Domestic Thursday: Double the Bubbles

 Today was supposed to be a day of rest. With a doctor's appointment scheduled for the morning, I decided to take the whole frigging day off. My guidelines for when and why to choose work? If I will be spending as much time on the bus as I will at the job, then I might as well not go. And all was well, all was good, yoga classes were planned and library fines paid off... and then I called Rogers.

Nearly two hours of combined hold time later, I was done. Not only with that telecommunications company, but with the day. I didn't much feel like browsing the very limited beer selection in my neighbourhood LCBO for this week's installment of Domestic Thursday, so off I went to 3030.

This Red Ale is the first Church-Key beer I've covered on this blog, and it's an odd one. Not flavour-wise - it's a pretty mild red ale, noticeable carbonation, and a high note that made me think peach. It was just a little strange to have it in the context of the last Church-Key beer I had tried, which was the rather intense Holy Smoke. This one needs something else. Hockey, maybe. Or food.

And on to my related domestic endeavour... the production of closet beer. It's a maple stout, and so far it's merrily fermenting in my closet. I keep on threatening to call it Pride Beer once it's bottled and out of the closet. And hopefully, some of you will threaten to punch me for making such an awful, awful pun.

This Is Why I'm "Curvy"

In spite of my better judgment, the online dating profile persists. At the very least, it's been an interesting sociological experiment, from confusing mating rituals - God bless the man who worked KFC into a pick up line - to what an algorithm thinks is my type. Which is somebody who loves food. More than they could ever love me. Every time OKCupid barfs up another potential suitor, it's inevitably a white dude, with a beard, who mentions kimchi in his profile.

Now, I like to eat. And I really like to eat kimchi. But as excited as I am to try out good restaurants, I secretly love bad food almost as much as well-done ramen. A recent article on the AV Club reminded me of this - and now I'm sharing it with you all, in case you want to forward it to OKCupid's algorithm robot.

1. Wine gums. I once ate a pound of wine gums in what was probably, if I'm being generous with myself, an hour. I tried to undo the effects of this decision by then eating one slice of pizza, a case of food calculus that only made sense in my head, and never to my digestive system.

2. Popeye's Chicken Dinner. Everybody loves Popeye's biscuits, but I'm all about the coleslaw. Fuck the biscuit. Just give me two styrofoam bowls of coleslaw and some friend chicken bits, and I'm a happy, lipid-high lady.

3. Chicken McNuggets. I don't know why McDonald's felt compelled to proudly announce to the world that the McNuggets were "now" made with white meat. What the hell was I eating before? Oh well, even if it was ground-up donkey, it's still delicious when dipped in honey. Side note: you can't get honey for dipping in the UK. I now understand why my American friends fought to free themselves from British tyranny.

4. Kraft Dinner: Anyone who follows the box and divides it into four servings is a liar. Each box feeds 1.5 people, or 1 person who's depressed post-breakup.

5. Tim Horton's Bostom Cream Donuts: The crappiness of my workday can be gauged by which donut I've ordered. Sour cream plain? I'm on the ball! Honey crueller? Things are getting dangerous. Boston cream? I can probably be found crying in the bathroom.

Domestic Thursday: Future Past Edition

It's the 100% Instagram Edition, celebrating my glorious arrival into the present!

First, the beer:

Black Creek has a new beer available in liquor stores - Dray Horse Ale. It's supposed to represent the brewing traditions of Canada in the 1820's, and comes with a history lesson on the side of the bottle. The taste is very malty - with a chocolate flavour that might even be a little peaty. Like all of their beers, it's low on carbonation. 

Then, the knitting:

This orange blob has been keeping me company on all of my recent bus trips. It's Knitty's Que Sera pattern, worked in some vintage yarn I found at a liquidation centre years ago. It's nice, simple knitting now that I have the lace pattern memorized - except for the time I realized I put the button hole in the wrong place, and had to rip back two inches of lace worked in grabby mohair yarn. I survived though, and I am a stronger woman for it.

And here's my completed Summer Flies shawl. Finished just in time for... November. Oh well, there's always summer 2013!

iBuy It

Tomorrow is the first day of the rest of my life. Because tomorrow is the day I will finally break down and buy a smartphone. Soon I will be Instagram-ing photos of all of my meals and using the word "app" as if it was a form of punctuation. Or whatever it is that kids do these days - I have been so steadfast in my self-imposed technological dungeon, where I get lost traveling to new places, never know a restaurant's Yelp rating, and can't resolve simple trivia questions, to really know what people do with these things. I'm sure they're awesome. I'm sure eventually my hand will grow around my iPhone, and it will sense my every urge, and then tweet it. But before I forget what my life was like pre-iPhone, let us take a moment to mourn my life B.P. Yes, it was filled with hours of tedium and confusion, but also the pleasures of getting lost along the way to a bike store, scurrying across a Victoria highway, and running into a pair of quail bobbing along the road.

Coming Out (Musically)

Back when I toiled in the pits of porno-doom, everybody at the office was convinced that I was an out and proud lesbian. As a lazy heterosexual, who didn't want to end up like Tom Cruise - protesting a little too much - it took a while to deny the reports. And I didn't help myself by reading Patricia Highsmith in the break room. Memories of the saddest twentysomething flirtation with lesbianism ever - all of the labels, none of the sex - came rushing back today.

Back then, I made the mistake of mentioning to my deskmate Will, the hero of my life and the only legitimately gay guy there, that the night before had featured a kd lang binge. He immediately set to cackling. "You're not helping yourself," he chortled. Well, if not helping myself means denying kd, I'll march in your damn parade. I've always felt like music snobs look down on her for some reason. Which is ridiculous. Vocally she's a ringer for Patsy Cline, and her Hymns from the 49th Parallel is a 11-song defense of the cover as art form. That's where you'll find the song I've been playing all day, her take on Joni Mitchell's "A Case of You." So let go of your pretensions, and give in to a Sunday morning of perfectly wrought melancholy. You can have happy brunches next week.

In the Cards

A few days ago, this landed in my inbox:

Subject: It's Time for Your Tarot Reading

$20 is all it takes to get a reading by UofT's renowned tarot reader. (Really! Look…Proof that I'm renowned! http://www.hrandequity.utoronto.ca/new/otc2/otcwdk.htm)

As always, 100% of the proceeds are in support of UTM's United Way campaign.

My first reaction was something along the lines of "Ah! Spammers!" Then I realized it was coming from the university listserv, at which point my reaction was something like "Ah! Foucauldian spammers!"

Once I realized it was on the level though, I was intrigued. In spite of my skeptical nature and schoolgirl crush on science, I own a tarot deck. Then again, if you were ever an awkward girl in high school, who had rented The Craft on VHS, you probably own a tarot deck too. It was the reader's endearing profile that eventually tipped me into asking for an appointment. If I couldn't spend time with a comic book-loving knitter and write the whole thing off as charitable giving, what the heck is the point of being alive? And, on that note, my life is/was a big hot mess, so maybe the cards would have the answers.

On the man front: I probably won't have a serious relationship in the next year, and I tend to focus on unattainable men. This last fact was indicated by the three of cups, which depicts a man gazing fixedly on a cup's mirage, ignoring the two decent ones at his feet. This, of course, was hardly news to me. In fact, the cup-o-vision has a name, which I won't share. I've also been neglecting my health. And the bad news didn't stop there. The cards also revealed that A FRIEND WOULD BETRAY ME. Will it be one of you? If it's not, and I get married and get in shape during the coming year, I am totally demanding a $20 refund from the United Way.

Bus Love

In the interests of my own emotional survival, I've cultivated a bus crush. If I take the bus to work at a certain time, or back eight hours later, I'll see him. Pale, bearded, probably undernourished, he'll be reading a book. I'll open mine in sympathy.

After six weeks, that's the level of intimacy we've achieved.

And I'm fine with that.

If I actually had to talk to him, and find out what he was reading, it could ruin everything. He could be gay, married, gay and married, or worst of all, be in the middle of reading a terrible book. My love is strong and true, but probably not strong enough to survive Atlas Shrugged. I would also have to confront the fact that my passion is one of convenience. Ever since I slung books at my university bookstore, I've nurtured crushes on coworkers, as a patch whenever the work, or even the paycheque, was not enough. Unfortunately, this didn't work out so well in Victoria, where I had no office options, few local options, and probably ended up fixated on a longboarder because of all that. I have a similar problem with my current job, but the Commuting Reader seems to be the solution.

I just pray he never buys a car.

Domestic Thursday: Black Creek Pumpkin Ale

Photo by Ally

My fridge is still looking festive, thanks to more pumpkin beer and a particularly spoooooky dessicated swiss chard. Woooooo. 

That should probably be thrown out, though I will hold on to Black Creek Historic Brewery's Pumpkin Ale. You may remember Black Creek from my December outing. As a brewery headquartered in a historical village, it's dedicated to preserving the brewing traditions of the 19th century - for ales produced on-site, at least. LCBO-sourced bottles like this one are made in a commercial space, to meet demand... and because sticking on labels using Ye Olde Flour Paste would have been tedious. 

Unlike Mill Street's entry, this one is strictly barley-based. My fellow beer questers, Aleks and Ally, tried both. Aleks found Mill Street's to be very fizzy and a little more bitter, while she tasted citrus in Black Creek's, and liked it better. I would agree. The spices seemed better balanced in this brew, and I even thought there was something woodsy about it, before the beer kicked in and reminded me that I was being unbearably pretentious. As Aleks pointed out, neither tastes all that much like pumpkin, though both smell like a fresh-baked pie. Thirty days later, I hope to figure out if that's because pumpkin is such a subtle taste to infuse, or if the spices overwhelm everything else. Cheers to research. 

In Which My Toe Gets Bitten Off in Shallow Water...

This past weekend I was in the throes of the "afternoon drunks," and decided to start an online dating profile.

It was a decision I regretted within an hour.

That was how long it took for some dude, high on male privilege and/or life, to message me an analysis of my personality based on my dating profile, ending with "How can you be more idealistic than you look if you don't even have a picture up lol" First, I didn't have time to put one up, second, I'm not very photogenic, third FUCK YOU and fourth lol, YOU ASSHOLE.

Anyway, I kept my profile up, lol, in spite of this small setback. Pinball Mike from 3030 met his current girlfriend through a dating site, and Pinball Mike is pretty great. Maybe I could meet the generic, Mr. Pibbs-version of Pinball Mike! So I felt somewhat optimistic when I got a message from another potential suitor. The hat was questionable, but at least it was clear that he had taken the time to read my profile. Before messaging him back I thought I would read it too. Bam. Married, and in an open relationship.

I will die alone.

No one will mourn my passing.

Except maybe the cats.

But all is not lost. When I texted my conclusions to my friend S, we agreed to die alone... together.

Domestic Sunday: The Month of Pumpkin Beer Begins

There are three ways of finding out whether it's the fall or not - check the calendar, look at the leaves, or see if a multitude of pumpkin beers have overtaken the liquor stores. I never heard of pumpkin beer until I moved to Montreal, and then all the talk was about the St-Ambroise Citrouille. And that beer felt like it was an urban legend, selling out within days and never ending up in my belly. Now there are so many pumpkins beers available, that I could try one a week and still have bottles leftover by October 31st.

So let's get things started with Mill Street's Nightmare on Mill Street. This is a wheat beer, brewed with pumpkin puree, pie spices and vanilla extract. The vanilla can be smelled as soon as the bottle is opened, but doesn't come through as aggressively on the taste. It's almost all spice, with some pumpkin knocking about. I would like it to feel a little heavier on the tongue - take away the flavour, and it sits as lightly as a soda pop. I would like my pumpkin beers to be a little more robust than that, if they're going to take me through the fall and right into winter.