Month: June 2010

Lunenburg Fog

It’s been foggy since we arrived in Lunenburg around dinnertime the day before yesterday. Funny, we drove into Halifax/Dartmouth (to pick up the keys for the luggage rack!) yesterday, and the fog seemed to have pretty much lifted by mid-morning, but as we drove back down scenic Highway 3 (“The Lighthouse Route”!) around dinner time the fog started rolling in again. I’m not sure it actually lifted around here!

You know what, though? I don’t mind the fog. It’s not raining, and it’s not really cold, although it is damp and I worry a bit what all that moisture is doing to my camera! But the fog makes everything so ethereal and enchanted. Like this, I think my favourite picture since we arrived.

Lucas on the oceanside highway, TtV (with a side of fog!)

Did you know the white balance setting to get the colour right on fog is daylight, and not cloudy? And that there is as much light, if not more light, in fog than on a cloudy day? I’m becoming a “shooting in fog” expert!

It’s actually starting to roll back out to the ocean this morning. I can see further into Lunenburg Harbour than I’ve been able to since we got here — we’re up to maybe 100 feet instead of 30! And the stuff on land is a little less foggy, too. The fog is really not so bad, though, for two reasons. The first is that I really don’t have much to fear of an ocean I can’t see! And the second? Foghorns. All through the night, you can hear the foghorn going off. At first, I thought they were on the boats, but I think they’re fixed at the edge of the harbour so the boats can hear them. Maybe boats have their own too?

Just before the fog started to lift this morning, around 6:15 while the rest of the house was still sleeping, I stood on the porch and filmed this little video to remember that mysterious, beautiful sound of a foghorn on a still summer morning.

It’s supposed to be sunny and warm for the next three days, which is exactly the weather I’d hoped for. But I’ll miss this for the rest of our trip. It’s… magical.

Poo by any other name…

We seem to have a lot of nicknames going on in our family. I suppose I started the whole trend of renaming things which already had perfectly good names with the whole “Beloved” thing, way back when I started the blog in early 2005. Then sometime last year, for reasons that were never clear,Tristan started calling his father Hacko-tato, and Simon picked right up on it. Now, likely as not, when they’re trying to get his attention, they don’t say “Daddy” or even “Dad” but Hacko. I think Beloved has even grown to like it.

Tristan seems to have the most nicknames. Tristy, T-bird, Tee-Tee — he answers to all of them. Simon, I think, is the most dissatisfied with his own name. Tristan calls him Simo, which seems to irritate Simon just enough to guarantee that Tristan will take every opportunity to call him that for the rest of their lives.

It’s Lucas who got the short end of the stick in the nickname game. I swear, I did not see this one coming. It started with the innocuous derivative Lukey, which I figured would mature into Luke for our English friends and Luc for our French friends. However, Lukey was just a consonant’s jump from Pookey, which is kind of cute for a baby, but really unfortunate for a baby with reflux issues. For most of his first year, I fought hard against the tide to make sure Pookey was not called Pukey.

Once the battle with reflux was won, I figured he was safe from the stigma of a nickname inspired by a biological process. I was wrong.

You know what Tristan, Simon and Beloved call my darling third son, likely as not? Drop the last syllable from Pookey. Yes, it is sad but true. They call him Poo.

Beloved insists it’s not “Poo” but “Pooh” as in Pooh Bear. I’m not sure the “h” is going to matter when he hits school-age with a moniker like that. I tell ya, it’s a good thing that boy is going to be 6’6″ and 200 lbs by the time he hits high school. He’s going to need it.

484b:1000 Lucas loves daisies

Does this look like Poo to you?

This is how much I love my mother

So I’m in Nova Scotia, and I have a lot of stories to tell you already. Like torrential rain for eight straight hours of driving, and the inevitable bit where someone barfs (not me) and someone misses an exit (also not me) and we end up lost and really unhappy for a bit. And the bit about how the Queen arrived in Halifax the same day as us, and the part about how un-freaking-believably beautiful this little house on the ocean really is, and how it’s so foggy I can’t really see more than five feet of ocean but I can hear the fog horns calling out to each other. Truly fan-fucking-tastic.

Nope, this is the story about how my mother is on the way to the Ottawa airport to the Fed-Ex people there, and how I’ll drive to Dartmouth tomorrow to pick up the package that she’s overnighting to me. The package with the key. To the roof rack. With half our luggage, including all the boys clothes except the ones they were wearing yesterday, and all our jackets, and most of the boys toys. Oh yes we did. We locked the Thule rack up nice and tight the night before we left, Beloved hung the keys on the hook, and there they stayed.

Heck, I was planning on heading up to Halifax eventually anyway… tomorrow now seems like the perfect day to do it! Oh, and if you want to see the pix of day 1 on the road, Ottawa to Grand Sault, NB, they’re on Flickr!

Much more to come — for now, I’m going for a walk in the fog at the edge of the ocean… with my boys and my camera. Life is good, and my mother and father are truly a treasure.

Thanks Mom and Dad! I owe you (another) one. Wait, I think after Beau’s great escape, we might be even on this one. 🙂

Edited to add: by the way, UPS told them it would take up to four days and cost $65. Fed-Ex shipped it from Ottawa to Dartmouth from 6 pm to noon tomorrow for $25. Yay Fed-Ex!

Thoughts on traveling safely

No, I’m not really thinking about seat belts and car seats and whatnot. Ever since we started planning our trip out east, I’ve been debating on whether to mention online when we’ll be out of town.

I’m torn on the issue. On the one hand, the house won’t exactly be empty as the dog and dogsitter with be there, and it’s not like I have posted my address on the blog. On the other hand, it just doesn’t seem to be prudent to broadcast to up to 800 visitors a day (and that’s not counting the twitter followers and Flickr friends) that I’m out of town. On the other other hand, I’d like to have the freedom to blog and post pictures and tweet as we go along and share the trip in real time. On the other other other hand (see, mothers really do need four hands!) I do not want to feel stressed about getting something posted just for the sake of it, and I know myself well enough by now to know that may become an issue. (Obsessive personality much?) On the other other other other hand (yep, I could use five hands these days) I will also dread facing a week and a half of blog constipation, let alone the anxiety of facing four thousand unposted photographs, if I don’t do it as I go along, and if I’m going to go through all that bother anyway, why not just post them as I go?

Yeesh, I’ve stressed myself out just thinking about it. Aren’t you glad you’re not married to me? Poor Beloved, I really am like this a frightful amount of the time.

Yes, we’re leaving soon. Ish. (waffle much?) Yes, I’m excited. Yes, I have a bunch of posts half written and ready to schedule in case I do decide to go for a stealth departure. No, I’m really not very good with secrets.

What would you do?

Edited to add: Not exactly related to this post, but I had to laugh when I read this article in today’s Citizen about the top five most photogenic places in Maritime Canada. Number one? Lunenburg, five minutes from where we’re staying. And I’ve got three of the five on our itinerary. “No Beloved, I swear I did not plan the entire vacation around a photo op.” *pause* “Much.”

Ottawa Rocks!

Did the earth move for you, too, baby?

That was pretty cool, eh? I’ve been through one other minor earthquake that I remember, when I was a kid, but the one yesterday centred just north of Ottawa was much stronger. It was the first quake during which I was aware at the time what was happening.

I was, of all things, getting a pedicure! I was sitting at the little table, reading my book with my toes in the little dryer, actually composing a post in my head about pedicures and having people in a servitude position and how uncomfortable that makes me. At first I thought the noise was construction or a big truck rumbling past on Woodroffe, but when the shaking was sustained I immediately knew what was going on. The tiny oriental women in the beauty shop scattered like marbles, most of them running to huddle in the doorway until I pointed out that the doorway in the middle of the plate glass window might not be a good place to be. Since none of the nail polish bottles had even fallen off their little shelves, I was more amused by the experience than anything, and it wasn’t until later that I realized perhaps I was a little too cavalier about the whole thing.

What really fascinated me, though, was watching the drama play out on Twitter. It may be a useless time sink 99% of the time, but I was hugely impressed by the speed with which information was circulated on Twitter yesterday. Within 10 minutes of the quake, I knew that people had felt it as far afield as Toronto and Sudbury. Within 15 minutes, I knew it was a 5.5 magnitude (later downgraded to 5.0) quake and the epicentre was near Buckingham, about 20 minutes north of downtown Ottawa.

What really made me laugh was that as soon as it was clear that nobody was seriously hurt and that no significant damage was done, the quake humour started. Here are my fave 10 tweets from yesterday.

From scottcoates: 5.5 quake downgraded to a 5. We did stick the landing ok, I blame the French judge.

From DenVan: Hmm. Toronto felt it too? There’s gotta be a G20 connection. OMG: it was a #FAKELAKEQUAKE

From Phillippec: Quebec is finally separating! #earthquake

From ThatsTeenTalk: “What’s that!! An earthquake?” “YES!! RUN!!!” “OMG, WAIT” *runs to the computer and writes on twitter* EARTHQUAAAAAAKE!!! #thatsteentalk

From melle: Dear California: You do that regularly? DUDE.

From jamiecalder: .@WickedLPixie We’re fine. We’re all fine here now, thank you. How are you? We had a reactor leak. Large leak, very dangerous.

From Glen_McGregor: Everyone talking earthquake and #CBC Radio is running interview with a children’s book illustrator. Memories of epic #fail on 9/11.

From thornley: RT @kylemcinnes: Ottawa government buildings evacuated. Productivity unaffected. #earthquake #smgov

From ALL_CAPS: My television fell onto my MacBook Pro and broke my DSLR. Guess I’ll have to file a claim and get new ones.

From mynameiskate: RT @RobCottingham: In solidarity with Montreal, Ottawa and Toronto, I’m wandering through the house and knocking things off shelves.

I simply couldn’t tear myself away from the computer! (Erm, okay, maybe that’s also the case on any random Wednesday afternoon, but still…) I was truly fascinated both by the earthquake itself, and by the way people were reacting to it. It took less than 90 minutes for this “I survived Toronto Earthquake 2010” t-shirt to appear. (I’m not sure if I’m more bemused disgusted by the blatantly exploitative capitalism or the branding of it as “Toronto’s Earthquake.”)

I think both the Ottawa Citizen and CTV Ottawa did an excellent job in collating and disseminating information on the fly. Other organizations were not so, um, forward-thinking in their use of social media tools in a crisis. Julie Harrison tweeted “Dear @ottcatholicDSB — it is times like THIS when you’re supposed to tweet something! Let us parents know what to do. Pick up or no?” Wouldn’t this have been a simple, easy way to reach hundreds, maybe thousands of anxious parents? No, you’re not going to reach all of them — but I personally was chatting with more than a dozen who would have appreciated the effort.

In the end, I think this comic sums up my afternoon just about perfectly. (Click on it to embiggen!)

What were you doing when the earth started shaking?

The Thousand Picture Project: A little bit of everything

I couldn’t believe I had four pages of unposted pictures to sort through since my last Thousand Pictures update just over a week ago, but then I realized I had all the Calypso pictures in there PLUS all the pictures from the photo shoot with Finola. Still, in the snap-happy groove I’ve been in lately, it’s amazing how many shots I’m going through.

Truth be told, I’m considering just calling it a year and starting a new 365 project. I mean, I’m taking just about a picture every day anyway, and some weeks I’m taking a couple dozen. We’ll see! Anyway, here’s what I’ve been doing since the last Thousand Pictures post.

One morning I woke up to this really dense, dreamy fog and I had to stop and take some pictures on my way in to work. I really love both of these images, for totally different reasons. This first one is the yellow line down the middle of the road, up close and personal! Cuz really, if you’re going to stand in the road with your camera during the morning rush, a day with practically zero visibility is the most logical day to choose, right?

Middle of the road to nowhere

I changed the colour cast in this one to give it that bluish tint, and I think it really works with this image.

475:1000 Trees in the fog

This was a lovely moment that I stumbled upon and raced out of to get my camera. That soft light behind them seems to add to the serenity of an already peaceful scene.

477:1000 Lazy Sunday afternoon

From no colour to too much colour — this is a longer exposure of the pinwheel in my garden, set spinning by my helper Simon. I set the aperture at f16 to slow down the light a bit, so I could set the aperture to 1/25 to catch the motion blur.

478:1000 Pinwheel in the garden

And, back to desaturated again! Just waking up from naptime… just one of those moments I wanted to keep, because in just a few minutes he’ll be sleeping in a big-boy bed, no more soothers or cribs…

479:1000 Waking up

We were at the boys’ annual school BBQ, and Lucas was fascinated by the visiting fire trucks and this police motorcycle. I figure it’s just a matter of years before he has a motorcycle of his own. He rolls like that. And I loved the composition of this one.

480:1000 Lucas reflected

I’ve been trying to keep up with the jump shots, but holy hell it’s hard to get the timing right! I won’t even tell you how many shots I took this night trying to get air under my feet and Lucas’s feet at the same time. I had to give up for fear my dear old garden bench would collapse!

481:1000 HBM meets June jumping

I can always rely on the boys for great jumping shots, though!

486b:1000 Sprinkler Jump!

This is more Flickr-inspired fun, my first contribution to the group Story People. The quote that goes with this image says “this is the moon dark as a bird wing & softer, he said & at that moment I knew only the joy of my child”.

this is the moon dark as a bird wing & softer, he said & at that moment I knew only the joy of my child

We went out to the flea market at the Rideau Carleton Raceway one Sunday and it was, well, meh. But, driving the back roads back to Barrhaven we came across this bucolic scene and my menfolk were patient enough to stop the car so I could capture a few images.

483:1000 Fields of gold

Lucas had the sense to watch from a safe and dry distance as his brothers goofed in the bloody cold refreshing spray of the “waterpillar” toy from Granny.

486:1000 Sprinkler fun

I haven’t forgotten my TtV gear this week — I managed to get this collage the other morning on my way out to work. I couldn’t decide if I liked the cross processing effect (the slightly more yellow/green toned ones) or not, so I made a collage of some of each.

487:1000 Daisies TtV

I’m not the only one who loves the daisies that grow in my garden. Isn’t he perfectly lovely?

484:1000 Lucas loves daisies

I love this shot, one of those rare and perfectly serendipitous captures when everything comes together. I was out with my photography class on Friday night, supposedly shooting landscapes at Hogsback Falls. I was, to be honest, a little bored with the whole landscape thing when I looked up on the rocks above me and saw this woman sitting against a tree, reading and enjoying the last minutes of golden light before the sun set.

485:1000 Hogsback reader

I had my tripod set up, and so the image is far sharper than my usual hand-held shots. I absolutely love how the fence and the tree intersect right where she is sitting, and the bit of diagonal to the fence line, and that delicious golden light. And, most of all, that HAT — perfection!

After I’d taken a few shots and knew I had my keeper, I scrambled up the rocks a bit to say hi and let her know I’d taken her picture, and gave her one of my little moo cards with my blog and contact info on it, and told her that if the picture turned out as nice as I thought it might, she could have a copy if she wanted one. She was very sweet, and thanked me. So that’s also #5 in my very lack-a-daisical hundred strangers project, too!

My blog and pony show

Back in late 2005 or so, I went to a Communications Community Office presentation on blogging. The CCO is a government communicators network, and the speaker was one of the leading experts on blogs as an emerging communication medium. I remember watching the presentation and thinking, man I’d love to have that gig some day.

Fast forward to 2010, and I have that gig! Today, I’m doing a presentation at ALI’s Government and Social Media conference downtown. How cool is that? I’m going to be talking about how the Army multimedia team is using YouTube, Twitter, Flickr and some of the other tools of social media. Here’s our abstract:

Social Media Is Not One-Size-Fits-All: How To Choose The Right Tool For Your Audience, Your Message, And Your Organization’s Goals

The secret is out – and now many government departments and agencies are considering launching their own YouTube channel or Facebook fan page. But how do you choose which tools are the right ones for your organization?

The Army News team in the Department of National Defence has posted more than 1000 videos to YouTube over the last two years and those videos have been viewed nearly 1.5 million times. Their channel is currently ranked within the top 75 YouTube channels for Canadian news and reporting. They’re also using Twitter, iTunes and Flickr to release information, and have plans to launch a Facebook fan page soon.

Social media is not one-size-fits-all. Not every tool is appropriate for each situation. In this session, you will learn how to choose the right tool for your audience, your message and your organization’s goals.
You’ll also review some common issues to consider when using social media tools in a government environment, including:

* Tweeting in both official languages
* Managing comments – and responding when necessary
* Giving your organization an authentic “voice” and personality through social media
* Developing content that is relevant, interesting and timely

It’s funny to think back to the days when I was first evangelizing social media in the workplace, and how I got an early opportunity to ghost-write our Minister’s blog (that was eventually strangled before birth by the approvals process) largely because I was one of the few people in our organization who had even heard of blogs, let alone who was actually sustaining one. Back in the day, I was really on the cutting edge with this whole government / social media movement. But the year I was at home on maternity leave with Lucas was the year that the social media became mainstream in the government communications community, and I fell out of the loop entirely.

And now I’ve come back full circle. How could I have guessed that my obsession with blogs, tweets and sharing pictures of my boys online would have helped me in my professional career? And how convenient that I learned the ins and outs of Photoshop just a few months before I found myself using it at work.

Funny how life works, isn’t it?

Nova Scotia road trip playlist

I tweeted the other day that I was having fun sorting through iTunes to make a Nova Scotia road trip playlist, and Susan asked me if I’d blog my playlist. Sure, why not?

Except, now that I have a second to do it, iTunes is being persnickety and I can’t get it to open. So I’m going from memory here, but this is the gist of it, all pulled from my existing music collection.

It starts with a whole lot of Great Big Sea. Lukey’s Boat, of course (it’s Lucas’s signature song!) and Ordinary Day and Rant & Roar. Simon’s favourite song is Home for a Rest by Spirit of the West, so that’s in there. Then 7/4 by Broken Social Scene, Feist’s 1234 and Life on Mars by Arcade Fire with David Bowie. The boys love K-OS’s Crabbuckit, so that’s on there. I figured it was high time the boys learned about Rush, so we’ve got Tom Sawyer, Limelight and Spirit of Radio on there. Then things folk up a bit with Gordon Lightfoot (Sundown and If You Could Read My Mind) and Jann Arden with Good Mother. Then Clumsy by Our Lady Peace, and then some Barenaked fun with Pollywog in a Bog from their Snacktime album, and Sarah Maclachlan’s take on Rainbow Connection. I’ve got two from one of my fave bands ever, The Pursuit of Happiness (She’s So Young and I’m an Adult Now) and at least one by the Hip, but damn if I can remember which one I chose.

The only thing I’ve got from this, um, decade is the Young Canadians for Haiti cover of Waving Flag. I’ve also got Tristan’s signature song on there, Loggins and Messina’s Danny’s Song (not really Canadian, I know, but Anne Murray did a cover that’s not as good so I figure that counts.) Representing Montreal, we’ve got Corey Hart’s Sunglasses at Night (don’t judge me) and then a really jarring transition (more Montreal, you say?) into Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah. It was going to finish there, but Simon MacDonald mentioned I need some Stan Rogers on there and he’s so totally right, so I downloaded Barrett’s Privateers and made that the big finish.

Not so much a Nova Scotia playlist as a really random sort through my music library. I had to keep it at that because I’m burning them to CD for the car, or else I’d’ve added some Burton Cummings, Holly Cole Trio, and a little Bryan Adams. I think I’ve got the CanCon spectrum pretty well represented through the last 30 years though, eh?

I’ve still got $6 left in my iTunes account (after I finally got around to replacing my old Purple Rain CD with digital music — yay!!) What do I need to add to round out my Canadiana road trip mix?

Weekend family fun – the Simply Raw Festival

You know how some friends are more like sisters than friends? My friend Candice is like that. She’s been with me for the worst of times (she was the person I called when we got our infertility diagnosis) and the best of times (she was in the room when Tristan was born.)

Candice is also the best cook I know, bar none. She blogs about her adventures with food at Kitchen Mambo, and she’s the one who introduced me to the concept of raw food. Heard of it? At first, I thought eating raw meant eating a lot of carrots and celery, but it’s so much more than that. Eating raw means your food is vegan based (no meat, no dairy — only food from plants) and uncooked and unprocessed, but not necessarily in its original form. In addition to some spectacular salads, I’ve had raw crackers and raw pizza dough at Candice’s place — delicious!

It seems like more effort than I’m currently willing to put into my diet — after all, I’m a girl who has quite recently graduating from simply heating frozen entrees to actually cooking food — but I’m intrigued by the idea. I’m hoping to check out the Simply Raw Festival going on this Saturday in Central Park. From their website:

This year’s Simply Raw festival aims to promote healthy lifestyles through raw vegan food and active living. Our famous raw vegan pie contest will be back for another rawsome year, and the event will also feature a range of seminars on healthy living topics by a number of celebrated speakers from across North America. [It will] bring together local and regional businesses and organizations with healthy living as the core value of their mission, and a range of other exciting activities and events throughout the day.

The highlight of the event is a raw vegan pie contest Participants create desserts using only fresh plant foods, with no cooking allowed. The entries are then judged by local community figures, including Jim Watson, Ron Eade, Paul Dewar, Tony Greco, Robert Fife, and others. The festival also includes about 40-50 exhibitors, including raw food vendors, and organizations and businesses promoting eco-friendly healthy lifestyles.