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Creativity.... Own It

To all my crafty, artsy friends out there:

Look, I can do it, too.

I know, this isn't me but, I was there and helping.  So, now I am qualified to give this tutorial on How to Silk Screen a T-Shirt.

1. After someone else (Taryn, for example) has made a funky design and made it into a thing in a wooden frame to push paint through (probably called a silk screen, not sure) and has mixed the paint that she brought home from school and has washed and dried the t-shirts and has laid them out and has put paint on the screen and has the squeegee in position....  pull the squeegee to the other side of the box.
2. Yay, Me!

This is what I made.

Alfred Hitchcock? Is that you?

"The Birds are back."

"Pardon."  I said to the strange, dog-walking lady.

She pointed ominously up into the skeletal trees and said simply, "Look."

With a sense of dread and foreboding, I slowly turned and looked in the direction she was pointing.

In the City of Vancouver, there is a cluster of eight trees or so that serve as a seasonal home to hundreds of Great Blue Herons.

Spring in Canada

Charles Dickens said it best:

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times,...it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness...."

This time of year truly epitomizes the complexities that Mother Nature can throw at us.  I insured and rode my motorbike yesterday yet got caught between avalanches in the ambulance on my way to an adjacent town to pick up a baby.

Some pick-up trucks have dirt bikes in the back; some have snowmobiles.

The roads are filling up with cyclists wearing shorts and the local ski hill is still open.

Baseball is overlapping with hockey.

I drove by a house that had a lady working in her flowerbed not ten feet from where the snowblower was parked in the driveway.

Enigmatic.

Safety First

Thank goodness they have their safety goggles on!  When Liam falls from his precarious stoop after burning himself on the light bulb, or pounding the crowbar into the electrical wire, or inhaling the asbestos; his eyes will be fine.  Yes, he is wearing ski goggles.  We do live in the mountains, you know.

Back to the Reno

Once upon a time, I decided that there was something I disliked about the bathroom.  And, there was this leak.  And, I had this great wrecking bar from Lee Valley.  If you can't guess the rest, here's a refresher.  It took me a while to find this link since it happened almost a year ago.  I have to admit that I'm a little embarrassed right now.  It seems that I have been living with this half morphed bathroom a little longer than the month or so that I believed it to be.

Well, moving on.

I proceeded to take the one full bathroom in our house from really unattractive to completely unusable in five painful steps.

1. Finished pulling off the ceiling tiles and the strapping that it was attached to.  Results:  minor abrasions, exposed asbestos and arsenic-ridden insulation and not-so-timely information from my Dad telling me that the strapping was, indeed, still required.
2. Removed the oversized vanity and sink.  Results:  huge bruise on my left elbow that sent me running to the freezer, toothbrushes moved to the kitchen, discovered the true colour of the vinyl flooring.
3. Extricated the above noted insulation from the ceiling.  Results:  discovered that I look totally hot in a respirator, baseball cap and goggles, the bathroom is 10 degrees colder without insulation, confirmed that there are no bats, raccoons or Manticores living in the attic.  That's one more irrational fear that I can put to rest.
4. Emptied and removed the toilet.  I'm so glad that I was able to do that at least once in my life.  Results:  the best pre-vomit face ever on the Girl's face when she realized that she had been condemned to using the Boy's toilet.  That's it, I really don't need any more than that.
5. De-commissioned the electrical in the bathroom (yes, should have done that first).  Result:  no one died, one blood blister, baths by candlelight.

Stay tuned to find out the price of Lipton's Tea back in the day when the original home owners used the boxes to insulate the second floor.

Embarrassing

In case anyone is wondering what absolutely no pride looks like, wonder no more.

Things that Coil

The phone rang; I answered it.  It was Liam-the-thirteen-year-old-boy calling.... from the bathroom, on his cell phone.

"Hi Mom.  I'm taking a dump and there's no toilet paper in here."

We are currently renovating the bathroom so there is nothing in there except a toilet and a shower.  The extra toilet paper was out in the hall.  I looked for a Bic pen to disassemble (because that's what MacGyver would do) to pick the locked door knob.

I was quite surprised to find that most pens seem to have a thicker, ratcheting type system these days and they do not fit into a door knob.  Who knew?  So, found a nail.

Liam, waiting patiently, shouted from his post, "I can get up and come to the door."

"NO!!!  Keep your butt planted on the toilet."

"OK.... I've made a lasso!  You have to see this.  It's not quite long enough but it still looks cool."

Now, I have to ask, in the context that I have presented above, what do you think he was talking about?  I'll tell you what I thought.  I thought he was being a typical teenaged boy who was bored waiting for his Mom to break in and give him toilet paper and was, therefore, peering into the toilet to see what shape his poop had made in the toilet.  Similar to a wistful girl picking out shapes of unicorns, bunnies and Justin Timberlake in the clouds.

I did the predictable thing and threw the toilet paper at him through a six inch opening in the door and told him that he's disgusting.  Daily reminder.

Five minutes later, Liam came into the living room swinging a piece of string around above his head.  His lasso.

The voices in my head are now shouting, "Don't jump to conclusions, don't judge, don't be so cynical, don't assume............"

Just Try To Sit Still

In my eternal quest for funky, addictive music from around the globe, I have found this catchy little tune from Romania; Dragostea Din Tei by Ozone.  Norway, you've been bumped.

Only as Good as My Tools

On February 20, 2008 there was a total lunar eclipse, full moon and a clear sky.  It was an amazing sight.  Something to be frozen in time by my fabulous Nikon D40 camera.

Here is my attempt with a 55-200mm zoom lens, a tripod and a remote control shutter release.

And, following is my Dad's picture with the same camera, free-hand, with a 70-300mm zoom lens which has a great internal stabilizing system.

Recap:  I planned, set up a tripod, used a remote so as not to touch or move anything and got something that looks like a preschooler's visual interpretation of his pet turtle.  My Dad walked out of his house, hoisted up the camera and snapped a picture that is worthy of the NASA website.

Air Travel in the 21st Century

Yesterday, following another angst filled week of training in Vancouver, I happily embarked on my journey home.  The trip generally involves a one hour flight in a small commuter airplane that even I have to hunch over in.  The plane du jour seats fewer than nineteen passengers so, no need for a flight attendant to service my every need.  In fact, I have flown with this airline so often now that I generally recognize the pilots (from previous flights, my friends, keep it clean).

One of the downfalls of living in Pleasantville, on the edge of a cliff, is the lack of available technology that those from major centres take for granted.  Things like functioning airports, for example, with lights and approaches and such.  Dare to dream.

Prior to boarding the plane this afternoon, I phoned home to ask one of my children how the sky looked.  Since taking this job and being weathered-in or weathered-out of various locations, they have become quite adept at analyzing cloud height and percentage of cover.

The mini-meteorologist reported that though the clouds were below the mountain tops, there were quite a few holes so, I was given a 50-50 chance of getting home.  The pilots (I did not recognize either of them) were giving slightly higher odds but neglected to tell us what I already knew; they were not frequent flyers into this region.

So, after about an hour of flying, I could see all the signs of a failed attempt; the weaving airplane, the pilots peering out the windows through the holes in the clouds to the unfamiliar landscape, looking back at the clock and the GPS.  Followed closely by the 180 degree turn and the announcement that they were unable to manoeuvre through the clouds to the airport, we were returning to Vancouver.  So predictable.

At least they kept both engines running this time.

And that, my friend, is two hours of my time that I will never get back.