junkyard wars

Today is Jeff's birthday! Feel free to send him a
birthday

Today is Jeff's birthday! Feel free to send him a birthday greeting.

My sister leaves today to do a book/school tour in the Northwest Territories. If you're in the area, be sure to check out the Yellowknife Public Library tonight at 7 pm! :-)

Last night, Jeff and I watched something called "Junkyard Wars". Anyone heard of this? I had never seen it before. It looked like a set from Mad Max, complete with the host in grubbies and goggles. The basic premise: two teams are given an assignment involving the creation of something mechanical. They have until sundown to find all the materials in a huge junkyard, plan and implement their design. At sundown, there is a challenge.

Last night, the assignment was to create a "puller", something that pulls things. The challenge was to hook both pullers together, and see who could the pull the other across their team's finish line first. I found it fascinating, mainly because I have pretty much zero mechanical knowledge. Also found it educational, since a lot of basic stuff is explained, like why they are building their gizmos the way they are, what a fixed differential is and why it will be useful in this pulling challenge, why balance between the front and back of the machine is so important, and so on.

The entertainment factor is also heightened by the humour prevalent throughout, the increasing grubbiness of the contestants, the competitive atmosphere, the banter. The host flits between the two teams, prodding each with hints about how the other team is doing, occasionally pausing for commentary with an engineering expert who gives his opinion at various stages.

Today's Blatherpic:
We celebrated Jeff's birthday this past weekend at the Deerhurst Resort. Thinking we weren't going to have access to an oven to bake a cake, Ruth brought Hostess Twinkies and chocolate cupcakes instead, decorating them with candles. Today's Blatherphoto is of Sara with her wrapped gift for Jeff. The label reads "To Uncle Slowpoke, Love Sara". Sara calls Jeff "Uncle Slowpoke" because he seems (to her) to take so long to finish his dinner, at which point he is finally free to play with her. :-)
greeting.

My sister leaves today to do a book/school tour in the Northwest Territories.
If you're in the area, be sure to check out the
Yellowknife Public
Library tonight at 7 pm! :-)

Last night, Jeff and I watched something called "Junkyard Wars". Anyone
heard of this? I had never seen it before. It looked like a set from Mad
Max, complete with the host in grubbies and goggles. The basic premise:
two teams are given an assignment involving the creation of something
mechanical. They have until sundown to find all the materials in a huge
junkyard, plan and implement their design. At sundown, there is a
challenge.

Last night, the assignment was to create a "puller", something that
pulls things. The challenge was to hook both pullers together, and see
who could the pull the other across their team's finish line first.
I found it fascinating, mainly because I have pretty much zero
mechanical knowledge. Also found it educational, since a lot of basic
stuff is explained, like why they are building their gizmos the way
they are, what a fixed differential is and why it will be useful in
this pulling challenge, why balance between the front and back of
the machine is so important, and so on.

The entertainment factor is also heightened by the humour prevalent
throughout, the increasing grubbiness of the contestants, the competitive
atmosphere, the banter. The host flits between the two teams, prodding
each with hints about how the other team is doing, occasionally pausing
for commentary with an engineering expert who gives his opinion at
various stages.

Today's Blatherpic:

We celebrated Jeff's birthday this past weekend at the Deerhurst Resort.
Thinking we weren't going to have access to an oven to bake a cake,
Ruth brought Hostess Twinkies and chocolate cupcakes instead, decorating
them with candles. Today's Blatherphoto is of Sara with her wrapped gift
for Jeff. The label reads "To Uncle Slowpoke, Love Sara". Sara calls
Jeff "Uncle Slowpoke" because he seems (to her) to take so long to
finish his dinner, at which point he is finally free to play with her. :-)

cottage adventure

As I've mentioned before, Jeff and I had planned another trip to the cottage this past weekend, this time with my sister and her family. Sara (6) and Annie (3) were both super-excited; Sara had apparently packed her knapsack a week in advance and had also created a special "Welcome" sign to hang on the cottage door. We left our cars in the parking lot and took a few minutes to put on our heavier winter gear. Bundled up, I went over to where Annie and Sara were still waiting inside the car and waved. Annie hesitated before asking, "Are you Mommy or Auntie Debbie?" She couldn't tell, my face was so covered up. :-)



The plan was for us to pull Annie and Sara on sleds across the frozen lake along with our supplies, and also carry backpacks. Warned by the slush experience last weekend, we decided to opt for trying the trek with just our boots...if needed, we could switch to snowshoes or skis. As we headed across, however, we found conditions worse than the weekend before. There was more slush, making it extremely difficult to pull sleds loaded with supplies and children. Annie fell out of the sled I was pulling once as I tried to pull the sled out of the slushy ice. She just lay there, wrapped in blankets and layers of clothing, patiently waiting for me to pick her up (I felt like an INCREDIBLY BAD AUNT!). Sara and Annie were VERY good the whole trip despite the biting cold wind and interminably slow progress.

After about ten minutes of puffing and panting, straining against the ropes that dragged the sled behind me, I knew that there was no way I could possibly make it across the ice all the way to the cottage. More and more slush seemed to be freezing on the bottom of the sled at each step. I called out to Jeff, who was pretty far ahead, but he didn't hear me.



Very soon after, I heard a scream from behind. I turned around just as I heard Ruth yell, "I'm going through!!" My heart did a huge flipflop and I saw her in the ice; one leg had gone through all the way up to her hip. She struggled against the weight of her heavy backpack, trying to get out; fortunately she had been holding ski poles, which helped break her falling through even more. As Kaarel went over to help her, I turned back and screamed for Jeff as loud as I could. To my immense relief, I saw him turn and start to head back.

I told Annie (who was sitting absolutely still in the sled, eyes wide) to stay in the sled and stumbled through the slush back toward Kaarel and Ruth. I felt like I was in one of the nightmares where you're trying to run, but you feel as if your legs are caught in molasses. What if the ice broke some more and Ruth fell all the way through? What if Kaarel started to go through while helping her?



Ruth got out, but her entire leg and boot was soaked through with ice-water. Ruth and I headed back to car to get her some dry clothes. Sara and Annie didn't seem to fully understand what had happened.

"Are you okay, Mommy?" Sara asked in a quavering voice.

Ruth tried to give a cheerful smile. "Yes, Sara, I'm just a little cold."

Jeff and Kaarel wanted to try to make it all the way to the cottage with the girls, and said they would turn back if it got too difficult. They ended up turning back after about twenty minutes. Ruth and I were much relieved, since we realized that we would have to be crossing the lake in the darkness otherwise...a scary thought, considering the circumstances.

Eventually we all made it back to the car, exhausted and immensely disappointed. Ruth's leg had gone completely numb by this time. She had to wait for her pant leg to defrost before she could get changed into dry clothes; the water-soaked material had frozen solid (!). I couldn't help but think how lucky we were that the accident had happened before we were still in the bay, rather than out on the lake where we would have had no choice but to continue to the cottage. I also couldn't help but think...what if it had been one of the girls?



Rather than drive back to Toronto, we all decided to find a place to stay. And not just -any- place; we deserved to treat ourselves to something a bit nicer (we all needed it!). We ended up booking a luxury suite at the Deerhurst, one of the top-ranked resorts in Ontario. Two bedrooms connected by a central area, two fireplaces, jacuzzi, full kitchen, huge living room/dining room area. Sara was delighted by the jacuzzi; she had stripped off all her clothes and was running around naked and laughing within a few minutes while the tub filled with hot water. We had a full stereo system, two bathrooms, two TVs, VCR, dishwasher, washer and dryer. We spent the weekend tobogganning, skating, snow tubing, swimming, hot tubbing, watching rented movies, snoozing, doing crafts and playing games in front of the fire. We cooked all our meals in the suite; we already had bought the groceries.

So the weekend didn't turn out so poorly after all. I will, however, be somewhat more suspicious of the ice from now.. I think we got complacent because we had made the crossing for so many winters with no mishap. We were lucky...and will be much more cautious in the future.



Today's Blatherpics:
1. Sara and Annie wait to be pulled across the frozen lake in sleds.

2. Our suite was on the 3rd floor of this Deerhurst Resort building.

3. Kaarel and Annie have a tea party.

4. View from part of the living room.

5. Sara in the pool.

6. Enjoying the hot tub in the public swimming area.

ut practice

Allison and Jodi came to my place for practice last night. I had had a very bad day and had been on the verge of cancelling (not wanting to drag them down as well). I'm glad I didn't.

We had dinner at Swiss Chalet, then went back to my apartment to practice. Wow, am I ever rusty...I did very little practising in Philadelphia (except of my harp), and it shows. We tried working out a third harmony for me to sing on the chorus of Chris Conway's "Alien Jellyfish Song", and I was having the darndest time with one of the interval jumps. Jodi and Allison were very patient with me (their own vocals on the song are VERY cool...way 'til you hear them, Chris! SUCH a fun song to perform). Instead of getting frustrated and impatient, they poked gentle fun at me until we were all laughing hysterically. 'Twas very good for me, and made me appreciate even more the value of the musical partnership we have.

I played them the piece I had written for my harp teacher (my first harp composition!), and also experimented with doing some harp accompaniment on "I Am Stardust". I need a LOT more practice before I can improvise on the harp the way I do on the flute. We also finalized our concert playlists for Ad Astra and Consonance as well as the playlist for our children's concert at Consonance.

This weekend, Jeff and I are going up to the cottage with my sister and her family. Sara has apparently been so excited about the upcoming trip that she's had her knapsack packed for over a week in preparation.

Have a great weekend, everyone! I'm looking forward to hearing the reports from ConThirteena. :-)

Today's Blatherpic:

Scott Murray flirting with my husband.

romance

Jeff and I will have been married ten years this August. When I was a kid, ten years seemed like an eternity. In some ways it still seems like forever to me, but in a good way.

I used to think that a romantic relationship should be a constant whirlwind of passion, flowers, and candlelit dinners. The early flush of a relationship is almost always a heady one; you can't stand to be away from the other person for more than a few minutes, you think about him all the time, and when the two of you are together, you're floating on a cloud of constant ecstasy and agony.

Eventually, this tumult of emotion fades somewhat. Some interpret this as meaning that the relationship is having problems. Some leave the relationship to find another; it can be like a drug, that initial flush of romance. Personally, I'm immensely grateful that my relationship with Jeff "settled". I would be a basket case by now if I had to endure ten years of the rollercoaster of emotions earlier in our relationship.

I think the most rewarding stage of a romantic relationship comes after the "honeymoon" period, when a certain comfort is established. "'Comfort'", I hear you sneer, "You mean like an old slipper or badly worn couch!" But that's not what I mean at all. By comfort, I mean the knowledge that the other person knows everything about you, both good and bad, and hasn't run screaming. You've seen each other at your worst, and through difficult times.

Jeff supported me as I watched my mother die from cancer; he was there in the surreal, nightmarish days after my brother and his wife were killed in a car accident. Times like those will either break or strengthen a relationship; ours grew much stronger.

Jeff is my best friend. Sometimes it's easy to forget that, and we'll treat each other in ways we would never treat our other close friends. It's also hard not to take each other for granted sometimes. Overall, though, I think we've done well (and plan to do better). The passion is still there, but it's a quieter and more enduring passion than in the "flowers and yearning poetry" stage.

And we still have candlelit dinners. :-)

Today's Blatherpic:

My first snow angel of the winter, up at the cottage this past weekend.

tea

It rained in Toronto yesterday, yuk. I'd far prefer a blizzard to rain, especially the kind of rain which hasn't quite made up its mind whether or not to turn to ice, and chills to the bone.


Best wishes to those who are gathering at ConThirteena, the 13th UK Filk Convention. Tim and Annie Walker are GoHs, Barry and Sally Childs-Helton are Overseas Guests of Honour, and Scott Snyder is a Special Guest. I wish I could be there; Urban Tapestry had a TON of fun at last year's UK Filk Convention.

Jeff and I went to see "Finding Forrester" a couple of nights ago (on our "date night") and both of us liked it. I found it very similar to "Good Will Hunting", but the emphasis on writing instead of mathematics was irresistable to me. I thought that Sean Connery was especially appealing in the movie. ;-) I'm a sucker for older, balding men with Scottish accents.

After the movie, we browsed a nearby Chapters bookstore, and I picked up my favourite hot drink: a short, nonfat, Lactaid Tazo Chai Tea. My friend Alison George introduced me to this Starbucks drink, and I've been hooked ever since. My only problem is that it tends to give me the hiccups. I take a sip, I hiccup, I take another sip, I hiccup. It's worth it, though.

Are there any tea drinkers out there? Black or herbal? I prefer herbal. Jeff introduced me to herbal teas. I still have strong memories of cups of sweetened blackcurrant tea in front of the fire while Jeff played guitar in his pirate shirt. Jeff will try making me take out that bit about the pirate shirt, I'm sure, but I won't. I loved that shirt, with its puffy sleeves and drawstring neck; any guy wearing that sort of thing now would be laughed off the street, of course, but back then it was dashing and romantic. I bet Jeff's going to try to make me take out this whole paragraph now. :-)

But back to tea. I like strongly flavoured teas which are naturally sweet, like cinnamon and licorice and ginger and chai. I'm thinking about making my own ginger tea from scratch, just to see if I can do it. Any advice much appreciated. :-)

Today's Blatherpic:
A self-portrait photograph by my 6-year-old niece, Sara.