Day 02 of the trip, a Sunday, was to be a “roam around Vermont” day (photo 1-2). We wanted to see a large lookout, go to Montpelier, and maybe see some waterfalls and/or covered bridges down towards the middle of the state. We managed to do all of the things we wanted, but not quite the way we expected.
We had breakfast at the hotel (one of the few perks, although they also had a pool), and headed off to Mount Mansfield for the Gondola SkyRide. It is the tallest mountain in Vermont and of course a major ski hill in the winter, with a summer gondola ride for lookout views of other mountains and valleys. It had amazing views, we saw lots of mountains in the distance, with great weather for our visit. There was an option to walk up or down, but we’re not crazy — it’s 3600 feet, although that isn’t including the full summit up behind the chalet. We bought a t-shirt for Jacob as a souvenir and took lots of photos (photos 3-60).
For our next jaunt of the day, we headed for Montpelier. We had been thinking that in every state, we would visit the state capitol building, look around a bit and move on. But Montpelier had an added reason to visit. They had been experiencing huge flooding issues in previous weeks, but they were supposedly into full recovery mode and we thought we could throw some tourism dollars their way, give them some business, even if only mild. News of their recovery efforts were greatly exaggerated. Montpelier is the smallest of state capitals by population, and the downtown area is about 4-5 blocks long plus 2-3 for the government buildings. All of it was closed off, with almost no easy access to any of it, and almost all of the businesses with huge piles of debris stacked outside of their doors. Note that to get to the area, the river had to rise a good 8-10 feet to flood it. All of the businesses were still closed, so we ended up stopping at a gas station across the river, and ate at a Dominos for lunch. The State House itself was impressive (photos 61-68), and there were lots of huge old houses above them on the hill.
We reversed course from Montpelier on the big highway, past the turn for Stowe, and on to Waitsfield which has a covered bridge (photos 69-84, with one video of the river, showing how clear it was which was NOT the case for much of the river elsewhere in the state). It is the oldest covered bridge still in use, and the second oldest in the state. It goes over Mud River, with people floating down on tubes, swimming, jumping off the edge. We enjoyed creemees (soft ice cream) in an old barbershop building that was destroyed by water levels from Hurricane Irene — up the bank, over the ground, and up another 8 feet. Almost to the level of the bridge itself, if not over. Yet no apparent damage from the recent flooding.
We then headed towards Moss Glen Falls. There are two falls in Vermont with that name, one down by Granville (where we were headed) and one near Stowe that we would visit on Day 03. We took a lot of back roads down to Granville, and our GPS took us WAY out of our way at one point instead of doing a simple turn-around back to the highway. We drove by it on the way down and there was almost no signage, so we had missed it. After our loop through a backwoods area on rugged dirt roads, we got back on the highway and found it relatively easily. Just really a pull-off area on the road, followed by a small boardwalk to the falls. I confess, I wasn’t expecting much given the lack of signage and infrastructure, even though it was on the list of the best 15 falls in Vermont. But I was too pessimistic — it was very peaceful, with a wide waterfall and definitely worth the stop (photos 85-102).
We could have just taken the same route back to Stowe, but that seemed uneventful, so we decided on an alternate route to the West. It was nice, and went over a steep mountain that I would ABSOLUTELY NOT want to do in the winter, with switchbacks and steep grades with turns at the bottom. Reminded me a bit of some of the roads in Cape Breton, actually. Overall, it was a long relatively boring drive back. We stopped for one fall and lookout, but the rain started and we mostly just drove up to Richmond. Only to find out that you can’t get ON the highway to Stowe at Richmond but have to go really far West to get on again. I’m sure there was probably another road to the East that would have done the same thing, but well, you rely on Google Maps to your detriment (photos 103-107).
We stopped at a grocery store outside Stowe on the way back, near the main highway, and then back to the hotel. Andrea and Jacob went for a swim while I had a nap.
And then it was time for dinner. One of the things that Stowe is known for is the that the real family from the Sound of Music, the von Trapps, settled in Stowe after the war and opened a hotel and restaurant. It has grown over the years, and while we thought of staying at the hotel, it was a bit more expensive than we wanted to pay. So we settled for dinner at their beerhouse. Really good Austrian food, with a laid back atmosphere. Afterwards, we drove by the hotel just to see it, and could see just how much property they own! In the winter, they push cross-country skiing too, and some of that is just on their own property. The beerhall is shown at photos 108-111.
Oh, and for stats — about 230km driven, 276 photos taken curated down to 111 (including 1 video).
As part of my goal to do 60 things by age 60, I have a goal to spend at least a week outside Ottawa per year. For 2023, my wife Andrea and son Jacob wanted to take an actual trip somewhere. For Jacob? He wanted to see a mountain. Initially, we planned a trip to Alberta, the US, and BC to see the Rockies. But with most of Alberta and BC tourism ministries saying in June that the wildfires were terrible and that we weren’t even in the hottest months yet, we reoriented our plans to New England (see the trip route in photo 1). Jacob would still see mountains, even if they weren’t as impressive as the Rockies.
On Day One we planned to go as far as Stowe Vermont (see photo 2). We headed out on a Saturday morning in July, passing through Eastern Ontario on the way to the bridge at Cornwall (photos 4-8) and the border crossing (photo 9, 10). We left around 10h45 (see photo 3), and crossed at 12h45. This was Jacob’s first time in the U.S., and it’s a little sad that you don’t get a “stamp” in your passport for crossing. When the immigration and customs agent asked what the purpose of our visit was, I was truthful — my son wants to see a mountain! 🙂
As we passed through northern New York state, we grabbed lunch at a Subway, and it was interesting to see the impact on the local area from 30 years ago and even from before the pandemic, when there were a lot more border crossings for shopping, etc. Now, the most common border businesses seemed to be selling pot. Many gas stations and other tourism support businesses were closed.
However, we saw windfarms (photo 11) and our first shots of distant mountains on our way to Lake Champlain by Plattsburgh (photos 12-16). We had decided to take the ferry across Lake Champlain at Essex, NY to Charlotte, VT (photos 17-28), and then work our way back northward via Burlington and on to Stowe. Lake Champlain was surprisingly calm given a decent breeze, and there were few sailboats about for a Saturday. As we passed through Burlington, Andrea had her first exciting sighting — there was an Olive Garden! As we got closer to Stowe, we could see the Green Mountains quite well, including some with rockier faces (photos 29-37). I never feel something is truly a mountain unless I can see rocky exteriors for part of it. The local river was high and muddy/murky, reflective of the recent flooding in Vermont over the previous weeks.
The road into Stowe was quite twisty, particularly as we got closer to the hotel itself, Northern Lights Lodge, which we checked into around 5h30. Pretty basic place, seeming like exactly what it is — a motel designed for skiers in the winter. A little tired looking in the hallways, a bit rougher, but when guests are likely to be carrying gear around, not unexpected. The room was good.
Stowe itself was interesting, as it is exactly what it is designed to be too — a small ski town for the winter. There were lots of small restaurants and specialty stores, with no chains hardly at all (outside of a grocery store at the edge of town and Dunkin Donuts). The hotel owner had recommended The Bench pub and we enjoyed a nice dinner there. The food was good, if a bit expensive, but I also enjoyed a really good local root beer and Andrea had a nice non-alcoholic cider.
We ticked off our travel goals with Jacob seeing mountains for the first time, although mostly small ones so far, and Jacob got to see two states (New York and Vermont). And I got to contribute to my 60×60 goal. Enjoy the photos from the day below, with 38 photos curated from our collection of 83 for the day. The total distance was about 370 km.
Andrea and Jacob got me a new Kindle for my birthday this past week. I went looking for some specific info on one aspect, and I found it amusing to see people debating online whether it is “better” to read ebooks vs. paperback vs. hard covers. Pretty sure that “debate” was done years ago, but whatever. It doesn’t matter to me. They could print stories on the back of cereal boxes, and I’d still read them. Even the side of the box. Ticker tape. In spirals on a piece of art. I’ll read good stories anyway, anyhow, anywhere.
My history with e-books
I’ve been trying to reconstruct a bit of my experience with ebooks. If I recall correctly, the first one I ever read was back in about 2002 on a Palm Pilot device. It was free, some sort of classic text that I downloaded in PRC format. I’m not 100% positive, but I think it was a Sherlock Holmes collection. It wasn’t super easy to access, kind of slow to peruse, but I read it and didn’t care about the format. I lost myself in the text, and the format disappeared. I hadn’t expected that, to be honest. I love books, paperbacks over hardcover if pressed, but generally, as I said, it turns out that I’ll read in any format.
In 2003, the Da Vinci Code was super popular, and I wanted to know what the hullabaloo was about. So I downloaded a copy, opened it on my desktop, and read all of it in a single go while looking at my computer monitor. Of course, it was not the most comfortable of positions, but it got the job done.
Over the next 7-8 years, I read occasional stuff on screens, but not many full books. Sometimes I would try it out on the screen, see if I liked it enough, and then I would buy it in paperback. I wasn’t reading tons during that period, in part because I didn’t want to add more books to my house. I’d already moved a large library three times and was not excited about making it any bigger. I liked the idea of digital storage, but I wasn’t sure what “ecosystem” I would commit to at the time. I used the apps here and there, but I was not “into” ebooks. For a while, it wasn’t clear that Amazon would dominate so heavily. And the last thing I wanted to do was get into a Beta/VHS world with thousands of dollars tied up in a format that I couldn’t use.
But by 2010 or so, it was clear that there were enough tools to convert between formats, so whether the future was Epub or MOBI, I’d be able to keep up. The question was which system was the most seamless to access. Amazon and Kindle beat just about everything else on the market. The biggest library, wireless downloads, it all seemed great. Kobo had just debuted but was still in its infancy, and book availability was a bit low. I had concerns that Amazon was the US site; there was no Canadian site yet, but beggars can’t be choosers.
I got a Kindle. The version I got was called the Kindle Keyboard, and I activated it in January 2011. I liked the idea of having a keyboard, and it had a basic browser that was still in Beta mode. Potential growth, but I just wanted a reading device with e-Ink and a really long battery life. I bought a case that came with a small light that ran off the Kindle, and I was set.
More or less, anyway.
It didn’t take me long to realize that I was likely always going to be a hybrid reader. Sometimes on phones, or on tablets, sometimes on the Kindle itself. I loved going on vacations and taking lots of books with me, as I rarely have ANY idea what I’m going to read next if I’m not binging a series. I’ll finish a book and then I have to see what kind of mood I’m in. Do I want a palate cleanser? Am I ready for some non-fiction? What’s on my menu for that day? I regularly carry over 300 books on the Kindle from my active To Be Read (TBR) list, and I could theoretically put another 500 on there without even blinking. Far better than the many times I went to cottages or even home to Peterborough lugging 6 or 7 novels, not knowing what I would be in the mood to read.
From time to time, I even dipped into Project Gutenberg resources. If you don’t know PG, it’s named after the printer Gutenberg, of course, but the idea is to resurrect texts that went out of print and copyright 50 or 70 years ago, convert them to an e-format, have people read them and clean up the scans into a real text, have proofers go through to make sure it makes sense, and voila, a restored text, free for anyone to read. All the old Conan Doyle texts are there, for example. Dickens out the wazoo. Plus, literally thousands of other books that would be “lost” as the paper deteriorated are now available in eternal digital format. There are PG organizations around the world, with the biggest being in the US and probably the second largest in Australia, from what I can tell. Canada has one too. I love the premise; I’ve done some editing and proofing from time to time. But the person who runs the Canadian site is, well, let’s say they don’t exactly separate their personal political views from the operation of the site, and while it has the name Gutenberg Canada, it isn’t affiliated with the PG international group. Often the first page reads more like some radicalized domestic militia manifesto than anything to do with preserving books. I’ve often thought that when I retire, I’ll devote several hours a week to helping with texts, but I’ll work with Distributed Proofreaders Canada, a rival group doing the same thing with better results.
Managing the new Kindle
The new Kindle is great; it’s called the Paperwhite model. I already like 6 things about the new model.
First and foremost, it has a touch screen. Before, I had to activate the menu key, cursor down in steps to what I wanted, choose the item, press enter, etc. Now, I can just touch my finger on the screen. That also comes with a small negative — because it is on-screen, there is no need for page-turning buttons. My old model had them on both sides; you could easily advance with your right or left hand. Now it’s more of a swipe. I am right-handed, but I usually hold my book in my left. If I press on that side of the screen? It’ll go BACK a page, not forward. It’s a small price to pay to get a touch screen, but it’ll take an adjustment to swipe with my thumb.
Secondly, it has backlighting. My previous one had a light from the corner, and it didn’t do a great job of lighting the whole screen evenly. Plus it drained the battery pretty fast. I’m sure backlighting does too, but at least it’s adjustable AND even across the page. I’m really enjoying that, as I’m hoping to get in the habit of reading for 30-45 minutes every night before I crash. All without normal blue light.
Thirdly, the new model has 16GB of space, compared to the 4GB that I used to have. If the average book is about 300 pages, 75K words, and thus the e-book has a file size of about 2.6MB, that would put the number of possible books somewhere in the 6000+ range. Or about how many I could read in 100 years. I think that I’ve got enough space. 🙂
Fourthly, it has better file management of collections. If all of my books came from Amazon, and all were downloaded from the Kindle space, it would work REALLY well. I could create collections online and group related books in various sub-groups. However, I have lots of public domain books, tons of books I got from Amazon way back when they used to have TONS free every day as promotions, and of late, I am getting many books from the public library. I download the book from one of the libraries in the consortium that our local library is part of, often making it relatively easy to find a good title, almost as easy as looking on Amazon itself, as I have a good plugin that runs in Chrome that looks in all the libraries automatically for me. The challenge is that I have to get it ON the Kindle once-borrowed.
There are a few ways to do that, but the most practical way is to sideload it onto the Kindle using Calibre, the software I use to manage all my ebooks on my desktop. But Calibre and Kindle are not best friends, and some of the collections stuff is more challenging to manage. In an ideal world, I could use Calibre to create collections and assign them all before I synch. For example, I could perhaps put all the books about astronomy together. Or by a specific author for a specific character, maybe separating Agatha Christie’s Poirot books from her Miss Marple books. Instead, it sort of works and mostly doesn’t. I like the new interface better, on the new Kindle, mostly because of the touch-screen that makes it easier to move things, but it’s not perfect. I saw a post dating back a few years when the PaperWhite was first released; an active Kindle blogger had just got one and went on this long rant about how they didn’t fix the file management system within the dang Kindle! Note that this is partly by design — they’ve modified their security over the years, and part of that is not having a simple file structure for their books. But I digress. It’s better, I can make it work. Another app called Kindlian, which runs on Windows, seems to be designed to help with file management, but it wasn’t easy to test it against my current model. It’s only $10 to try it in full, but I’d rather know it works before paying for it.
Fifthly, highlighting is much easier now. I like to review my books when I’m done, and the Kindle device and app like to save highlights and notes separately from the file. It’s not automatic to link them across any book that wasn’t directly downloaded from Amazon. On the old Kindle, I often found it a bit painful to access, and since it was hard to do the highlighting in the first place, I mostly skipped it. With the new touch-screen, highlighting is REALLY easy, which means for non-fiction titles in particular, I can highlight and then access the highlights later when I’m doing my review. I’d prefer they synched in Calibre, but Amazon has changed how the info is saved, and the old plugin that would pull the info doesn’t work that well. Soooo, I’m doing it manually. But I noticed that it is REALLY easy to just read the file from my desktop when the file is connected. I started a book about Pluto on the old Kindle and ignored most of the notes/highlights I wanted to make; with the new Kindle, I finished the last 10% of it while making about six separate notes.
Finally, it connects better wirelessly than the old model. The old model used Whispernet and was 3G. It was okay, but not awesome. Free was good, and anywhere I could get a wireless signal was good. But the new one? I used Calibre to email 10 books to my Kindle as just a test. All of them showed up on my Kindle with no effort on my part, no waiting, no wondering, and no errors, it just worked. Admittedly, most of the time, I’m doing my work through my desktop, and I can plug the Kindle in. But having the option to just EMAIL it to my Kindle, and it will reliably show up the next time I turn it on in the house? That’s pretty sweet.
I like anything that lets me get past the technology and into reading. This one makes it easier and gives me more functionality at the same time. What’s not to love? Now I just have to figure out what to do with the old one that still works.
Somewhere in this universe, if life after death exists, my father is rolling over in his grave. Or rolling his eyes, shrugging his shoulders, throwing up his hands…whatever the ghosts do when they see their descendants doing stuff that they think is ridiculous.
And it is NOT my father’s fault. Let me be clear. He tried to raise me right. He taught me the rights and wrongs at an early age, the benefits of doing things right the first time or at least having duct tape nearby. Well, to be totally candid, industrial duct tape or white fibreglass tape. But he taught me. Ish.
To wield a hammer, to build sheds, etc. None of them were particularly PRETTY when done, but his builds were at least presentable. Mine? Not so much. My poor workman abilities are not limited to carpentry. I suck at drafting, machine shop, plumbing, automotive, bird nest removal, eavestroughs, Xmas light mounting, etc. About the only thing that I’m decent at for some of this stuff is electrical, and I know enough to know how dangerous it would be for me to do actual wiring. For something like a ceiling fan, I could, in fact, work out the wiring, but I wouldn’t have a clue how to ensure the fan itself would stay mounted on the ceiling.
Oh, don’t get me wrong. I understand the theory. But everything I do in this regard goes slightly, umm, awry. Let me digress for another minute. In my bathroom, aka our main bathroom, there is a simple brushed nickel towel rack. If you’ve ever put up a towel rack, you’ll know that there are 3 or 4 main designs for how the rack attaches to the wall. One of the most popular is a plate that attaches to the wall at each end, and the brackets that hold the bars themselves actually “slip” over the plates like a sock/sleeve to hide the screws and hardware underneath. Nice, tidy, pretty and functional. Well, unless I put it up. Then it isn’t very nice. It definitely isn’t tidy when I screw up the holes in the wall and have to use larger anchors that I expected to make sure the stuff stays in place. It isn’t pretty since the sleeves don’t go all the way to the wall to sit flush, no matter how much I fiddle with it. And it is functional in the sense that if you don’t pull it too much one way, both bars will stay up. I’ve thought about using some super glue to make sure the bars can’t move in the brackets, which would also make the whole thing more secure. But I haven’t.
That towel rack? It’s about a 5-minute job. Maybe 10. I think it took me close to 90 minutes, and it looked like crap. We can do IKEA stuff, and assemble other things, all good. But designing my own stuff like a bookcase? Sure, it’ll be functional. But it won’t be something you want in your living room with your nice furniture. I’m a “functional garage bookshelf” kind of carpenter.
And even if I could get past the quality issues, the frustration is always off the scale. I dread doing any of these projects as I know they are NOT going to go the way they’re supposed to…if this was a sitcom, I’d be the guy who attempts to fix his toilet to save $30 and ends up with a $600 plumbing bill to fix his mistakes.
Enter the simplest project that I can’t do well
If you think of all the little things you could do around the house and then rank them for ease, most functionally-literate trades laypeople, aka homebodies who do things themselves, would rank hanging pictures on a list of things anyone can do. Oh, sure, people will say they have no idea how to do colour schemes, or things won’t be level, but they generally are willing to do it and adjust.
My experience has been more one of frustration with anything bigger than a calendar. I frequently will plan ahead, particularly as I am frequently hanging on drywall. So, if it’s small, a simple nail will do. Beyond that, the only thing that has consistently worked for me is to drill a small hole, put in a wall anchor, put in a screw, and voila! One wall plug/anchor to hold everything! Well, almost everything. Oh, who am I kidding? Most of the time it doesn’t hold ANYTHING I wanted it to hold. Not shelving units to the wall, not shelves on the wall, not heavy stuff that hangs. It just doesn’t stay.
Flash back some 11 years, we moved in, and one of the things we wanted to hang was a painting we bought in Hintonburg a few years ago. We had it hanging over our fireplace at the old house, and to be honest, it worked as I drilled holes in brick and used hard-core plugs that could have been used to mount exercise equipment. The whole house would fall down before those things came out. Anyway, it was up. But when we moved, we weren’t exactly sure which room we wanted it in, the family room or the living room, but likely the living room. Yet I have had no confidence that whatever I put in the wall would hold. It’s not super expensive art or anything, but it’s significant to us both for the cost and the sentimental value. We bought it ourselves while doing a local art tour, and we enjoyed buying something “together” for our new home at the time (two houses back).
So, it got put in a box with a bunch of other stuff we wanted to hang but weren’t sure where or how, and we basically ignored all of it. For the last 11 years, the stuff has sat. Some of it was visible and enjoyed without being fully mounted; others were just in boxes.
And things probably would have drifted along that way with our naked walls until we eventually die or move. Or both. Except in the fall, Andrea and I were out running errands in Barrhaven, I wanted a small couch pillow, and there was a small furniture store in the plaza we were in, so why not check there? We did, found one, and all good. But while we were in there, we happened to notice a framed painting on the wall. It’s commercially generated, sure, but it was nice. A landscape by the sea that both of us noticed and thought, “Wow, that’s pretty good, actually.” We can afford stuff by real artists, I won’t pretend this is exceptional art, but we really both liked it.
So I went back in when Andrea was out another night and ordered it for her for Christmas.
Let me digress with a small story
The store called to say it was “in” and that I could pick it up. The lovely young lady who had served me called me and left a message, and then called a week later and got me, and was about to call a third time when I finally made it one afternoon after school with Jacob. The intent was that Jacob and I would put it in the back of our compact SUV, and it would be from the two of us to her. Great. Got there at 4:00, paid for it, picked it up and realized it was actually a lot bigger in person than the one that appeared on the bare store wall. No worries, we have a Rogue, we’ll be good. Nope. It didn’t fit in the back diagonally (it was off by about an inch to be comfortable), and it couldn’t go in across the back seat vertically (about 4″ too long). And you don’t want to “force” a painting to fit. 🙂
I called a cab, told them I had a large painting, and that I needed a van. Someone showed up with an SUV that was even smaller than ours. I called back and said a minivan would do, it didn’t have to be an actual van, but no joy. Talked to the store and the assistant manager, but not much in the way of options from them. We could return it and have it shipped from the warehouse directly to my house (which I hadn’t been offered originally and would have said no to anyway because I wanted it to be a surprise when it arrived), but that wasn’t going to work well for logistics or timing. What other options did I have? Oh, right. Home Depot rents vans so people can carry large purchases home themselves. Or wood sheets. They’re large enough to carry 4×8′ sheets easily, so the painting would fit fine. It was 4:45 p.m., and the store closed at 6. The race was on! I dropped Jacob at home, raced to Home Depot, rented a van, drove to the suburb in the rain and dark skies, grabbed the painting, took it home, dropped it off, raced back to Home Depot for a time duration, and turned it back over. All done. By just after 6:00, and a total rental cost of…wait for it…$28, including taxes. It was cheaper than a cab, actually. Anyway. Got it home, it was done, and hiding it easily for six weeks was out of the question. I had to tell Andrea not to go into a specific area of the basement until after Christmas.
But with Christmas over, and a new large painting to hang, along with other stuff that really should be on the wall, what was the poor excuse for a handyman to do?
Time to get noodling.
One gig platform
Many people use various gig platforms to find jobs, but lots of people use the gig platforms to find temporary workers for specific projects. I used Fiverr to find someone to do a cover page for a book ($12 plus some tax, as I recall). I had someone assemble my exercise machine last year from Task Rabbit. There are a bunch out there for various tasks.
And I have a bunch of things I want done this year without the time or energy (or, in this case, the ability either) to get them done. Back before Xmas, I got a friend to assemble my 3D printer for me, and I’m looking forward to getting going with it in February. I’ve got some other things that have to be done before I allow myself time to play.
But I was noodling if I might have the guy who did my exercise machine come back to reassemble an exercise bike that has been disassembled since 11 years ago, too, when we moved, along with two other things that he could put together way faster than I can with less fuss and frustration. Anyway, I went on TaskRabbit, wanted to make sure he was still there, and I realized something.
I had forgotten that I ended up on TaskRabbit because that is what IKEA uses for local assembly. They basically just refer people to TaskRabbit to find someone to assemble furniture if they need that help. But they have people on there who do TONS of stuff.
Garden setup. Eavestrough clearing. Leaf raking. Assembly of furniture. Some painting if need be. Plus, a dozen other household chores.
And…wait for it…hanging stuff in your house. Drapes, curtains, pictures. Ding ding ding ding ding! We have a winner, folks!
Laying it all out first
So I knew we had about four big things that I felt were really beyond me. Two paintings in particular (new and old); a stone wall hanging from a friend that we have NEVER hung, it’s really heavy; and a larger poster in my basement (it’s a Star Wars reissue poster that references the original name for the third movie, Revenge of the Jedi instead of Return of the Jedi). But if a talented Rabbit was coming in to do those four, and there’s usually a two-hour minimum, we asked ourselves, what else could he hang? We unpacked everything we had that could possibly be hung, and laid it all out. Some of them required new frames as the old ones were cheap or the wrong colour. Others needed frames entirely, they were prints or hangings without any case around them. We weeded some stuff for quality and tastes changing over time. There may have been a few gifts that got purged in there.
Then we went around the house with it all and put sticky notes on the wall where the picture/print/painting/wall hanging would go. Then I made a list. How many were there? Well, let’s see.
If I start in the living room, there are only two, both large paintings. The hallway to the kitchen has a Hawaiian sunset picture printed on canvas, the powder room has a small Van Gogh print we bought in Amsterdam at the Van Gogh museum sometime around 2004 / 2005 or so, and a “welcome” sign was added to the kitchen wall, and the heavy stone artwork was added to the playroom. TOTAL: 6 items
As you go up the stairs to the second floor, we decided that the big walls we have there would eventually house mostly family photos. To that end, we hung one large constellation poster that shows the sky above Ottawa on the day our son was born, and two multi-photo panels on either side of that for four on one wall, plus three more on another wall. Not all of the picture slots are filled yet, but the frames are up. TOTAL: 8 items.
Once you are upstairs, there are generally four areas that got the “TaskRabbit” treatment. The hallway has a polar bear picture and one other I can’t remember at the moment, plus a new large bulletin board that will house a new world map where we put in pins of where we have been. Given Jacob’s interest in geography and history, and travel, that will likely see some good usage over the coming years. And the main bathroom has another Van Gogh print, plus while he was here, he fixed the “PolySpecial” towel rack. TOTAL: 5 items.
The master bedroom gained a print of a moon painting done by a local Indigenous artist that did a show at Jacob’s old school, I really like his Indigenous astronomy stuff, a print of 3 pandas on clear glass, a print of a sketch by a local artist in Quebec City of the entrance to Lower Town at the base of the funicular, a small Van Gogh print in the ensuite, and a large Van Gogh print over the headboard. Oh, and he fixed our curtain rod that had come loose at some point. TOTAL: 6 items.
The big room that Andrea uses as an office already has some decoration on various shelves around, but Andrea added a wall hanging, a print, and a wooden fish (all from travel in Asia, I think), plus a small painted postcard from Twillingate when we went to Newfoundland. TOTAL: 4 items.
The guest room gained four items from Andrea’s travels, with a Van Gogh print from Amsterdam, a painting of a house in Jamaica, a wall hanging of an elephant in fabric that we framed, and a wooden carving from Australia. TOTAL: 4 items.
We offered more options for Jacob’s room and office area downstairs, but he has lots of things up on the walls, mostly with tacks and things (posters, pennants, etc.), so he was good.
Which leaves me in the basement. I had him hang two diploma frames (Trent, Carleton), an achievement award I got from RASC for service to the astronomy club, the Star Wars poster I mentioned, a brand new large magnetic whiteboard, a picture frame with space for about 8 small prints in it that I will print on my colour printer soon, and a Van Gogh print in my bathroom.
Then I come to three kinds of special paintings to me that are not worth much money at all. I bought them in 1992 in Victoria when I was at law school. We went out for dinner one night and we all went downtown. It was February, and cold by Victoria standards, but we went and wandered around the harbour. There was a performance artist in his 20s doing spray paint art. Those who are handy in this type of endeavour consider it fairly easy as you aren’t trying to paint a realistic picture, but more representational art. I’ll describe the easiest painting as I saw him do it first in about 20 minutes.
First, he took three areas of the painting and painted a bunch of colours on top of each other to make three big blobs — one mostly green, one more yellowish and one more red. With some white mixed in, he smeared all three to give the sense of motion across the surface. Streaks basically. Then he put three small paper plates over them of differing sizes to cover what was under them. But the plates didn’t cover all of it, more of a subset of each blob. Then he sprayed the whole painting super dark black, going over the plates. When he removed the plates, he had perfectly round circles underneath that had these smeared/streaked designs on them. Then he took white paint (actually, I think he did this before removing the plates) and sprayed his fingertips and just flicked it at the black matte. It made it look like stars. He worked for 20 minutes and had this freshly spray-painted space image with three cool-looking planets, stars everywhere against a black background. I loved it. I think it cost me $15 to get it.
Then he did another one while we watched. This one was a bit more surreal, where you were looking out at a universe from a watery surface of an alien planet, there were comets streaking by, but the foreground planet was really cool. There are some sci-fi and fantasy elements in it, the colours are quite different, as are the techniques. I had to own that one too. It was one of the coolest things I had ever seen done.
And then he did a third space one just before we left. It is a large circle (like a portal) at the top, and in the portal, you can see a lake/river, some small mountains, a giant pyramid behind them, a setting planet behind that in the sky, and a sun starting to emerge from behind the planet. But the portal drains into the lower half of the painting, where there is a surreal alien vista with weird mountain formations and a lake. And he used streaks downward to simulate a waterfall from top to bottom. Plus used his thumbnail to add some birds flying in front of the waterfall. It was an extra $5 to get that one, so I spent $50 in total for the night. Having no idea what I was doing, I just knew I had to own these prints.
Are they high art? Absolutely not. But they were amazing to watch, I’ve now owned them over 30 years, and this is the first time I have had all three up simultaneously. We replaced the cheap frames I bought 20 years ago for two of them with only slightly more expensive but nicer ones from Michael’s. The portal one? I had that framed way back in 2002 or 2003, and it cost me close to $100 on some big discount sale at the time, five times the cost of the painting itself. But it blows me away. I can’t look at any of the three without a sense of wonder of “what’s out there”. Long before I rekindled my love for space, paintings like these resonated in my soul. TOTAL: 10 items.
That’s the ball game, folks
41 items hung, and 2 hanging items were fixed. We spent about $300 at Michael’s buying new frames, even with their perpetual framing sale. And then another $260 for the 4 hours the guy was here today. A little over $500 and more than 40 items hung, many of which have been waiting for 11 years or maybe 30 if you include the space paintings.
A pretty good deal for someone who couldn’t do it right or well himself. A friend mentioned she thought it was good money too since her and her husband take an hour to hang one item!
Andrea supervised the roll-out today while I worked, but I popped upstairs regularly to check on how it was going. The painting in the living room was a big wow for me, and the pics in the stairwell were big for Andrea. Jacob hasn’t pronounced on it yet. I look forward to people being able to come over this year and not see naked walls everywhere.
Oh, and while he was here? I knew he ran a general contracting business of his own, he’s only been with Task Rabbit since last spring/summer as a client of his kept bugging him to join. In the first 4-5 months of being on the site, he made $50K. Less some basic parts costs, I assume, as he came with ALL the hardware for hanging things and chose different hardware for various types of items to hang. But I digress. I knew he was a contractor and did other stuff, so I had him look at a problem I have with my ceiling from when the air conditioner lines were removed by a young gun with no idea what he was doing. He’ll give us a separate quote, and we’ll probably have him come in next week to fix that over two days. We chatted about how to shape the ceiling, and he talked to us about our laundry room, too, all good.
He was awesome, and we’ll use him again. I just won’t wait 11 years to end up writing a cheque.
It’s time for municipal elections in a little over a week, and I confess I don’t have very strong feelings about the candidates. Partly as many of them use the same “buzz” words like “traffic calming” with no indication of which measures they’ll actually use. So let’s see who my choices are for College ward here in Ottawa.
Councillor of the Ward
Our ward covers Bells Corners, Queensway, Centerpointe and of course the actual College itself (Algonquin). There are five candidates running: Wendy Davidson, Vilteau Delvas, Laine Johnson, Pat McGarry, and Granda Kopytko.
Wendy Davidson. Her overall platform is basically “make things happen” or “grow together”, not a lot of specifics that appeal to me. Complete secondary Plans for Baseline Road and Merivale Road? Yeah, every councillor will. Snooze. Reasonable intensification, responsible development sound great, particularly if you don’t have to define them. But good news, she’s going to question City Hall but “work with staff”…yeah, sure, that sounds like no contradiction at all.
But when the Ottawa Citizen pressed her on what she saw as the most important issue, her response was safety with a strong push to expand speed cameras everywhere. Yep, she’s got no chance of my vote. The city has dramatically expanded the use of speed cameras throughout the city, and I confess I actually do have views about it, all of them negative.
From my legal days, speed cameras fall into that strange category of strict liability crimes. Most of these are on their face unconstitutional as the onus shifts from the state having to prove you’re guilty to you having to prove your innocence. Sounds simple enough, the machine snapped your photo, must be guilty. Except for anyone who has ever received a speeding ticket in person from a cop, you know that there are lots of other variables at the time that might mitigate the sentence. If you felt you weren’t speeding, you can challenge the calibration of the machine and get access to the records. You can have your car tested to see if the speedometer was functioning correctly. You can take account of any weather conditions, other traffic that is going on, etc. In short, you can consider a defence if you know about it at the time. City tickets arrive in the mail weeks later, you may not even REMEMBER the day. Were you guilty? The machine says yes, and you have zero chance at a defence. That’s NOT the way the law is supposed to work. It’s not criminal, you’re not going to jail, but it’s often dicey, and courts generally don’t like them if they can be avoided. Photo radar is one of the few that is allowed, but often seen as something that should be used sparingly, not rampantly everywhere.
Equally, there’s a Charter issue. A reverse onus “crime” almost always raises Charter issues, as does this one, as a violation of your right not to have your liberty and economic security threatened without due process, including not being assumed guilty, but is generally “saved” by Section 1 as a reasonable limit because of the policy measure and goal. Except in this case, the goal is supposedly traffic calming, making the roads safe. Yet it does neither of those things, because you don’t even know you got a ticket until weeks later. A section 1 analysis requires the infringement of your rights to be rationally connected to the policy instrument, and with the most minimal infringement possible. Yet what works better? Speed bumps. An instant correction and calming mechanism AND no infringement on rights. It works better than photo radar. What it doesn’t do? Drastically raise funds. The amount of money pouring in from these cameras is crazy. If I recall, it is now the third-highest revenue source for the city after taxes and user fees.
I have three in my area. One at a nearby school has a speed limit of 40 km / hour. An elementary school about a mile north of me has a similar requirement still being operationalized, but the speed limit is 50 km / hour. Jacob’s school, an intermediate and high-school has photo radar near it, and the limit is 60 km / hour. All three use the argument that it is to keep kids safe, but with three different speed limits and no other traffic calming measures in place.
If you’re running for City Council, it would be good in my view if you understood that and didn’t think “ooh, look, free revenue” with something that doesn’t actually work to calm traffic. The “success” they tout in multiple press releases about how much money they have made shows it doesn’t work — people are still speeding through the zones, putting kids at risk. If you want slower traffic, photos aren’t going to get it done.
And they aren’t going to get my vote.
Vilteau Davis. I saw some online videos about him, but when asked to talk about himself, he’s borderline inarticulate, and seems to have no real platform. “Just a regular guy”. Great. Keep being a regular guy. And he ran for the provincial election before this, so you’d think he would be at least a little more polished and prepared to explain his approach, background, ideas. Nope, his whole schtick is “I’m not a politician”. Long on cliché, short on specifics. I have literally no idea what he stands for or hopes to accomplish. Pass.
Laine Johnson. She’s got strong City Hall street cred, has taught courses on City Hall 101, which appeals to me, I confess. I like those who build a knowledge of government and share it. Like others, she prioritizes “safe streets” and wants to do a program review of all services. Neither strike me as particularly compelling, even if needed. I like governance, I like accountability, but I also want to see a bit of leadership for the ward. She’s shown that in some ways with the word she’s done before, but, well, she’ll keep doing it even if she’s not Councillor. Housing is big for her, not a giant issue for me, I care but am not passionate about it. For public transit, I like the realization that if going downtown takes 90 minutes with two buses and a train, but you can drive it in 20m, many people are not going to opt for public transit if they have a choice. Great as a city or even ward issue, sure, but we chose to live fairly close to the TransitWay and Baseline Station. When that is complete, 90% of our needs will be met. Even noting that with three of us, often it is cheaper to just take a vehicle if we’re all going.
She has a good accountability schtick, I could consider her. But then she has some things that sound great if you live a block from your school, and make NO sense if you don’t. She wants car-free zones near schools for pickup and dropoff. Has she done this anytime lately? Not everyone has an option to be in the neighbourhood and walk over to pick up their kids. When my son was younger, the school bus options rarely coincided well with our needs, and not at all at the end of the day. So pickups by car were de rigeur. Add in the fact that he has some extra mobility issues, and her “solutions” would have made my pickups and drop-offs a nightmare.
There are a few other areas where I was SMH. Almost like she sees one way to do things, something that worked for her, and now she wants everyone to do it that way too. She’ll spend a lot of time with legal challenges from the looks of it.
She is probably the front-runner, but I’ll pass.
Pat McGarry. His name is familiar in Ottawa, with his funeral homes dotting the landscape quite well. I like his business experience, something that is sometimes lacking on Council and sorely needed with some of the large-scale projects they’ve been doing — and screwing up, let’s face it. He thinks the priority for the ward is transit, and I suspect it is reliably in the top three for me too. But as I mentioned previously, once the transit to Baseline portion is complete, most of my needs are met at that stage. I want it to keep going, sure, but I don’t feel passionate about it. On time and reliable are the big criteria, and more often than not, our goal would be to get us from Centerpointe to downtown. I will retire in about 5 years, and I really hope by then the full LRT is running wild across the majority of the city.
But I confess I’m uncomfortable with one small thing. He has spent his lifetime living in the ward, but in his interview with the Ottawa Citizen, he no longer lives in the ward. That doesn’t work for me. It might be minor, but I want my rep to live here. I wouldn’t vote for an MP who flew in for a byelection, and I won’t vote for someone who doesn’t live in the ward. Pass again.
Granda Kopytko. I have already ruled out the other four, but honestly, I might be tempted to NOT vote rather than vote for one of the five, if I didn’t like any of them. I have a potential bias for Granda though…I met her while she was campaigning. I said above that I don’t have strong views about municipal politics, my wife is the 311 whisperer and we get services that we need when we need them. I don’t have many complaints, not that thrilled with the progress on and reliability of the LRT, but not enough to follow it.
But as I said above, I do have views about camera radar. So I thought, “Hey, why not ask her? See what she thinks.” And her immediate response was that it doesn’t actually calm traffic. And with that instant response, she put herself in my “competitive” pile.
She’s been a National Executive Director with CAPE, and that cuts both ways. I’m not a giant fan of unions, but CAPE is one of the least offensive versions out there (“We’re cheap and we’re not PSAC!”), and most CAPE personnel have the advantage of having ties to policy analysis and/or research/statistics. Comfort with complex policy files goes a long way for me. For her views of the most important issues, she pointed to the developments all around the ward, as others have. But I liked that when she did talk about them, she was specific — others talked in generalities about thoughtful development, she talked about inadequate parking and a paucity of green space.
I guess I have my Ward candidate. Councillor Kobpytko, I like the sound of that.
The Mayoral campaign
Great, there are 14 candidates. That is way too much choice, as most of them will barely crack 2% of the vote.
Brandon Bay. Free transit? Where has that worked? Nowhere. More camera radar? Pass. (I addressed this in the Councillor section).
Zed Chebib. Virtually no engagement with city issues but wants to be mayor. Notes that Council doesn’t know how to use technology and yet his own questionnaire looks like it was filled out by an illiterate seahorse. His only “issue” is his own legal case. Hard pass.
Bob Chiarelli. One of the big “issues” on transit for him is he doesn’t want to commit to LRT to Kanata, Stittsville and Barrhaven, the last three major suburbs being served. He wants to “review” it before committing. That will happen anyway. The question is if you are in favour or not, and it’s a fundamental question of equity. They pay the same taxes, they deserve a reliable service. That’s not a question that should be TBD. I can stop reading right there. Pass.
Bernard Couchman. There’s a line not too far in that says “We’re farther in debt than before and no one is going to jail”. Can he really be that stupid? I’ve got family members that I think are idiots who understand government better than that. Debt doesn’t equal corruption and something you go to jail for, and to even joke about it, is ridiculous. And he wants to be mayor? Do we have an election for dog catcher, because that might be more appropriate? Hard pass. Embarrassingly hard pass.
Celene Debassige. Virtually no experience and knows she wants to defund the police, as if she has any idea what that would mean or the implications. That’s a slogan for rallies, not an actual workable platform. Another embarrassing hard pass.
Gregory Guevera. No clue why anyone would bother registering and then just put stupid stuff as their answers to everything. Another embarrassing hard pass.
Nour Kadri. I like his answers on most things, he’s a valid option, no red flags. A few places I would like a bit more clarity and less hyperbole, but overall decent. I’m not sold on Ottawa being a “big city” particularly with the downtown core decimated by the change in WFH for government. Before it was a commuter area, now it’s more a coalition of outlying suburbs with less and less interest in the Centre. Smart cities are powerful ideas, but most examples out there are more hype than reality. His goal for the next four years is to reduce poverty and eliminate homelessness. Yet having seen these issues from both an economic and social lens, they are not only intractable, but impossible to eliminate at all in most cases, let alone in four years. I’d prefer his predictions and content were just a little more practical and focused. But he’s a viable option. Just nothing that sings “pick me, pick me”.
Graham MacDonald. Strong policing stance, but everything else is rather ho hum. Nothing really stands out and resonates for me. Pass.
Mike Maguire. If we were hiring a city manager, his positions might have more credibility. But there’s virtually no nuance to most of his answers to the tough questions, no “social lens” or “community” link. Fix this, fix that. Nothing about how or what’s good in the bathwater before he throws out the baby. And he is ready to say no to expanding to Barrhaven, Kanata and Stittsville, not because he has looked at it and has concerns but just questions. Equity is not his strong suit, apparently. Pass.
Catherine McKenney. Highly experienced, links to housing and transit files, supported councillors / deputy City Manager / etc. She’s competitive right out of the gate, has a decent balance on transit fares (free for 17 and under), and focusing on communities within the larger communities (since people aren’t commuting). Others say the same thing, her profile of what it means is more precise. She’s open to automated traffic calming aka camera radar, which I’m against, but she’s not particularly wedded to it, just part of the possibilities. She’s also huge on the cycling aspects, which means very little to me. She has the same rhetoric about ending homelessness, but seems like all of them do. I’m not sold on her, but she’s the most viable candidate yet.
Ade Olumide. Wants to basically manage by the numbers, an approach that was widely tried and dismissed 30 years ago, but thinks “big data” now will solve the problems. Lots of new initiatives, with the plan to not increase taxes. And very little sign of community involvement in the design, he apparently has all the answers as former Taxpayer Advocacy Group. I’m sure he has lots of programs in mind to cut. But not a rousing argument to make him mayor. Most of his platform are links to ideas that are seemingly being done in other jurisdictions, but when you delve deeper, they are pilots or tests or ideas with no actual take up. They’re not viable solutions. Hard pass.
Param Singh. Most of the solutions seem like “we’ll talk” and he also wants more cameras. Pass.
Jacob Soloman. A student with very little life experience who thinks it’s terrible we don’t have pianos on the streets. Umm. Points for interest? Hard pass.
Mark Sutcliffe. Program review? Sure. Responsible governance. The Ottawa River Action Plan as a major accomplishment? Umm, okaaaaay. On policing? “Safety good”. I’m being a bit harsh, but I understood that this guy was one of the top two viable candidates with McKenney. Okay, we’re back on track with LRT to the last three suburbs. The rest of this platform is viable, but I don’t see anything in particular that excites me. He has extensive experience with United Way in multiple forms, which concerns me, given their serious problems with administrative costs for an umbrella organization whose fundraising is mostly done for them by volunteers of other organizations. Broadcaster and journalist duties don’t scream mayor to me, even though they may be the best spokesperson of the group. I think I’m going to pass.
Board of Education Trustee
There are three BoE Trustees for the Ottawa Carleton District School Board for my ward. They changed the boundaries for this election, so I had some challenge on a few of the sites even figuring out which trustees were for my ward! Sheesh.
Gemma Nicholson. I have almost no idea what her platform is, no apparent website, and almost all online stuff is tied to her involvement in schools with no fundraising capacity and/or declining enrolment. I see lots of quotes about her complaining about stuff, not a lot of innovative solutions coming from her quotes though (which might not be accurate of her role/views, of course). Just nothing to make a decision on. I do like that she has seen the hard-life of some schools, it’s not all sunshine and rainbows.
Amanda Presley. Well, it appears she’s in favour of general commitments, transparency, and addressing aging buildings. Not a lot about, oh, those pesky things like education. And she wants to collect COVID data. Not to do anything about COVID apparently, or how the schools address things related to COVID, but tracking the data and sharing it with parents again. Umm, okay. But she’s an OCDSB grad and has two cute kids, so that’s a plus.
Steven Warren. A youth candidate, but we already have mechanisms for the youth in the schools to have their voice, and virtually no experience to argue in his favour. But at least he put some time and effort into a platform. I’m not willing to take a risk on him.
Wow, we have vacant candidate, Mom, and youth. Those are my choices? I know someone uber-qualified and I can’t get her to run. And I think that is what bothers me. Each of the three has less experience than her dealing with education issues and governments. Sigh. Maybe I’ll let her pick which one she thinks is the best and go with that as my approach. Not the way it should work, but if I think she’d make a better candidate than most of the ones across the city (including some of those going for re-election), I guess I should trust her judgment as to who is the best of the three. I certainly don’t have any strong views in favour of any one of them.
Soooo, I have two out of three choices made, I guess. I suppose that was a good night’s work.
