Barkerburgh

Spent 5 days/4 nights in the Wasagas, at Vala’s Villa, the Tolkien themed ancestral summer cottage of the Ellis-Perrella family of Guildwood.

Just about here:

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Me In A Batting Cage At Wasaga

It was taken by Reid, total serendipity. I get hit in the head repeatedly (every time somebody watches the damn thing) and I still think it’s funny. Maybe that’s why…

I had a great, relaxing time, with frisbees, thunderstorms, standing in the lake up to my neck for an hour at a time, and an engineering project at the mouth of the Saint David’s River, which flows mightily into Nottawasaga Bay somewhat north of the villa.

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After returning from the Wasagas, Anneli took me, as a somewhat belated birthday present to see the “Facing Mars” exhibit at the Ontario Science Centre. While I had some issues with the interface for some of the exhibits, and some just didn’t work, it was still highly cool. Then we went to see the IMAX film “Roving Mars“, which was so kick ass I can’t tell you. It was basically about the Spirit and Opportunity rovers and their missions on Mars, a combination of live shots and splendid CG. One hypothetical shot showed an ancient Martian desert of rolling dunes dotted with saline lakes, and was quite spectacular, stirring in fact.

We had lunch, wandered around the other exhibits a bit and then we went to the tiny planetarium to see a show about Toronto’s night sky, although we also went out into intergalactic space for a quick peek. Beside the line-up, there was a sign telling us that if we were past it, we might not get in because space was limited. I pointed out that space was in fact infinite, got a general laugh except from a snotty 10 year old girl who said “I think they mean that seating in the planetarium is limited.” I couldn’t let her get away with that so I kidnapped her and sold to the greys from Zeta Reticuli for scientific experiments said “I don’t think so!”

Yes sirree, had me some fun.

Notes on dog-sitting Photon while PL&J were in Florida

1> She would sit, silently pining, on the deck, staring at the back gate where they take Jon in and out in his wheelchair.

2> One night, she woke me up twice by dropping her hard toy down the stairs into the basement (where I was sleeping in the guest bed).

3> Twice more the same night she woke me up by jumping up on the bed and licking my face until I woke up.

4> Around 4:00 or 4:30am that same night, I found myself in the back yard in my jammies and Peter’s Crocs playing keep-away with Photon in the snow, wondering just how the heck she tricked me into doing it.

5> Dang all, she’s cute.

6> Cobalt, her same-litter sister lives somewhere near the park but, while I’ve seen her before, I didn’t see her that week.

7> She has a sister-friend relationship with another, unrelated, Mini Aussie named Ruckus, who lives on the same street. They’ll chase each other around and wrestle for twenty minutes or a half an hour at a time, pretty much ignoring all the other dogs. And me.

8> On two different nights I woke up when she was trying to get under the covers with me. When I was a kid my dog slept with me, often under the covers at the bottom of the bed, so no problem. The first night I woke up later to find her laying right beside me. The second night she ended up on top of the covers at the bottom of the bed.

9> She has a crazy relationship with a park dog named Knowledge (yes, Knowledge), a frisbee catcher. Photon runs after her and constantly barks (which she hardly ever does, really…) but Knowledge pretty much just ignores her, running and leaping to catch the frisbee.

10> I didn’t know P&L were teaching her to fetch. I’d never seen her do it either. For the first couple of days I saw no evidence she even cared to try it. Suddenly on New Year’s Day in the park she started bringing the frisbee to me, dropping it at my feet, sitting and staring at me expectantly. At first I didn’t get it, being untrained. Suddenly I realized what she was doing, treated her, tossed the frisbee again, and thereby began to run out of treats. I’m not sure that it was just treats she wanted because if I moved away from her without throwing the frisbee, she’d pick it up, bring it to my feet again and maybe yelp. After a day or two she had me trained. “Barker to Barker; <i>throw</i> it!”

11> The Homecoming. Laura was the first one in the front door when they finally got home very early Sunday morning, after a grueling day. Photon came to the door to see who it was, stopped, stared, recognized Laura and went delightfully, ecstatically, crazy, as only a happy dog can do. (Cats have no equivalent reaction.) A few minutes later, at the back door, Jon and Peter got the same treatment.

Afterwards, an afterword:

12> While falling asleep in my own bed at home, I have hypnogogic hallucinations of a dog jumping on the bed, including the jingling of the tags. (It used to be a cat jumping on the bed, and before that it was a door slamming, but I had a psychotic landlord at the time so the door slam might have been real.)

I’ve basically used the same password on all my accounts for years. It’s clever, idiosyncratic and medium strength, according to the analysts.

I recently went using from ****** to using *********, which is good and strong. But I haven’t remembered to change it on all my accounts yet, and I forget which ones I’ve changed and which ones I haven’t.

So I keep having to ask the system to email me my forgotten password, and then I forget which email account I used as an alternative address, or even what my secret question was. Did my mother have a dog when she still had her maiden name? Or was it the one about the angles on the head of a pin. (I get too clever for my own good sometimes, and I suspect you already know that and are just too good a friend to actually tell me.¹)

I have to resort to the absolute wrong thing to do to remember my passwords, which I can’t mention in this post, obviously, for security reasons.  I wouldn’t want my life hacked by people even more clever for my own good than I am, now would I?

And thank you, Peter, Leslie and Simon.

They invited me to join them on Thanksgiving Day.

First we went to the ancient and mysterious ‘Crawford Lake‘ , on the Niagara Escarpment near Milton, where I partly grew up. Crawford Lake is a scientific marvel because it is meromictic. This means that the water layers within the small, deep lake never mix, or ‘turn over’; there are few if any currents within the lake and sediments are laid down in predictable, datable and unmixed sequences that can be dated, analyzed and have data extrapolated from them. Apparently, sedimentary analysis predicted the existence (and probable location, too, I think) of a local pre-Columbian aboriginal village, which has been reconstructed on its original site. Very interesting.

The lake is surrounded by a railed boardwalk which, while allowing people near the lake to see it or observe it, nevertheless keeps them away from it; swimming, drinking or any kind of interference or pollution is forbidden, so delicate is the lake and so important is it scientifically and historically. Very cool.

Then, for dinner, we went down to Burlington to Joan’s (Peter’s mother) 10th floor apartment overlooking Burlington Bay / Hamilton Harbour. What a view!

Dinner was a spread! Ham, garlic mashed potatoes, carrots, squash, brussel sprouts, cabbage, corn relish, hot mustard, wine, water, I don’t remember what else, but there was more. I ate like a mediaeval guest. Who hadn’t eaten all day, practically.

Leslie and Peter were, as usual, fine company. Joan is always interesting, and but for a brief fit of the crunkles, Simon was his usual well-behaved sensible self. So was I.

All in all, a day to be thankful for.

I’m not entering NaNoWriMo this year, but instead will work on finishing my last year’s project which so many of you contributed ideas to.

I have transferred the research and background notes to MediaWiki - a freakin’ godsend for this sort of thing, as you well know I know well - and will use that to carry on.

I won’t say I’ll hit 50,000 words, but I may very well go over…

There will be much and sincere wishing of luck starting…Now.

” Loved Heroes. Can’t wait for the season finale next week. “Boom”, indeed!

09:15 PM May 14, 2007″

Indeed!

So mosta y’all recall, I’m sure, how I found a Pentium III on the sidewalk along the Danforth a few months back. 650Mhz, 128 meg of RAM, since upgraded (via once forgotten RAM chips) to 320. There was a DVD reader (not much more than just that), a CD burner, a good video card (since upgraded to a Reid-supplied GEForce 3 card), a good sound card and a good (reliable, unlike its Win98 predecessor) network card.

What I don’t think I whinged about too much was that I thought my story files (novels, novel-like projects, and short stories) were on an unaccessable hard-drive, perhaps damaged by storage since the pre-Christmas total crash. I had plugged it in to the system and the system wasn’t recognizing it. Well, here’s the thing of it. It wasn’t the system or the drive. It turns out it was the IDE ribbon cable. On a whim on Thursday night, I replaced it and now I have access to all my soon-to-be-great novels and stories. Including my once long-lost NaNoWriMo novel, which I can once again work on. Huzzah.

To be honest, after I thought I’d lost them, I was seriously bummed. I felt like the stupid old universe had finally won, after all I’ve been through. But, finally, optimist that I am, inveterate mental Snoopy dancer that I am, I won. Finally.

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Simon likes to walk now, no stroller for him. Yesterday while we were out we went by the firehouse just a half a block from home. On the pretext that Simon has his own firetruck (which he does) and he likes it (which he does) I asked a firefighter if we could go in and take a close look at the firetruck (a pumper) that we could see through the closed door. The firefighter ran the lights, goosed the siren and pumped the air horn for me. Simon. Who, while a little spooked at first, nevertheless liked it just fine. So did I.

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And if you’re ever in the St. Clair and Dufferin neighbourhood and you want a tasty nosh, totally check out the Anatolian Pizza & Doner Kebab House. Have the lahmacun, pronounced approximately ‘lommajun‘. It’s this delicious Turkish pizza that smells exquisite and tastes as good as it smells.

As some of you may know, I will be turning 50 on June 26, 2007, three months from now. Which is to say I will have completed my 50th year of life.

With greatest respect to my dear friends, I don’t want a surprise party, or presents, or anything like that.

Please make a donation of any size to a children’s charity of your choice or a literacy charity of your choice. I’ve included the Google strings below for your perusal.

My preferences would be The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children who do great work (here’s their donations page), and ProLiteracy Worldwide who I discovered at the first Gathering of the Fellowship back in 2003 (here’s their donations page).

Once you’ve made the donation, have them send me a note that says something like ‘ A Donation Has Been Made In Your Name To…” just so’s I know. And can feel validated.

Of course, feel free to send me a card too. But no Star Wars pyjamas for grown-ups.

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Children’s Charities Google String

Literacy Charities Google String

Okay, everyone. So far suggestions for my NaNoWriMo entry have been very good. Thank you all very kindly. The ideas have been very useful.

But some of you haven’t submitted yet. I remind you, participation is mandatory. Failure to participate may result in the inclusion of characters in the novel with less than flattering personalities. Maybe I’m serious. Do you really want to find out?

I would like to point out the deadline isn’t until Friday, and I’ve arbitrarily set midnight as the cut-off point. But it’s a twenty four hour world and midnight itself is an arbitrary human concept.

Oh, I forgot! Y’all Can Enter More Than Once!

I’m going to enter NaNoWriMo, the (Inter)National Novel Writing Month - it is actually global, the original organizers were just a tad Americocentrically chauvinist in their choice of name.

The goal is to write a (minimum) 50000 novel in the 30 days of November.

Last time, 2002, I wrote a fantasy, as I mentioned in an earlier post, but I missed the deadline. This time I want to write a science fiction piece, but nothing in my files really grabs my imagination for this project.

Okay, here’s the plan. You’re going to help me.

How, you ask? What are you going to do?

Submit a short list of ideas, in the comments here (if you can), via email (dwjoyes [at sign] barker pip tnir pip org), or through my LiveJournal blog.

Here’s the rules:

1> Give me minimum 3 word phrases (maximum 7 to 10- I don’t want you writing the whole thing).

They’ll be ideas as inspiration. I might use them literally or figuratively. I might combine them with other ideas, yours or other peoples’, or use them as dialogue. No guarantee cuz I have no way to predict. Your contribution to my imaginative effort. Cliches are okay. Plagiarism is not.

2> No Faulkner, Joyes (later edit: I mean Joyce, of course. D’oh. Duh.) or Escher - each phrase has to make reasonable sense
          - eg ‘three blue spheres’
          - eg ‘the aliens laughed’
          - ie not ‘husband bracken hairband’
          - ie not ‘avuncular carbuncle ankle’
          - Get it?

3> Submit as many as you want; I promise I’ll use them all. You may not recognize them, but they’ll all be there and I’ll be able to prove it.

4> Tell your friends. Seriously. Tell your kids.

5> The deadline (because I have to read them all and make notes based on them) is the end of next week, that is Friday, October 20, 2006.

7> Wish me luck.