Palmer's World

For a few years now Vero has been on me to get back into swimming.  I mean, I’m the one who says “Maybe I should get back into swimming” and she follows up once in awhile.

Last night I bit the bullet and headed out to the Francois Dupuis recreation center.  I had never been there and I heard it has a heated pool. Gamechanger!

I showed up and instead of doing my typical “I’ll figure this out as I go along.” I asked a bunch of questions at the front desk.  The lane swim is a shared lane swim (booo!  I sure miss that hotel pool I used to swim in every day after work and I was the only person in it!) and the lanes are labelled slow to fast.  You choose which lane you think you can manage in and hop in.

Seemed simple enough!    I watched everyone get in at 8:15pm and figured out what folks were doing when they share a lane.  I also spoke to a lifeguard and she explained that generally one person starts and then when they reach the flag (they are hanging overhead), the second person starts.

It’s a bit of organized chaos where some folks are stuck behind the other, or I’m out of breath hanging on for dear life at one end of the pool and folks show up at the end and wonder if I’m going to continue.  There seems to be an unwritten rule that if you see a guy taking a break, you just head back and don’t bother them.  A sensible unwritten rule!  In other cases, I asked the person who was taking a break if they were taking a break or if they were waiting for the person in front of them to reach a safe distance.

My first time back swimming was a bit intense.  My shoulders were screaming after 30 minutes in the pool and there were a few times where I was huffing and puffing a bit too much and figured I would be taking in water if I didn’t slow down!  Haha.  I was sensible and took a break for a minute before doing another couple of laps.

All in all, it wasn’t a disaster and I’ll give it a try again.  Do I like shared lane swim?  No one does.  But that’s all I got at the moment.

At night I woke up at 4am and my shoulders and wrists were screaming in pain.  I don’t remember this feeling!  It was really bad and I ended up sleeping downstairs.  Or attempting to.  My body was too much in pain to go back to sleep.  Around 5am I snuck back upstairs and got some ibuprofen, settled on the couch and watched some Star Trek before realizing my body was still super tired and wanted to sleep!  Let’s just say this morning, I’m a slow moving unit who is already looking forward to a nap!

Another note about my swimming experience…I bought some bone conductive headphones to listen to music.  The experience kind of sucked for the price I paid ($130).  I could barely hear the music with all the noise in the swimming area.  They already have music blasting (Beatles!  Sweet.) and with everyone else splashing around, it was practically useless.  I did notice another person with those headphones and they also had earplugs in so maybe that’s the trick?  I’ll give that a try next time and also load in some music which isn’t a Smashing Pumpkins bootleg.

I can only imagine the shenanigans that would happen with five Ezra’s in the house!

Embrun usually has some great family day activities going on.  We headed over to the hockey arena to go do some bowling.  The information said that bowling started at 11am so we arrived around 10:45 to get a spot.  Turns out that they had been open since 10am where you could sign up on the waitlist.  Oh man!  When we put our names on the list they figured it would be sometime in the afternoon before we got a game.

While we waited we went up stairs to see Junkyard Symphony.  We didn’t end up getting any free popcorn.  Maybe they only make it once an hour and we missed out.

But Junkyard Symphony was great!  The lead singer said they had been around for 32 years.  Their thing is that they have drum sets and robots and other instruments on stage all made out recycled items (think buckets for drums, etc.).

They were great at interacting with the crowd and they were quite hilarious.  I would see this group again if I had the chance.

They had started at 11am and around 11:45 we got the call that bowling had a spot for us!  So we left the show early and got our shoes and…hit the lanes?  What’s the term for bowling?

Ezra says bowling is his favourite sport.  Who doesn’t love bowling?  I’ll tell you who doesn’t like it…the three of us when we got a bunch of gutter balls!

Ezra pointing out that he had the lead!

I had to post the final score just for historical purposes, not bragging rights.  

It’s super nice of Embrun to organize free family friendly activities for the community.  Always fun to drop by there and then stop over to A&W for some lunch afterwards.

 

Vero did a lot of great work on this video for Ezra’s kindergarten presentation.  He had to choose a favourite game and explain how to play it.

He was NOT a happy camper on the Saturday when we tried to film it.  We abandoned filming and tried again on the Sunday and he seemed to be a bit more agreeable.  When he doesn’t get his way, he shuts down and you can’t please him, even if we’re trying to help him do a presentation.

Anyhow, Vero put a lot of work finishing up this video and it worked out great!  I had a good laugh when Ezra said all the kids in the class watched it and were horrified with the opening bit where the pieces go across the floor.  “Oh no, they will lose the pieces!”  “Why weren’t they more careful with the pieces!  They shouldn’t do that!”

A lesson in ‘know your audience’!

We got walloped with 35 cm of snow on Thursday and another 40 cm on Sunday!  I was out snowblowing and asked the kids if they wanted to try it.  Sierra just wanted to make tunnels in the snow but Ezra jumped at the chance.  I was holding the handles along with him most of the driveway but I snuck away for a few seconds to take this video.

Behind the curtain

I was planning on attending Uncle Richard’s 80th birthday party but the weather wasn’t cooperating so the party was cancelled.

OR WAS IT?  Rick called up the boys and wondered if we would like to do a Don’t Fret livestream for his dad.  Absolutely!  It had been a few years since we had done a Don’t Fret session and I missed doing them.

It took me all morning to remember how to set up all my equipment and even then, something was weird with the sound when it came to an afternoon sound check time.  I fiddled with some wires and knobs and eventually got a sound that folks said sounded good.  I need to write down all my settings so it’s not a pain when you go to set it all up two years later!

I’m not sure if I’ve explained what a Don’t Fret livestream consists of before but the singers perform in a round robin fashion (2 songs each) and do that for a couple of hours.  This livestream had Dave in Cape Breton and Troy in London playing.  On my end, the kids showed up after bingo and played along to a few songs.  I LOVE when this happens.  I really enjoy how my kids get to see my family online and they get to perform for them.  Proud parent right here folks!

Performing for a livestream is a different beast than playing to a room of people.  Definitely quieter considering Rick mutes everyone!  I also secretly call the Don’t Fret sessions the Silent Clapping Sessions because whenever I’m done playing a song you can see everyone clapping but everyone is on mute!

Sometimes a Don’t Fret livestream has a theme (think Christmas), other times it’s a free for all.  When playing for folks I like to keep in mind how old the audience is and adjust my set list accordingly.  Case in point, I would say that the 80% of the audience are my aunt and uncles’ age, then you have 15% of cousins around my age and 5% younger kids.  If I’m feeling generous I tailor my set list to match those proportions.  The old adage “Play them the hits they know!” Comes to mind.  Sometimes I take a gamble and play a newer song and see if it catches on.  I was excited to see my cousin’s kid singing along to The Weekend’s Blinding Lights the other night!  Actually, it’s rare that I can actually watch the audience while playing as I’m focused on reading the lyrics or adjusting a pedal.

The sessions are recorded and I’ve never taken the time to rewatch them but I should in order to see folk’s reactions to the songs I’ve chosen.  I really like archiving anything I do so I also videotape myself playing the concert as well as recording the audio.  Do I have dreams of making a documentary of the Don’t Fret Sessions?  Sure do.  Do I have time?  Nope.  But at least I have some material to work with.

This particular night was a fun one as I hadn’t seen a lot of folks in awhile.  I also felt that all of our song choices were great.  I definitely flubbed a few songs but that happens sometimes when I switch up my setlist on the fly.  Here I was thinking I would have a certain 8 songs prepared and then the kids come down so I pivot and play 3 songs they know.  But I’m ok with pivoting and really, no one notices my flubs except for myself.

I look forward to future Don’t Fret sessions.  They are fun and it’s a good substitute for playing together live.  Speaking of which, Dave, Troy and I will all able meeting together to see Metallica in April…maybe we will slot in a live Don’t Fret session!  Imagine that.

It was the big Vars carnival weekend and the kickoff night had bingo!  Vero and the kids went to it as I had to set up for a Don’t Fret livestream.  They seemed to have a lot of fun even though they didn’t win.  Ezra said “I was one number away from getting bingo!”

I was originally asked to sing along with a couple of our friends sons but I was going to be out of town for Uncle Richard’s 80th birthday so that wouldn’t work out.

Luckily Sierra and her friends were available so they did a dance!

 

A video of Vero playing cards with her twin

The night before Vero made this video we watched Double Impact with Jean-Claude Van Damme (or as Vero likes to say…Van DAMNNNN!) and she was inspired by the visual effects where he plays a twin in the same scene.

 

Sierra hosted a Valentine’s evening where we laid out some gifts on a blanket.  Vero got an updated report entitled “An Analysis of  Why You Are Great” (which was about 15 years out of date!), the family got some assorted chocolates and goodies, as well as a Lego bouquet of roses.

Let us know forget this awesome heart box that Sierra made for me!