I’ve spent one of those frustrating “searching lots of different airline websites to piece together a trip” days. It’s like walking on a constantly shifting desert: not only are the websites often abysmally designed, but fitting together flights from disparate airlines so that they match up is always exhausting.

After a day of surfing through trans-Atlantic flights running anywhere from $800 to $1500, I stumbled across an excellent US Airways flight from Boston to Dublin. And booked it:

That’s $1161 CDN for three people, all taxes and fees in. That’s cheaper than getting from Charlottetown to, well, anywhere, in an airplane.

As I have to be in New England anyway to visit [[Yankee]], we’ll be driving down to catch the flight, which is somewhat inconvenient, but worth saving $2000 for.

Dublin is attractive to us not as a destination (although I’m sure it’s very nice) but rather primarily as Ryanair’s hub: from Dublin we can get almost anywhere for next to nothing.

The tail end of this trip will take us to Copenhagen for reboot 8 (word on the street is that the reboot wiki is being skinned as we speak); otherwise, we’re currently scheming for what else we’re going to do.

Must stand up from keyboard now.

There is some small quirk in my makeup that has rendered me somewhat obsessed with numeric patterns and cooincidence.

For example, I delight in the fact that [[Oliver]]’s birthday is October 1, 2000. Both because that’s 011000 or 100100 or 001001 depending on how you slice and dice, and because it means that it will always be easy to know how old he is at any given point in his life — 34 in 2034, etc.

For a similar reason (I think), I appreciate that our house is at 100 Prince St. Somehow it wouldn’t be the same if we were at 99 or 101. I like living at 50 Great George St. too, and somehow never got comfortable with 1360 Kingston Rd.

I have a friend who was born in 1933. I was born in 1966. The year she turned 66, I turned 33.

And just yesterday I found the following calculation tacked to the bulletin board at the uptown [[Formosa Tea House]]:

Of course Google is all over this, but I still found a bit of comfort in knowing that this is true.

[[Interlude]] is closing between March 24 and May 18 to give the owner time for a much deserved vacation. We’ll have to find an alternative location for [[Gung Bao Thursdays]].

If you are thinking of traveling to Europe this spring or summer, here are a couple of resources I’ve stumbled across over the past weeks that are somewhat hidden from view:

• Canadian Affair has charter flights from Halifax to London.
• Zoom Airlines has similar Halifax to London flights, and they seem to be about the same price as Canadian Affair’s.
• German airline Condor has charter flights from Halifax to Frankfurt (at least in theory; they have a horrible search engine and I couldn’t actually find the actual flights).
• US Airways has incredibly cheap flights from Boston to Dublin (and Ryanair can get you from Dublin to almost anywhere on the cheap).
• Many of the flights on sale right now at Air Canada, including those to London, require flying before April 4. However certain European destinations like Frankfurt, Berlin and Copenhagen allow flying up to May 18.

Excerpt from the first genuine piece of Prince Edward Island spam, received this morning:

FINALLY a site dedicated to PEI from people living on PEI.

Finally!

Remember when the plans were being drawn up for the so-called “Entertainment Centre” at the Charlottetown Driving Park? Provincial officials, and those from the Atlantic Lottery Corporation (ALC) bent themselves over backwards to avoid using either “casino” or “slot machine” when speaking of the project; it was always “entertainment centre” and “video lottery terminal” (or the ALC’s preferred term: “electronic gaming device”).

Well today the rubicon was crossed: the CBC is reporting that ‘Slots riding to rescue racino’ and Robert Bourgeois of the ALC actually uttered the words:

“They wanted slot machines that they were more familiar with and they were more comfortable with,” says Bourgeois.

“So we will be introducing 30 slot machines that are similar to the different slot machines that are found in other similar facilities such as ours.”

What hell? “Other similar facilities such as ours?” You mean casinos, right?

Of course all this reticence hasn’t kept the Entertainment Centre itself from calling them as they see them (emphasis mine):

This new state-of-the-art facility features a gaming room with 225 slot machines, a Player’s Club and dining at the Top of the Park which showcases an all you can eat buffet, à la carte menu plus screens on most of the tables so you don’t miss a minute of the action!

Surely the time when “Entertainment Centre” gives way “Casino” can’t be too far away? One can even imagine Mr. Bourgeois being interviewed: “We’re calling it a Casino because our customers are more familiar with and they were more comfortable with…”.

See also Government Announces Plans for Crack Cocaine Sales.

Okay, this one takes the cake. Here’s a screen snip from the Air Canada website showing the fare breakdown for a return flight from Charlottetown to Copenhagen:

This flight may fly over Greenland (and I’m pretty sure that it doesn’t even do that), but I can’t conceive how Air Canada can levy a “Greenland Dom. Psgr. Service Charge” here. Is it a mistake?

What’s next: Srchrg. bcas. we cn.?

The CBC is reporting that “Aliant expands into central Canada” — a bit of corporate doublespeak that really means that Bell Canada is rearranging its financial deck chairs.

On days like this, it helps to remember that only a few years ago we had a locally-based telephone company that actually marketed itself on its local-ness. Take a look at this old Island Tel commercial to jog your memory.

Four years ago this February, [[Catherine]], [[Oliver]] and I went out to dinner in Bangkok with my friend [[Harold Stephens]] and his wife Michelle. This morning Harold sent me a photo he took midway through the meal:

Man was it ever hot. And boy was Oliver ever tiny. It was a great meal.

As I was out and about with the [[car]] today, I decided to swing by the new “natural foods store” on Burns Ave. in [[Charlottetown]] called A Fresh Start. Since the demise of the Uncommon Grocer and the Cool Dog Deli and the “we sell powders and pills to make you healthy” conversion of The Root Cellar, I’m always on the lookout for small independent grocery stores selling healthy food.

Unfortunately, at least from first appearances, A Fresh Start falls firmly into the “powders and pills” category, with pre-packaged “health food” of the sort you would find at Nature’s Harvest filling out the inventory.

It’s sad that the “natural foods” industry has become a sort of parallel “manufactured foods” industry to that offered by the large grocery stores. Sure it’s nice to be able to by crackers made from kamut, but if those crackers are made in California, shipped here by truck, and packaged just like Ritz, is this really a step forward?

The closest you can come to truly natural foods in Charlottetown is the weekly farmer’s market: what could be more natural than real farmers selling things themselves that they grew on their own farms?