It looks like Air Canada’s website has just undergone a major upgrade. And the warnings that users of Firefox used to see are gone, suggesting that it’s more browser-friendly.

We took a quick trip over to Halifax on Wednesday, stayed overnight, and then came back yesterday. Here’s a quick recap of the trip:

• The Hilton Garden Inn Halifax Airport is a wonderful modern hotel with excellent rates. It is, however, not actually in Halifax. I knew this going in, but I underestimated the hassle of the 40km drive from downtown out to the hotel. Next time we’ll bite the bullet, pay $100 more a night, and stay downtown.
• Oliver and I test drove a Smart Car: here’s the photographic evidence. Verdict: in first and second gear it drives like a lawn tractor; at higher speeds it’s fine. The transmission — a sort of manual/automatic hybrid — is the weak point of the car. It’s positively roomy inside — lots of head room, and it doesn’t feel cramped. There is almost no storage space, however — not even a glove box. The sales guy O’Regans, which appears to have the car market in Halifax pretty well tied up, was very helpful, and very low-pressure.
• Talay Thai, on Barrington Street near the train station, is an excellent Thai restaurant. It was packed on Wednesday night (every other Thai place we’ve ever visited in Halifax has been deserted) and the food packed a wallop. Service was on the slow side, but transcendentally nice.
• The ferry is a much more pleasant way to travel to the mainland than bridge. And the photo ops are better too.
• Cabin Coffee on Hollis (it’s tucked into the side of the parking garage) is a great place to hang out with kids. They also serve great food and drink. Very comfortable armchairs.
• Brio is the best soft drink going.
• Frog Hollow Books, inside the mall on Spring Garden Road, has an excellent kids books section, and a great selection of “armchair travel” books that I haven’t seen elsewhere.
• Pete’s Frootique still rocks after all these years.
• …as does The Italian Market.
• Gasoline is very expensive. $53 to fill up!? See also Smart Car above.

Plazer for Mobile Phones came out of beta today.

Air Canada announced its latest seat sale this morning, and the Halifax, Nova Scotia to London, England route is down to its low-season $498 return — a fare that, give or take $30 — is as low as this route ever gets on Air Canada. On the London route the rules are: “Tickets must be purchased by December 14, 2006. Travel period is valid from September 28 - December 14, 2006. Minimum stay Saturday night/Maximum stay 12 months.”

Catherine and I, unable to stomach any of the movies playing in town on Saturday night, ended up enjoying a dinner at The Noodle House followed by an exciting tour through the Charlottetown Mall.

The menu at The Noodle House as been dramatically expanded over the last few weeks, and now runs to almost a dozen pages. In addition to a whole new range of Cantonese dishes, the back page features two new categories: “sizzlers” are served on sizzling-hot cast iron platters and “sizzling hot pots” are boiled-not-fried concoctions served in a small clay pot. On Saturday Catherine had the “ginger beef sizzler” and I had the chicken one. Both were very tasty, and a welcome addition to the menu. The only downside to the meal is that we forgot to tell the new owners to hold the MSG (the original owners had our non-MSG preference memorized years ago); they were very nice about this, and told us that they will cook without MSG if requested.

On Sunday we headed to Summerside with visions of Belgian-style french fries dancing in our heads. Ever since said fries were promoted by a Compass feature on Flex Mussels a few weeks back, I’ve been dreaming about the day I might make it all the way to Summerside for a sample. I should mention here that I didn’t actually know what “Belgian-style” french fries were, and I don’t really like mussels; I’m just addicted to the notion of anything novel.

It’s hard not to like Flex Mussels: they’ve got such a clever little brand, a cute website, and a setup on the water in Summerside that’s very “Ikea in Stainless.”

The Belgian-style french fries turned out to be thin-cut, about the size of McDonalds’ fries, but, unlike McDonalds’ fries, they had a recognizable connection to potatoes. Mine were a little on the cold side, and somewhat too salty (which might have been Catherine’s fault, as she supplemented the house salting with some of her own) but were otherwise very tasty, especially when dipper in the optional mayonaise; I’d rank them just behind those from the Water Prince Corner Shop in Charlottetown in the Panetheon of french fry excellentness.

Catherine said the mussels were excellent too; I sopped up enough of her tasty ” ginger, lime, indian curry, fresh mango puree, and cream” sauce with the thoughtfully-provided baguette to see where she was coming from.

In addition to the fries, I ordered a lobster roll, which is the only other non-mussel item on the menu. This was plesantly unlike the “lobster bits with celery and mayo” lobster rolls we’re used to: it was a deep-fried battered lobster tail served with mayo (one of five varieties; I choose wasabi) on a bun with lettuce. While I appreciated its iconoclastic qualities, and it was well prepared, something didn’t come together in the end; I’m not sure what it was, but it needed an extra oomph. But I’d order it again.

When added to the (transcendent) blueberry pancakes that Catherine Hennessey served us on Sunday morning, the chocolate-covered potato chips we sampled at Avonlea and the chocolate-covered ginger we had on the way home, we probably took 4 years off our lives this weekend. But it was worth it, I think.

I want to find out what’s playing at the movies tonight in Charlottetown, so I surf on over to Empire Theatres’ website.

All I want to know is what’s playing. I don’t need to be convinced what to see, I don’t want to hold a birthday party, I don’t want a Subway breakfast sandwich. And yet look at their website:

One of the smallest things on the page is the link to “showtimes by theatre” — but isn’t that what theatre websites are for? It gets worse: I click on “by theatre” and go to:

So here I get a jazzy Star Wars-style graphic telling me that I can go to Empire Theatres FROM COAST TO COAST. As I’m not considering going to the movies in Alberta tonight, this is of little relevance to me. I locate the link for Prince Edward Island and click, leading me to:

Note that on this page I can’t actually click on the icon placed on the map over Charlottetown, I have to click on “Empire Studio 8” (a name I have never heard uttered by anyone — there is, after all, only one multiplex in the city). Note how the “Empire Studio 8” is located several inches from Charlottetown, just to further confuse me. Finally I end up at:

Finally, showtimes! And Subway sandwiches and Ant Bully ads. But that’s okay, I’ve got my showtimes now. The clever amongst you might be thinking “you should bookmark this page now so you can quickly return in the future.” Alas this isn’t possible: the URL for this page is inanely constructed so that it’s good for today only. There is no way to construct a hyperlink to the “Empire Studio 8” showtimes page; indeed attempting to make the URL “universal” by stripping off the date results in this unhelpful page:

Not entirely useless, I suppose, as you can use it to plan your cinema outings for New Year’s Eve Eve.

I wonder whether anyone at Empire Theatres has ever actually tried to find out what’s playing at their theatres.

Disclaimer: I maintain the website for City Cinema, which is an Empire Theatres competitor. Indeed normally I’d be looking to go to movies there, but I just can’t abide Garrison Keillor tonight, or, actually, ever. I’ve always prided myself that finding out “what’s playing” at City Cinema takes no clicks at all.

A reminder that the Fundraising Concert for the L.M. Montgomery Land Trust is tomorrow afternoon, Sunday, August 13th at 3:00 p.m. at Avonlea in Cavendish. You can get tickets at the door.

G. and I went up to the Habitat for Humanity ReStore (an excellent resource for used building materials with profits going to a worthy cause) to pick up a chair he had acquired earlier in the day. On the way back downtown we stopped in at the new Shoppers Drug Mart on University Avenue — the one that occupies the space vacated by Pizza Hut.

Wow — it’s exactly the same as the other “new” Shoppers on University Avenue, the one that opened last year at the corner of Kirkwood Drive. It’s as if a giant fleet of trucks from the Shoppers plant pulled up one night and unloaded a pre-manufactured retail clone. Except that, for some reason, it took them months and months to construct. And the front door faces the other direction.

I’m not exactly sure why Charlottetown needs another giant Shoppers Drug Mart 4 miles from one with exactly the same layout and products. Is this a Shoppers vs. Ray Murphy fight to the death?

Speaking of things ablutionary: has anyone else noticed the sudden popularity of foaming hand soap? It’s everywhere these days, and seems to have come out of nowhere. In our house it started when we were sucked into the Kandoo frenzy, complete with its custom tailored soaps and bum-wipe dispensers for kids. I must admit, I’m a fan: there’s something magic about regular everyday liquid in a bottle being transformed into voluminous foam. A warning, however: don’t try to refill one of the special foaming soap dispensers with regular liquid hand soap: it won’t work, and you’ll be left with a door stop.

Elsewhere in the retail environment: I’ve decided to try to avoid shopping at Future Shop and Staples out in West Royalty in favour of using the Radio Shack (or whatever it’s called these days) downtown. Although their selection at Radio Shack is considerably less broad, they’ve got most of the electronic thingys a guy could have need for, the staff is surprisingly helpful and generous, and I think supporting a business that allows me to buy capacitors (should the need arise) that’s a block from my house is a Good Idea.

On Monday, at the invitation of Cynthia Dunsford, I attended a small gathering of “cycling people” at the Queen Street Commons to have introductory discussions about the possibility of forming a “bicycle users group” here in Charlottetown.

We had a good group of people, from hard-core cyclists to “3 blocks home and back” people like me, and people from both of the city’s cycle shops. There was also a reporter and camera operator from Compass and a radio reporter from SRC, all there to observe the proceedings. The discussion was focused and positive and there were an unusual number of practical ideas bounced around. We talked about bike lanes and bike racks and bike helmets, about how we ride bicycles in the city and what the challenges are, and about how to best proceed from here to advocate for a better cycling environment.

The session was mostly “guided brainstorming” and an opportunity for us to get to know each other and explore the possibility of working together.

At the end of the session we emerged with a tentative plan to get together with the City of Charlottetown in September to discuss the best way to work with the city.

At no point did we actually formally create a “bicycle users group,” and, happily, we spent no time at all talking about the usual organizational deadweight (bylaws, bank accounts, etc.). In other words we all left the meeting as we started it: a ragtag group of individuals affiliated only by our interest in the cycling issue.

So what did the CBC report? BUG wants bike lanes in Charlottetown, a story that starts:

The Charlottetown Bike Users Group (BUG) is lobbying the city to give it room on the streets. It is asking for designated bike lanes along the main traffic arteries of the capital. BUG spokesman P.J. Stephen said sharing the road with motorists who show no respect for cyclists bugs him.

BUG spokesman?! How can a group that doesn’t exist have a spokesman? Or a name? Or a lobbying effort? Apparently, according to the CBC, “BUG is also looking for more bicycle parking” and “said it doesn’t need fancy bike racks.”

I can’t conceive how a reporter in the same room as I was, for the duration of the meeting, could leave with the impression that somehow a formal organization had been created, a lobbying effort launched, and official positions taken. How did an informal “verb” get reportorially conjured into a formal “noun” without our knowledge? It just didn’t happen the way it was reported.

We’re having the outside of our house worked on this week — renewed trim and a new paint job — and this morning the work starting on removing the pieces of old rotten trim on the corner of the house right outside where our bed lies. So at 8:00 a.m. I was awoken by the sounds of saws and hammers and screeching trim.

As such I had a rare opportunity to listen to Island Morning on the radio, and I heard Karen Mair remind we listeners that the Charlottetown Farmer’s Market is open on Wednesdays. So around about lunch time, I heard Karen’s voice in my head, urging me on marketwise to eat.

Which is how I found myself, just before noon, on the bike, up University Ave. to Allen St. along Allen to the Confederation Trail and up the trail to the market.

Wednesday at the market is very different than Saturday: only about 1/2 the vendors, and about a quarter of the customers. So it’s claustrophobia-free with a smaller selection of food (tangent: can we stop using the term “ethnic food” to describe food that is not hamburgers and french fries — it doesn’t make sense in today’s Canada, where “regular” food is as likely to be chapati as it is french toast).

The altered food landscape caused me to depart from regular patterns, and so in addition to turning to Karin LaRonde for refreshing iced tea, I also ordered a bowl of her “oodles of noodles.” While I’m general averse to recipes that rhyme, this was a very good lunch: a bowl of noodles (oodles of them!) topped with stir fried vegetables and, at ones option, nuts and seeds and a tangy sauce.

Once I’d finished off my lunch (and returned my bowl to Karin as instructed — kudos to her for offering alternatives to styrofoam) I was going to head back to the office. But taking one last loop around I noticed that the Caledonia House Coffee booth had no line whatsoever in front of it — on Saturdays this never happens — and I took this as a sign that I should indulge in a rare cup of coffee (a piping hot mocha coffee, as it turned out).

I was fortunate at this point to run into Sandy and Dale and Riley and Bailey (and dog Cocoa) outside on a picnic table, and so passed a very pleasant half hour chatting with them before resuming my path back downtown.

So let this be a lesson to us all: when Karen Mair points the way, we should follow. Good food and good conversation (along with a sudden rush of caffeine) are apt to result.