Wednesday, October 14, 2009



This is my bus stop on the new transit mall. I'm not sure about the three tiny chairs. The display screen doesn't include the Vancouver buses and has been stuck on October 5 since October 5. I was wondering how that clear roof thing was going to hold up and it is already dirty with leaves on it. But maybe these monsooning rains will clear it off.

Stinky Cheese

The big fancy Fred Meyer on Hwy 14 has a pretty decent cheese selection. There's a little basket in the case with small chunks of cheese so you can try different things without spending a lot of money.

Since I knew I was going to be bringing my lunch this week, I bought a couple of samples thinking I could eat that with a hunk of bread. You know how in adventure stories they're always eating bread and cheese?

Yesterday I cut a piece of both samples and brought them in. One was Manchenga which was fantastic and the other I will not name but will say that it smelled like dirty socks that had spent a hundred years soaking in rancid yak fat. I tried to be game and I cut it in half and stuck it on my bread and took a bite.

Yikes. At first I thought I was fine and was going to go ahead and swallow it. Then I ran from the room and scraped it off my tongue with a paper towel. Determined to teach the cheese a lesson, I chucked it violently into the trash. Then the trash in the lunch room stunk like a yak's locker room. (We don’t really have a lunch room, it's a closet-like space with a copier, mini-fridge, cupboards and a sink.)

So much for adventure. It reminded me of when me and my sister were really little and went to Germany to meet our grandmother. She had some limburger cheese and I guess we complained about it so she put it in the bathroom. Or maybe she stored it in there all the time. I don't know. One of us had to use the bathroom and we cried because of the smell.