The school festivities

The other day I mentioned the Christmas recitals and school functions in which our granddaughters are participating. Here are a few pictures of the school performances:

The kids and their teachers all did a wonderful job.

Merry Christmas!!

A busy time

It's been a number of days since my last post.

I'm sure that I'm not alone at being busy during this time of year. My "busyness" comes mostly from running a home-based, one-person business. My wife does all the shopping and baking (2nd Pulla installment today - see previous post). I don't like shopping - she loves it. Whatever few presents I buy usually come via the internet. Throughout the year, my wife is always looking out for gifts to give on various occasions, so we usually have our Christmas gifts assembled well before the shopping season starts.

As it is, our social calendar is also full until the end of the year, what with family and friends hosting little get-togethers, the grandchildrens' school and recital performances, etc. It is a joyful time. tempered to some degree by Derek's illness.

My wife and I wish all who read this blog a Very Merry Christmas, and a Happy New Year, and, especially, Good Health.

Kitchen in Action

Some time ago, I wrote about our "old-fashioned" kitchen, which produces much of the food we eat when the family gets together. With the festive season coming up, we'll have another occasion to enjoy each other's company - and food, of course, will be a major part of that.

Over the many years we have developed some "family traditions". One of them is that my wife's expertise in cooking and baking has made her the "authority" to bake "Pulla" - a Finnish bread. It's meant to be served with afternoon coffee or tea, but it goes very well with our dinners, too. My wife learned the recipe from her mother. She makes some of it for most of our get-togethers, and so she did again.

Here are some pictures of the process of making it:


























This is just the first "installment" - these loaves are gifts to other family members. There will be more (yummy, yummy!). It's a lot of work, and a labour of love. The Pulla is especially appreciated by our family members who have an issue with diabetes - they are slightly sweetened with "Splenda" (an artificial sweetener). The recipe calls for some sugar instead, but this tastes just as wonderful.

My wife knows what goes into the Pulla - and it's not preservatives or other "shelf-life-enhancing" ingredients. To preserve them, we freeze them until they are served. I don't think that you could buy these at any of the commercial bakeries or food stores.

This whole process is perhaps a bit "old-fashioned", but that's what you get out of an old-fashioned kitchen.

Pineapple Express.

As mentioned previously, the Pineapple Express arrived, and melted all the snow in about a day. The snowman is but a couple of snowblobs left on the grass Here are the effects:















The ghost of the snowman.






















The pineapple express works fast - all the snow is gone.
Right now, it looks like we're nearing the end of the current pineapple express, with a break after all the rain.


Here's a break between systems rolling in from the Pacific:




fire in the sky











sunset on the clouds

The snow

"Collecting" the parts



















It's a "biggy"













Taking shape















And... here's the snowman




Well, all the snow in the last couple of days has put our family into the "holiday" mood. The granddaughters decided to build a snowman - and help with the other activity which my wife decided was to take place: setting up the Christmas tree. So the kids did their thing (see above), and (below) you see the results of the "indoor" effort. Of course, as I anticipated, I had to shovel enough snow to allow for safe pedestrian passage near our house.

We'll enjoy the scenery outside today, because tomorrow the "pineapple express" is slated to arrive all the way from Hawaii, with temperatures going up to 13 degrees Centigrade. We expect up to 50mm of rain here. It'll be a mess, and with all the melting snow blocking the drains and adding to the rain, some flooding is expected in the low areas. But, that's normal around here - we don't often get a "white Christmas".






Here's the tree - it'll be here to enjoy for the next several weeks.

It's arrived

In good old European tradition, my wife put up the "Advent Calendars", each with 24 little presents attached - for our granddaughters. Each granddaughter will open one present per day, until the 24th of December, at which time we have our family Christmas celebration, with dinner and the giving of Christmas presents. So today, being the first day of December, both opened their first-day present.

The advent calendars themselves are needle-point, made especially for our granddaughters by a very good friend who lives in California. The calendars will always remind us of her - what a wonderful effort to make for "the kids".


Well, the snow which was predicted, and which announced its coming a couple of days ago, has arrived. Some time ago I speculated that the birds would be very happy with the "yellow apples" hanging on our neighbours' tree. Today, that came true.










Here's the snow















...and the birds are having a feast.

A sign of winter

On clear autumn days, we get an excellent indication of how close winter is by looking out our window and taking notice of the snow line on our local mountains. Right now, the line is "descending" and is not too far above the elevation at which our house is located. This likely means that I'll be shovelling snow in a few days.

Of course, the snow line will have its "ups and downs" . In our area, being located more-or-less on the shores of the Pacific Ocean, weather patterns often bring a surge of warm and moist air from as far away as Hawaii, or even the South Pacific - which usually means rain. So this line is likely to move up and down in the coming weeks. Of course, as spring approaches, the line will "ascend" in a similar manner.

Well, regardless of what is heralded, it's just "plain beautiful" (is this an oxymoron?)

Lucky Moonrise

Every now-and-then, you happen to "catch" a fleeting moment of something natural going on, which makes you exclaim "wow - come and have a look at this!" This is what I said to my wife at approximately 5:30 pm, when I happened to look out of our living room window (actually looking for the Moon, because I knew that it should be visible in the northeast at that time). The Moon was just coming up behind our local mountains, and at the time it was still partially obscured. This is an enlargement of the moon in the picture below.











It only takes a couple of minutes for the Moon to "clear" the mountains, so I caught it just in time. This is the original image, taken with a 200mm zoom lens on a Canon XT camera.

Sometimes you get lucky.

Faster today

The new portable internet modem which I talked about yesterday seems to be running faster today. I've found a location in my office which makes 4 of the LED's come on, which, as I still think, means a stronger wireless signal. There may also be a more complete routing table for me in the system, and, of course, cashing of visited pages also contributes.

All in all, things seem to be working pretty well. More impressions about this when I've had more use of the new system.

Well, ok, it works

I've had some consistency problems with Shaw's cable internet service, which Derek and I share via a wireless router. Lately, the service has been unavailable about half of the time. I've become frustrated enough to set up a "portable internet" account with Rogers. To this end, I purchased a wireless modem (this one made by Motorola) which is the central component necessary to connect to Rogers portable internet services.

The company which actually sold this modem to me is one of three or four in the Metrotown mall which are Rogers representatives. They appeared to be the only ones who had this modem in stock. They went through the routines to set up and activate my new account right on the premises. I took the modem home, unwrapped it, and plugged it into the wall, and connected the included RJ45 connecting cable to my wireless router. You can also connect your wireless modem directly to your computer if you're not running a network.

Astonishingly, there were no setup instructions or manuals included. I'm tech-savvy, and got the internet connection going after experimenting for about an hour. The reason for experimenting (aside from the lack of instructions) was that there is no information regarding how this modem handles IP addressing - DHCP or static addressing, which exact addresses, defaults, etc. - all necessary for successful internet communication. I can't see how anyone unfamiliar with the ins-and-outs of computer communications can easily get this going. An easy installation is claimed on the wrapper of the box in which the modem was packaged (see picture).







the wrapper



















the wirelss modem (indicator lights at the top)










In order to use Outlook Express for email (email is one of the "killer apps" for which many people get involved with the internet in the first place) you need certain information, such as mail server names, port usage, etc., none of which was included with the package. This information is "Rogers-specific" in this case, because I'm using Rogers as an Internet Service Supplier (ISP - see image above). The modem wrapper bears Rogers' label but that information was not immediately at hand.

Today, I dug a little deeper into setting up Outlook Express (OE). Since a number of parameters in OE need to be set up for email, and since these parameters depend to some considerable degree on the "characteristics" of the ISP, this information needed to come from Rogers. So, I phoned their technical support, and, after going through an automated response system (using voice phrase recognition) I talked to a real person. This person (I think his name is Dave) supplied all the necessary information, as well as the requisite expertise, to get the email setup up and running. He spent 31 minutes with me making sure that things were working according to how I wanted my system to work. Dave is the kind of technical support person seldom available nowadays. Many companies get a bad press for poor customer service, but this is an instance which illustrates what customer service should be. Kudos to Rogers for this one.

Well, what's the bottom line? The system works, but it's not a fast as the ads want you to believe. Now, a fair number of external factors affect the performance of your internet experience - number of users online, bandwidth available, your own computer, etc. In my case, I think that signal strength (like that of a radio station) may be an issue.

The wireless modem has five unlabelled indicator lights (see image above). I have yet to find out what they indicate, but I theorize that they indicate signal strength. Only one light on may indicate low strength, five on may mean maximum strength. After moving the modem to various spots in my office, I could only come up with a maximum of three indicator lights turning on. So perhaps this means a kind of "medium strength" signal, which might have an effect on performance. I must emphasize that this is my theory only - I stand to be corrected.

The nice thing about this whole approach is that you're independent of the "hard-wired" (phone lines or cable) systems. If some car runs into a pole, or some thief steals some copper cable, you're still in operation. A big point is the fact that this system is portable - if you really want to have complete internet connectivity elsewhere (in your car, say) and you want to use your current computer and its files, and the wireless modem, you don't need to change any settings, and you can just carry on as though you are in your office (for this to work, you've got to take the wireless modem with you into the car). Of course you could always buy a Blackberry, or the new iPod Touch.

I wonder what my long-term feelings about this system will be - I'll let you know in time.

Ode to our kitchen

We subscribe to both the Vancouver Sun and to the weekend edition of the Globe and Mail newspapers. The VS spplies us with topical, local news - the GaM has an interesting editorial page and also three commentators who we both like equally (I've always wondered about that word: should it not be commentors ? We don't "commentate", we comment) - Margaret Wente, Jeffrey Simpson, and Rex Murphy. Of these, I'm making a special reference to Margaret Wente here.





The image shows Margaret Wente's article, as scanned from the Globe and Mail - click on it to read.











In this weekend's edition, she writes about designer kitchens and refers to her own cluttered and old-fashioned one, much like our own kitchen here (see below). Her point is that many of the designer kitchens are "showpieces" only, they are often not used for the kind of family cooking which we all enjoy and have the privilege to have access to.







Our own kitchen - it is as old as our house. The electrical appliances are newer, but were bought to match the needs of such a "working" kitchen. Many times, it has fed all of us when we had family gatherings at our house (see below).





I have had a number of occasions to see working kitchens in houses where really good cooks do their thing; they all look like ours. As you know from my previous post, I have a wife who really does know how to cook - this kitchen is her domain. I stay out of it - my cooking prowess is limited to toasting bread and boiling eggs. I will fix any of the appliances if they break down, and will also repair whatever plumbing needs work, though.


Here's some of the crowd which is often fed by my wife's cooking, produced in our "old-fashioned" kitchen. Our family dinners are sumptuous, with additional contributions from our son and daughter-in-law, my sister and sister-in-law, brothers-in-law, extended family and family friends., all of whom produce their food in kitchens just like ours.



Let's hear it for the "working kitchen"!

It's for the birds

Today, as forecast, has turned into one of those dreary, dark, and grey Pacific Northwest rainy days. So, any deviation from the dark greens and grays surrounding us falls readily into one's eye.

Our neighbours have tree in their yard which has lost all its leaves (naturally, it's November), but is hanging on to its fruits, as it does every year. My wife says that they are yellow apples - I wouldn't know; my botanical knowledge is very limited. My impression leans more towards Japanese oranges. In any case, they are very distinct (see the left picture, above, taken with a 300mm lens through our living room window). If you take a closer look at the centre of that image, you'll notice one of them with it's innards hollowed out (enlarged image on the right). I'm sure its the work of the local bird population.

We do have a number of resident species which are not deterred by our (usually quite mild) winters - crows, seagulls, pidgeons, sparrows, etc. I'm sure they appreciate the availability of food sources like that during this time of year.

So, because our neighbour usually leaves these fruits on the tree, he's doing something for the environment - it's for the birds.

Side effects

Derek's having a less than stellar day today. He is in the middle of his third chemo treatment. Airdrie says that he's just beat, and has spent the day in bed.

We saw him yesterday, after he came home from the hospital from his bi-weekly infusions there. He was feeling ok at that time. Today and tomorrow he is still connected to the "take-home" drip, I suppose that's what's causing his discomfort right now. I always think of chemotherapy as "controlled poisoning" - it's really a course way to attack cancer cells. It's the only reliable method we know of, though. Much research is under way to be able to "fine tune" these treatments - looking for the magic bullet, if you like.

The B.C. Cancer Agency is in the forefront of this research. It needs all the support it can get.