Everything I know about merchandising, including what the word itself means (“the activity of promoting the sale of goods, especially by their presentation in retail outlets”), I learned at Canadian Tire as a teenager. While my primary role there was selling Commodore VIC-20 computers, I received all the training that any floor staffer would, so I learned all about how to put English-language labels facing front, making sure there was always the appearance of products being fully in stock, and that Canadian Tire sells most of the Armour All in Canada.

All of which made me appreciate this floor display at The Bookmark even more.

After being out of stock for a week, Using Her Marbles is back in stock at The Bookmark.

From Black Ink, Fighting the Virus at Central Michigan Prison:

As the unrest inside Michigan prisons continues, how might we make the most of these shared sentiments between what are usually antagonistic groups? The Michigan guards union is holding pickets and calling for the resignation of Director Washington. And some guards are not silent about their sympathies with prisoners. In April, a CO at Cotton Correctional put it plainly, writing “I get it. [Prisoners are] panicking too. While prisoners can still call their families, visits have been suspended. Sometimes we look at each other and we can both tell what the other is thinking: I don’t know what to do.”

The Love & Sex section of The Guardian is an endless source of fascinations, none more so than the “How we stay together” column. Here’s a good example.

In July, Oliver and I inaugurated “Saturday Movie Night” at 100 Prince Street. We alternate movie picks each week. Except that choosing is Oliver’s Kryptonite, so on his choosing-week he provides me with guidelines and I do the actual choosing. I’m also subject to guidelines during my week, although the adherence is allowed to be slightly less rigorous.

Up until October there was an overarching requirement that I pick a movie made during Oliver’s teenage years on his week, and a movie made during my teenage tears for mine.

More recently the guidelines have been more thematic: “Hawaii” (From Here to Eternity), U.S. politics (Bulworth). The best thing about living under this regime is that as long as I meet the guidelines, it’s free reign (admittedly The Goodbye Girl is not strictly, or really at all, a Hanukkah movie, but Richard Dreyfus was raised Jewish, and I just love that film).

Along the way we’ve watched some important movies in the Warren Beatty canon, some classic movies, and some remarkably racist movies made in my teenage years.

I’m particularly proud of myself for finding matches for the weeks when the themes were “Google’s Anniversary” and “The Mexican Revolution.”

Oliver has scheduled a Movie Marathon for us for the holidays; I will put my training to good use.

Here are the 20 Saturday picks we’ve watched so far:

• 2020-07-18: Yesterday
• 2020-08-01: Raiders of the Lost Ark
• 2020-08-08: The In-Laws
• 2020-08-15: Carrie Pilby
• 2020-08-22: Volunteers
• 2020-08-29: The Best Offer
• 2020-09-05: Peggy Sue Got Married
• 2020-09-12: A Star is Born (2018)
• 2020-09-19: Heaven Can Wait
• 2020-09-26: The Intern
• 2020-10-03: The Constant Gardener
• 2020-10-10: The Big Chill
• 2020-10-17: Okja
• 2020-10-24: Charlie & The Chocolate Factory
• 2020-10-31: Bulworth
• 2020-11-07: The Wipers Times
• 2020-11-14: Starting Pancho Villa as Himself
• 2020-11-21: Dan in Real Life
• 2020-11-29: From Here to Eternity
• 2020-12-12: The Goodbye Girl

Although I’m a spendthrift in almost all regards, I have allowed us the luxury of renting movies digitally once a week: we’re very close to being able to find any movie ever made these days, online, between Disney+, Apple TV, YouTube and Netflix. 

Potato pancakes are the only recipe passed through the patrilineal line in our family, from my father’s father to my father to me.

The general shape of the Rukavina latke tradition involves a meat grinder (later a blender) to grind up raw potatoes, to which egg, flour and salt are added, and the resulting soupy mixture fried in oil.

Today I decided to turn my back on a century of family culinary tradition and use this renegade latke recipe from the Times as a guide.

I took shortcuts: I parbaked the potatoes in the microwave for 7 minutes, and I reduced the “resting” phase in the fridge down to 20 minutes. Otherwise I followed along, and the result was at least partially satisfying, more a fishless cousin to fishcakes than anything resembling the latkes of my youth. But they were crispy on the outside and moist on the inside, as promised in the Times article that describes them. Good enough that I’m inclined to try following the recipe chapter and verse next time.

Happy Hanukkah!

Apple released a substantial update to its Maps for Canada in earlier in the month, and there are big changes in Charlottetown as part of this:

• Apple’s “street view” (they call it “look around”) is here now, although, from the look of our VW Jetta in our driveway at 100 Prince Street, the photos are more than a year old.
• Buildings are rendered in 3D if you toggle that mode on, though the accuracy is spotty (Province House is remarkably detailed, down to the exoskeleton currently in place around it, for example, but the Grand Homburg Hotel skyscraper doesn’t appear at all). 

We’re still missing cycling directions, alas:

Walking directions are available, though, and a routing from my house to the Farmers’ Market shows the Confederation Trail as an option.

While the “look here” photos are old, the street map appears very up to date, with the displaced left turn system at St. Peters and Riverside, which opened very recently, already updated (at this writing Bing Maps is missing this, Google Maps has one half of the displaced left system only and only Here Maps is as up to date as Apple):

With 15 cm of snow in the forecast for tomorrow, I realized today might be my last opportunity to ride the new Riverside Drive active transportation path extension from Park Street to Grafton Street, recently paved as part of the Hillsborough Bridge Path project. So I took my bicycle back out of the basement and prepared for a late-autumn ride¹.

The paving has only just completed–I imagine the asphalt was some of the last to flow from the asphalt plant before it closed for winter–and the path is rough and ready enough to not be entirely considered “open” yet (in part because there are no pedestrian/cycle signals installed yet at neither the Grafton St. nor Park St. intersections). But it’s certainly possible to cycle, so that’s what I did, en route to Riverview Country Market for a late-Saturday grocery run.

To get to the path itself from and back to downtown took some gymnastics: on the way there I rode along Richmond Street to Cumberland, through the Cumberland jug-handle, across the carwash parking lot to the gravel trail that goes around the perimeter of the event grounds to the corner of Riverside and Grafton, and then up the path to Riverview Country Market. On the way back I took an alternate route, around the other side of the event grounds, then along Water Street to Prince and home.

One of the foundational tenets of Bike Friendly Charlottetown has been that by joining existing routes in the city together, we can achieve a safe, interconnected cycling network without needing to build from scratch: this path is one example of that. Once it’s formally wired up to the Hillsborough Bridge Path, and the intersections are signalled, it will become an important new link; when the path from the Queen Elizabeth Hospital to Mount Edward Road is finished next year, it will become even more valuable.

Bravx to the provincial government for having the foresight to build this extension into the Hillsborough Bridge project.

1. In taking my bicycle back out of storage today, I extended cycling season by 10 days over last year, making for a total cycling season, starting April 18, 2020, of 238 days, or 65% of the year.

Elderflower Farm Brussels sprouts and and veggie ground over sushi rice with a yoghurt-tahini-lemon sauce.