Eclipse day

We dropped the idea of trying to get into the states to see the total eclipse, but still enjoyed what part of it we could from home. As well, as part of the extended birthday celebrations, we tried to do cool stuff with William today.

At 11:45, the eclipse was at its ultimate for our area. Here it is through the safety glasses (click to zoom in on it). 

After the eclipse, we had cherry pie and coffee and watched this week's Twin Peaks. William drove me downtown where he took out a Filmpool membership (you need to be 16 to join a co-op and have voting rights). 

Gerda brought William a strange tin toy airport tower. We took a while to make it work (needed to partically disassemble it) but odd and cool. 

Paul came over for steak sandwiches and a fire. 

Mooky joined us at the fire. She proved she knew William well by bringing him a huge book about the twentieth century. We reciprocated by giving her an accordion with her name on it. 

William turns 16

Great day full of activities for William's 16th birthday. Allan, Geremy and Xander came over for a noontime game of Fiasco (with a Lovecraft theme to match the book I bought him). Ice cream this afternoon with Paul. There were cakes galore when my sister and all the grandparents came for evening desert.

Peaches and Orchards

We picked up boxes of peaches at mom's church today and intended to have pie and coffee. However, we were too late and the pie was all gone. We went to the farmer's market instead, but even they were mostly sold out of food truck stuff.

This evening we went to a really nice dinner hosted at the Over the Hill Orchards near Lumsden. Terrific. We sat beside Mike Maekelburger and his partner. The tour of the orchard and their methods was particularly enlightening
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Wheat Soup Beer invite

Invitation for the September 9 tapping of the keg and launching of the Wheat Soup beer arrived today.

40TH ANNIVERSARY CELEBRATION TAPPING OF WHEAT SOUP BEER

LOCATION: BUSHWAKKER BREWPUB 2206 DEWDNEY AVE, REGINA, SK

SEPT 9TH

TIME: 2:30PM FREE ADMISSION

DOOR PRIZES, REMINISCING, FUN AND SOCIALIZING!

Huge Lego from Sharon

Sharon took William out for an early birthday lunch and then bought him a gigantic Lego set. It's just nuts. The instructions are square bound - practically a novella.

Shooting in Art Shack with Lindsay Arnold

We visited the Art Shack at the RPL and shot some animation with Lindsay. I've not seen it posted yet. It will eventually be on her Instagram page. 

video camera

Geremy and William will now share this video camera (not camcorder) from 1985 that we picked up from Jay's garage sale. It looks like new (except for one foam part that was so disgusting that it went directly into the trash). Don't know if they'll get a signal out or power in yet, but it probably doesn't matter. 

Allan and complicated game

Margaret took a last minute extra evening shift so Allan, William and I played a very complicated game that was produced locally with some of his designs. I won but I'm not sure it was from any real strategy. It was fun though and probably be good if we all understood it better from the start.
Earlier, we had coffee with North Portal artist Lindsay Arnold.