There’s been a lot of change over the bridge in Stratford at Home Hardware over the last few years. After the Home Hardware is a co-op, and I’m just not a co-op kind of guy days, there was a brief flirtation with Callbeck’s, and now, staff tell me, the store is a corporate store managed by Home Hardware itself.

I hadn’t been in for a while, but as the store is helping to sponsor some painting at Prince Street School, [[Catherine]], volunteer colour consultant on the job, had to go over to immerse herself in the Beauti-Tone and [[Oliver]] and I went along for the ride.

They certainly have changed things around. The second-floor furniture section has been moved downstairs, and now takes up almost half of the retail floor area, squishing out the hardware section to the back, and moving the paint section up to the front. The co-located Radio Shack is gone. The in-store Tim Hortons has a reduced footprint. It’s essentially a brand new store inside.

The newly-expanded furniture section is a sort of mixed bag: they had several really nice and not-too-expensive dining room tables that were refreshingly simple in their design, but the balance of the living room furniture seemed to fall into “overstuffed recliner” category that you’ll find elsewhere on the Island. Which is too bad, as one of the nice things about the old era was modern, non-gingham furniture.

Staff were as pleasant as ever. Worth a visit if you haven’t been over since the upheavals.

Apparently a “looking glass” is a mirror. I went 42 years thinking it was another name for “magnifying glass.”

The Merchantman Pub, on Queen Street in [[Charlottetown]], built on an addition last year and, after opening a restaurant extension around the corner on Water Street called Gooner’s Bar & Grill, this year the owners have opened Merchantman Galley, a bakery cum coffee shop.

Last week we had a baguette from the bakery — very good — and today on the way back to the office from [[Tai Chi Gardens]] I stopped in for some dessert. I ended up choosing their dessert of the day, a fruit-infused bread pudding with rum sauce. It was very good. And very substantial (i.e. enough to sate the dessert appetites of a small family).

My favourite aspect of the Merchantman Gallery experience, however, is the note “We reserve the right to be spontaneous” on their menu:

I had the added pleasure of being served by a recent immigrant to the Island who, it seems, is also a longtime reader of this blog.

Although you’d never know it by watching or reading the media, Ralph Nader is running for President again this year, along with his running mate Matt Gonzalez.

Nader joined Ron Paul and other independent candidates last week in a press-conference to release a joint statement on foreign policy, privacy, the national debt, and the Federal Reserve. You can watch the video of the event on C-SPAN.

From Rob’s Island Energy weblog, a link to Fortune, PEI company Prompt Plumbling’s geothermal energy page.

Earlier this week [[Catherine]] and I stopped in for supper at the [[Seatreat]] before “meet the teacher night” at [[Prince Street School]]. Catherine had french fries with her meal, and the french fries struck us as being markedly different from any french fries we’d had a the Seatreat before: they actually tasted good. Not that the french fries we’d had there before were unusually bad; they were simply the same run-of-the-mill fries you get in most Island restaurants.

When I stopped in again this afternoon for a bowl of [[Louis’ chicken and rice soup]] I ran into Joe, personable owner of the Seatreat, and I complimented him on the change, and asked him what they were doing differently, thinking perhaps they’d upgraded to “McCain Super-Duper Premium Extra” fries or some such thing.

“We just switched to using potatoes,” Joe said. “You mean regular old everyday potatoes?” I asked. “Yes,” said Joe.

This would explain why the french fries tasted, well, so much like potatoes.

If you are a fan of the occasional fry, I encourage you to drop in and sample the “old and improved” ones at the Seatreat.

Three years ago we found ourselves in the the village of Aniane in the south of France at Au Bonheur des Jardins, a celebration of food and the earth and all things related. Among the things I purchased there were three books from Epure Editions, one on basil, one on olive oil, and one on eggs:

I bought the books mostly because they had beautiful covers, beautiful binding, and beautiful paper. But they are also, for some reason, somewhat unworkable as actual usable books because the inside papers aren’t cut:

I’m not sure whether this is standard practice, or whether I bought distressed “seconds,” but it does make using the books rather difficult, and I’m loathe to slice the pages myself as I’m certain I would butcher the books in the process. I might have to be content with using every second page spread — the ones that don’t depend on page-slicing. That recipe for Pêches Rôties au Poivre Long d’Indonésie does sound quite tasty.

I’ve probably seen two or three hundred movies in my life. Maybe more. And I’ve only walked out on three: Rain Man, Strange Days and, last night, Righteous Kill, the new De Niro-Pacino cop film. It was very, very, very bad: generic plot, dreadful dialogue, wooden acting. And just plain boring.

The skycraper on Fitzroy Street, two doors up from our office, has started construction. A steam shovel has been hard at work all week digging a big hole in the ground:

The new “Christian” radio station set to debut shortly in Charlottetown is operated by an organization called “International Harvesters for Christ Evangelistic Association.”

Apparently this group is not affiliated with International Truck and Engine Corporation, formerly International Harvester, but is rather a religious group that, they say, “exists to win souls for Christ… through supporting pastors and their families.”

It’s not completely clear from whom or what the souls are being won. It’s possible the devil may be involved somehow. But be prepared for shows like Prophesy For Today, Love Worth Finding and The Gospel 30 to grace the Charlottetown airwaves shortly.

(Interestingly, the new station’s call letters, CIOG, are also used by the Central Islamic Organisation of Guyana. Stranger still is CIOG Proposal for the PEI, a document that is not, as you might expect, concerned with Prince Edward Island.)

One of the conditions of the new station’s license from the CRTC is that it “broadcast a minimum of two hours and 30 minutes per week of balance programming.” The CRTC defines “balance programming” as:

For the purpose of this condition of licence, “balance programming” is defined as programming devoted to providing differing views on issues and events presented during the station’s primary programming, and includes the presentation of different religions.

This would seem to imply that at least some of their weekly programming should be concerned with the option of not winning souls for Christ, but rather leaving them be to consort as they wish. It will be interesting to hear how they do this.