Greg and Kat’s blog

So here I am in a hotel room in San Francisco, concerned primarily with an election in the homeland. We seem to be looking at a conservative majority and NDP opposition. Here’s my thoughts on how we got here…

I feel like the republicans in the states are mostly to blame for the NDP gains: there has been a lot off talk there about how health care and generally governments doing… things… is evil socialism. I think a lot of Canadians looked at that and said to themselves “that seems okay…we need us some socialism.”

As for the conservative gains? Here’s my glass-half-full take on that: three reason Harper is so popular is that he has been in a minority government and hasn’t actually been able too *do* anything. Given a few years of Harper being Harper, I don’t think the poll numbers will be quite the same.

As for the liberals… well… you picked Igatieff all by yourself.

Okay, seriously… am I the only one with ears? I’m hardly an audiophile, but I’m increasingly finding new music unlistenable purely as a result of the loudness war. If you don’t know what that is, this YouTube video has an excellent description of loudness wars.

I have songs that I don’t like listening to because I know there’s a better song in there somewhere: I just can’t hear it because all the interesting stuff has been clipped.

Most recently, I found myself thinking that the Alicia Keys vocal Empire State of Mind is totally muddied. It would probably sound awesome if the vocal wasn’t squished in with everything else, but everything is too loud to let that happen. [You can certainly find it on your favourite file sharing service—don't pay for it, it's not worth it.] Most annoyingly, the video on youtube actually has better audio (to my ear at least) than the album version.

Screw it. I’m just going to listen to Gordon over and over forever. I ripped it myself from a CD I bought sometime in the middle 90s and it sounds awesome.

Following our long-standing tradition (of three years now), we just had our annual holiday open house. It’s a great excuse to see a bunch of people, many of whom we’d be too busy to see over the holidays otherwise. We had 48 people (by Kat’s count) this year, which is a solid turnout. I have posted what pictures I have (which are mostly of food).

We have stuck pretty closely to the formula that seems to work: tell people to come whenever and make sure there’s a lot of food. You’ll notice a lot of similarities between this list and our list of food from 2008.

The Food

Here is the food we had, with recipe/supplier links where I have them to post. Several of the links are to Cooks Illustrated, which requires a subscription. I vote that you pony-up and buy the subscription: I’ve rarely made anything from them that wasn’t awesome.

• deviled eggs (from Cooks Illustrated)
• meatballs (from my mother’s recipe)
• Vegetarian Chili (from New Canadian Basics)
• Alton Brown’s Shrimp Cocktail (with a half-strength brine)
• a side of salmon
• artichoke dip (from New Canadian Basics) with pitas
• potato salad (my recipe)
• various cold cuts, veggies, and fruit
• salami from Moccia
• veggie and meat pockets from Golden Pita
• various cheeses: some from local farmers markets, some from the grocery store
• various bread and crackers
• blueberry pie (from Cook’s Illustrated)
• Caramel Macchiato Cheesecake (a Bad Girl Chocolates recipe)
• squares: triple-decker squares, lemon squares, butter tart squares
• cookies: chocolate chip, chocolate-cherry rounds, speculaas, ginger cookies, and some sugar cookes (which were the only ones we bought)
• candied pecans
• trifle (from my recipe)

Commentary: The meatballs were a huge hit, so I have posted the recipe in a separate blog entry. I have rarely, if ever, made a better pie than those blueberry pies: I think I’m finally getting the touch for it.

People drank a lot more pop and a lot less beer/wine this year. I have heard the same from another person who had a holiday party. Maybe it’s the new drunk driving laws? Worth keeping in mind if you’re entertaining in BC this season.

The Time Lapse

As before, I set up a camera on a tripod to take a picture every 30 seconds. These (2000) pictures can then be stitched together into a time lapse video, which tells the story of our day pretty completely, at 1:270 speed. (direct link to the movie if you’re having plugin problems)

The Next Day

On Sunday, it was Kat’s grandmother’s birthday. It has become tradition that the grandchildren cook for that event.

So, after cooking Friday for most of the day and all you see in the time lapse, we got up the next morning to drive to Surrey and make indoor pulled pork (with Lexington-style vinegar sauce, and chopped not pulled as they do in the Carolinas). And we fed another 24 people with that.

Needless to say, we were both pretty bagged by the end of our weekend.

We’re finally going to get a new car. Our old car is worth essentially nothing as a trade-in, so if anybody wants it, speak up quickly. (Like, today or early tomorrow.)

1990 Toyota Corolla, 265000 km, automatic. No A/C, no power windows, no power locks: basically, nothing to break.

For its age, it’s in remarkably good shape. I don’t actually know much of anything about cars, but to the best of my knowledge, the engine, transmission, brakes are all good. It has passed Aircare with flying colours every year we’ve had it. (Never within a factor of 10 of any of the emission limits.) It has had proper regular maintenance its whole life.

A complete list of problems that I know about: There is a short in the brakelights that needs to be fixed so it stops blowing bulbs (and leaving you with only the rear-window light); cable to the license plate light has snapped and needs to be reattached; significant chunk of rust under the gas cap; some minor rust elsewhere at the back; there’s a seal around the top of the windshield that is coming off (that I’m pretty sure is decorative, but what do I know).

I’m not a mechanic, so I’m in no position to say that it will still be running in 6 months, but it’s doing okay for now.

We can get $550 from Aircare, so anybody else willing to pay that is welcome to it.

I have avoided blogging throughout the Olympics because I just couldn’t figure out what to say. I still don’t know, but feel like I should write something. I have collected my Olympic pictures and will link as appropriate. (I have some pictures from last night that aren’t in there yet: give me a few hours.)

Here are my highlights…

Things we did

• On the 16th, I slept in and Kat got up early to do the zipline. I wandered downtown at my leisure and sat down to watch the curling game (Martin v Norway) in Robson Square, right under the zipline tower. In the span of three minutes, Kelly zipped, Martin won the game, and Kat and Pam zipped.

  There are pictures from the zipline. Be sure to notice the movies Kat took.

• Later that day, we went to the Mint pavilion. As much as I can’t believe I’m saying it, it was totally worth waiting for three hours.

  The Olympic medals are fundamentally just a pound of metal, but they just feel different: special and important. We don’t have many pictures from that because I mostly spent my time rolling the thing around in my hand and staring at it.

• On the second day of the Colbert report, we went around behind the stage (based on Kat’s discovery the day before). Everybody who went on or off the stage walked within 10 feet of where we were. Pam got a signed picture.
• Nico and Allison came to visit for a couple of days, which was great. We ran into Meredith Vieira from the View. That was exciting once Kat and Allison explained to Nico and I who that was. Also, we made pretzels.
• We saw two women’s curling matches: the semi-finals (Canada over Switzerland and China over Sweden) and the bronze medal match (China over Switzerland). So, we saw the Chinese women win the bronze: they were obviously very excited and I got some good pictures of them celebrating (thanks to the Chinese photographer who called them over to our side of of the rink).

The Games

• Jon Montgomery’s triumphant march through Whistler. I think this is my favourite moment of the games because it’s obvious to me that he would have done the same thing if he had come in 2nd or 6th. There might not have been a camera crew, and one of his friends would have gotten him a beer instead of some random girl handing him a pitcher, but he would have been there either way.
• Marianne St-Gelais’ reaction to Charles Hamelin’s 500m gold. I particularly like it when she lost the coordination to jump up and down and switched to running in place.
• Scott Moir: “We’re second… no just kidding: first!”
• Kevin Martin’s curling gold and Cheryl Bernard’s ulcer-inducing silver.

  Kevin Martin’s dominance in this sport really cannot be overstated. If we count the biggest competitions in the sport in the last year (Brier, Canadian Olympic qualifiers, World Championships, and Olympics), Martin has lost 3 games out of 40. In a sport where a couple of missed shots can swing the game in your opponent’s favour, that’s stunning.

• William-goddamn-Shatner in the closing ceremonies. “I’m Bill and I’m proud to be Canadian”. Really, is there anyone more full of awesome than Shatner?

I will point out that my top two there (Montgomery and St-Gelais) were the result of CTV putting a camera pointing in just the right (non-obvious) direction at the right moment. Kudos to them on solidly good coverage.

… and it’s days like today that I have to say that out loud to remind myself. I am not mentally or physically prepared to be done my Christmas break or resume teaching.

I have posted some pics from Vegas. The trip was good: to give you an idea, we gambled a total of $100 between us because there was too much other stuff to do.

A warning: when going to Vegas, plan to spend $100–200 per person per day on miscellaneous stuff. By the time you have a nice dinner and go to a show, $100 is gone, and that only entertains you for the evening.

The highlight for me was probably the Gun Store (not-even-subtly-racist targets aside). When else am I going to shoot an assault rifle? I should have upgraded the package to shoot a handgun too.

Other than that, we had a good set of the standard holiday stuff (including our open house, which I haven’t done the time lapse video for yet). All of that went well, but all happened much too fast.

A few weeks ago, I got to thinking about our Christmas plans…

I haven’t gone back to see my family for a while: it’s much nicer to go back (and deal with flying to Ontario) in the summer. Kat’s family does Christmas eve, not Christmas day. For the last few years, we have spent Christmas day with friends, which has always been a lot of fun, but this year all of the friends are scattering to the four corners of the world.

So I thought to myself: What’s keeping us in Vancouver? After Christmas eve with Kat’s family, we’re pretty much done with the holiday. But, anywhere we could go after that would be closed for the holiday, with one exception:

Vegas.

So, on Christmas day we’re flying from YVR to Vegas and spending four days at the MGM Grand. On the menu this time:

• We want to shoot some guns (just like Angelica did). I’ve got to shoot a Kalashnikov.
• Fremont Street.
• Seinfeld is in Vegas around then: that would be awesome.
• I have wanted to see Penn & Teller for a while and they’re performing through Christmas.
• We have never eaten the food of Thomas Keller, so Bouchon is a distinct possibility.
• Boxing day outlet shopping.
• I want to see if I can find somewhere to make a prop bet and bet on something crazy.

As an added bonus, our friend Suyoko (and her mom) are going to be in Vegas for Christmas. That means (among other things) that I don’t actually have to wait through the outlet shopping: they can go and leave me behind.

As a result of watching Hoarders and an ongoing effort to clean up our office (which has never been quite right since we moved in), we have a desk to get rid of:

It’s an Ikea corner-unit desk that folds open/closed. It actually holds a fair amount of stuff. It just doesn’t fit right into our office, so it’s time to let it go.

Free, but we have no vehicle to move it, so once it’s down the elevator here, it’s your problem.

While the aforementioned ice cream sandwiches were being made, this is what was going on outside:

Click the thumbnails for the full images. I managed to get some nice pictures with a tripod, one second exposures, and some persistence. As the storm passed and the sun set, this happened:

Edit 07/26: Katkam (no relation) pwned me due to vantage point: sunset, fireworks.