september 30, 2000. It smells like curry in my house. This isn't a big surprise. It's not like Asians broke into the house, terrorized us with flavourful vegetables and then departed, leaving the savoury smell of curry in their wake. In actuality, we took a vegetable inventory this afternoon and the Boy decided to cook some aging tomatoes before they became completely inedible. (Heard around the fridge: "I hate vegetable inventory!" "It only took us a minute and a half!" "Oh yeah...") The Boy's a big believer in curry. Me, I'm a bland Anglo girl - for the most part, I've eaten in bland restaurants, bland houses and bland cafeterias. I think of salt as a major spice. Not all of this is by choice - it's just that I was raised bland and I approach eating very seriously: I'd rather eat something I know will be good than to experiment and be horribly let down. This, of course, has led to some derision and full out mockery from my hip university friends. I affect disdain for their scorn, but sometimes I wonder what the world has to offer. I've been trying - ever so slowly - to expand my culinary horizons. There are more practical reasons - once when Y2K was still an issue, the Boy made the observation that picky eaters would be the first to go down in a post-Apocalyptic wasteland. So when the Boy decided to make a curry, I wasn't exactly ecstatic, but I agreed to the dinner in principle. It was wonderful, of course. The Boy has a knack of making odds & ends palatable, of combining things in neat and wholesome ways that even a neophyte like myself enjoys. But I have to confess: I enjoyed the baked potato and fluffy white rice best of all. Love them white starches. I've been sucking up a whole bunch of Trudeau coverage in the past two days, reacquainting myself with hazy facts I learned in a handful of history survey courses. It's been really amazing. When Princess Diana died, I was a bit sad...but the coverage was so sugary and fake that it obscured anything like real emotion. This is real, almost painfully so. I watch old Members of Parliament break down in front of the camera, unable to speak while tears course down their cheeks. I watch one person on the street talk about a fleeting encounter that smacks of celebrity worship, of fame for the sake of fame...then the next person will talk about immigrating in the seventies and how Trudeau made them feel welcome. I watch angry Quebecois and angry Westerners rage at how he mismanaged the budget and never wanted to know them up close, as persons (unforgivable! Who wouldn't want to know a bitter guy like you better?!) I've become addicted to grainy photos, to out of focus black and white depictions of the man. Such style! Such intelligence! Such principles! Even his failures were nothing less than magnificent. It is everything I admire in a personality. The Boy said, and I agree: what a shadow he throws over modern politicians. People say that principles have no place in politics any more. I say that they never did; that people like Trudeau make their own place. It upsets me.