Belated birthdays

belated birthday greetings to kadenza and ferret_fc

Beer and BBQ

The craft beer and BBQ weekend at the St. Lawrence market kicked off this afternoon so the lemur and I stopped off to sample on our long walk home from Yorkville. We avoided the BBQ which has been extremely disappointing the last couple of years. I am convinced that good BBQ can only be found in the US in the sort of neighbourhood where you worry about your car being stolen while you are picking your order up or getting shot for the sake of a few ribs on the way back to the car.

The beer was another story. I cunningly managed to buy just enough tokens to try all the beers that (a) we weren't already familiar with and (b) looked interesting. We navigated north from Durham Brewery (good stout) to Northumberland County (excellent ESB) via a brief diversion to Unibroue to sample the Raftsman (made with whisky malt, excellent) to Scotch Irish Brewing who had a line up of four uniformly excellent brews; a remarkably flavourful bitter that was only 3.5% alcohol, an excellent London style porter, a very good IPA and a really really good Scotch heavy. We skipped past the C'est What, Granite Brewery and Mill Street stalls because excellent as they are we know them well and don't need to sample their wares!

Household hints

I write mostly using fountain pens and prefer a nib that writes fairly wet. This naturally produces the scenario for which blotting paper was conceived. I have found however that bengals provide an effective and economical substitute. No bengal can resist the temptation to roll over a newly penned MS.

The election again

I just fielded a call from Bill Graham's canvassing team. I told the nice young lady that "I was going to hold my nose and vote for Bill". She said I was the second person this evening who had said that. The Liberals are arrogant corrupt SOBs but the opposition is worse. Excuse me sir, what flavour of shite may we serve you this evening?