Rice it up

I've cooked rice a few times now, as I found I quite like it. Now, I knew I liked rice before, but I hadn't really cooked it other than making risotto, which I've done a couple of times.

But rice is nice. I have a little pot that works well for the job and then I sautee some vegetables and throw the rice into them when it's finished cooking to mix it all up.

Thing about rice, of course, is that you can and stuff to it to make it taste many different ways. Today I used half apple juice and half water as the cooking liquid. When I tasted the rice to see it was done, I thought the AJ had made it too sweet, but in the end it was fine.

Last time I'd added celery salt to the rice when it was cooking, which gave it a nice savory taste in the end. I'm going to do that again for sure.

Photos of Home

I visited my cousins Doug and Phyllis on Sunday night in Vancouver. Phyllis said that she had done the four embroidery pieces on their wall. I told her that my mom did some way back in the '70s. They're still on the wall of my bedroom, although I'm planning to change what's on that wall (as I'm only planning it, they'll probably be there for a couple more years still).

Here they are:
This one I like. It's a nice simple pattern with good colours. It's about 12" by 8" or so.


This I'm not so thrilled with. There's less embroidery per inch of display, which is bigger maybe 18" by 12". And looking at the different types of stiches used, I'm thinking that it might have been a training kind of exercise as there are several different stitch types.

At least they got her name right

I do the press releases for Racquetball Canada. Occaisionally, there are errors. Like when I'm off by a day on the date, or omit something. But when large news organizations get things wrong, as The Toronto Star did here, well it's just an instance that lets me know that even the big guys err sometimes.

But I'll still be annoyed at my next mistake.

U2 by U2

Picked up the U2 by U2 book from the library today. It's good. The text is compiled from interviews with the four band members as well as their manager, Paul McGuinness, and it's set in set up as a chronology.

Haven't read the whole thing, but I'm thinking it'd be worth buying.

I've always liked U2. I recall when their first album was played on 92 CITI FM, back in the heyday of that station. Then War came out and I was hooked.

What's up at the Joe?

Watched the last of the Wings-Ducks game tonight. It was Steve Yzerman night, so they had retired his jersey at the beginning of the night.

But in watching the game, I was struck by how quiet it was. I don't know why that was, although towards the end of the game the deafening silence might have come from the fact there were so many empty seats.

Why were there empty seats? It was sold out - so they said - because of Stevie Y night. The opponents were arguably the best team in the league so far this season (the Anaheim Ducks have dropped the Mighty from their name, only to become so on the ice). It was only a one goal difference with four plus minutes to play, so it wasn't a blow out.

Yet in following the play, many empty seats were evident in the first dozen or whatever rows from the glass.

And this is in Hockey Town?

I suppose I should also say that the same thing was in evidence for the two games that I saw down in Phoenix. That is, there were many empty seats at Coyote games too. This makes me wonder about the financial health of these franchises and the league in general.

Those empty seats could be paid for by corporate folks, who aren't really interested in being at the games and get a tax credit or write-off for their purchase. But if so, what is it saying about your sport when the main way you make money is by selling tickets to people who don't
actually want to be there?