Sweet Home Halifax

As I start gearing up for this year's CALL (Canadian Association of Law Libraries) conference,* my thoughts turn fondly to last year's CALL conference. Or rather, more precisely, the location of last year's conference, which was in Halifax.



As most of you know, while I wasn't born there, I grew up just outside Halifax, in a now-thriving suburb of Dartmouth (itself a suburb of Halifax, or rather, more accurately, now amalgamated into the Halifax-Dartmouth moniker) called Cole Harbour. Yes, that Cole Harbour.**

We moved there when I was about 2 1/2, and we left a few months before my 12th birthday, from 1979 to 1988. Consequently, I did all my grade school there. I have very fond memories of growing up at the edge of Cole Harbour (we were almost at the boundary line for Lawrencetown).

I returned to Halifax for my graduate studies, doing both my Law degree and my Master in Library and Information Studies*** at Dalhousie from 1999-2003. I was last in Halifax in May 2003 for my graduation ceremonies,**** so it was a real treat to be able to go back last spring, in May 2009.

I took lots of pictures, which you can view on my Flickr site here. You will also perhaps remember me blogging about the first half of the trip here, here, here, here and here. But if you were basing it on the photos alone, you would almost not know I was at a conference, since all the photos are very decidedly of the tourist variety. In a nutshell:

1) I wandered the waterfront and downtown.


2) I went on the Harbour Hopper.


3) I meandered through the Public Gardens.


4) I took the ferry to Dartmouth and visited ye ol' homestead in Cole Harbour.


5) I got chilled to the bone by wind and rain at Peggy's Cove.


6) I was further drenched by wind and rain in Mahone Bay.


7) I refused to let the wind and rain dampen my spirits at the enchanting village of Blue Rocks.


8) I cheered the slight lifting of the fog***** at Lunenberg.


What the photographic record fails to confirm, however, is that in addition to water and ships and fishing villages and quaint buildings, copious amounts of martinis were also consumed in the company of good friends. My bad - I will have to make sure that the next time I travel, I bring along my camera-which-photographs-friends.



* It's in just under 3 weeks. However, even more pressing, I am doing a short presentation at CALL this year, and my slides and presentation notes are due on Friday. This means I had better start them. Like, now. This year it is in Windsor, Ontario. I can't promise 150 photos, however.

** And no, I didn't know Crosby growing up. Not everyone out East knows everyone else out East. That, and he was a year old when we moved away from Cole Harbour. He wasn't playing hockey yet. A friend of mine whose ex-boyfriend used to coach peewee hockey out there did, however, see him play numerous times, and yes, the rumours are true - he really was as good back then as we all hear now.

*** None of this IM nonsense for me.

**** And my grandmother had just passed away the day before the ceremony, so I wasn't feeling entirely festive.

***** It's the freakin' Maritimes. We'll take whatever we can get to pass for "good" weather.

The only picture I took 3 years ago today...

Three years ago today,* I was on a train with Randal, bound for Takayama, a town known as "Little Kyoto", which is located a couple of hours north of Gifu City. A famous festival happens there every year, and we were lucky enough to be able to stay with our friend Nancy who was living up there, and take it all in.


* Granted, things get a bit messed up when trying to determine exactly when 3 years ago today was, because of the whole international dateline problem. However, I am not getting into the semantics of that argument - 3 years ago today, April 13, 2010, was April 13, 2007, even though I was in Japan and so really 3 years ago "today" for the Japanese should actually be April 14.

Ice, ice, baby

I was going to post this last week, in celebration of the decidedly balmy 27-degree weather we were going to have on Friday. But one thing led to another and I didn't get around to it. So now, in celebration of, uh, the cold and rainy weather we had today*, pixxiefish is now floating back in time to one day this January, when it was about minus-27, and Randal and I met after work to check out the ice sculptures at Winterlude / Bal de neige.

You can view the whole set, as usual, on Flickr. But here is a selection to whet your appetite.




* I figure it's Mother Nature's way of poking fun at me for daring to remove, just this morning, my gloves and my armwarmers (thus far my crowning achievement in knitting; I should really take a picture of them and post it here) from my purse. Man, did I then ever go on to wish I was still lugging them around.

Why I am too busy to blog (Part 2 of many)

We bought an ice cream maker this weekend, and used it today to make strawberry ice cream. And oh my, it was so good and fairly easy.*



I also managed to obtain proof that occasionally, men DO read the manual.



If you're interested (or wish to whet your appetite further), you can view the blow-by-blow ice-cream-making photos on Flickr starting here.


* Says she who merely spectated in the making (though she then was, as you can imagine, an integral participant in the subsequent tasting).

Snow!!!

Doin' it in the dark*

Earth Hour, March 27, 2010, 8:30-9:30 EST.





Though I have to say that this actually isn't too different from many Saturday nights (and others), when we dim the lights and light some candles. We ate steak (done on the BBQ), mashed potatoes, green beans, and spinach salad, with a bit of wine.

* I totally stole that title from my mom, who posted this about her activities during last year's Earth Hour, on Facebook.

Why I am too busy to blog (Part 1 of many)

Last year, I decided to start baking bread. My attempts have thus far been few and far between, because it was kinda hard work.[1]

But after reading a good review of Kneadlessly Simple by Nancy Baggett[2], I decided to take the book out from the public library. About 15 pages in[3], I decided: I. Must. Own. This. Book. So I picked it up from Chapters.

After a couple of weeks of planning, prepping, and procrastinating, I took the plunge this weekend and made an easy-peasy white loaf. It was so frickin' easy, I could cry. The hardest parts, in fact, were:

1. realizing I had the wrong kind of yeast for the breads in the book, and having to explain to Randal (who was headed to the grocery store anyway) what the heck dry, active, fast-acting yeast was and why it would not fill the same niche as dry, active yeast (which I had in the cupboard aplenty - not that Randal was reticent to buy yeast, just that he was curious); and,



2. trying to keep my social life adequately in tune with my baking life for 36 hours.[4]

Not wanting to incur the wrath of the copyright gods, I am loathe to reproduce the whole recipe here. But if any of you are interested, I will send it to you directly. In the meantime, here is my paraphrased version of events.

First, you take a bit of yeast, a whole whack of flour[5], salt (I used sea salt), sugar (I used organic), and, um, some other things, and you mix it in a very large bowl with oil and water, getting a small lump perhaps the size of 3 fists, if such a thing exists. Then, for best flavour and convenience, you put it in the fridge for 3-10 hours. If you are like me, your fridge is so jam-packed that there's no way you can fit the bowl in it, so you instead put it in a small cooler with some ice packs, except the bowl is slightly wider than the cooler so you have to put the cooler on its side and then consequently tape the cooler shut.[6]


Raw dough, anyone? It's cool and refreshing!

That evening, before bed, at about 10:30, I rescued the bowl from the cooler and put it out on the counter.


I'm freeeeee!!!!

Then I promptly forgot about it (on purpose!) until the following evening. You are supposed to let it rise 15-20 hours. I came back to it at 6:30 Monday evening after getting home from work. Thankfully, I had left the plastic wrap on, so it had not yet had a chance to expand past the bowl, onto the floor and gradually into the living room, backing the dog into the furthest corner of the room. (Actually, I probably should have taken the plastic off, because I think the rising was impeded at the end.


All growed up.

At this point, I took the dough and split it into two chunks (not as easy as one might think, I should add), then put them into bread loaf pans. However, as this following picture will attest, not all bread loaf pans are equal.


Trying to make a break for it.

I have made bread numerous times in my silicone bread pan with no problems; however, I have never dealt with such springy, happy-to-rise dough. Which I guess is a good quality in dough, but it disagrees with silicone pans. So I must go buy a second regular loaf pan.

Here is where things got a bit off the rails. When I originally planned this, I had no plans Monday night. But that afternoon, a friend of mine emailed to see if Randal and I were available for dinner. "I'm baking bread" seemed worse than "I'm washing my hair", so I said sure. So I transferred the dough to the pans at 6:30, as I mentioned, and the recipe said to let it rise 1 1/2 to 2 1/2 hours until it is just 1/2 an inch past the top of the pan. Well, as the picture above attests, mine over-rose (about a full inch), as I was out to dinner until past 9:30. Oops.

Then you bake for about 35-40 minutes, plus some extra. I got tripped up on the "plus some extra". In the book, Baggett works it out to about 15-25 minutes extra. I didn't even do that much extra, and it was a bit too long. I think 40 minutes TOPS will do it for my bread next time.


Bread loaves, complete with Lady Gaga-esque not-so-subtle product placement in the background.

As you can see, the loaf baked in the silicone pan also looks like a boule on top, but is definitely loaf-shaped on the bottom, like a distorted mushroom. And I tried some today as an after-work snack, and other than slightly dry edges (overbaked a bit), it is quite dee-lish!


"Feed me, Seymour, I'm HUNGRY!" ...Oh, no, wait - I'm the one who ate the bread, not the monster plant in the background.


[1] For those near and dear to me, it will come as no surprise that I can be a bit of a lazy git, and am fond of taking the path of least resistance whenever possible. For the rest of you, sorry for shattering the Hard-Working Julie Illusion.

[2] I think the original review I read was in the New York Times online, but a quick 30-second Google search failed to turn the review up again, and please see the above footnote for why I am not going to look longer for it.

[3] Similar to my blog postings that ramble a lot before getting to the point, there's a lot of introductory information before the actual recipes, though in Baggett's case, it's actually useful and interesting information.

[4] Normally this would not be a problem. But, you know, once I figured out the perfect schedule for all the steps, well, life happened. But no one died, nor was any collateral damage incurred, and heck, one's bread still managed to rise.

[5] A "whack" corresponds to a "frickload", if you prefer imperial measurements.

[6] That last bit might be optional. I may just need a slightly larger cooler (a smaller bowl is not recommended, since this puppy expands a huge amount); however, since I actually already own a very large double cooler, odds are I am not going to buy a third cooler (how many coolers does a girl need?[6a]), so I think the masking tape is here to stay.

[6a] That's a rhetorical question.