R Is For Bunny

My mom spent a little time when I was younger doing cross-stich (this is before she discovered traditional rug hooking) and one of the things she made me was this alphabet (see image on right.) She used to say the marks on it was blood from pricking her finger with the needle, but then recently mentioned it was just from the age if it, so I don't know what is true.

I was showing it to Maya today, while Jason was holding it up, and she said, "A is for apple, B is for stuffy" and I was so confused until I saw that it was a teddy 'B'ear image. She is very young and not strong with letters or reading yet. She also pointed and said, "R is for bunny." 

Beginner Drawing - Class 1 of 4

I am taking a Beginning Drawing class at ARTiculations, in The Junction on Wednesday nights. Here is what I did on my first night.

The image on the right is a recreation from a Degas sketch, we used a grid technique to draw it. This is the remaining aspect of drawing that I can still do, I can recreate when someone else has already taken something and made it 2D, black and white, especially when it is a sketch, even more so if a gird is involved. It was nice to end on that, helped renew my confidence.

A Flying First

My birthday falls almost exactly one month before our major event at work. I don't really feel comfortable taking any time off leading up to it, in fact often I work over the weekends on top of Monday to Friday. So, Jason wanted to plan a surprise for me and the end of April would be the last possible time I might feel comfortable take a couple of vacation days.

I didn't know where we were going, which turned out to be Florida to explore The Everglades and Florida Keys. I found out in the UP Express on the way to the airport. It was a very exciting last-minute reveal.

As any regular reader of Always Standing would know, I have flown quite a bit (it has its own tag.) But last night on the way down something happened on the plane that I have never experienced before - They called for a doctor!

Near the end of the three hour flight, an elderly women a row or two behind us got up to use the washroom and fell down. (What what I heard afterwards it was more of a 'passed out' than a 'fall' so I guess the proper term would be she collapsed.) The man that was with her, a few other passengers and a flight attendant were taking care of her.

I thought it only happened in the movies, but I soon heard someone ask over the intercom, "If there is a doctor on board please identify yourself to the nearest flight attendant or ring the assistance bell." Right away a bell chimed in front of us, in first class. Soon after a woman can striding through the curtain. (I was quite happy that is was a lady-doctor.) I think the doctor was helpful since it wasn't long before the passenger was back in her seat and everything was back to normal with the crew.

I was surprised that they do this, as the population ages it might sense to have at least one attendant on each plane that is also a nurse, so that there is accreditation beyond First Aid and CPR. Also, calling for a doctor is fine, but what is their specialty is way off from general medicine? An orthopedic surgeon is a doctor, technically so is someone with a PhD in Art History.

Not Really About The Weather

Following in the 'lion, lamb' theme that has shown up in my past few posts, I stumbled upon this painting:

"Una and the Lion"

Painting by Briton Riviere (1840/1920 - 1880)

I like allegorical paintings, though I don't think that is the right word for it. I like when the paintings are realism but the items are symbolic, telling a story. This image was inspired by The Faerie Queene by Edmund Spenser, an epic allegorical poem about Queen Elizabeth I. In the poem, she trains a lion so well that it doesn't attack the lamb. The lion is thought to represent Queen Elizabeth's power, her elegance and her aristocratic figure.

Fine, I Will Do Edits

I am still a bit bummed that I don't love the photos I took in Africa. Especially as Mom has some amazing pictures already posted up on her blog. Jason has great shots too, but since I only had the camera for one day I didn't do so well. (I didn't want to the camera on all those other days. It is just after the fact  that I realized I like the small feeling of prestige that comes from taking good photos.) On one last ditch effort to get something decent out of the pictures I took I decided to put in the, very minimal, work to do some edits. Just basic cropping really, to better frame the image. Here is another attempt:

In The Gaze Of An Elephant

Pilanesberg National Park, South Africa

Photo and Edits by Me

Itinerary Update - Swaziland

Pre-Scheduled Post: Thursday - Swaziland Sightseeing and Matsamo Village Visit
As per our trip itinerary (bar any issues/changes/complications etc.) we will ....

After breakfast, visit the Ngwenya glass factory, where visitors can watch talented glass blowers create a range of enchanting African animals, birds, and fish, as well as tableware, made from recycled glass that is collected by the children of Swaziland. Transfer to the South African border and visit Matsamo Cultural Village, learn more about the Swazi traditions and customs. Enjoy traditional dance and song performances with authentic African instruments as well as traditional Swazi cuisine. Wander through the village with its many traditional huts and interact with the locals.

Agreed

from New Math by Craig Damrauer

Come Party In The Junction!!

And The Tradition Continues, Or Starts

Jason and I are spending the weekend in The Finger Lakes region of New York State. This marks the third time we have spent Thanksgiving in the USA.
- New York City 2014
- Chicago 2015
And now exploring Northwest New York, it is really becoming a tradition. The actual definition of 'tradition' is a bit more complicated but I think the second occurrence suggests a tradition and the third solidifies it.

We considered staying home, especially because the Canadian Dollar is particularly bad at the moment, but decided that it was a fun pattern to have and we could do it cheaply. Instead of flying we drove and we aren't taking any extra days off of work so it will be a short vacation.

Today we drove around the orchards found in the area between the Finger Lakes and Lake Ontario. We found a map that detailed a Apple Tasting Tour so had fun visiting eleven different locations, mainly farms or local produce stands but also a winery, a distillery, and a couple of cider breweries.

Then we headed west to Rochester. I wanted to go to The Strong, which includes The National Museum of Play, the Toy Halls of Fame, International Center for the History of Electronic Games, etc. Basically it is a 'children's museum' but that didn't phase me. We had a good time!

Jason and I - Virtual EtchASketch

The Strong - The Toy Halls of Fame - 2016

Rochester, NY 

Before heading back to the hotel in Newark (not the airport, the town) we decided to grab some dinner. Dinosaur Bar-B-Q is a small chain that we remembered having great reviews when we were staying in Harlem during our 2014 NYC trip; they only have nine locations, mainly in New York State. It turns out they had a restaurant in Rochester so we went there. It is super popular! There was going to be an hour and half wait for a table but then we noticed that they have a big area doing take-out, so we grabbed a sandwich to go! I had brisket, my favourite thing to have barbecued, it was delicious.

Motherhood - What I Would Not Be Doing

Excerpts from Mother, Writer, Monster, Maid by Rufi Thorpe:

"I am proud of being a mother. I love my two children. I love them so much that it hurts to look at them and I am pretty sure they are the best, smartest, scrappiest, funniest boys in the world, and having them changed my life. My life before children was selfish and bland, all feelings and no grit, just a drifting miasma of mood. To go back to living like that seems like hell."

"I have tried to say it to my husband; I have tried to say, 'I hate my life.' I have tried to say, 'I need help.' I have tried to explain why I am finding being a mother so difficult, but in the face of his questions, my explanations collapse. It isn’t exactly that spending time with the children is so horrible. I mean, sometimes it is, sometimes we have a bad day, but most of the time it is relatively pleasant: we go to the store, we go to the park, everyone is well behaved, the three-year-old says something cute, the baby does something new. The problem is not in what I am doing. The problem is in what I am not doing, which is writing every day, but which is also leading a life of the mind."

"I recognize the leveraging power of ineptitude. My husband can’t cook well; I do the cooking. My husband accidentally shrinks a few sweaters; I do the laundry. My husband can’t lactate; the baby comes to New York. In his inability to do things, he is excused from labor. In my rush to excel, to shine, to be a good wife and mother, I have done nothing but ensure my labor will be lengthy and unpaid."

"The conflict is between the selfishness of the artist and the selflessness of a mother."

"I am profoundly unfree."

For me, the haunting quote is: The problem is in what I am not doing.

I never thought I would be the type of person to have FOMO but I fear that having children wouldn't mean just be missing out on an event or two it would be missing out on who I could be. Sacrificing not just part of life but choosing to walk away from whole lives I could be living, other things I could be doing,

A Family Of Artists

Jason and I are working hard to get our Wedding Website ready so that we can start sending out invitations. It will have lots of information on it, everything from suggested accommodations to dress code descriptions. Since we aren’t having a ‘conventional’ wedding, we don’t want guests to be confused as to what to wear. We asked the three bridesmaids (my cousins: Heather, Fiona, and Sarah) to help us depict appropriate clothing. There are different events in different locations, on different days.

For example, the Friday afternoon paperwork at City Hall is a very small group - just the wedding party and immediate family - but they can dress up if they want. Heather beautifully depicted this:

Then on Saturday, the big wedding day is super casual. The main venue is on Toronto Island (you need to take a ferry or water taxi to it) and the activities we will be having are what you would do at a cottage, beach trip, or picnic. However, people tend to be uncomfortable dressing that casually for something they normally think of as ‘formal’ like a wedding. We don’t want them to end up cold or uncomfortable so Sarah helped us show how dressed-down we would like people to be. (I also think these mannequin guys look quite attractive.)

Lastly, Fiona has created examples of casual outfits that make sense to wear to the dinner and reception that we are having at a local pub on the Saturday Night. I believe she also provided suggestions to Sarah and Heather as to the concept and style of the drawings.

These are just an example each of the drawings, they did more for us and they are all going to be posted on the website. I can't believe how talented my family is, all three are really great artists! It is making me more excited for the wedding.

What I Do And Where

I haven't talking about my job in a while and my company just launched a new website that I thought I would share. I am part of the four-person marketing team at FORREC, where we focus on on promoting the company. My title as Marketing Events Coordinator means that I mainly work on logistics and planning for our attendance at industry tradeshows.

I really love internal and corporate communications, but the business-to-businesses (B2B) marketing that I am now focused on is my second love, and definitely my preferred form of marketing. However, since we aren't working at bringing brand recognition to the 'consumer' or general public, few people even know that this world renown entertainment design company exists in Toronto.

This company that I do marketing for is incredible and I am surrounded by the most amazing talent. I am in constant awe of the creation that is occurring around me every day. Check out the company and the projects we work on at FORREC.COM, our recently redesigned website.

By Recommendation

Literally everyone that I asked for suggestions from, of what to do in Chicago, mentioned the Architecture Boat Tour On The River. So yesterday, Jason and I decided that would be our main activity for the day. We are trying to keep costs down and the $42 a person price tag was a bit of a deteriorate for us, the Canadian Dollar is so low in comparison to the American that everything is pricier than we would like it to be. However, this was seriously mentioned by everyone as almost a mandatory experience.

We waited fairly late to head into downtown because it was the Chicago Marathon and was going to be packed. When we were trying to find a place to stay in Chicago for this weekend we couldn't figure out why everything was booked and so insanely expensive, it is one of the reasons that our AirBnB ended up being so far away from downtown was that we couldn't find or afford anything closer. It wasn't until Meg mentioned it recently that we figured out that Canadian Thanksgiving is the same weekend as the marathon and that was why. Tomorrow is also Columbus day, but that doesn't seem to be that major of a holiday, we didn't even notice it happening in NYC last year.

When we did get downtown in the early afternoon it was still really busy, lots of people in running gear with medals on. We went fairly quickly to the river to get tickets and found out they were sold out until 5:00pm, we got those and prepared to wander downtown, which we hadn't really done yet. We went to Millennium Park and saw The Bean. Ate our packed lunch and walked along the lake and river front.

Turns out 5:00 is the perfect time to do the boat tour! The docent/guide kept mentioning how beautiful the low light was on the buildings since he normally does midday tours he was quite excited. The tour lived up to the hype. I could have stayed on that boat listening to the guide talk about architecture for hours more. The 90 minutes flew by and having the different styles pointed out and explained was an incredible experience. I would FOR SURE recommend this as an important thing to do when visiting the city.

Trying True Deep Dish Pizza For The First Time

Jason at Giordano's - Hyde Park

Oct 11, 2015 - Photo by ME with my phone

After the cruise, we went looking for deep dish pizza for dinner, lots of Google Maps searches. Teri had mentioned the chain Giordano's as a good place to go, I had also noticed the Lou Malnati's as a popular place with lots of locations as well. We took The Loop, the elevated subway system, to go to one Lou Malnati's place that was close by, the line up was insane. Then I remember that Giordano's had a location near our apartment, turned out it was walking distance away and we just headed south to that one. There was a much smaller line.

I loved deep dish (or stuffed) pizza! Definitely my preferred in the whole Chicago and NYC pizza debate. Jason leans much further on the side of New York but still enjoyed the Chicago style.

Finally Saw The Bean

Sunday Mornin' Coming Down - A post about my Dad each Sunday, named after a song that he loved.

For a long time I didn't know where Stonehenge was. This was because I visited England between Grades 5 and 6 for over month with my family, and we never saw it. We saw so many sites in England the idea that my parents didn't take us to this Wonder of the World was unfathomable to me, so I spent all of high school and most of university thinking that was somewhere else. When Steph finished at Carlton, we celebrated by going on a trip to London and she wanted to see Stonehenge, we actually fraught a bit about it being in the country (and Steph is obsessed with Stonehenge so I have no idea why I argued.) We ended up seeing it and now I obviously know what country it is in.

I had been having a similar experience with The Bean. It can't be in Chicago, cause if it was, why hadn't my dad and I visited it when we came in 1994?

As I mentioned before, the only other time that I had visited Chicago was when I came with my parents over 20 years ago. My mom had a conference to attend, which meant that my dad and I hung out together during the day. We stayed at the Blackstone Hotel (some of The Untouchables was filmed there), which is next to the Hilton where my mom's conference was. These hotels are on South Michigan Avenue, just across from the big park area on Chicago's waterfront, we walked along the lake when it wasn't too cold or windy.

The only major attraction we visited here was the big aquarium, besides that we just went to all the free art galleries. Dad loved this because they were free and he has a certain cursory interest in art. Also, because I was young, we probably were moving through them in at a good pace. So, with this emphasis on art, visits to the waterfront parkland, and desire to see things that didn't cost anything, how come I never saw The Bean (which I hear K is pretty obsessed with and likes to visit it multiple times when she visits the city.)?

Turns out it wasn't even there! The planning for Millennium Park didn't start until 1997, and Cloud Gate (The Bean) wasn't added until 2006.

Real Love

I never liked the dichotomy that seemed to exist between 'passionate love' and 'companion love' and am happy to have found a concept that moves passed that and pushes the concept further - Triangular Theory of Love. The psychologist who developed it suggests that love progresses and develops in predictable ways. I can see Jason and my relationship history having the patterns he suggests. I can also see Jason and I in these pictures from the series Love is by Puuung. (Originally found on Facebook.)

Trip To The Zoo

We are spending the weekend with two of Jason's nephews as part of their Christmas present again this year. The main point of their visit was to go to the Toronto Zoo, but we also have plans to play board games, watch movies, read books, ride transit, and go to a park.

There are no photos from our time at the zoo today, but luckily this evening L drew the following picture which will help me outline my favourite parts of the zoo visit. L and I share the same opinion on what were the best parts:

L and P's Toronto Zoo Trip

2015, Art by L, Age 5

TIGER (Top Left) - At the Toronto Zoo, the outdoor part for the tigers (Sumatran) are two huge cages that have tall boardwalks dividing them. This means you can look down into the forest to easily view them - sleeping. Both of the tigers were outside and sleeping. L drew a picture of the smaller tiger that was lying on hay in an open-front cave. When we first passed by on the boardwalks the tiger was stretched out on its back with all paws in the air - like a cat!

GOLDEN LION TAMARIN (Top) - I really like all the little monkey species, they are so cute. The Golden Lion Tamarins are such a bright orange and are usually very active. Today's visit was no exception - the larger male one kept yelling at us too. This was super cute because it is tiny, and sounds a bit like a bird. Then we noticed that clinging up by thy skylight was a female with two little babies clinging to her.

RED PANDA (Bottom) - L's drawing features the fenced section of the red panda enclosure to the left of the drawing of the animal itself. The two pandas kept wandering between their open section and more cage-like part. These were the most amazing animals, so insanely cute, they are pretty famous since videos of this species frequently go viral on social media. I am really glad that L encouraged us to go and see them, they were one of today's highlights for sure.

Trophy Sneak Peek

Sunday Mornin' Coming Down - A post about my Dad each Sunday, named after a song that he loved.

Last week I mentioned that a sailing award has been created at our local yacht club in memory of my dad - The George Sweeton Memorial Award - For Outstanding Crew Member

My mom commissioned the top of the trophy for this award to be made by a friend of my father's who does soapstone carving. He finished it last week:

If Two Was Looking For A Job

------------ from Facebook (posted by JennD)

In The Shadow Of A Great One

Why must she look so cute when being bad? These books are on the top of a bookcase. Two is not allowed to climb the many bookcases we have at Rrunuv Bayit. She also isn't allowed on tables, desks, or counters. Whenever I catch her somewhere she shouldn't be, she always looks so cute!

The Eye Of A Tiny Tiger

Photo by ME with my phone

The Louvre

Yesterday we went to The Louvre:

We probably spent 3 to 4 hours inside and it was a great visit! We got to see all the stuff we were interested in seeing, for me that was the Nymph with a Scorpion and The Coronation of Emperor Napoleon, which we had seen a copy of at Versailles and I wanted to see the original. Jason was quite happy to come across an Easter Island Head on display, until I mentioned that I had seen one as well at a museum in England, to which he replied, "Uhhh, Europeans" and it is true - too many things have been taken away from their rightful place by powerful empires of the past and present. Jason was excited to see the Colossal statue of Ramesses II and the Code of Hammurabi, King of Babylon. And of course we made the obligatory stop among the crowd to view the famous masterpiece:

Jason & The Mona Lisa

The Louvre, Paris, France

Photo by Me