Ottawa

Until I planned this trip, I'm not sure I could have identified Ottawa as the capital of Canada. But now I have learned about 1000% more about the Canadian government.

I tacked on a one-day vacation to my work trip, reasoning that it might be decades before I came to Ottawa again. Yesterday I toured Parliament, which is the building that houses the Members of Parliament and the Senate. There are very few tourists in Ottawa in January, so my tour group was given lots of time to poke around. One of the most surprising facts I learned (mainly from the tour guide's reaction to one of my questions) is that most Americans think we won the War of 1812 and most Canadian think they won the War of 1812. Upon later reading, I learned that the British don't waste any time thinking about that inconsequential war, and historians are divided.

View from the Peace Tower at Parliament Hill

My timing was fortuitous, because in about a week the building will close and will not reopen for at least ten years. This is part of an ambitious renovation plan, in which they will remove every stone, take it off-site, and clean it. They will then reconstruct everything, placing every stone in the original position, and replace all the wiring, plumbing, carpets, etc. This plan does not seem terribly efficient to me, but perhaps I am a cold, non-traditional American who does not value historic buildings enough.

And to be fair, I am a cold American. It didn't makes sense to to take a taxi or Uber when all the students were hiking. In addition, they are having trouble keeping up with the plowing and there aren't many cars on the road. When I travel, I like to walk to gain perspective on the city and to get exercise. But today I may splurge on one car trip, because dragging my suitcase in the snow yesterday was rough going.

My new-found government knowledge also helps me understand an event at the conference. These conferences are for undergraduate women physicists. Often, senior women in physics will make extra effort to attend and participate in these conferences, even though the audience is smaller and less influential than those they normally talk to, because these women want to support those following in their footsteps. The third woman to ever receive a Nobel Prize in Physics, which happened in 2018, spoke at the meeting. Just like the other participants, I was excited. However, I was puzzled at the gasps of delight when they played a recorded video greeting by a bilingual woman who welcomed us to tho conference and told us about the importance of physics. After my trip to Parliament, I realized the woman was Julie Payette, the Governor General of Canada, who is the Queen's representative in Canada; she also happens to be an astronaut who worked on the ISS. Now I feel just a little bit more culturally aware.

Cold

January in Canada. I work on a project that organizes a dozen conferences every MLK Jr. weekend, and I am always assigned to the Canada conference. Thus,  I am in Ottawa. I don't want to complain too much, because travel outside the US is rare in my job and I relish the chance to enjoy a different country. Canada isn't exactly terra incognita, but there are subtle differences in the culture.

However, this year I'm also dreading the weather. The forecast tomorrow is for a low of -23C (-9F) and my words just fail me when I consider it. Technically I am a native Minnesotan, but I have grown accustomed to the relatively balmy winters in DC. On top of that, the conference is hotel is a mile from the conference center, and we are expected to walk every day. This is one of those cultural differences - I simply couldn't ask Americans to walk a mile each way in professional clothing to a meeting. Although some Americans are athletic, ill health or inactivity or age would prevent a sizable number of meeting attendees from doing that kind of hike. When I was complaining to a colleague about this, she gave me good advice: "You're an American. Call an Uber." So I'm going to see if I can tough out the cold and walk, but I'll keep my phone with me just in case.

Pizza

Every now and then I decide to get really good at cooking something: tortes, English fried breakfasts, no-knead bread. Mainly I improve by doing it over and over, and lately pizza has been my target. I've already established that I should stick with marinara sauce, since pesto is too dry. I use pretty nice mozzarella, although perhaps not enough. But I can't get the super-elastic, crispy in the middle, chewy at the edge, crust that I want. I've heard that letting the dough rest is important, so the last batch was split: I baked one half after 24 hours and one half after five days. I didn't notice a huge difference, and neither was elastic.

Even mediocre pizza is good pizza, of course, but I'd sure like to get this right. I'm using a pizza stone and a bit of vital wheat gluten. Do any of my readers have suggestions?

Looking up

While I had fun on New Year's Eve, the whole long weekend around it was kind of glum. I was sick, both from a sinus infection and complications from a foot procedure that I had had done a few days earlier. Top that with some pessimistic news from the vet about Ada's health and the discovery of a plumbing leak, and it was just dismal around here.

Now I am feeling much better. I went to Urgent Care; it's so efficient when you have two maladies that they can solve at once. The vet discovered that they put the testing dipstick in the machine wrong(!), which means my dog is fine and I can quit worrying that I'll have to put down both of my animals at the same time. And today I finally removed the part below from my shower faucet. It took me almost a full week of plotting, watching YouTube videos, and consulting with friends to figure out how to get this darn thing out. The installation of the replacement should be much easier, and if I'm lucky (fingers crossed), this will fix the leak.

As an aside, you can quickly clean your entire bathroom if you misunderstand which water "circuit" you've turned off, so that as you adjust a screw, you are suddenly hit full force in the chest with a huge geyser of water. This will flood your basement while you madly run to turn off the water, and after mopping everything up you will have a newly cleaned bathroom. This is just hypothetical, of course...

Holiday Catchup

I'm so behind on blogging that I'm just going to throw up a bunch of pictures and call it Christmas. Our family celebrated in Ohio this year, which gave me the chance to quit thinking about plumbing for a while and Ada the chance to run through the 40 acres.

Modeling the hat from my Christmas cracker. This was the only English tradition this year, as dinner was more Continental - homemade lasagnaa and Bûche de Noël. The kids declared the lasagna the second-best they'd ever eaten. I'd like to think that reflect positively on the cuisine available in San Francisco restaurants, and not negatively on my cooking, since it took about four hours to make.  

 A bunch of cute creatures all at once. All of the pets traveled, both from DC and California, but we couldn't corral the California cat into the picture. He was highly suspicious of the dog.

I made doughnuts for Christmas breakfast. This was a great idea. A less great idea was putting the hot oil outside to cool, where Ada later found it. After eating several cups of solid fat, we decided she had to spend Christmas day in the garage in case she was ill. There appear to have been no lasting effects. 

My father changed my oil. I am really good at having my life together, except when it comes to car maintenance. I should have changed it a year ago but forgot. Yikes.

New Year's Eve I spent with friends, but I once again forgot to take photos. We celebrated at 8pm so the kids could go to bed at a decent time, but they still had enormous fun throwing confetti for more than thirty minutes. It's one of my fondest NYE memories from my childhood that we'd tear up paper to make enormous mountains of confetti to throw. If you were thorough, your parents would still be finding pieces in July. It was good to pass on the tradition to the next generation.