butterfly cakes

Throughout childhood, my birthdays were celebrated at home with my family. I never had a birthday party with friends from school or neighbourhood children, though I attended many. I'm not exactly sure why, but I don't remember feeling at all deprived. I was quite content with a homemade cake with candles, presents, and a dinner menu of my choice. I did miss having loot bags, but I received plenty at other children's parties.


Not having children of my own, I'd be curious to hear how kids' birthdays are celebrated nowadays. I know that some in Toronto become elaborate affairs, with parents spending as much as a thousand dollars or more on catered events with hired entertainers. I've helped out with a few of Sara's and Annie's birthday parties, which usually consist of a craft session at the dining room table (masterfully orchestrated by my sister), outdoor games where everyone gets a prize each time, and then pizza and cake.


I'd especially be interested in hearing about special foods that you tend to have at your children's birthday parties. Yesterday, Helen taught me how to make butterfly cakes, which is apparently a common treat at children's birthday parties in England. From what I can tell, a butterfly cake is basically a muffin-sized white cake with the top sliced off and cut in half. A dollop of buttercream icing is dropped on as filling, and then the two cut halves of the top are arranged to resemble butterfly wings half-raised.









Absolutely no nutritional value, I'm sure, but very yummy.


Hot and humid at the cottage; we're spending a lot of time in the lake. We paddled canoes to Adaskin's Bay yesterday afternoon. No moose, but we did see ducks, a blue heron, two adult loons with a youngster, and a beaver. It was Alec's first time in a canoe.




Today's Blatherpic:


- Helen's Action Man feeds a chipmunk.


- Butterfly cakes for Helen's birthday.

Feel free to suggest a daily poll question.


Today's Poll:

Do you tend to see your birthday as more a positive or negative event? Choose 'Yes' for positive, 'No' for negative.

cottage birthday

Here is a Guest Blathering from Alec Bruce....

GUEST BLATHERER: Alec Bruce

My first vacation in Canada has proved challenging despite roaming the lands with my own personal tour guide (a.k.a. Helen -Melen- Waters). Challenge List as follows (warning: I like lists):

Survive daily slobberings by Bertie the dog at the Pimblett's bed and breakfast in Cabbagetown.

Adjust eye vision to bedroom with luminous orange shag carpet and kitch 70s multi-colour wallpaper in said above bed and breakfast.

Accompany Helen on a whirlwind social tour of her ex-boyfriends.

Experience my first camping trip in Canada.

Experience my first camping trip in Canada in a 12 hour thunderstorm with vintage equipment and leaking tents.

Attempt to view a movie at a Paramount cinema that does not include Dreamworks cartoons, inaccurate war dramas, American neo-partism or digitally enhanced breasts.

Horseriding Western style under the guidance of a French-Canadian who has eyes for my girlfriend (he was all over her!).

Suffer two weeks 'cold digital turkey' without access to mobile phone, text messages, email, or laptop (I want SMS).

Start three months über-diet (no sugar, no yeast, no dairy) in the company of a chocolaholic.


Despite these difficult challenges, the 'no sugar or laptop' Canadian Vacation has proved immensely relaxing and enjoyable. Toronto is a seriously cool city with a chilled attitude and a great vibe. My three favourite places in Toronto:

High Park for trekking and cycling.

Cruising the hip fashion of Queen Street West.

Cabbagetown's weird streetlife.


Our trip was impressively timed for gigs and tours. On a three-day window, Toronto:

Calexico at Lee's Palace

Jim White at Horseshoe

Howe Sleb at Horseshoe


Recommend that everyone has a Calexico CD in their collection so that they can dream of open deserts and love on the Texan/Mexico border.


As always when I travel, I attempt to fit with the local culture and collect new words. My three favourite new words:

Blogger: a person who publishes daily 'blabberings' on an online Web journal.

A Rack: a well-endowed women's set of breasts (by all accounts, Angelina Jolie has an impressive 'rack')

Nerd-Bird: flight between Austin and San Francisco


(thanks to the Dudes at Open Cola for the first two items)


Highlights of the vacation are as follows:

Horseriding in lush meadows of Shelbourne (check it out here).

Hanging at Jeff's cottage on Canoe Lake.

Laughing at disaster that was our 24-hr camping trip during the great flood.


Writing this morning on the peace of Canoe Lake and celebrating Helen's "21st" birthday (yes again!). She played 'hunt the present' to find her gifts from Alec. It appears her three favourite pressies are:

50s surfer girl short sleeve shirt

Short cut denim jacket

Rufus Wainwright CD


Can anyone confirm who Rufus's musical mother is? (either one of the Indigio Girls or the McGarrigle sisters)


Finally, the solitude of the cottage offers myself the calm and inspiration to rekindle my poetry writing. In the first five hours of arriving, I had written 9 haiku poems and 3 sonnets. Here is my favourite dedicated to Jeff and Debbie. Humble thanks to their hospitality and friendship:

Zen Golfer No. 2

The solstice warriors

fire into evening darkness

seeking resolution.

- Alec

---

Looks like the no-see-ums (the insidious little midge-creatures who sucked out most of my life's blood during the last cottage visit) are gone. Jeff says their lifespan and season is very short. I have no pity for them whatsoever.


Last night as we had a fine Mediterranean pasta salad prepared by Alec. During dinner, we watched the mosquitoes cluster on the screen windows, staring in at us hungrily, probosci (sp?) trembling with anticipation. I delight in torturing them by breathing gently through the screen, my face an inch or so away, imagining their mental screams of insectile suffering.


Jeff claims he doesn't react to mosquito bites anymore, and that this is probably due to all the time he's spent at the cottage over the years. He suggests it would be an interesting experiment to engage in the practice of lying on the dock, allowing bugs free access to one's blood, in hopes of eventually become immune to the bites.


I think I'll leave this bold experiment to someone else.


Today is Helen's birthday. Sadly, I left her birthday present at home. :-( I hope to make up for this act of gross negligence by baking her a cake. Considering that I haven't made a cake in quite a few years, this should be interesting, especially since the cottage oven exerts a great deal of creative freedom when it comes to how accurately the temperature dial reflects the actual temperature of its interior.


Anyway, cross your fingers for me and the cake. Tho I'm sure Helen will eat it, just to be polite. :-)


Today's Blatherpic:


- Another bbq pic. Scott, me, my sister Ruth.

Feel free to suggest a daily poll question.


Today's Poll: (Courtesy Paul Stockton)

Have you met Debbie in person?

Talking Tolkien

The picture above is of my friend Luisa, at Andy's and Christine's bbq on the weekend.


As I mentioned yesterday, Helen and Alec are visiting from the UK (they are moving to Amsterdam soon). Here is Helen's Guest Blathering:

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Guest Blatherer: Helen Waters

Tuesday, June 26th is an important day for a couple of very important people: it's my brother's 34th birthday and my friend Helen Vincent is getting married. Next to my parents, these are the two people I have known the longest.


Helen Vincent and I went to the same play group (kindergarten), along with my brother Michael: he is only a year and day older than me, and we were often mistaken for twins, much to our disgust.


All I remember about Play Group is that we went there every Friday morning for several years (or at least, it seemed like it), and one day a policeman and his anthropomorphic bolisha beacon came to teach us about road safety. My mother has a photo of that day. All the little pre-schoolers are sitting in a big circle paying rapt attention to a policeman and his ventriloquist road sign... except for me. I'm clinging in terror to my mother, who was a volunteer there. Maybe that bolisha beacon didn't really move it's great yellow orb of a head, and likely it didn't speak anywhere but my nightmares, but certainly, it was the scariest thing I'd seen since Raggety the scary stick-creature from Rupert Bear.





Thirty years later, my brother lives in Stoke-on-Trent with his wife and 4 year old daughter, Helen Vincent will become Helen Manning on a Caribbean island, and I still have trouble crossing the road.


I'm very happy to be in Canada, especially since we're off to the cottage today, but sorry I can't be with Helen and Anthony to wish them a long and happy life together, or with my brother on the one day of the year I can say to him: HA-HA YOU'RE TWO YEARS OLDER THAN ME!!

- Helen

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Back to regular Blatherings...


After I posted the bbq pics online, I got quite the shocking e-mail from my system administrator, Bryan Fullerton, letting me know that electricpenguin.com files were taking up 175 MB. Holy toledo. Fortunately Reid was kind enough to take over hosting of the bbq pics, which he added to his own. You can see them here. Bryan says that most of the 175 MB consists of our active logfiles.


Reid, by the way, is trying to read Lord of the Rings. Influenced by Luisa's enthusiastic "sprinkling of little Tolkien books all over the house", my LOTR journal and the upcoming LOTR movie, he is even making his progress public in his own discussion group. Feel free to post some encouragement or heckling, whichever you find more appropriate.


Speaking of Tolkien, I've created a new section in the message boards called Talking Tolkien (Reid's forum is in this section). And as I mentioned yesterday, Allison is starting up a reading group for The Silmarillion. Wow, lots of interest...nearly 60 new members in the past 24 hours.


For those of you wondering whatever happened to The Bryan Project, never fear. I'll be posting one or two more things on the site soon, including an *interview with Bryan's mom*.









Watched "Almost Famous" on DVD last night with Helen and Alec. Alec hadn't seen it before, and the rest of us didn't mind seeing it again. I had to crash before it ended, I was too tired. And this after taking a hefty THREE HOUR NAP in the afternoon. I've been doing a lot of napping lately, if you haven't noticed already. Jeff's theory is that I'm finally starting to actually Relax and am catching up on Relaxing after the months/years of Not Relaxing.


We're going to the cottage today for a few days; I'll have more of a chance to practise napping there as well. :-) I'm hoping to get Helen and/or Alec to post a Guest Blathering, perhaps even later today.


Updates/news:


(CNN) A Supreme Court ruling favours freelance writers.


Scott has finally updated his Scribbles!


Today's Blatherpic:


- Luisa, at Andy's and Christine's bbq last weekend.


- a bunch of pictures Helen found for her Guest Blathering.


- Helen and Alec.

Feel free to suggest a daily poll question.


Today's Poll:

Do you sleep on planes?

racism

I was the only Asian person in my class throughout grade school and high school. Non-Caucasians were a rarity out in the suburbs back then, so much so that during a murder investigation, a policeman came to talk to me because it wsa rumoured that the murder suspect had been briefly seen in the company of an "attractive female of Asian descent". When this finally dawned on me, I was flattered and horrified and amused all at the same time.


Despite the universal WASPishness of my hometown, I encountered very little racism. Or perhaps I didn't recognize it for what it was. Ironically, I see much more evidence of that sort of thing nowadays than I ever did back then, not sure exactly why.


No one likes to admit they have racist tendencies.


I cringe at sweeping generalizations about a particular ethnic group. Even when statistics may comprise a grain of supporting evidence, ridiculous conclusions are often drawn, usually as an excuse to say something negative about a particular individual or group. Sometimes these generalizations are made by individuals I had thought rational and well-educated.


But enough ranting on that topic.


Updates: Helen and Alec are visiting with us from the UK, and we'll be going to the cottage tomorrow. I've updated My Life In A Nutshell. I've finished Lord of the Rings! Allison's starting up a Silmarillion reading group on message boards, for those interested.


Today's Blatherpic:


- From a land deed belonging to a friend of mine (who inherited it from his grandfather). I was shocked to see that the document was dated in the 1960s.

Feel free to suggest a daily poll question.


Today's Poll:

Are you (even slightly) a racist?

bbq

Good food/friends day yesterday. Brunch in the morning at Grapefruit Moon with Parki, Bryan, Lindsay, Wendy and Jeff. Bbq at Andy's and Christine's in the afternoon. Evening drinks and snacks at the Liberty with Helen, Alec, Amanda, Sandra, Scott and Ron.


I had to miss Andy's and Christine's bbq last year because of the Inkspot deal negotiations. Had a wonderful time this year, seeing old friends, feasting on barbecued salmon and swordfish steaks, playing with the kids out in the backyard (see photo at top of page). I'll be posting some photos over the next while. You can also check out this photo gallery, which Reid was kind enough to host.


I recently began experimenting with a program called iView, which will make it much easier for me to keep track of all my digital photos. It also enables me to easily create online photo galleries like the one linked above; I plan to make use of this for future con pics. :-)


Dead tired today. I'd like to see the Gay Pride Parade on Yonge Street, but suspect I'll end up napping this afternoon instead.







Today's Blatherpic:


- Elspeth, Justine, and Jennifer at the bbq.


- Andy, cheerful bbq host.

Feel free to suggest a daily poll question.


Today's Poll:

Have you been COMPLETELY honest in every single Blatherings poll question you've answered so far?