Swim Meet

Swim meet day preparations

• Take Angela to school by 7:20 (check)
• Go home and Drive Brian to school early. (check)
• Leave at 7:50 to get to the new Atos Pan Am swim Center in Markham before 9am (check)
• Take short cuts as it is close to my work location (check)
• Just about there and there is an accident. Detour and get there before meet starts. (not on list but check)
• Ask lady what side of Pool the races will be on to get good seats. (check)

• Sit one row up to get good view of lane 9. The lane we were told Angela would be in (check).
• Take some test pictures of lane 9 to make sure you can get good shot of diving and swimming (check)

• Discuss which devices to use (Small camera for video as it has 20x zoom and can get lane 9. Big camera for action shots (check). 
• Confirm don't video whole race as battery will not last (check)
• Put big camera in multi shot mode to take good shots of dive (check)
• Test out videoing (check)
• Test shot of first heat (check)

Heat 2. Angela's Heat

• Swimmers at the podium
• What lane 0?, I thought they would be lane 9. 
• No time to change plans now, stick with original preparations

• First person dive. 
• Good shot

• First person swimming. 
• o.k. shot and know what to do for when Angela swims.

• I don't know if your camera is taking video Silvana? 
• I'm not sure why it is stopping all the time?
• Angela guiding her junior team mates
• Lots of time she anchors so I am ready

• Angela getting prepped to anchor 

• Angela on the diving block and ready to go

• This is it I am ready for the dive
• Yes get your phone on and take video with that. Now that it is lane 0 you should be fine
• Ready set dive 
• Some old guys hand in the way no worries I have multi shot on

• Some old guys hand in the way again

• First good shot of Angela

• Angela turning
• Flip turn. That's great!

• There she goes. Touches the Omega time wall

• Take picture of score board
• Angela Fragos .. what happened to the "n" ......arghhhh

With Glowing Hearts

The title of this post says a lot about our experience today. Our hearts were a glow with unity and the feeling of being something as big as the Olympic games.

We took the kids out of school for the day.
We took time off of work in order to get out to see the torch pass through Richmond Hill.
Many days of following the torch on the web site and then planning where we were going to stand went out the window when we drove down to see the area and found there was probably a better place to see the torch. The torch bearers where actually waiting at the community center and they let us touch and even hold the torches (not lit ofcourse). You could see the glow in their faces. Even more enjoyable was to see how they wanted to share the excitement with us.













Once the torch was coming closer we watched the bus with the participants pass by and drop them off every 300 meters or so. We quickly ran to the next person to watch the flame pass from one person to the next. Torch bearer 156 (Graham) was passing the flame to 157 (Alain). I'm glad we asked them there names as it was nice to cheer on a name rather than a number. It was a cold -10 degrees out but the feeling we shared with the people around us kept us warm...until they relay was over then we felt it I tell you :-)

I didn't want this event to pass us by without at least a try to get up close and see it. Back in 1988 I remember the torch passing by our old restaurant on Keele and Bloor. From what I remember even though it may not have been a day for us to be working we all showed up in order to take in the experience. It all happened too quickly then as it did this time but I feel we got much more out of it this time. I'm still trying to find the one picture I had from back in 88. Until I find it enjoy the ones from this year.

Update. There it is thanks to my Cousin.

Humbug, CBC chops part of classic Christmas special out

Last night the family settled down at 8pm ET to watch a Christmas classic, Santa Claus is coming to town. It's something we look forward to every year and is one of our favourite Christmas shows.
The one song we look forward to is "Put one foot in front of the other" where the Winter Warlock learns a valuable lesson on trying even when you think you can't do something. A great learning opportunity for the kids not to mention a nice catchy tune we sing for days afterwards. Much to our surprise this segment was cut out. It can't be more than a minute or so long but it was cut out. We questioned. Did we miss it? Was it going to be after the commercial. Nope, CUT OUT.

The good thing is that we can probably see it a few more times before Christmas on other stations that will not cut out key parts of the show.

This is not the first time the CBC has done this. We watch Chitty Chitty Bang Bang a few years back and they cut out more than one key part of the movie that in my eyes ruined the storyline.

CBC, The first time may have been acceptable given the length of the movie but to do this to a show that is only 45 or so minutes long is unacceptable. You've now lost us as a family for watching any such show. I'll look to other stations to watch my favourites knowing they will not cut out key parts.

Outdoor Movie Night

The weather has not been that Summery yet but we took a chance and decided to have an Outdoor movie night. It ended up being a great night for it. The temperature did drop a bit but it allowed us to use some blankets to keep warm and avoid the mosquitoes.
1 Ipod
1 Projector
1 Screen
2 Speakers and a bunch of snacks and it was better than a drive in movie. Not that I have ever been to a drive in.

Up Up and Away

It was a blustery day on Saturday and up in the Wasaga area by the beach you could really feel it. For most of us this is a day you don't go to the beach but for some it is ideal conditions for what I think is called paraboarding.

Imagine being pulled along the lake by a parasail and using it to catch some air as well.

While driving up you can see the parasails from a distance. This weekend there were at least a dozen high up in the sky that beckon you to come and see what is going on.

We went for a walk along the beach to get closer and possibly see some of these daredevils in action.

I followed a few in my viewfinder as they went back and for along the lake. All were good but then one guy stood out. Silvana caught him holding on with one hand and touching the water with another and she said "Follow yellow and green guy".

No sooner did she say it than he caught some big air. He could see that I was taking pictures and I think it spurred him on. For the next 15 minutes he was up in the air for what seemed an eternity (even people with their cell phones had enough time to focus and get a shot).

Scklock Clock

After some 12 years I was in the need for a new clock radio. The volume on my existing one would not allow for anything under 11 and as you know most settings only go to 10. :-) Waking up to Roger, Daryl and Marilyn (how did Daryl get in front of Marilyn anyways, maybe just sounds better) in the morning at that level is just not a good way to get out of bed.
I did some research on what I would get to replace it and found that many of the options involve some sort of ipod or mp3 player doc. I neither have an ipod nor do I think that the clock radio that is basically used to inform me of the time when I wake up at night needs to have internet connectivity, a digital picture, soothing rain forest sounds, CD player or the miriad of other feature that I will never use.
One feature that stood out was an auto dimming for the numbers. Many of the newer models the light is soo bright it illuminates the whole room. Another that is becoming more common is auto time set. Standard necessities would be a dual alarm and snooze. You think that it would be easy to find but as I said your options are limited.

Some words of advice:

• Get one with larger numbers that light up. Yes I'm getting old and need glasses to see but it's easier to see in the middle of the night as opposed to a backlit one that has black numbers.
• The autodimming then becomes a good feature as the 3 inch blue numbers will light up the neighbourhood if you don't do it.
• If you can get two speakers good for you as one small one usually makes the sound very sharp. Not that bad when all you listen to if for is 5 minutes in the morning.
• Battery backup for when the power goes out. Which makes the auto time set even better. How will you know if the power went out? Check the flashing clock on your stove or microwave.
  

I ended up getting an RCA that meets my needs even though the sound sucks.












Now this is a far cry from my first clock radio I got I think when I was around 11 or 12. One I like to refer to as a schlock clock, more commonly known as a flip clock. These were the ones where every minute the numbers would flip over with a loud schlock. Much to my surprise there was one similar to the picture below available at Wal Mart.

Back seat freedom

We used the car instead of the van a bit more this summer when going out with the kids. Perhaps it was the price of gas that caused us to do this but I think it's because they are older now and can manage themselves in and out of the vehicle.

Who could imagine that they would get a kick out of being in the car over the van. The single most exciting part is that they could control their own windows. I know you may find that difficult to understand but it is the first step in a long journey that culminates in getting your own vehicle and being able to control all the other parts of the car as well.

That back seat freedom is not as easy as it was in the past where we would ride around with no seatbelts or lie down on long trips. You still have to have your seatbelt on. You can't kick the seat in front of you which is soo much closer than a van.

Even though you can open that window with a push of a button it only goes down 3/4 of the way down and if the a/c is on you can't open it at all due to rules not mechanics. Gone are the days that all 4 windows were open to cool off the car because a/c did not exist. I remember riding in the back seat on hot day after a shower on our way to an event and the wind from the window would dry and style my hair at the same time.

Winter is almost here so we have a few months of fall to enjoy traveling with the windows down and then the heater will be on and we night as well go back into the van.