Derek K. Miller - Penmachine words music comment - Vancouver, Canada

There are a lot of moms in my life—most importantly my wife, of course, who's the mother of our two daughters. There are also my own mom, my mother-in-law, my aunt, my cousin, many of our friends, and, most recently, my long-time pal and one-time roommate Tara, who had a daughter in February.

I think when your kids are young, they really don't fundamentally understand the concept of sleeping in at all. Pretty much any child past infancy treats sleep as an enemy. It's a measure of still being a kid, like aiming for puddles instead of avoiding them. Mother's Day is probably the prime example.

I remember bringing my mom breakfast way too early on Mother's Day Sundays when I was old enough to cook, in the late '70s. It never occurred to me that she might rather sleep than eat the delicious food that I spent so much time messing up (but not cleaning up) the kitchen over. No. Idea. At. All.

Today, my own kids were already awake at 8:30 when I carefully tiptoed out of the bedroom and closed the door, letting my wife sleep while I went to the bathroom and got ready to start the day. By the time I'd come back upstairs, our bedroom door was open and their mom, with a tired smile, had eaten some eggs prepared by our older daughter, who makes a pretty decent omelette. After some Mother's Day morning greetings from our younger girl, my wife was, blessedly, able to go back to sleep, and the girls went back to playing The Sims.

So, here's a toast to all of you moms who got woken up too early today for a kid-prepared breakfast. I hope it was tasty.

I've persuaded the kids to bring the Mother's Day gift to their grandmother, my mom, closer to lunchtime.

Labels: family, food, holiday, memories

About 20 years ago, when my roommate Sebastien and I were first learning to play in a rock band, he wrote a song whose chorus was:

Wally's Burgers is the place to go
Wally's Burgers is the place to go
Wally's Burgers is the place to go
Let's go!

Wally's has been a drive-in burger joint on Kingsway in Vancouver since the 1950s (it changed its name to Wally's in 1962). A couple of weeks ago I dropped by to grab one of their delicious Deluxe Wagon burgers, but the place was packed, so I went elsewhere.

I only found out this week that was because Wally's closed forever at the end of March, so my last meal there had actually been a couple of months ago. A few days ago my wife and I noticed that the famous neon sign had come down, and today I drove past to see the windows boarded up. It's a shame. The burgers really were extremely good.

For someone born and raised in this city, I discovered Wally's surprisingly late, in the 1980s, but I was hooked. Over my years of commuting by bicycle along Kingsway, first to university and then to work downtown, I've eaten innumerable Chuck Wagon burgers and fries there.

There are other tasty hamburgers in Vancouver, but none quite the same as Wally's. As far as I know there has only ever been the one location—but had its owners taken a different business approach, I think Wally's could have been a B.C.-wide institution like White Spot.

At least we still have Me-n-Ed's Pizza. In fact, I ate some three days ago.

Labels: food, history, vancouver

It wasn't really called TikiCamp, but the Northern Voice opening tiki dinner at the Waldorf Hotel in Vancouver was a ton of fun. Here are my pictures:

More from the main event tomorrow and Saturday.

Labels: blog, conferences, food, geekery, meetup, northernvoice, photography, podcast, web

I've really liked Dr. Pepper pop since I was a little kid. After I developed Type 1 diabetes in 1991, Diet Dr. Pepper and some of its variants have been favourites of mine too. But the new Diet Cherry Chocolate Dr. Pepper is simply vile.

Chocolate is a good idea most of the time, even with cherries. But combined with Dr. Pepper? Nope. I bought some a couple of weeks ago, and my family has only now managed to drink the last of it. My wife says it tastes like "bad medicine." My kids think it's tolerable only when it's very cold—and normally they'd fall in love with anything even remotely resembling a carbonated beverage. It is even more repulsive than most other sodas when warm.

What I want to know is why plain old and delicious Diet Cherry Coke remains unavailable in Canada. Forget the weird flavour combinations: if I can get that stuff without having to make a run across the U.S. border, I'll be happy.

Labels: americas, diabetes, food

A bunch of stuff I've been accumulating over the past few months:

• Types of coffee beverages
• U.S. regional pizza styles
• Build your own Apple Store
• Google Maps mashup of how Greater Vancouver would be flooded by a 4-metre sea level rise (move around to check out your own area nearly anywhere in the world)
• J Allard's thoughts on the first year of the Zune
• Very useful Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) reference for web developers
• How well does restoring from Apple's new Time Machine backup work?
• Intro to Fully Flared features slo-mo skateboarding, explosions
• When you post to your blog, where does the information go?
• Tips to give presentations more like Steve Jobs
• What other sites are on your shared web server?
• How Microsoft would reveal it hasn't done its homework in school (see?)
• New Apple instructional videos
• Long Radiohead video that features all the songs on In Rainbows

Labels: apple, backup, band, blog, environment, extremesports, food, google, linksofinterest, macosx, microsoft, music, publicspeaking, web

Speaking of food, three words: Mmm, cheese podcast.

Labels: food, podcast, religion

For some reason, when the chemo starts hitting me, I often find myself watching Iron Chef America on the Food Network. Although I'm usually nauseated, somehow the expertly prepared gourmet food still looks wonderfully appetizing. A recent Kobe Beef episode was particularly scrumptious (probably because I'm a bit anemic and have been craving red meat).

Semi-related to that, I don't often write songs with words, but every once in a while something comes to me. Here's what the Food Network led me to write last evening:

Sometimes I feel like I've been drinking
Even when I haven't beem drinking
Baby, I swear I haven't been thinking
Of anyone but you
And Nigella Lawson
In the kitchen
With a spatula
And a blowtorch
For the crème brulée

We'll see where that goes.

Labels: cancer, chemotherapy, food, music, podcast, television

Our handsome pal Kris "kk+" Krug just did an interview on CBC Radio's On the Coast with lots of cool tips on how to take better holiday photos.

He knows how to take the pictures, so his advice is worth following. You don't need the big monster camera like his, by the way.

I'm also fond of the holiday eating tips ("If something comes with gravy, use it. That’s the whole point of gravy.") passed along by Arieanna, who also got an insanely huge Christmas tree this year.

Finally, don't forget the Mythbusters Christmas Rube Goldberg Machine:

It has Diet Coke and Mentos, as well as a holiday beef roast propelled right out of an oven. Thanks to my daughters for finding that one.

Labels: cbc, flickr, food, holiday, kriskrug, mythbusters, photography, radio, television

On occasion I have told a story from my wife's and my honeymoon, which we spent driving around California in a rented Chrysler Le Baron convertible. One night, after visiting Knott's Berry Farm, we found a Mexican restaurant for dinner and ordered burritos.

They came, but we couldn't see them, because each one had what looked like an entire block of cheese melted on top. Even today I associate the sound of a Mexican pop band (there was one playing downstairs) with the sight of that mass of bubbling cheese.

Tonight my kids and I visited one of our local Pizza Hut restaurants (much closer than the one in the photo). We ordered the special: the Triple Cheese Explosion pizza, where not only is there cheese on the toppings, but the edge of the crust itself is injected with the stuff.

It was overload. After an appetizer, my older daughter ate about half of one substantial piece (including the cheesy edge), while my younger daughter ate only some toppings from hers. "Too much cheese!" she said. Her sister said, "Look, it makes the plate greasy." I ate a couple of slices, and the rest came home with us.

Next time I think we'll go back to Me-n-Ed's.

Labels: family, food, restaurant

My wife's Lip Gloss and Laptops podcast has been featured on the main page of the Fashion and Beauty podcast category in the U.S. iTunes Store (they're on the second page here in Canada). We also figured out today that the show is #34 in that top 100 in Canada, and #68 in the U.S.A.

So congratulations, LGL, on 84 episodes and a feature at iTunes.

In addition, my podcast co-host Paul Garay and I have posted our 50th episode of Inside Home Recording, which we recorded live at a Coquitlam restaurant a couple of days ago. Mmmm, calzone.

Labels: audio, food, insidehomerecording, lipglossandlaptops, paulgaray, podcast, recording

Most mornings I make myself coffee, like many people. And like many of you, I'm sure, I have a favourite mug. It's pretty large, wide, and stable, with a big handle and a smooth rim. Running part way around the lower side is an arced ridge in the ceramic. The glaze is grey with dark speckles, and the bottom is unfinished and gritty.

My father-in-law made it. He's been making pottery as a hobby for decades, and from time to time we get the chance to rummage through his stockpile and pick pieces we particularly like. I'm not sure what it is about this particular mug that appeals to me, but it makes the coffee taste better, as well as hard to spill.

It's also unique, as handmade pottery must be. He has crafted some others like it, but none identical. If it ever goes missing or breaks, there are others we own, both handmade and commercial, that will do the job. But not quite the same.

Do you have a favourite mug? Why that one?

Labels: art, family, food

Back in July when I spent the month in hospital, I had several neighbours. The last one, who came in for intestinal surgery while I was on the ward and was still there when I left, was an older guy who'd moved to Canada from the Netherlands after World War II, worked as a machinist in a mill, and now likes to play golf in his retirement.

In the 1960s, he built his own house in Squamish, near the mill where he worked. I don't mean he paid people to build it—from what he said while we shared our hospital room, he constructed most of the house himself, with his own hands. He still lives in it.

I admire that. It's something I don't know how to do. I build ephemeral, non-material things like web pages, but I'd have no idea how to put together a building to shelter my family, and which could last more than 40 years. My grandfather was a carpenter, and helped build houses for a living, though he didn't build the last house he lived in, which is where I live now. My friend and podcast co-host Paul built himself a garage, and could probably pull off a house if need be.

For most of the vast span of human time, for hundreds of thousands of years in Africa and beyond, some of the only things worth knowing were how to create a shelter, and find food, and stay warm. Things many of us, like me, would have great trouble doing if cast out to our own devices in the wild. Today, even those who do know how to one thing, like build a house, might not know how to grow food or hunt an animal. That's a purely modern situation.

At least I was a Boy Scout. I can start a fire if I have to.

Labels: family, food, home, hospital

Tonight my wife was about to cook some dinner when she accidentally sliced a deep gouge at the base of her thumb with one of our sharp, sharp knives. That short-circuited dinner plans, but fortunately there is a walk-in clinic nearby where she could get treated quickly, with a tetanus shot, some medical tape, and bandages. We were in and out within half an hour. (Had it been late at night, we'd probably still be waiting at the hospital ER.)

Also luckily, I'm feeling surprisingly good today after a nurse removed my chemotherapy "baby bottle" following the allotted two days of treatment. So I was able to prepare the Hamburger Helper and salad tonight while my wife recovered on the couch with a book and a nice glass of wine.

Now we're sitting by a fire in the living room, and the kids are watching some TV. It's a nasty rainy night out there, but we are dry and warm inside. I'm tired, but I'm glad things are back to normal.

Labels: food, hospital, pain

For my degree in Marine Biology (UBC 1990), I specialized in marine invertebrates, and wrote one pretty good paper on giant squid. Most of my studies actually involved echinoderms and cnidarians, but today I'll indulge in my soft spot for squids, octopuses, cuttlefish, and others honoured on International Cephalopod Awareness Day.

Oh, and it's also Canadian Thanksgiving: we're having a big family party tonight. No cephalopods will be served. We're just doing the usual turkey thing.

However, let's be thankful for the cephalopods. Like us, they are big-brained, smart, agile, and dextrous. In so many other ways, though, they are so unlike us that if they didn't exist, we might not be able to imagine them.

UPDATE: PZ Myers posts lots of links about the day at his blog.

Labels: family, food, holiday, invertebrates, marine, science

This morning, for our last major meal in Victoria, my daughters and I let my wife sleep in and met my friend Simon for breakfast at a place he recommended, the Blue Fox Café on Fort Street.

I've walked by the Blue Fox a few times before, noting how busy it was, usually with a lineup. Fortunately, since today is Monday, we found no line at 9 a.m., although the place was still busy. I can see why it's popular: tasty and wholesome versions of basic breakfast foods (eggs, French toast, roast potatoes, sausage and bacon, coffee) in large portions, with reasonable prices and friendly service, plus vaguely ethnic Mediterranean-Mexican-Southwest decor (lots of saffron yellows and deep blues) and reggae music on the sound system. We all ate a lot, and my daughters had two hot chocolates each ("Best ever!" said my oldest). Ah, vacation.

Anyway, it seems that meal finally helped me reach a milestone. When I weighed myself at home tonight, I hit 176 pounds, the first time I've been over 175 since before my cancer surgery way back in July, some 30 pounds above what I weighed at my worst in hospital late in that month, and only about 15 pounds below what I probably should weigh, which is about 190. (I hovered around 200 pounds for many years until my cancer diagnosis early in 2007.)

I'm still a bit too thin and bony, but, other than the damned ileostomy bag, I feel more like a normal human being than I have for a long time. And I take considerable pleasure in being able to pig out pretty much as I like, within the confines of my diabetic diet. I hope I can keep that up once the next round of chemotherapy starts in a couple of weeks.

I'll be back to the Blue Fox on our next visit to Victoria, that's for sure. The kids want mom to come with us.

Labels: cancer, diabetes, food, travel, victoria

Taken outside Me 'n' Ed's pizza parlor in Burnaby, B.C.

Labels: family, food, photography

I think if you ask a kid what kind of donut (doughnut, do-nut, whatever) he or she wants, a large percentage would pick one with coloured sprinkles. It's not so much because of the taste as the appearance, which is the perfect crazy-quilt kid snack look. My younger daughter rarely chooses anything else.

I was the same when I was a child. At our nearby malls (or "shopping centres," as they were then known), Brentwood and Lougheed, were two branches of the small Hole-In-One Donuts chain, and in the windows were always racks of cake donuts with elongated sprinkles. They were my favourite choice.

These days cake donuts are hard to find, especially with sprinkles. Most are of the glazed-donut variety, with icing and often little spherical sprinkles instead of the stick-style I preferred. But the kids still love 'em.

Labels: donut, doughnut, family, food, memories

I did too much yesterday: I walked the kids to school and came back, then went (ironically) to a relaxation session at the Cancer Agency, followed by lunch, a bit of shopping, picking up the kids, and home for dinner, then off to the Lab With Leo 100th episode party in the evening.

And then, today, I paid for it. I took the kids to school again, then came home and went to sleep. For two hours. Then I woke and had lunch, and watched a bit of TV to try to wake up, which didn't work. I fell asleep again for another two hours until my wife brought the kids home—along with an awesome sugar-free slush drink for me. I feel a lot better now, but I still need to pace myself. Maybe one or two activities a day is still a good benchmark.

Time to get dressed.

Labels: cancer, diabetes, family, fatigue, food

When my wife and I were married in 1995, rather than a traditional bone china pattern, we chose an elaborate pattern from Portmeirion, from a factory in the U.K. The dishes and vases and bowls and vases we have accumulated over the years are safe to use in our dishwasher and oven, and since the kids have gotten old enough (i.e. no more likely to break the dishes than we are), we use them again as for our daily meals.

My wife even has one of the Portmeirion bees as a tattoo. She browses Craigslist in her spare time, and this week spotted a good deal on some more Portmeirion tableware. We bought it, and these are the latest additions to our collection:

After all these years I find the pattern—called Botanic Garden—very comforting, something that makes our home what it is. It makes morning coffee or evening sushi or spaghetti taste better.

Labels: anniversary, dishes, family, food, love, portmeirion

In our modern age, most things you buy at the store should go in the refrigerator once you open them. Fresh peanut butter is one example.

For some reason, however, Nutella is not one of them:

Despite being advertised as a healthy breakfast choice for children, Nutella is approximately 50% fat and 50% sugar. [...] Nutella should not be refrigerated, since it causes the spread to harden.

Lovely. I like it on crêpes anyway.

Labels: food, nutella, refrigeration

Twelve years ago I awoke to a cloudy morning, threatening rain. I didn't like that. My girlfriend was a few kilometres away in North Vancouver, similarly dismayed. But things improved.

Within a couple of hours the sun was shining through, and I was standing nervously in a tuxedo at the Hart House restaurant in Burnaby. Outside were chairs and a red carpet, and a dais beneath a large tree by the lake. Guests arrived.

Not much later, so did my girlfriend, in her dress, and Van Morrison's "Crazy Love" played on a boom box as she walked down the aisle and we were married. We ate with our relatives and friends, and then drove back to my parents' house, not far away, for a reception.

Today, we exchange simple presents on our twelfth anniversary, and later she and I ate out again, at The Cannery in Vancouver, also not far away.

We've been through a lot of shit together in this past decade and a bit. It has been a great time. I love her more than ever, and hope to continue for a long time to come.

Labels: anniversary, family, food, love, vancouver

We've done a lot in the past couple of days—or a lot for me, anyway. Yesterday I not only visited the Pain Clinic at the B.C. Cancer Agency (where I got a prescription for some longer-acting codeine so I don't have to take Tylenol 3s so often), but then went for dinner with my family at the mall and got myself a haircut. We were out of the house for more than five hours, which is my longest outing since the beginning of July.

I paid for it later with some pain in the middle of the night, but it was worth it. Similarly, today we visited the Agency again, where I talked to a social worker and generally got some stuff off my chest. But a couple of hours away was enough today, and I had to come home and lie down once more.

But I'm gaining weight steadily, despite the fatigue, close to ten pounds already. The steps are small, but they are steps. It's like coming back to life, bit by bit.

Labels: cancer, family, fatigue, food, pain, surgery

As of today, it has been one month since my colon cancer surgery. It seems like much longer. In that time I have been in the hospital for a week, out for a few days, back in for another ten days, and now home again for a little over a week.

A community health nurse visited again today. He examined my bedsore, which is healing fine, and generally checked me out. He reminded me that healing and recovery will be very slow—that with my ileostomy, I am absorbing food less efficiently than before, and after my spring radiation and chemotherapy treatments, tissues take extra time to mend as well.

So it feels very slow to me, and I feel guilty sleeping much of the day, but the medical professionals think it is all normal. My body has been through a lot, and I am gaining weight gradually. Each day I try to walk a bit, and to eat heartily, so I will get better very gradually. I still do not feel or look like myself, but I will come back. I know it's hard on my family too, but it is reassuring to know that nothing is seriously wrong.

Labels: cancer, family, fatigue, food, pain, surgery

Last night my wife and I went out for dinner for the first time in about a month, since before my major colon surgery on July 6. It was both a success and a failure. Or, more accurately, it was a good test.

We hired a babysitter for a few hours and chose our nearby Cactus Club Cafe, where I had some delicious cheese toast, grilled salmon, and mashed potatoes. (I had to skip the rice pilaf because during my recovery I need to avoid high-fibre foods like brown rice and nuts of all sorts, which can create blockages.)

I also drank a pomegranate cosmopolitan martini and a mojito. Everything was delicious, and I had a great time, even though I still have to bring a pillow to sit on.

However, earlier in the day my surgeon, Dr. Phang, had prescribed me some Tylenol 3 pills with codeine to help alleviate some of the pain I'm still having. As I half-expected, just as we were paying for the meal, the combination of the two drinks and the T3s kicked in, and I felt extremely light-headed sitting at the table.

My fantastic wife knew what to do, of course. She told me to put my head down to my knees, which I did, and I immediately felt better. Then she went to the car and retrieved the wheelchair we borrowed from my parents yesterday, and wheeled me out of the restaurant. I lay down in the back seat of our car and we drove the three minutes home, skipping our planned trip to the mall. Instead I went to bed and watched TV. Later we watched The Bourne Identity and I made some plans to give a remote video talk to the upcoming Gnomedex conference next week.

I didn't find what happened at the restaurant at all embarrassing, by the way. I'm way past embarrassment at any of this stuff. It was an experiment, in a way—what are my limits right now? I know I can eat a good meal in relative comfort. I know the Tylenol 3 works. And I know it does not interact well with booze (though I was pleased not to feel nauseated). So I should lay off the drink for now, at least if I plan to stay upright.

It was a damn good martini, by the way.

Labels: cancer, food, pain, restaurant, surgery, wheelchair