The Knife

End of June.  End of all the delightful blog entries about delights.  But here's one last one.

 Tonight I held up a butter knife that was on the drying rack.  It hadn't been washed very well.  I turned to Husbandman and said, "Look at this knife."

Husbandman said, "That's not clean.  What jackass around here thinks that's okay?"

Husbandman cracks me up sometimes.  We're having a good time up here in Toronto.

The Murals I Painted

Walked to Kensington Market yesterday, with John and Patricia.  There are many cool murals painted everywhere. I was inspired, so in the afternoon I picked up a few cans of spraypaint and created some street art in the back of our apartment on the wooden fence near where we park our car.  I painted a huge owl, flying over a  table with a bowl of green grapes and a cup of tea.  Our landlady came out to see what I was doing and she was delighted.  She wants me to make another mural on the back wall of the book store before we leave.  Not sure what I'm going to make yet, but I've started on some sketches.

You're probably wondering if I actually painted any murals yesterday. In actual fact, I didn't.  Come to find out, I wasn't feeling so well yesterday, so I decided to stay home, lay on the couch, and watch a movie. Husbandman, John and Patricia drove out to some bluffs near Lake Ontario.

Even though I missed out on the mural painting and the lake trip, my afternoon felt like summer vacation where you don't feel sad about missed opportunities.  Tomorrow's another whole day for noodling about.

The movie was Ben Is Back, about a drug addict and his mom, Julia Roberts. Pretty good. You should see it if you want to.

The Close Call

There's a museum here called The Spadina Museum that we did not pay ten dollars to enter yesterday.  Instead, we walked in their gardens for free. I'd call them pleasant. I might want to go back to that museum though to take the tour.  The museum is all about the house of a rich family who lived in Toronto in the 20s and some have compared their lives to the world of Downton Abbey.  Sounds good.  Count me in.

Our dinner plans with J and P got kind of messed up.  I had read about a great Japanese place nearby, but when we walked in, we were hit by 2 trillion decibels of loudness. People were screaming at the top of their lungs.  No way were we going to eat there.  Of course I had a backup plan, which was Harvest Kitchen, a few blocks away.  Sadly, that place was super busy and we didn't get to sit on the rooftop patio.  We sat out front though, at 2 teeny tables and waited for service.  Finally we got some beverages.  We wished we had a deck of cards to play bridge during our wait.  Husbandman took off toward a corner store and VOILA! returned with cards.  We started playing bridge and got lost in the game. The waiter, a young gent from Russia, forgot all about us and when we finally stopped with our trick making to ask him if we could order, he said, "You want food?  The kitchen closes in 15 minutes!"  That really cheesed me off.  Obviously we came to a restaurant at dinner time to eat food.  Come to find out, there were a bunch of things that they couldn't make in 15 minutes, so we all had to change our orders.  It all ended well because the food was good and we got over our annoyance at the lad and mostly we were feeling collegial and cheerful.  We'll probably go back to Harvest Kitchen because I wanted to try the mushroom pot pie, but I could only have a veggie burger.

The Bridge

I played bridge today at the Toronto Bridge Club.

I was nervous, but it wasn't as hard as I thought it was going to be. All the north-south partnership people were pleasant,  encouraging me to "Just have fun," and welcoming me to the world of bridge with typically terrific  Torontonian temperament.

My only snag came when I joined Bunny's table.  When my partner Patricia bid 2 clubs, I went on to bid a pass.  Bunny said, "Do you know what that means? You can't pass."

I said, "I do know what it means, but I didn't know that I couldn't pass."  I looked at my cards and tried to figure out what to do.

Bunny intervened.  "2 diamonds waiting.  2 diamonds waiting.  It's the only thing you can do."
I had no idea what "2 diamonds waiting" meant, but I picked up the 2 diamond card from my bidding box and put it on the table.  Luckily, my partner took it from there and I think "we" might have won that round.  I'm not hip to what you do to win or lose a round yet, but the bottom line is, we did okay. I will continue to play bridge in the future.  Everyone can rest easy.

The Leaders

I've pasted this photo all over creation because I was so thrilled to see Justin Trudeau.  Not sure why. I guess he's just my prime minister crush.  I bet he's not detaining children and putting them into cages and lying about everything.  He may be doing other things that aren't great, but he's probably not doing that.

Yesterday we made a donation to RAICES.  I also sent some emails to my congresspeople.  Senator Braun sent back a form letter almost immediately about how we can help the immigrants by building a wall on the border.  Wow.  Thanks, Senator Braun.  For being a big fat idiot. I hope you lose your next election one trillion to zero.

On the delightful side, I read a great article about Elizabeth Warren in the NYT today.  She was a champion debater in high school.  Come to find out, I also was part of Speech and Debate in high school.  Unlike Elizabeth Warren, I wasn't good at debate. I was more into the speech part of Speech and Debate. I would be thrilled to see Elizabeth walking around my neighborhood. I'm not crushing on her yet, but I think I'm starting to fall.

The Falls

Niagara Falls gets a solid 5 on the Fist to 5 scale.  We didn't go in the Maid of the Mist boat, but we did walk along the Canadian side, taking pictures, drinking coffee and reveling in the glory and grandeur of the falls.  We wondered why there's a statue of Nikola Tesla nearby.  We should have known all along that Tesla's ideas about alternating current were used to power up electricity on both sides of the falls.

After our visit to the falls we went to a pleasant little town, Niagara on the Lake. We had lunch outside. Cheese, wine.  The works.

The Field Trip to the Aquarium

We decided to meet at the aquarium on Friday afternoon, after Husbandman's conference finished up. If I were going to be in this city for a week or less, I'd probably skip the aquarium, but I'm going to be here nearly all summer, so why not zip down there on the metro and check out the sea life for a few hours?  Hands down a delightful afternoon.  We saw this sawfish in The Dangerous Lagoon.  Check out its rostrum.

The Pens

As you know, I'm reading Ross Gay's The Book of Delights.  One of his essays tells about how much he loves nicknames, so now I refer to him as The RossMan when I'm writing in my journal.

He also likes Le Pen pens.  I'm a copycatter, so I went to my local art supply store which is, delightfully, a mere 2 blocks from my apartment and picked out two Le Pens, blue and green, for purchase.

As I selected my pens, I lingered to listen to two women choosing colored pencils. They would write marks with two pencils, talk at length about each mark, and then decide which pencil they wanted.  Then they would pick up two more and repeat the whole process. It's so great to have time to fool around with folderol.

I'm not a massive fan of the Le Pen yet, but I think I'll buy a few more before I make a final decision.  They come in a lot of great colors and they might grow on me and I also like copying The Rossman.

I bought some stickers of woodland animals as well. I ripped two of the stickers when I was opening the package this morning, the rabbit and the oak leaf.  So that was a drag, but what are you going to do?  Next time I buy stickers, which will probably be soon, I'll be more mindful when opening the package.  That's about all I can do to remedy the situation. Live and learn.

From Collaboration to Compulsion

For the past few days, I've been working on revising a paper about a project in Thirdland that happened a few years ago.  Mitzker, Zawan and I are working on this paper and we really want to finish it this summer.

The first draft is written and the paper needs some serious revisions. I think it's going alright. It's nice to have this quiet place to work. Today Mitzker and I had an international conference to discuss some changes we'd each made to the first few pages.

Even though we're having problems with dropbox and zoom, we are working through these and the work chat got me pumped up to continue with revising.  It's pleasant to collaborate with pals.

On a somewhat related note, I saw rats zipping along the sidewalks up here yesterday.  One in the morning. One in the evening.  I mean come on. Two rats in one day? Our friend D, who was walking with us last night, also saw the second rat. D commented, "One of the scariest things I've ever seen is a rat fighting with a cat."

Now, sad to say, I can't seem to stop thinking about rat cat combat.  I've even watched a video or two about cats and rats fighting.  There's something compelling about the whole thing.

The Roti?

I had a big plan today to go to the vegetarian restaurant on the corner to order some take out for lunch. It looks like a great place, and I've been wanting to try it.  Vegetarian restaurants are few and far between, let's face it. In the end I switched gears after mulling over the plan and all it would involve. The restaurant is small and usually fairly empty.  Was I really in the mood to talk with people I don't know?  What if there were awkward moments as I waited for my order?  What did I really know about the place in the long run?

I probably made too big a deal out of the whole enterprise, what with blogging about it and all.  If I truly wanted roti with textured vegetable protein or calaloo with dumplings, I could have pushed through my mulling and gathered up my moxie.

In the end, I decided to stay home and have a toasted cheese sandwich.  It was delightful and the veggie place will still be there tomorrow.  Also, Husbandman maybe will pick up a roti for me on his way home some time.  

So, in short.  you don't have to make a big deal out of stuff.  Just do what you want to do and move on.

The Starbursts

Today I attended a talk at the Husbandman Conference, given by our good friend Koby.  He arrived from Israel a few days ago.  Koby invited me to his talk, so I decided to go. Why the heck not?  I'm always up for learning something new.

Koby's presentation was the best math conference talk I've ever attended. It was called "Caustics, Impressionism and Starbursts."  Koby wove together ophthalmology, art, astronomy and many  math equations that I honestly found quite challenging.

Here's my take away.  When people look at the stars, we don't all see them the same way.  Why is this true?  Aberrations of the retina?  Probably.  I'm not super sure.  But I do know that Franciscus Donders got the ball rolling with this mystery in the mid 1800s.

Thank you, Koby, for a most delightful start to my day.  I HEART MATH.