Rant

The first time I heard about planned obsolescence was in grade nine. The idea that things are manufactured with a specific life span so people would need to continue buying new things irks me. Since August 2000, we have bought 5 kettles. The most recent being today, making the average life span of a kettle 22.75 months, or under 2 years.
OK, we are heavy kettle users. Admittedly we make an average of 3-4 pots of tea a day. Making 2128 boils per kettle. But Studyboy and I have a habit of forgetting to use the first kettle of water and we have to re-boil it probably half the time, so add another 50% to that to make it 3192 times before the average kettle gives up the ghost.
Plus, if you read the directions, they always suggest boiling it twice before using to clean out any manufacturing debris, thereby cheating you out of two perfectly good boils.
It is not the element that goes. It is not the cord. It is not the on/off button or any of the moving parts on the cover. In all the kettles that have crapped out in the past 7 years, it has been the plastic bottom that eventually starts to melt and then bubble where the heat of the element weakens it over time. But get this, no matter what the brand or the style, or the price, all kettles have an exterior plastic bottom. (or at least all the ones at Cambodian Tire) Co-incidence? I think not.
But I got my small revenge. When you register the product for the 12 month (aka the 11 months too short) warrantee, they ask you to fill out a voluntary survey so they can 'know their customers better'. I always fill it out. Today, I am a 65+ single woman, who is retired, makes over $500,000 a year. I own a cat and my main hobbies are skiing and investing money. Take that Black and Decker!

Newfoundland Comedy Hour

I have written previously about how St. John's doesn't have sidewalk clearing in the winter. The city itself doesn't have the funds for clearing sidewalks, and there is no bylaw that makes people shovel out the sidewalks in front of their houses. Partly this is because in heavy snowfall winters, there would be just no place to put the snow on the crowded city streets where row houses sit right on the sidewalks for blocks and blocks. The alternative for years has been for pedestrians to walk on the streets. After heavy snows, the narrow streets are even more narrow and motorists have to weave around parked cars and walkers and people waiting for buses. When the snow blower does come round to clear sidewalks, it leaves a hard packed layer that alternate rains and freezes turn to ice. It is pretty dangerous. Just before Christmas there was a public demonstration to pressure St. John's City Council to approve funding for sidewalk clearing. Last winter there was a pilot project that cleared sidewalks close to schools and hospitals for about $180, 000. Council voted to not fund that project this winter.
Then Mayor Andy Wells was given a new job. He will be the head of the Public Utilities Board in March. This lead to a whole new controversy about whether he should resign as Mayor in March, triggering an expensive by-election or staying on as mayor until September, when there will only be 12 months left until a full election and the Deputy Mayor is allowed to fill in for that time.
After news that Andy is leaving was made public, the Deputy Mayor Dennis O'Keefe decided he wanted to listen to the public opinion on sidewalks and brought the issue before council again. He proposed they fund sidewalk clearing on all major roads to the tune of $500,000. St. John's City Council meetings are broadcast on the cable network each week, and the locals call those broadcasts the Newfoundland Comedy Hour because Andy et al can get a little feisty at times. Listen to this first 3 and a half minutes of this Real audio clip from council meeting that the local CBC morning show aired the next day. It is hilarious! You can also read the CBC news item here.

The Postman Always Knocks 'Shave and A Haircut'

It doesn't have the same ring as the title of the classic dark thriller, but it has the advantage of being true.
Our postman really does knock "Shave and A Haircut' when he has a package to deliver. We get a lot of packages. Study boy has substituted buying tools on EBay with buying books on Barnes and Nobel (and Ebay, and Amazon...).
A few weeks ago I was walking the dog on Merrymeeting Road and we passed a postman delivering mail. It was our postman, I didn't recognise him because postmen are like waiters, they all look the same, but he stopped me and asked if I was going to be home that morning as he a parcel for me. I was blocks away from my house and he not only knew me out of context but also knew that somewhere in a truck full of mail, I was going to get a parcel that day. I am amazed at this. We live in a city! It's a small city, but I'll bet that his route has as much mail to deliver to as many households as a postman in TO.
Then this week, we came home to find a notice of attempted parcel delivery in the mailbox. That's the card they leave to tell you where you can go to pick up your mail, after noon the next day. Usually it is a postal outlet in a drugstore, in our case it is the Shoppers on LeMarchant Road. The card indicated we could pick it up at number 10. The postman had left our parcel with Fred and Jean next door. I'm pretty sure he's not supposed to do this. We live in a city. They don't even do this in the country! I'm not complaining, I liked it.
The next day I was walking the dog on Aldershot, blocks from my house when I saw our postman again. He asked if I got my parcel, and said that Fred and Jean have lived at number 10 for years so he figured it was OK. It's true, Fred and Jean have been at number 10 for fifty years. Apparently a constant address is a good enough reference for Canada Post.

Pancake Day

It is called Pancake Day here in NL. But whatever you call it; Shrove Tuesday, Fat Tuesday, Mardi Gras... it is a BIG DEAL here. For weeks CBC radio has been advertising that the morning show would be broadcasting from a hotel in the Battery this morning while serving up Pancakes. Every church and community group in the city is hosting a breakfast, lunch or supper of pancakes today. Even Studyboy took the electric frying pan to school today for a special pancake lunch in the sociology department. I cannot stress how important today seems to be for the average Newfoundlander, and all I've been thinking is "If this is how they do Fat Tuesday, what will Easter be like?"
St. John's is a pretty Catholic place, and anticipating that a foreign student friend of Studyboy's would ask about the significance of today's ritual, I consulted a local I know at the pottery studio to get my facts straight. She let me in on an interesting custom I think may be unique to NL.
Newfoundlanders put stuff in their pancakes. I don't mean like blueberries. She listed off a number of unusual items which, when found in your pancake, were meant to predict what you would grow up to be. Such as:
A cross - the recipient would grow up to be a priest or a nun.
A thimble - who ever found this would become a tailor.
Money - the finder would be rich.
A small piece of nail (not too sharp, I was assured) - and I didn't quite get the significance of what the finder would become, although the nail itself was symbolic of the ones used at the crucifixion.
All this was confirmed today by another friend at the studio, who says his mum used to put her wedding ring in the batter, and whoever found it was sure to get married. It was interesting though that he had forgotten or never knew the whole reason for Pancakes to begin with.

When Studyboy was Carpenter Man

Last weekend Studyboy was asked to do some handy work at a friend's house. Nothing big, just hang a couple kitchen shelves and a bathroom vanity cabinet in exchange for lunch. I was invited along for the lunch.
Malin is from Sweden, so naturally all the pieces were from IKEA. Swedes consider assembling IKEA pieces without instructions to be their birthright. She was pretty adept at it actually and I struggled to keep pace when we assembled the vanity cabinet while the boys did mysterious things with stud finders and magnets in the kitchen.
While assembly might be a birthright, actually attaching things to the wall requires an expert, and so Carpenter Man made a brief appearance. It was nice to see him again. Apparently Malin and Pablo have been waiting 8 months to get the shelves put up. I know how they feel, I waited at least that long for a bathtub.
And lunch was certainly worth a little work with a hex key and a level.

Tips for the Home Ecomomist

I have always been a jar saver. I blame my depression era parents who built a house with 2 basements just so they would have enough room to save all the possibly useful flotsam and jetsam that flowed their way. Maybe it's just my maritime heritage; drive through rural Nova Scotia and you often see houses with outbuildings and dooryards stuffed with debris. Dad just designed his storage to be vertical rather than horizontal. When I was a child the coloured pieces of plastic for the lite-brite were stored in baby food jars. So it is no real surprise that I have a fondness for re-using empty jars as containers for other things. Honey jars, pickle jars, and peanut butter jars are just the right size for bulgar wheat, corn meal and nuts. I use jars to store all those things that come in crinkly plastic envelopes because they are easier to stack and are mouse proof. How many times have I reached for the skim milk powder only to find it pouring out the bottom from a hole that shouldn't be there?
Lately, the labels on all jars have been rather stickier though, leaving a uniform gum on the jar when I try to remove it and resisting all attempts to scrub or soak it off. I'm not sure why the change happened, but it is annoying.
Maybe the chemical formula changed to make the labels resist washing off because everybody is recycling now, (except NL) and recycling places like jars clean but with the labels still on.
Maybe the companies are using alternative gums that are not derived from trees that are rain forest harvested. If that's the case, good for them, but I'm still annoyed.
Maybe it's just a cost thing.
For the past several months I have been wavering between leaving the labels on, so that the jar says Honey but obviously it is pecans, or taking them off and ignoring the permanent sticky residue. Neither is completely satisfactory.
Today I had a small success. I remembered back to when Studyboy was Carpenter Man and we were shingling the roof. We had to use roofing compound to seal around the flue, and it is a horrible sticky stuff that resists all the usual cleaners. Our friend Ron was helping that day and told us that butter would work. He was so right. It was amazing. So I tried it this morning on a Honey jar, and it worked. I smeared the butter all over the sticky residue, and then soap and water took it away. It only worked on the glass jars though, on plastic the gum just smooshed around and it didn't lift off any better than before.
I don't understand the chemistry, I just use it.

Bounty Day

January is a rather dull month excepting that nearly everyone I know including myself and my father have birthdays this month.
So there is not much to write about these days.
January 21 was Dad's birthday, but more importantly I have recently learned from a friend's blog that it is also National Hugging Day.
So I thought to myself "If nationals can get a special day to hug all to themselves, then everyday in the calendar year must have some signifigance somewhere."
I decided to do some research and found some interesting facts about today, January 23, on answers.com

The first thing I found was that Anne Boleyn discovered she was preggo today in 1533. Perhaps she took National Hugging Day a little too seriously. A blunderbuss wedding to Henry ensued.

The next thing to peak my interest was that Sir Edward Pellew died today in 1833, some 300 years after Anne was up the duff (so it couldn't have been him.) This was interesting only because I didn't know he was a real person and not just some character made up by C.S. Forester. (And acted supremely by Robert Lindsay)

I really hit the mark when I discovered this gem about how Pitcairners celebrate an act of vandalism on a ship of the Royal Navy. (Sir Edward would have been aged 33 at this time and probably a Lieutenant or a Commander so he would have taken Bligh's opinion on this episode.) Below is a cut and paste of the original from answers.com, the links don't work, but they do if you go to the original source.

"Bounty Day is celebrated on Pitcairn Island on January 23rd, in commemoration of the burning of HMAV Bounty by the mutineers in 1790. Model replicas, made by the islanders, are burned.

Sequence of events

Bounty Day starts off with the a re-enactment of the landing of the Pitcairners down at the Kingston Pier. The Pitcairners are greeted by the Administrator and his wife.

From the pier they then march to the cenotaph where they lay wreaths in remembrance.

From the cenotaph they march to the cemetery where they sing hymns.

After the cemetery they head on over to Government House where a family being either Evans, McCoy, Buffett, Adams, Nobbs, Christian or Young are awarded family of the year. The children roll down the hill in front of Government House.

After this they go to the Compound where the children play games and everyone feasts on wonderful food.

After this they go home and get ready for the Bounty Ball where there is a competition."

A competition which one assumes would beat rolling down a hill or being named family of the year.
One of my favourite things about the series Gilmore Girls was the crazy town celebrations they always had in Stars Hollow. Truth is stranger than fiction.