Squid on a stick and other post-biking fare

At the beverage stop at the end of the Round the City ride on Sunday, I mentioned that the T&T Supermarket on Cherry Street had turned its parking lot into an Asian night market and invited them to come with me. R said it would be fun, so off we went, past lots and lots of cars waiting in traffic. This place was busy.

And it was full of new-to-me delicacies, like self-contained fruit juices.


There was a lot of choice of foods, but I quickly narrowed it down.

BBQ'd squid on a stick. You have be careful not to choke on the tentacles. Very chewy, but satisfying.

They had a stage to keep us occupied while we waited for food. This tai chi demo set to music was so beautiful to watch. Almost as centering as doing it myself.


There were a few stalls that were a bit head-scratch-worthy:



We didn't stay long because it was really hot, plus R hadn't wanted to lock his bike up and was having difficulty manoeuvering through the crowds. As we were leaving, a fellow cyclist came up with a flat tire and it turns out that I had the pump and R had the proper valve adapter, so between us we made that guy's night.


Asian night market with a little superhero thrown in? Yes, please.

So PhysicsGirl and Rube Goldberg walk into a bar...

...and it sets off a cascade of dominoes...

I love Rube Goldberg machines. I think they are a brilliant mix of physics, engineering, and creativity. What is a Rube Goldberg machine, you ask? Allow the kooks at Mythbusters to explain it to you (the actual explanation starts at 0:33):

Oh, I'm sorry. Did you actually want to see the machine? Yeah, the Discovery clips are like that.

Anyway, I thought I'd share some of my favourite web RG machines.

In which PhysicsGirl bikes Round the City (LGRAB #1)

I joined the Toronto Bike Meetup at the same time I joined the French conversation Meetup groups, and for pretty much the same reasons: to get me out of the apartment, meet new people, and to improve my French conversation skills. Okay, maybe not that last one.

Sadly, since I've joined I've been on only one group ride due to rain, snow, and apathy timing. However, the LGRAB Summer Games gave me the impetus to not only sign up but actually go on Sunday's group ride. Especially since the Round the City ride would take me to the West Humber trail, which I'd never ridden but have wanted to for a few years.

Just over a dozen cyclists met late Sunday morning at Coronation Park on the lake shore and rode along the Martin Goodman trail to the beautiful Humber bridge. I'll gloss over how irritating those stupid gates are near Ontario Place and focus instead on how beautiful the day was. And it was beautiful. Saturday night's rain seemed to have cooled the cranky heat wave a bit and the air wasn't as oppressive as it has been. The sun was shining on the sea, shining with all its might, which was cool, because it was midday.

The game's afoot... er, abike!

The city is running a bit of a temperature, poor thing. I am disappointed that yesterday we did not break the all-time record set in 1936, because that would have been the least we could do if we're going to insist on calling this heat wave Heatmageddon. Bright side: we set a record for highest minimum temperature. Yay, us!

I sat here not quite sweltering because I finally installed my air conditioner this week and I did not, alas, work on my Athens photos. Or organize my course notes. I'm not entirely sure how my day slipped away yesterday, but suddenly it was 3 pm and I hadn't done much. I know you are shocked.

Anyway, today I'm very excited because the Let's Go Ride a Bike Summer Games are on. I missed them last summer, due entirely to the fact that I didn't know about them. There are prizes! Frankly, there are only two or maybe three things I'd want to win, but the prizes are not the point. Well, they're a tiny bit of the point. As with the 30 days of biking challenge, it's more about getting me to use my bike more recreationally, because I'm mostly a transportation cyclist.

How it works: There is a list of 10 activities. You complete at least 4 of them and either blog about it or send them an email detailing your escapades. Much fun is had.

I'm happy to report that I will do most of the things on the list, some of them all together. For example, renting a bike on vacation + test riding new style of bike + visiting new part of town = Bixi to the Distillery, for example. And writing a letter to my councilor? Timely.

Speaking of test-riding a new bike: I came across these bikes propped against the light pole outside my apartment when I got home from the Jesse Cook/Pink Martini concert on Wednesday.

Can you believe it? Free! That red and white number was really cute. If I had the space to store it and the inclination to restore it, it would have been mine.

By the next morning, they were somebody else's.

Updated: At the Big on Bloor festival, I saw the red & white bike. With most of the rust removed, she's really, really cute! 

Ahoy!

I have renamed all my Greece photos, which took a lot longer than I expected, no doubt because I have lost the ability to use alt-codes for accents (the HP has no key pad and alt-codes don't work with an external key pad. I love it when upgrading results in a loss of functionality!) and I spent some time trying to Google a solution. I have commented on and posted the ones for the ferry trip.

Only a week behind schedule.

Minoan Lines cruise 2010

I think I'll wander out into the boiling-hot air and get my still-to-be-purchased Provence cupcake before I come back and do the Athens and Delphi photos. Aντίο!

In which PhysicsGirl is somewhat sidetracked

I have, finally, finished my Provence pictures and am now out of France and heading to Greece, skipping over Venice. Pictures-wise, that is. I had uploaded the bike-trip part of my Provence trip last... er... August, but ah, took a little time to finish the Avignon portion. However, they are finally done and here they are:

From Provence 2010

Somewhere in this city is a cupcake with my name on it.

I would have done these pictures last week, but I have been a little sidetracked by a new toy. I just got an HP TouchSmart laptop. The idea is that I will use it with a projector instead of writing on the blackboard. I will be able to save my lessons for a) posting to the web site and b) future reference (for when I have one of the lessons where everything goes so well I want to reproduce it, but later can't remember exactly what I wrote on the board). I even bought a pocket projector, so I don't have to fight for the use of one at school. I had to buy the laptop off e-bay, since HP has pretty much abandoned the tablet pc in favour of a pure tablet, and it arrived minus the stylus, so I'm waiting on that to be resolved. So far, I'm very pleased. Solitaire is a lot of fun using the touchscreen.

Ahem. Anyway. New toy. Slight sidetrack. But now I am using the new toy to work on my pictures, so two birds, one stone!

Greece next. I've promised myself baklava and "blood of the pigeon" tea from Arabesque when those are done. Καλησπέρα. Τα λέμε!

To-do (bee-doo-bee-doo)

I am a big fan of to-do lists. I love making them. I love scheduling my time and colour-coding my plans by category. I love making lists, almost to the exclusion of actually doing anything on the list.

I take procrastination to a whole other level.

I make my lists in two places: a white board (I have 6 different colours! meaning 6 whole categories! which aside from being fun, works well for me as a visual learner) and on the calendar on my Palm Zire, which also has colour coding. The white board is awesome because it lets me write long lists of things and then wipe them off if when I complete them. It lets me totally rearrange things when I inevitably don't get things done. I then put them into the calendar on the Zire so I can see whether there are actually enough hours in the day to do all those wonderful things.

Seriously, I can kill a couple of hours setting this up.

Big plans are afoot for this summer. I'm finally going to build the drawer for my kitchen table. I'm planning on making an awning for my deck so I can sit outside without burning my delicate flower-like skin. I'm even inching closer to finishing my Provence pictures, and getting a Dlish cupcake as a reward.

Ooh! I should add that to the list...

Edited to add: I should have linked to this xkcd strip. It's so very true.