CaptainOrange

Sad news first My mother died suddenly of a stroke on August 11th of this year while battling Cancer. I just thought you should know. There is a whole story hanging in that sentence, but it's not yet ready to tell. Some Joy In the meantime, grieving is an ongoing process and so, too, is my summer. As autumn quickly approaches, we are readying the yard and garden for winter. We have had a bumper crop of tomatoes, basil, carrots, and other wonders of sustenance.  One crop that has been in short supply is Serenity. It is yield that helps prepare me for the winter. COVID-19 has changed many things. For me, summer is a time to recharge myself and, through the experience of joy, recharge the people I love. I can be hard to live with in February and I count on a carefree summer to remind me--and those who live with me--just why they would bother ;) Needless to say, that has been challenging. But, Wendy and I have made some great headway on our desire to spend more time in nature (generall...

Lee solos Searszilla We finally got a new canoe! We have been using Lee and Sandi's old 17' Sears beast since we were married. It has served us very well and has now been handed along to Liz. At my strongest, I was able to carry it down to a boat launch myself, but that is a decade behind me now. I tried to talk Wendy into an ultra-light kevlar replacement, but at $4-6K that seemed like a remote possibility. Instead we settled on a sensible 14'6"  Clipper - Escape from Eb's Adventure . Clipper - Escape While she didn't want to admit it--"A canoe is a canoe" <yawn>--Wendy is clearly in LOVE with the Escape. Even with the river at faster than average flow rate, she was able to solo (with me as dead weight) across the river and even make easy headway upstream. The ostensible reason for this needless test of her paddling prowess was a large bird nest that she spotted on the East side of the river. As it turns out, it wasn't a ...

Okay, so you know about my New Zealand trip and my ongoing coffee obsession, but now that I am off G+ and Facebook, has my daily life stopped? Nope. Work The most straight forward part of my life is work. At least I feel that it has the fewest subheadings ;) I continue to work part-time at the library . Mostly, I am based out of the JS Wood Branch, but I find myself doing story times or special projects all around Saskatoon’s nine public branches. Much of my time is spent doing preparation and training for some of our newer programming staff and the rest is working with the public as a facilitator for paint nights, story times, robotics interactions, etc... I am currently working on a couple of special shows. One for the Remai Modern. I am doing a puppet show for them in September and the following week I am doing a workshop on shadow puppetry for teens. Another is for the Festival of Trees . The library will provide feature storytelling and puppetry at the end of the ...

obligatory site photo We managed to sneak away to Waskesiu for a few days before our guests began arriving in earnest. We didn't really have enough time to go anywhere too remote, so we opted for the Narrows. It's a little busier than we'd like, but its the camp sites are pretty large and the people that camp there are relatively no nonsense. We didn't have to put up with anything more than a barking dog from our neighbours. Leo and Anwyn are both getting to be good campers. They set up their own tent, build fires (I still chop the wood), and cook some of the meals. We (by which I mean Wendy) are working on canoeing skills with them, but they still have a ways to go in terms of endurance. Moss Monster Now, if you are looking for performance and melodrama, Leora and Anwyn have endurance to spare. The weather on the first day was spectacular enough that I was able to forgive the ferocious mosquitoes that accompanied it. Good thing we got some canoeing an...