Materials: 2 skeins Lorna’s Laces Shepherd Sock in Devon. Size 1 needles. Pattern: Sunday Swing Socks.

Time: A couple of months.

Cost: $20.

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A little while ago, after months of careful consideration and deliberation, Pete got himself a bread machine.  I’m delighted to say that said bread machine has been used regularly; a store-bought loaf of bread has not darkened our doorstep since.  (I do, however, doubt those studies that you see all over the place that tout the added economy of the bread machine — one definitely eats a whole lot more bread in general when it emerges, fragrant and tender and warm, from one’s own kitchen.)

I mean, I’ve been busy with the baking as well, particularly since the weather has made me almost entirely uninterested in standard cooking.  I seized upon the cool period between thunderstorms last weekend to make some cheesy garlic bread, and a from-scratch Tunnel of Fudge cake (something whose charm I’d previously assumed rested in its status as Retro Dessert, but which was actually quite tasty on its own merits, like a deliberately underdone brownie).

Cheesy garlic bread and Tunnel of Fudge having been promptly demolished, Pete spent some time last night editing one of my favorite bread recipes for the machine.  We’d made it before in the ‘Zo, and with a great deal of success; still, the instructions were still unnecessarily complex, and Pete wasn’t sure about the liquid-to-flour ratio.  It sure smelled good while I drifted off to sleep, however.

And, this morning, we discovered this.  Behold, the Tunnel of Oats loaf:

Perhaps I should’ve stuck a ruler in there for scale, but rest assured that it contains a sinkhole worthy of Guatemala.  I think we’ve created a spiritual successor to last fall’s evil pie.  Actually, here:

Insert bad puns about us baking up devilishly / sinfully / evilly good food here.

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And a housekeeping note: Pete and I are going vacationing again soonish.  This trip will be significantly less ambitious and significantly more social than the previous one, but standard disclaimers about comments taking forever to be approved still apply.  We’re having a particularly busy summer, which is fantastic: at this time next year, we’ll have been kicked out of the country, and can only hope that some U.S. institution is willing to provide gainful employment that funds yet another international move.  Time to enjoy the professional and geographical limbo while we can.

Lessons on how to be a southern belle. Maybe not belle lessons, exactly, but I require instruction on how to relax gratefully into the heat, instead of wilting stickily.

It’s been in the mid-90s all week and, as expected, I’m dealing with it without much grace.  “Oh,” my mom would say with just a hint of a patronizing tone in her voice, “you’ve never done well in the heat,” and what’s so infuriating is that she’s entirely right.  Horrifyingly, I lose the desire to do anything, which… not wanting to knit?  Cook?  Sew?  Run around the city?  Is this what it’s really like for some people?  I’m falling asleep in the middle of books at a rate unseen since the summer before prelims, when a reading list of 150-something novels made a mid-morning or mid-afternoon nap always seem like an enticing option.

So far, I seem to be adopting the feline strategy of heat management, which involves stretching myself out somewhere near a fan and listlessly dabbing at the sweat dripping from my face.

This has basically been my posture all week.  Unlike Sebastian, however, I’m not quite desperate enough to cuddle up against the cool porcelain of the toilet.  As a sidenote, I should mention that it is surprisingly disconcerting to be solicited for a belly rub when you go in to use the bathroom.  Hi, cat!  I love you, too!  I just… I have something that I need to do first!

Also unlike Sebastian, I am not nearly as cute while trying to stay cool, and I complain a whole lot more.  Perhaps it’s a good thing that I live in the frozen north, eh?

It’s hot, we don’t have air conditioning, and the only way that I can summon up words with my typical ease is by sitting in some sort of ‘climatized café while drinking an icy beverage, which I am not.  So, in ultra-efficient bullet-point format, a few recent observations upon which I will not expound:

• There has got to be some kind of formal inverse ratio that exists between the size of a child and the size of its stroller.  Ergo: toddlers are wheeled around in portable little umbrella strollers, and teeny-tiny babies run pedestrians (ahem) off the sidewalk and into the street in their military-grade armored stroller tanks with double 24″ wheels.
• I would like to see a study that compares the popularity of rechargeable batteries alongside of the number of Wiimotes in use.
• Lastly, it seems like the people who complain most about the heat and humidity are those who experience it for a minute or two each day, while traveling between their air-conditioned home, their air-conditioned car, and their air-conditioned office.  I’m not sure that I want the added credibility that comes with having none of the above.  Just know that we suffer in silence.  Such silence.  Of not saying anything at all about the heat.  Nope.

Materials: 2 skeins Malabrigo Yarn Sock in Lettuce.  Size 3 needles.  Pattern: Featherweight Cardigan.

Time: A couple of months.

Cost: $40.

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Materials: 1-point-something yards red quilting print and 1/4 yard black broadcloth from JoAnn’s; invisible zipper; McCall’s 5584.

Time: Two evenings.

Cost: $15.

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Materials: 2.5 yards cheapo navy-and-white cotton sateen from Fashion Fabrics Club; invisible zipper; New Look 6557.

Time: A couple of weeks, largely making futile and ill-advised changes to muslins.

Cost: $10 fabric; $20 belt.

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I’ve written before about Montreal’s weirdly liminal status vis-à-vis its own alleged Europeanness.  (Wow, so many words in that last sentence that Firefox’s built-in spellchecker does not recognize.  But the OED has my back, so I persist.)  You know: Americans find it charmingly European, Europeans find it disappointingly North American, and the Québécois themselves bristle at the insinuation that it could even be placed in the same category as other anglophone metropolicalities.

That said, while I was taking my afternoon constitutional yesterday around six-ish miles of neighborhood pavement, I heard the unmistakeable sound of the vuvuzela drifting out of many open windows.  It’s probably safe to say that people here are more into the World Cup than they are in most other major North American cities, which of course means that we’re nearly, but not entirely, at the bottom of the list of countries in the world suffering the most from World Cup Fever.  I do like to pretend, however, that all of the enthusiasm is really over the Quidditch World Cup.  (Hey, leave my rich fantasy life alone!)

Very tangentially related to alleged Europeanness: zippy little cars with manual transmissions, one of which — an early ’90s Volkswagen hatchback — is parked in the narrow alley behind our apartment during the day.  All is well until the owner has to back it out of the alley in the evening, and… oh, man.  It sounds, and Pete can corroborate my utter lack of hyperbole, as though the owner is attempting to drive a stick shift without any use of the clutch whatsoever.  It creates this unbelievably prolonged, exaggeratedly horrific clangy whirring cacophony that I thought simply could not exist outside the realm of cheap movie and TV comedy.  Even the cats, who usually can’t be bothered to investigate anything taking place outside unless it has wings and sounds like a bird, leap up on the windowsill to try and figure out what the hell is going on, their ears swiveling wildly with each new metal-on-metal crash of gears.

I’m hoping that I’ll be able to capture the marvel of the seemingly clutch-less stick shift with Pete’s camera one of these days.  Optimally on the day that the transmission explodes spectacularly.