A close paradise

Last week, we spent a few days with good friends on Saltspring Island. They have a wonderful house located near the top of a ridge, overlooking the waterways between some of the Gulf Islands.

They are great cooks, so we had some excellent meals. There were only the four of us - it was a "cozy" visit.

I took my Celestron C-8 telescope along, and, since the weather co-operated, we had a great view of the planet Saturn with its rings and moons, globular and open star clusters, and much more. The sky in the area is relatively free of light pollution, even though the "light domes" of Vancouver to the east and Victoria to the south were noticeable.

The ferry trips themselves were like "microcruises"; we tend forget how beautiful BC is - a paradise close by.

Some pictures:
Saltspring

A summer day

Today would have been Derek's 44th birthday. This is always a somewhat sad day for us. But we've also had some good experiences in the last couple of weeks.

Our older granddaughter won an award for being the top English student in her grade level. She now moves up one grade and, in three years, will be graduating from high school. Our younger granddaughter graduated from elementary school. She also won a general service award, and, in addition, a once-a year school award for exceptional volunteering and helping teachers and students. Her sister received the same special award two years ago. Starting in the fall, both will be attending the same school again.

Yesterday, we spent a lovely afternoon at my wife's sister's friend's house (how about three apostrophes in a row?), enjoying the warm, sunny afternoon on a very nice and secluded sun deck. I was the only man among five attractive and intelligent ladies; what more can a guy ask for? Clarification: the fifth lady was my imaginary mistress who looks just like my wife.

Today, we've been sitting in our back yard all afternoon, had a few glasses of wine, and raised a couple of toasts in our son's memory. It's now 8:40pm, we're still sitting here, and it's 30 degrees C (86F). A beautiful day, the rather warm temperature is rare for our area, though.

The "Fixer"

A couple of days ago, a few of these mushrooms appeared in our "lawn" (mostly clover, as you can see). Mushrooms appear every year there, and they have an important function: they are a catalyst in atmospheric nitrogen transformation for use by plant and tree roots. This is a two-way street. The mushrooms, in turn, benefit by having access to plant sugars and nutrients.

Here's the nitrogen "fixation" cycle, as taken from Google images:

As shown, there are other plants which do this kind of "work". In our case, the mushrooms shown above are located in the roots of our cherry tree - maybe we'll get some of those cherries later on in the year, before the birds rob them all.

A vacation

We went to San Diego a couple of weeks ago to visit good friends, and returned last Tuesday. There was a bit of jealousy on our part regarding the weather here. While we were going through the normal for this time of year cloudy-sunny-cloudy-and even rainy regimen for San Diego's shorelines, the weather here was summer. On top of that, we both contracted some nasty cough (I even had a bout with fever). We're still battling that now, on the long weekend. Sometimes you wonder whether our aging bodies are telling us to stay at home and deal with germs they know, rather than fight new "enemies".

Well, we'll resist that notion.

A life together

Yesterday, my wife and I celebrated our 48th wedding anniversary. Through all those years, we've never lost our love for each other, through joys, adversities, and family tragedies. Our relationship is built on trust, mutual respect, and love. 

We were in the company of our daughter-in-law and our two granddaughters, the three people in our family who are closest to us. The five of us had a very nice dinner at the Cactus Club at Metrotown. It was a "gentle" celebration.

Happy Easter

We have a nice, sunny weekend ahead of us. Since it's Easter, today (Friday) is a holiday for most people, and Monday is another semi-official one. Many provinces don't observe Monday, though.

We have plans to take the granddaughters to the Museum of Anthropology at UBC and also to have  lunch at the "Flying Beaver" -  a Harbour Air floatplane/pub combination on the banks of the Fraser River arm south of Vancouver International Airport.

The cherry blossoms are about to burst out on our street as well. It looks like spring may have finally sprung.

A Sunny Day

Today is Sunday, with a clear, blue sky, and sunny. It's beautiful, and we intend to go for a walk to soak up some of those rays.

In another way, the memories today are not so sunny: today is the second anniversary of our son Derek's living wake (http://www.penmachine.com/2011/03/my-living-wake). At that point, Derek had exactly two months to live; we didn't know this, of course. So today, we also remember that it is exactly twenty-two months since he died.

We'll raise a toast or two regarding these events in our lives, and as a thank you to our extended family and all the friends who helped us deal with those. We miss Derek, but we also have proud memories of him - he made a difference in many peoples' lives.

If you wish to do so, you can also leave comments on the memorial page at http://www.legacy.com/guestbook/vancouversun/guestbook.aspx?n=derek-miller&pid=150846264

Life goes on.

One more year

Our family's Christmas arrangements were geared to the young ones in family, as usual. We also had the family annual Christmas dinner at our sister-in-law's, also as usual. Our son Derek and brother-in-law Ray were missed by all, they both died of cancer within the last two years. There will always be a bittersweet memory of them. Our grandchildren in the family were the stars of the show - and reminded us all that family comes first.

My wife and I flew to San Diego after Christmas to attend the 50th wedding anniversary of close friends, and to celebrate the New Year with many more good friends, all of whom we've known for many years. It seems that it doesn't matter how much time has passed since we last saw each other - it is always as though it was just yesterday. Here, too, we raised a toast to the memories of friends who departed this earth recently.

We had the additional pleasure of attending a "tribute to Vienna" concert performed by the San Diego symphony. It was a world-class performance and a fitting end to our quick trip.

At our stage in life, we must enjoy the days as they come.

Another November

 The days are getting shorter, we are staying in our cozy home more often. I've had to do battle with my iMac; after it took more and more time to execute programs and commands. In the end, it took almost twenty minutes to boot up. After reading up on possible causes, erasing and reformatting the hard drive, and not making any progress, I finally fund out that this was an issue of the hard drive "deteriorating", and that Apple had acknowledged this was a "recall" issue. Apparently they have a program to replace the drive at no charge (my iMac was purchased two years ago).

So, I took the computer to the Metrotown Apple store. The service technician proceeded with a hardware testing program, which confirmed the drive problem. A work slip showing a "no charge" procedure was issued. I left the computer at the store, and was told it would ready in one or two days.

Imagine my disgust when I got a phone call a little while later informing me that the drive would not be replaced at no cost - it would cost about $280.- The reason was apparently that the hard drive was a Western Digital make instead of a Seagate model. I told the person phoning me that the hard drive was the original drive, and that this (what I thought of as a 'bait-and-switch") message left a bad taste about Apple in my mind. Since the computer was essentially useless, I reluctantly agreed to pay.

About half an hour later, I got another call from Apple - they would replace the drive under the recall procedure after all. So, I say that Apple "put the customer first" - and they deserve credit for that. It also restored my faith in the company - I'm going to be buying another portable computer soon - and Apple will be in the running.

Another notable event for us was a presentation by Dr. Sara Seager, Professor of Planetary Science and Physics at MIT. Dr. Seager is a Canadian, and one of the world's leading researchers in the theory, detection, and characterization of exoplanets. She talked about her work on Exoplanets and the Search for Habitable Worlds and how close we may be to detect possible evidence of some sort of life on an earthlike planet circling another star. There were about 300 people in attendance, ranging from young to not-so-young. Many questions were asked, especially by the young folks; Dr. Seager obviously discussed the subject at the appropriate level. My wife is only peripherally interested in Astronomy, but she said that she learned quite a bit about this subject and liked the presentation a lot. 

The event was sponsored by Simon Fraser University and the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada (of which I am a life member), and took place at SFU's Goldcorp Centre in the newly redesigned Woodward Building downtown. 

November is ending, Christmas is around the corner, and the young ones in our family are looking forward to it. This year seems to have gone in a flash.

Returning to Regular

The weather change this month is obvious. After a long period of sunny weather, the usual rainy and damp fall season has put us back to the normal fall environment. My business has kept me reasonably busy, we had our somewhat delayed Thanksgiving family dinner a couple of weeks ago. My wife and I have gone out to several of our favourite restaurants for lunch or dinner.

Tonight, our daughter-in-law has a Halloween party, and we'll make an appearance. It's nice to be living next door.

Life is returning to regular routines.

Summmer's end

This summer has been very nice, weatherwise, even though our brother-in law died a couple of months ago. We did some traveling, visiting good friends on Saltspring and in San Diego. It was a tonic to get over the family misfortunes of the last couple of years.

I purchased a new Canon model 60Da Digital SLR camera body recently. It is designed for astronomical photography (the "a" in the model number).  The old lenses I have for my Canon Rebel XT fit this camera and the adapters for the old "threaded" Pentax lenses work as well. The new camera also works well for standard daylight photography.

Here are a couple of samples:

A quick star image taken from our light-polluted back yard and processed to suppress that pollution. The only stars I could see with my eyes through this light pollution were the bright one at the top and the next brightest one near the upper right corner. The camera caught the other stars in this 10-second exposure.

A bee looking for more nectar from a flower pot on our back deck. Daylight imaging is also very good.   This camera allows for very flexible use.

I'm looking forward to get away from our city to the clear, unpolluted dark-sky areas for which this new camera is designed. We'll also keep in close touch with family here and hope to travel some more and visit more of our friends and family in both Europe and in the Americas. Perhaps I can combine both activities.

Life will go on.

The good and the bad

Last week, we spent three wonderful days with good friends at their million-dollar-view home on Saltspring Island, enjoyed their company, and that of friends and neighbours they invited. We also had a chance to enjoy the many cultural offerings available on Saltspring Island. It felt like we spent a very relaxing holiday somewhere in the sunny south - and that essentially on our doorstep.

An event much concerning for us recently is that our brother-in-law (on my wife's side), who is dealing with metastatic cancer, is in hospital. Illness is something any family has to deal with, but this is too close in time to the death of our son Derek, also from cancer.  However, we did then, and do now, appreciate the efforts of the doctors, nurses, and all the people who make humane and compassionate dealing with an illness possible. They do make a difference, and lighten the load on everyone.

Life's a rollercoaster.

An update (Aug 15):

Our brother-in-law died last week.

A bittersweet birthday

Derek was born 43 years ago today. For all of us this is a bitter-sweet memory. We'll have a toast to him later today.

This blog was started as a way to keep Derek's on-line friends up to date when he first began (eventually ineffective) treatments in 2007 for the cancer which lead to his death last year. He resumed his blogging when he felt better (www.penmachine.com); this made me enter fewer posts here. I have established a permanent location for leaving comments regarding Derek: http://www.legacy.com/guestbook/vancouversun/guestbook.aspx?n=derek-miller&pid=150846264

I intend to keep on posting to this blog, but fewer entries will be the norm.