family week: concluding remarks

A working holiday
While I was away at my French class last Tuesday, James and Dad cooked up a project involving patio blocks and crushed rock. The end result appears below.

It was great, because I'd secretly feared that my Dad, who likes to keep busy, would be tired of relaxing after three days. I think the patio project proved the perfect antidote to any potential ennui he might have otherwise experienced. While James and Dad ran back and forth to Home Depot for supplies and constructed their masterpiece, Mom baked potatoes and pulled dinner together, and Perry cat-sat, making sure eight little paws were not where they should not be, i.e., trampled in the increased traffic. The edges of our BBQ pad are still gravel, and Dad had an idea of how we could finish it off, but I think maybe we'll leave it so that we have a way to entice him back next spring.

Return to Diefenbunker
The following day, Wednesday, James returned to work. I took my family to Diefenbunker. James didn't mind missing out, since he & I had previously toured the Diefenbunker with Shirley & Dave back in February. I don't think I'll ever tire of going on the tour. There are many different tour guides, and although there may be a standard tour script with which they train, it's similar to theatre in that the performance depends on the rapport between the actors (in this case, the tour guides) and the audience: you'll never get the same tour twice.

One thing became clear to us almost immediately: it's not advisable to take a restless child on a tour of a bunker. One couple brought their daughter, perhaps 4 years old; at one point she lay on the floor and kicked up her booted feet in a tantrum. Fortunately for us, the guides decided the size of our group was unwieldy, so they split us into two, and we made a beeline for the child-free group.

I really don't dislike children: I just dislike children who misbehave! and maybe more so parents who don't have the foggiest that a bunker's significance will be lost on a young child, a young child who would rather be doing something than listening to someone for 1-2 hours. They would have been better off visiting the family-friendly Canada Science and Technology Museum, which houses exhibits that kids can touch and explore.

Billings Estate
On Friday we visited the Billings Estate Museum. It wasn't quite what I had expected; nevertheless, I'd recommend it to those who are interested in historical settlement and genuine artifacts. I guess I'd expected a house with fully furnished rooms, along the lines of the buildings one can see at Lower Fort Garry. Instead, it had four rooms on the main floor, one for each generations of the Billings family who had lived there, with some key pieces of furniture from each of those four eras. The second floor is reserved for displaying special collections on a rotating basis. All the items on display were owned by the Billingses--they're not just replicas--and apparently there is a lot more stuff in storage off-site.

I found most fascinating information about Braddish and Lamira's two daughters, Sabra and Sarah "Sally," who chose to remain single. (The City of Ottawa highlights short biographies here.) On the wall in the second room are Sabra's copies of sermons by Henry Ward Beecher (brother to Harriet Beecher Stowe, author of Uncle Tom's Cabin).

Someday I'd like to return to enjoy high tea on the lawn: it sounds elegant and so decadently Victorian.

Indiana Jones and the Tour of the Projection Room
Thanks to our good friend Dave, we not only got to see Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull on the big screen the night after it opened, but we also received a special tour of the Cineplex Odeon Barrhaven's projection room. It was extremely cool, but nothing at all like what I'd imagined.

I always thought the guys running the show were working out of small rooms, one guy to a room, one room to a theatre ("pay no attention to that man behind the curtain"). I imagined that the films would be running reel-to-reel on the type of upright projectors they used to use in the MPR (Multi-Purpose Room) back in my Rosenort Elementary and Junior High days. No so.

There were two guys on duty that night for all seven screens, both named Shane by some strange law of coincidence. Dave and the two Shanes demonstrated the technicalities of running projectors: they made it all look so easy (it still sounded complicated to me), even as they informed us of some of the many things that could go wrong.

Indiana Jones itself was enjoyable. Regarding the franchise, I've watched Raiders of the Lost Ark a few times (the first time was after a Christmas banquet in high school), and I'm sure I've seen the Temple of Doom, although I can't recall any details, but I've never seen the third installment with Sean Connery. Realizing that it's the end of an era in some ways, I'm feeling as though I should revisit the earlier action flicks for nostalgia's sake. There are some days when I find it hard to believe that over 20 years have passed since the late '80s. Yikes! (Even further yikes: it seems the shorter, wider jackets with the one-large-button closure of the late '80s have made a resurgence at Sears.)

A few scenes in IJ4 contained some groaner cliches (e.g., "You brought a knife to a gun fight"), and the premise surrounding the crystal skull was a little bit too akin to Alias's Rambaldi gimmick, both of which left me impatient. (I like science fiction, but in its place.) Still, Harrison Ford, Karen Allen, and the rest of the cast looked like they'd had fun with it.

In related news, IMDB reports that Ford stays young running after girlfriend Calista Flockhart's seven-year-old son, Liam. That's not all we have to thank Flockhart for, apparently: IMDB also reports that Ford purchased waterfront property on Bowen Island at her request. Which leaves me wondering if Siobhan is testing out her new camera on some famous neighbors.

As you can understand, this past week has seemed uneventful in comparison to the previous one. Thanks again for the visit, family, and mayhaps we'll see each other later this summer. If not, we'll always have long distance calling plans to tide us over.