Gallery 101 on Saturday - Bright Light: Remembering Reuel Dechene

There will be a wonderful exhibit of work by Reuel Dechene at Gallery 101 this coming Saturday.
Along with many of Reuel's works, you'll be able to see Reuel's True Love, and Eliza's Reckless Abandon, which normally hang on our living room wall next to each other.

There is more information on the G101 website.

Bright Light: Remembering Reuel Dechene

SATURDAY DECEMBER 1, 2018
Preview: 2-4 pm
Party: 7pm-12am

Gallery 101

280 Catherine Street
Ottawa K1R 5T3

Wing beans at the Superstore!

Yes, I was excited to find wing beans at the neighbourhood Thai grocery last year. It had been more than 30 years since I'd had any. Now they're a regular part of my diet again.

But perhaps they can soon be a part of every Canadian's diet because on Saturday they had them at the Real Canadian Superstore in Westboro!

Okay, they're not cheap, but if more people buy them the demand might cause supply to go up and the price could go down.

Happy National Deviled Egg Day

I don't like to miss a commemorative day

I'm happy to report that the Instant Pot does a great job on hard-boiled eggs just like everybody says it does.

My secret for deviled eggs? Artichoke hearts.

A Mentos fizzle

I thought I would add to the Canada Day excitement by doing one of those dramatic Mentos sodapop geysers.

This effort was not so dramatic.

I couldn't get all the Mentos to drop in at once.

And several onlookers told me that it works better with a diet cola.

So next time, I will have a special insertion tube and will use a diet cola. I might even pay the extra for a name brand.

I found wingbeans!

This may not be exciting to you, but to me it is monumental.

When I lived in Ghana between 1984 and 1986, my favourite green vegetable was the wingbean.

Dana, the Peace Corps Volunteer and physics teacher, was my supplier. He had learned that the miracle wingbean thrived in the tropical climate and set about doing what he could to promote it. Dana built enormous bamboo tripods to grow wingbeans and generously shared his crops with me.

Wingbeans (Wikipedia calls them "winged beans", but they'll always be wingbeans to me) are a miracle crop because every single part of the plant is edible and they are nitrogen-fixing. Because they are nitrogen-fixing, they don't need fertilizer and after you've grown some wingbeans, you can plant another crop that needs nitrogen without adding fertilizer.

My favourite edible part were the immature green pods, chopped and added to fried rice. A bit firmer than a green bean, with a slightly sweet, mild flavour.

I've gone 31 years without having a wingbean.

Until now. I've discovered them at the Lim Bangkok Grocery at the corner of Somerset and Booth, right here in Ottawa. They're not as long and healthy looking as Dana's used to be, but they've come all the way from Thailand.

I almost whooped out loud when I spotted them.

[Bonus points for anyone who can guess what I'm going to do with the two very ripe plantains I also bought today.]

Sleeping with Comedy Podcasts

I have never been good at sleeping. I used to have a lot of trouble falling asleep at the beginning of the night and then falling back asleep when I woke up during the night.

But listening to stand-up comedy podcasts has made a big improvement for me.

Over the past two years, I've acquired a large collection of podcasts. I've got people talking about current issues, recommendations on tools, descriptions of cognitive bias, Vinyl Café stories, all sorts of stuff. But it's the stand-up comedy that works best for me.

I think the comedy works because it's entertaining enough that I don't have the stupid thoughts that keep me awake, thinking about what I have to do the next day or what I should have said to someone earlier, and I can fall asleep because each joke is only a minute or two long. If I wake up during the night and can't fall back asleep even after listening to 20 minutes or an hour, at least I'm feeling entertained and not anxious that I'm not sleeping.

Stories don't seem to help me fall asleep. I love the Vinyl Café stories, but I want to hear the whole story too much.

There are a number of comedy podcasts out there. The ones I like best are from the CBC's Laugh Out Loud. They run 28 minutes and feature one to three comics. I'm getting to know them well and like them all. There is a great selection of comics with strong material. They're all recordings of live performances in Canada, so most of the comics are Canadian.

I really can't say enough about how much I like Laugh Out Loud. The selection of comics reflect Canada's diversity. There's a tremendous amount of openness, affection and kindness in their humour. Technically, the editing is seamless and the sound recording is impeccable.

This means that when I hear someone I like, there's a good chance I can see that person perform here in Ottawa, and usually for a ridiculously small ticket price. And now if I find myself in another city looking for something to do, there's a good chance I'll be able to see someone terrific.

Here are the mechanics of how I listen to the podcasts:

1. I save the podcasts to the hard drive on my computer.
2. Every couple of weeks, I copy the podcast files to my smart phone. Before I had the smart phone, I copied them to a tablet.
3. At night, I put on a set of light-weight Bluetooth earbuds that have an eight-hour battery life. (I'm using Skullcandy Ink'd Wireless, they're comfortable while I sleep and the audio is good. I'm told the microphone makes me echo-ey when I use them for phoning, so I don't use them for phoning.)
4. I play the podcasts using the free version of MediaMonkey. I usually set the sleep timer for 20 minutes. Most nights I'm probably asleep before 10 minutes go by, but if I'm not, it's nice not to have to start it up again.
5. If I wake up, I start the player again for another 20 minutes. Maybe backing up to where it was around when I fell asleep.

Magi update

A while ago, Magi was not doing well. Or she was doing some serious method acting for her video career. But on her new regime, she is perky. More interested in looking around than in sprawling on the floor. She seems to like the view of the outside from the Ocean Table.