Les Bonnes Choses

Today I received a letter from the IRS. No! Wait! It was a good letter! It read something along the lines of:

We reviewed your tax forms and think you made a mistake. You paid us way too much in tax. Unless you disagree with us, expect a pile of cash to land in your bank account with a satisfying thud. If you would like to disagree with us...[instructions and mailing address follow]

Seriously?

My experience with the Canada Revenue Agency has been ... different. For starters, I don't think I have gone more than one year without one of my deductions being challenged (this year I have to submit my moving expense receipt). I've certainly never had the CRA tell me they owed ME money. And it's not because I've never been overtaxed either, because I'm pretty sure you can find one of my old blog entries describing how a phone call to the CRA to resolve their claim that I had a balance owing uncovered that they owed me several hundred dollars from the previous year. So I guess maybe in a perverted way, I did receive a letter that resulted in the Canadian government refunding me money, but only if you are open to very unconventional interpretations.

So that's one difference I have noticed between the two countries, perhaps rooted in America's historical roots in a tax revolt. But that's just a guess. And I suppose it could be worse: In Soviet Russia, the taxes refund YOU!

Ever get the feeling that this generation of kids is getting a really lame childhood experience? They are. And it's going to bite them in the asses. Now, I'm not advocating eugenics, but there's something to that saying about "whatever doesn't kill us makes us stronger" (that's true to a point, though it's hard to argue an upside to getting maimed).

The other thing that kids don't get is all that awesome television programming for which we all have a deep sense of nostalgia. Why, just this weekend, I was having problems sleeping. Finding myself awake at 6:00 on a Saturday morning, I was thinking about tip-toeing downstairs to watch The Hilarious House of Frightenstein.



Classic.

Last week, Gill came over for some social interaction, as her roomie was off in the 'Peg buying a house or somesuch. I ordered a Homemade Pizza with my favourite fancy toppings: roma tomato, basil and prosciutto (my other favourite topping combination is pepperoni, bacon and green pepper). This isn't really germane to the story, but I just wanted to set the scene.

We watched The Social Network, which was a fair movie, though I don't think it was in the same league as The King's Speech. They definitely made Mark Zuckerberg out to be an ass; I found this to be an interesting observation, as I found his character to be similar in many respects to my inner monologue. Early in the movie, the Zuckerberg character is creating some kind of juvenile prank website over the course of an evening, and drunk-blogging about it as he goes along.

That's the inspiration of this blog entry. Except I'm not drunk, and I'm not making a prank website. Instead, I'm doing something much more practical: I'm making dinner, but don't really have a plan. Let's see how this turns out, shall we?

• 16:45 - What am I going to have for dinner? Everything's frozen. Crap. Seafood and chicken breasts defrost pretty quickly in running water. Both combine well with linguini. Let's go with the frozen scallops because I seldom have them (Rebecca hates them).


• 17:05 - So, scallops are defrosting. What goes with scallops? Bacon-wrapped scallops are tasty. And bacon is in a carbonara sauce, isn't it? I'll also need some kind of sauce or something...


• 17:30 - Basil, olive oil, salt and pepper, lemon and garlic. I have no idea if this is going to work with the bacon, but I've mixed up a thin paste with these ingredients. I plan on tossing the scallops in them and searing them in a cast-iron skillet on the BBQ so as not to stink up my house again.

Earlier in the week, I made seafood, and the house ended up smelling more like a wharf than I would have liked.


• I should have patted dry the scallops.


• 17:57 - Bacon has been cooking for the last 10 mins on the BBQ on the warming rack part where you normally put your charred hotdogs. I decided that I'll roast some veggies to go on the pasta. Went with grape tomatoes, orange pepper and garlic. Not sure if roasted garlic counts as a vegetable.


• 18:05 - Remember the charred hotdogs I just mentioned? It turns out that more than 10 minutes, even with indirect heat, will leave your bacon in about the same state. Bacon do-over. Resolve to be more vigilant. Eat the charred bacon anyways.


• 18:09 - Bacon cooking again. Scallops searing. Pasta cooking.


• 18:20 - Dinner is served.

Conclusion: garlic does not work well as a vegetable, even when roasted. Everything seems to pair well with bacon.

I was back in my hometown for Mother's day. My family regularly has Sunday dinner at my parents' house, and I often teledine via Skype. The time zone difference often means I am just thinking of preparing my dinner when the family sits down to eat, but otherwise, it's just like being there. Okay, not really. But it's what I've got, and it works in a pinch. Last Sunday, however, I was able to be there f'reals. In the last couple of months, Pretty has been bringing around a gentleman friend.

An aside: I don't recall ever experiencing this first-hand, but have you ever brought a significant other to a family function, and had your grandmother introduce them as your "friend"? You can tell by everyone's shift of gaze that it's a little awkward for everyone. Like, is grandma oblivious, or does she possess a wry sense of humour based on understatement? In the case of the former, perhaps you're going to have to check her into a home. In the case of the latter, you're horrified to consider that she's much more clever than you've given her credit for, is aware that you're just now considering checking her into a home, and is going to call her lawyer tomorrow to change her will.

Yeah, so Pretty has a gentleman friend. I'm pretty sure they're snogging. I asked where he was, expecting her to say that he's at his own mom's for mother's day. Instead she said that he's gone viking.

Pardon me?

Biking. He's gone biking.

Oh, okay. That makes more sense. Because one of those activities is socially acceptable. The other marks an unnatural interest in live action roleplaying. Unless you're filipino, in which case, the two activities are indistinguishable.

This is a delayed blast entry. I'm timing its publication for a few days from now so y'all don't have to go so long between witty observations.

I've spent the better part of this evening resetting my buddy Gill's Sony Vaio laptop to its factory condition. After four years, computers usually get pretty bunged up with crap, which is why I usually wipe mine clean every year (it also forces you to back up your important stuff, which is a good side effect). So over a few hours, I checked in on the progress bar to find it wasting probably an hour and a half restoring assinine software that I intended to delete at the first opportunity. Things like the AOL toolbar. Or Napster. Or some lame audio mixing software. Honestly. If someone buys a Sony laptop with the intention of doing some music editing, they probably have something specific in mind, and I doubt that it's a program that ships for free with the laptop.

What I find ironic is that computer vendors invariably ship computers preloaded with either Norton or Symantec antivirus software. It's ironic because one function of antivirus software is to prevent the automatic installation of crappy software that you don't want and will probably cause your computer to crash -- software very much like that that comes preloaded along with the antivirus software.

Just, okay, can someone please get any other photo of this woman, pictured here in what is clearly a webcam photo taken for a facebook profile with the background removed.



This is Ruth Ellen Brosseau, the newly-minted NDP representative from Berthier-Maskinongé who by all accounts has no business in parliament. But whatever. I'm just bothered by the fact that no other picture appears to exist for this woman, so anytime she is referenced in the news, you see this photo. Even a caricature from this winter's carnivale with Ms. Brosseau inexplicably wearing rollerskates and a touque would be a welcome change.

Sometimes I go for a spell where I have nothing to say; other times, I have so many half-formed topics swirling in my head that I don't know where to begin. This week was the case of the latter. To invent a cooking metaphor, you can't slow-cook a roast and bake a cake in the same oven. Sure, you can overextend the metaphor by arguing that you can still make a fine custard on the stove top while your roast cooks, but I don't know that a custard is the best choice to follow a roast. And what vegetables are we to serve with our meal anyways?

Where was I?

Oh yeah. So there was a royal wedding that I completely and deliberately missed, though I understand there was a hat in attendance that looked like a minor deity



I'm not going to talk about that. There was also an election in Canada. I'm not going to talk about that just yet either. Nor will I talk about the conclusion of the Bin Laden saga (other than to share Amy's linux joke about $> mv -rf /bin/laden /dev/null, which was totally funny, trust me.)

No, I just wanted a cathartic experience: I like -- no, I NEED -- something to drink with my meals. I don't like to drink milk, and I seldom drink alcohol, and neither are appropriate to bring to work in a lunch bag. So I often buy tetra-pack juice. And you know what I see when I go to the grocery store? An aisle full of juice box cartons decorated with cartoon characters and funny little faces made out of fruit. "It's not for me," I want to say at the check out, like I'm paying a cute cashier for a box of hemorrhoid ointment. I miss the bland yellow and black packaging of the No-Name brand, because I feel like I'm being blended into the same category as middle-aged men who buy comic books.