tomleslie.ca

Saturday morning started with the weekly demolition job on the Globe and Mail’s Saturday cryptic crossword. This week we cruised through it in about half an hour: unlike last week (whose answer “ambushment” will forever reign in infamy) this week’s had reasonable clues. After lunch I saved the world (ahem… finished playing NOLF2 on the computer..) Anne and I went down to the Exhibition Grounds to see the Royal Winter Fair. We saw horses and cows and a zee-ass (half-zebra, half-jackass) and a great chicken gulag and weird ducks with really long necks and some cute dogs and (strangest of all) lots of people dressed up in fancy clothes picking their way through the straw and dirt to the horse show. And llamas, and a couple of alpacas. It’s a bit of a bizarre event, one that could only take place in Canada, with upper crusties and wanna-be upper crusties trying to look fancy despite basically being ignored by most of the crowd, who were casually dressed for serious farm activity and generally not inclined to defer to anyone, especially someone wearing a tuxedo or evening gown. We spent a few hours touring and visiting the inmate animals before scooting up to Craig and Susan’s for a Calvin choir group birthday party, featuring a viewing of the Iron Chef.

Yesterday it poured rain, so Anne’s leaves comprehensively failed to get raked. After church I grocery shopped (being at home now means I have to cook again) and went home to do fun & exciting domestic chores, like laundry. Anne came round and cooked us up a wonderful chicken and shallots dinner, and comprehensively demolished me at Scrabble (by like, 120 points).

Freedom! My rolloff date from the Hartford project is confirmed for this Friday. Tomorrow will be my last trip on a Dash 8 (pictured) for… well, at least a couple of weeks. Actually, it looks likely my next project will be in Toronto, which I’m psyched about…

Yesterday’s theatre trip to the Hartford Stage was good, though it was pretty obvious Edgardo Mine is a new play. The pacing seemed a bit awkward a couple of times, as though the cast weren’t sure what to do with themselves between dramatic lines. The whole play was a single 1 1/2 hour act. I actually really enjoyed it: there was a much greater level of humour than the subject matter suggested.

By your search entries will ye be known (part deux). These are the things typed into the search engine on my site this last week (as opposed to the 10/23 entry which was entries typed into other search engines to find my site):

– 2 for “culture”

– 1 for “about a boy”

– 1 for “blackhawk down”

– 1 for “colour”

– 1 for “goulding”

– 1 for “just another indian”

Not sure about that last one.

The weather here in Hartford is beautiful this week, cool but sunny. Now that I’m in my final week I’m almost (but not quite) sorry I’m wrapping up so soon. Tonight I’m going back to the Hartford Stage to see Edgardo Mine, a new play by Alfred Uhry, based on a true story about a Jewish family in Bologna in 1858 whose six-year-old son, baptised Christian, is taken into custody by the Vatican.

Only seven days until the release of the Lord of the Rings: the Fellowship of the Ring (Extended Edition) on DVD!

I’ve posted the photos from last weekend’s trip to Dirk & Christine’s cottage near Haliburton. Check out the leaves! Check out the wolves munching on beaver carcasses! The two mug shots here are their sons Sean and Kevin. I’ve also posted a couple of pictures of Hartford. Looks like I’ve only got a couple more weeks there!

By your search engine requests will ye be known. From the Dreamhost web server logs for my site, here are the search requests from this week that led people to tomleslie.ca:

#reqs: search term

—–: ———–

3: tom leslie

2: kelly baxter golding

1: book reviews no one lives forever

1: romantika party estonia girls

1: ski trip photos

1: kandynski

1: finland goretex jacket

1: mani greece hiking path map

1: kardamyli

1: hymn or bootleggers or notarize or hitting or pneumatic