This fun little piece just came down the [toronto_lindy mailing list](http://groups.yahoo.com/group/toronto_lindy/):

As they chatted while waiting for the dance to begin, one elderly gentleman in colourful shorts and mismatched knee socks was dancing up a storm with a partner half his age. With his right arm wrapped around his partner’s back and his left hand gently holding her right hand, the man twirled her around the dance floor, unfurling the woman gracefully, then pulling her back into his embrace. It was a beautiful sight, but an anxiety-inducing one for me.

I had reluctantly made my way to Lithuanian House because I wanted to learn how to move like that elderly gentleman. I hadn’t always known I wanted to dance. In fact, I had lived my entire life unaware that I had such a desire…

Catch the whole article [here](http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/news/artslife/torontomag/story.html?id=59ef8704-6c76-44b5-909e-d542bec0273e&p=1). Alana is presently on sabbatical in Ottawa, but she was my teacher over the summer, and I fully second Karastamatis’ experience of her delightful personality and instruction.

The [Palais Royale](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palais_Royale) was a dance hall built in the early 20th century, once a major destination for Toronto dancers, but shuttered since the sixties. Well, it’s been bought, renovated, and apparently the new owners are back to throwing public dances there. The first of these was last weekend.

First things first: The floor there is *spectacular*. Even if not truly sprung, it’s extremely comfortable, and very, very smooth. Sooner or later I’ll buy proper suede shoes, but even given my sub-par equipment, the Palais’ balance between slip and grip is impeccable. I think I really cut loose on my Charleston for the first time; it’s awesome to be able to really twist and shuffle the feet, yet still have enough traction to be confident you won’t suddenly lose it and fall over. Read on…

This seemed to go over well at a pot-luck on Saturday. With prep, rising, and cook time, it was a mite over an hour total, of which twenty minutes was kneading dough and shredding cheese.

Read on…

Exam time means study time. Study time means *not enough time*. And this, of course, means streamlining.

Obvious targets are tasks that can be eliminated altogether. The justification which allows fast food to replace real food becomes more muddled, and can even extend as far more bizarre substitutions. For example, the purchase of new clothes to save that hour and a half spent on laundry. (Possibly a guy-only savings; apparently some females find clothes shopping to be a veritable black hole of time consumption.)

But besides killing chores, what about the necessary recreation? Man cannot live on studying alone… What kinds of relaxation activities give the highest degree of *relaxation per unit of time invested*? Read on…

I don’t normally use this space to express negative opinions, but I’m making an exception for the Low Fat Yogurt commercial from Tim Hortons.

The advertisement in question is not simply annoying, it is *offensive*.

A trim, red-haired woman is featured, enjoying a fruit and yogurt cup on a couch. A small crowd gathers outside the window, presumably to observe her consuming the treat.

On seeing these people, she assumes the look of a trapped animal. “It’s low fat,” she pleads, eyes wide, “It’s *low fat*!” Read on…

There are lots of reasons to love working at a small company. No, spending nights sipping a Corona and tweaking the templates is not one of them.

But it is really cool to be developing for the web when the company in the next office is innovating for the supermarket. This is an organic tea-based carbonated beverage. It’s really delicious, but it won’t hit shelves until the middle of next year sometime.

And it probably won’t be sold in an unmarked clear glass bottle.

I bought a bag of potatoes. The intention was to boil and mash them, and make shepherd’s pie. But then I had mashed potatoes at Thanksgiving.

So I did homemade french fries instead. And here’s how it went down.

###Recon

The only “real” home deep fryer I’ve ever encountered was an intimidating affair comprised of thick stainless steel and heavy plastic.

The primary function of it simple: It completely contains the volatile grease as the food is lowered into it.

As chopped and washed potatoes descend into 150+ degree oil, all the surface water boils very very quickly. Beneath the surface, this causes the oil to go psycho and splatter all over the place. At 150 degrees, this isn’t simply messy, it’s hazardous.

It was this functionality that would need to be replicated. Read on…

_Pronounce as ‘Cayley’_

Mike [Biggs](http://doubleplum.net/) persuaded me to go to a _Ceili Dance_. It’s a monthly affair put on by a local group with a [charmingly hideous](http://ceili.intrnear.com/) website.

But the dance was really marvelous. The last time I’d done anything even remotely similar was on a class trip in about grade 7.

###Music

Live. I appreciate that. The musician in me loves to experience what other skilled musicians create. There were about eight present, playing drums, fiddles, a whistle, and a keyboard.

And Irish music is beautiful. It’s energetic and uplifting.

(Just in case you had them confused, _Scottish_ is the one with the bagpipes, which happen to not particularly dislike, either.)

###Learning

Between the person calling the dances and the one person in my party who knew what the story was, it wasn’t that difficult to pick them up. I think we did just about everything except the waltzes.

Proper waltzing is skill I’ll learn at some later point, but Clarke Gable couldn’t waltz, so I guess you just never know.

###Friends

The group I went with was exact four gals and four guys, so that worked out quite well for the squares and lines.

I’d put something about it in my MSN name, and when I got home there was a capitalized message on my desktop from Christine S: “YOU COULD HAVE INVITED ME!” So at the next one in September, I’ll advertise. (I don’t feel comfortable promoting something I haven’t tried that costs $12 at the door…)

###All Ages

It amazed me the smattering of old folks, middle agers, young professionals, and students. It seemed like the sort of thing that a lot of people get invited to and it sticks with a handful.

I’m pretty sure it stuck with me.

But my calves kind of ache now.

When I was originally figuring out my living arrangements for school and decided I was cooking for myself, I budgetted a lot of money for eating out, figuring that I _could_, considering the savings on rent.

But I hate eating out. The food on campus is awful. In an emergency last night between a meeting and WCF, I had the special at a major campus eatery. Terrible. For the $8.50 that cost, I could’ve made three meals each twice as good. And I’m not a chef. Definitely not a chef.

But I had a nice piece of success Thursday after the bananabread fiasco. I thought I’d make Pizza for the other Mike and I. Now, I know making pizza is supposed to be really difficult, but I also knew that my sisters and I had had a moderate amount of success with it a couple months ago at home. Well, it worked famously — absolutely delicious. I bought a slice of Pizza Pizza today just as a control variable to make sure, and it was sort of lousy in comparison. :)

I might as well take this opportunity to link for the first time to my other big project — the [Quickcook Database](http://quickcook.net). It’s not finished, but there’s still a lot of great meals there that my family members and I have contributed.

It exists primarily to provide me with things to consume so I don’t starve, and secondarily as a playground for me to work on my PHP and MySQL skills. It’s not supposed to be a gargantuan beast the way some recipe sites are, just a small collection of honest, reliable, simple food ideas. That said, the database behind it is far more sophisticated and intricate than anything I’ve seen anywhere else to date.

I’ve updated the [Pizza Recipe](http://quickcook.net/recipe.php?id=40) to reflect my observations from the other day. And I’ve got the other half of the dough in the freezer for another time.

Mike

Chemistry lecture was cancelled today, so I had a few moments this afternoon and thought I’d try my hand at baking a banana loaf.

Well, something went wrong…

I took it out after an hour of cooking, plunged a knife into it, and realised it was still mostly dough inside. Was it missing some key ingredient that I neglected? Is the tired old oven in our kitchen just not able to hit 350F any more?

I stuck it back in for another 20 minutes. The results can seen on the right. Yes, it was cooked all the through. No, it wasn’t burnt. Yes, it is in many small chunks. Yes, I did grease the pan.

Baking is sort of like studying. You spend time studying in order to purchase the satisfaction of a good mark on the test — and that of having learned something new, but it’s less tangible. When you bake, you invest time in the present, and the payoff is a yummy snack.

Well, I’m pretty sure that loaf’s pieces will be yummy when I consume them slathered in butter with chunks of cheese and a tall cold one of milk… but not quite the way I envisioned it.

Mike

EDIT: It seems that all unsatisfactory results were the product of a single miscalculation. I used a slightly smaller pan than was recommended in the recipe. This caused the loaf to be a lot thicker, and therefore not cook properly in 60 minutes, leading to the overdone crust and subsequent disintegration.