Archive for the ‘ Uncategorized ’ Category

words of rice, freerice.com

30th December 2007 | Closed

There is so much commercialism around Christmas time that its good to think about those less fortunate. I read about this in the newspaper. Its a website that a parent originally developed to test his son’s vocabulary in preparation for exams. So for every word that you guess right, 20 grains of rice are donated to United Nations. It’s all free since there are corporate sponsors for the site. Try it! It builds your vocabulary, donations are free and its even fun.


anniversary collection

30th December 2007 | Closed

This is a work in progress.  It was published in error.

Kate Bush

Hiroshima

Peter Gabriel

Joe Jackson

Tori Amos

Jane Siberry

Pat Metheny

Steely Dan

Elvis Costello

Michael McDonald

Earth, Wind & Fire
Rickie Lee Jones

Suzanne Vega

Sarah Slean/Lynn Harrison


Japanese Tour Books

18th July 2007 | Closed

Paul let me his 2 travel guide books which I started to read.  I’m starting to get excited.

We had to replace the torsion spring on our garage door.  This meant that we couldn’t use our car until the service guy came.  We could have lifted the garage door manually but its a 10×7′ door.  Its like having your car locked in.

Eric went to the Chinese Embassy to get his visa today.

Adam is singing Chinese songs now.

Terra had her pet white rat with her today.   I’m trying not to be biased against it.  I’m fine as long as it in its travel case.

I spent yesterday weeding a rose garden for a client.  (a summer infill job).  I now hate roses.  I had to constantly reposition myself so that I wouldn’t get thorns in my bum when I was squatting down.   Actually it would have been nice if there were blooms then it wouldn’t have been so bad.  Only 3 of the bushes had blooms.


Food & Art

16th July 2007 | Closed

Where: Saturday, we went out for lunch at a restaurant Indo-Chyna on Ossington that served Chinese, Vietnamese & Thai food. It had only been opened for 2 months. It had 2 wonderful paintings on the wall, one depicting a woman sitting down on the grass with a bowl of fruit.  It was sorta like a retro vintage advertisement with a plain background.  The rest of the wall were plain.  There was also french music playing in the background.  Imagine Stevie Wonder sung in French by a woman.

Who: David, his old manager Greg who is now his co-author.  Greg’s girlfriend, Indira and her sister Sonia

Why: Greg was over here writing with David. And so the plan was to met with Indira and Sonia for lunch.  Sonia lives in Parkdale.

Food:  I ordered my main dish of fish cakes noodle soup, with chicken, pork, tomatoes in a tamarind base.  However, everyone else spring rolls and fishcakes as appetizers. Disappointed that they were out of calamari.  So my main course was pretty similar to the appetizers.  Lovely presentation, food was okay.  Fancy bowls, crackers as nibblies and those chocolate rolled cyclinder things as a dessert.

The fish cakes were supposed to be cod and dace.  I remember buying canned dace in oval tins and loving it.  However when I think about how much oil that the dace was sitting it, its enough for a car lube job.

It was a case of serendipity where I had already read the newspaper and was folding it up to put into recycling when the following announcement caught my eye.

Edward Day Gallery (952 Queen St.) unveils a series of intricately set-up mini sculptures by Cybele Young.  She creates little scenes inside black rimmed  box using Japanese paper and other materials, folded with tremendous skills.

So  after lunch which happened to be in the same neighborhood, we went to the gallery.  Co-incidently Indira said that she wanted to be at 920 Queen since she saw a lingerie shop that she wanted to be checked out. So David went into Museum of Canadian Contemporary Art, right next door to Edward Day Gallery.  Greg, Indira& Sonia went to 920.

So it was small exhibit and I didn’t see the best pieces until the very end when David told me that it was time to go.  Yes, they are tiny and the titles are very witty.  Such as ‘where did my shopping list go?’ and its a shopping cart being carried off by a balloon.   Edward Day Gallery and MofCCA are both free.  MofCCA had a lot of diverse exhibits there, some were interesting.  I’m hoping that Cybele Young has a website so that I can see more of her stuff.


More Estrogen

14th July 2007 | Closed

We had Eric’s girlfriend stay with us for a week. Terra is Korean so we had to explain some of the food items. And that in her family, they use food leftovers to make sushi just like we use leftover to make fried rice. It was a fun having another female in the house.


Rickie Lee Jones

13th July 2007 | 1 Comment

June 30th. David got us great seats for her concert at the Music Hall which is close to home and a small venue. We were in row D, #14,15 meaning close to the stage and center. I told David that it was BG crowd since most people were grey and bald. Not surprisingly since Rickie Lee is 52. She is not aging well. I always find it surprising that her singing voice is different from her speaking voice. She had a lot of problems with her sound mix, we couldn’t hear her vocals. She is still a rocker chick but does other stuff like ballads, uses a bow on her electric guitar ( it was a good thing that the stage hand got her floor cushions) like a cello. Her bass player was good too.


Syriana:DVD rental

23rd June 2007 | 2 Comments

Using our monthly free Rogers rental coupon, David pick out Syrianna. George Clooney gained 35 lbs, grew a beard and shaved back his hairline for this movie. He really didn’t look himself but Matt Damon looked good. It was disjointed, non-linear with constant subtitles making it hard to follow if you weren’t watching intently. It depicted how disfranchised and disillusioned youth can easily be manipulated into suicide bombers, you can’t trust governments, money and oil is the root of all evil.


Not your typical swordflower -its a wild gladiola

15th June 2007 | 1 Comment

Since the logo of this blog is swordflowers (aka gladiolas), I wanted a purple gladiola.  I could only find 3 images from flickr.  Gladiolas are  typically vertical flowers however the posted photo is a wild species.  I think the photo was taken in Israel.  If you want to know why I picked swordflower as a name, read the ‘about’ header.