StuLand

The StuLand 2011 Year in Review / Merry Christmas

2011-12-12T11:54:00.023-08:00

What do rats, compost piles and kidney disease, sibling rivalries, skunks, preschools, cancer, newborns and houses, all have to do with each other? Just another year in the Chase household, that’s all.

First, the rats and/or mice. This has been one of the few constants in our last year. No, we do not live in an unkempt cesspool. But we do live in a century house, and it comes with holes. Which rodents find their way into. And it drives us crazy. Doesn’t seem to matter what we do, they always find another way in. perhaps we can blame previous generations of ownership, I don’t know. Our house turned 100 this years. A century’s worth of owners means a century’s worth of home renos, the result of most of them seeming to be the burying of wonderful character, and perhaps the construction of an underground network of rodent tunnels built in the meantime as well? Who knows. If you have any iron clad tips for keeping rodents out, let me know. As for the house and state of the character on it's birthday: Glimmers of its old self are there. Exhibit A, the front entrance stairwell and upper landing, currently dressed for the holidays. After having it sanded down and re varnished a couple years back, the original honey coloured wood today shines through. The most unique characteristic of this is the wear pattern of countless footfalls resulting in weathered wood with blackened streaks, laying a path that has been trod for one hundred years. We plan to restore the banister down to the wood at some point, too, maybe in the coming year as part of a larger renovation that would bring a dramatic change to the house. We spent much of 2011 envisioning such a renovation, perhaps in 2012 we’ll get it done. For the time being, this railing is painted a crisp white. This approach has proven quite flawed, particularly in the last year, as the railing is the perfect height for gnawing on. Not by the adults or the dog or house mice, though. Rather, our kids, as they descend the stair case, stopping every once in a while to sample the paint (thankfully lead free). I wonder if previous owners faced such issues!

As for other rodents, many of you know about our adventures with pepe. Happy to report that after our summer cleanout, he never returned. We’ve had to shoo racoons and a cat off the roof,since then though. I have grown weary of urban wildlife this past year.

Alas, our own dog is adding herself to the urban wildlife scene, recently taking to navigating her way through our fencing and bushes to roam the neighbourhood. We thought she was trotting up the street to feast on the refuse from the Chinese grocer at the end of the block, but we’ve recently landed on the fact that she appears to be snacking without reserve on a neighbour’s uncovered compost pile. The stench on her breath is one thing, but we also, in the past year, have found our dog to be in rather ill health; it appears she may have a degeneterative kidney disease, so here we are trying to buy her time and keep her healthy with pills and blood tests and controlled diets, and she’s treating the neighbour’s yard like a personal all you can eat buffet.

As for the other kids in the house, the human ones, Sacha and Heidi have had a great year. Both continue to flourish and Heidi shows little sign of the fact that she was such an early arrival in 2010. It has been interesting to watch the dynamic of a 3.5 year old boy, of whom we are teaching rules, responsibility and order to, and his 1.5 year-old sister, to whom few of those things can concretely apply quite yet, though they are coming along nicely.
I am sure Sacha sees Heidi getting away with murder and it drives him crazy, which may lead to the occasional hair pull, head butt or bite, but on the whole, the pair get along swimmingly and use their words to sort out their differences. One arena of Sacha’s life where we were unable to sort out the differences was that of preschool. His was shut down mere weeks after opening due to near complete mismanagement, some of the results of which were quite frightening to behold. So, we have been trying to find alternatives to keep Sacha engaged with a peer group, and learning ‘schooly’ types of things. We look forward to 2012 being a more consistent year in that respect.

Speaking of biting--and also frightening to behold--I didn’t report it on this blog back in June, but I did suffer a substantial gash in my forehead this year, thanks to Sacha leaping off a pool ledge without prior warning. His lil’ chompers caught me at the hairline. His teeth were left in tact, but I needed a trip to the ER. Long story short, the human mouth is a filthy thing. I landed in St. Paul’s hospital with a massive cranium thanks to infection and swelling (any Goonies fans out there? Sloth?), aka Cellulitis. I’ll leave it to you, dear reader to look up the term and find out what it can lead to if not treated properly, but suffice it to say, after a week off work, IV’s, antibiotics and a miserable headache, I’ll be holding this one against Sacha for the rest of his life. The scar has healed well, thank you for asking :)

Last but not least, you may notice on the list above that the words ‘cancer’ and ‘newborns’ appear side by side. This is more than just mere coincidence. Fact of the matter is, the two things seem to coincide in our lives quite regularly. My dad was dealing with his colon cancer when his first grandchild rolled around, my son was born while mum battled breast cancer, and this year my sister has just delivered her first child, a daughter, on December 13th--mere weeks after mum underwent lifesaving surgery to remove a brain tumour, and mere days before she started some aggressive radiation therapy to try to deal with tumours that remain in her head. We are overjoyed that my sister has brought her baby into the world, and we know that soon, mum will be able to meet her newest grandchild face to face. All were to be together in the UK at my sister’s house for Christmas this year, but due to the emergent situation with mum, it just can’t be.

So what’s the takeaway from all of this? Especially the last part? Well, if you want to use a ‘Reason for the Season’ analogy, Jesus wasn’t born at the Ritz, was he? Mary barely made it to the stable. Best laid plans / Life is just like that/etc. There’s been bad in the last 12 months, like when my wife had her head, neck and torso shoved into the dark rafters as she tried to drag a stinky dead rat out from in the insulation. There’s been bad, like when I held mum’s hand before she went in for brain surgery. There’s been bad, like knowing my sister had a really, really tough pregnancy. But a lot of good has happened too. When the dead rats are gone the house smells good again, mum is still here to meet her new grandchild, and that newborn baby is crying in it’s parent's arms. The roof is still over our heads, we are steadily employed in a poor economy, our kids are healthy and growing, we get to travel here and there and enjoy our families, and the food is on the table whenever we needed it.

Some days we miss the good, but it’s always there.

from my family to yours, we hope that wherever you are and whoever you are with this Christmas and New Year, you have the time to reflect on your last 12 months, to realize all that you have, and to look forward to an exciting and prosperous 2012.

As one of our family members likes to say on such occasions: May the best of your past year be the worst of the year to come. May.it.be.so.

Happy Holidays,
Stu

'Bees in my Bonnet' or 'Occupy Christmas'

2011-11-09T09:19:00.004-08:00

I'll keep this short and sweet--and yes, I look fabulous in a Bonnet, for the record...

First, let’s talk Christmas. News flash: it’s not here yet. Universe, please stop sending me flyers. Give me a few more minutes to get past Hallowe’en, and for dang sure give me a moment to pause and reflect and give thanks on Remembrance Day before Santa starts putting his nose all up in my bizness.

Charities, stop sending me address labels, calendars, Christmas cards, envelope seal stickers and the like. You’re still welcome to send me pictures of sick and malnourished children with puppy dog eyes and pictures of sick and malnourished puppies with sad infant eyes, but please, stop wasting your money on goodies and gimmies. Yes, I have donated to a number of you. No, I didn’t expect any percentage of my donation would come back to me in the form of a gift bag and ballpoint pen. Please give my money to those kids with puppy dog eyes. I’ll buy a calendar from you if I feel like it.

Next, let’s talk Occupy. If you don’t know what that is, then I can only presume you live in a cave on Mars under a rock with your fingers in your ears and your eyes squeezed shut. I support the right to demonstrate, to exercise free speech and make your opinions known. What I don’t appreciate, however, is talking a lunch hour walk through my local Occupy site and being given the third degree on “what corporation do I work for?” and “what am I doing here?” questions from belligerent protesters who seem to think that they now own the city-owned, public-use land on which they are encamped. Yes, that happened yesterday. Colour me unimpressed. You want people to take you seriously? Stop talking to me like that and, absolutely and unequivocally, stop biting police. Stick to your key messages, work with authorities to make your valid right to protest go smoothly, and “stick it to the man” for as long as you like. I won’t get into the irony about the way-more-than-half-a-million-dollars that has been spent on the local protest, at the expense of the 99 per cent whom you are trying to represent. As a last comment on this, I hope cooler heads prevail if a Court injunction ordering your removal gets approved and another riot doesn’t get sparked.

Did I mention back in June how stupid I thought the Stanley Cup riot was? Bah.

Alright, that’s enough griping for now! I’ll be cheery once the Christmas spirit sets in. Not to worry—just have to get past November 11th first, Lest We Forget.

'Free of the children', or 'Ottawa, I hardly knew ye'

2011-09-26T12:16:00.011-07:00

Disclaimer: I love my children. At the end of a hard work day, coming home to them erases the blahs. The funny, adorable things the kids think to say or do for no apparent reason at any given moment is a reminder that there is innocence and discovery and joy in the world. Nothing is quite so satisfying as tussling my sons hair or giving my daughter a peck on the cheek.

That being said: By God it’s good to ditch the little ankle biters for a weekend away.

Kate and I had the chance to do just that this past weekend. Not a normal occurrence for us, by any stretch. In fact, since Heidi was born 17 months ago, this is only the 2nd time we’ve both left the kids at once, and the first time we’ve A) left them for more than one night and B) been so far away from them, as we flew half way across the country to the nation’s capital, Ottawa.

It’s hard to say what I liked best about the weekend. Was it the plane ride there, where we scored three seats to ourselves in the emergency exit row where we promptly plugged in our headphones, stretched out and watched movies for the next four hours? (You can’t do THAT with a one and a three-year-old, I assure you!) Was it the fact we only needed ONE suitcase between us, suits and all? (You can’t do THAT with a one and a three-year-old, I assure you!). Or, was it the fact that even though we arrived after midnight we still sat in our friend’s kitchen enjoying wine and cheese until 2:30 am before retiring to an uninterrupted night of sleep, and we didn’t get up until 11 am? (You can’t do THAT with a…okay, okay. You get the picture). Perhaps my favourite part was doing a walkabout in a very walkable city, rich in political history, interesting architecture and greenery of the valley.

We managed to see the canal, the locks, the river, Parliament Hill, the war memorial / tomb of the unknown soldier, the Byway market (re market: see random images of crowded sidewalk and painted pumpkins)... and the inside of Rideau Centre shopping mall. That last one isn't all that inspiring.

Perhaps it was the main event, the reason for our trip: Kate had been invited to give a toast at ‘The Sailing Dinner’, an annual event where Canada’s newest Rhodes Scholar recipients are given a warm reception by alumni of the same scholarship (ie, Kate), before being sent off into the great unknown. Though I was merely a hanger-on at such an event—Kate’s eye candy for the evening, if you will—it was an exciting evening for me.

I’m not one to be too shy about mixing freely in a room full of people, and it was a great opportunity to be mixing freely in a room jam packed with a diverse bunch of politicians, social activists, lawyers, scientists, doctors and other worldly do-gooders from current and past generations, many of them having made major marks on the the planet. So the main event was good, but maybe it was being able to go out to a club with my wife afterward and act like we didn’t have kids, socializing into the wee hours of a warm Ottawa night. Ooh, speaking of which, maybe it was the weather I liked the most—25 degrees and humid? Yes please! Back home the tomatoes I planted in May are still green, for crying out loud. So to have summer weather at the end of September? Amazing. Or maybe I liked the relaxed, brunchy get together with friends the next morning before heading for the airport to fly home again (we were actually only in Ottawa for 36 hours).

Or, maybe it was the plane ride home again, where we were once more treated to a plane with extra seats and uninterrupted movie viewing (Kate opted for a novel this time. Ever the Rhodes scholar). Actually, no, it wasn’t the ride home that was my favourite. The woman in the window seat was on a steady diet of wine, red and white. She got a little odder as the flight went on which was bad enough but my thoughts turned to ‘What if we crash? Surely she’ll be the first to ignite, thanks to her elevated blood alcohol level and I’ll be consumed into her drunken ball of flames, with no chance of survival regardless of how marginal the odds of living were already going to be… but I digress…).

Maybe my favourite part of the short but sweet weekend was actually when we got off the train back in Vancouver, where Sacha came running over in his clunky shiny blue rain boots to meet us and deliver hugs on the fly, soon to be followed by his gurgly little sister. Yes, I had cocktails with the interim leader of the Federal Liberal party. Yes, I had dinner with the head of Mount Sinai Geriatrics, international relations specialists, human rights advocates, drivers of change of important social policy, a leader in behavioural intervention for children with autism (ahem, Kate) and maybe future world leaders (In a room like that, who knows, right?) and countless other high achievers, all of it in the opulent and historical surroundings of Ottawa’s Chateaux Laurier. But maybe, just maybe, my favourite part of the weekend was once we got home, as I watched my one-year-old tip tomato-saucey macaroni noodles into her mouth off a plastic yellow IKEA dinner plate, grinning at the realization that she’d just figured out a new way to feed herself.

Rubbing elbows with future world leaders, indeed.

What lies beneath....

2011-07-24T20:58:00.011-07:00

Gentle readers, you may recall an installment in the not-too-distant past concerning a resident skunk who decided that the underside of our porch was its new home. This past weekend (knowing full well there was no creature of the night living there), we decided it was time to make the leap, get under there ourselves. As much as we want to make the space inhospitable to any more urban pestage, we also thought we'd take the time remove 100 years worth of junk that has been piling up for literally 100 years, as our house turns a century old this year.

The list of fodder that came out from under there is near endless. Crawling into the space in the first place seemed horrifying enough. I couldn't decide if the dark, dank, musty pit felt more like the setting for the scene in 'The Grudge' where the ghoul girl eats the face off of another girl after jumping out at her from the dark of an attic, or more like the basement in the final scene of The Blair Witch Project. Either way, my love of the horror genre had me envisioning all sorts of uses for this space. As I unburied an ages-old, thin, rotting child's size mattress, and unearthed pieces of a tiny bed frame, I imagined this pit being used to punish a Victorian-aged youth, locking them in the dark for their failure to sweep the kitchen floors... or... something.

Otherwise, I found ( in no particular order, and as some of the photos will point to):
- pop bottles and beer bottles of all sorts from the last several decades, including
some Expo '86 branded Coke and Labatt's bottles
- A Kamloops connection has been found in this house! Several 'Cooper's pop' bottles... I had no idea they used to bottle their own Soda.
- A mummified rat

- the bottom of an old wooden barrel
- Garden hose
- forementioned bed frame and rotten mattress
- an endless supply of construction end pieces from when this house was first being built in 1910/11
- plastic club head from child's golf club
- skunk poo, skunk poo, and more skunk poo
- old, fallen down insulation, more recently used as nesting sites for some nature of foul rodent.
- three of four short table legs.
- sledge hammer head. Just the head.
- a trailer hitch--portion of bumper still attached.
- various chunks of linoleum from previous owners' floor jobs...

...and that's kinda how it went. It had to figure that all of this miserable extraction in full coveralls, bandana and particle mask work was happening on the warmest day of our year thus far. But it's all gonna be worth it. our final step is to re-insulate, brighten it up under there a bit, throw down some crushed gravel.

All in all, it was a relatively interesting anthropological dig under the house. Especially where the pop and beer bottles were concerned, I couldn't help but think this is the sort of gold mine my dad would've had polished and on display before anyone else in the house would be able to blink an eye. We'll save a couple for ya, dad!

So, enjoy the random assortment of photos. There'll be some finished product shots in the near future.

OH, and to Pepe the skunk and all your friends? we bid you a fine adieu.

Summer Time!

2011-06-08T20:20:00.012-07:00

Okay, so technically the season doesn’t begin until June 21st, but surely the first camping trip of the year must’ve signalled the start of summer.

To that end, the Chases and friends trekked south of the border for some Roughing It.

And by Roughing It I mean full-tilt car camping.

Laden down with queen sized air mattress, six man tent tall enough for me to stand in or lie in (with headroom to spare either way), chairs, Coleman double burner stove, clothes enough to last us through Summer (and Winter) and a cooler full of food enough for an army, we set up camp on Orcas Island in the San Juans.

Suggesting this is South of the Border is somewhat of a misnomer, as by the time you’ve driven down to the States, gotten on a ferry and made port, you’re actually further North than Victoria, B.C. if only by a hair.

I'm going to let the pictures do most of the talking. Long story short, we had a campsite next to a mountain lake, where the sun filtered down through old growth cedars. Picture perfect.
The kids—six of them in our party, aged ‘almost’ three and less--had a grand time as did the parents. There was hiking, the kids did biking, the parents threw themselves in various bodies of still-frigid water (including me, thank you very much… I may or may not have developed a rep as somewhat of a chicken of the sea), deer sightings,
fun with the camera in the dark (see below images for results!)lunches on the beach, and an outing to the top of Mt. Constitution, the island's highest point and in fact the highest point in all the San Juan islands, which provided spectacular views of the Sound and surroundings. Of note at the summit, A stone observation tower patterned after a medieval watch tower stands watch over all, an architectural anomaly for these here parts, to be sure!

To end off the text before more pictures, some highlights/lowlights!

Highlight: sunshine and warm temps for all three days, calm evenings listening to frogs croak in the shallows of the lake edge.

Highlight: CAMPFIRES!

Highlight: watching Heidi crawl around freely discovering a bit of nature, eating as much dirt as possible.

Lowlight: convincing Heidi that dirt is not for eating

Highlight: Kayaking around Mountain Lake on a sunny afternoon, watching the two-year olds bomb around on their run-bikes without fear…way less fear than their parents had at times, anyway!

Highlight: Doe! A Deer! A female deer!

Lowlight: Sacha tripping on multiple objects: grated docks, rocks, tree stumps, tree roots, tree branches, etc. Multiple new bruises and a few cuts to show for it, and plenty of screaming/howling to accompany said falls.

Highlight: jumping off the dock into frigid waters

Lowlight: Jumping off the dock into frigid waters

Highlight: time spent in nature with good friends and family! ahhhhhh. SUMMARY: Highlights way more impressive and plentiful than lowlights.

Voter Fatigue? Consider this.

2011-04-28T09:29:00.003-07:00

The U.S. government approved armed drone patrols and--if necessary--attacks against Moammar Gadhafi's troops in Libya this week, while John McCain put out calls to give official recognition to the rebels in that country, who are most recently engaging in close-quarters battle in the streets of the Libyan city of Misrata.

French troops on Africa’s Ivory Coast managed to ferret out incumbent leader Laurent Gbagbo from his presidential compound bunker In the weeks previous, where he encamped himself after refusing to accede to the internationally-recognized president Alassane Ouattara as leader of the nation. Concurrently, UN human rights investigators say they found more than 100 bodies in a mass grave that were indications of an ethnically motivated slaying.

And unless you were living in a cave on Mars, with your fingers in your ears, and your eyes squeezed shut, you should’ve noticed the massive citizen uprising and protests in Egypt this year, which led to Hozni Mubarak—the country’s ruler—being toppled after 30 years of power. It was not a task completed without violence.

Many Egyptians are now supporting Syrian protestors who are calling for President Bashar Assad to step down, a dispute that has seen much blood shed, as have all the instances of political strife noted above.

Given these few examples of people standing up for their political beliefs—and dying for them—do we as Canadians really have any reason not to go to the polls on May 2nd?

Do you have any reason to buy in to the term ‘voter fatigue’ in the face of municipal, provincial and federal elections all in the same year, when you are SO fortunate to be able to exercise such a right as voting freely?

On May 2nd, there will be no armed security force escorting voters safely to polling stations. There will be no arbitrary detentions or threats of torture when you choose to cast a vote.

I suspect it highly unlikely that Stephen Harper, Jack Layton, Michael Ignatieff, Gille Duceppe, or Elizabeth May would barricade themselves inside an arms camp at the news they have not won leadership and command their followers to start an uprising against the elected government.

People seem to think that voting is pointless these days—that all politicians are corrupt, money gets spent unwisely, that generally nothing ever changes, and we’ll just end up with another election sooner rather than later anyway. Another election? That’s music to the ears of many on this planet, consider yourselves very lucky.

So, ‘Conservative’ or ‘conservative’, NDP, Liberal, BQ or Green? I don’t care. Just raise your voice in the peaceful, democratic, fear-free way which we are so fortunate to be able to do: vote. And if after you vote you don’t like the result, feel free to raise your voice again to complain. Another bonus of our system, you can do that, too, without winding up in a mass grave. It’s all a pretty good deal.

www.elections.ca

Miss you dad / Happy Birthday Heidi

2011-04-13T09:40:00.016-07:00

April 13

We knew this was the last 24 hours—or less—for dad. We were all gathered in the room at the Hospice where he had been transferred after a week at Royal Inland Hospital. Here at Hospice, he had a window-side bed which looked out over Kamloops. As a family, we spent time together with him in the evening. A sad time, but at the same time a relief knowing that he was beyond the pain at this point, and soon enough, he’d be beyond this world. We all stood in a circle around his bed. Mum said we should sing him a song, probably not a prayer though…not much his style. I said I’d had a Beatles song in my head all day. We sang.

Close your eyes and I’ll kiss you
Tomorrow I’ll miss you
Remember to always be true
And while I’m away
I’ll write home every day
And I’ll send all my loving
To you….

Just in case dad decided to leave in the night while we were sleeping, each of us before leaving sat close to the head of dad’s bed to share our thoughts with him, to wish him well and pay him thanks for all he was to us.

By 11:00 p.m. we had all headed out, except Mum, who was staying the night in the hospice.

The nurse said she’d call us at home if dad passed in the night, so we could gather once more, no matter the hour.

April 14

At one a.m., we were awakened from the few hours of sleep we’d had by the ringing of the phone.

***********************************

At 6:30 a.m., Kate woke up and suspected that the flu I’d gotten had come her way.

By 7:30 a.m., Kate was worried this was affecting the baby, and we’d called the midwives. Given Kate’s track record thus far for early birth, the midwife presumed it was nothing, but said she’d meet us at B.C. Women’s and Children’s hospital at 9:00 a.m. to check and be sure.

By 8:30 a.m. we were out the door en route to the hospital, a little terrified that Kate—still eight weeks off of her due date—was maybe, perhaps, but hopefully not in labour.

By 9:35 a.m. the fear of uncertainty of a premature child’s birth was behind us, replaced by Heidi, our little 4 pound 13 ounce daughter.

**********************************

And this, my dear little girl, is where I get in to my letter to you on the occasion of your first birthday. The event of your granddad’s passing was three years before you were born, and either by fate, fortune or folly the two instances happened to occur on the same day in the calendar.

As I said in my initial letter to you one year ago, the real significance of this is that your arrival on this day has helped the family redefine what April 14th means. I promise you, though, I’m not trying to turn you in to some sign from God that my father is up there watching us, and you were given to us on that particular day for just that purpose. That seems like too much weight for anyone to bear, and Lord knows you bore much weight in your early days. I will never stop recognizing April 14th as the day I lost my father, but I promise you I’ll not use your birth story from the same day in a way that makes you seem like a patch over a hurt, rather than the single, detached, stand-on-its-own amazing celebration of life that you are and deserve to be.

There was emotion in your birth like you would not believe, but as much as anything it was because we had to watch you in that incubator and isolette bed for weeks. It was because we could not hold you as much as we wanted and we couldn’t spend our nights with you. It was because doctors said you might be there until your supposed actual due date In June.

Let it not be said that you didn’t put all your might behind your four pounds. You were so excellent at hitting your milestones that you got to come home with us in 19 days. For a 32-weeker preemie, that’s tant amount to leaving burnt rubber on the floor of the intensive care unit as you peeled on outta there.

We held a little ceremony for you around the date of your originally assumed due date. We wrote down all the negative things we could think of about your birth that filled our heads and hearts, said them aloud and then threw them into a fire. It wasn’t only us who participated. Midwives, our doula, grandparents, aunts and uncles afar. They all sent in words even if they couldn’t join us in person, and we let those thoughts drift off entwined in the smoke from the fire.

We felt relief for ourselves, and for you. I think for the first time I really allowed myself to appreciate what a wonder you are; to see you clearly without bad memories clouding my thoughts.

I do have to apologize for our impatience in those early days, though, Heidi. Your mum and I, we wanted you to wake up, see some attention in your eyes, see you crack your first real smiles. Your state of 'newborness' went on for ages. Generally, that 'newborny' phase might go for three weeks and then babies start coming out of their sleepy little shell. But for you, it went on for months, and we really wanted to meet the 'real you'. You had enough going on though, and it wasn't fair of us to think like that.

But when you did come out of that shell, holy cow. You've come on like gangbusters. Now, you're a fantastic size. Not just for a preemie but for any baby. Enormity doesn’t begin to describe how adorable you are, though.

The way you chuckle: not an outward guffaw, but just a chuckle that shows how tickled you are—this is you. The way your face crumples completely and you wail in despair if not picked up post-haste by either your mum or I when we get home from work—this is you. The way you’ve learned to scoot across the floor, head down and cruising forward, after one of your brother’s toys, which you’ll try to rip from his hands unapologetically—this is you. That you tend to pet the dog’s fur rather than rip it out—this is you (and Nellie thanks you for it). That you not only play, but initiate, peekabo games with those around you. That you babble happily almost non-stop, though unfortunately sometimes at 4:30 in the morning—this is you. Along those lines, you’ve no idea what a light in the world you are when wake up happy every morning or after a good nap—your pleased little gurgles and coos are music to the world.

Cognitively, Heidi, “they “ say you’ll be a bit behind for a while due to your early arrival. But after 365 days of watching you not just grow, but excel and shine and turn into such a gorgeous little creature, I’ll be darned if you aren’t perfect right now. I can’t wait to watch what happens tomorrow and every day thereafter. I just know that Granddad Jim, from somewhere, like the rest of us, is just beaming at the sight of you.

Happy birthday, Heidi. Thank you for coming to us when you did, and for being who you are.

Love always,
Dad.

Life is Good

2011-03-07T14:22:00.007-08:00

Sometimes we worry. It’s human nature.

Like these days, I’m wondering about work; about how I can please all my masters, from the internal ones (AKA The Boss) as well as the external ones like the producer who needs me to lock down filming dates ASAP but I still don’t have my cast and the script is still too loose. Or there’s the printer who has fiscal year end billing cut off deadlines and we don’t have our project to them yet. Or there’s the web development company that should’ve gotten back to me by now about my website glitch, but they haven’t.

Sometimes we worry. It’s human nature. Like these days, I’m wondering about the kids, about Sacha’s foot, upon which he ‘landed funny’ jumping off a chair this past weekend which prompted a visit to the ER and now Sacha may or may not have a wee crack in a growth plate. Or, I wonder about Heidi and how now that our almost-one year old is eating all sorts of solids, are we feeding her enough? The way she knocks back her meals and snacks, you’d think not!

Sometimes we worry. It’s human nature. Like these days, I’m wondering about house stuff. Like that DAMN skunk living under our porch and why we can’t get rid of it no matter what we try, and will it spray our dog again and if we should just kill it somehow and be done with it, or will I actually feel bad about killing off a creature of that size? But if I don’t kill it and we successfully get it to leave, then it will just become someone else’s problem. As for the porch it’s living under, I wonder if it’ll make it another year without caving in on us. Our house is 100 years old in 2011, and beautiful as it is, it shows its age here and here.

And I wonder and I wonder and I worry and I wonder.

And then I open the freezer. And there, tucked in to the right corner of the bottom shelf, is a half-full Ziploc bag of homemade snack mix. It’s been there since we moved in. Chex, cheesy bites, cherios, etc. And before it was in this freezer, it was in the freezer at my last house. And in the freezer at the place I rented before that. And before that, it was in my freezer when I lived in Edmonton.

And now you’re worrying about my mental health, and why I have an ancient bag of homemade snack mix in my freezer all that time.

It’s part of the last batch of snack mix that my friend Colin Cooper ever made, a week or so before he died in his sleep, his various health issues catching up to him when he was barely into his 20’s. March 8th is the anniversary of his passing. I keep that bag of snack mix in the freezer for…well, a lot of days only God knows why. But days like March 8th, I know why. It’s to remind me that I’m so lucky to be 31 and have all those worries on my mind.

Colin knew well enough about worry, and several years ago I noted on this blog that he survived a cancer that took his leg at the age of 13, and in his late teen years, he contracted a rare disease that I can’t even hope to pronounce that reduced his vision, hearing, robbed him of his voice and forced him to walk with a cane much of the time. But Colin rarely if ever complained about his lot in life, saying often that there was always someone worse off than he was.

2003 was a while back now, so I’m not about to crack into that bag of snack mix in my freezer. But I’m glad its there. A lot people miss you, Colin, and we’re thinking of you. On March 8th and often otherwise. Thanks for reminding me about the good life. I'm sure you'd be tickled at the thought of being memorialized in the existence of your snack mix ;)

You can donate to the Colin Cooper Award, which was established at the University of Alberta by friends and family, and is now handed out annually. you can contact the awards office by emailing awards@ualberta.ca or calling them at Phone: (780) 492-3221

Top 10 of 2010

2011-01-18T10:53:00.005-08:00

Here we are, a few weeks in to the New Year. You know how it is when a new year rolls around. You get all those lists that tout the ‘best of the last year’ and all those lists that tout the ‘best of the year to come’.

Ridiculous, really, this human need to over analyze what’s gone by and what’s to come.

Naturally, I feel compelled to do one for myself.

But only the ‘looking back’ part. Predicting the best of my year to come seems like it would involve using too many neurons. Besides that, what if my ‘bests’ turn out to be ‘worsts’ or ‘mediocres?’ Totally not on.

So, my ‘top 10 of 2010’. No particular order here, so don’t get too excited about the distance between number one and number 10!

1. Decluttering the house. This was a new year’s resolution that Kate and I made last new years (resolutions, another human foible). To a fair degree it was successful. There were some hard choices in there, but ultimately it was rewarded. I thinned out my closet, for example, in a big way. I’m not really fussy about my wardrobe, Evidence for and against: I had a number of items that I kept for ten years or longer, and now that they’re gone, I’m not sure how they stuck along for so long. Items even older than that, too. A ‘San Francisco’ t-shirt from a family vacation… from when I was EIGHT. Buh-bye. A denim-y button down shirt that I used to wear with a tie… on game days in GRADE NINE… and the list goes on. Needless to say, I’ve weeded out some very outdated items and my clothes rack is lighter and happier for it.

2. Heidi. While her arrival was terrifying and fast-paced and surprising, one of the largest rewards of 2010 has been to watch that little four and a half pound sack of sugar turn into the 21 pound happy-talkative-solid-food-eating-sitting-up-on-her-own-lil’ person that she is today. While her age is still ‘adjusted’ based on her prematurity, she is a wonder of development to behold.

3. Vacation time. This is a no brainer, I suppose. Kate and the kids and I got 17 days off in a row (this includes weekends of course) to be together and go visit various and sundry grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins. It was a solid 14 months between vacations, and a whole lot happened in between times (see #.2) to make this break seem a great relief.

4. Olympic fever. Holy man. What an exhausting amazing unforgettable unrepeatable experience the 2010 Winter Olympic Games were. So Exciting to be immersed in the media centre as a media relations staffer, and so much fun to be able to experience some of the venues and watch competition and take in a number of the free events. By months’ end, I could’ve napped for weeks. Alas,

5. New job. The day after my last shift at the media centre, I fell into a new position as communications officer for the provincial public guardian and trustee. The timing was ‘fiscal year end’ which meant being parachuted into a frenzy of last minute project work that brought me back up to speed on layout and design tools that I hadn’t used in a while, and as a whole through the year, this position has exposed me to projects and processes that are either new to me, or are things I haven’t done other than in a classroom setting, so it’s been an amazing experience to be able to add and polish the tools into my skill set.

6. Five years of marriage. Closing out 2010, Kate and I celebrated our fifth wedding anniversary. The difference in our lives in a mere half-decade is almost immeasurable, what with kids and a house and a dog and jobs etc. etc., but it’s pretty cool that the ring on my finger and the love between us has been constant all the way through.

7. Teaching my two-year-old to parrot funny sayings. I’ll keep this one brief, but let’s face it: my son doesn’t look much like me. May as well train him to act like me.

8. Kari’s wedding. A highlight of the year was the late summer party held in Kamloops to celebrate my sister’s 'nups. It was a tonne of fun to have so much family together and to see my sister get hitched to a great guy. Don’t screw it up, Matt ;) we didn't take a camera with me and at the time of making this list, the only photo from that wedding on or computer... is of me MC'ing the reception. chalk it up to shameless self promotion?

9. Health. On the one hand, I have been plagued since the Olympics with a knee injury that has kept me away from doing most of the athletic things I love: volleyball, biking and running have all been off limits since I tore some cartilage. I await surgery. That being said, I’ve been lucky enough to be able to get to the gym regularly and I feel like I’m in pretty good shape these days as a result. Here’s to continued health in 2011!

10. All the things I forgot to mention. In reality, there are more blessings that pour into a year than I can actually count. I’m a lucky guy and that doesn’t seem to change from year to year.

-30-

All I want for Christmas is my Two Front Teeth...

2010-12-18T21:37:00.010-08:00

Early morning, Sunday December 19. The weather outside is stable, but inside, it’s perhaps anything but. I’m flitting back and forth from the house to the car, trying to jigsaw a ridiculous amount of luggage into the vehicle in advance of setting out for our two weeks vacation, all the while leaving enough room for the kids (of course) as well as the dog. Luggage with two kids is bad enough, but throw Christmas presents in to the mix… well, you get the picture.

Inside, Kate is attempting to calm our near inconsolable eight month old. Heidi is apoplectic —she’s chosen the last 24 hour period to start cutting her first tooth, and here we are trying to organize departure for a four hour car trip to Kamloops to spend a few of the holiday days with family. I dread a repeat performance. Sacha wants to be strapped in to the car, despite departures being a ways off yet. His wish is granted, but predictably, he turns to demanding that mummy and Heidi and Nellie get in the car now, and that daddy will drive. Not mummy. She sit in passenger seat. Yeah, yeah, we get it. All I can think about is when we leave for Kamloops and head up to Whistler where we'll spend Christmas.

Eventually, though, the melee dies down. We are all in the car and the luggage, by some small Christmas Miracle has also all made it in, and we are away.

And ain’t that just what the holidays are about.

People coming and going, family mashed together. Travel plans that try to include everyone, no matter the distance between. Way too much food, and weather that may or may not be what you want it to be.

But we love it all anyway, and we do it year after year.

And this year, I have the added pleasure of watching my two and a half year old come in to some of the realizations of what Christmas involves, like Santa Claus, and what the season is all about--the Reason for the Season, in fact--“Baby Jeeeeesus!”

It has reignited some of the magic of the season for me this year. I hope that this Holiday season, amongst the madness of travel and shopping and gatherings and stuffing your face, you get some genuine quality time out, to slow down either on your own or with your family, big or small. I hope you have the chance to reflect on what the past year has brought you and what the new year has in store, and be thankful for what you have and what it all means.

And so, if you don't feel Christmassy enough yet, perhaps the annual ‘Elf Yourself’ video, this year featuring our newest arrival, Heidi, will help, and as well, a little video Christmas card from the family.

Many blessings for a Merry Christmas and happy new year from Stu, Kate, Sacha, Heidi [and Nellie]

General updation

2010-10-01T09:05:00.008-07:00

Updation. Its my new word. Embrace it.

Fall, my friends, is upon us. Of all the seasons, I find fall to be the most vain of them all. Sure, it wants you to look at it, no question about that.
“You there! Look at all of my glorious colours! I’ll even give you sunshine! I’m gorgeous!”
But inevitably, the more into you get, the colder and more distant it becomes. Such a tease. Just enough sunny days to remind you of the summer gone by, but the falling leaves become the finger wagging in your face saying ‘ah-ah, don’t touch.’ It is a unique season in this sense. Summer’s all ‘Booyow! I brought the heat, you bring the party! Let’s do this!’ and Spring is all ‘check out these blossoms! You KNOW good things are on the way!’, and winter, while cold and wet/snowy and at times miserable, is at least up front and unapologetic. It’s like the Eeyore of the weather world.

Okay, enough of my personifications of the seasons. Just had to get that off my chest. We had a busy summer, but not much vacation to speak of. Just some long weekends here and there. Lots going on around the house. A wicked productive veggie garden (as evidenced by photos) kept us well fed, and Sacha was always willing to help weed (read: pull productive plants out of the garden) or pick beans (read: pull productive leaves off of plants).

He’s a rockin’ little two year old with a serious dose of class clown personality that keeps us on the go from before sun up to after sundown most days of the week.

Heidi continued to grow like aforementioned weed, but we’ve opted to let her do that rather than pluck her. She’s a happy drooly fatty fatty fat fat now, engaged in her world and smiling away and cooing. Awesome change from the extended period of newborn-ness that we were forced to go through due to her prematurity. Kate is back to work part time and our nanny now has both kids on those days, so it’s good that Heidi is in a stable place where she can live without mum for a few days a week.

Given the kids and all that’s involved, we haven’t bitten off much in the way of house renos, but as you’ll see from the photos, we have been chewing away at things over the months. The plumbing job and a counter replacement actually happened mere days before heidi’s arrival, and we’re glad we got that out of the way. As you can particularly see from the pipe, we needed to do the plumbing at the very least >shudder< The fence was a summer project, which needed doing as it was fully falling over, and as much as anything the project was spurred on by a formal reprimand from the city, which indicated to us that our greenery was too fulsome, and now spilled out on to the sidewalks, thus inhibiting pedestrian access, thus in violation of city bylaws.

Yeah, we became that house. Ghetto.

The result of our project was a great new fence that has major curb appeal, and way less greenery to deal with. Not to say we didn’t like lots of flowers and bushy things, but really, with two kids and that hyperactive dog of ours, we’re barely able to keep up with mowing the lawn, let alone weeding and pruning.

So that’s where we’re at these days. Life is straightforward(ish) for us at the moment, which is nice. Other highlights of the summer included a slough of family and friend weddings, some great weekends up at Whistler, in Victoria, and in Kamloops.

Maybe something more substantive to talk about next month. In the meantime, here’s some more photos. If you’ll excuse me, the sun is out. I’m going to go enjoy it while it lasts. Oh no wait, it's gone. SO like you, Fall. So.Like.You.
this one comes courtesy of my talented sister in law Dina!
more tomatoes!
pumpkin patch

bye for now!

She's not so bad, after all....

2010-08-25T08:55:00.007-07:00

To my big sister Kari,

Names, taunting, hair pulling, scratching, screaming fits. These are just a few common characteristics of sibling relationships in their early years.

The relations between you and I were of no different a sort when we were younger, either. I, the youngest of the three Chase kids carried a sense of entitlement (unconscious at the time of course), knowing my two older sibs had been there and done it all by the time I got to doing whatever it might have been. There was an ease there, perhaps, the road before me paved by my brother and sister. Which likely made me a brat towards both of you at times when I thought I ought to get something for myself. Turn on the water works, and there you have it. Younger child perceived as being picked on by older sibs got his way a lot of the time.

And as for you, my sister, the dreaded middle child. Classic symptoms of being the centre of a sibling trio include feelings of disassociation, of being ingnored, being passed over at every opportunity. One is also acutely aware that you were the girl sandwiched between two boys. All of it amounted to you being relegated to the middle bump seat in the family station wagon, each and every road trip (in fairness, you ARE the shortest). While “being ignored” by parents usually meant that Jamie would draw the fire from dad when he started yelling rather than you, it also meant that you maybe worked a little harder in life to make yourself known to the rest of the world; be a little bit of an independent soul.

Fast forward many years, and sibling rivalries sort themselves out. We’re all friends now, and we've all found our own ways in the world. But you, asserting that independence, that originality, found yourself doing science degrees while your brothers were both in some form of journalism school. You found yourself running campus dorms while your brothers lived together on the other side of town. Never one to be satisfied to do what some other girls do, you involved yourself in sports teams, took the lead on social activities like directing theatre, and continued to refuse to eat vegetables. Whatever the circumstance, you have never been afraid to be “out there”, and you have never been worried about what others might think about your goings-on.

Your sense of family has never waivered, despite perhaps feeling like the black sheep or different from us (these, may I remind you, are your words in past, not mine). When I lost my fingers, you took on a motherly role with me, kissing me on the forehead when ever we parted. This is something we still do now, a decade later. Going back further, the teacher in you—which you are now professionally, and a damn fine one I have no doubt—helped me wade through the murky waters of a university bio mechanics course >shudder. Dr. Moyls<. This was no easy feat; I do not take well to direct peer tutoring. Yet you applied an easy hand that led my arts-minded brain through physical principles and ultimately to a B in the course. I don’t think it’s every sibling that could do that, and I still thank you to this day for it.

Back to more recent days: You, not satisfied to stay a course, moved to England to see what life might be like for you there. Family brought you back time and time again--for illnesses, weddings, funerals, births.

But ultimately, the mother country has claimed you, and it brings us to a very special day, and I’m coming to that. But first, a little more about you.

As a younger brother, I have spent most of my life looking down on you physically, but up to you for all the positives that make up who you are.

I remember, once, when you came home from a day at elementary school, with a note from some so called ‘friends’ that wrote to you to say that they didn’t want to be your friend anymore. I remember your tears, and the pain you exhibited.

I remember Jamie and I playing our boy games that we kept you out of.

I remember the times your clumsiness took hold of you in very public places.

I remember you jumping through hoops to try and be a police officer in Calgary, and how disappointed you were when they ultimately decided you were too nice to be a cop (YOU will remember the relief your family felt as this put a lid on our visions of you shooting your foot off with a service revolver).

I remember you triumphing over medical issue after medical issue... after medical issue...

But with these and other such pains in life, I remember moreso the ways in which you chose—and do choose—to rise above it all. To continue being true to yourself and taking negative experiences whenever they occur and using them to make you a stronger person. And you did it all without building up walls around you, for you are loving and kind and caring and compassionate. You have always been wise enough to look at bad things in life and say to yourself ‘this does not have to be who I am’.

And, there, over in England, you found someone who sees those things in you and does not just admire those things and appreciate them, but who loves them and wants to be with you and those characteristics for the rest of his life. Smart man.

Black sheep as you are, you are the last of the three of us sibs to be married (this is moot, I just HAD to point it out! Ha!). And today, I am so proud to be your little brother, playing witness to this beautiful, strong, intelligent, amazing sister of mine who will be swept down the aisle on the arm of her big brother. perhaps keep the other arm out for dad, too, as you know he will be there, and he will also be so proud.

Marriage is not necessarily something that says ‘I am complete now.’ You are complete with or without your partner. Rather, it is a recognition by someone else of just how complete you are. You have always been complete, Kari, whether I as a brother have ever had the guts to say it or not. And I’m so happy for you that Matt recognizes it, and that this week you become partners for life. that is so SO cool.

You’re the best sister a little brother could want. Congratulations to you on your wedding day.

All my love,
Your little brother Stu

A big stinky problem

2010-07-20T12:13:00.011-07:00

I have said to myself lately that life is a bit like Groundhog Day, the Bill Murray movie from 1990 something in which the main character lives the same day, over and over again. So it has felt like in my world. Get up too early, entertain Sacha for a while, go to work, entertain sacha some more, bathe him, put him to bed, clean up the kitchen, bounce baby when not demanding food but cranky none the less, cuddle said baby when she allows for it. Go to bed myself. Rinse and repeat.

Okay, so there’s more to it that that of course, but as a general theme, perhaps you get my point.

The routine was bucked today, however.

The tale begins in the dead of night, with Sacha waking and waling on about something…

1:17 am, and I’m on duty. It is my task to get in there where necessary and bring him down out of the stratosphere.

99 times out of 100, sacha doesn’t just wake up. He wakes up terrified or totally pissed off about something, and the scene does not deescalate without intervention. Without intervention he resorts to smashing his forehead against the crib railing, or throws himself over the top; that sort of scene. As I say, it’s my role to go in and manage the situation. Highly not fair to make Kate do it--she already has mandatory wakeups to feed Heidi.

Anyway, Mr. Sacha repeated the wakeup process a few times in the night. Pepper in wakeups for feeding from Ms. Heidi, and one dog desperate to go outside at some ungodly hour (o’dark stupid in army terms), and we had a night of little sleep well on the go.

4:17 am: Nellie is dying to get outside, again.

I plod bleary eyed down the stairs, grumbling something under my breath, and expunge said K-9 from the abode.

I sit at the computer to keep myself awake, waiting for Nellie to come back after dealing with her “Business”. Don’t get me wrong, I’ll readily get up and let the dog out any time, rather than have her vomit on the carpet or do whatever she’s gotta do. And she always asks to go out; we never wake up to surpises on the living room floor, which is a blessing I suppose.

4:23 am: I hear a sound that I haven’t heard before. It was a combination of a hissing cat-like sound and a shriek; in my head, I immediately think ‘I really hope that’s a racoon trying to claw my dog’s face off, or maybe we have zombies in the garden, because if it isn’t either, it must be a

SKUNK.

I fly out the front door and on to the porch to look down the side of the house and into the backyard. I do so just in time enough to see Nellie come wheeling around the corner with her tail between her legs, up the steps, and past me into the house. I then see the offending pepe le pew scamper deeper into the backyard.

It’s all too late by the time the smell hit me. Nellie has already charged upstairs, burying her face into our bedroom floor and the foot of our bed in a vain attempt to shake off the smell. Shoo’d out of the room, she comes downstairs to bury her face into her beanbag chair bed. Kate is up by now; inexplicably but blissfully having managed to escape the upstairs mayhem of Nellie’s intrusion with neither child waking up.

4:30 a.m.: We corral Nellie in the kitchen, not letting her go near a carpet or any soft surface for fear she’ll rub off more oil.

4:32 a.m. or so rolls around ,and I set to work cleaning the dog with baking Soda and dish soap, the best materials available at the moment.

4:38 am.: Heidi Awaketh.

It’s down to just me and smelly Nellie and a bucket of warm soapy water. We are banished to the front porch to complete the work. Nellie wants to go back in the yard to find the skunk again. Duh? she promptly - while soaking wet, plows her face into a dirt patch at the back of the yard to, once again, get rid of the smell. now she's stinky and dirty.

5:07, Sacha Awaketh.

I am in the middle of mopping up the kitchen floor with some lovely smelling orange oil. It masks the stench to a small degree. Kate has already managed to strip the bed and the beanbag chair is now in the garbage (she’s been wanting to throw it out for years. The mop job must now be abandoned to attend to (screaming) Sacha.

fast forward a few hours to 7:23 a.m.:

Relative calm has returned. Nellie still reeks. She, Sacha and I are in the backyard. Nellie is fixating on the stairs down from the back porch. Sacha is off in the corner of the yard, remaining motionless and not letting me come near him as he fills his diaper in secret.

Nellie creeps toward the stairs, and then I hear a ‘pfffft’ and the dog runs away again.

Pepe is holed up under the porch, and is sending off stinky warning shots at anything that comes too close. The air becomes acrid and pungent once again. I sound the alarm to Kate.

7:25 a.m. Sacha is still at a safe distance, still working on disposing of yesterday’s meals.

I throw a few rocks under the stairs, just to make sure we’re focussing on the right area. More ‘pffft’ and more stench.

7:35: I knock on the basement suite window, rather than the door, which is right next to the stairs. Occupants are advised to exit through our upstairs door rather than risking exiting the suite next to the stairs and being forced to run a gauntlet.

7:45: Sacha has been coaxed out of the corner of the yard and now wants to go up the back steps to get back in the house. He’s already two steps up. Thankfully no movement from under the steps. We ask sacha to come back down in a panicky voice.

I’m normally heading for the bus to work by now, but not today.

7:46 a.m.: Negotiations fail, and I’m forced to advance on the staircase and whisk Sacha to safety. He’s not happy about the decision and starts to cry about it. Heidi is crying about it, too. Nellie is being shoo’ed away from the staircase, again.

8:00 a.m.: Sacha’s Crayola crayons are used to draw an uncannily accurate portrait of the offending skunk, which is stuck to our side gate as a warning to any potential visitors. See photo:

8:15 a.m.: Sacha’s diaper has been changed, and I leave Kate with the two year old, the three month old, and a stinky dog which we’ve now barricaded on the front porch, allowing her access to neither the yard, nor the house.

8:16 a.m.: I walk away from the house, en route tot eh bus, feeling somewhat guilty that I get to escape the scene.

**********************
Epilogue:

Pepe is resident under the porch. Exterminators will not 'off' the beasts, as it turns out, allowing only for the installation of an exit-only mechanism over their entry hole to their hideout. Meaning once the skunk has left their safehouse, they will not be able to return and they'll reestablish themselves somewhere else and make someone else miserable for a while.

In any case, the pest control folks won’t be able to make it to the house until tomorrow. SPCA offers some solutions, but their key word is ‘patience’. Dammit.

We’ll be watching our step until we get rid of Pepe, and, we have no guarantees that Nellie won’t have another encounter, particularly since she seems keen on a rematch.

As of time of publication, Kate is at home, and is still sane. The dog has been shampooed with some sort of concoction that seems to be working, with no guarantees she won't get skunked again before this creature vacates our property. Stuart is wanting to go back to Groundhog Day.

Pomp and Circumstance

2010-06-21T09:17:00.006-07:00

Don't let the title fool you. I hate pomp and circumstance

How odd then that a few Fridays ago, I found myself a part of a convocation platform party, head to toe in regalia, filing past onlookers and graduands attending one of Kwantlen Polytechnic University’s convocation ceremonies.

This behaviour, I assure you, is vastly out of character.

13 years ago, right about now, I begrudgingly sat through three hours of my high school graduation ceremony. I didn’t want to be there; didn’t see the point. But, the parents obviously wanted me to walk across that stage, so I did. About 650 of us, piled into the local hockey arena (how very Kamloops!). Sitting beside me, Heather Challenger, a friend at least to natter away with and one row in front of me, Craig Black, and Eric Brewer (good old alphabetical seating) passing a Nintendo GameBoy back and forth, over whose shoulders I could look to take my mind of the drudgery of this event. My diploma sits either in a binder or a shoebox. I’m not sure where.

Nine years ago, right about now, I begrudgingly filed my way in to my Langara College graduation ceremony. I didn’t want to be there, either. I believe I was pressured into attending by my mum, dad, sister, and girlfriend. My diploma is not in a shoe box, it has been upgraded to a portfolio binder so I can prove to employers that I have the credential.

And four years ago, right about now… I was flying home from a vacation in Turkey. Ha! you thought I was gonna say I was at a grad. Nope. I skipped my next graduation, this time from…Kwantlen. In Spring 2006, I put my foot down and said I would not be pressured into doing something I had zero desire to do. The Turkey trip didn’t actually conflict with the convocation ceremony; though I believe that is the excuse I used with classmates to keep them off my case.

So why then, was I standing up there last week, shaking the new graduates’ hands just after the hands of the school dean, the university chancellor, and the university president? Do I belong there?

It was last year, right about now, when I got a call from Kwantlen asking if I would consider being a board member for the Alumni Association. After some initial discussions with the exec director from the office of advancement, I decided to put my name forward.

My experience at Kwantlen was, after all, a rewarding and engaging one, and after I left the school I have returned on several occasions to speak with students in the PR program about what I got out of the school and how that has translated into my real world experience. As well, I’ve had prospective students ‘interview’ me about Kwantlen and life thereafter as they consider the school for themselves. As such, when the idea of being a board member for the alum association came up, I decided to go for it. I was brought on to the board, and now I’m Vice-Chair of the thing.

So, I stood there at grad in my role as Vice-Chair of the Alumni Association of Kwantlen Polytechnic University and greeted each grad and welcomed them to the alumni association of which they are now a part (ooh, and I gave them some gifties, too.)

From this perspective, the experience of a convocation ceremony was very different for me. Yes, I had to march in the processional to Edward Elgar’s March #1 of pomp and circumstance. Terribly cliché.

But beyond that, I enjoyed the perspective of watching the experience of others. And this is not to say I have not watched others before. Much as I hate grad ceremonies, I appreciate that they are important to others as milestone markers. But that still doesn’t explain why I was there.

In a world where the University of British Columbia has just raised the minimum grade point average required for entry to an ‘A’ across the board, I think it was in a comment that was made during the Kwantlen president’s remarks to the graduating class that rings true to me. He said that kwantlen does not believe that exclusivity is a requirement for excellence.

And that speaks to simple folk like me. I was never top of my class, but at times a decent student none the less. Never good enough to make it into a ‘big’ school, however. But I was able to get into Kwantlen, and now I have a university degree that in no way do I believe came with a sacrifice in quality of education. The program size was small, so lots of personal attentions with faculty whom I still keep in touch with four years after grad. It is a teaching school, not a research school, which means faculty pay attention to you, and not their next journal article. And by the end of it I won two scholarships; one a small monetary sum that bought a few text books, the other a fully paid opportunity for further study through a short certificate program at the University of Calgary (this was not part of Kwantlen, but I applied at the encouragement and with the assistance of the faculty at Kwantlen, thus, I owe them thanks!).

No one that shook my hand on Friday knew me (save a few PR students crossing the stage), or my story. But I am sure there are many who crossed the stage with a similar tale. So that’s why I was there. To celebrate an educational institute that is concerned with being accessible to its community, and just as concerned with making sure its students succeed. It worked for me, and I trust it has worked for the class of 2010 as well. Congrats to all of you.

I’m not about to frame my degrees or anything, but if asked to attend convocation again, I’ll happily stand up to shake some more hands.

Heidi's home!

2010-05-19T16:08:00.008-07:00

For whatever reason, our kids just like to show up early and in speedy, dramatic fashion.

Back on April 14th, it took 3.5 hours from Kate waking up in the morning, thinking something was up, to the arrival a screaming pink baby.

Much like an entry I did just after Sacha was born, we have to stress the point that “fast” birth does not equate to “easy” birth. We’ve gotten our fair share of comments along the lines of “oh man, another baby that only took three hours of labour to deliver? You’re so lucky!”

Yeah, and the three weeks in hospital that followed that were a real cake walk. Not.

So, here we are and Heidi is over a month old now, and home with us, thank God. We’ve been debriefing ourselves on the situation over and over again, and we can admit it at this point: having your baby show up quite as early as this is terrifying. The morning of April 14th was a scary emotional rollercoaster, somewhat devoid of the joy that comes along with having your baby brought into the world. It was very fast, it came with a major sense of unease, and to say the least, heart wrenching to have your baby, just minutes old, whisked away from you. Tubes in her nose. Morphine, antibiotics, Tubes in her throat, Intravenous lines in her hand. Heel prick blood sample after heel prick blood sample. Incubators cutting you off from being able to have skin-to-skin contact. All this on a four pound little person just born.

This could not have been further from the quiet home birth scenario we envisioned for our second child. An hour after sacha was born, we were in our own bed with tea and toast. An hour after Heidi was born, Kate was in a recovery room, and I was with Heidi in a busy intensive care unit, alarm bells ringing, nurses and doctors and respiratory therapists and x-ray technicians, not to mention other sick babies and stressed out parents.

But it is the other stressed out parents in this scenario that make us realize the good fortune of heidi’s arrival, early though it was.

Heidi, at 32 weeks gestation, only had a little bit of growing left to do. We live ten minutes from the hospital, and we have a great support network in town. Many other parents in the Neonatal ICU are from North of God knows where, babies born at 24 weeks with open hearts and collapsed lungs, weighing a pound or only a little more. Some of the parents we met had been there for months, and were living in their camper in the hospital parking lot, with not much prospect of going home any time soon.

Heidi was transferred out of B.C. Children’s Hospital after five days since she was doing so well. We were moved out to the Burnaby hospital’s Neonatal ICU, where the pace is slower and there are less babies present. Another 14 days, and we were on our way home.

We’re happy to report that Heidi is doing very well, gaining weight daily (somewhere in the neighbourhood of 6 lbs, 8 oz. at this point). She’s five weeks old now, and feeling quite solid, thank you very much!

Sacha is adjusting as well as can be hoped for, though he is compensating for the
situation by getting up way too early every morning, which just adds to the sleep deprivation that comes free of charge with most every newborn.

We've all managed to get out for a few family outings, which is exciting and maybe just a little nerve wracking at the same time (what? we have to wrangle TWO of these little peole now? ack)

So, I know that what most people really want is pictures, so here you go. hope the few images peppered throughout have satisfied you a little!

Lastly, just a huge thanks to everyone for thoughts, prayers, and assistance (especially the assistance!) during the last month. With so much time spent at the hospital and a needy dog and two-year-old still to attend to, the many helping hands did a yeoman’s service in keeping our household sane. Blessings on all of you!

Dear Heidi Chase...

2010-04-14T21:46:00.008-07:00

First of all, welcome to all four and a half pounds of you. You may seem small, but already, you seem bigger than life. Your arrival is something we have been looking forward to, this goes without saying. You are the reality of something we have, until today, only dreamed about.

But it sure was a surprise that you showed up when you did.

Congratulations. You upstaged your brother. At 9:30 in the morning on April 14th 2010, you arrived. In a state of hurried panic on the part of your parents, you arrived even when we were saying aloud to ourselves that ‘now is not your time.’ You had other ideas, and indeed, there was no stopping your entrance. What’s more, you showed up in a hospital, which was not the plan. You were supposed to be born comfortably at home eight weeks from now. But, what should we expect. It was your brother’s plan to be born at a hospital, but he was born at home, early. So, go figure; we respect your right for independent thought and action.

Gestationally speaking, let it be know that you decided it was showtime at 32 weeks. This, for the record, is more than just a tad early. Your brother Sacha…he was a ‘tad’ early at 37 weeks. You, our adorable little beauty with your velvety soft skin and crop of dark hair, are ‘way’ early. But, as an Aries—a Ram, no less—it would seem that you needed to have it your way.

The prospects of what your astrological sign may make you both thrills and horrifies. Gung-ho and enthusiastic; fearless as the gods (yahoo!), but an ego and lack of pragmatism to boot (uh-oh).

But the better parts of your sign make you an ideal candidate for what you’re dealing with right now.

Your tiny cries haven’t been heard by many ears yet, nor will they for a few weeks perhaps, until you’re allowed to come out of the hospital. We’ve got to get you up to speed on a few things you weren’t prepared for, like how those lungs work, and how to eat food. You’ve got a few tubes in you at the moment, but don’t worry about those. You’ve got the grit to take care of that situation.

By being born under Aries, being courageous and forceful, you will forge your way ahead in this. With this new endeavor called ‘life’ undertaken, you’ve got the goods to make it through a tough few days and you’ll come out shining.

Now, this may sound like we’re hinting at something very dire, but it’s really not that bad. You just need a kick start, and then you’ll be fine. You're in great shape, especially compared to some of your roommates. Always count your blessings, little Heidi, remeber that. Really, we as your parents just don’t want to see you connected to monitors, and we want to hold you. Soon enough. And then you’ll start discovering what this life is all about.

As we told Sacha when he was born, this is a great world to be a part of. People care, most of the time, and don’t be afraid to let them in to raise you up when you need the help, just like your doctors and nurses are doing for you now.

Life can be like that, you know. Just when you think things are awful and frightening, you get surrounded and carried to a better place. May you know the comfort of rescue when it’s needed and it comes, and may you know the feeling that comes from being some else’s rescuer, too.

And while we’re on the subject of rescue, maybe we can just ask you to make sure you do some good in this world. On little scales, on big scales, whatever. Just do things that make you happy and proud of yourself. Oh, but the same comment applies to you as what we told Sacha on the day he arrived: if you want to be a champion at something, make sure it pays well, so that you can fund our retirement for us.

Lets talk about your names for a second. Heidi: there is no significance; it’s just a great name and we know you'll wear it well. Ballem, on the other hand, is more significant. It is your mother’s maiden name. It comes from your Grandy’s side of the family. If it brings to you what it has to others who carry the name, then we can be fairly sure you’ll be brilliant, charming and attractive. Which reminds your father… he’s going to go out and buy a new Louisville Slugger right now, for use in scaring off potential suitors when you get to your teenage years…

So anyway, it’s hard to say where to go with all of this. Need it be said aloud, your arrival today was about as big a surprise as we could’ve imagined. There is joy at your arrival mixed with a melancholy for not yet being able to hold you and seeing you hooked up to machines. The day was melancholic to begin with, which you might later understand: April 14th is the day your Granddad lost his battle to cancer, three years before you were born, so the fact that you chose to show up on just this date…well, lets just say there is a whole ‘nother circle of life conversation that could be had over this whole affair.

But we don’t need to focus on the death side of things today, now that we have your new life. Your joyful life, just begun and soon to flourish. And we can’t wait to watch it happen before our eyes. Early as your arrival may have been, we are so glad you’re here.

Love always,
Your parents

A trip to the dump

2010-04-08T11:23:00.007-07:00

Over the Easter weekend, Kate, Sacha and I headed on up to Kamloops to spend time at mum’s house. The usual visitations took place, Church on Sunday and a big family visit were in the mix as well. Also, mum asked me if I would be willing to make a ‘dump run’ for her.

One of Kamloops’ dumps is conveniently located quite nearby to the house, so, with an uninsured trailer it’s not a problem to fill up a load and transport your garbage without getting pulled over for your use of a fall-apart trailer with non-functioning taillights and an out-of-date license plate.

This particular weekend, mum asked if I would go into the backyard and empty out the root cellar space that’s under our mudroom. Translation: get rid of a bunch of crap that dad had stored under there for years for no reason.

The task was a trip down memory lane, both for the stuff that was revealed and because of the fact that the guy who put most of the junk there--my dad--has been gone for three years now, coming up almost to the day.

This photo shows a pile of miscellany, no doubt about it. But it's also a patchwork quilt of family history.

The door used to serve as the exit into our backyard; it was scratched to bits by successive generations of impatient family dogs. Why dad kept it is somewhat of a mystery, but my brother now plans to use the windowed portion of the door to create a mirrored wall hanging.

The yellow buoy came out of Shumway Lake, the location of my many years of sprint kayak training sessions and race weekends. It was adopted into our home (who knows why in the first place), and quickly became a giant dog toy for the then-family pooch, Rump. Rump would grab the thick rope that was attached to it and swing it around in circles like a hammer toss. Hilarious to witness, I assure you.

The swing—homemade, with chains that would pinch your hands if you weren’t careful—used to be attached to a lower limb of one of our two tall pine trees in the backyard. Luckily, childhood disappeared before the trees succumbed to an early death, thanks to Pine Beetle infestation. To have been a kid and witnessed not only the loss of your favourite climbing tree, but also the swing attached to it, would’ve been nothing short of devastating. I could go on about the tree as I think about it; climbing to the top of its great heights in swaying winds. That was a time before my fear of heights kicked in and a time before a parent would be criticized for letting their little kids climb 80 feet into the air, untethered and unsupervised.

The GT snowracer. The property of my brother and sister; a joint purchase that I said I wasn’t interested in. Truth be told, I was perhaps foolish to pass up the investment and I may or may not have had pangs of regret as I watched them scoot down snow covered hills with such speed and control.
Jamie made sure to remind me at every opportune moment that I was not party to ownership of said sled, and thus best keep my hands off of it, which I did with surprising restraint given the impetuous nature of my age at that time.

The big white thing: a rooftop car carrier. This carrier sat atop our Chevy Lumina van for innumerable Chase family trips; the car packed with three kids, two parents, some luggage and often one family dog, and the rooftop carrier took all the rest. It's last trip was to attach it to Kate's Toyota Echo, however. The tiny car had in it: me, Kate, My sister, and Matt, her now-fiance-then-boyfriend, and nellie the dog. The Eggshell, as the carrier was known, was strapped on the roof. Tiny car, huge carrier, ridiculous image. We were using the Duffy lake road to access Whistler, from Kamloops. a few too many switchback corners at speed, and we all heard it: "pop pop pop pop woooosh" as all four straps gave up on their vain attempts to cling to the Echo's roofrack, and the carrier shot off the side of the car. Thankfully, it came to rest in a ditch, rather than the raging river we had just crossed over. small blessings. the carrier was retired permanently after that weekend, but not thrown out until now.

And the last item in the photo: a testament to the scavenger who was my father. This red and white striped tarp is actually an awning from a KFC store. Undoubtedly, when one of his stores was under a renovation phase, he probably asked “what’s going to happen with that awning tarp?” and when someone said it was going to be tossed out, he said “you’re kidding?! Well, I’ll take it off your hands”… and it was promptly folded up and stored under the house, never to be used. A heavy duty, quality tarp is indeed what it is. Could be used for all sorts of things, and now that it has been revealed, maybe it will be.

Not pictured here are a myriad of other items one might wonder why anyone would keep, but dad did anyway:

• Two saw horses, so rickety and broken down you wouldn’t dare use them for fear of serious bodily harm while operating a saw as they collapsed underneath your project being held up by them at the time.

• A collection of metal poles used to hoist our old canvas tent trailer into position. The tent trailer is long gone, I can’t imagine why the poles would not have gone with it.

• My old basketball rim, once attached to the roof of the garage; I booked a lot of hours out front of the house, practicing to be a high school basketball star (editors note: Stu was NEVER, even remotely, a high school basketball star). it was so bent and broken where it used to attach to the garage that one would have to do some welding to get it back into shape. I had no idea that it had been saved, and as much fun as it was to reveal it, it was added to the scrap metal pile for delivery to the dump.

So, with the trailer all loaded up with “stuff”, I hitched it to mum’s car and retraced the path of one of dad’s favourite weekend activities: a drive to the dump.

The recycling section of the dump has been closed recently; some woman tripped, split her face open and sued the city, so they can’t have a “used” section any more. One of dad’s favourite things to do at the dump—whether in the used section or straight out of the trash heap—was to rummage for stuff to bring home after he’d dropped off his own crap. I can’t say for sure, but he probably bought home more than he took on more than one occasion. I sure do miss that…but at least the root cellar is finally cleared out.

April 14th marks the third anniversary of the passing of Jim Chase. We miss you dad.

Olympics, come and gone

2010-03-01T07:59:00.017-08:00

Well, it’s all over. Years and years of planning, all leading up to the last 17 days which have just come and gone.

Monday, March 1st felt a bit like the hung-over morning after a one night stand. On the one hand, the city had a glow about it that won’t soon fade. On the other hand, it’s kinda like the world arrived, romanced us, then used up the city and ran out before the sun came up. I had to arrive early to work that morning; my final shift in the BC International Media Centre where I spent 24 of the 28 days in February.

The revellers from the Men's Gold medal hockey game had moved on by the time I got to work; even those that managed to parlay Canada’s Storybook overtime goal celebrations into post-closing ceremonies shenanigans had at least found an alley way or door enclosure to pass out in at that point.

But the litter on the street on Monday will not be a lasting memory from the past month.

The images I will take with me are of a nation cheering in the streets and at Olympic venues, unabashed in its love for itself and pride for its athletes.
I will remember being up close to our athletes mere hours after their wins, as they would look down at the medal around their neck, the pride of victory on their face.

I will remember the hoots and hollers of tourists as they flew across Robson Square on a Zip Line ride that they waited six hours in line to get on, and all the families that came down to Robson Square to partake in all sorts of activities.

I will remember the national anthem, ringing out in the streets in impromtu chorus day after day.

I will remember trading pins with media from around the world, little old ladies I met on the street, colleagues, and excited kids.

I will remember a city that did not sleep for more than two weeks.
I will remember gathering with friends--hockey fans and non-hockey fans--to watch the big games.

I will remember cherry blossoms showing themselves to the world in the middle of a Canadian “winter”, where sunny skies and moonrises over the downtown core took place everynight for the better part of a week--no small feat in Rainy Vancouver.

I will remember feeling so fortunate to have been live and in the flesh when our athletes achieved their goals and had the best days of their lives.

and everyone will remember Joannie Rochette, who achieved one of the biggest goals of her life amidst some of the worst days of her life. And Kate can say she was there to see it happen.

I will remember politicians proudly donning our maple leaf rather than the usual suits; a nice change of pace if you ask me.

And Lastly,I take with me the sense that, as john Furlong noted in his speech at the closing ceremonies, perhaps now the world knows who we are as Canadians. I hope that vancouverites keep with them the lesson that it is in fact okay to say ‘hi’ to strangers on the street, as they have been dong for the last few weeks. It has been awfully nice for the city to lose any pretention it had before!

I hope that as the Paralympics comes through town in two weeks from now, we can show the world that we can do all of this not once, but twice, and that our spirit as Canadians will endure to the world even beyond that. GO CANADA!

oh, and n case you missed it, here's a whole bunch more photos in high speed ;)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-KAPio1Prk

Happy Blogiversary to me!

2010-02-15T11:18:00.005-08:00

Six years ago this week, I waded into the world of social media. Life outside in the real world was very different for me then. I was living in a city that I disliked immensely (sorry Edmonton), during a season which I always dislike immensely (sorry winter), working at a job that I disliked immensely (sorry EPCOR), and to boot I was taking night courses at a community college which—you guessed it—I disliked immensely (sorry Grant MacEwan).

I think when I first started blogging, it was a creative outlet to distract me from other “stuff” that was going on. Six years later, my operation has grown slightly more sophisticated...but only slightly. My first-ever blog post was short and sweet, and a was a clear testament to my complete lack of technical know-how, and up to the most recent, my computer savvy has only barely advanced.

technically, I can hardly call myself a blogger. I've only produced 139 posts in six years. A drop in the bucket compared to those who update daily.

Despite this, people “read me” anyways, and hey, I just wanted to stop in this month and say “thanks”. In a world that has more social media applications and ways to share stories every month nowadays... Facebook, Twitter, Digg, MySpace, RSS feeds channelling news every which way... well, it’s more than easy to go somewhere else. It’s estimated that there are somewhere in the neighbourhood of more that 300 million blogs out there, and then some. Closer to 400 million now, I’m sure.
Which makes my blog tant amount to the speck of dust that clings to the speck of dust that clings to a slightly larger speck of dust. I’ve never been aggressive about trying to add readers to my blog, but some growth has happened anyway.

Over the last six years, I’ve had about 11,500 people stop by the blog, with about 19,000 page views. I can’t track the readers that check my post as it appears on my Facebook RSS feed, so I can factor in a few more hits from there, I suppose. I don’t imagine it’s anything to write home about. In any case, by no means do I produce these numbers as bragging rights, as not all of those hits are unique visitors. Most are folks like you who’ve come back time and time again to check in with StuLand once a month or so.

And thanks for doing it.

Writing makes me happy, and from what I get in feedback, my writing makes some of you happy, too, which again, makes me happy. Even if no one read my musings, I know I’d still be doing this stuff because it’s what I love to do, and I guess that’s why six years later, I’m still blogging.

Life is totally different now, of course, from what it was “back then”. Different city, career well underway, married, kid avec one on the way, house, dog, etc. So that must mean that I’m not really writing this blog because I need someone to “pay attention to me, dammit”, but just because it’s what I like to do.

It’s a good place to be. So, here’s to six more years and beyond!

-----------------------
Fast Facts about Stuland usage (yes, I’ve been spying on you):

• Canadians account for 65 per cent of my readership. “unknown” comes second
with a 17 per cent share, followed by the good ol’ USA and the UK after
that.

• The average reader stays on my blog for about six and a half minutes. That’s
pretty good considering how fast people jump off most web pages.

• I get about 15 hits a month from people who are 11,000 kilometres or further
away from me.

• For the nearly two hundred hits I get in an average month, Only 1-3 people
will leave comments ON my blog, with a further 18-20 sending comments to my
email inbox. The rest of you are just voyeurs I guess! Don’t be afraid to
stop in and say hi!

• Telus internet account holders make up about a quarter of the readers.

• 95 per cent of the readership uses English as a first language. Coming in
second... Russian, at three per cent. Me thinks we can safely call these
people internet spammers who are not on my blog for its fine content ;)

Marion Lay, Torchbearer

2010-01-13T21:04:00.025-08:00

Early on February 6th, 2010 on a quiet stretch of road in the community of Pemberton, B.C., just as the day brushes the last few flecks of night off of it's shoulders,it may be raining, or snowing, or cold and clear. But one things is for sure: There will be a flame.

That flame, just six days and two hundred-ish kilometers to the South, will be touched to the Olympic cauldron, officially opening the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympic Games. But before it gets there, for a few moments in Pemberton as that daylight takes hold, over a distance of 300 meters, that flame will be held in the hands of a woman by the name of Marion Lay.

This otherwise quiet, secluded stretch of road will be transformed and take on new significance, if only for moments; paved over anew by the footsteps of a woman with an olympic-sized legacy all her own.

Marion was born in and has lived most of her life in Vancouver, and she now lives part-time in Whistler, which alone makes her an ideal torch bearer given the host cities for the upcoming Winter Olympic Games. But it goes, well, well beyond that.

At an early age, Marion was drawn to the water. She grew up poor, but gained a wealth of experience through sport. Despite training in the U.S, Marion was always, and is, a proud Canadian. She swam for Canada in the '64 and '68 Olympics, at the ages of 14 and 18 respectively. Got a bronze medal, too, as part of Canada's relay team in those 1968 games in Mexico. She also picked up a gold medal at the Commonwealth Games. She's got a world record to her name as well.

Marion's interests lay not only in the competition in the pool, but also in the competition for gender equality in sport. She is a founder of the Canadian Association for the Advancement of Women and Sport and Physical Activity(CAAWS) where her legacy remains felt years after her foundation in the form of the Marion Lay Herstorical Award, which honours the long-term positive influence of an individual, group or organization whose contributions have directly affected, improved or positively influenced girls and women in sport and physical activity.

The list of awards Marion has been presented with is endless, from B.C. Sports Hall and Canadian Swimming Hall of Fame honours, right up to the International Olympic Committee's Trophy for the Americas, which she received in 2001 for her dedication to the advancement of women in sport.

She's been involved in sport at every level. As an athlete, a coach, an administrator, as mentor, as visionary. And it's not just with swimming, nor Olympic competition. For example, a guy the rest of us all know and refer to (and revere) as Rick Hansen? Marion knows him simply as 'Rick'. She headed up operations for part of the 1985-1987 world tour. Ever heard of Pacific Sport Canadian Sport Centre Vancouver? One of the first established places that elite athletes could utilize to train on the West coast as they aim to own the podium, and yep, Marion helped found that, too. Heard of LegaciesNow? the organization set up to ensure that sport, art, and culture legacies would be of benefit to all British Columbians, and not just the host cities of the Olympics? Marion is the past President.

But perhaps most important to this particular story about this years' Winter Olympics: Marion Lay has been part of the Vancouver 2010 bid from its earliest stages.

It's not necessarily well know, but when the 1988 Winter Olympics in Calgary were ending, the road to Vancouver 2010 was already beginning. And Marion was there. Marion shared the dream early on that Vancouver would someday host the Games, and eventually, the 2010 Bid Corporation was born. She was even the Chair for a time. In 2002, she was elected to represent the City of Vancouver as a member of the Board of Directors for the Vancouver Organizing Committee for the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games.

So where am I going with this?

Without Marion, On February 6th of 2010, that little stretch of road continue to be as it is. The sun would rise, cars would go by; maybe a cyclist here and there, and the sun would set. Just as it would be for all the near-45,000 km of Canadian Highway before it, where for months and miles torch bearers have carried the Olympic Torch, and felt it's inspirational power, and laughed and cried and celebrated, and drawn communities together to witness the spectacle...

Without Marion, it would all just be the same old road.

The torch doesn't have to be on its way to Vancouver right now. That torch could just as easily be in some other corner of the world that outbid Vancouver for the games.

But WITH Marion, and because of those like her, we.got.the.games.

So, on Feb. 6th, 2010 that little piece of road in Pemberton will take on a new life.

I could not be prouder or more thrilled as a Canadian, as a citizen of a host Olympic city, or as a human being who believes in the power and spirit of sport-- but most importantly as a family member of Marion Lay's--to say that I will be there to cheer her on.

Hold that torch high Marion. You earned every step, and I can't wait to be there to watch you take them.

An anniversary of sorts

2009-12-16T08:51:00.005-08:00

On Dec. 16, 1999 I cut off my fingers in a sawmill accident. Ten years ago today.

I remember the event well; the weather, the environs, the people around me. One of those people was my brother Jamie, who was working on the same machine as me, stacking the wood that I was cutting on the chop saw. I remember the ice pack duct taped to my hand, being on the edge of vomiting, the hurried ride to the Kamloops hospital. I remember the air ambulance to Vancouver. I remember waking up from surgery after 22 hours under the knife, I remember realizing I would not be in Maui for Christmas, as was then the plan.

I remember Jamie, days later, in the Vancouver General Hospital Burns and Plastics unit, closer to Christmas. Laying hands on me, he asked God for help with the re-attached digits that I lost from my left hand. I remember Jamie asking a God who has shown he can move mountains, that perhaps he could help these little fingers see life again. Jamie was the last to leave the hospital room that evening.
I remember crying to myself after he left, hoping for the same.

On Dec. 28th, 1999 the now-dead fingers were removed again.

--------------------------

Ten years later, I often think—but never wonder—about that bedside prayer.
The accident was—as I see it—a catalyst to becoming a closer immediate family that we still have today. Lots of hugs and kisses of greeting, lots of sharing what’s on our mind, lots more ‘I love you’. We were close, mind you, but we were not “that kind of family” before that point. And that kind of closeness has helped us through other family tragedies of much greater consequence in more recent years. Thank goodness for building blocks.

Without the accident, I never would have interacted with the Workers’ Compensation Board. FYI: it was as positive an experience as an injured worker could hope to have. More importantly, it led to my first “real” job, in the WCB communications department. This was the opposite side of the fence that I thought my career was going to be running along, as at the time of my accident I was enrolled in Journalism school. Ten years later, I’m still happy to be in PR rather than journalism. The current economic climate means that as news rooms and media conglomerates close down and file for bankruptcy protection, I’m in a field with more jobs than ever as governments and companies scramble for good communications in a bad news environment. Would I have been here if I hadn’t gotten into that accident? Maybe, but who knows. Doesn’t matter, because I got a kick start. Nothing wrong with that, I say.

We have a family friend who chopped off a few digits around the same time as me. His fingers were successfully reattached. He struggled / struggles with remaining sensitivity and mobility issues that I never had to deal with, simply for the fact that I did not have the reattached digits to rehabilitate. I got to work on healing and moving on.

Without the accident, I’d be without the best built-in physical comedy prop... aside from my big ears and clumsiness... that I could ever ask for (reference here: finger stump-up-nose-sight gag). It has entertained children, as it will mine someday, once they figure out that “daddy has a funny hand”. And that sort of gag has led to questions about physical difference and disability from many that ultimately brings people to a little bit of understanding and a broadened horizon or two. Nothing wrong with that either, I say.

So here I am. I can’t take back a moment in a sawmill from ten years ago but these days, I can see I don’t need to.

As for what happened with that bedside prayer a decade ago? My digits ended up in a hospital incinerator, so no, I don’t think they were particularly blessed.

But it feels like maybe, just maybe, the rest of me, was.

I don't talk about pee enough on my blog. so...

2009-11-27T16:35:00.011-08:00

Here we are!

Actually, this is an entry into a contest at parentingbynature.com and eco baby steps, where I wouldn't mind being their guest blogger for a few months.

That's the prize if I'm selected! that's right, I'm a dad, and I wanna talk about being a parent! so please: read my post, leave a comment or start a discussion and vote for me if I'm shortlisted! I'll let you know! Now, without further adieu... let's talk diapers!

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All of you who’ve been in this situation before with your child’s cloth diapers, please raise your hands: you’re enjoying some quality time with your wee one, sitting on the couch with your tot on your lap.

And then it happens.

Maybe the acidic smell reaches your nose first. Or perhaps the wetness seeping through on to your legs is your first indication. Any way you slice it, you know it’s happened. Your wee one has done... precisely that. Through their diaper, through their own clothes, and on to you.

Oh, the glamours of parenthood.

My wife and I are staunch defenders of the cloth / natural diaper use, but it took us a while to hit on a product that worked well for us. And the language can be a little intimidating at first. Diaper covers? Wha? Pre-folds? Hey, sounds easy! FuzziBuns? Hey, sounds cute! BumGenius? Hey, these will make my kid smarter! Hemp diapers? Hey, sounds groovy man!Monkey doodlz? Hilarious! Seventh generation disposables? Diaper inserts? Aaaand I could go on...

My wife and I were actually planning to use disposable diapers for a few weeks when our son was a newborn, but he showed up three weeks before his scheduled arrival time and at that point, we had only purchased the cloth diapers that we ultimately planned to use. And so it was from the start: our little man’s bottom was swaddled in natural fibres, and we never looked back.

Parents climbing into the green diapering arena ought to do their research, as—noted above—there’s plenty to choose from. The point of most all of them are the same: sustainability. In a population increasingly concerned with its environment, it makes sense to go green. And let’s not kid ourselves: all those cloth diapers add a little extra to baby’s profile, and it makes their little bums just that much cuter as they crawl and waddle around the house.

You just can’t find that in the slim fit of a planet-poisoning disposable!

In searching for the right fit of diaper, we definitely got peed on more than once. Into every life, a little rain must fall. Let this puddle on the floor (or on your leg) not weaken your resolve! Long story short for us has been to realize there is no magic bullet when it comes to buffering baby’s bottom. And the older our little guy gets, the bigger his bladder gets and... well, you get the point. We now live with a combination of different types of cloth diapers that we’re pretty happy with, but yes, shopping around was required. But it’s all been worth it, and it will continue to be so, even if we have to get into another search.

Why?

Well, could we have said ‘nuts to this’ and run for the ‘Pampers’ ultra-dry jumbo pack? Yes, of course. But ultimately, we have to look beyond ourselves and consider the future of our little guy—and any siblings that may follow him—and realize that we can’t bankrupt the future health of his planet for our convenience in the present. Cloth diapers are better for your wee one—chemical free and soft on baby’s skin being but two obvious reasons—and if treated right, they’ll last long enough for use with any other kids that might come along. Buying up a stock of cloth diapers may seem like an investment at first, but once you’ve got ‘em, you’ve got ‘em. Once they’re done with, cut ‘em up and use them as rags! And, if you do have more than one tot, the fact that your kids could share diapers is an added cost-saving benefit. The ‘shared diaper’ point could also prove handy when they’re older, fighting about something and you need to prove to them just how similar they actually are... but I digress...

So take heart if you’re early on in the game and still trying to find the right fit with your cloth diapers. It WILL happen! Just look at that pee stain on your leg, and see it as a badge of honour. You are a crusader on a search for a greener world, after all. Get up, change your pants (and your baby’s) and get back to it. You can do this!

Quiz Results and Hawaii Pictures!

2009-11-16T10:24:00.005-08:00

Well, I have returned to Vancouver after two weeks on the Hawaiian island Of Kaua’i. The Hawaiian hex essentially left us alone, I’m pleased to report, though Kate took a beating on her very first day of body surfing, and she ruined her shoulder and got a brutal knock on the noggin. Near as anyone can figure, she hit a sea turtle full on (they like to surf in the waves, too). Also, the member of our party with lyme disease—who was feeling much better, thanks—rolled her ankle quite badly, doing nothing more adventurous at the time than walking down the sidewalk.

Hawaii was lovely. Lush greenery and azure blue seas, marine life,lazy days on the beach, delicious fruits bought from road-side stands, warm southern breezes, sounds of the lapping ocean wherever we were, and the occasional tropical rain storm rolling though just to amaze us.

So yes, we cheated on Vancouver for a few weeks, and we loved every minute of it.
Like a scorned lover, however, Vancouver gave us glorious views of snow-capped North Shore mountains as we flew back in to town, as if to say “Yeah that’s right, see how good I’m lookin’?” , Just before clouding over and releasing what has so far been a near unrelenting dump of winter rain and wind upon us.

Sigh.

Enough chatter. At least a few of you didn’t come here to hear me wax poetic about Hawaii. You want chocolate covered macadamia nuts... so... Drum roll please...

With 21 entries (at least 220 people read the blog entry... what, you don’t like free stuff? Oh well, less work for me, figuring out a winner), I have to report that there were... zero correct entries! Maybe I should've let family play after all :) So, all the names went into a hat for the goodies and from said hat I have withdrawn the name of:

Marina C. From Vancouver!

This is win-win, because she’ll be getting some delicious packets of macadamia nut treats, and I won’t have to mail them anywhere!

So for those interested, here is the answer key for the quiz! Beyond that, a link to pictures from our two weeks in paradise. Enjoy!

1.True – Dec. 16, 1999, I lost my digits and my seat on a plane to Maui. D’oh.
2.True – a young friend of the family landed in BC Children’s hospital with a staph infection in his leg, which he contracted just days before his family was to travel to Hawaii.
3. False – totally made up.
4. T rue– all true, but rest assured, we had a fine officiate and a good family friend at that. These things work out as they should in the end 
5. False-totally made up.
6. True-happened to my brother, but he was determined to travel and he did!
7. T rue - ...and when he and the family were camping on what they thought was a quiet spot in their camper van, the police put an end to their silent night.
8. True... and False -- trick question...the event did take place, but I didn’t know anyone on the flight!
9. True – the incident made headlines all over North America.
10. T rue– As alluded to in the first paragraph of this entry. As far as anyone can tell, the Lyme disease was caused from a tick bite, but no one is sure. As for the ankle, it turned all sorts of pretty colours, needed lots of ice, and gave her a nice limp, but all’s well that ends well ;)

There’s a nice picture of the rolled ankle in the following photo album, along with lots of other purdy pics of our trip!

So there you have it! thanks for playing the home game! Until next time then!
Aloha!

Hawaii Five-OH!

2009-10-26T13:49:00.011-07:00

In short order, I and the fam are Hawaii bound! Would you believe this trip has been 10 years—less about 7 weeks—in the making?

I was first scheduled to fly to Hawaii for Christmas 1999 with Kate. Instead, I spent two weeks in the hospital after amputating my fingers in a saw mill. Boo hiss.

Ever since then, as far as I can tell, there’s been a bit of a hex on Hawaii in our circles which for quite a while scared me into not wanting to get on any plane that goes there.

But here I am, a decade older and ready to go! In celebration of getting past this mental barrier, and without further adieu... StuLand’s ‘Legend or Luau’ quiz and first-ever prize giveaway for this blog!

The following is a collection of Hawaii-related calamities which may have occurred in the last ten years, adding to my fear of travelling to that place in the sun to which I now dare venture, or perhaps I just made ‘em up... you decide!

Here are the rules:
1) Leave a response, either on the blog or through to my email, and respond in this fashion...
1. Legend (false)
2. Luau (true)
...and so on. So, just type the question number, along with ‘legend’ or ‘luau’, and that’s it!
2) The person with the most right answers will be sent a tasty treat in the mail, purchased in Hawaii! (no, not Maui-Wowee... we are neither travelling to Maui, nor turning ourselves into drug mules). Actual type of treat TBA! Something macadamia-ey perhaps?
3) Multiple correct entries will result in all the correct entries going into a hat for a random draw to win the loot.
4) Sorry, IMMEDIATE family members not eligible... you know too much...:)
5) Deadline for entry is...oh, I don't know. two weeks today. Nov. 10, 2009. At noon. any entries after that time won't be considered.

I’ll announce the winner on a blog post afterwards, and I’ll ask you to send me your mailing address!
Okay, here we go. First one is easy!

Legend or Luau:
1. Stuart did not travel to Hawaii as a 20 year-old because he cut off his fingers days before departure, and landed in the hospital...

2. A family friend planned to travel to Hawaii. Days before departure, one of the family members got a severe infection and they too landed in the hospital, unable to travel...

3. Another family friend DID eventually get to Hawaii, but they missed their initial flight booking. They were arrested in front of their kids at the airport upon suspicion of being wanted on an outstanding warrant...

4. One of the officiates that Kate and I were considering to have us married back in 2005 was originally okay with the dates of our ceremony, but his partner sprung a surprise trip to Hawaii on him as a gift during the same dates. So, he went to Hawaii... and got gravely ill while there...

5. I had a friend who was travelling to Hawaii for a winter vacation a couple years ago (same town we are going to now, incidentally!). They had saved for a while to travel; no vacations for a few years before this trip. Travel went fine, no snags... until they got to the hotel they were booked into...which had been completely demolished for redevelopment, a fact of which they were never informed by the travel agent...

6. A family member booked a trip to Hawaii a few years ago. They slipped a disc in their back a short time later, and required surgery to correct it...

7. The same family member did get to Hawaii, despite. Whilst camping in a touring van, they were rudely awakened one night to the glare of a police spotlight, police cars, and an officer on a loudspeaker. They had been singled out as drug runners / dealers...

8. In April of this year, a former classmate of mine was en route to Sydney, Australia. They, along with eight other passengers and two flight attendants on the Air Canada flight were injured when sudden turbulence struck...and the plane was forced to make an emergency landing in...Hawaii...

9. Hawaiian locals are not immune. In 2003, a 12 year old was surfing a kilometre off shore when she had her arm bitten off by a shark. She still surfs. Her arm was never found...

10. One member of our party for this long awaited trip has already fallen victim to the Hawaiian Hex. While not contagious and still able to travel, one of us travelling has contracted, of all strange things, lime disease...

11. A friend’s trip to Maui came to a disturbing conclusion when, on their last night there and out on the town, they got into a fist fight with David Hasslehoff after the actor started heckling him at one of the local night clubs. Okay, this one is a joke... It would be of course true, though, as you may not be able to Hassle the Hoff, but the Hoff can Hassle you...

Thus concludes my little quiz! Remember, Nov. 10th, 12 noon is the dealine! Good luck!

Knowing Monique

2009-10-16T09:34:00.013-07:00

You don’t need to know Monique to know Monique’s type, and to feel you know her well.

Heck, in all honesty, the only place I can say I know her from is the office. Well, that and unfortunately, bedside in a hospital room.

Our office lost a colleague to cancer this week. More than that though, we lost a friend.

When I first started my job in February of 2007, I was taken around and introduced to all the staff. I didn’t meet Monique that day. Nor the next, nor the one after that. When I started here, Monique was already off work, battling with breast cancer. So no, I didn’t get to meet Monique right away.

But I sure heard about her.

The Legal Office Manager here, Monique was clearly a friendly force to be reckoned with. Everyone talked about her, people took time to visit her after work and on weekends. People spoke of her calm nature, her soft-spoken demeanour and light-hearted way.

Finally, after months of my working here, she was able to return to work and by the time she came through my office door to introduce herself to me, I felt like I knew her.

I think, even if I hadn’t heard everyone’s stories about her, my first impression would still have been to say that she was a friend. And so it went from there. Monique was back. Happy, productive, with the aura of victory over the ugliness of cancer.

As I got to know her, personally this time, she came to learn about my mother’s battle with breast cancer, which was happening at the same time as hers. She also came to learn about my father’s passing from cancer a few Spring seasons ago. She lost her own father a year ago. As was Monique’s way, she did not dwell on her own trials and tribulations, but was always asking about others.
“How is your mom doing, Stuart?,” or “Any more follow-up appointments?” and “ So glad to hear she’s doing well.”

How could this woman care so much about other people’s woes when she had so much on her own plate? That was just who Monique was.

Well, Monique’s presence in the office didn’t last long. The cancer came back. Monique, forever faithful and optimistic was ready for the fight. With prayers and positive thinking, she was going to beat her cancer.

I saw her for the last time, on my birthday, when I went to visit her in the palliative care unit of Burnaby Hospital. Nauseous, thinned, tired and weakened by months of treatments and an unrelenting cancer, she was still impossibly optimistic.

I was able to visit with Monique one-on-one for a little while. No mean feat, considering the steady stream of colleagues and other friends in to visit her, and the presence of her seven siblings who had arrived in town to see her through her final stretch.

“How is your mom doing Stuart?” Even then, more concerned for others than herself. Monique spoke of her faith, of going to meet The Father, and of seeing her father again, whom she couldn’t wait to see again, just knowing he would be waiting for her.
“God has decided I don’t need this body anymore,” she said, and after a quick pause, “and at this point I agree with Him,” she said with a little bit of cheek in her voice.

We had our little visit--for a few minutes anyway--in the lounge of the care unit. She asked about my family, how my son was developing. We only had a few minutes to chat before she said she was tired and wanted to go lie down. I wheeled her in to her room and she lay down. I didn’t stay long after that, just enough time to say goodbye. When I say goodbye to someone in this situation, like I have in the past to others I prefer to say thanks rather than goodbye, so that's what i did.

“Thank you? For what?” she asked quizzically. My response was quick and to the point.
“Just for being you; for your life. We love you. You’re an inspiration, and I—and everyone—is better for knowing you.”

I followed that up by saying I was pretty sure it was the first time I’ve told a co-worker I loved them, but then, all of her colleagues have said it, and we all mean it.

She laughed a little then, as if she didn’t believe it I think.
“Take care, Monique,” I said on the way out the door.
“You too,” she replied. “Glad your mum is doing well,” she said again.

Her last facebook status, updated by one of her siblings, simply says “Today is the day I got my wings.”

You earned them Monique, no question. Thank you. We’ll miss you, friend.

What Lies Beyond 30?!

2009-10-02T08:19:00.005-07:00

Last night, I said goodbye to the final day of my twenties in fine style, and as a result I ushered in a new era of thirtyness this morning feeling every bit my age. I have no one to blame but myself. My whole body aches—my knees especially from all that jumping around-- I’m tired, I have a headache...

Yeah, it was a late one last night. Got right into it with the boys. Got served a few, killed a few, blocked a few.

Blocked a few?

No, I wasn’t drinking away my twenties last night, I was on the volleyball court.

30 years old is going around like a flu bug in my circles; my peer group are all just “of that age” now. As one with a birthday somewhat late in the year, I’ve had the chance to sit back and observe as others cross this threshold before me. To the people who have been a bit freaked out about it, I have to ask:

why?

People say they lament the loss of their 20’s.

Huh?

Do you want to go back to massive student debts and eating kraft dinner three nights a week? Do you want to go back to moving from basement suite to basement suite? Are you so attached to your ‘Bar Star’ status?

And then there are people like Matthew McConaughey’s character in ‘Dazed and Confused’, who said "...the great thing about high school girls is that I keep getting older, but they just stay the same age..." CREEPY, yes, and I also think reflective of someone who might be afraid of the future or doesn’t feel like they’ve accomplished enough of what they wanted to and is running out of time. Thus, they’d prefer to stay in the past.

I feel nothing of those things, and I’m totally looking forward to the next thirty years. Seriously, what’s to be worried about? God willing, this is not my mid-life point, so crisis averted there. God willing, I have only advancement ahead of me in terms of career. God willing, I’ll get to see my happy little family grow and develop. I presume there’s going to be more time for seeing the world, reading good books, seeing good movies, going to good parties and concerts, eating good food and spending time with good people. And, God willing, good health will stay with me through it all.

So if that’s all true, then this really isn’t a time for worry, or need of pause, or morose self-evaluation.

So, simply, happy birthday to me. Today is a good day, and I am glad to be in it. Yesterday was a good day and so too, I expect, tomorrow will be as well. And hey, why fight it? After all:

There is no cure for birth and death, save to enjoy the interval.
– George Santayana

Ps-if you want to buy me a beer at some point because you think the occasion requires more celebration, I won’t object to that ;) For now, you’ll have to excuse me. I’m gonna go ice my knees.

Summer Recap!

2009-08-25T15:44:00.016-07:00

Okay, I hate to vocalize this when the sun is still shining and we’ve not yet hit the Labour Day long weekend...but... summer is coming to a close. Insert deep, heartfelt >sigh< here.

There’s hardly been a free weekend since June around our house. So on the one hand, the end of the summer stretch means not only leaves starting to turn (heads up people, it’s already happening!), it also means the return a slower pace for us, which is perhaps not necessarily a bad thing. Particularly for Sacha, I think, who is proving himself to be a happy homebody type of guy.

This summer may have been busy, but it was good-busy. Our garden has seen a bumper crop this year, for which we are ever thankful. Dad would be impressed with our carrots, no doubt about it. Aside from harvesting food and enjoying the bounty, we’ve been able to go to a few weddings as well. One wedding was enjoyed in a scenic vineyard in Duncan on Vancouver Island, and the most recent wedding-- which was for my very best friend Doug—was on the shore of Kalamalka Lake in Vernon. Both weddings were amazing settings and memorable occasions.

But as for Doug... Doug and I have known each other for—give or take—27, 28 years? We were first paired in a babysitting co-oop that our parents belonged to when we wuz juss knee-high to grasshoppers. Translation: babies.

To be able to stand up as his best man and watch him get married was nothing short of a life moment for me, and to be able to stand in front of a room full of friends and family to toast to his life and enduring friendship was a wonderful privilege.

I’m secretly hoping that he and his wife, Laura, will end up with at least one kid that turns out to be a similar age gap to that of Doug and I, and maybe, just maybe, we can watch our own friendship be re-done in the next generation.

Another exciting event for this summer came just last weekend when Kate’s side of the family took possession of a new lil’ lakeside vacation spot in Whistler. As the pictures can attest to, it’s a very nice place and Kate and I feel so lucky and absolutely spoiled rotten to be able to be in on it.

There’s a very good chance that we’ll be spending a ton of time here!

Backpedalling, this house is actually the second lakeside house we got to stay in this summer, as there was another trip to the Okanagan at the tail end of July where the family met up at a friend’s house on Skaha lake for some “summer” fun.

I say “summer”, because for the few days I got to spend there, it was probably 70 per cent thunderstorms, clouds, and / or rain in stark contrast to the 36 degrees and sunshine that the rest of the family enjoyed before I got my days off work and joined them. Don't get me wrong, good times were had, but it all seemed terribly unfair given the fact that for week after week, B.C. was bathed in delicious summer heat, which I generally viewed out my office window, rather than experienced out and about in the world. It taunted me as I x'ed days off my calendar looking forward to the few days of summer sun I was going to enjoy in the Okanagan. Oh well, All the rain was good for the forest fire situation in B.C. As most are aware, this summer has been the most expensive season on record for fighting fires around here, as God bascially chose to turn the entire province into his personal marshmallow roasting pit.

Anyway, fast forwarding back to the present (you still with me?) and here we are, the last week of August. I'll be working out of Kamloops from Thursday to Tuesday, and maybe after that, it'll be time to chill out a bit! Sacha is glad to be done with all the running around. It may just give him time to work on... running around, ironically enough. He’s not figured out his land legs quite yet, but he’s almost there. I kinda get the feeling that once he figures out how to walk, any perceived “fall season downtime” will disappear quickly!

until next time then!

Stu goes to Yoga, and other tales of personal fitness...

2009-07-22T09:37:00.002-07:00

Let’s face facts: I’m two things, concretely. Frugal, and pushing 30. These two things may not seem connected, but I’ll get there. Some months ago after using up a month’s free pass at the Steve Nash Sports Club in downtown Vancouver which was given to me, I decided I was so in love with the place that I had to buy a membership. Enter: frugality. At more than a $100 / month for membership, however, this was not a bullet I was willing to bite. But, I’d been tired of my old gym membership at a local ‘Fitness World’ for ages. And after the multi-floored, fabulously equipped, sauna and steam roomed opulence of the Steve Nash club, I could not go back to my regular gym. I just couldn’t. But I couldn’t bring myself to pay that money, either. So began an internal dialogue and debate that ran on for a few weeks.
--------------------
“You’re almost 30, Stu. Your knees are a mess and you know it. You gotta keep up the leg strength to keep those knees in functional order. You’re not even at the trey-decade mark and already you can’t jog anymore!”
“Yeah, but, $100 a month at a minimum? You gotta be kidding me”
“You wanna go back to the fitness world? With their one bench press station, one rowing machine, just to name a few...”
“Yeah but...”
“Yeahbutnothing. The overcrowding, the complete lack of machines to or weights to work your legs? You NEED Steve and his club, Stu. You NEED it...”
“Oh, well if it’s a need, then maybe...”
“C’mooooon, think about it. The two levels of premium equipment, the complimentary towel service, electronic lockers and toiletries, AND all the fitness, spin and yoga classes are included in the price! If you use those service as well , this membership practically pays YOU!”
“Hmmm... Yoga, hey? Namaste...”
“That’s the spirit!”
“But a hundred dollars a month?”
“THAT’s IT! I quit! You do what you want, but I’m outta here!”
----------------------
And so, with that, I knew that I had to find a way to pay less. And, I’m happy to say that where there’s a tight wad, there’s a way. I got a membership at the club for $60 bucks a month, which on the surface still seems a bit steep for a gym, but hey, as my brain told me, if you actually attend some of the classes, it totally makes it cheaper than having a gym membership, having to pay extra to attend fitness classes, and having to go to a yoga studio somewhere else anyway.
And so, I drank the punch, and as of last night, I attended my first ever yoga class. I arrived ten minutes early; there was another class in the studio before my sessions for beginners. Looking through the glass into the calm, exotic space on the other side, it looked like a cross between a very concentrated workout and nap time. Me like.
Soon enough it was my turn, along with eight others looking to get their downward dogs on as well. Over the next hour, my body reminded me that I’m almost 30 at least a dozen times as I tried to gumbify myself into Ardha-matsyendra-asana-like pretzels, or maintain my cool through an Utkatasana stance.
But seriously folks, after the hour, I was hooked. I want some more. From controlled breathing through each new pose, to the dark stained bamboo floors and space awash in soft light, I was right into this stuff. Can’t wait until I can do it again!
---------------
“See, what did I tell you. The membership is totally worth it, right?”
Yeah yeah yeah, you’re the best, I’m the worst.”
“Dude, you just came from a yoga class. Don’t think like that.”
“Oh right. I mean ‘Namaste, Namaskar’”.
“That’s better. Now hit the showers. And maybe the steam room, too. Hey, how are those knees, by the way?”
“don’t harsh my mellow, brain.”
“oh. Okay. Well, we’ll keep working on that. Don’t worry, you’re not 30 for another three months.”

Happy Birthday Sacha James!

2009-06-22T08:30:00.000-07:00

Dear Sacha,

Today, you turn one year old! In short, I am in awe of the 12 months that has just gone by...but there is more to say than just that!

I can count on one hand the number of times your mum and I have been out of the house, at the same time, without you in the last 12 months. I can count on just over one hand how many nights I have slept away from you, on business or whatever. Unfortunately, I cannot include those same nights as counting the number of times I’ve slept through the night in the last year, as I’m so conditioned to wake up at random intervals expecting to hear you crying out in the dark. And then there's your mum who noted just the other day that she's not slept away from you for even one night in a whole year. That's something she can't say about anybody else in her whole life.

I can’t begin to count the number of diaper changes, crying fits, ear splitting screams, lost hours of sleep and free time, and loads of laundry that have flashed before my eyes in the last 365 days.
Then:

Now:

This doesn’t sound like a ringing endorsement of parenthood, nor of your existence.
Contrary to all the negative images just noted, immeasurable is the joy in my life that you alone have brought me. Life was great before you, make no mistake, but it’s definitely been taken to a whole ‘nother level.

What is so remarkable about the last year is that with each passing week and month, you produce another surprise for us, another marker or milestone that seems to us a miracle, but the likes of which you will never be able to recall. Opening your eyes and seeing the world, your first smiles, the first hints of an ability for interaction, and the first gurgles of language, and laughter, eating solid foods, and then sitting up on your own, and the flapping of your arms and legs in excitement, and the appearance of perfect little teeth, and crawling, and waving, and clapping, and so much more.

When you first arrived, when all I could do to help you was change you, pick you up and put you down, you felt like a bit of a house pet to me, as I then liked to say. But you’re my Pinocchio, and to be sure… you are a real boy now and I thrill at being able to watch you grow.

Also at the front of my mind in past weeks is how incredibly fast this year has gone! How can it be, that despite being awake (I say jokingly) for 50 per cent more hours every day, thanks to your sleep patterns, that life could still seem to fly by? Shouldn’t longer days make for slower days? Well, it is not the case, and the first year of your life is already in the books.

Happy birthday my little buddy. We are so fortunate that on your first birthday, we feel like the ones with all the gifts.

Love,

Your mum and dad

Not sure about this whole birthday cake thing...

No wait! I like it!

Walk a mile in my shoes

2009-05-15T14:18:00.008-07:00

I don’t have a fetish, and I’m no measure of fashionista. But it has come time to say goodbye to a pair of shoes with which I have had a tormented love-hate relationship as I have had with no other piece of footwear.

My eccos: fine, Danish-crafted Italian-toe style shoes. Black, shiny, and sexy like a sports car. They belong on display as much as on your feet. The kind of shoe that you almost think you ought to wear shorter pants just to show off, or at the very least, put a little strut in your step. Beauties. Real beauties. I’ll not go into specifics about cost, but the price point was pretty high…

But this is no love letter. No, these shoes are going out with a bang. The reason? well, lets just say the shoes have let me down more than once.

Strike one was against the shoes and the retail outlet, to whom I took the shoes about a repair where the toe had opened up. I was quickly turned out the door with a business card for a cobbler. I went to the store in search of a refund, or free repairs, and I walked out with a business card.

Strike two was the email: I sent a curmudgeonly letter of complaint to which I received a dismissively stock answer. Strike three has now come, and I'll get to that. But first, a little more history of these fine shoes...

...They made their way into my wardrobe in December of 2005, after much searching for a great looking pair of men’s size 15 dress shoes to go with my suit on my wedding day. Because as much as I might be okay with standing at the altar barefoot, no one else seemed to be. I digress... so anyway, one’s wedding only comes around once (ideally), and if the day wasn't reason enough, I would still be needing a good pair of shoes once the student life turned into the working life. Well, the wedding came and went as they tend to do, my feet looked fabulous, and then I went back to school for many more months before hitting the job circuit. During this time, the shoes lay in wait.

Imagine my dismay when I found out how the beauty of the shoes was merely skin deep. By the next December after some limited use, they were totally falling apart at the toe. By then, I’d treated them well, and only worn them on a less-than-regular basis for six months. Enter the process of complaints noted previously. With no answer to my liking, I weighed my options and begrudgingly had the shoes resoled at a cost. I should note that in the email stock answer, the company did say that I had the option to return the shoes to them via mail, and they'd "consider" repairs on a case by case basis, so lon as it was still within the year of purchase... which it wasn't, sadly. I figured that once I'd couriered the shoes at my own expense, with no guarantee that they'd accept my claim, I may as well go ahead and get the re-sole done.

I sat on the issue for a long time, but eventually I took the shoes to a repair store, the same one recommended to me by the retail outlet.

“Thing about ecco shoes is,” said the cobbler in a reflective tone, “we see ‘em all the time. They make good leather uppers, but the sole is useless.”

This was information that could’ve been useful a lot of money ago. by now, it was the Fall of 2007.

Fast forward to 2009, four wedding receptions later, a few funerals, a smattering of black tie and dressy receptions and dinners, at least thrice weekly wear for work days… and the shoes have fallen apart again, the soles tattering even worse than before, and this time, my foot has worn through the leather upper and the inner sole as well. The sexy black sports car has crashed into the telephone pole, and his time, I'm not prying it off. It’s time to swear off this relationship for good. I guess I'd have a hard time blaming the soles on ecco again since the shoes were cobbled, but the wearing through the quality leather upper? Strike three.

Now, in short but sweet style, let’s compare these write-offs to my Doc Martens.
I bought ‘em in 2001. Daily wear right off the bat for new job out of round one of college… fast forward through eight years of more weddings, more daily work wear, formal affairs, Sunday church services, etc: I’ve replaced the laces twice, and granted, they were shelved a little bit while the eccos were in service, but that aside, other than a few creases in the leather at the bend of my toes, these babies are in near showroom condition. Purchase price: $120.00. At a cost of $13.00/year and still going strong, they may be less stylish than the ecco shoes, but the good doctor has the last laugh, I think. I mean, I thought the Danish were great shoe makers? I’ll stick to your pastry and Tuborg beer from now on, thanks. At least gut rot is a problem I can fix myself.

Maybe ecco will pay attention to my use of social media to complain about their shoes. I cc'ed them on an email notifying my regular readers of a new blog post, and I've provided a link to this rant on my facebook page. If anyone at ecco has any thing more-than-stock-answer to say to me, you know how to get a hold of me. cheers :)

The offending ecco shoes:

The old faithful Docs:

Two Years and Counting...

2009-04-14T09:17:00.005-07:00

Dear Dad,

Two years ago on this day, I went to bed at 6:00 in the morning after we as a family let you go in the dark of the middle of the night, April 14th 2007. Driving home that early morning, the sun rose into a clear blue sky and the colours of dawn didn’t well reflect the sadness we all felt that day.

This morning, rather than going to bed at six, I got up.

I was awakened today by several things. For one, the sounds of your grandson, happily gurgling away as he lay between Kate and I. For another, Nellie, chomping at the bit to get outside for her morning walk. And last but not least, a dawn no less picturesque than the one 24 months ago, streaming its light through the blinds we forgot to close before bed.

The dog, the baby, and I all went outside together to greet the morning. Sacha in his stroller gurgling happily as we rumbled along, Nellie off her leash, nose hovering just over the grass in search of dew-covered treats as we made our way over to the park.

Sacha doesn’t normally rise in time to come on the morning walks, but I was glad for his presence today. Perhaps he knew I would be thinking of you as I walked today, and wanted to share in that communion?

We know you’re out there watching it all go on, dad, but I just have to say out loud how great it would be for you to see what your family has become since you left. Your first Granddaughter, Aria, was so little then when you were able to hold her. And now, she’s a bright, healthy bubbling two year old. Then came Sacha James last June, and soon after came little Gabby.

Life goes on without you, dad, and though we all suffer a bit at the memory of you, we’re happy, all of us. Jamie, Kari and I, and mum, and all the rest. As I threw balls for Nellie at the park today—another dog owner on the field with me, oblivious to the true nature of my thoughts as we chatted—and as the sun rose over my sweeping viewpoint, light reflecting off the glass towers of downtown Vancouver and the snow on the north shore mountains taking on a pink and crimson glow, and Sacha, my happy, healthy little son who giggled as he watched the dogs run around, the little boy who you’ll never get to hold… well… All of it in the same breath, it’s the joy and tragedy of it all, isn’t it dad? Life goes on without you. You will not be here again tomorrow, and yet, the sun will come up again at about the same time, hopefully just as brilliantly as it did today.

Long story short, dad: we miss you. I miss you. But I’m okay. We are okay. I’ve lost friends and family before, we all have, and everybody does. In any of those circumstances but especially in this one, it is hard to put my finger on it and say definitively “this is okay, we are okay”, but at the same time, it is okay, and we are okay. I guess that’s what I want to say to you today dad, ultimately. We love you, we miss you, and we will be okay, if we are not already.
And so, I will wake up tomorrow with the sun—two years plus a day by then—and I’ll run the dog, and Sacha may or may not decide to be awake and come with us, and after that I will go to work and join the world and be the person you helped me to be.

Really, today is no different than any other day, as I think of you often and in different ways.

But today, in particular, I just wanted to take pause, to stop, and say that I love you, and I miss you.

Love,

Stu

What the heck is a 'meme' anyway?!

2009-01-29T13:12:00.020-08:00

One of the things I love about facebook is that there aren't many real ways to let forwards clog up my account, unless I choose to accept some useless application request that has people sending me things.

Sadly, someone utilized the power of the 'notes' section to create a home for unsolicited forwarding, and as such the 'meme' has begun tearing through the facebook world.

I confess I am not immune, but the hear this:

A)the post below represents the first and last facebook-borne forward that I will partake in, and
B)in my head at least, removing it from facebook to post it in my blog deconstructs the forward, and denies it the opportunity to actually be a forward, since I've removed it from the context of it's normal environment, and I'm not asking anyone else to do it after me...so there.

That precursor aside, the 'forward' in question asks you to list 25 things about you that people likely do not or may not know. I've been chipping away at this for a while, and frankly, I hope you enjoy, because I'm tired of psychoanalyzing myself. Perhaps I should have left this on facebook; I wouldn't have treated it with such depth :)

So, without further adieu, 25 things you likely didn't know - or care to know - about Stuart Alexander Chase...

1. Despite a passionate dislike of mathematics and numbers in general, I run the office lotto pool (with an iron fist, no less), and I can recite Pi to the 12th digit, even though I’m not smart enough to remember what the Hell Pi even is: 3.141592653589. See, I did that without hesitation. I won’t look it up, but I know it’s right.

2. I cannot stand the thought of someone using my toothbrush and if I know my brush has breached someone else’s oral cavity, I will not brush my teeth until a new brush has been acquired.

3. Perhaps along the same lines, the thought of eating food off of my baby’s spoon after it’s been in his mouth grosses me out. Despite this, I will happily and unabashedly ask others for their leftovers.

4. In keeping with the baby theme, I can’t stand to hear Sacha cry. Not because it breaks my heart that he is sad about something, but literally because I cannot stand his crying. It hurts my huge ears, and I wear construction headphones around him when he is bawling ad nauseam. Hey, it sounds ridiculous, but it works. Don't judge me--I love my baby, damn you.

5. I'm pretty sure I will write a book someday. It may be a children’s book, it may be a full-length novel, but I will have something published in my name and I won’t even care if no one ever reads it. I just need to get it out of my system. In part it will be dedicated to my high school writing teacher who made me promise that it will be dedicated to her. For the moment, I get to write for a living anyway, and I couldn’t ask for more.

6. I lost my fingers on my left hand in a sawmill accident in 1999. Despite having a moment most every day since then where I end up wishing I had them back again, if I had the chance, I would never, ever go back in time to call in sick that day or warn myself about it.

7. Unless I am skiing on it, I hate… HATE snow. If I could somehow convince everyone I love to move with me, I would probably go to Mexico, and only come back to Canada between the months of May and August.

8. I have a ridiculously good musical memory. To wit, I sing primarily in front of the radio when it is on, despite being told by many that I have an exceptional singing voice that should be used elsewhere.

9. I miss my dad every day, and his loss makes me wonder if I will die young.

10. I swear I will never move back to Kamloops, B.C. where I grew up, citing the usual ‘that town was way too small by the time I was 16 years old’ reasons. I need a city; I love living in Vancouver, and I love working downtown among the hustle and bustle even more than that. Despite this, I could not have imagined growing up anywhere else, and I remain an avid fan of country music. Go figure.

11. The only volleyball tournament I have EVER won was in grade 12, and I was named tournament MVP. I’ve never won a recreational league championship, a college tournament, or a competitive league championship before that, or since.

12. I opted not to play basketball in grade 12 so that I could dedicate more training to my kayaking for which I went to the Canada games in ’97. The Canada games were bar none, across the board, the worst sporting experience of my life. I have always regretted having quit basketball, even though I probably would have
only made the B team. In the grand scheme of life, this may seem insignificant,but at least I wouldn’t have wasted my time training for paddling quite as much that year, only to be permanently scarred by a kayaking competition.

13. When my best friend Doug and I stopped competing together as sprint race kayaking team boat duo, we split a (roughly) 20 lb. ball of used duct tape—which we had been adding used duct tape to over the course of five years—in half (it's a long story). It took two hack saws to get through. To this day, we both still have our respective halves of the ball.

14. I'm a pack rat, but I'm also a neat freak. It's a tough existence. Luckily, Kate is more...judicious...about what things are kept and what is disposed of, and I'd like to think I've learned a thing or two from her.

15. I have had the opportunity to do a bit of global travel both as a solo backpacker, and with a significant other. Both were wonderful experiences, but given the option to travel the world alone vs. with a best friend or even my wife, I would choose the former.

16. I have been the subject of debate for an entire question period in the parliament of British Columbia…and not in a good way.

17. I do almost no reading for leisure, despite having a desire to write a book someday. I consume news like it's going out of style, I read work-related documents, but novels? one a year, if you're lucky.

18. I believe in One Destination, but I believe that many paths can get you there.

19. Most people that don’t exercise or go to the gym end up gaining weight. I am the opposite. I shed pounds when I sit around on my ass. I have only ever successfully managed to gain weight as part of a conscientiously applied gym program.

20. I love public speaking, and I usually get good reviews when I do so. The only time I have been nervous about it was giving a toast as best man at my brother’s wedding, and I’ve always kinda felt like a I blew it.

21. I was bullied in elementary school (tall, skinny, big ears, braces, glasses, slow-witted… can’t imagine why I got picked on…), and as a result I suspect that as a parent, I will have a really hard time being tolerant of anyone I catch pushing my kid around.

22. I believe that global warming is real, and I actively harass friends and colleagues that drive to and from work and school for no good reason, and who can’t be bothered to recycle.

23. The nearly-30 year old me wonders what the 40-year old me will remember or care about what the 20-year old me was like, like the nearly 30-year-old me right now does on occasion.

24. Right now, life is just like I like it, though we’d all like a little more sleep around our house... oh, and I wish I still wrote poetry.

25. Right now, I'm feeling a lot of shame for having been sucked into this forwarding business, and I'm glad it's over and done with.

A Midwinter's Tale

2009-01-07T10:58:00.011-08:00

Christmas 2008 will be remembered as the first cross-country white Christmas in Canada since 1973, which is pretty cool. Well guess what? Christmas has come and gone, which is great, because I don’t have to be cheerful about the snow any more. When it comes to the white stuff, unless I’m skiing on it, I’m a total Grinch.

As far as living in Vancouver with snow goes, it’s your basic pain in the backside. Given Vancouver’s relatively mild climate, snow isn’t falling as real snow around here anymore like it was at Christmas. It’s falling as Teflon coating. It would be nice if the vast majority of drivers had sense enough to put snow tires on early in the season, regardless of the forecast. But, they haven't and guess what people, the plows aren’t coming, so suck it up and get some decent tires and a shovel while you're at it, pLeASE!

I’m pretty sure I spend more on coffee in a year than Vancouver does on snow removal, which is no big deal, usually. Generally speaking snow doesn’t much come ‘round these here parts, which is one of the major reasons that I love Vancouver. This year’s snow fall has been an anomaly not seen for decades. Usually, we get three inches of snow at most, and within 72 hours, it’s gone. But this year, it’s just kept coming. A metre of snow later and a few rainfalls, and we’re all pretty sick of it.

With these curmudgeony thoughts in mind, sumitted for your approval, A Midwinter’s Tale:

Kate and I drive home from dinner at her mum’s house the other night. It’s 7:30 pm, and the snow is falling fast. We loop downtown to drop off a friend who joined us for dinner. All is well. Then, we begin our ascent back up to our house on the hill in the ‘burbs.

And it begins.

First, we see Knight Street traffic has started coming to a standstill. A heads-up play, and we’re able to divert over to Commercial Drive before we hit the snarl. As we head up Commercial, it happens again. In the few blocks that Commercial Drive turns into Victoria Drive, this rapidly evolving SnowMaggedon has taken hold, and is giving way to CarMaggedon. The base of the hill is a graveyard, articulated buses strewn all over the place, bent awkwardly in the middle as they try to scramble away from the curbs, only to get stuck. A semi truck can’t get any traction in the snow; he too has abandoned hope. Smaller vehicles without snow tires try to get up the hill, but any wavering in momentum, and they are done for. We do a little dodging and weaving, a little side street action (which, ironically, are more passable than the main roads at this point despite having never been plowed in the last three weeks of snow), a little waiting behind more snarled traffic, and at last, we make it home.

I decide that before I go inside for the night, I will do some shovelling of our walkways so that come morning, I’ll have half the load to move.

Alas, my efforts are thwarted. You see, while Kate and I were out for the afternoon, some ill-mannered, ill-prepared individual has let themselves onto our property, onto our porch, and stolen our snow shovel. Our beautiful metal-edged, wide bucket snow shovel.

Of all the low down, dirty rotten…

My snow shovel? Really? I am forced to chip away at the snow and ice with our narrow flat-head garden spade. If being irate melted snow, my property would’ve been tropical right about then.

Any vestiges of Christmas spirit have officially been sucked out of me. Next morning, I leer out my windows at the neighbours dealing with their own sidewalks and parking spots. Is that my shovel? Is that my shovel? No one is above suspicion.

On Monday, resentment still courses through me. Nellie and I go out for a walk, Sacha strapped in a pack to my back. A low-riding souped-up Honda civic with a grumbly muffler and all-season tires has beached itself trying to turn a corner at an intersection. Three of its four wheels are off the ground, its belly resting on the middle-of-the-road rise of snow. CarMaggedon continues. “that’ll learn ya,” I grumble to myself, thinking/hoping that maybe this is a Karmic return for stealing my snow shovel. Is it? No one is above suspicion.

But then, Nellie, Sacha and I cut through a playground. There, at the base of a slide, a discovery. All the while that Mother Nature has been busy kicking ass all over the place, she’s still had time to fold her laundry. Beautiful.

We walk past a school yard. There is an army of snowmen in the fields, slushily advancing from behind a number of snow forts, seemingly set to wage wintery war with the school kids happily frolicking in amongst them.

And, as we move on down the road to another park, Nellie gets lost in the joy of bounding through snow drifts, diving after snow balls; a headless black smudge on a white landscape as she digs down for her prize.

Sacha is off of my back now and smiling happily as he sits propped up in the snow, watching while I launch snowballs for Nellie.

I pause. The air is crisp, silent. Then, somewhere off in the distance, a car engine roars and wheels spin.

If I encounter that car on my way home, maybe--just maybe--I may help push it out, and on its way.

Yuletide 2008

2008-12-05T09:31:00.010-08:00

Since our family has multiplied and spread out in the past few years like a bunch of doukhabours (no offence, doukhabours), it was decided a while ago that we would no longer try and get together for Christmas every single year, and just try to regroup every few years instead.

With mum, Jamie and Dina in Kamloops, Dina's parents up in Prince George, Kari and Matt living in England, and Kate and I being in Vancouver with her family being spread all over the place, the logistics just become too mind bending to try get "the core family" together Christmas.

undoubtedly, this happens to every family at some point. We all love to let the nostalgia of our childhood Christmases wash over us, remembering those times of the immediate family unit in the living room on Christmas morning. But the older we get, the harder it becomes to make this a reality as the definitions of 'immediate family' expand to include a cast of thousands.

None the less, this year it's time to try and get us all together again. We're headed up to Kamloops to spend the holidays at mum's house. Kari and Matt are flying in, and, despite Jamie having to work on Christmas day (the scheduled life of a firefighter...), he'll at least be around, too. The new additions to the melee this year are, of course, our Sacha and Jamie and Dina's latest arrival, Gabrielle. This will be Aria's 2nd Christmas, making her a seasoned pro.

The holidays this year will be, overall, very busy! Between the 20th of December and the 1st of January alone, we have: Kate's dad's 60th b-day, Sacha's Christening, Kate's Birthday, a Christmas eve party, Christmas day "stuff", our wedding anniversary, and a wedding.

in short, the tail end of 2008 will go by in a hurry. Rest assured, however, there will be ample opportunities to pause and be thankful for the year that has seen the arrival of our first-born, Good health being on our side for most of us, and successful battles for those who had to put up a fight against ill health, happiness, employment, travel, and lots of time with friends and family. This will be the first time that we've gathered for Christmas as a family without Dad, so that will be tough, but it needs to be done. At the end of the day, we'll still be able to pick up and keep dancing.

So, have a merry Christmas, happy Chanukah, kwazy Kwanzaa, a tip-top Tet, and a solemn, dignified Ramadan. All the best for your holidays, however you celebrate, and best wishes for 2009!

Cheers,
the Chases

Lest We Forget

2008-11-10T11:55:00.012-08:00

Remembrance day, November 11th each year in Canada, is a time to reflect on the sacrifices that were made by men and women in the past wars of the last century.

Most specifically, of course, we think of World War One, and the gruesome images of close-combat trench warfare, poisonous gas clouds, and all that such a mode of combat entails. And, we think of World War Two, where war was elevated to a level of mechanization not seen before, and we think of the Holocaust and the millions lost in concentration camps. There are the Vietnam and Korean wars, too, that we must be mindful of when remembering the fallen. Though the number of lives lost in these conflicts was not as great as the first and second World Wars, the sacrifices made were no less significant.

I, as a Gen-X’er, consider myself to have a tangible connection to several of these conflicts. My parents are essentially the genealogical by-products of the end of WWII – The Baby Boomers. My mum, in particular, remembers growing up in her earliest years in post-war Britain and all that that held for her and her family. Her parents were a part of the war effort. My dad, born a few years later and in Canada, had a father – my grandfather – who was in the Canadian Navy and was deployed during Canada’s “forgotten war”, the Korean conflict which began in 1950. I remember, in 1996 after a trip to Halifax, I was showing my granddad some pictures I took of the naval vessels moored up in Halifax harbour. He laid his eyes on one photo of a Frigate.
“That’s the HMCS Sackville,” I remember him saying without blinking or pause. “Spent some time on her,” he said. The man knew his boats. And in that moment, I was connected to his past. The Sackville was a corvette class frigate built in the Second World War, and deployed in that conflict to accompany convoys and attack submarines. It was kept in service after the war, and that’s how my granddad came to know it, during his time in the service.

He passed away two years ago. My grandparents on my mom’s side have long since passed away. My own father is gone now, not that he was ever one to regale us with stories about his dad’s time in the service. The connections to that era are now frayed, to say the least.

My brother, though, spent some time as a reservist with the Rocky Mountain Rangers, and was deployed with the Princess Patricia’s Light Infantry Third Battalion for a sixth month tour in Bosnia, as part of the NATO stabilization forces deployed to that region after their civil war / war of aggression (the debate continues) was over. He was fortunate enough to occupy the region as a peacekeeper, and not to have to engage in conflict.

And I, a few years ago, took part in a Military Journalism program that allowed me some time in computer graphically-simulated battle zones, and some real time driving around in tanks and TLAVs. I don't think this qualifies as military service.

So the question is this: aside from being able to ask his uncle about what war might be like, where, in digging through the annals of my personal history, can I find a tangible connection for my own son, who as he grows older, will come to know of ugly things like war and why we ought to strive to avoid conflict?

There is the broader picture to look at, of course. We have WWII vets who still stand solemnly on Remembrance Day, and I can say “look son, these men fought so that you and I can be here today.”

I get that, but will he? How many years must past before the notion of old men fighting old wars becomes nought but pages in history texts? These vets won’t last forever, either. Their numbers grow fewer by the year. And what of WWI, the primary reason we recognize Remembrance Day on November 11th, which commemorates, as our generations know, the signing of an armistice peace accord at the 11th hour on the 11th day of the 11th month back in 1918. From this conflict, Canada has but one surviving veteran, and he, undoubtedly, will be gone before Sacha ever knows what they did for his freedom. The country has promised a state funeral for the last veteran to pass away. Even if Sacha was old enough to take in such a spectacle and understand it by the time it happens, this veteran has expressed no desire to be recognized in such a way. How very Canadian.

Long story short, how can I ask my son to Never Forget something to which I myself cannot literally remember, and to which he will have almost no connections?

The past will always be important, but perhaps the present should be more relevant to the next generation in learning why, as the literature says, War is Hell, and why it should be avoided. Sadly, there are plenty of other things going on in our world from which he can come to understand this brutal thing called war. War in Iraq, conflict in Afghanistan, etc.

I’ve read something along the lines that in the last century, there have only been 100 plus days of our collective global recorded history which do not show conflict. That’s pretty much only one day per year for the last hundred years where nobody is fighting about something. Christmas maybe? Who knows.

So, when Sacha will wear his poppy in the early days of November as we find it respectable to do in memory and thanks to those who have fallen for our freedom, perhaps that little red flower pinned to his lapel should stand for more than Flanders fields. It was bad enough when I, as a teenager, would stand in silence at my high school Remembrance Day assembly, only to hear people snickering. Even then, there were those who didn’t get it. I fear that by the time Sacha is in grade 12, he’ll have classmates who understand the true significance of that moment of reflective silence even less than those of my generation.

Perhaps that little poppy on his lapel needs to help him know more of Master Corporal Erin Doyle than it does to help him “remember” A/Lance-Corporal John Babcock. Does it dishonour the memory of the latter to think this way? I don't believe so.

One might hope that in learning about a soldier that his uncle Jamie knew, Sacha and all those like him will have a portal through which they might come to know of the sacrifices made by many men and women made today the world over, which in turn will also hopefully give Sacha and his contemporaries an appreciation for the courage that was showed by the brave ghosts of Canada’s past.

One way or another, it would be really nice if my son’s generation figured out ways which would mean no one would ever have to stand in silent remembrance of the violent sacrifices that they have made for peace. May it be so.

Sacha's furst moo-vee

2008-10-05T21:55:00.015-07:00

Well, it's been about two months since I updated my blog. Turns out that raising a newborn is a fair whack of work. Who knew?!

Free time is generally a thing of the past, but we're having fun none the less.

It is not my intention to make all of my journal entries about the baby, but gosh darn it, that's all life has really been about lately, so for this post a least... more baby. I'll talk about renovations and landscaping and such in a future post :) here's a few bullet points in summary!

There has been lots going on in the last few months, actually.

- my 29th birthday has recently come and gone,

- I got a promotion at work,

- Kate, unfortunately, had to start going back to her job already, for a couple days
a week. The joys of self-employment means no real maternity leave.

- I, on the other hand, am only working a part-time schedule until Christmas, and get
to hang out at home on Tuesdays and Thursdays with Sacha, which is sweet.

- We've popped up to Kamloops and Whistler to visit at least once each, I think, and
we've been down to Seattle as well.

- Mom finished her chemotherapy a while back, and is recuperating nicely; she'll be
going back to teaching this month! way to go mom!

- The fall season is kicking into gear around here, and with it, the arrival of the
next baby in the family: My sister-in-law's number two --Gabrielle Hana Chase-- was
born on October 6th, so big congrats to Dina
and Jamie! can't wait to meet my new niece! The 6th, as it so happens, is Dina's
birthday too, so it's a momma - daughter birthday!!

- The three of us in this household, as well as my mum, headed down to Colorado Springs this past week, to be witness to my cousin's wedding over the Canadian Thanksgiving weekend. We had a chance while we were there to tool around in the springs (Garden of the Gods, Pike's Peak, etc), which was great. It's a beautiful area! pictures / videos to follow in a future post, perhaps :) What's more, we had ample time to hang out with extended family and show Sacha around to a few family faces he hasn't yet been able to meet, so that was fun.

And, finally, speaking of Sacha... if you didn't already see the premier screening of the movie on Facebook, here's a small sample of what we've been up to with the wee one, and what life has been like around here for the last while... forgive any editing glitches you might notice, we're new to this technology...

Staying Abreast of the Issues...

2008-08-08T09:01:00.004-07:00

We all know a few ‘alternate’ terms for breasts. Boobs. Knockers. Mazungas. Cans. Headlights. Funbags. And, the less commonly known but perhaps most accurate: Milk Jugs.

The last few days, the local media and some national media has been covering the story of a woman who was in H & M department store with her husband, when she was asked by a store employee to stop breastfeeding her baby in the public space, and was given the option to move into a private nursing room set up within the confines of the store. The scene grew to involve a few store employees chattering to management, and trying to usher the woman into the feeding room.

Fast forward to a few days later, and more than a 100 women showed up at the same
H & M location to hold a nurse-in, and remind everyone that breastfeeding in public is not just a privilege: it is a human right. The right of a woman to breastfeed in public is enshrined by the B.C. Human Rights Commission, which states, "women who wish to breastfeed or express milk can do so while walking in stores."

And I am proud to say, at lunch hour yesterday, Kate and Sacha were in the thick of the nurse-in at the department store (six point five weeks old, and a social activist. atta boy!).

The mission of Kate and other women accomplished two things, I think. One, a public apology was issued by store management, and the national spokesperson concurred that what took place was in error, and that H&M do not, in fact, have policy against women feeding their babies in the store. So that was one victory. And second, the action stood to reassert what I mentioned above, that what the women were doing was their right.

Needless to say, the actions of the last few days have stirred as many controversial comments as they have supportive words. And I’m here to say that, as far as the former is concerned, I just do not understand, and see it to be a gross double-standard that is present in society.

We are a society—at least in North America, I would argue—that is obsessed with breasts. Why else would we have so many ridiculous names for a body part that, until utilized in child rearing, does absolutely nothing?

Our advertising is full of over sexualized images of breasts: Suffocated cleavage pouring out of tight fitting shirts in desparate attempts to breathe, shirt neck lines in a suicidal plunge toward the belly button, see-through peekabo sheer materials, and the list goes on.

So WHY, when given the opportunity to see a whole breast, pulled out in public for the purposes of breastfeeding, are people so appalled?

Is it because confident, self-assured women have all of a sudden taken the sex out of the breast and shown it to be what it’s actually for? Feeding children? The horror!

Is it because there’s some sort of breach of modesty? Surely not moreso than the lack of modesty present in today’s advertising campaigns, television shows, and movies.

Is it because we’re so used to media images of babies being bottle fed with formula that we forget that women into themselves are the only vessel for food that a baby needs at the start of its life? Don’t even get me started on the evils of the Nestlé Corporation!

I’m particularly surprised by the level of opposition that I’ve heard about public breastfeeding in my own office space, which is filled primarily with female lawyers. We’re taking highly educated people with a respect for the law, and they still think feeding in public is odd. I say that is, as much as anything, our overly-sexualized media culture at work, influencing their opinions.

And, back to the point of breastfeeding in public, there’s also the plain fact that some babies just won’t take a bottle. My own mother recently informed me, while we were discussing this very issue, that neither I, nor my older sister or brother, would have anything to do with a bottle. It was lait d’source, or nothing. When faced with that option in public, guess what? The headlights will get turned on whenever and wherever necessary, in order to cull the screaming fit that often precedes the need to feed.

In summary, I know that everyone is entitled to their opinion on this, and that’s fine, positive or negative towards the matter. I also know that lots of women are probably happy to find a quiet, out-of-the-way place to feed their babies if in a public space rather than be out in the open, and wonder what all this fuss is about.

I would suggest that many of those 100 or so women down at the H & M were those very types, more than willing to find a corner somewhere to breastfeed. But even they came out of the woodwork the other day, to ensure that people remember that when they decide to come out of the corner, or have no choice but to feed in a public space without cover, they have every right to do so.

Ladies, I say milk it for all it’s worth.

AN UNPLANNED PRECIPITOUS HOME BIRTH, or, DON'T THROW BABY OUT WITH THE BATH WATER

2008-06-28T21:09:00.019-07:00

on the occasion of one week of Mr. Sacha James Chase's time on earth, and due to very popular demand, here is an abbreviated account of why our wee one was born on the bathroom floor last Sunday night...

First of all, if you ever thought that short labour equalled easy, you are half way right... but while we appreciate that there are those of you out here that have had 30 hour labours, two-day labours, 4-day long labours, labours as long as your full gestational period of nine months, etc., please be advised: we find it hard to believe that, since everything came on so quickly, and there was the real possible need to call 911, that Kate had a "walk in the park" birth process. we prefer the term "fast and intense", thank you :)

That being out of the way, on with the show!

Sunday, 8 PM:
Kate and I were sitting on our couch enjoying a nice summer's eve and a bowl of ice cream, noting that since the baby's due date was now three weeks away, we better be a little more on the ball about getting some prep work done. Naturally, Kate's water broke right about then.

Exciting, adrenalizing, yes. panicky? a bit. But, we have heard time and time again from our mid-wifery group and our doula, Jacquie Munro that when the water breaks, it really may not mean much. In fact, it could be days before one goes into labour. It's a common belief that when the water breaks, it's go time, but it's not always the case. You may rush to the hospital, just to have to wait around for three days before you actually give birth. Both doula and midwife have, a different points during Kate's pregnancy, made the point that part of their goals as caregivers is to minimize the amount of time the expectant parents have to spend in the hospital when it comes time for labouring.

And so, we called our doula and our midwife to give them the heads up, and we tried calling our parents to keep them in the round. My mum is the only one available at the time, and she's very excited.

Sunday, 9 pm:
Kate is feeling a tiny bit "crampy"

Sunday, 10:15 PM:
Kate is feeling some pain, and wonders if she's just being a weenie. As hindsight will tell us, it was obviously quite the opposite. It's not everyone that passes contraction pain off as cramps. My wife has super-human pain tolerance!!

Sunday, 10:30'ish:
Kate has had a shower, and is now experiencing some intense labour. The doula and the midwife are made aware that things appear to be moving along.

Sunday, 10:56:
Kate is in PAIN!
At this point, our Doula and our midwife are taken aback at the rapid progression (as per my phone conversations with the both of them, they can hear Kate howling in the background. "She sounds like THAT? I'm already getting dressed as we speak, and coming right over. DON'T LET HER PUSH!".

We know baby is on its way, and Kate is working VERY hard not to push. Still not convinced within herself that she could already be in the second stage of labour and birth, Kate is going mental over the thought that this pain could last for hours on end before finally hitting the birthing stage. Once again, she's thinking she's a weenie.

At this point, Kate is on all floors on the bathroom floor, with next to no time between contractions, and certainly no opportunity to move elsewhere. Nellie the dog, in the meantime, sits on her mat outside the bathroom door, seemingly unfazed by this entire circus. Little does Nellie know, I'm under instructions to call 911 if Kate simply cannot hold of pushing any longer.

Sunday, 11:15 PM:
Both Jacquie, our doula, and Allison, our midwife, arrive at the house at the same time. Jacqie goes straight to Kate's head to help support her and keep her breathing. Allison, after a very quick physical check, announces that this baby will be born right here at home. Moments later, another midwife, Kat, arrives to give backup to Allison.

"would you like to give birth in the bathroom, or some other room?" she asks Kate calmly.
"Here's fine!", responds Kate through gasps and gritted teeth.
Allison still needs about ten minutes to get her gear set up, and Kate is still not allowed to push.

Sunday, 11:21 PM:
the phone rings. Unbelievably, I answer it, thinking it might be Kate's mum.
It is not. It is my sister, who lives in England and she's heard from my mum that Kate's water has broken (clearly by now, that ship has long since sailed).

"Hello?!" I say, perhaps not in my calmest voice at this point.
"Oh F*@K!" She says, "I didn't think you'd be here! I thought you'd be on your way to the hospital!"
"NO! We're Here! in the bathroom!"
"What?! F**K! S**T!"
"She's having the baby here! we couldn't get out!"
"F**K!"
Kate interjects from the floor...
"HANG UP THE PHONE!!!!"
"Gotta go, love you, bye!"
"F**K! Okay! Bye!"
>click<

Sunday, 11:25 PM:
Kate is allowed to push on her next contraction, and pretty much right away, the baby's head appears.

Sunday, 11:29 PM
One last push needed. Nellie runs downstairs, grabs a toy full of dog food, and comes back to the bathroom door to drop it. At that same moment, Sacha James Chase is brought into the world, fills his lungs with air, and lets out his first screams.

Needless to say, we can't quite believe what's just happened. Neither can the bath mat underneath Kate, I'm sure of it.

Within a minute, I've been set up to lean against the bathtub, a pillow in front of me, and Kate is leaned back into my arms, little Sacha is put on her chest to be skin on skin with his new mum for the first time, and we begin calling family to tell them the good news.

Fast forwarding a bit, Kate required a few stitches, thanks to Sacha's torpedo entrance into the world, and the job is done on our bed, to which we have now been moved.

Within an hour and a bit of the baby being born, we are both in our own bed, being served tea, toast and fruit slices by Jacquie.
Within two hours, we are left alone to settle in with our newborn son.
Within four hours, tired and still amazed, we are watching the sun rise on a world that God has changed for us completely and wonderfully.

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Now THAT, ladies and gentlemen, is how you have a baby!!! obviously this is the short, PG version of events, and I will simply sum up the birth story by saying it was the most crazy amazing thing I've ever been a part of. I just pray it never happens quite like that again!!! The speed we can go for. The uncertainty we can do without.

----------------------------------------------------

So here we are a week later. We admit to being complete home birth converts, and unless our next child (a few years down the road at least, God willing) has complications, we will absolutely plan to have the baby here.

We thought the exceptional care being given to us by our midwives and our doula leading up to this point was fantastic enough. The fact that we realized a drug-free, comfortable birth, in our home, even when there was a high level of uncertainty initially involved...well, it has put us right over the top. Why bother with a hospital, in unfamiliar surroundings with unfamiliar nurses and other staff, where the chance of getting unnecessary medical intervention is just that much higher, when we can have it all happen safely in our own home, and be in our own bed an hour after the birth with a warm cup of tea and some sliced fruit and cheese.

And hey, in this green era, think of how carbon neutral this birth was! we didn't burn fuel driving to the hospital, nor back of course. We didn't expend thousands of dollars of tax payer money by taking up a hospital bed space, and, since this baby came so early that we didn't even have time to by a few rounds of disposable diapers to supplement the cloth diapers we're using, we've had to start using the cloth right away! No garbage here! Uhhh... I digress...

and okay, if a home birth ain't for you, at least get a midwife! They have four full years of training in obstetrics. rest assured, as qualified as your GP may be, he doesn't have nearly that much time dealing with birth! Birth is all a midwife knows and does. You can't go wrong! did I mentioned it's covered under the provincial medical services plan? Did I mention the first week after the birth they come to the house for near-daily follow up visits? And as for a doula...well... invaluable support, thank you so much Jacquie! you can easily put your trust in a woman who's not just witnessed, but who has been a part of, well over 700 births! there's more knowledge there than Carter has liver pills, to borrow an expression of my mothers...

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Well, that's enough of our preachings. Oh, did I mention midwives, doulas, and home births good? great? got it? okay then, I'll shut up.

Thanks to everyone for the flood of calls, emails, and well-wishes during this past amazing, hectic, tiring, fantastic week. We feel every one of the blessings you've sent on, and we are so grateful for them. As I think I've said a few times this week, it may take a village to raise a child, but knowing that the village truly cares is an amazing feeling.

Sacha is doing very well, eating like mad, sleeping like a rock, and generally being a complete joy.

Dear Sacha James Chase,

2008-06-23T11:32:00.004-07:00

First of all, welcome to all 6 lbs, 12 oz. of you. Your arrival is something we have been looking forward to for more than nine months. What’s more, you are finally the reality of something we dreamed about years ago. You arrived kicking and screaming on June 22nd, 2008 at 11:29 in the PM (delivered to us on our own bathroom floor, much to our great surprise,but that's another story) and while we won’t care much to put up with that kind of noise when you’re a bit older, rest assured the first time we heard it, it was the most incredible sound in all the world.

And what a world it is. Your mom and dad enjoy being here, but make no mistake; it’s no perfect place to be. People do pretty nasty things to one another sometimes. There’s guns and bombs that get used on our planet, and they hurt. People use words against each other, too, and those can hurt just the same as weapons. At times, you might think they hurt even worse.

There’s political strife all over the place. Starvation and poverty in parts of the world you’ve never heard of and may never go to. There’s poverty at home, too. We have disparity between rich and poor, obvious to the extreme just blocks away from where you were born. Our environment is increasingly at risk. We are all too reliant on machines that fill the air with fumes, too reliant on conveniences that fill our dumps with garbage that will outlast you a thousand, thousand times over. Old, white men control way too much of the world’s wealth and power. Men in general hold more wealth and power still.

There are all kinds of religions out there: one God, many Gods, no Gods… people have all sorts of opinions and beliefs, and sometimes they fight over them. Believe in one if you want, or not. Be sure to believe in yourself though, that’s important. As for what your parents believe? You’re a miracle, and miracles don’t come from nowhere.

Let’s talk sports for a second. There are all sorts of games to be played. We don’t need you to be a champion at any of them, but you have to have fun, and you have to play your whole life through. We’re pretty sure you need to at least try kayaking—it’s kind of in the family. Afterthought: if you want to be a champion at something, make sure it pays well, so that you can fund our retirement for us.

Your names: What’s in a name, Shakespeare mused (you’ll learn about that guy sometime down the road) Well, in your case, your first name we just liked the sound of. the second name, James, is pretty common on your dad's side of the family, but mostly, it is a tribute to the grandfather that you will only be able to know through spirit and story, but know him you will. We hope you possess many of his better qualities.

I don’t want to ramble on too long with this, so let me throw a whole bunch of things at you at once:

People will come and go from your life. Some will be your best friends, some will be friends that seem to come and go, some people won’t like you at all and you won’t like other people. The latter of these people will eventually go away, though, so don’t sweat it too much. Some people you will want to have with you, always, but they will go none the less. They might die, or they might move, and it hurts, but that’s just how it is. Some people will not leave physically, but they will leave emotionally. They might stop loving you, or you might stop loving them. And you know what? It’s all okay. Love is never a mistake, and whether you’re diving into it or falling out of it, it’s getting you to where you need to end up.

Oh, there are these other people. People we call ‘family’. Some are immediate, like us as your parents, others are extended. They are the best people and worst people all rolled into one. And unlike other people, they do not go away. We will leave it at that, and let you experience it for yourself (not to worry, kiddo, it’s pretty much all good!).

Random thoughts: Eat your vegetables, they're good for you. Buy Local if you can. Don't be afraid of dogs; they'll just smell your fear and bark at you. scraped knees hurt, but they heal, so feel free to get a little reckless now and again (not too much though!). Your mother brought you into this world drug-free. Return the favour by staying that way, or we'll ground you for life. Ask your mom for math and science homework help, ask your dad for finger painting and creative writing help.

alright, I'm rambling back on track.

The natural world around you is an incomprehensible wonder. No matter how emotionally wrecked you may be at some point, no matter how frustrated you may be with the way the world is being run, no matter how hopeless existence may seem at times, the right sunrise, sunset, or long gaze up at the stars on a clear night, can stop you in your tracks, and make you forget everything you ever hated about life.

You will pass through moments that are surreal, wonderful moments. It may be a mental stimulus that puts you there, or physical, or spiritual. It may be all those things at once. You may share it with other people around you, or you may have that moment all to yourself, and you will feel blessed to have it just for you. And yet, you wish you could share that moment with the entire world.

Seeing the arrival of your child into the world is perhaps one of those moments.

But now we’re getting ahead of ourselves, aren’t we? We have a bit of time to get to know each other before that’s something that you’ll experience. For now, that surreal, wonderful moment belongs to us.

Love always,
Your new parents

Tales from Down South…

2008-05-21T06:00:00.012-07:00

This is pretty lengthy, so if you only want to read some of it, it's packaged into handy individual stories! and of course, lotsa purdy pichtures to look at...

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A room with a view… and a volume.

Ah, Mexico. Home of the Margarita, guacamole, siestas, swaying palm trees, sandy beaches, and all-inclusive resorts.

Kate and I took our last kick at the can to travel before the baby is due, escaping to Puerto Vallarta for a week at the Canto del Sol all-inclusive beach front hotel and tennis resort.
Despite Sunwing airlines getting us there an hour later than scheduled on a Sunday night, the passengers cheered and clapped as the plane landed on the tarmac.

We were shuttled to the resort, and the first thing that impressed upon us was the fact that it was loud. Very loud. It took us about three seconds to realize what we’d done. We booked a trip to Mexico the same week that Canadian Universities just let out for the spring. Whoops. Our room, as it turned out, was in the thick of the action, too. Despite a lovely view into the pool area, the balcony door pretty much opened onto the open-air lounge where the fore mentioned uni students were drinking aplenty, and singing even more.

Fast forward, we got a room switch after a near sleepless night, with a view of mountains, an open field and beaches and the rest of the week was blissful relaxation during the night!

Thanks to the hotel for making it happen! We’re pretty sure if it wasn’t for the switch, we were going to need a vacation after our vacation!
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Donde est mi Mexicana el foodo?

We spent a few days on the resort, and a few days off doing other things. Eventually, you just kind of get tired of the repetitious buffet (don’t get me wrong, access to all you can eat, 24/7, is basically my idea of heaven… but it turns out even I have my limits). The saving grace to the buffet was the fact that each night has a different cultural theme, and that the hotel also had three a la carte restaurants, of which you as a guest could book into two. We chose to book into the Hacienda Santa Maria on the Wednesday night. The restaurant has the following description:

Canto del Sol’s very popular Mexican specialty restaurant serves delicious, Traditional and Regional Mexican cuisine in candlelight elegance with colonial ambiance.

Sounds good, we thought! The drawback to our chosen night, we realized, was the fact that we ended up booking in on the night that the buffet was slated for Mexican food. None the less, we thought a really nice sit-down Mexican food meal will be awfully nice, and probably classier fare than that which would be available in the buffet.

It was classier alright. Problem was, it was Italian.

We were seated in the Hacienda Santa Maria, and were handed an Italian restaurant menu. We looked around at others, who had the same puzzled expressions on their faces as we did.

We asked the waiter what the scoop was on the Italian menu in the Mexican restaurant. He matter-of-factly told us that the menu switches every other night, a fact that remains conspicuously absent from every step of finding out about, and booking into this restaurant.

But that’s just the thing about Mexico. It can be pretty laid back. At times, too much so perhaps.

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Vallarta Misadventures?

We spent the next day out on the water. I had been down to PV several years ago with my then-girlfriend, and one of the highlights of that trip was the snorkelling excursion that we did with Vallarta Adventures, a company which offers a wide variety of day-trips to help you explore the region.

More than happy to experience this again, Kate and I booked in to a trip. We set out at 9:00 am (after being told by one source that the boat left at 8:30, another source 8:40…but show up at 8:00 am anyway…as I said, Mexico can be a little too laid back at times…) and arrived at the Marietas Islands around 11 a.m., eager to jump into the warm pacific and be surround by brightly coloured fish, and maybe catch sight of a turtle or Manta ray. As you'll see from the photos (if you link to the album at the end of this post…) we didn’t see anything beyond our outstretched hands, and even that was a fuzzy view.

Mother nature had other plans for us that day, sending a warm southern current into the bay and clouding up the normally clear waters to the point of having almost zero visibility.

Machines also had other plans for us. A loose cotter pin in the engine of our catamaran meant we got back on the board after an unsuccessful snorkel, and we couldn’t go anywhere.

Italian food in Mexican restaurants, zero visibility in prime snorkelling waters, stranded at sea… what was going on?!

Long story short, the boat got going, though slowly, and we were at least shuttled to a beautiful beach to catch some sun and play in the surf before our boat limped its way back to the marina. It was by no means a write-off of a day. As you can see from the following pic, the weather was perfect, and we did get to see some wildlife in the form of impressive fowl floating on the breezes.

We made it back to the resort in time for the buffet theme dinner of the day. And wouldn’t you know it… it was Italian night.

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Son of a beach

Let’s discuss the beach. We ended up with a sandy stretch in front of the hotel where the waves lapped happily and we were able to swim in comfort, but it didn’t start out that way. We started out with rocks, and plenty of them. Which in itself wasn’t all that bad. It still constituted a beach. That all changed one morning, though, when the backhoe showed up to start moving the rocks out in order to regain a sandy beach. Any decent piece of equipment could probably have gotten the job done in a day. But this gutless little backhoe could barely carry its bucket load without a struggle, and would get stuck here and there, so he’d have to dump his load and start again. And, then there’s siesta. Can’t work during that, of course. Three days later, the yellow tape came down, and our little beach was ready for business!

Epilogue:
We took advantage of the newly finished beach, and were glad for the fact that it was probably in the best shape that it had been in a while. I started asking staff on a daily basis if there would be a beach volleyball game if the beach was ready. The answer was usually yes, and the result—not surprisingly—was that a game never got played.

Viva Mexico!

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See you later, Sayulita!

We also took a side-trip to Sayulita, a small town being hugged on the Western coast between the Sierra Madre Mountains where they dip down to meet up with a beautiful, long, white crescent beach perfect for surfing.

You can go there, rent a board and get a surf lesson, or just body surf and hang out on beach chairs, eat at the beach-front restaurants, or wander around in the idyllic little Mexican town. We didn’t surf, but did the rest, and enjoyed ourselves thoroughly.
Kate was a little worried that the bus ride out of PV on a city bus might result in shaken baby charges against her, despite the peanut still being in utero. Something not commonly found on Mexican public transportation? Shocks. All part of the experience, however, and for 20 pesos (just under two bucks), the bus took us all the way from PV to Sayulita, about an hour and 20 minutes with traffic and stops. Not bad at all!

If we ever went back to Mexico with a larger group of family or friends, we think booking into a villa for a week around a place like Sayulita would be perfect!

Any takers?!
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All in all…

Despite some of the foibles mentioned in the tales above, it was a great week. The sun was cooking up mid-30 degree days all week long, the swimming in the pool and the ocean was refreshing, we ate well, slept well, got to see some of the area, met some fun people, and got to recharge our batteries and have this one last trip to ourselves.

Here’s a couple of links that will take you to albums one and two which include lots more pictures from our trip! enjoy!
Hasta Luego!

Time to learn your ABC’s!

2008-05-05T10:29:00.010-07:00

A is for ‘A relaxing beach vacation’ (okay, the system isn’t perfect, work with me here)
B is for ‘Babies’ (see that one works), and
C is for ‘Chemotherapy’,
D is for ‘Dad’, and as a bonus
E is for ‘Expecting’

So, A: Kate and I are just back from a week’s all-inclusive trip to Puerto Vallarta; a little place on the beach reasonably close to the town site. We ate, swam, ate more, swam more, and even managed to squeeze some other tourism into our week away. Once we get the photos up, I’ll make a longer entry about the trip, as there are some good stories to tell! Primarily, we were just trying to get away one last time before

B: the baby arrives! We’re just under 70 days away now from the official due date, and we’ve been doing lots to get ready for it. The nursery is pretty much done, save a new layer of flooring. We’ve got gear out the wazoo already. The crib, mobiles, two change tables, a Moses basket, a bouncy chair, a jolly jumper, a car seat, lots of clothes, blankets, toys… and I could go on. All we need now is the kid! And the peanut’s arrival is also reasonably timed to coincide with the end of

C: mom’s chemo treatments. At last update, we were still waiting for the mastectomy to happen. Well, that’s done, and she turned out to need chemo, and she’s in the throes of that experience as we speak. Eight treatments: one every two weeks for sixteen weeks, and a self-injected drug called Nuprogen for eight days somewhere in between the treatments.
So far, mom has been handling the effects of the chemo pretty well, and we're generally pretty pleased about that! Not that there is a good time to have to do chemo, but it was particularly unfortunate timing to have all this line up with

D: the one-year anniversary of dad’s passing, which we recognized over the weekend of April 12th. I went up to Kamloops to be with the family, and we made the trek down to dad’s spot on the bluffs (the dogs managed to behave themselves this time around). The weather that day was precisely the same as it was last year, which we thought was awfully fitting. I also had lots of time to hang out with our Niece, Aria, and the rest of the fam, too, which was nice! Kate couldn’t join me up in the ‘Loops, as she was working up in Whistler, and Jamie’s wife Dina didn’t make the trek out in the woods either, partly because she’s a bit tired right now since

E: she’s expecting again! Happily, our wee peanut will have a cousin very close in age, as Dina is carrying her second child; due in October!

F: Fantastic news, that is! Congrats to Dina and Jamie!!
G: uhh… I don’t actually have a G. I’m done now. But here are some cute photos of our niece that were taken when I was up in Kamloops for item D, just to wrap things up nicely for today! C you all later!

I JUST wanted a t-shirt...

2008-04-01T10:22:00.003-07:00

...Was it too much to ask?

Since September, I’ve been playing in a Monday night intermediate co-ed volleyball league. Three leagues have gone by now. Fall, Winter, and Spring, which just wrapped up last night. We have a crude team name—Bumpin’ Ugly—but make no mistake, we’re a slick operation. And we have tons of fun.

And fun is the point. But eventually, at the end of each league when it comes down to playoff night, we tell ourselves “we want the t-shirt!” The shirts to which I refer can be awarded for two reasons.
1. You’re the bestest team and you beat everyone else.
2. You’re the funnerest team, and you get a t-shirt for simply having a good attitude.

Sadly, the opportunities to win six t-shirts have come and gone, and I’ve nothing to show for it. It’s quite unbelievable, really. Constantly at the top of our pool, we always manage to lose out on the finals. Last night, we rallied back from a 12 point deficit to tie it up and keep ourselves in the game, and then blew the last two services receptions. There went a shot at the title, and with it, my dreams of fresh-pressed 100 % cotton gently caressing my torso.

No worries though, we still had a fun points t-shirt coming! We’re always at the top of those standings! Oh no, wait. Some team drank their faces off at one of the sponsor pubs on the weekend, submitted their receipts during playoff night, and were awarded extra ‘funpoints’, and thus, the t-shirt.

I says pardon?

we're second place because someone out-drank us? what is this, high school? I mean, I’m used to playing second fiddle, don't get me wrong...I'm pretty used to losing. Okay, so there’s the American Nationals sprint race kayaking gold medal I won back when I was 16. But please… it was against Americans. It was too easy; they suck at everything (take a joke, my American friends, take a joke). Okay, I did come ninth in Canada at our own sprint nationals one year. But that just means I was dead last in the finals. Okay, there’s the tournament MVP awards… (from high school, >cough, sputter< ignore that part and pretend it wasn’t ten years ago)… and there’s all free goodies I win for being caller nine to the radio station...does this stuff count for anything?

In college volleyball, just when I was finally coming into my own, I cut off my fingers and there went what was likely to be my best performing season ever! The next year, when I was back in fighting shape and ready to play, I was not only playing, but was named team captain of my college team! And then the team folded before we even got started.

In a last ditch effort to play some high-level ball, I looked into the Canadian Paralympics volleyball program, now that I was an amputee and all. Turns out I couldn’t even cut off my own fingers to match up with any sort of high standard. My index is about a half-inch too long to be allowed on the squad!
…okay, now I know I’ve hit rock-bottom in the wallowing pool of self pity… complaining that I still have a functional digit on my hand? That’s pathetic.

Okay, okay, I’ll put this whole t-shirt thing into perspective. I have a whole drawer full of t-shirts. I don’t need another one, especially when others in our city would love to have at least that much. And, I’ve got enough money in the bank to let me pay to play in these leagues in the first place. And, I’m healthy enough (save a few knee issues...oi!) to be able to play volleyball and a lot of other games, even without fingers on one hand.

What’s more, I have a great lookin’, national champion kayakin’, rhodes scholar brain trust, good chef, caring and loving, doctor of a wife, who’s currently carrying in her belly what is the greatest accomplishment in my whole darn life; a baby.

Maybe I can teach that baby that having fun and doing your best is more important than winning, even though it’s nice to be on top of the podium now and again. What’s more, being able to afford a house in one of the most expensive cities in the country is a pretty amazing feat. And that having a great job like mine that you love to get up for everyday is worth every penny, no matter what they pay you. And that just being surrounded by people that love you makes for a winning team for your whole life, not just for a season.

At some point the kid will understand that what its dad is trying to say is that while he may consider himself the bridesmaid in a lot of life’s little sporting challenges, the big, important stuff makes him feel like a winner pretty much all the time.

And that’s worth more than a t-shirt any day of the week.

Cancer SUCKS

2008-02-13T11:45:00.026-08:00

Life is at times a shipwreck, but during these times, we must not forget to sing in the lifeboats. ~Voltaire

"cancer sucks" has played out as a theme on this blog before.

This past spring, it was my dad who lost his battle with colon cancer. In the Fall of ’06, it was Kate’s father-like figure Gord, who succumbed to a brief but valiant fight against a lymphoma. In the spring of ’06, it was my Granddad. Before that, it was Kate’s Grandmother. And that's just the past few years. I could go back further, or talk about other people I know dealing with the disease at the moment, if you like, but I think you get the picture.

In any case, it seems it’s now my moms' turn. Breast Cancer. British Columbia’s current catch phrase is ‘BC… the Best Place on Earth.’ Frankly, this is one BC we’d all like to stay the hell away from.

There is the particular sense about the situation that my mother is being kicked while she’s down; still mourning the loss of her husband, she’s now got to go through this garbage. One can’t help but look heavenward and say—either quietly to one’s self or out loud with fists shaking—ArE yOu SeRIouS?!

Luckily, mom has always taught us kids that though it may feel like it at times, God will never give us more than we can handle.

Listening to and watching mom in the past few weeks, I know she feels this within herself. She is approaching the situation with good humour and strength, determined that this will not bring her down. After all, she’s got a cruise boat to get on in June, and she’s got another grandkid arriving sometime in July, and she’ll be darned if she’s missing either.

And so, on February 19th, she’s going under the knife. She’s got the option of a lumpectomy, but she’s embraced the thought of a mastectomy instead.No sense giving the BC an increased chance to come back, and this way she wont need radiation. After surgery, she’ll have to wait for pathology results to see if any further chemo will be required. Hopefully doing away with the affected breast will take care of the problem, but if not…well, that’s a bridge that will be crossed if need be, but for now, we look to next week with optimism.

Really mom, this is only partly about letting others know so we can increase the prayer network for you. The main point is simply to say that in the face of all that you’ve faced in the past year, I am astounded at your continuing strength, and I am in awe of your ability to smile. You are simultaneously willing to play with the cards being dealt and conversely unwilling to put up with the crap the universe seems to be slinging in your direction. Dad is no doubt proud, as are we all, family and friends alike. You are an inspiration to us, and I only hope we can return the favour as you battle this cancer. Just keep singing in that lifeboat. We love you.

Some facts on breast cancer in Canada:

• One in nine women will develop breast cancer in her lifetime, assuming she lives to age 80

• Every year approximately 18,000 Canadian women develop breast cancer (over 2,000/year in B.C.)

• The BC Cancer Agency and the Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation offer plenty of information and resources if you’re interested in learning more about breast cancer, or would like to donate to research.

Impending Arrivals

2008-02-01T16:34:00.001-08:00

Well, it’s Groundhog Day once more. For those of you in other parts of the world who are scratching your head in question, Groundhog day—February 2nd—is some sort of pagan ritual whereby we divert what little faith we have in meteorological weather studies, and put it in the paws of a furry little creature, who shall predict for us whether or not we have six more weeks of winter, or if an early spring is on its way. If the little bugger sees its shadow, it gets scared and scuttles back into its den, and we’re in for more winter. No shadow? Bring on those daffodils.

Well, we have a groundhog of our own in the making, but it won’t be making an appearance until mid-July sometime, and it certainly won’t have the opportunity to go back to it’s den if it doesn’t like the outside world.

Its old news to some at this point, but if my note above is a bit too cryptic and you haven’t heard about it yet… KATE IS PREGNANT!!!!

We were well enough aware of the pregnancy back at the start of November, but we didn’t start telling people until Christmas time. Now, it’s week 18 and everything is going just fine! We’ve got a few more weeks until we have the detailed ultrasound, but we did get an advanced peek in week nine (Kate shocked herself while we were doing home renos, so we wanted to make sure the lil’ peanut was still alive! It was!) Here’s the image we got from that scan. Not much to look at (really not much.. if you click on it, you'll have a slightly better idea of what's baby and what's not...slightly...), so the next one will certainly be more exciting!

We’re both very excited, and Kate is through that nasty first trimester with all the nausea and low energy and ravenous appetite. As she put it, it hardly seems fair that one has to suffer through all of that before telling people about the pregnancy, when the one thing you want to do most is complain about it!

To answer the usual questions, Yes we have names picked out but won’t tell you what they are, and no, we don’t want to know what sex it is. Nor do we care. We just want it to be healthy! July 13th is the due date. Rest assured I’ll set up an appropriate Facebook group soon enough so everyone can pool the bets about weight / sex / due date / etc.

So there you have it! Not much of a secret these days, but to those of you who hadn’t known about it, we’re thrilled to be able to tell you! Kate is working away at what will be a fine looking baby blanket once completed, and we’ve otherwise started collecting hand-me-downs- from other recent parents.

Will keep this blog choc-a-bloc with updates as they are warranted!

Happy Holidays from Stuart, Kate, and Nellie the family Pooch

2007-12-20T14:16:00.001-08:00

Off the top, Merry Christmas, Happy Chanukah, Kwazy Kwanza, and happy new year to everyone. We are in awe to the many of you who have managed to get out Christmas cards and photos. Thank you for sending them to us; it's great to hear about how your year has been! We admit our complete and utter failing in this department, and in the same breath thank you for your success! consider this your letter... without a stamp, envelope, or paper... and really, isn't that what we need in this time of environmental consciousness?!

Okay, time to get serious:

One of the obnoxious things about the human condition is that we like to look back on time spent, and try to rate the quality of that time. I say that because the past is full of…well…the past. Stuff you can’t change, can’t give back or can’t take back, no matter what.

“Wow”, you’re thinking right now. “Such a cheery start to the letter. Seems a bit ominous for the ol’ holiday piffle, doesn't it?”

Well to be honest, there is only one thing this year that was a truly negative experience, but it weighs heavily on us right now; that ‘thing’ being dad passing away. Christmas was without a doubt his favourite time of year. Dad was the type who would, on Boxing Day, eagerly pronounce that there were only 364 days left until next Christmas.

And right now, we miss him terribly. Even his musical Christmas tie, spitting out its tinny holiday tunes at each press of the button. We’re a bit scattered to the four winds as a family this year, in part perhaps because we’re old enough to be able to share the time with others than just ourselves, but as much as anything, I think it is an acknowledgement that things ain’t quite right, at least for this year, and we need to do our own thing.

As such, Mum is headed off to England to spend a few weeks with my sister and her boyfriend’s family. My brother is headed to Prince George to celebrate with his in-laws, which will be followed closely by a near month-long trip to Hawaii with Dina and wee Aria. And Kate and I have two weeks off of work, which we plan to split between time here in Vancouver and time up at Whistler. Kate also has her birthday this weekend, and we have our wedding anniversary on the 30th (I save money all year, for the grand week that is the Merry Annibirthday).

All in all, we have much to be thankful for in 2007. I started a fantastic job back in February which presents me with ever-changing challenges and is by no means short on interesting issues, and it is a job I look forward to continuing through the coming year.

Kate transitioned out of her speech language pathologist job that she held for a year, opting to focus her attentions on early behavioural intervention for pre-school aged children with autism. Not to be one to start on the ground floor, nor take a break, Kate essentially entered into a partnership role with a private firm, and started it the day after she finished up at the Centre For Ability. This too, is a job that presents her with ever-changing challenges and is by no means short on interesting issues. And like me, she loves what she is doing, so we’re very fortunate in the employment department.

Other highlights of the year are well enough documented on this blog: the wonderful arrival of our first niece, Aria. The beginning and end of many a pocket of renovation on our house. A shift in lifestyle choices as we have endeavoured to eat local. A great week puttering around Vancouver Island in the summer. Jaunting up to Kamloops here and there to hang out with family. And lets not forget the simple things that make every year great, like taking the dog for long walks on Saturdays, dinners out, sleeping in now and again, visiting with friends, staying healthy (save the odd bout of the sniffles here and there), taking time to get to know the neighbours…. And the list could go on.

So, as I said at the start, the past is what it is. Stuff you can’t change, can’t give back and can’t take back, no matter what.

But that’s okay.

We can at least learn from it, appreciate the experience for what it was, and never have to do it again.

And when things have really gone well, we can remember those things fondly, be glad for who we are, be glad for who’s with us along the way, and be glad for what we have going forward.

Happy Holidays everyone. All the best for 2008.

P.S.—for those who missed it last year, I’ve elfed the household. It seems everyone is doing this this year, so while it may not be all that novel, if nothing more, Nellie looks funny with a human body .

(A renovated) Home for the Holidays

2007-11-30T13:06:00.001-08:00

The time of the year has again rolled around where the morning finds drivers must unhappily scrape frost off their windshields, and where puddles underfoot have the ice cracked off the tops of them as walkers trod over them, as though they are servings of nature’s crème brûlée...except they're flavourless, infinitely colder, and considerably more depressing... (PS, I don't like winter...)

While things may be chilly outside the Chase household, it’s certainly warmer inside, thanks to the arrival of our fantastic new fireplace! Yahoo! At long last and by popular demand, it’s time for a little before-and-after of the rooms in the house that we’ve been transforming.

We’ve slacked off a bit in the last while, in that the rooms are now totally liveable, and we have lost the motivation to do the finishing work like mouldings and baseboards… we’ll get there though!

SO!
1. The Study BEFORE, when it was our bedroom:

The Study in progress:

The Study AFTER:

2. The Living room BEFORE, when we didn't even know we had a fireplace:

The Living Room in progress:

The Living Room AFTER:

And last but not least, our happiest renovation, the bathroom.

The “bathroom” BEFORE, a la cramped shower and crappy 70's decor:

The “bathroom” in progress:

The Bathroom AFTER:

We’re most pleased by these developments. And, it’s fitting that this blog post come on the day that it does: we’ve been in this house for one year today, exactly. Happy anniversary to the house!

Time to get it all gussied up for the holidays!

Life is like a bowl of ice cream...

2007-10-11T09:19:00.001-07:00

This week is a bit of a mix of ‘what’s been up’. A few scoops of Neapolitan ice cream, if you will. There’s been lots going on in the last bit, and here’s the report. With photos this time, I promise!

Hmmm. First, the vanilla scoop. White, pure, and well-intentioned. Kate and I spent our Thanksgiving weekend up in Kamloops, where we had lots of visiting with family of course, and eating turkey, but we got lots of work done, too! (this is the well-intentioned part) We raked leaves and pine needles, reorganized a few rooms at my moms house ( A little drilling, a few shelves put up, a bit of dusting, moving some furniture around, you know how it goes), and cleaned out my dad’s old workshop space, which resulted in several runs to the dump. My brother and I both worked at that task. A great man, my father, but a great packrat, too. For the five per cent of useful things he had in his workspace, the other 95 per cent was garbage, or things he thought were of value, dating back thirty years or so. Does anyone need an 8-track player for their car? How about a 15-year-old can of wood stain? How about a pile of extension chords, either male or female socket-less at one end? It was a trip down memory lane though, despite the oddities, like finding his old fishing gear, or the winter gloves he used, year after year, for shovelling the driveway. Even his ancient chorded drill could not help but remind Jamie and me of many years of shoddy home repairs. We miss you dad, but thank goodness your work bench is clean. Now mum can find a screwdriver if she needs one.

Next up, the Strawberry scoop. Sweet and light! Kate and I have had lots of opportunity to visit with our niece, Aria, in past weeks. Jamie and Dina came down to Vancouver recently, and then, as just mentioned, we were in the loops over the long weekend, and we got to hang out with the wee bebe again. Here she is, hanging out with Nanna Chase, and then bouncing around in front o her second cousin--she loooves that jolly jumper!--and then being fed by her father. contrary to the evidence in this photo, she does like her food, and most of it stays in her mouth.
she’s so darned cute, she gets her own scoop of ice cream, not to be lumped in with the rest of the thanksgiving weekend. Well anyway, she’s not so wee, actually. She’s somewhere in the neighbourhood of 22 lbs., and she’s only 6 months old. She’s adorable though, and very happy. She makes it sort of a shame to live in Vancouver, because we don’t get to see enough of her! Mind you, my sister lives in England (sorry to rub that in, Kari), so I should consider myself as much a next door neighbour to my niece as anyone else!

And lastly, the chocolate scoop. Rich and indulgent. Kate and I continue to tear apart our house, and soon enough we’ll have a remodelled bathroom, a remodelled study, and our gas fireplace is being installed next week, just in time for the chilly weather. We know we’re pretty lucky to be able to afford to do such things, hence the indulgence part. It’s also a guilty pleasure being able to take sledge hammers and crowbars to one’s walls. That’s how I spent my birthday this year, actually! No joke! I came home from work, put on my grubbies, and we started tearing out the bathroom walls. Forget a nice b-day dinner on the town, we ordered take-away Indian food so that we could get to work!
This should also be considered as a chocolate scoop itemsimply due to the nature of all the stuff we uncovered, as most of the S*@t that we found in behind the walls was, at best, brown. usually black, however. and dusty and musty...hence the masks, need one ask.
In other indulgent news, I won some concert tickets for a David Usher show off of a radio contest recently

and we got to eat some tasty food, see a great show, and meet the man himself, too.

There you have it… hopefully by my next entry, we’ll have some of the reno’s done!

A little more Green...

2007-09-24T13:10:00.001-07:00

well, I got some good feedback from y'all in regards to the last entry, so I think I'll just be lazy about bringing forward new material, and give you a sampling of the things people had to say about eating locally!

"... I love that you’ve put your thinking about eating locally out there, sharing your own reasoning and thoughtful choices about how to combat global warming. Eating locally, mostly locally...is something I’m interested in and trying to learn more about (and practice in my own way!).

By the way, I agree about olive oil, and I think each of us begins to do as much as we can w/o feeling guilty about a few concessions.It has to be user friendly or people might not even consider trying..."

"...I’m a ‘green girl’ myself but with a twist. I buy organic or biodynamic only. My diet is organic, predominantly raw vegan, which means nuts, seeds, and avocados are a staple of my diet, none of which are grown here. I also can’t eat apples, so pears play a big part of my diet, especially in the winter when fruit selection is limited. I don’t buy local unless it’s organic or I know that the farm is not spraying. I will not support the use of pesticides even if it means I’m paying a lot more for produce and it’s grown more than 100 miles from here. I do not eat processed food or anything that is GMO (canola, corn, soy, wheat). I eat what’s in season and have been stocking up the freezer with BC organic fruit and veggies. It definitely costs more to eat this way – just last week I spent $2.79 on a bunch of organic BC carrots (4 of them), instead of $1.79/lb for organic US carrots.

There are a number of areas where I disagree with the 100 mile diet (especially that they were vegetarian who went back to eating meat, which is not sustainable for the planet), but if even one person becomes more conscious about what they eat, it’ll be a big step in the right direction……..

You might like to check out the following two movies: “The Future of Food” and “We Feed the World.” Both are very interesting. There’s also the Slow Food Movement, which is predominantly in Europe and places other than North America..."

and this same person also suggested a bit more interesting reading, if you're into it:
http://www.thegreenguide.com
http://www.organicconsumers.org/
www.idealbite.com , and last but not least:
an article from david suzuki

"...After reading your blogspot on the 100 mile diet, I think you and I share some common beliefs around the topic of consumerism. Good on you by the way, and Kate as well! It's a good practice, one that I myself am trying to incorporate into my daily life too! It's tough though, and I do indulge in things like wine, rice, couscous, olive oil, chocolate, cheese, and certain fruits like kiwis and oranges. But the key for me right now is to cut down on eating imported foods, and also to eat as many whole foods as possible. I've been a vegetarian for five months now, but Scott still eats meat and thus purchasing organic meat is important to him, and me! The consumerism issue has been on my mind for quite some time now, and ...I went and saw "The 11th Hour", the DiCaprio documentary on climate change. It is good and I highly recommend it. It addresses the issue of consumerism as being one of the fundamental problems at the centre of the global warming/climate change dilemma. It makes connections and provides solutions.

For me, I've been thinking a lot about the importance and the value we (as human beings) place on material things. I've been thinking about and evaluating the extrenuous, unnecessary things in my life. I think about ways of living more simply, and thus more happily..."

A Somewhat Inconvenient--But very Tasty--Truth.

2007-09-04T10:01:00.002-07:00

Now, I think I’m a pretty standard sort of guy. I’m your average white suburbanite, as a matter of fact.

We have one fuel-efficient car parked in front of a nice house, and that’s plenty. I mow the lawn, and listen to inoffensive music like John Mayer and Maroon5. I get up at 6 a.m. to run the dog, and I pick the morning paper up off the porch when I get back. I work at a job I love, in an innocuous-looking office building downtown, and I take the bus to get there. I call my mom at least once a week, and chat with the neighbours over the fence. I hit the gym a few days a week, and get in on a volleyball game when I’m able to.

Pretty standard stuff.

But Kate and I are trying to be a little more radical these days. No, we’re not out there with protest signs. We’re not spray painting our messages on bus stops or getting our voices heard on the six ‘o’ clock news.

What we're doing is growing veggies.

Shocking, I know. Okay, okay, so that in itself is also nothing new, nor particularly radical. We’ve done that for years. But the veggie garden has been a seed for bigger ideas as of late (pun intended?)

Ever heard of the Hundred Mile Diet? Chances are good you have, since the book about it, and the environmental movement in general are gaining so much steam these days.

What the Hundred Mile Diet basically says is that you should not rely on any food source that comes from anywhere outside of a 100 mile radius of your home, because it’s killing our world. Have you ever put much thought into where the meal on your table comes from? We have. And that’s all part of the reason that there is so much smog hanging around the Fraser Valley and in the Strait of Georgia these days.

At the end of our block, there’s a Chinese grocer, and it stocks every manner of Asian foodstuff imaginable. Problem is, it literally comes from China. No, we’ve got nothing against the Chinese, if that’s what you’re thinking. What we have a problem with is that all of that Bok Choy, all of those Ya Pears and Fuji Apples, were picked before they were ripe, put on a giant boat, spent the next 58 days crossing the pacific ocean, got on a truck, was sent to a packing facility, put on another truck, and was then sent to our neighbourhood store three hundred yards away, only to be put on a shelf for 69 cents a pound, where it has two days to be bought up before it’s thrown out, over-ripe and only suitable for the crows and seagulls that swarm the dumpsters.

So what was the point? The pollution problem in itself is obvious and alarming, but I’m not going to beat anyone over the head about it--we all get enough of that in our daily media as it is. Nutrition is also a question, though, since the fruit was picked two months ago and left to ripen off the vine. It’s no different that a California strawberry, picked green and shipped up the coast, so we can pay $4.99 / pound from the local Safeway.

And Kate and I thought about all this and said: why?

Why go to the little grocer to get the apple that’s done more international travelling than I have, or go to the Safeway to get the strawberries with no flavour, when we can go to the farm, pick 40 pounds of the things at a quarter of the price, and have enough fruit to eat fresh and freeze to last us for the next year?

So, we’ve changed some things. We now buy our produce—and our fish, dairy, and meat—from a farmers Market on Saturday morning, from a local producer, or we go to the farm and get it ourselves. talk about fresh, and the money goes right into the hands of the farmer. In the price of our eggplants, garlic scapes, apricots, apples, sides of lamb, and strawberries, there is nothing built into the price other than eggplant, garlic, apricot… well, you get the point. No paying for advertising or trans-continental shipping in the price of our food. Major nutritional value and virtually no carbon footprint.

okay, so you can probably see the drawbacks to this plan. It means giving up a lot. And I am the first to admit, we are cheaters. We’ve put up an exceptions list to deal with these little… indiscretions. For example, while we don’t buy pasta anymore, we will still buy bread, so long as it is at least baked locally. The common denominator of course being flour. We don’t grow wheat here in BC, so technically, we shouldn’t buy it. But we do anyway.

Beer is also a no-no. So, I’ve stopped buying it. But there too, is an exception. We’ve said if guests are coming for dinner, we’ll buy a six pack or something. Not to worry, wine is still made well within a hundred miles, so that can still be bought… unfortunately, I despise the stuff. Too bad for me, good for Kate who loves it.

Tofu, edamame beans and other soy products are out. Sure, Tofu is made here in Vancouver, but the beans aren’t grown here. In Olive oil, we confess our hypocrisy, and will continue to buy the stuff.
well, there's lots more to it, but basically, if you come over for dinner at our house, pretty much everything in your meal will be local—if not from our own backyard—and unbelievably full of flavour.
We even eat out less now, as our home-cooked meals are so satisfying. We just don’t feel the need to go out.

By now, you get the point. Maybe it's not so much radical as it is exciting and satisfying, and different. But when there is so little in my life that I am preachy about--To each his own, I usually say--I figure I can stand on the soap box for a while too :)

I’ll wrap it up here by saying that no, it isn’t as cheap as going to the Safeway or IGA. And no, we know not everyone has the luxury of paying extra, nor of having a big veggie garden.

Ultimately though, we need to find ways eat local, drive clean cars, fly less, etc. etc. etc. God gave us this big, beautiful world. It is nothing more than our own desire for convenience which will result in our losing it.
An intro to the 100 Mile Diet

City Farm Boy, a vancouverite with a great idea about urban farming

The Omnivore's Dilemma... haven't read it yet, but it sounds interesting!

A litte R and R

2007-08-17T17:01:00.001-07:00

I’ve been meaning to get on here and update my blog with a quick run down of how the vacation time that Kate and I recently took was spent. As I mentioned at the end of the last entry, it would be more manly than flowers and such… so, without further adieu…

We kicked off our week with a stay at a lovely bed and breakfast in Esquimalt on Vancouver Island. The Lord Nelson, it was called, and we stayed in a lovely suite with it’s own kitchen, a hot tub out back, and lovely gardens all round. We th… what? OH! Right! Manly, I said! Manly!

Okay, well, it was a short walk down to the waterfront from the B & B, which was coincidentally located right near the Canadian Forces Base Esquimalt (there… manly…). The shoreline in that particular spot is peppered with old bunkers from the second world war, which had gun turrets pointed westward in case the Japanese ever came buzzing across the pacific in our general direction.
Now, the site is just a great spot to walk and view the ocean. The only threat from the air you have to watch out for now are seagulls pooping in mid-flight...

Anyway, after our one night’s stay, we drove further into the island to find Gordon Bay on Lake Cowichan. We’d booked a few nights of camping in the provincial site on the side of the lake.

Lemmee tell, you about our new tent. It is a thing of beauty. It’s not wee. It’s not not so wee. It’s frickin’ huge! It’s pretty much a church. Not ideal for backpack camping, but great for car camping! Not only can I lay out flat in this tent without my feet pushing out the edge, there’s even a solid foot of clearance. That’s right folks, 2.5 meters of floor length! But wait, there’s more! I can stand up in this thing!! Can I get an aMeN?!
And, you guessed it, that’s not all! The church… err, tent… features two doors, two very large window, and a skylight! (no, there is no hole in the roof, merely a mesh roof to the tent, so on clear nights with no fly, you could have a full moon roof, or, on nights when it might be cloudy, the fly still has a clear plastic patch that lets the light in that way. Halleluia!) Anyway, out of one door, the fly can be unzipped and can act like an awning, and out the other door—the front door--there is a fully enclosable, netted vestibule. I call this the Narthex. You can be inside, but outside at the same time, without worry of them nasty ‘skeeters getting atcha. It’s sweet!

Well, as you can see from the rest of the pics, the lake itself is a beauty.

We couldn’t take Nellie with us to the main beach, but a short 10 minute hike away, there is a rocky point that we basically had to ourselves, and it offered awesome swimming.

Nellie wasn’t sure about the whole camping thing. Being a dog that sleeps indoors, once the sun went down, she was all like “okay guys, lets go into a building and sleep now, okay?” but instead, all there was were trees, a campfire, food from the table that we wouldn't share with her (as usual) and the scent of bears

.

She warmed up to it by the time we left… basically, anyway 

After camping, we went to Nanaimo for a night to visit with a friend from the flatwater kayaking world, Ashley.
She and her husband Eduardo let us stay with them. We haven’t seen them in years, so it was great to catch up!

Next, it was over to the mainland on the ferry, and up to Whistler for the long weekend. The highlight of being up there is that on the August Long weekend of each year, Whistler plays host to the Canadian Barbeque Championships. Oh. My. God. So much meat. So little time.

As I wrote about this last year, I'm simply going to plagiarize myself, and repost the event description from 12 months ago! Also, here are some photos, if you’re not much interested in words…

"...The highlight of the weekend--aside from the glorious weather,mountain vistas, shimmering lakes and fresh air--had to be the Canadian Barbeque Championships, which took place in Whistler village over the course of the weekend. Picture it if you will:

two dozen or so competitors gather to cook up their best BBQ'ed Pork, Chicken , and Beef. You, as a spectator / carnivore head to the site. upon paying five dollars which goes towards the charitable cause of crohns disease / colitis research, you're given free access to wander up to any of the competitors tents, and sample of the particular meat they happen to be cooking for the competition of the hour.

This is our whistler neighbour, Norm, and his son Oliver

First up, the Pork. Forgive me Jewish God, for I have sinned. There was more pulled pork in a plethora of mouth-watering marinades than this here meat eater knew what to do with.

This is Norm's wife, Natasha, and to her left, Marissa (she can pack in the BBQ for an 11 year-old!)

There's more gloriously succulent ribs on hand than even the most gluttonous of gluttons could hope to gorge upon. There's a little bit of Homer Simpson in all of us, I think. And on August sixth, there was a lot Homer showing up in a lot of people.

After the pork had been turned in for judging, the competitors turn to their chicken recipes, and the process began again, with the carnivores running around like chickens with their heads cut off (pun intended) trying to grab up the samples before they're all gone. And so it went with the beef after the chicken had been turned in.

Yes, my meat-eating friends (sorry to all the Vegetarians out there...)It was every bit as wonderful as I describe, and then some. I imagine it will be right up there with wedding days, and--when they arrive--the birth of my children. Unlike such events, however, the BBQ champs happen every year. Amen..."

…and that was about the extent of it! Ten days goes by awfully quickly, unfortunately. Still got lots of vacation time to use up before the end of the year! Yahoo!

a little summer colour

2007-07-28T21:17:00.001-07:00

alright, so here's the story on this series of pictures. It's short and sweet. When kate and I moved in here, one of the most common comments we got from passers-by as we would work on the house would be: 'whatever you do, DON'T touch the garden! just wait to see what come up!'

the previous owner of this house threw wildflower seeds all over the place. inside the fence, outside the fence. front yard, backyard, down the side of the house. she didn't do much else for the yard, though. We have two foot tall dandelions. everywhere. and stinging nettles. turns out Kate is allergic. weeds of all descriptions fill in any gap where a flower hasn't. No shortage of morning glory around here either, unfortunately. Nothing glorious about that frickin' weed, if you ask us!

aaaanyway, spring rolled through town, and with it came the flowers. No. pardon me. THE FLOWERS.Week after week, we've been treated to something different as various blooms have come and gone, and for all the weeds, the flowers have been worth it! Here's some examples for you! and you'll note these pics aren't all flowers--you'll see some berries int here too! no, they didn't grow here, but it's another sure sign of summer. we've recently gone out to some local farms and picked 40 lbs of strawberries, and 20 lbs of raspberries! that oughtta last us through the winter :)

the next entry will have more manliness to it--I'm off camping this week! yahoo!

Man's best friend: To The Edge and Back

2007-06-12T11:09:00.001-07:00

If you go down in the woods today, you’re in for quite a surprise…
In the Crown land that stretches out North behind my parent’s house in Kamloops, you expect a certain number of sights. Bears are not uncommon. Pine Beetle infested trees, you can see them everywhere. The tree line gives way to a relatively flat mesa, where views are in plentiful supply. Coyotes are another plain sight in these parts.

...But until this past weekend, I had never seen flying dogs...

We as a family were carrying out one of Dad’s last wishes—that his ashes be placed in the ground out near the edge of the bluffs on top of the mesa. At their edges, they drop dramatically, going vertical for hundreds of meters towards the river valley, where the North Thompson River plies its way through town.

The views are spectacular, the location is peaceful, and dad made a good choice on where he wanted to be put.

And so, on Sunday afternoon, the family marched down through the woods and out towards the grassy bluffs. There were six adults, one baby, two family pooches, dad’s ashes, a shovel, a baby tree, Dixie cups, and a bottle of champagne. The idea was to plant the tree over dad, then drink a toast.

We were all wending our way west along a path which runs parallel to the bluffs, a few hundred feet away from the edge. The dogs were happily bounding around, we were all chatting, and baby Aria was bouncing along in her snuggly carrier.

It was mainly a clear day. Warm, with a strong breeze whipping its way over the grasses. Off to the North of us, a crow rose off the ground and began flying Eastward. Immediately, Lucy, my mum’s dog, zeroed in on it. Lucy is well known for chasing birds in flight, as futile a pursuit as it is. And Nellie, our dog, is known for chasing dogs that are chasing other things. It’s an amusing spectacle to watch,and one we’ve all seen before.

Well, paws set into motion, and a black bird was quickly being pursued by a black dog that was being pursued by another black dog.

But then, the crow veered to the North, out past the edges of the bluffs... and the dogs just kept on following.

In a split few seconds of stunned silence, we watched as not one, but two dogs went *Ploop, Ploop* over the edge of the horizon. We stood dumbfounded, waiting for them to reappear back atop the bluffs.

But then, how could they? We just watched them run off the edge, all Wylie E. Coyote style. And as we know from those cartoons, Wylie looks down, holds up a sign that reads EEP!, then plummets to the valley floor far below.

Let me tell you, in real life, there are no momentary levitations, and certainly no tiny signs of distress being held up in the air. I am sure that in their tiny dog brains, however, the EEP! was at the forefront of their thoughts.

No one else was in much of a position to run at that point. In our party, there were various states of injury, arthritic joints, or just arms full of babies or other stuff.

I had a backpack on, which I promptly slipped off then sprinted to the edge.

In the 30 seconds that had likely elapsed between watching these lemmings…err.. beloved family pets… hurl themselves off the edge after the crow (which, by the way if you can believe it, can fly), and my getting to the edge, the dogs had managed—either by sprint or by stumble—to get themselves a fair 90 per cent of the way down these hundreds of meters of steep, steep bluff face. It took me a second to spot them, but when I did, they were thankfully moving.

Nellie was already trying to scramble back up, but then realized her partner in crime was not as well off as she, and she wouldn’t come up the side any further until Lucy had caught up (gawd, she’s such a hero).

I signalled back to everyone that they appeared to be okay, by which time the rest of
the group was picking their way over to the edge anyway.

Eventually, Nellie made it back up, having coaxed Lucy most of the way. But Lucy didn’t want to finish the trek, despite being maybe 30 feet from the top. Stepping gingerly and clinging to the wiry grasses to hold myself on to the steep face, I slid down until I could see the pooch, who had lain down in surrender, a bloodied tongue lolling out the side of her mouth.

She was convinced to get the rest of the way up, and I then hauled myself back up over the top.

This is getting long, so I’m going to gloss over the main reason we were down there. I will say that it was a significant time for all of us, an important time, and luckily, K9 stupidity didn’t put a damper on the plans. Kari did manage to spill a bit of dad on her shoe, but then, we couldn’t have expected the moment to be perfect. That’s not how this family operates.

By the time we were ready to hike out again, it was apparent that Lucy’s front Left paw was hurt. Lucy is a weeny, for the record, so it was tough to tell if she was genuinely hurt, or just shocked about the whole thing. Either way, she wasn’t walking out, despite having three perfectly good legs.

Jamie and I took turns carrying the pained puppy over our shoulder. I think Jamie did the bulk of the hauling, I am happy to admit. He is a firefighter after all. Observe his fine over-the-shoulder-technique in the following photos:

Epilouge:

Nellie shows no adverse signs from her vertical thrill ride, and is currently entertaining offers to join the X-games tour, with exclusive marketing rights being negotiated with Outward Hound doggie gear.

Lucy is somewhat the worse for wear, having suffered a spiral fracture to the front left paw. Turns out she wasn’t faking it. She is going to be down and out all summer recuperating, which means that my mum must also be down and out all summer, watching the dog recuperate.

we are all vaguely amused that it was this time last year that Kari suffered a similar spiral fracture to her left leg, and that the dog is currently on the same type of pain killer patch that my dad was on during his final days in hospital.

We suspect the crow has spread the story of the two moronic mongrels it lead off a cliff to the broader crow community.

Overall, we're quite sure that dad wouldn't have seen it done any other way, and is amused by the events of the day, wherever he may be watching from.

Death of an Oil Tank

2007-05-24T09:46:00.002-07:00

While it was an extremely exciting day for us at our house, those of you that are
A) not homeowners, or
B) homeowners that have a pristine house and property with no issues ( if so, I hate you)

Well then, you might not find this all that thrilling. BUT! If you’ve ever bought a house with a potential environmental disaster brewing underneath the property, then this series of photos is for YOU!
A recap: when Kate and I bought our house, we were aware of the underground oil tank, which is filled with diesel fuel and used to heat the house via oil furnace. What we weren’t terribly aware of, is the fact that a house with an oil tank—particularly of the underground nature—creates a huge hit on one’s house insurance, not to mention that with price of gas these days, it’s just a huge expense to keep using.

SO! We decided from day one that it would be coming out. Then we did the research on extraction of oil tanks, and read many horror stories of 50 year-old tanks that have been leaking for 47 of their years underground, thereby creating an environmental nightmare that requires tens of thousands of dollars to clean up, all at homeowner expense.

Now, we knew our tank was functioning pretty well, and by all accounts, no leaks existed. But it’s still been a bit tough to keep our fears in check while waiting to get this thing out of the ground. As you’ll recall, we converted to a gas line in past months, and since then have been gearing up to dig out the tank.

Well, yesterday was the day, and much to our relief, no Exxon Valdez-style damage existed underground! WeeHOOO!

The day was also a great pleasure for our young next door neighbour, Matthew, who at the age of two-and-something years old, has a healthy obsession with “big diggers” and firemen, both of which were on scene during the day (it is the fire chief’s job to inspect tanks once extracted). As an added bonus, Matt even got to sit in the cab of the backhoe.

So, with that job done, we can now focus on the much more enjoyable task of landscaping our yard! Heck, with any luck, it’ll look less (to paraphrase the Simpsons) like a full-scale Chernobyl, and a more like a mere Three-Mile Island in no time 

until then!

Jim Chase May 24, 1948 - April 14, 2007

2007-04-18T21:10:00.002-07:00

When My brother, sister, and I were little, we all used to play t-ball. We've got pictures and super 8 footage of games and practices; Jamie standing on the pitcher's mound ( which is odd, as there is no pitcher in T-Ball...).

More often than not, dad was at the helm, coaching us. He had the same glove all the time we were growing up.
"It's older than you are," he'd say almost every time he brought it out for a practice or game.

As a T-baller, I was admittedly, not exactly the top of my game. Low self-confidence, awkwardness, and clumsiness were generally my best attributes at that age. And, even with a ball sitting atop the tee, I still couldn't hit it off. If I didn't chop the top off the ball with my bat, sending it dribbling just beyond home plate, then I'd hack at the Tee, and the ball would simply fall lifeless to the ground.

I can just picture my dad rubbing the back of his neck with his hand in frustration.

But there was one day, one game, that I have held on to for good reasons, not bad ones.

It was a typical at-bat for me. I had just spent my first swing, whiffing the bat over the tee without even touching the ball.

Now, dad was not the most ideal coach, as far as we could tell. Short-tempered at at times, and despite a mantra of "it's not winning or losing, it's how you play the game"... dad wanted to win.

I am convinced he'd have more hair if he had stayed away from coaching his kids.
But then, no. If he stayed away from coaching, I'd be without one of my very strongest memories of him and I as I was growing up.

"Time out!", my dad called from the bench. I turned to see him coming towards me at the plate.

He turned me back to the tee, and crouching over me, he placed his hands over mine as I held up the bat. And he leaned in close, with his face next to my ear, and he said "Stuart, it's simple. Just take your time. Keep your eye on the ball, and just bring the bat away from the tee, then back to the ball. away from the tee, back to the ball. Then swing. Simple."

And with that, he stepped back, and I reared back the bat, liked he showed me...

..and I hit him in the head. He walked away with a grin on his face as he rubbed his head.

I reset, and did it again. Eye on the ball, bring back the bat. bring the bat close the ball, repeat. Then swing.

And the ball leaped off the tee and into the infield. Beyond this point, I don't really remember if i ran, if I made it to the base, if I got tagged out, or stood there or what, But I remember that hit.

And I remember my dad's arms around me. There, in front of all those people, maybe not saying that he loved me, but showing it none the less.
From all the memories I have been sorting through--frankly, ever since he was first diagnosed with cancer, this is the one that has come back again and again.

Dad always figured that we hated having him as a coach, but with a memory like that, to last me a lifetime, how could I ever say I hated him as a coach. And it's through this memory, as well as the millions of others, that Dad gets to live on, that I can keep him earthbound.

And it is the same for everyone else. He is only a dad to me, my sister, and my brother, but he is also a brother, a cousin, a son, a husband, a friend, a co-worker,
a boss, a teammate. And all those people have their memories, too.

And some day, if I am so fortunate to have kids that play t-ball, like I did, and like my dad did, maybe I'll have the chance to come up to the plate, lean in close to the ear of my child and say...

..."now, this is how your Granddad taught me how to do it."

I miss you dad. I love you.

The EVOLUTION OF (our) FIRE(place)

2007-03-21T19:16:00.001-07:00

okay, so the dramatic title is less dramatic than it could be. It's the sad realization that this update is about (groan) home improvement rather than (woohoo!) that scintillating phlogiston that so captures our attention, be it little campfire or a whole forest at once.

If nothing more, you're now at least curious as to what 'phlogiston' means.

BUT I digress!

It's been months since Kate and I started probing into our walls to see what lay beneath. we are but one step away from a completely new look to the wall that separates our living room from our kitchen.

Let me take you down memory lane for a moment...
You may recall that this is how our wall used to look, both from the living room side, and then from the kitchen side:

And then we went to work. There was limited exploration at first, just--much like the bear going over the mountain--to see what we could see. we quickly discovered that there was a chimney and a fireplace concealed within.

Exhibits C and D, for your approval:

unable to restrain ourselves much longer, we soon ended up tearing down walls, to reveal this crumbly, sagging, Gothic monstrosity:

But fear not! with the help of our chequebook and Bob, from cornerstone masonry, we now have this!

TADAAAAA!

we've just one step to go now: the installation of a gas fireplace. just as of last week, we have a gas line running into the house, so that'll make it easier to have a gas fireplace :) (this house has previously been heated by an ancient, unreliable oil furnace), and by then... well, by then, it'll be summer, so we won't use it... but... it'll be there, so.. yay.
so, for the moment, we have a lovely fireplace, and a more open floor plan. Swing by and take a look for yourself some time!

sunshine and happiness! :)

2007-03-02T21:13:00.000-08:00

well, as promised, the next blog update would be all smiles und sunshine, and it is!!!

First off, we have a new contender for cutest member of the Chase family ( that's right, I've been challenged!) (cue rocky theme or Eye of the Tiger...) Ladies and Gentleman, now entering the ring, weighing in at 8 lbs 7oz., wearing nothing but a shock of dark brown hair, The newest member of the claaaaaaan... ARIA NICOLA CHAAAAAAAASE!

congrats to muh big brother Jamie, and his wife Dina on their first child!

Little Aria arrived on this side of the womb at 6:37 on March 1st. She was delivered at Royal Inland Hospital in Kamloops, safely and soundly during a very smooth birth.

I'm pretty excited to be an uncle, Kate's excited to be an aunt, and can't wait to meet the new wee one!

Now, the smiles und sunshine fest continues, as I direct your attention to the video below! it's pretty self explanatory once you get started, so I'll just leave you to do the clicking! It's a wee bit grainy, but hey, whatdya want for a web cam? and once you're done, if you stand anymore sunshine, keep reading down below the video link.

Third, and finally on this blog update, I would like to announce that I'm employed again! okay, so this is actually old news, and many people are well aware that I have been working for a while, but I haven't put the word out there all that much.

yep, I'm working downtown, in a public affairs officer position with the BC Ministry of the Attorney General. It's been great fun so far; hardly one hour the same as the next. I assist with communications pieces, I go to court, I network all over the place, I go back and forth to Victoria now and again... and the list goes on. All in all, just really enjoying the gig!

okay, that's enough sunshine for one edition, I think, more than making up for the drama of the last few entries! ta ta for now!

responses from y'all.. and more on Francois...

2007-02-15T17:38:00.001-08:00

Well, the last update got a ton of response, and I thought some of what you had to say was definitely worth sharing, so here you go! (Don’t worry, names have been removed, and I left *most* of the glowing praise out of it!) And at the end of reading all the comments, stay tuned for an epilogue of last week’s episode.

---------------------------

"...with all your best effort and intention things out of both your and Frances' control got in the way. That with all the wealth this province and country has there is such a lack of human services and long-term solutions. But, like you mentioned, you two didn't just talk about the problem you acted on it. That is true compassion and that is what although it may not seem so at the time, in the big overall picture makes a difference. That six weeks may be a short time but for Francis you never know what doors and possibilities that may have opened up, even if the aren't apparent right away..."

"...Hmmm I appreciate the sentiment of doing good and all...but the whole Ned Flanders ...okilly dokilly ...live in my basement is a little much for me. A wonderful Christmas effort though...But, I don't think my scared little recovering catholic arse coulda done the same..."

"...I understand your frustration and sadness, having worked in health-related industry for going on 16 years now. I lived with my aunt, who was a paraplegic living alone, for about 6 months in 1997 and saw the health care system from another side as well. Currently, it’s quite upsetting to me that we’re spending millions of dollars on the 2010 Olympics and other ‘great things for the city’ when there are far more important issues to be addressed..."

"...there is so much wrong with the "system" and we may never understand what this kind of mental illness can do to a person. I'm sure soon there will be another Francois who may be able to take full advantage of your basement, and in the meantime its onwards and upwards..."

"...I was glad to read your story today, thought more about it and know that it is a problem. I see homeless people like Francois every day on my way to and from work and often wonder if I'm doing the right thing by offering food instead of money when I can..."

"...I am happy to hear I am friends with someone who tries to make a difference instead of just complaining that no one is helping. It is inspiring for the rest of us. I also wish the best for Francois and all those in similar situations..."

"...I'm just so sorry for that poor man. It makes me even more sad thinking that even medication cannot help him..."

"...It's really really sad and scary to think about. It could be anyone. It's not just reserved for a certain section of people.

Just think about Alberta right now, with the boom...people are living outside of their means. If something happens - and it will - lives and families will be ruined and people will have nowhere to go. And they, like Francois, will have to start the battle and possible find themselves twenty years down the road still trying to find peace, inner peace.

That could be any of us..."

----------------------------------------------------------

The day after he left, Francois was back again, looking level, wanting another chance. Wanting to try for at least another month. Kate and I were tired, but willing. But before he was going to be allowed to stay, rules would be set down. A tenancy agreement that left no stone unturned.

We sat Francois down. This was how it was to be: first, the damage deposit. We’d need it back. He didn’t have it. Strike one, but let’s move on. Next, we have to live our lives as we always have, with friends and family visiting, with repair and maintenance people coming into the house do maintain our furnace, etc.

And that was all it took. He lost it again. Stormed out. Ten minutes later, back again. Calm, again. We talk to him for an hour. This time, no trying to get him to stay, no telling him to go. Just trying to get him to the hospital.

And so it was agreed after much discussion with him, that Kate would take us to the ER first thing, and I would wait with him until we got him some help. 8:00 am, we said, we’d leave the house and take him to Vancouver General. He could stay in the basement suite overnight.

Would he still be here in the morning? Would he be here, but refusing to go?

At 6:45 in the morning, the bell rang. He was ready to go. Kate drove us over, and Francois and I went into the ER.

Long story short, he didn’t want to stay, but I found ways to keep him there. It was a long day of waiting, broken up with the occasional visit from a nurse or doctor. It was a very revealing day, listening to him speak to the staff. Turns out he went off his meds weeks ago, and was using cocaine. Now we know where our damage deposit went. Anyway, the whole day of waiting almost all fell apart when Francois decided that a man in the waiting room had a gun, and we had to go before we got hurt. Talking him down from that was worth it though, because 20 minutes later, there was two psychiatrists to talk with him. Off they went, and I headed to the nurses station at Triage.

I made it clear that no matter what, I had to talk to those doctors when they were done with Francois. And I got to. I filled in all the details of our experience and left nothing out (trust me, there is WAY more than what this blog says).

They had me go back to the waiting room, to sit with Francois. Shortly, they came out asking Francois to have another chat with them. One of the two doctors came out seconds later, saying that was it. He was in.

I left the ER, got on the bus, and went home.

----------------------------------

We’ve seen Francois once more; looking not just level, but human. He was out on a day pass and came back to us to get a bag of his clothing, and to get the damage deposit back. We had to tell him that we already gave it to him, that we understood how he may have forgotten, given what he was going through. As of today, we’re happy to report that Francois has stayed on with the hospital, where he can reconnect with housing and care services. Whether or not he stays on the system remains to be seen.

Next week, SUNSHINE AND HAPPINESS, I PROMISE!!!!!!!

meet Francois

2007-01-29T15:07:00.001-08:00

Francois Lamontaigne. Age 52. Not very tall, maybe 5'7" or 5'8" at the most. Grey hair, pulled back into a small pony tail. And a beard, pretty neatly trimmed and peppered with the colour of his younger years. He speaks with a thick French-Canadian accent, having grown up in Montreal. He's also Bi-Polar. And homeless. well, he was homeless, until he found Kate and I. Actually, he's homeless again, as of today. Perhaps I should start at the beginning...

... Francois first came to us through our church. Mid December, Christmas season fast approaching. Kate and I were in a Sunday morning meeting with our Social actions committee, just before the service started. Gary, our minister, poked his head in the door and said good morning, adding that he had something he just wanted to put in our ears.

"There's this homeless fellow who's come in the last few weeks," He said, "he's got his government cheque for $325 a month, and he's looking for space if any one has it. He's here again this week, and still asking around."

Gary said he had told the fellow that the chance was slim, but that he'd ask around. Once Gary had made his announcement, Kate and I turned to one another. We had a basement suite in our new house. not yet rented, but then, in no shape to be rented yet. And yet, better than the streets, surely.

To make a long story short--we talked to Gary, we talked to Francois, and it seemed like a good fit. Bi-Polar yes, but level, and medicated. He just knows he can't be on the street, and needs a quiet warm place to sleep and eat.

And so it was. Francois moved in right away, despite the state of the suite, and you've never seen anyone so happy, so thankful. After all, it had to be better than dirty, back-alley concrete. He was happy to be out and about during the daytime, and I fixed up the space while he was gone. New paint, new trims, new flooring, furniture. In no time, we had a gleaming suite, and a tenant who was happier and more grateful by the day. He told us he was never leaving, and that our place must be the Hyatt.

Francois was the perfect fit as a tenant. A guy who just wants quiet space, who keeps to himself, who respects our property, is happy to play with our dog, and who even joins in our yard work with us. Sure, he talks a lot to us when he's around us--but a guy who has lived on and off the streets for 20 years has a lot of stories, and probably not many people to listen to them.

This happy arrangement all came together just in time. The snow, the windstorms, the frigid rains. we had helped bring someone out of that. When there is so much talk about the homelessness crisis in Vancouver, we were doing something about it.

Just last week, though. Last week was all different. Something went wrong. Not with us. Not inside the house. But inside his head, something went wrong. The place of warmth and shelter was all of a sudden a prison. we were either working with the police, or with a gang. Either way, we were watching him. And poisoning him, through our furnace. Nothing we said could convince him this was a safe place. No question he asked could we answer correctly. Kate especially could do no right in his eyes.

Francois' Bi-Polar had bubbled to the surface. Boiled, more like it. And it wasn't pretty. Lots of anger and storming off. He's lost his grip on reality, and we can do nothing to influence him positively.

Fast forward again, to today. Francois has reappeared today, after being off the property for a few days. Reappears with bloodied cotton swabs taped to his wrists. He's been in the hospital again he says, calmly. We gave him a heart attack, he says, again calmly. He had to be in the hospital. With IV's hooked into his hands and all that.

He seems more level today, but there's an edge there that I don't intend to push. He's still not back to normal, I can tell. I let him talk. He's got to go, he says. Can't stay here. It's not us, it's this place. He apologizes for the things he said to us, said to Kate. I hang around in the suite while he packs, which isn't packing at all. I've gien him my old travel bag, but he just moves things from one couch to the other while he talks. Changes his socks three times, his shirt, four times. Finally, he gets some things in the bag. not much, though. In the end, he leaves the bag in the suite with everything else, deciding it's too much weight to strain against his heart. I listen to his frustration. About the system, about 20 years of disappointments, of being let down.

"The people, they're always nice--well, usually, like you guys," he says. "But they don't know what it's like for me. If everyone could be me for just one day, they would see how hard it is. But they just don't know."

and with that, he left. He says he'll go to the church tomorrow to talk with Gary, to see if he has anymore help for him. And he'll come back for his stuff tomorrow, too, or I might take it to the church, and he can get it there.

Maybe he will be back tomorrow. maybe not. maybe he'll visit Gary. maybe not.
We tried to give a man a home, and, during the coldest, wettest, windiest, ugliest period of weather in Vancouver's history, we did.

We tried hard to keep him off the street. A Government issue, $325 a month cheque doesn't by happiness. If it gets you a place in this overpriced town at all, it just hides the problem away for six weeks, until there is a need for more than shelter. Like a qualified mental care team, and 24 hour assistance.

These things were not well enough in place, and today we are left with frustration, a feeling of helplessness, and an empty suite.

Good luck Francois. We're praying for you.

RenovationSensation

2007-01-10T11:17:00.001-08:00

We've managed to get cracking on our renovations in the last while, and we've got some photos lined up of the new look of a few things! Our living room is done, pretty much. we gave it a new coat of paint, replaced the baseboards and slapped up some crown molding. The once wood-panelled ski chalet is now a classic looking room. Also, the basement suite is renovated and rented.
ALAS! Those photos are yet to come. Perhaps the more exciting development is the demolition we have done on the walls enclosing what we suspected was our chimney. after some limited probing to test our theory, we couldn't stop ourselves from tearing down entire sections of wall.

from the first two pics, one can get an idea of the fireplace that is in the wall in

our living room closet. it's a small little Victorian fireplace, and it needs some work. Above he fireplace, note the wallpaper with willowy branch prints and japanese or chinese characters on it
(I'm not well enough versed in Asian langauges to know what's what)

the beauty of this demolition is...
It's in a cupboard right now. we can close the door on the mess (ps, old living room paint job. please ignore. Besides, once the fireplace is ready to go, that cupboard will be coming down anyway).

On the other side of our wall is the kitchen.

in this pic, on the right hand wall, note the pink-covered, walled-over chimney outcropping.

here's me in the demolition phase. Any guesses what year that wallpaper was put up? Any guesses as to why someone would make an enclosing wall out of flooring?

Ooh, looks like my pants are falling down in sync with the wall.
you probably should ignore my saggy butt. and the look on my face (it's sheer intoxication over the joys of demolition. those who have done it, know).

and here's the exposed chimney!

Add some cozy chairs and accent lighting, and VOILA! A room with some character is born! It's just that easy, folks :)

the fun continues! ta ta for now!

HAPPY HOLIDAYS!!

2006-12-20T20:56:00.001-08:00

MERRY CHRISTMAS, HAPPY NEW YEAR AND SO ON!

Hello all! as you can see, our new house is decked out for the holidays! the lights went up on December 1st, the first full day we were in the house.

as you will see from the following pictures, the interior isn't necessarily as well decorated as the exterior! we've already done some work, but those photos will have to wait until the next entry or two. after all, it's more fun with the before / after effect anyway :)

so what you're looking at is our dining room, living room, back yard ( the last owners had SEVEN cats, hence the mesh that was their encagement! and it all collapsed in the snow...), and a taste of what the basement suite is painted up like. pretty , no? and the wood panelling? We'll be attacking that stuff with extreme prejudice. Gorgeous. and what of the chandelier? a real touch of class. there's five or six chandaliers in this house. nope, not sure why.

Last but not least, just a slice of the view from our spare room. we can see the whole North shore range from our house! (to those of you on the prairies / back east, etc... these are called mountains.. mahwn/tayns

well, despite the snow in these pics, and the lights on our house, this isn't an overly Christmasy holiday message so... ummm... uhhhhhh... Oh, I know, here you go... Click This!

New Digs and other info

2006-11-27T10:15:00.001-08:00

Well, It's been six weeks, give or take, since I updated this thing, so I'm going to try to cram as much of it as i can into one breath, so as not to waste your time in this sound-bite, give-it-to-me-now age of information...

okay, Deeeep breath iiinn...aaaannndd... GO!

updating you from mid october on Kate lost her wallet then I crashed the car the next day and then we bought a house two days later and then two more days later my contract at work finished up and then Kate got the flu or something gross like that and then her wallet showed up magically in the mail with everything in it so yay but even though kate now had a license again she still had no car but kate's mum gave us her truck which was good as kate needs a car for her work which is going well by the way and also cause the car wasn't fixed until just before rememberance day which means it took a month to fix the car which tells you that I smucked it really good but when we got it back we used the car to go to kamloops to visit my parents over the long weekend which was nice and mixed into all of that I have been trying to line up another contract and hopefully one that is longer than the last because that was way to short and I have also been touching up and fixing up this house before we move out of it which happens this thursday, november 30th and hopefully the snow that has been falling here the last couple of days will have disappeared or at least sorted itself out as moving day could be gross but I think the snow is maybe a bit better than the 320 mm of rain we have so far received in the month of november and since it's the end of november that means I'm only three months away from being an uncle and if you were wondering Dina's baby is doing just fine and nellie the dog is also fine and mum and dad are fine they went to mexico for a week last month and that was nice and dad just finished his very last chemo this week way to go dad it has been a long year but you rule and now I think we're up to speed which is good because I'm about to pass out.

......WHHHHEWWWW....

did you catch all that? highlights include:

-looking for work
-bought a new house, which is awesome, pictures to follow

so that brings you up to speed! when next I write, which will hopefully be next week, we'll be in our new place, and with any luck I'll have another gig lined up.

Death, and Birth (y'know, just the light stuff this week)

2006-10-03T07:49:00.002-07:00

Overnight on September 27th, 2006, family man and avid fisherman Gordon Loutit lost his battle with lymphatic cancer. He’d been in the hospital for three weeks before he snagged snag the big fish that carried him upstream and away from us. It's said that a graceful death is the ultimate acheivement in life, and for all the months he was sick, and for all the weeks he was in hospital, there wasn't one complaint to be had...

...I first met Gord at Kate’s high school graduation in the spring of 1997—that was only the second “date” Kate and I went on, and needless to say, it's an odd thing to one's ENTIRE family all in one fell swoop so early on in a relationship. But that's what happened, and among the family members present: Gordon Loutit.

Technically he’s a neighbour, but more appropriately he’s been a father figure for Kate since she was born. As a young girl, Kate would spend hours at Diane and Gord’s house across the back lane when Kate’s mum was at work. In later years, when parental supervision didn’t matter, Kate could still be found over at the Loutit house, sitting in the kitchen drinking tea and eating brownies.

Gord would tell a fishing tale to anyone that would lend an ear, talk about the fishing show he caught on TV the night before, or tell stories about near anything for that matter. He loved to talk about construction projects going on around the city and province, to gripe about government, and fume about cost over runs on this and that. With a gleaming eye, a grin and a chuckle, Gord managed to pull me into one of his fishing stories at that high school grad of Kate's back in 1997. All I had to tell him was that I was from Kamloops, and that I hear he liked to fish. From there, I was told everything I could have wanted to know about the waters around Kamloops and the marine life that inhabited them. Instead of being a fish out of water, I was made to feel as comfortable with their family as I could have hoped.

Not an entirely docile creature, Gord would be quick enough to tell his grandkids to go play in traffic if they were annoying him, and would be more than happy to tell you when you’re wrong. But on the other hand, if you needed a ride to Timbuktu, he’d be the first to offer it. And if you needed something when you got there, he’d give you the shirt off his back. And naturally, he’d be there to pick you up when you wanted to get home again. Kate was ferried back and forth by Gord more times than she could ever count.

There’s a family that misses you now, a groove in the TV room chair that no one else will be able to fill, and a particular fish-motif coffee mug in the cupboard above the sink that will sit empty. Here’s to hoping the fishing ‘Up There’ is better than it ever was down here…

Tight lines, Gordie. We love ya.

---------------------------------------------------------

And now, on to new life... An update on the happy news I mentioned last time about my Sister in law being "with Child" as they say...

We got Pictures, baby! (pun intended...)
Here's the first ultrasound of the wee one! The Docs say he / she is perfectly healthy so far with a strong heart, and Dina reports that she can feel the baby moving around in her tummy now... in true Dina fashion, she likens this feeling to 'indigestion'...

I'm not entirley sure what to make of these pictures thus far... on the first image, my future neice / nephew looks a bit alien, and the second image looks more jellybean than human :) No doubt there's all sorts of cuteness just waiting to be formed! and it's perhaps more exciting to see the pictures than it was to hear the announcement in the first place---It's real now!!

That all being said, it was my brithday this week, as well as Dina's brithday, which falls on this very day! Given those facts, and amidst the birth and death going on around me, I can't help but remind myself that in between, there's lots of life to live!

"To everything there is a season,
and a time to every purpose under the heaven:

A time to be born, and a time to die;
a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted..."

Ecclesiastes 3