Birthday

It was my birthday last week - last Thursday in fact. I had a nice one. It was the first one that my parents were in the province for. They moved to BC last summer. It's really nice to have them here, but it is a bit of an adjustment for us. We are used to being on our own and not having to take other family into consideration for holidays or long weekends. It is different having to spend my birthday with them when it hasn't been an option since 1997 - 8 years is definitely long enough to create new habits. :-)

Friday night CM insisted that we spend the evening just the two of us. It was really nice. We had dinner at Feenie's, which is a restaurant that the two of us have wanted to go to for a while. It was funny because he picked some fabulous dished and really enjoyed the play of flavours and textures. The funny part is because he has always said that he doesn't have the tastebuds to enjoy really fine food. It just proved to me that taste, like anything else, is something you can develop. He has learned about fine ingrediants and how to mix flavours through reading and tasting good food for the last 4 years. Before we got together he rarely cooked and when he did, it involved frozen tater tots. Sorry, but to me that's not cooking - that's eating to survive. I don't think that is being snobby either. I don't mind fast food, but come on. It's really not that hard to make a pasta dish for yourself. Anyway, the point of this was that he hadn't been given the opportunity to learn about this stuff - and now that he has, he really enjoys that. That makes me happy that I have been able to share one of my loves with him.

Bringing it home

I found this public blog - http://www.nola.com/weblogs/nola/index.ssf?/mtlogs/nola_nolaview/archives/2005_08.html
It allows people to post stories, calls for help or requests for information about people, pets, homes, etc. It has really brought home the personal side of this tragedy for me. I haven't been watching the news this week, so I only knew the barest of facts of what has been happening, but the stories of these people are so real.

Anyway, I thought others might be interested -some are heartbreaking and others make you feel that there really are good people out there
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This is an email I sent out to some friends. I could go on and on about how horrible this tragedy is, but I think everybody is aware of that. I wish everyone well and hope most come out of this safely, but I continue to have one reoccuring thought that I feel rather guilty for. I have read so much about sea level and New Orleans and how it was a mistake to try to settle a city there, let alone such a large city. Perhaps it would be best to allow the ocean to reclaim that area. Maybe the US shouldn't try to fix the levee. Maybe this is one of those really harsh lessons about Mother Nature and the power struggle between man and nature. I know this is horrible to say when the lesson has cost us thousands of lives, but I think it might be an even bigger mistake to suggest people should go back there and establish lives again.

Anyway, this is probably a horrible thing to say, but this is the place to do it if I'm going to.
bye