The Most Difficult Recipe I've Mastered

Nothing Cookies; Meringue cookies with chocolate or butterscotch chips inside, which we make around Christmas time.

My trip from Toronto, Ontario to Rainy River, Ontario

Family trip to drive up Yonge Street (map is wrong, we took Hwy 11 all the way), with two kids, my wife and a 60lb Catahoula Leopard Dog. We decided to take a page out of Elton Brown's Feasting on Asphalt by eating only at local restaurants. You haven't tasted Guatemalan food until you've eaten it in Kapuskasing. You haven't seen joy, like watching your children "swim" with a polar bear in Cochrane. I will never have as much fun or be so tired as when I drove from Kap to Thunder Bay, through the Great Emptiness between Hearst and Longlac.

“Loved, and were loved, and now we lie, In Flander’s Fields”; Why I remember

Private Joseph J. Foulkes, 14th Batt. The King’s Liverpool Regiment.
Lost June 24th 1917. Memorial cross in Doiran Military cementary, North Greece.

 

 

Peter Mirams, lost when his ship was sunk defending Hongkong, 1941.

 

 

 

 

 

Warrant Officer Class 2 George Kitchener Jarvis and the crew of 407 Sqdn., Royal Canadian Air Force. Lost March 24th, 1944.

 

 

 

In Flanders Fields the poppies grow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved, and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch, be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

Lt. Col. John McCrae.

Lest We Forget.

And now my son

Damon.

Allow me to introduce…

my daughter, Marissa.

Trip to Sandbanks

View a GoogleMap of our Trip

Loveliest drive: Through a forest, on #4 Prince Edward County before Doolittle Lane, coming into Sophiaburgh from Picton.

Most exciting drive: On Hill Top Road and Army Reserve Road, from South Bay to see the Point Petre Lighthouse. Sign said not for Passenger Vehicles, and it certainly wasn’t but we took it anyways. The pleasant we passed was certainly surprised to see us drive past.

Biggest disappointment: the Point Petre Lighthouse. The original one was torn down in the 70s. My daughter thought we could visit, but I am afraid we couldn’t.

Best surprise: the old barracks at the Picton Airport, where we saw gliders.
Best local museum: Mariners’ Memorial Museum/Fort Kente in South Bay.

Best little town/tourist trap we drove straight through: Bloomsfield

Best tourist trap we stopped at: Lake on the Mountain

Best swimming: Outlet Beach, Sandbanks Provincial Park, even if it was overcast and cool. Some very cool sand sculptures there too.

Only 129 shopping days before Christmas…

Summer is officially over! The temperature outside feels more like September than August, hovering around the mid-teens. We are publishing our Fall/Winter programming lineup at the Library. And, the “keeners” are coming back preparing for the return to school in two weeks.

Then, on my doorstep this morning arrived the Christmas Wish Book catalogue. Instead of biking, or skateboarding, or asking to go to the local splash pad, my children and I sat on the bottom stair and started to think about Christmas. With all the toy recalls I wonder what the holidays will be like this year? And I wonder if I should start untangling those Christmas lights?

When they let you play again, Or, Why I love storytelling

Yesterday I had the opportunity to return to one of my first loves, storytelling. One of our branches needed someone to do their Family Storytime, so I packed up my bag of books and headed north. What a delight they were. We sang through “The Seals on the bus” , went looking for “Turtle in the toilet”, jumped around, and made up our own animals with “Jumbled Jungle”. Yes, there was a point when I could only keep the attention of one little girl, but you’d be amazed how quickly you can regain your audience when you stick out your tongue and start singing. I just hope the kids had as much fun as I did.

     

Facebook at Work

With a title like, An Unlikely FREE Collaboration Management App, I just had to read Chris Brogan’s post on Lifehack.org Friday. Have I missed one, I thought? I’ve used Basecamp, pbwiki, Zoho, Blogger, WordPress, Netvibes, Remember The Milk and others, with various success. My login names are littered across numerous sites.
Facebook, Brogan was going on about Facebook. His argument,

“I thought about this today. Here’s what you get with Facebook and their 3rd party apps:

• Email client.
• Status client.
• Groups – which permits 1-to-many messaging, discussion threads, im-like interaction.
• RSS support to import your team’s blogs (Your team isn’t blogging?), wikis, etc
• Calendar / Event app.
• Twitter app.
• Flickr app.
• News feed that tells you what people in your “friends” (your team, in our case) have done differently with their account lately.”

For me, I use Facebook’s Inbox more than my own Outlook. Staff asking me questions about my status line in the morning. In fact, nearly all of my team are on Facebook.

Go Canada!

The FIFA U-20 begins for Canada tomorrow, Canada Day, in my home town, Toronto, as our boys take on Chile. Go Canada. Could we ask for 14:0 for the Canada over Chile? Is that too much to ask on our birthday.