Although I’m not as obsessive as those folks who take a picture-a-day of themselves or their babies, I have tried to take a photo of Pace every few months and now every year. I didn’t plan it this way initially but now always include an Oscar the Grouch doll we bought him when he was born and who ended up in a few photos with the newborn Pace. (By way of explanation, “Oscar” was our pet name for Pace while he was still in utero because he was occasionally pretty grouchy, kicking and punching his mommy!)
This is a quick little video I made for his fourth birthday today (and yes, when it ends up Vimeo instead of YouTube, that’s a pretty big clue that my interpretation of copyright law is different than YouTube’s! <grin>)…
…say “Takei” according to Star Trek’s George Takei who is taking on a controversial Tennessee law by suggesting people could use his surname as a replacement for the word “gay”.
Four years ago, I never imagined that I’d be laying in bed tonight with my perfect, wonderful son, having this conversation:
“What am I made of, daddy?”
“You’re made of lots of stuff – bones and muscles and skin.”
“And what else?”
“Well, did you know that most people are mostly made up of water?”
“I’m not made up of mostly water.”
“Yes you are. It’s science.”
“I’m not water! I’m made of people stuff.”
“Should we call mommy in here to tell you? She’s a nurse so she’ll know.”
“I think mommy needs to give you ‘talking real’ needles!”
“Mommy, can you come in here and tell Pace what he’s mostly made of?”
(Mommy comes in the room)
“Mommy, what am I mostly made of?”
“Poop!”
(Mommy leaves the room)
So I don’t think the issue got settled but nonetheless, happy fourth birthday to our little man, our Spaceman, our Peso, Pace Owen Hammond!
Everyone says it but I can’t believe how the time has flown! (PS – not sure how he got the shiner in the photo below but I think he ran into a table at a 50th Birthday party we attended in Calgary. I couldn’t help but joke “You know you had a good time in Calgary when you go to a party and wake up the next day with no idea how you got a shiner!”)
We got back from our trip to Calgary last night but after unpacking and doing a few things around the house, I didn’t get around to posting. But I’ve decide to backdate this post on Tuesday to yesterday so I can do a Music Monday post as it connects pretty directly to our trip.
We’d gone to Calgary for two family events – a 50th Wedding Anniversary on Friday night and then a 50th Birthday party for a cousin on a different branch of the family tree on Saturday night.
I was asked to give a toast to our family’s milestone anniversaries at the birthday celebration and, barring a few ad-libs, this is what I said:
Hi, my name is Jason Hammond. I am Susan’s cousin and I was going to joke that I’m her favourite cousin but I know that would offend a lot of people in attendance here tonight. So I’ll just say I’m her favourite cousin. Who’s male. And who lives in Regina. And who’s between the age of 35 and 40!
I’d like to thank Aunt Greta for asking me to say a few words in honour of the various milestone anniversaries various members of the Hammond family are celebrating this year and most specifically, the 50th wedding anniversary of her brother Ken & his wife, Eileen which was celebrated last night by many in the Hammond family who have gathered together this weekend.
When I was thinking of what to say to honour such an accomplishment, I thought back to my wife’s and my own wedding reception, eight years ago in 2003. I have to begin by explaining that technically, Shea and I had three weddings!
We planned to get married on the beach in Mexico but to simplify paperwork issues, we’d gotten legally married by a Justice of the Peace here in Calgary which is where we were living at the time. A month later, we had a ceremony on the beach in Mexico with a small group of family and friends. Then we had a reception in my wife’s hometown later that summer for everyone who couldn’t join us in Mexico. As we all know, most men have trouble remembering one anniversary so I don’t recommend putting yourself in a spot where you have to remember three!
Now, I think the bar’s open so you may find out otherwise as the night goes on. But normally my wife and I aren’t big dancers. For that reason, we decided that instead of having a traditional First Dance as Bride & Groom, we would have our DJ play a song called “Prettiest Eyes” by a British group called The Beautiful South. This very touching song tracks the development of a relationship with each verse covering a different milestone – from a couple meeting and falling in love, moving in together, and slowly growing older together through all of life’s joys and struggles.
For our first dance, we asked every couple in the audience to join us on the dance floor and the song began to play. The trick was that after every verse we had our MC ask people who had been married for a certain period of time to *leave* the dance floor, naturally starting with “those who have been married for one year or less.” This got Shea and I off the hook immediately!
The next verse was five years or less which saw a great outflux as many of our newly married friends (as well as one 80-something couple who had recently re-married!) joined us on the sidelines. The next verses were for couples married for ten years, twenty years and so on.
As the song played, I realized with some horror that we hadn’t really planned this out very well as we hadn’t thought who, or indeed if anyone, would be left after the final anniversary, the 40th, was called. But after the MC called for the couples who had celebrated their 30th anniversary to leave the dance floor, I was happy to see that it had worked out perfectly – there was one couple from my wife’s side and one couple from mine left dancing.
That was Ken and Eileen.
Shea and I happily joined the two remaining couples on the dance floor and our silly plan to get us out of a First Dance actually ended up working out better than we could possibly have imagined. The symbolism of us joining two couples who had lasted forty years together – and now fifty in Ken and Eileen’s case – was not lost on us and we can only hope to reach the same milestone ourselves.
We have lots of inspiration as we look around the crowd gathered here tonight – Mike & Deana are at five years, Susan and Bill are celebrating their 20th, Wes & Lynda Banbury are at 30 years, my own parents will celebrate their own 40th anniversary this year as will Donna and Paul. I’m sure there are many others at or close to symbolic anniversaries as well.
For all of us who are married, it all begins with our wedding and so I’d also like to take this opportunity to welcome Jessi to the family. As most of us know, her and Shane are getting married later this summer in Hawaii and beginning their own journey together. I will offer one piece of advice – if you decide to have two…or three weddings…make sure the next one happens during the winter months and I guarantee a lot more Canadian cousins will show up!
Anyhow, to pull it back to our reason we celebrate tonight – congrats to Susan on her 50th Birthday and also to her and Bill as they approach their 20th wedding anniversary.
I propose a toast to our family’s many milestone anniversaries.
This song, which I’ve posted before, long before I had Music Mondays, is a favourite (although I don’t draw too much attention to the fact that one of the great appeals of The Beautiful South for me is their super sweet melodies are often mixed with sarcastic lyrics such as “And I only write it down/Just in case that you die”! Yep, that’s part of the refrain in Shea’s and my first dance song!)
We’re off to Calgary from Wednesday until early next week so it may be another blog holiday depending on how busy we are and what my Internet access is like at our various ports of call.
In the meantime, here’s a song from one of my favourite artists I discovered when we lived in Cowtown. Tariq was one of the featured performers at a fundraiser for Amnesty International chapter and he absolutely blew me away – great songs, great lyrics and a great performer with just an acoustic guitar and a microphone.
Unfortunately, partly because he’s an unsigned indy artist and partly because he goes by the somewhat common name, Tariq, it’s pretty hard to find clips of him online. Below is the only song of his I could find on YouTube and there’s a few more on CBC3 (check out “Basement” which is one of my favourites and the song which is quoted as the title of this post.)
Apparently I don’t have any pictures of me with my mom on my computer. So instead, here’s one of Pace and his Grandma when we stopped by the Indian Head Union Hospital on our way out of town during a recent visit to Grandpa and Grandma’s.
Technically, my mom “retired” from nursing a few years ago (I swear I attended a party and everything!) but sometimes you wonder if she’ll ever retire. She loves her job, the patients and the contribution she makes to the community (hmmm, I didn’t go to nursing school but library school doesn’t seem so far removed from that value system at all!)
I’ve always taken a great deal of pride in that, it doesn’t matter which person from Indian Head or area that I bump into – a new guy on my rec hockey team, someone I meet at the library, a person I’m interviewing for a magazine story – if they’ve spent any time at the Indian Head Union Hospital, they speak highly of my mom.
The guy who showed up to play hockey with us was the funniest. Once we figured out that he grew up in a nearby town which led to talk of my parents and what they did, he goes “Oh yeah, I remember your mom. I had a really bad chest infection so I got admitted the hospital for a week. Your mom was the only nurse who wouldn’t let me go outside to smoke! Probably a good thing when you think about it. She’s could be a hard-ass but she’s a great nurse!”
I couldn’t say it better myself. Happy Mother’s Day, Mom. Love you!
With the amount of moisture we’ve had for the past couple winters and last summer as well, much of Saskatchewan is experiencing the worst flooding we’ve had in forty years. Katepwa Lake, north of Indian Head, where our family has a cottage is no exception. Last weekend, Shea, Pace and I were out to do some sandbagging with some family members and then with some of the cottage owners near us as well.
After we finished, we took a drive around the four lakes that make up the Calling Lakes (including Katepwa) to see the extent of the damage. The photo below is from Katepwa Beach.
Normally the “Unsupervised Swimming Area” sign is on a grassy area. Beyond that, there’s a walkway, a drop down to a wide beach (you can just make out one of the boards that normally divides the walkway from the beach) and THEN the water starts. Or at least where it’s *supposed* to start.
Most of these sites are based on anonymous ratings so you have to take them with a grain of salt as the people most inspired to write a review will be those who either felt really bad about or really good about who/what they’re rating. I suspect those who had an average experience aren’t likely to take the time to write anything.
But I do think there’s some legitimacy to these sites, especially when you look at the ratings in aggregate. When I did Web 2.0 instruction with our branch librarians in Southeast Regional Library, I would bring up RateMDs.com to talk about how web sites like these were putting power directly in people’s hands.
Early on, one librarian asked me to look up a specialist who had done her recent surgery and which she’d had a really negative experience with. Many of the reviews were similar but always along the lines of “This doctor has a terrible bedside manner but is an excellent surgeon.”
After looking through these reviews, the branch librarian said “If I’d known that ahead of time, perhaps my experience after surgery wouldn’t have been so bad.” (Of course, in the “grain of salt” category, another librarian revealed that a bunch of the town councilors had gone on the site to give an average-at-best doctor really high ratings in an effort to keep him in the community and also to possibly draw new residents to the town!)
So again, while you have to look at these sites with a critical eye, they can help give you a more detailed picture of the people and places you interact with on a regular basis.
It will be interesting to see what a site like RateMyPolitician, especially since it deals with such a sensitive, polarized topic, might develop into.
