9/11

A few minutes ago I turned to a digital clock in our Sun Room and realised the significance of the time.
Exactly 10 years ago at 8:30am on Sept 11, 2001 I was the happiest man in the world! I was up early, prepared and served my wife breakfast in bed to celebrate her birthday. All went well, she loved my gift and by then she already had a few phone calls from all over the world.
She left for work around 8am and I cleared and washed up.
Life couldn't be better. Work was going well, our children doing great in their respective lives and I was anticipating a peaceful day. Why shouldn't it be?
At around 8:50am, the house in good order, I decide to switch on the TV and watch some news..........................

Wow, I just realised how lazy I've become so I'll be adding blogs here in the near future.
The next week wil be quite memorable, the lead up to the anniversary of 9/11, the beginning of the rugby World Cup, the Protea Club braai and probably preparing the garden for the fall.

Here's one of my first recent attempts at stitching photos to form panoramas:

Holiday Photos

Cape Town, South Africa

Year In Perspective

Now that I'm on a 2 week holiday, it's a good time to reflect on the past year.

Firstly, it has flown bye faster than Tiger's 3 iron in his wife's hands!

It's been a year of many ups and many downs. The ups occurring each time we get to see our kids and grand daughters, the downs with so many friends suffering from illnesses and a few passing away.

All our children (including our daughters in law of course) seem to be well settled into their jobs and the future looks good for them, and this is obviously a relief in these economic times. The oldest girls, Anna & Julia, have started real school and have their whole education ahead of them....lucky for their teachers, I think! Meanwhile Claire and Monique will be learning from them and should find schooling easier, I suppose.

Kate has moved house and seems to be in a good place at the moment and travels all over Canada for her company.....

This has been a quiet year regarding vacationing, other than visiting our family in Kitchener/Waterloo and family and friends in Toronto, we have not travelled further afield.

The year did start with a bang when we celebrated New Years Eve with Sabrina and Brian at the Rex in Toronto. We all had a good time, listening and dancing to some great Reggae music.

The down side of the year saw the passing of Jackie's sister Shirley, a photography friend Fred Abela and of course our good friend Ron Marks. The latter 2 suffering and succumbing to the dreadful A.L.S. desease.

We are also watching our friend and Rabbi, Joel Wittstein struggle with his deamons and to call him a hero is probably an understatement. He and Ailene are fighting a difficult battle and he has tremendous support from his congregation. We visited him last week while he was in hospital for about 10 days and, although very week, he showed signs of the Joel we know so well.

The year is hopefully ending well with a Wienburg/Wirick Boxing Day gathering and then Margie and I are repeating our New Years Eve celebration at the Rex as we did last year.

We are also looking forward to taking all 4 grand daughters to the Wizard of Oz at the Grand Theatre on Sunday.

Early December '09

Our House on Google Map's Street View

This has been quite the interesting week.

Our bus system's strike continues making loads of cash for taxis particularly the brand new company, London Taxi.....talk about perfect timing!

Tiger continues to make headlines and time will tell whether he'll continue to dominate the golf world. The lawyers will make a killing and ironically, more people will be watching when he makes his golf appearance.

Google Map's Street View came to London with quite the reception. Many pros and cons but overall people seemed to be ok with the idea. I think it's a very positive add on and the benefits far out way the sceptisism.

Musings

It's still an exceptionally mild Fall and I'm loving it! We normally would have had at least one snow fall and temps around 0C....
Not much happening to report.
Enjoyed Colin Perkel's visit to the London Videography Club earlier this month where he talked about his experience in Afghanistan. A good turn out of members enjoyed his talk, photos & videos.
I'm looking forward to my 2 week break at the end of the year....a family 'Boxing Day' gathering at our home and joining the Bakers at the Rex in Toronto on New Years Eve.
I'm sorry the golf season is over as I was feeling quite confident towards the end. Hopefully next year I'll get closer to the 80's than the 90's.