Rotten Tomatoes on the film Table 19:

Table 19 is marginally more entertaining than actually sitting with a table full of strangers at a wedding — although most screenings won’t come with an open bar, which makes it a wash.

Perhaps we’ll not see this tonight.

From El Deafo by Cece Bell.

Meags Fitzgerald’s book Photobooth is one of my favourite books, for its prose, style and tone, and because photobooths are things I love dearly.

To my surprise and delight, a cabal including UPEI and the Canada Council is bringing Fitzgerald to Charlottetown at the end of the month: she’s presenting her work at Charlottetown Rural High School on Friday, March 31, 2017 from 1:50 p.m. to 3:15 p.m. It’s open to the public. You should go.

While we’re on the subject of graphic books: Oliver and I were in the (also surprising and delightful) Weird Harbour coffee shop today (thank you, Ben Wedge for the pointer!) and we found a copy of The Best American Comics 2016 on the shelf in front of us. Two pieces stood out: Here, by Richard McGuire, and Blanket Portraits by Geneviève Elverum.

We immediately walked down the hill to Strange Adventures to see if we could purchase copies of same, but, alas, neither was in stock, so I resorted to an Amazon order instead (Blanket Portraits appears only inside Drawn & Quarterly Showcase Book 3 from 2005; for some inexplicable reason, Amazon sold it to me used from a dealer in Germany for 47 cents plus shipping).

Halifax’s Ardmore Park has a fenced-in exercise area that’s set aside just for service dogs:

“It is important hard-working service dogs get a chance to exercise and have some off-leash down time, like any other dog. The creation of this small exercise facility will provide a safe, place for me to take my guide dog without the worry of losing track of her, like I might in a big park. It’s also easy to get here by bus,” said Helen McFadyen, Chair of the municipal Advisory Committee for Persons with Disabilities.

An estimated 75-80 registered, professionally- trained service dogs provide assistance to people with disabilities in the Halifax Regional Municipality. They include; guide dogs for the blind, ‘hearing’ dogs for the Deaf (which alert to bells, knocking, and alarms), seizure alert dogs for people with epilepsy, and ‘special skills’ dogs trained to perform specific tasks for a person according to their disability or medical condition.

What a fantastic idea!

To get access to the service dog park you need to have a registered Halifax service dog: this is easily accomplished, even for temporary visitors, by visiting the Halifax Service Centre in Scotia Square.

It took us about 10 minutes to register: we needed to show proof that Ethan is a service dog (we used Oliver’s Dog Guides ID card for this), and to provide Ethan’s breed, colour, and date of last rabies shot. We were issued–at no cost–a Halifax service dog tag and a credit-card-sized key card that unlocks the magnetic gate at the park. We’re allowed to keep the card between visits, meaning that Ethan will always have a place to run around outside when we’re visiting Halifax.

We visited the park every day of our trip to Halifax, and Ethan absolutely loved it (so much so that he decided to steal Oliver’s glove and run around with it as a demonstration of his freedom; the only way I got the glove back was to trade him for my hat: poodles).

Thank you, Halifax.

Sometimes you open a magazine and find an article about the young lad you once looked after as a two year old, now a successful water buffalo cheese maker.

Between Catherine and Oliver and I, we have failed to eat at Wasabi House approximately a dozen times.

It always plays out the same way: we decide to go to the Oxford Cinema, right across the street, to see a movie. We show up early to grab supper at Wasabi House. Wasabi House turns out to be very, very busy, and we give up and go elsewhere.

Tonight we were smarter: we went to an early 4:30 movie, and made a reservation for supper after the movie immediately upon arriving.

The plan worked like clockwork: we exited The Sense of an Ending at the Oxford, walked across Quinpool Road, and sat down at our table

We then enjoyed our very first Wasabi House meal. It was very good.

We’ve been in Halifax less than 24 hours. We’ve already, completely by happenstance, run into four groups of Islanders, including our next-door neighbours.

If you know me at all, you know that I’m a sucker for a good tea slash craft supply shop, and Halifax has not disappointed: out of the corner of my eye this morning, while walking the waterfront boardwalk, I spotted Yu Yo, tucked into a corner of the Brewery Market building on Lower Water Street.

We entered tentatively, as we weren’t sure they were open–it’s not a splashy place with flashing “come in we’re open” signs–and I immediately recognized this as a shop placed on Earth specifically for me.

We started out with a bracing flagon of strong, hot ginger tea, the kind of tea that warms you to the bone:

We then adjourned to the other half of the shop, where all manner of interesting crafting items are on offer. In lieu of my first impulse to just say “wrap up one of everything,” I carefully curated a selection thereof, and emerged after 30 minutes with what you see here:

Four notebooks, two boxes of business card-sized brown card stock, two travel diaries, 10 bookmark-sized envelopes, a small rubber stamp set of numbers and days of the week, and two dozen tiny binder clips.

As Yu Yo is just up the street from the new Discovery Centre, where we plan to spend a good part of the upcoming week, I suspect we’ll be back.

Recommended.

Oliver and I started the tradition of father-and-son March Break vacations when he was 9 years old–shockingly, almost half-his-life ago.

I cannot recall what prompted the idea in the first place, and, in retrospect, the idea of heading to farthest Slovakia as a temporarily-single parent seems foolhardy: what if I’d turned the other way and Oliver had run off into the sewers?

But he didn’t, and so the template was set and it’s a tradition we’ve continued ever since, with only one exception, in 2015:

• 2009: Kosice, Vienna, Nuremberg, Paris, London
• 2010: Düsseldorf, Wolfsburg, Berlin, Mälmo, London
• 2011: Florida
• 2012: Florida
• 2013: Tokyo, Kyoto, Osaka
• 2014: Toronto
• 2016: Halifax

While getting to all of the above has involved different degrees of arduousness, it’s not really been the journey that’s switched “vacation mode” on, but rather the first supper out on the town of each trip.

The first time out, in 2009, it was a smoky Mediterranean second floor pizza-and-beer joint called Amir in downtown Kosice.

In 2010 we arrived so late in Düsseldorf that we missed supper altogether, so the suppertime portal to vacation had to wait until the next night where we ate more ćevapčići than I ever thought possible at the Lika Grill.

In 2013, we arrived in Tokyo late at night after an exhausting day of travel halfway around the world, so our first supper was at 7-11 (we made up for it the next night with an excellent sushi supper, the first of many).

This year, like last, we’re more modest in our ambitions, and have again come to Halifax for our vacation.

But the meal we had tonight, at Edna, ranks among the best we’ve had anywhere: it was simply fantastic on every level. Good food, great service, a comfortable room.

We’re here in Halifax until Wednesday, and plan to engage in all manner of father and son fun. It may not be Osaka, but that won’t keep us down.