Thas cooks as I shoot her

Thas cooks as I shoot her
Originally uploaded by Rob Hoey

Thasneem is an incredible cook, so we started a cooking business here in Ottawa. We've made a few contacts, shook a few hands, namaste'd a few South Asian business people, and even filled a few food orders. All well and good, but the problem is that we're now cooking from our home kitchen and we need to do everything we can to keep the odors of food out of our furniture, and the oil of cooking from bathing our new couches. I think we've succeed by the strategic placement of a floor fan near a window that goes out to the terrace. Winter should be fun.

But a funny thing happened yesterday when we were heating the stove. I had a flashback to my days in Vietnam, in the war. There was the unmistakable smell of Pandemonium Red number 101--a spliff-filler so powerful, it could make a naked man charge an enemy tank and beat it with a stick. (Believe me, I know this.) I looked at Thasneem, knowing that she never even held a marijuana joint in her hand, and asked her where that fantastic odor was coming from--she was as clueless as me. It turns out, the house we bought was being rented out to college students prior to our moving in and the stove must have had some old seeds underneath the elements. (This also gave us some insight into the colours chosen for the washrooms.) We cleaned it out and, as it turned out, all is well, but oh, the flashbacks to more innocent times--a time of war and killing, a time to be young, and a time to smoke up.

But not me--I was a good Marine--I'd never smoke pot.