Fri - December 15, 2006

The Dreaded Christmas Newsletter

Tom has an acquaintance, Frank, who blogs huge amounts almost every day. He also stays gainfully employed. How does he do that?! Obviously we haven’t managed to maintain a daily (or even weekly) blog, but it’s Christmas once again, so we’ll let you all know what’s going on with us Evers.

Grace and Maria now the upper-classmen of Earl Grey Senior School and are trying decide where to go to High School. There are countless choices here in Toronto. They have four schools they can enter automatically: Riverdale Collegiate (regular/pre-university), Danforth Collegiate and Technical Institute (pre-university plus Auto Repair and Baking classes), Eastern Commerce Collegiate Institute (business oriented), and Malvern Collegiate Institute (to continue French immersion).

In addition, they can apply to almost any other school they want, including many with specialty programs. Maria really, really, really wants to go to Rosedale Heights School of the Arts. It’s only a block from our house, and has an excellent reputation. Grace is also interested in Rosedale, but right now she is leaning towards attending Monarch Park Collegiate in their International Baccalaureate program. This is a very challenging, internationally recognized diploma program. It’s a very exciting opportunity.


They still dance like Scots in the country, and scout like, well, Scouts. They have a new violin teacher whom they enjoy a lot. Whether they continue with violin will depend a lot on where they go to High School. Grace went to music camp in June, which she thoroughly enjoyed. This summer they flew to St. Louis to visit Grandma Ginny and Grandpa Wolfers, as well as their new cousins Allie and Andrew.


Tom still takes pictures all the time, sings Sacred Harp, and goes to lots of concerts. Anne and Tom had a blast seeing Gogol Bordello (ever heard of gypsy punk?) in February, and The Decemberists in November. We all enjoyed hours and hours of great (mostly Canadian) music at the Olympic Island Music Festival.

Anne still sings Sacred Harp, and supports the Arsenal Football Club (go Gunners!). This year she took a week’s vacation and saw 20 films at the Toronto International Film Festival. The hits: The King and the Clown (Korea), The Last King of Scotland, For Your Consideration, The Magic Flute (directed by Kenneth Branaugh) Paris, je t’aime, The Bubble (Israel), Penelope and


Monkey Warfare (Canadian). The misses: Bobby (very disappointing and I was really looking forward to it), Macbeth (Australian) and This is England (I almost walked out).

That’s it for this year. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year from all us Evers in the Great White North.

Posted at 09:08 PM      

Sun - December 18, 2005

The Dreaded Christmas Newsletter

Another year has gone by, and looking at our blog it seems like all we’ve done is sing Shape Notes and go to movies. Hey, that’s doesn’t sound bad! But we have done lots of other things, we’re just too lazy to blog them. 

The big event this year was the wedding of Marc (Anne’s brother) and Jen. We all flew down to St. Louis and had a great time catching up with relatives and basking in the early spring warmth (much warmer than in Toronto). 
 
The other big rite of passage was Grace and Maria graduating from sixth grade and moving on to Earl Gray Senior School. They spent eight years at Jackman Avenue Junior School and it was hard to say good-bye. Fortunately for Anne, she is now teaching with the husband of one’s of the girls’ favourite teachers: Mrs. Muroony. Now she can keep up with the schoolyard gossip.  
 
Earl Grey is going very well for both the girls. They are involved in lots of activities and enjoy [most of] their classes. Grace made the Honour Roll this first term! After school activities remain the same: violin, Scottish country dancing, Scouts. This summer they spent a week camping at the Haliburton Scout Reserve, and then spent two weeks at their French camp, Ça Bouge. This is probably the last year for them at Ça Bouge; they’re getting too old for it.  
 
The family holiday this year involved a short stay in Ottawa exploring the museums (we highly recommend the War Museum. Just amazing!)
 
Tom once again wowed us and the Toronto Star with his photography. He won two Second Place prizes in their annual photo contest. We now have five cameras (we only paid for one of them), six printers (paid for two of them) and way too many other electronic/digital devices (can you spell “eBay”?).  
 
It was a fortunate year for contests in general. Grace and Maria were both picked to be Junior Jays: winning tickets, shirts, hats and the opportunity to go on the field before a game and each meet with a Blue Jays player. Tom also won a set of Jays tickets and a hat and a shirt for writing a blurb about how great Toronto is. Garce's name was pulled in a draw for a year-long pass for two to a local movie theatre (The pass does have her name spelled Garce - but it still works.) And finally, Tom won tickets to a couple of concerts.  
 
Anne remains a fan of English football (soccer to all you Yanks), still loyal to Arsenal, despite their disappointing season. Once again she saw eight movies at the Toronto Film Festival, and only hated one. (Detailed reviews can be read in an earlier entry.) She’s looking forward to the year she can go all out with a 50-film festival pass. But like a marathon, it’s important to build up slowly. Maybe 16 films next year. Anne also achieved a professional goal by being assigned as a teacher for the Cambridge First Certificate Exam preparation course at her school, Pacific Gateway International College. She really loves teaching this course and hopes to continue doing so for years to come. 
 
And yes, we still sing Shape Notes.
 
...Tom still goes to lots of concerts (Anne sometimes too) and even Grace and Maria, too. In the summer, Tom took them to see Avril Lavigne at Air Canada Centre. And this last week, the whole family went to see Stars - pictured below - at an all ages show at Lee's Palace.
 
...We still have the cat
 
and the dog.
 
We experienced two major rodent traumas. First, when one of Maria’s rats killed Grace’s hamster. But the hamster has been replaced and the bloodthirsty rat has shown no more signs of aggression. Second, when Maria's other rat got a serious ear infection, causing an affliction referred to as head-tilt. Sizable vet bills and a couple rounds of antibiotics seem to have cured the infection, but the head is still tilty. Poor baby.
 
So Merry Christmas and Happy New Year from all us Evers in the Great White North.

Contact us if you would like to have recent photos e-mailed to you. 

Posted at 11:59 PM      

Sun - October 23, 2005

More Photo Awards 

Two of my photographs won awards in this year's Toronto Star contest.

I shot the first when we toured the new Canadian War Museum in Ottawa this summer. I really wanted to visit the museum after visiting the office of Moriyama & Teshima Architects earlier this year. I'm still lukewarm over the entire building, but really like many parts within. The architects are masters of the details in their buildings. One of those details figured in the photo. This intense reddish-orange wall encircled a central gallery. The dramatic lighting provided the silhouette. This won second place in the people category.




The family was coming back from the cheap theatre last November. I noticed that the normally photogenic Flatiron building was really, really photogenic this night due to the fog. We drove home, I picked up my camera and tripod, and I headed back downtown. I shot for over an hour and was pretty happy with the results. This photo won second place in the places category.


 

HP is the co-sponsor this year, so the prizes are HP cameras and printers. I'm not sure what I will receive because there seems to be a rule about one prize per household. We'll see. [I did receive both second place prizes - cool!] The Star published all the winning photos on November 11.  

Posted at 10:25 PM      

Sat - September 3, 2005

ROM photos 

I updated iBlog today, so I had to post something. The steelwork at the ROM is now complete, and they are starting to put in the floors. I've been shooting the skeletal steelwork for the last year because it is totally unique in architecture to see such a jumbled mess form the structure of a building. Soon the walls will cover this all up, and it will disappear forever.

 

Groundbreaking of the construction at the Royal Ontario Museum was on May 28, 2003. Completion is scheduled for next summer

They have some cool Quicktime VR movies of architectural renderings. The third movie shows our church, when you spin around 180 degrees. 

Posted at 06:17 PM      

Sat - May 28, 2005

The garden is looking good this year

Now, about the weather....

Posted at 05:47 PM      

Mon - April 4, 2005

ROM construction

A look at the underlying structure of the crystal being built at the ROM. (It's going the be a museum.)

I like the crystal design that is being built, but it's really hard to see at this point.

Posted at 09:42 PM      

Thu - March 3, 2005

Sat - January 29, 2005

lolinite was dying, and now she is starving!

lolinite says 'Roast Tentacle - my FAVOURITE!!!
lolinite was dying, and now she is starving!
This is a good thing in the world of neopets.

I used to say that I don't play computer games. But now I have to confess that I do. It had been a week since I had logged back into Grace’s old neopet account. So all of the neopets were dying. I started to feed them. In the neopet world, starving is better than dying. Additional food got the three pets back to fine. I could now play.

Way back when, I started buying stocks in Grace's neopet account. She was bored by the rise and fall of the Neodaq index, but I saw it as a much surer bet than putting actual dollars into our RSPs. So, bit by bit, the stocks grew, I traded, and eventually one of the stocks paid off well and her neopet account grew by tens of thousands of neopoints. She liked that part, even though stocks were still too boring to mess with.

Instead, she would play Destruct-O-Match, stock her store or feed her pets (after I nagged her to do that part). This all went fine until she forgot her password. So the account went silent for a long while. The three pets, cat-myhouse, moiemoieneo and lolinite slowly faded from hungry to starving to dying. They quietly suffered since no one could log back in. It was virtually sad.

As time passed, neopets called, and Grace started a new account. I lectured her about proper care and responsibility of pets. I probably was wishing to get back in to check on the stocks. She didn't seem to mind that her original pets were abandoned.

Back a few weeks before Christmas, I decided to try to get her account back again. After much effort, the correct password was rediscovered. And, Grace said I could use the account. Back to the stock market I went.

I've built up over 20,000 neopoints in stocks, but the market has been down for me lately. That's okay. I'm testing the Buy. Hold. Prosper. strategy. Eventually Dice-A-Roo Industries PLC or The Shoyru Company will bounce back.

Neopets has over a hundred Flash games that are pretty addictive. Destruct-O-Match is one. Excape to Kreludor is another. You play the games, and you earn neopoints. The neopoints pay for food. So lolinite doesn't starve. Really, it's the decent thing to do. It would be neoanimal cruelty to not play these adictive little game. Really.

I reopened Grace's store as Omelette Land. I've found you can fairly easily buy omelettes in the neoauctions, and then resell them in you neostore for about twice what was paid. It's a tedious way to pull in the neopoints, but it's rather satisfying to run a successful retail shop. I've also picked up various gems and stones that resold for hundreds or thousands of neopoints in profit. What doesn't sell can be donated.

So, I'm being taught responsibility, consumerism and marketing. The puzzles challenge my mind. What's not to like? Except for the hours wasted. Which is why I hardly ever played computer games. Until I got hooked on neopets.

Posted at 11:38 PM      

Sun - August 15, 2004

Mon - July 26, 2004

Two Honourable Mention Photographs

I entered the Toronto Star Photo contest again this year, and came up with two honourable mentions. The photograph of Maria even made the front page of the section. Competition was pretty stiff again, so I was really pleased with the recognition. Take a look at the images...

"Waiting"

This was shot in a restaurant in 2002. There was a similar shot of Grace, but it just didn't have the look that this shot had.

"Stepping Stones"

The Star's contest added a category this year focused on the Distillery District downtown. The area is the old Gooderham and Worts distillery. It has been massively renovated over the past couple years. So I went down there on a photo expedition to see if I could bring back anything good. I had another shot that I liked better, but I didn't get permission from the kids' parents, so I didn't enter it.

See the rest of the photographs at this link (while it still works).

:.T

Posted at 10:07 PM      

Sun - July 4, 2004

Helas! Helas! Helas!

Nothing better than living in Greektown when Greece wins the European championship!

Drinking Carlsberg, eating burgers and watching the European soccer championship at the Detroit Eatery with a bunch of rowdy Greeks! What a blast! Especially when Greece scored. And even more when they won. Amazing! OPA! Singing, dancing, chanting on the Danforth with thousands of Greeks! So many gorgeous Greek boys with their black hair and olive skin. Felt like Pride Day! Woohoo! (Didn't the Greeks invent homosexuality?;)) Too much fun for a middle-aged German-Irish-American-Canadian!

Posted at 05:47 PM      

Fri - March 5, 2004