QUESTION: Who made you the expert on this?
ANSWER: Foursquare is just over a year old (launched March 2009) so nobody’s an “expert” yet, but I’ve been playing with it for the last 6 months and have 170 checkins under my belt. If you check in at the same location often enough, you can become the “Mayor”, which some companies reward with free goods or discounts (in the US, Starbucks gives the mayor of each location free coffee). I’m the Mayor of my dentist, bank and workplace, which probably means I should party harder. The ladies at the Whitney Block Tuck Shop stubbornly refuse to recognize my Mayorship by giving me free donuts. Yes, I’m bitter.

QUESTION: What’s been your best experience so far using Foursquare?
ANSWER: Exploring St. Lawrence Market in Toronto, I checked in at a restaurant I’d never eaten at before called “Le Petit Dejeuner“. Foursquare had multiple tips for this place, all recommending the spaghetti bolognese and Delerium Tremens (beer). The meal was absolutely divine and I’d never have thought to order it normally. Second best experience was using Foursquare while traveling to Boston. It was a perfect travel guide! I kept track of where I’d visited and where my colleagues were. Also, I unlocked some fun badges (achievement trophies) for checking in at the last stop of the Freedom Trail and going on a boat.

QUESTION: Worst experience using Foursquare? Biggest downside?
ANSWER: Unless you’re paranoid about someone stalking you, or are worried about damaging your squeaky-clean reputation by checking in to more than 4 bars in one night (there’s a special “Drunk” badge for bar-hoppers), there’s not much downside. I never check in at my house, to keep that information private. Remember that information you share like this can be seen by anyone – you can use Foursquare to see where your kids are at (are you sure you want to know?), but they can also see where YOU go.

QUESTION: Where is all this going? What’s the benefit from a business perspective?
ANSWER: Tourism is an obvious angle – what better way to promote your city or province than with an up-to-the-minute electronic guidebook that knows where you are and makes recommendations accordingly? Chicago and New York are all over this angle. Badges are also a fun and free motivator to get people to attend major events or visit certain locations. Foursquare also offers venue analytics to business owners who partner with them, showing how a location or special offer is performing over time. And for nerds, there’s an API, which means developers can use their little grey cells to imaging new ways to check-in or visualize data generated by the foursquare community, then build their own applications.

So… those were my questions and answers. What are yours? Anything you want to know about Foursquare I might be able to help with? Or any other mobile apps? Write a comment, let me know!

Further Reading:

• Mashable:
  Foursquare: Why It May Be the Next Twitter
• Ad Age:
  Building an Army of Hyper-Local, Mobile-Connected Advocates
• Techcrunch:
  Foursquare Shows The Business Potential Of Location-Based Services
• Charlie O’Donnell:
  Why Yelp (…and Every Single Retail Establishment) Should Support Foursquare

For those of you who got really sick of seeing the booties in my last post getting dusty in my blog, and are mad at me for not writing anything about my recent trip to PAX East in Boston, or the purchase of my new condo in the St. Lawrence Market area, or any other little personal things I may have been up to lately, all I can say is: BLAME POPCAP.

My life has been brutally annexed by the game Plants vs Zombies lately. It’s a simple little tower defense game – zombies are attacking your back yard (or roof, or pool), and you have to garden quickly to stop their brain-eating rampage from invading your home. I can’t explain to you why it’s so addictive, it simply is. For those of you who have had hours or days of your free time swallowed whole by the devastation of some of PopCap’s other delectable goodies, such as Bejeweled or Peggle, I hope you understand my predicament. On the plus side, it goaded me into making a nice container garden on my balcony (see above) in case of zombie attack on Yorkville. You never know.

Now that I’ve taken pains to explain why I’ve been such a naughty blogger lately, let me try and make amends.

First, the day to day minutiae. After making a companion stuffed fleece and terry cloth toy dragon (named Lloyd, see above) to follow up on the triumph of my stuffed knitted Linux penguin (Grumpy), I am taking a break from toy making for a while and focusing on finishing my green triangle quilt (also see above). Desperately avoiding the desire to embroider tiny plants and zombies onto it. Knitting a pink version of Ysolda Teague’s Cloud Bolero, and am already off my stitch count (I hate yarn overs!). Reading a bunch of things – just finished a whack of obscure Agatha Christie (The Clocks, The Listerdale Mystery), and am working on re-reading Bird by Bird, Committed by Elizabeth Gilbert (on loan from MintyNinja), and a tentative start on Terry Pratchett’s massive Discworld series, The Colour of Magic, which has been aggressively marketed to me over the years by a series of maniacal fans, including Edwud, Philip and David.

Next, Travel. Pro Tip: if you are flying to Boston from Toronto, take Porter airlines, their service is AMAZING and their marketing is killer, and on top of all that, if you have a mobile phone with Foursquare and you check in at “Billy Bishop Toronto City Airport Ferry” while traveling the 400 meters to get to the Toronto Island Airport, you unlock the “On a Boat” badge. Wicked.

Boston was lovely. Darren and I decided two PAXes in one year was a bit too much, so avoided most of the heavy nerdery to do some sightseeing and sampling of the local restaurants with my friends HA and BW. Things I did enjoy at the con were the retro gaming room, which had a library of classic NES, SNES, Colecovision and Sega games, and the ancient but beautifully preserved systems to play them on. Right next door was the classic arcade room, where you could play free pinball to your heart’s content. I had a go at Dragon’s Lair and a completely bizarre Japanese game where you play pigs with dart guns being attacked by floating foxes held up by balloons (no, seriously) called… Pooyan. *snicker*

In Boston itself, we tried both ways of getting from Logan International Airport to Hynes Convention Centre. Another Pro Tip: don’t bother with the new “Silver” line. It sucks. It’s not even a subway, it’s just a bus that runs underground for a while, then gets insanely crowded, then lets you off at your terminal. Seriously, just take the shuttle to the Blue line, then transfer to Green. It’s WAY faster! We walked the whole Freedom Trail, starting at the Boston Common and going all the way to the USS Constitution. This was my second time walking it and it was every bit as amazing as the first time I did it. Also, the stupid crazy scary rusty see-through bridge between Copp’s Hill and Bunker Hill was still scary as hell, but I crossed it without plunging to my death, so that was okay.

Food-wise, the best place we ate, hands down, was the Parish Cafe on Boylston. Gourmet sandwiches from local celeb chefs all over Boston. Every bite was fabulous, nice patio, and a handsome wooden bar. Emma’s Pizza in Cambridge ran a close second for tasty, with great ambience, nice wine, and thin crust pizza that I could have kept eating all night. The rest of our noms were found on Newbury Street, including TeaLuxe which provided us with some powerful chai and matcha action.

I won’t bother writing about the new condo purchase, since we don’t get the keys until next Monday, and it won’t be much to look at for a while after that, since we need to renovate the bathrooms and kitchen, paint, buy furniture and move in. Hoping to get all this done before the G20 arrives in Toronto in late June.

As you might imagine, this sudden explosion of babies in my social circle leads many people to inquire whether *I* will be / would ever become “with child”: making my own tiny human genetic copies, passing on my DNA to enrich the next generation, etc.

To put all the questions to rest (yes, I’m growing weary of being asked again and again when I’ll join the Mama Club), I may consider it, but not at the moment. Anyone who wants to know can put their curiosity on the back burner until 2013, when at 35, I will reconsider the question.

For one thing, James Cameron has instilled an unhealthy fear of the birthing process in me: I’ve watched Aliens too many times to not fear that my progeny would try to exit my body in a really messy and unpleasant fashion. On a more mundane, realistic front, I’m just not ready to dive into the world of milky puke burps, diapers, bum rashes and all that. But my own hesitations only make me prouder of the wonderful women in my life who have taken the plunge into motherhood. I’ll take pleasure in being the aunty who can teach your kid all about hacking, English literature and the wonders of graphic novels.

That’s all I have on the baby front for now.

My upbringing led me to believe ignorance is not bliss, but should be exterminated at all costs. Education, hard work and extensive reading were held as virtues. I am currently reading a little book called “The Tao of Pooh”, published in 1982 by Mr. Benjamin Hoff, and its philosophy disagrees with everything I’ve been taught. It suggests doing the complete opposite: trying to achieve nothing. Interesting.

At university I read plenty of Western literature, with my East Asian studies limited to translated Japanese culture – movies, literature, architecture and gardening. I learned about Buddhism, Confucianism and Taoism only in passing.

A few years ago I recorded The Art of War, a Chinese military treatise and (so I was told) a prime example of Taoist thinking. Curiosity compelled me to buy a small pocket volume of the Tao Te Ching, but after struggling through the book once I found its way of defining through negatives – what the Tao is not – to be impenetrable, and surrendered to ignorance.

A few weeks ago I read Neal Stephenson’s The Diamond Age, which was full of references to Confucianism. I had the distinct nasty-crawly feeling that there was a lot of subtext related to Chinese history and thought that I was missing. So I hunted down “The Tao of Pooh”, which proved very elusive to find at my local used book stores – a good omen of quality.

The Tao of Pooh is an easy introduction to Taoism, using Winnie the Pooh as your guide, narrator and mascot. Here is a more fulsome review than mine, if you’re curious to know more.

The basic principles of Taoism (as told by Wikipedia) are compassion, moderation, humility, naturalness, vitality, peace, “non-action” (effortless effort), emptiness (refinement), detachment, flexibility, receptiveness and spontaneity.

The principles of Taoism (as told in the book) are the Uncarved Block, the Cottlestone Pie principle, the Pooh Way, That Sort of Bear, and the Great Secret.

1. The Uncarved Block, or “P’u”, is the idea that “things in their original simplicity contain their own natural power”. This describes Pooh, in his glorious simplemindedness.
2. The Cottlestone Pie principle is similar, describing Inner Nature, that “things are as they are”. “Ask me a riddle and I reply: “Cottlestone, Cottlestone, Cottlestone Pie”. (very lolcattish, if you ask me)
3. The Pooh Way, or “Wu Wei”, literally means “without doing, causing, or making”. When we work with our Inner Nature, and the nature of the things around us, we learn to go with the flow of life, wasting little effort. Chuang-tse’s story of the old man staying afloat in a stream is used to describe this idea: “I go down with the water and come up with the water. I follow it and forget myself. I survive because I don’t struggle against the water’s superior power.”
4. That Sort of Bear is a principle that states everyone is “special”. To find our Way and what we are made to do best, we must look in our Inner Self. Basically, if you’re born to be a stonecutter, be a stonecutter (this is where I *really* started to get lolcat flashbacks. “Stonecutter cat cuts stone”).
5. The Great Secret is “the key that unlocks the doors of wisdom, happiness, and truth”. And how would one obtain this Great Secret? All you have to do is… wait for it… NOTHING. Nothing is after all something. The Taoists call this “T’ai Hs”: the Great Nothing. Emptiness and nothingness are the keys to achieving a fresh mind; a mind so clear that it develops fresh, new ideas.

While I’ve enjoyed the challenge to my preconceived assumptions, I have bones to pick with the author in his method of debate. Twice I had to put the book down in annoyance, because Hoff is so combative in defending his views. He fails to embrace the first “jewel” of Taoist ethics: compassion. I don’t take issue with his belief that Taoism is the one perfect Way (he’d be a poor advocate if he thought otherwise), but he pauses in his crusade to belittle other beliefs while arguing his point.

In Chapter 4, “Spelling Tuesday”, he’s very insulting to scholars and pokes fun at Owl, one of my favorite Winnie the Pooh characters. And in Chapter 7, “Bisy Backson”, he aggressively mocks ambition and hard work. But, but… what if my Inner Nature defines me as a Scholar? What if I am That Sort of Bear? Are Knowledge and Cleverness really so incompatible with Wisdom? If so, why did I spend all that money on those damned useless degrees?

“Rabbit’s clever,” said Pooh thoughtfully.
“Yes,”said Piglet, “Rabbit’s clever.”
“And he has Brain.”
“Yes,” said Piglet, “Rabbit has Brain.”
There was a long silence.
“I suppose,” said Pooh, “that that’s why he never understands anything.”

I agree with Hoff’s assertion that many people in the modern world do things out of obligation, not natural inclination. We study to get jobs, not to acquire wisdom. We work to make money, not to fulfill our inner nature. I think taking a step back to consider what we truly are and what we really want is a good idea, difficult though that process may be.

But the political creature in me, small as she is, is skeptical of the motivations behind a philosophy that urges people not to look above their station, or to try and rise above what they were born to. If stonecutter loves to cut stone, let him or her continue in their natural path. But if they aspire to be something greater, why shouldn’t they rise and become a ‘Bisy Backson’?

Hoff uses cheerful examples of great men who eschewed formal schooling and went on to make history, like Buckminster Fuller and Thomas Edison. But what about the peasant in mainland China who harvests rice for a living? Is this philosophy going to help them discover their inner physicist/inventor? Or does it urge them to be content with their lot, lending credence to a society based on class divisions?

My own father was a stonecutter in his way – he cut coal out of mines before deciding to aspire to a different life and moving countries. He did not go with the flow of the stream, he swam against it, defying the life he was born to, and became a merchant. Would Taoist philosophy say my father should have remained a coal miner his whole life, not moving to Canada? Am I missing the point?

“Everything has its own place and function. That applies to people, although many don’t seem to realize it, stuck as they are in the wrong job, the wrong marriage, or the wrong house. When you know and respect your Inner Nature, you know where you belong. You also know where you don’t belong.” -Benjamin Hoff

Next? Maybe I need to read The Te of Piglet to grasp the bigger picture…

Last week I completed my first (and probably last) ever genuine “holiday” type vacation in Cancun, where I did not do any of the following:
- wonder which hostel I should book for tomorrow
- decide if I should eat the dodgy street food
- wear the same jeans for seven days in a row
- avoid eye contact with strangers
- visit a new part of town every day

I’ve been thinking about this, and I want to be very clear that while I am critical of the notion of “all-inclusives” for myself, I found both our resort and Mexico generally to be beautiful, with wide-open skies, clear water, lovely flora and fauna (mangroves, birds, coconut palms, rat-pigs, etc.).

Caveat: I booked this trip with the understanding that it was less a “vacation” and more a “scientific experiment” to prove the hypothesis that all-inclusive resort vacations where the main attraction is the beach are not for me. This carries on the tradition of an earlier experiment where I proved that Danielle Steel was not for me by reading one of her books. That way, when I said “Danielle Steel writes trash”, I was speaking from a position of authority, not talking out of my ass.

Here’s a summary of my core problems with resort life:

1. I hate feeling trapped.
2. I hate not using my brain.
3. I hate being coddled.

The trapped feeling was the result of many factors. We were issued scary bracelet-manacle-handcuff things (see below) that we were told we had to wear the entire time we were at the resort ON PAIN OF DEATH. Okay, maybe not death per se, but without it I would not get fed, as the awful White Bracelet of Power was the only thing indicating that I was a human being who had paid the Fiesta Hotel Group oodles of money and was thus worthy of food and shelter.

Upon removal, bracelet-monitoring resort robots would instantly detect my naked wrist, relegate me to “refuse” status in their tiny databases and bodily remove me to fend for myself on the Yucatan peninsula. I hated it, and it kept scratching me when I rolled over on it in my sleep.

Remoteness was a factor. Being 2 hours outside of Cancun and 40 minutes from Playa del Carmen meant the only convenient thing to visit near the resort was a massive highway. The one time we took the “Colectivo” bus into town, we didn’t spend much time there. The transition from resort-vacation to adventure-vacation mode was too abrupt for comfort, and my Scottish self loathed the idea of paying for dinner twice: the pre-paid buffet at the resort was wrapped in dollar-signs in my mind.

Yes, I visited the ancient ruins of Chichen-Itza. It was interesting, and swimming in a cenote (freshwater underground pool) before walking around the ruins was probably the highlight of my trip. But seeing the appalling living conditions of the Mayan villages we passed along the bus route stole some of the glory from the ancient pyramids.

It would probably be healthy for me to stop using my brain more often. To let the old grey cells idle in neutral, let the meat-CPU cool down every now and then and just meditate on the sea. But I simply can’t turn it off. Drinking works to a point, but to stop myself from spending hours meditating on the economic plight of the Mayan natives would involve a dawn-to-dusk commitment to alcohol that I am not willing to endure; there’s too heavy a penalty the next day when the Hangover Fairy visits.

Yes, I brought books. I finished three while I was there. But “all-inclusive” does not include room service, just a minibar full of pop and beer. So, instead of lounging about in the morning enjoying a hot cup of tea (Mexico’s worst failing: they serve LIPTON, gasp, horror!) and a biscuit while reading in my PJs, I had to suit up for the loud, bright, human-infested buffet as soon as I wanted food in the morning. Wireless Internet is not available in the rooms, so if you want to check your email you have to go to the lobby and sit amongst drunk, smoking louts (which explains a lot about why this blog post is being written a week late). Not my idea of luxury.

I think the biggest problem I had was with the society on the resort, or lack thereof. The people flaunting their bikini-bodies on the sand, playing beach volleyball, and lounging by the pool soaking up the sun’s rays are not of my nerdy, book-loving, computer-addicted tribe. They are sun-worshippers; the sun strikes fear in my heart. “Put on some SPF!” I wanted to yell at the young woman slathering herself in tanning oil. “You’ll have melanoma before you’re 45!”

Every day when I tried, against all reason, to run 5km in the sweaty, sticky heat, part of me wanted to leave the perfectly-manicured, almost video-game perfect grounds, and dart off into the jungle, to see some “real” Mexico, and maybe meet a Mexican who would not make a self-deprecating joke about themselves, but actually converse with me about something *real*.

My final issue, not enjoying “coddling”, is really the nail in the coffin of why I should not go to an all-inclusive again until I am either a baby-mama seeking respite from the daily grind of housework or a very old lady. The whole point of these getaways is to be pampered. To have unseen staff clean your room and launder your towels, make your food and wash your dishes. It’s creepy; I don’t like it.

The buffet encourages excessive consumption of foods you would never normally eat. To add insult to overindulgence, I couldn’t enjoy my forbidden hash browns because of the morbidly obese man wearing a NASA shirt standing directly behind me in queue, heaping six of the same on his overburdened plate – an instant reminder of the evils that result from gorging on the buffet.

I think the trip could have been improved considerably if I had gone with a large group, or if I was brave enough to try SCUBA diving, or if I was a better drinker and could choke back more than 3 glasses of margarita without wanting to hurl.

No, but seriously, go to Mexico. See the friendly rat-pigs. They’re so cute! Look!

A few months ago, I went to a restaurant on Dundas ominously named “The Black Hoof“, where I ate bone marrow (did not like – gelatinous, flavourless, icky) and raw horse (was okay, not something I’d eat every day). I texted a colleague and her response was “OMG RAW HORSE??!?! WHY?”.

Curiosity is the simple answer. I’m an adventurous gal, and I often like to say that, within reason, I’ll try anything once. I’ve got a pretty relaxed attitude towards what is edible, so usually when we’re talking about eating dog-meat (in the context of visiting a country where dog is part of the cuisine, NOT in the context of me coaxing Fido into my personal abbatoir so I can enjoy dog burgers on a Saturday night in Toronto – let’s be real) I’m the one nodding while others are gagging.

However, I have recently run into two experiences that are taking my “try anything once” attitude to the wall.

1) Dessicated Ox Bile
2) Entomophagy (Eating Bugs)

Dessicated what now?

So, the dessicated ox bile is a component of the evening digestive pills that form part of the “Innocleanse” 7-day cleanse that I thought I’d try out this week as a sort of personal challenge. There are the usual regimen of enzymes, purgatives and thermogenic (temperature-raising) ingredients in these pills – alfalfa leaves, sennosides, papain, cayenne pepper) but let me stress that this is emphatically not the crazy Beyonce cleanse where all you drink is spicy maple syrup lemonade. The list of foods you can eat is restricted, but you still have to eat.

The “NO” foods for this cleanse include wheat grains, fruit, caffeine, milk, carrots, tomatoes, pork, shellfish, yeast, oats, barley, potatoes, vinegar, sugar and margarine.

At first, looking at that list, all I could think of was celery sticks. But as it happens, if you’re willing to shell out about $150 in groceries at Whole Foods, you can eat a lot of things that are included in the “YES” food category, namely: yeast-free sprouted grain breads, lemons, limes, fresh cranberries, unsweetened almond butter, organic plain yoghurt, butter, eggs, herbal tea, sunflower seeds, vegetables, hummus, tzatziki, olive oil, garlic, onion, lean beef, chicken, turkey, all fish, beans, yeast-free grains (millet, quinoa, spelt, amaranth, brown rice, kamut, teff, buckwheat), unsweetened soy milk, rice milk, almond milk, and tofu.

We’ll see if I can last out the whole 7 days. Yesterday was day one and I had a screaming, eyeball-splitting headache all night from caffeine withdrawal. This morning my head is still hurting, but not as badly, but my upper arms feel like someone administered a series of clumsily-injected flu shots into them. Achey and heavy and sore. Apparently the first three days are the worst. I’ll keep everyone posted.

So, what was that about eating bugs?

There’s a surreptitous supper club in Toronto called “Charlie’s Burgers“. The idea is, you go to their website, fill out a survey about your food fantasies and they may (or may not) invite you to dinner. The mandate of this mysterious enterprise is to give great chefs “a blank canvas to create whatever menu they want, with no boundaries whatsoever.”

This month, they’re really pushing those non-existent boundaries by offering up an extravagant 9-course meal made up of… insects. Yes, for just $155, guest chefs Matt Binkley & Jeff Stewart will tantalize your tastebuds with tarantulas. Okay, not really (there are no spiders on the menu), but they WILL serve you crickets, grasshoppers, forest nymphs, scorpions, queen ants, water beetle, rhinoceros beetle, wax worms, meal worms, super worms and butter worms. See the complete menu if you dare! (or, if you want to know which wine goes with scorpions)

I have to make up my mind if I’m bold enough to eat these things before the dinner happens on Jan 24. If I’m honest with myself, I think I already know the answer. As an old-school nerd, the moment I think of eating worms, the image that springs to mind is of Riker staring down the parasite-infected Starfleet Admirals in episode #25 of ST:TNG, “Conspiracy”.

The valuable life lesson that episode taught me? If you eat bugs, your head may asplode.

I have a friend who can run half-marathon distances while listening to audiobooks. I also know someone who finds lyrics distracting and use beats from Podrunner (free on iTunes under “podcasts”) – you choose your speed and get an hour of music at exactly that pace.

Me? I like catchy tunes. Not what the musical elite would call “good” songs, or songs that make you cry or think deep thoughts. Running is not the time to indulge in sentimentality or emotion; it’s a time to strip yourself down, turn off your brain and just be pure moving muscle.

Dance and pop music are great for motivation to move. They give you the all-important high beats-per-minute that you need to keep a steady, aggressive pace. I also believe that if you listen to some of the same songs every time you run, your body’s response becomes Pavlovian – your heart and lungs feel the rhythm and know what’s coming up, so they tune in and work harder to move oxygen around.

That said, with all the races and training coming up in 2010, here are some of the songs that help me warm up, stay fast and put an extra burst of speed on when I’m pushing towards the finish line:

Warm-Up

• Lebanese Blonde – Thievery Corporation/Garden State
• Porcelain – Moby/Play
• Wonderful – Adam Ant
• I Know I Know I Know – Tegan & Sara/So Jealous
• I Don’t Feel Like Dancin’ – Scissor Sisters/Ta-Dah
• Bug Powder Dust – Bomb the BASS/The Rebirth Of Cool Phive
• Faith – George Michael
• Clint Eastwood – Gorillaz/Gorillaz
• Lazy Eye – Silversun Pickups/Carnavas
• My Moon My Man – Feist/The Reminder

Hardcore Speed

• Fell In Love With A Girl – The White Stripes/White Blood
• Inner Universe – Yoko Kanno/Stand Alone Complex
• Intergalactic – Beastie Boys/The Sounds of Science
• X Project – Dj Fresh/Escape From Planet Monday
• Stronger – Kanye West/Graduation
• Ocean Drive (Tiga’s White Linen Vox) – FPU
• Destination: Overdrive – Chromeo
• Firestarter – The Prodigy/The Fat Of The Land
• My Elastic Eye – The Chemical Brothers/Come with Us
• Hollaback Girl – Gwen Stefani/Love. Angel. Music. Baby
• Fuck The Pain Away – Peaches/The Teaches of Peaches
• Holding Out For A Hero – Frou Frou/Shrek 2
• Sexyback – Justin Timberlake/’Futuresex/Lovesounds’
• Milkshake – Kelis/Tasty
• Womanizer – Britney Spears/Circus
• Toxic – Britney Spears/In the Zone
• The Distance – Cake/Fashion Nugget
• My Red Hot Car – Squarepusher/Go Plastic
• What You Waiting For? – Gwen Stefani/Love.Angel.Music.Baby
• Smack My Bitch Up – The Prodigy/The Fat Of The Land
• Hey Ya! – OutKast/’Speakerboxxx/The Love Below’
• No Sleep Tonight – The Faders/Veronica Mars
• Crazy In Love – Beyonce & Jay Z/Dangerously In Love
• Single Ladies – Beyonce
• Boom Boom Pow – Black Eyed Peas/E.N.D
• Don’t Stop The Music – Rihanna/Ultimate Collection

Sustained Speed

• Kids – MGMT/Oracular Spectacular
• Sex on Fire – Kings of Leon
• Unbelievable – E.M.F.
• Change – The Lightning Seeds/Clueless
• Number One – Chaz Jankel
• Yes – Merry Clayton/Dirty Dancing
• The World’s Made Up Of This And That – Fatboy Slim/Deeds Plus Thoughts
• Damn Girl – Justin Timberlake/’Futuresex/Lovesounds’
• Can’t Get You Out Of My Head – Kylie Minogue
• Let’s Dance – David Bowie/Let’s Dance
• Rehab – Amy Winehouse/Back To Black
• Black Betty – Ram Jam
• Billie Jean – Michael Jackson/Thriller
• Simply Irresistible – Robert Palmer
• Two Princes – Spin Doctor
• Just A Girl – No Doubt/Tragic Kingdom
• Zombie – The Cranberries /No Need To Argue
• Pain – Four Star Mary
• Shout – Tears for Fears
• Crabbucket – K-Os/Joyful Rebellion
• I Hear You Calling – Gob/The World According To Gob
• A Bad Dream – Keane/Under The Iron Sea

Laugh Through The Pain

• I’m Too Sexy – Right Said Fred/Up
• Girls – Beastie Boys
• Money – The Flying Lizards/Sedated in the Eighties
• I Touch Myself – The Divinyls/Divinyls
• The Humpty Dance – Digital Underground/Sex Packets
• Baby Got Back – Sir Mix-a-Lot/Mack Daddy
• Bust a Move – Young MC
• I Want Candy – Go Gos/The Best of Bow Wow Wow
• Istanbul (not Constantinople) – They Might Be Giants
• Bohemian Rhapsody – Queen/Greatest Hits
• Mashin’ On The Motorway – DJ Shadow/The Private Press
• U Can’t Touch This – MC Hammer
• Me So Horny – 2 Live Crew
• Tubthumping – Chumbawumba
• Smile – Lily Allen/Alright, Still
• Supermodel – Jill Sobule/Clueless
• Watch Out Now – The Beatnuts/Classic Nuts, Vol. 1

Home Stretch

• Don’t Stop Believin’ – Journey
• Danger Zone – Kenny Loggins/Top Gun Soundtrack
• Mission: Impossible Theme – Lalo Schifrin/U2
• The Imperial March – John Williams/Star Wars Trilogy
• Eye Of The Tiger – Survivor
• You’re the Best – Joe Esposito/Karate Kid Soundtrack
• Gonna Fly Now (Theme from Rocky) – Bill Conti/Rocky Balboa

What do you like to listen to when you’re pounding the pavement? Suggestions welcome!

Just last night I stalled at making dinner by checking email, filling the dishwasher and joining the anti-proroguing group on Facebook, and before you knew it my stomach was growling like a caged tiger. The granola bars in the pantry were starting to look like a nice idea for a main course.

Fortunately, I had planned ahead, and bought some baby bok choi and frozen shrimp at the grocery store on Thursday night. Hooray! Mum’s delicious speedy ginger & lime shrimp to the rescue. (Note: most of Mum’s cooking involves wrapping meat or eggs in pastry, so don’t be fooled into thinking she’s a health freak just because this one dish is good for you).

I swear the whole thing can be chopped, cooked and served in 15 minutes:
2 tbsp. olive oil
1 shallot or small onion, diced
1/3 cup finely chopped fresh raw ginger root
2 cloves fresh garlic, diced fine
2 tbsp. fish sauce
1 generous sprinkling dried spicy red pepper flakes
2 cups shrimp (I like frozen & shelled; less mess)
1/2 cup firm tofu, sliced finely into thin strips (vegetarians: skip shrimp, make it all tofu)
2 cups baby bok choi, sliced into strips
2 limes
lots of fresh cilantro
(optional) an avocado and a cucumber
salt & pepper to taste

Put a frying pan on low heat, drizzle the olive oil about, then toss in the onions to get them browned up. Add garlic as soon as it’s chopped. Next goes the fish sauce, the juice of one lime and red pepper flakes.

Now turn the heat up to medium-high and you can pop in the shrimp and/or tofu. Poke it all about in the pan vigorously with a spatula, coating it with sauce. Remember: nothing says “I love you” like a spatula.

Cook this for about 7 minutes until everything is sizzling and steamy. Add bok choi last and cover your pan to let it steam. This should only take 2-3 mins. Voila! You’re done.

Garnish with salt & pepper, add a generous fistful of fresh cilantro leaves (unless you hate them), slice the other lime into quarters and put on the side.

Bonus: if you have cucumber and avocado in the house, slice into small wedges and scatter over the steaming bowl, to add some cool & creamy contrast to steamy hot & sour shrimpy-ness. Yum!

Serve on its own, or with rice or noodles if you possess the forethought I lack to make those sorts of things in advance (start rice 20-40 mins before, noodles 10 mins before).

However. That being said, I also have some very clear images in my mind about what a vacation in the sun in Mexico should look like. It should involve cold beverages with tiny umbrellas. Sombreros. Massive, gaudy beach towels. Coconut-scented SPF. And of course, bikinis. During my ongoing family photo project, I unearthed some pics of my Mum & Dad vacationing in Mexico in the early 70s. My Mum, clocking in at a lithe 110lbs soaking wet, was sporting a very small swimsuit. My Dad looked very pleased about this fact.

Thus, I have decided to kick my running training up a notch and try to squeeze my blindingly white bottom into a pair of rather petite string bikinis while I still can, before the ravages of advancing age and the unspeakable nightmare that is cellulite spoil the dream forever. After all, it’s not like the prospect of wearing a bikini is going to get any more appealing (for myself or my pitiable onlookers) as I get older.

Observe my own personal crucible:

Achtung! These are not clothes meant for actual submersion in water! These are exclusively for posing by the swim-up pool bar, trying to look nonchalant while actually frantically sucking in one’s abdomen and wondering if you can casually sneak a peek down to check if all your strings are still tied.

To achieve this end, I’m hoping to run 5k on five out of every seven days in January, and to eat as healthily as possible until my departure on Jan 28. And maybe do some situps. And possibly investigate liposuction.

Another helpful motivator to keep me training is that I’ve signed up for a full roster of races for 2010 already, including my first full marathon in September (no guarantees; I might chicken out of that one).

This is partly because due to an accident in overbooking, I’ll be spending the last weekend of March in Boston attending PAX East, instead of running in Hamilton where I had agreed to do the oldest race in North America, the “Around the Bay Road Race” 30k in Hamilton, as a relay with Indigirl and Twiggy. Many thanks to my Top Gear-loving partner in crime CarbonMan for taking my place for the last leg of the run!

Here’s the running roster for 2010 so far:

1. Sunday, Mar 14, 2010 – Steam Whistle Brewery, TO – Achilles St. Patrick’s Day 5K Run
2. Saturday, Apr 3, 2010 – High Park, Toronto – Harry’s Spring Run Off 8km
3. Sunday, May 2, 2010 – Yonge Street, Toronto – Sporting Life 10k Run
   
4. Sunday, May 16, 2010 – Mississauga – Mississauga Marathon (half)
5. (Saturday June 12 2010 – Jordan – Niagara Wine Country Run half marathon relay – tentative)
6. (Saturday, June 26, 2010 – Queen’s Park, Toronto – Pride & Remembrance Run 5km – tentative)
7. Sunday, July 11, 2010 – Distillery District, TO Acura Toronto 5km
8. Saturday, Aug 21, 2010 – Leslie Spit, Toronto Midsummer Night’s Run 15km
9. Sunday, Sept 26, 2010 – Waterfront, TO – Scotiabank Toronto Waterfront Marathon (full)

This, for me, is the start of winter. Here marks the weekend where I officially re-engage my “indoor activities” roster, which includes reading, quilting, baking, knitting and doing things on the Internet, not necessarily in that order. In wintertime, Pipes rediscovers her inner Domestic Goddess. And as 2010 seems to be the year of the Rebirth of the Blog (see: Jalapeño Pirate, Spaghetti Robot, etc) I thought it was high time for a new post.

So, yesterday I made use of my lovely Christmas gift of ceramic pie weights and baked a pecan pie…

*the verdict was “more pecans, less sugar”. Not bad for a first try, though.

…and today, inspired by the lovely new “Fletcher Mittens” I got from indigirl for Christmas, I finished knitting and stuffing and sewing eyes onto the Linux Penguin I’ve been working on (or rather, NOT working on) since March…

Reading has been a bit eclectic lately. I recently completed the utterly abysmal conclusion to Stephanie Meyer’s “Twilight” series, ‘Breaking Dawn’, where the vampires *finally* decide it’s time to start talking about menstruation, and where I was disappointed to find there were absolutely zero sex scenes or even pages of tawdry purple prose waxing poetic about Edward’s heaving bosom or what’s-her-name’s engorged throbbingness or what have you. Sigh. 800 pages I never needed to read in the first place. I sincerely hope she doesn’t write a fifth book, though, or I’ll feel compelled to read that steaming pile of printed letters, too.

I’m accumulating a large stack of books to take with me to Mexico in a few weeks, for my first ever attempt at a non-adventure vacation. I’m nervous about being expected to basically lie down and turn off my brain for 7 days while attacking my liver with alcohol, so in addition to going armed to the teeth with SPF80 and an extraordinarily wide-brimmed floppy hat, I’m packing a heavy arsenal of literature and possibly some knitting to take along in case I need to jump-start my brain after baking it in the sun for a few hours.

Here’s the tentative list so far:
* Christopher Moore – Bloodsucking Fiends
* Fabienne Grevy – Graffiti Paris
* Lise Myhre – Nemi
* Caleb Carr – The Italian Secretary
* Agatha Christie – The Mysterious Affair at Styles; Hallowe’en Party; Third Girl
* Mark Dunn – Ella Minnow Pea (indigirl recommends)
* Marisha Pessl – Special Topics in Calamity Physics (indigirl recommends)
* Isaac Asimov – Tales of the Black Widowers
* Alexander McCall Smith – In the Company of Cheerful Ladies

Additions? Suggestions? Do tell. Comedy/mystery/fantasy preferred. I’ll also take recommended (light, small) knitting patterns for vacations.