Audrey's Caʒ Birthday

Caʒ - pron. "caszh", adj.: suggested spelling for the conversational abbreaviation of casual

I recently read a list of conditions a woman declared for any prospective long-term partners, all relating to childbearing and rearing. It included full time off work from knowledge of conception to kindergarten or age 4, a 'push presen't, a babymoon and a few others. And while I was glad she had such a clear set of priorities and laudable dedication to her future offpsring, I was also grateful Audrey never set any such preconditions on our relationship. Which was good, because I don't think I would have met that standard!

We both knew early on that we wanted kids, and when they came into our lives, she stayed home to raise them, but also managed a day home for many years to offset that cost. It was a great fit for her in many ways, and also helped prepare her for her current work as an educational assistant.

Audrey is a very unassuming and easygoing lady in virtually every aspect of her life (I mean, if you want proof, look who she is married to!), and has always valued authenticity over flash, and fun over image.

For her birthday tonight, she could have picked a fancy restaurant or upscale lounge, but she selected a neighbourhood pub in Lago Lindo called The Thirsty Rhino that some coworkers had recommended. And instead of everyone picking a dish, she suggested the three of us share appetizers instead, but wouldn't dream of calling it tapas.

We had a plate of wachos (waffle chip nachos with their own delicious sauce), two baskets of wings (sweet and spicy Thirsty Rhino sauce and dry garlic parm) and pesto fries with parmesan and balsamic vinegar. Audrey spun a wheel of drinks called 'dangles', a variation on shooters served in a rocks glass with ice that you drink through a straw as quickly as possible. She ended up getting us a round of Black Beards, a combination of dark rum, triple sec, orange juice and pineapple juice - very tasty!

Their beer list is not tremendously diverse but they did have a Hop Valley IPA and Guinness on tap. Our server was delightful, their playlist was enjoyably eclectic, and their desserts were pretty creative (a tiramisu affogato and Boston Cream donut-style cake) so I am confident we will be back.

And Audrey's love of authenticity extended into my gift choice for her - a stained glass decoration to fill the remaining empty space in our living room window.

I got it from Winter Arts Glass Studio, a local pair of artisans who work from their home (like, not ten minutes away) and use an automated web form to arrange shopping visits instead of maintaining a brick and mortar store. I loved visiting with Andre and Leslie, who almost had me talked into coming up with an idea for a commissioned original until I saw the colours on that honeycomb piece.

It is a wonderful thing to be married to a wonderful person who will share a romantic fondue with you on your anniversary, but prefers wings and appies and keeping it caʒ for her birthday - thank you and happy birthday Mrs. Fitz!

Monopolized

Why do I own four different versions of a board game I don't even enjoy that much?

I am referring, unsurprisingly, to Monopoly, a great old board game which, thanks to hyper-competitiveness, player-elimination mechanics and a flurry of house rules so well-eastablished that many players are legitimately shocked when you tell them that no, tax money does not go into the center of the board to be paid out to whomever lands on Free Parking.

The rules as written for the standard game mean the only way to win is to bankrupt every single one of your competitors, a process that is both insidious and tedious, and in addition to prolonging the game past any reasonable length of play, will not endear the winner to any of the 'friends' they were playing with.

And yet, the legacy and familiarity of the game has led me to acquire (some as gifts, I believe) three variant editions of Monopoly - Nightmare Before Christmas, Star Wars, and The Godfather - as well as the original. 

But some unrelated trivia question (was it the Connections game from NYT? something else? damned  faulty memory...) which named some of the familiar properties from the game had recently stumped Glory. When I explained the linkage, she mentioned that she had never once played "Classic" Monopoly, so we busted out the Deluxe Edition from my childhood tonight and had a go. Ah, nostalgia!

The Deluxe Edition is so named because the game box contains not only the original ten pewter tokens, but also a clever but oversized sorting tray that gives the banker a well-organized drawer for all denominations of bills as well as a display rack for all the properties, Newer versions seem to replace this with some sort of rotary filofax mechanism, but both mean a lot less shuffling through the deck looking for Ventnor Avenue or B&O Railroad.

And of course, the properties are all (or once were, at least) actual streets in Atlantic City, the home of the developer of the original Landlord Game that eventually became Monopoly in 1935.

Anyhow, it is still possible to have fun playing Monopoly, if you follow these three simple guidelines:

1) Play the official short version of the game - everyone starts with 3 random properties, you can build a hotel with three houses instead of four, and you play to a time limit.

2) No house rules! I mean if you have some you like, great, but remember, the Free Parking payoff turns the short game into a lottery (hell, you might as well play Candyland...) and needlessly prolongs the regular version. This also prevents "oh, we've always played it like..." discussions.

3) Invite good peeople (mandatory) and serve them liquor (optional, but highly recommended).

We had a great time and many laughs.

Tiki Time at 22

Glory is currently in her third-year clinical placements for nursing school, and it is at least as demanding as the academic side. Last week she got home a bit before 4 pm, started looking up drugs and medications for patient research, took a short break for dinner, then got back to it and stuck to it until bedtime.

At supper, she confessed she had been so busy she had forgotten it was her birthday the next day. I reassured her that everyone gets busy, and most importantly, her mother and I had not forgotten. The next day, having been told by her instructor that she was doing too much, she returned in better spirits, and the two of us set about determining where to go for her birthday outing. 

I asked her what her main focus was for her birthday: the food, the drinks or the vibe. After a thoughtful pause, she chose vibe. I said, "okay, so what sort of vibe - casual, classy, funky, fun, music, country?" She landed on fun, and we both agreed that is a pretty broad category, but seeing Tiki Tiki on Whyte appear on a few "fun YEG" lists, she declared it was "perfect."

I had fond memories of visiting the original with my parents back in the late seventies, in a much larger space that had a separate lounge and a dance floor, where Polynesian performers amazed us with grass skirts, poi balls and even fire.

A resurgence of interest in Tiki culture and drinks prompted the opening of not one but two Edmonton tiki joints last year, Honi Honi Tiki Lounge and Tiki Tiki, and nostalgia led us to the latter.

It is a small place with very friendly staff, great, kitschy decor, wonderful food and most critically, a robust cocktail menu supported by an A-level glassware game.

I went for a classic Mai Tai which ended up being the best one I had ever had, the perfect synthesis of sweet and tart, while all the ladies coincidentally selected the Dole Whip Pina Colada which was also delightful. 

We shared meatballs, sticky ribs and crispy sushi rice for appetizers, then everyone but me selected the Poke Bowl, while I opted for mac n cheese with pulled pork and udon noodles subbing in for elbow macaroni. Mine was great, tremendous comfort food, but the variety of textures and tastes in the poke bowl made it a clearly superior choice, and I would lean towards getting that next time.

All the while, there were ample opportunities to explore the cocktail menu, but a highlight for me was learning they do shareable cocktails 'scorpion bowl' style, so we ordered a Mainlander for all of us. Our server brought a decent sized bowl with a flaming volcano in the center of it to the delight of everyone present. (Video below.) Thank goodness Glory's BFF Brooklyn was able to join us and help out!

Glory had a chance to try a Mermaid juice served in a hefty, glowing fish, while I got to put the lime in the coconut and drink it all up, like in the song.

                                                

They brought Glory a complimentary and delicious pineapple upside down cake for her birthday and enough forks for sharing, and to cap things off, I ordered some cinnamon bun wings. I expected wing-shaped pastries with cinnamon and cream cheese icing, but was surprised when they arrived and turned out to be actual chicken wings, albeit dusted with cinnamon and sugar and glazed with icing. There was a lot of uncertainty around this, and despite this paradigm shift being a challenge to wrap a rum-addled brain around, we all agreed they were novel and tasty.

We made the mistake of parking on the street, which limited our visit to two hours (pro tip: if you go, the parking for the tire place next door is open after they close at 5 pm), but that was probably for the best.

All in all, a wonderful night out, and a great way to observe Glory's 22nd birthday!

Feasts & Family - Spring Break in TO

Despite my entrenched resistance to growing up in general, Audrey and I appear to have reached that stage of adulting where holiday family dinners can't help but be exclusionary in some way; by flying to Toronto for Spring Break so we could spend Easter weekend with Fenya and Bobby, it meant abandoning Glory! But with the Noah Kahan concert on Friday night and a visit to her bestie's family for Easter supper, we knew she would not be completely abandoned. And what a wonderful week in TO it was!

Air travel is still a conundrum to me in some ways; a mere four-hour flight that between airport travel, security screening and getting a ride from YYZ to F&B's Cabbagetown apartment, somehow felt like we were travelling the entire Tuesday, or at least from 8 am to 8 pm... Some of this discomfort is mitigated by the ability to have waffles and a bevvy at the Belgian Beer Cafe at 9 am, however.

Wednesday saw poor Bobby both under the weather with a (non-Covid) cold and under the gun for his PhD committee presentation the following day, which I understand to be not only an intense, nearly hour-long Powerpoint show but is followed by what is essentially a mini-dissertation defense. We left him to his own devices and best wishes and just got a little shopping in, including the turkey that we agreed to cook up for Easter supper. 

But even a simple shopping trip is kind of cool when you realize their neighbourhood Loblaws was formerly the legendary Maple Leaf Gardens and has their eponymous sigil recreated in an array of arena chairs on one wall...

That evening the three of us heading back to Etobicoke to visit our friends from Wesley-Mimico United Church, our congreagation from when we lived there in the late '90s. John and Nancy had graciously agreed to host a potluck there, and it was nothing short of delightful to reconnect with these dear friends (and some new ones, including their new minsiter and his wife!). 

Despite our only having lived in Toronto for four years, those relationships have somehow managed to stay intact, and they were hugely important in helping F&B get settled when they were apartment hunting there last year.

Thursday began with a trip to Kensington Market, a truly funky assortment of shops and restaurants situated in former homes in this old Toronto neighbourhood that most people my age are likely to associate with Al Waxman. The primary purpose was to find a dress for Fenya at one of the many thrift and vintage shops in the area (as she has a singing performance coming up), but when Bobby showed up following his academic ordeal, his cerebellum truly wrung out and in need of a rest, he and I made tracks to the nearest restaurant.

Blessedly, this turned out to be my first encounter with Jamaican/Italian fusion at the amazingly named Rasta Pasta. My Fettucine Irie (with a generous portion of spicy jerk chicken stirred in) was fantastic, but I think his namesake dish of Rasta Pasta was even better - the fluffiest gnocchi I have ever tasted paired with a mixutre of ackee fruit and salt cod. The ladies ended up getting the same thing when they joined us a little later, and agreed that the dish was worth seeking out, even if the restaurant's three-door layout was a little confusing.

I could have spent an entire day at Kensington Market - as it was there was enough time to see some amazing vintage clothing, visit two cheese shops, see the Cocktail Emporium and marvel at their selection of bitters, and even grab a margarita at Pancho Y Emiliano (with walls full of Zapata quotes!) before heading home so F&B could make it to choir practice that evening.

On Friday, we attended Good Friday service at St. Luke's United Church, which included hearing Fenya sing a sombre but challenging solo from Handel's Messiah. It is a small congregation but still vibrant, meeting in a crowded chapel space because their sanctuary is in need of repairs.

I was delighted to learn that F&B's apartment is a 15-minute walk to the fantastic Stormcrow Manor, a self-described "sports bar for nerds" that lets you build burgers using an RPG character sheet, roll for random shots with a 20-sided dice, and has some of the best-presented cocktails I have ever encountered. One of the better Friday-nights out, in my books at least.

Xenomorph Brain Fluid (15)

Yes, OBVIOUSLY I kept the Lich King Tiki Mug...

I'm gonna level with you -my chicken wings were only so-so, but Audrey's chickpea fries more than made up for that, and I fully intend to go back and try to hit that natural 20 on the shots table!

By Saturday, Bobby's cold had begun transferring itself to Fenya, but she was still up to walking just over a block from their place to the Allan Gardens Conservatory. This collection of plants is not dissimilar to the Muttart in Edmonton, but is contained within a set of greenhouses dating back to before Confederation, and their tropical wing has a tremendous collection of turtles I found entirely captivating. The plants are amazing too!

We had told our young hosts that we intended to take them out for supper Saturday night as thanks for hosting us and being our guides for the week, but the gobsmacked and delighted look on Bobby's face when I told him we were going to Medieval Times made it clear we had chosen correctly.

And in case you are wondering, MT lives in a weird sweet spot betwen children's entertainment, historical recreation and professional wrestling, and you will have exactly as much fun as you want to have, so long as you can get past the innate silliness of sitting in an arena eating a half-chicken with your hands while wearing a paper crown on your head and cheering on your designated champion (ours was the Blue Knight).

This was the fifth visit for Audrey and I, and once again, our knight failed to triumph. But we all marvelled at the athleticism and horsemanship of the performers, and I had forgotten how engaging the falconry demonstration is in that small a space. And if we ever felt jaded or unsure, we had only to turn at look at Bobby: "Oof! So our guy is off his horse, so is he just out now?"

"Oh no, now he will continue to fight on foot."

"WHAT."

We attended the 4:30 show (which included birthday announcements for celebrants aged 4 to 50, which I found delightful), but they hustle you out of there pretty quickly afterwards, leaving a lot of souvenir and bar money on the table in my opinion. But this left enough time for our traditional viewing of Jesus Christ Superstar, which Fenya was keen to do before Easter Sunday, as the movie ends on Good Friday.

Tragically, the cold was well entrenched by Sunday, so she had to miss church that morning, prompting an emergency change in choir anthems, but the service was still lovely. Even more importantly though, we got to meet a number of their fellow congregants, all of whom expressed how much they adore our daughter and son-in-law, which is just something I will never tire of hearing, despiute how natural such reactions seem to me.

And afterwards, their friend Maelyn took us on a tour of the church, which is due for a major remodelling soon as they transition a bunch of their space into affordable housing, something their neighbourhood deperately needs.

Audrey's impetuosity led her very quickly up a steep and narrow spiral staircase with a rope handrail, and my curiosity and FOMO led me just as quickly to follow. I was too apprehensive to enjoy myself fully but really appreicated the chance to go where so few have been, and which soon may be inaccessible or demolished.

Returning to the apartment, we started assembling their apartment's first turkey dinner - with Fenya excused duty, I looked after the stuffing and turkey, Audrey the broccoli and onions for veg, and Bobby took care of the mashed potatoes. The Look bag I had brought got the 10.5 lb bird cooked in a little over two hours and made cleaning up the roaster a snap, much to Bobby's amazement.

While the turkey cooked, we watched music videos and chatted and caught up, and as much fun as all the Toronto activities and attractions were, this was my favourite part of the week - just enjoying each other's company (and sampling many Ontario beers, and watching the Ayreon Universe conert in its entirety and facilitating Fenya's first glass of icewine).

And this of course includes Skye, who, while still a terror when left unsupervised and has disassembled a closet and its contents, including at least one door removal, obviously has a tremendous amount of affection for her new family, but still remembers us fondly too.

I've mentioned before that we should all pay attention and be grateful for the people in our lives that we are comfortable doing nothing with, the folks with whom time can pass unencumbered and with swiftness despite the lack of an any sort of agenda. Such a delight to have such people in my family by both birth and marriage!

The Brisket Debacle

I cooked my first brisket on Friday - well, I started it Friday, I guess it was technically Saturday when I finished.

Needing dinner for 8-10 people on Saturday night, it seemed like an opportune time to cook my first brisket on the pellet grill. The recipe I used call for seasoning the big cut of beef overnight in the fridge, smoking it for 4-5 hours and then wrapping it in aluminum foil and cooking for another 4-5. 

Now it was pretty chilly at 7:30 Friday morning when I threw the brisket on the grill, and being from Costco it was a healthy size (17 lbs), so I figured we would be looking at the long side of that timeline for sure. 

But when it didn't reach the foil-wrapping temperature of 160 degrees until 4:30, a whopping nine hours in, I knew I was stepping into the twilight zone.

After swadding the brisket in heavy duty foil, I had to dash back to Costco to buy more wood pellets, for fear of running out if it took another nine hours to finish cooking - but it turns out that was not going to be the biggest issue of the night. 

I watched the temperature slowly creep up toward the goal of 203° as Audrey and I watched an episode of Shogun, after which she went to bed. Sometime later I looked up from my loong-running game of REd Dead Redmption 2 to peer at my wireless thermometer and noticed two disturbing things: 1) the brisket was only at 186°, but even more disturbingly, 2) it had been 188° when I had checked previously...

I dashed outside and sure enough, an error code flashed on the grill's panel. Due to either underheating or overheating, it had shut off, and the lid was cool to the touch. I rushed inside for a cookie sheet and threw my foil-wrapped, beefy treasure into the oven, then covered the grill to protect it from the snow shower that was starting.

At 10:30 I turned the oven up to  315 from 275 and at 11:30, the thermometer finally beeped to let me know the target temperature had at last been reached.

But now it had to rest for an hour before slicing and storing it...

So at half past midnight, I started slicing the brisket into manageable chunks and stashing it in a couple of our largest Tupperware containers. Most of the flavour in a brisket comes from the thick line of fat in the middle of it, and the grease from that meant that some serious kitchen cleaning was needed before I eventually crawled into bed at close to two a.m.

The grease got me to thinking though; the Traeger is highly resistant to glare-ups since it uses indirect heat and has a very efficient grease management system...but with so large a cut, is it possible a small grease fire had shut the grill down on me.

Thankfully, depsite being largely a salvage job, the brisket itself was very tasty and still fairly tender (I mean, why not, it took 16 hours to cook!) and everyone enjoyed the sandwiches we had for supper Saturday night.

But today I went to clean out the grill, and sure enough, in addition to a gooey Grease Management System and lipid stalagmites that had blossomed on my foil-wrapped drip tray, there was a deposit of fat in the very bottom of the grill next to where the auger delivers fuel to the firebox.

That is more than enough fat to fuel a fire of sufficient size to trigger a shutdown (turning off the fan to deprive the fire of oxygen), but not big enough to cause any damage as far as I can tell.

It took a screwdriver, a shop vac, a bunch of concentrated Dawn, an eighth of a roll of shop towels and about an hour to get everything cleaned up and reset, but with the mystery resolved, the Traeger is ready to be put back into action.

And the amazing thing is, I can't wait for my next opportunity to test myself against the brisket again!

Numanoids, et al

 It has been my best March ever in terms of live music. Today we saw the U of A Concert Band show "The Old Sod" (featuring Rhondda, the daughter of our dear friends Shari and Dave, on flute) at the Winspear, wherein I learned that Dutch composer John deMeij wrote a Lord of the Rings-themed symphony.

Last week Audrey and I saw Alan Doyle (formerly of Great Big Sea) who is an exuberant and charismatic performer, and also deeply enjoyed the banter and dark yet often funny ballads from his opener, Adam Baldwin.

The week before that, the Rare Hipster was nice enough to take me along to Midway Music Hall to see '90s industrial music legends Ministry along with Front Line Assembly and Gary Numan, and I was a little surprised that the act I enjoyed the most was Gary Numan.

I mean, of course as a fan of new wave and electronic music I love "Cars", his signature tune, as well as a couple others from his early days and time in Tubeway Army like "Are Friends Electric" and "Down In the Park." I had come across his 2017 album "Savage (Songs for a Broken World)" and liked a couple of tracks from it, but since the show Mar 6, I have been streaming a fair bit of his material.

I was unsure how what I thought of as Numan's electro-pop sound would fit in with the hard-edge music of FLA and Ministry, but the man is nothing if not adaptable. He came out rocking hard, with the synth tones still present but masked a bit by a mix that really gave center stage to his two guitarists. 

It was kind of a short set for a man with 21 solo albums to his name (that is a new album almost every two years on average!), favouring tracks from his last few releases (Savage in particular) but still making room to fit a guitar-forward "Cars" into the middle for an appreciative crowd.

When the album featuring that track, "The Pleasure Principle" came out in 1979, most critics piled on pretty relentlessly, mocking the synth tones he pushed through guitar effects pedals, calling his music pretentious and inhuman. He was even accused of taking jobs away from "proper" musicians.

Obviously he hung in there, and today he is not only recognized as a pioneer in electronic music, but maintaining a cult following for his recent releases, which feature not only catchy hooks and powerful, dramatic rhythms but also soulful and insightful lyrics.

My Name is Ruin (probably my current fave)

My name is ruin, my name is vengeance

My name is no-one, and no-one is calling

My name is ruin, my name is heartbreak

My name is lonely, my sorrows a darkness

My name is ruin, my name is evil

My name's a war song, I'll sing you a new war

My name is ruin, my name is broken

My name is shameless, I'll tear your world open

When the World Comes Apart

And when the sun fell down

And when the moon failed to rise

And when the world came apart

Where were you? Were you with me?

When my light burns out

And when my fire is cold

And when my breath is the wind

Where will you be / I will find you

Dear God?

The End of Things (Live)

Everything I work for

Everything I long for is always just too far

Everything I hope for never comes to me

Everything I bleed for burns a scar on me

Everything I fight for leaves a bitter taste

Everything I cry for laughs into my face

Everything I scream for barely knows my name

Everything I'd die for will die just the same

In here

With me

Dude has led an interesting life (flying aerobatics, racing formula cars)  and I am glad he is still putting out music, and that I had the opportunity to see him perform live. All 91 minutes of his 2018 concert film Live at Brixton Academy can be streamed on YouTube and I have watched it twice now, but I will leap at a chance to hear him in person again.

Oscars 2024 - Never Kenough

In retrospect, cramming the Oscars, a Risk game that ran late and a Beer Fest into the same weekend that the clocks sprang forward was probably ill-advised.

The telecast even started an hour earlier, making it challenging to get the 8+ pounds of roasted pork to the potluck table before Jimmy Kimmel started his opening monologue (5 minutes late, as it turns out!). I think Kimmelo is a great host, a bit sharper in tone than Billy Crystal, but smart, funny, appreciative and willing to poke. His acknowledgment that the people who snubbed Greta Gerwig's director nomination for Barbie were in the room that evening was a great example, while his description of Robert Downey Jr's 'highest career moment' felt offside to many. 

In my mind, acknowledging RDJ's troubled past, chequered with substance abuse, arrests and rehab stints, was a great reminder of how far this actor has come - this was his third nomination, after all, and his win later on was a great validation for everyone at the time who said, "this guy is amazing and will go places...if he can get his act together." After all, Downey made sure to thank his wife Susan, and described himself at the start of their relationship as a snarling rescue animal that she loved into life.

It was a night for great speeches actually, with acknowledgements of the ongoing tragedies in Gaza and Ukraine and the importance of musical education, but also personal moments like RDJ's and Da'Vine Joy Randolph's. There are still some laundry lists of thanks, but many people took the time to say something genuinely appreciative or meaningful.

Snubs notwithstanding, I was generally happy with the awards themselves.

Oppenheimer winning Best Picture felt appropriate and Christopher Nolan finally garnering the Best Director award was a real treat which I hope gives him even more latitude in his future projects than he has had in the past. Poor Things, a movie I described as an R-rated Edward Scissorhands and which I enjoyed far more than I expected, took not only the costumes and production design gongs but a surprising Best Actress Oscar for Emma Stone.

And Barbie, which was hampered right out of the gate with snubs for Director, Best Actress, and Best Picture, and which really deserved more recognition for being such a bold and frankly educational film, at least won Best Original Song for Billie Eilish’s “What Was I Made For?” But Ryan Gosling’s amazing and electrifying performance of “I’m Just Ken” set a new high-water mark for performances of a musical nominee, starting the song from his seat in a hot pink tuxedo and cowboy before leading the cameraman onstage and joining five dozen dancers, co-writer and guitarist Mark Ronson, four of his fellow Kens from the film, Slash and Wolfgang Van Halen. After returning to the audience and handing the mic to his cast and crewmates to sing a verse or two, Gosling got the entire auditorium on its feet to belt out the chorus, with indoor fireworks capping off the entire thing.

In household entertainments, The Rare Hipster both ‘lost’ March of the Dead with 7 or 8 drinks taken (5 for me, and his last one was a bit dubious due to a huge slate of names appearing at the end) but won with 15 correct guesses for awards! My nephew Mark won the raffle for a free night at the movies.

And with the earlier start, most people were on their way back home before 9 pm! But the rest of us stayed on to chat and go to bed late, which is why this blog post came in late – apologies!