There's always some kind of bug going around here and after a long, long gap, it finally struck Kara. It hit on Thursday with a bit of body ache and temperature. Actually, there was a sore throat that came in and out quite a bit before then too. On Friday it got so bad that I had to come home from work a wee bit early. She was pretty miserable Friday night. Today she was really sick. She ran a temperature all day with a painful sore throat and various other symptoms.

 

So my day started at about a quarter to six when Alex finally woke up for good. I got away with a few cat naps on the sofa watching TV with him - he likes to wake up with a show. Kara finally showed around 8:30 or so. She wasn't feeling well. She ended up lying down for most of the day.

 

I, on the other hand, did no lying down. Or sitting. Or anything else. About the most rest I got was waiting for the light at the 02 Centre after a delicious lunch of Pizza Hut. Somehow, I got through the day. It alternated between errands, playing on the back patio, eating, a few games and a cooking activity, some shows and a long bath.

 

And now I'm ready for a long sleep, although I expect to be up at half-five or so with Alex. And I've only just finished the chores. OK, maybe I could have been done a little earlier, but I did need to catch up on the news and stuff.

 

The point is I have precious little time. Although I've been blogging a bit lately, and I have a lot of material stacked up, it's going to be hard for the next few days with Kara so sick. Bear with me.

 

 

 

 

 

So I’m in Raoul’s Deli recently and amongst the biscuits (cookies), breads and other assorted goodies is this jar of syrup. I was struck by it because it was labeled ‘Vertmont’. Now, I have spent a lot of time in the beautiful and rural state of Vermont, and although this particular spelling may be more accurate for those who speak French, it’s definitely not the name of a U. S. state. But Vermont does have glorious stands of sugar maples and the maple syrup is on par with the best there is.

 

 

It’s not quite so easy to get maple syrup here, although it’s not too hard. Getting American pancake mix is pretty hard. We’re lucky in that we live next to St. John’s Wood. A lot of Americans live in the area, especially there, and there is a small store that carries some American products. Including Bisquick and Aunt Jemima Maple Syrup. Neither of these would have been our favourite in the U. S. (well, speaking for Kara and myself, anyway – the kids love the stuff), but there is no other choice here and so it’s heaven. The pancake mix available here, English mix, is more dense and heavy. Anyway, the chance to get some real maple syrup was too good to pass up, but I didn’t buy it because I was concerned about its pedigree, frankly. I mean, how hard is it to spell Vermont correctly?

 

But a few weeks later I was back at Raouls and I figured it would make a blog, so I bought it. Kara was the one who noticed the line on the bottom that says, ‘product of Canada.’  Now this is really ridiculous. OK, look, Vermont borders Canada. In many instances, there would be no detectable difference between Quebec maple syrup or Vermont maple syrup. I think they have a different grading scale, but it’s based on the same thing – the purity of the syrup. The thing is, I would happily buy Canadian maple syrup – it doesn’t need to pretend it’s American.

 

Just to play devil’s advocate here, I can understand where this all may have come from. Somebody realizes there’s a market in the UK for maple syrup, so they do some deal with a big producer in Canada and then brand it Vermont, they just either screwed it up on purpose or for legal reasons. There is, I think, a bit of a pecking order in the maple syrup business and I’d be willing to bet that Vermont is at the top of it. Part of the reason for this may be that it’s a very rugged state. It is full of mountains and hills. There is one part near lake Chaplain that has some rolling farmlands, but it’s a relatively small part of the state overall. And if you drive North across the border into Canada the landscape gets even rollier, if you can imagine that. But if you drive North-West into Canada, across Hero, for example, the land turns flat as a board. The point is that the terrain in Vermont is more consistent that it is in Canada. Canada is also a big country and the syrup could have come from anywhere within. I just talk about Quebec because it’s the closest to Vermont.

 

OK, I think I've killed this topic. I'd better get some housework done.

 

 

This is a rare family shot, taken by a friend of mine, Rich. Rich is another American who is working a job in London and traveling back and forth. His family came out for a month and we managed to spend some time together last weekend at the Peter Pan Treasure Hunt Charity Event in Kensington Garden. I gave him the camera and made him shoot like 10 pictures. This is one of my favorites.

I don't usually do this, but it's a real hoot - courtesy of a job applicant, by the way (props to you DD, I enjoyed this quite a bit). It's call the human time-clock. The concept is classic viral internet stuff. Basically everyone submits photos that include, somewhere, a series of numbers that can be interpreted as the current time. When enough have been submitted, you can create a clock that shows a different picture for each minute of the day. There is also an analog clock, but I find that a bit too silly.

I recently re-installed my main digital darkroom PC. It had a SATA stripe set that had gone bad. When I was doing the Windows update at the end, I noticed that Internet Explorer 7 Beta 2 was out. So I got a copy and ran it for awhile.

 

The biggest difference with this version is the introduction of tabbed browsing. There are plenty of other browsers out there with it, but Microsoft has lagged behind. The Microsoft implementation seems pretty good, although it doesn’t support the one operation I really want. What I’d like is to get another instance of the active session with its history when I click on a tab for a new session.

 

Typically when I’m browsing, I’m popping along looking for interesting things. When I find something, I want to leave a browser sitting there, open up a new one and keep surfing. IE 7 does let you do this, but not be clicking the tab button. You have to press the control key and then click a link on the page. The link will open up in a new tab with history.

 

Still, for all that convenience, IE7B2 was not that stable. It had a habit of just throwing fatal errors at seemingly random times and needing to quit and send Microsoft an error report. Beta three just came out, though. I’ve now got it running on the main PC and it seems more stable at first glance. It doesn’t seem to crash like this. The thing that’s annoying is that you have to completely uninstall Beta 2 before you can install Beta 3. That means you have to completely remove IE in the process. Given how tightly IE is tied into Windows these days that made me very nervous. But I must say, it went off without a hitch.

 

So I think IE7B3 is ready for prime time. Pick up a copy at Microsoft.com.