Quiet Time Coming Up

Better drop a line or three in here now. Odds are the Breadbin will be closed for business over the next week.

We're headed out next weekend to Frankenmuth, Michigan, for that great Canadian pastime of cross-border shopping. A friend and former colleague of Eva's will be living here for the weekend with our puppies...we anticipate this will go over much better with them than a kennel has in the past.

Contrary to the song above (an old favourite of mine), we are going down mostly to grocery shop. If that sounds strange, you're probably American.

There are any number of products that are either unavailable to us sad-sack Canucks, or only available at grossly inflated prices. One such is Mrs. Dreamfields pasta. This is low-carb pasta that actually tastes better than regular pasta and doesn't leave me with that horrid bloated feeling. We currently get it shipped from a store in Mississauga, at, as I say, grossly inflated prices. I'm willing to pay more for this stuff, but I don't want to be a masochist about it, especially if paying less involves a romantic weekend with my wife in a whole 'nother country with no puppies crawling around (ahem) on the bed between us.

I've looked at the Kroger and Meijer flyers. They boggle the mind. The staple prices are so low they're actually suspicious. I actually saw milk at $1.77 a gallon. Of course, this is Monsanto-milk, loaded with bovine growth hormone. I don't really care if it's free: you won't catch me drinking American milk. Eggs, though, at 77 cents a dozen? They usually run around $2.19 up here and almost never go on sale. I hope this is just economy of scale rearing its ugly head--American farmers probably produce ten times as many eggs, after all.

Anyway, we're not going for eggs, either. Honestly, aside from the pasta, I don't know what else we're going for: it'll suggest itself when we see it. An adventure. I'm looking forward to it.

Because I am off this Saturday, I have to work Wednesday, which is my usual day to gather thoughts and blog my brains out. We've also some outdoor renovations scheduled this week and a fairly deep-cleaning of the house to take up any time that might other was be spent baking up Breadbin material.

And so, barring anything world shattering--something worse than the extinction level event in the Gulf of Mexico or war between the Koreas or...

I need a break from this stuff. More than anything else, that's why the Breadbin's about to go silent.

See you in a week or so.