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Concert Go’ers

October 13, 2012
Rainwater

The girls, along with cousin Melissa headed off to Copps Coliseum on Saturday night to see Marianas Trench. We had bought the tickets for the girls back in the summer when we were at the cottage in PEI. They said the seats were pretty good. I scooped these photos from Angela’s Facebook page.

We dropped them off at the door and then picked them up 4 1/2 hours later. Susan and I hung out at Lori and Dale’s and Chloe got to hang with Nike. Thanks for the dinner Lori!

Melissa was a little worried that she would be one of the oldest ones there, but she said there were way older people, some of them grown men dancing awkwardly. It also helped that Angela and Gillian are about the same height as her, so she blended in with them. Thanks Melissa for going with the girls.

Chloe

October 13, 2012
Rainwater
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Chloe is getting a little shaggy looking. When I downloaded the pictures from this week, I found this one that one of the girls had taken this morning. I trimmed around her eyes this morning, but she’ll need the full cut soon.

Congratulations Gillian!

October 12, 2012
Rainwater

Friday night was the Mt Carmel Academic Awards evening. Normally it is held at the Church, but due to the construction/renovations, it was held in the school gym. Gillian received her award for honours. Look closely and you’ll see her going up for her award.

Afterwards it was off to Starbucks for a celebratory drink. Waiting for the train on Tenth Line.

Good Job Claudia!

October 11, 2012
Rainwater

Claudia participated in the Cross Country Meet at Erindale Park on Thursday. Despite the cold weather she toughed it out and had a good run. Here she is just after the start of the race.

She was smiling because her teacher/coach was yelling at her to stop smiling for the camera and run.

They ran 3 km. Here she is coming into the finish area.

Claudia finished 53rd in the Grade 7 girls run. Here she is getting a high five from Mrs Foster as she comes across the line. Way to go Claudia!

Portland, Maine

October 6, 2012
Work Posts

This past week I was down in Portland, Maine for meetings. This was the fall version of the meeting I went to in the spring in Portland, Oregon. I flew down Monday connecting through  Philadelphia. There is a direct flight from Toronto but it is on a small Beechcraft prop that holds about 12 passengers, opting for the regional jets was a much better choice.

Definitely ate too much while I was down there, even though the meeting hotel was out by the airport and not right downtown. The first night we had dinner at the Portland Lobster Company. I had the Downeast Feast which came with a 1 1/4 lb lobster, 6 steamer clams, corn on the cob, seafood chowder, fries and cole slaw all for $27.

When you order, they give you a lobster with a number on it, when your order is up it starts flashing and vibrating.

The next night it was back downtown to J’s Oyster Bar. The oysters (from Chesapeake Bay) were cheap, 1 dozen for $12.50, we had three orders at our table. I had a cup of their Lobster Stew which was amazing and then the Seafood Bouillabaisse which was packed with seafood.

Of course with all this food we needed something to wash it down with, there is no shortage of local microbrew pubs like Sebago, Sea Dog Brew House and Gritty McDuff’s.

The final night we had dinner at Gilbert’s Chowder House on Commercial Street. This time I had the seafood chowder and the Fried Maine Whole Belly Clams in crumbs. All of these restaurants are not very large and wait times could be long depending on the time and size of your party.

Finished off with some ice cream at Captain Sam’s homemade ice cream. It had just opened and as we walked past there was a guy standing outside eating ice cream, one of the guys in our group asked him how it was and he said it was amazing and he was going back in for more. After walking a bit we decided we had to go back and try it. I had Kentucky Derby ice cream which had bourbon, almonds and chocolate pieces. The portions were huge and it came with a wooded spoon, not a flat ice cream spoon, but a wooded shaped spoon.

(all photos were downloaded from the internet.)

Chronicles of Form and Place

September 29, 2012
Rainwater

On Saturday we headed into Hamilton to see Uncle Tak’s latest show. He has a retrospective exhibition of his works on paper at the McMaster Museum of Art. As part of Culture Days, they had staff on hand to give a guided tour of his works. The girl did a good job of explaining his work and adding some background behind some of the pieces that Uncle Tak had given when he did an Artist’s Talk earlier in the month. The exhibit is in the galleries that normally hold their permanent collection.

There is a new website to accompany this exhibition, it is called Form and Place. It is pretty comprehensive and has all of the works on display.

The McMaster Museum of Art building.

The public art of coyotes.

Headed into Dundas to pick up some treats for Chloe at Bark & Fitz.

Congratulations Gillian!

September 25, 2012
Rainwater

I took Gillian down to the Drive Test centre in Oakville this afternoon for her G2 (G1 exit) road test. She didn’t seem to be gone that long and before I knew it, she was standing next to me, telling me she passed. Well done Gillian, with great power comes great responsibility. Here she is in 1996 getting an early start behind the wheel.

Around Island Falls

September 20, 2012
Work Posts

We lucked out with the weather this week, only the first morning was a little chilly with frost on the car windows and on this dandelion.

The Snow Geese were headed in the right direction.

Our ride for the week was a Jeep Liberty.

The site is located at the Island Falls Hydroelectric Dam, this is the A-Dam Spillway.

On the way out of the site we encountered this guy.

He was just sitting on the road, not in any hurry to move off to the side.

I took some video of the bear as I was slowly driving towards it, eventually it bounded off into the bush.

We were staying at a fishing camp about 20 km’s from the site.

This is our cabin at Slim’s Cabins.

The cabins are located on the Churchill River, only about 8km by boat to the dam. The camp offers fishing, fly-in fishing and hunting. The main catch are Lake Trout, Pike, and Walleye.

The Hydroelectric Generating Station was built in 1928-30 by the Churchill River Power Company, which was a subsidiary of the HBM&S Co. (Hudson Bay Mining and Smelting Company). It provided power to the Mine and Smelting operations in Flin Flon, Manitoba. Today it is owned by SaskPower.

Up until the late 60’s there was a townsite of company owned houses for staff. Our site is located on the old townsite. Although they have long since torn down the houses, the sidewalks still remain as you can see in this photo.

The only remaining building from the townsite is the Commisary.

The two-storey Comissisary can be seen in the distance along with the old sidewalk.

These two photos show the location of the townsite in relation to the power station.

The Comissary is in the bottom right of this photo.

Another look at the A-Dam Spillway

Some video of from the Spillway.

Had time to visit the Josiah Flintabbatey Flonatin statue in Flin Flon.

The history behind the name of the city. NHL hockey players that were born in Flin Flon include, Bobby Clarke, Al Hamilton, Gerry Hart, Eric Nesterenko and Ken Baumgartner to name the more famous ones.

The flight to and from Winnipeg was with Calm Air. I flew up in a Saab 340B and an ATR 42 300 (below) on the way back. The Winnipeg Airport Terminal is quite nice now, a big step up from the old terminal.

Four Provinces in Four Days

September 16, 2012
Work Posts

This week found me in northern Saskatchewan again, only this time I’m on the east side in Island Falls. We are up here to finalize the installation of our first Oil Sands Monitoring Site. Since Thursday I have been in Nova Scotia, Ontario, Manitoba, and Saskatchewan.

The route to Island Falls is through Winnipeg, then a flight to Flin Flon, follwed by a 2.5 hour drive, the last 100 km on packed gravel. The copper smelter in Flin Flon was shut down in 2010, the mining is still going on with an ore concentrator and zinc production facility.

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The road up to Island Falls.

The last of the sun for today.

PA Day

September 14, 2012
Rainwater

The girls all had a PA Day on Friday, only twice this year do the high school and elementary school have it the same day. I took the day off and the four of us headed downtown in the afternoon. We were going down to see the season premiere of the Rick Mercer Report. Due to the early morning tragedy on the TTC subway line at Yorkdale, there were delays on all the subway routes. I was trying to figure out how to get downtown by avoiding the Yonge-Spadina line.

Before we left they had re-opened the subway north of Yorkdale. We drove to Kipling and parked there for $2. Our first stop was Chinatown to have dinner, we went to Xam Yu and had the BBQ pork noodles in soup and the deep fried shrimp balls. It was the same restaurant we went to with Uncle Tak back in January.

From there we walked down Spadina and along Queen and hit the Chapters at John St and Adelaide St. It is only a short walk to the CBC Broadcast Centre where the Rick Mercer Report is taped in front of a live studio audience every Friday. Our seats were third row on the floor.

This is the 10th season for his show.

The show will air on Tuesday September 18th, check it out, his flyboard segment is hilarious. “With great powers, comes great responsibility”.

This fridge may be unused for awhile. The studio portions of Hockey Night in Canada are filmed on the same floor.

We were close to the front of the line for meeting Rick Mercer. This was Gillian’s first time and Angela and Claudia’s second time.

The girls in front of Mr. Dressup’s treehouse.

Larger than life Rick Mercer.

The girls with his star in the CBC building.

This was the second last night of the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), parked on Wellington was Gene Simmons tour bus. Kiss had a concert at the Molson Amphitheatre on Thursday night. Across from the bus is the Ritz-Carelton hotel and there was all kinds of activity out front and people waiting around.

There was a guy in a black leather jacket and long hair and he had some items that were autographed, so I thought maybe Gene Simmons was in the middle of the crowd out front. It turned out that it was VIP’s for the movie English Vinglish. The movie is an Indian drama directed by Gauri Shinde.

People milling about the front of the hotel, including us for awhile, trying to figure out who we were waiting to see.

The VIP’s got in their fancy Audi cars and drove across the street and then up a makeshift driveway on the Metro Hall square to more waiting fans and photographers.

We still weren’t sure who we were seeing, but interesting to be part of the crowd none the less.

It turned out the big star was Sridevi, a Bollywood actress. This was her first film in 14 years, she had come out of retirement.

Everything was TIFF, even the Toronto Star newspaper box. More importantly I noticed all kinds of Orville Redenbacher popcorn bags in the garbage can, I said to the girls we missed the free samples. But once we made our way to King Street, there was a couple of people handing out small bags of the Sweet & Salty popcorn. So good, Angela and I went back for seconds.

The movie was being shown at Roy Thompson Hall, there is a display of Audi cars in front of the venue. Eventually we made our way to the subway and headed home. It was a fun day with the girls.