[rich@dallas64 lish]# cake
Devil's Food Cake - tasaro's office desktop
INGREDIENTS:
* 3/4 cup unsweetened cocoa                   * 1 1/4 tsp baking soda
* 1 1/3 cups granulated sugar                 * 1 teaspoon salt
* 1 1/4 cups milk, scalded                    * 2/3 cup shortening
* 1 1/4 teaspoons vanilla extract             * 3 eggs
* 2 cups cake flour, sifted or stirred before measuring

DIRECTIONS
  Grease two 9-inch layer cake pans and line bottoms with wax paper.
Grease wax paper. Sift the cocoa with 1/3 cup sugar; pour into the
milk gradually; stir until well blended. Set aside to cool. Sift
together flour, remaining 1 cup sugar, soda, and salt. Add
shortening and half of the cooled cocoa and milk mixture. Beat at
medium speed of an electric hand-held mixer. Add eggs, vanilla, and
remaining cocoa and milk mixture. continue beating for about 2
minutes, scraping bowl with a spatula occasionally. Pour into
prepared pans. Bake at 350° for 25 to 30 minutes. Cool in the pans
for 5 minutes; turn out on racks and peel off paper. Cool and frost
devil's food cake as desired.

mmm, cake
[rich@dallas64 lish]#

(It probably doesn’t hurt that Linode is run by Chris Aker aka caker…)

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Half a kilometer down Dupont is a Sobeys. The selection is a little narrow there for me, but it’s 24h, and Candice thinks it’s neat to shop at a Sobeys again — it’s a Maritime chain. Another half-kilometer that way is a Loblaws, which is smaller than the Superstore we shopped at in Ottawa but still has all the President’s Choice brands we’re used to.

A half-kilometer in the other direction gets us a Price Chopper, which we haven’t tried yet. I’m not in any huge hurry to try it, since it’s a really low-price-oriented store and it’s in the Dufferin Galleria, which is a really creepy “dirty mall” that hasn’t been renovated (or had its low, arched, stucco ceilings cleaned) since the late 70s or so. I’m sure it’s fine, it just doesn’t seem to offer anything that the Sobey’s or Loblaws wouldn’t.

Then tonight we went to No Frills in the Dufferin Mall. The Dufferin Mall used to be a dirty mall but renovated in the last few years and is now a nice, clean little mall (and has an H&M, yay!), even if it is anchored by a Wal-Mart. But I’m pleased with No Frills. It’s not less, uh, frilly than any other grocery store, except for having to bag your own groceries (in your own bags, please, or 5c/bag for theirs).

But the selection there is interesting — not only does it have the usual national brands and the Loblaws-specific brands like President’s Choice, it also has a lot of brands and foods that I’d expect to have to go to an ethnic grocery store for. The Mexican section has sauces practically labeled only in Spanish; the frozen section has the kind of dim sum I’d have had to go to Kowloon Market for in Ottawa; even the beans shelves have a lot more Goya and other “second-tier” brands than just Libby’s and Unico — which is a plus, since brands like Goya have a lot more variety.

Now part of me wants to just chalk this down to being in a more diverse city, but none of the other grocery stores around here are like that! So yay for an easy place to find difficult-to-find ingredients at good prices.

And finally, a little ways down Christie from the Loblaws is Fiesta Farms, which I’m really excited about — the one time I walked by it it was so late at night that they were closed, but I saw banners on the outside promoting local food. Turns out it’s Toronto’s largest independent grocery store and it’s partnered with Local Food Plus, an organization which promotes and certifies local producers.

So we can join the local food movement at an independent grocery store that’s a fifteen minute walk away!

This is legal in Canada, Originally uploaded by nyxie

From a spice rack kit I bought years ago. Click for detail!

I’m in Toronto! I got here on Saturday morning with Candice. We spent the weekend seeing apartments — 6 or 8 on Saturday, and then two on Sunday, staying at the Holiday Inn on Bloor at St. George. Most of the apartments we looked at on Saturday were roughly along St. Clair around Avenue or Yonge. We found some, and nearly went for one that would have stretched our budget quite a bit — until we saw this!

So Sunday we started out a little discouraged. And then we saw The Apartment, which I’ll talk about in a second, and then another one that was just as cute but up at St. Clair and Dufferin which was deemed too far away from the subway. We went out for dinner for Candice’s birthday to Coco Lezzone in Little Italy, which was good but not spectacular. (We’d forgotten to account for the difficulty in finding good dining on Sunday night here.) And then before we went to bed Sunday night I emailed about The Apartment.

Let’s talk about The Apartment for a moment: tonight I signed our lease! We now have an apartment (well, for January 1, but I have the keys) on Delaware Avenue, just west of Ossington and just south of Dupont. It’s right near here.

It’s a cute, medium-sized 1-bedroom on the main floor of a house, with hardwood floors, glass block walls, a giant kitchen, and a freakin’ backyard. How great is that? It’s two blocks from Ossington station, and not far from the Dufferin bus that will take me straight to the door at work. The photo of the house at right is linked to a Flickr set of the apartment, as yanked from the Craigslist ad that we found it with.The only downside: street parking, but there seems to be lots of room on that block alone whenever I’m over there.

Anyhow, back to the timeline: On Monday morning, I left the hotel and drove straight to FreshBooks World Headquarters, up on Dufferin just a bit south of Lawrence. The first day was a little bit hairy — not quite sure what I was expected to do, my manager was in interviews for most of the morning, I was stumbling around OS X for the first time ever, I was thinking about missing Candice, and I hadn’t yet seen the place I would be living for the next two weeks! But even then it was fine. Day Two felt like a “first day”, though, so the hairiness is irrelevant now. Days three and four had me doing a bunch of email support (best way to learn the product!) and finding my way around a bit more, and things are coming together pretty well.

I think it’s going to be a blast there. My coworkers are smart and a lot of fun and we seem to have much in common, and everyone, employees and customers, are really excited about the software. I’ll have plenty of interesting projects once I get up to speed on the sysadmin side, and I’ll have my fingers in a bit of the dev side as well from the sounds of things.

(I should’ve taken some pictures of the office. Drat. Also, I like OS X a lot, and need to find a way to get Candice and I MacBooks.)

Let’s see, what else? Until the new year I’m staying in Mike McDerment’s place, near Eglinton and Mt. Pleasant. Easy drive in, apartment to myself, lots around it. I’m driving back to Ottawa every weekend, and am going to be there over the holiday perineum, to see Candice and help pack up the apartment. Went over to Dan‘s to have a couple beers Tuesday night, was nice to socialize a bit, but found out just before I left that there was no beer — so went around the corner from Mike’s to the Granite Brewpub, who offer growlers of their beers to go. Their Peculier was just right.

All in all things have been overwhelming and exhausting and awesome.

However, today I left my gloves at the Future Bakery (at which I had their all-day breakfast for dinner tonight, $7 for omelet, toast, home fries, fruit, and coffee). Oh, well. Can’t have everything go right, I guess!

Rich likes chili
Originally uploaded by nyxie

Candice took this at Memories in the market this weekend. I couldn’t not post it. Om nom nom.

From Pizza Hut’s Japan menu. (Which also includes this tasty treat.)

Bacon Krispy Kreme burger

Originally uploaded by satanslaundromat

(Found via Valleywag.)