“Today’s been a bit better, but I’m still feeling pretty wonky. Two COVID rapid tests have proved negative, but it sure as heck feels like it. I’m hoping I’ll feel nearly back to normal by tomorrow, my first real day of vacation.”
Narrator: he did not feel nearly back to normal.
Whatever this was — a third rapid test confirmed it wasn’t COVID — laid me out most of the week, save a work-ish drinks thing on Thursday at Chez Nous. Actually, I took a bunch of DayQuil just to make it to said drinks, which was a mistake, because I don’t remember the second half of the evening. Anyway. Being this sick has allowed me to catch up on a bunch of TV, like season 4 and part of season 5 of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. I’m all caught up on Ahsoka, Billions, and Only Murders In The Building, and we’ve just started Painkiller. We’ve even caught up on a ton of backlogged Last Week Tonight eps.
Still, I’d rather feel like I could breathe normally.
It’s long been a pattern with me that, as soon as my body knows it can relax, it stops fighting off whatever bug or virus might be knocking at the door. And so it was that after I finished work on Thursday I began to feel the effects of whatever bug Lindsay had been fighting all week.
And when I say “after work” I mean immediately after work. As in, I couldn’t have been more than ten minutes from the office when I first felt some throat irritation. By the time I pulled into the garage I had a legit sore throat. By that night I was feeling the effects of a full-blown cold.
I wasn’t too bad Friday — I was able to wrap up what little work I had left (more on that later) but it destroyed me Saturday to the point where I spent pretty much the whole day in bed. Our tickets to the Leslieville Beer Fest went to waste too. 😦
Today’s been a bit better, but I’m still feeling pretty wonky. Two COVID rapid tests have proved negative, but it sure as heck feels like it. I’m hoping I’ll feel nearly back to normal by tomorrow, my first real day of vacation.
I nearly forgot: a few weekends ago, while out walking, I finally stopped in at East End Vine for a drink. How I’d managed not to visit until now is a mystery. Anyway; it was a hot sunny day, and three glasses of white helped to cool me down.
Pardevalles Albarin Blanco (Spain)
Blue Mountain Pinot Gris (Okanagan)
Elgin Chardonnay (South Africa)
I didn’t have any food, but what I saw go by looked awfully good, and I loved the vibe. I’ll definitely be back.
Visiting my family farm since they moved back to NS has also meant visiting my brother’s dogs. In recent years that’s meant getting loved up by big old Ayce and sweet, smart Aly. When Ayce passed away earlier this year I felt it, but not like today when my brother let me know Aly was gone. I ugly cried. For a while. Lindsay did too. There was probably some residual sadness from Ayce in there, and almost certainly something left over from Kramer. My heart broke, and broke again for my brother and sister-in-law.
I wish I could have seen her one more time, but like her mom said, she’s back with her best friend now.
I hope there are unlimited squirrels to chase where you are, sweet girl.
Even late on a Friday night, the theatre showing Barbie (imdb | rotten tomatoes) was full. It’s become a real cultural moment, the success (both commercial and critical) of which will no doubt touch off myriad toy-based movie scripts — many of which are catalogued by the New Yorker.
Anyway, the movie itself was very good — clever in a laugh-out-loud way but also in a wow-Fox-News-is-going-to-hate-this way — and accessible for a pretty broad age range. Recommended, though be ready to have this song stuck in your head for a while:
To celebrate my forty-eighth, we booked a four-day weekend in Prince Edward County. This time Lindsay did pretty much all the planning.
Friday
After a big-ass breakfast at OK OK Diner we jumped in our car and…crawled slowly up the DVP and across the 401. We were so delayed we didn’t even have time to stop at our AirBnB, instead driving straight through Bloomfield to Flame + Smith for an early dinner. It was a big but busy spot, even at 5pm. We had:
artisan sourdough w/ whipped whey butter
a dozen oysters
a non-alc Bellwoods Jelly King for me, a cocktail for Lindsay
We took some desserts to go and drove back to find our AirBnB. It was a cute spot, like a combination of modern + farmhouse. It had a big, private, farmyard view, and a pretty decent sunset.
We woke up early but lazed about a bit before getting a start on our day, which ended up being a mistake. By the time we left it was pouring; by the time we’d driven to the outskirts of Picton, it was a monsoon. We’d hoped to get breakfast at Bailey’s, but we couldn’t line up outside in that weather. We decided to do a bit of our shopping at the Agrarian Market and pick up breakfast stuff whilst there. We got utterly drenched just getting in and out of the car, even with big umbrellas, but we managed to get home and get dry…just as the rain let up. Of course.
We ate a breakfast of bacon, eggs, sourdough toast, and raspberries before resolving to just chill. We watched some TV. We drank coffee and watched the rain. We napped, hard. A right lovely afternoon.
Eventually re rallied, showered, and walked down the road to Darling’s for dinner. We opted to sit outside, and were the only ones on a huge patio. I don’t know whether it was the relative cool (the rain had broken the heat, and it was about 20 degrees), the threat of bugs (none materialized until the very end of the night) or what, but we didn’t mind having the outside to ourselves. Inside seemed loud and frenetic. Outside it was breeze and soul music. The staff were really sweet too, and the food was excellent:
I’d never heard of New Haven style pizza before, but I’m into it.
We walked home, questioning our decision every time a car drove by too close to us, but we made it.
Sunday
After finishing off the bacon & eggs, we set to picking up the groceries for the meal Lindsay planned to cook for dinner. That meant a few stops around Bloomfield and Wellington, but we got it all, dropped it back at the AirBnB, and set out for some wineries.
I’d ordered from Morandin before, but never been there. It was a quiet, pastoral little locale, with picnic tables outside a Quonset hut. We tasted everything, leaving with six bottles.
After leaving there we drove around the corner to By Chadsey’s Cairns, a winery I hadn’t visited since my very first trip to PEC 11 years ago. It was actually the very first country winery I ever visited, and I’d been tipped off by county friend Duarte that they were likely closing up shop soon. Sure enough, when we arrived we saw they were down to only Gewurztraminer (fair enough; that’s what I was looking for anyway) so we bought a half dozen to help speed along the retirement plans. It was lovely chatting with Vida in that barn for a good long while. We left that beautiful farm, bundled our purchases into the car, and drove into Wellington.
Lindsay had booked us lunch at the Drake Devonshire, which I’d somehow never visited. We lucked into a frankly incredible table, on a covered patio looking right at the lake. It was a popular spot, rife with poses and selfies, but we managed to enjoy a perfect day and a pretty great meal nonetheless.
We needed dessert and a final dinner ingredient so we drove to Slicker’s for a pint (dinner) and a couple scoops (immediately). We arrived back at our place to enjoy the remaining afternoon sun. Eventually Lindsay cooked us a great meal, though I ruined the lamb.
tomato + grilled corn + arugula bruschetta
2021 Morandin County Chardonnay
grilled lamb shoulder chops + mint salsa + new potatoes
2020 Closson Chase South Clos Pinot Noir
peach cobbler + Slicker’s apple pie ice cream paired
I’d brought a 2019 Inniskillin Riesling Icewine to go with this, but reconsidered and we decided to just finish the Morandin chard
By this point we were tired, and the ducking in and out to the grill had let in an armada of bugs, so after a mosquito massacre we trudged upstairs to bed.
Monday
We’d originally planned to do a few more wineries on our way out of the county, but by the time we packed up and cleaned the place we just wanted to head home. I have to say, I quite like having nearly a whole afternoon back at home to recover after a trip, even a short one.
In the last couple of weeks, we watched two exceptional movies.
Tár (imdb | rotten tomatoes) was a symphony of intrigue, ego, genius, patronage, and impropriety, and a masterclass by Cate Blanchett.
We saw Oppenheimer (imdb | rotten tomatoes) in theatre (!) earlier this week, and it was as good as expected. I am, of course, a hopeless devotee of Christopher Nolan, and now Lindsay might be intrigued as well. Exceptional performances all around, a story I felt silly for not knowing (the intrigue around Oppenheimer and the Manhattan Project, specifically), Nolan’s trademark time-jumping which keeps it fun, and some humanization of a name I know only from the most massive of historical events.
We just got home from a day trip out to Stratford. The festival is on, and while we have a long weekend planned in September to see a couple plays, there was one playing earlier we decided we had to see.
First, though: some lunch. We ended up picking LOVAGE, which (a) had a lovely shaded back patio, (b) had the nicest staff ever, and (c) was delicious. You can see some samples on their instagram, and my mouth is watering just seeing some of those dishes again. We had oysters, steak tartare w/ carrot and parsley, trout w/ cucumber & dill, sugar snap peas w/ stracciatella, and potato paillasson w/ herbs & aioli, and a couple of glasses of wine each. Absolutely lovely spot — we’ll find a way to get ourselves back there in September.
The play we wanted to see was Women Of The Fur Trade, playing just down the street at the Studio theatre. Here’s the synopsis from the program:
Set in eighteen hundred and something-something, somewhere upon the banks of a reddish river in Treaty One Territory, where three very different women with a preference for 21st-century slang sit in a fort sharing their views on life, love and the hot nerd Louis Riel. In this lively historical satire of survival and cultural inheritance, playwright Frances Koncan shifts perspectives from the male gaze onto women’s power in the past and present through the lens of the rapidly changing world of the Canadian fur trade.
It was funny and powerful and silly and I’m really glad we saw it.
Fourteen years ago at TIFF I saw a movie called Leslie, My Name Is Evil (imdb | rotten tomatoes), a heavily-stylized story about Leslie Van Houten, one of the Manson Family cult murderers. In writing this I just noticed that at some point the title of the film had been changed to Manson, My Name Is Evil? Anyway, I’d kind of forgotten about the film since then, until earlier this week when I read that Van Houten had been released from prison after 53 years.
Weird timing for this much Manson-esque news, as we’d also just watched the “Under The Sea” episode of the latest season of Black Mirror, in which a cult presumably patterned after the Manson Family plays a central role. Another funny coincidence: Tiio Horn is in Leslie/Manson, My Name Is Evil, and also in The Trotsky, which we just randomly happened to watch with a friend on Thursday night.
That latest season of Black Mirror, by the way, was mostly excellent, especially the one featuring Podrick Payne.
Skirl | Dan Dickinson 