My December Beer of the Month Club Delivery

I am off this week so it was fun to answer the door this morning to find a fellow from Canada Post with my Beer of the Month delivery. This is the tenth month I have received the package. Although some of the breweries have been duplicated, the beers have all been different.This month I received three beers of two different styles from two breweries, which I have received beers from before.

Featured this month are two beers from Theresianer, which is an Italian brewery ... three bottles of their Premium Lager and three bottles of Vienna, which according to the newsletter is an auburn-red lager. I'm looking forward to this one as it is supposed to be a direct descendant of the first brews of this style.

There are two different beers from Nickel Brook Brewing in Burlington ... three cans of Equilibrium ESB that I am looking forward to, as I am a fan of English style bitters, and three bottles of Maple Porter. One reason I like this club is that I would not have bought this myself, as adding maple syrup to a beer might make it too sweet for my liking. Now I will be trying this beer, which I would never have thought of trying on my own.

Each will be featured in up coming Beer of the Week posts.

Book Review - So, Anyway ... John Cleese

I am old enough to have enjoyed Monty Python's Flying Circus when it first came on the air here in Canada back in the early 1970s. John Cleese was my favorite of all the Pythons and I became a big fan of Fawlty Towers, a series that starred him and his wife, Connie Booth. In September 2013, Teena and I went to see him at The Wintergarden Theater here in Toronto during his, Last Time to See Me Before I Die tour. He was hilarious!

So I was quite excited when he came out with a new book, So Anyway ...

Candid and brilliantly funny, this is the story of how a tall, shy youth from Weston-super-Mare went on to become a self-confessed legend. En route, John Cleese describes his nerve-racking first public appearance, at St Peter’s Preparatory School at the age of eight and five-sixths; his endlessly peripatetic home life with parents who seemed incapable of staying in any house for longer than six months; his first experiences in the world of work as a teacher who knew nothing about the subjects he was expected to teach; his hamster-owning days at Cambridge; and his first encounter with the man who would be his writing partner for over two decades, Graham Chapman. And so on to his dizzying ascent via scriptwriting for Peter Sellers, David Frost, Marty Feldman and others to the heights of Monty Python.

Punctuated from time to time with John Cleese’s thoughts on topics as diverse as the nature of comedy, the relative merits of cricket and waterskiing, and the importance of knowing the dates of all the kings and queens of England, this is a masterly performance by a former schoolmaster.

Boy, was I disappointed. Mind you, I never read the description of the book but thought much of it would focus on the Python and Fawlty Towers years. He touched on those subjects but concentrated on his life before that. That is all well and good and I would have enjoyed it except he writes in great length about rather trivial stuff and I mean pages and pages. There is some interesting stories of his life and some very funny material in the book, but if he had whittled his 400 pages down to around 200, the story would still have been told, just done much better.

The only reason I finished the book is the fact that I'm a huge fan of Cleese and would not recommend this book. A big Cleese fan might enjoy it but others should give it a pass.

The ROM Part 2 - Rome, Greece and Egyptian Mummies

Today Teena and I visited the Royal Ontario Museum. Our tour through the Canada's and Dinosaur galleries were done on the post before. After leaving the dinosaur gallery, we headed upstairs where ancient Greece, Rome and Egypt were featured.

This is Yogini, a Goddess from India who supervises both nature and annihilation. She embodies the yogic ideal of a body that is at once mighty and at ease.

From Egypt.

 

A carved Roman marble coffin.

A piece from another Roman coffin.

Roam emperor, Septimius  Severus from 146 AD.

This bowl and lid are from 750 BC. Teena and I were amazed at the great condition these artifacts are in!

Dionysos, Roman God of Wine.

A Roman bust of Herakles from 340 BC.

A torso of Aphrodite from the 4th century BC.

This guy was doing a great job sketching the bust in front of him.

From the mid 4th century BC.

Gold wreaths from 3rd century BC, Greece.

 

Tiberius was not just Star Trek's Captain Kirk's middle name. It also was the name of one of Rome's greatest generals in 14 to 37 AD.

Egyptian time.

 

 

Mummy time. This one was the mummy cover of a temple singer.

This mummies name is Anjau. I could find very little about it.

 

 

This mummy was the first one in the world to get a cat scan. The museum did not want to break open the coffin as the body was loaded and sealed from the back. The CAT scan was done at Toronto's Sick Kid's Hospital.

More Egypt.

 

A Roman gladiator's helmet which was found in the Colosseum in Rome.

A plate in the European gallery.

Swords.

 

 

 

 

We saw much more and took many more pictures. There is so much to see. I can see us going back again in the future as we likely missed as much as we saw in the four hours we were there.

The ROM Part 1 -Canada, then Lot's of Dinosaurs

I haven't been to the Royal Ontario Museum (aka the ROM) since Ken was a little kid, which means about thirty years ago. It had been some time for Teena too so today we decided to head there for the afternoon.

The Royal Ontario Museum was formally created by the signing of the ROM Act in the Ontario Legislature on April 16, 1912. When the Duke of Connaught, then Governor-General of Canada, opened the new building to the public at 3:00 pm on March 19, 1914, it instantly became an object of pride for Toronto.

The intervening years brought several expansions. By the late 1920s, collections and staff were competing for space and the crowding had become intolerable. The first addition took place during the Great Depression and an effort was made to use mostly local building materials. Excavation was done by hand, using picks, shovels, and horse-drawn wagons. On October 12, 1933, Toronto newspapers reported that a newly opened wing facing Queen’s Park was a “masterpiece of architecture”.

In 2007, after a $30 million donation from Michael Lee-Chin, another expansion took place and was appropriately named the Michael Lee-Chin Crystal after the crystal shaped design of the wing.

When you first walk in, you are greeted by a Futalognkosaurus. Big body but a very small head!

We started in the Canada Gallery and then moved to Canada's First People. I found Canada was just a lot of furniture but the First People Gallery was very interesting. This is a bust of British General Brock and Shawnee war chief Tecumseh, allies in the War of 1812. The short sabre behind is from 1755 and belonged to another British General,

 

This is a collection of of paintings from famed Canadian illustrator Rex Woods, who has been called Canada's Norman Rockwell.

Some First Nation's clothing.

This is a Condolence Cane. On it there are 50 carved pictographs which represent the hereditary titles of Haudenosaunee Confederacy Chiefs, grouped by nation.

 

This is a House Post which was used inside Northwestern peoples homes to hold up the roof.

A native warrior's club. It looks as if it could cave in a skull.

A club, a tomahawk pipe and knife.

A ceremonial pipe.

The bottom of a totem pole from the west coast, which is as tall as the museum.

The staircase makes an interesting shot.

Time for some dinosaurs.

This one has a freaky skull.

 

Real prehistoric bones and creatures. 

 

 

Look at the size of this ancient turtle.

Prehistoric fish.

Fierce creatures.

Look at those teeth.

This is a beaver dinosaur which could  grow up to 200 pounds.

I did this trip in two posts. The next post has mummies!