A la carte

How was your Valentine's Day? We finally got a table at a posh restaurant we've wanted to try ever since moving to Oxford. It has a really romantic atmosphere, especially at night when it's lit by ancient chandeliers and candles. We sat among many young and wealthy Oxford students on awkwardly sweet dinner dates.

Jeff started our own date off perfectly by accidentally setting the menus on fire.


How does a person manage to sit there calmly perusing a menu without noticing it's in flames? And that his girlfriend is urgently trying to catch his attention without rousing nearby diners to a panic? However, I upped the ante by developing crippling stomach pains just before dessert, and spending the rest of the night groaning in bed. We have a long and storied history of dinner mishaps, whether glasses crashing to the floor, inadvertent whacking of passing servers while making a grand gesture with one's hand, spectacular nosebleeds and concussive blows to the head when diving under the table to retrieve dropped cutlery. It wouldn't be romantic without feeling that, together, you have escaped mortal danger.

By the way, the British Museum is looking pretty cool lately.


This is one of my favorite things at the museum: a chess set (Scandinavian origin) found on the Isle of Lewis in 1170. It's the bored guy in the middle I really love. Dude, I can relate. (Click on picture to enlarge.)

Innovation

How I love YouTube! Hours of fun. And education, too. This video is apparently from 2004 so it probably made the rounds a while back. But it's worth a listen - really interesting, especially if you've been a fan of the various incarnations of electronic music over the past ten or twenty years.

6-second drum loop

Also fun: looking for old TV commercials on YouTube. Especially when you can tell the company really tried hard to make a new catchword or slogan that would become all the rage. Sadly, 'mindsticker' doesn't appear to have, uh, stuck in peoples' minds. Check out this creepy commercial that frankly makes me glad I'm not a woman in the 60s. Then again, commercials still convey the impression that a woman's worth is based on her weight. Sigh.

Be a mindsticker

Speaking of innovation, I have just discovered that Onion Goggles exist. Which is fantastic, as nobody needs them more than I do. I cannot cut up an onion without a prolonged break partway through to regain my vision. Put that on my birthday list, right along with the Banana Guard. Mushy, bruised bananas make me want to vomit. This could change my life!

Miss Universe

The lovely Natasha turns 30 today, and I'm very lucky to have known her for at least twenty of those years. Errr ... sorry ... she's turning 24. 24, I say! In honour of her eternal youth, a list of the reasons that everyone should have a Natasha as a friend.

Freaky memory power:
She remembers what she studied in school, unlike me. She can recite all the best lines from films. She is particularly good with numbers - I'd swear she could memorize a thirty-digit number after hearing it once. I have often considered paying her a yearly retainer to serve as my personal password management system.

Physical protection:
This is a woman with martial arts training and marathon-running experience. She rides bikes up mountains and across chasms, and can bench-press her husband (hi Pete!). She pumps iron and wears stiletto heels. You definitely want her on your team. (Thats her doing a jump on her bike at left - sorry it's so small.)


Your own personal think tank:
She has studied astrophysics, philosophy, architecture and law, making her very good at the hardest Trivial Pursuit topics. She also has uncanny research abilities. If I so much as mention looking for a job, she will, within the hour, email me eight exciting opportunities, none of which I'd have been able to find for myself.

A fashion consultant on call:
She appreciates the importance of kick-ass shoes, sparkly silver (but always modern) jewelry, and the colour black, and uses all to devastating effect. She forces you to buy things you wouldn't have otherwise, but immediately love.

Psychic powers:
She can post you fragments of old notes you passed back and forth in school in grade eight so that they arrive exactly on the day when you most need a laugh. From what corner of the Land of Lost Memories she retrieves these ancient bits of ephemera, I shall never know.

Makes anything boring fun:
The best (and most dangerous) person to have next to you in a dull class, school assembly, lecture, film or over-earnest theatrical production, or when you're being lectured by a teacher or parent. Without words she'll manage to convey the ridiculousness of the predicament, so that you dissolve into stifled giggles that erupt into an unseemly snort at the most inopportune moment.

Makes exquisite cheesecake:
I think this one speaks for itself.

Self-sacrificing to a fault (at times):
She will, with good humoured resignation and admirable panache, be the one to wear 'Dum' across her chest - at an age when it's just asking to be tormented for the next three years - when someone has the brilliant idea of dressing as Lewis Carroll characters for Hallowe'en. Of course, she hadn't yet become Lara Croft and I was approximately three times her size at the time, so perhaps it wasn't a fair fight.


I wish I had a photo that does justice to her beauty, but she lives across an ocean and a continent and I have hardly seen her since I got the digital camera. Rest assured she is also easy on the eyes, and deserves to have a fantastic year ahead. Of being 24 years old. Ahem.

Spoke too soon ...

Not much can top the excitement of two Canadians far from home who wake up to discover this going on outside their flat:


We went to sleep with dry pavement, and though snow was predicted we didn't expect it to materialise. But after the disappointment of Christmas, we got a taste of winter after all! Today most people didn't make it into work. Those of us who did had cameras along and went outside at noon to marvel at the snowy trees and make snowballs. Seems like this is a real rarity here. According to the BBC one man took his young son for a ride on a sled that hadn't been used for 38 years. I've seen so many photos of children excitedly making snowmen for all they're worth, cos it's meant to be 7 degrees tomorrow so it won't last. Which seems really poignant. Don't all children deserve snow? Even the Oxford students (for I assume 'twas they) had a little fun:

The snowmen take a stand (click on photo no. 3)

And besides, this country looks so pretty under snow, just like Narnia.



I'm trying not to be an obnoxious Canadian, all 'you call THIS snow?' I do smile behind my hand when I see this sort of thing:

"The deepest snow recorded so far fell in Worcester, where 10cm (4in) is lying and overnight temperatures plummeted to -4C (25F)."

Four inches of snow! Temperatures plummeting to -4! But, in a country without snow tyres and snow removal equipment, even that can lead to this:

"It is expected that the lateness and loss of work hours caused by transport disruptions will cost the British economy up to £400 million ... All schools in Birmingham, Solihull and Dudley have been closed, as well as some in Gloucestershire, Herefordshire, Worcestershire, Essex, Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire, Buckinghamshire, Hertfordshire and East Anglia. More than 300 schools are also closed in Wales."

Though the government's unhappy about this dire loss of productivity, people here were just genuinely enjoying the weather. Like I said, these people deserve more snow! Except for the brats who hit me with snowballs on my way to work. Never hit a Canadian with snowballs, especially a Canadian who hates mornings. We know too many deadly tricks - ever heard of a gravel ball, kids? Just kidding. Grumble grumble.

Give me whistling, hand-claps or la-la-las and I'm hooked.

The latest song I just can't get out of my head:

Young Folks

Guess what? They're Swedish (like We're From Barcelona). Maybe I should just move there. While we're on the subject of Swedish music, may I direct you to the original version of 'Heartbeats' by The Knife? The cover version by Jose Gonzalez (also Swedish! or partly, anyway) is pretty popular due to a Sony commercial but the original is definitely best.

Heartbeats

The band consists of a brother and sister who tend only to be photographed in bizarre masks. The photo on their Wikipedia entry will make you fall in love. I can't stop listening to their song 'Pass This On'.

While I'm plugging music, I owe a long-overdue mention to Bed is Rude, the one-man band of a former soccer teammate. The only time I'd ever heard him sing he was screeching along to Axl Rose, so I was blown away by his gentle pop sensibility on 'A Certain Age' and 'Get Social'. Did I mention he sings and plays all the instruments? And has a full-time day job? Amazing.

Anyway, what are you listening to lately?

Quality

The paint on the walls of our flat comes off under your fingernails if you accidentally nick it (leaving a visible spot of drywall). It also appears to be water soluble.

Probably only four haircuts ago, sadly enough

I have been carrying around a Daytimer (TM) for ten years now. The good old-fashioned entirely paper kind of agenda. I have misplaced it several times, and each time been unable to sleep until it was safely returned. I refill my Daytimer with new week-at-glance pages each year, but don't very often bother with a proper clean-out. Which means every now and then I stumble across goodies in the note pages. Like a list of possible career options, from when I panicked about my future in fourth-year university. ('Editor' was not on the list. 'Architect', 'lawyer' and 'art curator' were, meaning I hadn't yet adopted my 'aim low' philosophy.) Notes for job interviews (hi Napanee Museum!). A to-do list for moving to Toronto (1999). Shopping lists for three consecutive Christmases. A list of radical ways in which I was going to Change! My! Life! during my quarter-life crisis. Lists of books to read. Recipes to make. Quotes to remember.

Because my Daytimer has grown heavier over the years, under the weight of responsibility for keeping my life together and my mind clear, I decided to rid it of all unnecessary items. And hidden under the front flap I found this:


This photo is at least twelve years old. I'd hazard a guess that it's from 1994. Are you thinking what I'm thinking?

Yep. It's just about time to try a new look.