I'll take a momentary break from my emo-tastic whining to present my list of favorite albums o' 2006. Although there are still several critical faves that I haven't had time to adequately absorb (Joanna Newsom, +/-, Califone, Robyn Hitchcock, Pernice Brothers...), I wanted to get get something on the record to prove that I'm not just Pitchfork's ( Read more... )

I flew into Ottawa last Monday, and slept walked through the week at work, homesick and beat. Things took a turn for the worse on Friday when the quiet meal I'd planned at Conwall's most chi-chi establishment was thwarted by a private party at the restaurant. Instead, I grabbed a to-go chicken fillet dinner at St. Hubert's and drove to an ( Read more... )

California. This is the first I've been back since I took off on a cross-country trip with a car full of animals and a suitcase full of summer clothes. Seeing as how it's WINTER now and the house is still for sale, it seemed advisable to check up on the old homestead and send my family a care package of warm clothes to protect them against the ( Read more... )

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My buddy bailed on me on what I'd hoped would be a night of liberal sampling from the stash of fancy Duty Free liquor (Patron Anejo, Johnny Walker Gold, Grand Marnier) I've been supplying him, so here I sit in front of a fire soaking up the Wi-Fi that has cruelly forsaken me in my private confines of my hotel room. So there we have it - Friday ( Read more... )

Today is Brady Boo's birthday! To celebrate, I visited his classroom to take part in a Montessori ceremony in which a candle is placed in the middle of the room to represent the sun, and the birthday boy carries a globe one revolution around it for each year of his life. Between each orbit, the teacher shows the class pictures of the child from ( Read more... )

I'm about to head out to nosh at Montreal's most famous "smoked meat" establishment - Schwartz's. The ambiguously named smoked meat, for the uninitiated, is a Montreal delicacy that's sorta-kinda (but not really) corned beef. I tried it at a lesser, tourist-y deli on Ste. Catherine the last time I was in town, and was profoundly underwhelmed. ( Read more... )

I have two dozen posts (or maybe one just really long, fragmented one) to write, but in the meantime I have to use LJ as my personal filing system. Below is a link to a house we toured and fell in love with on our recent trip to Kankakee. Any small prayers/offerings/sacrifices to the real estate saint/deity of your choice would be most ( Read more... )

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