Capt. Mondo's World o' Mondo-ness

Hey, I Was "Blog of the Day Yesterday"
Well, funk-o-rama Daddy-o. Was wondering why I had the sudden jump in hits yesterday. ;-)

Okay, nuff said about that I guess.

Dining @ Peppino's and The Subject of Death
Bare with me on the odd title... All will be explained.

On Sunday evening, we set out for Peppino's, a restaurant in The Beach with a good reputation. We had tried to go there one other time previously, but the place was full (a good sign) and they had no tables available. So this time Erika reserved a table for us, and given the traffic due to the Jazz Festival, we took a streetcar in order to get there, which was just as well, as there were zero parking spaces to be seen (and the restaurant is many blocks away from the center of the Jazz Festival). We sat outside in plastic deck chairs under the shade of a tree. We had a bottle of Chilean white wine, I had the pasta special (linguine in a spinach sauce mixed with mushrooms and artichoke), they made a child-friendly pasta dish for Vanessa, and Erika had a lamb and salmon on risotto dish. The food was all good, with Erika's being the best dish of the bunch. The food on the whole was excellent, though I would rate my experience just below that of Sauvignon in terms of the quality of the food and the atmosphere (plastic chairs don't do much for me).

On the way back home, we dropped by Ed's Real Scoop Ice Cream parlor, and then sauntered down to the boardwalk, and strolled along much of its length. Vanessa noticed that one of the trees had been chopped down, leaving only the stump and masses of wood chips. She asked what happened to the tree, and I replied that it had likely died and had to be cut down. Then the question: "Why do things die?" This started a longish conversation about how things get old and/or sick and how all things -- including Mommy and Daddy -- will one day pass away. Vanessa has asked this type of question before, particularly with reference to why she's never met my father (who died a year prior to her birth), but this time she seemed really intent about figuring it out. Not being of a religious bent, we talked in terms of a natural cycle of growth and renewal, saying that people grow old and die because otherwise, there would be no need for children, and what sort of world would that be. I think she was troubled by the thought of her parents dying, but after re-assuring her that we were not likely to pop off anytime soon, she seemed cheered. She ended up dancing on the odd angles of the tree stump.

I remember reading a book some time ago (I can't remember which) that asked why we don't remember the moment in our childhood when we realized that we are mortal. I can't remember that moment myself, but am pretty sure this was Vanessa's "moment".

So Is the Beaches Jazz Festival Too Big?
Turns out the survey in yesterday's FYI Toronto is an even, 50/50 split between "yes" and "no". As this was the result I remember seeing when I voted, I feel that their vote figured may be somewhat suspect. And besides, without knowing the total number of votes, it's hard to know how statistically valid it is. The results don't surprise me much, and in fact am surprised that even split (I would have though the "no" vote would be much larger).