Isabella Street Bloblaws is Back

We can confirm that Mayor Jim Watson did indeed show up to cut the ribbon. As if you had to ask.

The Isabella Street branch of a national grocery chain styled under the corporate identity of something very much like "Bloblaws", felicitously located past the Queensway overpass at the south end of Elgin Street, has returned with its walls kicked out and gussied up, and its consumer mojo intact, after being MIA for the past four months.

We can confirm, as eyewitnesses, that Mayor Jim Watson indeed showed up to cut the ribbon, ahead of a lineup that ran out to Metcalfe Street - and beyond.  And that our much-maligned tail got stomped again, in the frenzied crowd of shoppers stocking up on re-opening specials.

We can also confirm that they still sell the really very good President's Choice tomatillo salsa verde, unreasonably beloved of coyotes everywhere, for a regular price of $2.99 for a 430 mL jar.

This is greatly welcome, since the nearest alternate purveyor of said comestible,  Hartman's YIG, jacked the stuff up to a off-the-peg insane, ummm, slightly unreasonable, price of about double that, sometime shortly after PC added a near imperceptible soupçon of lime juice to the recipe, and a quasi-swanky-lookin' black background to the paper label pasted to the outside of the jar. So, obviously worth it.

We wish Hartman's luck with that.  Us coyotes will happily revert to shopping elsewhere, further south and slightly east.

Beware ye faint of heart

Yes, it is that time again. When the anxiety-ridden among us prepare to spend a difficult night fraught with troubling memories.

I speak, of course, about Friday the 13th (as Coyote alluded in his intuitive post of earlier today).

Fear of this day is known as paraskavedekatriaphobia. And we better get used to this poysyllabic syndrome because there are three -- count 'em -- three Friday the 13ths this year. The next one is just a month away, in March, and we're haunted by the spectre of yet another in November.

Apparently fear of this fateful date affects millions of people. The U.S. Navy will not launch a ship on a Friday the 13th. And there are suggestions that accidents actually increase.

A survey by Richard Wiseman, noted in National Geographic, led the British psychologist to conclude that people who have negative feelings about Friday the 13th are likely to be more freaked out and therefore more likely to have mishaps.

In other words, we have nothing to fear but fear of each and every waking minute until midnight tonight.

Heart shaped world

On the eve of St. Valentine's Day, I am pleased that our inimitable Audrey continues her endless honeymoon. Her Top Ten Romantic Things list now stands at thirty items, and counting. She floats on a pink chiffon cloud wherever she goes, stylishly pink-clad feet barely touching the ground. I rather picture her wearing heart-shaped pink sunglasses on her (yes...) romantic trip to Jamaica. It suits her.

However, we coyotes' glowing yellow eyes see things that are not quite so uniformly tickety-boo with others. XUP may be pro - hard to tell, because she ain't dishing much personal - but there's a twist of asperity. Jo's buy-in seemed at one point to be coming and going in (dishwasher) cycles. Megan is bucketing along between righteous sistah militancy and feeling a little more ummn, disheartened. J is flirting with what Jo labels as one of the oldest standard guy "Plan B" lines going.

Now, we coyotes draw our semimythical mojo from cultures considered by some to be based on superstition, or magical thinking. So, we are wont to wonder if it may not have something to do with Valentine's Day chasing hot on the heels of Friday the 13th. What with that, and the big event residing not unadjacent to the scientifically-calculated crappiest day of the year, ya gotta ask if the vibes ain't clashing.

If it weren't for the mountains of chocolate that would go begging, I'd wonder if the whole day was worth... huh.

Woodsy just emailed me a SweeTart. Awww...! I know she hands 'em out to everybody like candy, but suddenly I feel, like, all sweet and warm and smooshy. Maybe even like taking another pre-diabetic look at Zoom's nuzzling kitties and fawns. Must be the tiny perfect sugar hit. Anyway, when that wears off, there's good eatin' at Zoom's blog...