Last Time 'Round the Forties

Once again I've made it to my birthday. It has been another action-packed year. Last year saw some big events, including:

• visiting France to meet the Bouviers (Florence, Christophe, Thibaud and cute, little Lou), staying in Bischoffsheim and making plans to come back and stay for a few months
• finally getting a decent chance to wander around Paris
• missing out on Calgary's big flood (and having our home emerge without damage)
• becoming true empty nesters.  Banana and McMonk are now full-fledged adults (McMonk entered her twenties this year) and it's unlikely that they will be permanently living with us anymore
• reconnecting with my cousin, Heather, and her husband Charlie by visiting them in Phoenix  
• having an awesome downhill ski year, destroying a perfectly good pair of skis (through arduous use)
• reconnecting with my niece, Kristin and grand-niece, Alena through regular swim dates
• getting my dad moved into an assisted living lodge

This coming year is a year of preparation for The Big Break.  I'm reluctant to call it retirement, as Kate and I likely return to work - this is more aptly a walkabout.  The work that we do (in between our adventures) can be focused on jobs that we love and/or needs to be done.  Volunteer work readily springs to mind (maybe bike repair at Good Life or MEC).  A sailing trip is still in the works, but will be a few years away yet.  We have some land-based adventures to have first (including six months in Australia).

I am also looking forward to these events next year:

• watching Kate end her job at the end of this month
• host a bevvy of Aussie guests (including Hilary, Nadia, Graham and Gabby) here in Calgary this summer
• prepare our Broadview home to be rented out
• put Geek and Co on ice in order to go off on adventures
• lots of time on my bike
• Folk Fest for the sixth year
• trips to Alaska with Graham and Gabby; Los Angeles-Phoenix-Las Vegas with Nancy and Eliza; Galipoli and some sailing in the Mediterranean with Kate

I've undergone some health changes this year, too.  I now find it easier to read with reading glasses than to read without them. I'm now rocking the Eugene Levy look, though.

Life is very exciting and holds lots of promise. I don't mind trading youth for wisdom ... especially when the wisdom comes from great adventures.

Oh, the stories I'll be able to tell at the old folks' home ....

Need to Travel

What a marvellous message. Once your kids become teenagers, chances are you are not going to kill them with negligence (i.e. they are smart enough to make their own ay home from school). You can stop scaring them with cautionary tales and let them read this.

… and when they finish Grade 12, encourage them to TRAVEL (not just vacation), and (if you can) offer to buy them a plane ticket in any direction.

Thanks for the link, Dean Stanton.

Ice Canal

Sunny-day, homebound, winter fun in Canada - getting the ice chipper out and creating your own 40 metre long, ice-Panama Canal to encourage drainage. I know winter is far from over, but if the storm drains are free and a path is available, the chinooks can help get rid of quite bit of ice in the alleyway.

Besides, I have a Civil Engineer on staff.

Floss?

This will be me next week.

Trauma

OHMYGOD!I'MDYIN- oh, wait … we had beets for dinner last night. 

Nevermind.

Biker Bar

Rockets

As a young child, Hallowe'en was the highlight of my autumn.  The whole of October was spent anticipating an evening spent with friends, loose on the streets of Sherwood Park, masked to prevent recognition and armed with boundless energy and an empty pillow case for candy.  The costume was usually determined early. For me, scary was a fallback for inspiration.  I tended to lean towards emulating my heroes - "army" guys, Superman, Spiderman or other comic book characters.  The week prior to the eve was the time to make alliances for trick-or-treat buddies.  You chose someone who lived close-by, so you could quickly race over to their house after supper (clearing of the dinner dishes being the the unofficial starting gun of the candy fest) and the two, three or four of you would then plan the route, maximizing visits to areas that would yield "good candy."

In the 'seventies, Hallowe'en candy tended to be something that today's kids wouldn't even bother catching if it was thrown at them.  Things like stale, chewy, individually-wrapped toffees; small plastic packets of candy corn; hand-saran-wrapped balls of dry carmel popcorn; loose sticks of licorice; unadorned, bruised (and presumably razor-filled) apples ... all of these meager offerings were accepted with fake, luke-warm gratitude.  The thing that really caught our attention, and held it, and lived in grade-school folklore from year to year, were the houses that gave out REAL CHOCOLATE.  These were, of course, the childless and/or retired couples that graced our neighborhood.  Although we spent the other 364 days of the year being chased from their lawns, on that one magic night we would show up in mobs, hoping for some of that quality loot.

The following day, you would usually go over to a friend's place to compare your Hallowe'en Haul.  Although chocolate bars (candy bars in the popular vernacular) were the most coveted, I had a non-chocolate personal favorite - Rockets.  Rockets are a tube of tart, little compressed sugar pills.  They were fun to unwrap - no tearing involved - just grab the plastic flappy ends and pull and after a small, satisfying spin, the wrapper parted and left a line of individual morsels to enjoy.  As they are small, you could shotgun them all at once or savour them individually, holding them one at a time in your mouth until the urge to crunch that tiny bomb of tartness became too much, triggering the need to pop a fresh one into your mouth.

A few days prior to Hallowe'en this year, I happened upon a bag of Rockets and was bowled over with a wave of nostalgia.  I bought them under the guise of offering them up to the tikes that came begging for sweets this year. I had to fight to keep my Aussie bride from handing
out my treasured treat, as I think she was protecting her purchase of Oh Henry's and M and M's she had bought.  When the pumpkin candles were blown out, we both seemed to have an equal share of our own candies.