Our Message Archive
Sunday April 19
On the Ramblers ride in Seaforth yesterday
I last reported here on Easter Sunday. On Easter Monday we hosted 13 for dinner (horrors! such bad luck): the three of us, Ingrid, Mike Alex, Kim Glen, Josie, Lauren, Roxanne, Carl and Chapman. I made rolls and leeks au gratin, Ann cooked a ham and made scalloped potatoes, and various vegetable dishes were brought by our guests. Our friend Erika was going to come but she had a cold so pulled out at the last minute; she did still provide us with a carrot cake for dessert.
I've played bridge with Layton a couple of times over the last two weeks, once at the Truro Bridge Club where we redeemed our previous poor performance by coming in first, and also at the Don Cox Memorial Tournament at a hotel in Truro; we did fairly well there but not as well as I would have liked.
Ann has been very busy with all her volunteering: doing taxes at various libraries around town, at the food bank, and at the church. She did find time a week ago Thursday to meet Marg, Ingrid and Kim for drinks at Dear Friend Bar in downtown Dartmouth in honour of Marg's birthday.
The next day, we invited Carl and Roxanne over for a relaxed pizza dinner. We end up by crossing the street to their place and watching the Artemis II splashdown on their TV. While any trip to the moon is impressive, I was a bit surprised at all the hype about it considering that the technology is almost 60 years old. Someone in the PR department obviously latched onto the fact that they were going 1% further from the Earth than any of the Apollo missions so that they could claim a great technological triumph.
The Ramblers biking season has officially started. As we did last year, we had a pre-season Lunch two Saturdays ago at the Best Western on St. Margaret's Bay Rd. in Halifax. That allowed everyone to get reacquainted after the winter so that our first ride could depart with reasonable efficiency. That ride was yesterday along the trail between Lawrencetown Beach and Porter's Lake where we stopped at Tim's for lunch. Although it has been very wet recently, the weather for the ride was fantastic though a bit cool. There was also a bit of wind but, since the trail is largely protected by trees, that did not bother us unduly. I have also ridden out to Lawrencetown Beach and around Dartmouth a few times.
On Wednesday, we took our e-bikes to Sweet Ride Cycling in Mahone Bay, where we bought them, for servicing. While we waited we met Ingrid and Jocelyn's at Eli + Trix, almost across the street from the bike shop. After lunch I went to check out the trail through Bridgewater to make sure that it is in good enough shape for rides later in the season. Meanwhile Ann relaxed with Jocelyn and Lokman at their place. I met them there before returning to Sweet Ride to pick up the bikes.
I mentioned last time that I have been watching the chess Candidates matches. They finished this week with Sindarov, as expected, a runaway winner in the Open. The women's match was very close until the end with Vaishali Rameshbabu of India winning in the last round.
Sunday April 5
Happy Easter!
Our latest puzzle
The day after I last updated this page, Ann flew home from Ottawa. I picked her up from the airport and, the following day, I returned the rental car and picked our own up from the body shop. So now everything here is back to normal.
This morning, Ann and I were up early to attend the short service on the Dartmouth waterfront followed by breakfast of eggs, pancakes, sausages, fruit salad and muffins in the church basement. Ann stayed afterwards to sing with the choir in the regular 11 o'clock service.
The weather, for the most part, has continued to be cold and wet which has prevented me from getting as much done in the garden as I would have liked. By this time last year I had already planted lettuce and kale but nothing yet so far this year. The week ahead promises to be a little drier so I hope to get some stuff planted soon.
I have managed to get out for some rides but mostly just around Dartmouth. Ann joined me on one of them but she has been busy volunteering at the food bank and doing taxes with the Community Volunteer Income Tax Program which hasn't left much time for biking.
A week ago Thursday we went to Neptune to see Chase the Ace, an amusing one-man play about shady dealings around a lottery in a small town in Cape Breton. We met with Ingrid, Mike, Kim and Glen for dinner beforehand at Mappatura Bistro. We were at Neptune again this week to see Come From Away, the musical about events in Gander on September 11, 2001, which Ann had already seen but I hadn't. We had another nice dinner beforehand at The Wooden Monkey with the usual suspects.
Last Tuesday, I drove to Truro to play bridge with my friend Layton at the Truro Bridge Club. We played really badly, making all sorts of stupid mistakes, but still managed to place in the middle of the field. We are going to try and do better this coming Tuesday.
For the past week I have been watching the chess Candidates Matches which are taking place in Cyprus. There are two co-located tournaments, one open and one for women, which will determine the challengers to the current world champions. The talk of the tournament so far is the young Uzbek player Javokhir Sindarov who, at the half-way point, is a point and a half clear of the field having won five games and drawn two, an almost unbelievable start at this level.