I'm feeling comfortable in my evening of rest tonight. Due to timing and tiredness, we decided against going to Guelph to sing Shape-note tonight, and that was OK. We decided against checking out the live music at our brand new closest bar, and that is also OK.

Just now walking Rover, I found where Comet Lovejoy is supposed to be, in the clear night sky, and there were faint stars, any one which might have been it. I don't have binoculars to be sure- and this, too, feels OK.

I've seen the amazing photos, and I have a good imagination. ... I'm remembering a year ago and the truly amazing skies from Hawaii, so I'm mostly imagining seeing it with the naked eye while standing on a beach in Maui.

Today included: a Christmas Carol party with hordes of cheerful people, mulled cider, mulled wine, a surprising number of children who somehow all fit into in the room with two small kittens, two hours or so of singing, and a "bonus reel" of songs including Tom Leher's Christmas Carol:

Also I walked to market, did a strategic run of 5? 6? errands by car, and took Rover to see the Christmas lights (and Christmas smells?) in Victoria Park.

To cap the evening off, I replaced the clogged freezer-drain tube in our fridge which was causing pools of ice and leaking water. For which I owe a debt of gratitude to Matt of ApplianceVideo.com for their youtube video which exactly described the fix; much more completely than the 1 page of instructions from Whirlpool. The video saved us over $100 on a repair bill- Whirlpool sent the part for free, so yay for that. But they were going to bill quite a bit to install it, and one of us would have to take time away from work at a busy time of the year.

So, yeah, I will happily install a fridge part at 8pm on a Saturday to avoid that hassle. And it didn't even harsh my holiday spirits. As Tom Leher put it so well: "Angels we have heard on high/Tell us to go out and buy..."

And Monday I hope to perform a similar operation on my Macbook Pro: the video describing a memory and hard-drive upgrade make it clear I have all the experience I need to do that myself, after hours using work tools, versus a considerably more expensive trip to the Apple Store. (The most important caution here is using anti-static mats and clips, so I don't fry the memory). Thank you macsales.com for your videos, even though I didn't buy anything from you either.

As with wine-tasting, it's better to pace yourself. When you're on the Butter Tart Trail, small portions are the way to go. Otherwise you'll be overfull before you even get to your fourth tart, and that's just no good.

Dan, Tara, and I started in KW, pointed ourselves north, and set out around 9:30 in the morning. The weather was brisk but not hazardous. Morale was high.

Our first stop at River's Edge Goat Dairy was a disappointment as far as goats milk butter tarts, which we remembered as amazingly good from previous years. Sadly they haven't had the volume of demand necessary to make goat's milk butter for a while. We consoled ourselves by buying food for later: a strong cheese and a tub of chevre-in-spices-and-oil.

Kenilworth Country Kitchen was hopping at 11am. We decided on an early lunch and then a few of their 6? 7? butter tarts. These were definitely better than the best in our town from City Cafe. (And I liked them more than Dee's in Cambridge.) The crust was buttery and substantial, matched with strongly flavoured filling. We bought a few plain and pecan to share, both which were great. As we were finishing up, our waitress came by and said, "Hey, can you do me a favour? The baker forgot to label a batch." She thought they might be skor and toffee flavour, but she wasn't going to eat one to find out, but she thought we might possibly. ...Well, if you insist. Yes, they were skor and toffee, we guessed. It was tough to be sure. Maybe I'll have another bite to be sure. Yes, definitely.

In Mount Forest, we struck out at Farzer's Mercantile, which was one of a huge number of jumble shops we saw on this trip. He had just stopped buying tarts for the winter because the fall customers had dried up. Just as well, because the place was a bit on the creepy side.

Munro's on Main was a sit-down restaurant and nobody was free to take our order for a couple of tarts to go, so we went onward.

We finally broke out of our 1-for-4 record in the last place we tried in Mount Forest. The Spot Restaurant was happy to sell us a tart to go (the standard variety- with rasins). We saved it for later, and did not linger for their Butter Tart Pie, though I considered it. Next time. The tart was good, though not as good as Kenilworth's.

Heading East out of Mount Forest, Misty Meadows Country Market is a German-Mennonite general store, with everything from bulk-size cereal to baking goods to local cheese to butter tarts in the assorted pack of 6 flavours. So we bought two packs. The pecan one that we split was good, though a bit heavy on the lard flavour.

Finally we stopped in Arthur, at Shirley K's Coffee Cafe, tucked into the back of Sussman's, a men's clothing store (which had expanded to women's as well). Over the years we've driven past it a handful of times, and always scoffed a bit- but now we know to go back! They have surprisingly high quality, and prices are a bit high-end, but not crazy. I bought a newsboy-style hat and a button-down shirt. Tara was quite impressed with styles in the women's sections. They plied us with mulled cider and offered us cookies, but we held out for a butter tart. Only one. Standard rasin. Tara judged it to be her favourite- it was more custardy, and lighter in flavour than the others we'd tried. I may need to go back for another try.

On to Elora, through wonderful late-afternoon sun over stark countryside, and as the sun set (at 4:40! Grr) we looked in three or so galleries. All three  had great art, none of which came home with us on this trip, though it gave all of us ideas, some which might have been partially fueled by a group sugar high.

Back at our place, we had a light dinner of the goat's milk cheeses, bread from City Cafe, and one final tart. I don't remember where it came from, and it doesn't matter. It was good. And we have five [ no, six ] left to get through or share, which will be a challenge.

We saw Tara off on her bus back to Toronto, and now I've declared myself Done. This was a wonderful day from start to end, and I feel grateful for it. Although I wish I'd had the oomph to make it to Max and Jer's 8th annual housewarming wine and cheese party as well. Though the idea of eating anything more at all... Sorry guys. Next time.

This is... a neutral/positive story about phone service in Canada, oddly enough. In September and October, I took two trips to the US. I used some of my "Fido Dollars" - which have been accumulating for years - $40 was going to be enough for 200MB of US data-plan and more than enough voice/text than I would need on those two trips.

The September bill arrived when we were in Asia, and the October bill just arrived, so I took a look at both of them. They were both MUCH larger than expected, and my Fido Dollars balance didn't go down.

Oh oh.

I took a deep breath and called Fido, expecting an argument or "there's nothing we can do." It was a surreal and positive experience- from when a human picked up within ONE MINUTE of me calling, to the fact that this human (Morgan) was cheerful and socially aware- starting with "how can I help you today?" "I need to talk to someone in billing, please." "That's me! What can I do for you?" And concluding with her giving me a credit which translated in the end to me paying $40 in real dollars for the extra charges, instead of $40 of Fido Dollars. The entire call was 21 minutes, including her talking with her supervisor for about 10 of those minutes.

So something got messed up, either I didn't manage to complete the online order or their systems lost it. They have no record, I have a text saying I have to confirm the online order using a code. I had a personal note that I'd turned it on. Whatever. I'd be happier if I could've used the Fido Dollars, which continue to accumulate. But I'm happy enough, and especially grateful that I don't need to stress about it longer than the hour just past since I first discovered the bills.

So, perhaps the morale of this story is not procrastinating on the likely-frustrating phone-call, which is what I do often enough. And reiterating that people (and soulless systems, including telecom companies) can sometimes favourably surprise one.

Hello from Taipai, Taiwan. We're here for two more days, and I'm sort of getting the hang of the city after three and a half days. 

Today involved plan Bs, Cs, and possibly Ds. I'm glad for fairly pervasive wifi here- which I discovered today is even more easily found than I had thought- and for TripAdvisor City Guide, which has a full city map with gps locating when there wasn't wifi. And for remarkably inexpensive transit- the metro and buses are typically $0.50 USD a trip.

Today's plan A was: rent a bicycle, and assuming traffic doesn't want to kill me, follow the linear parks along the river, cross and climb the hill to the National Palace Museum, with a few side-trips to the Aboriginal Museum and possibly the War Memorial.

Bike acquisition: successful. There's an app for that, listing multiple dozens of "youbike" parking lots and how many free bikes there were. I had to walk a bit to the closest one with any free, but that was fine. Renting the bike was great- first 30 minutes free, and you either use your transit card and phone-number to create an account, or for a one-time rental, give them your credit-card. Cheap- after 30 minutes, $10TWD per half-hour ($0.33USD). 

That's my bike. Built like a tank, 3 speeds, not great on hills. The big question was traffic- I was a bit worried, given all the scooters, but my first ride convinced me it wasn't going to be a problem. Everyone gave me lots of room, and there was even some of the safety-in-numbers on streets where cars were in a minority. 

My first problem: I couldn't figure out how to get to the waterfront without going into an automobile tunnel. So I punted and followed the streets until I got to a bridge, and crossed it.

I found the war memorial ("Martyrs Shrine") eventually, and saw the hourly changing-of-the-guards ceremony, which was quite involved, taking over 10 minutes for 5 guards to transit the huge courtyard between the front guardhouse and the huge temple dedicated to the war dead; 5 minutes of ceremonial swapping two guards into place at the temple, then another 10 minutes as the guards marched back down to the gate, and swapped the two gate guards. The scale of the place was meant to impress, and it did. The temple is huge; the wall-of-names written on wood plaques reminded me a bit of the Vietnam memorial in DC in scope, though you can't get any closer than 100 feet or so. I didn't see a note of how many war dead Taiwan has; wikipedia says between 1.8 and 3.5 million casualties including civilians, in the as-of-yet unfinished war between Communist China and the Republic of China AKA Taiwan. I really don't know the history. The story told on the signs was eyebrow-raisingly heroic. Rivalling any other war memorial I've seen, certainly. 

Then I cycled off, after taking use of their free wifi to discover that 1) the route I had wanted to take was another car tunnel; 2) google said there was a walking routing that was more or less direct; 3) there was no convenient way to do this on train without backtracking almost to our hotel.

Long story short: the walking route was over a mountain. Battle-tank bicycle did not have tank-treads and I wasn't going to carry it up many flights of stairs. So I backtracked and used the youbike app to figure out where to drop the bicycle (good bye tank-bike!) and switch to metro. I discovered the "secret" to free wifi at the train station, got bus routing that made sense, and went onward to the National Palace Museum!

But first I took what I thought was going to be a quick look at the "Museum of Formosan Aborigines," basically across the street from the palace museum. That was really cool. Since Taiwan is an island, I expected the story to be similar to the Hawaiian islands, but the cultures involved seem more diverse. There are 500,000 members of some dozen or 15 aboriginal nations in Taiwan- recognized as deserving treaty rights, like in Canada, but an apparently less horrific genocidal relation with the settling cultures, at least as this museum describes the history.  The museum went into lots of ethnography and archeology, going back 15,000 years to the oldest known culture which occupied the whole island and died out completely in the last ice age, then successive rounds of cultures arriving and settling different portions of the island, with many established by the time the Dutch and Chinese came along in the 16th century. It was a lot to absorb, and I wish there were more English-language materials, because all of the video narration was Chinese-only. I may spend a bit of time tomorrow looking into what other Aboriginal sites there are to see here. (I also wonder why the mainland Chinese hadn't settled here much earlier than the Dutch? I will try and figure out that mystery later.)

By the time I left, I only had an hour for the national palace museum, which I knew was huge, so I decided to punt so I could be sure to make it down to dan's conference hotel in good time to meet up with him for a concert as part of his conference. ...Hah. 

Now an "expert" on the bus system, I managed to overshoot my stop when it was earlier than google maps said. We immediately went onto a bridge over the river. The bus driver was apologetic, but there was nothing he could do but get me to the first stop on the other side. Google maps said it would be 30 minutes to get back across. So I hailed a cab- making the fourth mode of transit today.

I would have still been on time, except the cab driver made a wrong turn. We didn't have any language in common but he made it clear it was his fault when he reset the meter. In the end he got me to the hotel before the concert started- and Dan was waiting for me in the lobby of the rather amazingly opulent hotel. I will take photos tomorrow, as we have a banquet dinner.

After the concert we had a late dinner with one of dan's colleagues, at the same night-market I photographed last night. Verdict: tasty dumplings, really tasty "Taiwanese pizza", tasty fried soft shell crab, so-so clam omelette, and quite awful fermented tofu, which was expected (it's even called "stinky tofu") but it's a dish you're supposed to try, so we did. 

I feel like I learned a lot today, and tomorrow will get me back to the Palace Museum nice and early before the tourist hordes descend. And possibly a hot springs and sauna in the afternoon, if things line up well. 

I'm so glad I risked rain and biked to work today. The ride home was gorgeous. I briefly stopped to take off my overshirt and by the time I was done, the clouds had shifted and one orange tree suddenly looked like it blazed into flames. I stayed for a moment and watched before putting myself in motion again.

We're going to Asia in 5 days. One week in Korea, one week in Taiwan where dan has a conference, bringing us up to November by the time we get back. Yikes. My brain being my brain, I am discovering there are a lot of OMG critical things. Some of which are, um, not critical.

I will leave some things un-done as much as I'd like. That's OK. I just have to keep telling myself that.

I will, however, advance vote in our municipal elections, and we will submit a vote in our building's annual election of a board of directors, and I will meet the work committments I promised to various people.

And I will, Monday morning, leave behind things that are less than done. They will wait until November. And that's OK.

I'm also grateful for a few nudges from friends that have made me examine how I deal with things that might cause lots of anxiety. It's a work in progress, but that, too, is OK.

Hey! Happy Thanksgiving to those wot celebrate it this weekend.

We just got back from dan's parents' place in southern PA. I'm thankful for a pair of mellow parents-out-of-law, who were great hosts, offered us the right amount of entertainment, sat with us and read companiably at other times, and fed us a delicious turkey dinner.  

I'm thankful for a drive through windy twisty roads today, which were fun, and gorgeous with the fall foliage.

I'm thankful for a partner who makes me laugh, makes me think, and frequently prompts me to say "that is a really good idea."

And I'm thankful for a wonderful home to come home to, now containing three fairly sleepy mammals.

Today we canoed on the Grand- it turned out that the 2-hour 10km trip was just the perfect length for today (putting in just upstream from Victoria Street). We saw loons, and blue herons, a pair of eagles or hawks, an osprey, some kind of aquatic mammal that might have been an otter... it was serene and wonderful.

I am feeling grateful for this river, right here all this time under my nose and under my wheels. And I do look forward to developing a closer acquaintance.