Erin's Birthday

Happy Birthday To You!!!

I'm not going to say how old she is because that would not be polite but she looks as sweet as ever and we all enjoyed the cake.

Erin's new sport is Roller Derby so we got her some appropriate stockings.
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Fisherman Lifting Nets at Bayfield, Ont.

Click the pic to enlarge it.

Today's "artsy" picture evolves from a post card circa 1910.  I hope you enjoy it as much as I did enhancing it.

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Before/After Before/After

I've been working on my outdoor projects so most of my time has been taken up with that.  My son Tim and I finally finished the wall project and I continued to work on the stairs down to the pool house and re-bedded some sunken patio stones near the pool.  Of course with all the fine weather and showers lately you can almost see the lawn grass growing so it needs a weekly cut as well. It's been five years since the deck was painted so Wendy has been working on painting the railings and deck. Fortunately I bought 5 extra gallons of oil-based paint before it was discontinued some years ago. I don't know what we'll do next time. Might be time for plastic deck boards. Every day; even weekends, have been busy and now we are into June and the pool needs opening. April weather was so bad we got a late start. My back is sore and I'm beginning to feel like a low paid maintenance man.

BEFORE (Rotten and yielding to the gravel behind, this wall was past its useful lifetime)

AFTER (benches next)

BEFORE (Rotting timbers and everything sliding down)

AFTER (Salvaged some good timbers from the wall project) (Poolhouse roof next?)

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Toronto: Yonge at Wilton Street (Now Dundas) Looking North

My "arsty" picture for today was inspired by a circa 1915 post card.  The present Dundas Street in Toronto is composed of several smaller streets that were amalgamated or joined together into one east-west thoroughfare.

You can read about it HERE.

Click on the picture to enlarge it.

"As an east-west thoroughfare, Dundas Street in Toronto is rather unusual. Even at ground level, numerous jogs, kinks and gentle curves in the road give the street a crooked, doglegged feel not found in the ruler-straight Bloor or Queen streets. The main reason for Dundas' odd route is its origin as several unconnected streets through the centre of the city. For many years, there was no major east-west street between College and Queen.

The street we know today was gradually stitched together from west to east starting around the time of the first World War. When Dundas arrived, numerous smaller streets and intersections - including a now-impossible Queen and Dundas junction - were eliminated or renamed. Without the arrival of the new street, the Dundas bridge over the Don would still be Wilton Square and Wilton Street Bridge. Yonge-Dundas Square might be something else altogether."
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A Weekend Break For A Breaking Back.

These stunning petunias at the market had such a rich colour I had to snap a picture. Click pic to enlarge.

We decided to run down to the condo for a couple of days. My aching back needed a rest and we had some items to retrieve across the border in Port Huron. The weather remains unseasonably warm and there is the feeling of summer in the air.

The Sarnia Farmers' Market was abuzz with activity on a fine day.

It was a hard winter and the extreme ice combined with higher water levels meant lots of mangled docks to fix..
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PROJECT: Wall Restoration (Continued)

The stone arrives in our front yard and must be carried to the site in the back yard. A lot of slugging.

Our wall restoration is well under way and now we are adding the wall stones to replace the old, rotten timbers we removed last week.

The new wall finally starts with the first course below grade.

Tim slugs a load of subsoil to dump behind a temporary plywood divider. Gravel in front buries stabilizing Geogrid.

Here you can see some metal straps and the stabilizing Geogrid that will help hold the new wall.

A sheet of plywood temporarily helps us keep the gravel against the wall and separates the subsoil further back.

All this in a heat wave means Tim and I are both losing weight.

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Dash Strikes Again!

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STUPID: Drowning from an Inner Tube at the Beach

My love of the water brought with it certain risks that I might drown in it. I would suppose that the possibility of meeting a watery demise increases directly with the amount of time one spends in and on the water and maybe, somewhat diminishes as they grow older and become "wiser" either through experience or just plain common sense. You obviously don't have to read to the end of this page to know that I did not drown since I am writing this now, but I have seen people who have turned purple and met their fates in the water and in fact I have come close myself.

Helen Clarkson, our next door neighbour when we lived in Byron was a dear lady. In fact I called her Aunty Helen. She seemed older than my mother and married to Art. My dad said Art was an astute business man. He owned a B.F. Goodrich store and followed the stock market fairly religiously. He did alright as far as I could see. They had two sons, Tommy (older) and Jimmy (my age). Maybe Helen's age made it easy to call her Aunty or maybe just the fact that she was truly a dear lady. Helen would often babysit me at their house when my mother was off somewhere. This was great since they had a television set with an antenna that could receive a few US channels and I got along well with the boys. I give this background because Aunty Helen and the Clarkson family more than once fit into my "Are You Stupid Or What" snippets.

The ever-alert Aunty Helen and her sister "watching" the neighbour kids at the beach. Circa 1954.

 It was a hot summer day when Aunty Helen popped the news that she was taking us to the beach. Few families had two cars but you'll recall from my last "Stupid" post, she had a large old, late nineteen thirty-something Chevrolet sedan. I'm not exactly sure how many kids were invited, but for sure Tommy and Jimmy and I and maybe another neighbour kid, Stevie Robertson. We loaded up a supply of used inner tubes (from the tire store) and with Helen at the wheel we were off to the beach. She wanted to pick up her sister in Strathroy "on the way" which turned out to be a substantial delay, but that didn't matter because after all, we were going to the beach.

I don't know who or when the tradition started, but it was standard procedure when driving to the lake that the first one to see the water wins. Cars didn't have air conditioning back then so I think the first glimpse of water this time was unanimous as we all looked forward un-blinkingly with wild anticipation.  We parked on the sand and readied the inner tubes, barely able to contain ourselves as we eyed the cool, blue water before us. Coming to the lake was a fairly rare event for all of us and the inner tubes were considered safety devices since none of us could swim.

Helen set up chairs in order to continue an endless conversation in which the two women cackled back and forth without the slightest pause, ever since we picked up her sister in Strathroy.

All I remember is seeing bubbles rising past my face and feeling the warm summer air on my hands as I unsuccessfully groped for life and the inner tube in the air above. The lake-bottom was too deep for me to stand up as I slipped from the safety float. I managed to reach the surface and took a quick breath mixed with water and again descended into that clear, cool blue water with those amazing bubbles. It might have been the third time down and maybe my last when I felt someone grab me and lift me up dragging me towards the shore with my head above the water. It was a man I had never seen before. He had me under one arm and the inner-tube in the other. He looked at me sternly, handed me the tube and told me not to go to the deep water again. I didn't even have time to thank him. I was still stunned and coughing and gathering my composure. I don't think the reality of the situation had really sunk in to my 4 or 5 year old brain but I didn't go in the water again that day.

Back in Byron, when I recounted my tale to Aunty Helen, I could see she was upset by my story. For the rest of that summer, every Saturday morning, into fall and winter, Tommy, Jimmy, and I commuted to attend the YMCA in downtown London...  for our swimming lessons.
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Happy Bitcoin Pizza Day!

Five years ago when bitcoins were worth 1/3 of a cent apiece...

The Bitcoin community celebrates the 5th anniversary of the first time that Bitcoin was used to buy something, according to internet lore.

As Calvin Tran of Cryptocoin News reports:

In 2010, Florida programmer and BitcoinTalk user Laszlo Hanyecz offered to pay 10,000 Bitcoins for pizza. This transaction is famously known throughout the cryptocommunity as the first real world transaction/purchase used with Bitcoin. It is now known as Bitcoin Pizza Day.

Hanyecz posted on BitcoinTalk that he would give 10,000 bitcoins to anyone who brought him a pizza. Someone in the U.K. took him up on it, ordered two pizzas from Papa John's in Hanyecz’s area, paid $25 for them, and got the 10,000 bitcoins in exchange.

And Bitcoin Pizza Day, May 22, was born.

Bitcoins had no real value back then. They were estimated to be worth $0.003 each, Tran reports. So 10,000 of them were theoretically worth about $30. So at the time, Hanyecz’s was kind of getting the pizza for free.

Flash forward five years. If the person hung onto those 10,000 coins, with bitcoin hitting $235 on Wednesday, that person would have $2.3 million worth of bitcoins today. That's more than a fair trade for $25 worth of pizza.
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Where's The Cat? Origami by Dash.

"Where's the Cat?"

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A Reenactment with Pete and Donna at the Backus-Page Museum.

The weather this long weekend was quite lovely with temperatures approaching 80F around the province. Our 40 mile journey today takes us to the Backus-Page Museum southwest of London.

 What a fine place for a battle. And on the weekend we Canadians celebrate Queen Victoria's birthday no less.

The reenactors sleep in the camps for two or three nights so it's always nice when the weather cooperates.

Fortunately for the heavily costumed actors, our destination was cooled a bit by foggy "Scottish mist" off Lake Erie. Very authentic eh laddy?

The museum was open to tours with people dressed in period attire. This lady is making soda bread baked in the wood stove in the background.

The reenactment today takes us back to 1745 and the Jacobite rebellion against the English led by Bonnie Prince Charlie.

Bonnie Prince Charlie

 The actors were superb. In fact I think this was the most emotionally charged and authentic depictions I have ever attended. There was not a huge number of participants but what the display lacked in size, they certainly made up for it in the quality of the talent.

The setting is 16th century Scotland depicting the defeat of the Scots in 1745.

Jarrad hugs Aunt Donna.

 Our good friends from Orillia, Pete and Donna brought along Donna's niece Macey and nephew Jerrad.

Macey, dressed in period costume, demonstrates a spinner toy.

The Jacobites form a volunteer army of unskilled, but dedicated countrymen attempting to reclaim the throne for Scotland.

The English troops are highly trained with cannons and more firepower.

Bonnie prince Charlie leads the rebel Jacobites.

Jerrad holds the Scottish flag as he proudly led the Jacobites into battle.

Pete and his colleagues fight to the finish.

Jerrad lies dead in the field.

 Today, according to history, all the Jacobites are slaughtered, even women and children.

Seamus (pronounced shay-mus) was the commentator and he weeps at the sight of the fallen comrades. It was a very moving performance.

"Brave Hearts"

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Rich, Lush Nature At Its Best.

Surrounding the Backus-Page Museum near Wallacetown is the John E. Pearce Provincial Park. While our friends Pete and Donna were having their lunch at the reenactment Wendy and I set off to discover some of the trails through the park.

Click Pic to enlarge

 A short walk took us to the lake shore and we found ourselves atop the 100 foot high cliff overlooking the foggy Lake Erie.

Click pic to enlarge.

Everything was so alive and vibrant. As usual in nature, the pictures tell the story better than my words.

Spring is a lovely time of year.
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