Monthly Archives: April 2011

I HAVE A HAMMER, Therefore I DIY Blog

HEY, people.
You know what I haven’t told you yet? I’m blogging over at BUILD DIRECT, your building supply geniuses on the web.
There, you’ll find me doing home improvement and DIY blogs on a whole range of topics.
If you like the content on the following posts, please comment on the Build Direct blog, not here. Share it, like it, tweet it — whatever you like.
Here are the summaries of my recent posts, and stay tuned for more.

  • 6 Ideas for Balcony Privacy: Honestly, sometimes the best thing about apartment living is spying on the neighbors. The flipside is, sometimes the worst thing is knowing neighbours are spying on you. In the summer, the world’s a fish bowl when it comes urban apartment balcony life. It doesn’t have to be that way. With creativity and crafty splurging, you too can enjoy a special outdoor space while not letting yourself be a spectator sport… READ MORE HERE.
  • Picking Paint Colors: It’s Personal, Not Theory: Committing to a new paint color can be nerve-wracking. A friend once taped 15 paint chips to the wall, and asked her visitors to choose their favourite — of 15 variations on beige. Her inability to break the Bonds of Beige isn’t unusual. Embracing color is a lot to ask in a neutral world… READ MORE HERE.
  • Area Rugs as Wall-Hangings: A Magic Carpet Decor Solution: It’s the oldest of decorating truisms: a house isn’t home until something’s hanging on the walls. It’s personalized touches like artwork or family photography that define your space. Today, it’s rare to see original art hanging in a home, or unique knick-knacks. As a result, we have a crisis of decorating identity… READ MORE HERE.
  • Rethinking Storage: A Personal Story: Space: Everyone wants it, but in a square-foot world, it’s increasingly a luxury. A material age presents a lot of space-making challenges. Where do we put all that stuff when urban dwellings are shrinking? READ MORE HERE.

Coming up in May, I have a whole series on DECLUTTERING the home. I also have a two-parter on growing a kitchen garden. And there’ll be other stuff coming up as well.
Are there DIY stories you wish were getting covered? Are there home-improvement ideas you’d like my thoughts on? Here’s where you can tell me that. Thank you! Enjoy the reads.

Getting it Wrong Means Knowing How to Get it Right

The older I get, the more I see the adage of “darkest before dawn” being a truism.
A certain Zen-master sensibility takes over as I age whenever the fit really hits the shan.
“Oh, wow. A gnarly wave of suckage cresting on the right. Head down, hang on, and pray, woman.”
When I had that almost-a-major-setback with my back the other day, I went to some pretty fucking dark places. It’s been one hell of a rollercoaster week for me, and I’m done, man.
Done on a few levels, that is. I think I’ve hit a major turning point with my back. The almost-major-setback, it turns out, was that I had been doing a very important stretch wrong. Ever so slightly wrong, too.
There was a miscommunication in having the stretch explained/digested, and as a result I was extending backwards instead of forwards, causing a minor  compressing of the spine — but after a week or so of the compression, kaboom. Yowch. Something slipped as I started to pedal my bike and I went to That Dark Place.
And this stretch, the difference in placement of my tailbone is all of, say, 1 horizontal inch. It’s really not a lot, but that angle changes shoulder-level by about 30-degrees, just enough to fuck a girl up.
For me, this incident is a reminder on a number of levels.

  • Close often isn’t good enough. Which is, you know, not good enough.
  • When you’re doing yourself harm, it’s not always apparent until it’s too late.
  • Know the result you want, and how to recognise it.
  • Attention to detail is time well spent.
  • Attempt to undo damage all you like, but if you ain’t gettin’ it right, then you’re makin’ it wronger.*
  • Solutions tend to reverse tides in a hurry. Step 1. Act. Step 2. Worry only if it motivates you to do Step 1.
  • I am a tough bitch.

It wasn’t that I wasn’t working for wellness. I was. Daily rehab and stretching.
I was just doing it wrong. One small part of it. No good deed goes unpunished, as the cynical old bastards always say.
And this too shall pass, say others. With stretching apparently down, it seems like the mix is right and it will settle.
Life comes with interruptions and setbacks. If we can’t take them for what they are, an opportunity to adjust our thinking and try another tack, then we’re destined for a pretty bumpy journey.
What solves other lives ain’t gonna solve mine. It’s not a one-size-fits-all dealio, so there’s a lot of bump-in-the-night that we each need to do to get there.
I’m coming up on three years with this back injury, and it’s the first time I’ve ever nailed this particular stretch that releases this particular combination of muscles. That other old truism, never too late to change, appears to be indicative of my rehabilitation, too.
Believe? Why not. Sure, I believe.**
It’s fitting there’s sunshine today. I could use a little basking in the light.

*If you’re a grammar dork who wants to point out that “wronger” isn’t a word, well, duh. Go back to satire school.
**By the way, not for nothin’, hockey fans, but I hope Vancouver’s Canucks can learn a little of what I’ve learned this week, that a lack of success doesn’t mean failure, it means it’s time to adjust strategy. Getting outcoached is a shitty way to lose a series.

The Death of Culture

Yesterday, I watched Oprah speaking with The Director Who Walked Away From Hollywood, Tom Shadyac, about the new doc he has coming out, I AM, in which he sort of explores the wrongness of “the cult of celebrity,” and how humans are the only thing in nature that takes more than what it needs, because of some ridiculous concept of entitlement.
The conversation took the point of how we celebrate people for nothingness. Oh, look, Paris Hilton goes to a party. OMG, how does she do it? Party queen!

Cartoon is by @meganmything, on http://mycartoonthing.com


Yeah, let’s talk about that. That’s important.
Are you kidding me?
There’s great art, great music, great film, great thinkers, great catastrophe, great urgency, great change coming — all of these things, everywhere around us.
AND YET these are the people we choose to discuss and obsess over? Lame actors and actresses who are simply doing their jobs, or celebrity debutantes who are do nothing but party and endorse brands?
I’ve shat all over gossip columns for years in blogging, and I’ve never written speculative posts that cut down people — famous or otherwise. I don’t believe in it, never have.
And I sure as hell won’t celebrate dumb-ass debutantes who contribute jack to the world. Sorry, walk on, bub. That might be on ANOTHER blog, but not here, baby.
Still, I do follow these things a little, because I think it says important things to us about our society and what we value, and why that means we’re in trouble when the world is in crisis and needs serious solutions.
So, when today, I hear that Jersey Shore is shooting in Florence, Italy, my jaw drops. Admittedly, I’m behind on this news, but…
Florence, bitches. FLORENCE.
ARE YOU KIDDING ME?
My whole LIFE I’ve wanted to go to Florence. The following passage from Wikipedia sure as hell doesn’t suggest it’s a great shooting location for the most vapid cast of reality TV ever.

Florence is arguably the last preserved Renaissance city in the world[11] and is regarded by many as the art capital of Italy. It has been the birthplace or chosen home of many notable historical figures, such as:

I bet Snooki’s over there mouth-breathing, chewing Hubba-Bubba goin’, “I’m packin’ for Eye-taly! We’re visiting a lady named Florence! She has nice food at her house, the guy said. And LOTS OF WINE.”
I used to be this bleeding-heart type who thought Eugenics sounded like a horrible thing, but then this cult-of-celebrity shit happened and now I want to sterilize Snooki, The Situation, Paris Hilton, the Kardashians, and a lot of other people.
Let’s sterilize them. Let’s end this now. Let’s save the future of civilization.
Or, you know, you could up your standards on filmed entertainment, America. “No more vapidity!” should be our clarion rallying cry.
Seriously. Wake up. Look at the mediocrity we celebrate. You don’t THINK this is hurting our soul?
But no. SEASON FOUR. IT’S NEVER GOING TO END. I’ll need a supply of Tylenol just for all the facepalming this will incite.
Snooki is a millionaire. If Snooki becoming a millionaire while espousing the advice “Study hard but party harder” in a two-hour Rutgers University speech/appearance for $32,000, more than the average person earns IN A YEAR, doesn’t suggest AMERICA IS BROKEN, then I don’t know what will.
Now, instead of keeping this lame series where it belongs, in JERSEY, it’s crossing the Atlantic to a place where, as a WORLD, we are lucky that time hasn’t erased, and we’re subjecting that hallowed Renaissance city to this horror that is the lowest of the cultural low that America has to offer?
So wrong. On so many levels.
Maybe I’m cynical. Maybe I’m jaded. People have often suggested this to me: “Steff, you’re such a cynic.”
Yep, heard THAT before.
So, that said, lemme reach here — lemme open up to the gods of possibility and offer that maybe, JUST MAYBE, this is the season Jersey Shore at long last has a character arc in which the vapidest of guidos and guidettes finally grow and learn that there’s more to life than beer bongs and g-strings.
Maybe Snooki grows a much-anticipated soul and learns to breathe through her nose and think at the same time.
Maybe “THE Situation” finally realises the world is bigger than he is, he’s just a cog on its wheel, and thusly he changes his name to the less obnoxious “A Situation.”
Maybe THIS is that season.
But I be it’s not. Growth and redemption apparently don’t sell in America anymore. Mediocrity, however, rakes it in.
I fear for Florence. I fear Italians will get a load of this crew and think “If we knew their descendants would’ve turned out like this, we never would’ve let the emigrants set sail. Had we known…”
But here we are. Season four. Let the wheels of exalted mediocrity spin yet once again.
I keep hoping America, and everyone else, is gonna wise up to this “Hah-hah, they’re so funny when they drink, let’s make them famous!” idiocy, but it might just be that my expectations are too high.
Come on, prove me wrong. Stop watching. Demand more.

YO, WHAT IT IS, PEOPLE! (Filler Worth Eatin')

I’m doing a lot of writing for work right now. Writing for work, to find work. Other work.
Writing for the soul? Not so much.
It’s too bad, too, because Spring is when one ought to be writing for the soul. Given it SNOWED last Thursday, perhaps Nature has had a hand in the Soul-Squelch Factor. Cherry blossoms be damned.
So, you know, soul-squelch aside and all, I thought I’d pop in with a warm-and-fuzzy “Yo, what it is, people” journalling post and see where that gets us.
It’s a difficult Spring for me. A lot is going on. But I’m also kind of kicking adversity’s ass as it continues trying to suppress me. Emphasis on it “trying.” Because I am Ass-Kicker Girl, and I am getting it done.
Back injury rehab is stupid, but somewhere on the other side of this town, a good man in his early 40s is nearing the end of his life, and I’m reminded that life is not always easy, but always worth fighting for, and some of our “struggles” can be important reminders of what we’ve not been valuing. How much I’ve realized that of late, I can’t tell you. Thank you, Derek.
There’s a lot going on beneath my skin these days, simmering-thought-wise. Just… so much to wrap my head around. Where I’m going, what I’m doing. Pretty pleased with all of it, scared too. A lot of choices on priorities have to be made, and it ain’t gonna be simple to get there from here.
If anyone gets there from here, though, it’s me. I’m all about journey-making… just forgot to get on the road for a while.
People forget that life is like driving — you can’t just be watching the car ahead of you, you gotta be watching the car ahead of the car. That’s where success is: foresight, anticipation. I’m working on that, and it doesn’t make for intelligent status updates, tweets, or emails.
Speculation sounds ass-hatty because so much of what we actually undertake and accomplish is bump-in-the-night. Or, should be. If you’re too married to the mapped journey, it really limits the ability to improvise with unexpected opportunity and divergent paths.
Going hands-free, unmapped the whole way ain’t so bright either. Can be amazing if you’ve the balls, luck, and creativity to make it happen, like someone else I know. Balancing a mix of planning and improv, that’s a tricky deal, but I think I’m starting to get it done.
Doing what I gots to do, I’ll tell ya ’bout it when it’s all said and done. Weeks? Months? Whatever, baby.
Yes. WorkWorkWork. Weeks, months. God knows I hope it’s weeks before the future reveals itself. Months, whew.
I’m tired of having nearly no time for people. I have to be rehabbing, recharging, that sort of thing. I need to do the self-employed looking-for-work stuff, working the work I’ve got, and juggling the rest. I watch TV to shut the brain down in between. I need the dumb-ass recharging provided by network television today. People enter the scene sparingly, and not many of ’em.
It’s a tricky balance the best of times, working/rehabbing/finding more work, but it’s one of those times I know I’ll get to the end of it and feel really damned self-satisfied, since I’m the one putting this tired ass to bed every night and I know what it’s taking.
In the meantime, it’s so isolated and repetitive.
GoGoGoGoGo, STOP, Rinse, Repeat. GoGoGoGoGo, STOP, Rinse, Repeat.
Fuck, man. I tell you.
You know who’s got it going on? Cats.
We call cats stupid, but that’s just what they want us to think. We say, “Oh, stupid cat, just lying in the sunbeam, batting a little ball around. Lazy thing.”
Cat’s lying there, thinking, “Yeah. Stupid. Uh-huh. Look who feeds me, washes me, pays for my medical, and works 40 hours a week to get it done. Oh, look — the sunbeam moved. I’ll just wriggle to my left. Drive safe, schmuck. Seeya in 10 hours. Bring me some bacon.”
When I die, I want to come back as a cat. A long-hair, just to really fuck with my owner.
But, for now, I’m the hamster on the wheel. Thank god I don’t have a cat, might just find myself eaten one of these days.
Summer’s here, though. Or, almost. I still have slippers on. Naked warm feet, THAT’s summer. The sunlight and slow-warming trend is a welcome battery recharge and brain-jumpstarter of late.
Meanwhile, I know what I want: To be a cat basking in a summer sunbeam.
Or, you know, [mumblemumble_TellYaLater_mumblemumble].
For now, I’m a gimpy girl hoppin’ on a bike before a busy day ahead.
Have a good one, minions. Stab ’em with your plastic forks if they give you a hard time.

Confessions of (Not) a Bandwagoner

Here we go: playoffs, baby.
I actually love playoff hockey. There’s nothing more fast-paced and exciting than when your team starts doing well in the post-season. The spring of ’94 was one of the most exciting times of my life, when this town went on the playoff run with the Rangers. Man, was that some kinda hockey.
And maybe the Olympics were a once-in-a-lifetime experience, but so’s a Stanley Cup Playoff Run in Vancouver, and, for me, the playoffs are a bigger, happier, more awesome memory for me than the Olympics. It was unexpected, it was for us and no one else.
This year is the first time I’ve watched almost none of a season. I can’t believe it. Feels so odd to not be into watching sports all winter anymore. But there you have it.
But don’t let that fool you. I want the Canucks to go all the way. I want them to play inspired, to get hurt and come back from it every single game. I want little Vancouver boys and girls watching and later playing street hockey with all their favourite team players’ names taped on their backs.
I want the streets to open up and bleed maple-flavoured hockey blood, man. I want a choir of angels harmonizing “Hallelujah” behind Stompin’ Tom belting out The Good Old Hockey Game while an arena stomps along.
YET I didn’t watch the regular season.
Some yahoos on Twitter last night are exactly the kinds of asshole fans that kind of turned me off of watching day-in, day-out. Some are saying Bushisms like “You’re either with us or against us!” and calling people tuning into the playoffs “bandwagoners”.
Those dickheads make it seem like THEY did what these 26 guys accomplished on the ice. Um, no, they’ve done nothing but swill beer and mouth off at their TV — those 26 teammates have bled and ached for the game.  They’ve been well-paid to do so, yes, but they’ve bled and ached and trained.
So, I’m here to tell you the real reason I don’t watch the full season of hockey anymore.
From 1991 to 2004, I probably watched or listened to 80% of ALL the Canucks games that were broadcast. I was a fan girl, baby. I didn’t miss a MINUTE of the spring of 1994. I was managing a photo lab and on game nights when I was working, you could hear the game in the mall corridor, filtering from my back lab, where it would be blasting.
When the team started sucking again, I stuck with them. When a new empire began with Bertuzzi and Naslund and Mo, I was  in love with that hard-hitting great-shootin’ team.
2003-2004 was The Year It Changed for me, in more ways than one. The hockey season was all right, sorta phoned it in with a tendency to start slow and win late, and the playoffs sucked. It was game 7, series 1, against the Minnesota Wild. Dominating the first 3 games, they lost the next four, and the Wild took the series. I was the fool with the hope they could undo the falling-apartness and actually WENT to Game 7 live.
You know, the infamous game where Captain Markus Naslund later confessed the team “choked”? It wasn’t their first post-season choking, it was just the most offensive occurrence of recent years. THE FUCKING MINNESOTA WILD!
I stayed until the end of the game, because that is what a FAN does. I don’t leave early, it’s disrespectful.
And then some asshole threw a lidded beer from higher up, and missed the ice by a mile — hitting me in the head, exploding all over me.
That was it. I was done.
And it coincided with the Lost Year, thanks to the NHL strike — which caused me to loathe the pettiness of both players and owners. With no hockey available, I learned there WAS life after hockey. Holy toledo.
I got out of the habit of watching, and I liked being out of the habit. I found it harder to focus on pro sports anyhow, having had a head injury during the year of the strike, and not trying to watch made more sense.
When fans are rabid and love their teams and support them, and in losses suck it up, grumble a bit, but know that’s how it rolls, they’re great.
It’s the dickheads with the us-versus-them, take-it-all attitude that boo opposing teams’ anthems, pitch beers when they’re unhappy, get argumentative, etc who turn folks like me off.
Year-round? Well, I find the “fans” who insult and belittle the team for a loss after 4 wins turn me off too.
When the team’s playing hard, showing up, like the Canucks have all year, then that’s all a fan can ask. Sometimes I think Vancouver fans ask too much, and I grew tired of being in the mix. I needed a break.
So, am I a bandwagoner? Nah. I’m a fan who’s watched them for much of 25+ years. I’m a fan who doesn’t like having to commit to watching sports anymore. Not right now. I’m a fan, I’m just not an observer.
I was bantering with a friend in email last night, who surprised me when she said she was watching, and confessed she only watches playoffs, so I asked her about whether she thinks she’s a bandwagoner. Her reply?

To appease their taunts of “bandwagoner!”, I tell them I’m not a fan of hockey, I’m a fan of fans, and fans are really fun this time of year! 😉

I have to agree. Some fans are HILARIOUS and just so much fun at this time of year, and I love the energy they bring to the city — those with shrines on their work desks, hockey flags, a schedule for washing/wearing their jersey — they crack me up and are everything a fan should be.
Know what I want this year? Average fans who can handle the playoffs WIN OR LOSE. Fans who respect the effort, who don’t become assholes if it should go awry, who understand there is no US OR THEM in Vancouver — this is VANCOUVER. We’re in it together, but not everyone’s addicted to hockey. It’s not a CHARACTER flaw. It’s like chocolate versus vanilla — you like what you like.
But mostly, I want the Canucks team to put it all on the line, hit any motherfucker with the balls to touch a puck, pass clean, hit fair but HARD, make fast changes, listen for their linemates, remember how much their fans have stuck with them over the decades, do what the coach says, and fuckin’ WIN.
That’s what I really want. This town would be wild after a Stanley Cup.
Maybe that’ll make me fall in love with regular season again. Who knows. Or maybe I’ll just keep hockey as a Canadian rite of spring.
Either way: Bring us the Cup.

A Last Look at a Horrible Crime

In 2008, my brother’s closest friend from high school and his early 20s was killed in a bizarre Craigslist murder that has captured the media’s attention.
Yesterday, the jury came back with a verdict of guilty. Mark Twitchell will, it seems, spend 25 to life behind bars. (Thanks, Jury.)

The poster Johnny's friends made when he first "disappeared".


My brother has obsessed over the case, following it in extreme detail. The murder broke his heart, I guess because Johnny Altinger was one of those quiet dorks that everyone loved because he was able to be himself. John was a little obnoxious, a little sweet, a little clueless. But he was a whole lot of good. He was a good, good, good man, and he trusted people at the blink of an eye.
Their crowd grew up on the computer, they were the original “social media” crowd. They talked on chat systems, came of age as the humble modem grew from 110bps to 300, then to 1200, then 2400… and now at seemingly the speed of light.
It was an oddball mix, back then. Folks too smart for the general population, kids too outside the norm to conform to the school crowd. They found like-minded friends on the precursor to the Internet, the Dial-Up Generation.
Johnny was the kind of guy who, in the ’70s, would’ve been stuck in lockers or mocked senselessly at school. He had a big nose, bad glasses, awkward gait, goofy teeth. But, coming of age in the ’80s, he found his crowd online, and so did my brother. Some of their friendships are as strong now, 25 years later, as they were then — friendships born on ideas and discussions, not just happening to be in the same class or born in the same neighbourhood, friendships that seemingly came from a deeper place and lasted longer on merit alone.
Johnny A and my bro kept in touch when Johnny moved north. They chatted online, stayed in touch, traded book titles to read, shared video files — at length. It wasn’t a surprise to hear that, given his newly isolated northern home, John was meeting more friends off the computer, and even using Craigslist for dating.
All right: I’ll be the first to admit that Johnny annoyed me. A lot.
But he was my brother’s friend, I was 16 or 18 or so, and that’s how it rolls — older brothers and their friends torment the annoying little sister. I think it’s Sibling Rule 72, paragraphs A through C.
That said, there were those rare moments where we both managed to be ourselves, rules aside, and I liked what I saw of him. More importantly, he was always a friend when my brother needed one.
But we were never close, and I don’t want to pretend we were. My brother didn’t live at home when he and Johnny were friends, so I really seldom ever saw him. He wasn’t even someone I’d even thought of in 5 years, aside from my bro’s rare mentioning of him.
Still, when I heard not only of his death but the horrific circumstances behind his death, I rethought many things I assumed to be true in life.
No one I know will ever be bludgeoned, stabbed, dismembered, burned, and dumped in a sewer. Wrong. Internet violence is a myth, it could never happen to me. Wrong. This stuff only happens in the movies. Wrong. Canada is a nice safe place. Wrong.
I’m more skeptical of people I meet now. More dubious of online followers, usually distrustful that they are who they say. When I see X many people in my audience, I now assume, the larger the number grows, that some amongst them are just plain evil. Because now I know it’s out there.
I thought my innocence was shattered in my teens, but the truly heinous nature of this crime, and the fact that it’s even touched the peripheries of my life, gave my remaining innocence a big adjustment.
And it’s so weird.
Now everyone wants to know about John. Everyone wants to hear “what was he like?” My brother can’t even log onto Facebook without a new reporter trying to contact him.
But where were these curiousity-seekers when he was looking for friends and relationships on Craigslist? Sure, now you have a story to file. Now you’re bored and surfing the web at work. Now you’re interested.
That part makes me angry. Now, interested. Now, prying through his life. Always with the sensationalizing. But I was trained as a journalist, so I get it, too. Doesn’t mean I have to like it.
Sigh. I don’t know. This whole case… the tragic death of a good guy, Johnny Altinger, it’s just so fucking unsettling when I think of the guy I knew, and THIS happened to him. If there’s anything I have, it’s a very healthy imagination. And this turns my stomach every time a flash of an image hits me.
My creative side has always wanted to write macabre books with twisted deaths. Sometimes I think about it now, but I stop at a thought of Johnny and I feel physically ill. It’s straight out of Dexter, ripped from fiction, what happened to him.
There are things that happen that really shake our faith in people, and this chapter has been one for me.
There’s a severe disconnect between the kind of person it takes to commit this kind of crime, and the kind of trusting person it takes to be a victim of this crime, and the idea that they both are in this same world, at the same time, breathing the same air…
When they told me the world was full of possibilities, well, I never for a moment wanted to believe they meant it like that.
Still.
Twitchell didn’t get to become the serial killer he dreamed of becoming.
People noticed him. He got caught. That says something, right?
People are horrified by the crime. That says something, too, right?
But I still can’t watch Dexter. It cuts too close to home. I’ve never been able to imagine a victim’s mindset like this before, and I hope I’m never able again.
Rest in peace, Johnny.
I hope it’s the hardest time imaginable that Mark Twitchell serves. I honestly do.
Today, as a testimony against this kind of crime that preys on those who are lonely and looking for friendship, be nice to someone who might not get a lot of attention. Don’t brush off that small-talk-making stranger at the bus stop or store. Give them just a moment of your humanity. You just never know.

Keeping it Real on Vancouver’s 125th

In 1966, my parents moved from Ontario to Vancouver.
There are days when the beauty here still astounds me, and I’ve lived here all my life.

Vancouver's Burrard Bridge, shot on yet another cycling adventure.


It’s Vancouver’s 125th birthday today. Young city. It shows.
These days, I still love my home but I’m under no illusions how much it has changed… and how much others still seek to change it. An influx of easterners, Americans, and other foreign nationals keeps expanding this town, which these days feels 10x the size it was in my youth.
Prices are ridiculous — on everything from food to real estate. Buying here seems a fantasy on par with that dirty dream I have about Josh Hartnett.
There’s a Hollywood feel to this town that just annoys the shit out of me — the yuppies and well-moneyed folk just aren’t my bag, never have been, never will be. After working more than a decade in Yaletown, I still find myself tired of the cliches in that neighbourhood. One more poodle in sunglasses, I’m gonna fucking freak.
That that’s how it rolls here in Hollywood North.
For the few who are like me, who were raised here and are of the land, there’s a different air about the true locals. They’re more casual, relaxed, less likely to live downtown, big on being outdoorsy. Or maybe that’s just talking about my friends.
I don’t know, but today I’m thinking about how it’s really two cities. It’s the lowkey city I grew up in that was hippy central in the ’60s, the birthplace of Greenpeace, land of marijuana and forests and water and sand between the toes, grizzly writers and struggling artists.
And it’s the city of glass with urban dwellers moving in from all around the world, with kayaking through the central core and gastronomy of little compare and movies shooting on every street and schnauzers in sweaters.
How do I reconcile the two cities? I pick my locales.
The older I get, the more I realise this place will always be home, but I may not always want to make my home here… the change gets oppressive, like the weather, sometimes, but weather I can find elsewhere — and change can be eluded.
Urban life has its appeals, but the white noise of energy buzzing, endless drone of traffic, peppering of sirens, concrete as far as the eye can see, crowded transit, grumpy pedestrians, pesky beggars, greedy merchants, cramped spaces… sometimes it’s just feeling endless.
It’s like the old conversation goes — Why do you keep hitting yourself in the head with a hammer? Because it feels so good when I stop. City life feels like that, sometimes.
Where Vancouver differs from so many cities, though, is how close escape is at hand for the non-travelling man.
On a bike and in in less than 25 minutes, I can stand under evergreens taller than downtown highrises in vast tracts for forests. I can go to the north of the city in about an hour, on transit no less, and be in the mountains with rainforests, overlooking the Pacific.
This isn’t an endless sprawling metropolis. When it comes to man versus nature in Vancouver, nature’s still winning in some areas. That’s rare in an urban setting, and I’m smart enough to appreciate that.
It’s a love-hate thing, for me, here in Vancouver. I don’t like all the changes, all the new people coming here… but I’m so proud of this city, it’s so beautiful, it deserves to be a jewel in the world’s crown, as cliche and pathetic as that sounds.
This is home. The endless rain, it’s a part of me now. Take that away and I’m emotionally lost, but too much of it and I start to drown — something I think is true of a lot of born-in-Vancouver types. The grey, it’s permissiveness in how it allows a sort of emotional dampener… good for writing, I find.
This place, it gets in you. Even if I ever leave for another part of the world, I’ll never be able to stay gone.
It’s home. It’s my rainforest. My edge of the world — concrete jungle or no.
It’s Vancouver. Happy birthday, hometown.

Common Sense Food-Shopping Adds Up at the Bank

I’m a writer. A broke-ass writer, it’ll probably say on my tombstone. This means I’m cheap at my very core.
For centuries, writers have toiled for the mere sake of writing. Usually, writers earn crap wages, supplement their calling with “jobs,” and that’s the way the cheap-eatin’ cookie crumbles.
Me, I’m okay with that. If I work too much, I may not have the time to write something brilliant (yuk-yuk-chuckle), even if it doesn’t pay, because, without the writing, I don’t maintain my craft, I don’t keep kicking wordy ass, and life gets complicated in a hurry. And, sorry, but those other jobs? Not what I enjoy. Writing, I love.
So, choices get made.
I know, there’s this whole “Buy ethical food! Organic is everything!” kick, but a lot of those folks pushing that lifestyle and those food-buying habits CLEARLY don’t live on MY budget.
And I’m a foodie, so, y’know, fuck ramen.
Sometimes I buy ethically, sometimes I don’t. In my perfect wet-dream reality where I sleep on sheets of gold, with pillows stuffed of angels’ feathers, get cocoa-butter slathered on my ass daily, and all that, I’m buying local, 100% organic small-grower foods.
In this reality, though, my happy place sings when I see a can of Suraj’s chickpeas for sale for 67 cents. Screw your expensive ethics, buddy.
At least I know what my financial reality includes, and when I do shop, I shop where my bucks stretch the furthest.
Today, I made a Twitter comment slagging the local grocery chain “Save On Foods” as being a complete joke, and was surprised how many folk replied. Half agreed, the prices are 10-20% higher than elsewhere, and for no justifiable reason — the generic brand is shit, the other stuff includes your average staples to be found anywhere. Whole Foods is similarly priced, but they have products I feel better about buying when I do know for realz that I’m overspending.
The reality is, I think a lot of people fail to note how much they’re overspending on groceries. When prices have already increased an average of 5% this year, are you sure you’re being thrifty on your food choices?
I save a lot of money just by making my own things, like homemade tzatziki. Doing the math today on the fancy house-made tzatziki sold by Whole Foods versus mine, which is made with real organic Greek yogurt, lemons (not cheap vinegar), and high-quality olive oil, I found mine costs $6.50 for a litre volume of it, versus $6.30 for a QUARTER of that at Whole Foods. And those savings take all of 20 minutes to make happen, and it lasts a month in the fridge.
Hummus, another example. I make my own beans, use more of the boiling liquid/brine for thinning for consistency, no olive oil, etcetera, and I think I make some of the best hummus you’ll ever try, again at about 30% of the purchase price for commercially-made hummus, and it keeps two weeks but can freeze for up to three months. (Meaning I’m saving 70% or more every time.)
Furthermore, when it comes to any kind of beans, and I’m using a lot for soup or something, I hydrate and cook my own — often for 75% or more off what canned beans costs, then I put extra beans in their liquid, in Ziploc bags, and freeze them for up to 3 months — which I then thaw and use as I would from a can.
Some boxed wine can actually be terrific and really saves you money (30% or more) if you’re a 1-2-glasses-a-night person. Then, save yer moolah for a nicer bottle with a splurge item on the weekend.
Whole chickens — even if you buy already-roasted ones at the Supermarket — are a huge budget-saver. While the ready-at-the-market roasted birds are usually 1.2-2 pounds, for $7.99-11.99, I can get a 5-7 pound chicken (Vancouver, visit Poultry Land on Granville Island) for $15 or so, a really good Halal / Kosher bird, and the amount of meat that comes off that is phenomenal. But, face it, that smaller, less-economical chicken can be a lifesaver when you want a healthier meal on a weeknight. Grab some salad fixings, a nice bread, and make it go further.
Whatever’s left of those roasted chickens gets frozen in small packets for salads, sandwiches, tacos, and more. Chicken bones get simmered (frozen until then) for stock, and I can make a good 20 LITRES of stock, which I then cook down to a super-concentrated 1 cup or so and freeze for a LONG time. I mix a tablespoon of “stock” with a cup of water, and then I have stock for all manner of uses — instead of paying $4 for a LITRE of the supposedly-fancy stock I think is real boring. That’s about $80 worth of “fancy” stock, plus all the chicken that can go in salads and other meals, for a total of $15 an an afternoon of work (which is really only an hour or so of labour, just a lot of waiting for shit to simmer — watch movies!).
Now and then I plan burrito factories. When you get wraps on sale, buy them, freeze them, and get ready to make wraps and burritos. You can do classic chicken-and-bean, Indian chicken curry, whatever, but I generally find I can use good food, control the calorie & nutrition count, and provide myself with up to 20 freezable lunches for under $2 each. Just make sure it’s drier stuff you’re putting in there — nothing soupy or it’ll be a mess later.
Let’s face it, the cost of living is skyrocketing. Somewhere between making ethical food choices and fiscal ones lies the perfect medium.
I buy nice local produce when I can, I save in other areas, and make compromises or plan ahead to get savings. An example of planning ahead is, by knowing a great quality produce shop I love has “customer” day on Wednesdays, I shop there and save 10% on everything… mostly quality local stuff, and that’s where I get my organic eggs, rice, and other things that never go on sale otherwise. But, THERE, I know my coconut milk costs 20% more there than another store’s prices, so even saving 10% means I’m throwing out money, when it comes to buying the coconut milk.
So, be intelligent. Buy what’s cheaper there. Buy the other stuff elsewhere. Yeah, it’s work, but it’s YOUR money and YOU had to work for it, so why not SAVE it with a little work now too?
It’s really about realizing how many products you buy on any given shopping trip and how much each little item can blow your budget. Add the difference up. Just today, one pack of pita bread was 25% more across the street. I saved $1 on that one item. Imagine how much that adds up in a single month, a single year. I live in an exorbitant city on an underwhelming income, it adds up a LOT.
Know how the saying “getting nickel-and-dimed” means a person’s pissed off at getting price-gouged? Well, we nickel-and-dime ourselves daily. Think more about everything you spend, and who sells X item for less, make some effort, and you might see a huge difference in your bank account. God knows I have.