Call me fickle?

Call me fickle, but I've changed my mind about where I want to have my blog. I will miss this green colour, but overall it seems that the best idea is to move What would Buckaroo do to a new location. Click here, and you're there. That's where I will post from now on. Thanks for the tip LR, I like the new place better.

I can run

I can run for ten minutes without stopping, as of tonight. I'm sure for some of you that would be no big deal, but for me it feels like an accomplishment. I'm taking a running clinic at The Running Room in Halifax, it's the beginner level clinic. Before I started, I'm sure I might have been able to run for one minute without stopping - if something scary was chasing me. But no more, and it would have been painful. Well in tonight's class we ran for ten minutes without stopping, walked for one minute, then ran for another ten. By the end of the second ten I really wanted to stop, and I couldn't talk anymore, but I did it.

My group is small - only four people plus the instructor. The four of us are all biologists, and three of the four are named Catherine (Catherine, Cathy and Katie). Weird eh! The other three are students so they are 15 years or so younger than me... and none of them are overweight whereas I am ... so I feel pretty pleased with myself for keeping up.

Hey Marni! You know you definitely helped inspire me to do this. Here's hoping I keep with it.

Two more weeks, and we'll compete in a 5K run. Now I'm thinking I should keep up the momentum and go for the 10K clinic after this one ... I have no good photo so I will plug the shoes that I feel made this possible for me, MBTs. (I can't get a better photo.)

Before we invented climate change, it was acid rain

This is the only four-wheeled vehicle I've ever owned. It was ten years old when I bought it. I needed it to get to work during one of the summers I worked as a naturalist in Gatineau Park, when I was a student. (I lived in downtown Ottawa, and the park office was about a 20-minute drive away).


My fellow interprète/naturaliste Anne and I were stars of the tiny stage in the woods up at the Lac Philippe campground. We created a show that presented a (no doubt) thrilling yet educational lesson about the things we could all do to prevent the deterioration of the environment. Our show combined live action with slides, and this photo was taken to illustrate the benefits of carpooling. We enlisted several of the office staff, as you can see. (That's me peering out of the window from the back seat.) I don't know if Anne is in the car or if she took the photo.

I loved that car! VW Rabbit GTI, the sporty 5-speed model. Until the clutch started to go, then it wasn't so sporty, and I started taking the backroads to work because the car couldn't maintain highway speed on the uphill portion of the route (Highway 5 ?). I wonder how environmentally friendly that car was?

This photo was taken a long time ago, and I remember it, but thought I had lost it. So I was happy to find it in my box of old stuff. Anne and I had such a fun and memorable summer.

I found a treasure trove

For some reason I was rummaging through some boxes of old stuff and I found a lot of old letters and photos. It wasn't exactly a huge surprise, as I know I've kept almost every letter I've ever received in the past. (For you youngsters reading, a "letter" is a piece of paper with writing on it, sent through the mail, i.e. placed in a box and then someone else carries it to its destination for you.) I have letters from friends, letters from family. High school friends, university friends, bat-lab friends (and other biology friends. But I like saying bat-lab.). Letters from former boyfriends, and from friends who were former boyfriends at the time they wrote. I found some forgotten letters from someone who had a crush on me that wasn't fully requited. I even have some letters from myself ... not to myself. But to my family or to a boyfriend, and somehow they ended up in my box of old stuff.

Many of them are in the envelopes still. Even looking at the envelopes brings back memories, without even pulling out the contents. I had forgotten the name of the street in Windsor where I lived in that crappy apartment with a man I never should have gotten so involved with at such a young age. ("I spent a year in Windsor one summer".) But my friends were sending me letters there. And the envelopes remind me of some of the exotic travels of many of my friends, and of the two whole summers that my mailing address was the E.E.E.J.N., a research station in rural Costa Rica where I received about 50% of the mail people sent me.



I've kept these things because to me, they are interesting. I have this idea that someday I will have the time to re-read all of this material, and I will be able to use it to write a fascinating memoir of my life (fictional or otherwise). I do realize that this would probably be of interest to me only.

But what I'm going to do is scan a few of the old photos or cards and use them as occasional fodder for this blog. And if you have ever written me a letter in the past 20 years or so - beware! (or be excited) - maybe I will feature a snippet. Names will be changed to protect the not-so-innocent, if necessary.

If you find this prospect terribly exciting, and you want to make sure you don't miss a single post, here's what you can do: Scroll down to the bottom of this page and click on the link that says " Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)". This way you will receive an e-mail every time I update this self-indulgent diary. Don't worry, I don't think it will happen too often.

Just because I can

One of the TV shows I have been enjoying these days is My Name is Earl. Below is a clip from an episode I saw recently (it was a repeat, I think). I enjoyed this scene a lot. I arrived home from work shortly before 10:30 p.m. and just caught this bit before the credits rolled. I enjoyed it thoroughly, and looked forward to watching the episode (I was taping it) to find out the context.


As it turns out, There never really was much of a context for it, and in a way that makes me enjoy it a little bit more.

So, just because I can and because I'm such a 21st century gal, I'm going to try and embed a YouTube link right onto my blog. Let's see if it works.



It seems to have worked! I feel so modern. Because strobe lights and robot dances are so, you know, modern. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

Things I've been making lately

My 8-year old niece asked me to make her a sweater. She had some rather precise specifications. Orange and hot pink, and long. Here is what it looks like so far.

And at the same time I'm making a scarf for Gwladys, who is a 91-year-old woman I go visit and read to once a week or so. (In the winter, without a vehicle, it's a lot harder for me to get to where she lives in a suburban area.) This scarf is made from an angora blend that is indescribably soft and light. Yet it's cosy and warm. Her birthday is coming up soon (she's an Aquarius like me). She doesn't go out much anymore, mostly stays in her room in the old folks' home where she lives. I think I will write more about her sometime because she is a really interesting person. (And that is the correct way of spelling her name; she is Welsh you see.)

When I can, I continue to build up an inventory of my glass jewelry and buttons. This is a necklace I sent to my sister a while ago. I like the shape of the leaf. It is a piece of copper foil stamped out with a paper punch, and I scored the 'veins' on it. It is one of the few kinds of metal you can fire in the kiln without it burning ... though it changes colour.

I have also been making a number of tables and reports on the topic of criteria for prioritizing actions for integrated management and planning of ocean activities ... Zzzzz. Not worth photos.

That's it for now. I am trying to get a lot more glass stuff cut and prepared tonight so I can take it to the kiln tomorrow. I continue to fantasize about being able to buy my own kiln.

Thanks for checking in,

Your friend Cathy

Bye bye bike, for now

This and the next two posts are backwards, chronologically, but we can handle it right? I'm doing my best here. And this makes me caught up, for a while.

Please excuse the lousy paragraph breaks ... I'm still trying to figure out how to insert them just where I want, Blogger doesn't seem to see a hard return the same way I do.

I just had to note that this season I put my bike away for the winter on December 15th: latest ever. I miss the days when I had underground parking where I lived. I fantasize a lot about garages now. This year my F650 is spending the "winter" at my friend and former co-worker Marty's place, specifically in his garage. Marty is a surfer. Last year he & his wife bought a house in a fantastic location overlooking the Atlantic Ocean, not too far from Halifax.

On December 15th, fearing the winter and snow might actually arrive soon, I rode my bike out to their place. It was a moderately cool, overcast day ... heated handgrips on, no need for the electric vest. Nice scenic drive. Crossing the McKay Bridge from Halifax to Dartmouth, I saw a submarine toiling across the Bedford Basin, going past BIO in toward Magazine Hill. That was kind of a cool little treat, because how often do ya get to see an actual submarine that's not in the news or up in drydock being worked on (the latter is common actually in Halifax). Anyway it was kinda cool.

This is where the bike will spend the winter - note garage on left, ocean in background.

This weekend it's supposed to top ten degrees, so I'm sort of wishing I still had the bike, but it's better for it to be away.

And it has company - surfboards. They can reminisce about the good times back in the summer. (and fall. And winter. Actually Marty surfs in the winter so I hope the bike won't feel too bad if the boards get out a lot.)

Christmas happened

This year there were children in my home on Christmas morning for the first time since I was a child myself. My boyfriend Bill and his two daughters were at my place and the girls were awake from 04:30. They woke us up at 06:30. A few hours later I understood why their family has Christmas dinner at lunchtime. (We had a lovely Christmas dinner made by Bill's Mum at her home in Dartmouth.) Because when you get up at 6:30 a.m., especially after staying up late the night before, noon feels like suppertime.

So I had to have a Christmas tree. I think it's the first one I've had in my own home, not counting the decorated potted Norfolk pine I had one year in grad school

Bill and I bought a fake tree from Canadian Tire, that fabulous emporium of efficient shopping. It has a kind of Charlie Brown quality we liked ... and built-in lights. Here is it is all decorated up.

I bought a fancy store-bought cat toy for the cats for Christmas. Guess what? They weren't that interested in it. Here's what they liked better:

The classic Giant Paper Bag.

And in case anyone thinks Ruby is not intelligent, just because they've met her, here she demonstrates her talent for jigsaw puzzles as she helps Megan with her Cristmas present. Can your pet do puzzles?

Happy 2007

Well, what use is a blog if I never post to it? Today is my day 'off' - off from The Loop, that is. I should be working on action planning consulting work, but instead I have been catching up on e-mails to friends, and other things that have used up most of the day. (Action planning looks more action-filled if I put it in italics.)

Our second Christmas / holiday season as part of the small retail business universe has come and gone. It was busier than the first one, but less stressful because we had a better sense of what to expect. Last year, we had just opened a few weeks before xmas, and felt like we barely knew what we were doing. We felt like we were "playing store". It still feels like that sometimes, but that's mostly a good thing.

The newspaper article I menioned in the last post was published this week: here is the link. And the photo the Herald photographer took.

The Loop in the news

And next week, on the 15th, we (well Mimi) will be on TV. CBC is starting a new regional 'lifestyle' TV show called Eastern Living, afternoons (1:00 maybe, I forget) and we are on the inaugural episode. If you listen to CBC radio in the Maritimes, you will recognize the name and voice of Heidi Petracek. She is the host, and Mimi taught her how to knit. It's pretty exciting because it means that, presumably, what we are doing is interesting to some people. And that kind of publicity really has legs ... based on a CBC radio interview from when we first opened, we'll keep hearing about this from new customers for a long time.

That's enough for the moment. I'll probably think of something else to post in a few minutes.