Blue Velvet Sectional

This is how I do it.  My brain turns on at the weirdest times. I first saw a pen like this when I was in my 20s, in a TV report about a movie reviewer, who used one to take his notes in a dark theatre.  I searched everywhere, and finally found one.  Before I had it, I tried a few other tactics to help me save for posterity the incredibly deep, meaningful thoughts I felt I was having at night. I tried just writing with a pencil in the dark, but that didn't work out too well.  My writing, on a good day, looks like someone suffering from the DTs sprayed Silly String  on paper during an earthquake.  What I mean to say is, it's really, really bad.  So, the pencil thing was a bust. Next, I bought a mini-tape recorder, but my middle-of-the-night mumbling was almost worse than my writing.  It seemed like my Shakespearean musings would be lost to humanity.  How tragic! The pen. Then, I got my flashlight pen.  It was a revelation.  Finally, I could grab a pad, click the pen,

On one of my recent purging benders , I found this great old cookbook.  I got it decades ago from Mrs Morland, the mother of one of my parents' friends.  She had been an operator for Bell Canada in the stone age, when phones were essentially tin cans with string between them. Anyway, as a young woman, she'd bought quite a bit of stock in the company. By the time I knew her as an old lady in the late 70s, she was plenty loaded. And if you were even passably flush in Ontario in the 70s, you had a cottage in Muskoka , or as we always called it, "up north." Pointe au Baril, Ontario. This cookbook is from Pointe au Baril , a beautiful area on the Georgian Bay part of Lake Huron, for those of you not from these parts.  I don't remember going there as a kid, but I probably did.  My earliest cottage memories were in Bala  and Baysville, with my family, and with friends in Lake of Bays, or when we were in the mood for bear sightings, Cache Bay, on the north side of L

Life in a downtown condo poses some challenges.  Listening to your neighbour's thudding disco at 2 in the morning, and picking other people's discarded cigarette butts out of your balcony plants, to name a few. Then, of course, there's size.  This condo is tiny.   Not crazy  Tiny House small, but I Grew Up In a Leafy Canadian Suburb and This Place Would Fit In the Kitchen small. My sofa, from Elte , is "condo size", but I recently decided that I needed a new living room chair. As I am accident prone, I need something to sit on that isn't white, or I'll spend all my free time trying to get Bordeaux out of the upholstery.  For years, I had a club chair with a multicoloured leafy print on it, but the fabric started to fray, so I decided to try a new look.  That chair, which fit perfectly, was from an unlikely source- I ordered it from Sears.  I don't remember fretting about the size before I ordered it, and it fit the room really well.  So, I went down

Here is a thing I do like 3 mornings a week: At my office, we have a new automated elevator system.  You press your floor number on an exterior keypad, and it directs you to a specific elevator. When it comes, you get in, and the floor is already lit up.  The buttons inside don't work, so you can't sneak on at the last minute.  Works great, as long as I remember which elevator I'm supposed to get in. Thing is, when I leave my condo in the morning, pre-caffeine , I seem to forget where I am, so when the elevator comes, I get in and just stand there like an idiot. Eventually,  I realize I'm not moving; occasionally, though, the elevator does move, but I don't notice that I am going UP instead of DOWN.  Then, someone gets in and sees I haven't pressed a floor, and they look at me funny. Have I mentioned that I am not a morning person? Happy Monday, all!

I've complained before about the small, boring bathroom that I am saddled with in this condo.  Honestly, I hated it so much I feel like I was actually bathing less.  For the sake of my loved ones and coworkers, something had to change. The whole thing was starting to make me homicidal, too... Psycho shower curtain.  Draw your own conclusions about me... Clearly, I was directing some unresolved rage at my bathroom.  I'm kidding, I just thought this shower curtain was hilarious.  I guess it's twisted (my mother was not impressed when she came to visit), but I got it somewhere classy- the TIFF Shop , when I saw Dial M for Murder in 3D . Back to fixing up the loo.  I added this dispenser , which has been great for decluttering the tub ledge, which then keeps me from dropping and tripping over plastic bottles when I have my barely-awake morning shower.  In that sense, it may actually be a life-saver.  It was a great purchase, and I am really happy with it.   Here's

There's a Family Guy episode where Lois serves a casserole for dinner, and someone asks "What are these crunchy things?" She says "I ran out of paprika, so I used M&Ms instead. " That's my mom! My mom is a world class recipe substituter. Nothing quite as batshit as M&Ms for paprika, but pretty damn close.  Once, she tried to make Spicy Szechwan Chicken, but we were out of red pepper flakes.  She used oregano instead.  You would be correct in assuming that this was not a screaming success. In honour of Canada Day, I felt like making butter tarts .  I didn't have any corn syrup, which is called for in the traditional recipe I use, so rather than just doing a straight substitution like my mom would have (and added, I don't know, Sriracha ?), I Googled around and found  this  version, using maple syrup. How apropos! Another professional-quality food pic.  Trust me, they were delicious. These ain't health food, and Goopy  would bitc