Sesame Street Live winner!

Congratulations to Julie of Coffee With Julie for winning the Sesame Street Live giveaway. Yay! You’ll be receiving four tickets to the performance this Saturday, January 22 at 11 am.

And for the rest of you, tickets are still on sale through Capital Tickets!

Thank you to Scotiabank Place for sponsoring this fun giveaway, and to everyone who commented with their favourite Sesame Street skits and songs. I’ll have the pinball song rattling around in my head for weeks to come! 🙂

Delurk dammit!

Well, well, well, whaddya know — it’s Delurking Day 2011!

Thanks to Chris at Rude Cactus, lurkers are exposing themselves all over the interwebs. So now I can coerce you — yes, you, the one over there hiding behind the dual 17 inch monitors, don’t think I don’t see you peeking! — to come out into the light.

For goodness sake, people, you freak me out at the grocery store by coming up and introducing yourselves at least a couple of times a year, the least you could do is step out in the comment box and say hello!

(And, to all my more vocal and less lurky visitors — I love you, too! If you want to say hello, go right ahead!)

Delurk, dammit!

Your thoughts on vitamins?

So here’s the thing. Lately, I’ve been feeling like crap. My head is cob-webby and I’m feeling so dragged out and tired that it’s making me cranky. I’ve been trying to get a little more physical activity in, but I’m also freezing cold all the time lately, which combines with the tiredness to make me reluctant to go outside. And there’s only so much exercise to be had walking from the sofa to the kitchen and back. And did I mention the cranky? The lack of focus is killing me, too. Oh look, something shiny over there….

*crickets*

In an epiphianic moment (can I just turn a noun into an adjective like that?) I decided that my iron is probably in the basement, so I should start taking my supplements again. That will help.

That got me thinking about vitamins again, something I keep meaning to look into and never quite get around to doing. I think someone mentioned to me that B vitamins help smooth out the, um, rough edges in your mood. Um, I kind of need to know more about that. Now! I read a couple of labels in the vitamin aisle of the grocery store, but nothing was particularly helpful. I saw a couple of bottles labelled “stress busting” and thought that seemed like a pretty good idea, too. (Who me, stressed? What, just because of the way I’m clenching my jaws until my ears ache and you can see a little too much of the whites of my eyes you think I’m STRESSED?!? *breathe breathe*)

I have never really taken vitamins. I took folic acid when we were thinking about conceiving, and pre-natal vitamins on and off throughout my pregnancies — but mostly off. I was taking vitamin D for a while, because the whole universe seemed to be telling me it was the Right Thing To Do, and I know I need to top up my iron. What else should a 40-ish woman of relative (*touch wood*) health and stamina be taking for preventative and bolstering measures?

So what say ye, Dr Bloggy Peeps? Do you take vitamins? If so, what and why? Medicate me!

Project 365: Week 2

One of my main goals for the 365 project this time around is to take it a little bit less seriously. To that end, I’ve allowed myself a bit of flexibility: if I take four great pictures on Monday and Tuesday ends up being a trainwreck of a day, rather than stress myself out trying to take a picture on Tuesday, I’ll just steal one from Monday. This will be the exception rather than the rule, but it will also ensure that the 365 project is something I enjoy rather than dread. So far, a whole 20 days in, this has already come in handy. And yet, I feel this compelling need to confess it to you, less you are not able to sleep at night after examining the meta-data in my imagery (I swear I’m not looking at you, Angela) and realizing that the picture posted for Wednesday was actually captured on (gasp!) Sunday.

Phew, glad I got *that* off my chest!

And now, some pictures!

We were delighted to discover that the local Chinese food joint prepares what turned out to be the best Chinese food I’ve ever had. In fact, we’ve had to limit ourselves to only having it once a month, cuz left to my own devices we’d have it at least once a week. Totally drool-worthy! It was the neon and the pink interior that engaged me on this picture, and something in it was evocative of a poster called Boulevard of Broken Dreams that I used to have in my room when I was a teenager. Taken with my iPhone.

12:365 Best takeout Chinese food EVER!

Lucas and I were playing kick-the-puck in the driveway when the snow removal crew showed up, to the delight of the curious toddler and his sidekick. It was the light in this one that caught my eye. Also taken with my iPhone.

13:365 Snowplow!

Manotick’s Haunted Mill (you saw this one earlier in the week.)

14:365 The Haunted Mill

A boy and his dog.

14:365 Cabin fever

The treehouse in the back yard on a cold January day. I was trying to capture something more moody, but I couldn’t quite get it right.

16:365 January

The first TtV shot of the new iteration of the 365! This star is part of a dangly ornament that hangs in the kitchen patio door. You would have laughed if you saw me trying to capture this, standing on my tip-toes on a step stool in my kitchen, trying to angle the camera so that I had flat white snow as a background and not the play structure. The diagonal angle is a total fluke that I started out trying to achieve, gave up, and accidentally achieved anyway.

17:365 TtV star

I’ve been admiring this falling-down old silo at the corner of Bankfield and Rideau Valley Drive for ages, and knew it was just a matter of time before it made its way into my photographic repertoire. I took this shot with both my Nikon and my iPhone, and ended up liking the version in my iPhone much better. The frame and processing are from an app called Camera+.

18:365 Old Barn

Another iPhone capture: pine cones against snow. This one uses processing from the Instagram app.

19:365 Pinecones

And finally, your weekly serving of cuteness. Someone got a haircut!

20:365 Someone got a haircut

So I’m thinking this 365 project will be a lot more playful, with plenty of hokey processing from various iPhone apps and retro TtV captures. I think a few of these, the old barn in particular, come dangerously close to being overdone — but I like them anyway.

Ottawa family giveaway: Sesame Street Live at Scotiabank Place!

It’s no secret that we’re long-time fans of Sesame Street – when I searched the term on the blog, I got four pages of posts mentioning it. So when the fine peeps at Scotiabank Place asked if I’d be interested in promoting the new stage production, “Sesame Street Live: Elmo’s Green Thumb,” I was delighted to say yes.

From the press release:

Sunny isn’t just the weather forecast on Sesame Street – it’s also the name of Elmo’s sunflower friend! Join all your favorite friends on an amazing musical adventure as they help Elmo find a new home for Sunny when Sesame Street Live “Elmo’s Green Thumb” performs at Scotiabank Place on Saturday, Jan. 22, 2011 at 11 a.m. and 3 p.m. and Sunday, Jan. 23 at 1 p.m. and 4:30 p.m.

Elmo has raised his sunflower, Sunny, from a seed, but his floral friend has outgrown the flower pot. Elmo and friends find Big Bird’s garden the ideal place for Sunny to flourish and grow but they are too excited to wait. Rather than let Sunny follow nature’s course, Abby Cadabby, Sesame Street’s fairy-in-training, casts a spell to make Sunny grow. The spell does just the opposite and, instead of growing, Elmo and all of his friends shrink. While Abby searches for just the right words to reverse the spell, Elmo, Zoe, Telly and friends explore Big Bird’s garden from a smaller perspective and learn some big lessons about patience, overcoming their fears and appreciating the role that each creature plays in our ecosystem – from dancing ladybugs and beautiful butterflies to grouchy beetles that scavenge the garden floor. Will being small help Sunny grow tall? It’s a fresh, original Sesame Street Live on a whole new scale.

Like television’s Sesame Street, each Sesame Street Live production features timeless lessons for all ages. The universal appeal of each Broadway-quality musical production continues long after preschool. Adults will appreciate the high-tech stagecraft, cleverly written script, and music they’ll recognize and enjoy sharing with children, such as “Ladybug Picnic,” “Inch by Inch” and “I Love Trash.”

Is it sad that I’m ridiculously excited to see two of my favourite Sesame Street songs (Ladybug Picnic and I Love Trash) on the playbill? Could we dare hope to hear What’s the Name of That Song?

This looks like a terrific production, and I’m happy to be able to offer a free set of tickets to the show: a family four pack of tickets in the 100 level to the performance on Saturday January 22 at 11 am. Yay! If you’d like to be entered, leave a comment on this post with either your favourite Sesame Street skit or song. (Here’s a little hint to stir your memory!)

If you would like more information about the show, or if you want to purchase your own tickets, visit the Capital Tickets website.

If you would like to win, here’s the fine print:

  1. The giveaway runs from January 10 to 14, 2011 .
  2. The prize is a family four-pack of tickets to the January 22, 11 am Sesame Street Live show at Scotiabank Place in Ottawa.
  3. To enter, you must leave a comment on this post telling me your favourite Sesame Street skit or song, and leave a valid e-mail address.
  4. I will provide your contact information to a representative from Scotiabank Place, who will arrange for delivery of the prize package directly with you.
  5. Contest closes midnight EST on Friday January 14.
  6. A winner will be selected from all entries using Random.org around noon on Monday January 17, 2011.

Disclosure: I received a promotional set of five tickets to the same show.

Thanks to Scotiabank Place and Sesame Street Live for a most excellent giveaway! Good luck!!

Name that ringtone!

I was poking through my blog feeds and found a link to this neat iPhone app that lets you create a ring tone from any song or sound clip.

I love this! The ring tone I have now is the old nostalgia ringing phone, which I like well enough. I have never been particularly inspired to get a funky ring tone, although I do love the fact that my brother programmed his phone to play Darth Vader’s Imperial March whenever his wife calls. A friend of mine also has the “yip yip yip, brrrrrrrring” guys from Sesame Street for his iPhone, which is what I planned to get when and if I ever got around to it.

But the idea of using ANY song? Wow, that’s an intimidating amount of choices! (Well, technically it’s any DRM-free song, but for the purposes of speculation, let’s assume we can have the rights to anything we choose.) In fact, it’s so much choice that I’m paralyzed by the possibilities and experiencing a complete creative blue-screen-of-death meltdown.

If you could have any song as a ring tone, what would you choose and why?

Ottawa’s Hidden Treasures: Manotick’s Haunted Mill

I may have mentioned that I am newly infatuated with Watson’s Mill, the historical centerpiece of Manotick and barely a few steps’ walk from the new house.

Since we moved in, I’ve been itching to get out there with my camera and simply wander around for a bit. It was Christmas morning, in fact, after everyone had settled in after breakfast to play with their toys and I needed some fresh air, that I finally managed to creep out with my Nikon.

I wandered over the dam and around the grounds, and these frost-patterned windows with their Christmas wreaths caught my eye.

Mill window

It was only later in the weekend that the hair on the back of my neck stood on end when I thought about taking these pictures. I was reading up on the history of Manotick (a post for another day) when I came across references to the haunting of Watson’s Mill. I’d heard about the Mill’s ghost before, and in fact there was even a Haunted Ottawa presentation at the Mill just a couple of days after we moved in, but somehow I’d completely forgotten about it when I was creeping around with my camera in the gloaming.

The more I read, the more fascinated — and unnerved — I became. Do you know the story of Ottawa’s most haunted place?

Foggy Mill

The Mill was built in 1860 by partners Moss Dickenson and Joseph Currier. It’s one of the few remaining operational grist mills (it uses the current of the Rideau River to grind wheat into flour) in North America. Shortly after it was built, Joseph Currier met his second bride-to-be, Anne Crosby, in Lake George, New York. She had never been to Manotick, and after their January 1861 wedding and month-long honeymoon, he brought her home to celebrate the Mill’s first year of operation. It was March 11, 1861 — almost 150 years to this very day.

By all accounts, Anne was delighted with her new husband and new home. On her first day in Manotick, Currier brought his new bride to show off the Mill. As she was ascending the stairs to the second floor, her long, hooped crinoline got caught in a piece of machinery, and she was flung against a support post and killed instantly.

Currier never set foot in the Mill nor Manotick again. He went on to become a Member of Parliament, and eight years later married his third wife, the granddaughter of Philemon Wright. He commissioned a house be built for her as a wedding gift, and called it Gorffwysfa, Welsh for “place of rest.” The address? 24 Sussex Drive.

As for poor Anne, she never left the Mill. Visitors to the Mill report chills and goosebumps when they mount the stairs to the second floor on even the hottest summer days.

When I read this account, from an undated Ottawa Citizen story, the hair stood up not just on my neck but all the way down my arms, too.

But in 1980, two boys were walking across the dam beside the mill, the old lamps along the pathway giving off a pale, yellow glow in the deepening twilight. As they approached the mill, they heard a noise from above, like someone falling. They looked up to see a woman in a long skirt, standing at the window watching them. They froze. The ghostly figure tilted her head, and the boys grabbed each other and ran. Keeping their eyes on the window, they saw Ann slip away, and then reappear in the next window, following them.

Over the years, Ann has been seen more often. She’s become possessive of her mill, and doesn’t like things changed. If tour guides move anything, they’ll come in the next day to find it moved back to where Ann wants it.

Her footsteps, pacing along the second floor, are getting louder. Some people say it’s because she knows her secret is out, so she doesn’t have to hide in the darkness anymore.

But in the cold winter months, when the mill is closed to visitors, Ann gets lonely. She comes out, sometimes walking along the front of the mill, but mainly watching people from her favorite window by the pathway.

If you walk by, late on a winter night, you can sometimes hear her low, mournful voice, calling to the people below.

Since I read this account, I’ve been back to the Mill a couple of times. I won’t stop wandering around, and I won’t stop pointing my lens at it. In fact, it’s on the route of my favourite Manotick walk.

13:365 The Haunted Mill

But I find myself cringing, trying very hard not to hear anything out of the ordinary as I cross the dam and mount the steps beside the Mill, willfully concentrating on the snow-covered steps and not the old Mill with its second-floor windows looming over me.

And when I do take my pictures, I won’t look too carefully through the viewfinder, either, lest I catch a glimpse of poor Anne Crosby Currier, lost 150 years ago.

Tristan helps out

So I haven’t quit the sequel edition of the 365 yet, although I’ve thought about it. Really, who the hell let me commit to this while I was still in vacation mode? It’s EASY to get a shot a day when you don’t have pesky WORK taking up eight hours of each day. Yeesh.

The good news is, Tristan’s got my back. The other day, he dug out his Little Tykes digital camera, a gift from several Christmases ago that has been languishing in a drawer with dead batteries for, um, a long time.

“Can we put new batteries in this?” he asked me. “I want to help you with your 372.”

And good parent that I am, I was able to turn that into a teachable moment. I explained to him that I call it a 365 project because there are 365 days in a year. But did you know, I continued, that there are actually more than 365 days in a year, but just a little more, which is why we have a leap year every four years. Except of course, years which are divisible by 100, which skip the rule. In fact, even those small accounting measures will mean that over the course of 8,000 years, we’ll still lose an entire day, but the vernal equinox will shift by an as-yet unknown amount, so we don’t have to worry about the potential Y2K-like chaos that will ensue from that eventuality just yet.

(Yeah, his eyes glazed over right about then, too. I really have to learn when to turn it off, don’t I?)

Anyway, I was delighted to have stirred up enough enthusiasm for photography in my almost nine-year-old that he wanted to play along on my photo-a-day project. Once I loaded him up with some fresh batteries, he went about the house capturing images of his brothers, his Super Mario stuffies, and a retreating dog.

He was composing a picture of the about-to-be-served dinner on the table when he said, “I call this one ‘delicious dinner.'”

I heard a noise somewhere between a guffaw and a groan from behind me, and Beloved said, “Oh my god, now he’s naming his compositions? I blame you.”

I’m okay with that. 🙂

It’s baaaaaack – the return of Project 365!

I feel like there should be theme music to this post, but I can’t decide if it’s a triumphant fanfare or something more ominous. Yes, it’s true, I’m back on the Project 365 bandwagon again.

I’ve been considering it for a while. The Thousand Picture project was great, but there wasn’t enough pressure for me to take a daily picture and I’d gone weeks without lifting my camera when things got truly hectic from September to November. (And man am I glad I wasn’t doing a 365 during those months because truly? I never would have made it through.)

Another reason that I faltered a bit with my pictures, I think, is that during most of my 365 I worked downtown in what is probably the most photogenic area of the city, smack dab in the middle of Parliament Hill and the Byward Market. I mean really, I could point my camera in just about any direction on my way to or from work and come away with a good image. And while my current office is a million times more convenient, it’s an equally exponential amount less photogenic.

Conveniently, however, I just happened to have recently moved to an incredibly photogenic neighbourhood, with a house that is bathed in delicious natural light. So I traded photogenic work for photogenic home — that seems fair!

And, that was about all the encouragement I needed. Well, that and the convenience of taking, processing and posting photos through my precious iPhone.

So, here we are again. I think this 365 will be a little more, um, relaxed than the previous one. As in, a picture will be posted every day, but there may be days when the picture was actually taken a few days before. My project, my rules! Also, I will not be quite so hard on myself when it comes to what makes a “worthy” picture of the day. They don’t all have to be masterpieces, and in fact, I’m looking for more simple documentation than fine art this time around, especially when time is short.

Last but not least, I didn’t think the regular blog fodder would hurt. I missed posting my daily pictures in weekly round-ups. Once I decided that yes, I was indeed silly enough to embark on this adventure yet again, I counted back and realized I’d posted a shot every day since December 23, so I gave myself a 11-day head start. Now I’ve only got 354 days to go!

Always start with the cute, the rest will follow:

1:365 Cuz they're so cute

From the Christmas Eve photo project:

2:365 8 hrs of Christmas 1 pm

This was the picture that finally swayed me into deciding to try this again. Expect to see copious amounts of Watson’s Mill pictures here in the coming months!

3:365 Dam at Watson's Mill, Manotick

This one caught me by surprise. I was coming up the stairs from the basement just as the sun was setting, shining through the front door and making shadows of both the wreath on the outside and the hanging decorations on the inside. This is almost straight out of the camera.

5:365 Sun setting on another Christmas

This is the locomotive at the Museum of Science and Technology. I have taken dozens of pictures of this thing over the years and liked none of them — and the one I adore was a quick snap with my iPhone. Go figure!

6:365 At the SciTech museum

Taken through my bedroom window! Chickadees on a lilac bush. You think I can train them to eat seed from our hands?

7:365 Chickadees

More Watson’s Mill. I waited for about 15 minutes in the early morning cold, watching from the bridge and hoping the clouds would obscure the sun in just this manner!

8:365 Winter sunrise over Watson's Mill

My mother’s holiday table. I loved the greens, and the soft focus. One of those “just because” shots that makes me happy when I look at it.

9:365 Holiday dinner

More cuteness!

11:365 Bathrobe boy

These, plus a couple of other pictures I’ve already blogged about in the past week or so, are the beginning of what I hope is 365 days of new challenges and moments captured.

Here we go again!

Two tales of customer service done right

This is the story of two companies, one big and one small, that impressed me over the holiday break. I think businesses get a lot of flack when they do poorly, but not nearly enough props when they get it right.

On the Monday after Christmas, I walked into the Manotick Village Butcher looking for some ground beef for meatloaf. I am so impressed with their locally grown, ethically and sustainably raised meat that I will now do most of my shopping at the grocery store while making a special trip there for the meat. And it’s close and convenient enough that I can just pop in to get the meat fresh on the day I need it, rather than thawing out freezer-burned hunks and having to plan ahead.

Well, when I walked in there last Monday, I was temporarily flummoxed to see the place dark, with nothing in the display cases. I cast a surprised glance at James (I’m pretty sure he’s the owner) and said, “What happened?” thinking they had suffered some sort of power outage.

“It’s Monday,” he replied. “We’re closed on Mondays.” Oh right, closed on Mondays. I knew that, but completely lost track of my days during the holiday break. “What are you looking for?” he asked.

I told him I was looking for some ground beef, and he said he had some in the back. He returned with the meat and as he dropped it on the counter in front of me, I reached for my purse. “Oh, don’t worry about it,” he said. When I protested, he replied, “No, really, it’s okay. We were just going to freeze it and use it for cooking anyway.”

Isn’t that great? Small-town service with a smile. And, he’s a photographer, too. Have you seen this set of Canada Post stamps featuring historic mills of Canada? James took the portrait of Watson’s Mill featured on one of the stamps. Pretty cool, eh?

The second story is one of customer service gone wrong, and then right. In November, we bought a Whirlpool 70-pint dehumidifier for the basement from Canadian Tire. In mid-December, we went to unplug it and the third prong of the plug stayed in the wall. All the paperwork that came with the dehumidifier said, “Do not bring this product back to the retailer. Call this number for service.” So I called that number, and was told I’d need the original receipt for service. Which was lost. That was thick in the middle of the failing furnace and mould remediation and what seemed like an endless stream of injustices, and a $380 dehumidifier rendered useless by a $3 plug was the icing on the cake.

That’s when I found out that if you pay for an item at Canadian Tire with your interac card and you bring your bank statement to customer service, they can recreate your receipt for you. It took about a week and a half, but it was better than throwing the money down the toilet.

So, new receipt in hand, I called the third-party company that handles Whirlpool’s dehumidifier repairs back and re-explained the whole story to them again. By now it was three days before Christmas, and the basement repairs had mostly been done and we were twitchy to get our dehumidifier working again. We’re pretty sure the issues that had caused the mould were fixed, but the humidity in the basement is still on the high side.

I pleaded for quick service, and was told someone would get back to me to arrange a service date soon. Shortly after that, I received a rather apologetic e-mail from the clerk to whom I had been speaking, saying that the warranty did not cover the plug. They could ship a replacement cord at cost, but it would be at my expense and I’d have to repair it myself.

I think steam actually came out of my ears as I was re-dialing the service telephone number. I got a third person, and after I re-re-explained the whole thing, she put me on hold for a very long time while she read up on the file from her end. Then she came back and said, “Well, that doesn’t seem right.” We agreed on how not right it seemed that I’d be out nearly $400 for a $3 part on a six week old dehumidifier. She told me her name was Emilia, and that she was personally going to make this right for me. She called me three more times over the next week, updating me as she escalated my claim first to her supervisor and then to Whirlpool itself. Long story a wee bit shorter, the part has been ordered and someone will be dropping by to install it in the next week or so.

Isn’t it great when someone gets the customer service thing right?