18th
August
2006
Camping trips that end with sunny weather are a blessing from Heaven. No packing of wet tents under sullen skies, while memories of the trip are slowly washed away. We were up while the dew was still heavy (meaning, before noon) to stuff the sleeping bags into their tiny sacks, deflate the air mattresses that have been slowly shrinking for better than two weeks, rolling tents and stowing them on the roof. Twice makes perfect, if the keys to the van are stowed on the roof at the same time. The bright yellow scars of the tenting ground will soon heal, because grass is a very strong weed.
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posted in travel |
9th
August
2006
We did it. The parents left the youngest to his own devices for a whole day while we played tourist. I admit, the choice was his, and he scored a laptop to design games while awaiting our return. Still, not something we’ve done before…
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posted in travel |
2nd
June
2006
The green part of my soul believes in rechargeable batteries. From my earliest experience with a simple D cell, placed on the warm part of the stove (warm, not hot) for a couple of hours, to give just a little more go power. To a drawer full of NiMH cells, rated for meaningless sums like 1500 mA hours.
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posted in technology |
27th
April
2006
Part of my training the new dog is to get out and be led around on a leash every day. I have chosen the timeframe and the speed varies little from session to session, so today we headed off in a different direction. I mean, one house resembles another in this part of the city, but there’s a break in the “there goes the dog with its person” comments from the neighbours. As well, the GPS gets a chance to exercise too; how else would I know how far the dog took me?
posted in pets |
9th
April
2006
I had to drive son #3 to a friend’s house this afternoon. Nothing too difficult in that, except that he didn’t know where the friend lived. Check the phone book. Not listed (Dad’s a doctor). What’s his wife’s name? OK here’s a possibility. No city map to be found. Dig out the GPS and plug in the address. Off we go.
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posted in technology |
25th
March
2006
The spillover from one background to another is sometimes manifested in the odd details supplied by my children in our cross-cultural household. This morning, son number two headed off to write his entry examination at a local CEGEP. After a return delayed by the family taxi which went missing in action (note to self, place a road map or a GPS in the next vehicle), the obvious question was about the difficulty of the exam session. The response “A bit like a Fun With Dick And Jane reader” caught me off-guard. Except for the briefest of contact with a reprinted copy at my sister’s earlier this month, there is no way in any context that he’s had the intense pleasure of reading that particular work of literary history.
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posted in history |
19th
February
2005
Our household made a corporate decision several vehicles ago to be slaves to the lease, which means that the time has arrived to return our satisfactory set of wheels and take another to have and to hold until calendars do us part.
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posted in environment |
