I moved this blog publishing area from the blogger server to my own server at davetraynor.com
Now I’m going to see how well it worked
Month: March 2009 Page 3 of 4
Thirty-one years after my first haircut with Stephanie, we’re still a great team. Every time I’m back in Regina, I try to get in to see her at the Canadiana. It’s downtown, next door to the Novia Cafe, which is the building beside the original McCallum Hill building, Regina’s first skyscraper. And whose demise in spectacular fashion I captured on film from the roof of the Hotel Saskatchewan. But I digress…
Being here in Regina always does that to me. The hometown is a place full of memories – most of them good. The streets, the sidewalks, the buildings – they’ve all got stories. This one is about Stephanie. We first met in the late seventies. I was going to university and living in the Bartleman apartments on 14th Ave. As it turned out, Stephanie did too. But I only met her when I went for a haircut one day. She did a good job and from then on, I went back to her every time. She moved around a bit. She was with a different hair shop for awhile, then she moved to Weyburn to pursue a boyfriend that didn’t work out. But she always ended up back at the Canadiana and I usually ended up back there too.
There’s something about a relationship between a man and his barber. I’m not the only one that feels that way. I know my Dad used the same barber for most of his life and Heather’s father did too. And now my son Cory is still going to Stephanie. She’s been cutting his hair since he needed a booster seat.
Over the years, we’ve gotten to know about each others’ lives and its always fun to find out what’s happened with our families and our dogs. We’re both older and settling down a bit. We talk about retirement and the years going by and how our Mothers are doing. Mine just turned 87 – her’s is 86. She’s always interested in my kids and she remembers far more than I would expect, given that I only see her at the most once a year.
But so much about my hometown is like that. I come back and its like I’ve never really been away. It’s a treat to walk through the old neighbourhood and visit the stores I remember so well. The library is still open, the school hasn’t closed (yet) and many of our neighbours are still around. Not all, of course. Changes happen. People leave. But fortunately, some things just keep on keeping on. Like Stephanie’s haircuts. They’re worth coming back for every year.
It’s my Mom’s 87th birthday on Monday and as you can see, she’s still looking pretty good. I flew into Regina today for a couple of days, along with the rest of my siblings. It’s going to be a fun weekend and we’re all looking forward to it. We spent much of the afternoon visiting with Mom, then the siblings went out for the first of what will be several memorable meals, I’m sure. There’s nothing like a family reunion to get the tales flowing. It’s good to catch up and I know it’s making Mom very, very happy. She’s a great lady and I’m thankful that she’s still around to enjoy it all.
OK, two family pics in a row…I’m sensing a theme developing…more tomorrow.
I did a good thing today and got our old VHS tapes of the kids birthday parties and other significant events transferred to DVD before they became unviewable. While the quality of the pictures isn’t that great, they sure give me a warm feeling when I watch. Those years were wonderful…I would like to be back there again.
So in honour of my kids, the stars of so many videos and the authors of some of the best moments of my life, I dug up this shot of the three of them climbing the walls in our house in Regina. There’s another one that some of you may have seen, in a similar pose, with their Christmas best duds on. This is from the same set, but it’s from the working series, where we were practicing to get the shot just right and they hadn’t gotten dressed up yet. You can see they knew what they were doing. And nobody got hurt, which is always a plus.
Tomorrow, I’m off to Regina to celebrate my Mom’s 87th birthday, with all of my siblings and Cory too. I’m really looking forward to sharing her special day and telling lots of stories with my family.
There’s a trail running off the side of the path. I’ve always been attracted to shots of trails leading off somewhere, so I took this shot. But there’s something a little different about it. Any ideas what it is?
Notice the birch tree at the top left side of this photo? (Click on the image to see a larger view on my Flickr site) There’s another one on the right side too. But if you look closer, you may notice that some of the trees aren’t really trees at all. Maybe it’s a bamboo forest?
Actually, the “forest” you see is a path running through some grass that’s about 18 inches high. I set my camera down on the ground and shot some pictures from ground level. The results are pretty interesting. I’ve got some others too and I’ll be posting them in the days ahead. It’s amazing how changing your perspective gives you a whole new view on stuff you see every day.
I’d never heard of a treadmill desk until I read about it on my friend Arthur Slade’s blog. But once you think about it, it makes a lot of sense.
Art’s a writer (you can see his books at his website) so rather than spending all day sitting at his computer, he decided to walk at his computer. Here’s a snip from the blog post:
Since I, as a writer, tend to sit for hours and hours and hours, this idea of a treadmill desk kept coming back to me. Finally, I decided to take the plunge. Dr. Levine’s desk is $4500 or more, so I frugally made my own (for about $500). I’d read about home built treadmill desks (just Google “treadmill desk” if you want to learn more about treadheads) and followed several fine examples (here’s a great blog). I bought a Tempo Evolve treadmill from Canadian Tire, and, oddly enough, the arms on it were perfect for attaching a shelf. It runs quietly and fits nicely into my office.
Art’s got a great post about his new desk (which he’d been using for about a month when he wrote the post back in early February. And he made a video of himself on the thing.
This is such a cool idea. It’s the kind of thing you often hear people speculate about, but full credit to Art for actually doing it!
I don’t have a treadmill, but I do own a rowing machine. I wonder if I can adapt that?
It’s amazing the kind of things you find in a walk in an urban park. The other day, this brand-new Dirt Devil vacuum cleaner was sitting just off the path. Somehow, I don’t think that it was left there by the owner. It might have been someone who wanted to clean up the dead leaves but was put off by the lack of an electrical outlet. But I suspect the more likely story is that somebody stole it. Why they decided to leave it in a thicket of trees is anybody’s guess.
Here’s the funniest part about the tale of the lost vacuum cleaner (see part 1). Just after I stopped to take the first picture, this guy showed up wondering what was going on. He had a truck and we decided that someone really ought to take away the thing before it rained again and ruined it. So he decided he’d load it up in his truck and call the police. If no one claimed it, he’d give it to Value Village or some other charity. It was a nice ending to a strange story. Of course, he might have just put it in his garage too…
This photo is for those who noted that my pic of me washing the car the other day was a bit of a “hey – look at the weather we’re having in Victoria” type of thing. I hadn’t intended it that way, but I can see how it might look, given that a lot of the country was dealing with major winter weather at the time.
Today, I got my comeuppance. We’re having a blizzard. And it looks like the weather is serious. I’m hoping this will pass through and we can get back to enjoying the flowers and leaves, etc. But for now, we’re back in the grip of winter, so you don’t have to feel sorry for us any longer.
Hope the weather is nice wherever you are. I’m heading to Regina later this week and I’m sure it will be sunny and warm there, like it always is.
I haven’t smoked for many years and so I haven’t even seen a cigarette pack in a long time. This one was lying by the path the dogs and I were walking on and I noticed that the warning on the front was a lot longer than it used to be. The statistics are pretty startling. In case you can’t read it on the small photo (click on the pic to see a larger version) here’s what it says:
Warning: Each year, the equivalent of a small city dies from tobacco use.
Estimated Deaths in Canada, 1996
Murders – 510
Alcohol – 1,900
Car accidents – 2,900
Suicides – 3,900
Tobacco – 45,000
That’s a lot of people that die from cigarettes. But do smokers really understand what kind of risk they’re running? Funny how people will buy a lottery ticket (which they have virtually no chance of winning) but they don’t think that they’re going to get sick from smoking.
We’ve had these warnings for a long time but have they really done much to decrease smoking? It seems more plausible that they make people who are opposed to smoking feel better and that smokers just don’t pay attention. They know its bad but so what?
Our clocks jump forward tonight. That means that summer is on the way. We’re going to be spending July at the cottage in Saskatchewan and I’m really looking forward to it. This is a photo of Hillcrest, our home in Buena Vista. I took it in the early morning light in the fall.