I found out today that Joel passed away. I hung out with him a bit during high school and lost touch since 1997. Here are some stories I would like to share:
Guitar
I remember seeing Joel play Elderly Woman Behind the Counter in a Small Town at an assembly/music night at KDHS. I would have to say that this exact moment was what inspired me to learn guitar. I remember hanging out in his basement a few times listening to him and his band jam. For the life of me I cannot remember the name of that particular band but I remember a song I quite liked entitled “I, Vampire.”
Monty Python
Remember in Monty Python and the Holy Grail there was King Arthur riding on his mighty steed followed by Patsy with his coconuts? Well, for an OAC presentation Joel got to go as the King and I was his humble servant Patsy along with the coconuts. We had a laugh planning that all out. I’m pretty sure he was the one who introduced me to Monty Python. I remember sitting in his room while he introduced me to a few comedy albums of theirs.
Editing videos
I remember our love of horror films. I was just getting into them and he was a mentor in all things macabre. I specifically remember helping him after school on editing a horror film that he and his friends had filmed. For the life of me, I don’t even remember if we ended up completing it. It would neat to see it if it actually exists somewhere.
These are just three examples of how much of an impact Joel had on my life…while we only hung out for a few years (and not much at all even at that), he was a soul that introduced me to so many things that I hold dear in my life right now…guitar, Pearl Jam, Monty Python, laughter, making everyone comfortable, and horror movies, TYPE O NEGATIVE! How could forget them? I borrowed October Rust from him, accidentally got it scratched, felt horrible and ordered a replacement copy right away. I felt pretty sheepish when he asked for it back and I told him I ordered a new one for him. I’m pretty sure the last time I saw him and Robin was when my Dad dropped me off at their place one Friday night when we had all started college in the fall of 1997.
Here’s more of Joel’s story as it was documented in Maclean’s over the past few years. Article #1Article #2
And here’s a bonus for all those who knew Joel. Years ago when I started a website, I asked him if he had any concert reviews to add. He loved live music as much as I did (a lot of us from Kapuskasing ended up with a love of live music) and graciously passed along some excellent reviews which I have placed onto this website for historical reference.
Whoa, 30 months = 2.5 years! That’s a little crazy to wrap my head around. I feel time is passing by way too fast.
Sierra love singing tunes these days. She has always loved Skinamarinkadinkydink, but now enjoys Itsy Bitsy Spider (Thanks Grandma!) and the most important tune of all…Old McDonald had a Farm! Every night as Sierra drifts off to sleep you can hear her sing E-I-E-I-O! It is hilarious and heartwarming and promising to hear a kid sing in tune.
As Sierra has hit the 2.5 year mark, the daycare in Vars let us know that they have a spot for her and she will start at the beginning of December. While it is sad to see her leave her existing daycare, we think having her in a daycare centre which is part of the school she will eventually be going to is a great move. Plus, it doesn’t hurt that it’s in our neighbourhood and not a 20 minute detour from our normal route to and from work. Vero has grand visions of walking home with Sierra. I think she will have second thoughts when she realizes Sierra can take an hour to walk ten steps!
Sierra has a longer attention span lately. When it comes to television shows, she seems to enjoy watching a full 20-30 minutes of a show. This has posed a problem some nights where bedtime is getting late and she hasn’t watched the entire episode of Charlie Brown! But so be it, we turn the TV off and put her to bed and she screams for a few seconds until she realizes that she can read Garbage Delight or Hands, Hands, Fingers, Thumbs.
As I write this, Christmas has arrived quite early in Ottawa as we have been blanketed with snow for a few weeks now. The lights are on and the tree is up and we have a month of Christmas joy to fill the home. Sierra is currently enjoying Rudolph more than Frosty the Snowman and the Grinch.
Sometimes PJ knocks it out of the park with their Halloween shirts.
Carving the pumpkin!
We got Sierra to do most of the dirty work.
The Great Pumpkin!
Hey, I got to reuse my old Star Trek outfit from years ago! I especially like how we dressed up Sam as Gene Roddenberry (middle).
Here’s the little cat going on the prowl for some candy! Vero said she made it pretty far down the block! Vero came back after awhile and let me go out with her for a few more houses. It’s pretty slow-going with a 2 year walking down the street so we only hit up two houses.
Quite the haul! I think Sierra liked Halloween a lot more than her first year. I think it helped that she was absorbed with watching It’s The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown! over and over again.
Someone really likes barrettes
Spaghetti supper in Vars! Seriously, what’s up with the lighting in the gymnasium?
After months of avoiding her, I couldn’t avoid Baby Ellie any longer. I visited Nat and Marc and was surprised to find a girl who was pretty calm and was sleeping pretty well during the evening! Definitely different than our experience with Sierra!
Luckily Sierra doesn’t realize that this thing moves if you put money in it.
We went up to visit Lynn and Sue one night. Sierra is teaching Lynn about trains in this photo.
This photo was taken in the doctor’s office before we both got flu shots. Let me tell you…Sierra is a trooper. I rolled up my sleeve, showed her how it’s done and when it came to her turn, she just stared at the needle entering her arm. No crying! That’s pretty tough to watch the needle go in, let me tell you! I was super impressed with her. Plus she got a sticker!
We bought this Spider-Man outfit at a craft fair here in Vars. She likes waving her arms and going ‘pew pew’ around the house.
Vero was gracious enough to let me out for the night. Mina, Etienne and I painted the town red. First stop was Darcy McGee’s to see our friend Dana play. It was cool to see her outside of work and it was also great for her to show me their live setup. It was quite neat how they had an iPad plugged into their sound system to control the sound levels remotely.
Next stop. the House of Targ to see The Reverb Syndicate play songs off of their new album! I always have a good time seeing this band and the House of Targ is THE live venue of the city. This is the only decent photo I took from the night as my drunken hands weren’t all that steady!
We met up with Clive along the way. This was probably the last photo with a somewhat sober group of friends. The rest of the night descended into madness. I still remember walking up to Etienne and he was telling the drummer “Dude! You were so tight! You were amazing!” The drummer was giving me the look that said “Please save me from this drunken fan.”
The next morning Dad showed up and enjoyed watching tv shows with Sierra.
Dinosaurs also ended up roaming around Mom!
I’m loving how much Sierra loves when family visits.
A morning on the weekend generally starts like this.
I learned a life skill while Dad was up visiting…how to clean the carburetor on my generator! It wasn’t starting up so we had to tear it all apart but luckily it started up after we reassembled it! Take note all generator owners…while the manual says that you should just run it until the gas runs out if you are storing it for months…I would have to say this method wasn’t exactly the thing that saved my generator. This time around I put some gas in and added some stabilizer. Hopefully that does the trick!
Sierra was gliding on air between Poppa and Grandma.
Mom and I went to a Navan Christmas craft fair and it wasn’t much to write home about. But the next day we went to the German Christmas market and it was incredible! I was disappointed that we ate a large breakfast before coming so none of us were hungry enough to sit down and eat some weinerschnitzel. But I got some currywurst instead which is just as good!
Now that’s a pretzel!
Sierra met up with some friends at the sled hill!
A rare (but out of focus?) shot of the three of us.
Trying to get the perfect picture is definitely an adventure!
Not bad!
We are really liking these lego knockoffs. They are a lot more versatile.
T-Rex meets mighty tower!
Abigail and I went out to the Prescott for lunch during a conference. Here’s the famous meatball sandwich!
Someone is definitely fake sleeping here.
At least my nostril made an appearance.
Sierra having fun with Baby Ellie.
Martin’s Birthday! The Lonestar was calling our name for this mighty event. I hadn’t been there for years. I remember pool tables in behind.
While I don’t have a large love for 80s rock music in general, I know when a band is killing it on stage and Hair Force One was definitely doing that! They put on a great show. I’m pretty sure most of these guys are probably public servants who have fun like this on the weekends. Awesome! Trish told me that she wants them to play at her wedding.
This brings up a great memory of how Maureen and I would jump in Dad’s scoop (way before the days that he had a snowblower). I’m not really sure if he was frustrated by us jumping in, or if he just gave in and enjoyed the moment. Probably a little bit of both? It was a large driveway to shovel! Anyhow, Sierra was loving life riding around in this thing.
Wheeee!
Before she decided to jump into a puddle.
After a morning outside, Sierra went for a long nap in the afternoon (4 hours!) so Vero and I decorated the place. Look who showed up again this year!
Sierra working hard at putting up ornaments. Let it be known that this was the only one at a higher than Sierra level.
The three wise guys. For the next few days, Sierra insisted that I wear that hat everywhere…including the supper table!
Last night we were running late and Vero suggested we dump everything we had available into the Instant Pot. I have to say it was a genius idea so I’m writing down this recipe for historical purposes.
Defrost chicken breasts.
Put a cup of bazmati rice and a cup of water into the pot.
Put the wire rack that holds the chicken above the rice.
Pour some canned mushrooms and black beans over everything.
Close it up.
Set it on MANUAL for 12 minutes.
After the 12 minutes have passed, let it sit for another 10 minutes.
Thought it was quite tasty! I mixed some piri piri sauce into it once on the plate. I’m sure with some more research we can figure out how to have the sauce/spices added into the actual pot.
We have a few ash tress on our property that unfortunately met up with the ash borer beetle. In the middle of the summer, I would be staring up at the sky and notice that there weren’t any leaves on a few trees. This reminds me of a funny story where Mom said to me “I think that tree over there is dead.” “Oh really? How can you tell?” “Because it’s August and it doesn’t have any leaves!” I now realize I’m not the most intelligent person when it comes to the outdoors.
Front yard before the cull
Anyhow, after some searching around and getting some estimates around town, I found out that my neighbour has a lumberjack friend that would help us out for a great deal. Hey, I can’t complain about a friends and family discount of $100 a tree!
Of course it had to be pouring rain on us the entire Saturday that we worked. Bringing down trees is quite the activity. Cut the tree down, take the branches over to Claude’s fire pit, burn them, then cut the tree into blocks of wood. Move the blocks of wood over to an area where we would split them later. These were pretty large trees…one of the ones in my front yard was 42 years old, older than the house itself!
I have to say that we were moving at a decent pace for the first four trees and then we stopped to have lunch and of course it’s always harder to go back out into the rain after being in a warm house!
There was one tree leaning directly towards the house so we set up a cable attached to another tree to convince it to fall away from the house. Four of us were pulling on the cable as the tree started coming down. I looked to my right and saw the wife of the guy cutting the tree hauling on the cable. I realized I should be putting a LOT more effort into pulling on this cable when it was coming down! We lucked out and the thing fell within inches of hitting the eaves trough at the corner of the house! Phew! We screamed in excitement about how we managed to avoid disaster. I have to say I wasn’t even thinking it was a possibility but you could see that the guy cutting the tree definitely wasn’t happy that it came so close to the house. I can understand…it’s a lot of worry on his part!
We ended up with a backyard full of branches and we thought it would take all Fall to burn it but I’m happy to report that we got half of it burnt by the end of the weekend. Yes, there is this giant pile of ashes in Claude’s back yard now, but we’ll deal with that later.
The sun came out on Sunday which was a welcome sight. We started splitting the wood early in the morning and by mid afternoon we were piling it. Vero and I managed to get it all done next to our garage and ready for the winter. I don’t even know how many cords of wood we have but I have four large trees worth.
My body is quite sore but the job is done and I have to say we didn’t encounter any issues…just a lot of grunt work for the job to get done!
