Orbiting Ottawa

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August 1 - 27, 2014

"Haven't you gone yet?" a good friend teased us the other day. "How can we miss you if you won't go away?!"

Well, yes, since vacating our house on August 1, we've spent the first weeks of our sabbatical year off orbiting within 2 hours of Ottawa. So far we've made it:

• as far East as Montreal, where Trish and I pretended we were Plateau hipsters for a few days while the kids went to sleepover camp;
• as far West as the Barron River Canyon in Algonquin Park for a short canoe trip; and
• a bit further North visiting friends' cottages up in the Gatineau Hills. 

While hovering close to home has sometimes made this feel like a long goodbye, it has been a great chance to recover from the big push to move out of the house, and to reconnect with a few more friends...

We also taking some time to get use to being happily homeless, and to pare our travel gear back to "all that we can't leave behind".  We have really appreciated the hospitality of friends who have put us up (and/or put up with us), and we are getting excited about heading off for Turkey in mid-September. 

Having reached escape velocity from the gravitational pull of the nation's capital, we are now on the VIA train en route to Toronto, from where we'll next visit some of our family in Southern Ontario. See you soon!

A Blessing of Friends

As keen as we are to go #thataway for the next year, we know that we will miss our friends and neighbours while we frappez la rue. So it seemed fitting  that we throw a party ere we depart. 

Trish and I have been married now for something like 19 years, which I suppose is long enough to call some of our odder habits "traditions".

One of these traditions is to open up our house for big parties. This started back when we were grad students with the De-Alienation From Your Labour Day Salsa Making Collective Party, and it continued with Monster Potlucks of 70+ people when we lived at The Blob, a two-year experience of living in intentional community.

More recently, our fetes have included the Biannual Waffle Extravaganza on New-Year's Day, and a super-secret-surprise party for Trish's 40th party in which we demonstrated our great love for her through skullduggery, deception and covert acts of catering.

Through these exxperiments and double-blind, randomized control trials, we've discovered that the formula for a great party is really quite simple:  good lighting, a great playlist, an electic mix of amazing friends of all ages, some simple but yummy food, a wee bit of something to drink, and a Grandiose Title -- preferably with a #hashtag :-) 

This time for our #thataway bash, we invited singer-songwriter, Craig Cardiff to play. Craig tours all across Canada, peforming at bars, concert halls, churches and festivals, but in between he loves to play smaller private functions like this. I first heard him play at our neighbour's house concert and his songs have been on high-repeat on my shower-serenading set-list ever since. 

Craig's poignant songs, solid guitar work, sing-along-choruses and father-daughter dance smack down competitions, together with technical, logistical and moral support from some friends, turned our back yard into a Mid-Summer-Night's Dream. It was lovely to see so many folks together and to say goodbye; we will miss you.

Ahh, yes, to misquoteth the Bard, Partying is such sweet sorrow. 

Here are a few pictures from the bash.