A Present from Mom

Mom was in the habit of giving Sean and me cash for expenses incurred while helping her. We protested, but she was persistent. 

Some of that cash was left over since her passing, so while Sean and I were in Leduc to settle some affairs of her estate this morning, we stopped at Habaneros and shared a meal and this delicious deep fried ice cream. Mom enjoyed this place and we'd eaten there together a few times before, so we think she would have approved. 
 

Interred

Just after 11 this morning, Sean, Sylvia and I interred Mom and Dad's mortal remains in a very nice spot in Leduc's beautiful cemetery. We said a few words, ending with our goodbyes and silent promises to return. 

Even after all the stress of heartache of the last few months, this final parting hit harder than any of us anticipated. 

They're together now. That must suffice. 

 

Golden Hour Hydrant Crossing

 

Bold Bunny Bush Blog

Xmas 2025

Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night. 
 

This One Is Lovely

While driving from Leduc to Edmonton on Saturday night, YouTube music's algorhytim slid "This One" through my speakers. To the best of my memory, never before had I heard "This One," and it captured my heart immediately; since that day I've played it dozens of times. 

There's always something new and beautiful to discover, isn't there? 
 

Wizard Encounter

This afternoon, Mom and I were driving down 46 Avenue in Leduc when we spotted a wizard. We were driving quite slowly because there was a line of cars waiting to turn right, so we got a good look at him. He was a bearded white fellow in his 30s wearing black and red robes and a black hooded cloak. He was using a tall gold staff with a large disc at its midpoint, and on his cloaked back were written the words "Love Light." (I didn't see those words myself; Mom observed his retreating form as we completed our right turn.) 

During the encounter the wizard smiled and waved at us as if to reassure us that our eyes had not deceived us. I'm glad Mom was there, otherwise I might have feared I was hallucinating. 

Violent Greens Use Violent Means

Violent greens 
Producing pepper pod people
Perfectly pseudopeople
Impenetrable cell walls a mystery for the chlorophyll-philes
Crooked rows seeding chaos
Dissent and dysentery 

 

Pinwheel

Round and round and round it spins
Crimson pinwheel, dancing winds
Harbinger of naught and null
Hydrocarbon sunflower shaped by spacetime
Hypnotic eye predicting the fall
Of a garden in Orion, thought hidden away
A pathway to tomorrow eroding by the day
Threads fraying beneath our feet
Invisible inevitable irrevocable doom
Lurking in an iris unseen
 

Three Sisters

My aunts Jean and Marjorie (far left), came to Edmonton on Friday for a wedding, and on Sunday Sean, Sylvia and I came out to Leduc to see them. Mom served a very delicious lunch, and my cousins Darwin (seen here to my right), Bruce (not in this photo for some reason--where did he go?) and Darwin's son Brandon (who shot the photo) popped by, too. It was great seeing my aunts again! 
 

What We Found There

 

A Squirrel in the Crabapple Tree

Sean and I visted Mom for Mother's Day today. A squirrel visited us while we were relaxing under the shade of the crabapple tree that refuses to die. 

Sean found a better position at just the right time to capture a much better shot. 

Lego Advent Calendar Haiku 2023 Day 24

An Ewok Xmas
Santa's hearty ho-ho-ho
Distant jingle Bells

Christmas in Leduc
Photograph by Sean E. Woods
Elizabeth's smile

For the Want of a Dashcam

Earlier today, Sylvia and I headed to Leduc to help Mom with some gardening and return her leaf blower. To avoid construction on the southwest leg of Anthony Henday Drive, we drove north instead, figuring it would be faster to drive all the way around the city than wait for the inevitable backlog through the construction zone. 

That choice could have gone very badly for us. Just a few minutes into the drive, we rounded a gentle curve and discovered an upside-down kayak was blocking the entire middle lane--the one we were using. I barely had time to shoulder check and maneuver into the left lane to dodge the obstacle. 

Fortunately, the kayak was bright green-yellow and I spotted it instantly. Had we hit it, at the very least the kayak would have ruined our front end and undercarriage; at worst, I might have lost control of the vehicle. 

Our car was the first to nearly collide with the kayak; while all this was happening, I caught sight of a man getting out of a pickup truck and getting out his cell phone, presumably to call emergency services. Several vehicles behind us had to swerve clear of the kayak as well, and as I lost sight of the man with the cell phone, I hoped we wouldn't get himself killed trying to drag the kayak to the shoulder. 

Everything happened in just a couple of seconds. It was a good reminder to stay alert when you're driving. 

Rolo Out the Barrel

A few weeks ago, Sean and I stopped at the Val-Mart in Leduc for some groceries. I noticed the store had Rolo candies, which I haven't had since the 1980s. On a lark, I picked up a roll specifically so that I could place two Rolos bottom-to-bottom, as pictured above, to form a barrel shape. I used to do this as a kid, for reasons long forgotten. I guess I thought it somehow looked neat? 

I was, and am, easily amused. 
 

Mother's Day 2023

Sean and I have enjoyed a lovely two-day visit with Mom this weekend helping plant her garden. Mom had too many bedding plants, so she generously donated the leftovers to Sean and Sylvia and me. 

And we enjoyed a really nice Mexican lunch at Habanero's in Leduc. Beautiful weather, too. Two very good days. 

Happy Mother's Day, Mom! 
 

Shower Cat

Sean's first cat, Alexander the Great, or just Alex, had some interesting habits. For one, he liked to relax on top of the television, as seen here. He also liked lurking atop the refrigerator, and if you stuck a finger up over the edge, he'd bat at it playfully. I also remember playing a kind of soccer with him; we'd whack a bottlecap back and forth across the kitchen floor. He really loved sleeping on Dad, and sometimes he'd climb into bed with me, too, despite my allergies and my protests of "Go away, stupid cat! I'm allergic!" 

The behaviour I found enjoyed most, though, and found the most perplexing, was the way he'd join me in the basement shower. He didn't like getting wet, but for some reason the shower fascinated him, so he'd sit at the edge of the spray and look up at me. I'm not sure what he wanted, but it was strangely adorable. 

Anyway, I've never been much of a pet guy, but Alex was very cute. 
 

Atari 8-Bit Cartridge Inventory, Continued

(Ignore my incorrect voiceover; this was 1982, not 1980). 

Thanks to Sean, here are a few more Atari 8-bit cartridges we owned back in the day: 

Dig Dug
Tunnel through the earth and use your pump to blow up monsters! Another excellent arcade port. 

Astro Chase
This is one of the few Atari 8-bit games with a cinematic opening of a sort, along with a really decent, if repetitive, soundtrack. You flew around the earth, using your joystick to fire laser beams in four directions. Very fluid and fast moving. 

Choplifter
This was one of our favourites. Choplifter was a 2D side scroller; you flew your helicopter behind enemy lines to rescue hostages. By holding the joystick down for a second, you could rotate your chopper to face toward you and shoot missiles straight down, good for blowing up tanks, or, if you were sadistic, shooting the hostages you were supposed to rescue. 

Q-Bert
Yet another arcade port, in this one you hopped around "painting" the tiles on a faux-3D pyramid while avoiding a purple snake and other hazards. Famous for "swearing" when Q-Bert dies. A fun, accurate adaptation.

Fight Night
I barely remember this one, and Sean thinks it may have been the last game he purchased for the Atari 8-bit (by that time, the 130XE). Here's a video:

Robotron: 2084
A fast-pace, frenetic shooter, the arcade version sported two joysticks: one to control your movement, and the other to fire in any direction. Rather than doing things the lazy way and combining those functions into one joystick, Atari packaged the Atari 8-bit version in a box that allowed you to sit two Atari joysticks side-by-side so you could replicate the way the arcade version played. Sean still has the box! 

Jungle Hunt
Swing through the jungle on vines without missing, swim through the crocodile-infested river, and run up the hill as boulders roll down at you, all so that you can rescue your beau from, well, a rather insensitive portrayal of jungle cannibals. Eek. Swinging on the vines was a lot of fun, though. 

Atari BASIC
Not a game but a programming language, Sean and I learned a lot about computers by fastidiously typing out programs from books and magazines and then experimenting with the commands we learned to create our own programs. 

Super Breakout
A game that's still fun to play today, bounce a ball against a slowly descending wall of colourful bricks in the hopes of smashing them all. 


Moon Patrol
Whimsical but repetitive, in this one you drive a dune buggy--or rather, a moon buggy--across the moon's surface, avoiding craters and the like. Not terribly memorable. 

Centipede
As in the arcade version, you control a little ship at the bottom of the screen, shooting at the centipede winding its way toward you. Mushrooms get in the way, and spiders complicate matters. Fast-paced and entertaining. 

Jumbo Jet Pilot
A very, very primitive flight simulator with terrible graphics. Not very good at all--a waste of money at the time, I remember thinking. 

Qix
This game was almost like impressionist  abstract painting--create squares on the playing field by drawing enclosures with lines while avoiding "sparx" and the Qix itself, a floating bundle of neon-coloured sticks. Great game. 

Frogger
Why did the frog cross the road? To earn some quarters. Another excellent arcade port. 

Protector II
A Defender rip-off, but I remember it being almost as good as the original arcade classic. Fly your ship horizontally over a cityscape and rescue people from alien invaders.

Speedway Blast
A driving game where you drive a race car through a small town while avoiding a really creepy giant snake-like thing with a quasi-human head. 

Ms. Pac-Man
Even better than Pac-Man, in terms of gameplay and fidelity to the arcade version. House of fun. 

Desert Falcon
This might have been the last XE cartridge I purchased; it was a diagonal side-scroller aircraft shooter with a vaguely Egyptian theme. 

Zaxxon
Another side scroller, with good 3D fakery (you could move up and down and side to side to avoid obstacles) and a science fiction theme. 

Shamus 
You're a shamus slinging shivs in an endless labyrinth, dodging robots and looking for clues to escape. Sean and I both really enjoyed this one, despite never winning. I don't think you could, really - there weren't a lot of games you could win in those days. 

Star Trek: Strategic Operations Simulator
It wasn't the greatest port of the arcade version, mainly because once again the original used vector graphics, but it was still a lot of fun tooling around the galaxy blowing up Klingons and Nomad. 

Startled Snowperson

The Further Adventures of the Adventure People

 

Over ten years ago, I wrote about the Wilderness Patrol Adventure People set I received as a Christmas gift way back in 1976. To my flabbergasted surprise and utter delight, on Saturday Sean gave me a virtually complete, mint-condition Wilderness Patrol set he found on Ebay. They're all here: the forest ranger, the collie, Red, the pilot, the sleeping bags, the pontoon boat, the plain, and the ATV. The only thing missing is the tow rope, which is pretty insignificant. The toys and figures are all in outstanding shape considering their age, and they brought a whole raft of memories flooding back. These guys really lived up to their name, both in Leaf Rapids and Leduc--exploring the "desert sands" of Leaf Rapids (the beautiful beach sand ground so finely by the retreating glaciers thousands of years ago) and the "dense jungles" of Leduc (the lawn and plants of our back yard). 

Sean, this was an incredibly thoughtful and impactful gift, and I'll find these guys a place of honour when the library is transformed into the game room.