Many Happy Returns

This is the latest in a series of pictures C and I have taken together while celebrating her birthday which falls around this time of year. Husband took it, and when he protested and wanted to take another one, saying "It's blurry!" we replied "That's okay, we're blurry!" and insisted on using this one. Taken with a Blackberry, without flash, in a bar, by a blurry Husband of two blurry women. Pretty accurately captures the merry mood. Happy Birthday, C, and many happy returns of the day!

The Bard at the Barracks

Last night C. and I went to a performance of Twelfth Night, part of the Bard in the Barracks series of outdoor performances of Shakespeare's plays. The plays are performed by NotaBle Acts, a Summer Theatre Company and Festival, using the old barracks in Officer's Square as their backdrop, hence the name; and it's a great set because the barracks has rooms accessible at ground level and two open balcony-walkways above, all of which were used to effect in last night's performance, as the barracks stood in for Countess Olivia's estate among other things.
It was a perfect, perfect night for it and the performance was outstanding. These are people who have been busy professional stage actors for years in some cases and decades in others and we are lucky they are all here to entertain us this summer. I only took a handful of pictures as I didn't want to distract the actors, and we were in the front row. In this image, Viola (disguised as a boy, Cesario), declares her master Duke Orsini's love to Countess Olivia.




Later, Cesario reports on "his" luck in winning Olivia's affections, as a young audience member watches intently. He was successful - but in all the wrong ways, as Olivia has fallen for him instead of the Duke.

Olivia has a quick-witted, tongue-twisting conversation with her fool, Feste, while the Puritan Malvolio watches disapprovingly from the background.



Having been tricked by a forged letter into thinking that Countess Olivia harbours feelings for him, Malvolio dons the garb requested in the letter - yellow stockings and crossed garters - and prepares to sweep her off her feet. Instead, he'll be mocked mercilessly by the ne'er-do-wells who set him up (Shakespeare really did not like Puritans, who would've loved to see his bawdy plays, as well as most forms of public entertainment, shut down) and eventually thrown into jail as a lunatic.

It was genuinely funny - you forget how, in the mouths of talented actors, Shakespearean English becomes immediately understandable, right down to the double-entendres and ribald jokes. That, plus given that the physical comedy skills of the company is outstanding, made for a laugh-out-loud performance.

I'm extremely pleased that C. suggested going. It was the most enjoyable thing I've done in a long time. Of course, what less would you expect from a play which opens with some of the loveliest words in the English language:

If music be the food of love, play on;
Give me excess of it, that, surfeiting,
The appetite may sicken, and so die.
That strain again! it had a dying fall:
O, it came o’er my ear like the sweet sound
That breathes upon a bank of violets,
Stealing and giving odour!

ronnie

Blogging T.O., Part Two

On Friday I had a chock-full day of conference at the storied Royal York Hotel, a block east of the Intercontinental. It’s a beautiful, posh hotel full of history, Toronto’s “It Girl” where royalty and rock stars stay while in town, and have since 1929.

At the end of day Friday, I emerged from the Royal York and began to proceed a block west to the Intercontinental. Suddenly I realized that something was up. Police cars and flashing lights were everywhere. Front Street was completely closed. There was yellow “Police Line Do Not Cross” tape blocking every intersection and cops on every corner. Holy smokes – something was up. I continued on toward the hotel and the cop on the corner said, “Where are ya headed?”

“The Intercontinental,” I said, pointing to it. “I’m staying there.”

“Okay, ya gotta go down this side street around the tape and go in through the underground.”

“I’m not from here,” I said. “Do you mean the PATH?” (Toronto has an extensive underground shopping and transport system and I thought he might’ve meant I was to look for some entrance to it.)

“No,” he said, “The underground parking garage entrance to your hotel. Stay close to the buildings. There’s ice fallin’ off the CN Tower!”

(Maybe Brian, who many reviewers of Mom’s Cancer vaguely call a “science writer” or “technical writer”, can elucidate, but I am pretty certain that if a piece of ice the size of a tabletop fell from the CN Tower, at an acceleration rate of 9.8 m/s², the result would be as if the entire government falled on my haid. But Brian may be able to put it more succinctly, possibly with numbers and pretty algebraic Greek symbols.)

As I peered around the corner to where he pointed, I could indeed see the entrance to the underground parking at my own hotel, and two more cops monitoring that entrance and yet more yellow tape.

“Ok, I see… thanks!” I said.

“Run!” he said. I runned.

I took the elevator from the parking garage up to my room where I reflected on the folly miracle of 553-metre towers in a country where blizzards are de rigeur, and the unexpected and incredible results thereof.

The next morning, the situation hadn’t changed. In fact, it had worsened. Saturday evening they wouldn’t even let me return to the hotel by the same route, making me walk around the block to the north, where I could access underground tunnels farther away from the hotel. “They ain't no other safe way, ma’am!” the no-nonsense cop said firmly, as she pointed to the north.




That’s okay. On the way around the block (which took me past the Mothercorp - isn't Rick Mercer adorable?) I discovered a little Pakistani restaurant where I returned later for a nice supper of chaat papri and chicken jalfrezi.




Later still, conference delegates reconvened for the conference fête (hey, they named it) at the painfully trendy This is London nightclub (entertainment: reggae, courtesy Bobby Dreadful).

In spite of all the bother, I had fun. I love Toronto, it's one of my favourite cities. It is surely not the only city in the world, but certainly one of the only cities in the world, which has everything you could possibly want in terms of shopping, dining, culture, entertainment, and fun, and yet where the residents conduct themselves like citizens of a small town and you can still strike up conversations with strangers every day.

(Taken from my hotel room: The CN Tower reflected in the building next to my hotel.)

Well, all things must come to an end, bizarre twists and all, and now I am home again in the bosom of my kitties and Husband.

And guess what? The airport just called. They found my luggage.

ronnie

Blogging T.O., Part One

Here’s a little secret about writing about a really bad trip: other people don’t want to hear about your really bad trip. You want to recount in painstaking detail everything that went wrong, so cathartic would it be; but your readers, love you though they may, really find retracing those steps as excruciating as a trip to the dentist.

Therefore, let me cut to the chase and put us all out of our misery: worst snowstorm to hit Toronto in years. Me, flew into it. 2 hours on tarmac at Montrèal after changing planes. 1.5 hours on tarmac in Toronto while they cleared snow so we could access our gate.

That’s the big picture. The details I’ll only fill in about the (slightly) interesting elements.

We had flown from beautiful, sunny Fredericton into Montrèal (across from me, a Concordia University student who dutifully took out her “Understanding Macroeconomics” textbook, and then spent the 1.5 hour flight doing Sudoku puzzles). In Montrèal, after boarding and waiting way too long at the gate, we were told that our “window had closed” for landing in Toronto because of a vicious storm lashing the region, but they needed the gate for another plane, so we were going to taxi to the tarmac and wait. (For another “window”, I guess.) Estimated time: 1.5 to 2 hours.

And it was there, then, that I was idly thinking, well, at least they’d have had lots of time to transfer the bags so they shouldn’t lose my little checked bag in the transfer between the Fredericton-Montrèal flight and the Montrèal-Toronto flight, when all of a sudden, it hit me, like a ton of bricks.

I’d packed my CI battery charger and spare batteries in my checked luggage.

How could I have been so stupid? What was I thinking? Without the batteries, there was no CI. I would never in a million years pack the processor into checked airline luggage. Instead, I packed its life-support system into checked luggage.

I mean, I know what I was thinking. I packed them in the same place that I have ever since I’ve gotten them, a nice safe place cushioned in the lid of my bag. But every time I’ve travelled since I got the CI has been by land, and the bag hasn’t been out of my possession. This time, my two pieces of carry-on were my laptop and my purse, and my roller-bag went in the cargo hold. And I had packed, as usual – unthinkingly – with my battery charger and my two spare batteries in the lid.

I spent the next two hours on that tarmac, and the following hour in flight, fretting and panicking and working scenarios. What if they lost my bag? How long would it take to get a replacement battery charger and batteries? I’d be deaf until they arrived. And OH! the COST! the unnecessary COST! And what would I say to Husband? And to the people at work? While I was deaf, while I was waiting? What a stupid, thoughtless thing to do!

Agony. Followed by hurried mental reassurances that they wouldn’t lose my bag, they’d never lost one of my bags, even when I’d changed planes twice. It would be there in Toronto. It would. It would.

And it was. But what a lesson! From now on, even though it will be troublesome and complicated to explain to Security what this unusual electronic stuff in my carry-on is, from now on when I fly they travel with ME.

And then, as mentioned, we arrived into one of the worst blizzards Toronto has seen all winter. The airport was chaos, transportation to the downtown was chaos.

I was staying at the Intercontinental Snooty Toronto Centre (all right, I made up the Snooty part), a swank place that I could never afford if someone else (and I mean someone with more money than my organization – we’re sponsored for this conference) wasn’t paying for it.

I asked for a deaf kit at check-in (I had not pre-ordered one) and they sent one right to my room. I was dismayed to find they’d done something I’d already discovered at one other hotel earlier – they use the “CC” button on the remote control to call up the hotel’s internal telly menu. In other words, if you press the “CC” button on your remote, instead of offering closed-captioning options, it calls up a channel listing the hotel services, pay-per-view movies, games, etc. menu. I know it is intentional because in both cases written instructions on the TV said to press “CC” to get the hotel menu.

But I asked at the front desk the next morning if someone could activate the CC on my telly and when I got back that night the TV was on and the CC was working.

And on the flight back? Word of honour - they lost my bag. I'm waiting for them to call now. But I didn't make the same mistake twice - my battery charger is with me.

Next post: the actual visit, or what happens when ice starts to fall off a 1/2-km tall building.

ronnie

I thought we were going to Toronto. Why are we over a desert?

Tomorrow will be the first time I fly since getting my implant. I have been wondering about whether the implant and/or processor will be a problem with getting through security and/or whether they can be affected by metal detectors and flight.

Looking for answers turned up this list of FAQs about air travel with a cochlear implant. My favourite question:

"Will my implant transmit signals that can interfere with the plane’s navigational instruments?"

One would heartily hope that if it did, someone would've told me by now!

I am a bit concerned that most sites about airline travel with a CI suggest that the user just show the screener their "Patient Identification Card" or simiilar terminology. I've never been given any such card, indeed never heard of them until now; so I will have to cross my fingers and hope that the things have become common enough that nobody has a problem with it tomorrow.

*Edit - Ha! Whaddya know? I do have a card - it was in an envelope along with the warranty and a bunch of printed information in the big box the CI and its accessories originally came in. And now it's in my purse. Potential crisis averted.

ronnie

Canadian animator Ryan Larkin dies

I am too sad to write much about this. Read the story here.

I vacillate from feeling sad at so much wasted potential to chagrin, knowing that Larkin himself despised and resented those who felt sad for him, for all his wasted potential.

In the end, he lived his life on his own terms. And that, you must respect.

If you love animation and inexplicably have not seen Larkin's Academy-Award-winning Walking, his brilliant Street Musique, or Chris Landreth's Academy-Award-winning animated biopic, Ryan, do yourself a favour and get your hands on them as soon as possible.

ronnie

Remembrance

Today is Remembrance Day and we went to the Cenotaph for the Remembrance service, C., Husband and I. It was clear and sunny and not too cold.


It was a very different ceremony this year. This year the sacrifices of war are not an abstract concept or a distant memory. We were not only honouring the veterans and the dead of past wars...






...but also those who are in harm's way and coming home in flag-draped coffins right now, today. This year Canadians dying young on the battlefield is reality, not history.


Unsurprisingly the crowd was huge. Hundreds and hundreds of people.

Many, many people brought their children, many many toddlers there with their parents. I found it strangely touching that people were getting out of bed early on a Saturday and bundling up their two-and-three year olds (an event in itself) and taking them out to stand in the autumn chill for an hour. I saw parents hold their toddlers in their arms so that they could see the whole time, which must have been incredibly tiring.

There can be no reason for doing that other than wanting them to know this is important, it means something.


After the ceremony if you choose you can leave the poppy you've been wearing in your lapel on the steps of the Cenotaph or in a cross-shaped box, and we did that.

Today the politics of the war wasn't important. Today was a day to say thank you and please, please, we want all of you home safe. Soon. Somehow.


ronnie

Conrad Black wants to be Canadian again

He also said in the same interview that he has "settled into my new life as a freedom fighter."


Conrad Black can kiss my maple-leaf-festooned Canadian ass.

That is all.

ronnie

Happy Birthday, "C"!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

As we do every year, in honour of "C"'s birthday, Fredericton invited some of the finest jazz and blues musicians in the world to to kick off autumn with a bang.

Last night, as has become tradition, we took in the "Blues Happy Hour" at the Mojo Tent together.

This year we heard an incredible performance from up-and-coming NB blues musician JP LeBlanc. (We left with that odd satisfying feeling you get if you have the experience of understanding that you've seen someone who is going to be great, before they are famous and lauded and un-seeable in such an intimate venue.)

Last year, the same concert - Colin Linden played - was the first live performance I'd attended since I had gotten my hearing back. It's a really special thing for me, and it is all wrapped up with celebrating the fact that the world is a better place because some years ago, C made her debut on the face of it.

Of all the friends who did amazing things when I went deaf, C did the most amazing things.

Of all the people who knew how to do and say the right things at the right time, who went way beyond the call of duty to help, who not only helped me keep my sanity but helped Husband keep his, who showed themselves to be true "friends in need" in the most fundamental sense of the phrase, C was the most outstanding.

She went out, after a demanding day's work, into the freezing Fredericton night, two nights a week, week after week, to learn sign language.

So that I wouldn't be alone.

I'm embarrassing her now :) .

So, to honour another tradition, here is this year's C birthday photo.

(Husband says we're both better-looking this year. I say he's right.)

Happy Birthday to one of the most outstanding women I know.

Thank god you're here.

ronnie