The Seated View

One of these days, I'll photograph something other than flowers, but not yet... Happy Canada Day to all who celebrate it - have a great long weekend!

The opening act was the Paul James Band and can I just say where have they been all my life ? He/they were absolutely fantastic (and, according to the website, available for weddings – I should think about getting married), played for a good 40 minutes and completely made me forget who I was there to see, which took some doing as I been hero-worshiping this woman for years. Decades, even. I’ve wanted to see her perform live for... well, I can't remember for how long, but it was a fantasy, really – I never thought it'd actually happen. Then one day, purely by coincidence, I saw the ad saying she'd be appearing at the Hummingbird Centre and I rushed out with my trusty credit card and got tickets to see I was nervous. The hype in my head had built this evening up so high there was no way she could live up to it. I was nervous, because the vast majority of performers sound better on the CD then they do in person. I was nervous because I couldn't bear to ...

I saw The DaVinci Code . It is awful. In the beginning, I honestly thought they were using the wrong movie – some sort of revival of a 70’s horror thing. Then I saw that it wasn’t and descended into 2½ hours of movie-hell. Tom Hanks looks singularly constipated throughout, Audrey Tautou is horribly miscast, the script is pedestrian and the only time the screen came alive and held my interest was when Ian McKellen was in a scene, completely stealing the movie out from under everyone, including the director. He was a joy to watch, even as everyone else was reduced to amateur status in comparison. They castrated (sorry, no better word for it) the story and followed the book too closely, when unnecessary. Don’t waste your time. And speaking of movies… I may have mentioned this before – it’s as bit of a soapbox with me – but I’ll take the chance of repeating myself as it’s a natural segue: Just because you can make a movie that’s 2 (or more) hours long, doesn’t ...

Remember the episode of ‘Sex and the City’ in which Miranda buys her own apartment? The one where people keep assuming that she’s married and she has to constantly correct them, saying “it’s just me”? Yeah. That one. One of the reasons I love ‘Sex and the City’ is how wonderfully it reflects life as a single woman in her over-35 or so. Admittedly with a lot more hot men and more fabulous clothes than generally populate my life, but still… Recently, during a very irritating week, I had reason to think of Miranda when on two separate occasions, people assumed I couldn’t be anything but married. Because that’s what you have to be, right? The rant about myths, stereotypes and single women will keep for another day, but the two events need sharing. First, I talk to a company related to another type of TNF blocker, as the Enbrel side effects were getting on my nerves (I’ve since found ways of dealing with them). We talk about my private insurance and the rep asks me if I’m ...

Blogging has taught me many things, chief among them how nice people are. I’m pretty sure that people who don’t blog/read blogs don’t quite get it – they tend to get stuck on the “and you’ve never even met this person, but s/he’s your friend??” thing. Come to think of it, that’s the reaction I’ve received whenever I’ve spoken of internet friends – I started on the net in the early 1990’s and was thought extremely strange (if not outright pathetic) by most people. These days, that boggling of minds seems to have abated a smidge as more and more join the bandwagon, but still… friends? That you’ve never met? How odd. From my end, not so odd. When the technicalities of going out involves advanced planning in terms of transportation, attendant schedules, etc., friendship easily evolves into something non-geographic, something not necessarily requiring face-to-face time. Very few of my friends originated in ‘real life”, many of them still exist purely in the ether of internet...

This post is a multi-purpose one. First, it gets me off the blogging hook relatively easily, as I have a list as long as my arm and entirely too little time in which to be efficient. Second, it panders shamelessly to members of The Other Team (i.e., non-dogpeople) and third… well. It fulfils an obligation to two creatures who got a little huffy about the dogs (“dogs drool, cats rule” was one quote) - my other nephew, Jag (here seen on his favourite perch - photo by a TinkParent) and the mistress of my house. I mentioned last week how much I resent naps. Don’t get me wrong – naps can be wonderful, particularly when they’re a treat. When they are necessary, it gets to be a bit of a drag. I call them my Mandatory Rest Period. However, there is one MRP-related tradtion that always makes me smile. It starts off with Mojo insisting that she lie on my stomach (under the blanket, naturally) to receive an extended cuddle, including vigorous rubbing of ears and occasional wa...

Lately, a few people who have only been exposed to my name in written form have asked me how on earth that’s pronounced. Don’t feel bad – no one on this side of the pond (OK, outside of Denmark) knows how to do it without a quick tutorial. I once read a book – I’ve forgotten which; it had something to do with a dragon and King Arthur - in which the dragon mentioned that Danish wasn’t a language, it was a throat disease. There might be something to that claim. Do all children want another name than the one their parents gave them? I did. Well, sort of - more of a variation on it. I wanted to be Lena, which I thought more exotic and glamourous, not Lene. I wished for it q uite fervently, although I never went so far as to insist people call me that. Instead, they called me Lene - not surprisingly, I suppose. In Denmark, everyone knew how to pronounce it. The first ‘e’ isn’t like an ‘i’, but definitely an ‘e’ and the final ‘e’ is pronounced like the ‘e’ in ‘the’. Cl...

Being too busy having fun this weekend to even think about blog entries - I know, how selfish of me - I provide a small photographic essay on on of the activities: Woofstock . Yes, Woofstock. A festival for and about dogs. I have never seen so many dogs in one place at once. The welcome wagon. Cool ride. From the tiniest... To the biggest (and when you're sitting down, boy are these big...). And then we found a patio with a view. Perfection.

It’s Friday and I’m ending the week on a light note. My friend Sidney* has two boys, one very much a teenager (Jack) and one on the verge of becoming one (Evan). Which can make telephone conversations with her highly entertaining. Over the past years, I’ve kept a record of things I’ve heard her say to the boys. Herewith a brief sampling: The dumpster is not a play area. Sidney: What are you doing? Oldest child: Piercing Evan’s ear. The crickets have escaped! The knife is not a toy. If you hang up, I will break your hand. Why are you eating a piece of glass? Don’t wipe your nose on my shirt – use a Kleenex! Do not jump on the trampoline with the cat in your arms. Why are your pants in the freezer? Do you have any funny kid lines? * names changed to protect the tender dignity of teenaged and almost-teenaged sensibilities.

One night a couple of weeks ago, I got a call from a hyperventilating mor, telling me to turn on the news rightnowthisveryinstant ! Which I naturally did, as I always do what my mother tells me. Well, when it suits me, anyway. The women in my family are very much like cats that way. The reason for the maternal order was a news report about TNF blockers , like Remicade and Enbrel . It talked about how drugs like these apparently triple the risk of certain types of cancer. I knew there was an increased risk, but I hadn’t known it was that high – even allowing for several grains of salt due to standard media fear-mongering and half-reporting, it felt a smidge beyond my comfort zone. For a while now, I’ve been struggling with finding joy again. The winter was hard on me – my pain levels increase with the cold - and after months and months of dark and dreary, I’d misplaced my optimism. I’d remember last year , before the fall’s neverending whiplash took over and wouldn’t be...

I have this thing I call a Life List. It contains all the things I want to do before I kick the bucket – not surprisingly, it’s an ever-evolving project. On my list – or rather, my List – are languages I want to learn (Spanish, Zulu, Irish and more), things and places I want to see - the space shuttle lift off, the Grand Canyon, St. Lucia (because my father, who travelled all over the world, once told me it’s the most beautiful place he’d ever been), Uluru (because… well, duh), things I want to do – skydive (maybe next life), touch a tiger (some day, I’ll tell you how Ken managed that one and became forever Da Man in my book) and… well. I’d also like to get over the instinctive urge to curl up in a whimpering ball of panic every time I see an equation. On the fantasy part of my List… wait, ‘fantasy’, you say? Being ever organized - and no, that’s not another way of saying anal-retentive - the List is divided into ‘feasible’ (see above) and ‘not gonna happen’. The latter c...