So there I was driving down Belvedere Avenue after dropping [[Catherine]] and [[Oliver]] off at Ellis Bros. thinking to myself “wow, I could sure use a coffee.” And then, in the distance, rose the [[Charlottetown Farmer’s Market]], now open, during the summer months, on Wednesdays.

I lurched the car over into the turning lane and two minutes later there was a high-quality cappuccino being lovingly prepared for me. Five minutes later I had coffee and bagel with high-quality smoked salmon in hand and was a much, much happier person.

The market is open 9:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. on Wednesdays through August. It’s a short bike ride from downtown Charlottetown (and an even shorter ride from Holland College Royalty Centre) and thus an excellent choice for lunch. As a bonus, the Wednesday market is much less crazy and claustrophobia-inducing than the Saturday one.

The CBC is reporting that Flex Mussels’ application for a late-nite liquor permit (they wanted to be able to serve drinks until 2:00 a.m.) was denied, and that they’ll only be allowed to stay open until midnight.

Much of the discussion surrounding this issue, at least from Flex Mussels’ perspective, seemed to centre around the difference between low-class rowdy drunks and their breed of high-class wine-drinking effete drunks; their representative was quoted:

We have every intention, we’ve had every intention all along, of bringing something classy and nice to the Charlottetown waterfront.

Here’s the thing about that (and I speak from personal experience here): put some drink into anyone and put them out on the street at 2:00 a.m. and they’re going to be annoying. They don’t need to be peeing on the neighbourhood begonias or breaking into musical theatre numbers: simply walking up Prince Street in the middle of the night talking about Brahms in that slightly-too-loud way that endrunkened people do is enough to disturb the peace of the neighbourhood.

Nobody’s suggesting that there be a total ban on movement and activity on Charlottetown city streets after midnight, but over the last 7 years we’ve lived downtown there’s been an incremental tilt in the late nite atmosphere away from “comfortable urban residential neighbourhood” and toward lively outdoor music (etc.). This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but the tilt has to be managed against the needs of residents who want to do things like “sleep” and “think” at night.

Kudos to city council for recognizing this.

gOffice, designed for the iPhone, also happens to work quite well on my [[Nokia E61i]]. Not surprising given the common ancestry of the web browsers of each.

Our multi-year plan to outpace the Macdonalds and the Arsenaults and become a Prominent Island Family achieved another milestone on Friday evening with the birth in Charlottetown of Ava Frances Rukavina, daughter to my brother [[Johnny]] and sister-in-law [[Jodi]].

Ava is the first girl born into our immediate family since my mother was born, which means that she has an additional miracle to add to her belt in addition to the regular “miracle of birth.”

We visited on Saturday, and I can affirm that Ava is adorable.

By the way, it’s Aaa-va-ah, like Ava Gardner.

Ava happens to share her birth date with Nanci Griffith and Peter Mansbridge, and Janet Leigh.

Ava Gardner was in The Kidnapping of the President with Hal Holbrook Hal Holbrook was in The Fog (1980) with Janet Leigh.

And if you want to get really funky: Peter Mansbridge was in April One (1993) with David Strathairn. David Strathairn was in The Firm (1993) with Hal Holbrook. You do the rest.

Here’s what The Old Farmer’s Almanac says for those born on July 6:

You are serious in everything you do, whether love, work, or recreation. You are a great reader, a profound thinker, and an ardent student, and make the most of your abilities. You enjoy culture and refinement, and whatever you undertake is done to the best of your ability.

Welcome to the family.

In line at the [[Charlottetown Farmer’s Market]] for a bagel with smoked salmon this morning, [[Oliver]] excitedly pointed down the way and claimed that he saw “the guy from that show.” It turns out he was pointing at Nobu Adilman, erstwhile-Islander and host of television’s Food Jammers (perhaps the greatest food show ever produced for television).

So while Oliver took an opportunity to bask in Nobu’s glow, I took an opportunity to introduce myself to his brother Mio. Regular readers may recall that a couple of weeks ago Mio, in his capacity as Q correspondent, blew the lid off l’affaire café for a national radio audience. Mio graciously offered me protection should my assailant send henchmen my way.

Speaking of television, earlier in the week Oliver and were playing the “name 5 things that are X” game with each other, and my challenge to him was “name 5 people on television.” After the expected Dora, Franklin and Bob The Builder, Oliver named Boomer Gallant and “that other guy who helps Boomer” (who we assumed to be Bruce).

This collage of computer-generated images taken from flight data is beautiful. It’s also scary, as it shows the monumental task of reducing airplane emissions given the huge volume of flights over North America. It’s part of a project by artist Aaron Koblin whose work includes the brilliant Sheep Market project.

Here’s my LocoBlog of a bicycle ride around downtown Charlottetown at dusk this evening. LocoBlog is an application that runs on my [[Nokia E61i]] and talks to my [[GPSlim 236 Bluetooth GPS]] to location-stamp photos taken on the phone’s camera. The application then uploads the result, and the web app puts it all together. It’s quite elegant.

New Plazes group: Tea Houses in Charlottetown.

On April 29, 2007 the New York Times ran a story about Canadian actor/director Sarah Polley in which they wrote that TV series Avonlea in which Polley starred as a child was set in the Canadian prairies.

As Avonlea was, in fact, set here in Prince Edward Island (even it it was filmed largely in Ontario …), I sent in a request for a correction on May 2:

The television series “Avonlea” is based on the works of Canadian author L.M. Montgomery, and the television series was set, like most of Montgomery’s work, in the eastern coastal province of Prince Edward Island, not on the prairie.

To their credit, and my satisfaction, they published the correction, and have attached it permanently to the article’s archive:

Correction: May 6, 2007, Sunday An article last Sunday about the film actress and director Sarah Polley referred incorrectly to the setting of ”Avonlea,” the Canadian television series in which she starred. It was set on Prince Edward Island, not the prairie.

The daily Corrections Page of the Times, by the way, always makes for an interesting read. Here’s my favourite from today:

An obituary on Friday of Kiichi Miyazawa, former prime minister of Japan, rendered incorrectly the name of the American general whose lectures during the occupation of Japan were recalled by Mr. Miyazawa with distaste. He was Gen. Douglas MacArthur; he had no middle name and did not use the initial A (or other initials often ascribed to him, including B, C and S). Five articles in 2005 included the “A” (on May 29, June 20, June 28, July 29 and Aug. 26), and it has been used in 19 other articles since 1987.