We are 5 months into this pandemic, and for many of us, it has been stressful! What we all need is a good ROTFL moment. A real LOL until your gut hurts –hardy har har!

You’ve heard the saying, “laughter is the best medicine.” Well, we could all use a good laugh right now! We have just what you need, with a solid line up of joke books to get you giggling. Here are just a few of the huge selection of joke and humour books available in our physical and digital collections.

The library is open for light browsing now, and our friendly staff would be thrilled to help you find joke books. If you prefer, you can put holds on items from our catalog, and come pick them up once you have been notified they are ready for you. As if that wasn’t enough, you don’t even have to come in to the library to take advantage of all of the great joke books we have in our digital collections, like the Download Library. We’ve got you covered! Check out the items below and bust a gut with your family or friends.

We all know how this one goes:
“Knock Knock”
“Who’s there?” “Something”
“Something who?”
“Something HILARIOUS!”
Check this book out online at Download Library for all those knock out knock knock jokes to get your funny bone smarting. 

This one will have you hooting and hollering! Part of the very popular Just Joking series, this little book of wonders is filled with over 300 jokes, riddles, tongue twisters and much more, all about anything and everything. Check it out at the library.

Harry Potter. Jokes. Need we say more? Yes? Okay… regardless if you are a Gryffindor, Huffelpuff, Ravenclaw or that other one… this gem will have you rolling in the aisles of Hogwarts. Read online at Download Library.

This one is for those of you who are next-level jokesters. Elevate your humor from the common joke to the ever hilarious practical joke! Keep things interesting around the house while so many of us are still spending more time inside anyway! Check out this book at the library.

I know, you don’t want to think about it just yet, but facts are facts my friends: you are going back to school (or online learning, or homeschooling, or whatever that will look like for you this year) in just a few more weeks!! So you might as well shape up on all the subjects you’ll be taking this fall, while laughing hysterically about it! Available online from Download Library.

These jokes are designed to be shared. They may inspire a few eye rolls, or even the odd groan or two, but they will be entertaining! Get it from the library.

Write some of your own jokes!! We’d love to hear them! E-mail them to us at childkpl@kpl.org, or leave them in the comments below!

POST WRITTEN BY MICHAEL C., CHILDREN’S AND TEEN COLLECTION LIBRARIAN

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The weekend is almost here, so here are a couple of restaurant selections and a pair of food-related events, if you are looking for something to do and eat as we find ourselves in the middle of August. Time flies, even in a pandemic!

Head out for fish and chips at a couple of our local pubs! I’ve picked out a couple of examples I’ve tried recently.

Haddock, a saltwater fish closely related to cod, when fried right and served with some good twice-fried French fries, is a humble public-house and tavern dish that’s an absolute treat.

If it’s in your neck of the woods, check out Scran and Dram, a wee Scottish pub in New Hamburg. The fries are good, the slaw crisp, and it comes with wholegrain-mustard tartar sauce.

Pictured above, the haddock is beer-battered and crisp on the outside and firm yet moist inside. There is lots of patio space at Scran which essentially wraps around the front of the building in the parking lot to the side area.

In Eastwood Square, at the corner of Weber and Ottawa streets in Kitchener, StrykerZ Kitchen & Bar has a covered patio that has also been extended into the parking lot by a half-dozen or so tables.

The beer-battered haddock and fries were excellent, when I had them last week.

As for events, if you’ve ever wanted to grow your own mushrooms, both indoors and outdoors, then now is the time.

At St. Ignatius Jesuit Centre, Guelph, you can learn how to “Grow Your Own Oyster and Wine Cap Mushrooms.” The class is Saturday, August 15, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.

According to the Minga Skill Building Hub and master organic gardener, David Fields, a fitting name, putting on the event, “growing your own mushrooms is an easy way to increase the productivity, health and interest of your gardens and your plate. This workshop will offer an overview of some of the many ways you can grow delicious edible and medicinal mushrooms in your garden and in your home or apartment,” according to Minga.

For more information and tickets, visit here.

On Sunday, August 16, head to Rustico Kitchen and Bar, at the corner of Victoria Street and River Road, for the “Community Tables Series” raising money for Nutrition for Learning, an organization that sees that kids who need it get food at our schools.

This, the first event in the series, will be a special tasting brunch menu with distance protocols in place to ensure everyone can safely enjoy their meal as they support Nutrition for Learning.

The event runs between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. You can get more information and tickets here.

Incidentally, popular — and amazing — local musician Juneyt will provide the musical accompaniment.

The goal is to reach $10,000 to support the Student Nutrition Programs in Waterloo Region.

Have a great weekend!

Check out my latest post Weekend food and events from Andrew Coppolino - World of Flavour.

Source: Washington Free Press, by Janice Morley-Lecomte

Summer is a great time to get out and visit local sites and to purchase fresh produce supplied through local venues. Le Marché St Norbert Farmers’ Market is one of these venues.

A young girl’s artwork to thank Wanda for helping save her mother’s life.

It was a chance encounter, a moment that changed everything.

A woman in despair found the support she so desperately needed at our Emergency Food Hampers program.

It was a normal day for House of Friendship staff Wanda Zimmerman, who had just finished helping a family. She had given one of the children a little treat before realizing there were more children in the family, so she followed them to the parking lot to provide more treats.

It was then that she saw a woman, walking by in a daze.

“Something didn’t feel right,” said Wanda. “Something didn’t look right.”

She went over to the woman and asked if she was okay.

“She couldn’t speak. Then I said, ‘Would you like a hug?’ I hugged her, and she cried so hard,” said Wanda. “I did not know she had planned to end her life. She was going through a nasty divorce, lost her children, and had no hope to live.”

Wanda was able to bring the woman into the building, keeping her safe until paramedics arrived. That timely intervention led to the woman getting the help she needed.

“Her children drew this picture to say ‘thank you’ for saving their mom,” said Wanda. It’s a picture she keeps on her bulletin board as a reminder of that day.

“This is what keeps me coming back every day to House of Friendship. It’s more than just serving food to the community,” said Wanda.

“It’s listening to their needs, their desires, their hopes, their dreams. And then working together to make it a better place for everyone.”

Every year, your gifts of support ensure that 20,000 people receive food hampers during their time of need. You show them that they are worth it, that they matter, that they are not alone. Thank you for giving. Thank you for caring!

The post More than Food appeared first on House Of Friendship.

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Ken Sushi House
Blair House
256 Phillip Street
Waterloo, ON N2L 6B6
(519) 883-7272
kensushihouse.ca

My first visit to Ken Sushi House, ensconced in “Blair House” within the newish high-rise University of Waterloo dorms on Phillip Street, was in early 2019. It seems a lot has happened since then.

One such phenomenon has been that Ken Sushi has established itself as the premier venue for sushi and sashimi in the area. And rightly so: it’s very good.

Space has been reduced for physical distancing, but Ken Sushi is open daily, with a brief closure between lunch and dinner service.

[published previously]
With Valentine’s Day arrows launching this week, it only makes sense to get on a love boat – the “Love Boat” at Ken Sushi House in Waterloo, that is. The dish tingles and excites.

We are, however, talking something more sensual and intimate than the gluttonous orgy of all-you-can-eat sushi that is generally the norm in the region. That, too often, is sushi that fails to satisfy, either body or soul.

Ken Sushi House features another type of love: the care of preparation for this ritualistic food that is really the essence of sushi and sashimi ardour.

“I keep the ingredients fresh, first of all. I buy only the best, and prepare it as if I’m making it for my family. If I have some fish delivered that I don’t like, I don’t accept it,” says Ken Sushi House chef and owner Ken Yim.

Yim opened the 45-seat restaurant in September, 2016, coming from Toronto where he had previously operated a sushi restaurant.

A regular Toronto customer from as early 2001 eventually came to develop the property where Ken Sushi House now resides, and he asked Yim to open a restaurant. “He said there’s not a good sushi restaurant in Waterloo, and that I could offer something to the area,” according to Yim.

Such is it that when I see these numbers, I wonder how there ever is enough fish in the sea. It’s something that Yim is careful about and respects, you can tell. “The fish is God’s gift,” he says.

That Ken Sushi has come to mean premium quality is the general consensus of area diners in evaluating Yim’s preparations: the lightly vinegared and slightly warm rice, the fresh, cool slices of fish, the delicate, refined morsels gently handled and shaped by the kitchen, rather than the slapdash, desultory preparation of too many AYCE venues.

Love Boat is 16 pieces of sashimi, 12 pieces of sushi and 12 pieces of roll (crispy salmon and California) making it good for sharing ($47).

The dish comes on a boat-shaped apparatus that is basically every ingredient that the restaurant has, except for uni, otoro and some other more expensive pieces. “It’s a good variety,” Yim says.

That includes delicious salmon, blue fin tuna, yellow tail, albacore, shrimp and surf clam and others, with a dollop of wasabi stimulation and cooling pickled ginger.

In total, there are likely 200 items on the menu, including three other boats that sail to sushi ecstasy: Waterloo, Deluxe and Titanic – the latter includes the Brobdingnagian proportion of 120 pieces (for $147), inspiring a delight of sushi satiety.

Such is it that when I see these numbers, I wonder how there ever is enough fish in the sea. It’s something that Yim is careful about and respects, you can tell. “The fish is God’s gift,” he says.

Indeed, sushi love is a many splendoured thing.

Note: You may have to search for Ken Sushi among a series of ground-level stores with student residences towering over head. There is some parking behind the Blair House with access up the driveway on the north side.

Check out my latest post Ken Sushi: “love boat” of sushi from Andrew Coppolino - World of Flavour.

Lectionary Readings for the 10th Sunday after Pentecost:      

Job 34:4-18

Psalm 18:1-16

Romans 10:5-17

Matthew 14:22-33

Collect: Almighty and most merciful God, preserve us from all harm and danger that we, being ready in both body and soul, may cheerfully accomplish what You want done; through Jesus Christ, Your Son, our Lord, who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen. 

Hymn of the Day: “Eternal Father, Strong to Save” – (LSB 717)

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The book of Job is one that we are often encouraged to turn to when things in our lives are going badly. We are often told to take comfort from it in that just as Job suffered and was rewarded, we too who trust in God will be rewarded for our suffering. But truly, the message of Job is one that is much more complex than that, if not even more comforting. It truly is, as our collect of the day suggests, all about God’s mercy, not His rewarding of good behaviour.

What do I mean? Well…I think it’s pretty well summed up in a meme I read online this past week. There is a person talking about how though many people got sick with this Coronavirus, not everyone who contracted it died, and so this person was encouraging people to give thanks to God for being delivered from it in their post, and that’s what most of the responders were doing, until the last one. That person, sarcastically I’m assuming, responded with: “Yah, thanks a lot God for killing all those other people who didn’t get better.” And whether we admit it or not, that pretty well sums up our sinful attitude rather accurately.

Like this person, and like Job ended up doing, we tend to want to blame God for the bad things that happen in our lives and even just in the world around us in general. The destruction of a severe hurricane or hail storm is labelled “an act of God” for example. We like to, as one member once described it to me, ‘externalize blame’. We would rather blame someone else than take any responsibility upon ourselves, and who better to blame than the One who ‘claims’ to have everything under His control? Especially when it is something that we don’t have any control over.

Now…there are several problems with this line of thinking, but I’m going to go straight to the main one, just as God did in His response to Job: Who are you to question God?

Well…who are you? Take a look in the mirror. What do you see? When I look, I see a modestly handsome, though completely sinfully corrupted creature. I see a man who is responsible for many bad things having happened, both in my own life, and also in the lives of those around me. I see a person with no power to change the world around me, a person with no supernatural abilities to control any aspect of creation, a person who is completely helpless, and yet demands the world answer to him and his whims and the way that he thinks things should be. And I’m betting that this is similar to what all of you see when you look into the mirror too…especially the mirror of the Law.

When looking into that mirror, we can’t help but see ‘that we are by nature sinful and unclean and cannot save ourselves.’ We see a creature who has fallen far from the perfection that God had given us in our creation. We don’t deserve any good from God, only punishment and eternal damnation. We say that quite often in church, but have you ever really thought about what it means? It means that, since we are sinful from the moment of our conception, that we deserve death before we even draw our first breath. Plain and simple. This is what we deserve because of our sinfulness, our corruption – insta-death. “How can you say that pastor? That doesn’t sound fair? There’s nothing I can do about that. And that’s true, there is nothing you can do to fix or change that old Adam in you, but again, you’re making the same argument. The fact that you were conceived at all is a merciful gift as your parents shouldn’t have lived either…nor their parents, nor their parents. All the way back to Adam and Eve, whom God spared despite their disobedience. But what does God do instead? He lets us live! And even more than that, He gives us good gifts throughout our lives! (The greatest of which being our faith in Christ and His saving work for us, but we’ll come back to that.) While there is still evil all around us, and we are often faced with the sinful results of our actions in this life, God still loves us, and still gives us good things.

We don’t’ like to think that. We don’t’ like to admit…or maybe confess is a better word…that we are sinful to our very core and deserve nothing good – not even this life that we regularly take for granted. Instead, we’d rather complain that God isn’t doing this or that thing that we want Him to do. Or we’d rather complain that this or that bad thing is happening in the world around us, instead of realizing that this bad thing is even more than we deserve in the first place as we are alive to witness it at all! We deserve bad things to happen to us, because we are, at our root and core, bad people – broken, sinful, bad people.

But thanks be to God that He doesn’t leave us that way.

That’s why He gave us Jesus. That’s why He lived with us, suffered with us, and ultimately died for us. He took all our deserved eternal punishment on His shoulders and had it nailed to His cross where He took our place. So now, while still broken and sinners, we are also glued back together saints. We have forgiveness, even though we still live in this sinful fallen world. Things around us are bad, then good, then bad again, but ultimately, they are all in God’s hands and He has promised that He won’t allow anything to come against us that we can’t handle as long as we remain faithful and trust in Him. 

Does that mean it will be all sunshine and roses until He calls us home? No. Quite the opposite actually. Bad things are going to happen, and even more for those of us who believe the Scriptures warn us, as Satan doesn’t want us to believe and trust in God. He wants us to forsake God and walk away from His grace, and so he tries extra hard to make your life even worse so that you would curse God and die – as Job’s wife urged him to do in Job 2. Luther warned us in other words when he wrote: “Our Saviour wore a crown of thorns, why do we expect a crown of roses?” Why indeed.

My fellow brothers and sisters in Christ, I encourage you to see your life for what it truly is: a blessing from God. All the good and yes, even the bad, are all a gift as you are still around to experience it. These goods and bads will continue to come too, all the way until He calls you home and finally removes all the bads, leaving only the goods, and this is how it will stay for all eternity thereafter.

Until then? Trust in God. Understand Him? No – we’ll never be able to fully do that. But trust Him? Yes. Trust that no matter what comes, He will see you through it. Could things be better in your life? Yes, they could. Covid sucks, being stuck inside is frustrating, having to wear masks is annoying, but God will see you through it all. Trust that nothing can separate you from His love, and nothing can cut you off from His grace. Know that no matter how low you think you’ve fallen, that He will be there to pick you up – not because you deserve it (we already talked about that), but instead, because He loves you, and has promised to never leave you nor forsake you.

So rejoice! You do have a merciful, loving God who has promised to be with you always.

Dear Lord, thank You for Your undeserved mercies each and every day of our lives. When we are in doubt, bring us Your certainty, and when we are low lift us up. In all things help us to put our trust and faith in You, knowing that You will never lead us astray, but have promised to be with us even until the end of time.  In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.

In Christ,

Pastor Rapp

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Just a note that Simply Delicious and many of the other food hall vendors at the Kitchener Market are back in action for take-out on Saturdays.

[Not all food hall vendors are open. Please consult the Market website for information.]

[previously published]
If you ask Elena Sopt what dish you should have at Simply Delicious, you can’t finish the question before she says, “Cabbage rolls!”

That answer is just fine by me.

She and her daughter, Denisa Danciu, have run Simply Delicious for about four years. It’s technically Danciu’s business, but Sopt helps out, because, she says simply, “I really like it.”

Sopt previously operated Everyday Gourmet, another of the dozen or so food stands that constitute the international cuisine vendors on Kitchener Market’s upper level.

During the weekday, noon-hour tables are occupied primarily by students, eating the affordable and predictably narrow range of fries and pizza slices. Otherwise, Sopt says her customer base is wide.

“This is my food and my family’s,” she says, smiling with the pride one so often senses when people are talking about their food.

Everything on the menu is hearty. For breakfast, that includes an omelette or peameal bacon or sausage and two eggs and homefries, while at lunch you can get traditional eastern European comfort-food dishes like goulash, schnitzel and perogies with sautéed onions, bacon and sour cream. It’s all prepared and cooked, essentially, in a family style. For me, that adds a lot of value.

Sopt’s background is Romanian. She’s not a trained cook, she readily notes, but learned on her own and absorbed the recipes and, importantly, the techniques of her family kitchen. “In Romania, we have cabbage rolls, goulash and schnitzel, and every market there must have chevaps,” she says of the little spiced pork sausages.

Sopt’s mother is with them at the Market stand today because they have a lot of cabbage leaves to prepare: it’s a matter of all hands on deck. “They are a lot of work,” she emphasizes.

The cabbage is first fermented in large barrels (in season, they buy local cabbage at the Market). It then takes them hours and hours to prepare enough leaves for the restaurant.

Every week, the team makes about 600 cabbage rolls, Sopt estimates. “Last week, we made 2,000. Someone had a big party and placed an order,” she says, adding that they have a wedding to cater this month.

The stuffing inside the carefully prepared leaves is pork and rice with spices like paprika and some tomato paste. “It’s too dry with beef, so it has to be pork,” Sopt asserts. “This is our recipe from back home.”

The platter ($8.85 for three large cabbage rolls) is a contrast of crunchy sauerkraut and smooth mashed potatoes. “I like the Yukon Gold for mashing, but I add a few Russets to help make them fluffier,” she says. The gravy on the dish is rich and comes from the goulash pot. “We make that from scratch too.”

As I was eating, Sopt brought me a mug of light, milky fluid, cool and aromatic. It’s called “moare,” some of the liquid from the cabbage preparation. It acts, she says, as a digestive, and it’s in fact a nice if not unusual sip on a rainy day.

Simply Delicious is open Tuesday to Saturday from morning to mid-afternoon.

Simply Delicious
Kitchener Market
300 King Street East
Kitchener, ON   N2G 2L3
(519) 590-6472
 www.kitchenermarket.ca

Check out my latest post Cabbage rolls at Simply Delicious from Andrew Coppolino - World of Flavour.

Welcome to our second Nature Blog. Parks are open and teaming with life so I want to take you with me on an interactive exploration of the natural world. I will be visiting Huron Natural Area in this post filled with fun facts, activities and craft ideas. So let’s get started. 

The day and night skies are filled with the flutter of wings from our native moths and butterflies. All through the spring, summer and fall there is colour and movement as eggs are laid, caterpillars munch through leaves, grasses and plants, then pupate to become moths or butterflies.

Have fun this summer and when you are out exploring nature look for caterpillars and moths or butterflies and count how many different kinds you can find.

It all starts with an egg that hatches into a small caterpillar, which grows until it makes a chrysalis or cocoon and begins the transformation.

• Butterflies taste with their feet
• Butterflies and moths live from a week to over a year
• The Mourning Cloak Butterfly lives over a year and does not migrate
• There are over 5000 species of moths and 302 of butterflies in Canada
• The largest moth and caterpillar is called a Cecropia
• Some caterpillars like the Spiny Oakworm caterpillars have hollow spines that contain a small amount of poison to save them from being eaten. Do not touch them or they can sting.
• Monarch caterpillars warn predators to stay away with their yellow, white and green stripes. They feed on milkweed which is poisonous to other insects and creatures.
• Moths come in many sizes and shapes and look like hummingbirds, bees, wasps and flowers. Below is a photo of the Clearwing Hummingbird moth.

What kind of butterflies and moths did you see on your walk? Compare them to the pictures on this activity sheet from Royal Botanical Gardens and see if you can figure out which ones are moths or butterflies.

Take a walk and look for all the amazing colours and patterns of butterflies and moths in your neighbourhood. Then gather some markers, crayons a cup and craft stick to make this fun pop-up butterfly craft. You can find the instructions on the Kindergarten Worksheets and Games website.

Never before has it been so much fun to go exploring in our backyards and parks. The Secret Lives of Backyard Bugs has amazing photos and even more amazing facts and details about the lives of bugs that share our natural world. Once you know where to look you will be amazed at what you can discover. Request it from the library.

This beautifully illustrated book takes us through the amazing journey of a caterpillars life. From egg to caterpillar, then cocoon or chrysalis and, lastly, emerging as a moth or butterfly. The use of large illustrations with bursts of fascinating facts will keep you turning the pages. Take this book home today!

I would love to hear what you find on your nature walks.! Let me know in the comments below, and email your photos to childkpl@kpl.org to display your creations.

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Tempeh [TEHM-pay]
As interest in vegetarian and vegan diets has grown significantly over the past decade or so, it’s interesting to note that a popular staple of the diet is tempeh — and that tempeh may be as old a food product as a thousand years.

Fermented and cooked whole soybeans that have been pressed into a shape similar to a bar of soap, tempeh is dense, chewy, nutty and yeasty. It’s high in protein, free of cholesterol and low in fat.

Tempeh is good for cooking with because it generally keeps its shape and absorbs the flavours that are being cooked with it.

As for it’s origin, it’s possible that tempeh was a by-product — a mistake, in some senses — of the tofu-making process and dates to being made in Indonesia in the 17th century.

You can purchase Henry’s Tempeh, a locally made product, at Full Circle Foods, or try it in sandwich form at Cafe Pyrus: the “Benwich” is organic panini with tempeh, avocado, aged organic Cheddar or Daiya and whole grain mustard.

I’ve had the Benwich: it’s good!

Check out my latest post Wednesday Word: tempeh from Andrew Coppolino - World of Flavour.

On July 14, the prominent feminist philosopher María Lugones died. Lugones was one of the first feminist thinkers that I ever read. Her co-authored paper with Elizabeth Spelman, “‘Have We Got a Theory for You!’ Feminist Theory, Cultural Imperialism, and the Demand for the ‘Woman’s Voice,” inspired my Master’s thesis. Some of the questions that paper raises about coalition across cultural difference still press on me. In fact, Janet and I have a project about building solidarity within heterogenous feminist communities.

One of Lugones’ most influential concepts is that of “world-traveling.”  For Lugones, worlds are socially constructed contexts that have particular norms and expectations. When a person inhabits different worlds, their sense of self may change, because they are interacting differently with the norms and expectations of that world. For example, who I am is not the same across worlds: when constructing a space for productive discomfort in a feminist classroom, contrasted with the collaborative space of my Dungeons & Dragons group, or at a large family meal around the holidays. I’m different not only in terms of how I feel within that world, but also because the norms of each world shape my opportunities differently.

World-traveling, for Lugones, provides someone with an opportunity to better understand another person and their situation. It enables someone to recognize how they and another are positioned within certain worlds. For people with more privilege, world-traveling can be a mechanism for recognizing this privilege. This is part of why world-traveling can be a support for building solidarity.

I’ve been thinking about similarities between world-traveling and Arendt’s notion of “visiting.” For Arendt, visiting is an imaginative process whereby a person seeks to expand their own perspective. This process enhances our ability to make normative judgments. A person “visits” the perspective of another by trying to imagine themselves in the other’s context. It is about imagining how you might think or feel in that particular social location and circumstance. However, in visiting a person does not try to simulate another perspective, but rather, they think from it. Thus, they do not adopt or assimilate another’s point of view, but keep a sense of awareness about their own position and how it might differ from the one they visit.

Visiting allows a person to collect diverse stories about a single event or phenomenon, which challenges the idea that there is a single authoritative perspective. Lisa Disch likens visiting to a literary experience whereby a person understands a situation by encountering the perspectives of different characters. I like this metaphor because it emphasizes that visiting is not about assimilation. As a reader, I might understand a situation better, in all its complexity, by thinking from these diverse perspectives. Further, this engagement might challenge me to reflect on assumptions I have brought to the text. But, I am always conscious of myself as a reader. I notice how I, Katy, am not the same as the characters, even though I am in their point of view.

This kind of distance is important for both world-traveling and visiting. It is important for maintaining our commitment to the plurality of our communities, which is crucial for both Lugones and Arendt., as well as for building solidarity.

Further, Disch notes that there are resonances between world-traveling and Arendt’s relational notion of self-disclosure through speech and action. For Lugones and Arendt, who we are is shaped, in part, by how we interact with others and are recognized within various worlds.

Disch suggests that Arendt makes visiting sound simple, yet it isn’t. Neither is solidarity work. According to Disch, Lugones’ articulation of world-traveling helps to supplement Arendt’s notion of visiting to enhance its potential for solidarity projects. World-traveling is more interactive and not merely an act of the imagination, as visiting is for Arendt. Further, Lugones is more explicit than Arendt about how a person may feel disoriented through world-traveling. Visiting is arguably uncomfortable—we get glimpses of this from Arendt’s letters, though she does not talk about it explicitly.

I’m curious about how love, another aspect of world-traveling might relate—or not—to visiting. For Lugones, world-traveling is a way to love other women. It aims to repair the mis-recognition that comes when White women fail to recognize the uniqueness of racialized women and to fail to identify with them. Lugones states:

I am particularly interested here in those cases in which White/Anglo women do one or more of the following to women of color: they ignore us, ostracize us, render us invisible, stereotype us, leave us completely alone, interpret us as crazy. All of this while we are in their midst. [. . .] Their world and their integrity do not require me at all. There is no sense of self-loss in them for my own lack of solidity. But they rob me of my solidity through indifference, an indifference they can afford and which seems sometimes studied. (p. 7, italics in original)

This identification, I think, is not about erasing differences. Instead, identification is needed to build solidarity between women in their activism against patriarchy, heteronormativity, and other forces of domination.

I don’t usually think of Arendt as a thinker who often involves emotions in her philosophy. She does talk about the experience of joy and happiness that comes from acting with others in political community. (See, for example, On Revolution.) Perhaps love seems too akin to empathy, which Arendt explicitly rejects in visiting. Empathy functions as a form of assimilation. It collapses the relational distance between a person and the perspectives they visit.

I’m not sure what Arendt would say about this use of the term “love,” a term which she reserved for speaking about romantic love or the warmth between close friends. I haven’t gone back to her dissertation Love & St. Augustine, which seems clearly relevant, but I would if I want to further explore these thoughts.

Arendt also uses “love” to express the care she felt for the world, the space of togetherness that humans share. Her favoured title for The Human Condition was Amor Mundi, or “love of the world.”

It is in this sense that I think Lugones’ concept of love might help us understand the potential of visiting to promote solidarity. For Arendt, politics emerges when people speak and act together. This depends upon the recognition of human plurality, that each person is unique. White women’s failure to recognize, identify with, and love women of colour is a denial of relationality, and hence, a denial of  plurality.

This way of thinking about love is not empathy. Based on Lugones discussion, love, as a mechanism for identification, can involve affect—her example is loving her mother. But, it doesn’t seem to me that love in this sense requires any particular emotion of liking another person. Love seems more akin to how, in Arendt’s work, political principle guide action. For Arendt, collective action may be motivated by emotional responses. But, it should be guided by principles such as freedom or equality.

Perhaps love functions like this: It is a principle that centers the uniqueness of the other so that visiting does not become too abstract or objectify the other. (This is another limitation of visiting, says Disch, if it only requires one’s imagination.) Love might also indicate a disposition toward the other. We love by engaging another in a way that respects their uniqueness and affirms human plurality.

I am with love in politics, probably from reading Arendt so much. Nevertheless, the centrality of love in world-traveling is prompting me to rethink Arendt’s concept of visiting. And perhaps it also helps address ways in which visiting can go wrong. When we focus too much on our own understanding, we might forget the unique subjectivities of those whose perspectives we visit.

Hypatia, a journal of feminist philosophy, has made some of Lugones’ essays free to access without a subscription until August 18, including her essay on world-traveling. Check it out while you can!

Photo by Eugene Zhyvchik on Unsplash

My thoughts in this post have benefited from the collaborative thinking I have done with Janet Jones about visiting as a potential mechanism to build solidarity in feminist communities.

The post Visiting other worlds appeared first on Katy Fulfer.

Gantt charts are among the most popular methods for visualizing a construction project’s progress. But what is a Gantt chart and why is it important? Keep reading to learn all of the details.

A Gantt chart lays your project schedule out using a bar chart format. This layout is very effective for visualizing the dependencies between various aspects of the project. 

While the Gantt chart was not designed specifically for construction, it offers several advantages for workers and operations teams in this field, which we’ll explore shortly.

The Gantt chart was developed by Karol Adamiecki all the way back in 1896. Around 1910, a man by the name of Henry Gantt introduced an updated version of the chart that more closely resembles what we know of today, including interdependencies.

The recorded use of Gantt charts in a construction project context dates back to 1912 when civil engineer Hermann Schurch used something very similar.

Gantt charts have, of course, come a very long way since the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Because each chart was drawn by hand, changes in project scope or timing could take hours to visualize.

Chief among the benefits of Gantt charts today is their nimbleness. Whether you’re building a skyscraper or renovating a house, Gantt charts are living, breathing documents that conform to your needs with just a few mouse clicks.

Every Gantt chart has four main components. Let’s take a quick look at each.

The Gantt chart format places labels along the y-axis to indicate what you’re organizing. 

Traditionally, these labels would consist of your various project components (i.e. “Pour Foundation” or “Install Windows”). Our workforce management software allows you to list personnel along this axis so you can allocate your team’s time efficiently.

Time runs along the x-axis of a Gantt chart. Bars on the chart attached to each label allow you to visualize duration. For example, if you’re tracking a project, each bar will tell you how long its associated task is expected to take. When tracking your workforce, each bar will inform you of the associated worker’s availability.

When tracking a project, you’ll naturally want to identify which tasks are associated with important milestones such as project phases. These milestones are linked to their relevant bars and easily visualized in the Gantt chart.

As mentioned earlier, one of the major advantages of Gantt charts is the ability to map out dependencies among tasks or resources you’re tracking to help visualize progress and prevent bottlenecks from occurring on specific tasks.

When attempting to understand why Gantt charts are important, you’ll eventually uncover a number of tremendous benefits they provide that many other schedule types do not. Let’s take a look.

Many other project schedule formats make it hard to properly visualize important factors like interdependence and resource allocations. Gantt charts are fairly unique in the way they conveniently display this information. The layout is so simple that elements of the Gantt chart have been adopted by productivity applications meant for the average person.

In a professional construction context, Gantt charts help you visualize your entire project, including the tasks that need to be completed and who is taking care of them using what resources.

Gantt charts are very useful for running effective construction manpower planning meetings. This is particularly true of meetings conducted amid the COVID-19 crisis. Because a Gantt chart offers a complete picture of your project, it can serve as the single source of truth that all discussions get framed around. Plus, because it’s so easy to manipulate Gantt charts using software, you can implement agreed-upon changes immediately. This will eliminate the common issue of different teams working off conflicting understandings of what needs to be done.

Chief among the advantages of Gantt charts is the ability to measure progress towards a task’s completion rather than having the task exist in a binary “finished” or “not finished” state. The format allows team members to update a task’s percentage of completion, which is something many other scheduling layouts lack.

There are also benefits of Gantt charts for this particular purpose. The bar layout displays percentage completion in a very sleek manner that you don’t get with the few other formats that have a similar feature.

Another key Gantt chart benefit is the layout’s conduciveness to keeping everyone focused and on track. Other schedule types rely on workers communicating (and then subsequently remembering) which tasks and resources are tied to another team’s success. This is a recipe for disaster when it comes to capacity planning on larger projects. A Gantt chart remedies this so easily it’s almost hard to believe.

A properly-maintained Gantt chart will make it very clear which workers or aspects of your project are excelling – or stalling. This can help management make effective decisions about where to allocate extra attention and resources to keep things running smoothly. 

It also helps contextualize worker output. A particular employee stalling may not be doing so because of incompetence but rather because an item their role is dependent on has fallen behind. You wouldn’t be able to deduce this from other schedule layouts.

As mentioned a few times now, the ability to see interdependencies is a chief Gantt chart benefit. One of the ways this benefit manifests itself is in encouraging flexibility. 

Responsible managers can often fear adjusting other types of schedules that don’t display interdependencies clearly because doing so can have unknown consequences. When you adjust a Gantt chart, however, you can immediately see the ripple effects your change will produce.

If the bar you’re adjusting overlaps with another one, you’ll know there’s a potential conflict. If the change produces a gap between previously-adjacent bars, you’ll know some resources will be freed up for allocation elsewhere within that gap.

Another key advantage of Gantt charts is their ubiquitous nature. When sharing your schedule with a third party, you can pretty much count on them knowing exactly what they’re looking at.

The popularity of Gantt charts also means software companies (like us at Bridgit) have spent considerable resources on implementing the format in programs that help the many organizations seeking such technology.

This means better tools for you to manage your projects and workforce!

We hope this post has done a good job of answering the question “what is a Gantt chart and why is it important?”

To summarize, Gantt charts are a very convenient means of visualizing progress on construction projects. The many benefits of Gantt charts can bring enhanced productivity, efficiency, and flexibility to any construction company’s operations. For more tips on improving construction labor management, check out this article as well as others on our blog. Workforce management is what we’re all about!

Lauren Lake is the COO and co-founder at Bridgit. She holds a degree in Civil Structural Engineering and is well-versed in construction workforce management and resource planning processes. Lauren has been named to the Forbes Manufacturing & Industry 30 Under 30 and Best Of Canada Forbes Under 30 Innovators lists. Lauren has presented at industry events and conferences, including BuiltWorlds, Canadian Construction Association, Procore Groundbreak, and more. Follow Lauren on LinkedIn and Instagram.

The e-news bulletin for July 2020 is now available to read. With many updates, including an invitation to join The Brain Story: Summer Series, this bulletin includes a message from Debbie Engel, who will become move from the role of Co-Chair to Past-Chair in September.

Check it out here.

The post July E-News Bulletin appeared first on Children and Youth Planning Table.

September 10th

September 13th

September 15th

September 17th

September 20th

September 22nd

September 24th (rain date)

more information here.

The post Rep Tryouts appeared first on Kitchener Minor Baseball.

2021 Tryout Dates:

August 24th and August 25th

Lions #1 and #2
5:30pm-7:30pm
14U and 15U

Lions #2
16U and 18U
8:15pm-10:15pm

August 26th
Rain Date

August 27th
Lions #1
14U and 15U
6:00pm-8:00pm

Lions #2
16U and 18U
7:00pm-9:00pm

August 28th
Rain Date

August 29th
Lions #2
14U and 15U
10:00am-12:30pm

Lions #2
16U and 18U
2:00pm-4:30pm

The post Elite Tryouts appeared first on Kitchener Minor Baseball.

2021 Tryouts are FREE!

KMBA is pleased to announce that tryouts for our 2021 Elite and Rep programs are free!

Elite Program

Elite Program Tryouts are being held the week of August 24th. More details can be found here.

Register for Elite Tryouts here.

Rep Program

Rep Program Tryouts will be held between September 10th and September 24th. Rosters will be announced between September 24th and September 30th.

Players will be evaluated over the two week period by their age group evaluation team made up of head coaches, external evaluators and some assistant coaches using a standardized evaluation tool. At the conclusion of the two week period, the evaluation team will determine the rosters for the age group, and the rosters will be posted on the KMBA website.

Due to Covid19, 2020 Panthers are guaranteed to be placed on one of our Rep rosters (not necessarily their current roster). Location and timing details will be emailed to those who have registered for tryouts on September 5th.

Register for Rep Tryouts using our new Association TeamSnap system here.

The post 2021 Tryout Information appeared first on Kitchener Minor Baseball.

It’s said that well behaved women rarely make history and that is certainly true when it comes to the Tudor dynasty. King Henry VIII had six different wives, but it was the two most scandalous Queens – Anne Boleyn and Katheryn (Catherine) Howard that we remember the most.

♦Katheryn Howard, The Scandalous Queen is narrated by Katheryn, Henry’s fifth wife and the second Queen (after Anne Boleyn) to be executed for adultery. She was just a teenager when she met Henry, who was nearly three decades older than she and in poor health. He quickly became enamored with her youthful beauty and called her his ‘rose without a thorn.’ Unbeknownst to him, however, Katheryn had led a less than reputable life before becoming his queen.

Is it easy for history to paint Katheryn as a lively adolescent who got involved with too many young gentlemen but that’s what I love about historical fiction – it can create a much more detailed story with emotional depth and complexity. The book presents Katheryn as a lonely child being passed from relative to relative until staying with her step-grandmother, The Dowager Duchess of Norfolk.

With no mother and an absentee father, Katheryn has an innate desire to be noticed and loved. This is what most likely makes her vulnerable to the advances of her first romantic partner – her older music teacher. The Dowager Duchess pays little mind to Kathryn’s supervision and the young girl is left to run wild. Several men take advantage of this and soon she is indulging in late night parties and other nefarious activities. She is later sent to court to serve the fourth Queen, Anne of Cleves, and that’s where she catches Henry’s eye.

Women of the Tudor period had little say in their own marriages and once Henry set his sights on marrying Katheryn, she couldn’t very well refuse. Her true desire, however, was for a young man named Thomas Culpeper, the King’s own gentleman to the royal privy chamber.

Author and historian Alison Weir started her career as a biographer of British royal families and although Katheryn Howard, The Scandalous Queen is historical fiction, it is based on years of research. Weir even intertwines her own fictional narrative with snippets of real love letters written between Katheryn and Thomas. To date Weir has written about all of the wives of Henry VIII as well as other prominent women of that time including: Elizabeth I, Mary Queen of Scots and Lady Jane Grey. Her next novel, Katharine Parr: The Sixth Wife, tells the story of Henry’s last Queen and is set to be released in spring 2021.

— Lesley L.

Hi everyone. If you guys have been following along with our company, you’ll probably know that at this moment we are currently super backed up with orders. At the time of writing, we have around 270 machines waiting to ship and counting.

Back at the end of April/start of June, we were expecting to clear out of inventory for Batch 2 around the end of July. Then sales jumped to more than double in June and double again in July. By the end of June, we were sold out of Batch 2 machines and by the end of July, already halfway sold out on Batch 3 before we were to ship.

Now, if we ran out of stock at the end of July as we were initially expecting, it would have coincided well with when we would have received all of the parts for Batch 3 and start shipping new units again. As you probably figured already, this plan didn’t really work out. With a combination of COVID-19, shipping and production delays, and all the other things, we’ve had to increase lead times for subsequent orders coming in.

In hindsight, it probably would have been better to get prepared earlier, as well as order parts in larger batches, but in my defense, I didn’t expect so many people to be ordering LongMills and that things would pick up so quickly. I guess it’s a good thing since it seems that folks are really liking their machines and I’ve seen a lot of people recommending the LongMill to other folks, so I’d like to think that this jump comes from building a good product. Nevertheless, going forward, I’ve already started ordering parts for Batch 4 and doubled the size of the batch for parts for things that have the longest lead times. With slowdowns with production, customs, and other things with shipping during COVID-19 times, I have a better idea of what shipping companies to work with to ensure parts come on time as well.

Although most the parts were supposed to be completed, shipped, and at our shop by start to middle of July to give us more time to check over everything, it ended up that with delays in customs especially, some items needed an extra few weeks to arrive. This meant that the time I had set aside to fix quality issues was taken up with the delays.

And that brings us to the whole v-wheel fiasco.

Around the middle of June, we ran out of v-wheels, anti-backlash delrin nuts, and 608ZZ flange bearings, so we ordered a small batch from one of our manufacturers that we have been working with for 2-3 years via express shipping. The idea was that we would be able to ship some machines up to when we would receive our full order of parts from them.

Our initial inspection of the parts appeared to look good, and since we had ordered the same parts from the same company for several years now, we expected to be the same. However, a small number of customers got in contact with us to let us know that the fit for the v-wheels were too tight, and in some cases, causing the v-wheel itself to break. At this point we stopped shipping the machines to check the remaining batch of v-wheels and try to solve the issue.

Well it turns out there were two problems. First was that the outer diameter was too large. Rather than being 23.9mm or 24mm which is standard, all of the v-wheels had a diameter of 25mm. This meant that the spacing between the wheels was off causing the fit of the gantry to be too tight. Second, the angle of the v was not exactly 90 degrees, which means that the v-wheel rides slightly higher on the rail, thus exacerbating the first issue and causing even more spacing issues. On top of this, there were several other inconsistencies that Chris and I weren’t happy with.

In an attempt to prevent us from stopping shipping altogether, we tried to purchase some v-wheels from local sources that would only ship in within a day or two (other suppliers, Amazon…). For some insane reason, no matter which place we ordered from, they all had the same problem. What we suspect is that one manufacturer made all of the wheels for all of the different distributors, thus making all of the wheels come out to be out of spec.

I even ordered another batch of 3000 wheels from China that promised that they would be in spec, only to find that they still had the same problem. I was really hoping that at this point that this saga would be over.

Yesterday night, I ordered 600 wheels from OpenBuilds from the US using their fastest shipping method, enough to build 50 more LongMills. Tracking is showing that they are expected to arrive tomorrow. I also have another 1000 wheels coming in from China to replace part of the defective wheels that should arrive in a few days. My plan is to keep bringing in more wheels to continue shipping and try to get the machines as quickly as we can with a combination of different suppliers so that if one manufacturer mis-manufactures the wheels, we would have another source of wheels to use. If they all end up good, then we can hold the stock and use it for future batches.

We also have our manufacturers re-making the wheels from scratch as well to a new drawing and with extra QA done to ensure that the right size wheels are being shipped. This will likely be a two to three-week process altogether so we should see these wheels for the later part of Batch 3 production.

I feel pretty confident that the v-wheels from OpenBuilds will end up being the correct size, especially due to the massive price difference and it being an American company. I would much rather pay the extra bit to make sure all of the customers who have been patiently waiting to get their machines get it as quickly as possible and have the machines work the first time around. That should get machines moving out the door while I wait for the rest of the wheels to finally show up from our regular suppliers.

So the plan for tomorrow is to have all of the machines on the packing table get shipped out with the first batch of 600 wheels coming from OpenBuilds. If you have fingers please cross them for us for the wheels to be good this time.

Thanks – Andy

Mappedin’s Directory Voice Assist is an audio-based assistant that provides a fast and touchless wayfinding experience on our Digital Directory product. Using convenient voice commands, shoppers can navigate a venue with simple phrases like “Where is the Apple Store?”

In an effort to safely welcome people back to Uptown Waterloo and to recognize and thank front line workers, the Uptown Waterloo Business Improvement Area (BIA) has launched a gratitude garden campaign called Uptown Rocks!

“Members of the community are being asked to find and paint rocks – at home, of course – with positive messages and drawings that showcase their appreciation for all that our frontline workers have done to keep us safe during the pandemic,” shared Tracy Van Kalsbeek, Executive Director of the Uptown Waterloo BIA

1. Find a perfect rock, grab your paint and craft materials and while at home, decorate some beautiful works of art with words of encouragement and inspiration.
2. Take a photo of your rock, share on social media and tag in @uptownwaterloo.
3. While physically distancing and following safety precautions – bring your finished rock one of these participating Uptown businesses:
   1. Dana Shortt Gourmet – 55 Erb Street East
   1. The Duke of Wellington – The Atrium at 33 Erb Street West
   1. Uni+Koncept – 85 Willis Way, Unit 115
   1. The Sock Factory – The Shops at Waterloo at Waterloo Town Square, 75 King Street South
4. Later in August, the Uptown Waterloo BIA will create a giant heart out of everyone’s painted rocks in the Waterloo Public Square for an aerial photo we can all share and continue to spread the love! The rocks will later be dispersed throughout public gardens and spaces around Uptown.

Community members have already been sharing their completed rocks on social media.

The post Uptown Rocks! appeared first on Uptown Waterloo Business Improvement Area.

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Located in the heart of Stratford, Stratford Chefs School has just announced a new scholarship it will be offering.

The details of the scholarship are in the press release, below, from the school.

In recognition of the obstacles that Black People, Indigenous People, and People of Colour (BIPOC) face in gaining entry to professional culinary training, Stratford Chefs School is pleased to announce the establishment of The Bruce Hotel Scholarship for Emerging BIPOC Chefs as a way to contribute to movements of economic justice.

Initiated and funded by Jennifer Birmingham, owner of The Bruce Hotel in Stratford, Ontario, The Bruce Hotel Scholarship for Emerging BIPOC Chefs will be awarded to one Canadian BIPOC student entering Stratford Chefs School each year, beginning in 2020, and will cover the full cost of tuition for the 32-week professional program.

“I am thrilled to be able to offer this new scholarship to Stratford Chefs School, a respected leader in culinary arts training in Canada. We see it as a critical step in diversifying the food industry and creating space for BIPOC leadership in the food world,” said Jennifer Birmingham, owner, The Bruce Hotel.

The scholarship is both need- and merit-based. In addition to satisfying Stratford Chefs School’s admission criteria, interested applicants are required to write a statement detailing how the scholarship will make a difference in their career trajectory, their previous community involvement, and any other information that may assist in determining their eligibility including, but not limited to, a brief description of their financial situation.

Preference will be given to students who demonstrate a commitment to the BIPOC community through volunteerism, activism, and/or involvement with BIPOC student groups.

Applicants are also required to submit two letters of reference in support of their application; one from an academic or culinary source such as a course instructor, academic advisor, supervising chef, and one from an individual familiar with their personal achievements, community participation and/or volunteer activities and other contributions.

The completed statement, reference letters, and all supporting documents can be emailed as PDF attachments to Stratford Chefs School Program Manager Randi Rudner at rrudner@stratfordchef.com or by uploading them as part of the online Application form for the 32-week professional program available on the Stratford Chefs School website: www.stratfordchef.com/apply-now

The deadline for 2020-21 Scholarship applications is Tuesday, September 1, 2020 and applicants will be informed of the award decision by email, no later than Monday, September 14, 2020. Orientation for the Fall semester at Stratford Chefs School begins on Tuesday, October 13, 2020.

[Photo/Terry Manzo]

Check out my latest post Scholarship for emerging BIPOC chefs from Andrew Coppolino - World of Flavour.

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I have a toothache. It’s affecting my outlook, I confess. This is the week of doing things that need to get done, so I’m going to see a dentist. To tell the truth, I kind of want the tooth just pulled. Last fall, I paid for an expensive root canal and less than a year later, the ache is back; was it worth the drilling and pain and cost?

It occurs to me, as I write this out, that pulling the tooth — the desire to pull the tooth, and be done with it — is a metaphor that perhaps I should explore in more depth.

Let’s assume I want to pull the tooth. Am I, therefore, the sort of person who rips painful problems from her life, leaving gaping holes, rather than spend the time and energy to fix them? Or am I the sort of person who recognizes that the fix is a scam, that when all the work is done, the tooth will just be hollowed out and crammed with filler, a shell of its former self, shored up for cosmetic purposes? It’s interesting, isn’t it, how a metaphor can be twisted any which way, to support opposing views.

Maybe it’s just a toothache. But I want it fixed!

All the fixes are imperfect, okay, I accept that. My question is: Which imperfect fix is worth it, given the costs? How can I ever know, when I’m trying to sort these things out? What’s the healthiest allocation of resources, what’s important to prioritize, what will I miss when it’s gone? No wonder it’s so hard, when making a choice, to say no — it feels like giving up, but also, it feels like an absence, a void, is scarier to accept than something known, even if the known thing is causing pain and can’t be perfectly put right again.

I know, I know. I’m over-thinking.

One of the problems of the pandemic is seeing fewer people, less often. It’s a recipe for unchecked eccentricities!

♦

A friend said to me that she asks herself (and others): What do you want to do, and what can you do?

Another friend recommended long ago not to choose resentment over discomfort. Or at least to notice if it’s become a habit: truth is, if it’s what you’re accustomed to, resentment feels easier to accept than discomfort. Many of us (women, especially) are socialized to believe that feeling discomfort is bad and wrong, and that, when we feel it, we are bad and wrong, or we’ve done something bad and wrong. Resentment, by contrast, is an outer-facing feeling — blame someone else, blame the situation, blame anything but your own choice. Oh, resentment, you’re so easy to step into and you go on and on and on.

I think these are similar philosophies that acknowledge the difficulty, the fraught-ness, of decision-making. And I’m making decisions, choices, whether by doing or not-doing, all day long; some more consequential than others, but all fed by my private interior calculations that take into account (unconsciously, more often than not) my values, my relationship to others, my whims, my interpretation of available resources.

My daughter, Annabella, says that human beings have limited will-power, and that’s why routines are so important: a habit is a choice already made, and our energy can be spent making other choices, instead.

What do I want to do, and what can I do?

I want my tooth to stop aching. I also want the least expensive, least complicated option. But I don’t know: will I feel ugly or self-conscious if there’s a gap in my teeth?

I wonder how often I make choices based on how I imagine I’ll be perceived.

This post was never about the toothache. Not exactly. I like how these posts drift into the unexpected, into the weeds. I don’t know what’s waiting to be found till I come here and look around. More and more, I appreciate that this space exists, whatever its nebulous purpose. It feels like there’s room here for nuance and exploration and questioning, and eccentricity. I wander out into this space to make a few observations, see if anyone’s around. This is my overgrown empty lot in the middle of the city. This is my front lawn.

xo, Carrie

Have a great game night with your family. Borrow a new game or an old favourite from WPL!

WPL has more than 40 games for you to choose from, with 125 total copies available. From stacking games for children like Animal Upon Animal, to cooperative games like Pandemic where you work as a team to win, our collection has a little bit of everything.

Check out the full list of games in our catalogue.

Borrowing a board game is easy.

• Place a hold on your favourite board game
• Wait for an email alerting you that the game is ready to pick-up
• Drop by your selected WPL location during curbside hours to borrow

There is a maximum of 2 games per library card. Loan period: 6 weeks.

Benefits of Gaming

Did you know there are many health benefits to playing games? They’re great for your mental health and help prolong cognitive decline as you age. Plus, for anyone who has experienced brain trauma or prolonged illness, board games help to retrain the brain and regain a sense of normalcy.

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Waiting for a thunderstorm that never arrived — though the tree limbs were waving excitedly and the wind was roaring — I threw together a bite to eat hoping we could have supper before being rained inside.

In a way, the dinner was a sort of combination of two cultures, North American and Indian.

Not wanting to heat up the kitchen by booting up the stove-top to boil a large pot of water to cook corn, we cut the fresh Ontario cobs in half and with only a half-cup of water cooked them in the Instapot: it took just a few minutes and was both water- and heat-efficient.

Then, I dropped a knob of butter into the hot pot and swirled the corn to coat it. They ended up on the barbecue for a few minutes to finish — where a half-dozen chicken legs had been slowly cooking for 15 or so minutes.

As one of the “three sisters,” corn has a long history in North American, and I’d loosely call the chicken “tandoori” in style, even though the legs were not cooked in the rocking hot tandoor oven that is a feature of Indian restaurants.

With such equipment, seasoned, skewered food is lowered into the round clay oven and cooks quickly and beautifully. Naan is similarly placed onto a small “pillow” and set against the tandoor oven wall — to delicious result.

I, of course, don’t have a tandoor oven, so the closest to tandoori chicken I could get was in the seasoning, from ground coriander and cumin to the Indian spice blend garam masala and several other spices (I didn’t have yogurt to add to the marinade).

The chicken had been marinading for about an hour, and when it was finished on the barbecue the corn had gotten just a slight roasting. It then got a generous sprinkling of salt.

The meal was simple and trouble-free and completed by a pint of beer. The only thing missing was the storm.

Check out my latest post Corn and “tandoori” chicken: 2 cultures from Andrew Coppolino - World of Flavour.

goodvibes juice co. offers delicious and nutritious cold-pressed juices, almond milks and smoothies, giving you a great way to get the nutrition you need. And even better, juice comes from local and organic produce! They offer single bottles, cleanses and subscriptions for all your cold-pressed juice needs.

Website: goodvibesjuice.com
Location: 1 King St W, Kitchener
Check the website for daily hours

Maybe you’ve seen their juice caboose cruising around town!

 

View this post on Instagram

 

FREE DELIVERY ON $40+ ORDERS // PROMO CODE ‘STAYHEATHY’ link in bio ♦

A post shared by goodvibes juice co. (@goodvibesjuicecompany) on Aug 2, 2020 at 8:40am PDT

There are lots of exciting and nutritious juices to try – Soltice, Heartbeet, Gardner, and Sunkiss (just to name a few). Plus they have lemonades, milks and coffees, kombucha, and mini shots. Check out all “the goods” here.

Tip: If you have kids, they will absolutely LOVE Eby Apple. Think apple juice, but better. With hints of lemon and cinnamon, they’ll be hooked!

If you don’t have time to stop at the store, you can always order delivery (available in Kitchener, Waterloo and Guelph). Check out all the goods here.

You can subscribe to their newsletter, but you can also subscribe to fresh juice. If you love getting goodvibes juice every week, you can sign up for a delivery subscription for you or your business (available weekly, bi-weekly, monthly, etc.) and voilà! fresh juice at your doorstep!

You can also shop for goodvibes juice at other local retailers. You can find it at Vinenco’s (when it hasn’t flown off the shelves), Smile Tiger Coffee Roasters, MODA YOGA, Eco Cafe, Block Three and more. See all locations.

Goodvibes also has a second location in hustl + fow in Uptown Waterloo so you can grab the perfect post-workout drink.

A gift card is a great way to spread the word about this local business. You can gift one to a friend and let them select their favourite juices.

Find them on social media; follow, like, comment and share their posts! With an artistic touch, get ready to be wowed by their instagram posts!

Instagram  |  Facebook  |  Twitter

We are giving away gift cards to help support our local businesses during these difficult times. This awesome business is part of our giveaway. Enter today for your chance to win gift cards to amazing KW businesses!

♦

The post goodvibes juice co. | LOVE-19 appeared first on Cindy Cody.