Category: General

Breastfeeding Challenge

Posted on by boj Posted in Baby, General

This is a bit of old news by now, but I wanted to blog about it. Also, I promised Marina to give her more details so I’m killing two birds with one stone.

Several weekends ago Trev and I joined our Mom & Baby friends at the Ottawa Breastfeeding Challenge. This is a yearly event that is intended to make breastfeeding in public more socially acceptable and educate public on the benefits. Every year moms and babies arrive at malls across North America and start breastfeeding exactly at 11AM. Once you have a latch you raise your hand and nurses count the babies currently feeding. It is a bit of competition between cities and Ottawa came in fourth after Montreal, Quebec City and some place in Quebec I’ve never heard of.

There was an article in Ottawa Sun, and apparently I was in the picture, but they didn’t put the picture on the web and after a few days they removed the article as well so I can’t link it.

Overall it was fun. There were just under 200 babies feeding at the same time. Here’s a link to the final results. Quebec and Ontario did great, but where did the rest of the continent go?

Theatre – Penelopiad

Posted on by boj Posted in General

We were ready for a nice Friday night with babysitters settled in and tickets to the opening night of the English Theatre Season at the National Arts Centre. There was some hoopla about the play since it was a Canadian premiere of a Margaret Atwood play. The play is collaboration between NAC and the Royal Shakespeare Company. It had premiered in London with mixed reviews.

The theatre was comfortably full with Atwood in attendance. We tried to see if there were any other Ottawa literary artists there as well, but then we realised that we don’t know what any of them look like even if they were. We only recognised Jian Ghomeshi.

I don’t have a good history with NAC English Theatre since the best plays I’ve seen there were somewhere between “strong” and “solid”. Nothing to talk about at dinner parties years later. Penelopiad is the best play I’ve seen there so far and I would describe it as “gripping”. Whatever the problems seem to have been in London it looks like they’ve fixed them. The acting was fantastic and the scenery and props brilliant.

The story is what one comes to expect from Atwood. A lot of feminism, some pessimism and just enough of humour to make it stick when you throw it at the ceiling. There was a lot of praise for the actress who played Penelope, and it was certainly deserved, but it was the chorus that did it for me. I loved the shape shifting, the dance and song, the pedantic detail that went into each character even if the character only existed for several minutes. One of the very interesting aspects was the women portraying men. They were excellent in portraying straightforward characters, but the portrayal of Odysseus was brilliant. I don’t really understand how they did it, but then again I am not a playwright so I don’t need to know that.

So yes, I do recommend the play if you get a chance to see it. It is nothing new, but it is solid. Am I going to still be talking about this play three years from now? I don’t know, ask me in three years. You’ve got to love Atwood, though. Who else have we got to go on CBC on a Sunday morning and say things like “Everyone thinks that being Byronic is romantic unless you’re Byron”?

NAC’s page

Anniversaries

Posted on by boj Posted in General

Through lucky combination of good coordination and lovely family willing to babysit, Chris and I got not one but two anniversary dinners. Yay. We went to Urban Pear (my pick) one weekend and to Les Fougeres (Chris’ pick) the next. I’m really glad we did this as we don’t get to spend as much quiality time together. I forgot how much fun hanging out with Chris can be.

We’re still re-organising the downstairs, we moved some furniture around. It is going to take years to get the house to look cozy.

Making lists I’m not going to do anything about

Posted on by boj Posted in Books, Film, General

A friend from my literature club sont me this link. There is a summer reading list of Canadian lit. I’ve read Oryx and Crake and might have read Neuromancer. Some books on this list I have heard about, some I have been thinking about reading, but most are new to me.

Another thing I will not have time to do is write a post with title of each movie I’ve seen this summer. I’ve used free babysitting liberally while on vacation and saw tons of films:
Mr Bean goes on Holiday
A Boy Girl Thing
Pirates of the Caribbean 3
Shrek 3

And now I will try and get Eclipse working on my PC, and catch up on banking. And call my mother to tell her that there is a message for her on my answering machine. And make supper. And catch up on sleep. And play on the Internet.

Film – Oceans 13

Posted on by boj Posted in Books, Film, General

I am so happy. I am on vacation so I have tons of family and friends playing with the baby. This is good for both him and me. I have been getting a lot of reading done. Not only that, but I’ve read three good books in a row. I’ve read Orwell’s Burmese Days before leaving and thought it was great. I’ve since read Bloodletting and Miraculous Cures by Vincent Lam. I was interested in this book since it got the Giller Prize last year, but I knew I was not going to have time to read it. I went the lazy way and sent it to my med school sister so she could read it for me. She liked it and lent it back to me as summer reading. I do hope they make a television series out of it. There is some character development in the first few chapters, but afterwards it is just stories.And, there is never enough hospital dramas. I wish I could say the same thing about engineering – Dilbert was never compelling.

I just started reading Speaking with the Angel collection of short stories. I’ve only read two so far, but Nick Hornby’s NippleJesus is fantastic! I would recommend it to anyone who has an opinion about art galleries.

I’ve had such a good reading streak, I’m afraid of picking up anything else for the fear of it being a dud. I’ll just concentrate on my Master’s thesis now, it’s a safe bet.