Painting The Town Red

It’s RED all over around here – especially today. What with the Canadian patriotic fervour for our Olympic team, plus the fact that it’s not only Valentine’s Day but also Lunar New Year. The latter is big news in this town of many Asian immigrants. We’re welcoming in the Year of the Tiger, which is my Chinese astrological sign (and T-Man’s) as well. So there are Canada maple leafs, red tuques and mittens, hearts and flowers, red lanterns and auspicious red Chinese characters everywhere you look.

Speaking of that O-Thingie that’s taken over my city, I did manage to see one tiny little segment of the Torch Relay last Thursday. Though I have no idea who the woman who ran by me was! It was a bit disappointing in that I expected something more than a couple of C*ca-C*la trucks with dancers and another from The Sponsoring Bank. (How exciting. Not.) The cops didn't even stop the traffic but just kind of maintained a bubble around the central action. The people in the streets were pretty enthusiastic anyway, running out in the street and taking photos of themselves with their red paraphernalia. Even though it was raining all the little kids from the nearby school were out with their flags and red mittens. Hey, it was only three blocks from my house and I needed a few groceries from the store right on the route. I just timed it well. Heh. Yeah, I had my red umbrella up!

And did you catch the Opening Ceremonies on Friday? Personally I thought they were just fantastic – beautiful and moving – and it made me feel such pride to be Canadian. My favourite bits were the Native dancers, the whales and the punk-Celtic segments. (My kind o’music!) The lighting effects were totally amazing and left me wondering how they did it. Too bad about the leetle teensy glitch at the end. But hey, it was live! Stuff happens in real life. (As that poor luger found out. Sympathies to his family and friends.)

So now they can all play their games and win (or not) their medals and we can all get back to what passes for normal around here in Lotus Land.

Meanwhile, back at Damselfly’s Pond, I won’t even elaborate on the “fun” I’ve been having trying to locate 3 different fleeces for a workshop we’re having in May with Anne Field from New Zealand. The wool has to conform to particular numbers of crimps per inch – fine, medium and “bold” (my fave new term). And we don’t have many local farms with suitable sheep and nobody I’ve heard from is planning to shear in time. So I’m trying to track down people willing to sell me something resembling the right stuff. It ain’t easy. Especially for the “bold” which you think would be the easiest one to get. Not so much. I have lots of Romney in my stash but it’s all washed and no longer in very perfect lock form, which apparently we need. Luckily I still have a couple of months though I’d like to get this done ASAP. Just so I can stop worrying about it.

Plus I’ve been slaving away on my slides for my talk. Time’s getting very short and I’m not nearly done yet. At least PowerPoint wasn’t so bad to figure out. My version is the old 2003 and it’s pretty straightforward: type in the text and paste in the photos; resize them and arrange them to look nice; next slide please. At least I have the digital projector here and was able to make a test run. It worked fine, except that I had to adjust little Bluet the Netbook’s resolution to match the projector’s. (She has a weird long narrow screen.) OK, time to go to work and make more slides. I only have a few more days.