Game Photos: JJ Gets Attacked

We almost forgot JJ's hockey game this week, but the phone saved us by posting a reminder when I happened to check it for some other reason with only 40 minutes to go until gametime. We were about to have supper, but it was just a toast night, so we were able to down our food and still get there with plenty of time to spare. The arena is only about 5 minutes away.

We had remembered earlier and made a plan to go but then, both of us being elder citizens, we  forgot.

We do try to attend most of the home games to show our support. Goodness knows the team needs it since they never win — not in league play anyway although they did win one tournament game.

Please note the wonderful writing above with 3 consecutive paragraphs beginning with "We." Sheesh! 

On to the photos.

The first one is my choice for Game Photo. The goalie sprawling like that is a great moment, and it is well focused with his face being clear. It is a bonus, I suppose, that Jonathan in also in the frame although it might have been a stronger photo with just the shooter and the goalie.

A few non-JJ pics that I like. I note in passing that I take a lot of non-JJ pics. The team has a FB group, and I post many photos there for parents to enjoy.

A few more Jonathan pics to end the post. You can see his expression very well, especially on the second one.

I asked Jonathan about team spirits since they never win, but he said they are good.

I also asked him what he must have done to provoke an opposing player so much. The guy was ready to go after him, but Jonathan didn't engage, so the other guy got a penalty. JJ said that he had blocked the guy a bit in front of the net. You probably aren't supposed to do that at this age level, but it tends to be overlooked when everyone is scrambling for the puck in front of the net and it is difficult to avoid contact with so many bodies fighting to get at the puck.

I am not sure when the next hockey posting will be. I think their games for the next few weeks are on the road. We usually only attend the home games.

More New Edits of Old Photos

Last week, I posted two new edits of old photos. One was from the cottage in November 2017, which I shall repeat.

Below: a photo from the same morning just a few minutes earlier than above: the sun almost rising beyond the old barn.

You can see in the above photo that there was some snow on the ground. It has all but dissipated from the fall three days earlier (which I will show in the next photo).

There had also been a fine sunrise on that earlier and snowier day. I took this photo from just behind the cottage which would also have been the view that we could see from the kitchen window, if the window had been both clean and free from frost, that is. In the background is the same barn as above, with the planer mill behind it. These are two of the three outbuildings on the property.

 It was November, so the snow wasn't quite ready to stay, but it soon would be.

Musing About Spell Check

I have often wondered why we don't have autocorrect on computers like we do on phones. It's not that I particularly desire this feature, you understand, but I do wonder at the lack.

Autocorrects are not always helpful, and they can be pretty funny. There are many examples online. Some seem to be contrived but who knows? Of course, the majority seem to involve bathroom or sexual humour, and they tend to be the funniest, but here's a pretty innocuous one for the pure amongst you all.



Although we may be suspicious of the authenticity of some of the examples that we see online, this really does happen. Like the time I texted Shauna that I was taking Rona Ice Time for a backache. I had been trying to type Robaxacet.

Or take my neighbour who texted his wife about being bone donkey at work. He had been trying to write something about boredom, but it came out as bone donkey. Try as he might with various keystroke combinations, he could never replicate that autocorrect and doesn't know what keystrokes he must have hit.

Although I am not pining for the implementation of autocorrect on computers, I still wonder why we don't have it.

I do notice, however, that realtime spell checking is getting very good. Almost every time that I click on a word with a red squiggly, I am presented with the correct choice, so a simple click or two almost always fixes the typo now. It seems to me that it has not been so accurate in the not-too-distant past.

This is in the Chrome browser, but I must assume that they are all getting better. Chrome is even making more and better grammar suggestions. I am not a very proficient keyboarder and often reverse my letters, but the checker will often sense the context and highlight with a  green squiggly a word such as form where from would fit much better. That is pretty good artificial intelligence.

Absent Mindedness

I have developed quite a proclivity (although I do like the word, propensity, too) to forget what I was about to do. My Beloved would probably say that this is nothing new, and she would be correct, but I do believe that it is a phenomenon on the ascendancy, even if it is not new.

To wit: last night, I popped out of my easy chair with great purpose and gusto. I had been doing something or other on my iPad but suddenly decided that I must attend to something or other.

But I was immediately sidetracked by the pop carton. A few hours earlier I had refilled my pop fridge and had left the carton to deal with later. I guess I decided that this was later enough, so I folded it up and pitched it down the stairs to put in recycling on the next morning.

Well, that was fine and dandy, but then I stood in great perplexity staring vacantly all about me, wondering why I had ejected myself from the chair with such great purpose in the first place.

Too bad, AC, that moment is gone. I, your brain, will not permit you to retrieve that thought.

So, I sat my forgetful self back down and resumed whatever I had been doing on the tablet.

Later, when I was brushing my teeth in preparation for bed, I had the thought that I should fill up the coffee machines for morning. I have been trying to do that recently, which I prefer to bothering with in my 5 o'clock groggy stupefaction. I think that was the reason for the earlier rising. I cannot be sure, but I think so.

I think that many of us suffer from this absent mindedness and that you don't have to be an elder for it to happen, but I also think that we of a certain age succumb with greater frequency. Sue, for example, somewhat frequently propels herself into my den to proclaim or ask something of importance, only to stand there with a vacuous look on her glorious countenance. Oh well.

Speaking of absent mindedness and the coffee pot, on this very next morning I have had two incidents of the braindead variety.

You must understand at this point that we have two coffee brewing machines: a single cup pod type and one that brews multiple cups. I have been using the pod one for my early morning mug because it is quick and easy. When Sue gets up later, I make a big pot,

Well then, when I made my initial mug, I forgot to put the mug in place. I was quite fortunate, however, in that the holder at the bottom was big enough to absorb the contents. I was then able to pour the coffee into my mug. But still, it was a moment of forgetfulness.

If that wasn't enough braindeadedness, when it was time to make the big pot, I actually forgot to add the coffee. Once again, I was fortunate to realize this oversight quickly and shut the system down before it had time to percolate. It wouldn't have been tragic had I not discovered my oversight, but I am just as glad not to have made a big pot of hot water.

I Had No Idea

I Had No Idea of what exactly I would see when I got this ↓ message from Google before clicking on it. (Even though I have an iPhone, I use Google Maps and not the Apple version although I do keep that on the phone too.)

Yes, I guess I was aware that I had location services checked on my phone, but I don't really have to guess that I didn't really know what that entailed.

Basically, it shows me every place where I have been with the phone since I got it in late 2017.

We obviously don't travel much or far. The most distant place is the red dot near the bottom left corner. This is Sue's sister's place, only about 4 hours away.

Of course, you can zoom in by area and get right down to street level. For example: when I clicked on that dot ↑ it showed me a large scale map of SIL's exact street and house.

You can also search by day. Here's what we did on October 16 2018.

The arrows mark our route. On the actual map the exact roads were shown with a blue overlay, but the overlay didn't get picked up in the screen capture.

On the side bar, we could see our driving distances, times and stops. (We were actually going home, so the arrows that I inserted, above, should be reversed. I was reading from the bottom up when I added the arrows; it should be read from top down.)

We had been at the cottage and were heading home. First, we drove 40 minutes to Bancroft. Since we spent only 6 minutes there, we must have just gone through the Drive Through for coffee and whatnot. I am pretty sure that there would have been whatnots. 😊

The next and longest leg was 154k to Renfrew, where we stopped at Wendy's for lunch. This drive took the best part of 3 hours. That's only an average of 50k/hour, but if memory serves, we made at least two photo stops (yes, I've now added photos below). We can saunter and stop almost at will on the backroads.

An hour later, we were home. (The trip took us more than 5 hours, but it can be done in half that time on the right roads with greater purpose.) 😎

You can do this reconstruction with any day, but that was our longest trip since October 2018. Times change, and we will likely never get to that cottage again. It's not ours and extended family dynamics have alterred.

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Just to confirm my memory, I have two photos from the section between Bancroft and Renfrew. Autumn was looking pretty good. That is the Madawaska River in the first photo, taken from the Matawatchan Road, I believe near Camel Chute (why that name, I wonder).

Caturday 13: Lacey Falls in Love

What a strange cat she is! While she doesn't approach strangers, she does want to be around when they visit. This is true almost every family dinner when we have Sha and the kids over on a weekly basis. Lacey hangs around. She just chills, nothing more.

The same was true when friends visited for coffee just after New Year. They were here most of the afternoon. And so was Lacey at a time when she would normally be napping upstairs by the back window. That's her habitual afternoon spot, but not when we have company.

She was intrigued by Bob's foot.

Bob and Barb have a dog, so we are guessing that's what drew her. When we got her from the shelter, they did mention that she was known to sleep with the dogs. That's what made us think that she might be animal friendly, but when we tried to introduce another cat, this was not a happy place, as I posted in Caturday 4 back in August.

But her fondness for Bob's foot does make us think that she might be tolerant of dogs. Not that we want a dog, you understand, but there are dog-lovers in the extended family, so it just might work out if and when they visit. Fingers crossed.

Sue made a pet talkie of Lacey's deep feelings: "Who is this guy? I think I'm in love."

Toward the end of the afternoon, we showed Bob the guitar that Shauna has left here for the kids should they ever show an interest. Bob can play, so he tried it out.

Lacey was very interested.

All in all, that was an interesting Lacey afternoon.

Autumn 2017

As my photo ops become less frequent during winter, I sometimes enjoy peering into older photo folders. Today, I have two photos from autumn 2017.

The first is an October sunset from at our Riverside Park. I imagine that I posted it here at the time, but to keep it fresh I sometimes re-process, which is what I have done today. I am not always sure if I like the original edit or the new edit best, but at least it is fresh.

One month later, in November 2017, we were at the cottage where there was a pretty fine sunrise one morning. You'd be tempted to think that I have enhanced it a lot, but I haven't. The main thing was cropping some of the foreground to highlight the tree more. I do like this one quite a bit; I might even consider it to be print-worthy.