With my success burrowing between the layers of glass that make up the oven door yesterday, tonight I set to clean the true grimy inside-facing glass.

I wanted to avoid noxious chemicals, so I opted for baking soda and vinegar plus elbow grease. It worked!

I made a paste of baking soda and water, brushed it on the open oven door, sprayed on household vinegar, waited 15 minutes, and then scrubbed and scraped. The seemingly impenetrable was penetrated and the result, if not brand-new-looking, is certainly an oven door transformed.

This video from GE demonstrates their official guidance on how to clean the between layers of oven door glass.

My oven has had versions drips and droops behind the outside glass for a long time, and I’d long simply assumed they were in some completely inaccessible sealed chamber.

But no: by taking the door off (easy), I was able to take a soapy cloth rubber-banded to the end of a framing square (official guidance: yard stick) and squooch it up inside to gently nudge off the stains (not as easy as the video suggests).

My result wasn’t perfect. But the glass is much-improved. And I neither broke the glass nor needed to disassemble anything beyond removing the door.

Attached to the Guardian story Russia warns of nuclear weapons in Baltic if Sweden and Finland join Nato, the paper posted a correction:

This article was amended on 15 April 2022 to better characterise Kaliningrad as an exclave, rather than an enclave.

This Wikipedia page proved helpful in understanding the difference: Kaliningrad is an exclave because it’s a part of Russia geographically separated from the rest of the country. Vatican City, by contrast, is completely surrounded by Italy, and is thus an enclave.

The article is required reading for any student of geographic edge cases.

Harry Holman writes about the life and death of the S.S. Prince Edward Island:

As a child I was always delighted when we caught the Prince Edward Island as it was a much more interesting ship to explore. We, with the abridged parental responsibilities of the period, had the full run of the ship from bow to stern and from lifeboats to engine room.

Stephen was so taken with my Rotring Core fountain pen that he borrowed it and dedicated an entire video to it.

Dating a woman with Ben Franklin hours has been transformative: I was up at 5:30 this morning, and out on my bicycle across to Stratford for coffee at 6:30. It was a brisk morning, but I’ve learned this spring that, even as the temperature approaches 0ºC, as long as I dress warmly and the roads are clear, cycling is a breeze.

On the cycle back from coffee at The Lucky Bean I noticed that the pedestrian traffic signal at the Esso corner in Stratford was out. I Googled “pei road report” and was happy to find that the Department of Transportation and Infrastructure takes road problem reports by text message. And so I made a report. And, once they opened for the day, I got a reply:

This is a handy service, and I wish the City of Charlottetown supported the same thing (I’m the city’s foremost reporter of pedestrian signal problems, which means a lot of calls to Public Works).

Stephen B. Macinnis came along to the shop table this morning and we recorded an episode of his fountain pen show, talking about my five favourite fountain pens.

Delicious nerdery.

One of the many delightful things about L. Is her love of tiny interventions into public spaces, a love I share.

Over the last two months we’ve been plotting together to do something over Easter weekend, something hopeful at a time when hope seems in short supply.

What sprang from this plotting were 200 Cultivate Hope cards, printed on my letterpress on paper impregnated with wildflower seeds (if you look carefully you’ll see a tiny flower ornament on the card, courtesy a recent casting by Swamp Press of flowers designed by Vance Gerry).

We printed the cards last week, me and a hearty band of press assistants, and today we made our way to Dead Man’s Pond in Victoria Park to hang the cards for all takers. We were lucky to find the day bright and sunny and warm with just the right amount of wind.

If you go to the park today, you will find a card waiting there for you. Plant it indoors in a pot, covered with ⅛ inch of soil, keep moist, and in 7 to 10 days, hope will spring forth.

Last week and this I’ve been learning to canter Jack the Horse. It’s a whole new ballgame, and one that I’m, so far, only just touching the edges of.

The “canter switch” on Jack is to put pressure on his right flank while making a kissing sound (I’m not making this up). Canter is a different gait, and a faster speed, and it is, at this point, frankly, somewhat terrifying a prospect; the terror is leading me to pull back on the reigns and give mixed signals to Jack, so I’ve yet to achieve a full cantery orbit. But I’ve tasted it, and as much as it’s terrifying, it’s also deeply thrilling.

L., who’s been coming for riding lessons with me this month, generously took a video of one of the “almosts.”

James A. Reeves is a such wonderful writer:

York Minster is the largest Gothic cathedral north of the Alps, and it hangs from the sky like lace. Whenever I see these colossal palaces to God, it’s easy—and perhaps correct—to frown at all the blood and treasure hoovered up by faith-dealers to sustain a corrupted fantasy. Yet if I squint a certain way, I see something humble and profound, even a little heartbreaking: a community deciding, upon finding themselves alone and confused on a strange planet, to use their finest materials and labor to erect a space devoted to an otherworldly logic, hoping to find some answers.