I am crazy busy this week. I don’t have time for Internet drama (but oh, there is drama) and I don’t have time for the forecasted 30+ cm of snow between now and Friday (seriously!) and I really don’t have time to talk at any length about coffee. But as we discussed on Twitter this weekend, it’s a simple fact of life: coffee sometimes trumps all.

I just got a press release from Tim Hortons. I am still not sure I’ve forgiven them for their Christmas cup faux pas, but I wanted to put this out there for your opinion. Apparently, they’ve broadened their coffee cup line so that starting next Monday a small is now an extra-small, a large is now a medium and an extra-large is four ounces bigger than it used to be.

From the press release:

Tim Hortons announced it will be brewing its biggest cup yet, with this month’s introduction of a brand new extra large cup. Beginning January 23rd, the new cup will offer coffee lovers across Canada a premium quality, extra large coffee at a value price. To accommodate the brand new cup, the names of the other hot cup sizes have shifted: the original small is now extra small, the medium is now small and so forth. The change in names of the hot cup sizes will apply to all hot beverages – guests will still receive the same amount of coffee for the same price, only the name of the size has changed.

I’m happy that they didn’t drop the small entirely, as since my last post on the subject of Tim’s cup sizes (hey, what can I say, I’m obsessed) I’ve grown kind of fond of the kiddie-size small — soon to be known as the extra-small. But do we really need to buy our in coffee 2/3 of a litre containers? I’m a hard-core coffee drinker and even I’m not sure I’d have many occasions to order THAT much coffee at a time.

What say ye, bloggy peeps? Do you need your entire daily recommended dose of caffeine in one 24-ounce hit, or is there such a thing as too big a cup of coffee?

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Dear Tim Hortons,

You know I love you. I’m pretty sure I single-handedly keep you in hockey pucks with my 2XL a day habit. In the battle for coffee drinkers that divides Canada into tribes like the Hatfields and McCoys, I have long sworn allegiance to you. I have been known to say that Starbucks coffee is overpriced and way too strong and just a smidge on the pretentious side, and I can never remember what I’m supposed to call an extra-large. Any coffee shop that requires a lexicon to order is probably not for me.

But.

I have a confession to make. Much as it hurts my patriotic soul to say this, I think maybe Starbucks has won a space in my heart. It started many years ago when I needed a drive-thru on a Christmas Day in 2006, and Starbucks was there for me. I’ve started popping in to Starbucks more and more through the years. Granted, their coffee is still not my cup of, erm, coffee, but I do have a fondness for a venti green tea in the afternoon. And when a Starbucks barista found my wayward iPhone and kept it safe for me at the counter earlier this month, I felt my allegiance sway.

You know what finally sealed the deal for me, though? You just don’t mess with my Christmas traditions. Tim Hortons, where is the holiday coffee cup? Yes, you now sell ornaments and double-double chocolates and the ubiquitous $2 latté — but when you dumped the annual blue holiday cup to instead advertise said new lattés? You lost me.

I’ll stick with my morning XL from Timmies, but not with the same deep affection I’ve always felt. It’s a matter of convenience rather than loyalty now. There’s a new spot in my heart for coffee, and it’s got Starbucks written all over it.

Wistfully,
DaniGirl

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Did you hear the latest? Starting tomorrow at select Tim Hortons locations in Kingston and Sudbury, the small coffee size will no longer be available, the medium and large will become the small (10 oz) and medium (14 oz) respectively, and the new extra large will be a whopping 24 oz — that outsizes Starbucks’ Venti by four ounces.

That’s more than 2/3 of a litre of coffee, folks, and the entirety of the daily recommended caffeine intake.

I have mixed feelings about this. I’ve always found the small size a bit of an anachronism, and Beloved and I refer to it as the “kiddie size”. On the other hand, I’ve got a 2XL a day habit, and I do love my coffee. There is no doubt in my mind that I have a bona fide addiction to coffee. In fact, it will be a conscious decision on my part to not supersize my XL with three milks, and to resist the the temptation to wring a few more milligrams of caffeine into my system.

Apparently this brings the Canadian Tim Horton’s coffee sizes into alignment with the larger sizes south of the border in the United States. Nothing against my American cousins, but in the age of Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution and all the general movement toward more reasonable portion sizes and an appreciation of restraint over gluttony, is this a smart move on the part of Tim Horton’s?

Do we really need to supersize our coffees? And more importantly, will I be able to resist the siren song of four more ounces?

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When I mentioned to a few friends in an e-mail conversation that the 16 mature trees on our property were kicking my ass this fall, and that I’d filled more than 20 bags without managing to conquer even the half way point, one of the women who has been living a rural life for as long as I’ve been living in the city asked, “Why are you raking them up?”

Why indeed? You mean, there’s a choice? Apparently, you can just mulch the snot out of them and (pardon the pun) leave them. But, if you can do that, why do most of the properties around here in Mature Tree Land seem to have careful rows of filled-to-bursting leaf bags lined at the roadside every week?

In defense of raking, it is a wonderful way to carefully inspect each inch of your new property. I found an entire raised and rock-lined garden bed in one corner of the yard that I hadn’t noticed before! And, it’s a great way to meet the neighbours before everyone goes into hibernation mode for the winter. (I had to laugh at the fact that everyone who walked by stopped to chat, and they all knew that we were the new family and exactly when we’d moved in. Small town indeed!)

What’s it like in your neck of the woods, bloggy peeps? Do you rake diligently? Or are you in the “wait for a blustery day to send it all next door” camp? Or maybe you just leave it on the lawn and call it compost? Do tell, I’m fascinated that there are choices other than seventeen hours of raking available to me!

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Back in the day, I used to blog a lot about books. Way way back in the day, I used to consider myself somewhat of a fan, if not an authority, on Canadian Literature. So when I heard that CBC Radio was compiling a list of the Top 40 Essential Canadian Novels of the Decade, I knew it would make great blog fodder.

And then I actually looked at the list, unveiled today, and realized that I have read exactly three of them. And for an embarrassing number of them, I had heard of neither the book nor the author. Eek. Clearly I am not spending enough time with Shelagh Rogers.

But, I was so excited to have a blog post that required (a) brain use and (b) no discussion of moving, unpacking or septic systems, that I’m going to charge ahead with this one anyway. In fact, I’m going to make a meme out of it! Remember memes? They’re about as relevant as my knowledge of Canadian literature, apparently, as I can’t remember the last one I’ve seen. Let’s call this a celebration of the Canadian Blogosphere circa 2005, whaddya say?

Ahem, anyway, here’s the list. If you want to play along, copy and paste it into your own blog. The ones in bold I’ve read. The ones in bold and underlined, I’d recommend. The ones with an asterisk are on my “I swear, I will read it before 2012″ list.

Ready?

A Complicated Kindness by Miriam Toews *

Bottle Rocket Hearts by Zoe Whittall

Clara Callan by Richard B. Wright

Come, Thou Tortoise by Jessica Grant

Conceit by Mary Novik

Crow Lake by Mary Lawson

Drive-by Saviours by Chris Benjamin

Elle by Douglas Glover

Essex County by Jeff Lemire

Far to Go by Alison Pick

February by Lisa Moore

Galore by Michael Crummey

Heave by Christy Ann Conlin

Inside by Kenneth J. Harvey

Late Nights on Air by Elizabeth Hay

Life of Pi by Yann Martel

Lullabies for Little Criminals by Heather O’Neill *

Moody Food by Ray Robertson

Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood

Pattern Recognition by William Gibson *

Room by Emma Donoghue

Shelf Monkey by Corey Redekop

Skim by Mariko Tamaki and Jillian Tamaki

Sweetness in the Belly by Camilla Gibb

The Best Laid Plans by Terry Fallis *

The Birth House by Ami McKay

The Bishop’s Man by Linden MacIntyre

The Bone Cage by Angie Abdou

The Book of Negroes by Lawrence Hill

The Day the Falls Stood Still by Cathy Marie Buchanan

The Fallen by Stephen Finucan

The Girls Who Saw Everything by Sean Dixon *

The Last Crossing by Guy Vanderhaeghe

The Stone Carvers by Jane Urquhart

The Way the Crow Flies by Ann-Marie MacDonald

The Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood

Three Day Road by Joseph Boyden *

Through Black Spruce by Joseph Boyden

Twenty-Six by Leo McKay Jr.

Unless by Carol Shields *

Hmmm, not a single Douglas Coupland or Alice Munro? I suppose Will Ferguson is not exactly a novelist, but I am in the delicious depths of Beyond Belfast, and loving it as much as I loved Beauty Tips from Moose Jaw and Hitching Rides with Buddha. Looks like my tenuous claim to a passing knowledge of Canadian literature is as dated as my taste in music.

What do you think? Have you read any of these? Would you recommend them for CBC’s shortlist of the ten best Canadian novels of the decade? And do you think maybe it’s time for me to wade out of the wilderness and try something from this decade on my next trip to the library?

If you decide to play along and post the list on your blog, be sure to leave a comment so I can come over and admire your taste in Canadian literature!

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I tweeted the other day that I was having fun sorting through iTunes to make a Nova Scotia road trip playlist, and Susan asked me if I’d blog my playlist. Sure, why not?

Except, now that I have a second to do it, iTunes is being persnickety and I can’t get it to open. So I’m going from memory here, but this is the gist of it, all pulled from my existing music collection.

It starts with a whole lot of Great Big Sea. Lukey’s Boat, of course (it’s Lucas’s signature song!) and Ordinary Day and Rant & Roar. Simon’s favourite song is Home for a Rest by Spirit of the West, so that’s in there. Then 7/4 by Broken Social Scene, Feist’s 1234 and Life on Mars by Arcade Fire with David Bowie. The boys love K-OS’s Crabbuckit, so that’s on there. I figured it was high time the boys learned about Rush, so we’ve got Tom Sawyer, Limelight and Spirit of Radio on there. Then things folk up a bit with Gordon Lightfoot (Sundown and If You Could Read My Mind) and Jann Arden with Good Mother. Then Clumsy by Our Lady Peace, and then some Barenaked fun with Pollywog in a Bog from their Snacktime album, and Sarah Maclachlan’s take on Rainbow Connection. I’ve got two from one of my fave bands ever, The Pursuit of Happiness (She’s So Young and I’m an Adult Now) and at least one by the Hip, but damn if I can remember which one I chose.

The only thing I’ve got from this, um, decade is the Young Canadians for Haiti cover of Waving Flag. I’ve also got Tristan’s signature song on there, Loggins and Messina’s Danny’s Song (not really Canadian, I know, but Anne Murray did a cover that’s not as good so I figure that counts.) Representing Montreal, we’ve got Corey Hart’s Sunglasses at Night (don’t judge me) and then a really jarring transition (more Montreal, you say?) into Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah. It was going to finish there, but Simon MacDonald mentioned I need some Stan Rogers on there and he’s so totally right, so I downloaded Barrett’s Privateers and made that the big finish.

Not so much a Nova Scotia playlist as a really random sort through my music library. I had to keep it at that because I’m burning them to CD for the car, or else I’d've added some Burton Cummings, Holly Cole Trio, and a little Bryan Adams. I think I’ve got the CanCon spectrum pretty well represented through the last 30 years though, eh?

I’ve still got $6 left in my iTunes account (after I finally got around to replacing my old Purple Rain CD with digital music — yay!!) What do I need to add to round out my Canadiana road trip mix?

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And then I watched this video.

Doesn’t it make your heart soar?

www.facebook.com/youngartistsforhaiti

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Does it get any more Canadian than this? We go to bed on a wave of Gold medal fervour and wake up to Roll Up the Rim to Win. It’s Canada’s Best! Day! Ever!

If you watched even a bit of the Olympic coverage (Go Canada GO!) this year, if you felt that nascent tug of patriotism deep in your heart, if you stood as I did with tears running down your cheeks as your kids bellowed the national anthem at each gold medal victory, then you’ll enjoy this: Stephen Brunt’s touching essay about the Canadian Olympic experience, from its rough start to its glorious gold medal finish. (You might be asked to download a program called “Silverlight” which is Microsoft’s version of Flash. Annoying, but worth it!) If you can’t get the video to work, you can read a text version of what seems to be an early draft on Brunt’s Olympic blog.

And if you’re feeling a little snarkier, you might enjoy this essay courtesy of our Vancouver correspondent Fryman on how the “musical phenomenon known as “I Believe,” the official anthem of Canada’s Olympic Broadcast Media Consortium, may in fact provide the true legacy of the Games: another generation of Canadian kids who don’t know me from you, nor their “I” from a hole in their head.”

Cuz you simply can’t be Canadian if you can’t poke a little fun at yourself and your country, even after celebrating it all night long. Now where’s my coffee?

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From CBC Ottawa, news that an Ottawa couple successfully argued that both parents are entitled employment insurance (EI) parental benefits for their twins. Each parent claims the benefits for one child. The decision applies only to this couple, but sets an amazing precedent. Way cool!

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At the end of April 2009, the Senate of Canada released a report titled Early Childhood Education and Care: Next Steps. I printed it out and have been lugging it around with me (it runs more than 200 pages) for the better part of a month. If you are at all interested in the issues of daycare, child care and early childhood education in Canada, and how Canada compares to the rest of the world, I highly recommend you make yourself a copy and find the time to read it. If you’ve never read a Parliamentary report, you don’t know what you’re missing! And if you can’t quite find the couple of spare hours you’ll need to polish it off, fear not, because I am going to break it down for you and share the highlights over the next little while.

When I read the Executive Summary, my first reaction was eyeball-rolling disappointment. The main recommendations are (spoiler alert!):

1. That the Prime Minister appoint a Minister of State for Children and Youth, “with responsibilities to include working with provincial and territorial governments to advance quality early learning, parenting programs and child care” and to research early childhood development and learning.

2. The Minister should be advised by a new National Advisory Council on Children, on matters of “how to best support parents and advance quality early learning and child care.” The Council would be populated by “Parliamentarians, other stakeholders, community leaders and parents, with appropriate representation from Aboriginal communities.”

3. That the government call a series of multi-jurisdictional meetings to establish a “pan-Canadian framework to provide policies and programs to support children and their families” and establish a “federal/provincial/territorial Council of Ministers…to meet anually to review Canada’s progress with respect to other OECD countries and to share best practices.”

4. The government should establish “an adequately funded, robust system of data collection, evaluation and research, promoting all aspects of quality human development and in early childhood programming, including the development of curricula, program evaluation and child outcome measures.”

Captivating stuff, isn’t it? The Standing Senate Committee on Social Affairs, Science and Techonology took nearly three years to issue a report that calls for — more bureaucracy.

Because this is a topic dear to my heart, and because I think it’s important for every single Canadian to know at least a little bit about this issue, and because I like to think I have at least a moderate ability to translate government-speak into a language people other than the bureaucrats can understand, I’m going to take an in-depth look at this report in a series of posts over the next little while. By the time I finished reading it — and I read every single word because there is no end to the things I will do for my bloggy peeps — I was more or less in agreement with the Committee’s recommendations.

This Committee’s report was inspired by a 2006 report from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) that ranked Canada dead last of 14 countries participating in the OECD’s Thematic Review of Early Childhood Education and Care. As noted in the Senate report, “the 50 reports that make up the OECD’s review of education and care services for pre-school-aged children comprise the largest body of comparative policy research to date in the field” and “allowed Canada to evaluate itself against international peers and provided a unique opportunity to drawn on best practices in early learning and child care policy and delivery.” Did I mention dead last? Ouch.

The OECD highlighted strengths and weaknesses in Canada’s early childhood care and education system. The strengths included the one-year parental leave, Quebec’s early education and child care policies, a well-established kindergarten network for children aged five years and older, and “efforts of provincial administrations to maintain ECEC services ‘despite a withdrawal of Federal funding and a climate of suspicion of public services’.” The areas of concern included:

• weak public funding of ECEC services, especially for children under five years;
• the separation of child care from early education;
• limited access to affordable child care services and particular issues related to access for Aboriginal children;
• the quality of child care, e.g., very poor accommodation, child care workers’ protective and interventionist approach, lack of direct access to outside space;
• the apparent predominance of unregulated care; and,
• staff qualifications and training and other issues related to their recruitment and retention, e.g., absence of federal and provincial/territorial guidelines and low wage levels, and lmited tradition of professional development.

A few more statistics that I found both enlightening and alarming: among the OECD countries under review, Canada ranked in the top 10 in the following categories:

Wealth: ranked 4th in gross domestic product (GDP) per capita
Cost of child care: ranked 4th in amount paid by parents for early childhood services
Child Poverty: ranked 7th overall
Proportion of “working” mothers: ranked 7th overall for mothers with children under three years old and 8th for mothers with children under six years old.

Further, Canada came in 14th out of 20 for early childhood education attendance for children ages 0 to 3 and last out of 20 countries for early childhood education attendance for ages 3 – 6. We came in 15th out of 20 countries on spending on social programs as a proportion of GDP and last of countries compared in spending on early learning and child care services.

It’s not a very pretty picture, is it?

And that’s only skimming through 20 of 200+ pages of information. In the next couple of posts, we’ll take a look at what other countries are doing, why early childhood education is so important to every single member of our society, and what Canada should do next.

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Love this delightful essay in the Globe and Mail comparing and contrasting Canada and the United States — via a love letter to Corner Gas. Worth the read!

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By Friday of last week, Lucas had been sick for three days. Fever, green snot, bad cough and most troubling, increasing lethargy. I gave up waiting it out and tried to get an appointment with our ped, but by the time I got through around 11 am, the answering machine said they were completely booked up for the day. (In seven years, I’ve never heard that one!) It offered the number of the after-hours pediatric clinic, which would take calls starting at 4 pm.

(This gets long. Refresh your coffee and settle in!)

At 4 pm, I called the them and the machine offered yet another number, which I called. The machine said they would start taking appointments at 5 pm.

At 5 pm I started dialing. For 10 minutes, redials alternated between a busy signal and the message that said they would begin taking calls at 5 pm. Finally, a real person answered the phone and gave me what I suspect was the first appointment of the night at 6 pm.

“And where are you located?” I asked, no longer sure to whom I was speaking after the long chain of referrals.

“Carling and Holland,” she answered.

“Oh, right, I’ve been there before,” I said, and hurried to throw together something mildly resembling dinner for Lucas and myself while tasking Beloved with feeding himself and the big boys.

We pulled into the parking lot across from the clinic with five minutes to spare and I was rather pleased with myself, despite the headlong rush through the evening. I bundled Lucas up in a blanket and headed into the clinic. To my surprise and relief, the waiting room was empty. I walked up to the reception desk and handed the woman Lucas’s health card. She looked at her list, looked at the computer, and asked, “Is this Olivia?” Um, does HE look like an Olivia? And why would Olivia have a health card that says Lucas on it? She asks for my pediatrician’s name and fusses with the computer a bit more, obviously flustered.

She asks me to wait, and steps away from the desk to consult with a tall, balding man with a stethoscope around his neck. She comes back and tells me there must be some mistake, as they don’t have an appointment for me. I assure her that I do, and repeat the gist of the 5 pm phone call. I can see the doctor listening, and turn my attention to him. He says, in a patronizing tone that immediately puts my back up, that I must be mistaken. I assure him that I am not. We begin to debate the state of my mistakenness, at which point I say, “Listen, I have a sick baby here who needs to see a doctor. Whether I have an appointment or not, can you please look at him?” He begins to huff about how he is booked solid and has his own clinic to run, and I gesture at the empty waiting room behind me. He continues to push back, and I say, “Listen, I called here and I got an appointment. Are you going to punish my sick baby because you guys screwed up?”

He asks me for the number I called, and I try to find my cell phone, still balancing Lucas and my backpack and the health card I’m still holding. While I’m doing this, he’s assuring me that I still have plenty of time to get to the right place and I’m arguing that no, I don’t, as my appointment was for 6 pm and it’s now past that time. I finally get the phone out and show him the number I called, and with smug satisfaction he tells me that’s not the number here. At which point four days of sick baby, second week back at work, two birthday parties in two weeks, out of town guests for the weekend, and about three weeks of sleep deprivation catch up with me and I burst into tears.

“For goodness sake,” I say through frustrated tears, “In the time we’ve been standing here debating this, you could have been done the exam!”

I press the redial button on my cell, and get a message that says, “The clinic is now full for the evening.” Click. I’m furious, frustrated and at the end of my rope. I’ve done everything right, I only want my poor helpless baby to stop being sick, I can feel the Tylenol wearning off and the fever returning, and I am completely out of options.

Eventually, the doctor relents and says he will see Lucas between patients. I am grateful, but can’t help but bristle at his tone of magnanimous exasperation. He’s placating the crazy woman. By now, there is another family – presumably Olivia’s – watching the drama unfold. Lucas and I sit through the arrival and departure of two more patients when I overhear a man at the reception desk replaying the same conversation I’d had earlier. Yes, he’s sure his appointment is at this clinic. I listen closer and realize his circumstance is the same as mine. He’s even called the same ped. I see the doctor in the background, also listening. I can’t help myself.

“See?” I say to the doctor. “I’m not crazy.” I’m sitting in a waiting room hysterical with exhaustion and crying my eyes out with a sick baby, but I’m not crazy.

Given the name of the man’s ped, they are able to track down the clinic. It’s across the street, on the other side of the parking lot I’d parked in. Turns out that neither I nor the doctor was wrong, but I was still in the wrong place.

To his credit, the doctor does see Lucas and diagnoses a whopper of an ear infection, and maybe the beginnings of a chest infection. I simply cannot control the tears that run silently down my face throughout the entire exam. He is extremely kind with Lucas, even tickling him to try to make him smile. I am humiliated and angry and did I mention exhausted, and can only mutter something half-way between apology and thanks on the way out.

Prescription clutched in my hand, I cry as I load Lucas into the car. I cry as I drive up Fisher to Prince of Wales, and cry the whole way down Fallowfield. By the time I drop Lucas off at home, I’m nominally under control, but I’m crying again in the hair products aisle of Shoppers Drug Mart as I wait for his prescription. The pharmacist, to her credit, only gives me a long look and says nothing.

The moral of the story? We live in a country where you can show up at any random doctor’s office with a sick child and pitch a fit, and they will provide professional medical care whether they are under obligation to do so or not. It’s a good system.

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I knew the RCMP holds a contest each year inviting kids to new foals from the Ottawa stables that may be part of the Musical Ride program, but I didn’t know they also had a Name That Puppy contest for future police service dogs. Kids 16 and under can enter, but you have to send your entry in the old-fashioned way – by snail mail! Hello, RCMP, what decade is this? We should be able to Tweet our entries in!

Although my boys have shown an astonishing lack of inspiration in naming their Webkinz (the polar bear is named, um, Poley, and the mouse is named, you guessed it, Mousey) I think I’ll use this to teach them about old-school communication methods. With stamps! And paper!

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They’re Canadian; of course I had to sign the boys up for skating lessons!

They’d never been on skates before. The morning started out with a lot of this:

After a while of crawling around on the ice, Tristan had progressed to this:

I honestly never expected him to get to this during his very first lesson:

But, most of the time was spent more like this:

Simon was content to stay more or less like this:

Guess which one said he wants to sign up for hockey lessons next year, and which one said he thinks he’ll stick with swimming?

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I’m *so* excited!

I bought my tickets back in April, but I swear, I have been waiting to see this concert since I was ten years old. Finally, tonight, we’re going to see Rush! With 100-level seats, no less! I’m beside myself with anticipation.

I’ve always loved Rush.

For my 12th birthday, my folks replaced my little suitcase record player with an actual real stereo – the kind with the smoked plastic box lid, and honest-to-goodness speakers. And they gave me two albums, AC/DC’s Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap (I still remember my mother blanching when she read the lyrics on the liner) and Rush’s Moving Pictures. I’ve long since outgrown my AC/DC phase, but Moving Pictures is still one of my favourite albums of all time.

When I was in high school, my first serious, painful and perhaps even partially requited crush was on a boy named Greg who played the clarinet in my music class. While I remained a band-class geeky good girl, Greg went from clarinet player to headbanger, hanging out in the smoker’s pit and wearing almost exclusively those black concert T-shirts with the white sleeves. Although we were never officially a couple, we were almost inseparable around the time I turned 16, from sharing a locker to spending endless hours loitering in downtown doughnut shops… talking about our mutual favourite band, Rush. Twenty years later, Rush’s Freewill and the 2112 album still evoke the then-delicious smell of cigarette smoke and cold air on his leather jacket as I wore it to class. I blame him for my lifelong affection for bad boys with good hearts… and for deepening my appreciation of Rush’s back catalogue.

All these years later, though I’m no longer charmed by the smell of cigarette smoke on black leather, I still consider Rush one of my five favourite bands of all time. Really, it’s a bit of a surprise that I haven’t seen them before now. Only Paul Simon and Billy Joel remain on my all-time must-see list. (I have eclectic – some might say antiquated – tastes in music!)

When we went to see REM in 2004 (scratching out another favourite on my lifetime concert to-go list), I was extremely disappointed when they played only two or three songs from their back catalogue. I mean, no Shiny Happy People, no Orange Crush, not even Everybody Hurts. So tonight, I’ve got my fingers crossed to hear a few faves. If I hear at least a few of these, I’ll go home happy:

• Spirit of Radio
• Freewill
• Red Barchetta
• Limelight
• and my favourite of all, Closer to the Heart.

What’s the equivalent to Rush in your life? First album, most evocative song, must-see but not yet attended concert?

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When I heard that there would be a rally to cheer the Senators on to a Stanley Cup victory on the very day I was home with the boys, I couldn’t resist bringing them downtown for what could be a once-in-a-lifetime event.

It was hot – damn hot, to quote Robin Williams – and crowded, but still a wonderful experience to be a part of a crowd of 6000 Cup-crazy fans. The boys had their new Senators jerseys on, fresh from Saturday’s inagural wearing, and “Go Sens!” written on their cheeks in, well, in my eyeliner.

Does it get more Canadian than poutine at a Stanley Cup hockey rally? Kerry was kind enough to share hers with Simon.

We had three generations of bandwagon hockey fans cheering for the Sens: Tristan and Simon, me and Papa Lou!

The boys had fun, but spent an inordinate amount of time looking at the backs of people’s knees as they sweated in the newly rechristened ‘Sens wagon’.

There were lots of smiling faces, and plenty of funny expressions of fandom. This guy who was standing near us had both!

I’m pretty sure this guy had sunstroke by the end of the rally.

This was the best moment of the rally. (Well, this and when Lucky Ron sang Stompin’ Tom Connors’ The Good Old Hockey Game!) They set off some daytime fireworks and unfurled this 60 foot Sens banner over City Hall.

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So we’re not exactly sporty people. Beloved, bless his literate artsy heart, couldn’t care less about the difference between an infield fly and a hanging curveball. The athletic education of the boys has fallen largely to me, which, if you know me at all, is pretty darn funny. Pity my poor boys, who are just now learning how to catch and have yet to have their first experience standing on ice skates, let alone actually learning to skate.

But this exciting spring, with playoff fever spreading like malaria through the capital, I’ve taken it upon myself to teach them the finer points of bandwagon hockey fandom. I’m a professional in this particular sport. I can count on one hand the number of regular season hockey games I’ve watched in their entirety, but each year as the lilacs bloom I find myself glued to the screen, cheering on the home team. (In no small part, I’m sure, because in my heart Sens playoff hockey is hopelessly tangled with one of our best family memories.)

I’ve never lived in a city with a championship team before. I was a rabid Blue Jays fan in 1992 and 1993 when they won the World Series – I barely missed a single game of the entire 162 game regular season in 1992 – and when they won they weren’t just Toronto’s team but Canada’s team. But we were still five hours down the road from Toronto and although I made my way downtown to the massive victory party in the Byward Market when they won, it still wasn’t quite the same.

There’s something charming about how a winning home-town team brings the community together. The plethora of cars with Sens flag whipping in the wind, the home-made signs on lawns and windows, the otherwise staid civil servants wearing hockey jerseys over their business suits. The Sens are within a single victory of their first-ever Stanley Cup playoff in modern history; how could an irrepressible joiner like me resist feeding off of – and feeding in to – that energy?

A couple of weeks ago, when the Sens made the first round of the playoffs, I started talking to Tristan about hockey, and about the Sens. I knew his schoolmates would be talking hockey, and I wanted him to be able to join in the conversation. Yesterday, with the Eastern Conference final on the line, I asked they boys if they wanted to watch the game with me. (Simon used to be a Leafs fan, back in the day.) To my great entertainment, Tristan was beside himself with excitement, counting down the minutes to the puck drop.

We stood together in the living room, trying to sing along with the national anthem. Well, Tristan did a fine job singing along, but I could barely croak out the words around the lump of pride in my throat. The national anthem chokes me up at the best of times (I’m such a sentimental patriot), but standing there hand in hand with my boys, watching the Sens in front of the madly cheering hometown crowd, was just one of those moments.

The goal nine seconds into the game didn’t dampen Tristan’s enthusiasm in the least. He watched the first period with a rapt attention that surprised me, and in between muttering encouragement to the players on the screen he even composed a little song about the Sens winning. It was, in a word, adorable.

He only agreed to go to bed at the end of the first period after I promised to tell him the score as soon as he woke up the next morning. His disappointment at the loss was mollified by the promise of a daytime game on Saturday, one he could watch in its entirety.

Make room on the bandwagon – I’m off to see if I can find a Sens jersey, size extra-small.

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Late last week, I was telling you about Paul Kind, the Ottawa inventor who created the Rimroller, a “plastic device the size of a bottle opener that cleanly slices open and unrolls a rim in one fluid motion.” Apparently a lot of people are intrigued by the idea, because the google traffic on Rimroller has been second only to the Ikea dog penis fiasco of 2006.

I was so entranced by the idea of the Rimroller that we made a special detour to Lee Valley Tools on Saturday to pick one up. And since I was there, I picked up one for my dad, and one for my brother. I mentioned I was going to Kerry, and she asked me to pick one up for her dad while I was at it. It does seem like a dad kind of widget, doesn’t it?

It works like a charm! Well, not exactly a charm. In the four rims we’ve collectively rolled since Saturday afternoon, we haven’t won a single thing. But I remain hopeful.

And now, my bloggy friends, I will share the Rimroller love with you. Want to win a Rimroller of your very own? You’ll have to earn it, but I won’t make it too hard on you.

To win a Rimroller, simply leave the URL of a Canadian web site in your comment. Any Canadian web site will do, but bonus points will be awarded for Canadian-ness, creativity, and at the whimsey and caprice of me. I’ll leave the contest open through Friday.

If you don’t like your odds with me, you can always buy your own from Lee Valley Tools here. (And no, I’m in no way affiliated with this guy or the Rimroller, I’m just tickled by the whole idea.)

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It’s a reliable sign of the end of the Canadian winter. No, not the lengthening days, the appreciable warmth of the sun on a frosty day, not even the first day you decide you can safely leave the house in shoes rather than fur-lined mukluks. Spring is truly on the way when the already long (but impressively fast-moving) queues at Tim Hortons lengthen appreciably each year with non-regular Timmy’s fans in the first few weeks of March. It is that annual late winter rite, the Roll Up the Rim to Win contest, that brings them out of the woodwork.

I’ve been lucky so far this year, at least compared to last year when I fruitlessly rolled up more rims than I could count for bupkis. This year, I’m on my third free coffee. And you know I love free. Over the course of the year, I drink hundreds of cups of Tim Horton’s coffee, and they buy my loyalty with three free coffees a year. Not a bad strategy on their part.

But I’ve been thinking about this whole Roll Up the Rim thing. I mean, is that not the least hygenic contest you can possibly think of? I’m going to slobber all over this paper cup, then I’m going to tear off a bit and hand it over to the clerk. I’m surprised the folks at Tim Horton’s aren’t wearing latex gloves while this contest runs.

How do you roll up your rim? I’m a chewer, myself. I work my lower incisors in under the rim and do a back-and-forth kind of mastication to loosen the roll, and then pull it up. It’s not too pretty, so I try to remember to use my thumbnail and the side of my index finger, rather than my teeth, if I’m in polite company.

And then I read about this guy in this morning’s Citizen. He invented a Rimroller, “a plastic device the size of a bottle opener that cleanly slices open and unrolls a rim in one fluid motion.” They’ll be selling it at Lee Valley Tools (one of my favourite stores for gadgets and whimsical indulgences) for the most excellent and affordable price of $1.95. Get yours here!

Canadian ingenuity. Ya gotta love it.

Edited to add: Now you too can win your very own Rimroller! See this post for details.

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Link surfing is a wonderful thing.

I can’t even remember where I was, but I caught sight of something about a lunar eclipse on March 3. Turns out it wasn’t visible from here, only in a wide swath on the other side of the planet through Europe and Africa. Disappointing. I love stuff like eclipses and meteor showers and the northern lights.

Then further down on the same page, I was reading about the solar eclipses for later this year. (Did you know that there are two lunar and two solar eclipses every year? A lunar eclipse is when the moon travels through the earth’s shadow, and a solar eclipse is when the moon comes between the earth and the sun.) Unfortunately, the solar eclipses for this year will only be visible in eastern Asia and South America.

And THEN, I saw that there will be a total solar eclipse ON MY BIRTHDAY next year, AND it will be visible from Canada. Now that’s way wicked cool.

Except, I kept reading and found out that it will only be visible from the very northern tip of Canada, through Nunavut. And I noticed that the path of totality runs right across Alert, Nunavut, which is the northernmost settlement not only in Canada, but in the whole world. It’s a mythic sort of place, this northern outpost, and I started to think about how I’m always saying that I haven’t seen nearly enough of this gorgeous country of ours, and how I’ve always wanted to see the far north, and an embryonic plan started to hatch in my busy little brain.

Wouldn’t it be way wicked cool to make a family vacation out of going to Alert for my birthday to see the solar eclipse? It’s north of the Arctic circle, but it would be high summer, so not only would the temperatures be moderate, but there would be 24 hours of sunlight – and then an eclipse. Really, could you imagine anything cooler than that? It’s Canadian, it’s astronomical, it’s my birthday: three of my favourite things. This was obviously meant to happen.

So I set out to find out how to get to Alert. And that’s when I started to grasp just how big this country of ours is, and that north as I know it really isn’t so very north at all. I mean, Alert – that’s seriously North. Let’s put it in relative terms. Iqaluit, the capital of Nunavut, is just over 2000 km due north of here. (By comparison, Miami is just about the same distance due south.) Well, Alert is DOUBLE that, more than 4000 km due north. In fact, it’s only about 800 km from the North Pole.

Not only is Alert north, or should I say NORTH, but it’s isolated, and kind of desolate. Just about the only thing that’s up there is a Canadian Forces Base and an Environment Canada weather station. But neither the northness nor the isolation deterred me. I live in a generation of extreme vacations, after all – I never imagined there could be a populated place in this country that doesn’t have some form of tourism. (Okay, so ‘populated’ is a bit of a stretch – according to Wikipedia’s citation of the Canadian 2001 census, Alert has a permanent population of six.)

Typically, all of this actually encouraged me rather than discouraging me from my summer holiday plans. I spent quite a while googling various combinations of terms and surfing travel sites only to find out that for all intents and purposes, you simply can’t get there from here. And even if you could get there, it’s not exactly a tourism hotbed.

Nothing comes up, for example, when you search on “hotels in Alert” or “tourism Alert Nunavut”. And the closest you can get to Alert on a commercial airline is to Iqaluit, about half way. If you’re curious, it would cost a family of four somewhere in the neighbourhood of $6000 to fly to Iqaluit from Ottawa in August. That’s not including the charter flight up to Alert, which seems to be of the principal that if you need to ask the price, you can’t afford it.

Sadly, I think Alert is now off the table as a summer travel destination. Lucky for me, it’s currently -42C with the windchill right here in Ottawa, so I can have my very own Arctic experience simply by waiting for the bus.

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