Since Andrea and I didn’t yet have a digital camera, the photos in my digital collection for 2003 are all ones that were scanned at some point, partly as I recall, to go on the new PolyWogg website I was designing at the time.
In March, Andrea took a work trip to Hong Kong. There was a park near her hotel, and she took some pictures of nearby buildings. One was identified in our notes as a church, but Google Image Search revealed that it is actually their former Supreme Court building.
It was my turn to take a trip in April. We had an upcoming international meeting to host in Canada, and we were leaning towards the East Coast. So we went and checked out the Keltic Lodge at the start of the Cabot Trail and then down to St. Andrew’s in New Brunswick. For today’s summary, I was deciding between photos of each, but obviously, St. Andrew’s is the more impressive building of the two.
Come June, it was time to hop on a plane together — we flew to Winnipeg to see the wedding of Andrea’s good friends Liam and Nicole. The quality of my photos is not awesome; I must have scanned them at low res as they were intended to only go on my website, not for printing. But it is what I have!
The next day, we went to the Winnipeg Zoo to see the red pandas, although they did NOT cooperate with our paparazzi vibe. Instead, we had to settle for polar bears, birds, kangaroos and tigers.
So that is a wrap for 2003, unless I scan more later.
Andrea and I really didn’t get into digital photos until February 2004, and we haven’t scanned many old photos (yet!). As such, I only have two albums processed for 2002 — one from an outing where she went rock climbing and another from a conference later in the year.
July was the rock climbing outing, where Andrea and Amanda went to Vertical Reality on Victoria Island here in Ottawa. If Andrea later said I was making her climb the walls, well, she had experience.
Over the late spring and all through the summer, I was working with a group of students at Carleton University to organize a conference in September at a downtown conference centre. We got some heavy hitters to come out, and produced a fairly solid report on HR challenges for the time. Here’s our organizing committee.
So that’s it for us in the gallery for 2002. A short review of the year.
I’ve built and/or re-built my PandA gallery multiple times over the years. I started a basic version early on in HTML; then a slightly larger ASP-generated query version; another basic one manually in WordPress but wasn’t satisfied; another significant version through SmugMug but integrated into WordPress that gave me some challenges when it got too big; a newer even larger version through a plugin (NGG) in WordPress, etc. that let me host everything on my WordPress site until the system crashed at one point and I was disinclined to try to repeat all of that work to fix it. And then, finally, I said screw it, and built a brand new one through Flickr a few years ago, mostly because it handles my video files so easily with the rest of my photos, and without any relevant limits to what I’m sharing.
But after a website meltdown a few years ago for my website hosting (there’s a class-action lawsuit going from clients, that’s how bad it was), I ignored my photo gallery for a while while I concentrated on other things.
This past month, as I uploaded my photos for the recent trip to New England, I really wanted to start embedding my photos from my Flickr gallery again. I have one gallery from 2002 from a conference I co-organized with other students, but the real “collection” of photos starts in 2005.
February had four galleries — roses at the office, and Andrea’s trip abroad with stops in Bangladesh, Bangkok and London. Of the four galleries, I’ve chosen one of Andrea meeting with partners and clients in Bangladesh.
In March, there wasn’t much going on for photos. I have a single photo in the gallery of our new couch.
For the month of April, Andrea and I took a trip to Quebec City and Montmorency Falls. One of the photos from the trip that stands out for me is a shot of Andrea in front of frozen falls.
May only had one gallery, including the Tulip Festival and a trip to Peterborough and the cottage. I have several great photos from the month — tulips, the Liftlocks, some really clear water shots at the cottage, and sunsets, but I’ve chosen another of Andrea, this time sitting in the tulips by Dow’s Lake.
The month of June collapsed to a single gallery, but it’s a big month with wedding showers, some sunsets and the Blue Panda, our first car. I was tempted to go with the car photo, an obvious choice, but instead, I chose a sunset photo from the Gatineau Hills. After we picked up the car, we went for a drive out to Kanata just tooting around (Richmond Road to Kanata, and some exploring), and then up to the Hills, somewhere we hadn’t been able to go easily without a car. It was a good day.
Now it is time to move on to September, which was a huge month for us after an already busy summer. We decided to do a two-week trip to the East Coast and then scurry back to Ontario so we could attend Cam and Courtney’s wedding at Courtney’s family’s camp. Up until this point, when there has been multiple galleries per month, I settled for a single photo, but September really needs two — one from the trip and one from the wedding.
For October, things were a little simpler with Thanksgiving, a SocAss weekend, and Becky’s bachelorette party (spoiler alert — there’s ANOTHER wedding this year!). There are some amazing sunset photos from near the cottage at Thanksgiving, but come on, how could I NOT go with the photo of a sleeping baby during the Sociology Association reunion weekend?
In the photo below, there are five people — Andrew, a friend I met through another close friend; Mary Ellen, who Andrea met through french training; Paul, who was ME’s relatively fresh new beau and who we were meeting for the first time that night; and Alexandre and Liam, both friends from CIDA and who knew each other from university. Apparently, Mary Ellen had worried that Paul wouldn’t know anyone at the party, since she herself barely knew anyone beyond Andrea. But as we were setting up, the doorbell rang, and I asked someone to answer for us, as we were tied up — and when the door opened, Paul and Andrew came face to face and basically went, “Hey, I know you!”. It turned out that Paul and Andrew knew each other already, having no idea of the connection to Andrea. In addition, Paul also had met my brother at some point in the military. In the end, he knew more people than Mary Ellen!
That story was told with far more panache at their wedding (see future albums) as they considered it a good omen that they didn’t have to blend their friends, they were ALREADY blended. Sure, it’s one- or two-steps removed from a MEET CUTE origin story, but I really find it heart-warming.
For December, we had the standard Christmas-y events like gingerbread, our PandA Christmas in Ottawa, some Christmas pics in Peterborough, and pics from the family cottage in the winter. And just because there hadn’t been enough for the year, one more wedding — Becky and Dean’s. Outside. In December. In Ottawa. Yeah, Andrea told her she was crazy during the Maid of Honour speech. As an aside, while there was really no doubt that I would choose a wedding photo, I was surprised as I was building the gallery for the rest of December as I found some photos I didn’t even realize I had. Just the other day, I was wondering what the first photos were that I ever took on a phone, and at the time, I was thinking, “Okay, so I have my iPhone, and before that I had two Android photos, likely one of those.” For timelines, I would have guessed maybe 2010 or a bit later even. I would NOT have guessed 2005 when I had a Palm Treo and took a bunch of low-res photos (the phone didn’t have much memory). The photos themselves are practically thumbnails, not big enough to enlarge without massive pixelation. But it was interesting. However, I digress. On to the snowy wedding photo!
And that’s it for the year. It was fun wrapping it all together, and I’m happy to have it all embedded in my regular website.
My mental health has been taking a beating lately.
Maybe it’s the simple act of turning 55 this week. Wouldn’t be out of the realm of possibility, lots of people do feel crappy about another trip around the sun. The slow feeling that as I turn 55, I’m one step closer to a dirt nap, and as I become increasingly aware of the limits of my body, I’m not entirely sure I want to fight to the end. MAID, perhaps. Something more accidental looking before that. It weighs on me more this year as I figure maybe another 25 years if I’m lucky.
Maybe it’s the realization that instead of being able to retire in about 2 years, it’ll be closer to 4. I’m already tired. Some stupid ass crap keeps happening at work, and it bothers me more than it used to. Things that would roll off me before are making me downright irate. I’ve even started managing things different so that it won’t get to me. Let it go, Disney style, perhaps. I haven’t had to do that in a long while but if I could drop my papers tomorrow, I would. I don’t even mind being back in the office, it’s just a loss of control perhaps or a reduction in my span of control. What seemed like a decent job with good support from above and a solid foundation for the future seems reduced to toeing the line, ideas be damned from anyone else. Not overly a great environment, but you do the job you have, not necessarily the one you thought you had.
Maybe it’s an increasing feeling of isolation and aloneness. I’ve always been somewhat of a loner, I like doing a lot of things that are not really “group activities”. Writing. Reviewing. Reading. But after the pandemic, and what I tend to think of as a Facebook divorce for Andrea and I, I don’t have many friends left on Facebook, I mostly just follow groups now, or a few memes shared by friends. There’s no real connection there for me anymore, although perhaps there never was, perhaps it was just the illusion of connection seeing some stuff people I knew posted as opposed to real friendships. Andrea asked me if I wanted to have anyone come with us for dinner for my birthday and it’s a bit embarrassing to admit there really isn’t anyone. Which isn’t exactly fair, there ARE people I COULD invite, some of which would probably come. But it’s also a risk management technique to NOT invite people. If I do something small, it looks like my choice, even enough to fool myself perhaps. On the other hand, if I invite a bunch of people, and nobody shows? My mental health would take a hit that I can’t really afford right now.
I often feel that in times of crisis or stress, the only way out is through. Just keep pushing through. Except I’m not sure I’m strong enough to keep pushing through right now. One foot in front of the other is about all I can manage. And it isn’t even necessarily huge things the universe is smacking me with. Some of it is small.
We just spent tens of thousands of dollars to redo three bathrooms — one upstairs for an ensuite that is mostly for Andrea; one that is for Jacob (my old main bathroom); and a basement one with a shower that is now functional enough to use. Truth? I don’t really like any of them. The ensuite looks nice, really they all do, but one thing that I hate was the placement of the toilet next to the wall and a vent, and we didn’t end up fixing that because it was too much work. Most of the stuff in the bathroom area is taken up with Andrea’s stuff, so not a great solution for me for things like water for my BIPAP machine. I’ll figure out some option over time I guess, but not great. J’s bathroom looks great, but the water pressure for the shower is almost non-existent. It used to be good with the old showerhead, but I’m the only one who likes that one, and Jacob deserves his own bathroom to look after his lens stuff and everything. So I’m using the basement. Toilet is good, sink is okay, shower is smaller than it should be for a person of my size (which is nicer than saying I’m just too fat for a small shower), but I also can’t really get the shower head angled the way I want it to consistently. I’ll eventually fix it with something from a 3D printer, but it’s annoying. We spent all that money and I feel like I have less “functionality” than I started with. It’s telling that we did 3 bathroom renos consecutively, the people were here for weeks, and I never really blogged about any of it.
Tonight, we had to call 911 for a fire in our kitchen. Yeah, sure, I buried the lede, as they say. It wasn’t super serious. We had housecleaners in today, and because we didn’t quite have all the dishes and extra stuff clean to go back in cupboards, we temporarily stored some stuff in the oven. Lots of people do it, we do it often too. Except of course that practice doesn’t work well if you forget and later ask Jacob to turn the oven on to preheat only to find out later that a plastic cutting board eventually catches fire. I used the fire extinguisher to put it out, Andrea called 911, we sat outside waiting for fire department who arrived within a few minutes. They checked, yes indeed all out, yes indeed we were right to call, etc., etc., etc.. We rolled with it, joked a bit, nothing too precious lost, no damage other than to the oven we want to replace, a relatively minimalist intrusion of the malevolent universe into our life.
Except the whole bottom floor of our house now has a thin layer of white crap all over it. Which isn’t a big deal until you go to make a lunch, clean the counter for a second time, and it is STILL not clean. I gave up. I’ll buy Jacob a lunch for tomorrow. We have some electrical inspectors coming for something else tomorrow (related to the reno work), and house cleaners who will come clean EVERYTHING tomorrow afternoon to get rid of the white coating. But it is EVERYWHERE and it’s going to be showing up / annoying us for a long time.
Sure, I can tick the box about how minor it was or how lucky we were, blah blah blah. But I felt that only right afterwards. Now I’m more like, “Really? I can’t even make a lunch right now?”. Crapola on steroids.
And it doesn’t feel like I’m pushing through. It feels at best like I’m crawling out or squirming out from under crap that is piling up a little more rapidly than I would normally like. If age brings wisdom, I really hope it arrives soon, I could use some insight about now.
I need a mental health day tomorrow (Tuesday). I got overwhelmed today, and I’m really tired. I just don’t have the energy to adult tomorrow.
I posted earlier about the progress I thought I was making on the basement. I was ready to spend a bit of time this week testing different setups to finalize the basement TV area. Right. Yeah. Man plans while the universe laughs. Or something like that.
So we’re having our two upstairs bathrooms (main bath and ensuite) renovated. They’re basically “done” with the main bath, which has traditionally been “my” bathroom. It will now become primarily Jacob’s + guests. We should have done this long ago, but well, there was that pandemic. Apparently, it was like a whole thing, messing up plans for lots of things. But his is about done. Which we can all use while they’re redoing the ensuite.
I’m not sure how much I’ll use the ensuite. Married people like to joke that (thing X) “saved our marriage”. Sometimes it’s a second car, or a dishwasher, or housecleaning service, or whatever. A popular one that resonates with us is separate bathrooms. Pre-pandemic, we were always getting ready at the same time. And it’s annoying tripping over each other in the bathroom, not to mention if one of you is stinky that morning, etc. We have had separate bathrooms since we bought our first house and it was awesome to stop sharing. Now? We’re going back to sharing.
Maybe.
Seven or so years ago, we had the basement redone. It might be more than that. Anyway, we had a small bathroom put in with a full shower. Just a small bathroom and it’s mostly just me who uses it. In all of that time, I’ve had less than 10 showers in it. The dehumidifier fan was not strong enough to get the moisture out of the bathroom, a problem we have had in the upstairs bathrooms previously too, but in the basement, the walls would have condensation on them when I showered. It would almost literally run down the walls when I was done. We put in a new high-capacity fan, and the problem was mostly solved. But if I’m going to be using it more now, maybe we can tweak things. So now I’m replacing the very small vanity with an almost full-sized one. And the contractors noted why the walls ran — it’s entirely the wrong type of paint for a bathroom. Great. That WOULD explain some stuff. Plus they have to repaint anyway since they put the new large fan in the ceiling and had trouble putting a light switch where we wanted to put it initially. Rather than a simple touch-up and fan, we’re now repainting everything and putting in a new vanity.
I searched high. I searched low. And I searched Lowes. Where I found a vanity I liked. Which was also on sale. Bonus. Barely managed to get it into the car to bring home, put it in the garage. Today, we started on the downstairs basement (although I’m slightly out of order on the decision), and so they ripped out the vanity. We’ll be down to the one bath upstairs (plus our powder room, we’re not neanderthals!) for a few days, but okay. And then they opened the box for the new vanity, totally destroying the box in the process as they cut it open of course. Why would we need it? Brand new vanity. Oh right, because the legs on the vanity had a bunch of nicks and cracks. Not actual structural cracks, more in the enamel/melamine surface, but well, they’re there. I could probably live with them. Then I looked at the drawers where there were more cracks. Several in fact. On the front surface. I could have tried touching them up, it comes with touch-up paint. But really? A brand new vanity with cracks already? I went back and forth, and if it was a toaster, it would have gone back instantly. But it’s a vanity. Big. Hard to fit in the car. And the box is destroyed. And I hate returning shhhh…stuff. And if they gave me a hard time, was I going to handle it calmly or was I going to lose my shhhh…stuff?
I was also actually working today. Fighting with a file that should have been easy, but it’s been in circlejerk mode for almost 2 weeks, and no sign of it stopping. It’s just flat-out annoying. And demoralizing and frustrating. Plus a couple of other files went sideways on me in the last two weeks, after I am fully staffed and thought we would be FLYING. But we have these files that WILL NOT DIE! 🙂
But let’s get back to the TV, that’s where I started. Some time ago, I mentioned a hole in our ceiling from an air conditioner tech removing an old line from the house. I left it that way for 4 years and had someone fix it recently. They did the drywall, fixed the ceiling problems, fixed an extra look and feel problem, and then they were gone; we only had them for a short time. But they didn’t get to finish it all…no sanding, no mudding, no painting. Just “fixed”. Patched really. And within a week of having it all done? We had the f***ing dishwasher leak from the first floor into the basement right in the same spot. Not terrible, just annoying and frustrating, but livable.
So I asked the contractors here to fix it. Thinking they would replace a section maybe 3″ x 4″? Simple? Right, no. Because to do it properly with the added features before, it really should be fully mudded, and sanded, and painted. Sure. Let’s do that.
Riiight. I have to move everything out of that area — like two desks, my 3D printer, all the boxes under the desk, the stuff sorted into baskets on the floor. And, drumroll please, the TV stand, TV, and all the video games set up and wired there. Back to where it all was a few months ago. So it looks like I’ve made no progress on anything! I’m back to where I f***ing started! Yay me!
All while trying to work my day job. Right.
So I delegated a file back to the originator. Cancelled all of my meetings for tomorrow. Booked it off. Closed out about 30m early today. Slept for 3 hours. Skipped dinner. Woke up. Returned the damaged vanity. Sent email to contractor with selection of new vanity at Home Depot. Just like the other one, only not as nice and more expensive, but hah! It’s in stock and the contractor can use his truck to pick it up! Take THAT, universe!
Now I’m downstairs for the night. Trying to figure out what the f*** happened today, I have plastic ALL over my basement to block future sanding and dust, but it will still carry all through the house. It always does. Whatever, moving on.
In theory, everything will be done here by Friday. I’m not 100% sure of that after today. But optimistic. I might go into the office for W and F this week too, just to get out of the house and not deal with anything.
I’m taking Tuesday off. I’m going to focus on a nice leisurely breakfast while reading Crime and Punishment, although I’m seriously tempted to go sideways with Crime and Law in the form of a Lawrence Sanders’ entry in the original McNally series. Or perhaps introduce myself to Lawrence Block’s Matthew Scudder. There are about 20+ books in the detective series, and I’ve only read a handful.
I might be able to finish reorganizing my office area in the basement, at least to make it more functional. I turned my work desk to be able to better use my white boards, but now when I sit at my personal computer, if I back up too quickly or at the wrong angle, I smack my work desk. Double sigh.
Now let’s see. No, I don’t know what I’m doing about getting all my gym equipment finally set up as I need to get all the rest of the basement stuff organized so I can get to it. No, I don’t know when I’ll get my damn 3D printer running. No, I don’t know if I’ll be able to make a print ‘n’ play board game for Jacob for his birthday, as I don’t know if I know all the techniques or have all the craft supplies to do it, but I want to try. I still have 27 working days before his actual birthday, right?
Oh and no, I don’t know what I’m doing about an observatory in my backyard, although the current contractors are willing to do the pier AND build me a deck AND a potential roll-away shed for me to be able to use it! I almost have a plan. But well, I also have to pay for it at some point. Hah. I think I’ll let this go until I can order the metal pier for the backyard. Although Andrea would like us to figure out the rest of the backyard landscaping stuff too.
And the electrical work we need done at the front of the house.
And no, I have NO IDEA when I’ll get around to continuing to write my HR guide.
But thanks to my squirrel brain, the questions are never far from asking.
