...and a Happy New Year!

We watched An Inconvenient Truth, Al Gore's crusade about improving awareness of global warming. It is truly sobering because of the fact that we are rapidly approaching the point of no-return. We know what must be done to leave a lighter footprint on the planet (though here are more pointers, from his site), now we need to Just Do It.
So I have only one New Year's resolution for 2007,
Save The Planet

That should keep me busy for a while...

Best wishes for a Happy New Year 2007.

The Beauty of Technology

Year end is coming fast. I am actually rewinding the reels of time (I made that up - nice image, huh?) as I go through boxes of slides my mom took over the years. I saw moments that were never printed. I saw my grandmother in mourning dress after my grandfather had passed away; I saw her with jet black hair and my aunts and uncles younger than I am now, holding my brothers and I as babies. I saw the results of a hurricane that brushed past our house (we were away on vacation so there was only material damage), and corrected a few over- or underexposed shots. I discovered some gems and polished them. I recaptured lost moments, shreds of life. Oh - and those are only 6 boxes... There are plenty more.

Thank you Santa for this wonderful scanner!

The day after

I hope everybody had a good time. We were up watching Pirates f the Carribbean II last night - a XMas present, of course. I had already seen it, so halfway through I started reading my new How-to book on writing songs. Good stuff, man. I can't wait to put it in practice. I haven't gotten to the exercise parts yet, still in the intro chapters, but it is an entertaining read and there's a lot to learn + actual songwriters are interviewed which is way cool. Evidently, everybody has their preferred work method so they contradict each other but as I (we) have been doing it for over a year now, I can use what applies to my style and not feel overwhelmed by choices.
I fell asleep in the living room and had bits of lyrics floating through my mind. Since I didn't have a notebook (Rule 1) to jot them down, they are lost to posterity. Not to worry. There is more where that came from.

Joyeux Noël - Merry Christmas!

Christmas Marathon

The race is on! We have hit the second marker (family party and gift exchange), the first one being putting up the Christmas tree (we ran swiftly by that one last week). We are carburating on Chrsitmas cookies. We still have cards to mail and a few gifts to buy but the finish line is in sight. Still hoping Santa will bring me a new job for Christmas (I've been decent this year maybe I deserve that).
We're in it for the long run. The season isn't over until the last party, the last eggnog and the never-achieved New Year's resolutions.
We have left a few competitors behind - clearly ill-prepared. They look tired, are in a shopping frenzy and their house is a mess. We're just tired with a messy house. Two out of three is good at this stage. I have an edge because I don't need to go to any office party - nothing beats working from home!

Of Other Addictions

Forget smoking - what about blogging, emailing or surfing? I can't seem to get enough.I get up, start my computer and check for email. Go about my routine in the outside world, then back to my routine in the computer world. There's always lots to do: click on the Hunger site and affiliates; turn on my launchcast radio or a friend's; chat; email; blog; check friend's blogs; oh - uh - work; that's only morning. I get reminders popping up for tasks not in front of the computer - dr's appointment and stuff - but mostly, I can while away the day without noticing. I go out and get fodder for my flickr site. I seem to always be thinking of ways to entertain you : ) ... except in the evenings, where I do take a break.
I've been logging on regularly to the Atomic Tumour site, where I can live a guy's life by proxy. How healthy is that? I haven't started on YouTube - somehow, the written word appeals to me more than moving pictures. I read a great article on Evites in yesterday's Time. It described this growing compulsion to make public private matters and try and entertain at the same time.

Maybe smoking is healthier after all...

P.S. I am writing this in Notepad as I have lost my Internet connection... Life is hard.

Gnikoms

I was just musing about the disappearance of cigarettes in my sphere of consciousness. As laws have been enacted and more people have been made aware of its deleterious effects, cigarette smoking has lost its ubiquity.
Smoking is no longer permitted: on planes, buses, taxis, classrooms, restaurants (depending where you live, maybe?), bars, bingos (they lost their appeal), offices and most indoor public places.

Can you imagine taking a bus from Ottawa to Toronto with people smoking? Or boarding a plane to Florida where the back rows were reserved for somkers? Hello - don't you think we'll all be smoking (even unwillingly) after being subjected to 3 hours of that?
Or going to class/work and having colleagues lighting one beside you? The nausea!

So - this post is to rejoice at the suppression of ads, characters in comic strips (remember Lucky Luke), sexy smoking actors, all huffing and puffing seductively trying to suck you in.

In high school (I think), I did an ad on cigarettes as part of a class assignment. I thought nothing of it because it was still so pervasive. A product that we all knew so well and could talk about. I shudder to think of it.

Is there a point to this post? Not really. I guess I was just happy to realize we've come a long way in my lifetime and I am enjoying my smoke-free environment.

Funny - banning smoking was not mentioned in the Clean Air Act. I won't hold my breath....

Every picture tells a story, don't it?

Well, maybe not. I tend to take close-up of plants and stuff. I am not sure I could make a story out of that. What I really want to try but I am having trouble with is taking abstract pictures from concrete objects. I have been going so close that you don't know what the picture is about but that is reltively easy (if your camera can do it and if you can keep your hands still).

My model is to make a picture from parts of disparate objects so that together they make an esthetically-pleasing tableau yet remain oddly foreign. It is this strangeness which appeals to me. Things are not what theu appear to be. There is something whimsical about those pictures sometimes. My problem is, my brain is not attuned that way and I don't see objects that way so I can't take pictures of them. I tend to think man-made objects would lend themselves to that more readily... but I live in the woods. So life is tough. I am thinking I could try something with the mailbox maybe. The garbage can? My choices are limited. I will add a flickr link here if I manage to take a few decent pictures to show you what I mean.

Till then, don't forget that beauty is in the eye of the beholder!

Noel

I have been trying to write a Christmas song with Steve these past few weeks. This year, Christmas is unlike the other years. No expectations, no needs. Quiet, peaceful. No rush.
We were trying to set a melancholy mood to the song and I was having trouble feeling it. I can write without thinking but writing with feeling takes a lot of work. For me, that is.
So it got me thinking about Christmases, past and present. Mainly good memories. Exciting years alternating with boring ones.
Our family tradition on Christmas Eve was to go to the 10 pm mass at the school across the street where I would sing in the choir (I loved it) and then eat fondue bourguignonne and homemade cream puffs with our grandma, and then, around midnight, open the presents. Then my parents would go to bed, we kids would follow. As we got older, we always asked for LPs and we would spend the whole holidays listening to our new records while playing board games.
On Christmas day, the whole family, aunts, uncles and cousins would gather at my grandmother for loads of food and drink and talk. That was noisy and fun. Sometines, our cousins from Australia would be there and that was even more excellent.
And then we'd have plenty of time on our hands to play hockey, go sledding, listen to music and basically hang out with our driends. We didn't do much on New Year's Eve - watched the end of year shows (just the kkids, our parents would head off to bed early). That was nice too. At midnight, we would say Happy New Year and head off to bed (I was never a late-night person - maybe my brothers stayed up. No amount of noise could have roused me.)

As we all moved out of home and settled with partners, Mom and Dad would invite us a week ahead or so so we could go to the in-laws without having to rush from one place to the next. It was very thoughtful: they never cared too much for exact dates and stuff and just wanted to see all of us. We're just lucky that way...