Showing posts with label birthday. Show all posts
Showing posts with label birthday. Show all posts

31 July 2026

31 Days in Canada

 In honour of CANADA DAY  I plan to post a daily image of Canada and a link to a random Canadian location we have visited.

It's my birthday and the last day of July, so what a better way to wrap up 31 Days in Canada than with my favourite Canadian icon!!!

It so happened that last Sunday we attended a candlelight tribute to Leonard Cohen to kick off my birthday week!

The Fever Candlelight Concerts series in Toronto featured a 60-minute Tribute to Leonard Cohen performed by a live string quartet (two violins, one viola, and one cello) surrounded by thousands of candles at the Toronto Reference Library.



We've had the pleasure of seeing him twice in 2008 and 2009, in London ON and Toronto.

Candlelight Tribute to Leonard Cohen 2026
Lest We Forget recited by Leonard Cohen
RIP First We Took Manhattan
Hallelujah various including Greece

In 2024 we watched Leonard Cohen: I'm Your Man is a 2005 concert film by Lian Lunson about the life and career of Leonard Cohen. It is based on a January 2005 tribute show at the Sydney Opera House titled "Came So Far for Beauty", which was presented by Sydney Festival under the artistic direction of Brett Sheehy, and produced by Hal Willner. Performers at this show included Nick Cave, Jarvis Cocker, The Handsome Family, Beth Orton, Rufus Wainwright, Martha Wainwright, Teddy Thompson, Linda Thompson, Antony, Kate & Anna McGarrigle, with Cohen's former back-up singers Perla Batalla and Julie Christensen as special guests. The end of the film includes a performance by Leonard Cohen and U2, which was not recorded live, but filmed specifically for the film at the Slipper Room in New York in May 2005. 
This was fantastic!!!! Here's a link to it on YouTube.


01 May 2026

Memories

 May 1 Toronto ON


Today would have been my mother's 96th birthday!!

Photo taken 1945 Dublin Ireland

Her favourite song and version she knew best.


Bee Gees version



31 July 2025

Birthday Reflections



July 2025 - Toronto ON

You start dying slowly ;
if you do not travel,
if you do not read,
If you do not listen to the sounds of life,
If you do not appreciate yourself.
You start dying slowly :
When you kill your self-esteem,
When you do not let others help you.
You start dying slowly ;
If you become a slave of your habits,
Walking everyday on the same paths…
If you do not change your routine,
If you do not wear different colours
Or you do not speak to those you don’t know.
You start dying slowly :
If you avoid to feel passion
And their turbulent emotions;
Those which make your eyes glisten
And your heart beat fast.
You start dying slowly :
If you do not risk what is safe for the uncertain
If you do not go after a dream
If you do not allow yourself
At least once in your lifetime
To run away from sensible advice
Don't let yourself die slowly
Do not forget to be happy!
~ Pablo Neruda♡


The moment I hear a Senior start acting, speaking and looking like a Black Cloud of Dying Negative Energy, I can't disengage fast enough and draw me some Positive Energy from a more Youthful and Vibrant Source. 





05 August 2023

Paul's Coffee

  Linking up with Marg at The Intrepid Reader

 August 2023 - Toronto ON

NEW - OPENED ACROSS THE STREET FROM US


Saturday we woke to heavy rain. So as per the last two Saturdays that we had baseball tickets, we headed out with rain jackets and sneakers. 

Shohei Ohtani is the American League Player of the Month for July, marking his second consecutive A.L. Player of the Month Award and the fourth of his career!



Halfway through the game, they opened to the roof and we were sitting in full hot sunshine and sweating.




Sunday stay home/relax day!

Monday - my birthday!! John golfed, I insisted. I just picked up what I wanted for dinner.
Saw this walking to Longo's.



Came home and got a flower delivery.
Flowers! And chocolates.



Tuesday we had lunch reservations at Bardi's, my choice. 
BARDI’S STEAK HOUSE IS AN INDEPENDENT, NON-PRETENTIOUS, TRADITIONAL STEAKHOUSE, OWNER OPERATED SINCE 1966 by Phillip Bardwell.









Wednesday John went for a pedicure and then golf. I headed out to meet BFF for lunch. Neither of us felt like our lobster roll (gasp) so we tried Michel's Bakery Café and chose sandwiches instead. The bread and croissant were delicious. We are adding it to our rotation.
I decided to cancel my birthday dinner on Thursday at Velouté, in our building. Instead I bought myself a birthday present of a new telephoto lens for my Canon. I had traded my one in when I bought a new camera a few years ago and really missed it.


Instead of going out to dinner, John bought a special bottle of wine for dinner.



Thursday it was so hot and humid when I went for a mani pedi at 10 AM that I decided to stay home while John went for his golf lesson.




Friday was another lazy day at home. I did spend most of the afternoon working on our itinerary for our time in Whitehorse. 

Since I'm light on photos this week, here is one John took last week as the sun was setting, coloured by the fires.


And the Marilyn Monroe buildings in Mississauga.





COOKING

I forgot to mention, when in Montreal last weekend, John's daughter ordered celery fries and they were delicious!

I also didn't post John's Philly cheesesteak poutine (and I many of you think this is a gross idea!).




Saturday - ordered Swiss Chalet chicken

Sunday - Roast pork, potatoes and broccoli

Monday -cilantro lime honey salmon, Greek lemon potatoes, and spinach

Tuesday - out for lunch - cheese and crackers

Wednesday - teriyaki chicken skewers with mushrooms, peppers, and onions and kale salad

Thursday - Velouté  spaghetti and meatballs with focaccia.

Friday - steak, baked potato and broccoli.


WATCHING


11M: Terror in Madrid Survivors and insiders recount March 11, 2004's terrorist attack on Madrid, including the political crisis it ignited and the hunt for the perpetrators. We were not aware of these attacks, a year before London July 2005. 

Mother's Day 2023 is a thriller action movie from Poland (org. title: Dzień Matki). The story unfolds around Nina (Agnieszka Grochowska), a former NATO special operations agent, who is alive and well despite standing over the grave that says she died in 2005 in defense of her country. An interesting foreign film for a Saturday night. 

We finished the series The Night AgentLow-level FBI agent Peter Sutherland works in the basement of the White House manning a phone that never rings - until the night it does, propelling him into a conspiracy that leads all the way to the Oval Office. We are enjoying it.

Sleeping Dog is a 2023 German mystery series. A disgraced police officer and an ambitious young prosecutor open a closed case, which sends them down a conspiracy rabbit hole.
The dubbing is excellent.

Georgetown is a 2019 American crime drama film directed by Christoph Waltz (in his feature directorial debut). It is based on Franklin Foer's 2012 New York Times Magazine article "The Worst Marriage in Georgetown", which details the 2011 murder of 91-year-old socialite Viola Herms Drath by her much-younger second husband in the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, D.C. Waltz stars alongside Vanessa Redgrave, Annette Bening and Corey Hawkins.
Creepy and good.


READING

I am on a kick of Toronto true crime stories.

A Daughter's Deadly Deception: The Jennifer Pan Story was good (I knew the story) but it didn't cover how she was captured nor give us much of the trial. 
Click here for a quick recap of the case in Toronto Life.


From the outside looking in, Jennifer Pan seemed like a model daughter living a perfect life. The ideal child, the one her immigrant parents saw, was studying to become a pharmacist at the University of Toronto. But there was a dark, deceptive side to the angelic young woman.

Secret Life: The Jian Ghomeshi Investigation 


It began as rumours. Whispers at dinner parties. Warnings about bad dates with a Canadian celebrity. Then, seemingly out of nowhere, superstar CBC broadcaster Jian Ghomeshi revealed his interest in “rough sex” in a long Facebook post, and a scandal of unprecedented scale descended on the radio host.


I had read the excellent book about and by Marie Heinen, Nothing But the Truth. She was Ghomeshi's lawyer. I actually read it in one sitting! The woman loves shoes, how could I not??



An intimate and no-holds-barred memoir by Canada's top defence lawyer, Nothing But the Truth weaves Marie Henein's personal story with her strongly held views on society's most pressing issues, legal and otherwise.

01 April 2023

Bean Head

 Linking up at Marg at The Intrepid Reader


March 2023 - Toronto ON

Sep 2022 - Toronto ON

It rained all day Saturday but since it is usually a PJ day we didn't care. We dawdled over our coffees reading/watching. Did a couple of loads of laundry. Hung my latest embroidery. 
Got rid of cardboard boxes that have started to accumulate.
I have spent some time yesterday and today going through the multitude of CDs we had used as backup. Hopefully I will finish on Sunday. UPDATE I did finish on Sunday! YAY me! I just have to dispose of them. I kept the old laptop with the CD read/write.

I received our new compost bin (I had been using a bowl on the counter). This works really well. 




Sunday was certainly productive for me. A load of laundry, I cleaned out the freezer as repairman coming tomorrow (fingers crossed) reorganized and threw out a bunch of crap. It seems like the freezer is freezing and unfreezing on the right side so any bakery products were mushy, soup stock went in garbage. Then I ended up with a gazillion reusable freezer bags to wash and a bunch of tupperware. Finished CDs as above, washed kitchen floor.
Decluttered the bar and moved the tech chargers/plugs into the drawers of the coffee table that got rid of a basket on the bookcase.
I even had an hour telephone chat with a friend.
John descaled the coffee pot, something we should do more often.
Cleared out the empty boxes were were keeping "in case".
Heck, it's Sunday...
Then I sat down to embroider and watch stuff.

Monday John used the golf simulator. 
Fridge repair guy came, nice guy, said it was because ice was building up blocking fan and unable to push cold air down...Okay...we were told to defrost it for 24 hours. So we packed up the meats and put in the other freezer, got ice and put the rest on the balcony. 




Tuesday we headed to meet friends for pizza at Libretto's, we were early so we took the long way underground.

Since it was 24 hours later, we plugged the fridge in. Waited a few hours, freezer felt cold but bottom is still at around 60 F. We put some stuff back but left the meat in the other freezer.


Wednesday I checked temperature in the morning 54 F.
We left at 9:40 to catch the bus downtown, I noticed the sign said to Dufferin. Sure enough, at Dufferin we had to get out and catch the streetcar. It was not warm out! 
Got off at John St. and walked up to the AGO for the Leonard Cohen exhibit. We found a new mural at OCAD, check back on Monday.

Back of the AGO





Entitled Couch Monster: Sadzěʔ yaaghęhch’ill Jungen’s new sculpture for this outdoor space is a monument to creative form and engineering. In his first large-scale work in bronze, Jungen has constructed the figure of an elephant from discarded leather sofas. “The use of discarded couches came from my experiences of walking the streets of Toronto and seeing them abandoned on the sidewalks waiting to be picked up at night,” said Jungen. “This was foreign to me and surprising, but to the residents of this city, accustomed to seeing them, they are invisible. I look forward to making them visible again.”


Intrigued by the tragic story of Jumbo, a captive circus elephant who made international headlines when it was killed by a train in St. Thomas, Ontario, in 1885, Jungen is deeply concerned with the terrible price all living things pay when forced to perform for others. That concern is embedded in the title of the work. “Once captured and trained, things are no longer themselves: Jumbo was no longer an elephant, but a monster created by humans for entertainment. Its will and spirit were broken,” he says. The Dane-zaa subtitle of the work, “Sadzěʔ yaaghęhch’ill” translates to “My heart is ripping.”










After a cappuccino in the Galleria Italia we walked over to St. Patrick Station and took the subway up to St. George and transferred over to Shelbourne for John's birthday lunch at The Shelby.

1883 - The mansion was designed by acclaimed architect David Roberts Jr., who had extensive connections to Toronto’s prominent Gooderham family (the cofounders of Gooderham and Worts Distillery, now known as the Distillery District). Roberts Jr. was also responsible for designing Toronto’s Flatiron Building.



2018 Interloper Cabernet Franc from 13th St. winery in Niagara on the Lake.


Delicious steak frites! We both gave the sauce a miss.



Crème Brule sooooo good.


Other dining rooms. 




My BFF was gardening this morning then sent me a text asking if we were getting the storm? Yes.


We came home to the mystery of the missing crocs. John had put them on the dining room chair, out of the way of the cleaning lady. We couldn't find them anywhere so I messaged her and she said she had no idea. Around 8 PM I went to sit on the couch and found them! I sent a photo to the cleaning lady and we had a good laugh. Her husband said she had probably put them there.


Came home and the fridge was still 54 F. John attempted to contact them and got the run around.

Thursday morning fridge was 49 F but it soon climbed back up. John eventually reached a representative, Eve, who was actually helpful and scheduled another repairman for Tuesday. But he still had to provide the same information over again and again and then to the actual company who sent the previous repairman.

John used the golf simulator and I went to Longo's to get our Friday steaks.

Friday, John's birthday, so we went to Kitchen on 6th for a big breakfast. Delicious, we will be back!

Grapefruit mimosas.






We picked up gluten free cannoli from Holy Cannoli!

Cirque de Soleil Zooza is setting up a new show down the street from us. I also noticed the restaurant in our building had a poster made. It will be interesting to see the impact on traffic.

It was a very rainy day.
.





COOKING

Saturday John suggested Chinese curry and I remembered I had bought a mix from Blighty's. When I opened it, it is just a spice mixture so I used it. 

Sunday pizza

Monday pork chops beans and mashed potatoes

Tuesday lunch out - sushi for me and peanut butter cheese and toast for John

Wednesday lunch out - popcorn

Thursday - chicken quarters and salad

Friday breakfast out - steak with gluten free garlic bread. We tried the Schar baguettes and they were great.


WATCHING

We finished The Consultant, not sure how to explain this one...we enjoyed it. It is described as
horror/satire/workplace comedy-drama.

We also watched a movie Dead Drop 2013After surviving a fall from a plane 3000-feet over the ocean, a former CIA operative turned government contractor re-infiltrates a dangerous North Mexican drug trafficking ring to find his own killer. With his memory unraveling, he descends into a murderous rampage while trying to uncover the truth. Who threw him from the plane? Was it his best friend?

Bullet to the Head 2012.

READING

I finished The Girl With No Past, this was a GOOD read, the ending totally surprised me.

I started A World of Curiosities, Louise Penny's (Three Pines) number 18 in her series and it's got me hooked. It has also introduced me to a fascinating piece of art The Paston Treasure that I am also reading about. Another great article, this one gives an interesting perspective.

Morning Reflections