Cereal Mixing

Today, we had cereal for breakfast. For Sylvia, Weetabix; for me, Cheerios. 

"Have you ever mixed cereals?" Sylvia asked. 

I recoiled. I'd never imagined such a thing. 

"Mixed cereals? Like, two different kinds of cereal in the same bowl?" 

"Yeah," she said. "It's the cereal power move." 

I said "Blech," or words to that effect. 

Before today, I've never heard of people mixing breakfast cereal together. Do other folks out there actually do this? If so, what cereals do you mix? 

I suppose combining, say, Special K with Corn Flakes wouldn't be so bad. 

Ms. 38

 

Spotted Lake

This is kłlilx'w, or Spotted Lake, a sacred site of the Okanagan Nation. The spots are mineral pools formed as water evaporates in the summer. It's pretty neat. 

The Gregarious Gentlemen of Gaming & Guinness

Here's one of the group photos for G&G XX. Crazy that this tradition has now lasted two decades. While I couldn't be there for the whole thing this time, I still had a great time. Here's to twenty more years or more of these shenanigans. 
 

Okanagan Lake

Such a beautiful place. I didn't see Ogopogo. :( 
 

Do Not Press

Our rental car has an SOS button. I really want to press it, but Sylvia and Sean say "NO." Alas. 
 

Sylvia and Uncle John

Today we celebrated Aunt Jean's life at a beautiful farm north of Kelowna. This is my favourite photo from that event. Uncle John was Aunt Jean's husband for many decades, and together they lived lives full of travel, art, and adventure on several continents. Uncle John's kindness, tenacity, and talent are truly something to behold, and it's not hard to see why Aunt Jean loved him, and why he and Sylvia connected very strongly at the instant of first meeting several years back. I loved watching them interact this weekend. 

As for the celebration itself, it was a showcase for Aunt Jean's art and our shared love of her somewhat off-the-wall way of looking at the world, something I like to think we share. 
 

Woods, Langergrabers, and a Newton at Red Robin

Earlier tonight Sean, Sylvia and I met with Uncle John, his two sons, their partners, and our cousin David for a long, leisurely supper and chat at Red Robin in Kelowna. Once again, the only real upside of grieving is how it brings people together to remember better times and create some new memories. And it was great to finally meet Kevin's partner, Carol, in person. Sean and Sylvia and I are very grateful to the Langergrabers and David for a wonderful evening. 
 

Osoyoos Oasis

Sean and Sylvia and I are in the Okanagan for celebrations of life for our Aunt Marjorie and Aunt Jean. Aunt Marjorie's was earlier today, and it was a beautiful, welcoming tribute. It was great to see my cousins Diane, Darwin, and Bruce again--Aunt Marjorie's surviving children--as well as several of their children and partners. 

After the service, we took some time to travel around the region, stopping at a patio in Osoyoos for refreshments. Being in such a beautiful setting helps take the sting out of loss.           
 

Up, Up, and Away to BC

 

The Chili Verde of Choice

One of the many highlights of Gaming and Guinness is Pete's homemade chili verde. It is incredibly savoury and scrumptious, especially when served in a sourdough bread bowl. I'm so glad I was there tonight for this! 
 

The Days the Debts Come Due

Due to family circumstances, I'm missing most of Gaming and Guinness XX this year--and on such an important anniversary! Saddening, but it can't be helped. I love that Pete put up this list of our challenge coin debts for the occasion. I owe a lot of favours...although I'm sure I paid off Sean. I might have forgotten to update the spreadsheet...
 

Cheeky Jackbox

"Why is Earl like that?" Good question, wrong answer. 
 

The Young Man from Elsewhere

Today I watched a fifth-season episode of St. Elsewhere, and who should turn up but Wil Wheaton? He plays a prodigy with an IQ of 160 who's completed Einstein's unified field theory. 

Never mind that such a feat might fundamentally alter the world in which St. Elsewhere exists, Wheaton's character decides he wants to be a doctor, so even though he's only 14, he joins the cast for rounds. 

Wheaton is very good here, and it's interesting to see him in a role that comes after his star-making turn in Stand By Me but before he joined the cast of Star Trek: The Next Generation as Wesley Crusher. 

Other Star Trek alums appear in this episode: Bruce Greenwood, who joined the regular cast this season and who appeared as Captain Pike in the first two Kelvin timeline movies, and Ed Begley Jr., who guest-starred on Star Trek: Voyager. Mind you, several St. Elsewhere regulars have appeared on Star Trek, perhaps most famously Jane Wyatt, who played Amanda Grayson, Spock's mom. 
 

Gathering Dust

They slept unmoving for months and years
Paper and chemical memories
Slowly and silently buried
Under the grey shedding skin
Of neglectful caretakers
Forgotten until irrelevant
And discarded thereafter
Without ceremony

Cameraception

I used my phone to shoot through the viewfinder of Mom and Dad's TECO box camera. 

The Internet tells me these cameras were made between 1945 and 1948. If I could find film for it, I'm sure this TECO could still capture images. 

Chair Buddies

 

First-Grade Outfit

 

This is my official grade one class photo, taken at the Leaf Rapids Education Centre. Mom made the vest and the pants that went with it. Nice job, Mom! 

Need a Lift? Go Higher than the Sun

With human civilization approaching collapse, I feel a bit guilty indulging in upbeat art. But sometimes I can't help myself, and I need to indulge the fantasy that we'll somehow pull through <gestures at everything> this. 

"May you go on and on" is my favourite line. It's a lovely sentiment in the context of the song, a sort of "peace and long life" for the non-Trekkies. 
 

Kindergarten Earl

Young Earl was a much less casual dresser than Old Earl. Does that outfit scream 1970s? I think it does. 
 

A Close Call

 

Today Sylvia and I had a close call on Anthony Henday Drive. We were in the middle lane when, in the course of regular spot checking, I spotted a large cargo truck swinging into our lane. I had barely enough time to shoulder check on my left; it was clear, so I was able to quickly dart over to the left lane. The truck came close enough to cause Sylvia to yell "Yiiiiikes," and I'm sure were were only a few inches apart for a second or so. 

The other driver showed no sign of awareness, blissfully ignorant of their role in possibly killing one or both of us or at least damaging the vehicle badly enough to turn it into a write-off. 

It was a good reminder that driving is inherently dangerous. Situational awareness is critical, because even if you never make a mistake (and I've made my share behind the wheel), someone else will, and you need to be ready for that. 

Even though I was performing my regular mirror and window checks as I was driving, I was lucky, too. If I'd been checking left instead of right in the critical moment, we might have collided with the truck. 

Stay safe out there. 

An Organic Interlude

Sometime in the mid-1970s, we travelled from Leaf Rapids to Thompson to buy an electronic organ. Mom or Dad shot a Polaroid of us playing with it in the spring of 1977. 

As a built-in teaching aid, the keys on this organ would light up to display the notes. Once you'd learned them, you could turn off the feature and play like a real organist. Mom and Dad got pretty good at it, as I recall, and the organ came with us to Alberta. I think Mom and Dad finally tired of it in the late 80s, or maybe it stopped working. 

The organ's brief presence in our lives is something of an anomaly, as neither Sean nor I play an instrument, nor did Mom and Dad seem to have much interest in doing so aside from this organic interlude. (Pun intended.) Maybe they hoped Sean or I would pursue music. Sean plays the harmonica, but me, well . . . I still have the recorder from the one music class I had in grade four or five, but I was and am pretty terrible. 

This is the our first Mother's Day without Mom, and it feels weird to say it, but I think they might have gotten a kick out of some of the stuff Sean and I have been doing with generative AI tools--taking old photos of fishing trips and turning them into movie clips and so on. Or this: 
 

Sean and Earl as painted by da Vinci. I think Mom would have gotten a chuckle out of this. Dad probably would have shaken his head, but I think he'd like the motorboat animations from our fishing trips. 

Happy Mother's Day, Mom. 

Batman's New Bat-Hat

From time to time, comics have revealed that teams like the Justice League occasionally get together for a group photo. Maybe once a year, or whenever the membership changes. Having managed a few photo shoots in my time, I know how chaotic they can be. Imagine how much more chaotic when the subjects of the photo have personalities ranging from cheery do-gooderism to various forms of mental illness plus an array of disconcerting super-powers. 

Here, Zatanna indulges in some mild tomfoolery by chanting, "taH! evoM ot s'namtaB daeh!" And suddenly Batman's wearing her top hat, much to his annoyance and the chuckles of his super friends. 

I don't think they've ever shown who takes the JL photos, though. Maybe Jimmy Olsen? 
 

Kisses of Death, Flashes of Brilliance

The Death Kiss (Edwin L. Marin, 1932) is a fair-to-middling comedy-mystery hybrid about a movie star who gets shot to death on a film set and the pursuit of his killer. The comedy relies mostly on some dry wit and buffoonery, and the mystery has some clever aspects. It's not a bad film, but it's not terribly memorable--save for two aspects. 

One, Bela Lugosi is in really fine and atypical form here as one of the movie's quasi-antagonists and murder suspects. The script requires him to be somewhat abrasive and therefore credible as a murderer, but Lugosi's performance adds sympathy and ambiguity, so much so that I was thinking to myself that maybe he wouldn't turn out to be the murderer after all. (SPOILERS for a 94-year old movie: he didn't!) 

Two, Marin and his team add flashes of colour during two scenes of this black-and-white film. The first comes as the police are reviewing film in the projection room--film that might reveal the killer's identity. But the projector explodes, and does so in what I think must be hand-painted colour on the frames. The effect is quite dramatic, and if it caught me by surprise, I imagine audiences in 1932 must have been really impressed. There's also some use of the technique for light sources in the aftermath. 

Showing admirable restraint, this trick isn't used again until the film's climax, when the killer is tracked down and a running gunfight breaks out. Again we get hand-painted colour on flashlights and, most effectively, flashes of red and yellow gunfire. It really is a very cool effect that elevates the picture. 


 

Keane Leads with Empathy

 

As I've said in the past, I don't have the knowledge or vocabulary to explain why I like certain pieces of music. All I can say about Keane's "The Way I Feel" is that the percussion makes me want to pretend to play the drums, the keyboards make little flashbulbs of multicoloured light go off in my head, and the guitar (a rarity for Keane in my experience) has me seeing retro, rocket-shaped 1950s starships doing barrel rolls. 

But the lyrics, I get--I hope, anyway. I love how supportive they are--a message of understanding, reassurance, and comfort to someone suffering from some kind of mental illness, low self esteem, or a combination of both. 

The lyrical message is: It's the voices in your head telling you there's something wrong with the way you feel. You're not alone, and I'm here for you. 

It's beautiful, even if by song's end the problem remains. Maybe more beautiful because of that--the support continues no matter what.