Posts in category "Photos"

gambler's fallacy

It’s my eleventh time here in four years, almost three times per. At this rate — con­sid­er­ing how sel­dom I get out nowa­days — it’s one of the only places I fre­quent. Each vis­it serves as a small time­stamp, from the year we went home with dif­fer­ent peo­ple to the year we went home togeth­er, and all the times caught in between among heavy snow and mechan­i­cal hors­es.

wedding name card

 

Strange how often I come here when it’s so rarely by choice. I always think I’ll be up next time, that I won’t be sit­ting by myself in one of these great halls, cause for­tune even­tu­al­ly smiles on every per­son who takes a chance on love.

Byron

Kitties are impos­si­ble to resist when you see them in every oth­er viral video doing some­thing hilar­i­ous or clever or just plain cute, and my plan to wait until life set­tled down a bit before adopt­ing anoth­er one was as dif­fi­cult as the inten­tions were noble.

I’ve had Byron for about a month now, and he’s already been a great com­pan­ion. He has­n’t warmed up to sleep­ing with me at night, but he fre­quent­ly sleeps in my lap, and fol­lows me around the house, even going so far as to lie on the bath­mat to watch me when­ev­er I’m mak­ing a nice BM. He also rarely stops mov­ing, which makes him espe­cial­ly dif­fi­cult to pho­to­graph. Like Dolly, he can be quite a vocal cat, and will meow repeat­ed­ly when he knows he’s about to be fed or if I call his name.

cat on a couch

 

I can tell he’s already grown in the short time I’ve had him. It’s always fun to see how all the parts of kit­ties devel­op at dif­fer­ent rates; right now he has big ears and a full tail, though his big mitts are more like­ly due to his breed. His face is also quite mature, though it isn’t par­tic­u­lar­ly strik­ing or unique.

Continue read­ing “Byron”…

rose coloured veil

Thank you for friends from Scotland and moon­cake from Hong Kong.

Thank you for guests and hosts and hol­i­days.

Thank you for friends like Lisa and Flight of the Concords.

cat on lap

Thank you for healthy kit­ties.

Thank you for mov­ing base­lines and dub­step wob­bles.

Thank you for local­ly grown beef and sig­na­ture sauces.

Basia Bulat at the Ottawa Folk Festival

Thank you for inspi­ra­tions and front row seats.

Thank you for British sit­coms, old and new.

Thank you for cheeks and day­dreams.

friends playing Magic: The Gathering

Thank you for new friends and Magic nights.

small world

The dri­ve to Toronto is get­ting eas­i­er. It’s my only chance to real­ly lis­ten to albums nowa­days1, not to men­tion the com­fort of see­ing famil­iar towns on the way, like the names of sub­way stops you can’t help but mem­o­rize as a child on the way home from school. And in a way, so many years lat­er, Toronto still feels like home. Getting there is a jour­ney, but the peo­ple always make it worth it.

My patience tends to wear out about a quar­ter way in, when it becomes hard to main­tain a rea­son­able speed. It’s a test of whether I can dri­ve safe­ly to see how far I’ve grown as a per­son.

I fail every time.

Toronto view

The view from Alex’s down­town apart­ment. You can eas­i­ly tell Yonge Street apart from how bright­ly it’s lit.

Continue read­ing “small world”…

  1. Editors in both direc­tions this time, cause any­thing I lis­ten to nowa­days is Antje rec­om­mend­ed. [↩]

homeostasis

Everything is bal­anc­ing itself out. I’ve stopped try­ing to pre­dict or con­trol my cycles of intro­ver­sion and extro­ver­sion, pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and pro­cras­ti­na­tion. As Oscar Wilde once said: “The only way to get rid of temp­ta­tion is to yield to it”. By doing what I want when I feel like it, every need is met in turn.

Life does­n’t get more com­fort­able than this. It’s been a great sum­mer.

baby eating on high chair

Now on mashed solids. Ruby at 11 months.

I’m glad I got here by myself, with­out the help of a friend, or lover, or wind­fall. It was some­thing I had to do on my own, so I’ll always know I’m strong enough to pick myself up and con­tin­ue grow­ing.

The only thing that’s real­ly miss­ing now is anoth­er cat (or two), but I already blew my kit­ty bud­get on Leonard’s vet bills. I’m not at the right place for a new adop­tion any­way, and I’ve decid­ed to wait until my major projects are fin­ished (hope­ful­ly some time around the end of the year) before I take on anoth­er life.

father and baby

It’s offi­cial; Kyden has the soft­est, pinchi­est cheeks ever at eight months.

I’ve been back from my trip for about a month and a half, but it feels more like a year. I’m so dif­fer­ent now from the per­son I was before I left. I was dying then, but I’m liv­ing now.

The only way I can tell how quick­ly time is tru­ly pass­ing is in the faces of my friends’ babies. Each time I see them they’re mak­ing new sounds, say­ing new words, more con­scious and coher­ent. I used to envy the care­free inno­cence they have when run­ning about naked, the sin­gle-mind­ed­ness they pos­sess when engrossed with a new toy, but now I feel like one of them.