Anniversaries

So it has been brought to my attention that the first anniversary of this blog came and went this week. Oops. It's just been one of those crazy weeks -- out every evening and a weekend chock full of everything from errands to socializing to parental visits. There's another week just like it coming up and we've already got something on the calendar for every weekend in June. Sheesh. But I digress. Although I haven't been blogging as much as I'd like, I think the blog has been a good exercise for me, a good way to keep in touch with friends and family, and a good way to get some thoughts down and "out there," so to speak. It's been a great year, that's for sure. Eventful, happy, fulfilling, full of many of the good things life has to offer. Sure, there have been some difficult times as well, but in those days the support of my friends has given me great strength. I've really enjoyed sharing my life this way for the last year, and am looking forward to continuing the blog. Maybe I'll even post entries occasionally! *eye roll*

We had a great visit to Tremblant and the cottage (which was actually in Val-des-Lacs) last weekend. Serdic's birthday was, I like to think, well celebrated (he didn't seem to have any complaints, at least!). You can view some pictures here. Lots of quiet time, hot tub time, "us" time. It was perfect. We didn't even mind that it rained all weekend. ;-)

And, finally, I'm just putting my friends on notice. If that happy day should ever arrive where I put on the white dress and walk down the aisle and throw a big ol' kick ass party afterwards, I will be very disappointed if something like this does not happen: best toast to the bride ever. Just sayin'.

Running away for the weekend

Just a short post to update, since it's been a couple of weeks. We are off today for a few days at a rented cottage (or "chalet" as the paperwork keeps calling it) near Mont Tremblant. Hot tub, fireplace, mountains, lakes, peace and quiet ... a few days of that is just what the doctor ordered, for both of us, and we've been looking forward to it for weeks. It's also my birthday gift to Serdic, so that makes it a little extra special as well.

Other than that, things are normal around here. Busy, as usual, of course. One choir is done for the season, the other is in the home stretch (three more weeks). J and I have an NAC date next week, and Serdic and I have one the week after. Lots of good theatre. As you may have read on Serdic's blog, we also got home last weekend to see a friend play the lead in Beauty and the Beast, which was a lot of fun. I'm always happiest when I'm sitting in a theatre, listening to the orchestra tune, waiting for the lights to go down and the overture to start, so I'm excited about all the theatre I'm getting to see this month.

And finally, happy Mother's Day to my Mom and grandmother, and happy anniversary to Mom and Dad. We got to spend Mother's Day with our families (both of them, which is one of the things I love about dating someone from my hometown!) and as always it was a treat.

I hope everyone enjoys the long weekend and has something fun planned!

Sunday morning musings

Yesterday was a milestone in our relationship ... we, for the first time, made a joint purchase of something major for our home. (We've been sharing bills and groceries and that kind of thing since we moved in together, of course, but this was the first time we went out and invested a fair amount of money in something permanent for the apartment.) We bought a little bistro set for our back deck, so that we can have morning coffee and evening meals and all sorts of things out there. So cute!

This is another musical weekend for me. Last night we saw a friend and colleague of Serdic's in a performance of La Boheme. This afternoon one of my choirs is giving our spring concert, which I am very much looking forward to, as it is a selection of Canadian folk music, which is exactly the kind of music I like to sing. I have to say that I'm rapidly reaching the point I do every spring, where I am very burnt out and exhausted from the two choirs and all their demands, but the end is in sight -- this weekend and next are the two final major concerts for the season, and then I have some time off. I love my choirs, but I reach a point every spring where I've had enough and need a few months off. This year has been particularly busy, as one choir alone has had ten engagements, or averaging more than a concert a month (our season is October to June)!

In other news, Serdic and I have just started to plan our first (of many!) trip to visit PetDoc and Noise once they're settled in London. I think we'll be going for ten days in September. We're actually looking for suggestions of things to do in Edinburgh, if any of my faithful readers have been there. We're going to try to do a side trip to there from London, and we know what the guidebooks say to see, but I'm always interested in "off the beaten track" suggestions from people who have been there ... "Don't miss this!" or "We had the best meal of our lives in that restaurant" kind of things. Anyone?

Spring is in the air

Ah, yes. Spring. That lovely time of year. And you know how you can tell spring has arrived in fair Ottawa? Half the streets in the bloody city are already torn up with construction. That didn't take long.

However, I'm not complaining, as we've been enjoying absolutely gorgeous weather this week. This is exactly the time of year I love, when you can sleep with the windows open, but still snuggle under the covers. When you still need a jacket, but you don't necessarily have to do it up. The snow is finally (almost) gone, the green things are starting to bloom again, and everywhere you look you see signs of the world coming back to life. It's been a long winter this year and I'm really enjoying this glimpse of spring.

I have a busy weekend coming up -- a performance at a local retirement home with one of my choirs Saturday afternoon, then a girls' night at my friend H's house (always a great time, we get together, eat too much food, have a few drinks, play board games and gossip). Sunday I have a sectional rehearsal for my other choir, then Serdic and I are accompanying my friend Pixie (as Serdic dubbed her several months ago) to the NAC to hear Gordon Lightfoot perform. It's not every day you get a chance to hear a living Canadian legend sing. I'm very excited about it.

Tonight Serdic and I are meeting downtown after work to fulfill our Flat Stanley duties. I agreed to do a Flat Stanley adventure for a little girl in my mom's class. I'm an old hand at the Flat Stanley thing, as I had a visit from one made by my friend Cupcake's son a couple of years ago, so I know all the places to scope out. We have already had an abortive attempt at showing Stanley around Ottawa, as we went downtown on Sunday to take some pictures of him at the parliament buildings. Only to discover when we arrived there that there was this little pro-China rally going on, featuring tens of thousands of protestors. Perhaps you read about it? So although political action on the Hill is part of life in Ottawa and would have made an interesting backdrop for the pictures, we decided all in all it was better to try again when things were a little quieter. Fortunately today's weather is even nicer than Sunday's, and now that it is light until nearly 8:00 in the evenings (woot!) we'll get some nice pictures in after work.

And, finally, this is a special time of April for me, because it's bookended by the birthdays of two people who mean the world to me. My sister, PetDoc, had her birthday last Friday, and SingerDad's birthday is tomorrow. I know I talk a lot on this blog about my family and how much they mean to me, and it does start to sound like a broken record after awhile, so let me just say that my sister is my best friend, and my dad is my hero. I'm blessed to have them both. Happy birthday, youse.

Keeping up with the Joneses

It is a well established fact that Serdic is The Cook in our household. He does 90% of the cooking and every meal he has ever prepared for me has been delicious. But every once in awhile, I feel the need to prove that I can cook, too, and so I take over the kitchen for a night. The major difference in our styles, I think, is that Serdic is constantly trying new recipes or adjusting the ones he has based on what we happen to have in the fridge, whereas I have my few specialties that I do very well, and I don't tend to stray too far from them. One of these specialties is a vegetarian manicotti (although I've been known to make it with Serdic's famous spaghetti sauce as well, so it doesn't have to be vegetarian). It is the first meal I ever cooked for Serdic, back when we were first dating, and it's a dish he still requests on a regular basis. It's a bit time consuming and fussy, but the end result is definitely worth it. It also helps us with our resolution this year to take our lunches more often, as we get seven generous servings out of it, so two for dinner and then five lunches for the week ahead. I often try to make it on a weekend and then we have the leftovers in the fridge ready to go for Monday morning. You see tonight's meal pictured, along with garlic bread and a green salad.

I received the recipe as part of a fat loss program I was doing once upon a time, so it's also quite healthy. You can adjust as you like -- obviously full fat cheeses and/or sauce and such make a difference to taste and texture. I also play with the amounts of sauce and mozza, as I like my pasta very saucy and cheesy (just like me!). Of course, this has an impact on the calorie count. *sheepish grin*

The recipe is as follows:

1 box manicotti shells

1 15 oz container low-fat ricotta cheese

Whites of two large eggs

1 cup drained thawed frozen spinach or 2 cups fresh, chopped

1 cup grated peeled carrot

1 small onion

1 tbsp chopped fresh basil, or 1 tsp dried

1 tbsp minced fresh thyme, or 1 tsp dried

3 cups marinara sauce (I tend to cheat and use store bought, my favourite is Healthy Choice 'Garlic Lovers', or if there is a container of Serdic's spaghetti sauce in the freezer we'll use that)

1/2 cup part-skim mozzarella cheese, grated

1. Preheat the oven to 350F. Bring a large saucepan of water to a boil and cook the shells for 3 minutes. Drain, rinse with cold water, and put them in a bowl of room temperature water. Set aside.

2. In a bowl, combine the ricotta with the egg whites, spinach, carrot, onion, basil and thyme.

3. In a 9x14 baking dish, place about 1/2 cup of the marinara sauce, enough to cover the bottom. Drain the manicotti shells. Stuff each shell with the filling and place in the baking dish. Spoon over the remaining sauce. Cover with foil and bake 35-40 minutes, until the shells are fully cooked and the sauce is bubbling.

4. Remove the pan from the oven and uncover. Sprinkle evenly with the mozzarella and return to the oven for 10 minutes more, until the cheese is melted and slightly golden. Let rest 5 minutes before serving.

Makes 14 shells. A serving is 2 shells. 320 calories; 10 g. fat; 41 g. carbohydrates; 18 g. protein; 4 g. fibre.

Picture this

So we had our trip to Quebec City (see some photos here) last weekend. It was a great weekend in several respects -- we had a lot of R&R and great meals (we definitely highly recommend the hotel and will be staying there again), spent a lot of time just wandering the city and enjoying some quality time together, the train is a great and relaxing way to travel, and the highlight, of course, was seeing my photo in the exhibition at the museum. I had prepared myself to be disappointed, as they had told me the photo would be in the "interactive area," which I suspected meant that it would be manipulated beyond recognition or part of a collage or mosaic or cut up and put back together in a weird way, or something. But as soon as we walked into the exhibition I could see it across the room, in all its glory.



It was on a flat screen set into a display case, and part of a series of scrolling photos of different cityscapes. So while Serdic acted as my accomplice and stood between me and the guard and blocked her view, I quickly snapped off a couple of photos of my photo (how meta!). The only disappointment was that instead of using my name as the photo credit, as I had been told they would, they gave the source instead, the URL for my Flickr account. Still cool, but not *as* cool as seeing my name there would have been. But it was still a pretty awesome moment, to stand there in the museum and see my photo scroll by. Several times, of course. And then we went back to see it again before we left. *sheepish grin*

So then we came home, thinking it was a once in a lifetime event and weren't we glad we had made the effort, and so on and so forth. And two days later I got an email, via Flickr, from an editor at http://www.schmap.com/, which is an online travel guide run by Yahoo! (who, not so coincidentally, also run Flickr), asking if I would grant permission for one of the photos I took in Italy last spring to be used in their latest publication. I did, of course, and it appeared online on Friday. (Here's a screencap.) This time they used my name in the credit line. ;-)

So, interesting times. As I said before, I've always thought I took nice photos, but I never thought other people (besides friends and family) would be interested in them! It's not like I'm ready to quit my day job (hell, no one's offered to pay me for anything yet!) and take up photography as a career, but it's still been a nice little ego boost in the last few months. In both cases, interestingly, the photos selected have not been the ones I would have chosen, or ones that I would rank among the best pictures I've ever taken. But I guess in both cases they were an unusual angle and not the stereotypical "tourist" shot (I mean, I took some gorgeous photos of, for example, the Rialto Bridge in Venice, but everyone who has ever visited Venice has the same shots in her photo album!). Either way, it's been kind of fun.

A picture's worth a thousand words

So as you may remember, in August Serdic and I had a long weekend in Quebec City. For a number of reasons, it was an excellent trip, our first real getaway together as a couple, a beautiful city, great meals and sightseeing, fabulous weather, etc. etc. etc. And I took a lot of pictures, as I tend to do when I'm travelling -- as anyone who has been forced enjoyed looking at my photo albums will know. Now, I don't claim to be a fabulous photographer, but I do have a good quality camera which takes a pretty nice picture, and I have found with digital cameras and the advances with screens and settings and such (and especially the ability to know right away if the photo will turn out or not and take another one if necessary) that I tend to take a lot of nice pictures. And then I like to share them with people. So when we got home I put my photos of QC up on my Flickr account, sent the link out to friends and family (and posted it here), basked in their admiration for a couple of days, and went on about my business.

Fast forward to mid-December. Sitting at my desk at work one afternoon I got an email via Flickr from a woman who works for the Musée de la Civilisation in QC. She had found my photos on Flickr and was wondering if I would grant permission for them to use one of them in an exhibition they are putting on this spring at the museum. At first, I thought it had to be some kind of hoax, as it just seemed so random. But I did some investigating and googling and she seemed to be who she said she was, and we exchanged several emails over the course of the week about the exhibit and I sent her the high resolution copy of the photo and so forth. She told me that the photo would be used in the "interactive" portion of the exhibit, and they wanted to use it because it was exactly the right angle and perspective of the city's skyline that they were looking for. So it won't be framed and hanging on the wall, but it is apparently in the exhibit, with credit given to me as photographer.

Obviously, Serdic and I decided we needed to go see it. It's not every day this sort of thing happens, after all. So we are off this weekend for a flying trip to QC to see the exhibit and have a couple of days of R&R and pampering. We are splurging and taking the train down and staying in a hotel in the lower part of the old section of the city, just across the street from the museum, in fact. I anticipate some great meals and a lovely soak or two in the hotel room's jacuzzi tub (we upgraded our room when we found out that for $10 more a night we could have a jacuzzi!). And the photo thing is still too cool for words.

What's funny about that particular photo is that it was a random snap out the window of the car. I had been trying to get a shot of the city from that angle as we came back in on the highway, but it's hard to take pictures out of a moving vehicle and they were all blurry. Then as we were bombing down the highway all of a sudden we came upon a stoplight. In the middle of the highway. And it was red. And we were saying to each other "what the heck is up with this stoplight in the middle of the highway?" when I turned to look and the city was perfectly framed in Serdic's open driver's side window. I threw the camera up and grabbed a shot just as the light turned green and we took off again. So we decided that stoplight was there for photo ops. Little did I know that it would be the photo that would bring me glory and riches. Well, glory at least. Well, for a moment or two, anyway. :-)