Category: Family

"The blues is when you love someone don't love you"

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.:.

Last night was a great Toronto night…lots of snow, a (relatively) quiet downtown and some comfort food after a trying week. We took Nellie’s mom to Smokeless Joe which, despite the fairly empty streets, was packed to the ceiling. We finally got three seats together and put down some pasta and some beer before hitting the wall. We’d all had a long day so we just came home and watched some TV (The Wire…so good!!) before crashing.

I have to say, after a week of corporate finance, it did me some good to sit in cozy little Joe’s with my wife, drink a good beer, have some good food, chat with the excellent staff and listen to Leadbelly on the stereo. My recharging has continued today; with the snow now stopped we had some breakfast at Over Easy and I now have the place to myself as Nellie and NellieMom have gone to see Dirty Dancing. Me, I’ll be staying home and watching the Canadiens game on TV…oh, right about now.

.:.

United 93 has been playing on TMN lately, and I’ve watched bits and pieces of it over the past couple of weeks. I thought the film was unsettling and brilliant when I saw it, and thought it was one of the best of 2006, but I simply cannot watch it again. It’s too hard on me. Every time I watch it, even just a few scenes, my guts twist into a knot. It’s probably the most physical reaction I’ve ever had to a film, and it happens every time I see it. I want to watch it — Paul Greengrass is a master at that sort of emotional recreation — but I get apprehensive just thinking about it.

I guess I’ll just have to lot it from a distance.

[tags]berczy park, smokeless joe, leadbelly, united 93[/tags]

Happy anniversary to me

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At this very moment four years ago I was probably doing some boxing day shopping with my father and brother, and was seven hours away from making an honest woman out of Nellie.

.:.

I’ve watched a ton of movies in the last few days, so here’s the synopsis: The Good Shepherd was actually pretty boring, and Angelina Jolie is really starting to scare me; Friends With Money was a chick flick, but the four lead actresses were so good it was almost worth it; Haven was one of the worst films I’ve ever seen and I have no idea how it got on my list in the first place; Shame was a rather shoddily-done documentary about an incredibly interesting topic so it balanced out; Spider-Man 3 was kind of entertaining but was the worst of the series by far, and 300 looks frigging amazing on Blu-Ray.

Whew.

[tags]anniversary, the good shepherd, friends with money, haven, shame, spider-man 3, 300, blu-ray[/tags]

My brain and eyes might just explode

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Yowzah, that was quite a morning. I guess not going home this year freed us up to purchase some bigger-ticket items for each other (which we normally wouldn’t want to try to get on a plane), so I am now the proud owner of a Blu-ray DVD player and Nellie now has a wine fridge. We certainly got lots of other cool stuff as well, but suffice it to say the DVD player’s been a little distracting; I’ve already hooked it up and watched Superbad.

I also got 300, the Spider-Man Trilogy and the seemingly-made-for-high-def BBC series Planet Earth on Blu-ray, as well as The Bourne Ultimatum in standard DVD format (it’s only on HD-DVD for now). Nellie got Freaks And Geeks: Season 1, Young Guns, Young Guns 2 and Never Been Kissed.

I got a few books too: My Boring-Ass Life by Kevin Smith, The Book Of Dave by Will Self and The Cult Of The Amateur by Andrew Keen. Nellie got A Dirty Job by Christopher Moore.

Right now Nellie’s making Christmas dinner (everything except the turkey, of course) while A Christmas Story plays in the background. I don’t know if she’ll be able to top last night’s kick-ass meal (lemon pepper shrimp, scallops, cheese, chocolate & a bottle of white wine I bought her last year) but I’m willing to let her try.

Happy Christmas, everyone.

[tags]christmas, blu-ray, wine fridge[/tags]

The Family Stone we are not

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I’m not going home to Nova Scotia for Christmas this year, as I normally would. When I tell people this their first reaction is usually, “Oh, don’t want to deal with all the family drama, eh?”

Given how often I’ve heard it in the last month, and the number of times I’ve heard stories about such family drama, I think I must have a fairly abnormal family. There’s no drama. We don’t fight. We don’t have feuds, or get snippy, or form alliances, or try to manipulate each other. In fact, even since I grew out of the gimmetoys-gimmetoys-gimmetoys phase (if my dad were reading this he’d say, “What, you mean two years ago?”, ’cause that’s just how he rolls humour-wise) spending time with my family has been the best thing about Christmas.

I laugh more, and feel more relaxed, with my brothers and parents (especially when we’re on the farm) than I do with anyone else, except Nellie probably. That quiet time, punctuated with games of skill (read: cribbage and Trivial Pursuit), musical interludes (usually my father, brother or I fighting trying to convince my mother we should listen to delta blues instead of Christmas carols) and episodes of utter silliness (my brothers and I speak some kind of special language when we get going and occasionally fall on the floor laughing) is about as close to blissful meditation as I get.

And this isn’t just my immediate family either: our extended family on my dad’s side gets together every Boxing Day and it’s equally fun and laid back. Of course, they’re all like my dad…not a lot of high-strung people amongst the Dickinsons.

One of the reasons we could stomach the idea of not going back to NS this year is because we just spent time with my family in France (having one of the best times of our lives, I might add, so that’d be hard to top so soon after) and Nellie’ll have a family visit in about a month, so we won’t have been away from them for too long. There’s a couple of other reasons why we decided to stay in Toronto, but the idea of avoiding family drama never even crossed my mind. The only drama at all will be not seeing them.

[tags]family drama[/tags]

A morning of mild revelations

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Something occurred to me yesterday: I am half my father’s age. Well, technically I was precisely half his age on Oct 10 (thanks Excel!) but in terms of years, I’m 32 and he’s 64. I remember when I was a kid I wondered how old I’d be when that happened; I didn’t have the math skills to just figure out that it was just 32 so I sat down and did the math. I wasn’t even ten years old at the time, so 32 seemed like centuries away. I couldn’t imagine being that old.

Also: I never thought I would own a brown suit, but I’m wearing one today for the first time.

Life’s full of surprises.

[tags]silly musings[/tags]

R.I.P., Richie

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There was a power outage in my neighbourhood today…except I don’t think the power went off in my building. I was just leaving work at 7 when the power came back on in the large area that had gone dark so I can’t say for sure, but nothing in my condo would appear to have suffered the ill effects of a blackout. Weird.

.:.

Sad news from back home today: my old neighbour Richie Pettigrew died. I’ve known Richie since I was born, as my father probably did. He worked for my grandfather, and his son worked for my dad. My childhood memories are filled with funny stories Richie would tell us, or of being at his (and his wife Margaret’s) house down the road, or of eating freshly-made maple cream off the tiny wooden spoons he’d carved by hand for my dad.

He was like a great-uncle. I’ll miss him.

[tags]toronto blackout, richie pettigrew[/tags]

I'm not having it either

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My brother sent me this article from a Manchester newspaper yesterday and I had to post it. I like to share stories that make me weep for humanity.

A lottery scratchcard has been withdrawn from sale by [national lottery operator] Camelot – because players couldn’t understand it. To qualify for a prize, users had to scratch away a window to reveal a temperature lower than the figure displayed on each card. As the game had a winter theme, the temperature was usually below freezing.

But the concept of comparing negative numbers proved too difficult for some Camelot received dozens of complaints on the first day from players who could not understand how, for example, -5 is higher than -6.

I can see why that could be complicated. Witness the lament from this poor confused soul:

“I phoned Camelot and they fobbed me off with some story that -6 is higher – not lower – than -8 but I’m not having it.”

Onward, vacuous soldier. Rage against that machine.

.:.

Tonight I was reminded of the reason (well…one reason) why I love my wife so much. I got home, expecting her to be there, but she hadn’t yet returned from the grocery store. She came home a few minutes later, crying. On her way home she’d found an injured pigeon on the street. She stopped to take care of it, got it out of harm’s way and into a box, called animal rescue and (along with a stranger) waited with it. She got home, dropped her bags and went out to the balcony to watch for the rescue van to arrive, guiding them to the box on her cell phone.

The pigeon might not make it, but she stopped and cared for it when no one else would. Pretty hard to not love her for that.

[tags]cool cash scratchcard, camelot, why i love my wife[/tags]

Les vacances sont fini

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My parents have flown back to Nova Scotia, so the vacation is now officially over. We’ve set about recovering from the time away and resuming our daily lives. We both have tomorrow off and plan to relax a little, but soon it’ll be time for the office and the gym and groceries and bills and blah blah blah.

We had one last farewell to the festivities last night, having dinner at Fieramosca with my parents and my aunt and uncle from Guelph. Now every member of my immediate family, and Nellie’s, has been there with us at least once. It was, as always, a terrific evening and a good way to cap things off.

Actually, getting my parents to the airport on time was a bit of an adventure. We booked a car from Autoshare to drive them and Nellie went across the street to pick it up. After fifteen minutes she still hadn’t shown up (the car is parked right across the street) so we were all puzzled. Ten minutes after that I was starting to get a little worried, but five minutes later she appeared. See, the downtown core was slammed today: Nuit Blanche has shut down some streets and both the Toronto waterfront marathon and the Run for the Cure were on today. This meant road not only closures, but also that thousands of people who’d just finished running were trying to drive out of the city…and we were already thirty minutes behind our (conservative, admittedly) schedule. Calling a cab would’ve taken too long so we drove anyway; after crawling along Queen Street we thought we were home free on University…until we saw that Word on the Street was blocking the entirety of Queen’s Park. Apparently it’s festival weekend in Toronto. Anyway, after a slight diversion around WotS we booted up Avenue and cruised to the airport, arriving in plenty of time for their flight. We think.

.:.

I saw some really great places on our trip — highlights include the view from Domme, walking around the old centre of Sarlat, the rooms at the Relais Franc Mayne and pretty much all of Paris — but the five days spent at the chateau with so many friends and family, in such a phenomenal location, for such an auspicious occasion, is really what I’ll remember about the trip. It was just one great memory piled on top of the next. As I said before, it was a once-in-a-lifetime happening. I can’t believe it’s only been a week since we left. Already I miss it terribly.

.:.

One more good thing about France:

  • Original weight: 233
  • Weight last week: 227
  • Weight this week: 221.5

Yup…I actually lost weight, despite a steady infusion of pain au chocolate and booze. I may have lost even more than those 5.5 pounds but put a bit back on once I arrived in Toronto.

Clearly I need to spend more time in France.

.:.

Given how many times I’ve watched these two movies, I can’t believe I didn’t notice this before now:

“The (toy) bear that Jack Ryan brings home to his daughter at the end of The Hunt for Red October is the exact same bear that Bruce Willis brings to his son in Die Hard (both films were directed by John McTiernan).”

[via John Sakamoto]

[tags]fieramosca, autoshare, nuit blanche, toronto waterfront marathon, run for the cure, word on the street, relais franc mayne, domme, sarlat, die hard, hunt for red october[/tags]

I shall require chemical assistance

Dan DickinsonLeave a comment

Still in wind-down mode with my parents. Since we’re all still on French time we were up early; I’ve been awake since 3:30 and the others were up shortly after that. We went to Eggstasy for breakfast and did a little shopping; since then we’ve spent most of our day on the couch. I wish I’d taken a nap; not sure how I’ll make it through dinner tonight, let alone all the stuff I need to do.

I may have to learn to love the espresso.

[tags]jet lag, eggstasy[/tags]

Like the ghost of Jacob Marley, but with a tail

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This morning, as the fog and haze lifted, all the buildings seemed to be breathing strangely.

.:.

Listen, I’m all for supporting our troops, and I have no problem with a stretch of the 401 being renamed to honor them. But really, can we not come up with something a little less cheesy than Highway Of Heroes? That sounds like a fucking Hallmark movie. Please, Ontario government, I’m begging you: give the highway a name that doesn’t sound like a Valerie Bertinelli vehicle.

.:.

My mother just sent me this email. For context: Stryder is my parents dog (a very big rough collie with a snout like an anteater), Tigger is my cat who died five years (who, for some reason, Stryder always idolized) and my mother is deathly afraid of mice and the like.

“I’m still shuddering. Someone had come for maple and we were talking in the yard when I see Stryder coming with something in his mouth. He drops it at my feet and it is a mouse! Still alive! The humans are trying to get away from him and he keeps bringing the mouse closer, trying to pick it up in his mouth. He must have had memories of his teachings from Tigger on how to catch and torture a mouse! I finally got him to drop it and come in the house. It might be playing ‘possum’ but right now it is lying belly-up. Stryder wants back outdoors but I’ll keep him here until it revives or your father comes to remove it.

I can see Tigger’s spirit watching, ‘That’s my boy!'”

I feel bad for the mouse, but I have to say, that made me smile.

[tags]401 highway, highway of heroes, collie[/tags]