Musings on Lists and Roman Apartment Pics

Well, it's happened. I am now in full List-Making Mode .

It's now less than two weeks until I'm off to Italy along with Jeff and Tai and Pol.

So I'm making Lists. It's what I do before I travel.

Lists of what clothes to pack:polka dot blouse, sandals, my lucky travelling dress...

Lists of things I need to do before I go: give mom house key, break it gently to mom that she'll need to take care of my stick bugs as well as my cats, request holiday pay, clean out fridge, breathe deeply...

Lists of things I want to see: Ostia Antica, Rialto Bridge, Cappucin Crypt (again! you can never see too many chandeliers made from bones), Isola Pescatori, the preserved head of St. Catherine in Siena, the view from the hiking trails between the villages of the Cinque Terre, the Borgese gallery in Rome....

I like making lists. When I was a child I can remember my father making lists too (gardening lists, lists of what was in the freezer, lists of stock market trends--he had all sorts of little notebooks around). I would tease him about his Super Powers of Organization, but even then I thought it was kind of a neat idea.

Last night I was re-reading one of my travel journals. It was from my first international trip ever, back in 1999 when my friend Tai and I back-packed around the British Isles. Our budget was so small that I recorded the cost of every ticket and postcard purchased in a little list at the back of a notebook. Also the cost of every meal. Looking back I see we subsisted mostly on tuna fish sandwiches and Cadbury's Whispa-mint chocolate bars. Mmmmm....backpacker's cuisine.

Don't worry, my travel budget has gotten more expansive (er, expensive too) and when I'm in Italy I'm planning on eating fabulous food...and not writing down the prices. It's just better if I remember the flavours and not the debt this time, trust me.

Speaking of spending money in Italy, these are pictures of the apartment we'll be renting in Rome for the last week of holiday.

Really central location, 1200 sq, feet, 3 bedrooms, kitchen, 2 bathrooms, washing machine.

It's up lots of stairs mind you, but it'll still be much less expensive than renting a hotel room for that length of time.

What do you think?

*singing* All We Want to Do is Eat your Brains....

Okay, it's a catchy folk-style ballad about zombies. And it's been in my head for about a week.

I mean, how can you resist a chorus like *singing* :

All we want to do is eat your brains!

We're not unreasonable....I mean, no one's going to eat your eyes...

Okay, not for everybody I suppose, but I was laughing my head off. Here's Jonathan Coulton, performing "Re: your Brains". Enjoy!

Vincent in Brixton

I love it when I go to see a play with no expectations and come home after the performance with a deeply satisfied feeling that I've just seen a genuinely brilliant piece of theatre.


Before this evening I knew little about the play called Vincent in Brixton other than it was about a young Vincent Van Gogh during an influential period in his life when he lived for a time in a boarding-house in London.

It may or may not be historically accurate, ( the program admits no one really knows what transpired between the inhabitants of 87 Hackford Rd, London, SW9) but the play's author, Nicholas C. Wright has said that in writing the script he was influenced by "an intriguing six month gap in Vincent's surviviing letters, and by the well-known tendency of young men writing home to be less than frank about their formative experiences."

It certainly was a performance which drew me in and engaged me completely. The actors were brilliant, especially the two leads (Aidan Maxted as an intense and socially awkward but endearingly eccentric Vincent, and Caroline Alexander as the widowed land-lady, Ursula Loyer).

To my surprise it was not a play about art--in 1874 Vincent had not yet begun to paint--instead it was a play about people : unlikely love, frustrated talents, self doubts and the ability to house in your heart both great joy and black depression at one and the same time..

Do you ever wonder about what the lives of famous people are like when you strip away what they are known for and examine the rest of their life? I recommend seeing Vincent in Brixton for a glimpse of that.

Thank-you to my mom for taking me out for another evening of brilliant theatre! I loved our seats, two rows from the front--close enough to the stage to feel like you're sitting in the same room as the people onstage. And most importantly in a play containing such raw emotion, to be close enough to see the facial expressions on the actors' faces.

By the way, I really do admire Vincent's art ( he signed his paintings as Vincent and I never can pronounce Van Gogh in the proper Dutch fashion). The Musee D'Orsay has some very fine pieces of his that I was privileged to see during my visit to Paris, and I was absolutely thrilled to eat lunch at the little restaurant in Arles that is so famous for its depiction in the painting of the Night Terrace Cafe.

His life story is ultimately a tragic one (ending in poverty and mental illness) and his work rarely sold during his life (even with the support of his brother Theo who was an art dealer). And yet, knowing how important his works are considered nowadays, it should give hope to all those artists out there living under-appreciated in their own times. But why must artists traditionally suffer so much? Why do they usually have to die before their paintings are suddenly worth a million bucks? It's just not fair.

And why does an actor as talented as Mr. Maxted in Vincent in Brixton still have to hold down a day job?

Web

A spider may not be everybody's idea of a beautiful creature, but they are artists in their own way.

This web hung below a cherry tree, welcoming people to my home last fall as they turned into the driveway (well, if they looked closely and the morning dew was just right). :)

Some folks wait to see the first robin; I'm waiting for the first spider webs of Spring to soon appear.

Owning Real Estate on the Moon

This is an excerpt from a recent BBC news article that made me wonder why I'm not busy selling someone a bridge on Betelgeuse 5:

From his office in Nevada, entrepreneur Dennis Hope has spawned a multi-million-dollar property business selling plots of lunar real estate at $20 (£10) an acre.

Mr Hope exploited a loophole in the 1967 UN Outer Space Treaty and he has been claiming ownership of the Earth's Moon - and seven planets and their moons - for more than 20 years.

These are "truly unowned lands", he says. "We're doing exactly what our forefathers did when they came to the New World from the European continent."

Hope says he has so far sold more than 400 million acres (1.6 million sq km), leaving a further eight billion acres still up for grabs.

Buyers include Hollywood stars, large corporations - including the Hilton and Marriot hotel chains - and even former US presidents Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter. George W Bush is also said to be a stake holder.

Mr Hope claims to be selling 1,500 lunar properties a day. He allocates land by simply closing his eyes and pointing to a map of the Moon.

No government has yet recognised the lunar sales as legally binding"It's not very scientific but it's kinda fun," he says. It is fun that has already made him $9m (£4.5m).



Well, I simply don't know whether to be more flabbergasted at this guy's arrogance or amused at his powers of entrepreneurship. A little from Column A and a little from Column B I think....

The article goes on to say that no actual world government recognizes his claim as legally binding, so if you go ahead and buy an acre on the Moon (and usually I'd say that twenty dollars for that amount of real estate is a smart buy even if it's uniformally grey and EVEN if the commute to the summer cottage IS rather laborious what with the cost of rocketship fuel and all nowadays )--- just know that you won't be able to claim the mineral rights to your little patch of moon dust. Apparently the US government (among others) has plans regarding that. Big plans.

It reminds me of that sticker I've seen around down on some redneck-around-town's bumper: EARTH FIRST: WE'LL LOG THE OTHER PLANETS LATER.

I was just at a party the other night where one of the topics tossed about between the cutest teensy little bottles of fruit liqueur was whether or not the Americans really landed on the moon or whether it was all a big hoax to uh, I dunno, annoy the Russians during the Cold War era.

Some of my dearest friends have a charming conspiracy-theory streak a mile wide. They said they had seen/heard/read on the internet some fairly compelling evidence that seemed to back their suspicions. I've read some things too---about suspicious identical rocks in photographs and about flags rippling in the breeze of a place with no wind and of mysterious accidents happening to people who could have leaked to the media. It all seemed rather compelling under the warm influence of German Sour Apple-flavoured alcohol.

Then again I've also heard and read plenty of scientific material which neatly rebuts all the hoax evidence. Deep down, I'm pretty sure the Russians wouldn't have let the Americans get away with claiming all the thunder if it wasn't so. Spider Girl is thinking the moon landing was two parts marvellous technological accomplishment and one part expensive testosterone-fuelled Cold War-inspired ego trip.

What do YOU think? Any NASA employees out there for comment? (Hey, would you get a discount on moon properties if you worked for NASA, ya think?) Any conspiracy theorists out there?

Well, back to land ownership of the solar-system....

Here are some historical dates pertaining to the subject that I borrowed straight from Wikipedia for your elucidation. I like the one where lunar property rights come in your box of cereal.:

In 1937, A.D.Lindsay of Ocilla, Georgia claimed all “planets, islands-of-space or other matter” in the Universe as his property.

In the 1940s, people were enquiring with the US Bureau of Land Management for lunar homesteads.

In 1948, James Thomas Mangan of Chicago proclaimed himself First Representative of the Nation of Celestial Space and envisaged selling “parcels of space” to interested buyers.

In the 1950s, deeds for square inches of lunar property were offered as premiums with morning cereals.

In 1952, a Science Fiction club in Berkeley, California claimed a triangular area on the Moon with the United Nations.

In 1953, Jenaro Gajardo Vera of Chile lodged the first Latin American claim to the Moon.

In 1955, Crater Copernicus was parceled by Robert R. Coles, the CEO of the Interplanetary Development Corporation, much to the chagrin of New York State Attorney General’s office.
Japan entered the extraterrestrial real estate business in 1956.

In 1957, a Le Mars, Iowa newspaper gave its readers deeds to lunar farms.

In the 1960s, the Moon and Venus were officially annexed by several municipalities. Deer Park, Texas claimed planet Venus, while Oklahoma City and Geneva, Ohio expanded their boundaries with the Moon.

In 1969, a man in Brazil was arrested for selling lunar real estate.

In the 1970s, Barry McArdle of Berkeley criss-crossed America “selling” the Moon in the mode of the traveling medicine show performer.

In 1974, land on Mercury was "sold" by the Astronomical Society of the Pacific as a fund raising ploy.

In 1980, the American Dennis Hope starts his own business, claiming to have found a loophole in international law allowing him to claim full sovereignty of the moon. He was the first to sell lunar deeds (also on the Internet) after sending off declarations to the US, (then) Soviet and UN governments. Hope has so far made $9 million off his business, claiming to sell 1,500 lunar properties a day at $20 an acre. He allocates land to be sold by closing his eyes and randomly pointing to a map of the Moon.

In 1982, newborn Prince William and Kermit the Frog were given complimentary “Martian Land” packages, courtesy of Fiske Planetarium’s David Aguilar.

In 1997, three men in Yemen sued NASA for landing on their inheritance – planet Mars.

In 1998, Mars was claimed by the Western Federation Church and Tribe, who plan to terraform it, provided there is no indigenous life.

In 1999, The Lunar Registry was founded, like the Lunar Embassy, to sell real estate on the Moon.

In 2000, Russ Wylie founded buyuranus.com, a humoristic approach outlining the importance of “owning” Uranus.

In 2001, Orbital Development invoiced NASA for having landed a probe on asteroid Eros, and a legal battle ensues.

In 2001, Virgiliu Poplodged a tongue-in-cheek claim for the Sun with the Archimedes Institute.

In 2002, Anthony M Grasso incorporated the Lunar Federation Inc , according to Articles of Incorporation of the State of Florida, and entered the Moon and Mars Real Estate Business.

In 2003, Charles Wesley Faires claimed ownership of the three stars of Orion's Belt: Alnilam, Alnitak and Mintaka. The claim has been filed with a Knox County Courthouse, United States Library of Congress and the Kingdom of Swaziland, among other entities.

In 2005, Marina Bai , a Russian astrologer, sued NASA for having encroached upon her ‘holy of holies’ (the moon) by landing a probe on comet Tempel 1.

In 2007, Nicholas Yoho-Wikse filed official claim to Venus, and all space from its surface out to 333km from it to space vacuum, to be eternally his. He filed with the UN and the International Court of Justice (a court of planet earth states)...he pledged to share it however as it was such a large amount of space to deal with...he declared soon after the proposed motto of Venus to be "love reigns eternally" and expected all future inhabitants to live in this spirit of planet Venus..."earth had so far failed in this...may venus never be so..." A company called MoonEstates has also been selling plots on the Moon and Mars, which it purchased from Dennis Hope.

The Best and Worst Couple Dollars I Ever Spent

Sometimes you don't have to spend a lot of money to create memorable experiences.

The pictures in today's post represent the best two dollars I ever spent, and the worst three dollars I ever spent, both transactions taking place while in Zanzibar.

Yes, five dollars worth of memories....okay, I know full well that I'm ignoring the not insignificant price-tag of flying to Africa in the first place.

(Heh, it reminds me of the time my friend Emily responded to my compliment about her gorgeous dangly silver earrings. She said, "Yes, these earrings are special alright, they cost me five thousand and five dollars---five thousand for my trip to Turkey and the five dollars I paid for these earrings there".)

The Best Two Dollars: Were spent as the admission fee for the Mnarani Natural Aquarium, an educational conservation project in an enclosed tidal lagoon on Nungwi Beach to protect the local green sea turtles and hawksbill turtles from being killed for the use of their shells in souvenir products, to raise local sea turtle populations by protecting hatchlings, and to raise money for the local community through turtle tourism.

We got to feed adult sea turtles seaweed and hold baby ones! How cool is that!

The Worst Three Dollars: Getting a Black Henna design painted on my skin on Zanzibar the very next day. It was very pretty. At first. Then I had a severe allergic reaction and ended up in a hospital in London with second-degree chemical burns and blood-poisoning.

Note: Black Henna is not real plant-based henna. I learned the hard way. (If you want to see a gory picture of my arm taken three weeks after I got this done, I posted one over on my other blog. Never, ever do what I did.)

So, part of the reason I mention these things is because you can now read about them in fuller detail if you are interested at my travel blog (http://www.spidergirlontheroad.blogspot.com/).

I'm finally writing the last posts for it. I'm actually writing about my last day there--whew, finally. (I've had all the posts started in draft form with the photographs since December!)

My motivation to finish writing about this trip? Well, pretty soon that blog will have to be the new Spider Girl Goes to Italy blog and I should really finish transcribing the journal for one trip before I start the next one, right?Geez, it's taken me long enough.

I hope everyone out there had a good Easter holiday.

Bellydance Party

If you want to be invited to a lot of parties, become a bellydancer. Every time you turn around someone wearing sequins is looking for a happy excuse to get everybody together to dance.

There was a very fun hafla (bellydance party) up in Campbell River last night. Even though I've thought of myself as unofficially out of the bellydance loop (the last show I danced in was in June), I still got an invite. Somebody has to be sitting in the the audience after all I reckoned.

But, wouldn't you know it, I ended up dancing at the party after all.

Most of my old troupe (the Yalla Gypsies) were there (except for Emily who's climbing in the Himalayas) so it was bound to happen.

Yes, Chris just happened to have the music for one of our old choreographies with her.

But! (I protested) I can't even remember the tune to Santiago. But! It's been two years since I danced this piece. But! I didn't bring a costume.

None of that mattered apparently. Glasses of wine in hand, we went over the choreography:

Three-point turn this way...chest circle chest circle...spin back the other way...hip circle hip circle.....fiiiiiigure eighhhtttt.....OH! now I remember! Grapevine step...ah yes! It was all coming back.

Oh sure it was unpolished, but it was merry fun to be up dancing again. The hostess lent me a gypsy skirt and Sherry lent me a tasselled scarf and away we went.

Alas, no pictures of us dancing to share with you, but I did take these one's of the Campbell River troupe.

So Much Fun!

I don't think you can beat the fun factor of a roomful of bellydancers hamming it up to the Bangles "Walk Like an Egyptian ".

We danced, we ate, we drummed, we played with veils....I'm sure you can't help but note how the polka-dot dress I was wearing under my veil only added to the Mystery-of-the-Orient-like atmosphere I was trying to convey. :)

Italiano

Perche ride? Parlo tante male l'italiano?

Translation: Why are you laughing? Is my Italian that bad?

I just know they are phrases that will come in handy in Italy....thanks for the new phrasebook, Mom...er, grazie, Mama, I mean. :)

Just before I went to Italy in 2003 I took a class in conversational Italian. Since then most of it has flown right out of my head alas.

It didn't help that I've taken French classes since. Ah, the Romance languages...all lying around lanquidly tangled up in my brain waiting to be retrieved in halting sentences delivered in pigeon-turistico speak.

I'm a little embarrassed NOT to be bilingual actually. The European friends I know usually speak at least two languages and sometimes three, as well as a smattering of anything that borders them.

Of course, in Europe one could conceivably get in a car and drive through several countries with different languages before stopping for the night whereas in west coast Canada you have to drive a long, long time before this becomes an issue.

Anyway, that's not a very good excuse so I'm carrying my Italian books with me every day on my coffee break... it's nice to at least try and speak Italian when you're in Italy.

I remember a fellow laughing behind a take-out food stand in Capri after I did my best to order in Italian: "Oh, you speak-a Italian! I'm-a going to give-a you a bigger piece of pizza! "

I miss Italy. :)

Most Amusing Compliment Received in Italy: "You are more beautiful than Barbie!"

38 more days till we go and counting!

Little Black Dress and Cantiamo Night

I have a vision in my head: my beautiful friends and I are sitting at a little table in a sunny piazza in the city of Rome. We are talking and laughing and sipping wine. We are full of the joy of life and being together in Italy. And we are wearing cute little black dresses.

I have my passport. The tickets are reserved. European euros and traveller's cheques are ordered from the bank. I leave in five weeks. There are plenty of likely piazzas in the sunshine waiting in Rome. And all that is missing from this vision was the dress I am planning to wear.

The mission this past weekend: to find a Little Black Dress to wear while in Rome.

You know, so I can look something like Audrey Hepburn in Sabrina , something that Coco Chanel would have approved, something simple and sophisticated and yet kicky and fun....

Do you think there might be such an article of clothing to be found in the town I live in? There isn't.

Well, there is if you count the little black barely-there suede dress from Paris I once borrowed from my friend Nell for a fancy soiree (she has a closetful of gorgeous evening wear) but no, I meant to have something of my own.

So I went shopping down-Island on Saturday and found my sweet Little Black Dress at Le Chateau after a minimum of fuss and angst in the changing rooms. The third dress I tried on was the charm. I knew it was the one just looking at it on the rack.

Sigh, I'm not usually a girl who gets into the spirit of shopping, but this was satisfying. I'll post a picture at some point.

But at least some of you have seen it already as I
also managed to have a visit with my friend Pol (who is travelling with me) before racing up the Island again in time to become a volunteer Serving Wench for the Cantiamo Choir's Italian -themed fundraiser night.

The choir was raising money to sing in Prague and Salzburg this July and tickets were around fifty dollars. But you could avoid the ticket price altogether if you didn't mind rushing around up and down stairs like a fiend carrying trays of bruschetta artichoke and olive tapenades, and hustling out plates of bocconcini salad and ricotta cannelloni and chocolate-drizzled tiramisu for a crowd of two hundred.

Between courses I could listen to gorgeous Italian arias and duets (I was definitely in the mood tonight for eighteenth-century Italian music) and (eventually) be fed besides.

Spring!

Well, rereading my last post it might seem as if I was in a morbid frame of mind, but it's Spring now, so I just can't stay there for long!

Here are some pictures of art projects I've been doing with the preschool kids--it was time to take down the Valentine hearts and the chilly winter-time pictures.

Also picture are my new helleborus plants (one white, one pink) that I acquired at Seedy Saturday and have since planted in my garden.

I've grown to love helleborus as they flower as early as January and look nice all year long.

Also acquired at Seedy Saturday (an enormous local seed-swap): seeds for red poppies, nigella, zinnias, Siberian fritillary, scabiosa (looks much better than it sounds), clarkia, sunflower, calliopsis, and yellow and pink hollyhocks.

I hope I actually get them all in the ground this year. I tend to concentrate on already established perennial plants and I haven't been very talented at nurturing flowers from seed. But I try every year, and by Gum! Sometimes they come up!

The Butterfly Effect in a Nutshell

http://www.perkel.com/nerd/butterflyeffect.htm

I've been thinking lately about how the smallest events/decisions can affect your life.

For instance, recently my friend Pol celebrated her birthday on the first of March, which is indeed the day she was born. However, on her seventeenth birthday she decided (for reasons I've long forgotten) to have her party on the tenth of March of that year. We ended up in the local Teen club and that was where I met Jeff, who I married.

Now, if she'd had her party on her actual birthday would I have married the same person?

What if we'd decided NOT to go to the club? Or what if Jeff hadn't? Or what if I'd had the flu that day? Or what if I'd been grounded and couldn't have gone to her party?

What would my life have been like now? One small thing. For good or for bad.

Even much smaller things can change the course of a life.

I was reading about chaos theory and the Butterfly Effect tonight. (The link above is easy reading compared to some of the more technical stuff on the theory of Sensitive Dependence on Initial Condition .

According to this theory even something very, very tiny ( like the flap of a insect's wing) can cause ripples of effect in the universe space-time continuum thingy. Tiny little things making all sorts of far-reaching changes that nobody can know or fathom (unless you're heavily into chaos equations and fractal whatchamacallits).

Makes my head whirl to think that something I did today, perhaps some 1/4 second of my life today crossing the street walking faster or slower, or perhaps something as banal as my breakfast cereal choice has changed the course of my life or perhaps someone else's in a way that I will never realize.

Something of this nature that spooked me once: I was working at a video store circa the year 1989 and I rented out a games system and a couple of games to two teenaged boys. We chatted for a few minutes before they left.

Maybe an hour later a police officer brings the things the boys rented back to the store. There had been an awful car accident about a mile away. The boys' vehicle had been T-boned by another car and both of them died.

Morbid thoughts: Was I one of the last people they spoke to? If they hadn't rented the games or spoken to me, would they still be alive? Or did they stop for slurpies at the 7-11 across the street and did that put them at the fatal intersection at the moment of impact? If they'd paused to tie their shoelace before they caught back in their car, was that enough to change their fate? Yeah, it was spooky to think about alright.

According to Butterfly theory, even the fact that you are reading this blog post instead of doing something else has probably changed the course of your life in some infinitisemal way. Or possibly just a weather pattern in Brazil.

The Other Job

Have you ever been hired sight unseen, resume unseen? That's how I fell into my newly acquired job. I've never met the person who hired me three months ago--so far they are only a shadowy figure on the other end of an email address where I post my hours worked.

Somebody asked me the other day, "So how do you like your other job?"

As it's been one of the things cutting into my blogging time, and jobs have been on my mind lately, I thought I'd talk a bit about it.

My new job, as once mentioned before, is at a dentist office in the evening. Two or three times a week. I clean all the sharp little instruments a dentist is likely to wiggle around in your mouth. I scrape out disgusting strawberry-flavoured mouth moulds--its like bubble-gum in appearance and consistency. I polish the great HUGE stainless steel needles and rinse blood out of the syringes. As I've long suspected about myself, I'm not grossed out by much. Lucky for that, huh?

Some of the thingies I clean I can't even imagine how they are used in the context of sticking it in someone's mouth...although I can envision their usefulness as a weapon in a self-defense situation.

Things I LIKE About This Job

* It's quiet.
*I work by myself.
* I can actually see that work is getting accomplished.
*I like fiddling around with all the funky medical equipment. The models of actual mouths and teeth are really interesting to look at too.

Things I DISLIKE

* Thanks for ruining my appreciation of strawberry flavoured bubble-gum, like, forever , Dentist Job!

But, all in all, I actually rather like this job.....it's gotten me thinking about doing other work in general.

Things at my day job, at the preschool I've worked at ten years, are a little up in the air right now.

Government cuts. Possible wage roll-backs. Low staff morale. "Reconfiguration": a vague word I'm growing to swiftly dislike. It's doubtful I'll actually lose my job, but some brutally un-fun staff meetings have made me wonder about other lines of work. Seriously.

They say that the average person changes careers eight times in their lifetime. I think I may be overdue for one.

Any ideas for me, people?

Er, something lucrative, entertaining, and with travel perks preferably.

Healing Dances

There were dances for healing, dances for hope, and dances for the joy of it in honour of a fellow dancer.

Sunday night's bellydance show was a fundraiser to cover some of the medical costs for a talented local bellydancer who was in a tragic car accident seven weeks ago, leaving her with a broken back and unable to move from the waist down.

Imagine the awfulness of suddenly being unable to move when your love is for dance and your whole livelihood depends on your ability to move...

We have a very beautiful dance community where I live. I haven't danced myself since the show in June, but seeing many of the dancers I've performed with in the past made me suddenly miss the comraderie. I felt very moved to see a packed standing-room-only building for the performances : such an outpouring of support for her.

There is hope too--at the beginning of the show a friend reported that that very day, Dee had wiggled her toes for the first time! A cheer went up!

Oblivious

Although he's probably just doing it to be annoying....I would.

Why I Need to Check My Brother's Blog More Often

These are pictures from three morning's ago, taken from my brother's blog under a blog post titled. "How to Get a Day Off Work".

Yep, wiping out in the company truck will do it.

Actually Adam was a passenger and Mike was driving. Both of them are okay fortunately. (I talked to Adam this morning.)

I'm glad they only ended up in a ditch instead of one of those nasty ravines along that stretch of road.

But this will teach me to miss reading someone's blog for a couple days!

I'm talking to my mom on the phone and she's suddenly talking about my brother's accident and how his back was still sore, and Jeff is nodding as he overhears my side of the conversation. He apparently knows about it too.

See, apparently they all knew about it because they read his blog.

Sigh. I was temporarily out of the loop.

Big Drums

Uzume Taiko derives from the Japanese word for "big drum", and from the goddess of laughter, Ame No Uzume No Mikoto .

This goddess is known as the Heavenly Alarming Female who , according to legend, first began taiko drumming.

Heavenly Alarming Female...I like the ring of that. That's the kind of powerful happy goddess archetype a girl like me likes to identify with.

I liked this Canadian drumming group a lot. Jeff, me, Kim and baby Zoe heard Uzume Taiko in concert as part of last week's Cumberland Lantern Festival performances.

I missed the flamenco dancers on Monday alas, but I'm glad I didn't miss the Big Drums.

Uzume Taiko was loud, fun, energetic, and combined tradition drumming techniques with their own choreographies, mask work, martial arts and humour.

As well as big drums, gongs, and wooden flutes, this group can also play a mean musical trio with Frying Pans.

And Zoe, aged only eleven months, seemed very pleased with her very first Taiko drum concert. Kim was a little worried Zoe might be fussy, or the drumming might scare her, but on reflection she noted that, as daddy is a musician, Zoe's quite used to musical noise.

Actually, I've seen her with her own drum-sticks in hand...

Uncle Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

Okay, rationally I know there are few, if any, Oompa Loompas involved in my family history (although we are as a whole rather on the short side), and as far as I know "Bucket" is not a name on my geneaology tree...

Nonetheless I am pleased to share with you a picture of my Great Uncle Charlie.

His claim to fame?

He owned a Chocolate Factory. :)

Lantern Festival

So Happy Week of the Chinese New Year everyone!

Kim wrote a lovely and thoughtful post on our time at the Taiwanese Lantern Festival in Cumberland last weekend, so check it out if you like.

Me, I thought I'd post a few pictures of my favourite of the lanterns on display, and a picture of us all huddling under our brellies in the rain at the outdoor festivities.

I took a picture of my friend Tai in the rain too(oh boy, the girl does NOT like rain), but she was sticking her tongue out at the camera so, like a good friend, I am refraining from posting it here. Because there would be repercussions I'm sure.... :)

Yes, it Rained on Our Parade. Oh yes, it rained like billy-o! The chance of a paper lantern surviving the torrential onslaught of water pouring from the heavens seemed slim (fortunately the display was indoors), but nonetheless there was an enormous crowd that turned out to parade along with the Chines dragon and a lively band of drummers...down to the park we all went, wet as wet could be.

And then, the Giant Tap in the Sky turned itself off. It was a twenty minute gift from the gods.

Leaping into action as the weather broke, a troupe of amazing fire-spinners entertained the crowd with Fiery Hula-Hoops of Death, the ethereal Sky Lanterns were released into the suddenly clear and starry night sky, and great bursts of fireworks exploded over head. Gorgeous.

The show ended. Ten more seconds of clear skies.

And then, boom! The Tap turned itself on again. Perfect.

Well, except for my tragically sodden shoes. (Thanks for the dry socks, Kim!)

Would the Stale Beer Work, D'Ya Think?

I was lying on the floor on at the gym doing crunches, bored and trying to ignore the mutiny in my tummy muscles, when distraction and entertainment arrived in the form of three elderly people.

As they stretched and limbered up for their workout (I'm always impressed when folks in their eighties are gym rats), they began to chat about the good 'ol days back on their farms and dogs they used to have.

The talk turned to chicken-stealin' dogs:

Harold: "Yeah, an' then while I was up there, visitin' and having tea and cake with the lady of the house, that darn dawg of mine was around back getting after the chickens. Fifteen chickens he killed! And imagine my embarrassment at that!"

Betty: "Especially after you were eating her cake and all! What did you do?"

Harold: "Well, I, uh, paid for the chickens. And then she told me that the only way to cure a dog of stealin' chickens is to tie two dead chickens around the dog's neck and keep them there until the chickens are all rotting and stinky and there's nothing left of 'em. That's how it's done, they say. So that's what I tried."

Roy: "So, did it do the trick?"

Harold: "Nope. That dawg just kept eatin' chickens no matter what. But I hear it worked for some."

Betty: "Say, Roy, I just now had a fantastic idea! I think we should try hangin' a couple bottles of stale beer around your neck. Maybe that would cure you.'"

Roy: *snorts* " Yeah, well, I dunno about that...."

Heh, those three sure kept me entertained. As for the chicken trick, apparently people really do try that, but you'd think it would just make you not want to hang out with your dog.

Rally Rant

We came .
We rallied.
We waved our signs.

But I'm not very sure that many people noticed.......

There was a red carpet out on the steps of the Legislature, but it wasn't for the thousands of people protesting nasty cuts to the child-care system in British Columbia, that's for sure.

One thing I learned this past Tuesday at one of the province-wide rallies: if it's not a Slow News Day, you probably aren't going to make a big splash on the evening news.

Way to get eclipsed by the Throne speech and Valentines Day lead-up articles!

Bah! Bah, I say!

Daycare fees are going up. (The hundred dollar a month gesture nicknamed The Beer & Popcorn Money Plan that Harper is replacing the old system with is dismally inadequate for most families who need childcare. It's about six hundred dollars a month for daycare 'round these parts...)

Childcare worker wages are going down. ( At the end of June my wage will be lower than when I joined this profession ten years ago. I knew this wasn't a high-paying profession when I went to college for it, but I didn't expect the future to be a few bucks from minimum wage and going backwards. Grrr!)

The waiting lists for getting in to most daycares are so long.... that your child may have to be a foetus when you sign up. (Yes, it's literally true, we've had unborn babes waiting to get into our centre and it doesn't necessarily mean they'll get a spot in time.)

The government is closing every Childcare Resource and Referral Centre in B.C. by the end of September-- people are losing their jobs and daycare providers are losing job training, lending libraries, and the people who keep an eye on licensing requirements and criminal-record checks and a whole lot of other important things.

Yeah, the whole fragile child-care system in B.C. is getting a little more dodgy, I'd say.

On the bright side, even if I got up early and trekked to the Parliament Buildings in Victoria for very little effect (and less a day's pay), at least the sun was shining and I had a nice walk around Beacon Hill Park to show for it.

Oh, and I got to see a whole lot of Mounties, parading politicians, and the Lieutenant Governor herself. Dang it, the red carpet was for them, wasn't it?