We have settled into a cute, comfortable family home in Gatineau which we are renting until December 31. The owners are in Edmonton for 3 months for a work contract. And we are grateful for this place. Emma and Nathan are enjoying having their own bedrooms again (Emma especially), and exploring the toys the family left for us to use.
Chris and I are enjoying the simple routes to downtown Hull and Ottawa. Unless it is rush hour I can get to the Parliament buildings in 15 min! But we've struggled to find good places to swim and work out. Somehow we always end up driving for 40 min to some suburban rec. centre on the outskirts of Ottawa...?!
In other random, bloggy news, I stumbled across and purchased two wonderful, very different, books lately. The first was "In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts" by Dr. Gabor Mate from Vancouver. It's an exploration of addiction and discusses the the ways and degrees addiction burdens all our lives. I was rivetted. He paints a compassionate picture of life in Vancouver's downtown Eastside, and then outlines a reasonable and loving avenue for action to reduce the harm addiction causes. I learned a great deal - both about the world of those suffering terrible drug addicitons, and about the addictive tendancies in most of our lives (mine included). Mate's voice is one of optimism and experience. I'd recommend it.
I finished 'Hungry Ghosts' and went straight to a wonderful new book of interviews with actors of Shakespeare. Discovering what people like Kevin Kline, Derek Jacobi and Kenneth Brannagh have to say about their processes of preparing for the classic roles is sparking my dormant love of acting, directing and language again! It has been wonderful to have a long break from teaching, but I'm getting quite excited about carrying on with some of my wonderful private students. I'll have lots of ideas for Shakespearean monologue work to try out when I return!
Okay - I have to mention four of the best things that have happened this month - one for me, two for Chris, and one for Emma!
1. Emma turned 9 on the 23rd! She felt very special - had many phone calls and emails, and lots of wonderful gifts.
2. Chris has had three meetings in the Centre Block of Parliament Hill - briefing MPs about a report the Pembina Institute was involved with
3. He also had the chance to travel to London, England for work!
4. My great thing was that my friend Liz came for a weekend and we got to go to Montreal, just the two of us, by train. We had the best weekend. We laughed like crazy, talked for hours and managed to check off a huge, long list of touristy things like eating Montreal smoked-meat sandwiches at Schwartz's, going to a jazz club, walking to the cross on the 'Mont' etc.!
Well, that's enough from me...
Juleta
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