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Sunday, December 24, 2006

2006 in Photos

Friday, December 22, 2006

Matty Christmas!


Have a Merry Christmas from John, Julie and baby Matthew. Thanks to all for visiting and reading my weblog this past year. Keep safe, and keep coming back to see what's new in 2007!

Thursday, December 21, 2006

Dany Laferrière


Dany Laferrière looks upwards and pauses briefly for inspiration before giving his acceptance speech last week at Rideau Hall. I believe he was one of the only recipients who did not have a pre-written speech. He won his first GG for Je suis fou de Vava, his first novel for children. Originally from Petit-Goâve, Haiti, Dany Laferrière lives in Montreal.

Sunday, December 17, 2006

3rd Annual Dusty Owl Chocolate House Tonight

A fundraiser for The Ottawa Food Bank @ Club Saw, SAW Gallery, 67 Nicolas Street, 7:00 p.m.

Saturday, December 16, 2006

Oni The Haitian Sensation


Oni The Haitian Sensation live at Library & Archives Canada - lyrically amazing.

Friday, December 15, 2006

Best Wine Literature Book

from official press release:
Red, White, and Drunk All Over: A Wine Soaked Journey From Grape to Glass by Canadian (& Ottawa area) author Natalie MacLean was chosen Best Wine Literature Book at the Gourmand World Cookbook Awards December 6. The awards are considered the Oscars of the food and wine world. They were created at the Frankfurt Book Fair in Germany ten years ago to reward those who “cook and drink with words.”

MacLean’s book, now a bestseller in Canada, takes readers behind the scenes of the international wine world, exploring its history, visiting its most evocative places and meeting its most charismatic personalities. Red, White, and Drunk All Over was also chosen as one of the Globe & Mail’s top books of the year with strong reviews from both Canadian and U.S. media.

The Gourmand World Cookbook Awards receive more than 6,000 books from 60 countries for the competition each year. All books must be published between October 15, 2005 and November 15, 2006.

Thursday, December 14, 2006

Oni Day

Book launch of Ghettostocracy by Oni The Haitian Sensation

Friday, December 15th 2006 7:30 p.m. ($7.00 admission)
The event will be at Library and Archives Canada in Ottawa
Hosted by Adrian Harewood of CBC Radio's All in a Day


(Thanks to Max Middle for the heads up of letting me know of the latest ish' of Ottawa Xpress where Oni is featured on the cover and the article inside also mention's my name... name dropper me -hehehe. Living in Greely, there's no local xPress news boxes and little else for that matter. Anyhoo.)

Decalogue: Ten Ottawa Poets

Tonight at 7:00 pm. Ottawa Art Gallery, Arts Court Building, 2 Daly Street featuring:

Stephen Brockwell, Michelle Desbarats, Anita Dolman, Anne Le Dressay, Karen Massey, Una McDonnell, rob mclennan, Max Middle, Monty Reid and Shane Rhodes.

Wednesday, December 13, 2006

2006 Governor General's Literary Awards


Her Excellency the Right Honourable Michaëlle Jean, Governor General of Canada and the winners of the 2006 Governor General's Literary Awards.


Fiction category winner, author Peter Behrens stands proudly while his laurels are being read aloud during the official ceremonies at Rideau Hall Wednesday evening. During his speech he noted that the last time he was at Rideau Hall he was as a tour guide in his youth.

From the Canada Council website:
Peter Behrens is a native of Montreal, where he was educated at Lower Canada College, Concordia and McGill. He held a Wallace Stegner Fellowship in Creative Writing at Stanford University, and was a Fellow at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Massachusetts. Night Driving, a short-story collection, was published in 1987. His stories and essays have appeared in Brick, Best Canadian Stories, Best Canadian Essays, The Atlantic Monthly, Saturday Night and many anthologies. His first story published in the US, in The Atlantic Monthly, was optioned in Hollywood; he has written four feature screenplays. The Law of Dreams is his first novel. Peter Behrens lives in Brooklin, Maine.

Jury's comment
The Law of Dreams is an epic novel populated by extraordinary characters traversing the bleak moment of famine in Irish history. Peter Behrens, with authorial imagination and a wealth of historical detail, guides us through the blight with unparalleled intimacy.

Tuesday, December 12, 2006

Ouch!


An open apology to the global community of dial-up access users for the size of my weblog. Mainly, the apology is directed to those poor souls looking for pics of K@l@n P0rter and Br1g1tte B@rd0t * who have to wade through megabytes of my feckless dross to get their prurient interests satisfied.

Will archive this page before the end of 2006 and start afresh in January with regularly scheduled archives. Weekly should do it I think. Until then, browse away and thanks for stopping by and 'You stay classy, San Diego.'


Brick Tamland: I'm Brick Tamland. People seem to like me because I am polite and I am rarely late. I like to eat ice cream and I really enjoy a nice pair of slacks. Years later, a doctor will tell me that I have an I.Q. of 48 and am what some people call mentally retarded.
* (for those who think I spelled the two above names oddly, it's done on purpose to attempt to fool search engine bots.)

Update:
Yes, I technically made an error in that this HTML page is/was 65k bytes but the actual time the page takes to load is mostly attributed to the size of the photos therein. So, the actual size of this webpage is currently somewhere in the region of 24.5 MEGAbytes. Sorry for the initial confusion. By the way, my 2005 archive turns out to be a whopping 47.2 megabytes...double-ouch!

Monday, December 11, 2006

Huth on Visual Poetry

Geof Huth -- always a good read.

Sunday, December 10, 2006

Son day

Matthew celebrated dad's birthday by crying and peeing at varying hours throughout the day. What more could I want?

Friday, December 08, 2006

9 hours

A first of sorts:
Last night Matthew slept from 8:30pm till 5:30 am and if my math is correct, that's 9 hours of continuous bliss.

...

And he scoffed at the notion of me putting him back in his crib after his 5:30am feed.
"Pah! Like I'm going back to bed", he thought. "Riiiiight."

Friday, December 01, 2006

Staying Inside


From the looks of it, I'm staying put where it's warm.