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Personal News Archives: 2005

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2 December 2005

Jumping the cat! Picture of Zoë sleeping. Unrelated to text at right.

We went on a nice vacation at the end of October. I really need to write up more about this, but to summarize: we went east. We stayed two days in Ottawa, two days in Québec City, two days in the Charlevoix region, two days in Montreal, then back home. It was all quite relaxing. Weather wasn't fantastic, given the time of year, but we did get some sun along the way. We also happened to see our first snow of the year, in the Charlevoix mountains. It didn't hang around where we were actually staying, though. You can see some pictures from Jean's site.

Food was a big focus of the trip (big surprise). We ate out at some very nice restaurants, as usual, including a new discovery in Ottawa called Domus. Fantastic creme caramel, among other things. In the Charlevoix, besides restaurants, we also visited a number of food producers: of foie gras, cheese, cidar and wine, honey, chocolate... Aside from eating, we got to some interesting museums, including the new War Museum in Ottawa, and the Charlevoix museum. We did some shopping, for clothes and art. We visited with Jean's brother Pierre, my sister Joanne, and our friends Gerry and Phyllis (from Guelph, but in Montreal for a conference).

November started fairly quietly, but we've been very busy with activities recently. Last Friday we went to Robin's for a pig roast. That was a fun gathering. We met Robin's brothers and parents for the first time, and Tim and Heather were also there. The Saturday we had Jean's Pro Resp Christmas party, at a resort in Grand Bend. Very nice hall. Pretty good food, and we had a lot of fun dancing. (I was amused that the oldest people in his office—that would include me and him—last longest. Helps not to have babies at home.)

Sunday we went to Michelle's for Jackson's third birthday. He'd had a kids' party in the morning, so this was more for the adult family and friends. It was nice too. Tuesday night we went to Guelph to see Derek Edwards perform. He's a comedian from Timmins—so funny! We were almost in pain from laughing so much. I was also pleased to see how many "Guelph-ites" came out to see the second most famous person from Timmins after Shania (kind of like being the second most famous person from Bethlehem, Derek pointed out).

And tonight we're off to see Gordon Lightfoot perform in Stratford. We have very good seats (though more across than beside each other). Weather predictions are for a lot of snow, though it hasn't started yet (knock wood).

More to update soon -- I've been such a delinquent -- but I should go exercise now. (I have the day off, but I'm doing un-fun activities like shopping and exercise. Oh well.)

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9 October 2005

I hope to write more about this, but in September we participated in the second annual Culinary Walking Tour of Waterloo, with money going to two Waterloo Arts organizations. It happened to fall the same day as the 25th anniversary edition of the Terry Fox Run, which I'd also thought about participating in. Since it proved impossible to do both, I donated to the Terry Fox Run, and we decided to walk to uptown Waterloo for our walking tour. It was good; it was nice day, and we discovered many parts of Waterloo Park we'd never seen before (one of which is pictured at right—taken with my phone, so a little blurry). Well, we've only been here 12 years or so. Can't get to everything.

Food from Sole The participating restaurants this year were Solé, Lucy's Seafood, Hannah's Bistro, Charbrie's, Saluté, and the Rude Native. Solé probably had the best food and wine, with salmon done three ways (pictured at left), but there were other highlights: the plain shrimp and oysters at Lucy's (whereas their fried stuff seemed too dry to me); the brie puff pastry at Charbrie's; the apple caramel martini's at Rude Native. Afterward, we were going to take a taxi back, but we ended up walking again. So hopefully helped balance out those calories.

October is a busy month for cultural events; the first was the “faux Queen” concert, A Kind of Magic, at Centre in the Square. That is, a performance by a Queen tribute band. At first I was distracted by the “that's not really Queen” factor, but soon I got into the spirit of things. The singer did quite a credible job with the Freddie vocals. And though they naturally did all the hits—We Will Rock You (both ways), We Are the Champions, Bohemian Rhapsody, Radio Gaga, Another One Bites the Dust—they also did lesser-known but great songs like I Want It All, Save Me, and Good Old-Fashioned Lover Boy (which caused the guy next to me, clearly dragged to this by his Queen-loving wife or girlfriend, to exclaim, "That's a Queen song?"). There was much singing, dancing, and clapping along, which was a lot of fun.

We saw Michelle and Hugh's new house a few weeks ago, when Mom and Dad were visiting. Quite impressive! Four bathrooms, sauna, wave pool, ample closet space, high ceilings, amazing kitchen... The yard is quite something as well, all landscaped with flowers, trees, and a vegetable garden. Michelle doesn't know very much about gardening, so it's a bit overwhelming.

Dad and Mom Mom and Dad also stopped by here few a little visit before heading home. They were quite good at keeping themselves entertained while we were at work, going to wineries in Beamsville, factory outlet stores, and the Harvey Korman / Tim Conway performance at Centre in the Square. We did join them for dinners, though. I cooked for them one night, and we went out to Rude Native another. For their last evening here, we tried to get Northern Thai, but it was full. We then walked to Vietnam La Cuisine, but it appears to be permanently closed. So, we ended up at Chef's on King, which is across the street. Fortuitous result, though, as that turned out to be very good: squash ginger soup, quail with fruited rice, nice seafood linguine, and well-executed tenderloin steak. (Another slightly blurry phone picture at left: Mom and Dad with us at Chef's on King.)

We also acquired a new cat (picture to be posted once I locate the digital camera): a year-and-a-half old little calico named Zoë. Jean went to Pet Valu to get cat food for our other guys, and spotted her in the Pet Patrol (a cat rescue organization) cage. She looked quite a bit like Bob, though smaller, so he couldn't resist her.

She seems to be fitting in well. While not overly cuddly, she certainly likes to be in the same room as people. She's incredibly active; we've had to dig out all the cat toys and buy new ones. The boys had some concerns initially, but got used to her pretty quickly. (They're a little old to get too agitated about anything.)

Finally, I attended one of Jon Stewart's sold-out shows at Massey Hall last night. I went with Sherry, Melle, and Andrew Cowan. We left plenty early and had dinner and such before the performance. Our seats were quite good; we had a good view of Jon, who I think was wearing exactly the clothes shown in the photo at left, though that photo was taken at a show he did back in March. (And it was a little weird at first to see him not in a suit.) The show was an hour and half or so of pretty much constant laughter. He touched on various topic: SARS (“It's sad that we're happy 17 people died of Legionnaire's Disease"), the unpredictability of who the US will invade next (“I think you guys are OK as long as the United States has natural resources”), the frustration of computers, the lack of significant medical breakthroughs (“What's the only thing we've cured? Impotence. Look, we're hard. Move on to cancer.”), the limitations of religion (“Don't eat pork? Are we sure that's from God? It wasn't just some pig projecting his voice?”), cultural co-optation (“White people: there is no need for you to talk black. You might as well talk like a pirate.”), the joys of pet ownership—and more.

His live show, as you might surmise, is a bit more racy than his television work. (“You're not that nice man from the TV. And you're much shorter in person.”) And if anything, he's even sexier live.

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17 September 2005

In late August, we went to Toronto to help Michelle and Hugh with their garage sale. That was an interesting experience, as we'd never been on the seller's end of one before (and rarely on the buyer's). We learned that:

You can't start a garage sale at 8:00 AM. People start showing up before 7:00 AM; they insist on starting to buy by 7:30.
Not as many people haggle as you might expect. Maybe it's a Canadian thing.
It's hard to predict what will sell.

The whole was surprisingly tiring as well. But still, nice to be able to see Michelle, Hugh, and John (Jackson was with his grandparents) for the last time in the townhouse.

Labour Day weekend we flew up to Timmins (on points). We hadn't been to Timmins in quite a while; the goal was basically to visit family, which we did. (We also tried to get together with Paul and Sylvie, but they were busy with house renovations.) One evening Mom, Dad, and I went to the Fishbowl for their Jazz night. It was quite nice. Though we'd had mixed experience with Fishbowl food in the past, this night we were all pleased with our meals—poached orange roughy for Mom, grilled Northern pickerel for me, and pan-fried shrimp, scallop, and haddock for Dad. The Jazz Band stuck with the standards—nothing past 1960—but they were pretty good.

I also did some shopping at Bucovetsky's, and Jean helped his Mom with the vegetable gardening. We heard about but didn't see the family of bears that had been making frequent outings on Carium Road.

Recent excitement includes the purchase of a treadmill. We went with a big, solid Precor model because it was both highly rated (by Consumer Reports) and significantly discounted. I also get a partial refund for it from my company. So far Jean and I have both used it—me three times, Jean twice. It comes with a heart rate monitor, and I've been surprised at how hard I need to go to get into my target heart rate zone. Apparently I haven't really been exercising the past five years.

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13 August 2005

After our trip to Scotland in late June, we seemed to get into a cycle of busy weekends, which has now calmed down. The first weekend after, we attended the wedding of Jean's brother Pierre to Monique. That took place in Sudbury, at the location where the Métis pow-wow had been held the previous week. The ceremony was conducted by the first native “minister” legally allowed to perform wedding ceremonies. Certainly made for a different experience. A great meal followed, then a party, which Jean lasted at longer than I did.

The following weekend we went to a party at Don Dennison's. (I used to work with Don at Spicer, and now we're both at Agfa.) The torrential rain early in the day didn't bode well for that gathering, but the rain did ease off by late afternoon. At the party I caught up with a few more former Spicer-ites, including Paul Mansfield, who was also able to update me on people from Maple. (It's a small world, this Waterloo tech community.) Paul's also lost a lot of weight and looks really great. Anyway, that made it fun, and the steak and lobster dinner didn't hurt either.

The next day Robin had a Welcome Back gathering for Heather, who was back from four weeks in Peru. Heather had gone there to volunteer for three weeks, then stayed an extra week to visit Machu Picchu. She was really affected by the experience and the people she met there. And she now has a serious interest in salsa dancing.

Neal, Thérèse, Isaac, and Caleb came to visit the weekend after that. The first night we actually abandoned to go for a belated anniversary dinner in Stratford (at Rundles—quite nice), leaving them to figure out how to work our digital receiver, DVD, etc. But they managed. The next day, after a short outing to the little park across our street (it was quite hot again), we all trooped off to the Children's Museum of Waterloo. Its four floors proved to be fun for everyone.

The next day they made a pilgrimage to the large Toys'r'Us store in Kitchener, but the rest of the day was fairly quiet—dinner, Buffy viewing, cat chasing. And speaking of cats, our house, of course, is not a great place for the allergic at the best of times, but it didn't help that Caleb should couldn't resist touching the cats. Many antihistamines were required to keep airways open. But all in all, it was fun having them visit.

The weekend after we caught up with Michelle, Hugh, Jackson, and John, who were visiting Macphie's. They had just sold their house, which got rid of that stress, but were now dealing with move and trip planning.

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4 June 2005

Mom and Dad visited recently, which was nice. They arrived Saturday night, and we just had a quiet dinner and TV night after their long drive. Sunday Michelle came over in the morning with John, who is a more interactive baby now. Late afternoon we went over to Macphie's and gathered with the rest of the Macphie clan, along with Cathy's brother, his wife, and one of their sons.

Monday was the Victoria Day holiday, so we decided to visit a few of the Niagara Region wineries. We ended up visiting five: Puddingcombe Estate Farms & Winery, Fielding Estates, Thirty Bench Wines, Mountain Road Wine Co, and Crown Bench Estates (I think). At all of them, at least one of us bought some wine or other—I don't believe any of them are available at LCBO. Probably the most unusual Jean and I purchased was a chocolate-scented ice wine.

At our Wine Appreciation class, I later found out we'd been taste-testing them all wrong, confusing our taste buds and therefore having difficulty determining what wines we'd actually enjoy later. Oh well. It was definitely a fun day.

Tuesday we barely saw Mom and Dad, as we were at work and they had tickets to Stratford that night (“Hello Dolly”, I believe). So Wednesday we got together at Verses for lunch, then Mom and Dad went to Toronto to stay with Michelle.

Concert-wise, we saw our last Electric Thursdays show of the year, which featured the music of the Beach Boys. It was a pretty-fun, summer-like show (on a cold, rainy day, however). We've already secured tickets for next year's line-up, with sounds pretty great: the music of Led Zeppelin, Gowan's "Strange Animal" tribute (featuring Larry Gowan himself), an Abba tribute (featuring Abbamania, an "imitator" band), and the music of Supertramp—featuring Roger Hodgson himself.

Every Electric Thursdays concerts was sold out this year, so next year there will be two shows of each, the other being on Wednesday. We'd said we'd be open to either night—whichever gave us the best seats.

We also went to our final Theatre and Co performance, Lake Nora Arms. It was a musical, but rather unusual, in that it was based on poetry, and didn't really have a plot. It was more on the theme of nostalgia, loss, and memory.

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8 May 2005

The cultural scene has quietened down; it actually seems quite weird not to have so much concerts and plays on the agenda! But to recap what we have seen:

Marat/Sade was presented by the UW Drama department; as an Arts alumni, I got free tickets. It's a really unusual play-within-a-play: the premise is that, while incarcerated in a mental asylum, the Marquis de Sade writes a play to be performed by the inmates. The play focuses on the life of Jean-Paul Marat, the French revolutionary who had been murdered some years before. We are meant to be part of the audience seeing this play for the first time. The Marquis plays himself; Marat and all other characters are played by inmates. (And then it gets really weird.) Definitely thought-provoking...

Strange Magic was an Electric Thursdays concert featuring the music of Moody Blues and ELO, in which I discovered that I know a lot more ELO songs than I thought. And that Knights in White Satin (amusingly spelled Nights in White Satin in the program) is just as awesome orchestrated as you'd expect it to be.

Still, I think we enjoyed the following night's Pop concert, Love of the Screen, even more. This featured music from movies and TV, with KW Symphony and two excellent vocalists, who particular shone on “A Beautiful Mind” (where the voice is truly orchestrated) and the well-performed “Journey to the Past”. We also got to hear the world premiere performance of the theme from “Being Julia”—because Stephen Sitarski, the principal violinist of the KW Symphony, performed on the actual movie soundtrack. So listen for that when you see “Being Julia”.

Finally, we went to another Theatre and Co. peformance, A Walk in the Woods. That's a two-man play about US and USSR Arms negotiators. (Chuck from “Street Legal” played the Russian.) Despite a bit of kerfuffle about our seats, which ended up being not that great, we did enjoy the debating between these two men, who are tasked with a hopeless mission.

So, Jean and I have filled up some of our time by enrolling in a Wine Appreciation course at Conestoga College. I was very excited to smell the asparagus accents last week! And I am understanding those Vintages “tasting notes” better now... But I'm dismissing the advice to finish an open bottle in one day by spitting out what you can't drink without getting drunk! Forget it. I'll just cope with the “oxydization” that otherwise results...

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13 March 2005

I had previously reported that 100% of Jean's clinical staff is pregnant. Well, now his office administrator is pregnant as well, so make that 100% of his staff who can physically get pregnant. And, well, two have actually had their babies already, so I they're not pregnant anymore. Jean has hired two and is looking for more staff to replace during these absences.

For us, the main event was our return trip to Paris, France, which was very enjoyable.

We've been keeping busy, as usual, with cultural events. We had one breakthrough with Carl Orf's Carmina Burana — it was the first “Masterpiece” concert that Jean quite enjoyed. This piece is quite the epic; it featured three soloists, two choirs, and two pianos, along with the KW Symphony. I was interested in going because I sang excerpts from it while part of the McGill Choral Society. The Symphony kindly provided English translations of the lyrics, which are all in Latin. I had no idea I'd been singing about boozing, womanizing, and other debaucheries. Huh. Anyway, a most entertaining night out.

Less grand but also quite enjoyable was the Pops concert called “Classic Pops,” which featured all classical pieces most of us recognize. I think it was our first concert conducted by Brian Johnson, who is quite entertaining himself.

We had Cathy and Graham over for dinner recently, with their cute baby daughter. We had billed it as a game meat dinner, only to discover that that meat we thought was a moose roast was actually ground moose. Hmm. Fortunately, Robin came to our rescue with a roast of elk-deer meat — she and George just happened to have a lot of meat available. We cooked following a recipe on "bowhunter.net" (which I find hilarious), and it turned it out quite well. It was also nice to visit with the Ruses.

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January 25

Christmas in Timmins was fun, although it was a very cold one this year (-40C Christmas morning). We were lucky that our flight out was booked for the day after the big storm. Although it was delayed, that was nothing compared to the chaos of the day before. At Lefebvre's, Jessica played the role of Santa this year, while at McNair's, Isaac and Caleb made out like bandits. Joanne and Michelle and their respective crews did not go North this year, so the McNair house was less crowded than last year.

New Year's Eve, Jean and I cooked a gourmet dinner again. It was a hefty bill from Vincenzo's, but everything turned out very well, and we were frankly stuffed. This was the menu:

Appetizer 1: Cheese platter with Swiss, Roquefort, and soft brie. Wine: Cabernet Sauvignon. I used to not like blue cheese, but I seem to have gotten over it.
Appetizer 2: Seared foie gras with apple chutney. Wine: Late Harvest Vidal and Port. Remarkably easy to make and reminiscent of the foie gras we've had in chi-chi restaurants.
Main course: Molasses moose, garlic mashed potatoes, grilled wild mushrooms. Wine: Shiraz.
Salad: Waldorf. Deferred to next day because we were getting too full.
Dessert: Chocolate Cannelloni with Baileys Mousse and Cinnamon Sauce. Wine: Black muscat. Rich and fattening, but definitely delicious.

Now we're back to the work routine. Jean has found out that yet another clinical staff member is pregnant. So for anyone counting, that's 100%. But there are plans to get replacements, including a new full-time staff member (already hired).

Last weekend we went to Toronto to see the latest addition to the family, John Noel Macphie. He's the smallest newborn among nephews and does, in fact, seem quite small. But he's cute and does not seem to be overly fussy. Jackson remains a sweetie and so far mostly seems pleased with “his” baby.

This weekend we went to a Symphony concert on Friday—the very entertaining “Hot Pops on a Cold Night”, featuring music with a mambo, salsa, and even disco beat. Saturday we braved the snowstorm to get to Hamilton, where a Métis Nation of Ontario meeting had brought three of Jean's siblings. And tonight we're having the Grant's over for lasagna.

And coming in February, we've finally decided on our vacation destination: Paris, France.

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