In the interests of controlling how much and what kind of sweetener we drink (and to make life more interesting than fruit juice and water), and of course also just to have some fun, I’m looking into concocting soda at home. Of course you can buy seltzer and spritz up syrups and juices, but how about carbonating at home? It involves putting yeast and sugar together in a bottle to create fizz. You can buy soda flavorings, try fruit syrups, or make your own flavoring. And in this guide written for home beer brewers, honey (my favorite sweetener) is actually recommended for the soda base. If I start to experiment, I will report back.

Recently transplanted from Seattle to Brooklyn, the proprietress of Geegaw listed her favorite Seattle characteristics. Since I’ve been bad in the past at appreciating things and places before they are gone, I figure I should take her list to heart now. Bunnies on the paths at work, water views, green everywhere, birds chirping, and soon yummy fresh cherries. One day there might even be an ethnic restaurant to miss.

A postcard written in 1922 ended up in an Ohio post office 82 years later. No one knows where it was mailed from, only where it was going to, and that was unfortunately an unnumbered rural route address. Was it dislodged from a hiding place after so many decades or accidentally posted by a collector? It is addressed to a Mrs. Roscoe St. Myer and is presumably from her husband. The mystery may never be solved if descendants are not found. (via Obscure Store)

If the world was flat and had fewer cars, I might spend more time on inline skates. Enterprising tour developers in the Netherlands have taken advantage of their country’s flatlands by offering inline skating tours. Skaters must be careful to avoid potatoes and cow patties, but the scenery, when you can look up, is storyboook.

Archie McPhee is of course the place to be if you need an Edgar Allan Poe figure, one of those punching nun puppets and the like. But I haven’t actually made it to their Seattle store yet. However, there will soon be more to choose from, as they have plans to open More Archee McPhee next door to their present location later this year. The expansion will house their home decor line, sure to please those who can’t get enough tiki in their lives.

There is a wonderful profile of Madeleine L’Engle in the April 12 issue of The New Yorker. Unfortunately it is not online. Written by Cynthia Zarin, who spent and perhaps spends a lot of time with her subject, the article gives you a sense of the unique personality of a remarkable woman and writer. It takes you along the path of her life story and how it affected and formed her characters and conflicts. Her family reveals that her fiction is in many ways more truthful about her life than her non-fiction memoirs.

Good grapes make good wine, but there’s also a lot to be said for the wood that makes the barrels. At $250-$600 each, a wine barrel is an investment that a winemaker will select carefully, looking at the variables of origin of the wood and the amount of toasting over a fire that the cooper gives the inner surfaces. Tight-grained wood, found in colder climates, is desired. Experienced winemakers know what flavors different oak species will create. The toasting of the wood is akin to caramelizing onions in cooking. Flavor, that will later be imparted into the wine, is created as the wood is scorched.

Living further north means our cable provider provides us with CBC Television. They show a lot of hockey (in season of course). And while ABC relegated its World Figure Skating Championships coverage to weekends and a few hours on ESPN, CBC ran consecutive evenings of coverage. It was during the skating that I noticed all the commercials promoting “Hockey Night.” It sounded like Monday Night Football or Must See TV. I started wondering — is there really a Hockey Night in Canada or is it all a marketing fabrication? Of course the answer is on the web. Hockey Night in Canada has been an institution on Canadian television since 1952 and prior to that on radio starting in 1933. Fans of the show are as devoted to it as they are to the sport it covers, and you can read laments from homesick Canadians and raves from current devotees across the web. You can get a ringtone of the theme song for your mobile phone. You can purchase special HNIC jerseys. You can sign an online petition to keep your favorite HNIC broadcaster. This is no marketing hype. It is hockey (night) in Canada.

An article on different types of salt mentioned a couple types I wasn’t aware of. Danish smoked salt has a Viking heritage, from the days when salt was made by boiling sea water in a metal pot over an open fire. The wood smoke imparts a smoky flavor, and different woods make a difference in the taste of the salt. Black Salt (Kala Namak, Sanchal) is used in Indian snack foods, and, from what I can gather on the web, comes from mainly from Pakistan and is ground from mineral salt deposits. Its color ranges from pink to dark purple. Mentioned in another article is Peruvian Pink Sea Salt which comes from an ancient, underground ocean and is colored by bacteria and algae in the ponds fed by the ocean. It is hand harvested and transported to town on burros.

A forty pound cat? His owner fed him 4.5 pounds of meat a day. I’d say that low-carb diet was a failure. The elderly owner is now in a nursing home and the cat is in a shelter on a strict diet.