home improvements or it started with pansies

Here's a quick photo update on what we've accomplished in terms of yardwork over the last little while. It all started with a small pot of pansies I purchased at our Loeb-next-door for our front entrance.

I've discovered that pansies need to be watered regularly or they droop and become "wilted spinach," as one Web site, which I can't seem to find again, phrased it. Mine are sheltered from the rain by the overhang, so I end up watering them each morning (or whenever they resemble wilted spinach).

Then James and Dad put in the patio blocks (you read it first, right here, on May 30), so I felt compelled to spruce up our backyard with the purchase of a shepherd's hook and a hanging basket of wave petunias. One such combination just didn't seem like enough, so I bought another.


Then, this past Saturday morning, we exchanged our special invitation for a lilac bush. See, Minto Homes sent out invitations for a free plant to everyone who had purchased a home from them in the last year. There were about 5 different varieties for us to choose from, but I e-mailed an RSVP for a lilac. At the time I was thinking that perhaps I should telephone to follow up, but I stopped myself. There's a Dilbert comic circa the early 1990s that I clipped from the paper once--it might still be kicking around in my stuff--wherein the boss asks his administrative assistant to e-mail a report, fax it in case the recipient's e-mail isn't working, and then telephone to confirm the fax was received. Obviously, I didn't want to succumb to the same sort of legendary overkill.

Fortunately for me, though, I had the foresight to print out my e-mailed RSVP and take it along, because our names were not on the list when we walked over to pick up our lilac from the Minto Sales Office. Apparently my e-mail was swallowed up in cyberspace, maybe by Pac-Man ghosts. I should have phoned. But because I produced the evidence, we received our lilac (see photo above, far left). I'd hoped for a purple one, but it seems Minto only had pink and white to begin with, and white lilacs were the only ones remaining at 10:30am (they'd started dispensing shrubbery at 10).

We decided that, before we could plant our lilac tree, we would need some peat moss and topsoil from Home Depot. While there, I spotted a thornless rosebush, and I snuck it into our cart. James had done the same with the Weed'n'Feed. We've planted the rosebush in the front yard--yes, the plot of land beside the driveway on which we heap our snow. We'll have to wrap it or put a teepee around it for winter. Thankfully, that won't be for some time yet.


Instead of peat moss, we bought something called "BeatsPeat." It's made from "spent coconut rind," and is purportedly a sustainable alternative to peat moss. It certainly does retain moisture: I don't think I'll have to water my pot of marigolds ever again. (But I'm jumping ahead of myself.)

Upon our return, we settled down to dig, no easy task, because after the initial plunging the spade through the sod from last year, with every strike we hit a stone. (When I say "we," I mean that I started digging, but James soon took over given my lack of muscle/progress. I was relegated to scooping the rocks out of the hole.) Oh, how I miss Manitoba gumbo!

Of course, one trip a day to Home Depot is never enough. I'd tried to persuade James earlier that we needed two bags of topsoil; evidently I still, after 9 years, lack the conviction necessary to influence my spouse. The bright side is that I volunteered to get more, which enabled me to buy a few marigolds, too. That, in turn, meant that after I returned with the topsoil, I had to run out to buy a planter for them. (Oh, the sacrifices I make!) I finally found a suitable one at Rona. It's not exactly what I wanted--I covet my neighbor's planter--but it'll suffice.

And after suffering through two of the hottest, most humid days on the weekend--at 31˚C with humidity that made it feel like 41˚C (source: Weather Network's site), it was almost pleasanter to be outdoors than in--the Sears serviceman came to our rescue on Monday morning. In about 5 minutes he was able to resuscitate the unit which the trio of installers had pronounced dead on arrival after 3 hours of labor on Friday afternoon.

The next thing on the list is eavestroughing. Our neighbor obtained estimates for our entire row of units, and it looks like we'll go ahead with that.

So it's all coming together.

sleeping single in a queen-sized bed

~ or my husband's been to MIT and Harvard ~

It's true. James finally realized a deep-seated dream: he was able to travel for work. He'd been to Chicago on business many years ago, but this was the first time his current employer sent him anywhere. He's on his way back from Boston even as I write. While he was there, he drove past MIT and Harvard on a whim, and he especially phoned me that evening to tell me so. (His dad will like repeating that one.) I would have liked to go, too, but I had midterm tests in French this week. C'est la vie. Peut-être une autre fois.

Besides, when he's out of town, I get the whole bed to myself. What luxury! While I will readily admit that there are definitely some fringe benefits to sharing a bed, it's rather nice, every once in a while, not to wake up when someone else rolls over, or not to worry about waking someone else up on account of my snoring (of which I am not proud). Plus I get to stretch out. Funny, I don't see my favorite "jumping jack" position mentioned anywhere in CTV's "Favoured Sleeping Positions" article.

to say nothing of the dog*

Lately it just seems that everyone and his/her dog is kicking the bucket--which sounds terribly irreverent, maybe even crass, but I'm getting really tired of documenting bad news. (I may have to make up for it with reams of "positive energy" à la L.)

I hadn't yet noted, for instance, that Freckles, Dave & Ci's "baby girl" since 1996, is no more. (I feel dreadfully compelled to launch into Monty Python's dead parrot skit, but I'll let the link do that instead. I haven't got it memorized anyway.) I'm not as callous as I seem to be: I do feel for them, because Freckles was a member of their family. She'd had surgery on her leg a few months ago and recovered nicely from that, yet recently she seemed bloated and unlike herself. A trip to the vet revealed a tumorous mass. Rather than have her spend the remainder of her time in agony, her owners decided to put her down--not an easy decision since they were so attached to their pet.

Dave & Ci can't say they haven't had their share of interesting pups. In addition to Freckles, they had a big, beautiful, husky-gened dog up until 2001 or 2002. Early on he won himself the name of O.T., short for Old Testament, because he took a huge chomp out of Dave's Bible. Apparently he had once devoured a few pounds of chocolate while the family was out (even a small amount of the good stuff can be fatal to cats and dogs). He pulled through that one; I wonder if it's because some of that India paper still lined his stomach.

And Freckles, well, she was a dog unlike any other I've ever known. She once bit our former Ottawa pastor (with ample reason, it turns out). Last summer when I accompanied Ci and Freckles on a W-A-L-K, that bundle of speckled freneticism tried to jump over the fence separating her from "Buddy," a neighborhood pooch a few doors down. You'd have thought Buddy was on a trampoline the way he bounced from one corner to the other in response. The last time I saw Freckles I made a huge mistake: I pronounced the word comprising the letters "W-A-L-K," remembering only too late that the family always, always spelled it out. That crazy doggie got so wound up, I haven't uttered that word since. I wonder if her family will promenade about, forevermore spelling out that word. Do you suppose this is how words enter and exit the vernacular?

R.I.P. Freckles


*To Say Nothing of the Dog (1998) is the title of a science-fiction novel by Connie Willis. (She tends to focus on "soft" or social sciences as opposed to "hard" or applied sciences, although the latter crops up, too, if you know where to look.) Willis's novel makes numerous intertextual references to Jerome K. Jerome's Three Men in a Boat (1889), whose subtitle is "To say nothing of the Dog!" I highly recommend reading the two in juxtaposition. If you don't enjoy them, do not tell me, because I simply worship the literary ground that Willis steps on.

the passed and the past

I also learned earlier this week of the passing of Harold Buchwald. I met Mr. Buchwald, a Board member of the Mauro Centre, when I was employed there, but I believe I'd first heard of him back in the late '80s, when I was a lowly office clerk at KPMG, and the partners corresponded with various law firms in Winnipeg, Buchwald Asper Henteleff being one of them.

Those were the days of the antiquated (by today's standards) cell phones, those big bulky things that took up the space where the cupholders of today rest. Not many people had them, so the ones that did usually resorted to calling the office. Here's a conversation typical of the ones that often transpired:

Me: Good morning, KPMG, Julie speaking.
He-who-shall-not-be-named: Julie?
Me: Yes, hello, Bob. (We had at least three Bobs in the office. Hopefully that's vague enough so as not to incur libel charges.)
He-who-shall-not-be-named: It's Bob. Any messages for me?
Me: Yes, there are three. (I retrieve the messages from the plastic pigeon-hole.) From [name, name, and name].
He-who-shall-not-be-named: OK, I'll be there in a few minutes.
Me: OK, see you soon.
He-who-shall-not-be-named: Bye.
Me: Bye.

I bet Mr. Buchwald owned one of those car phones in his heyday. I bet he even had similar conversations with his support staff.

update

For anyone who might be interested, I've just updated the links on my May 26 post, the ones to obituaries for Brad Hughes and Brenda Kroeker.

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.

a short cat tale

Here's a YouTube video called "Psycho Kitty: Qu'est-ce que c'est?!!" It's the only thing I know that will stop Darth short in his tracks (except James's "Quit it!") when he's in a howling frame of mind and padding on the patio doors with his little paws because I won't let him outside, on account of the workers are finishing off the last of our neighbors' fences. Thank goodness! Today I heard them begin at 7:15 am. I was able to roll over and half-sleep-in, but I was still conscious of the noise.