Very pleasant evening yesterday, a slight breeze and a few clouds in the sky. I videotaped the two carousels I had going on the little deck in the back; a clothesline carousel with 20 "stuffies" (teddy bears, monkeys, Raggedy Andy, and a very cute gorilla with a wild-sounding squeeze-button...) suspended by clothespegs; and the omnipresent barbecue with a small roast slowly turning on the rotisserie. Now there's a gadget I'm bound to use more in future! It was perfect. There was corn resting in the coals too, perfect peaches-and-cream cobs that were the first picked crop of the year, and a little pepper squash in tinfoil warming in butter and spices under the roast...
Kudos to the fine recipes and tips from The Canadian Living Test Kitchen and their August 2001 "Barbecuing Big" article with the helpful sidebar on Indirect Grilling. Sorry, you'll have to get that one at the newsstand, but here is a nice recipe for a side dish - Grilled Vegetables!

Tonight we got a couple of comps ("complimentary tickets") to the Gala Opening of the First Annual Kelowna International Comedy Festival, featuring headliner Mike MacDonald, a Canadian from Los Angeles, and two much funnier guys, the youthful Roman Danylo - he really struck a chord with my son Rory, 11 - and Nelson Giles. I spoke at length with Nelson after the show, while staff, volunteers and performers guzzled free beer and downed canapes (no really, super fine seafish finger food prepared by a French chef) and tried to impress each other with verbal stunts and flying resumes. I exhibited restraint and declined to float the Codco connection; being a chauffeur is enough of an introdution - then you're on your own. So I grilled Nelson about his routine - how long? "11 years - that's nothing for a guy my age... Roman has been doing it as long as me but he's 15 years younger". Do you come up with new material on the fly or work it up bit by bit into your routine, testing it as you go? "When I've had a few scotches, I have an hour and 45 minutes of excellent material, but I tailor it to the audience and according to what the promoter needs."
He showed me his Blues Harp - it emerged like a submarine from the depths of his Salvation Army tailored jacket, eight bucks (shortly he confessed it only cost five, but still looked like it was worth 12). I told him there was a blues jam tonight three blocks away and he was tempted - would have been great to have a blues song interrupted by a comedy routine, it would be totally unexpected by the audience at the Blue Gator - but he declined and wouldn't even nibble at the idea the El Dorado was having a stand-up comedy night... what are these comedians made of? Is there no sense of adventure on the touring circuit? No! They just wanted a ride back to their hotel. Fuckin pathetic I say. Nelson is from Cape Breton and has the accent to prove it, so I gave him the benefit of the doubt. And I dissed the headliner Mike MacDonald who had a tolerable but overly long routine, and one which I had seen many excerpts from within the past week on the Comedy Channel, preserved from the Just for Laughs Comedy Festival in Montreal.
Except MacDonald was right behind me as I said this, and now I realize I have to chauffeur him from the hotel to the gig tomorrow. Hope he gets smashed tonight and forgets I said that!
So the sandwiches were triff. The beer was free and I had a couple even though they were provided free of charge by the sponsor (fokkin awful they were too! Brand name was 'Kold'. How original! Like, don't steal my stupid trademark buddy!). Krappy Kanned Kola, more like.
Savin' up somethin' for the Sprinklers blog.

Sour cherries. Yum! The German matron was exceedingly friendly. The fields below the cherry trees were totally clear of cherries. How tidy! I thought. THere were no birds to be seen and there were no holes in the cherries. THey just hung there on the branches in incredible profusion, millions of them, bright red, almost orange red, such a pure red, not dark and bluish like the sweet Byng cherries we picked two week ago. The trees ranged in precise rows and columns and had been cut back meticulously so that ladders would be unnecessary. A tall person could just about reach the tallest branch. I used the ladder anyway, snatching cherries by the handful - they easily popped off their brittle stems and some even left the pit behind while all the flesh came away. I filled a gallon pail in under an hour - 12 pounds for $8.40; she used an ancient bathroom scale like the one in my Mom's old house.
On the way home we dropped into two roadside fruitstands. This is what impressed me about the layout of my new home city - many orchards within the city limits. However, the old country road is actually a highway through town and people are riding in their RAM3500s - fifty thousand dollar pickup trucks - at high speed between their lakeside condos and the enormous shopping centres. As I picked through trays of the first apricots picked locally, the first field tomatoes grown here, transparent apples (for pies) and Sunrise apples, big and tart and bursting with freshness.
Judy's taking Rory to the Lower Mainland this weekend to share the bounty with her family. I'm staying here to take tickets at the Comedy Festival. And some sun on the beach - towel, lotion and sandwiches. What a to do list!

New blog. Lost the first one. Don't forget to make sandwiches!
Kudos to Patrick Blake, first Quippy to have a blog. Ye Olde Phart.
New here? Blogs are "Web logs", a good place to keep your to-do lists and Internet Favourites - or to share comments on the stuff you find there.
To-do: physio; shopping, liquor store (make appointment at Michael's Beer Factory), go pick sour cherries for pie, and do it before the birds get to them! Apricots are out now. Recycling. Throw out those old magazines (Wired, Microsoft Certified Professional, Adobe Magazine). And just trash those old software programs - who needs 'em?

See my other blog Sprinklers for some bug stories.