November 26, 2009
On Sunday, I left for a road trip to Kirkland Lake, which is where Lem and Brad and their new baby live. Brad just got a job up there in August, and Isaac was born in September, and I wanted to hang out with them. Seeing as my old job ended last Friday and my new one doesn’t start till next Monday, I knew I had to take this opportunity to make the trip. Kirkland Lake is an 8 hour drive from Hamilton, and I didn’t want to do it by myself, so I invited my newly retired Mom along for a road trip and we were off.
Northern Ontario has a lot of rocks, and trees, and water. The drive was good — the major highways are in really good shape all the way up, and Kirkland Lake itself reminded me a lot of the town I went to high school in. I’m not a baby person, but Isaac is totally adorable and cute, and Lem and Brad are doing a great job with him. We were there Sunday night, and for Monday and Tuesday. We left early on Wednesday and were home before dark. I would not want to make the trip at night; it would be a mighty lonely trip.
I had a great time. We didn’t do a whole lot; pretty much just hung out with Isaac and Lemmers, watching TV and playing dumb Facebook games, but it was a nice change of pace. We went to the Kirkland Lake mall, toured the town, and Mom made a couple of batches of delicious cookies. On Tuesday night, Lem and I went for dinner and Mom took care of Issac, which was fun.
On the way home, I threatened to stop at all the silly roadside attractions (giant cows, buffalo, Muskoka chairs, etc) and historical plaques, but after our first attempt to locate a historical plaque failed, we gave up. We did however hit more than three bookstores and find some great butter tarts in Huntsville.
Picture time!
I don’t have any pictures of me with Isaac, but Lem does. Will steal some from her Facebook page later and post them here as proof that I will (sometimes) interact with babies.
Shannon Patterson, filed under Uncategorized |
September 4, 2009
A few months ago, I posted pictures of my “completed” quilt. That was in February. My Mom and Dad took it home with them, and they were going to get a lady my Mom knows to machine quilt it for me. Time passed, and one night, I got a call from my parents. Some of my Dad’s relative were over, and my Mom showed Muriel (my Dad’s cousin) the quilt top. Muriel decided that she would hand quilt it for my for Alan and my wedding gift.
We went back home to my folk’s place two weekends ago, and it was sitting on the couch for us when we got there. It’s absolutely beautiful.
I think we're going to have to get nicer bedding to match the quilt
another angle
If you can't see it, the detail in the boxes are squares, circles, stars and octagons
I’m so impressed that I made this. The finished product looks so different than when I last had my hands on it that it’s hard to believe it’s the same thing. I’m looking forward to getting more into the next quilt project, which is a blanket for Lem and Brad’s incoming Galaxar, who is due to show up in a couple of weeks. The quilt isn’t nearing anything ready to give away, I have two block completed, and bout 40 more to go, but it’s going to be absolutely amazing if this finished product is any indication.
I love curling up underneath the quilt and reading. Alan took a few pictures of that, but I don’t know how they turned out.
Shannon Patterson, filed under Uncategorized |
July 1, 2009
Monday on Q, CBC Radio’s wonderful music/arts show, Jian interviewed an author about the robot revolution, a musician, and then a woman who had been tasked with hunting down the history of the butter tart, a truly Canadian desert. They talked about the supposed history of the tart, where to find the best one, and what the ingredients should be (butter, brown sugar, syrup, raisins). It wouldn’t be surprising to members of my family that butter tarts brought back memories of my Grandma.
Butter tarts remind me like no inanimate object of my Grandma. She was the master. Grandma didn’t make a few butter tarts at a time, she made a few dozen. They were stored in the freezer in white margarine tubs, and they were full of sugary deliciousness. I’m sure each butter tart was about a thousand calories, but no family gathering was complete until there was a plate of butter tarts. I remember a few times being allowed to help with the making of Grandma’s butter tarts. She made her own pastry, and did not have a recipe to follow, except the one in her head. She would look into the batter from yards away and tell me it needed more corn syrup, or it didn’t have quite enough butter. It was crazy magic, and it was wonderful (my Mom can do the same thing). Because she would make these tarts dozens at a time, the act of making the tarts would take a full afternoon. Time spent waiting for the tarts to finish was often spent playing Mexican Rummy, a game that doesn’t even closely resemble the game rules I found on the Internets.
My Grandma passed away during the summer of my first year of university. From then on, we have never had butter tarts at a family gathering. The first year, we had butter tart squares but it was the end of the butter tart era. I am glad that I have these simply delicious, buttery awesome items with which to remember my Grandma. I think it’s cool that there is one thing in the world that will always remind me of her. There are other items in the world that remind me of other people, but I don’t think the connection is as strong as with my Grandma and butter tarts. Also, store bought butter tarts suck.
Happy Canada Day everybody.
Shannon Patterson, filed under Uncategorized |
May 17, 2009
More photos can be found on Alan’s Flickr Page.
Shannon Patterson, filed under Uncategorized |
May 7, 2009
I’m working on a secret project, and part of that secret project involves having a sidebar that can be hidden. a la Google Reader, Google Maps, the file manager in Gnome., or lots of other places. It got me to wondering how they did it. Google reader, for instance, has this fun little arrow icon.
But here’s the fun part: This is not actually an icon, it’s a box. It took me about 15 minutes meddling inside Firebug to figure out how they did it, and I shall explain it, so that I can fully understand it, so that I can use something eerily similar. To start, here is a box with a border of 15 pixels:
Now, let’s draw this same box, but let’s change all the border’s colours:
See how the borders miter? So what google has done, is shrink this box down so that the arrow reaches a point. They set the width and height to 0px, and all the borders miter in to a point:
Now, if I were to set all the borders to the background colour but one, I would get a similar arrow:
And if I were to make the border width a reasonable size, I would get:
The style on the final div is:
width: 0px;
height: 0px;
border: 5px solid;
border-color: #EEEEEE red #EEEEEE #EEEEEE;
How badass is this?
Shannon Patterson, filed under Uncategorized |
