… that IE 7 was installed on my computer before I uninstalled it: 12.

And I was sleeping for 8 of those.

I used to work for a software company in southern California, and eventually left because of the toxic corporate culture and politics, especially the old boys network that prohibited women from having any real impact in the company. Recently, they were acquired by a very large technology company that has their own particular unwanted level of corporate politics, but which has a very different attitude towards women. On Friday, I received an email from one of my former (female) colleagues at the acquired company, which said:

The real reason for my email is that I am overwhelmed by the female presence at meetings [since being acquired by Large Co.] … so you can come back now

If you read this blog directly (rather than via the RSS feed), you may have noticed the beautiful Breast of Canada photo in the sidebar. I added this to my site after meeting the creator of this calendar, Sue Richards, at BlogHer in California earlier this year. Needless to say, I have my copy of her 2007 calendar ready to go for next year.

Since October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month, I thought that there couldn’t be a better time to highlight her message, and encourage you to buy one of her amazing calendars (no, I don’t get a kickback from this, except in the karmic sense). Sue’s message is about breast health and having a healthy attitude towards breasts, and net proceeds from the sales of the calendar go to the Canadian Breast Cancer Network, a national network of organizations that is focussed on breast cancer survivors. Buy one for yourself, for your mother, your sister, your daughter and your girlfriends.

The calendar contains some very striking images of both healthy breasts and breast cancer survivors, just normal women hanging around topless. :)  The one of all the topless women waiting at a bus stop is my absolute favourite.

Sue also writes a few blogs: one about the calendar project, one about menopause, one on news and views about breasts, and one about Guelph, the town where she lives.

I’m about as far as you can get from being conservative (or Conservative), but I have a huge amount of admiration for Garth Turner, the former Conservative MP from Halton, for the level of transparency that he brings to the political process. First of all, he blogs. Second, he blogs his opinions even when they don’t toe the party line. Third, when he gets booted out of the Conservative party, he posts a video about it on Google Video.

I’ve had a soft spot for Turner ever since he helped out my sister and her husband almost 30 years ago when they were stuck in an 18% mortgage snafu: he publicly named the bank in his influential morning business column in the Toronto Sun, and the problem was magically resolved within days. Lately, he’s more likely to be publishing his thoughts on a number of issues where his opinion differs from that of the party, such as child care, same-sex marriage, and the publication ban when the bodies of soldiers are brought home from Afghanistan. (Not surprisingly, he’s in favour of children, tolerance and freedom of the press.)

Meanwhile, the Conservative party backs up their actions by saying that there were “confidentiality concerns” about his blog, which sounds a bit too much like the US cracking down on music pirates as part of “national security”: I can almost hear the jackboots marching in the streets.

Okay, this is definitely the funniest thing that I’ve read in ages, and written by a lawyer, no less:

Ordinarily, when someone starts staring at my breasts, I assume that I’ve spilled something. After all, the girls are getting on in years. There are plenty of newer models out on the market for the lads to admire. So when I found an older gentlemen reviewing the troops during a board meeting recently, I was both flattered and stymied. What to do?

I’ve had this happen many times over the years (although, as Suzanne points out, less lately) and usually just stare the person in the eye until he finally raises his eyes to mine before I reply, but I like her suggestion of smacking my chest and yelling “Wake up! He’s talking to you!” although not sure if I could pull it off without laughing. I also recall one memorable meeting with a VC when I was raising venture for a startup years ago when he spent the entire meeting staring at my legs, but I admit that my breasts win hands-down over my legs for attention at meetings.

In a similar vein, there was a fabulous scene in the series Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip two weeks ago where a journalist played by Christine Lahti is encouraged by her (female) friend to show a little cleavage in order to get the story that she wants; when she shows up in a low-cut dress and push-up bra (and looks fabulous, even not considering that she’s in her mid-50’s), Bradley Whitford’s character takes a quick look at her and says “Nice rack. Did she tell you to wear that? How old do you think I am, 15?” Matthew Perry’s character, of course, spent all of his time staring at and addressing her breasts. The whole exchange was really funny, poking fun all around. This is definitely my favourite new show.

This Thursday is Women in Technology day at the CASCON conference in Markham. It’s a long haul up there from downtown, but I’ll likely find a way to get there as it sounds pretty interesting:

The IBM Women’s Leadership Council, the Centers for Advanced Studies (CAS), and our university partners would like to invite you to “Women in Technology Day” at CASCON on Thursday, October 19, 2006. This is a day to celebrate the accomplishment of Women in the IT industry and to look forward to how we can shape the future for Women in Technology. This is an excellent opportunity to not only meet and network with other women in computing and IT, but to also learn from some of the top minds in our community!

I caught the information on the IEEE Toronto Section news forum, but it’s also available on the IBM site and on upcoming.org.

CASCON is free to attend, and although online registration for all of CASCON is now closed, the website states that you can register on site. You need to register in advance for the WIT luncheon here.

When people ask me how I survived a week with my boyfriend, Damir, at his parents’ place in Croatia, when they don’t speak English and I don’t speak Croatian, I often tell the story of how Damir really sucks at translating. We were out walking one day in Osijek and came across a beautiful cathedral in the old part of town. Since both Orthodox and Catholic religions survived under the former Communist regime, I asked him whether this was Orthodox or Catholic. I thought that the area was predominantly Catholic, but the dome on the church was slightly onion-shaped, so I wasn’t sure. Damir didn’t know, but said that he’d ask his mother later.

At dinner that evening, I asked him to ask his mother; he turned to her and they engaged in a lengthy conversation in Croatian. Several minutes of (to me) unintelligible conversation went by. I examined my soup. I drank some wine. I smiled and nodded as if I understood. It sounded like he was getting the complete oral history of the cathedral, and I was looking forward to hearing some of it. At the end of it all, Damir turned to me and said “it’s Catholic”.

I pressed him later for a bit more detail, but he said that his mother was just off on a tangent, and the conversation wasn’t at all interesting. Besides, he found out my answer, so probably figured that he’d done his job here.

Fast forward to this past weekend, Thanksgiving with the family (12 adults, 2 kids, 4 dogs, 1 cottage). Sitting at the table with my mother and sisters preparing Thanksgiving dinner, one of my sisters asked my mom where they had found out about a clever little woodstove fan that they just bought. My mom launched into a long explanation of a trip that they had made to Vancouver, Salt Spring Island and Victoria, friends that they visited, the bed and breakfast that they stayed at, visiting my cousin, and so on for several minutes, until she eventually came to the point: they saw the same fan at the home of a friend who they were visiting out there.

Finally, I understood Damir and his “it’s Catholic” synopsis of the conversation.

I met up with my friend Grazyna last night, who is in town for some intense SAP training. Originally from Poland, lived in Toronto for many years, and now in Phoenix, she’s usually up for any sort of cross-cultural experience, so I suggested dinner at Ethiopian House. The restaurant is tiny, one small room downstairs and another upstairs, but the unique incense wafting through rooms, combined with the music and the crafts on the walls make a cozy and welcoming environment. Although the house wine was nothing to write home about (my bad, should have ordered beer), our platter of food arrived promptly and was delicious. I’ve eaten here many times before, and always enjoy the experience of tearing a piece of injera (flat sourdough bread) and scooping up a bit of the meat or veggie dishes with it, since there’s no cutlery. The manner of eating lends itself well to long conversations over dinner while you nibble at the shared platter, and we were still picking at bits and pieces of it long after we were full.

Unlike Queen of Sheba, another favourite Ethiopian restaurant, they don’t offer any chicken or lamb dishes, only beef and vegetable. However, at the server’s suggestion, we ordered a spicy beef dish and a selection of the vegetable dishes that was more than we could eat. Ethiopian food can be fiery, but this was fairly mildly spiced, although I didn’t eat the obvious chunks of chiles in the beef dish.

If you’ve never eaten Ethiopian food before, get over the obvious jokes (how many times have I heard “oh, I thought that they didn’t have any food there”?) and any squeamishness that you might have about eating goopy stuff with your hands, and dig in.

Schadenfreude isn’t a word that usually comes up in my personal conversations, but it’s cropped up three times in the past few days, which deserves a post.

Sunday night, Ingrid called me: “Turn on the TV, your ex-husband is on 60 Minutes!” In the middle of serving dinner, I didn’t bother, then she called me back later to give me the blow-by-blow: his third wife has some weird form of depression (well, look who she married ) that required them to drill into her brain and attach some electrodes. Of course, three other people would subsequently call or email to tell me the same thing, thinking that I might have some sort of weird fascination with my ex, who is certifiably crazy, and his apparently somewhat disturbed wife. Ingrid made two comments to me that stuck with me: “You aren’t going to blog about this, are you?” (yeah, right) and “Well, you have to feel sorry for her.”

Actually, I don’t feel any such obligation. After I announced my intention to leave my ex but we were still living in the same house — and running a 40-person business together – we agreed that we would not see other people until we were out from under the same roof in order to try and preserve our sanity and the business. Within a few days, he made it pretty obvious that he wasn’t keeping to his part of the bargain, and even made it known who she was: Ms “I’m So Depressed” from 60 Minutes, no less, who he met at a Landmark course (also known as “nutbar central”). I left her a message explaining what he and I had agreed, appealing to any sense of goodness that she might have possessed, saying that it was going to be very hard to keep the company together under the circumstances. He came back to me the next day with a rant, claiming that I had threatened her, and the rest is history: with 51% ownership of the business, I decided to shut it down a few months later.

I have to say, I felt a frisson of satisfaction that after some years of fighting her depression by sleeping with married men and adopting babies from China, she’s still miserable. Uncharitable, I know, but I couldn’t help that brief moment of pleasure. I made the mistake of sharing it with Damir, who responded that the German’s have a word for that — schadenfreude, which means to derive pleasure from the misfortune of others (damn that European education!) — and that maybe I shouldn’t indulge in it. His comment made me think, and I managed to stop gloating and put the entire topic out of my mind.

The next day, I clicked through to a link on a friend’s site, and there is was – schadenfreude – although seemingly out of context, and now I can’t even find it there. My overactive imagination, perhaps?

Then on Tuesday, I read Rick Mercer’s blog, and there it was again, in reference to Conrad Black wanting to get his Canadian citizenship back again after rejecting us all in favour of becoming a Lord.

Okay, I get it. I’m stopping the schadenfreuding, already.

I can’t say enough good things about the Body Blitz spa. I was there last week (my 3rd or 4th visit), and it was heavenly. First of all, partaking of the “waters” before your treatment is a blissful experience, especially on a chilly day like last Thursday when the heat was not yet on in my condo and I had been feeling cold all day.

It works like this: you book a massage, body scrub, or whatever else that you want from their service menu, then you show up an hour and a half early for a free visit to therapeutic waters: soak in the big warm salt water pool for about 15 minutes, then off to the (hot hot hot) steam room for 5, a rinse in the shower then a minute in the cold plunge pool, then 5 minutes in the dry sauna, another rinse and cold plunge, then 5 or 10 minutes in the hot green tea pool before returning to the salt water pool to finish the cycle. Women only, bathing suits optional.

At the end of it, you can lounge around the pool for a while until you are called for your treatment, and you head off into the rooms at the back for a massage, scrub or mud bath. While my friend Rajani went for her massage, I indulged in “the sampler” body wash and scrub with the mint-lime sea salt scrub.

Totally relaxed, we headed over to Johnny Banana’s for mojitos and the best chicken enchiladas this side of Mexico City. I read a review for Johnny Banana late last summer just after they opened, and visited for the first time before they even had their liquor licence. I can’t find the original online review, but everything that I’ve had there has been fabulous, especially the chicken enchiladas with green tomatillo sauce that we both had last week — not on the regular menu, alas. They’re in a bit of a funny location, on Bathurst a few doors north of Queen, so miss much of the Queen West walk-by traffic but definitely deserve a closer look (and taste).