Errors and Omissions

She beheld her dream; hair like coal, cerulean eyes, ruddy face and a fatal smile. That picture made Ruth buy the June issue of Sail Magazine and predisposed her to a life-long passion for pretty yachts and handsome strangers.

Mosaic Memories

Donnie said some funny things. One time he told his mom, "I hate fall. All that orange and red in the trees gives me a headache."
Judi thought that was an eccentric observation but grinned and said, "I'm glad I'm not the only weird one in this family."
Another time he said, "Whenever I think about something that happened in the past, I can only picture it in black and white."

Judi Does Opera York!

I had a passion-filled weekend that I’m just dying to tell you about!  I was whisked away to the Paris of artists, poets and lovers.  I was swept off my feet by a potent cocktail of romance and wine and youthful ardour.  Who was the author of this delicious assignation?  It wasn’t just one, but an entire posse of passion purveyors by the name of Opera York.  

Stories on Canvas - Are you in one??

Amberlee Rosolowich is a young artist from California.  She paints powerful, narrative images of childhood fantasy and anxiety.  View her work and read more about it HERE.

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Call Me Frankenstein

I set myself a task this evening.  Hooked up to my MP3 player  I went out for a walk.  The mellow voice of Madeleine Peyroux set a comfortable pace.  The music; however, turned out to be a weaker draw on my senses than the spongy, hot August evening.  The sky was black and motionless; before it the trees stood out in surreal relief.  The heavy mist felt tingly and made my skin shine.  Before an intense palate of black and green my eyes awakened from their mid-summer sleep.   I turned off my music, took out my ear phones and walked, as such an evening demanded, "unplugged." 

Untethered to the words of the music, my mind quickly started to wander.  I started thinking of the start of school in September and how I might be able to engage my 11 year old son, Kyle, in creative evening activities.  I had him start a blog last year.  He has a few entries in it.  (Right click HERE and "open in a new window" if you would like to take a peek.) 

I thought I might ask Kyle one evening to write a blog entry describing his idea of the "perfect friend."  With this exercise, he would have to think about: 1. what it means to be a friend and 2. what qualities constitute good character. 

No sooner did I hatch this little plan for Kyle than I started thinking about it in reference to myself.  Enter Frankenstein - how would I "build" the perfect friend?  I don't know if this would be my final design, but the prototype would be something like this:

• there would be a male version and a female version
• he/she would be strong, decisive
• objective and non-judgemental
• brave but not foolhardy
• wouldn't dream of telling me a lie to spare my feelings
• would love me but never pity me, envy me or enable me 
• would not need to be with me constantly to know how important the friendship was
• someone I'd want to "measure up to" and vice versa
• would most likely have a "quirky" and unique take on life

I think that's probably more than enough to expect of my imaginary paragon!  I have one friend who very closely fits my ideal.  Zoe was the subject of my very first blog entry in 2007.  She has been the best of friends for over 35 years. I had no idea that my one hour walk this evening would take me all the way to BC!

What a happy thought this exercise has been.  Love ya Zoe! 

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Heard of "Project Gutenberg?"

From Wikipedia: (right click on any link and select "open in another window) to read the complete article.

"Project Gutenberg was started by Michael Hart in 1971 with the digitization of the United States Declaration of Independence.^[4] Hart, a student at the University of Illinois, obtained access to a Xerox Sigma V mainframe computer in the university's Materials Research Lab. Through friendly operators, he received an account with a virtually unlimited amount of computer time; its value at that time has since been variously estimated at $100,000 or $100,000,000.^[4] Hart has said he wanted to "give back" this gift by doing something that could be considered to be of great value. His initial goal was to make the 10,000 most consulted books available to the public at little or no charge, and to do so by the end of the 20th century"

One of the coolest things on the Gutenberg website is the free audio book offerings.  I down-loaded "The Picture of Dorian Gray" by Oscar Wilde recently.  It's a wonderfully narrated piece of work!  I copied it to my MP3 player and listened at my leisure on walks and roller blade skates over a week or so. 

Would you like to try down loading this classic story too?  Here's how:

• go to this website: http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/26230#downloads
• scroll down to the table titled "Hand-Crafted Files"
• there are 13 "audio" files (for the 13 chapters of the novel)
• starting on the first of the "Audio" files, left click where it says "main site" in the 5th column of the row
• then, in the dialogue box where is asks if you want to save this file, click  the "save" option
• In the next, "save as" box, select a suitable library - music, document etc. and create a new folder, title "Dorian Gray" by,
• Right clicking the library name on the left and selecting "new" then select "folder"
• a "new folder" will appear under your library title - documents or music that you selected           
• Rename that "new folder" to "Dorian Gray"
• save all 13 files in sequence to that folder then transfer the entire folder, if you wish, to your MP3 player for easy summer "reading."
• then continue browsing the collection!

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Let's Call it "GOOF"

Food Diary - Thursday, August 5th.

  7:00 AM - Brekky of champions - Protein shake with a liberal dose of strawberries, blueberries, banana and soy milk

  9:00 AM - Grabbed the yellow plum on the counter that had "Judi" written on it

12:30 PM - After gardening, house cleaning and keyboard tapping, - Cottage cheese with strawberries and bananas and another glass of soy milk, oh, and 2 whole wheat saltine crackers,(munched while wondering about their sodium content.)

12:40 PM - Single dose mult-vitamin supplement, double dose calcium and vitamin D supplement, single does chondroitin something-or-other that's good for the          joints supplement.

• At this point, Stomach says to Head, "C'mon now, are we really happy with this "health" deal?"
• Head replies, "We'll be healthy or die trying!"
• Stomach counters, weakly,  "there are laws against this!"

1:00 PM - 5:00 PM - Between on-going housework (not a typical day!) and keyboard tapping, Stomach is languishing in gustatory angst and considering mutiny.  Head, not insensitive to the feelings of her constant companion resolves to make amends...

Out comes a cookbook - "simply Indian" - sweet and spicy recipes from India, Pakistan and East Africa."  It's time to cook REAL food! (But GOOD food!)

I love cook books.  I own dozens and have given away as many as I still own.  I like to spread the "cooking word" to newbies!  I flipped through a few pages, looked at some pretty pictures then put the book back on the shelf.  I don't follow recipes very often any more.  I opened up my cupboards and pulled out:     

• a bag of red lentils  (Right click on any links and select "open in a new window" for lots of great nutrition info)
• white rice
• 1 onion
• frozen peas and carrots
• small bit of cooked beef leftovers from freezer
• turmeric
• curry masala
• butter
• salt (just a smidge!)

What I did with it:

Sauteed the chopped onion in butter, added lentils to toast, added peas and carrots, rice, spice and sliced beef and water.  Brought to a boil, reduced heat to simmer for 15 minutes.  It was done.  The house smelled "spicy"  and Stomach was friends with Head again.

I call this creation "GOOF" after my old neighbourhood restaurant in the Toronto Beaches.  The GOOF, (not it's real name) sat for years with a defective sign that, fully-lit would have read "GOOD FOOD" but  due to poor maintenance read "GOO    F     "  Nobody remembered its real name; to everyone in the "hood" it was just known as "The Goof."

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