Mug Me

crappy computer type on candy

Another day, another art opening. At Sadie's diner there was a group show with several artists that had submissions to the theme of valentine's day. While there were some great pieces hanging on the wall, the thing that I noticed the most were these little candy hearts put out on the table for people to eat.

The thing that got me was the poor quality craftsmanship. The letters weren't centred properly, bad english short forms like "plz", some of the text was hard to read. The 'm's looked like 'h's and vice versa. Sure it's just candy, but where's the quality control?

ToRD EOS

Demolition Dawn thanks the volunteers (including me)

West of Ossington on Dundas street at the Garrison the ToRD EOS was taking place. I had gotten there right on time, running in from the art auction at Jimmy's (see previous post). The garrison is a kind of dark building on a what feels like a secluded portion of the street. Not having been there before I was wondering if I'd actually have a problem finding it. There was a giant ToRD poster in the window and a death track doll standing outside.


Triple award winning and stage hog, Dyna gets pulled off by other derby girls.

For those not in the know, parties, award ceremonies, after parties, and pretty much any event that involves roller girls always (at least in my experience) ALWAYS results in photography gold and the cool stories like "...remember the Fort Wayne bed taco?", or "When they packed the two story venue in Portland doing live karaoke?"


Brim Stone, ToRDs Roller Girl 2009

One day when I get older I can look back and say "That was a fun ride." and it would have been worth every penny.


Rockin' at the end of the awards

Open Your Art to Haiti

Katarzyna at Jimmy's Coffee

On display at Jimmy's coffee (107 Portland street) a bunch of artwork was on display. Donated by artists to be sold in silent auction style with the funds going to help the relief effort in Haiti.

Up until this event, I'd never heard of Jimmy's coffee. I don't drink coffee. But I do eat those little things that go with coffee. See in photo, there's cakes and tarts and things. As the coffee shop was packed and I didn't know many people when I got there I found myself standing in front of the cake display checking out the goods.

I broke down a couple of times and bought a twinkie like thing, a cake thing, and some other kind of baked good. Eventually people started to pour in, people I knew. The distraction from the food was easier with conversation.



At 8:30pm it was time to go.

Sadie's Diner drop In

Al Ridley owner of Sadie's Diner

On the way tot he art show at Jimmy's. I noticed the lights on at Sadie's Diner. Al was in there finishing off some meal. I thought I'd pop in to say 'Hi'.

Sadie's Diner is located at 504 Adelaide Street West.

N 43°38.746', W079°24.054'


Happy. Sad.

How's that for a plug for a fine vegetarian food place?

Oh yeah, if you're there for breakfast, I recommend the western sandwich.

Whipper Snapper

Self Explanatory

While the computer was rendering I went outside to see the world, so to speak. Sometimes you've got to put fire under your bottom to get out there and see things. It's easy to get stuck in a warm comfy environment when it's cold outside.

Down the street I had missed some large emergency. Four fire trucks, one with a ladder, a bus ambulance, a regular ambulance, two police cars. You could smell the smoke but looking at the houses whatever fire was there had been extinguished. I missed the action by a few minutes judging by all the fire personal who were making their was back to their trucks.

With all the commotion the only thing that really stuck out was the words "Whipper Snapper" painted on the side of a building. Reading those words I imagine some old guy on top of a box shaking his angry fist at kids going by on skateboards, the snotty nose brats are wearing baseball hats backwards and maybe chewing gum.

My paternal grandfather used to say "Instant stuff, that will kill you.". I'm not sure what he was talking about. This was before microwaves. It might have had something to do with those new fangled TV remote controls that were attached to a TV via a wire. There was a rocker switch that doubled the functionality of the 20 odd buttons. Wooo. For us, the future of cable had arrived. No more turning a broken TV knob with a wrench. Push of a button. Presto chango.

I remember how my uncles would say that as kids we always had it so good. We didn't have to walk X miles through snow to school. Heck, we had school. I pictured them as old geezers blabbing about their oh so distant past. "Back in my day...", add on whatever. "Pens? We had ink wells! We had to pluck chickens for our pens and Wow, they could run!". "TV? We had to entertain ourselves by playing with left over rifles and bayonets from the war". My uncle actually used to do this. At least until his friend, little Timmy started bleeding.

Oh yeah we had it so good. I remember sharpening that Popsicle stick on the sidewalk, collecting bottle caps, the odd 30 cent comic, 10 cent bag of potato chips, 20 cent hamburger at McDonalds.

Kids today? internet, planned play dates (with parents), satellite TV, cell phones, complex toys. Result. Little or no imagination, no memory retention, no patience, no social skills.

How does this affect me? Quick cutting, crappy movie sequences, bad music mash ups, that cater to the attention lacking, littering, little turds.

Wow, I'm THAT guy shaking his fist at those punks, those brats, those whipper snappers.

Off to get cheese but found Ginger

Ginger St. James shows her bandaged finger

There's not a lot to do while waiting for a computer to crunch through a bunch of numbers. I decided today I would make macaroni and cheese for dinner. Only the cheese I have is that cheap cheese that you get at the local grocery store. If you're going to use that cheese you might as well just make a box of Kraft dinner.

I've been a bit obsessed these last few weeks into making food from scratch (more or less). Common food that you can get in a frozen food section of your local grocery store or in today's case, from a box.

Living near Kensington means living near Global Cheese and Cheese Magic two really great places to get real cheese. The cheese with the real fattening flavours not that processed cheese that has plastics added to it to make it go further or last longer. It just seems wrong. Kind of like having a chocolate bar that tastes waxy. We'll save the chocolate bar blurb for another blog entry.


Ginger and Teddy

And so, with the computer on auto I ventured out in the afternoon to get some cheese. Maybe even take some photos. I was walking past Sneaky Dees at College and Bathurst and noticed, after doing a double take, that some one inside was smiling at me.

It was Ginger, who normally, I associate as someone who lives in Hamilton. She shows up at the occasional derby bout to sing the National Anthem. If you have not heard her sing you should see if you can get out and hear her. She may be petite but she's got a big voice.

I joined her and Teddy for a few minutes, chatted, then continued on my way to the cheese store.


Global Cheese in Kensington Market

I bought about $15 dollars of Hollandia and Smoked Hunter (currently my favourite cheese these days), went back home and started cooking and Macaroni and Cheese. What follows is the recipe I used.


Macaroni and Cheese in a casserole dish

Macaroni and Cheese

ingredients

• 2 cups of macaroni
• 1/4 cup butter
• 1/4 cup flour
• 1 1/2 cups milk
• 1/2 cup whipping cream
• 2 cups Hollandia cheese, shredded
• 1 cup Smoked Hunter cheese, shredded
• 1 branch of broccoli, chopped
• 2 onions, chopped

directions

1. cook macaroni
2. melt butter in a separate pot.
3. stir in flour (butter and flour will begin to clump)
4. stir in milk and whipping cream
5. while stirring, melt in cheese
6. add macaroni, broccoli, onions and cheese mixture into large casserole dish
7. mix
8. put into oven at 350° F for 20 minutes

I ended up eating about half the dish and had to lie down. It's quite filling.

Carrot Muffin Day

23 1/2 carrot muffins

I had a pretty unproductive day today. I'm not sure if it's that I'm coming down with something or perhaps the lack of sunlight in the dreary winter months. Vitamin D deficient? Meh.

I wouldn't say the day was a complete waste. I've been working on a 3D logo the last few days and managed to start a render today. Unfortunately the test render didn't look the way I wanted it to so I started a new one with different logistics. I know that might sound vague but I'm not really supposed to talk about it much.

Anyways that's about all I did today. That and the sifting through photos (which I seem to do on a regular basis). Sifting through photos doesn't even seem like work anymore. I was looking for a past party I shot of Sanjay (the book publisher). He had lost the photos I gave him.

While sifting through photos, rendering a logo, I was also examining my blog, this blog, and noticed a whole lot of entries in 2006. After that the entries get fewer and far between. It's around the same time as logging onto facebook.

It's difficult to blab on facebook and on a blog at the same time. I might just have to consolidate the blabbing to one, possibly the blog, and have a permalink to my facebook account.

Random blabbing aside and getting to this blog entry...

As a result of my boredom or lack of activity I have declared this "Carrot Muffin Day". Carrots to lure the ground hog that didn't come out of the ground a few days ago? A muffin in remembrance of the Day music died? Which technically was yesterday, at least 4.5 hours ago minimum. And sure there's just so much in common with a muffin made of carrots and three distinguished musicians dying in a plane. Was the big bopper big because of eating muffins? It's amazing how random thoughts enter my head... and the answer would be "No"... at least I don't think so.

No, I'm declaring this carrot muffin day because I feel a tad lazy today and because of this I decided to make a bunch of carrot muffins from one of those instant muffin mixes. A baking item that can be enjoyed by lazy (and non-lazy) types with the smallest amount of baking effort.

1. Pour mix into bowl
2. add water
3. mix
4. pour mixture into muffin trays
5. bake
6. eat

"All the enjoyment without the effort." I should have a bumper sticker made for days like today. Maybe a T-shirt.

Speaking of T-shirts, insert the plug for Wicked Skatewear's wicked line of T-shirts here. Did I say they were cool? Well now you know. They are cool. Buy a T-shirt.

Not a creature was stirring...

Old spoon (broken) and new spoon (not broken)

While making a crockpot full of chili I broke a wooden spoon in the attempt to stir said chili. This circumstance resulted in my going out to get a new, and hopefully more sturdy, wooden spoon.


Corn bread, bowl of non-meat chili, and pink lemonade

ingredients

• 1 can of spaghetti sauce
• 1 can of tomatoes
• 1 tsp pepper
• 1 tbs chili powder
• 1 tbs tabasco sauce
• 4 cups of hydrated beans
• 1 cup of TVP¹ "ground beef" before hydration
• 1 cup of chopped onion
• 4 cloves of garlic, chopped
• 3 celery branches, chopped

directions

1. hydrate TVP¹
2. throw ingredients into crockpot
3. cook in crockpot on low for 12 hours

The cornbread was made from the recipe that can be found in the Joy of Cooking. I multiplied the recipe by two and used the Baker's Secret petite loaf pan to make eight small loaves of corn bread.

---

¹ TVP = Textured Vegetable Protein

Cold start

Ivy shows off her one piece thermal wear

The first practice scrimmage of the year had Hammer City go up against the Tri-City girls of kitchener. It took place in an arena some where (I left my GPS at Chainsaw's place) in or near Caledonia. As a passenger in a car I'm terrible at figuring out where I am if I'm not paying attention.


Getting ready to scrimmage

The arena was cold. According to my thermometer, it was 2° C. Not quite freezing but cold enough to see your breath. The concrete was cold to sit on. The few spectators that showed sat in lawn chairs with blankets.


Dicey warms up


Sin-e-star blocks Dicey


Lippy from Tri-city scoots around the track taking lead jammer


view from the stage.


Boom and Chainsaw Mary freeze while performing the duties of the penalty box


Miss Carriage takes on ninja like properties

Beaches Photo Walk

The sewage treatment plant (N43 39.810 W79 19.042)

Our photographic adventure started at 10:00. The 10am thing is a pretty hard sell. Getting up early on a weekend when all your body wants to do is sleep can be a major undertaking just by itself. Having to, in addition, lug that same sleepy body across town to be meet in front of a sewage plant in a park for 10:00 near a body of water in the winter, that's just crazy.

If I haven't stated it before I'll state it now. The photos that you get that are great looking are generally proportional to the crappy weather conditions. The crappier the environment outside, the better the photos. Like any great photographers there were actually a bunch of the meet up group out early braving the elements even before I arrived.


Paul walking on the hill (N43 39.799 W79 19.028)

A bunch of them were just standing around making it easy to spot where we were meeting. All those people talking in a clump with all that photo gear. Some were off shooting nearby. Lying on their stomaches shooting up at the sky, aiming at the water sewage plant, taking photos of one another.

By 10:18 gps time, the group left the sewage plant to wander toward queen street. We walked along a board walk and a few dog owners. There was one energetic black dog that ran around all of us at terribly fast speeds. I've never seen so many photographers trying to take photos of a dog before. I think the owner was a bit at awe as well.


A dog on the boardwalk (N43 39.878 W79 18.676)

After unsuccessfully trying to take a photo of the dog by following it, I stretched out, stomach to the board walk and waited for the dog to pass by with my camera set to a predetermined focus. It was good in theory and I didn't have to move. It took about two minutes but the dog, I suppose being curious, saw me and decided to get closer to see what I was up to. click.


The library owl (N43 40.215 W79 17.916)

We found ourselves in front of the Beach library and this owl. Again, a horde of photographers shooting the same thing from different angles.

Sometimes it's worth photographing things in color (N43 40.263 W79 17.797)

The Leuty life guard station (N43 40.019 W79 17.704)


Bunch of rocks (N43 40.021 W79 17.703)


More rocks (N43 39.983 W79 17.696)



Icicles (N43 39.983 W79 17.695)


Jose, Photographer (N43 39.985 W79 17.696)


Paula


Iced plant (N43 40.326 W79 16.671)


Close up of the iced plant (N43 40.329 W79 16.672)