Heather and I went for a walk on Saturday, up to the Danforth and over to the DVP. We were trying to do one of the Discovery Walks, but couldn't find how to get into the valley from Bloor (I think you have to start a bit further south). We ended up walking a bit north, where there is a cool vantage point overlooking the Don Valley.

Along the Danforth we stopped into a few shops. There's a cool kitchen place on the Danforth near Carlaw (IQ Living), where we bought a replacement for our automatic soap dispenser. I had bought a cheap one last year from Kitchen Stuff Plus, but it was cheaply made. The new one from simplehuman works great. Trishia and Maricar both have the same one. Now we just have to get dish soap that matches the kitchen (we currently have a green Palmolive soap).

Last week we checked out the new McCleary Playground on McGee St near Queen. They've done a great job in designing the park, and re-using the old tree that had to be cut done because it had Dutch elm disease. Here's a pic of Heather and me regally holding court:



We finally decided to try out the self-cleaning feature on our oven on the weekend. Based on the warnings in the manual, Heather was expecting huge flames and smoke to appear (part of the "normal cleaning process"). Instead, there was just a bit of a smell. It was all rather easy.

I have officially decided not to return to The Roy. I went there with my Ultimate team on Sunday, around 4pm. They don't allow sports on the TV, so no NFL football. It wasn't that so much as the attitude that the owners felt that they knew what was better for the bar, and not the customers. I guess it's their right to run their bar as they want to, but it'll be without me as a customer (which maybe is the intent, to not target my demographic).

Well I should start getting ready for bed.

Heather had a craving for poached eggs this morning, and I figured they couldn't be too hard to make -- water, eggs, done like dinner. I googled around, and ended up cracking the egg into Saran wrap, dropping into almost boiling water, and cooking for five minutes. It turned out really well. It sounds a bit weird, and I was concerned about the Saran wrap melting to the pot, but it worked out -- no vinegary taste, and no mess in the pot.

I just had hard boiled eggs: cover the eggs in cold water, bring to boil, take off heat, cover with lid and let sit for twelve minutes.

It's been really cold at night the past few days. There was a frost warning for Toronto last night, our outdoor thermometer registered a low of 1.4C. It was cold enough yesterday evening that we dug out our winter boots and gloves to go for a walk after dinner. Most places were closed for Sunday or Thanksgiving. We ended up stopping in at The Roy. The place is somewhat growing on me. It still looks like an Irish-pub-in-a-box, but I guess the space is a box, so it would be hard to end up with much else.

It's been a pretty busy weekend. On Friday night we got together with Heather's friends Darlene and Fed after work at the Elephant and Castle. We had a couple drinks, and then walked over to Chinatown for dinner.

On Saturday night we drove to St Catharines for dinner with Shelley and Geron. It was excellent, Geron's a really good chef. We had appetizers of scallops, with orange, sundried tomatoes and fennel. (Shelley and Heather are rather particular about scallops, but Geron cooked them perfectly). The main was pastry-wrapped salmon with asparagus, dill and mushrooms. Both were matched with wines from the Niagara region. Mmmm good.

This afternoon we're heading to my parents for Thanksgiving dinner.

I'm hoping that it will warm up one last weekend before winter. One of the sub-projects in the backyard was to fix the siding at the back window. There's a 4"x4" gap in the siding (from the previous owners), and it's always cold near that corner inside the house in the winter. I'd like to take off the siding, put in some insulation around the window, and put the siding back on. I have an extra length of siding to fix the gap.

Saw that Six Shooter is moving -- although nothing on their storefront or website says where they're going.

The new flower store beside Te Aro (the coffee shop) has made a nice cosy corner between the two. You'd never guess that a few months ago it was a dry cleaner and an auto body shop.

The new bar where Carlaw Carburetors used to be is still under construction. They've covered up the front with wood, presumably changing the windows. They've saved the old sign, I wonder if they will put it back up when they're done.

Well I should go make lunch.

My Ultimate teams this fall are pretty good. We're 3-0 on both Wednesdays and Sundays, and leading the league in both. I don't think we've played the best teams yet, so it's hard to say if we have a chance to win in either. I missed the first two hockey games, but I'm hoping to make it this week.

We've had some problems trying to find a good place to go out after the games on Wednesday. All our games are at St Michael's College at St Clair and Bathurst. We've tried a place near St Clair and Bathurst which was sort of a dive; and then tried a place near St Clair and Dufferin which was a pain to get go with all the streetcar construction on St Clair. Next week we're going to try The Pour House near Dupont and Spadina Rd.

Went to see Zombieland after yesterday's game with Craig, Maricar and Trishia. It took us a while to decide on a movie; Craig was the only one who wanted to see it, but all the other movies were vetoed by someone. It turned out to be pretty funny, much better than I expected.

Heather and I went for a walk around Lakeshore to Coxwell on Sunday. We checked out the new skateboard park. There were lots of kids using it which was great to see. There's also a nice natural parkland around a pond just east of Coxwell. We were rained on a bit walking back home, but not too soaked.

There's quite a few new places in Leslieville that opened up this summer. We've been to Lady Marmalade a couple times, on weekdays after Heather's appointments. It's way too popular to get into on a weekend.

Also went to Swirl a couple weekends ago. It's a nice cosy place, so small they don't have a kitchen and instead serve picnic-type food (cheeses, spreads, charcuterie). It was great, although next time I don't think we'd make a meal of it, as it's all really rich food. Very reasonably priced, plus they have BYOW on Sundays.

Well I should get ready for bed.

I took the day off today and finished up the benches around the firepit:



I have to let the pressure-treated wood dry out over the winter, and then next spring I can stain the benches a dark brown. Also, we're looking for some outdoor throw cushions. So the backyard is almost complete!

Heather's been weaning off the medication she was taking for her back. I called her a weaner (wean·er n pl -S one that weans). Heather put a quick moratorium on that.

The fall Ultimate seasons started last Sunday. Our Sunday team has a lot of the original team (me, Craig, Cindy, Maricar, Trishia, Helen), and a couple new guys. I don't think we're as good as the summer team but we'll see. The Wednesday team has a lot of new players on it, and everyone had fun the first game. We ended up tying 8-8, scoring the last point about ten seconds before the whistle went to end the game. Wednesday's league is more competitive, so we may not win too many games.

We're about to go out to Hanoi 3 Seasons for dinner (a little Vietnamese restaurant near us on Queen E), I should get ready.

We had a really good dinner on Saturday, with a couple new recipes from nibbledish. For the pasta course we had Tagliatelle of Mushroom. I used cremini, shiitake and oyster mushrooms (and some leftover king mushrooms). Cooking the mushrooms in a really hot pan works great -- the mushrooms fry rather than boiling, and so come out nicely browned. For the meat course we had Argentinean Strip Steak. I still prefer steak with just Montreal Steak Spice, but this was pretty good for variety. Our favourite LCBO guy (Grant) recommended a malbec from Argentina, Alegoría, which went really well with both courses.

On Sunday I re-did the flagstone that runs beside the house. We had a lot of rain on Friday night, with predictions of up to 50mm. The weather station in Leslieville doesn't show any actual data for rain (maybe it was off the chart?). Anyways, I originally built the flagstone beside the house (the downspout empties into this) (it's 3' wide), in a "V" shape, with the mid-point about 2" lower than the sides. When it's raining hard, the water was running over the edges, and eroding the limestone screening. I re-lay the flagstone so that there's now about a 4" difference. I was trying to figure out the water volume based on the roof size and rain peaks, but there were too many variables I couldn't estimate.

Well I should start making dinner. We're having grilled lamb (it's my own recipe, so I can take a picture and post it to nibbledish.com)

I have a new favourite website for recipes, nibbledish.com. I found it while looking for a recipe that included king mushrooms (we had some leftover). Ended up making basil chicken that didn't even have king mushrooms, but it came out pretty good. I really like the pictures with the recipes -- looks like most posters are into photography as well.

Yesterday we made tacos, sort of based on one of the recipes. I didn't realize how easy it is to make the meat mixture -- I just used tomato paste, along with cumin, paprika and chili powder. I was going to make the tortilla shells too, but ended up buying some from Loblaws. Next time I think I'll make the shells.

We won our playoff game last Sunday in Ultimate, so we're in the finals this weekend.

Well I should start making dinner.

Heather's back has been flaring up the past couple weeks and I've been working from home about half the time to help her out.

On Thursday there was a big storm that blew through. A couple branches (about as thick as my leg) broke off the tree at the entrance to our street, one of them falling on a parked car. The other branch took out an electrical wire, so we had an emergency vehicle outside for a while. The clean-up crew came around midnight, and in about five minutes had wood chipped all the branches, fixed up the wire, and moved onto their next job. They were very efficient.

I barbecued chicken on Thursday for dinner, and so had to wait for the storm to finish. Heather suggested using the cornmeal to coat the chicken pieces, so I made up my own recipe of five herbs and spices (cayenne pepper, garlic salt, paprika, cumin and pepper, plus the cornmeal). It turned out pretty good.

We had some chocolates from Ambiance Chocolat again. They have some new flavours, my new favourite is the caramel and jalapeño truffle. Mmmm good. Heather's favourite is still the caramel and fleur de sel.

With Heather's back sometimes keeping her in bed, I was surfing around for audio books for Heather, so that she could listen to them on her iPod. I found out that the Toronto Public Library allows you to download audio books for free! First I had to actually go in person to a library to renew my card, which was pretty quick. The audiobooks have DRM on them so they "expire" after a set period of time, and you can have a maximum of 10 books checked out at a time, which is pretty reasonable.

It wasn't too hard to download a book, but I had to manually import it into my iTunes library. It wasn't that complicated, but now that I'm used to the iTunes Store, moving files around manually seems a bit archaic. Also, it's downloaded in a mp3 format which iTunes 7 doesn't recognize as a book (time for me to upgrade to iTunes 8?). Some googling showed there's an option in iTunes for each track to remember playback position, so if you start playing a book, it will remember where you left off. Anyways, Heather selected some books and now they're on her iPod.

I finally gave up on trying to finish Don Quixote. It's taken me six months to get a quarter of the way through. It's way too repetitive, like a Saturday Night Live skit where the same joke is used over and over again. Craig said the second half of the book is even worse, because the author just criticizes other people who have copied his format, and shows why his is the real thing. Maybe I'll come back to it one day, but for now it's back on the shelf along with Catch 22, another book I struggled with and never finished.