Today was a good day.
After sleeping in, having breakfast, then taking a nap (all three of us), we headed out for a road trip that meandered through Cambridge, through Carlisle and Waterdown, and past the Escarpment-dominated lands that mark out the horn of Lake Ontario.
This is how Erin gets a lot of her writing done, these days, with Vivian strapped into the car seat and falling asleep, and with a laptop on Erin’s lap. More than 5000 words on the developing epic Plain Kate have been written through this arrangement.
We took the road from Hamilton to Ancaster — formerly Highway 2 until it was made redundant on the provincial network with the opening of Highway 403. It’s a beautiful trip, with old shops and low-rise apartment buildings clustered around the road, hemmed in by the rockface of the escarpment. It would be a very beautiful place to live, I’ve thought, and we might consider that if Erin’s career takes her in that direction.
We ate at an Italian-leaning Italian-American eatery called Sfoozi, welcomed to our seats by a startlingly thin young woman who was the restaurant’s manager. The food was good and Vivian ate most of a meatball as well as a few vegetables off our plates. Then we headed over to Chapters and sat in their Starbucks while I got some writing done.
Not much else to report, so here are some photographs that have been accumulating on my Nokia 6682 camera-phone. Oh, and we took Vivian sledding. Here’s a video of how that went.
More Sunset over Ancaster Photographs
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Looking away from the sunset, at clouds reflecting the glow over an Ancaster stripmall. |
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Sunset reflected off the windows of a car. |
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Sunset over Sfoozi. |
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And a shot of Wilson Street in the heart of Ancaster. |
Other Photographs
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Tickle Me Elmo returns with a few “modifications” to extract revenge on all the kids who tormented him… |
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Downtown Oakville is decorated for Christmas. |
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Another shot of Oakville in twilight. |
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The view from Erin’s office: the Dana Porter library behind Engineering 2. |
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And, because I can: here’s Vivian on a playset in the gym during a visit to Early Years. She climbed onto the equipment herself. |
Blogstravaganza
Blogstravaganza was cool. I arrived early and was greeted by Damien Brooks and Nicholas from Quotulaciousness. Mr. and Mrs Tarantino showed up soon after. I had dinner, one pint of Guinness and a lot of conversation as many people showed up from all sides of the Canadian blogosphere. Thanks to Bob, Jason and Joey for organizing the shindig. I’m looking forward to next year!
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From right to left: Chris Taylor, Quotulatiousness, Damien Brooks and one other blogger I didn’t get a chance to talk to. |
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The Tarantinos, with Jason Cherniak behind them. |
Quotulatiousness has a full writeup, as does Damien Brooks. The Oz references, incidentally, is a statement Kathy Shaidle made at a previous blogstravaganza about “the curtains being pulled back on a dozen Wizards of Oz”, which is a very good metaphor. Personally, I’m just impressed that I have more hair than a lot of these gentlemen… :-)