So this was Easter Week. When did Easter become a four day holiday? When I was growing up Easter was Sunday. That’s it. Monday it was back to school and if you still had the jitters from all the sugar you ate, that was your tough luck. Up here, Good Friday is a Stat Holiday so everyone gets a three day weekend. In the last few years I’ve noticed more people getting Easter Monday off as well. Now I’m starting to see people start taking off on Thursday afternoon. Somehow Easter went from a spring event for candy lovers, and dentists, into a huge spring blow out. Not that I’m complaining mind you, but it seems to be a clear case of mission creep.

This week I did a reading for a play. It’s not an audition, those are in a couple of months. The director was asked to do a short scene for the theatre board. She knew us from Ethan Claymore so we (myself and Heather) were the obvious choice on short notice. The read through went very well. One cool part of it though was with the accents. The play is set in the UK and the Director said that she wants a British accent. So I worked very hard on my British. OK I sat around watching Monty Python and Father Brown, but it was gruelling. However it was worth it as the Director, who is actually British herself, said my British accent was pretty good. She could even tell when I switched from working class British to stuffy upper crust British. That’s not too bad for a kid who grew up in the woods of Oregon.

For me the highlight of the week though was this. A statistical analysis of the philology of diplodocids has found that Brontosaurus is meaningful clade. 
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/04/150407085256.htm
Isn’t that exciting? OK, in English, somebody did a mathematical analysis of how different a bunch of big long necked dinosaurs were from each other. They found that there is just as much difference between Brontosaurus and Apatosaurus as there is between Apatosaurus and several other related genus. This means that the analysis from 1903 that said Apatosaurus and Brontosaurus were the same was wrong. Brontosaurus is a separate genus after all. Brontosaurus lives!, sort of. But now if some four year old tries to correct you when you call it a Brontosaurus, you can tell them that the latest research says that that toy they’re holding could be a Brontosaurus. I mean, unless it’s a rubber duck or something…. 

This week also saw the end of the NCAA March Madness. Wisconsin made it to the final and I went to bed at half time. Marsha told me the next day that Duke won. For me, a much more interesting bit happened on Thursday.  As part of the party around the final four, NCAA had a three point contest. As it turned out, the two finalists were both Canadian and the winner was a lady from Vernon BC, which is cool.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/cassandra-brown-ncaa-canadian-champ-hopes-victory-inspires-girls-1.3023672

This week I was talking to a friend. She had tried cranberry juice and said it was terrible. I told her that I had also tried full 100% cranberry juice and yes it is horrible, but the blends with ~25% were pretty good. Which brings up a question: How did we figure out what was food? Some things were easy. Eggs for example. We have been eating eggs since the early mammals were raiding dinosaur nests in the Triassic. Even Brontosaurus nests. The only difference is now we factory farm raise dinosaurs and we can get eggs or Kentucky Fried Dinosaur whenever we want. Cranberries are a puzzle though. Who figured out that you can eat them? Who wandered into camp one day saying, "Hey everyone, I found that if you wade out in that leech infested swamp and collect these berries they are good to eat, as long as you take the juice and mix it 10 to 1 with sugar". OK but if you mix pine needles with enough sugar they're edible too. Rhubarb is another example. Who one day said "You know, if we take the stalks of this weed, and add massive amounts of sugar, we could make a pie. It would be so much better than that nasty apples and cherries we have been using. Who's with me?" Both are just really weird things to eat. 

I once had a wilderness survival manual. Yes. back in my high school days I was interested in roughing it, living off the land, finding my own food. I'm not really sure why either. Literally I never go outside without shoes. Cooking over an open fire? Well, only if the fire is indoors and electric, and by cooking you mean popping corn in the microwave. The closest I ever came to actually living off the land was just after we moved to Vancouver Island. For a whole week we had no WiFi and couldn’t find the Pizza Hut. It was brutal. Anyway, the book said, "When in doubt, eat whatever the locals, or the French, would eat." Those are words that I have followed to this day. I try to avoid anything that doesn’t have a sauce. 

But back to wilderness food. As far as digging in the swamp for camas bulbs, or snaring small animals, or even slogging through the mud flats for clams, I'll pass. I'll take my cranberry juice heavily sweetened. Maybe mixed with a nice Grenache or White Zinfandel and some dinosaur nuggets. If I want to rough it I'll sit on the deck, in the shade, but only if I can connect to the WiFi.

Unless I see a spider.

Doug & Marsha

PIX: Our Cherry is in Bloom