Harry Potter

We drove out to Lumsden today to see one last secret garden, a rather amazing hill top place with a great pool and huge deck. I'd love to vacation there for a week. William wiggled his tooth the whole way there and it came out finally. Afterwords we drove in to see the new Harry Potter movie. It wasn't until after it was over that we discovered that William's cousins hadn't seen any of the other films, even though the older one had read six of the books. I liked it. It was a bit scary in parts but the really dark stuff from the book has been removed. I coffeed with Kevin for a while this evening and when I got back I discovered that William's tooth had gone missing. I'd placed it on the table on a folded piece of paper two hours before but it was gone. Margaret wrote a letter to the tooth fairy explaining the situation. I found the tooth on the floor. I guess everyone is a bit frazzled after this weekend.

quick notes on very busy day

Secret garden tour continued today. We went. A good performance by a Winnipeg group took place at the Schumiatcher yard. Margaret's brother and his daughters arrived today for a week. I bought new medicine for William's goldfish as I now think it has fin rot. If it survives three days we should start seeing results.

end of week

After a week of working on the "cottage", I have the ceiling painted with two coats, leaving it a light, dusty blue. William enjoyed his "choose your own musical adventure" camp through the University's "Space Camp" program and we had to race back to town for his 1:45 recital today (it was 15 minutes long and featured songs alternating between his violin group and a different cello group). He was behind another kid and I didn't get good video of him, but here he is after the recital (see video below). Now I've got to shop for a violin. It was my dad's birthday today. We went to my sister's for supper.

paint

I painted the ceiling of the "cottage" today. I ran out of the tan mis-tint half way through so had to switch to my abundant blue. I thought it was going to be a darker blue-green but instead it was a light blue so I think Ill put a second coat on the ceiling. My purpose for painting first was so that the dust will be held for when we work on the windows. However, the ceiling will not end up being altered as much so it will be worthwhile to put that second coat on.

Wolfe at the door

The last Rex Stout "Nero Wolfe" book in our collection arrived yesterday. I've now acquired 50 or so of these books for Margaret; it's taken me about three years. This last one, "Triple Jeopardy", has been out of print for a while. The only one I didn't get her was "Corsage", which as a novella that appears to have had only short numbered print runs. The cheapest copy I found on line was $200 and it was apparently adapted into one of his later novels. A few years ago I nearly completed my friend Joanne's Nero Wolfe collection when she gave me a list of 17 she was missing and I found 15 of them. I then lost the list and so no longer know which two she was missing. The tv show they made from these books was fantastic and we were very sad when it was discontinued. It starred Timothy Hutton and Maury Chaykin and the rest of the cast was an ensemble with the same actors playing different roles each week. This way, you could not guess who was the criminal based upon the actor; one week someone might be the killer, the next s/he might be the victim or the witness. Really well acted and designed. It's available on dvd, the library has both seasons although at least on of the season one discs was scratched. When you read the books after seeing a few episodes of the show, you can really hear their voices as you read. These are the only mystery novels I've ever read, having read my first ones about two years ago when I was travelling to Victoria and ran out of other reading materials.

floor

I spent the day cleaning the "cottage" in preparation of painting it. My last hour was spent scraping dirt and old grain out of the grooves in the floorboards. All the day I fretted about the fish and how to break it to William. I ate lots of chocolate and listened to the B-52s with the cd player powered by my solar collector battery. This kept up my spirits. Luckily William had a really good time with his music camp and is excited to return. We broke the news to him after supper, he's always in better control of his emotions after he's eaten. He took it fairly well but was sad and wrote a card to his friend "T" who is the owner of the fish. I watched a few episodes of "Get Smart" with him after supper as well. I bought season 1 last week and he really loves it.

mornings/mournings

Yesterday I was really tired and sore from the heavy Saturday painting so I ended up sleeping in. I finished painting yellow second coat and some touch ups but didn't start on any tope. Took William swimming for a while then collapsed in bed early. Woke up at five to discover that his friend's fish had died. This is a new thing for me as a dad, dealing with dead pets. I though that this fish was the one that had recovered and it was William's fish that is more in danger. It gives me a sinking feeling. William has an all day camp today that he's already on the verge of rebelling against, even though it was his idea. This could be a very bad morning.