I took the kids to a local hill today for some good ol' tobogganing. It was fun as always.
Today was the first nice day in a long time, and a Sunday as well, so the hill was quite busy. Lots of parents laughing and taking pics. I brought a cam as well and got a video of the boy's first solo downhill. He almost collided with another speeding toddler in another uncontrollable unstoppable snow rocket, a 'near miss' as we used to call it in the trades.
On the way home the kids wanted to stop at a park, and there was a young lady there with her own toddlers. (I assume they were own, I could be mistaken.)
She seemed happy, but cold, and was trying to get her kids to leave the park.
"C'mon, we'll head over to the next park. We're park-hopping! It's like a park crawl! Come on!" she pleaded, and she caught me laughing at her and smiled.
Ah, kids.
Sunday, December 28, 2008
Saturday, December 27, 2008
The Oh Nine Project
A fellow blogger has encouraged me to join him and other bloggers in his network, in announcing my New Year's Resolutions for the coming year. The idea will then be to follow up on the progress (or lack of progress) that we make towards our goals.
Sounds like fun to me, and I've found in the past that publicly stating one's goals can be a real motivating factor to achieving them.
Here is my primary goal for 2009:
I want to be running significant distances again by September. Prior to moving back to Saskatchewan, I was logging some serious miles running every week. Since then I have lost all interest, passion, ability and stamina for running, and I want to get it back. Just saying this and wishing for it won't help me however. I'm a firm believer in having a plan when it comes to achieving goals. The first stage of planning for me involves setting the goal, the second involves recognizing the obstacles.
Obstacle 1: The mystery pain that surfaces along the inside of my leg after my first 2 or 3 weeks back running every time I try to get in to it again.
Obstacle 2: Finding the time to run, as a father and a chef.
Obstacle 3: -50 degrees, come on!
Here is how I plan to tackle the above problems. I believe the mystery pain is caused by a combination of factors. I'm heavier than I used to be, which puts more stress on my muscles and bones. This in turn wears out the cushioning on my shoes quicker. I also tend to push too far too fast in the early stages, mainly because I don't have the time to build a proper base. Although from a cardiovascular perspective I'm ready to go for a few miles at a time, my legs aren't.
The Plan: Today I bought a treadmill, with emphasis on cushioning. I'll be receiving it in about the second week of January. Cold will no longer matter. Impact of my heavier frame on the running surface won't be such a big issue. Restrictions on spare time to run won't be an issue because I can do it in the home. It's my hope that by the time spring arrives I'll have dropped enough pounds, and built up enough strength in my legs to start running the bridges again, which I haven't done in at least 2 years, possibly 3.
So there you have it. My goal for 2009. I'll keep you updated as I go.
Sounds like fun to me, and I've found in the past that publicly stating one's goals can be a real motivating factor to achieving them.
Here is my primary goal for 2009:
I want to be running significant distances again by September. Prior to moving back to Saskatchewan, I was logging some serious miles running every week. Since then I have lost all interest, passion, ability and stamina for running, and I want to get it back. Just saying this and wishing for it won't help me however. I'm a firm believer in having a plan when it comes to achieving goals. The first stage of planning for me involves setting the goal, the second involves recognizing the obstacles.
Obstacle 1: The mystery pain that surfaces along the inside of my leg after my first 2 or 3 weeks back running every time I try to get in to it again.
Obstacle 2: Finding the time to run, as a father and a chef.
Obstacle 3: -50 degrees, come on!
Here is how I plan to tackle the above problems. I believe the mystery pain is caused by a combination of factors. I'm heavier than I used to be, which puts more stress on my muscles and bones. This in turn wears out the cushioning on my shoes quicker. I also tend to push too far too fast in the early stages, mainly because I don't have the time to build a proper base. Although from a cardiovascular perspective I'm ready to go for a few miles at a time, my legs aren't.
The Plan: Today I bought a treadmill, with emphasis on cushioning. I'll be receiving it in about the second week of January. Cold will no longer matter. Impact of my heavier frame on the running surface won't be such a big issue. Restrictions on spare time to run won't be an issue because I can do it in the home. It's my hope that by the time spring arrives I'll have dropped enough pounds, and built up enough strength in my legs to start running the bridges again, which I haven't done in at least 2 years, possibly 3.
So there you have it. My goal for 2009. I'll keep you updated as I go.
Saturday, December 20, 2008
One Ton of Fun
Anthony Bourdain is fond of saying that inside of every cook there is a Chinese guy screaming to get out. I have to agree. There are precious few foods in the world that are as fun to cook for me as Asian dishes.
I'm trying to impart this same sense of fun and excitement about food on to my kids. We make an effort to buy some sort of produce we've never tried before whenever we go grocery shopping. I like to involve them whenever I'm doing any kind of scratch cooking so that they understand that food doesn't have to come out of a box, it can be made at home.
So the other day we went to the Eastern Market on Idylwyly, one of our favorite places to go, and I got a bunch of ingredients to make our own wonton soup.
Unfortunately, the kids are sick tonight, so while they alternated between vomitting and moaning, I escaped to the kitchen.
Here's the thing about cooking with a passion for it.
I've made wontons before, and I heartily believe in keeping dishes as simple as possible.
My wonton filling usually consists of nothing but pork sausage meat and green onions.
But I recently learned of a common addition and I've been agonizing all night about whether or not to add it. Water chestnuts, right in the filling.
I'd planned to add them into to the soup itself, but I wrestled with the idea a long time before finally deciding to go with it in the filling.
I said I agonized over it, and believe me I agonized. I'll probably be making a few hundred wontons tonight, and it will be heart-wrenching and tragic if this winds up messing up my end result.
So far however it seems alright however.
I just found it interesting that I would find myself faced with such monumental concern over a slight recipe variation. Anyone else this touchy about this stuff?
I'm trying to impart this same sense of fun and excitement about food on to my kids. We make an effort to buy some sort of produce we've never tried before whenever we go grocery shopping. I like to involve them whenever I'm doing any kind of scratch cooking so that they understand that food doesn't have to come out of a box, it can be made at home.
So the other day we went to the Eastern Market on Idylwyly, one of our favorite places to go, and I got a bunch of ingredients to make our own wonton soup.
Unfortunately, the kids are sick tonight, so while they alternated between vomitting and moaning, I escaped to the kitchen.
Here's the thing about cooking with a passion for it.
I've made wontons before, and I heartily believe in keeping dishes as simple as possible.
My wonton filling usually consists of nothing but pork sausage meat and green onions.
But I recently learned of a common addition and I've been agonizing all night about whether or not to add it. Water chestnuts, right in the filling.
I'd planned to add them into to the soup itself, but I wrestled with the idea a long time before finally deciding to go with it in the filling.
I said I agonized over it, and believe me I agonized. I'll probably be making a few hundred wontons tonight, and it will be heart-wrenching and tragic if this winds up messing up my end result.
So far however it seems alright however.
I just found it interesting that I would find myself faced with such monumental concern over a slight recipe variation. Anyone else this touchy about this stuff?
Another John Nash Moment
Another John Nash Moment.
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Sunday, December 14, 2008 at 10:00pm | Edit Note | Delete
You might have seen my remarks earlier about having trouble with all of the doors on my jeep because of the cold. This is where it starts.
The doors being frozen on the damn vehicle was certainly the central event of my day today. If anyone were to ask me how my day went, it would start with that story. The theme is thus set.
Jump forward a bit.
I made pancakes and sausages later in the day. When I tried to close the cupboard I'd gotten the pancake mix from, it wouldn't close.
The same thing then happened moments later with the utensils drawer.
Tonight, I was putting away a few groceries, and found that the fridge door wouldn't close properly. I wound up cleaning out the whole fridge in order to get it closed.
By this time it's of course occurring to me that doors are playing a significant role in my life today, and always easily influenced by suggestion, I idly thought maybe there was some message in it all for me. But again, not in any serious way, after all, it could all be coincidence.
Flash to right now. I'm done feeding and bathing the kids, cleaning the kitchen, all of that, and I'm hating winter. So I decided I would search out a nice profile pic full of sunshine in protest.
If you do a google image search for sunshine you get this
http://images.google.ca/images?hl=en&q=sunshine&btnG=Search+Images&gbv=2
The ninth picture has a quote attached to it, and I like quotes, so this was the first image I clicked on it. It takes you here. http://milosjanusoutlook.blogspot.com/2008_05_01_archive.html
The site header talks about the Roman God of Doors and Gates, Janus, who is always seen as looking to the future and the past simultaneously. He symbolizes beginnings and endings as well as change and transition. His name is also the origin of the word January.
Anyway, now I'm convinced that all these door metaphors are trying to tell me something. I just don't know what.
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Sunday, December 14, 2008 at 10:00pm | Edit Note | Delete
You might have seen my remarks earlier about having trouble with all of the doors on my jeep because of the cold. This is where it starts.
The doors being frozen on the damn vehicle was certainly the central event of my day today. If anyone were to ask me how my day went, it would start with that story. The theme is thus set.
Jump forward a bit.
I made pancakes and sausages later in the day. When I tried to close the cupboard I'd gotten the pancake mix from, it wouldn't close.
The same thing then happened moments later with the utensils drawer.
Tonight, I was putting away a few groceries, and found that the fridge door wouldn't close properly. I wound up cleaning out the whole fridge in order to get it closed.
By this time it's of course occurring to me that doors are playing a significant role in my life today, and always easily influenced by suggestion, I idly thought maybe there was some message in it all for me. But again, not in any serious way, after all, it could all be coincidence.
Flash to right now. I'm done feeding and bathing the kids, cleaning the kitchen, all of that, and I'm hating winter. So I decided I would search out a nice profile pic full of sunshine in protest.
If you do a google image search for sunshine you get this
http://images.google.ca/images?hl=en&q=sunshine&btnG=Search+Images&gbv=2
The ninth picture has a quote attached to it, and I like quotes, so this was the first image I clicked on it. It takes you here. http://milosjanusoutlook.blogspot.com/2008_05_01_archive.html
The site header talks about the Roman God of Doors and Gates, Janus, who is always seen as looking to the future and the past simultaneously. He symbolizes beginnings and endings as well as change and transition. His name is also the origin of the word January.
Anyway, now I'm convinced that all these door metaphors are trying to tell me something. I just don't know what.
What Leary Took Down With Him
I was talking about the book Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas earlier this week, and I find that I take a different meaning from this book than other people do. Most people see it as the glorification of the
'freak' lifestyle.
I see it as satire. I see it as mocking the very things that so many people seem to buy straight into at face value in Thompson's writing. For me the book is a complete and utter descent into ever increasing, self-destructive madness. It claims to be a savage journey to the Heart of the American Dream, and it's a monologue on self destruction, dejection and tragic comedy. For me, the heart and meat of Fear and Loathing can be summed up in these excerpts.
"Strange memories on this nervous night in Las Vegas. Five years later? Six? It seemed like a lifetime, or at least a Main Era - the kind of peak that never comes again. San Francisco in the middle sixties was a very special time and place to be a part of. Maybe it meant something. Maybe not, in the long run… but no explanation, no mix of words or music or memories can touch that sense of knowing that you were there and alive in that corner of time and the world. Whatever it meant…
History is hard to know, because of all the hired bullshit, but even without being sure of ‘history’ it seems entirely reasonable to think that every now and then the energy of a whole generation comes to a head in a long fine flash, for reasons that nobody really understands at the time - and which never explain, in retrospect, what actually happened.
My central memory of that time seems to hang on one or five or maybe forty nights - or very early mornings - when I left the Fillmore half-crazy and, instead of going home, aimed the big 650 Lightning across the Bay Bridge at a hundred miles an hour wearing L.L. Bean shorts and a Butte sheepherder’s jacket… booming through the Treasure Island tunnel at the lights of Oakland and Berkeley and Richmond, not quite sure which turn-off to take when I got through the other end (always stalling at the toll-gate, too twisted to find neutral while I fumbled for change)… but being absolutely certain that no matter which way I went I would come to a place where people were just as high and wild as I was: No doubt at all about that…
There was madness in any direction, at any hour. If not across the Bay, then up the Golden Gate or down 101 to Los Altos or La Honda… You could strike sparks anywhere. There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing was right, that we were winning…
And that, I think, was the handle - that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn’t need that. Our energy would simply prevail. There was no point in fighting - on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave…
So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark - that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back."
and this one:
“That was the fatal flaw in Tim Leary’s trip. He crashed around America selling ‘consicousness expansion’ without ever giving a thought to the grim meat-hook realities that were lying in wait for all the people who took him too seriously . . . All those pathetically eager acid freaks who thought they could buy Peace and Understanding for three bucks a hit. But their loss and failure is ours, too. What Leary took down with him was the central illusion of a whole life-style that he helped to create . . . a generation of permanent cripples, failed seekers, who never understood the essential old mystic fallacy of the Acid Culture: the desperate assumption that somebody—or at least some force—is tending the Light at the end of the tunnel.”
—Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, 1971
'freak' lifestyle.
I see it as satire. I see it as mocking the very things that so many people seem to buy straight into at face value in Thompson's writing. For me the book is a complete and utter descent into ever increasing, self-destructive madness. It claims to be a savage journey to the Heart of the American Dream, and it's a monologue on self destruction, dejection and tragic comedy. For me, the heart and meat of Fear and Loathing can be summed up in these excerpts.
"Strange memories on this nervous night in Las Vegas. Five years later? Six? It seemed like a lifetime, or at least a Main Era - the kind of peak that never comes again. San Francisco in the middle sixties was a very special time and place to be a part of. Maybe it meant something. Maybe not, in the long run… but no explanation, no mix of words or music or memories can touch that sense of knowing that you were there and alive in that corner of time and the world. Whatever it meant…
History is hard to know, because of all the hired bullshit, but even without being sure of ‘history’ it seems entirely reasonable to think that every now and then the energy of a whole generation comes to a head in a long fine flash, for reasons that nobody really understands at the time - and which never explain, in retrospect, what actually happened.
My central memory of that time seems to hang on one or five or maybe forty nights - or very early mornings - when I left the Fillmore half-crazy and, instead of going home, aimed the big 650 Lightning across the Bay Bridge at a hundred miles an hour wearing L.L. Bean shorts and a Butte sheepherder’s jacket… booming through the Treasure Island tunnel at the lights of Oakland and Berkeley and Richmond, not quite sure which turn-off to take when I got through the other end (always stalling at the toll-gate, too twisted to find neutral while I fumbled for change)… but being absolutely certain that no matter which way I went I would come to a place where people were just as high and wild as I was: No doubt at all about that…
There was madness in any direction, at any hour. If not across the Bay, then up the Golden Gate or down 101 to Los Altos or La Honda… You could strike sparks anywhere. There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing was right, that we were winning…
And that, I think, was the handle - that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn’t need that. Our energy would simply prevail. There was no point in fighting - on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave…
So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark - that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back."
and this one:
“That was the fatal flaw in Tim Leary’s trip. He crashed around America selling ‘consicousness expansion’ without ever giving a thought to the grim meat-hook realities that were lying in wait for all the people who took him too seriously . . . All those pathetically eager acid freaks who thought they could buy Peace and Understanding for three bucks a hit. But their loss and failure is ours, too. What Leary took down with him was the central illusion of a whole life-style that he helped to create . . . a generation of permanent cripples, failed seekers, who never understood the essential old mystic fallacy of the Acid Culture: the desperate assumption that somebody—or at least some force—is tending the Light at the end of the tunnel.”
—Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, 1971
Monday, December 1, 2008
I Looked Great Yesterday!
According to my 3 year old son that is.
My son's life revolves around action-adventure. His favorite tv shows, favorite movies, favorite books, favorite toys all have themes of extreme action-adventure. His fixations cycle through Transformers, Power Rangers, Lightning McQueen, Heavy Equipment and Star Wars.
So the other day I got up to head to the gym. I put on a pair of camouglage military style cargo pants and a Transformers T-shirt that I bought mainly to amuse the boy.
I came up out of my room wearing this outfit, and Anderson stopped dead in his tracks, his eyes widened with awe and amazement and he said "Wow Dad! You look GREAT!"
I have since downloaded over 20 gigs of Transformers TV episodes and movies for him.
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