Snack Packs

I struggle to come up with ideas for work lunches that aren't carb heavy. Before my diabetes diagnosis, I used to go by the format I used for the kids at my old grouphome job. It was something like, a sandwich, a snack, fruit, vegetable, and a yogurt cup. Most of the kids hated the yogurt cup but for some reason our protocol really wanted them to have it.

After the diagnosis, I wanted to cut back on bread because of the starch. So that put out sandwiches, and most of the snack options, like granola bars, had almost as much added sugar as candy. So I opted to just make dinners that would often leave excess, and bring leftovers to work.

When Mom and my brother needed to stay with us, we were cooking for four, which would leave me without this option. I wound up getting pre-made lunches at the local grocery. There wasn't much in the way of diabetic-friendly options, but they did have these snack trays segmented into four. They would usually include a cheese, a meat, and two vegetables.

I thought this was a pretty good way of keeping track of your nutrition intake, but the grocery really inflated the price for what it was. Eventually, it occured to me that I could make my own. At first I was collecting the trays from the store and reuse them with home ingredients, but Lee-Anne pointed out that they were of poor quality, meant for single-use. She said that someone had probably made resuable food containers like this.

My new snack packs! The left one has dark chocolate covered cranberries, cheese, popcorn, and snowpeas and the right one has grapes, radishes, cashews, and dark chocolate covered crandberries.

I find it really convenient, because I can make multiple and then I don't have to worry about remembering to do lunch prep.

When people see them, they often get called "adult lunchables". I think this is funny because I've chosen this way as a healthier alternative, while lunchables are discouraged by doctors due to having low nutritional value.

Quick-pickled green beans go well in these. I sometimes like to have a brined vegetable to go with a fresh one. This is how I found out that chocolate and pickles go well together. I tend to absent-mindedly pluc from each section. One day I had dark chocolate covered almonds and pickle slices and I noticed myself going between the two.

Making Sense of the US Election

I don't really like writing about politics on this blog, and I'm not going to enjoy making this one either. However, recently there has been a development that is difficult to ignore. This past Tuesday, there was an election for the Presidency of the United States. It was Kamala Harris vs. Trump, and Trump won.

As someone in the helping professions that supports people of all backgrounds and opinions, who is cognisant of his influential position and believes in democracy, I seldom make political commentary publicly. I believe that it is professional to maintain an image of neutrality to allow space for people with contrasting beliefs to express themselves.

I suppose this blog technically counts as public. I've made exceptions for Trump in the past though. Back when he had a bunch of peaceful Black Lives Matters protestors assaulted with rubber rounds, flash bombs and tear gas so that he could pose in front of a church with an upside down Bible, I made a post on that. 

So if you've been following me long enough, you'll know that I am not a fan of Donald Trump, and I view his recent victory negatively.

It probably goes without saying, but one might question why I care about the US Presidency when I am Canadian. It's because they are the world's largest economic superpower and functionally our only neighbour, separated from the rest of the world by a wide expanse of ocean. Technically we have Iceland too, but come on.

Much of Canadian identity centres on how we are "not American". For example, globally we have a pretty mediocre medical system, but because it's better than America's we think it's top class. Canada is a world economic superpower in its own right, but we feel small and impoverished because we're next to the leader in that category. 

They are our largest trading partner and vice versa. Trump has stated that he wants to impose a 10% tariff on international trades, which would cause inflation for us. What happens to them impacts us. 

So I care about who is in their highest seat of power. I am ashamed to say that I was shocked by the outcome of their election. I was so confident in Kamala's win that I was reassuring other people as the ballots were coming in. The map was looking redder and redder, and I was saying that Republicans tend to vote in-person while Democrats are more likely to vote by mail, and that an early Conservative lead was expected, which would follow a blue wave.

I wasn't just saying this because it's what happened last time. There's this guy named Allan Lichtman. He has a system that he calls the "Thirteen Keys to the Whitehouse". He's been making predictions over the past ten elections, and has called nine of them correctly. 

The one he got wrong was Gore vs. Bush, which was historically close. He's argued that he got that right too. He says that election was stolen by people intentionally misinterpreting ballots from Black people as "over-voting". Apparently there were two places that looked possible to indicate a selection, and a sizeable number marked their preference in both as an abundance of caution. This was to combat this very same form corruption that they had historically experienced.

I would argue that even if this is true, Lichtman's tool is the "13 Keys to the Whitehouse", not to a "Victory Under Fair Circumstances". If corruption is enough of a variable to make the difference, then there should be 14 keys.

He also sometimes gets challenged on his 2016 prediction. He said Trump would win, but he said he'd also get the popular vote, which he didn't. I don't care about that either though, because as I said, I only care about who gets the Presidency, and Lichtman was right about that.

He's said that the 13 keys hold up for centuries, but obviously he wasn't around for those so he's going in with confirmation bias and I don't take that seriously.

Still though, I'll give him a 90% accuracy with his only wrong prediction being extremely narrow. I was converted in my way of thinking, and started to believe that election results had less to do with campaigning and more to do with environment. I saw Lichtman go through each key and he called a win for Kamala, with the only variance being by what margin.

There's also a pollster named J. Ann Selzer who is considered the gold standard. She said that Kamala would flip Iowa.

That didn't happen, and the election wasn't even close. Well, it was in the way that almost everyone in the US is already locked in based on party loyalty and the only variance is some small percentage of swing voters. But Harris lost the popular vote, the first time that's happened to a Democrat since 2004, and Trump flipped four states.

Sometimes I get criticized for being pessimistic and gloomy. I really think it's the opposite. I have so much hope and optimism for humanity, which gets routinely crushed. This causes a sometimes dour demeanor.

Since the election, the strangest thing is that no one is talking about it. It feels like everyone was fixated on it, and then the next day no one I spoke to in person even mentioned it. Even I didn't. 

Some family members have been talking about it on WhatsApp. Online, some left wing pundits have discussed it, but their videos have been mostly brief and dispassionate. People that came out of the woodwork to discuss politics even though it's not their usual thing have been totally quiet. I feel like even Conservatives have been pretty subdued in their boasting.

I had to be the one to break the silence with my mother and brother on the topic and their initial response was something like "Yep, it's bad", although they've both expanded on their feelings since. One of my coworkers asked me a day later how an American I know was taking the election results, which was my first entrypoint into having an actual, in-person discussion on it. She agreed that the silence has been deafening.

I really feel like we might be witnessing the beginning of the end of democracy as the global standard. Trump will likely be more unhinged than last time as he won't have to appeal to prospective voters. This is because he'll either have reached his term limit, or he'll have managed to eliminate that as a barrier to his continued rule.

Another reason is that the political environment right now is much more vulnerable to abuse. Before I get into this, I want to say that I'm not all that savvy when it comes to talking politics, and I'm venting more than anything, so I might get some of this wrong.

During his first term, Trump installed three right wing Supreme Court Justices. During Biden's run they've managed to enact two pretty damaging bills to the checks and balances that keep democracy functional. The first one allows the President to fire as many people as he likes from his office. The implication here is that you could remove people with expertise and replace them with propagandists. The second one allows the President to bypass the Supreme Court's rulings when making official acts. There have been almost no parameters given to the definition of an "official act", although it does offer any and all use of the military, which Trump has already stated an interest in using on US citizens. It would be easy to imagine this being used to dispatch future political rivals as well.

These are the kinds of moves that make democracy fall apart. Putin needed to win his first few elections fairly, but was able to destabilize the system to the point that it's an open secret that he is pre-ordained to win every term by a wide margin. President Xi in China has managed to eliminate term limits in the not-so-distant past as well.

So why are the US citizens handing power over to Trump again, when even he says that he'll be a tirant on the first day but then stop? I don't feel confident in speaking on this, as my prediction for the election results turned out to be incorrect. But I have looked at some speculation.

First of all, despite a complete victory, Trump didn't get as many votes this time around. Harris just got a lot less than Biden did. This implies that Trump didn't convert more people to his side, just fewer people, mostly Democrats, chose not to show up.

In 2020, record numbers of people went to the polls and Biden got more votes total than any President in the history of the US. I think that was due to desperation to get Trump out of office. Now that we've had four years of relative normalcy from the States, I guess voter apathy has kicked in again.

The elephant in the room is that Kamala's demographics may have come into play. She would have been the first woman of colour, and the first woman at all to take the position. The sample size for how this impacts voting decisions is too small right now to come to a conclusion. But at any rate, I think there is enough data to suggest that having "woman-like" traits has been viewed as undesirable to the American people.

In recent history, the vast majority of Presidents have been over six feet tall. Even though that doesn't influence a person's ability to govern, I actually worried that Kamala wasn't "Presidential height". I've heard complaints that she isn't good at public speaking because she has a "nasally voice", but really, it isn't outside the spectrum of normal for a woman.

Other prominent nations such as the UK, Germany, and New Zealand, have had women at the highest level of power. But in the USA, they seem to want a manly figure to tower above the rest of the world.

There's also the fact that most undecided voters choose their candidate based on the economy. I've heard a lot of annoying bickering on whether or not Biden was good or bad for this. My understanding is that, post-COVID, globally we have fallen into a recession. While the US has done a comparably good job of staving this off, they have not been untouched. Their citizens don't see themselves as one piece of a larger picture, and instead compare what they have now to what has been.

This logic can be faulty as well, in that there is often a lag between when a policy decision is made and when its impact hits. This means that Presidents are often credited for their past rivals actions.

There has been a lot of people speculating that Biden shouldn't have dropped out of the race, or that he should have done so earlier. It's hard to say how that would impact things.

One hot take I have is that I don't believe Biden has dementia. I remember lots of people making fun of him for being old, which  made sense as he was the "return to status quo" candidate with the long political resume, while Trump was the pro-change guy who was new to the scene. Even though they weren't too different in age, I could see Biden embracing the traditionalist image, which would get mocked for coming across as "old".

When he debated Trump, it was the first time where I thought "Uh-oh, we might have a problem". I'd come in about an hour late so I figured he'd just run out of steam. But watching from the beginning, I saw that he never fully had it together.

Still, he was the oldest sitting President in history, and he was sick and had a speach impediment. I can't guarantee he didn't have age-related illness, but I felt his performance was explainable by those things without the needed addition of dementia.

Some people have said that Kamala's decision to continue to support Israel in their ongoing conflict with Palestine alienated their voting base. I kind of sympathize with this perspective. It's been a hot topic, and for some reason, it's been the only one that both parties have united on. So if you're pro-Palestine, you were left without a voice. 

I've also heard that globally, there is an anti-incumbant trend. So this means that regardless of which party is in power, people will be switching to the other side. So while this means the US and Canada will be shifting right, many traditionalist places are turning left.

I hesitate to say that Trump is the worst politician in history. However, he has set a few records in that he's:

• First to be impeached twice
• First convicted felon to achieve the Presidency
• The oldest person to hold the position

I hope my more pessimistic viws don't come to fruition. In these circumstances I very much hope to be wrong.

Late October Stuff

Last year I made a post about a local event called the Central Art Walk. For a weekend, local artists display their work from their homes, and the public is invited in to browse and make purchases. Art can be on the more traditional side in the form of paintings, but can be anything including sculptures, woodworking, jewellery, homemade soap, etc. Last year we got some wooden spoons, a canvas with colourful buttons attached to it, and Lee-Anne got some mittens.

It was inspired by another event called the Frederick Art Walk, which has been going on for longer and is larger in scale. I went to that one once, but I was alone and too shy to look at things closely.

This year we made it to both. On the Central Art Walk we didn't see our spoon guy, which is too bad because we have a few more wooden bowls and would have made a purchase to accompany them. We did see the person we got our button canvas from. 

There was an Artists's Co-Op, which I think is pretty established but was new to the walk. A piece that caught our eye was a painting of a sliding scale of citrus fruits, with a lime at one end and a grapefruit at the other. The artist wasn't present that day, but Lee-Anne took her contact information and contacted her later to make a purchase. It's paid for now and we just have to pick it up.

One of the addresses was located on Waterloo Street. We went there but it didn't have a display. Before we could decide whether or not we should knock, the home owner took the initiative to poke her head out and say that if we were looking for art, the address number was the same, but it was in the city of Waterloo. We were at Waterloo St, Kitchener, but we needed Waterloo St, Waterloo. I got the impression that she'd needed to give this explanation a lot over the weekend.

Our neighbourhood borders the two cities. The place we were looking for was on the same physical street, just in the opposite direction. I've always thought having Waterloo Street so close to Waterloo was a problem. Having a Waterloo Street in Waterloo shouldn't be allowed.

Lee-Anne's mom expressed disappointment that she wasn't able to come to the Central Art Walk. Lucky for her we still had Frederick. She came with us to that one and got a couple of new Christmas stockings, as a new child had recently been born in the family, and another one is on the way. She also got some soap. Lee-Anne got a handbag and some wool balls that are supposed to replace dryer sheets while doing laundry. I've tried them since and I guess they work. To be fair, I haven't used dryer sheets since college.

I was bolder at this walk and got a 2025 calendar, a sketchbook, and some bookmarks. We also got a cat toy. Part of me felt bad for making more purchases at the Frederick Art Walk than the one in our own neighbourhood, although Lee-Anne did later get that citrus painting.

I ran into the guy that made my wooden bowls. Because I'd bought some for my family as gifts and we rescued them, we currently have two households worth and weren't in need of any more. Since I hadn't seen him at the Central Art Walk, I was worried I'd bought too much of his supply and he couldn't justify doing a stand, but I was glad to see he still had a good quantity.

I ran into some old colleagues from when I was an Independent Facilitator. The Frederick neighbourhood is basically social work central.

It was Lee-Anne's 31st birthday recently. We got Detroit style pizza from a nearby place, and on her request I made a fattoush salad to go with it and brownies for dessert. Normally I'd make a chocolate coconut cream pie, but that wasn't the birthday wish this year. Maybe I'll make one this Tuesday for the US election, since Kamala has that coconut symbolism.

We gave out candy on Halloween. Mom is still staying with us, and she hasn't lived on a street with active trick-or-treaters for at least as long as I've been alive. Last year I tried to keep track of how many kids came, but a bunch showed up in a huge wave near the end and I lost count. I estimated that we had about 40.

I was told standard trick-or-treating hours were 6-9. Things were slow at first, picked up around 7, and died around 8. Because we live in the basement apartment, we have to set up a stand in the front yard or nobody will approach us. At 8:30 it started to rain in a serious way so we went in. At this time we had 40 trick-or-treaters. Even one of the kids from upstairs said she was sorry I "didn't break the record".

But later, after 9, Mom was sitting outside and two trick-or-treaters came by, raising us to a final count of 42.

Best costume of the night goes to the kid that dressed up as a recycling bin. Apparently his dad was wearing a matching costume. I didn't see the father, but I like to imagine that one was paper and the other containers. I'm pretty sure I remember the kid was paper.

35th Birthday

In my "Traveling North" post I forgot to mention that when we purchased our bus tickets, they misspelled my name as "Grython Fibbald". Seems like an error of judgement, not a slip of the fingers. The "t" key is more than half the length of the board away from "p", and "f" is buffered from "s" by "d". It just sounds like a fake name too, with the word "fib" integrated into it.

People have really been struggling with my name lately. When me and Lee-Anne were out buying a few items to accomodate my family after the fire, we dropped by a Starbucks and this happened:

Brethon!

I just uploaded some images to my Gallery blog of my time up North. You can find it here: https://gryphonsgallery.blogspot.com/2024/10/kenabeek-pics-fall-2024.html

Before I posted it, I glossed over my previous entries to see if I'd ever made one before. I had, in 2012. You can look and compare here: https://gryphonsgallery.blogspot.com/2012/07/kenabeek-pics.html

I guess I didn't used to make commentary on my images back then.

I mentioned it in a previous post, but this was my first trip up North where I had a smart phone. In 2012, I was using a point-and-click digital camera that was noticeably primitive even by the standards back then. It's what I used in Canada World Youth and got a lot of commentary on it. But I did take some good pics with that thing.

 Something interesting I noticed was that during my visit in 2024, I took this photo:

And in 2012 I had this one:

I think this is the same birch tree! I didn't have that in mind when I took the more recent pic. It's not so weird, as its proximity to the house lends itself very well as a photo opportunity. I think the 2012 shot was more appealing, as it features a more drastic bark peel. The most iconic feature of the birch.

You might notice that the title of my older post specifies that I was in "Kenabeek" while in my two recent entries I only ever state that I went "up North". I also made an effort to only show images of nature, not the house and not much man-made (I did show autumn leaves on a small staircase and my aunt's stone circle, if you caount those). The reason is because at this point of time I am a little hesitant to share identifying information. But I've been documenting my experiences on the Internet long enough that there is enough content from a time when I did not feel this way. I can't completely scrub it.

On another note, I hadn't planned it this way but I wound up having my 35th birthday while I was up there. It just made the most sense scheduling-wise. I wasn't going to remind anyone but my grandparents remembered and we had a wild blueberry pie to celebrate.

I'm sure I've mentioned it several times before, but blueberries naturally grow in the area. When I was a kid, I used to pick them and my grandmother used to bake them into pies. It was a fun way to feel like I was part of the process. I alluded to this in a recent post when I said we mostly came up during Christmas and blueberry season, which is why we'd never visited in Fall.

It's funny because there was a recent study where people with ADHD and neurotypical people were observed picking blueberries. The people with ADHD consistently picked more than their neurotypical peers, implying a potential benefit to the disorder. This is kind of in line with the "hunter gatherer theory", which is a controversial idea that ADHD is not really a disorder, but rather an evolutionary trait that was beneficial for millenia but does not serve well in modern urban settings.

As a former kid with ADHD that prided himself in his blueberry picking skills, it was hilarious to read about this, as it seemed so targeted to me. Also, whenever this theory is brought up it seems like people hone in on the hunter side of things. Good to see the gatherers getting some love too.

Another thing I got to do while I was out there was practice driving. I avoided saying the date until now, but since I mentioned having the 2012 Gallery post, I'm pretty sure that was the last time I'd visited. We'd seen them annually since then, but they would come to Guelph. It makes sense, because it would have been after I did Canada World Youth and before I went to college. I expressly went there to learn how to drive from my grandfather.

I tested up there but didn't quite make it. The instructor said that I "didn't make any disqualifying errors, but made an accumulation of minor ones". Since then, I've either not had the time or the money to do lessons.

Until now. I've currently had 5 lessons with a driving instructor and a test date booked for November 20th. So while I was up North, me and my grandfather got to pick up where we left off.

We also met a neighbour of there's who they've known for years but was new to me. He gave us some buckwheat in the form of "groats". He also gave us a recipe to make chocolate groat squares. When I make them I'll post a pic here.

His wife has a falconry license and has tamed a red tailed hawk. I showed a picture of my grandma with the hawk and it's one of the reasons that I have a coworker who is a big fan of my grandma. She was excited to meet her at mine and Lee-Anne's wedding.

Return to the Ridge

Being back at my grandparents house was an experience. It was as if I had been there yesterday. Their property sits on the Canadian Shield, which consists of cascading mossy rocks and sparse forests of birch, poplar, and conifers overlooking flatter lands of more traditional woods.

Because of a fire that ocurred about 100 years ago, the area is full of pioneering tree species, slowly being replaced by more long-lived variants. So it's not technically "old growth" but I would argue it counts as "undisturbed". Wildfires are a part of Ontario's climate, pioneering tree species are the natural recovery response, and the soils that had been worked over by old-growth conifers remained primed for their successors. The natural link to old growth remains intact.

It's almost impossible to capture the depth of the rolling ridge using a phone camera.

I could still remember the grooves in the rock that I used to walk. I found the old ceremonial site where my aunt practiced Wiccan rituals. Even after all these years it was fairly undisturbed. I think one of the stones in one of the piles was nudged over, but that was about the extent of it.

I found my old clubhouse

As kids, me and my brother wanted a tree house. None of the trees in the area were able to support one, so my grandpa created a little space in the back of the garage. I opened th door and found this old toy truck. I was too nervous to go in, partly because I didn't trust something that was built to support my weight as a child, and also because I thought it probable that something else had taken up residence in my absence.

This was my first time visiting in the Fall. As children, we would often come for Christmas and in the summer during blueberry season.

The Autumnal colours were somewhat muted, with more yellow than red appearing among the green. On the trip up, we went through really vibrant pockets, making me think that the climate getting colder as we travelled further North was causing an earlier change in season. But then it started getting greener again.

In the four days we were up, it did feel like Fall swept in properly

The house was pretty much the same as I remembered too. It was so close to how I remembered it that I could identify the small things that had changed.

I easily found my way to my favourite childhood books.

These had pictures of different North American species. Each colour was a different category, e.g. mammals, trees, birds. Part of the book was a list of names with pictures next to them and a code which you could use to find their specifics in the other part of the book. My favourite at the time was mammals, I guess because they were relateable. Nowadays I'm more of a tree guy. I would also watch out the living room window at the bird feeders and try to identify the species using these books.

There were also these,

This is a bad photo. For some reason, my phone camera wouldn't let me flip the image. I was trying for a horizontal shot but had to settle for this one with my shadow in the way.

Anyway, this is not an exhaustive list, but these were some of my favourite childhood books. The one at the top, No Fighting, No Biting is about an older cousin babysitting her two younger. When they won't stop quibbling, she opts to read them a story illustrating the trouble they might get into for their behaviour.

It teaches a lesson that at the time I found quite bleak, which I reflect on even as an adult. The story that the older cousin tells is about two young alligators that find themselves unable to reach their fishing spot due to a large log being in the way. An older, hungry alligator offers to carry them over it in his mouth. After some deliberation, the two children get wise to the predator's intentions and escape unharmed.

This alone was not too disturbing. I'd heard stories with villains before, and I knew about Stranger Danger. What really bothered me was later in the story, when the siblings encounter another obstacle and the same alligator shows up. The children take the initiative in saying they won't get in his mouth, but he isn't interested in that this time, and simply moves the obstacle from their way.

The children report to their mother this change in behaviour, who is quite unsurprised. Apparently the behaviour of this stranger, which oscillated between homicidal to helpful citizen, was not based on his virtue or lack thereof, but on his level of need. The alligator wasn't good or bad, he was hungry or not hungry.

If I were to be an obnoxious critic as an adult, I think the story didn't really require the book-within-a-book framing. I only remembered the story about the alligators, not the one about the human cousins.

On the bottom left of that book pile, you have Moomintroll. This one is a comic version, but they're also a series of novels that I read up North as well. They're about a group of not-humans and their various antics and interactions. My favourite character was Snuffkin, who was a nomadic fellow that believed all the Earth was his home. He played a harmonica, which is part of the reason why I tried to learn it in middle school. He's a quiet, reserved type that is still anti-establishment and has trouble following rules.

This series is actually pretty mainstream, and shows up in various incarnations over time. There is at least one television series based on it. I think Snuffkin is a fan favourite too. I wasn't special to hold that opinion.

It's hard to see, but on the top there is a fuzzy book called the Little Fur Family. It's basically about a boy roaming around, exploring the world around him and being fascinated by it. I think the tactile element of the book itself being furry really enamoured me as a child.

Finally, on the right is Eloise. It's about a girl that lives in a hotel, who's taken care of by a nanny, who doesn't go to school or have any peers. Instead, she's left to her own devices and crafts a routine using her vivid imagination. This mostly involves being a brat.

I don't know why I liked this book so much as a kid. Obviously it wasn't relateable at all. I think I was just fascinated by looking into the life of someone who was so different from me. I'd ask where her parents were, and  why staff would scold her one moment then be fond of her the next. Returning to it as an adult, it's obvious that Eloise is pretty emotionally neglected despite simultaneously being pampered.

I was reading this book later in the evening, thinking about the gulf of time that had passed, pondering a life unlived. This brought me to tears. Lee-Anne found me like this, and I offered to read her the book. She accepted, and through gentle sobs I read Eloise to her. 

She was polite enough not to remark on her distaste for the character, mistaking my emotional state to imply I had some resonance with the spoiled little rich girl. The most absurd book to cry while reading.

Traveling North

Me and Lee Anne took September 18th to the 24th off from work to visit my grandparents who live in Northern Ontario. Slightly awkward timing, because it ran from a Wednesday to a Tuesday. Not a clean week, but we had to do it that way because I was teaching Safe Managment on the Monday and Tuesday, and Lee-Anne couldn't get time past the 24th.

When I was a kid, we spent most of our Christmases and summers during blueberry season at my grandparents'. In adult life, visits became much more irregular. The last time I'd been up was so I could practice for my G2 driver's license with my grandfather. Well, I never got around to that, so I got to practice some more this time as well.

There used to be a train that went up there, but it was put on suspension, leaving a bus as the only option. For some reason, this proved to be a psychological deterrant and it was only after my mother and aunt visited a few months prior that it felt like a viable method.

I don't know why I let the bus scare me so much. I take public transit regularly, frequently using it to travel between cities. In one instance, I bused through Guelph, Toronto, Buffalo, Syracuse, New York and Washington DC. I got to watch the sun set and rise and move through countries. The Northland Bus should not have been so intimidating.

It did cross my mind that when my mom visited, her house burned down while she was away. So I hoped there wasn't some kind of curse that would make it happen again. The silver lining was that because she's living with us now due to the fallout of that event, we had someone to watch the cats. Even directly after learning about the fire, I grimly mentioned that.

I associate these smaller, Northern communities as being less modern, like a step back in time. Due in part to size, as well as the fact it had been long enough that my memories were an actual step back in time. So it was kind of eerie to see that the go-to way of presenting bus fare was by showing tickets presented on smartphones. Last time I was up, I didn't even have a cell phone. They existed back then, but it wasn't as weird not to have one. It doesn't feel that long ago that I was taking the Greyhound bus between Kitchener and Guelph, and I always used a paper ticket bought in-person. I had the option of buying and printing at home, but I was never that organized.

Also, it's a weird sensation seeing that all these little settlements have been pretty thoroughly mapped out by Pokemon Go. I got my platinum badge for unique Pokestops it was so extensive. I couldn't even win a Pokemon Showcase it was so active. I like that an effort has been made to make sure people in these more remote locations can play, but the game feels at odds with my experience of this region. The North Bay bus terminal was a Pokemon gym, and the community is still so enduringly disappointed with the suspension of their train service that its description complains about it.

We had a layover there and stopped in the mall next door. I was wondering if it would be a cultural experience, but pretty well every store was something I could find at home. Food court had A&W, Orange Julious, Dairy Queen, and Tim Horton's. There was a Roots clothing outlet. The jewellery was Michael Hill. There was a Carter's Babies and Kids. They had a Best Buy and a Wal Mart. I may as well have been in Kitchener.

Overall the trip was about 9 hours over 2 buses. Not too much worse than going by car as I remembered it. We cut time off though, by staying at Lee-Anne's parents place the night before.

First Anniversary

September 16th was mine and Lee-Anne’s first anniversary. We rented a hotel room in St Jacob’s for a weekend, which is a small settlement basically attached to Waterloo. Not very far from home, but still kind of nice to have a change of scenery.

Our room had two framed pictures of birches.

It seems to me that artists love these trees specifically. I can think of a handful of pieces hanging in the homes of various people I know. We even have one in our house.

It's the sole survivor of my "buy nice looking things from the thrift store and throw them on the wall" era. Lee-Anne did away with everything else from that time. You might notice it's not hung up right now. Almost all our decorations at this point have some form of sentimental value, but the birches keep hanging in. Even though we don't have a use for them, they're just a little too nice to get rid of.

We recently came back from my grandparents and they definitely had at least one example of birch art. I'll be writing more about that experience in consecutive updates.

These trees also seem to pop up frequently in events hosting local artists. Maybe it’s because the black and white scarring on the bark is high contrast and can pair with a variety of background colours. 

Looking it up, their prevalence in art appears to not be a common observation. I think it might be a region-specific thing, with birch trees making more frequent appearances in Canadian works because they’re more common in Northern climates. Apparently Russians like them too, which tracks with this theory.

Saturday morning we went to the St Jacob’s farmer’s market. Being closer to the country makes it convenient for local agriculturalists. We got  sweet potatoes and zucchinis from someone yelling that the latter was “good for your weenie”. That’s not why we got them. I’ve since wondered what she meant by that. I have a few guesses.

We got Brussels sprouts, green beans, and some oddly coloured bell peppers. I’m used to seeing green, red, yellow, and orange. This was the first time I’d seen purple. We later learned that they may have been that colour because they were so close to turning bad. Even the very next day they seemed over-ripe.

We later cut them up to bring as snacks for our trip up North but wound up leaving them at Lee-Anne's parents' place, which we used as an intermediary step. I will never know what a purple bell pepper tastes like.

At the market, we also found oddly coloured carrots. These would hold their integrity better and were exciting for Lee-Anne because she’d been wanting to find red ones ever since they were served at my cousin’s birthday party. She believes they have a different taste, but I can’t tell the difference.

We stopped by an African artist and bought a couple of spoons with handles fashioned after giraffes.

It just seemed like a good idea to get something non-consumable to commemorate our first anniversary, and Lee-Anne likes giraffes.

The Shea Butter Man was there. He used to own a shop in Guelph but mostly does markets now. We were already stocked up and couldn’t justify a top-up, though.

For lunch, we had empanadas, churros, and strawberry lemonade.

I always forget how good fresh lemonade is.

I knew one of the buskers and we got to catch up. It was someone that has used our services before, who inspired one of our key phrases, who’s been in the newspaper multiple times for his music, and has toured cross-country with his band. After we left, Lee-Anne said that I always get star-struck when I meet people that I used to work with. I countered that this person is a legitimate star.

Apparently there's a tradition of celebrating with a different material each year of marriage, and for the first its paper. We didn't plan anything for it, but Lee-Anne got a paper bill in change which we're counting as fulfilling the ritual. For those that don't know, Canada stopped producing paper bills in favour of plastic some years ago. The paper ones are still in circulation but are increasingly rare, making it exciting whenever you come acrosss one.

We followed the tradition of preserving part of our wedding's key dessert to eat on the first anniversary. For most people it's a cake, but for us it was a tart tray. When we got back home, we pulled them out.

I took this pic after Lee-Anne had already eaten one of the blueberries. They were freezer burnt something mean. There was no fruit flavour coming through at all, and somehow the crust tasted raw. There may have been a better way to preserve them. We both managed to eat one of each, purely for ceremonial purposes.