2009: A Bloggy Year in Review

I know, I know, everybody and his brother is doing the year in review thing. But I’ve done this in each of 2006, 2007 and 2008, and frankly, I got nothing else for today! Here it is again, a meme of review in the form of the first line of the first post of each month in 2009.

  1. The problem with extended absences from the blog is all the posts I want to write that get tangled up in my head, so when I actually do get a couple of minutes to string together, I’m bloggily constipated.

  2. My dearest darling Simon, You are five years old today.

  3. I filched this meme from a couple of friends’ Facebook pages.

  4. I’ve said before I’m a fan of Mabel’s Labels, and they just keep setting the bar higher with new and interesting products.

  5. I’m glad I didn’t quit my photo-a-day project last week, and I’m kinda sorry I whined at you with all my artistic angst.

  6. I’ve been working with the Mom Central network for more than a year now on various blog tours and promotions — from locks to board games to chocolate – and one of my only complaints would be the number of events and tours that were less convenient for or not available to Canadians.

  7. Ten years ago today, in a tiny church in London’s Pioneer Village in front of 45 of our best friends and family on the hottest day of the summer, I said these words.

  8. How bad can 40 be, when it starts out with a blissful day at the beach with some of my favourite people?

  9. Every now and then, a pitch stands out from the noise that is my in-box.

  10. Are y’all feeling a little freaked out by H1N1, the so-called “swine flu”?

  11. This is an exciting year for Santa parades in and around Ottawa.

  12. I‘m always glad when November turns to December.

Hmmm, birthdays, photos, giveaways, and memes. I hope the whole year wasn’t as, um, flaky as these posts seem to indicate! Note to self, start each month with substance and flake out from there.

Happy New Year to all of you who have taken a moment to stop by and read, and especially to those of you who toss in the occasional comment or observation. Almost five years in and I’m still humbled by your presence here. I wish all of you a new year filled with joy, laughter, and wishes fulfilled!

Tap, tap, tap — is this thing still on?

Well, hello there. You’re still here? Yay! Sorry about the extended absence. I’ve been distracted by something shiny and new that I got for Christmas. I’m so spoiled — Beloved bought me an iPod Touch! I hadn’t even asked for it, and have to admit when I opened it my first thought was, “Wow, this is great — but what am I going to do with it?” I already have my battered iPod Nano, the one that survived in the glove-box of the flaming van, and it does me fine as a music player and for the occasional game of solitaire. (Truth be told, I have been coveting an iPhone, but just couldn’t justify the monthly cost of the data plan.)

But you know what? I love it! LOVE it. I called it the MotherPod, and I’ve loaded 50 of my favourite pictures and my entire music library and filled less than 1/4 of it. In about two clicks I’d connected my e-mail account and found my way online. I wasn’t going to put any games on it, because I knew that the moment it looked like a gaming device would be the moment that I surrendered myself to sharing it with the boys, and frankly I don’t want to share. It’s MINE!

I surfed around looking for recommendations for Apps (should I capitalize “Apps”, do you think?) and found this most excellent post on Greeblemonkey, with an annotated list of all the Apps she has on her iPhone. I downloaded a couple of freebie Apps, like Google Earth and CBC Radio. (Jian Ghomeshi on demand? Be still my heart!) Did you know that there’s an App to find the nearest Tim Hortons? Now that’s useful technology. And a word game called Moxie, which is kind of meh, but I wasn’t going to start paying for games and it was free.

And then, with a few serendipitous clicks, I began reliving my digital youth. I found — are you ready for it? — Sim City, and suddenly it was 1990 all over again. Sim City? Oh, the hours I dedicated to that game, on my very first computer with the 40 MB hard drive. (Ha, some of the photos I upload to Flickr are more than 40 MB!) My only regret is that the version for the Touch doesn’t say “reticulating splines” as it loads. I never did figure out what splines were or why they needed to be reticulated.

Not too long after that, I found Tetris and I haven’t stepped away from the device since. Tetris? Oh, how I do love Tetris. It’s even MORE addictive than Tim Horton’s coffee. I haven’t yet downloaded Rockband, but I am *this* close!

So if blogging is sparse over the next little while, you’ll know that at least I’m not doing anything productive like, say, cleaning the house. I’ll be reliving my digital youth, playing Tetris and Sim City, and roaming the ‘hood looking for wi-fi hot spots.

Got a favourite App? I’ve still got 3/4 of an iPod to fill. What else have I been missing?

Project 365: Christmas Cheer and the Return of Inspiration

It’s a Christmas miracle! (Okay, maybe not so much a miracle, as a really nice Christmas treat.) Slogging through much of the last couple of weeks of the 365 project, I’d realized that I was enduring it rather than enjoying it. But my 12 Hours of Christmas photo project reawakened the joy of picture-taking for me, and I am once again enthralled with the hunt for the photo of the day. Good thing, too, because there’s only a little more than three weeks left in my year!

Maybe I’m feeling rejuvenated because I’ve starting taking pictures of some of my favourite subjects again this week. Old barns, for example. (And old barns in TtV are like faves on top of faves!)

332:365 Old barn in winter

And you know I am fascinated by hands and feet. This is my father-in-law’s hard-worked hand being held up for a tentative high-five from Lucas. As is often the case, not quite the image I was going for but I like it nonetheless.

333:365 High-five

Sometimes, the photo of the day presents itself and begs to be photographed. Although, when the boys came in and excitedly told me they’d made a snowman (their first on their own!) I have to say I expected something a little, erm, taller. Don’t you love the look of self-satisfaction on their faces, though?

334:365 The Snowman

Tristan didn’t actually lose his tooth playing hockey, but when my father-in-law mentioned a similar picture taken by a relative, I knew exactly how I wanted to make this one up. A quintessentially Canadian image, I think!

335:365 I am Canadian

“Mom, could you get me another spoon? This one doesn’t seem to be working very well.”

336:365 Spoon malfunction

By the 23rd of December, I realized that the entire Christmas season had almost passed by, and I had taken hardly any of the warm, brightly-coloured images that I’d been anticipating throughout my 365 project. (I think that’s part of the reason why I was inspired to do the 12 hours of Christmas project, and I’m so happy I did!) Also, I think by the time I took this on the Eve of Christmas Eve, I’d reached that Christmas tipping point where the stress was pretty much gone and I was simply excited about Christmas.

I was delighted when the Karma group on Flickr, with more than 13,000 members, chose this as the Photo of the Day for December 24. What a nice honour!

337:365 Balls!

And finally, although I liked all of the images from my Christmas hourly photo project, I think this one best captures the day.

430 pm

As I type, the ice is building up outside from freezing rain. I can’t wait to get out and play with my camera. Taking pictures is suddenly a treat instead of a chore again. Hooray!

The Christmas Eve Photo Project

Inspired by Andrea, a photo-essay of hourly pictures of the most excitement-laden day of the year: Christmas Eve.

First stop, breakfast with cousin Noah at 8:30 am:

830 am

(Can you believe they were up at FOUR am? Yeesh!)

9:30 am: The gingerbread house is decorated, and accessorized with Belgian chocolate Santa, courtesy of my Loblaws advent calendar.

930am

10:30 am: Mother Nature provided a fresh dusting of snow overnight to help Santa’s sleigh land on the rooftop!

1030am

11:30 am: Santa’s cutest reindeer!

1130am

12:30 pm: a bit of last-minute wrapping to do.

1230 pm

1:30 pm: The big boys are at a movie with Beloved, and Lucas is sleeping. Time for a coffee break!

130 pm

2:30 pm: Back from the movie, and making Christmas ornaments for the family.

230 pm

3:30 pm: Wrapping up the last of the home-made peanut brittle and shortbread to give away tonight.

330 pm

4:30 pm: Just about a half an hour until the family arrives for dinner and presents. The calm before the chaos!

430 pm

5:30 pm: Granny and Lucas having a little moment just before the presents begin.

530 pm

6:30 pm: Santa Papa Lou.

630 pm

7:30 pm: Admiring the annual family calendar.

730 pm

8:30 pm: Lucas was so not interesting in sharing his new Sesame Street toddler-sized sleeper couch with his cousin Brooke. He was priceless in his annoyance, and she was persistent in her desire to share his space.

830 pm

That’s it — I can’t believe I made it through all 12 hours. And a Merry Christmas was had by all!

Five things that are making me happy this Christmas

I have to tell you, I love the (relatively) new category I’ve added of “5 things.” On days like this when I’ve got a handful of half-baked ideas that just won’t come together, or when I feel like chatting with you but can’t get organized enough to assemble a coherent post, I can always crunch them into a ‘five things’ post.

So here we go, five things that are making me happy about this Christmas season.

  1. If it ain’t done by now, it ain’t getting done. I call this my official Christmas tipping point, when the joy of the season and the excitement of anticipation finally eclipse the stress of of planning, organizing, wrapping, baking, and shopping. Time to release my inner child. Yay!
  2. After more than a decade of asking for it, and trying to catch it on TV, I’ve finally got not just one but TWO copies of my all-time favourite Christmas movie, A Christmas Story. I PVR’d it last night on CBC, and my brother burned me a copy of his DVD yesterday. I tried a few years ago to share this with the boys but they weren’t old enough to appreciate it. I’m saving it for a special Christmas Day family viewing. Yay!
  3. It’s super-quiet here in the office (I still *so* love this job, btw), and the crisis that had me and several of my colleagues in a panic for most of the past 24 hours seems to be on its way to being resolved. My dad is on the way for a tour of our broadcast studio and operations, and after this afternoon I’m on vacation until January 4. Yay!
  4. My brother and his family are in town. The kids really love their cousins, and it’s wonderful to have family together at Christmas. They may have to leave a little earlier than anticipated, based on the storm that may or may not happen this Friday and Saturday, but I’m still happy just to have the gang together. Yay!
  5. I really do love Christmas. This year was the most stressful yet as far as preparations go. I had a hard time initially coming up with the perfect gift for everyone, and plans kept shifting on me. But now it’s all good and the boys are excited as the presents begin to pile up under the tree and we’re down to just one or two more items on the advent calendar and it really is beginning to look a lot like Christmas. Yay!

Share the joy, what’s making you happy this holiday season?

In defence of Donder – redux

The other day, I was on the phone at work and giving my last name to someone. They missed it and I repeated myself, “Donders, like the reindeer.” After I hung up, because the cubicle farm provides not a scintilla of privacy, a colleague asked me, “What was that you said about the reindeer?” And so I launched into my seasonal tirade, which reminded me that I almost forgot to repost it again this year. (Hey, if CBS can air How the Grinch Stole Christmas every year for 45 years, I’m entitled to a seasonal repeat too!)

And because I understand that the beauty of the Christmas special repeats is their familiarity, here’s last year’s post, verbatim:

“Oh no,” lament the bloggy peeps who have been around for a while. “Not the reindeer thing again!”

Why yes, as a matter of fact. It’s the reindeer thing again. If I can educate one misinformed soul every year about the correct names of Santa’s reindeer, my mission will be a success.

“You know Dasher and Dancer and Prancer and Vixen;
Comet and Cupid and DONDER and Blitzen…”

As you might know, my last name is Donders. As such, it has been my lifelong quest to set the record straight and right the wrongs entrenched by Johnny Marks and Gene Autry.

Here’s a little history lesson for you. The poem “A Visit From St Nicholas”, commonly known as “The Night Before Christmas”, was written back in 1823 and is generally attributed to American poet Clement Clarke Moore (although there have been recent arguments that the poem was in fact written by his contemporary Henry Livingston Jr.) The original poem reads, in part:

More rapid than eagles his coursers they came,
And he whistled, and shouted, and called them by name.
“Now Dasher! now, Dancer! now, Prancer and Vixen!
On, Comet! on, Cupid! on Dunder and Blixem!

As explained on the Donder Home Page (no relation):

In the original publication of “A Visit from St. Nicholas” in 1823 in the Troy Sentinel “Dunder and Blixem” are listed as the last two reindeer. These are very close to the Dutch words for thunder and lightning, “Donder and Bliksem”. Blixem is an alternative spelling for Bliksem, but Dunder is not an alternative spelling for Donder. It is likely that the word “Dunder” was a misprint. Blitzen’s true name, then, might actually have been “Bliksem”.

In 1994, the Washington Post delved into the matter (sorry for the noisy link – it’s the only copy I could find online) by sending a reporter to the Library of Congress to reference the source material.

We were successful. In fact, Library of Congress reference librarian David Kresh described Donner/Donder as “a fairly open-and-shut case.” As we marshaled the evidence near Alcove 7 in the Library’s Main Reading Room a few days ago, it quickly became clear that Clement Clarke Moore, author of “A Visit from St. Nicholas,” wanted to call him (or her?) “Donder.” Never mind that editors didn’t always cooperate. […] Further confirmation came quickly. In “The Annotated Night Before Christmas,” which discusses the poem in an elegantly illustrated modern presentation, editor Martin Gardner notes that the “Troy Sentinel” used “Dunder”, but dismisses this as a typo. Gardner cites the 1844 spelling as definitive, but also found that Moore wrote “Donder” in a longhand rendering of the poem penned the year before he died: “That pretty well sews it up,” concluded Kresh.

So there you have it. This Christmas season, make sure you give proper credit to Santa’s seventh reindeer. On DONDER and Blitzen. It’s a matter of family pride. (Or, for more fun with the true meaning of Donder, you can read this post from the archives, too!)

An ode to runners-up

The Buffalo Bills made it to the Super Bowl and lost four straight years in the early 1990s. The Red Sox made it all the way to the World Series in 1946, 1967, 1975 and 1986 and lost each time. Jack Nicklaus finished second 19 times in major tournaments, and Susan Lucci was nominated for an Emmy Award 18 times (!!) before finally winning in 1999. Alanis Morisette, Aaliyah, Christina Aguilera, Destiny’s Child, Drew Carey, Jessica Simpson, Kevin James, Dennis Miller, Rosie O’Donnel, Le Ann Rimes, Dave Chapelle, Justin Timberlake and Britney Spears ALL appeared on Star Search without winning. Heck, even Susan Boyle was a runner up. And we all know what happened to Al Gore in 2000.

Two cheers for second place!! One for you and one for me, because you helped to vote Postcards from the Mothership as the second-place winner in the Best Family Blog category of the Canadian Blog Awards!! Yay, and thank you — times two!

The results aren’t official yet, but I can see by the voting form that the voting is complete. I’m not sure I like the new voting system, and that has almost nothing to do with the fact that I came in second by a mere — choke! — FOUR votes!! Sigh.

Speaking of which, I think enough time has lapsed that I’m now allowed to tell you about this, too. Remember back in February, the last time I was grovelling for votes in the Send a Blogger to BlogHer contest? I came in second then, too, although I was asked not to mention it at the time. Sooooooo close!

So really, thank you. I am honoured that you nominated me, and I am delighted that you tossed more than a hundred votes my way. And for the five of you who forgot to vote, you’re getting a lump of coal in your stocking this year! 😉 And heck, there’s always next year. Go for the gold in 2010, that seems to be a message I’ve heard somewhere recently…

***

Speaking of second place, did any of you watch the Survivor finale last night? SPOILER ALERT!!!!! SPOILER ALERT!!!!! SPOILER ALERT!!!!! I was gobsmacked at the outcome. Seriously? Gobsmacked. I was a Russel fan from early on, and I totally think he deserved the million bucks. Nobody has worked this game like he has, and nobody has earned that million more than him. I suppose the contestants don’t see everything we see, and I didn’t yet watch the post show (I was so annoyed I went to bed at 10:05) but I imagine they just didn’t have an idea of the extent of his manipulative deviance. Brilliantly played, though, and I’m beyond excited to see the new season of heros versus villains next year. That AND Lost? The PVR will justify itself in a single seaon!!

So yeah, second place rocks!!

Project 365: Baby it’s cold outside!

Looking back over my year in pictures, I’m surprised to see how many of my favourite images were shot outside. There really is no substitute for natural light, I suppose. And even though the temperatures have really bottomed out in the last week, most of my pictures were in fact taken outside.

The only time I feared for my camera was yesterday morning when I took this shot of a windswept farmer’s field off Fallowfield. It was -30C with the wind chill, but I loved the colours of the snow and sky just before the sun came up. Mind you, I was so cold and anxious to get the shot done that I made the one “rookie” mistake I seem to have the most difficulty overcoming: putting the subject dead centre in the viewfinder! Oh well.

331:365 Wintry morning TtV

This was another early-morning shot, of that spectacular ice fog that caused the 60-car pileup about 10 minutes after and 5 km away from where I was taking this picture.

328:365 Ice fog

This one was a lot warmer, both from a colour and a climate perspective. (He’s such a ham. We’re in so much trouble with this one! I called it “I’m so cute I can barely stand myself.”)

330:365 I'm so cute I can barely stand myself

Call this one my abstract period. It’s actually a silver star-shaped Christmas ornament, with red, blue and yellow LED lights reflecting off it, shot with a screw-on macro filter on my lens. I like the movement and the shapes in it. Plus, it was late, I was tired, and this was an easy shot!

329:365 Macro silver star

This one has a not-so-nice story behind it. It’s the train trestle that passes over Prince of Wales just south of Colonnade, and I’ve always thought it was interesting-looking. Last Friday on our way to the Land Staff luncheon at the Cartier Drill Hall, two of my colleagues were in a fender-bender practically underneath the trestle. Nobody was hurt, and it wasn’t my colleague’s fault, but we spent about half an hour waiting for the police and my eye kept wandering up to those creosote-covered beams against the bright blue sky. Finally, I couldn’t resist any more — and of course, I had my camera with me.

325:365 Train trestle

It’s been a busy week. No really? BUSY! So it was good to multitask, piggybacking the photo of the day on to other important seasonal activities, like the annual baking of the shortbread.

326:365 TtV Christmas baking

Christmas lights and snow. A hard combination to resist. This was almost the shot of the day, but in the end the next shot won out.

Freshly fallen snow

There was no way I’d be able to do an entire 365 project without trying my hand at a long-exposure Christmas-tree lights shot! I cranked my aperture way down (up? I always get that confused) to f22, and the camera selected a 30-second exposure to get this one right. (The tiny f-stop helps make that star-shaped flare on the lights, but I guess LED lights don’t flare very well — and they also “burn” the image on long exposures up close, but I’m not sure why.)

327:365 O Christmas Tree

This wasn’t my tree, by the way, and I’m pretty sure the neighbour who watched me haul my tripod out of the car and set it up on the curb was thinking some very unChristmas-like thoughts, based on the stink-eye she was giving me. I think I’ll go photograph her house next week, just to freak her out.

And, ahem, there are only two days (phew!) of voting left in the Canadian Blog Awards. I’m just sayin’. 😉

You’ll FLIP over my latest giveaway!

Remember back a few months ago, I told you about our new Flip MinoHD? Thanks to Mom Central, I can now give away another Flip MinoHD to one of you in the “You’ll Flip for the Holidays” giveaway.

Mom Central is asking to whom would you give a Flip and why. I’d say this is the perfect gift for just about anyone — of course, it’s especially good for those of you with wee ones. Face it, it’s a lot of work hauling the camcorder down out of the closet, making sure it’s charged, and getting it out of it’s bag every time you want to shoot some video. By the time you’re ready, the moment has passed. You know I’m not exactly good about putting things back where they belong anyway, but I do always have the Flip close at hand, and it’s easy to just slip it into a drawer in a central location where I can get to it in a flash. Or, erm, just leave it lying out on the cabinet, amongst the camera lenses and other clutter, where at least it’s easy to get to!

Entering is easy; just leave a comment below telling me to whom you would give the Flip this holiday season and why. (Please note, this is not “tell me whom you would flip off this holiday season”. That’s an entirely different blog post!!)

Here’s the fine print:

  1. Sorry, but this giveaway is only open to Canadian residents, age 18 years or older.
  2. To enter, leave a comment on this post telling me who you in your life you would give the Flip to and why. Go ahead, nominate yourself! (I promise I won’t follow up in January to make sure you actually gave it to Uncle Joe.)
  3. Please note that it’s you, the person making the nomination and not your nominee, who is entered into the contest.
  4. You must leave your comment before 12 pm EST on December 31, 2009.
  5. Only one comment entry per person will be counted.
  6. You can enter one additional time by tweeting “Win a Flip MinoHD from @danigirl and @MC_Canada: http://tinyurl.com/y8k2nl7 #Flip4holiday.” IMPORTANT: you must leave a comment linking to your tweet, because there’s more than one blogger using the same hash tag and I need to be able to find your tweet to enter you in the contest!
  7. One winner will be chosen by using the random number generator at random.org, selected from all eligible entries.
  8. You must be willing to share your full name and mailing address with me, and I will pass it along to Mom Central Canada, who will ship the prize directly to the winner.

Good luck, and thanks to Flip and Mom Central Canada for yet another fun giveaway!!