty faint but I guess it looked like someone had tried to strangle me since the doc pulled me aside and asked if my brother had done that to me. I started crying again, what an awful thing to say although it gives you insight into what medical staff has to deal with on a regular basis. Fortunately the staff also believed my explanation and I was sent home to sleep it off. Needless to say there wasn’t much sleep that night but I managed to get myself to work the next morning. My boss took one look at me and got an assistant to drive me to my regular doctor’s office. This one told me I had first degree burns, gave me some burn cream and told me to go home and sleep. Mom and dad came by that night to bring dinner and keep me company.
The day after. Pretty 1st degree burns.
View from below. You can see where the cable ended it’s journey on the right side of my neck.
The next morning I woke to a big jello-y neck. Overnight fluid had come in and swelled up the area around the burns. When I talked or moved my head it would jiggle and it looked absolutely stupid. I decided to stay home from work to save everyone the sight of my mutation, but the next morning the jello had hardened and I figured it was time to get back to emergency. They confirmed an infection had set in and put me on an IV to funnel the meds through, the process would have to be repeated for the next three days. The doctor on day 1 poked his finger right into the swelling to figure out what was causing pain. I let him know it was his finger, until he did that everything was fine. He told me it was his job and walked off in a huff. The next day a beautiful doctor with intense curiosity decided to do a minor ultrasound on my neck after the IV had run it’s course. He was so gentle and so nicely wiped off the gel afterwards that I immediately fell in love with him. This feeling disappeared when the nurse gave me my discharge papers. The diagnosis was “cellulitis” in the neck. I marched out to the nurses desk and demanded from him if that meant what was on my neck was what had happened to my thighs. He looked confused for a moment then responded that cellulitis is different than cellulite and he was pretty sure my neck would look “normal” after a few weeks. Hallelujah. The doctor on the third day basically told me he hadn’t heard of these meds helping my “issue” and went on to explain that drug addicts do not encounter noticeable differences in their addictions after receiving treatment. Uh, yeah. My neck is swollen because I shoot up bus cables. After convincing him I felt the IV would help he relented and gave me one. By this point the swelling was greatly reduced and all that was really left were the burns.
An infection caused a whole lot of ugly swelling. I think this was after 2 IV treatments to get rid of it.
I have a tendency to scar pretty badly and light burns take a few years to disappear. Mom came over with a small gift, two turtleneck sweaters. She said she thought they’d be more useful than flowers considering I might look like Frankenstein for the next few months. However, between the IVs and the burn cream, everything faded out pretty quickly and by Christmas Day there wasn’t a lot of evidence that I’d almost had my head cut off.
This is Christmas Day, 24 days after the accident and you can barely see the remains of the burn.
The doctors still wanted to make sure things were ok so I was sent back for an extensive ultrasound. The scan revealed the initial impact of the cable hit in the one place it couldn’t do any damage: it was just a few millimetres off from the carotid artery, barely missed the saliva glands and landed in between all the lymph nodes. This is nothing less than a miracle. During the scan I asked the technician if I could get a picture. She asked why and my response was if all my friends have “baby” pictures on their fridges than I want something comparable. She said that made sense and sent me on my way with a couple of great scans. I fired them off to my brother to photoshop the important info out and then posted one on facebook with no explanation. Sure enough, within 15 minutes the congratulations started pouring in. Well wishers, people excited for my “news”. My brother posted a comment that all it showed was 10 out of 10 people don’t know how to read a scan.
This is not a baby. This is what the inside of my neck looks like.
It’s five months later and I’ve settled the case with the insurance company. It’s not a great feeling to see a monetary value placed on your life, but still, my neck and throat are fine, I can still sing, the scar is completely gone, and with the help of my massage therapist there’s no underlying scar tissue. Even my family doctor says he’s amazed by the speed and thoroughness of the healing. It’s still a bit of a mystery why the cable blew off the bus in the first place and I actually don’t care, it was a case of being in the wrong place at the weirdest time. I don’t walk across that bridge anymore if I can help it and whenever I hear the trolley buses passing I cringe a little, but for the most part this is a pretty happy ending.
Billy Idol Weird
In At home, Concerts on July 11, 2008 at 5:49 pm
This past weekend as a family event, my brother, sister, and I went to check out Billy Idol live in concert. “Live” might be a misnomer since Billy wasn’t very lively, more stoned and confused. The concert started off in a promising manner with the stage going dark and the sounds of lions and tigers and general jungle atmosphere rocking the theatre while the band came on stage. Lights up and… Billy wanders onto the stage looking like he’s not quite sure where he is. He lifts his head for a moment to look around and then treats us all to a big yawn. We three siblings look at each other to confirm that we saw the same thing, yep, and we’re off to the stoner races.
I can’t even remember what song he started with but he manages to sing it in key and with most of the lyrics intact while looking at the floor and tapping his chest in time to the beat. A little karaoke-ish, no?, and I want to yell, “It’s ok, Billy. They’re your songs, you can own them.” Song’s over, he mumbles something incoherent and we move on to White Wedding which he also performs moderately well. A few more songs, then everyone but the fanastic Steve Stevens (dude, what is that on your head??) leaves the stage for a break while Steve-O brings down the house with his excellent guitar riffage. Billy takes a hit of something backstage cuz when he comes back on he’s animated for all of 20 seconds.
We’re thinking the road crew must panic a little with the worry that Billy might wander off somewhere and disappear so it looks like they’ve given him tasks while he’s up on stage not singing. Like a roadie brings him an acoustic guitar which he expertly swings onto his neck before playing… nothing. Just standing there for most of the song with fingers on frets but no movement. Then he lifts his hands like he’s going to play and… more of nothing. End of song and two small chords later he passes the guitar back to the roadie. Then another rocking song with yet another fantastic solo by S.S., more time to kill for Billy. So he wanders back to the drum kit and picks up a drum stick, positioning himself behind the snare like he’s ready to kill it. Nope. Instead he tap tap taps it like he’s testing a steak on the barbecue for doneness and then pauses long enough to spin the cymbal around and stare at it in it’s rotating glory. A bit more tapping, spinning, tapping, he’s done. But there’s still more soloing going on and Billy needs purpose so one of the roadies has put a stack of white discs at the front of the drum kit. Billy picks them up and stares at them for a good minute or two before whipping them out into the audience. Fan appreciation moment over.
Not that I’m complaining. As we discussed afterwards, we all felt like we’d gotten our money’s worth although perhaps not for the show we were expecting. Nobody yells as well as Billy and Rebel Yell was worth the price of the ticket alone. Plus he has THE SEXIEST SPEAKING VOICE of anyone on the planet and his stomach still looks rock hard. Yes, he took off his shirt. As we exited the theatre I saw a few star-gazing, feminine mulleted variety ladies holding those white discs. Up close I discovered they were not Frisbees but white Corette paper plates with Billy’s autograph.
Rebel YELLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL!!!!!
Qu’est-ce que le fuq?!!!
In At home on April 7, 2008 at 8:51 pmThings I wish I hadn’t seen in order of sightings:
1. dog in hoodie
2. dog in puffy
3. gold lame (lam-eh) jacket in shop window, FOR A GUY
4. dog in anorak
Note to people who follow trends: there IS a reason we all laugh at MC Hammer
Refugee Food Distribution
In At home on March 8, 2008 at 9:40 pmWhen I was living in Damascus last year, some of my closest friends were Iraqi refugees. Our view of refugees is that they are poor, uneducated, and live in tents on the outskirts of cities. This is not what I saw as my friends lived in a decent apartment down the street from my place. I met H. at an internet cafe when she was checking her email for pictures of her grandkids in other parts of the world. Her husband is a retired doctor and his stories of working in the First Gulf War are crazy. They had to pull their daughter out of university in Baghdad when her classmates were being kidnapped and killed and the situation was too dangerous to let her keep going. They are all highly educated and speak English fluently. Yet they have run out of their savings and now have to depend on the U.N. for food rations. Here is H.’s account of how they got their food last month:
On the twenty seventh of last month was our turn to receive our share of food. We got up very early in the morning and went to the president`s bridge and yet when we got there we got the number 240 in line so you can imagine the number of people. Because I stood in the women`s line I got a number earlier than if we waited for my husband to reach the gate. At first we were seated in a big tent, where lines of seats were provided. 20 people were called every time, to another tent. When our turn came we went yet to another tent where the first number was taken from us and we were given another one. 50 people were called this time and we had to go to yet another tent ( it was exactly like playing musical chairs ). This time we were called into a building where my husband got a card for food distribution. Now the fourth tent, we gave our name and waited to be called. A car driver was called for each family who would come with each person to yet another tent to receive the food ( Have you been counting the tents? ) I had to leave my husband go back home by bus because there was no place for me near the driver. I could have sat in the open rear with the food ( I think I would have looked ridiculous ). The food does help a lot ( rice, sugar, tea, two kinds of grains, tomato paste, spaghetti, cleaning detergent and sponge beds with light blankets ) we were given three amounts. They say this amount will be given every two months.
As I write this I can look out my window down the street to the corner market where I buy my food, whatever I want whenever I want. The only line I stand in consists of the three people in front of me who pay with cash and not food stamps. I’ll get my paycheque this coming Friday so if I’m low on cash I know the next supply is not far away. I might not be rich in cash, but I am rich in the ease of my life.
Vancouver Winter
In At home on January 14, 2008 at 4:34 pmFor all those people who come to Vancouver in the summer and say how much they love it and want to live here, try it in a winter like the one we’re having now.
The difference between rain and snow in the winter is the brightness. At least with snow the sun is able to shine through the clouds somewhat and give the impression of light. With rain, it’s dark all the time. Last week, dark. It’s 8:35am right now and as I look out the window from my office I can barely see 10 blocks away. Not that it’s black, more like a dreary grey that’s trying to glow but can’t.
And the cold feels colder than it actually is because it bites through your clothes and sinks right into your bones. I hate winter here. I want to see the sun for more than an hour every two days. I want to show up somewhere without arriving damp or drenched. I want to stand on the streetcorner waiting to cross without getting another shower from the car plowing through the puddles.
For those who think it’s the most livable or beautiful city in the world, come on over and have a go. Blah.
Public Pool: Part 2
In At home on January 10, 2008 at 5:32 pmBack at the pool last night and into the hottub for the usual relaxation session. Sweater lady wasn’t there but the guy who hogs the jets on the steps was, bobbing up and down to massage his back and block the entrance. Some other guy exits the steamroom and hops under the shower to cool down. How do we know the water was cold?
“I love cold showers!! Cold, cold, cold, cold, cold, cold, cold, cold! Yes, yes, yes, I love cold showers!! Cold, cold, cold, cold, cold, cold, cold, cold! Yes! Cold showers!”
Intersperse this with a little deep digging for phlegm and you’ve got one happy guy in the cold shower.
Down a Block 