Up Town – Summer in the City

Since you’ve been gone….

Amazing. Three weeks after I came home from our trip I have YET to go over the 2000+ photos and sort them into Brilliant, Awesome or Just Good categories. Which is odd because I have managed to sort the photos from a model shoot, a Wheels in Motion volunteer effort, a Toronto Skyline shoot etc… Apparently I can be daunted my the huge number of waiting pictures. I am weak.

Kaylah continues her unfortunate unhealth by again contracting an ear infection. This is the third since we left for England. My mother claims I had but one in my entire childhood career. I can only imagine how my daughter will be three-fold more successful than I, given the current trend.

Finally the long July weekend is ahead, where the holiday falls on a most inconvenient Wednesday and the actual weekend stretches only the regular two days.  This might be enough to bring down the Conservative government and have a Coalition installed in its place.

And lastly (the previous Finally didn’t count) an A/C guy is coming to assesss what’s needed to bring central air back to Chateau Gananoque. My hope is that this does not impede the savings of a wide screen HDTV or an equally massive LCD computer monitor.

War out.

For Queen and Country!

It’s easy to summarize the last two weeks for our much anticipated trip to England (and Wales). We flew there. Then we flew back.

But we did more than that. Much, much more. We went to Blackpool – Pleasure Beach is the Canada’s Wonderland of the English North West. We went to Scarborough (mispronounced by the Brits as  Scaw-Bruh) to see the seaside. Alas there was no fair to go to.

We even went down to Cardiff to meet the famous members of Torchwood. Alas, I couldn’t find the right stone to stand on to enter into the fortress – they were fenced off by a tent set-up team for an upcoming fair. Torchwood never knew we were even there.

The following day we went to Bath – the go-to city since the days of the Roman empire. No longer though – Queen Victoria wouldn’t even spit upon the city after a reporter gave her a less-than-flattering remark. She was not amused.

We also rented a flat in York for a few days. Beautiful weather and improved health for both Kaylah and I proved to make the trip a splendid affair. Lots to see and do. Highly recommended.

And on the plus side, our return flight didn’t crash. In your face Air France!

Return to the Britains!

Ruth, Kaylah and I are heading to the UK this Thursday for a two week firestorm of meeting family, more family and finally some more family after that. I haven’t met most of Ruth’s cousins, aunts, uncles etc and these next few weeks we mean to rectify that. Little of our time will be spent in the regular tourist destinations but we *might* find our way into London.

There’s also a small concern at my ability to both 1) drive stick with my left hand and 2) drive on the wrong side of the road without coliding with other vehicles.

Hee hee. Rectify. It sounds dirty but it’s not.

Father Fire!

Two words that normally don’t go together.

Recently photos of Kaylah have proliferated across Facebook after I bought a new lens in Canada’s black market. This older Nikon 50mm AF F1.8 lens (made in Japan, not China) that works with my D50 is considered optically superior (per dollar spent) than any other lens out there. Everyone should have a low-light fast lens. There’s just no delay when you press the shutter. It’s brilliant!

BTW – black market in Canada is Craigslist. I did not pay tax on my purchase.

BTW2 – the deal went down on King and Bay and probably wasn’t the first time someone avoided paying taxes on that corner.

BTW3 – just kidding. Investment banks and law firms are remarkably honest in their dealings with the government. Please don’t sue.

Hey People! It’s Not All Us You Know!

In a bizarre twist of fate, yet another appliance of ours has gone on the fritz. Ruth’s laptop – specifically its screen – has started to flicker and wash out colours. As her main tool for music therapy (iTunes) and patient assessments, it wasn’t the sort of thing I could persuade her to delay. So with my tax refund well in hand, we went to the near-by Best Buys/Tiger Directs/Futureshops ‘to just look’.

The salesman was friendly, helpful and utterly false. He managed to make some pretty shifty claims that turned out not to be true at all, yet never was I the wiser. Kudos to Ruth for putting up with my haggling that netted us a laptop bag at wholesale cost and an extended warranty that with our luck lately, we’ll probably need.

Kudos to the Canadian capitalist engine for separating me from my hard-earned dough through three wonderful purchases for my wife: new shoes, a Wii fit, and the aforementioned engineering marvel – this laptop.

Investing

I picked up a well-perceived investment book called The Intelligent Investor by Benjamin Graham with an introduction from Warren Buffet claiming “By far the best book on investing ever written.”

Simply put, I agree. The book has been updated with footnotes to describe similar events in the recent 1990-2002 era to note that the advice is still very much relevant. This particular book was published in 1973, yet the advice is timeless as it is uncomfortably accurate.

The true investor scarcely ever is forced to sell his shares, and at all other times he is free to disregard the current price quotation. He need pay attention to it and act upon it only to the extend that it suits his book, and no more. Thus the investor who permits himself to be stapeded or unduly worried by unjustified market declines in his holdings is perversely transforming his basic advantage into a basic disadvantage. That man would be better off if his stocks had no market quotation at all, for he would then be spared the mental anguish caused him by other persons’ mistakes of judgement. – Graham

 If you have the time to read a 600 page book on investing, this should be the one to grab. And if it’s not worth your time, you may be well-advised not to invest in the stock market at all.

Weekend Update

I watched the finale of BattleStar Galactica. It was very long and had far too many ‘fake endings’ similar to Lord of the Rings: Return of the King. New rule – blacking out the screen should only be done AT THE END. It does wrap everything up into a tight little package that pretty much destroys any attempts to have a sequel. Prequels are always fair game though.

We also watched The Trials of Ted Haggard that was entertaining, as much as watching someone have their life destroyed by the choices they made can be entertaining. He couldn’t find work. He was exiled from his home and state. It was really sad and pathetic. Recommended.

We bought another washer after our ‘newer’ one continued to work less and less. First it wouldn’t finish the spin cycle. Then it wouldn’t rinse. We broke down eventually and found a replacement at the Dixie Outlet Mall. It’s incredibly fast – running two washes for every load in the dryer. It’s almost as if it knew we had a lot of catching up to do.

If we personified a washer.

Sickness

Since the dawn of time, mankind has been plagued by… plagues. Viruses and bacteria that we treat today with some fluids and bed rest used to bring humanity to its knees, killing off huge numbers of people before disappearing into the shadows again.

But with the dawn of antibiotics and anti-viral drugs that work sorta, men can wake up sick with something, puke their guts out and be at work within a week, if not days (depending on whether you despite your coworkers and wish to see them suffer).

But today, when you look around for Ruth, know this: she is sick. She’s in bed. And she damn well better not be reading this or changing or Facebook status.

That is all

Hey Baby! Wanna go for a ride… on my bicycle?

I road my bike to the Go Station this morning, the first time in weeks. I’ve recently been in the habit of driving my father-in-law’s car [parked in my garage] in a sign of my laziness and the incredible recent cold weather. Or wet. Or snowy. Or almost any excuse for weather at all. It also didn’t help that the front brake was disengaged and the back brakes only screamed, instead of slowing the bike.

Yesterday however, I installed new brakes on both the front and back. New cables, new brakes, new pads. Lest the shiny new equipment make the bike a target for thieves, I duct taped the back cable to the frame. I’m all about class.

And in response, the bike moved easily through the wind and snow, a remarkable modern example of 19th century German engineering.