Blessed by the Potato

We had dinner last night at the Dragonfly Bistro (Richmond St., just south of Oxford in London). It’s a cute, tiny little place, with just about 8 tables (consequently, reservations are recommended). The menu was quite limited (a choice of one soup, 3 appetizers, and 5 entrees) that fit on a single sheet of paper (in large font at that), and rather pricey (over $50 for two, expect more if you’re inclined to drink). The food was good though, and it was a nice, relaxed, quiet atmosphere (it’s a bit of a change being able to practically whisper at dinner, since so many restaurants are fond of blasting music lately). Note that the place is brighter inside than it looks from the street, almost too bright given how intimate the atmosphere is otherwise. Just as we were finishing up, another couple came in — a loud couple — and we found out thanks to them that the staff is open to changing up the menu on request. Apparently the fish option is pan-fried, but they were open to the suggestion of possibly grilling it, or making up a salad (and oddly enough, salad is only an option on the lunch menu).

Earlier yesterday, we went off into the country to go apple picking. There’s a cute little farm on Dundas, about 4 km east of the city. We found out about it from a little guide book to u-pick-ems that we got at Home Hardware, and the directions were something like “head east on Dundas, look for signs”. We saw one sign, and it had no directions on it, just the name of the farm, and it was in the middle of a field that had already been harvested (not an apple orchard) so we weren’t sure if it was just advertising for the place we were looking for, or what. After driving for another few kilometers, we figured that was indeed the place and went back to turn down the street the sign was nearest (Richmond Street, though not that Richmond), and found it about a kilometer down that street.

It was a pretty bustling place, with a fry/hot dog stand, a shop full of souvenirs, fudge, and pies, and of course, pre-picked apples. The apple picking was busy with all sorts of families with small children. They had a really cute train made up that cost $3 to take (from what we understood, a mandatory cost of going out to pick apples) that would drive you out to the orchards, and pick you up again after the picking was done. It was actually the first time I’ve gone to pick apples, and I was amazed at how small the actual apple-producing trees were. I always imagined them as being, well, tree-sized. Like 10 m tall. My aunt and uncle have an apple tree (it produces tiny yucky green apples though), and while it’s not quite as big as most of the maples in this area, it is an impressive tree, quite large enough for a tire swing (I know this because it does actually have a tire swing). At the orchard though, the largest fruit-producing tree looked to be maybe 5 m high, with several being not much taller than I was (2.5 m, maybe). And the apples grew much denser than I ever thought possible — they seemed to be about half the mass of the tree!

Wayfare, throwing caution to the wind, picked an apple off the tree, and then ate it. Just like that, no cutting, no peeling, no checking for worms. I felt like we were taking our lives in our hands, it was thrilling. Today, I had a few more for breakfast.
“What are you doing?”
“Making apples.”
“No, the trees make the apples. What are you doing to them?”
“Err… peeling them?”
“Hmpf.”

I have to peel them and cut them up before I eat them, I don’t quite know why (maybe I was a browncoat in a past life?), and of course the apple slices go best with a bit of peanut butter smeared on them.

After apple picking, we went to the farmers market out there (I’m not quite sure if we were in Thornton or Thames Centre) just as they were closing up. If you want to eat cheap, then that’s the time to go. We stopped at one stand to grab some field tomatoes (which were huge and cheap, but didn’t look great with lots of spots on them). “I’ve got a special on right now,” the guy said, “get a cauliflower for a dollar. Or, two for a dollar. Or, three, for a dollar. Or our best value, four for a dollar.”

The bathroom here at the hospital has rather poor ventilation and tends to smell a little more strongly than your typical public washroom. Sometimes it smells strongly of cleaning products, whatever turns the toilet water blue, and disinfectant (especially at night, when it usually gets cleaned, and when I’m really the only one left around to use it; I, somewhat unfairly, have a near-total monopoly on the odd magic of turning that toilet water solution green). Other times, as one might expect, it smells foully of other people’s waste products.

Today, it smelled like fried chicken.

That kind of threw me for a loop when I first walked in there, because there really aren’t any cleaning products on the market that the caretaking staff could possibly have switched to that might smell like that (oranges, lemons, “springtime”, and bleach, yes, but I’ve yet to see “fried chicken scented Lysol”). And no matter how little one’s digestive system may be acting on food, there’s simply no way it could come back out (either end) still smelling so much like fried chicken. The mystery of the odd, out of place smell was enough to make me start to wonder if I might be having a stroke, though worrying about whether I’m having a stroke seems to be my default state these days, particularly when strange smells are involved. Eventually the logical explanation hit me: all around that washroom are labs where no one is allowed to eat. The people who work there usually have to eat out in the hallway, sitting on the floor (and even have to leave their food sitting out there unattended, like the wet snowboots of so many kindergarteners). So of course, if one is just a little bit crazy and wants something approximating a chair to sit on and eat lunch, there’s really only one seat in close proximity…

But if it were me, I’d try the cafeteria. They have tables there, too.

My connection to Rogers went dead in the middle of the night last night, and when it came back up I had a new IP. That might cause a few minor headaches for readers of the site (hopefully no one noticed — traffic has been really light lately so I don’t really know if anyone is reading this anymore). My new IP is in the 99.* range, which is a new range of IPs opened to Rogers in the last few months. Reports are that they’ve been a bit of a hassle — most of the rest of the internet doesn’t know that they belong to Rogers, so sites that say, for example: “welcome, visitor from Canada” don’t quite know what to make of you. Likewise, many routing tables aren’t optimized for that block of IPs yet, so reports have been that it was a slow IP range to have (by now, I guess those problems must have been fixed since I haven’t noticed any problems… yet). Also as a heads up, my IP tends to change fairly rapidly in bursts and then settle down for a few months, so there might be more spontaneous changes in the days to come.

It’s tough these days to get people to come to your Halloween party! Wayfare has, for the longest time, been the thrower of Halloween parties, but the last few years it’s been really tough to get people to come (yes, we live in London now, but it’s not really any harder to get to than Hamilton was, and at this age people are in the habit of staying in guest rooms or hotels for weddings, and out-of-town baby showers, so why not for Halloween?). Never mind that we have even more decorations, more candy, and a fog machine!

Ah, well, if you’re a reader of this blog, (one that doesn’t try to push discount pharmaceuticals in the comments, that is), then feel free to stop on by (in costume, of course!) on Saturday, October 27 (yes, Saturday — that other date was a brief and wild mistake that has been corrected).

I’ve been catching up on 24 (a show I initially dismissed as gimicky, and while I do find some faults with the execution of the concept, it’s actually quite watchable). I think it really is meant to be watched in rapid succession like this. There have been a few things that have bothered me, such as the computer people constantly “opening sockets” to do anything. It’s really strange technobabble, and it kind of annoys me that they keep repeating it (it is ok to make up some new technobabble).

What gets me the most though is that nobody seems to wear seat belts. Which is strange considering how many accidents they all get in… Likewise, Jack Bauer goes on all kinds of raids without strapping on a bulletproof vest, except for one or two times when he goes out of his way to put one on, and those are the times he actually gets hit.

Some unrealistic things are just going to be a given to help the show along, things like magical security cameras that can be enhanced to show an incredible amount of detail, and send their images over “a socket” to CTU. And the fact that this high-security government agency can’t go a single season without a mole or traitor sneaking in. They stock a good number of security guards (who have recently started wearing red shirts to indicate that they’re disposable), but apparently keep them in a closet except when called since they never actually stop anyone from getting in to or out of the building, or keep an eye on the people while they’re working. And it just wouldn’t do to have commuting across LA take more than 10 minutes…

A number of other plot inconsistencies bug me, though.

Spoiler alert!

For instance, in season 5 there is much lamenting over the terrorist threat to attack Suvarov’s motorcade. The whole time I was thinking: if you’re the kind of person willing to sacrifice a few secret service agents for nothing, then why not send the motorcade on, but send the Russian president by helicopter instead? Then many, many episodes are spent trying to recover a certain voice recording. Several times Jack has it in his possession only to lose it again. The big question I was practically screaming at the TV was why didn’t Jack just copy the stupid thing?! He had a cell phone and a tape recorder, he could have just called CTU, played it up to the receiver, and let them archive it that way. Or later when they capture Henderson and the recording isn’t on him, and Jack figures out that he’s using it as insurance (otherwise he would have destroyed it), why not just kill Henderson? After all, as he threatened, if anything happened to it, that would be made public. That would save all the effort of tracking it down, and just get it out there. Sure, it wouldn’t be ideal chain of custody procedures for evidence, but in a case like that it probably doesn’t matter as much. Plus it would help a ton for all the people who say “I think Bauer is telling the truth, but I haven’t heard the evidence myself…”