The Snit and the Cheese

They were $2.59 + 13% tax for a very small, 70g/2.5oz bag. Quite expensive, eh?  But Hawkins Cheezies are Canadian through and through, so they were worth investigating, especially since the package says they are made with real cheddar and no preservatives.

Shauna said was familiar with them from her teenage camping parties that I don't want to know anything about, but I hadn't even heard of them until you-know-who decided that America should annex Canada. That put us into a bit of a snit up this way.

I thought, "Darn the expensive. I'm going to give them a try." 

So, I did . . . try them.

My Oh My! What I have been missing‽ 

I owe it all to you-know-who.

Stupid Photoshoot

Well, it was a stupid shoot that I kept brief by necessity. Because what silly, old fool would take his equipment out at -4C and gale-force winds? In my defence, and I surely need one, it did look nice out there from the warm side of my windows. 

Here's where I was out behind town hall looing toward the waterfall and dam. After my short photographic attempt, neither of us wanted to proceed on our intended walk, so back home we went.

The whitewater way off to the right was what I was trying to capture with my telephoto lens. 

I wanted to get more rushing water photos while the river is still in spring runoff mode, so I squeezed off a few shots, before I made like a tree and leaved. (Back to the Future reference)

This photo is in colour, believe it or not: a patch of blue visible at the top of the drop.

1/5sec, f10, 339mm, ISO100

I like the flow and colour of the rushing water after the drop.

1/5sec, f10, 400mm, ISO100

I squeezed off a couple more shots of the edge of the faraway dam and converted this one to b&w with some filtering. I converted because I did not like the colour of the edge of the dam against the water.

1/10sec, f10, 400mm, ISO100, cropped

Believe it or not, we are under yet another weather watch tonight, but the day may be liveable. 

Searching Memory

Danica messaged us. For an English essay, she  . . . well, here's the message.

Does anyone remember when we started staying at dad’s and when we returned to mom’s during Covid. I would like to know for an essay I’m writing but it’s very hard for me to remember events from that time.

We started looking for the answer to Dani's question, and I first found it on Flickr. It can be easier and quicker to look up things in Flickr than in Blogger although I tried Blogger first.

Following, is the timeline that I pieced together.

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Because Shauna worked at a seniors residence, there were concerns about the spread of COVID in that tight environment, so Shauna sent the kids to the safety of their dad's house.

This is the photo that I posted to Flickr on May 16 2020 (my mother's birthday) but taken the day before, May 15 2020, after a separation of eight weeks. Their dad took this photo of their greeting after driving the kids over to Sha's house.

Once I had found the date on Flickr, I moved on to Blogger, where I had posted the colour version in addition to the b&w.

This is what I wrote on both Flickr and Blogger. I don't think there is one other example of me posting exactly the same thing on both platforms in over twenty years on both mediums.

Eight weeks ago, my daughter made the difficult decision to send the kids to their dad's place. She made this sacrifice because of the dangers inherent in working in a seniors residence at this time. However, her residence has been safe for many many weeks, and it was time for the kids to come home. Tears may have been shed during this hug, but there were certainly moist eyes here upon seeing the photo. (taken by their dad, I presume) 

I am proud of my daughter for making this selfless decision, and I am thrilled that they are back together.

As we looked back on those pictures, we all re-experienced some poignant feelings, or at least all of the adults did.

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You will probably want to stop reading at this point, for the above was all that I intended to post. However, I became curious as to what happened both before and after that reunion in the days of that viral threat, so I add the following for my personal and family benefit. 

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They were hard times in a way, for this is how we had celebrated Sue's birthday that year, 2020, just a few days after the lockdown. The kids and their stepsisters came by with signs.

Then came Danica's birthday almost a month later on April 19. We celebrated at safe social distances in the cold garage.

We also celebrated Mother's Day in the garage, but I will spare you another, similar garage photo. We followed with a safe-distance meetup or two in June, and by Father's Day, the numbers, which I tracked assiduously, were looking not too bad so we got together in close quarters in the house.

We met a few times in July and August, both in the park and at home, and we even dared to have Jonathan over for a sleepover. 

We we felt safe enough to have my September birthday at our place.

If I am getting this right, the numbers began to surge as the weather began to chill, so we were back to the fresh air safety of the park for Canadian Thanksgiving in mid-October.

Later. we had a Halloween meetup in the same park, but by December numbers were really taking off, and we were isolating once more, especially because of the fraught situation at Shauna's work. Our annual tree-decorating party was virtual. 

The town cancelled the normal parade, but a mini parade quickly swept through some of the neighbourhoods.

I had forgotten this, but that the kids isolated for awhile and then tested themselves to confirm that they were virus free. So Shauna sent them over for awhile on Christmas Day.

Danica also came for a sleepover just before New Year. We even went on a little photoshoot together near New Year.

The good times were not to last, and as winter deepened, we were back into not-so-splendid isolation. That went on for more than two months, but finally, COVID tests were taken, and we chanced quick hugs at the door. This was on March 07 2021, just about a year after it had all begun. I admit to being very emotional on that day, and I confess to feeling a bit of similar emotional right now.

I shall spare further pictures for those who have made it this far, but it was back to the garage in 2021 for both Sue's and Danica's birthdays as well as Mother's Day. Father's Day was another park meetup, and it really wasn't until July, after the first two vaxes, that life began to approach the old normal although I believe there was still quite a bit of masking going on.

It was quite a time. We were in our vulnerable seventies, so we remained very cautious throughout and did what we thought we should do in order to keep as safe and healthy as possible. 

Here we are five years later, living pretty normal and healthy lives, all things considered.

Late December 2024

Education and Evidence

It is possible that this map explains a lot. I had no idea of the low proportions of tertiary educated people in so much of the USA. I know you don’t have to go to college to be smart, but a lot of smart people do go to college, and education does affect how we think, especially how critically we think.

Critical thinking involves evaluating information, identifying assumptions, and solving problems objectively, requiring skills like analysis, inference, and communication to form sound judgments and make informed decisions. (Google AI)

The thing is that the less critical people are, the more susceptible we are to succumb to the Dunning-Kruger Effect. For example: someone might think that they know all about climate change based on one YouTube video by someone without credentials. I am sure that one could think of many more examples. 

In theory at least, critical thinkers will be less dogmatic about their opinions and also more likely to change their minds in light of new evidence. Evidence from reliable sources is key.

Like Crazy Baboons

When March came in like a lion, we took solace from the old refrain: "March comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb." However, after that beginning, much of March remained leonine, and this is how it looked on Saturday morning in the last weekend of the month. Not lamb-like at all. Roar.

When I looked out the window, I saw that the driveway guys had already done one pass, but that they would have to return for a second, clearing which would include removing that ridiculous bank of heavy snow left behind by the ever-so-thoughtful city plow. This they did in due course.

That ↑ was Saturday. It is now 6am, Sunday morning. When I awoke at 5:30, I looked out my window, except I could only look at my window and not out because it was covered in ice. Thankfully, the power is still on, but the current weather report predicts that the freezing rain will last for another 8 hours, so I'll finish this up soon and get it posted. 

Whatever happens, we'll manage. Fortunately, Danica, who works parttime in Perth, a half hour rural drive away, was able to switch shifts with someone who lives close to work. On the other hand, the last that I heard, Jonathan was still expected to show up at work. His work, you may remember, is to deliver groceries to cars in the parking lot. It is difficult to picture cars driving to the store for pickup today, but that is all that I can report for now.

When I look at the forecast, it sure seems that winter is not done with us yet, for I see snow off and on in the long range forecast until April 10th. I think we can drop the March Lion metaphor for something like, "March comes in like a pack of crazed baboons who wreak havoc well into April."

Whitewater

After I took the big scene photos seen in yesterday's post, I turned my attention to little vignettes. I thought to capture water flowing around or by stable objects such as boulders and riverbanks, but the results were so-so.

Here they are the first two despite my reservations, both converted to b&w.

They ↑ were taken from the trail bridge. We then made our way over to the little bridge, where the river is extremely fast-flowing and it great volume, not little vignettes. It was truly whitewater over there. but I mainly shot from beside the bridge and not on it. Once again, not thrilled with the outcomes, I put different filters on these in edit looking for a satisfactory result.

It turns out that the next photo of just the fast-flowing water is my favourite, more that the previous flowing-by-things photos, above. I guess it pays to try different shots. Aside from the waves, I appreciate the colours that were captured.

Back to the bigger and higher trail bridge. While I was taking some of the other photos, Sue had spotted this ever-changing cascade by one of the bridge supports  The cascade kept changing from sparse to full and in between. The first photo shows a half-full cascade, the second is full. It kept changing, I like these as well, for the colour is pleasant to my eyes, and I don't mind how the misty whitewater to the right is overexposed and free of texture.

So, it turned out that the photos that I most wanted to take were my least favourites ones and vice versa.

I know that the next section will be almost meaningless to most of you, but Mulewings, Roentare and Spare Parts might like to read it.

I should say that the whole shoot was a bit of a struggle to remember how to work the camera as well as I would have liked. For one thing, I haven't used the camera much lately, and beyond that I seldom use a tripod, but it was needed to achieve relatively slow shutters speeds of around 1/5th of a second. That's about the speed I needed to get the blurry motion that I wanted. Secondly, I was using a variable neutral density filter to allow me to use a slow shutter because it was actually fairly bright out, and that was just one other almost unfamiliar thing to contend with, especially in changing light, depending on where I was pointing the camera. Third thing, and this really bugged me, was forgetting to attach my tripod collar to the lens, so I had to put the actual camera in the holder and that tends to unbalance things when you are using a long lens. In this case I was using a 100-400mm lens. Although, I used the full 400mm zoom in yesterday's post, the longest reach in this series was 325mm in the very first photo. The cascade photos were taken at 258mm. The one of just the whitewater was the least zoomed, at 181mm.

Whitewater in both Directions

I left you yesterday with a post about spring flooding, and I mentioned that the river changed just a little farther downstream from the park. Hoping to capture some of that, we headed to the trail bridge yesterday. The former railway bridge looks westward to the main bridge, but it you turn east you can se the little, one-lane bridge that doesn't get too much traffic.

Looking west, upriver, there is a significant little waterfall with town hall in the background.

Looking west toward town hall and the little falls

Not shown in the above photo, there is a dam just off to the left. The reason for this dam is somewhat obscure to me, but I know that there was a hydro electric power plant over in that vicinity at one time.

The dam

In the above westward photos, the river has already narrowed from the picture from the park that I showed yesterday. As a result the water flows faster.

However, when I turn around to take a a eastward photo looking toward the little bridge, there is further narrowing of the channel, causing the water to become even more violent.

Water flowing under the Little Back Bridge

After that it widens and calms down somewhat again before it gets to Almonte and to the falls that I have shown you recently.

What I want to do tomorrow, now that I have set the larger scene, is to post some little photos of the rushing water.

Addendum: Sue showed me this photo after I wrote the above. It looks like I was taking one of the two first photos in the post.

Spring Robins and Floods

The weather is discouraging, but that is March being March. The sun crosses the equator, and we have a few nice days. Then, the temperature drops again, and the winds come, and we even get more snow. It's always a letdown, but there are signs — signs apart from the disappearing snow pile, of which by the way, the small core still lingers.

Robins are a sure sign. Sue, for example, used her wonderful telephoto on her phone to capture this robin on our neighbourhood walk.

Then, we had coffee by the park adjacent to the boat launch. Just over two weeks ago, we couldn't see over the snowbank, but it is all gone. The yearly flooding of that low strip between the parking lot and the river has occurred. The river beyond that tree has risen to the same level as the land, and the resulting pond was full of geese and a few ducks.

I wanted to get a photo of all of the fowl in the pond, but had I stepped out of the car for a clear photo, they would have left. So, I did my best through the windshield and then cropped away the hood in the bottom third of the photo.

The river has overflowed the bank near the tree, and the geese search for food in the resultant pond.

Flooding occurs here every spring but sometimes even more so than this year. One year, as we sat in the car, a couple actually launched their canoe from the right right of the photo where the trees abut the edge of the park. They paddled from the pond onto the river and went on their excursion upriver.

Miracle of miracles, I found those pictures from April 2017. First, look at the extent of the pond from all of the flooding: so much more than this year. Then, I have the picture of the couple getting into the canoe, followed by one of the paddling away on the actual river.

While it all looks calm enough in these photos, the high water creates quite a torrent farther downstream. Maybe I will be able to capture capture some pictures, but it was so dull yesterday that I couldn't be bothered to lift my camera —- not even the little phone.

Sue's Day

The birthday came and went. You may recall that there was an early gift of a pretty upscale iPhone, but there had to be something else for Sue on her special day. There is always the gift of a card, and you saw that yesterday, but some other little thing was required.

So . . . come mid-morning, I went out to pick up a little bouquet of three white and three red roses that I ordered last week. I could have had them delivered, but I knew that we'd be going out at some point, so I decided to pick them up to avoid a delivery conflict. Sue took various photos; I chose these two. I would show the whole bouquet, but that download is choosing to give me grief.

Then, it was off to Ottawa for lunch at Swiss Chalet, where the nice server provided a piece of lemon pie after our rotisserie chicken lunch.

Shauna and Dani dropped over after work and school respectively just to say hello. I think we'll see them again on the weekend along with Jonathan who was working today. We had buns and cold cuts available so that they wouldn't have to go home and still fuss with dinner. Poor Lacey was not included.

Of course, there were gifts, which hardly excited Sue at all, as you can plainly see.

! 78 !

The woman with whom I have spent most of mu life is 78 years young today. We don't dine out often, but we often take pictures when we do, so many of the pictures that I have of her are from these outings. Here is the most recent one from you know where.

This year's card: front, followed by inside, which I did sign later, bottom right.

I found the collage that I made 10 years ago for Sue's 68th and thought that I would post it again. It's chronological if you begin at top left and then go clockwise down and back around to bottom left.