It Definitely Holds Up

Have you watched Jaws lately? No? That's too bad 'cause I watched it last night and now I can't sleep.

I guess it still holds up in the "Crap Your Pants Everytime You Go for a Swim from Now On" department. Sheesh.

Weekly Salad is Back!

A few months ago, my husband and I leaped into the wonderful world of cottage ownership. Though the journey was slightly fraught in the beginning with renovations, clean-ups and the like, the experience of being at this new-found property has been life altering. We have - all of us - found a place to truly connect and relax.

It's also a place where I want to do my two favorite things - read and eat. The reading part is a no-brainer but the food part- tough! Which is why I've decide to revive last summer's feature: The Weekly Salad. Salads are my favorite food in the summer mostly because they are delicious and easy to make. They also need just a few combination of ingredients to make them great. Here are three to get you started:

1. Grate carrots, toast some sunflower seeds and toss blueberries, olive oil, lemon juice and pleanty of black pepper. Sweet, sour, crunchy, soft.

2. Blanch spinach, then drain and shock in ice cold water. Squeeze it dry, chop it and toss with toasted pine nuts, raisins, olive oil and a tiny bit of balsalmic vinegar. Very elegant.

3. Make a grilled cheese sandwich, with good bread and not too much cheese. Make a salad with cherry tomatoes, basil, black olives, olive oil and balsalmic vinegar. You will not believe how damn good this is.

Enjoy

P.S. Holla! to Tracey Green and all of her visitors from Cookies and Catwalks!!

The Little Stranger

The Little Stranger
Originally uploaded by The Sage Libraries

Are you looking to completely lose a few days of your life between the pages of a good book? Here's the one for you. It is by far, the best book I've read this year and it completely highjacked my week. Also, as an added bonus, Steven King lurvs it! But what does a hack like him know about writing a scary book, right?

Sarah Waters was an author I'd heard a ton about but not read. She has written a trilogy of Victorian novels Tipping the Velvet, Affinity, and Fingersmith which have earned her legions of fans around the world, a number of awards and,tons of critical success. And, man, does she know how to build suspense!

Set in postwar Britain in the 1940's, Waters gives us a sinister tale of a haunted house, brimming with the rich atmosphere and psychological complexity that have become hallmarks of her work. The book follows the strange adventures of Dr. Faraday, the son of a maid who has built a life of quiet respectability as a country doctor. One dusty postwar summer in his home of rural Warwickshire, he is called to a patient at Hundreds Hall. Home to the Ayres family for more than two centuries, the Georgian house, once grand and handsome, is now in decline-its masonry crumbling, its gardens choked with weeds, the clock in its stable yard permanently fixed at twenty to nine. But are the Ayreses haunted by something more ominous than a dying way of life? Little does Dr. Faraday know how closely, and how terrifyingly, their story is about to become entwined with his.

Piqued your interest, yet? You. Will. Love. It.

Life's Too Damn Short

Muffin Top
Originally uploaded by NoT Photography

This weekend, I spent a good deal of my time shaking my head at the universe and saying over and over to myself that, well, life's just too damn short for (insert appropriate caveat HERE).

Here are just a few things that I was able to come up with in 10 minutes:

- cold tea
- whiners
-stale chips
-mealy fruit
- muffin top
- lazy people
- shitty books
- pointless movies
- shoes that don't fit correctly
- idiot Prime Ministers
- deliveries that don't arrive when they say they will
- reruns
- worrying about things you can't control
- coffee tables you can't put your feet on
- jumping to conclusions
- root canal


Anything to add?

Genius

Albert Einstein
Originally uploaded by ThomasThomas

Today, is the official first launch day for the new version of iPhone. Am I bitter that it launched just shy of the 2-month purchase mark of my iPhone? 'Course not. (P.S. F**ck you, Steve Joby-Jobs....)

Anyhoo, by far, the best feature on my iPhone is the "Genius" feature that's baked in to the iPod. What is Genius, you say? Here's how it works (the following words are Apple's...not mine):

Say you have one song you really love and want to hear other tracks that go great with it. A few clicks on iPod nano, and Genius uses that song to find other songs in your library and makes a Genius playlist for you. You can listen to the playlist right away, save it for later, or even refresh and give it another go.

It's like being given an excellent mixed tape at every touch.

Watch. I'll do it now. At random. I just pressed "Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels) by The Arcade Fire (a personal favorite song of mine, BTW) and here's just the first five songs (of a possible 25) that came up;

White Winter Hymanal - Fleet Foxes

Weird Fishes/Arpeggi - Radiohead

My Moon my Man - Feist

Pizza Catcher, New York - Belle and Sebastian

Ziggy Stardust - David Bowie

Awesome, right? Do this. Now. Go. Make haste. Your music library needs to be listened to in a new way. Stop playing Fleetwood Mac, Rumours over and over again. K? Fanx.

Sex Ed - Benoit Style

Sex Ed - Sixties style
Originally uploaded by painter girl

My son was home this week with a sore throat and to pass the time, we watched a few pointless shows on the Sundance Channel. ( Hell, it's dedicated to independent film, was my thinking, it's got to have more interesting programming than TeleToons, non?)

In between shows, the channel has programmed bumpers - little independent features - that are often hilarious and very innovative in their format. One of them is a series called, Green Porno. Hosted by its creator, the beautiful and talented Isabella Rossellini, the premise of these shorts is to show the bizarre mating rituals of various insects and animals. And here's the kicker: Rossellini, herself, stars. In costume. As an insect. The costumes are fantastic, the sets are hodge-podge-y and strangely fabulous and the dialogue? Well, let's just say that you have not lived until you've heard Madama Rossellini say, "And now....We are sequential hermaphrodites!" Awe. Some.

I did, however, have to don the the parenting hair shirt shortly thereafter, though.....

Benoit: Mom, what's a porno?
Me (trying not to puke and scream AND stay calm, all at the same time :
It's a movie, with very little plot, whose sole purpose is to show people having sex with each other.
Benoit: (aghast) Eeeeew! (pause) I don't mind watching these insects do sex, though.

Where the Rubber Meets the Road

Road Trip Time Lapse
Originally uploaded by Neil Dorgan

When I was a kid, my parents would take my sister and I on road trips. To pass the time, we would play a game that we came to call, Who Am I? The object of the game was simple: you had a person, place or thing in your mind and it was the goal of those playing to ask the proper questions in order to reveal the answer. With the right sort of questions, the game would be over in few short minutes. The wrong sort of questions, though, could lead you down a perilous path and you could be guessing for hours. The game kept us amused, made every trip seem shorter than it was and most importantly, gave us the opportunity, as a family, to be playful with one another, something a lot of kids my age didn’t get the chance to do with their parents.

I have wondered, often, why my mother had us play that game so many years ago. Partially, I believe, it was to pass the time but mostly, it was to keep us from doing what alot kids will do when they are forced into a confined space: get in fights and start poking fingers at each other over the smallest of perceived slights.

This week, my immediate family found itself in a similar spot. No, not forced into the backseat of a brown Pontiac Perisienne that reeked of bologna on white, but forced to redefine itself in the face of a difficult circumstance. My Nana - matriarch of a strong family, player of cribbage, lover of the Blue Jays, love of all jokes practical and all-round saint - died after a long and fruitful life.

Her death shook us all to the core.

But instead of pointing fingers and railing at the universe, we made a decision, one similar to the one my parents made each and every time we got into that car and headed out on a long journey. We decided to play, Who am I, and define who we were as a family.

And guess what?

My name is Laura Francis. I am a member of the mighty Robinson clan. And it is my honour.