I've never had a big backyard. Growing up in Toronto's westend and living in a house meant, for us anyway, having a modest backyard. Which was fine, we were busy playing in the street - something that is now, if not actually a finable offense, seriously frowned upon. Quite the shame really, as I don't think there was anything more fun as a kid then a group of us playing foot hockey with a tennis ball and using the sidewalk cement dividing lines as goalposts. Yes, lots of trips and skinned knees, and yes, lots of timeouts when someone who was actually paying attention yelled "car!". But all good fun, and easy to access.
It's amazing how much stuff one young girl and her friends can distribute across a large space in a short amount of time. Meara is a fine example of such a girl. I will guarantee you that collection time takes far, far longer than distribution time. I'm sure there's a formula for it. Have to ask Marc later. Needless to say Philip and I got the job done. Hatches consider yourself battened.
The boys of this particular crowd (Philip, Marc, Noah, Jake and myself) had been invited by Philip to join him at a pub The Knot Pub for his regular Friday lunch with a group of friends. What a great pub. What great friends. Normally there are about seven or eight of them that turn out, however this time there were only two others, Steve and Tom. I'm not sure quite what Steve does now, but I do know he originally hailed from Kent and has spent the past 25 years or so sailing various parts of the world, running restaurants, and the like. Tom I believe originally hailed from Maine and has been living in Lunenburg for quite some while. Tom is an optometrist. This figures into the story momentarily.
Philip had crab cakes. The rest of us had chowder. The Knot Pub makes amazing chowder. While there is a seafood chowder, there is also a mussel chowder. I had that one. It was delicious. And please, when thinking chowder do not envision the New England stuff slithering forth from a can of Chunky soup. This chowder was, well, the best chowder I've ever had. At this point I am thinking I should possibly get over my reluctance to photograph food as a picture would really be helping me out here.
Jake had woken up with a bit of blood in the white of his eye. This is the eye that is currently black. This is due to the trampoline incident that happened a few days back. I kinda brought it up before. Anyway, this is pretty typical behaviour for a black eye however it was still something to be a wee bit concerned about. And hey, look, there's Jake sitting beside an optometrist, both of them eating chowder. How's that for convenient?
Tom was marvelous. He was happy to take a quick look there at the pub, where he incidently pronounced Jake's black eye to be the most perfect black eye he has seen - which is saying something coming from a guy who looks at eyes all day long. He also gave a quick assurance that it was probably nothing more than a subconjunctival hemorrhage, which while long in name is short in concern and incidently isn't actually in the white of the eye but in this thin layer of skin in front of the eye. That said, just to be on the safe side, he offered to see us at his clinic later in the day. How cool is Tom? Tom is cool.
This worked out well as Philip was off to get a hair cut and Marc, the boys and I were off to another pub The Grand Banker, which has a beautiful view overlooking the harbour which we totally ignored as we had gone there to watch the Germany/France game. Noah's idea, and a good one. Yay Germany! During the game Marc and I busied ourselves trying a flight of local beers - not a fan of the smoked porter but the others six were great. At 2:40 Jake and I departed to make our way the arduous 2 minutes walk to Tom's office. And no, you're right, healthcare cannot get more convenient then it did for us yesterday.
Tom saw Jake pretty quickly and in those 15 minutes or so in his office I learned more about the human eye and the history of optometry and why certain things are the way they are then I have in my life. And here's the thing. Active listening is really underrated. I mean, think of all the things you hear on a daily basis, and ask yourself how much of that information you retain? If you're anything like me it's an astoundingly low percentage. This writing thing though has got me listening even more than usual, and, more importantly, trying to retain as much as I can. Sadly it's still an astounding low percentage. But it's improving, and I'm hoping it continues to go up. So sure, maybe I don't need to know that the reason why machines that measure the pressure in your eyeball are calibrated for a cornea thickness of about 550 nanometers is because, based upon the cadaver eyeballs they measured initially optometrist thought that all corneas are about that. Turns out a healthy cornea can be anywhere from 540 to 560. Guess we're just a little more alike when we're dead? It's fun knowing it though. And who knows when it may come in handy. Information is funny that way. It's amazing what we know that we don't even know we know until we need to use it, and suddenly, there it is on the tip of our tongue making us sound cleverer than we actually are.
After a successful visit with Tom, success because Jake's eye is totally fine, not because I learned that there really is no difference between 20 feet and infinity when measuring refraction and visual acuity, or something like that (like I said, not retaining much), Jake and I met up with Marc and Noah and went out for a walk along the waterfront where we eventually happened upon the Bluenose II. Yes, the Bluenose, that ship on the back of the dime. It's home is Lunenburg, and having recently had a lot of work done to "restore" it, it continues to wait for additional changes to its steering mechanism before it is deemed sea worthy. This is actually a reasonably sized controversy as I understand it as the shipwrights in Lunenburg were not used to do the work - it was farmed out to a US consulting group and some other groups in Ontario. Those groups did not actually consult with the captain and crew as for some reason many consultants like to not ask the end user for their opinions I mean, why would they know anything, right? Right?
But the waste of millions of dollars, and loss of the Bluenose II being at sea meant a big win for the four of us because we got to see it up close and also got a chance to chat with Gale, a member of the crew who happened along and was happy enough to chat with us about this wonderful schooner. I will say that the above editorial about what's been going on did not come from Gale but from other chats I've had with Philip and the gang. Gale steered us clear of such topics. I'm sure she'll handle the Bluenose with an equal finesse, assuming of course they fix the steering. And no matter what anyone says, she is a gorgeous vessel.
We ended up having to breakout of where the Bluenose was, the gates having been locked up while we were still in. Fences are made to be climbed though.
Having escaped, we returned home for a quiet evening and late dinner of that ceviche I mentioned Philip had been making. So simple yet so delicious. Fresh scallops, cut and marinated in lemon for about 24 hours, combined with diced tomato and fresh basil. Oh so good. I think it might have to do with us eating this on Friday and the scallops still having been in the sea on Wednesday. Could be wrong though. Ya never know.
With Arthur expected to come a knockin' sometime late in the night we did a final internal battening down, fortified ourselves with a touch of rum from The Ironworks Distillery, and turned in to await the storm.
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