Here is the birthday cake that I made for Ms Atwood and that was served last night at the post-dinner party at The Living with Lakes Centre. I am still trying to get a hold of a photo with Ms Atwood and the cake in it. The ones we took were too dark (candlelight) to make out the people. Turns out Ms Atwood used to decorate cakes herself for her family and got a kick out of my cake.
It was a Maple cake with Scotch-Maple Icing, decorated as a Northern Autumn forest. Bulrushes border a pond with mushrooms, and dragonflies, and a pathway leads downhill through fallen, fall-coloured leaves, crabapples and berries , pinecones, more mushrooms and dragonflies. The mushrooms were meringue and very edible. The cake tasted good too.
Today is Margaret Atwood's birthday. She is celebrating her birthday, as she has done several times, with friends and fans in Sudbury. Her birthday bash here will be a fundraiser for student bursaries at Laurentian University. All of us involved with students here are very grateful to Ms Atwood for taking part in this, and the citizens of Sudbury are very keen to take part in her birthday celebrations whenever she arrives - with music, art, drama or whatever. This year I get to take part in a material way.
After the main event, she is going to a private birthday party for a few students (representatives of the students the fundraiser will support) and close friends. I have been invited to make this private birthday cake. (I will be posting a photo of it but not until after this evening's party.) I feel as happy as the company that made the birthday cake for the royal wedding this year, though my cake is not as elaborate or as big. But I am sure it will taste better, because my cakes taste great.
The theme is the Northern Ontario forest, and I hope she will be delighted by it. I don't actually care if people eat my cakes - I can't really eat much cake anymore because I am too fat, so I understand when people don't want to eat much cake. And they always get eaten by somebody either at the party or the next day. But I want my cake recipients to laugh or gasp when they see it - to be charmed. So I hope this one works. I think it's as cute as a bunny.
I have been very busy making sugar decorations for a while, some of which worked, some of which ended up in the garbage. I have mainly made it a fall theme, but I am never perfectly literal in my cakes, so there will be some summer touches, as an homage to her father, whose work meant that she lived in Northern Ontario for a lot of her groping up time, particularly in the summers. And of course, there is some good scotch to flavour one of the icings.
So Ms Atwood, I offer my cake to you in hopes that you will remember always what you love about Northern Ontario and to thank you for supporting Laurentian University students by sharing your birthday with us. And have a happy birthday!
I am feeling sorry for the NDP today. As the official opposition they have to bitch and whine about whatever the government is doing. And today the government is doing something really good - introducing a pension plan - the pooled registered pension plan, or PRPP - for people who work for companies too small to have their own pension plan, or for self-employed workers. Since most of my working years have been with small companies without pension plans, or as a self-employed worker, I would have liked this policy in place back when I was working full-time. It's too late for me but it will help the next generation and they need all the help they can get. My current pension plan is hoping my husband (who has a publically-funded pension plan, and will have a reasonable pension) doesn't leave me.
But today on the news I have to watch the NDP trying to pick apart the policy. Their main argument seems to be that the government should continue to prop up the pension plans we already know are unsustainable. And continue to put the load on our children to pay for our pensions, when our children's generation is too small to do this and raise their own families too.
Why we think the government should adopt environmentally sustainable policies but economically unsustainable ones escapes me. I think we can demand and pay for sustainability in both spheres and, in fact, cannot have sustainability in any other way.
So our pension plans have to be sustainable too. That means no more building pension plans that can't pay out. And it means telling citizens clearly that the bulk of their pensions will have to be paid for by their own efforts, so start planning in their first years of working. Since it's very hard to save money that is in your hand, the best way is a pension plan that slips the money into reliable savings before you even see it.
The other objection the NDP is making is that someone other than the pensioners and the government will profit from these private pensions plans. Notably the banks. Get over it! People whose jobs involve handling, maximizing, and transferring money need to be paid too. If money is invested, you are paying someone to invest it. And if it is not invested you are losing the value of your money to inflation. Economics 101. Banks currently make loads of money off my RRSP and they would make less off of an PRPP.
I know the real concern of the NDP is not about the workers that will benefit immediately from this plan. It's because they suspect that once these plans are in place, the government will divert all pension savings to this kind of plan - getting rid of the Canada Pension Plan altogether. And the NDP prefers guaranteed benefits, which are predictable but expensive. Well, we all do, but we are clearly having trouble paying for this kind of plan. Well, those are concerns, but not ones that need keep us fro helping people today - like self-employed workers - who have no plans now. So today I am sorry for, but also proud of the NDP today. Doing their job faithfully, complaining about government policy even when they sound particularly silly complaining about this particular policy.
I am a little bit worried today about whether I will ever be able to use the upstairs bathroom again in my house. John is upgrading the toilet. He wants one of those fancy modern two flush type toilets that let you push one button when you only need a little water for the flush, and a different button when even Niagara will not wash out the "damn spot". He bought the appropriate do-it-yourself hardware that supposedly installs in 10 minutes without any special tools two days ago. Our toilet has been out of commission since then and he has made 4 trips back to the hardware store after parts. My calves are getting stronger from going up and downstairs whenever I need to use the facilities. It's all very sad. If we don't count his time and my frustration as having any cost, we will save $100.00 on a plumber though.
I have not been very faithful at writing in my gym log. That might suggest that I have given up but that is not the case. I am plodding away, slowly and steadily making progress that would embarrass a tortoise. At least it is in the right direction. I passed my goal of getting below 100 kg a while ago, and am now working on moving from being obese to being merely overweight.
I am still working faithfully with my trainer, Paul. I injured my knees this year; first one, then the other several months later. Paul has adjusted our schedule accordingly. We now work out at strength training every week-day for one very intense half-hour. Then I do 40 minutes of cardio on my own. Recently I added a Saturday pure cardio session. For the first few weeks all I did when I got home was nap but lately I am recovering some energy. And the cardio is slowly getting more gruelling, as my heart rate adjusts.
This year I am finally paying more attention to my diet. I am still eating lots of meat and eggs, but have been replacing grains and refined sugar with more vegetables and fruit. So I am eating a low-carb diet. That has got me slowly losing weight again. My poor old muscles have to work so hard to make enough energy to feed themselves while I work out that I find my recovery times and maximum energy output suffers a bit, but not a lot.
More importantly, I feel better than I have in a long time. Stronger, less bloated, more clear-headed, and happier. To help me continue avoiding sugar, always my weak point, I quit drinking coffee two months ago, and have replaced it with herbal tea. The first week was unadulterated agony, as I had splitting headaches and overbearing lethargy much of the time, but that went away. By the fourth week, when I tried a coffee again, I found I didn't like it any more. Now I occasionally have a weekend espresso, but I never want more than one, and I don't like any other forms of coffee. This was quite unexpected, as I have quit drinking coffee many times, only to start again within a month. Time will tell. My favourite herbal is a licorice tea that serves as my morning wake-up drink, sometimes with cocoa powder stirred in.
So there has been progress in all my health goals, though much slower that I ever would have guessed. Still, as my new age friends say, it is the journey that matters, not how soon you reach the destination.
As a "pragmatic environmentalist" I turned off my electricity (and turned down my thermostat) last night in solidarity with all those who believe that Canadians need to get their per capita use of non-renewable energy sources down. And I turned my thermostat down this morning and put on an extra layer of clothes, because Earth Day's only sensible function is to get us to conserve the other 364 days of the year. We Canadians aren't in any position to preach conservation to anyone else, given our high rate of energy use. Nowhere was this more evident to me than during my visit to China last year ( and yes, I FLEW there and used up lots of non-renewable resource to do it.) I don't want to have to live the way the poor do there, and why should I expect them to? I wholeheartedly agree with the following wonderful TED talk, brought to my attention by my brother on his blog.
I have just finished updating some of the blogs I administer and realized I hadn't changed anything on my own blog since New Year's. My sister keeps urging me to write something - - anything -- new but the truth is I lead a quiet and repetitive life and I like it like that. February especially is a lackluster, let's just get through it, month. I have kept on going to the gym, walking the dog, making cakes, reading books, knitting and watching TV, and having Monday Night Dinners. That's my news since New Year's. Oh, and we went to Cuba and I got injured by a dolphin. That's it. No news.
Dolphins 2 - Kris 1 : Kris loses in her game with the Varadero dolphins as a knee injury means she has to forfeit the game. Fun was still had by all. Dolphins are gracious winners.
Dolphins don't only swim with each other and with humans. The following comes via my brother's blog . Thanks, Al!
