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Personal News Archives: 2008 and 20097 September | 19 July | 26 May | 11 February 18 September 2009Not that much to report for this summer, really... Jean's canoe trips Jean went off on two week-long canoe trips, both of which he had to fly into. The first was a guided tour, so he had less to prepare himself in terms of food and everything. The second was self-organized with his team of three other canoeists, so more supplies were required. Both turned out to be very challenging trips, with big water and some arduous portages. But the pace on the second was particularly daunting. The first trip ended slightly prematurely due to some injuries: an eye ulcer (ouch!) and a twisted, neither of them Jean's. On the first trip, I used some points to head up to Timmins for four days. It was a very mellow visit. I did do some clothes shopping, getting some items that I've continued to wear the rest of the summer. I also saw the family, of course. On the second, I just headed into Toronto for the day (which was a nice day). I had lunch with Jo and Jon, then went to visit the Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit at the ROM. The scroll are tiny! But the history of their finding and being reconstructed and translated was quite interesting. I also went to an excellent National Youth Orchestra concert with Karen and her daughter. They did a Canadian composition, selections from West Side Story, and a piece by Ravel. The musicianship was wonderful and they had a lot of energy and good interaction with the audience. House stuff The yard got a bit of a makeover—the weeds beaten back some in the garden years, the raised bed filled and planted, if a little late in the season. I've been amusing everyone with the tale of my bounty to date: one tomato and two peas. Though I can add that the herbs have done quite well, especially the basil. Next year the peas and tomatoes have to go in a little earlier. Then if it also isn't as rainy and cool, we might get a slightly better yield. Fine dining We discovered a nice new restaurant called Nick and Nat's Uptown 21. We had an enjoyable dinner for two there, then later went out with a bunch of friends for a wine-matching dinner there featuring the wines of Tawse Winery. For our anniversary, we spent the night in Orangeville at the Millcroft Inn. We had a very nice dinner there, again enjoying wines from Tawse! And we had a really cute, two-level room at the Inn (even though we cheaped out by not getting the hot tub). We also went to Rundle's Bistro in Stratford, with Robin and George. This is their slightly cheaper, but still great quality, new restaurant section. Very nice lunch! Other events After lunch at Rundle's, we went to see Cyrano de Bergerac, which was very good! Colm Feore was excellent in the lead. And I, for one, enjoyed the bits of French thrown in throughout the play. Earlier in the year, we had seen West Side Story with my parents at Stratford. That's a great productions. The dancing, the staging, the performers... All superlative. Jean joked the whole nice part of the summer in Orillia—and that was one overnighter. Guess summer wasn't quite that bad, but it was close. But Orillia's a really nice little town. We visited the uptown, we went swimming at the beach (nice water temperature), we had a decent in a restaurant made out of a converted train (!), and we saw a slightly hokey play about golf. Our Inn was great. The next day was the real impetus for our trip—getting Roger Daltrey tickets—and the drive home, we stopped at Michael Stadtlander's new spot. The restaurant wasn't fully open, but we were still able get some food. Labour Day weekend, we headed up to Timmins. There was a family reunion to celebrate my aunt's 80th birthday. It was nice to see a lot of the family again. Jean also had a gathering of extended family, many of which he barely recognized! 7 September 2008Our second vacation of the summer was a McNair Family Reunion at the Delawana Inn, in Honey Harbour, near Midland, on Georgian Bay. So my parents, all the siblings and spouses, and all their kids were there. It's a nice place, up on a lake, near Georgian Bay National Park. And it offers a lot of activities: golf, tennis, boating, karaoke nights, kid's camp, beach party... We were a little concerned about the food, that turned out to be pretty good, even though they had more buffet dinners on offer than they usually do (partly due to a full house, partly to newer management). Only one meal was kind of sub-par. Weather, however, behaved every day. It doesn't get super-warm there, which is actually nice, but we had sun daily. The bit of rain we had was mostly overnight. Very fortunate in this rainy summer. We took advantage to canoe to Georgian Bay Park one day—biggest challenge there being the many, many powered boats we encountered on the way. (There is a marina next to the Delawana.) But it's a really nice, Killarney-esque park, with well-marked hiking trails.
Another day we joined the family on a group (power) boat tour to a different part of the Park. That part looked much more beach-y. We had a nice long walk there, also. An unusual thing we participated in, with some siblings, was a beer tasting seminar. The presenter was very good—mostly just poured the beer, not giving much info except when directly asked—but I did find it interesting how different the beers were. And some weren't too bad, for beer. (Jean remained fairly unimpressed.) Another night, we went on the beach for a late-night showing of “Dirty Dancing”. (Apparently one cannot see that movie too many times. We also tried paddle-boating, had a family bonfire one night (with a bit a rough sing-a-long—we needed lyric sheets!), had a rousing game of Taboo, took advantage of the "bring your own wine" to try various vintages at dinner, and enjoyed swimming in the incredibly warm beach waters. Having the kids on the beach made it extra-fun, as they were very gung-ho (sometimes to their parents' concern). The only "downer" was nephew Jackson's re-breaking his arm on the second-last day. But that hardly ruined his trip overall (and relatively speaking, the trip to the hospital this time was much less traumatic all around), so we didn't let it ruin ours. More photos available at Picassa. Since getting back, we have progressed a little on the yard, getting our front tree professionally pruned, and setting up a raised bed in the backyard, with the idea of trying to plant some vegetables there next year. Jean's Mom and sister visited. Jean's Mom's lack of mobility limited some of what we could do, but we did have some nice restaurants visits, especially to Verses, and we did drive around some of the countryside in these parts. Now things are heating up at work a bit, being post-vacation time, but we are looking ahead to another vacation in the fall. July 19, 2008
At the concert two days, there was no Misha, but there Tom Allen (from CBC Radio)—and a lot of talking. And explaining. A lot of the pieces performed were, in fact, the very same ones from the Friday concert. But this time they were put in context; for example, the story of the Firebird Suite was told before each movement. And that did help keep focus and increase appreciation. So certainly an interesting study in contrast. On the home front, we've been talking a lot about doing something to improve both our front and back yards, but so far haven't actually done too much besides a little maintenance. And at least getting the material needed to put in another garden. But we'd like to really redo the front yard sometime, likely with less grass, and open up our back deck to get better, more open access to the backyard. Just ironing out what that means, and who is going to do it when. Last week of June, we took a vacation, first to Ottawa, then up to Timmins. During the Ottawa portion, we got to the National Gallery and saw the exhibit "The 1930: The Making of the New Man”, on the development of fascism as illustrated through art works. We both enjoyed it, though Jean says I like themed exhibits much more than he does. We also saw the Currency Museum (though Jean thought I was kidding when I said I wanted to go in) and various neighbourhoods—the Market, Sparks Street, the Rideau Waterfront. We did a bit of shopping, and had some really great food. We revisited favourites Domus and Signatures, and tried out the new (to us) Whalebone and Mamma Theresa's, both to pleasing results. Of course, on Canada Day, we did Canada Day stuff, as blogged. It was a perfect day there, weather-wise.
Then it was up to Timmins, where we stayed busy—but not too busy—visiting with folks. We went to the Fishbowl Restaurant with Sylvie and Paul, then for a short stop at their house to see the dogs and how they've rearranged their living room around the new TV. Jean went to see his brother's cottage in development. We also got together with my brother, wife, and kids, which was fun. And we found some new (to us) walking trails. Back in town, we attended a benefit dinner for the Speed River cleanup. It was a nice steak meal, sponsored by Creemore (though they let us have house wine instead), and everyone in attendance gets some sort of prize. But as names are drawn, they stay out of contention, so the “last man standing” gets the big prize. This year, that was Jean! He's now the proud owner of a brand new canoe. Of course, the only problem is that he doesn't really need a new canoe. So he's exploring selling options at this point. Last weekend, we went to Stratford with Robin and George to see All's Well That Ends Well. Prior to the show, we had dinner at an Italian restaurant called Pazzo. It was quite good; offered some unusual items in combination, but they worked. And they had wines to recommend with each dish, which we always like. The play turned out to be quite enjoyable as well, at least to me. The cast (including Brian Deheny) was lively, and it was quite the exploration of a very unsympathetic leading man. This weekend, our 16th wedding anniversary, we went to an Inn in Niagara-on-the-Lake for a "wine and chocolate" package. It included a three-course dinner, the last of which was these wines with matching chocolate, room for the night, and breakfast the next morning. They gave excellent service and very good quality food, and it was a really nice building. We then visited the town a bit, staying ahead of the crowds, then went off to visit a few wineries: Jackson-Triggs, a pretty "general listing" kind of place; Stratus, with its very few rather expensive but very good wines; and on the way home, Thirteenth Street Winery, a quite small one known for its excellent Gamay, Chardonnay, and sparkling wines. 26 May 1008Lots of catching up to do! The KW Symphony has had a good year—not quite over yet. Many of the shows we've attended have been sold out; none had the embarassingly empty hall look that was rather frequent last year. One certainly worth highlighting is Gilles Apap's 21st Century Violin. Gilles is a very talented but unconventional violinist; as shown in popuarl his YouTube video, he likes to intersperse folk and other forms into classical music. At his KW Symphony concert, he went further, illustrating how just changes to violin strokes can convert Mozart to folk. The whole evening was highly entertaining.
The next few were great, and I've actually blogged about them: the Lemony Snicket-inspired The Composer Is Dead, the very cool little wine and cheese reception with the Brass Quintet, and the rather awesome Jean's'Classic rendition of Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon. The latest Jean's'Classics outing was with George and Robin, and featured the music of The Doobie Brothers (Mike McDonald era) and Michael Jackson. They brought in two new singers for this, both very talented vocalists. The "Michael Jackson" performer was also great fun as a performer, appreciating Jackson's pop music talents while lightly mocking his weird persona. On the theatre front, a lot of local companies are in difficulty, actually. Not sure why that is. We certainly enjoyed seeing Defending the Caveman at Theatre Athena, a humorous but gentle look at the differences between the sexes. We were given free tickets to two plays at Centre in the Square (by Centre in the Square); one set we gave away, but we attended Norm Foster's Jasper Station, a small musical. I enjoyed it more than Jean, but we both agreed it wasn't our favourite play ever.
And we discovered a new good restaurant: Village Creperie, now listed on our Kitchener-Waterloo restaurants page. And we gave Art Bar another try, and were quite impressed with both quality of food and speed of service. Food also played a bit part in our recent trips to New York and Chicago. I've also blogged about the rather impressive Chef's Gala dinner, featuring local foods. We also went on a little day trip to Niagara Falls as part of a group. We were supposed to play at the Casino, but that didn't really interest us, so we explored the town. Which is a bit sad, really: terribly run-down downtown, tacky tourist part, and the casino area. Although that last at least is more "upscale" looking, and includes a decent Chinese restaurant. And the falls really are great to look at... Hadn't seen them in a while. Also had the siblings--well, the sisters and their husbands--over for dinner in April. It was the first time Joanne and Jon had seen our place. I went for a possibly over-ambitious menu of three appetizers, a main course, a few dessert options. Most things turned out quite well, the major exception being the gnochi, which basically turned into mashed potatoes. I should have made bigger servings of certain items--the scallops, the pork. Well, at least I didn't end up with a bunch of leftovers. Except wine. We opened all kinds of wines, which we had to spend the next few weeks trying to polish off. There are worse chores in the world... 11 February 2008Christmas up in Timmins was good, though an unusal challenge getting everyone together. Jean and I arrived on the 23rd, but Michelle and Hugh weren't there until the 26th, when Jean had to leave. Neal and Thérèse also had extra Rondeau events to attend, given the recent death of her grandfather. So the gifts and various visits were kind of done in stages, with different groups each time, instead of as one big blowout. Not all bad. The Lefebvre's still had their Réveillon at Jean's Mom's, even with Pierre and Monique now living there. The flying was all remarkably smooth, with much smaller lineups than I would have expected at that time of year. The Agfa Christmas Party was also fine, with a demonstration and small lesson in ballroom dancing, and food that was pretty good. Our table enjoyed the wine and the company. But after the dancing lesson, eating, and the speeches and gift presentations (I won for the first time this year!), it was 11:00! So a bit late for the start of dancing. We did stay around for a while and a few dances, but the DJ wasn't terribly inspiring. New Year's Eve Eve (December 30), as reported on the blog, we did our usual gourmet dinner, freeing us up to go the Verses New Year's Eve Dinner on the actual day. It was very nice, of course. Busy, but we had a later table, so didn't need to feel rushed for the next seating of anything. The three-course meal was extremely well-prepared, as usual, and we enjoyed it with a Cotes-du-Rhone wine and some champagne afterward. At Centre in the Square, we saw a couple of Broadway musicals—Hairspray and The Producers. Hairspray, as blogged, we loved. It was energetic and funny and very well-performed. The Producers didn't impress us nearly as much. Except for the “Springtime for Hitler” piece, which was as funny and over-the-top as you'd hope, the rest really seemed to drag in parts—too much stop and sing. I'm really not sure why it was such a huge success in New York. Did we really get a sub-par version, or was it just not our thing? Electric Thursdays shows have started, with Music of the Eagles the first selection. The Eagles just aren't my favourite, and the concert didn't change that, but Michael Shotton definitely has a gift for livening up and entertaining a crowd, so he made it pretty palatable. And our guests were fans, so they enjoyed it, despite feeling there was too much Don Henley and not enough Eagles. In more culinary stuff, we went to Malivoire winery in Beamsville for a meal of French Canadian foods, matched with their wines. It was really great—cretons to start, then fish chowder, then baked beans with cipaille, and a tarte au sucre (really maple) to end. They gave us all the recipes, too. The cipaille and the pie would be particular worth repeating. They had us all sitting a big long tables, so we did join in conversation with some of the other folks there. Some interesting people, including a lawyer involved in litigating some of the big cases in the news (like airline seats for the disabled and obese). And last weekend we were up in Toronto. Jean was there for his annual conference; I took the train up to join him Saturday morning. Good thing I hadn't been planning to leave the Friday, because that was one of the big storms, and nothing was moving too well. Anyway, Saturday the weather was calmer, but there sure were a lot of huge, residual puddles on the streets (kind of warm Saturday). My boots eventually got so wet, I was overcome with the desire to buy new ones. Waterproof. Which I did, and I'm quite liking them, though they certainly aren't big fashion statements. We had a really interesting meal Saturday night at Shanghei Sushi. It specializes in tasting menus, and man, were these elaborate. We chose the smallest, the 5-course, but by my count there were actually 8 rounds of food that came out, from amuse to dessert. And several were just an amazing collection of items—stuffed dumplings, rolled sushi, rice foams, tiny salads... The menu changes regularly. We'd definitely go again. Sunday we met up with Joanne and Jon for dim sum. That was fun. Good food, and it was nice to see them. They're definitely seeming happy with the move. We then spent the afternoon at the ROM, which certainly is an impressive building, and has some interesting collections—though Jean feels he's still more of an art gallery guy overall. And we finally managed to dine together at Jamie Kennedy Wine Bar, though we did have to sit at the bar. We had seabass soup and seared tune, duck, fries, marzapan dessert, each matched nicely with a 3 oz. glass of wine. |
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and Catherine McNair
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2008
and 2009
At
the end of May, we attended two KW Symphony concerts within three days.
One was dubbed “An Exploration of Musical Colour”, and we'd
bought tickets for it ages ago. The second featured Misha Bruggergosman,
on whose star power we decided to buy tickets. The Misha concert was presented
in very traditional symphony style, letting the music speak for itself.
And there was no denying the beauty of Ms. Bruggergosman's voice; it sounded
just incredibly rich and gorgeous within the Centre in the Square acoustics.
And the KW Symphony on their own also acquitted themselves well, on pieces
such as Stravinski's Firebird Suite. But it was also true that it was
hard to actually stay focused through the whole thing.
Their
Sorry I'm Canadian concert combined Drayton Festival
actors with an excellent folk-rock band to bring music from one coast
to the other. ABC: The Look of Love was a Jeans'n'Classics
concert that we attended with Kristi and her mom. It featured Martin Frye
of ABC. He seemed surprisingly (to me) uncomfortable with the "light"
mood of the evening, but I did quite enjoy the music, which lent itself
very well to orchestral treatment.
And
we're continuing to enjoy the fancy dining. We went to Verses
for Valentine's Day, and they did a fantastic job with that,
despite it being a sold-out evening. (We took a later seating to ensure
we wouldn't be rushed.) Our neighbourhood association had another wine-matching
dinner at Solé, this time on the theme of wine
and chocolate. That, too, was quite awesome--scallops (with white
chocolate in the sauce), beef tenderloin (with chocolate molé sauce),
and choccolate mousse for dessert. The wines were nothing to sneeze at
either, especially the Jackson-Triggs Grand Reserve Meritage, and their
Cabernet Franc ice wine, which they actually gave refills on!