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Here is my annual picture of the winter aconites which are our first harbingers of spring each year. At the moment they are providing a brilliant splash of yellow to the corner of the back yard, with the promise of blues, reds and pinks to follow in a few weeks as the crocuses and then the tulips and daffodils appear.
On Monday and Tuesday I was in Toronto for a two-day meeting. I was scheduled to fly up on Sunday morning (hence the unusual publication of this page on a Saturday last week) so that I could spend the afternoon and evening with my Mum in Aurora. However, early on Sunday morning the airline phoned to say that the flight had been cancelled and that the earliest I could get there was Monday morning. I did stay with Mum that evening and also saw my brother Simon and his family. I flew home again in the late afternoon on Tuesday.
On Friday evening Ann and David went to the church to partake in a Spy Night with the Youth Group. They watched From Russia With Love (James Bond), then played spy games in the upper and lower halls. In this morning's class they discussed the morality of state-sanctioned assassinations and the possibility of just wars by asking "What would Jesus do?", then finished by reading scripture passages on peace.
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Last night Emily went to an end of season party for her basketball team. They had plenty of good stuff to eat and then watched Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit. Meanwhile Ann and I went to Neptune to see Who's Afraid of Virgina Woolf, which was probably not quite as easy to sit through as Wallace & Gromit. We went out for a nice dinner beforehand with the usual crowd, to a new restaurant called The French Quarter which specializes in cuisine from New Orleans.
Today I took Emily and three other girls from her Girl Guide troop to Windsor to go curling. They were shown a brief introductory video on how to curl, then spent the next hour on the sheets giving it a try. They all seemed to have a lot of fun.
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There has been another hiatus in the writing of this page due to our annual ski vacation. We packed up the van and left early (well, fairly early) last Saturday morning, driving as far as Grand Falls where we stopped at the Auberge Pres du Lac. After a swim and dinner in the restaurant we tumbled into bed. The next day we arrived at Stoneham and checked into our two bedroom condominium. After a quick trip to the local IGA for supplies, I went out for a few runs while everyone else got ready for bed. We spent the next few days skiing (snowboarding in James's case), relaxing (the kids always enjoy watching TV channels — especially the Discovery Channel — that we don't have at home as we don't have cable) and, unfortunately, for each of the kids, recovering from flu. The flu hit Emily first early on Tuesday morning, then James and David on Thursday. Luckily the main symptoms lasted only a day, but David seemed less than 100% for the rest of the week. Despite a bit of drizzle on Sunday and Monday, the snow conditions remained good and we had a bit of new snow later in the week when the temperature had dropped a bit. We skiied on Friday morning, then packed up and drove as far as Grand Falls again, then back home again today, arriving in the late afternoon.
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While we were gone we took the opportunity to have the flooring in our front hall, kitchen and main floor washroom replaced; it is now a uniform beige tile. Our neighbour Claire was good enough to keep an eye on the contractors for us. It looks very nice, but after 20 years of the old floor I think it will take me a while to get used to it. Most of the house is now covered in a fine layer of dust and the kitchen is still missing the fridge, stove and table (in the picture at the right, if you look closely, you can just see the stove through the door to the dining room). They will be replaced shortly but the stove will not be reconnected to the gas main until Monday.
On the Tuesday before we left, Emily played her violin in the Beginner Blast, a showcase for all the first year violinists in the All-City program. Each school played a couple of numbers along with a couple in which everyone played. In my opinion (unbiased of course) Emily's school gave one of the better performances.
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It has been a busy soccer week for David. On Monday and Wednesday night and Saturday afternoon he had his regular practices and on Thursday, Saturday and Sunday he had games. They lost the first and won the other two, guaranteeing a place in the playoffs which start on Tuesday.
Tuesday was busy for us all. Being Shrove Tuesday, the church had their annual pancake supper and I was volunteered to help cook the pancakes. I left work at about four and started cooking at about 4:30 to get enough cooked by the start of the supper at 5:30. David also helped along with two other members of the congregation. Immediately after the supper David had a concert with the All-City Jazz Band as part of the annual All-City Showcase. Along with the Jazz Band, the All-City Boys Choir, the Junior Band, Senior Orchestra and Senior Choir also performed. Emily and I went to watch, but Ann and James missed it as James was also performing with the school choir at a concert celebrating the end of African Heritage month. One of the local TV stations sent a crew down to cover the concert and on Wednesday, during the supper hour news cast, we were treated to a full frame view of James singing with gusto. Unfortunately it only lasted for two or three seconds before cutting to an interview with his music teacher and a master African drummer that was visiting from Toronto. Maybe two or three seconds of fame is all we get these days.
On Wednesday, in lieu of our regular practice, the Dave Brothers Band went to our neighbour Carl's for a recording session. Carl is the sound designer for the production of the play En Suite by the Dartmouth Players, a local theatre company. The play is set on the Irish coast just north of Dublin and mentions a lighthouse which Carl has figured out must be the Rockabill Light. Carl also found a fiddle tune called the Rockabill Light and thought it would be fun to use it as background music for the play, so he asked us whether we could record a version for him. We have worked up an arrangement of it and another tune called the Lighthouse Keeper's Jig and on Wednesday we recorded them in Carl's living room. We also took the opportunity of recording one of Dave Chapman's tunes that we have recently been working on. For our pains we will get copies of the recordings and free tickets to the play in early April.
On Friday Ann and I went to the Neptune Studio Series play Soul Alone, a rather strange concoction about a teenage girl who suffers an aneurism and whose identity takes over the body of her twin sister. It raised a number of classic philosophical questions about mind and soul and identity without really shedding much light on any of them. I thought the acting was a bit weak too: two stars out of five.
Yesterday, after lunch, Ann, Emily, James and I went for a walk in Shubie Park. It had been bright and sunny in the morning when we made plans to go, but by the time we got there it had clouded over. Nevertheless, it was still very pleasant to be out of the house for a while. Emily made friends with a succession of squirrels along the way and came up with names for most of them.
February 2006 Archive
April 2006 Archive
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