D2

Weird Al edition.

I find myself thinking that this was... merely pretty good? I mean, Al's still great, and his band is very talented, but there was almost no patter. But what he did do was very impressive! Including a 15 minute Star Wars medley to round things out.

So, ups and downs I suppose. On the one hand, I don't regret going, but on the other, this was not the mind-blowing experience of his past tours (allegedly; this is my first time seeing him). He did have a number of great costume changes though.

On balance, I'll go with this: high school me had a great time. Most surprising song: "Fat". The one I liked the most: "Everything You Know Is Wrong".

I wore my fancy Etymotics earplugs because I knew it would be too loud for me. I was therefore alarmed when I work up in the middle of the night to find that my hearing in my left ear was not the same as my right -- perhaps my old hearing damage was back?

But no, a couple of ear drops and a blast from the ear bulb, and instead I discovered my canal was just plugged. Likely from shoving earplugs down it. So that's a relief.

I've been imagining an 'nduja and ricotta pasta, but my usual grocery store doesn't carry 'nduja. I happened to go to Fiesta Farms today (because I knew they'd have Ontario field-grown strawberries and raspberries), and on a hunch I scanned the shelves in front of their deli case, and I found exactly what I was looking for.

I put about half the little tube into a frying pan (~60g), waited for it to heat through and melt, then about a half cup of passata, and when that had reduced a little, 2-3 tablespoons of ricotta (really, just a goodly thwack of it), a little cream, and a couple of twists of black pepper. The whole sauce was done in the 10 minutes it took to get the noods al dente, which I then finished in the sauce with a little pasta water.

Except I was not prepared for the level of spice I have signed up for. Holy crow. The good news is that the flavour is excellent (smokey and rich) and the heat was actually well-balanced. It was just a lot.

I have enough to do this once more. I might try upping the cream/ricotta even further.

When I have an electrician in to do work in my kitchen, should I ask for a NEMA 6-15 receptacle borrowed off the oven outlet? The reason to do this is to get a UK kettle and then replace the BS 1363 plug (even though the UK plug, with its built-in fuse, is superior).

I drink tea every day, could very well be nicer to have a 3000W kettle that boils in seconds.

To really reach, there's even the Leviton BSRDP which will allow you to install a UK plug in a NEMA junction box with a Decora faceplate, but that's probably asking for trouble (not least of all because it's not CSA certified).

My Saturday plans cancelled on me, so instead I took an Uber up to the parents' place, had dinner with them, and then after retrieved my road bike Chief Brodie from the basement. A pump-up of the tires was all it needed, and then I rode the 16km home.

In the good:

• Clipless pedals are still fabulous for getting good power out of mediocre legs
  • Clipped in the whole way and I didn't fall over on stops!
• Rides smooth and silent
• The lowest gears will get me up the worst hills still
• I found the lock/lights/panniers!

In the bad:

• I bought the Chief in 2013 and it's starting to show: the plastic over the shift indexes is noticeably yellow, for example.
• The right interrupter is starting to stick
• The bar tape needs redoing
• The setup is really aggressive, with a lot of weight on the arms whether I'm on the horns or the flats, to the point I find myself wondering if the Chief has always been the wrong size
• The lights were all dead

My enjoyment of the ride was also strongly coloured by desperately needing a shit for the last 5km. It seems Friday's tacos, er, came home to roost. So I spent the last 20 minutes or so convincing myself I was only 10 minutes from home. I did make it, but having a highly distracting podcast on the bone conduction headphones certainly helped.

I'm going to ride the Chief around the neighbourhood (5-6km at the most) a few times this week and see how I feel about things now that I have it back. But first impressions are that while the Mundo can be unwieldy...maybe I prefer it in all scenarios anyway? It does have a more upright riding position and the electric assist. The Chief is just easier to park.