Well, despite the drama of the National Day of Protest, we made our way to Montreal yesterday. When we heard about the protest late Thursday, we quickly booked a bus and left at 12:30AM, instead of on the train. Good thing, as the blockade started early, and even the bus was diverted. We arrived at around 9:30AM, 2.5 hours behind schedule. Tired, but no worse for wear.
Yep, Montreal. My secret is no more. Actually, DW figured it out this week where we were going… sigh.
Glad we made it today, because we had tickets for Pink Martini tonight, and we DID NOT want to miss it.
(It was awesome… stay tuned for the ‘mini-review’, for now, I have to go sleep… so tired…)
EDIT: As this is my only post for this day, I would like to note that at 6:00PM on “iDay” I was sitting in the concert hall listening to Pink Martini open their concert with Ravel’s “Bolero” and NOT obsessively surfing the web for iPhone launch news.
I started an update log so that you can see what changes I’ve been making to my blog as I go along. I actually started it last month when I had to re-install my whole blog because I was hacked by what I now understand to be an infamous Turkish hacker. Grr. Anyway, it was benign, thankfully, in that all my data was untouched, simply the front page was modified. That’ll teach me to leave my file permissions wide open. Duh.
In the log, you’ll see some of the details of what I’ve installed, and what I’ve tweaked. The most recent change is my Twitter now includes all the updates my ‘friends’ are making, so it might seem odd that I’m giving all this space to other people on my blog. Well, I say, the more the merrier. This is about conversation, so why not eavesdrop on some other conversations while you’re here, right? At first, I was hesitant about Twitter. After all, why would total strangers want to know about what you were doing? In 140 characters or less? As dbush put it so eloquently:
TWITTER –> washing hands.
–> blowing nose
Yes. Well, there is that. But more often than not you get a little slice of life from somebody that can be quite interesting. And people from around the globe as well. Not only that, but twitter itself is evolving. The use of the “@” symbol to denote a response to someone else’s tweet has turned into a bona fide way of having a chat through twitter. Rather than just talking into empty space, you can and will get replies and responses to what you tweet about.
That’s why I’ve changed the sidebar. You can get a taste of what’s going on in my twitter network, and maybe you’ll want to join up too. Fabulously addictive, but you can spend as much or as little time as you like.
I also recommend using Twitterific for tweeting, if you’re on OS X 10.4 and up. Just try it, you’ll like it.
When I was a kid, growing up in Mississauga, I didn’t walk to school. School was strictly a busing affair. Or I’d get dropped off. But after school, I’d get on my bike and ride around the subdivision, but never really go too far, or else I’d be riding on a major street. Welcome to suburbia. We had AC, I liked to stay in and play computer games or Colecovision (ooh, there’s a blast from the past), so I didn’t experience the ability to wander the city growing up in the late 70s and 80s. I didn’t move to the city until midway into my twenties and married, but it was a definite decision that we made to stay in the city and not live in the suburbs. Even with children, we sought out a house that was in town. It’s hard to talk about being in the city, since T.O. is so huge, but I guess if you can say that you’re serviced by transit, you’re in the city… Anyway, it’s only a 15 minute drive to the downtown core, no traffic. Which is only on Sunday. But not in the summer, because of the countless marathons, parades, road construction, etc. Anyway. We qualify as city dwellers, the new urbanites.
Living in the city with two kids, one of whom is about to start school, we have the luxury of being able to walk to the school, right around the corner. Literally. We don’t have to cross the street to get there, which I think is great. Our street is very family oriented, with lots of “eyes on the porches” and it’s something that I’m not used to, but I cherish. If each street becomes a little community, I think our whole city would be a lot safer. But it’s a dream, I guess. There are few real neighbourhoods any more. Hopefully, as more people choose to live in the city, the neighbourhood will see a resurgence.
well, I got the nicest email from the people at flock letting me know that the feature I wanted was now included in the new beta release of flock. SO… being the early adopter that I am, I downloaded it. I’m now blogging with the new version. Hope it works! If you haven’t checked it out yet, it’s an awesome browser. It integrates your blogging with flickr with RSS with pretty much anything. Check it out if you don’t mind a beta.
Edit: in a word, wow! It looks so much better, and it works great! Faster, much more useable! I think I might just switch completely!
A glorious day spent outside picking strawberries and enjoying the sunshine! What could be finer? Well, maybe NOT having to take both of them to the port-a-potty one after the other… that I could have done without… but anyway… mmmm… strawberries!
I am the dad of two girls, a husband, and a Mac Nerd.
I work two part time jobs as a music pastor and recording engineer, and do photography on the side. I often feel like a jack-of-all trades, master of none.
This is my place to geek out.
watching DW and friend race Mario Kart Wii 6 hrs ago
over at a friends house with the kids. Successful strawberry picking excursion completed. 8 hrs ago
having a 1.5 yo and a 6 mo over to our house reminded us of exactly why we don't want to have any more kids. You tend to forget with age. :) 12 hrs ago
