I oversaw the installation of new Bell FibreOp to Lisa‘s office on Queen Street yesterday. It’s a tricky old building, and she’s on the third floor, in an enclave reached through the building next door. So, in the pantheon of installs, not a walk in the park.

Mike, the Bell installer, proved more than up to the task. He was kind, patient, creative. A credit to the company.

Thank you, Mike.

In Failblog, Bethany writes:

You don’t see when I stay up late night after night trying to catch up and not making it. Or when I fail to be there for a friend, or let down my family. Or when I don’t exercise or take care of myself. I think there are lots more of those than the triumphant posts I put up.

So let’s normalize failing, and give each other a little grace when it happens, and remember to congratulate people all the more for the good posts they put up!

In this week’s The Quack, Dave writes:

One tiny programming note: a few times over the years, I’ve had people say they’re glad to hear everything is OK with my family literally all the time, because they read about our lives in the Quack. And while I will say we are absolutely lucky and happy in many ways, I hope you don’t think the Quack reflects absolutely everything in our lives… and that we don’t have, like, problems. That was never the point of this newsletter. This isn’t my whole life in a newsletter. This is the collection of (mostly) lovely mundane things that makes life worth living. This is the cup of tea on the deck in a stolen moment with Erin. This is the sink I figured out how to fix myself. This is the glimpse of the sunrise before a busy day. This is the good stuff.

So there’s owning-up-that-everything-isn’t-perfect in the air.

My summer has been dreamy, by times. I’ve swum in the ocean more times than I can count. Enjoyed wonderful meals with family and with friends. I’m in love. The world is grand.

My summer has been dreadful and hard and angry by times. Grief continues to raise its hand at inconvenient times. I’m discovering that I have so much to learn about how to thrive in a relationship. My daughter has meltdowns, and is worried and anxious a lot of the time, and supporting her, and finding supports for her, is a part-time job. The world sucks.

Both stories are true. 

My favourite installation at Art in the Open this year was Sandi Hartling’s NO THING. I took a vertical panorama of it:

Three things I need help from the lazyweb for:

Flat Light Switch

I have a light switch for a half-bath that a pantry door opens into. It is a low-profile “decorator” light switch, but the profile is still enough that 50% of the time the pantry is open the bathroom light comes on. I seek a completely low-profile “flat” light switch that won’t suffer from this problem. Lots of chatting to staff in the electrical sections of home goods shops, and lots of Googling, have resulted in no luck. Anyone?

Flat USB Charger

Lisa has a couch with an electrical outlet behind it into which a USB charger is plugged. The USB charger is a brick that sticks out about three inches, meaning it pokes into the couch. I’m looking for a low-profile USB charger, one that sticks “across” rather than “out.” I’m thinking of something that would have the profile of a deck of playing cards, with the plug part on the flat part. Like if Flat Stanley was a USB charger. Anyone?

Set And Forget Shower Temperature Control

In sensible Europe the shower controls have separate controls for “flow” and “temperature,” meaning that one can set the temperature to a comfortable level, and then avoid the daily “get the water temperature right” dance. This is convenient and, in our household, would be a huge help, as regulating the temperature is currently beyond Olivia, and so this remains the one impediment to 100% showering independence for her. I’ve raised this with local plumbing shops and responses have ranged from “huh?!” to “that will require ripping your walls apart.” I’d like to easily drop in a replacement for an existing “pull out to turn on, swivel right and left to control temperature” control. Anyone?

Until last week I’d never swum in the Victoria Park Pool, the public swimming pool operated by the City of Charlottetown that’s an easy cycle from my house (and an easier cycle still from Lisa’s).

I’d always imagined it to be a fetid facility, best avoided.

But it was a hot day, and Lisa was chuffed and encouraging. We swam. It was a delight: free (!), spotlessly clean, friendly staff, not at all crowded. The perfect antidote to the heat that ailed us.

We went back today. Same delight.

I love living in a city with a free public pool; I regret thinking it was anything less than amazing all these years.

An unexpected late night beer on the patio at Craft Beer Corner. Reading newly-arrived Holo 3.

Matt Haughey, who has been helpfully publicly digital for a delightfully long time, just published an update to a 2011 blog post about podcasting: A less exhausting guide to podcasting in 2022.

Other than “record an MP3 on my phone and email it to my blog where it becomes a de facto podcast episode”-style podcasting, I haven’t cut audio for a podcast since the last episode of Live from the Formosa Tea House, recorded just a few months after Haughey’s original guide was published 11 years ago

It took forever, even without careful editing, to record, edit and publish that, and Haughey’s updated guide makes it clear that modern tools, especially Descript, have transformed this. To the point where I’m jonesing to dip back in to the medium.

Nimrods’ announced on Facebook this week that it’s closing its Stratford location:

Hello!

My name is Jesse and I co-own nimrods with my good friend Nigel and we have important news to tell you. Sunday September 4th will be the last day we are open at our Stratford location.

The last two years have been a heck of a ride. The pace and the scope of this project demanded so much just to keep moving forward that we began to lose sight of the reasons why we started it in the first place. We set out to produce food we were proud of, to create great jobs, and to do some small amount of good in our community. I think many of you reading this know how challenging running a small business can be. I think many of you might know how hard restaurant work is, and I think pretty much all of you can think back to the personal and professional pressures the circumstances of the last few years has put on us all. Nigel and I have never begrudged any of the challenges we’ve faced, but we find ourselves now, further from our core goals, our ideals, and our very mission statement than ever before. We both believe fundamentally that something worth doing is worth doing right, so conversely, maybe when you believe you no longer have it in you to do the job the way it should be done, you should step aside. 

Many of you have driven by this little old used-to-be KFC countless times since we moved in. From the outside you could never see how loud we were laughing, the cartoons we were drawing on the walls, or memories we were making. In the last two years when the whole world felt a little less warm and a little less funny, I got through it with and because of all of you Nimrods reading this. And I wouldn’t rather pandemic with any other group of people. 

And to you, our community and customers, we’re going to miss you too. You have cheered and supported us. You’ve always shocked us with the care and quality of your feedback. And my Lord, the patience you’ve shown us even when we messed up. You have all shown me and my staff unending kindness. I can say from personal day-in-day-out experience that the spirit of community and gentle nature is alive and strong on our Island. 

You’ll still be able to drink and dine with us at our locations on the Charlottetown Marina, and who knows, maybe somewhere else in the not so distant future, but as for Stratford - you’ve got two weeks to get your fix PEI. Then it’s time for these little Nimrods to take off their aprons and Birkenstocks and raise up our delis in a final toast to our corner in Stratford. 

Cheers,
Nigel & Jesse

After capturing the Stratford Nimrods’ website to the Wayback Machine, L-the-Younger and I went across the river for one last meal there. She had poutine, as is her habit, and I had the excellent vegan burger and a coffee slushie. As usual, it was good food, well-prepared, well-served by friendly people in a we-made-the-best-of-what-we-were-dealt old Kentucky Fried Chicken.

The heart of lunch for me and L-the-Y, however, wasn’t so much the food as the Donkey Kong.

“What’s Donkey Kong?”, she asked as it scrolled by on the NES-emulator installed table-side.

I am not a video game aficionado nor nostalgist, but even I know that, when an 11 year old says ”What’s Donkey Kong?”, it is the obligation of we greybeards to rescue them.

So we played Donkey Kong.

A lot of Donkey Kong.

In 2-player mode.

And it was fun. 

A lot of fun.

We ended up staying almost 90 minutes. Which can’t be good for turning tables in a quick-serve restaurant, but was certainly a joy for us, and a fitting swan-song for a place that, while I couldn’t claim “regular” status at, carved out a soft spot in my heart.

You will be missed, Nimrods’.

Bon voyage, weirdos.

My favourite takeout lunch order is from Khoaw Pon: basil stir fry with shrimp and cashews.

Today I ordered it by delivery, as I was working and didn’t want to get out of the zone. The order took longer than predicted to arrive: I was given a 45 minute estimate, and after an hour it still hasn’t come.

I called the restaurant, and was reassured that it would arrive in 5 to 10 minutes, as they were just waiting for a delivery driver.

Sure enough, five minutes later the delivery was on my doorstep.

With a $20 gift certificate attached.

That’s a classy move, one that has me writing a “that’s a classy move” blog post rather than a “I’m so disappointed” one.

From time to time a press release comes over the wire with a title that screams “this should be the name of my progressive rock band.”

Today’s Montrose Intersection Realignment is once such example.