Wednesday, March 22, 2006

Can't Get Enough of those Beer Nuts

The Home and Garden show is on this weekend at Lansdowne Park. I love going to this show, for 2 reasons. I get tons of ideas that inevitably lead to hard labour for my husband. And the second reason I love the Home and Garden Show is: the beer nuts. The aroma of the beer nuts fills the air as you descend the stairs of the Civic Centre, and before you know it, your hand is deep into a bag of warm sticky nuts, which then means that you can’t touch any of the exhibits. But its worth it. At the home and garden show last year, I learned a very important tip to make my gardening easier. Buy the biggest wheel barrow you can find. Even if it looks ridiculously huge, buy it anyway. With a monster wheel barrow, you can haul everything you need in one trip. Rocks, soil, the dog, plants, hose, shovels, fence, plywood, cordless tools, drink cooler, your bike helmet, Miracle Gro, lawn furniture, tomato cages, it all goes into one wheel barrow. And you can push all that quite easily if your lawn is fairly level. Just watch out if you’re going downhill, a fully packed giant wheel barrow can sometimes get away on you when you’re going downhill. Defeats the whole purpose.


As we await the birth of Gwyneth Paltrow and Chris Martin’s second child, mostly just because we want to know what the heck they’re going to name this kid, with the first one getting the moniker ‘Apple’, this week, we learn that Donald Trump and his wife Melania have named their newborn son ‘Barron’. They’ve built the wealth right into the kid’s name. Why didn’t they just call him ‘Richie Rich’? ‘Barron Trump’ Wow. Quite a name. When I was a kid, a popular name for a rich kid was ‘Millhouse’. Somehow doesn’t fit anymore, ever since the Simpsons.

My husband and I finally got satellite tv. I think we get over 400 channels now. So far, this is what I’ve been watching over and over. The Price is Right, with Bob Barker in ‘high definition’, ‘Animal Cops’, and the educational show on the Discovery Channel, ‘How Its Made’. Last week, we learned how baseboard heaters are manufactured. When Bruce Springsteen sang about ’57 Channels and Nothing On’, maybe we shoulda believed him.

Good luck to everyone who is auditioning for Canadian Idol this weekend in Ottawa. It must be pretty nerve-wracking. I think this show has been on long enough, that the judges are probably hearing the same songs over and over again at the auditions. I think that a contestant would really stand out if they did a song that was a bit of an oddity, a bit of a surprise. I wonder if anyone has the courage to enter the Canadian Idol audition process with a rousing rendition of: ‘Love Removal Machine’ by the Cult.
Or the theme from the Mary Tyler Moore Show.

Go Sens go!! As we near the play-offs, the excitement is reaching a feverish pitch. I gotta get some of those Senators car flags that you clamp onto your car window. Then just hope it stays cold outside. Because as soon as you open the car window, there goes the flag. On a good day, with a play-off game taking place at Scotiabank Place, there are easily 20 to 30 Sens flags on the Queensway. Its tempting to nab a couple of these flags, but probably not a great idea during rush hour traffic. Funny. I haven’t seen many Leafs flags around this year.