Well, wasn't 2011 a piece of work? Lots of things happened, some great and some lousy. Let's start at the beginning.

In January we were taking Thomas the cat to the vet for excessive skinniness, strange loss of hair and general geriatric decrepitude. It turned out he had fleas, some kind of allergy which was giving him red spots all over, and lots of weird growths here and there: under his tongue, on his head, and probably in his bowel too. We treated him for fleas and gave him antibiotics for a while to clear up his skin problems, and put him on a permanent course of prednisone to treat his various tumours. (He's eighteen years old, so the growths are just because of old age.) We prepared ourselves for his imminent death; however, a full year later he's not dead yet, and indeed seems healthier than ever.

At the end of January Blake took off for Hawaii for work. I wasn't invited, which was particularly galling given that, you know, Hawaii in January. Not to mention, we hadn't been on a proper not-visiting-mum trip since before Cordelia was born. So come March Break I decided we should go to New York for the week. That holiday was more successful and fun than I expected it to be—the girls are at the perfect age to travel with. (Which is a bit ironic, now that I think about it, considering we won't have the money to go anywhere in the forseeable future.)

In May Greg Wilson and I published the paperback edition of The Architecture of Open Source Applications (Volume 1). In the process of publishing the book I learned an immense amount about TeX, typesetting, book production and publishing on Lulu.com, as well as getting a lead on a copyediting job. I enjoyed the whole process so much that I made it into a
business. So far I've had a handful of jobs and made some good connections, and I'm looking forward to growing the business this year.

February through June we were in reno upheaval. Our 80-year-old plumbing started leaking and we somehow decided, with impeccable North Toronto logic, that the only possible solution was to put a powder room in the basement and completely redo the upstairs bathroom. I've been meaning to post about that... It took a long time because our contractor usually runs much bigger jobs, and her trades were sneaking our bathroom in between other jobs. But when it was all finally done it was very satisfying and lovely.

In the middle of June one of the kindergarten students at the girls' school was hit by a car and killed. It shook up the staff and a lot of the parents pretty badly, and it's been on my mind a lot ever since. The little girl who died was the same age as Cordelia, and she was out with her mother when she was killed—actually her mum was hit by the car too. Imagine the fodder for rumination and imagination and nightmares that provided... It's a bit ridiculous that it would take something like this, but it made me understand that the continuing existence of my children is a gift. Anyway, that's a whole post on its own, really.

At the end of June I took a plane to Tokyo (by myself) to visit Dave. I'd never been to Japan, and it was a grand adventure.

By the time I got back from Japan the girls' summer vacation was well underway. The girls were at camp for a couple of weeks, then we went to Saskatchewan for a couple of weeks, then shortly after we came back the girls went to the cottage for a long weekend with Baba and Zaida. I felt like the real mooching-around-Toronto part of summer didn't start until the middle of August, but then we did manage to do our usual round of the Toronto Islands, High Park, Harbourfront, and a few trips to the park. I love summer.

I have to say I don't think anything terrifically interesting has happened since September. Greg and I have been working on the second volume of the software architecture book. (This time I'm actually going to copyedit the book, which will both be fun and educational, and improve the book.) Cordelia likes Grade One, Delphine likes Grade Three, Cordelia likes gymnastics and Delphine likes ballet. We're all pretty content to carry on into the new year as we've been carrying on.

This poor blog has been sorely neglected, and especially the book blog. I feel like I haven't been reading much—I certainly don't get big blocks of time reading time very often—but I've managed to plough through a few books while brushing my teeth or waiting in line or taking the bus. I think these are most of them, although I always manage to forget a few.

Key:
(**) Loved
(?) Forgot
(x) Did not care for
(hm) Made me think

Books I Read With Delphine

• All Creatures Great and Small and All Things Wise and Wonderful by James Herriot (**)
• Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone by J.K. Rowling

Kids' and Young Adult Fiction

• Milo: Sticky Notes and Brain Freeze by Alan Silberberg (**)
• Scars by Cheryl Rainfield (hm)
• Better Than Weird by Anna Kerz (**) (hm)
• Bud, Not Buddy by Christopher Paul Curtis (**)
• Masked by Norah McClintock
• Knifepoint by Alex Van Tol
• Comeback by Vicki Grant (?)
• Rock Star by Adrian Chamberlain
• Harriet the Spy by Louise Fitzhugh

Book Club Books

• The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien (?)
• The Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennett (x)
• Good to a Fault by Marina Endicott
• The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz
• The Book Thief by Marcus Zusak
• The Golden Mean by Annabel Lyon (hm)
• Annabel by Kathleen Winter (**) (hm)

Pulp and Other Fiction

• Gideon's Sword by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child (x)
• Guilty as Sin by Joseph Teller
• The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley
• Open Doors by Gloria Goldreich
• Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
• Blackout by Connie Willis

Self-Improvement

• Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work: A Practical Guide from the Country's Foremost Relationship Expert by John Gottman and Nan Silver
• Health at Every Size: The Surprising Truth About Your Weight by Linda Bacon (I know, right? Mmm, bacon...) (hm)

Non-Fiction

• Too Safe For Ther Own Good: How Risk and Responsibility Help Teens Thrive by Michael Ungar (?)
• Lapsing into a Comma: A Curmudgeon's Guide to the Many Things That Can Go Wrong in Print—and How to Avoid Them by Bill Walsh
• The Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother by Amy Chua (hm)
• Losing Our Cool: Uncomfortable Truths About Our Air-Conditioned World (and Finding New Ways to Get Through the Summer) by Stan Cox
• Wrong About Japan: A Father's Journey with His Son by Peter Carey
• Ah-choo!: The Uncommon Life of Your Common Cold by Jennifer Ackerman
• Bury the Chains: Prophets and Rebels in the Fight to Free an Empire's Slaves by Adam Hochschild (**) (hm)

Santa was good for family cohesiveness this year — he brought us lots of things to do together. Delphine got a build-your-own-catapult kit, Cordelia got a giant puzzle of Toronto, and we got three board games. We haven't opened the catapult or the puzzle yet, but the games have already seen a lot of use.

Apples to Apples, Jr.

Apples to Apples, Jr. is one of those games that makes you feel slightly stupid for having paid for the game and all the packaging, because there's nothing special about the game parts that you couldn't fabricate yourself. The creator's genius is in coming up with the game and getting it into production. And in this case I don't feel too bad about paying for it, because it's a really fun game.

What you get in the box are two sets of cards: red (nouns) and green (adjectives). Each player gets five nouns, and one player is the judge and selects an adjective. The non-judge players have to select from their hand the noun which most exemplifies the chosen adjective, and submit it without revealing which noun is theirs. Then the judge chooses—using criteria of their own choosing—the winning noun. Players are encouraged to advocate for their cards, and the game is more fun if the judge deliberates out loud.

We've enjoyed this game every time we play it, with every age group. It's best for readers, but even Cordelia can play if she has someone to help her with the words she isn't sure of. There is an adult version of the game which I can only imagine is extremely fun.

Lego Champion

We have Lego Creationary, which I kind of like but I'm not really good at Lego, so I don't love it. I wasn't sure about Lego Champion, but we all like it way more.

The board is a track made (by you) of Lego, and each turn adds another piece to the board. Each turn also involves a challenge, a game the whole team plays to determine who will move forward a bonus amount.

There are five possible challenges which vary wildly in difficulty. In On Target everyone throws a Lego brick and tries to hit a target. Bluffing Bricks is a guessing game where everyone takes three blocks and then players take turns guessing how many of a particular colour there are, or calling the previous player's bluff. In Topple Tower players take turns balancing a successively larger Lego creation to the top of a tower: the first player plays one piece, the second player plays a two-piece object, the third plays a three-piece object, and so on. The trick is that you can't interlock your object to the tower. The last player to add to the tower without toppling it wins the challenge.

In Codebreaker, the challenger (the person whose turn it is) makes a three-brick code, and then other players have to figure it out by asking yes-or-no questions. And finally, in Speed Builder the challenger builds an eight-brick structure in secret, and the rest of the players race to duplicate it exactly.

Our favourite challenges are Topple Tower and Speed Builder. Bluffing Bricks is a little hard to understand, but once you've worked it out it can be a clever and fascinating exercise. I think you have to be quite a big of a game theory nerd, though; last night we played it with some friends and it was so confusing we ended up substituting Lego bowling when Bluffing Bricks came up on the dice. (Lego bowling is surprisingly challenging, it turns out, because the bowling ball (the dice) is cube-shaped and bouncy.)

The game play for Lego Champion is fairly quick and we've played it successfully with ages from six to adult. (Although Cordelia tends to amuse herself between turns by building things with the extra blocks.)

Trivial Pursuit Family Edition

For a long time I've imagined that it would be really nice if there were a trivia game with different questions for kids and adults. I looked here and there (although not on the Internet) for such a game with no luck. At the local games shop (which is admittedly really nerdy, catering mainly to the Chess, Go and D&D crowd and only reluctantly carrying a selection of mainstream board games) they had Nickleodeon and Disney Trivial Pursuits which depressingly advertised, "DVD Included! No reading! No adult participation required!" Well thank goodness for that.

Imagine my surprise when I found Trivial Pursuit Family Edition at Toys! Toys! Toys!, the second tackiest toy store in town. It is exactly as I imagined it, Trivial Pursuit with two sets of cards, one for kids and one for adults. The board is changed slightly to speed up game-play: half of the "roll again" spaces are now shortcuts to pie spaces, but even so Delphine and I have found that our two-person games drag on a little.

The kid questions are pitched perfectly for a well-read eight-year-old, so Delphine really enjoys it and gives me a run for my money. I am not sure how well this game would go over for a kid who doesn't read a lot or watch a lot of education TV. Cordelia basically can't play because there's too much reading and she doesn't know enough yet, although she has a nice time being on someone's team, for a while at least.

My only problem with this game is that it's American and the questions are heavily skewed to American history and geography. I suppose it's too much to ask that there be a Trivial Pursuit Canadian Family Edition...

Delphine, her friend Darina and I invented a word game. It goes like this:

1. The first player says a letter.
2. The next player says that letter and then another letter to start spelling a word.
3. The first player says the first two letters then continues spelling the word – maybe the same word as the second player, maybe not.
4. The players continue to take turns spelling, adding a letter each time.

You win if:
- you finish spelling a word and the other player can't think of a way to make it longer.
- you stump the other player - they can't think of a word which starts with the letters so far.

So we just did:

Amy: A
Delphine: A-W
Amy: A-W-E
Delphine: ... (she didn't know "awesome" has an "e")

Delphine: J
Amy: J-U
Delphine: J-U-N
Amy: J-U-N-I
Delphine: ...

I was going for "junior" but Cordelia reminded me about "juniper".

Then Cordelia gave us "G" as a start letter, and Delphine lead with:

G-E
Amy: G-E-N
Delphine: G-E-N-U
Amy: G-E-N-U-I
Delphine: G-E-N-U-I-N
Amy: G-E-N-U-I-N-E

So I won that round because I got to the end of the word and Delphine couldn't make it longer. But then we decided (when we did "zamboni") that if you're both obviously working on the same word you should both get a point. (We're not much for points, anyway.) It works best if you're playing with someone with about the same vocaulary as you; I kept stumping Delphine with ridiculous words but Delphine and Darina were well-matched.

Anyway, I don't know if it's a brilliant game but we almost never come up with good games so we're pretty pleased with ourselves.

A recipe by Delphine. [Spelling and capitalization hers. -AB]

Ingredeents

Banana
Small fruit [Like strawberries or blueberries. -AB]
Ckrackers
Jam
Peanut butter
cheese

1. Spread peanut butter on crackers
2. Cut Banana and place on crakers with peanut butter
3. Spread Jam on three Differet crakers [That is, not the crackers with the peanut butter. -AB]
4. Cut cheese. Hee Hee Hee!

How to place

1. Put crakers Around edge of a plate.
2. place small fruit in middle.
3. fill cracks with cheese.

I haven't posted about the girls for ages because Delphine's not totally comfortable with being the subject of a blog any more. I guess if you want to get to know Delphine better you'll have to either meet her or wait until she starts her own blog. But I might sneak in the odd post, like this one.

This week Delphine started Grade Three and Cordelia started Grade One. Cordelia wasn't excited about starting Grade One until a few days before, when her sister convinced her it would be fun. Delphine has had Cordelia firmly under her wing since school started: they entered the first day fray together (with strict instructions to us to stay out of the way) and they have been meeting up at recess and sharing snacks.

Both girls love their respective teachers. Delphine is in a 2/3 split which seems like it's going to be an awesome class. Cordelia is in a 1/2 split – I'm not sure who is in that class but I really like the teacher so I think it will be a good year for her, too.

More generally, Cordelia is still clinging to her baby status. She doesn't like to read, although I think she reads better than she likes to let on. She also flat-out refused to learn to ride a bike this summer, although she's learning to go like stink on the scooter to keep up with Big Sister. I'm curious to see what being in Grade One will do for her carefully maintained aura of incompetence. I'm pretty sure she steps up and shows her abilities when she's at school, and I think soon she's going to have to accept that we know that she can do stuff.

Cordelia has always had an affinity for numbers (as I expect I've mentioned) and her report card last year said "Cordelia shows an avid interest in math". I'm curious to see how that interest develops in Grade One's more advanced math.

Cordelia's my little maker. Her catchphrase is "I could use that for something!", whenever I try to throw away some interesting box or widget. And indeed, if I let her have the thing she will cut it up and glue some other bits to it and transform it into a building or a slide or a cat or some other creation. I so want to take her to a Maker Faire.

Around about when she turned eight Delphine transformed from a little kid into a pre-adolescent. I used to think "tween" was a nonsense marketing category, but there's a marked difference between seven and eight. She's got a new spirit, a little bit of sassiness and attitude, but not in a bad way; she's still polite and civil (mostly) but she's got opinions. A few of her rants: "Why do they change everything when they make movies out of books?!" (with a subrant: "'How to Train Your Dragon' was nothing like the book!"); "Everyone thinks Canadians live in igloos!"; "Why does everyone drive everywhere?!"; and one of my favourites, "Everyone else has a nice basement, why is ours is all gross?!" She's going through a bit of a noisy, self-righteous phase which, if she doesn't grow out of it, will serve her well on the Internet (or in the Computer Science Club) some day. But it all comes from noticing the greater world and realizing that there are different ways to be in it, and trying to work out what your choices say about you.

This year she's starting ballet, which will hopefully teach her self-discipline and maybe some humility (unless she turns out to be really good at it). She's still enjoying piano, and she's taking an art class with Cordelia. Perhaps a little overscheduled; we'll see how it goes.

The sad thing is, I wasn't all that hungry when I was in Japan. Normally I love to eat but I couldn't get excited about food, probably because of the heat and humidity. It's terribly ironic, to me, to go all that way to somewhere where I'd normally want to stuff my face and then not being interested. Fortunately I was hanging out with a person with a normal appetite, so we ate regularly and interestingly anyway. (If I had been by myself I might have just survived on bread and fruit juice, and that would have been a pity.)

My first meal in Japan was dinner: okonomiyaki at a cook-it-yourself restaurant near Ameyayokocho, with Dave and his friend Robert. We had a kind of miscellaneous omelette, fried enoki mushrooms in butter (so good!) and some sautéed greens. The greens came in their own little soup of cornstarchy sauce, which you are supposed to add gradually to the greens. After you have cooked the greens and sauce, you add a bunch of cheese, which suddenly changes the whole thing from sautéed greens to fried cheese with bits of greens. Tasty.

We also had a couple of flagons of Japan's Default Beer. You go into a restaurant and order "beer" and they bring you "beer", a glass mug of a cold, easy-drinking lager with a good inch of head on it. (Usually Asahi Super-Dry or Kirin Lager, I think.) It was the perfect drink in that weather, and Dave and I had one with almost every meal.

For the next morning's breakfast I had ordered the "Japanese breakfast" at my ryokan, and I was eager to find out what it entailed. It turned out to be rice, miso soup, some lightly-pickled sliced cucumber, steamed greens in a sweet sesame sauce, scrambled egg with tomato and orange on the side, and some grilled fish. Also green tea and a little package of nori. It was a lot of food and I didn't finish everything, which I'm sure is either completely insulting or totally acceptable. The fish was delicious: mild and slightly crispy on the outside.

For lunch that day I decided we should have sushi, since that's the quintessential Japanese food in my mind. Dave found us a conveyor belt sushi place where we had eel, salmon, tuna, tiny fish, tiny shrimp, and plenty more.

Later that afternoon we wandered to Harajuku, where the street eat of choice is crepes. This is curious because there aren't really any other street eats in Japan, apart from the odd soft-serve ice cream place — walking while eating just isn't done — but for some reason it's acceptable to eat a filled crepe folded into a cone while walking around Harajuku. I had ice cream, chocolate syrup and whipped cream in my crepe; I think Dave had bananas or apples in syrup or something similar. (Dave has lost lots of weight since moving to Japan by eating carefully and walking a lot; I think he must have had to eat even more carefully and walk even more after I left to make up for sharing my bad habits while I was there.)

For dinner that evening we went to a (chain?) restaurant which offered a variety of food: garlic cheese bread, pizza, shrimp chips, chicken. We had some gyoza and an assorted yakitori plate (grilled chicken parts on sticks; mmm, chicken kidneys). I think we also had something with cheese, but it's hard for me to say because I was rocking some serious jet lag and pretty much falling asleep on my plate.

Next day's Japanese breakfast was about the same, but with salmon instead of the mystery white fish.

We had ramen for lunch in Fujisawa, on the way to Enoshima. It was a rustic little restaurant, staffed only by two cooks behind the bar. You order by selecting and paying for your dish from a machine, then giving the resulting receipt to the cooks. It was delicious: the meat was tender, the noodles were soft with that particular chewiness you only get from freshly made noodles, and the broth was savoury and rich. (I wish I had been as hungry when I had it in front of me as I am now writing about it. Irony!)

It was on Enoshima that we had the mango softserve ice cream that I posted about earlier. It was almost like a mango sorbet, with enough creaminess to make it luxurious without cutting the refreshing fruitiness of the mango. Served in a twist ("mix") with vanilla it was like a creamsicle all grown up.

After Enoshima we went on a long train ride to a yakitori restaurant run by some friends of Dave's. We could have ridden the whole way in a standard JR train car, like a fancier subway car, but there's an option on JR (the rail company) to take a "Green car", a sort of first-class which is more like a double-decker GO train car — cushy reclining seats with a tray, and drink and snack service (with very cheap beer!)

The restaurant was like a pub, kind of dark and medieval with low ceilings and lots of wood. (Never mind the high-tech powered sliding door which are all-but ubiquitous in stores and restaurants.) The sink in the picture gives you an idea of the rough-hewn feel of the place.

Once again the food was delicious: we had grilled bits and pieces on sticks, mostly-raw chicken (I wasn't up for more than a taste of that), and hiyayakko, sliced tofu with soy sauce and fish flakes. (A.k.a., "That cold shit.", as Dave thinks of it.) Also more beer.

For Sunday's breakfast I requested "Western-style", as much because I wanted to see what they would do with it as because I craved familiar food. "Western-style" breakfast turns out to include back bacon, scrambled egg, a giant slab of toasted white bread, tomato and some orange. Also penne with sweet tomato sauce, and steamed broccoli. Of course.

We had lunch at a chain tonkatsu restaurant called Wako. I had a combo with pork medallions, a shrimp and some pumpkin, all breaded and deep-fried, as well as a haystack of shredded cabbage and the usual miso soup and bowl of white rice. There was a side of mayo, for what I'm not sure (I made the cabbage into coleslaw with it). Also chawan mushi, a savoury custard. The tonkatsu was crispy and delicious and the pile of cabbage was a refreshing change from the analogous pile of french fries you would get on this side of the Pacific. It, as well as the miso soup (I think) were bottomless — you could hail the waitress and she would come over with a enormous bowl of shredded cabbage and pile another stack of it on your plate.

Having had a tasty plate of deep fried for lunch, we set out vaguely in search of something healthy for dinner. I moved to a hotel in Saitama on Sunday, so we were in Saitama for dinner, and had a choice of the usual suspects: ramen, sushi, and so on. We eventually talked each other into Korean barbeque and decided to be healthy another day.

Most Japanese restaurants have pictures of all the dishes they offer, but the interesting thing about Korean barbeque is that the food in the pictures is still raw. I guess that's not the most interesting thing — the most interesting thing is that the food they bring to your table is still raw. Each table is fitted with its very own little fire pit, some intrepid young man comes by with a bucket of hot coals and skillfully sets it into place, and then you use cunning little tongs to cook everything to your taste. We had some delicious strips of beef and placated the gods of healthy eating by roasting up some assorted veggies.

There was no breakfast at my hotel in Saitama, so on Monday morning I ventured out on my own to find something to eat. It seems like an odd choice, but I found it at 7/11. They have a decent selection of cellophane-wrapped pastries, so I bought brioche sort of thing, and added a can of delicious Boss Caffe Latte from the vending machine in the hotel lobby.

Lunch led us on an epic train journey to Utsonomiya, the world's gyoza capital, for (that's right) gyoza. We went to a tiny restaurant and ordered their special plate of 12 gyoza*, all different (and beer!) There were pork, shrimp, chicken, kim chee, pork and shiso, and some more which were delicious but not readily identifiable. (I actually left the kim chee dumpling; it was just too spicy for lightweight me — Dave helped me out with it.)

(The more I write this post the sadder I am that I had no appetite to speak of while I was in Tokyo. Everything was good but it would have been even better if I had been hungry.)

By dinner time I was craving a Pickle Barrel big salad. I don't know what it says about me that when I'm in a foreign country full of exotic, delicious food I crave the most pedestrian Western food, but there it is. All I desired was a giant bowl of crispy iceberg lettuce, ham, eggs, and chicken smothered in some unctuous dressing. There is about 0% chance of finding that anywhere in Tokyo, let alone Saitama. We wandered around sussing out various restaurants and finally chose an odd little second-floor pub, advertising $3 beer in the window. (We weren't sure whether $3 beer was a good sign or not, food-wise, but we figured at least it meant there would be $3 beer.)

The place was decorated in a blackened-wood and fishing nets motif. We got ourselves a beer, and ordered what might be the closest thing to my big salad you'd find in Tokyo: a green salad with sashimi. It was delicious, and hit the spot. We also had shrimp and cheese sticks — shrimp with cheese rolled in an egg roll wrapper and fried — and I think Dave ordered some other stuff I either didn't try or tried and didn't remember.

On Tuesday my 7/11 breakfast was a boiled egg (individually wrapped) and a Georgia Iced Coffee. I thought the Georgia Iced Coffee would be pretty much the same as the Boss Iced Coffee, but it was much more bitter and metallic-tasting. I learned from Dave, later, that all the different iced coffee brands have distinctive flavours, and I just lucked into the one I like best first try.

We were down at Tokyo Bay at lunchtime — I wanted to check out Tokyo's "Harbourfront". There's a big mall down there (Doug Ford take note!) and they were having some kind of ramen festival in one of the food courts. (Or else one of the food courts was set up to simulate a perpetual ramen festival; now that I think about it I'm not quite sure which.) I had a hankering for eel, so I ordered something which looked like a delicious bowl of ramen with eel on top. Turns out the colour reproduction on the picture was a little off, and I got a delicious bowl of ramen with two slices of boiled bacon on top. (Dave tells me it was Okinawa-style ramen, which is of course different from the various other kinds of ramen.) I know boiled bacon sounds disgusting, but it was smoky and tender. I expect if you tried boiling Canadian mass market bacon it would fall apart or go slimy, but I think if you got good bacon from a butcher it would boil up nicely. Try it in soup!

I also had some melon soda. Melon is a big flavour over there, although it seemed more vaguely fruity than tasting of any melon I'm familiar with.

After we walked around the waterfront some more we had kakigori, which is like a sno-cone or granita or whatever they call flavoured ice where you are. I chose Blue Hawaii flavour, which is... blue. And sweet. It was delicious, just the thing to eat while sitting by the water and sweating gently.

Our next stop was Tokyo Tower, where I had a piece of cheesecake at the restaurant up top. Cheesecake seems to be quite popular in Tokyo, and I was curious as to how it was interpreted. It was softer and smoother than a New York-style cheesecake, and had a nice sharp cream cheesy bite.

Dinner was fancy, at the Chou Chou Dinning Room (not to be confused with Tony's Fine Dinning, a roti place up on Sheppard). Like many restaurants in Tokyo, it was on the second floor — Tokyoites don't have our aversion to going up a level or two to eat or shop. The restaurant was beautiful; we entered on a transparent walkway over a mock riverbed of white stones. Shiny dark wood and elegant lighting set a mood of quiet refinement.

Keeping with the classy style of the place, I refrained from ordering my usual beer and had a grapefruit sour instead. We ordered chicken gyoza and little fish baked in phyllo, with the heads still on. But the highlight of the meal was the risotto, a creamy sweet-savoury delight.

Wednesday was my last day in Tokyo. My final 7/11 breakfast was a green bun filled with cantaloupe-flavoured custard. Why was it green? Green tea? Melon? Mint? It's hard to say, and the flavour wasn't much help. The custard was delicious, though, and not something I'm likely to ever get in Toronto. I also had a tub of yogurt in a vague attempt to eat some protein, and, sadly, my last can of Boss Caffe Latte.

Dave and I decided that my last meal in Tokyo should be the iconic conveyor belt sushi, so for lunch we ducked into a really cheap little place. It was fascinating — they had laid out the restaurant so that the conveyor belt wound round into every cranny of the odd-shaped room, so it formed an irregular, jagged L-shape and we had to shuffle sideways behind half the other diners to get to our chairs.

I didn't realize how cheap the place was until Dave pointed out they were serving fake wasabi. But even the cheapest saddest Tokyo sushi is still fresh and delicious; really, the only thing that distinguished it from more expensive sushi was that the rolls were slightly misshapen. We had the usual selection of tuna, salmon, and clam. Dave scooped himself a plate of natto sushi, and I had some alarmingly tacky shrimp salad sushi, while I amused myself trying to think what you could serve conveyor-belt style in a Canadian restaurant: sandwiches? Salads? It's such a great way to have lunch: fast, fresh and cheap.

My very last Japanese food purchase was a can of peach soda from a vending machine in the airport. Even though I was only there for a week, the idea of Japanese vending machines has lodged itself in my brain, to the extent that whenever I go to a public park in Toronto I'm always briefly disappointed that I can't buy myself a can of coffee or a soda from a handy vending machine.

I love eating in other countries; you learn so much about a place from what and how they eat. I loved the little plates, which allow you to try lots of different things, and to eat as much as you like and no more. I liked the way everyone orders together and shares the food. I think the Japanese custom of not eating while walking is healthy and sensible (although it would take me more than a week to get out of the habit). And I liked the food itself: everything (apart from my 7/11 delights) was freshly made from excellent ingredients. Tokyo is a great destination if you like to eat.

There are hardly any urban animals in Tokyo. I didn't see any wild mammals at all (although I'm sure they have rats) and the only birds I saw were crows and sparrows. There are cats around shrines because the monks feed them.

When you go to a restaurant you get a little towel in a plastic bag. Sometimes it's a disposable wet wipe, sometimes it's a little facecloth (hot or cold). The catch is you don't get a napkin.

There are hydrangeas everywhere; in parks and gardens, but also growing wild by train tracks. I also spotted daylilies and hostas — it was cool to see my garden friends in their native environment.

July in Tokyo is really freaking hot. Really, and humid too. They don't report a Humidex, which is good because it'd be up in the 40s and it would make everyone feel worse.

The good people of Tokyo don't suck it up and act all stoic, they hate it and deal with it in a number of ways. Hand fans are very popular and no-one is shy about using them — lots of companies give out fans as promotional material. Everyone carries little schmattes to mop themselves with. You can buy them all over the place.

A lot of ladies carry parasols. These are distinguished from umbrellas by their eyelet lace edging. I assume if you are expecting rain and sun on the same day you have to carry both devices.

All the manhole covers are pretty, and they're different in every area.

They have awesome transit in Tokyo. There are a bunch of different companies which provide subway and train service, but they all work together seamlessly because they use the same payment card system. Yet again the TTC looks like a bunch of bush league amateurs by comparison. (Not that they're dealing with the same size user base. But still. They could suck less.)

No-one in Tokyo has a garden so some people get their green thumb on by creating sidewalk gardens; pots and planters on the sidewalk. I saw a rosebush in one, and a little fish pond with water plants and actual fish in another.

Most restaurants serve meals as a collection of little dishes; instead of ordering, say, steak which comes with veg and potatoes, you'd order a little plate of steak, a little plate of veg and a little plate of potatoes. And you don't order everything up front, you order a few things, then add some more stuff later if you're still hungry. (You also share with everyone, so if you don't feel like what everyone else feels like, you're screwed. Until dessert, then everyone gets what they want.)

It's a great way to eat - you can order the right amount of food and stop when you're full instead of being tempted to finish a big plateful. And you can order the exactly kind of food you want and the restaurant doesn't get to screw you by serving you a giant pile of cheap carbs and calling it a deal.

Some of the bathroom stalls have little child seats mounted on the wall for you to park your baby when you pee. I cannot tell you how much I wanted this feature when my kids were babies!

They have great softserve flavours. I don't know why we stick with chocolate and vanilla here, because mango-vanilla swirl is sublime. I also spotted green tea and black sesame.

Parks and playgrounds in Tokyo run the gamut from lame to non-existent. They have a few big parks, but they're not big on lawns and greenspace. I spotted a handful of playgrounds, but they all featured the same monkey bars, two swings and a metal slide. I also didn't spot any children at the playgrounds. I don't know if Japanese kids play at private playgrounds, or if they just don't play at all and are at organized activities.

They have 24-hour karaoke. (24-hour karaoke!!!)

Shoes in Japan are awesome. Okay, plenty of women wear boring shoes, but there are some amazing shoes worn just out and about. And the fancy shoe ladies are dedicated to high heels.

To go with the shoes are lots of fancy sock options; some girls even wear socks with strappy sandals. They have sock configurations for every kind of shoes; tiny socks with lace mary-jane straps and lace trim to wear with ballet flats, socks with a split at the toe to wear with thong sandals, socks with cut-out heels for... when you feel like wearing socks with cut-out heels. Socks in Japan have gone beyond their traditional role as foot/shoe protectors; they augment the shoe.

I cleaned my purse out today. It had been getting heavier and heavier, and I was quite curious as to what was in there.

Some highlights:

• vast quantities of paper napkins (only some of which were used)
• Chinese restaurant flyer
• pirate eye patch
• pirate map
• plastic telescope
• plastic shark
• yoga studio brochure
• Ontario Science Centre flyer
• four lip glosses
• Licemeister™ lice comb

I've been doing a lot of work-work lately, and not finding time for life maintainance. The state of my purse, before I cleaned it out, was much like the state of my wallet, and the state of my desk, and the state of my yard, and indeed the state of my house. When that much of your life is in disarray it makes you feel like a bit of a failure. I was really glad to get a chance to clean out my purse, and I hope I can get to some of that other stuff soon.

Life is coming at me too fast lately.

We're still in the middle of the bathroom reno (basement powder room is done, upstairs bathroom is entirely non-functional). This means I have to find somewhere else to shower.

I just helped publish a book, which is really cool but the work keeps coming; we have a print edition, but we also want to produce various different eBooks (and the giant learning curve that entails), not to mention fixing errata and keeping the website up to date.

The girls' school spring fair is this weekend, which means I will be baking for the bake sale tomorrow, and both Blake and I are volunteering on the day of.

Delphine has had a persistent infestation of lice, for almost two weeks. We've treated with the chemical agent and picked nits for hours, but that didn't do the trick so I treated her again today with some herbal stuff of dubious value and spent another hour or so picking nits.

My brother is getting married in July, which is going to be completely awesome, but I've never been to Japan before and I have a ton of things to do, get, and read about before I go.

Then there's the usual groceries, laundry, cooking, picking up and dropping off, vacuuming, etc, etc.

And, finally, inevitably, I just scratched my head and came away with a live louse. So now I'm off to shave my head. Or something.

...on Tuesday May 10. But her party was on Saturday, a perfect day for a party. Delphine invited four friends: Ursa, Darina, Amelia and Rosebella.

The day was sunny and warm, and almost all the guessts arrived on time. We started the fun as we usually do, decorating brown paper lunch bags for loot bags. This is a pretty good way to keep everybody busy while all the guests arrive, although it's surprising how quickly a child can coat a paper bag with glitter and stickers. The girls spent a good eight to ten minutes on their bags before disappearing upstairs to "visit" the cat. I don't like parties to go upstairs because it creates far too much mess, so I called them down and sent them outside to play while we waited for the one straggler to arrive.

After the final guest appeared, we rounded up the whole gang and walked up to a nearby parkette to terrorize unsuspecting dog walkers with a series of silly races. We did a traditional speed race, then a hopping race, a egg and spoon race, a three-legged race and a sack race. It was a pretty nice combination: the speediest kid was totally hamstrung by the sack race, the least athletic kid turned out to have nerves of steel and totally shellacked everyone in the egg and spoon race. Delphine won the sack race because most of the big kids collapsed in exhaustion and the little kids just kept falling over.

After everyone was worn out and sweaty we headed back to the house — curiously, the children managed to muster enough energy to run most of the way there — for sub sandwiches and cheesies and apple juice. Everyone was happy with lunch. Even the children who don't like sandwiches (seriously?! Who doesn't like sandwiches?) were convinced to disassemble their sandwiches and enjoyed all the ingredients thereof.

Delphine once again designed an awesome and original cake: lemon cake sandwiching a thick layer of rainbow sherbet, with blue buttercream icing. I decorated it with kosher jelly candy shaped like slices of citrus fruit. (On sale after Passover.) The cake was a hit with everyone; some kids ate just the cake, some kids ate just the sherbet — no-one ate just the icing, I guess that stops at about five or six — and some kids ate the whole thing and had seconds.

Next Delphine opened her presents, slowly, paying great attention to each gift, much to the irritation of those children whose gifts she hadn't opened yet. She got a Geronimo Stilton book which she was very gracious about even though she has been openly scornful of Geronimo Stilton lately. (It's come up because Cordelia likes Geronimo Stilton — they read them at daycare.) From the same child she also got Happy Birthday Bad Kitty by Nick Bruel, which is a fairly witty comic/novel hybrid. From her school bestie she got the puzzle game Rush Hour. From her friend down the street she got a big sketchpad, a box of bright, gorgeous oil pastels and a book called The Sisters 8.

The best present was from Ursa, or rather her mother Tanya. Tanya snuck all through the house and hid a series of clues leading Delphine to her gift, a set of stilts. Delphine loves a treasure hunt, and she was thrilled with the treasure, too. The girls spent a good part of the rest of the party trying them out.

Gradually all the kids except Ursa left (Ursa's a semi-permanent addition to our household and doesn't count as company). I was just about to collapse into well-earned slumber (did I mention the day before the party I published a book? Well, I did. More about that soon.) when my friends Kat and Joel arrived. Kat had been away in Asia for weeks so I peeled myself off the couch to give her a hug and make some tea.

The party finally came to an end when Ursa and Kat and Joel went home. Delphine went to bed happy and exhausted.

Yesterday Canada elected a Conservative majority government. Our House of Commons has 308 seats, and the Conservatives won 167 of then with 40% of the popular vote. The NDP is our new official opposition with 102 seats and 31% of the popular vote. The Liberals, Canada's "natural governing party", suffered a huge setback winning only 34 seats and 19% of the popular vote.

My politics lie somewhere around the NDP/Greens, but I'm not partisan. If there was a party that ran on a platform of evidence-based compassionate pragmatism I would vote for it, but there isn't so I do the best I can. This time I voted for Carolyn Bennett, our incumbent Liberal candidate, because she's clever and effective. It wasn't a difficult choice, because I would have been happy to have Michael Ignatieff as Prime Minister.

I'm not happy about this result; I'm pretty miserable, actually. Stephen Harper's faults are well-documented elsewhere, so I won't go into that. I'm not on-board with the Conservative platform, obviously, and I worry that with a majority they will make changes to this country that lead it further and further away from what I value.

I'm also frustrated with our electoral system. Electoral reform makes my head spin but I understand enough to know that our system is broken and our government doesn't accurately represent us. Dave Meslin can explain it better than I can.

So the question remains: As a citizen, what do I do next?

There's a school of thought that says that everything will work out and nothing will go horribly wrong no matter who is in government. I think this is the school of thought that non-voters follow, because if that's true, why vote?: stuff will work itself out, everything will be fine.

If I followed that school of thought I would just carry on exactly as I have been. Of course if I followed that school of thought I wouldn't have been so upset last night when the results came in. In fact, I probably wouldn't even have watched.

There's another school of thought the members of which are rending their garments today: the CBC is going to be dismantled, abortion and gay marriage outlawed, gun control repealed, mega-jails built on every corner. That school is well-represented in my Twitter feed, but it's not one I subscribe to either. I'm not sure what would prevent the Harper government from doing all that: perhaps they mostly don't really want to, perhaps they fear that the electorate would disapprove and not re-elect them, perhaps there are checks and balances in place that would otherwise stimie them. But I don't believe a Conservative majority equals the Hellmouth opening.

If I followed that school of thought... well, I don't know what those people are doing. Drinking, I guess.

This is what I think. I think things don't just work out fine by themselves. I think they work out because of the hard work of thousands of people writing letters and articles, rallying support (or just plain rallying), raising money, going on TV, and doing all the other things besides voting that democracy entails.

And so I'm going to email Carolyn Bennett's office and see what I can do to help. Help immigrants, help families, help seniors. Help make (keep) this country great.

The Amazing Two Bathroom Home-Value-Inflating Reno Extravaganza is plodding along nicely. The basement powder room is framed out, the plumbing and electrical are roughed in and the drywall is up. (Oddly enough the guys who hang the drywall are not the guys who tape and plaster it, so we're in between those two stages at the moment.)

But I digress. This post exists to ask for your help. We're totally redecorating the upstairs bathroom and I have exhausted my teeny tiny decorating muscles.

As you can see in the collage above, the floor tile is a kind of stripey grey (it's the "White" colour), in 12" by 24" rectangles.

We're tiling the walls halfway up with elongated glass subway tile (4" x 16"), mainly white with about 15% bottle green, and a few tiles-worth of white square mosaic tiles in there for texture (and because Delphine really likes them).

The bathtub is really plain and rectangular. The sink is Ikea's Vitviken. (Or perhaps I should say sinkS! Whoo!) The vanity is shiny and white and plain, the medicine cabinet is shiny and plain, the faucets are shiny and sleek and apparently not discussed anywhere on the Internet (but here's the box).

So what colour paint is going to work with the bottle green tiles? Find me a shower curtain the softens up all that sleek shininess. Tell me what else I need! Shop for me, my pretties!

Wednesdays are tricky, dinner-wise. Delphine's art class ends at 5:15, which means we're usually not home until 5:45 or 6:00. Dinner is at 6:00. (Theoretically.) If I'm extra clever and don't get distracted by work, I put something in the crock pot and set the table in advance so we can sit right down and eat. Yesterday I wasn't extra clever.

We got home at 5:45 and there was nothing cooking anywhere, but I did have an idea. It started with half a pound of Perth Pork bacon. Any idea that starts with Perth Pork bacon is a good idea.

I cut the bacon into little bits and fried it up. When it was starting to get crispy I (reluctantly) poured off about half the fat. Then I added a cup of arborio rice to the pan and mixed it up. I minced two cloves of garlic and added that, then I poured in two cups of chicken broth, put the lid on and walked away for about twelve minutes.

When I came back, I added a cup of frozen peas and a large tomato, cubed, and also a bit more water since the rice wasn't quite done. I put the lid on, let that simmer for another couple of minutes, and then served it with that cheap "parmesan" in a can.

It was delicious and beloved; everyone had seconds. (Cordelia ate around the tomatoes.) Delphine took some for lunch today. Yay! Dinner victory!

Friday was our last day in New York. (I cleverly planned our trip to provide a weekend at home before the trip and one after. Unfortunately as it turns out, weekends in New York are on the same days as weekends in Toronto, and so Sascha and Leontine and Nina could not hang out with us during the day. Instead, they were kind enough to spend two evenings with us and completely annihilate Nina's bedtime two school nights in a row. If that isn't love I don't know what is.)

Anyway, Friday was our last day. We were flying out from Newark at two, so we had enough time to do a thing before leaving. The thing we did was brunch at M. Wells (Magasin Wells), a little hipster diner a couple of subway stops away from the hotel. The place didn't open until 10, so we had a donughnut for first breakfast while we packed, and then walked over.

It wasn't a nice walk — we walked under an elevated train for some of the way, and it was through a kind of industrial-ish area. Still, the sun was bright and warm, and it was interesting. Delphine picked up a lot of beer bottle caps for her collection.

M. Wells is a super-cool place with a somewhat convoluted menu. Brunch-y things were mixed up with lunch-y things, there were dishes with brains in them, there was clear evidence that they could make bacon and eggs and pancakes, but no bacon and eggs and pancakes on the menu, because bacon and eggs and pancakes are not hip. (I had expected something more diner-ish so I was a little taken aback by the menu.)

Anyway, Blake had tortilla Española, Delphine had a scone with apple butter, and Cordelia and I had buckwheat crêpes with maple syrup, which was billed as "maple syrup ploye". It was delicious — thin, heavy pancakes drenched in maple syrup. Everything else was good, too.

We went back to the hotel to pick up our bags, then began the long trek to Newark: N to Times Square, change to the 1 to 34th station, then a NJ Transit train to Newark Airport. We were not particularly early, so I was all fretty, but I liked the cute little shuttle train from the NJ Transit stop to the terminal at the airport.

We were flying Porter, and they were a helpful and friendly as their reputation suggests. The plane was small but comfortable, and the staff were patient with the girls. It was a bit of a rocky ascent, probably because it was a prop plane, but once we reached altitude it was a smooth ride. We were back in Toronto in about an hour. Porter provides a shuttle bus right to the Royal York, so the rest of our trip home was effortless.

We had been reluctant to come home: we felt like we could have stayed for a few more days. I think that's the perfect way to end a trip. I might even have suggested that we would go back some day.

Thursday in New York was the day I had planned to not plan anything. I knew that in the course of exploring on Tuesday and Wednesday we would come up with something we wanted to do on Thursday, so I left it open, "TBD".

What we decided to do was find a playground. The girls had been gazing longingly at every playground we passed on Wednesday, so we decided to carve out Thursday morning for some quality playing (them)/sitting in the sun (us) time.

Sascha directed us to the really cool playground in Central Park, but Central Park is full of winding roads with no names, and we ended up at the wrong playground. (Luckily Central Park is also full of playgrounds.) The girls played there for a while but then proclaimed it lame, so we set off with a renewed determination to find the right playground, which we eventually did: the Heckscher Playground. It features a cement fortress-like structure beside a giant (like, building-sized) rock, as well as lots of swings and a really tall slide, like I haven't seen since I was a kid.

The girls had an excellent time, Blake got a sunburn, I met a nice Irish guy and his son Finn, and we all watched a drunk girl get taken away in an ambulance (it was St. Patrick's Day).

After the playground we grabbed a hot dog and a pretzel, then walked up to the Museum of Natural History where we elected to pay $40 to get in (did you know it's a "Pay What You Can" museum?) and spent at least an hour in the Discovery Room. The Discovery Room is apparently the Museum of Natural History's best kept secret, because there were, like, five other kids in there. It's bright little room with a well-presented hands-on collection: dinosaur bones, clothes, bugs under a microscope, a cabinet of natural wonders like shells, coral, skulls and rocks. The girls had a great time exploring and Blake and I had a great time sitting.

Our next stop was a bakery at 87th and 1st to get black and white cookies. Now, I swear black and white cookies were everywhere when we were in New York in 2003, but Sascha says they fell out of fashion years before that. To be fair, "everywhere" might just mean "every Starbucks", but they certainly weren't hard to come by in 2003. In 2011, I had to ask Twitter where to get them, and my lovely friend Shawn pointed me at Glaser's Bakery. Not only are their black and white cookies delicious, they also have a fine selection of cupcakes, eclairs, danishes and things I don't even know the names of. It was totally worth the detour.

Dinner was delicious ordered-in Indian food with Sascha and Leontine and Nina, and gulab jamun for dessert, and bedtime was late.

Day three, Wednesday, dawned early but not bright with a drip, drip, drip in the living room. It was raining and the roof of our hotel was leaking into our top-floor suite. It wasn't a disastrous leak, but in the dark it produced the kind of hard-to-identify noise which makes imaginative little girls very nervous. After we had reassured the girls and set up the ice bucket to catch the drips we went downstairs for our daily waffles and doughnuts.

Our trajectory was east that day, into the wilds of Queens and ultimately to the New York Hall of Science, a.k.a. the Queens science museum. (We got in free because we have a membership at the Ontario Science Centre.) The first exhibit we visited was about science in the Muslim World, which was pretty cool. There was an interesting exhibit on light and optics, another on sports science (I believe all science museums are required to have an area devoted to sports science), and a bunch of stuff about space. It was fun but assumed a fairly high level of literacy — Cordelia was reduced to being one of those annoying little kids who runs around pounding buttons because there wasn't much designed for kids at her level.

We went for a late lunch at Tortilleria Nixtamal, a fantastic little place recommended by Sascha. We had nachos (with Mexican cheese, avocado, peppers and beans), tamales with chicken mole, pork tacos, and the girls had fish tacos. I had Mexican Coca-Cola, which is apparently sweeter than American Coca-Cola, but I didn't notice. It came in a cool bottle, though. Blake had a cool drink the name of which I have forgotten. Everything was excellent, but the nachos were my favourite — crispy chips, fresh toppings in just the right proportions. Afterwards the girls and I enjoyed an ice pop, or as mine was labelled, "Artificial Coconut Quiescently Frozen Dairy Confection". So much tastier than it sounds!

By the time we finished lunch the sun had come out and we were on track to be late meeting Leontine and Nina at the Children's Museum of the Arts in Manhattan. We found our way, with some twisting and turning, through the neighbourhood back to 103rd St station and headed west.

The Children's Museum of the Arts has lofty goals but my impression of it from the hour or so I spent there was of an arts-and-crafts oriented drop-in centre. The main floor had various art stations: painting, cutting, that stuff you make out of Borax and glue. Downstairs there was a ball pit stocked not with the usual little plastic balls but with those giant exercise balls, and a dress-up centre. It was pretty cool but I missed the "museum" part. Then again I didn't really look for it. The girls had a great time bouncing in the ball pit, dressing up, and listening to an energetic rendition of Cressida Cowell's "That Rabbit Belongs To Emily Brown". Delphine made a picture of a turtle. Blake and I got to hang out with Leontine, which was fun. She's awesome. (I love it when my friends marry awesome people.)

When the museum closed we peeled the children away and set them loose on the streets of Manhattan to terrorize passers-by with their erratic behaviour and injudicious piggybacking. Also irrepressible adorableness: they made a lovely trio.

Our intention was to go out for dinner, and since Blake was the only person with a preference, and Blake's preference was to go to Pizzeria Uno (why don't we have those here?!) we decided to go the Pizzeria Uno that's right by, I mean mere blocks away from, our hotel in Queens. So close we could almost walk it!

Closeness to the hotel was desirable because before dinner we had to stop by the hotel to deliver this painting by my friend Tanya which I had bought to give to Sascha and Leontine. Buying art for other people is always tricky, maybe even unadvisable, but I think this went pretty well. Leontine and Sascha liked it, or else they were really polite and good actors. Delphine kind of ruined it — or added a level of intrigue — by saying they were evil bubbles...

Our next mission was to get to Pizzeria Uno, which seems simple but was complicated by the fact that it's almost too far to walk, it was dinnertime and we had three small short-legged children to think of. Sascha thought it would be easier to catch a bus, Blake was with him on the bus plan, I was indifferent and Leontine was strongly against taking the bus, which is apparently her usual stance on the issue.

As always when taking the bus, it could have gone either way: the bus could have arrived promptly and taken us where we wanted to go, or we could have waited for ages and ages, getting crankier, tireder and hungrier, until we finally decided to take some other bus which got us slightly closer so we could walk the rest of the way, inevitably being passed by the original bus as we walked. Nobody's mind was changed about the value of buses that evening.

Finally we arrived at the restaurant, where we marvelled at the calorie counts on the menu, and were perplexed at the lack of prices for alcohol and the supreme awfulness of the waitress. The grown-ups all had pizza of various kinds, Nina had macaroni and cheese and Delphine and Cordelia had the exact same dinosaur-shaped chicken nuggets they get at The Longest Yard three blocks from home.

Then Sascha ordered a car service to drive us home, and we all collapsed into bed — far too late for the girls and somewhat embarrassingly early for the grown-ups.

While we were in New York we stayed at the comically-named Country Inn & Suites in Queens. It's an incongruous 9-storey building in a slightly seedy area which didn't seem to have much to offer (although we didn't explore) apart from Queensboro Plaza station, from which it's a quick ride to westbound to Manhattan or eastbound to all the cool stuff in Queens which you only know about if you have friends in, say, Jackson Heights.

One of the most important features of a hotel is a free breakfast buffet, and this one didn't disappoint. Well, I suppose if you were looking for high-quality food it might disappoint, but considering the great price we got for the room I wasn't expecting much. There were strange skinless sausage-like objects, patties of that yellow foamy "egg", cheap bagels, danishes, doughnuts and bread, coffee (or hot chocolate or hot water) out of a dispenser, and for the health-minded, bananas and tubs of fat-free yoghurt. But the highlight was the make-your-own waffle station: a dispenser oozed pre-made waffle batter which was then poured onto an electric waffle iron. Two minutes later, uncanny fluffy goodness. The girls and I had waffles and syrup for breakfast every day. (There may have been some doughnut consumption as well.) The "sausages" were savory and sagey, but the egg tasted like the cushion foam it resembled.

After carb-loading we walked down to the station to catch a train into Manhattan. We bought two seven-day MTA Metrocards — that's right: two. The girls rode the MTA all week for free! Not 60¢, not 75¢, but absolutely free. They got to duck under the turnstiles! (Each adult gets to take three children under 44" for free.)

Our first stop was Fifth Avenue, to visit F.A.O. Schwartz and then walk to the Lego Store at Rockefeller Center. Before we got to F.A.O. Schwartz our sight was arrested by the looming glass cube which heralds the Fifth Avenue Apple Store. Well... it was right there; we had to go in! They had the new iPads to play with, and I looked at docking stations for the bathroom (shut up) and Delphine and Cordelia found games to play, but all in all it didn't strike me as any cooler than any other Apple Store, apart from the great glass elevator. The children wanted to stay and play video games all day, but I impressed upon them the utter lameness of that idea and finally dragged them out.

F.A.O. Schwartz turned out to be right next door to the Apple Store, and also turned out to be closed (it was 9:30 am) so we walked down to the Lego Store, admired Lego and made custom mini-figs for a while, then walked back (with a Starbucks detour). F.A.O. Schwartz was big and toy-store-ish, and they had lots of cool stuff there, but the lines they carry are pretty much the same as the stuff at Mastermind, except more of everything and the occasional sales guy/demonstrator. Delphine was swayed by one of the demonstrators, a sweetheart shilling Myachis. That's what she spent her souvenir money on, and Cordelia bought some Playmobil.

Our next stop was the Second Avenue Deli, confusingly not found on Second Avenue at all: it's the new location! There we met up with Sascha, my oldest and bestest Internet friend and my excuse for the whole trip. We all had matzo ball soup, Blake had a brisket sandwich, I had noodle kugel and Delphine had a meatloaf sandwich. I don't think the matzo ball soup was as good as Baba's, and I don't think the noodle kugel was as good as our family recipe, but they were still very tasty. We took some rugelach and hamentashen to go and they turned out to be delicious indeed.

The Second Avenue Deli was the site of my first kosher faux pas of the day: I asked in great earnest whether Cordelia could have a glass of milk. If you're paying attention, which clearly I was not, you will note that the Second Avenue Deli is a meat restaurant and thus not likely to have handy gallons of milk hanging around for thirsty five-year-olds. I'm pretty good with kosher but I always forget about the meat/milk thing. As we shall see.

After lunch we proceeded apace (I'm trying to see how many ways I can say "went") to the Central Park Zoo. We have a perfectly good zoo in Toronto but it's miles and miles away and not easily reachable by transit, so we never go — this would be the first time Cordelia had ever been to a zoo. The Central Park Zoo is fairly teeny but the animals are all interesting: seals, penguins, polar bears, tiny adorable tamarins (my favourites). The best thing was the Tropic Zone, a building containing a rainforest stocked with a breathtaking number of fantastic tropical birds. Everywhere you looked there was another amazing bird. (They said they had fruit bats too, but I didn't see them.)

We also went to the Tisch's Children's Zoo, which was a fairly small collection of the usual petting zoo critters, along with lots of interesting climable sculptures and a giant spider web made of rope. The girls loved it but Blake and I were freezing in our optimistic spring coats. It was one of those days which are pleasantly warm when the sun shines and chilly and miserable when it doesn't, and as the day wore on the sun's appearances became more infrequent.

We finally dragged the children away on the fairly slim premise of going to Macy's to get Cordelia a pair of shoes. (The shoes we had packed for her were woefully inadequate — they kept flying off when she ran because the Velcro on the fake buckle was shot.) The Macy's turned out to be that store with the cool wooden escalators, which we were on for a long time because the kids' shoe department is on the seventh floor. We finally (not without some testiness all around) found shoes which met my requirements for price and fit and Cordelia's for sparkliness, and then set out in search of dinner.

Blake and I were in that horrible state where you're tired and hungry but too grumpy to decide on a restaurant: everything looks too expensive, too seedy, too weird or too chain-y. Finally after blocks of searching we settled on Mike's Pizzeria on 36th Street, a café-style pizza place that looked clean and nice. I ordered macaroni and cheese for the girls, smoked cheese and mushroom pizza for me, and Blake got a slice of thick-crust plain cheese pizza. When we got to the table it came to pass that Delphine didn't want macaroni and cheese, she wanted pepperoni pizza! Blake said they didn't have any but that didn't mollify Delphine any, so I agreed to take her up to the counter and ask if they had any pepperoni pizza.

Well, I know you've all figured it out by now, but I was tired. Obviously, Mike's Pizzeria was our second kosher establishment of the day (you could tell from the kippah on the guy behind the counter, and the black-hat enjoying his pizza and newspaper) but I once again didn't put it together until it was spelled out for me. Pizza ⇒ cheese ⇒ milk ⇒ no meat ⇒ no pepperoni. Sorry, kid. But the macaroni and cheese was sublime, and Delphine got her own slice of plain cheese pizza.

After dinner we headed back to the hotel to get the children to bed at a decent hour, and then we watched TV on my laptop until our bedtime. (The girls slept on the pullout couch in the living room, and we had a delightfully huge and comfortable king-sized bed.)

Here are pictures.

Our train was scheduled to leave at 8:30, so we arrived at Union Station at 7:30, possibly a little too early but I'd always rather have time to kill than hurry, especially with kids. We picked up our tickets, then treated the kids to Cinnabon cinnamon sticks, which were to be the first of many delicious, unwholesome treats over the week ahead.

On board the train we settled in, luxuriating in the space and comfort. We played with the trays and the buttons on the seats, working out all the different lounging possibilities.

The train started moving on time, and not twenty minutes later Cordelia wanted to know if we were nearly there. I explained that we would be there after lunch and dinner, so she only asked two or three times more.

We each spent our train-bound day differently: Delphine braided gimp and read a lot; I read a little, stared out of the window a lot, escorted missions to the bathroom and the snack car, and worked a bit; Cordelia looked out the window, did activity books and drew; Blake read. I created a Train Bingo for Delphine (a five-by-five grid of things to see out the window: a red roof, a horse, a water tower, a playground, etc) and then she did one for me. As on an airplane, meals were an effective diversion: we had sandwiches and carrot sticks for lunch from the Canadian snack bar, and for dinner, a meatball sub, a hot dog and a small pepperoni pizza from the American snack bar. (The snack bar changes nationality — menu, currency and staff — at the border, at the same time as the dour border guards come through checking passports and making sure no-one is smuggling in contraband fruit.)

I was alert and fully conscious in the morning, and it's a good thing I decided to get some work done then because after lunch I became listless and sluggish. It's a paradox that sitting around conserving energy is more enervating than being active, and by around 2:00 in the afternoon all I was good for was staring out the window looking for the dog, bicycle and yellow-leafed tree that Delphine's bingo had set me in search of.

New York State is not at its most beautiful in early spring; for hours, it seemed, the view was of grey swamps and grey trees, with only an occasional raven or hawk betraying life. In between the swamps there were brief views of farms and farmhouses on the higher ground.

Eventually the swamps gave way to a wide river (the Hudson, it turns out), flowing fast with great slabs of ice thrown up on either side of it. The opposite bank of the river was a towering chunk of rock scattered with leafless trees. The view was monochromatic and beautiful in its severity, like an Andrew Wyeth painting.

After dinner the children really started to get fidgety and fretful. Their normal routine has them going to bed almost immediately after dinner, but they weren't able to get to sleep at their usual time. On top of that, the day of junk food combined with very little activity left them both with upset stomachs. Cordelia finally fell asleep about forty minutes before the trip ended, but Delphine wasn't able to sleep at all and was tired and emotional when we rolled into Penn Station.

The decision to take a cab to the hotel was an easy one, even for Delphine who hates cars. Cordelia's crying about her tummyache all the way to Queens didn't impress the cabbie much, although he did not betray any emotion. Then I unknowingly undertipped him — tipping makes me panic a little bit at the best of times, and late at night after a day on a train is not the best of times. Sorry, Abdullah, wherever you are.

We arrived at the hotel around 10:15 pm and after settling in and brushing teeth we all went to bed feeling much better, glad to have finally arrived and excited about the next day.

Moral Disorder by Margaret Atwood is a series of stories about a woman named Nell. The stories start in her childhood, move on to a weird (but just normal-weird, not freaky-weird) relationship with an older guy, and then ends with a pair of stories about her childhood and her relationship with her mother. Good, entertaining, interesting.

There's a kind of crankiness, a negativity, to Margaret Atwood's writing which stops me from reading two of her books in a row. Everything's described in the most sordid way. I mean, I could describe every annoying and stupid and gross thing about my life, and leave out all the good bits, and it would sound overwrought and terrible like Atwood's characters' lives, but really my life is not all miserable and icky, and I don't buy that Atwood's characters' lives are all miserable and icky. Sometimes it annoys me that her books are so relentlessly negative. Lighten up, lady! Give it a rest! (Lest you mistake this for intelligent literary commentary, I feel the same way about Stephen King books.)

On the other hand, the thing I love about Margaret Atwood, and this isn't something that seems to come up much, is her little jokes. (She likes that too: a friend of mine saw her do a reading, and apparently she laughs at her own jokes.)

(Careful readers will note that this is the first of my Alphabetical To-Be-Read List Plan, and that I have read several off-list books. If I'm going to get through any amount of my TBR pile I'm going to have to increase the on-list:off-list ratio.)

Baking Cakes in Kigali by Gaile Parkin is our second book club book. (The girl who's planning this month's meeting decided we needed something a little lighter after The Things They Carried. On the one hand, Rwanda; on the other hand, cakes!) Baking Cakes in Kigali is about a community of ex-pats of various countries who have come to Kigali to participate in (or take advantage of) the post-war rebuilding and spending. Centreing the book on non-Rwandans is a great way to write a book about Rwanda without asking us to get into the heart of someone who lived through the genocide. Not that that's not a worthwhile thing to do, but it's not this book.

Our main character is Angel, a Tanzanian grandmother who has recently launched a custom cake business. Her husband works for the university, and is the reason they are in Kigali. They live in an apartment complex populated by people from other parts of Africa and the world, and one of the delights of the novel is reading Angel's thoughts on cultural differences within Africa. The main charm of the book is Angel, actually: her thoughts on her neighbours, on feminism, on running a small business, and on coping with hardship are reminiscent of the levelheaded philosophies of Alexander McCall Smith's Precious Ramotswe.

(Leading, obviously, to the question of whether these white writers are creating a new sterotype, the "practical African woman". Both Precious and Angel are admirable characters who you would want to have by your side in a crisis, but I feel like I need to hear another voice from Africa, perhaps one that isn't so tailored to my taste as a North American reader.)

Baking Cakes in Kigali isn't a work of great literature, but it was a pleasant and easy read and raises enough discussion points that I think it will make for a good book club meeting.

Odd and the Frost Giants by Neil Gaiman was perhaps an unnecessary diversion from my TBR list, but Delphine had it out from the library and I hadn't read it, so I did. Besides, it was short. It's the story of Odd, who is odd and not entirely wanted at home, so he goes away. While he's away, he meets some more odd characters: a bear, a fox and an eagle who aren't behaving as you might expect a bear, a fox and an eagle to behave. Events transpire, Odd quests and succeeds, learns about himself and his family, saves the day and returns home stronger.

It's a wonderful little book, as you'd expect from Gaiman. He has a gloriously gentle, deadpan way of ushering you into his imagined world that I loved in the Sandman comics.