Bespoke By Brouhaha!

is it your lucky day today? 13 February 2009

Well, it shouldn’t be unlucky – at least not according to this guy:

This, by the way, is my great-uncle Spiro. And he believes the unlucky day is actually TUESDAY the 13th.  Oh, but the old skool griks also believe that 13 is a lucky number – or so I’m told by http://www.greekspider.com:

Tuesday is considered the unluckiest day during the week for the Greek people. It was on this day on Tuesday May 29th 1453 that the unimaginable happened and the city of Constantinople fell to the Osman Tribe, the “Ottoman Turks”.

It is often said that businesses that open on this day have a black mark against them, and many Greeks who believe in this superstition will not venture into a new business on a Tuesday.

The number 13 is considered lucky by Greeks in the setting when it stands alone as can be seen from the previous weeks writing, see The Number 13.

However, when Tuesday and 13 are placed together they are considered unlucky in the Greek culture. So Greeks will watch out for Tuesday the 13th not Friday the 13th. It is the combination of the date “Tuesday” with the number “Thirteen” that is considered very unlucky to the Greek people.

Damned griks. Nothing is straightforward with them!

Happy 13th!

brrrrrrrrrr 14 January 2009

I know, I know – it’s been a very, very long hiatus this time. And after all this time away, I only have two – well, three, really – words for you:

It’s ()*()#$*@#()$*#()@ cold!!!!!!

And I mean, really $#)(*@)(!*@)( cold.  Something like minus 27,010 degrees C (or minus 40,897 degrees F – plus or minus 10,000 negative degrees or so). 

So )(*$)#(%)#$(%* cold, in fact, that I’ve had to resort to this sort of gear – in the apartment!

Even puir wee JJ, he of hardy Viking stock and all (or so he has led me to believe, although every time I ask him for written proof he tells me that the bloody English burned it all about 300 years ago!), is feeling a chill:

(And WordPress is apparently feeling the pain – as these photos appear to be frozen to the left side of the screen.)

“So what’s the big deal?” I imagine you’re all thinking by this point.  “She’s been too lazy to post for a month or so, and all she can whine about now is ‘It’s so cold… and it’s January!’  WAH.  Someone should remind her that she lives in CANADA for ()*)%#)($*)@#(‘s sake!!!  What is it with these Canajans, always moaning about the weather?!?”

Well, welcome to my increasingly irritating world.  Because, dear readers, last night what do you think the top stories were on the evening news?  Curious?  No?  Well, I’m going to tell you anyway:

1.   It’s cold.

2.  It’s going to get colder.

3.  I mean, it’s going to be REALLY cold tomorrow.

4.  Don’t forget about that windchill effect – which makes it feel as though it’s even colder.

5.  Don’t forget your gloves, because it’s going to be SO cold that your fingers could start freezing off in 15 minutes (I am NOT making this up, by the way).

And so on, and so forth.  I thought I had actually turned on the Weather Network by accident, until around 20 minutes in they mentioned something about that guy Obama south of the border … ah, so there really IS some news going on?  Oh, wait – that’s not actually going to be news until next Tuesday.

(I also had flashbacks to public school days where we were forced to read books like “Call of the North” and learn that if you spit in the air at 50 below zero Fahrenheit, it freezes.  Funnily enough, this is some of the only information from those halcyon days that seem to stick in my brain – I wish that I could remember arithmetic classes instead, really.)

Am I the only one who is driven crazy by the evening news?  Or am I just frostbitten between the ears?

Anyway, it’s all enough to drive someone to…

So, what have I been doing with myself anyway?  Well, one of these days when I manage to get the batteries for my camera charged, I will come back and show you.

In the meantime, I leave you with the following:

1.  Stay warm!; and

2.  Did you know that for only $3.29 per day (or less than the price of a mocha soy chai latte at The Evil Coffee Multiconglomerate Which Shall Remain Nameless), you, too, can sponsor a puir wee snowbound duckie?

Send your cash or certified funds to Brouhaha today – for January and February to start, please.  You’ll have to do the math.  I trust you.).  For more information – well, you know where to find me – somewhere in front of a space heater in Toronto.

Happy Wednesday!

that time of the… ahem, of December 15 December 2008

Q:  What do you get when you combine “that time of the month” with PayDay, and factor in a recent $$$-hemorrhaging move plus the holiday season fast approaching?

A:  A food spending orgy.  At least if you’re Brouhaha!

I blame this man, really.

I picked up his book last week while on a pre-PayDay mini-bender.   If you don’t have a general resource cookbook that you find useful, buy this one.  He has EVERYTHING in this book.  
“Everything” includes a recipe for no-knead bread (which I first learned about from Chef Michael Smith).  I started it last night, and by this morning when I went to work it looked like this:

However, it turns out that to make this bread in the best possible way, one requires covered pans (something like a Dutch oven).  Now, even though I have a Dutch over, I decided that today I needed some fancy yuppie-style ones, so headed over to Winners on the morning smoke break. 

And I scored!!!!

Le Creuset and all… for a third of the price.  Man, I’ve achieved true yuppiedom now (even though I’m not really all that “y” anymore.  Sigh.) 

Not just one… but two!!!

I thought photographing it on this table with the matching can of Pledge was a nice touch.  Plus, it might make you think that we’re actually doing some cleaning around here.  Heh heh. 

And, just in case you doubted the real credentials of this pot:

And – I bought some (almost) matching silicone oven gloves!

But even all this bread-baking orgy was not enough for me on this Day of the Month Days, as I decided when I had to run over to the grocery store for tampons and milk.  And only tampons and milk, mind you. 

Until I saw some other baking ingredients, of course, and then decided that I just had to try to make a yeasted coffee cake from Mr. Bittman’s magnus opus.    Here it is in progress:

I must warn that I’m sure this is doomed to fail.  Why?

(a) I can’t bake.  I’ve never had any luck working with yeast. 

(b) I think I broke my food processor mixing the dough for this.  Smoke coming out the back of it is not a guid sign, right?  

(c) I’m fooling around with the recipe, which probably isn’t the swiftest idea given that I haven’t the slightest idea about how to deal with yeast. 

Oh well. If I don’t post here tomorrow, you know the whole thing went over the balcony.  

In the meantime, I did have some baking success already this evening with dinner: chicken pot pie!

Looks lovely, no?  

Alas, I can’t tell a lie.  I did not make the pastry. However, I did an over-the-top thing – combining pie crust and puff pastry in the same recipe!

And it was GUID. 

For dessert?  Did I mention that I now live about 100 metres away from a Dairy Queen?  And that they have a 1/2 price cake sale for the month of December?

Well, I think that’s enough of a food orgy for the time being.  Time to go grab a beer. 

Happy 15th of December!

kb

PS.  Oh, let’s not mention my other food acquisitions today… 

get your House in order… 7 December 2008

WARNING/ATTENTION: there will be some political content in this post. I know, I know… it’s been a long time. However, the media here in Canada keep telling us there is a political crisis…and if you stick around you might find something of interest in the post…)

An open letter to all Canadian federal non-Conservative politicians: that is, the NDP, the Bloc Quebecois and most especially the Liberals:

Get it together, people.

First of all, you try to overthrow the government that was elected not even two months ago. And believe me, I’m not a big fan of that situation.

So, you come up with this coalition thing. The Liberals and the New Democrats got together, got the support of the BQ, and were making a guid effort to overthrow a government just recently re-elected. Hats off to you.

Until, that is, it came time for the Prime Minister to address the nation on this the other night. He showed up on time. He spoke. He didn’t say much, but it wasn’t contested.

Why not??? Because this guy, the Leader of the Opposition, didn’t make his appointment for the media address:

Wow, Stephane… the one place you had to show up on time, and you didn’t!!

But why was that? My thoughts… because these two guys, who are fighting for Mr. Dion’s job…

…oh, I’m not allowed probably to say what I think. Suffice it to say they made sure Mr. Dion didn’t show to address the nation.

So now our Prime Minister has had Parliament suspended until January 2009. This in a time of supposed economic crisis, mind you.

Meanwhile, the two guys above, (right) Mr. Michael “I lived outside Canada for 28 years and am a publically known intellectual” Ignatieff and Mr. Bob “I was the socialist Premier of the Province of Ontario who opened the door to the arch-conservatives, and then became a Liberal because NDP wasn’t where it was at” Rae have found some big long knives and are using them to vie for the next Prime Minesterial position, without an election.

Confused? So am I. I actually like the idea of a coalition overthrowing the Harper Conservatives, and it could work… if the Liberals could actually figure out who is supposed to be in charge.

So, Coalition people, just know: THE DUCKIES ARE WATCHING!!!!

And, by the way, this situation has taken its toll on the Matriarch of my wee duckie family. Remember Daisy?

She was the silver one to the left of the yellow vase. The silver variety of duck, I should let you know, is among the most rare and prized.

Well, in the stress of all of this, she has clearly turned yellow, as you can see when you look at her sitting next to the yellow vase in the photo above.  Here is a new photo of her…

She appears to have lost some weight as well.

She is faring OK health-wise, just in case you were worried… but only through some serious nurturing and caregiving from her silver-haired colleague and mentor:

So, all this to say, fair politicians: you guys are hurting real live Canadians with all of this nonsense.  Get your house in order.  I have, although I’m not willing to show you any photos yet. 

Yours very truly, 

Kristina

Barrister, Solicitor, Big Mouth, etc. and so on and so forth, B.A., LL.B , B.la B.la B.la

whither JJ? 3 December 2008

I went looking for JJ this afternoon, but he had disappeared.  I guess he was stressed out from the move, which lasted 10 plus hours.  And which, more importantly, cost… ahem… well, slightly less than one month’s rent at the last place).

Actually, JJ hadn’t really disappeared, but this is what he looked like when I found him:

Puir wee JJ.

And who could blame him for retreating?  This is what the second bedroom (a.k.a the stash room) looked like just after the move:

And, I should clarify that these are not all stash.  I wish.  Instead, quite a bit of our furniture was buried under the pile, including JJ’s favourite side table on which he likes to station his whiskey glass.

JJ also had to put up with my very bad mood last night.  You see, I had to deal with the following crises in addition to the rest of the moving grief:

(a) in an extreme moment of weakness, allowing myself to get conned by hearing the (Rogers) cable guy tell me that he couldn’t hook up the cable, then telephoning three different people, all of whom had a different response (and Daphne from Rogers, if you’re reading this, you were by far the most helpful);

(b) deciding not to smoke in my new home – and then wanting nothing more than several cigarettes in front of the television which was not #(@*&#($*!&@#(!* working.  So, instead, I got to traipse out to the balcony in sub-zero weather… and here was the view:

The highway!

And actually, that’s not being honest.  It’s actually quite a lovely view during the daytime, and probably more so if you’re not sitting there saying “Why, oh why, don’t I just smoke inside?  I can’t smoke inside anywhere anymore! The last place I could smoke inside was in my house, and now I can’t even do that… wah wah wah and bla bla bla”.

But back to the main story.  I was very worried that JJ had turned into a gargoyle, so I invoked the powers of Marina:

You can’t see it in this lame photo, but she is actually gazing upon the gargoyle.

While this was happening, I went up to the Sobeys grocery store – less than a five minute walk! how exciting – and when I came back, this is what I found:

Hey!  Is this what we crossed the river for?!?!?!

Anyway, I was glad to have my JJ back… and he has spent the day washing the 1,234 dishes, glasses, etc that we didn’t quite realise we had until we moved.

When I locate my stash and my current project, I’ll be back with more information.  And maybe even some daytime photos of my new place… and maybe even, in a week or two, my brand new log cabin!

I hope all is well with you and yours.

Regards,

kb

I found my camera cord…! 2 December 2008

… but please don’t think this means that you get any wonderful photos. In fact, what it means is that you get to see some bizarre photos from the past month or so.

This is JJ’s new computer which I bought him about a month ago

This photo is the computer surronder by the detritus of moving.  However, here is an action photo taken about a month ago:

Now – JJ still says he can’t use the computer.  But he looks OK there, no??? Any takers as to how to how to teach him to use the computer?

And here is a duckie photo.. just before the duckie in question was packed!

This is the cold callous mother of the duckie modelling JJ’s stetson from his work as a Commissionaire:

(In actual fact, since I located this hat, I haven’t really taken it off.  I like the way it fits me.  I asked JJ to model for a photo with it, but he refused.  I’ll have to dig one up and post it!)

I should note that I did locate the Hallowe’en photos as well, but they are all sideways – I also have a disc at work with some of me so I will have to do a belated Hallowe’en post.

And finally, a photo taken this evening just before I sat down to write this.  I’d like to think of this photo as the end of an era at the Valleyview… but I suspect that it won’t look too different to other photos I’ve taken inside my place.  Just realise that I have taken this photo just before the movers arrive tomorrow…

…and below is the stash room…

The stash is there… but well hidden.

And I know I said “Finally…” but here is one last photo of JJ in our old place:

I would have taunted you all with a photo of my log cabin, but it too is packed.  Plus, WordPress just screwed me when I tried to post a new photo.  So, hey.  Stay tuned…  

kb

moving hell 27 November 2008

I know, I know, I know… I’ve been very remiss about posting. My apologies.

My further apologies for what will be a very boring post indeed, as I have either packed or thrown out the little connector cord for my digital camera. SIGH.

Anyway, I have several explanations (NOT excuses) for my blogging delinquency:

(a) I’m stressing about becoming an ex-tenant as at 2 December. I know that this is weird, given that I spend my work life fighting landlords. But being a “tenant” has become an identity for me which is actually hard to give up for some reason. Hmm.

(b) Because of all the #%$*(@(#*$&(#@*$&@#* landlords out there trying to screw tenants, my work life has erupted. It’s good, but it’s busy busy busy.

(c) Did I mention that we’re moving? The decluttering effort alone has taken weeks. Now we’re into the packing bit. Mind you, despite JJs strong hints (“D’ye really NEED all that yarn, lassie”), my most prized collection is more or less intact and packed.

(d) The duckie family is really stressed about the upcoming move, and I don’t have the parental skills to console them.  In fact, I’m sure I’ve made it worse by separating them during a binge packing session last weekend.  I could show you some startling photos of forlorn and bereft baby duckies, but guess what – I lost my camera cord!  Coincidence…???

(e) I’ve been busy trying to finish my log cabin blankie because my mother expects us to set up the second bedroom in the new place as what she calls a “pethara suite” (“pethara” meaning “mother-in-law” in Greek).  I reckon that when she comes to visit us at Christmas and is faced with the same old cheapo blow-up bed and a cheapo cotton knitted bedspread, she’ll decide that it’s not a good idea to come live with us after all.

Anyway, the blankie is almost finished, and at present measures 4 1/2″ by 5 1/2″.  I look forward to posting photos when I manage to locate my $#*&($#*($&#($&@# camera cord.  And at that point, you can also look forward to Hallowe’en photos and so forth.  Yes, I’ve been delinquent.

If anyone is still checking into this blog, kindly send some good vibes for the condo closing (which takes place officially tomorrow.)  Today we had to go and hand over a ridiculous amount of $$$ to a lawyer, who had us sign about a million pieces of paper and then told us “oh, I’ve got the keys here [dangle dangle], but you can’t get them until tomorrow when the bank has sent over the rest of the money”.   $&#*($&@(*#$* lawyers!!!!!

Anyway, thanks – and I will be back with more pictures than you will care to look at once I’m settled in and locate my camera cord.

knitting for social justice, etc. 23 October 2008

The subject line is a bit high-falutin’, really.

All I really wanted to say is that I did a bit of public knitting for the first time in a long time.  I was at a Toronto legal clinic conference for a couple of days, and it was a cool bunch of people so I thought they wouldn’t be thrown off too much by the knitting.

Au contraire.  In fact, I met a whole group of conference knitters (from one clinic in particular… in fact, I was asked why I didn’t work at their clinic!)

And, I made a lot of progress on my log cabin blankie project:

What I managed to do over the two days: finish the green, add the dark brown on the right side, and start the blue.

I managed also to make everyone jealous at the conference, because the meeting rooms were (very) cold but I was knitting and covering myself with a blanket while knitting.  I assure you all that this wasn’t planned… but it did work out very well.

I also managed (inadvertently) to inspire some envy regarding my very cool Ecco boots (a gift from my mother, who works at Ecco Shoes in Kingston, Ontario).

I got to wear both boots at the conference today, which to be honest felt more like wearing slippers – that’s how comfortable they are:

Wish me luck with the log cabin: I’m not quite sure about the colour choices yet.  I do hope that they meld a bit better.  It has been suggested to me that the brown/orange combo was a tad too reminiscent of the A&W Root Beer Bear:

…which is quite funny as I can’t remember the last time I ate at A&W.  To give you a tip, it was when they still had drive-in restaurants (and now I’m dating myself).

However, I’m hopeful that this blankie will still work out.  And I managed a good chunk of it during this conference, for which I am grateful.

Happy Friday and a fabulous weekend to you all!