I’ve never owned a microwave oven. It’s really the only thing, other than smoking, that I absolutely forbid in our house.

Why? I don’t understand how they work, and however it is that they do work seems to defy all logic. I suppose “electricity” is no less mysterious, and thus my suspicions should extend to regular ovens too. But they don’t. At least regular ovens got hot. Which in my book is a necessary requirement of anything that’s going to be doing the cooking in my house.

Of course this has caused others in my house some degree of hardship — no baby bottles were microwaved, no chicken breasts get quickly defrosted, no quick popcorn-in-a-bag for us.

It’s been mostly a lonely, irrational obstinacy that’s kept the microwaves out all these years.

Until today, when I spotted this sign on the wall of The Courtyard, a coffee shop on Locke Street in Hamilton:

The sign makes reference to Dangers of Microwaving, which is a much more complete list of anti-microwave reasoning. I don’t know enough about the science of microwaves to be able to judge the truth of what’s written there, and it may be all drivel. But as it bolsters my until-now-knee-jerk anti-microwave stance, I welcome the help.

Snapped from the window of seat 4A on Air Canada 8875 from Halifax to Charlottetown on Tuesday, May 6, 2008:

95% of my life is conducted within the confines of the area this photo captures.

Announced.

There are a many reasons why, sitting in the Halifax Airport on a three-hour layover, you may wish to use a thesaurus to find synonyms for ‘anal’, not the least of which are the myriad things that can go wrong in this area when traveling.

You may also be looking for a synonyms to allude to something like this (as I was here). Or, perhaps, you are looking for sexual imagery.

Unfortunately, you will be out of luck not matter your reasons:

Compass released a redesign yesterday, leaving behind the “Sally Pitt’s head and a lighthouse fly over the Island” style and replacing it with a shorter curvaceous design that’s quite alluring.

Of course if you subscribe to one view of the CBC’s logo design then Charlottetown, at the epicenter of the implosion, ends up in a rather vulnerable position.

I’m putting this here mostly so I have a place to find it later (the Charlottetown Airport website hasn’t been updated in a year).

• Delta starts flying from Charlottetown to New York JFK on June 14th, 2008 and stops flying the route on September 7th, 2008. They fly out twice on Saturdays (8:00 a.m. and 4:10 p.m.) and once on Sundays (4:10 p.m.). The flight takes 2½ hours.
• Delta starts flying from Charlottetown to Boston Logan on June 13th, 2008 and, like the New York flights, stops flying the route on September 7th, 2008. They fly daily at 3:15 p.m. and the flight takes 1 hour and 50 minutes.
• Northwest Airlines starts flying Charlottetown to Detroit Metro on June 27th, 2008 and stops flying the route on September 30th, 2008. They fly daily at 8:25 a.m. and the flight takes just over 3 hours.

It’s stunningly difficult to find this information elsewhere.