burnt honey and saffron

it's hot chocolate festival again.  there may not be 2 more devoted festival celebrants as h and i.  we are loyal.  it was lindsay who got me into it and heather who lives the hot choloate lifestyle with me every january 15 to february 14.  first we ate at bao down, had our flights of bao.  the bao did not disappoint. i don't know if it was just us but the fillings were fair busting out of the bao.  we did big chomps and licked our chops. and hit the road.  the hot chocolate place of choice was la glace on 16th and macdonald.  a really cute little bakery. it was all stylish and artsy and turquoise inside.  we got 3 hot chocolates and split them between us.  our favourite was the white hot chocolate with saffron, burnt honey and a meringue rosette.  the other two had ice cream in them.  one was white with a lemon ice cream and the other a dark chocolate with vanilla ice cream.

heather saved two of her bao and the daikon in them made the car smell like farts.

i read the next chapter of my new book which included a short story by anton chekhov called in the cart or the school mistress.  the way he has it in the book is a page of the story--then some discussion.  another page and some more discussion and on it goes like that.  it was really interesting.  i didn't realize the short stories were in the book so i read it first all the way through.  but then reading it that way with i saw and learned so much more about the story.

i learned that in a short story every thing introduced in the story has a purpose in the story.  i learned that what makes it a story is a transformation of some sort. and i learned other things but they are a secret. ha.

dad's puff paw has gone down a bit but my thumb still left a dent.  dad seemed a lot more alert and himself. the three of us played one game of dice--i stole the win from dad and one game of up and down the river which i won as well!  so i was a big winner tonight.

that was my day.  also izzy hasn't been grooming herself as much.  she thinks that as an old lady soon to be 84 years old such things are beneath her now.  maybe she's still pained at the memory of dad telling us all that she was licking her bum.  whatever the reason, i've taken to wiping her down and then brushing her coat every day to help her out.

on friday i bought korean rice cakes for jihyun's last day with us. for fun i bought a few mochi too.  i got a mango one, a strawberry one and a durian one.  i thought the durian one would be funny but the joke was on me because it was so stinky and gross that it almost ruined all our enjoyment.  pask put it in the bathroom. a bit of it got on something else i was eating and it tasted like onions.  "onions that have gone bad" said jihyun.  he tried a bite of it and his face jolted to alert in the funniest way.