cottage pictures

Kaarel and Annie in the motorboat, yesterday at the cottage.





Jeff and I took Sara and Annie up a day early
(Ruth and Kaarel came up on Friday night)




Sara was determined to find a salamander while she
was at the cottage. Weeks in advance, she researched salamanders
via various books, pinpointed the most common species,
knew where to look; I was really impressed. With
Uncle Jeff's assistance, she found one! After she and Annie
took turns carefully examining it, she put it back in
the forest.




Roasting marshmallows over the firepit.




Sara with a fish she just caught.
We had it for breakfast the following morning.




Feeding the local chipmunks.




Sara went out in a canoe several times by herself
(always with an adult watching from shore). Annie asked to
accompany Sara on one of her paddles, and Sara graciously agreed.

July/2003 comments: Read | Post | LJ

first non-ViaVoice Blathering!

Luisa and Jeff in Chapters last night.
Anyone recognize the book Jeff is holding up?


Went out for dinner at Penelope's with Luisa and Reid last night. I had my usual: the roast lamb dinner, yum. Afterwards, we visited Chapters, browsed books until the staff kicked us out at closing time.

About halfway through the last season of Buffy. Holy cow, pretty dark and foreboding. And HEY, was that Aimee Mann performing at the Bronze in the one episode? She even had a spoken line! Something like, "I really hate playing these vampire towns..." (her performance was interrupted by a dead vampire falling from the balcony)

Going to be offline until Monday, so hope you all have a great weekend.

Guess why this Blathering is so short? BECAUSE I WROTE IT WITHOUT VIAVOICE, WOOHOO! :-) Gradually getting there...



Reid, talking to his son Michael on the phone.

July/2003 comments: Read | Post | LJ

poll: tv series

A while ago, our friend Vartan loaned us three seasons' worth of the British spy television series, "The Sandbaggers", which was first aired in 1978 and 1980. Jeff got hooked immediately; it took me a bit longer since I was distracted by Buffy. I'm also not a huge fan of British spy stories, but I couldn't help but be sucked in by the excellent writing, witty dialogue, intriguing character relationships.

From Opsroom.org:

"The Sandbaggers is remarkable for the many ways in which it inverts espionage genre conventions: Burnside doesnít drink, his top Sandbagger hates violence, no one has any flashy cars or gadgets or sexual liaisons, and the whole series features very few action scenes. A typical 50-minute episode consists of men and women having intelligent conversations and heated arguments in government offices, in London parks, and in the Ops Room, where missions are planned and controlled."

Anyway, Jeff started raving about the series to a few of our other friends, and began lending the DVDs to them with Vartan's permission. Then they started telling other friends, and so on. Last night, we got together (Jeff, me, Parki, Marc, Ray, Jennifer, Vartan) to watch the last four episodes of season three, which were on tape. Vartan was the only one who had seen in the episodes before.

The only real problem with this series is that it ends on a cliffhanger: Series creator and writer Ian Mackintosh died in a plane crash, and no more episodes were ever written. :-( As soon as the last episode finished, a howl of despair reverberated around our living room, and I immediately started beating Vartan around the head with a pillow.

Speaking of series, I'm up to the last season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer in the tapes that Vartan loaned me. Argh, my last season! I will have watched seven seasons in a less than three months (the first two seasons in a long weekend). I think that the only other television series of which I have watched every single episode is Classic Star Trek. Oh wait, and maybe The Partridge Family.

Poll: television series

Is there a television series where you know you have watched every single episode that exists? If so, which one?

Also, do you know of other tv series from the past that have ended with as frustrating a cliffhanger as the last Sandbaggers episode?

(This entry was written with ViaVoice, a voice recognition program, which sometimes has its own sense of humor. Please forgive any spelling or grammar quirks which Debbie has missed while editing. Thank you. )

July/2003 comments: Read | Post | LJ

poll: high school

My grade 3 class at Earnscliffe Public School.
Me: top row, 4th from left (I used to have a crush on the guy on my left).
Karen: bottom row, 4th from right. Cathy: bottom row, far right.
(click on image for larger version)


A while back, I discovered that my someone from my old high school had set up a message board for alumni. I normally have little interest in high school reunion message boards and spam, but this one intrigued me because it was free of ads and free of charge.

I posted a brief message about my brother and his wife in the "In Memoriam" forum. As a result, I started receiving e-mails from old friends of Jim as well as my old school friends and acquaintances. Mostly acquaintances, since I didn't have many close friends in high school. Some of them also responded to the bio I posted in the profile section, only accessible if you're an alumni.

Here is what I wrote (forgive me if I omit the links and photos I included with the entry):

Since graduating from BSS, I went to the U of T (B.Sc.), worked as a programmer/analyst, published a book, sold my Web site, am now a fulltime freelance writer working on magazine articles, novels for young people, and online columns for Writing-World.com and WritersMarket.com (Writer's Digest). You can find links to some of my writing projects at Inkygirl , my weblog for writers.

MY HOBBIES: my online comics ( Waiting For Frodo ,My Life In A Nutshell ,Inkygirl ), writing songs for and performing with my band, Urban Tapestry . My songs have been aired on CBC radio and Dr. Demento. We have two albums already out, and a new one coming out this fall (" Sushi and High Tea ") which is a compilation of songs recorded during our concerts in the UK and California.

WHAT I WAS LIKE AT BSS: Quiet, shy, bookish, definitely on the side of nerdy. Never went on a date, never went to the prom. Then again, I wasn't particularly interested in boys until university, where there were technonerdboys aplenty; I ended up marrying one. :-) No kids, no plans to have kids.

MY SIBLINGS WHO ALSO ATTENDED BSS:
Ruth (now a children's book illustrator, see her Web site )
Jim (died in a car accident with his wife in Aug/93, see this In Memoriam entry )

If you're still curious, check out my personal homepage ,my autobiographical comic (see sample below) or my online journal .

One of my favorite letters came from my old childhood friend Karen from early grade school, who now lives in Saskatoon. She used to live across my house in Bramalea, in the house on the corner; I still remember playing double dutch and other games with her as kids, how we used to hang out at each other's place all the time. We are now corresponding by email, and are comparing our experiences, school retrospectives, and current lives.

Survey: Did you enjoy high school? What were you like back then compared to now? Would you go to a high school reunion?

Feel free to answer in your own journal if you prefer, but I'd appreciate you posting a link so I can find your entry, thanks.

(This entry was written with ViaVoice, a voice recognition program, which sometimes has its own sense of humor. Please forgive any spelling or grammar quirks which Debbie has missed while editing. Thank you. )

July/2003 comments: Read | Post | LJ

an awkward elevator conversation

Ruth and me, in kimonos sent to us by relatives in Japan.


I recently had a brief and somewhat awkward conversation in the elevator in our apartment building. The other person was a man who looked to be in his mid to late 50s, possibly older; we had run into each other in the elevator several times in past years, not a surprise considering the relatively small number of tenants and the fact that our elevator doors tend to take a very long time to open and close.

Jeff and I have been living in this building for quite a while, and though we don't tend to socialize with the other tenants, we have gotten to know some of them on a very minimal level based on just the conversations we have had with them in elevators. The most entertaining elevator rides are the ones with very young children who spend the ride staring intently at everyone, or make sudden announcements like, "I have pants on!".

Anyway, the man in the elevator asked me if I was Chinese. I told him I had a Japanese background.

"Does your husband play golf?" he said.

"No," I said, curious.

The man looked surprised, then gave a loud laugh. "Well, that's the first time I ever heard of a Japanese male who didn't play golf!"

I stared at him for a moment, completely at a loss for what to say in response. Finally I told him that my husband was Caucasian, and he looked even more surprised.

To tell you the truth, I wasn't upset. I have encountered racism so rarely in Toronto that when I do personally come across it, I find it more fascinating than truly upsetting, as if I've just stumbled across an unusual beetle on the sidewalk, or someone tells me that I am wearing too much foobar. Then again, I have been lucky enough never to have encountered blatant in-your-face racist insults, only subtle instances where the speaker is basically well-meaning and oblivious, like the man in the elevator.

(This entry was written with ViaVoice, a voice recognition program, which sometimes has its own sense of humor. Please forgive any spelling or grammar quirks which Debbie has missed while editing. Thank you. )

July/2003 comments: Read | Post | LJ