Slum bloglord

I've been neglecting this blog lately. I feel like a slum bloglord.

As much as I love blogging, it's not a particularly lucrative hobby (at least it's not for me. Some bloggers get advertising dollars and book deals. I'm not one of them).

So when a magazine calls up and offers $500 for an 850-word article, well, let's just say the writing that pays wins out over the writing that doesn't.

Anyway, that's it. I just thought I should drop in to explain my lengthy absence from this space. My article is due on Monday so my reign as a slum bloglord will end soon.

(Also, while I'm busy procrastinating, can I just say how excited I was when I googled "slum bloglord" and it returned zero hits? Have I just created a new term for people who neglect their blogs? I can't believe no one else has used this before.)

What's wrong with this picture?

Take a look at this construction project. Is there anything about it that strikes you as unusual? Because all I can see is a bland, boxy apartment building with an unattractive yellow brick front.

I didn't think there was anything all that special about it when I walked past it the other day. And then I took a closer look at the sign posted out front.


That's right. Starting at $1.25-million (what's it stopping at? $3-million? $4-million?). For an apartment. An apartment!

Everyone knows that Vancouver has the highest housing prices in the country. But this is ridiculous. How can anyone afford to buy a place here?

I certainly can't. Not on my salary.

Moving out to the suburbs is not an option. I refuse to spend a good part of my day commuting to work. It's just not worth it. I want to live in a neighbourhood where I can get everywhere I need to go on foot or by bike. But the only way I can afford to live close to downtown Vancouver is to rent.

I will never be able to afford to buy a home in Vancouver. Not when the average house price is nearing the $1-million mark.

Who are all of these people with their million dollar homes? And where did they get the money for the down payment? Do they supplement their income with a grow-op or a crystal-meth lab in the basement? Or are they simply up to their eyeballs in debt?

Something is seriously out of whack here.

Practice safe fruit

My friend Laura gave me a very useful birthday present last week.


Get your mind out of the gutter, people. It's not a sex toy. It's a banana protector!


According to the Banana Guard website, the device was created by three Vancouver ER doctors who were concerned about "the fruitless amount of banana trauma and abuse taking place in the world . . . You can now take your banana to work, school or play secure in the knowledge that no harm will come to it."

Yay! No more squashed bananas in my bag!

More adventures, please

I like to think of myself as an adventurous person. I love adventures.

I'm not talking about climbing Mount Everest or bushwhacking through the Amazon. I'm talking about the small things that thrill, amuse, entertain or challenge us on a daily basis.

Everything has the potential to be an adventure. Taking the bus can be adventure. Walking to work can be an adventure. Even counting ballots can be an adventure.

Of course, the best adventures are the ones that include trying something new for the first time. Last week I did two things I had never done before -- fly in a floatplane and attend a budget lock-up.

Both were pretty exciting experiences. When my boss told me she was sending me to Victoria for the release of the B.C. budget, I was happy about getting out of the office for a few days. But I wasn't happy about the fact that she was sending me there by floatplane.

Now, I hate boats and I hate small planes. Put the two of them together and you get my worst nightmare. I had visions of vomiting all over the cabin and crashing into the ocean.

This is Vancouver's floating "airport." The whole scene looks pretty sketchy to me.


But I'm pleased to report that I didn't get sick and that the plane didn't nosedive into the ocean. The scenery was spectacular. Check out my video!



I even got to sit right behind the pilot (I guess they're not worried about terrorists on floatplanes).


The budget lock-up was also a pretty awesome experience.

A lock-up is exactly what it sounds like -- prison. The lock-up allows journalists and stakeholders to look at the budget before it's officially released in the legislature. It gives journalists a chance to study the details and gives stakeholders a chance to generate an informed response before it's unleashed on the public.

But you pretty much have to sign away all of your personal liberties and freedoms for the privilege of getting a sneak peek at the budget. We had to sign a waiver that said we would not leak the details of the budget to the outside world.

Just like a real prison, they took away our cell phones and blackberries and put them into sealed plastic bags that were not returned to us until we were released.

Stripped of all contact with the outside world, we were then directed into a large, windowless room filled with tables and chairs where we spent the next five hours poring over the budget.


We were not allowed to leave the building. We were allowed to go to the bathroom but security guards followed us there. The provincial government also provided a buffet breakfast and lunch (the egg salad sandwiches were particularly delicious).

The only entertainment was when Finance Minister Carole Taylor came in the room to do a presentation on the budget and answer journalists' questions (can I just say that Ms. Taylor is one of the smartest, most passionate and most beautiful women in Canadian politics? She’s our Obama, and my newest non-sexual crush).

At about 1:00 p.m. the 70 journalists in the lock-up were allowed to cross the room and interview the stakeholders. It sounds civilized but it was actually extremely chaotic. It was like a feeding frenzy with journalists running around thrusting cameras and microphones in peoples' faces.

The chaos subsided after the journalists had their fill of quotes and sat down to write their stories. By 3:00 p.m., Carole Taylor was standing up in the legislature delivering the budget and the lock-up was lifted. The whole thing made me want to be a journalist again. I miss the adventures.

More adventures, please!

One of the worst movies I've seen in a long time

I was part of the National Post's Popcorn Panel this week. I was one of three "lucky" people asked to watch and then write about the movie Jumper.

Jumper was awful to watch but fun to write about. That Hayden Christensen sure knows how to bring the suck.

Here's an excerpt:

Not even the jumping, the plot device on which the entire film rests, is explained. But I sort of like the Zen quality that results. What is the plot? There is no plot, there is only right now. And right now Hayden Christensen is sunbathing on top of the Sphinx. Sweet.

You can read the rest of the review in today's National Post (and save yourself the cost of a movie ticket).

Samuel L. Jackson spends most of the movie trying to kill Hayden Christensen. But we're never really told why. (Jackson's white hair is another mystery.)

Adventures in online dating

I have a confession to make. I frequently cruise the "men seeking women" ads on craigslist. I have no intention of replying to any of the ads. It's strictly voyeuristic.

I do it because it makes me feel better about being single. It's proof that there are no decent single guys in Vancouver. And, secure in that knowledge, I can hole myself up in my apartment without feeling guilty about not putting myself out there.

First of all, half of the guys on craigslist are looking for Asian women (What's that all about? Aren't Asian women creeped out by white dudes who only want to date them because they're Asian? And what kind of guy only dates Asian women anyway?).

Second of all, almost all of the guys on craigslist are looking for women five to 10 years younger than they are. I don't get it. Why do they automatically rule out girls their own age or a little older? Why do women have no problem dating someone 10 years older but there are rarely any guys willing to do the same? What's that all about?

Of all the ads on craigslist, there is only one that intrigues me (emphasis is mine):

I am a 25 year old male looking for a dominant female in need of a boytoy. I am 6’1 195 lbs very fit and attractive. I want to have no control and be at the will of a dominant female. As your boytoy my services could include full sexual slavery or no sex at all. I could just be used for cooking cleaning and massaging ect. I am very clean and dont do drugs. I have always fantacized about this but never tried

What intrigues me about this ad is that I have a very similar fantasy. I have always fantasized about being free from domestic drudgery. I get absolutely no pleasure from grocery shopping, cleaning the bathroom, washing the dishes, doing laundry and sweeping the kitchen floor. I hate housework.

And now, here's this guy offering his services for free. Absolutely no strings attached. I wonder how this would work? Could I just give him my keys and tell him to clean my apartment and have dinner waiting for me by the time I get home from work?

Or would I have to supervise him and whip him and say things like, "Scrub the floor harder, you dirty boy!" And then he would whimper, "Yes, mistress." Because that would be weird.

I miss real winter

I love winter. Always have. Always will.

I'm talking about real winter, of course. Not this rainy, grey, wet non-season that passes for winter in Vancouver.

"At least you don't have to shovel rain," people here are fond of saying. What kind of consolation is that? I love shoveling snow. I would shovel snow all day if I could.

Vancouverites also like to compensate for their non-existent winter by bragging about how you can ski, golf and sail all on the same day. While this is technically true, I don't know anyone who actually does this.

I'd take a blizzard over rain any day. There is nothing more beautiful than snow. I love the way it softens edges and muffles sound. Real winter is supposed to be harsh, bleak and desolate. The colder it is, the happier I am. Maybe I have reverse seasonal affective disorder.

At least Vancouver is close to the mountains where, if you get up high enough, the rain is replaced by snow. Although, there's something unnatural about driving out of a city where the grass is green and arriving in a winter wonderland a mere 20 minutes later. Downtown Vancouver and Cypress Mountain are less than 15 kilometres apart but they feel like two different worlds.


So while it looks like spring from below, it looks like winter from above. Two seasons for the price of one. Weird, huh?


I took these photos last weekend. And while the scenery up on Cypress was spectacular, something about it just didn't feel authentic. It took me a while to figure out what the problem was . . . it wasn't cold enough.

I guess you can take the girl out of Ontario but you can't take the Ontario out of the girl. I miss real winter.

Freaks on the bus and parrots in the supermarket

I had a couple of "only in Vancouver" moments this week.

The first happened on the city's great traveling sideshow, where $2.50 gets you a front-row seat to the theatrics of some of Vancouver's most colourful characters (more commonly known as "the bus").

The following went down on the #4 bus heading south on Howe Street . . . in the middle of the afternoon on a weekday.

As I boarded the bus, I was greeted by a very drunk man hanging off the pole beside the driver. Even though the bus wasn't moving, he was having trouble keeping his balance. He lurched forward as I tried to squeeze past him. He smiled and mumbled something incoherent, spewing noxious booze fumes in my face. The man was hammered but harmless.

I sat near the back of the bus and watched as the drunk guy tried to strike up a conversation with the driver. I was too far back to hear what he was saying. About five minutes into the trip, the drunk guy decided he wanted to get off the bus and dinged the bell.

The driver stopped the bus and let him out the front door. Mistaking it for a proper stop, a guy standing in the stairwell at the back of the bus frantically tried to open the rear door. As the bus lurched forward, the guy at the back door started yelling because the driver hadn't let him off.

The driver yelled back, "It's not a stop!"

"You let the other guy off!" the bus rider said.

"He's drunk," the driver explained.

Instead of calming the man down, this sent him over the edge.

"THAT'S DISCRIMINATION!" he yelled.

The tone of his voice verged on rage.

"IF I'M DRUNK AND HOMELESS THEN I CAN GET OFF ANYWHERE I WANT!"

He looked around for support but everyone on the bus remained silent. No one would even make eye contact with the guy. He stood in the back stairwell cursing and ranting about discrimination against non-drunk, non-homeless people until the driver let him off at the next stop.

This week's second "only in Vancouver" moment happened at the Safeway on 4th yesterday morning.

There was a guy walking around the produce section, just going about his normal grocery shopping. There was absolutely nothing out of the ordinary about him . . . except for the large parrot sitting on his right shoulder.

The parrot was sitting on a navy blue towel the guy had draped over his shoulder so that the bird could crap whenever it liked.

I couldn't stop staring at him. No one else seemed fazed by the fact that there was a man walking around the grocery store with a dirty, shitty bird on his shoulder.

Only in Vancouver . . .

Vancouver + snow = chaos

I woke up this morning to a frantic radio report about school closures and treacherous driving conditions due to an overnight snow storm that was wreaking havoc on Vancouver.

(I still get excited when I hear the words "snow storm" and "school closures.")

I jumped out of bed and ran over to the window, hoping to see a raging blizzard outside. I peeked between the blinds and saw . . . a light dusting of snow on the ground and a couple of flakes floating in the air.

Oh, Vancouver. Your hysteria over a few centimetres of snow makes me laugh.

The CBC had three different reporters tracking the storm. (Yes, they actually used the word "storm.")

There were stories about delayed flights, road closures, traffic jams, transit chaos, school closures, fender benders. The whole city was paralyzed -- all because of five centimetres of snow.

I took a few pictures of the "nasty conditions" on my way to work. It's almost as ridiculous as the time Toronto called in the army to help shovel snow.

Beautiful British Columbia

I've lived in Vancouver for almost seven years and the view of the snow-capped mountains on a clear day still takes my breath away.

Coming from Toronto where you have to suffer through hours of gridlock and miles of sprawl before escaping the city, it never fails to amaze me how easy it is to get out of Vancouver and into the mountains.

In the summer, I can hop on my bike and get from downtown Vancouver to the North Shore in less than 20 minutes. In the winter, I can catch a bus a few blocks from my apartment and be in Whistler in two hours.

And that's exactly what my friend Laura and I did on Saturday. We went to the brand new Whistler Olympic Park in the Callahan Valley for some cross-country skiing. Check out the size of the snow banks!


I will never whine about the lack of decent cross-country skiing near Vancouver ever again. The Callahan trails were incredible.


While there are a lot of things I don't like about Vancouver (the lack of eligible bachelors, for one), the scenery is something I will never complain about.

Fraud!

Remember how excited I was about acquiring my first piece of original art? Well, it turns out there’s nothing original about it at all.

It’s a fake. A fraud. A con. The 70-year-old woman who painted it isn’t a real artist. She’s a scam artist!

At least three different people emailed me to tell me my proud new painting was actually a copy of one of those cheesy email forwards that have been circulating for years.

Yes, that’s right. I am the owner of a painting that was inspired by an email forward.

Let’s review the embarrassing evidence. Here is my painting:


And here is the photograph it was modeled on:


I was shocked and appalled. For about a minute. And then the over-the-top ridiculousness of the situation hit me.

Think about it. Some elderly lady got this photo in her inbox. She thought it was funny. She liked it so much that she recreated it on canvas. She named it “Warrior Mouse.” And then she sold it to my unsuspecting dad for $50. Who does that?

I have to grudgingly admit that it makes me like the painting that much more. In a so-bad-it’s-good kind of way, of course.

Warrior Mouse

I've been looking to buy some original art for a few years now.

Actually, "looking" is probably too strong a word. I've mostly just been thinking about it. As in, I'll walk past a gallery and think, "I should buy some original art."

And that's about as far as I've gotten.

I did walk into a gallery in Gastown once. Or was it a studio? I'm not really sure. Maybe people who can't tell the difference between a gallery and a studio shouldn't be buying art in the first place.

Anyway, the gallery (or studio) owner asked me what kind of art I was looking for. I told him I didn't have anything specific in mind but that I'd know it when I saw it. Which, now that I think about it, is exactly the same way I've trying to find a boyfriend. Maybe it's no coincidence that I am both artless and loveless.

The gallery (or studio) owner didn't seem to mind that I was completely clueless. He disappeared into the back of the shop and returned with painting after painting for me to look at. Some of them were awful. Some of them were amazing. But none of them had that extra special something that made me think, "This is the one!"

I walked out of the shop feeling like I should just buy a canvas and paint something myself. I stopped thinking about buying art for a while.

And that's when it happened. A few months after I stopped looking for it, I found my first piece of original art. Although, technically, my dad found it for me. Which is funny because my dad and I don't share the same taste in art. At all.

My dad collects paintings of barns and lakes and canoes and trees. He also collects wooden ducks and plastic frogs. Which is all well and good for him but a little bit too lawyer's office for me.

Anyway, when I was back home in Toronto for Christmas, my dad announced he had bought some art from a 70-year-old client of his who had recently taken up painting. I cringed when he described her artwork as "whimsical."

Here we go again, I thought to myself. What had he bought this time? A painting of a cat curled up on a quilt?

"It’s called 'Warrior Mouse,'" he said, holding it up for us to see.

My sisters and I laughed. We agreed that Warrior Mouse was awesome.

And just like that, I had found my first piece of original art without even looking for it.

Fail-proof New Year's resolutions

I’m not a New Year’s resolutions kind of girl.

I’m all for setting goals in the name of self-improvement but I don’t like the completely unrealistic and wildly ambitious resolutions that are de rigueur this time of year.

Low expectations are a better strategy. Which is why I have decided to make two fail-proof resolutions for 2008: 1) cook more, and 2) bring lunch to work at least three times a week.

Now, I love to cook but I only put time and effort into it when I have friends over. It’s no fun to make a nice meal when you live alone.

The trick to cooking more often is to invite people over more often. Which is where my sister Anne comes in. She is the perfect guinea pig for my culinary experiments. First of all, she’s family so I can force her to come over every Sunday night for dinner. Second of all, she’s a student and no student alive would turn down a free, home-cooked meal.

So that’s the plan. Every Sunday night my sister will come over for dinner. I will cook massive quantities of food and then I’ll bring the leftovers to work for lunch. New Year’s resolutions resolved!

To help keep me motivated, I thought I’d post my Sunday Night Supper Club recipes on-line every week. (Warning: I tend to go heavy on the garlic, ginger and chili peppers. Feel free to adjust recipes to suit your own taste.)

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Sunday, January 6, 2008

No-frills spicy jerk chicken served with bean casserole and a green salad

SPICY JERK CHICKEN

3 pounds skinless chicken thighs
6 cloves garlic
1 cup vegetable stock
2 tablespoons Jamaican jerk seasoning (you can find jars of jerk seasoning at most supermarkets or google the ingredients to make your own)
1 tablespoon dried chili pepper flakes
Black pepper to taste

Mix the jerk seasoning with the vegetable stock to make a marinade. Place uncooked chicken thighs in a baking dish. Coat with jerk marinade. Thinly slice garlic. Stuff some garlic slices in chicken and let the rest stew in the marinade. Top with some ground pepper and chili flakes. Cover and marinate in fridge for at least an hour. When ready to cook, heat oven to 350 and bake (covered with aluminum foil) on middle rack for about 45 minutes.

HEARTY BEAN CASSEROLE

2 cans Heinz beans & tomato sauce
1 can (19 oz or 14 oz) mixed beans (drained and rinsed -- not marinated)
1 diced red pepper
2 green onions
1 tablespoon dried chili pepper flakes
1 teaspoon brown sugar
1/2 cup grated cheddar cheese
All the garlic you can stomach

Combine all the ingredients in a baking dish and bake on the middle rack at 350 for half an hour. Cover with aluminum foil and uncover for the last 10 minutes. I put it in the oven at the same time as the chicken and cooked both dishes together for 45 minutes. Easy!


I served the meal with a bottle of Reed’s ginger brew and an organic green salad, topped with my famous “quick and dirty salad dressing” (two parts extra virgin olive oil, one part balsamic vinegar, one clove raw garlic minced, a pinch of sea salt, some ground black pepper).

THE VERDICT: Spicy, delicious and super easy! Leftovers lasted until Wednesday. Here's a picture of my sister giving it the thumbs up (she's not giving it the thumbs up with her hand or anything but I know she's giving it a mental thumbs up).

We love George

My entire family loves George Stroumboulopoulos. Even my mom has a crush on the guy. Talk about intergenerational sex appeal!

I went to a taping of The Hour last week with my mom and two of my sisters (that's us with the object of our shared affection in the photo).

I know I've said this before (okay, many, many, many times before) but it's worth repeating. George Stroumboulopoulos is one of the nicest guys around. He's charming, funny and one of the best interviewers in the business. Watching him work his on-screen magic in person is a treat.

Even though this was the second time I was part of The Hour's studio audience (in case you missed it, you can read about my humiliating first time here), I was still blown away by George's professionalism.

He seems genuinely interested in the people he's interviewing and he asks intelligent, well-researched questions. He also seems genuinely interested in the people who watch his show. He spent half an hour chatting with the audience before the show started.

After the show wrapped up, George stuck around for an hour, happily answering questions and posing for pictures. There were no handlers ushering him out the door. He didn't leave until everyone who wanted to meet him had met him.

I'm kind of embarrassed to admit that we were there until the bitter end. We were the very last people in line. But George didn't seem annoyed or tired. He greeted me with a big bear hug and even remembered my name.

"Marchildon!" he boomed. "What's going on?"

I'm not sure how he remembered me. The last time I "saw" him was when I was in Montreal in 2005. One of his producers called me to get David Suzuki on the show. Because we were in Montreal and George was in Toronto, the interview had to be done by satellite. So David and I hopped into a cab and drove out to the CBC's Montreal office. They put David into a tiny studio, with barely enough room for a chair and a camera.

George was talking to David through his earpiece before the interview started. I asked David if I could say hi to George. But because the room was so small, there was no way I could get in front of the camera to wave hello unless I sat in David's lap. So I did what any professional, career-minded woman would do. I dove into David's lap and flirted outrageously with the camera (shameless, I know).

I must have made a big impression on George for him to remember me ("Oh, no! It's the crazy stalker who works for David Suzuki!").

Anyway, he joked around with us for a while. I have never seen my mom giggle so much before. It's kind of weird to have a crush on the same guy as your mother. We both swooned when George proposed to me.

"Move back and marry me," he said.

I'm 99.999 per cent certain that he was joking but on the .001 per cent chance that he wasn't, my answer is "Okay!" (mostly because I want to have the world's longest hyphenated last name. Sarah Marchildon-Stroumboulopoulos has a nice ring to it, don't you think?)

Anyway, I think I've hit my 2008 quota for gushing about George. I mean, you know you have a problem when your 20-year-old sister shakes her head at you and says you acted like a teenager around him.

Whatever. She's, like, totally jealous.

Happy New Year!

I think 2008 is going to be a fantastic year. I don't know why. I just have a good feeling about it, you know?

The first few hours of 2008 weren't very promising. It was 4:30 a.m. on January 1st and I was standing on Bloor Street waiting for a bus to take me home.

I had just left a New Year's Eve house party. It was a good party. There was music and dancing and food and lots of nice people (and more than a few eligible bachelors). But I left the party feeling somewhat deflated. I had no one to kiss when the clock struck 12.

It's not being single that bothers me. I'd rather be single than settle for someone who isn't right for me. What bothers me is that my life as a perpetual bachelorette seems to be stretching out into infinity.

So, there I was, standing at the bus stop at 4:30 in the morning, freezing my butt off and feeling sorry for myself when a man named Rudy (or Ruby, I'm not really sure) snapped me out of my pity party.

He was striding purposefully down the street wearing a green puffy jacket and a black toque. He joined me at the bus stop and struck up a conversation.

"Are you Italian?" he asked me.

"No," I said.

"Are you sure?" he asked. "You look Italian."

And then he started telling me that he didn't like Chinese people but that Japanese people and Korean people were okay.

He ranted about Chinese people for a few more minutes and then asked me for my number.

There. I had met a man and he asked me out. Just like that. I didn't even have to say a single word, except to tell him I wasn't Italian.

I suddenly realized my problem isn't meeting men. I meet lots of men. My problem is that I have standards.

I'd rather be single than date a crazy, drunk, racist.

You know what? I like having standards.

And that is the kind of positive attitude I'm going to carry with me for the rest of 2008. Happy New Year!