F 1 D 0 -- 02 02 17 at 11 30 F 1 D 0 -- 02 02 02 at 02 02 Oh Two Oh Two Oh Two. I was in bed at 202am, but I prefer to use this as the date for today's entry. Bread! I baked a white bread on the bread machine today. Actual ingredients. 2 ts old yeast 3 ts heaping sugar .5c warm water .25c milk Mix, and allow the yeast to grow. Notice that old yeast doesn't grow. 2c flour 1 ts salt 2 tb butter Process in bread machine. Watch the dough not form right, in that it makes crumbs. 1 egg Continue letting machine mix. It tries to make dough 1 egg more Continue letting machine mix into dough. .5 envelope of fleishmann's yeast Help bread machine by using wooden spoon to pick up the stuff unmixed in the corners. Eventually it seems to get the job done right. Close the lid and let the professional do its work. I use the Black and Decker breadmaker. It takes about three hours. The result was very crisp crusted, and a soft cake like centre. The colour was off-white, and agreeable. Next time: I'll add crushed peppercorns. The bread maker has made it to Thunder Bay with just a few dents. I was worried that it would not make the trip. So far so good. The cost of moving is a problem. Boxes cost 11.50 plus tax if not heavy, and about 18.00 plus tax if they're full of books. Greyhound lets me carry two large gunny sacks of anything for my fare. I can get perhaps four more for 5.00 each. I'm thinking that this could be my best bet for economical package could be travelling with the stuff. In keeping with that, Ann and I went out and bought fabric for making two more. The stuff was 9.99 a meter, but was 70% off! It is thick, and water resistant. Yay! It took a while. She decided that double seams were the way to go, and put a round bottom onto it. I'm thinking that I'd be in a big hurry, and just sew up a big envelope with the fabric stuff. I'll bet hers will last longer. TIME FLASH! I had to leave Thunder Bay before posting this, and have returned. I'm worried that if I use the 020202 date, it will be left unread and unnoticed. But nevertheless, it was the date which got me started. Sigh. I'll rename it to something useful. Like today's date. That's why the top of this looks funny. I've brought a load of stuff with me, which I suppose is the purpose of the many visits here when I'm packing. I've gotten so many email forwards for how this is a special century! 2002 20/02 20:02! Well those people might see patterns, but they've gotten their dates all mixed up. Oh, people give me heartache over date formats all of the time. I keep it like numbers. The further to the left, the more significant the information. Like numbers. Thousands, Hundreds, Tens, Ones. Decimal points. Tenths, hundredths. So Year, Month, Day isn't so crazy. Hour, Minute, Seconds, and then fractions of that. So for me, if I seek some kind of scientific "once in a lifetime association when the calendar is just right" I figure I may as well use a notational system which looks scientific. It was Bryan's list which suggested that it isn't such a singular event anyway. 2112 21/12 21:12 But that truly relies on a wrong date format! I wanted to bake a bread today, but we're going to set up for an art show at the university. Also, I didn't want all of the eggplant and zucchini to die while I was up here, so I brought it with me. So *that* is what I've made up instead. I found them brown powders confusing today. I have plastic 750g yogurt containers full of assorted miscellany. Except that they're not so miscellaneous. Generally a powder is a soup base. So when I mixed up some today, I was surprised to find it was Iced Tea Mix. Not a problem. Beef mix has no beef. It does have caramel. Chicken mix often does have chicken. They put just enough chicken fat in to irritate someone who won't do meat. The entire package when full is 30g. Moreover, it is full of noodles. So how much of the package is soup base? And how much of that is fat? I'd just as soon they lose the fat. In Canada things like milk consider the butterfat the essential ingredient, the part you are paying for. Whipping cream, 35% fat, is most costly. Then 18% table cream, 10% coffee cream, 5% light coffee cream, 3.25% homo milk, 2% partially skimmed milk, 1% lite partially skimmed milk, 0.5% skim milk with a real creamy taste, 0.1% skim milk. Ok, once you get to 2% milk, the price heads up again. But I know so many people who loathe that fat part of the milk. Same for cheese. Labelling requirements forces the manufacturer to label the stuff. But it can err on the side of the consumer: so chesse which says it is 33% BF (butterfat) can be more. I for one really like the taste of butter in cheese, but again, I know so many people who would buy 0% cheese if it didn't have that o-so-weird taste that comes from changing a hundred year old recipe for modern fat-free consumers. I'm fond of double-creme brie. It is something like laying slices of butter onto bread when I enjoy it. It is a christmas or new years thing for me to do. Thank Dave Nichols, formerly of President's Choice for that. I'm getting accustomed to the long ride here, I think. So many I know think they'd go crazy. But it is two hours reading, 15 minutes moving around. Two more hours sleeping, 90 minutes moving around. The business keepers along the way are starting to recognize me. I like that. There was a children's carnival at White River this time around. A crowd of perhaps 20 kids under 10 years old. They were being pushed by their dads in card board boxes painted to look like go carts. A distinguished man, perhaps the town mayor, was holding a stop watch, and shouting "Go!" as everyone else in the family were taking pictures of the craziness. Yes, craziness. These boxes melted in the snow, so the fathers would lie it flat, and then pull the kids. But they'd have to body check the other men whose 'carts' had not melted yet. This was all in good fun, and when the kids started complaining, the men switched sides, with arguments which went like, "oh yah? OH YAH?!" and the next thing you know, someone else's Dad is pulling your cart somewhere sideways from the finish line. I'm thinking it might have come from a Calvin and Hobbes cartoon. But not. This was one of the races where you don't really win anything anyway. Or everyone does. I went into the little LCBO shop, where they had stuff on the reduced alcohol table. I asked the lady about bottles of sparkling wine with pictures of famous Canadians all over it. We opened one yesterday, and it was fine enough. Nothing notworthy, nothing bad. Oh My Gawd, the olympics are on the radio. They have hockey! What a combination. They shoot, They Score. That's all I know.