So over the past six years, I have amassed A LOT of brush to burn at the campfire. In my head I thought “Oh hey, I’ll just throw this stuff near the campfire and get around to burning it.”
When you offer a guest the option of a campfire vs. a hot tub, the campfire tends not to get used as much as one would think! I then end up with a giant fire hazard of branches and twigs sitting two feet from my campfire.
I decided enough was enough and started to burn the brush. I have to say after three afternoons of campfires, it’s down to quite a manageable size!
Rob, Janice and Jenna came over to hang out for the afternoon which was welcome. It was a beauty day.
My two helpers.
Jan loves this kid so much that I’m pretty sure if she goes missing one night, we’ll know where she ends up!
Uncle Johnny and Aunt Aggie were nice enough to bring my grandmother back into Ontario after a long summer down in Gaspé. They stopped into Perth to visit Lynn and Sue so it was a great time to bring Sierra for a visit!
Nanny has held many babies in her lifetime as evidence by Sierra looking comfortable.
Actually, I take that back. It looks like she is plotting her escape.
I’m loving the new gazebo.
Clearly I need to teach my daughter how to pose for pictures!
No matter, this one is better.
Two gals hanging out on the back porch.
I love Sierra’s expression in this one!
It was a fun afternoon with family but once I started seeing flashing in the distance (lightning), I knew it was time to hit the road. I didn’t want us driving back in a monsoon. Luckily the storm held off for the most part and if anything, it gave us a really interesting light show for the ride home!
Any good visit to Ajax deserves a trip to Sauter’s Inn for a pint (or more!)
After a great night out with some friends, it was time for a great afternoon with family! The annual pool party had commenced!
Sierra spent the day meeting family member like Connie
And Wendy!
I managed to convince Dwayne to crank the heat in the swimming pool so I could bring Sierra in for a dip. It was a great success! She really likes the water! When I say she really likes it, I suppose I should say that she is indifferent to it…she neither smiles nor cries while in the water. I consider that a win! She hung out for a bit in the pool and I think she’ll become a little grenouille soon enough!
Later on in the night, we hauled the guitars out to have some fun. Troy had brought a new member to the group, a gentleman by the name of Greg who was an a-ok guy. He got to stick around for a few tunes before heading back to the London area. Troy and I had chosen a few new tunes to play that night in honour of the Tragically Hip. We snuck a suite of their tunes into the set.
It was a fantastic day and a fantastic chance to introduce Sierra to the family! She had tons of attention and I don’t remember her acting up too much!
The next day we hit the road and she was sleeping like a champ again. We decided to stop at one of the 401 truck stops and we found a really nice relaxing area down the hill from one of them. It must have been the old truck stop of the 1960s. They even had a boarded up washroom. At least they had some picnic tables that we hung out at.
You all know my love for comics, and more specifically, Marvel Comic books. Well, there’s no one more important to Marvel Comic books (in my opinion) than Stan Lee, creator of many of our favourite super heroes that we know and love today.
My friend Nat was heading to Fan Expo and I didn’t really put too much thought into going until there was chatter about bringing Sierra on a road trip to road test her. Then I realized that Stan Lee’s final Canadian appearance would be at Fan Expo so I decided it was due time for Stan and I to hang out. I mean, the gentleman is 93 years old! I’m assuming he’s going to retire some day!
I left Sierra and Véro in good hands for the day and I hopped on the Go-Train along with a bunch of other geeks in search for adventure. The only adventure I was NOT in search for was the god awful smell that the kid next to me was emitting. I can honestly say that this was the first time in my life where I have experience the ‘body odour’ so strong that I was contemplating just jumping from the train! The woman across from me had to pull out a gas mask from her purse!
Fan Expo was super well organized considering they had upwards of 75,000 people down there. I have to say that while my cohorts in crime (Benoit, Nat and Mel) had some issues getting to and from the North and South building due to so many people, I had a completely opposite experience and I’m glad the Fan Expo gods (Thor?) were smiling on me that morning. I got in line and managed to get into the venue 30 minutes before the ‘official’ opening. I managed to score some Astro City books I’ve had my eye on for a few years as well as some other Excalibur comics. I was on a good roll for the first hour.
But I only had one mission. Get a photo with Stan Lee. I’m scoped out the venue first to make sure I didn’t miss my 11:45am time slot. I went to the Stan Lee booth in the South building only to find out that this is where he provides autographs but the photos are taken in the North building. I went back there and found out where to line up and went perusing the wares from merchants. Fan Expo was definitely a larger experience than the Ottawa Comic Cons in that they have mammoth booths set up by Lego and Hasbro and TV studios all over the place, inter mixed with the general merchants of geek.
How awesome is this Lego statue?!
Around 11:15am I decided to head back over to the North building to ensure I made it to the photo session on time. Essentially, you buy a pass to the Fan Expo for the day, but you also have to buy a photo opportunity ticket to get a photo with Stan Lee. When you print out your ticket, it gives you a time slot to arrive at. I arrived with plenty of time and they even told me that I was way too early and there is no need to line up at that point. Luckily I had packed a few peanut butter sandwiches for the day (with 75,000 people in attendance, it’s kind of hard to get any food!) so I munched on one while I waited and read a copy of Angloman which Trish had picked me up for my birthday. It’s a funny Canadian comic based in Montreal.
I finally got to line up for Stan Lee. They shifted us behind some curtains and we waited patiently. 45 minutes later the line started moving and then stopped again for awhile. I wasn’t really sure what the hold up was, but so be it.
But then the line started moving, and moving FAST. I was getting pretty excited to shake the hand of an idol and chat with him and tell him “Thanks”. But the experience was entirely different than what I had in my mind.
With the line moving fast, we finally got towards a break in the curtain and there are a dozen people there and they are telling me to pass me my backpack to them fast and keep moving. I did so and it was like an assembly line of photos being taken. Person runs over to Stan Lee, smiles, snap, picture is taken, move along. The poor guy in front of me had the same idea as me as he wanted to shake his hand and talk to him but there was none of that. The people running the show just moved him along. So here came my big moment. I rushed up, and you can see the results of the photo. There was no way that I was going to leave it at that so I stopped and this was our interaction:
Me: “Stan, thanks for everything.”
Stan: “Good work.”
Stan “The Man” Lee
Then I was whisked off, they passed my backpack back to me, I walk down a corridor of felt rope and lo and behold, 10 seconds later, they have my picture printed out, I pick it up and throw it into my University of Ottawa diploma case (Trish had a good laugh when she saw that the photo of Stan Lee now takes place in that case instead of my actual diploma!).
“Good work”? GOOD WORK! I don’t even know what that means but I have a good laugh remembering that moment and the hilarious response he gave. It’s a story for the ages.
With that mission done, it was time to enjoy the rest of Fan Expo. I still hadn’t met up with Nat, Mel or Benoit at that point as they were traipsing around and it was hard to really meet up with anyone as it was like a herd of cattle moving to and from point A to point B. I headed down to an excellent Q&A session with Joe Quesada, chief creative officer of Marvel. If Stan Lee was the original creative genius of Marvel Comics, Joe Quesada certainly carries the torch nowadays. He chatted about everything Marvel…he doesn’t just look at the comics, but works a lot on the TV series on Netflix and the films as well. An interesting comment he made was how the films were meant to be global in nature (Avengers saving the world), whereas the Netflix series was more focused on heroes saving a neighbourhood (Daredevil). It was a great Q&A session and I’m glad I got the chance to attend it.
Joe Quesada Q&A
I also went to the Hayley Atwell Q&A session with Mel and Nat which was an example of what I hate about comic conventions sometimes. I enjoy behind the scenes stories from film a TV show like Agent Carter, but I do not like questions like “Do you think Agent Carter would have ended up with Guy A or Guy B if the series continued?” I mean…you are asking a question to an actress who doesn’t even write the stories! So there were a bunch of questions like that peppered with some fun behind the scenes commentary which was fun.
One day I will build this proton pack as my Hallowe’en costume!
After that point, I decided to enjoy the rest of Fan Expo going around Artist’s Alley with Benoit, Nat and Mel and taking it all in before the day ended. It was a long day, but it was incredibly fun and I ended up getting a boatload of Marvel Epic collections at the BMV Books booth at the end of the day so I was very happy with my day.
I love how I just happened to be walking by this awesome Boba Fett and Han Solo combo that I just took a picture of someone’s selfie without thinking of it.
<insert Imperial March theme>
The funniest part of the day was seeing a Deadpool do some breakdancing and then Nat and I were leaving and we heard some music and Nat said something like “Where’s the dancing Deadpool when you need him?” and there was literally a Deadpool next to us who started dancing. We had a good laugh.
I give Fan Expo two large thumbs up. They had a good selection of horror movie booths, some great deals to be had on comics (which is sometimes rare to find), and some great guests for Q&A sessions.
Back in Ajax, Vero was having fun with Sierra and the family.
If you are from the North, you have to start planning for the eventual road trip with the baby. Labour Day weekend was approaching fast and we decided to head to Barrie to visit Emilie, then I would head into Toronto to go to Fan Expo (comic book convention) and then head to Ajax to visit some family. It sounded like a great plan!
Sierra’s first road trip, wooo!
Now, of course, all good plans tend to fall apart and it fell apart for us by the time we hit the McDonald’s in Trenton. Up until that point (3 hours), she was sleeping like a champ but we were getting hungry so we figured we might as well not tempt fate and have us stuck in traffic with a screaming baby.
But we received a text message from Emilie saying that her kid was vomiting and that her house is now a quarantine zone. Oh no! We ended up calling up Aunt Dinah and invited ourselves over for the weekend. Thanks to Nanny, Aunt Dinah and Uncle Richard for putting up with us for the weekend!
Sierra enjoyed her first french fry on this trip. (I’m kidding!)
After spending an hour at the McDonald’s, we hit the road for another hour and headed into Ajax. I have to say that this was a blessing in disguise because I completely forgot that the 400 North is ridiculous on any summer weekend with all the campers heading out of town. Imagine being stuck in that traffic around 4PM! We wouldn’t have made it to Barrie for another four hours! So thank you Mackenzie for vomiting. I owe you big time.
Nanny loving every minute of Sierra
Nanny feeding Sierra like a pro. How many mouths has this woman fed in her lifetime?
It was a great evening of hanging out in Ajax but let’s be honest…we were all excited for the main event…meeting Stan Lee on Saturday!
Vero’s parents came up on Tuesday for a visit to see us. Let’s be honest, they came to see Sierra and if Vero and I weren’t home at the same time, it really wouldn’t have mattered!
On Friday, we brought them to the St-Albert Cheese Factory, a great little spot to get a poutine.
I had never realized that if you go upstairs, you can see the cheese factory in full operation. It was quite interesting.
I am glad I got to return to St-Albert to rectify a mistake I made the last time I went…I ordered an Italian Poutine thinking the sign said ‘regular poutine but with Italian sausage!”. But I ended up with a real Italian poutine which consists of fries, curds and cold spaghetti sauce. Blech! Luckily I tried the St Albert house poutine which has some veggies and ground beef. Add some mustard in there and MMM BOY!
We met up with Oncle Claude, Mary, Antoine and André as well and we all ate our poutine on a beautiful summer night where there weren’t a lot of flies out. I brought Sierra on some trips up and down the parking lot and I’m not sure if she enjoyed them or not. In my mind, if the kid doesn’t cry, she’s ok with it!
I LOVE the look on the cow’s face!
On Saturday, I was itching to go to a beach. Specifically, I just wanted my body to touch water this summer. On a sunny day. Preferably lake water. But it was just too hot all summer long to bring Sierra out for long periods of time. So that dream kept slowly fading.
But lo and behold, Saturday turned out to be a really nice day where we could bring Sierra out for a longer period of time and it was decided…we were heading to Petrie Island! Trish had invited us to another beach further out of town which I’m sure would have been the nicer beach of the two, but it was a little far to travel for the baby’s first trip to the beach. For all we knew, it would have lasted ten minutes and we would have went home.
Alas, the e.coli levels at Petrie Island were around 101 per 100ml of water and the website said that if they were that high for two days in a row, they shut the beach down. Considering it could be a matter of 24 hours before e.coli levels spiked up, we decided against visiting the beach.
But with the hot tub pump out of commission, what’s a guy going to do? In swoops Mike with an invite to come into the ‘cool’ tub, which was the hot tub set at 91 degrees. It was a fantastic afternoon hanging out with Melanie, Max and Mike and Sierra got her first taste of swimming! She quite enjoyed it and we can’t wait to introduce her to more!
Smiley McSmilerson
I have to admit I was pretty pumped that she was having a great time in the water.
https://goo.gl/photos/cxwhhBAAzN7ayvGo7
Best men
Time to start burning some of the brush we accumulated over the past six years!
This summer, the Aviation museum was hosting the Starfleet Academy Experience in celebration of the 50th anniversary of Star Trek. Rakhi and her family, Christine, Trish and I all embarked on this wonderful trek into the academy.
Much like the Indiana Jones and Star Wars exhibits in the past few years, it consists of a hangar of movie/tv props, coupled with information about the tv show and interactive displays where you, the young (well, old?) Starfleet Academy cadet walk in and test your strengths in various arenas and at the end, they let you know what career would be best suited for you in Starfleet.
Borg costume
My favourite parts of these exhibits are the movie props as you can take a closer look at how costumes were built (and in some cases, how ridiculous they actually are!). They had some uniforms and Borg costumes and tricorders and various props on hand to peruse.
Trish doing her best Data impression. Pretty good!
At the end of the exhibit, they have a full replica of a Starship bridge which was awesome!
Look at all that makeup! I feel bad for Michael Dorn.
Beam me up Scotty!
I have to admit I’m quite fetching as an alien!
There were a bunch of areas where we had to test our worth in the academy:
Klingon 101: Where they taught you some Klingon phrases and you had to recite them back. Trish failed MISERABLY on this task.
Emergency Landing: You have a scenario where your ship is going to explode so you need to shuttle your crew to a planet which will allow you survive. You had to choose an M class planet (spoiler!)
Plot Your Course: This was an awesome scenario where you had your ship on the left hand side of a screen. You had to get it to the right hand side of the screen by plotting navigation points from one side to the other. But there are obstacles in the way (like Klingon cruisers, suns, etc.) so you had to make sure to avoid getting too close those things.
Phaser Shootout: A screen full of targets popping up had to be taken out with your trusty phaser. I would like to thank Duck Hunt for my score of 44 out of 50.
Kobayashi Maru: The greatest simulation of all time…the no-win scenario, the Kobayashi Maru! It was a cool computer game where you had to save members from the crippled starship the Kobayashi Maru before the Klingons took them out completely.
Here is the certificate showing that I had Command potential and a side interest in Science
Overall, I have to say that this, along with my purchase of the Next Generation on Blu-Ray, was the greatest way to experience 50 years of Trek!
