happiness is a warm camera

we have been missing our camera a lot. on sunday we trekked up through the snow to bridal falls. we have been there many times before, but never when it was half frozen. after visiting the falls themselves we ventured out onto the creek flowing from the falls, a torturous mishmash of ice, fallen snow, melted and refrozen snow, and partially carved rushing minicanyons.
no camera aaargh! here is a picture of bridal falls in the summer.




we also made a big snow cat in our backyard. i made the snowballs and kylie styled it into a cat. she did an excellent job with only snow, soot and twigs. quite recognizable as a friendly cat and much cuter than shelley's. it was dream snow man snow too ... the type where you start rolling in one direction for about 15 feet and then realize that by the time you get back the snowball will be too big to lift. each roll would expose a new section in a strip of crazy green grass completely cleared of all snow.
one of our neighbours made an amazing snow sculpture that put even kylie's cat sculpting abilities to shame. it was about 7 feet tall and depicted 2 human figures contorted into vaguely fetal positions and stacked on top of eachother. maybe they were in love or maybe they were twins. either way its art. again no camera. aargh!




a lady in colorado was recently ordered to take down her christmas wreath (pictured above) b/c several residents complained that it was antiamerican or that it was satanic. however after a bit of outcry it seems she will be able to keep it up fine free after all.


i finished "king leopold's ghost" a few days ago (see below) and my enthusiastic recommendation has only deepened. at risk of giving away the ending (can you spoil a history book? if you think yes then maybe skip to the next paragraph) i will say that this book neatly illustrates the history of colonialism by describing the initially highly developed albeit often brutal central african societies and the story of the congo's hostile takeover by white guys with guns and funny hats. it ends with a fine foreshadowing of neocolonialism when the first democratically elected prime minister of the congo is assassinated by the CIA for interfering with american mining interests and one of their pawns mobutu sese seko is installed in his place.




this book was just loaned to me by our hospital librarian. it recently won the giller prize and is the writing debut of a toronto er doc. i picked it up, read the first 2 paragraphs and thought, "whooaah... this is my life!" i'm 3 chapters in and that initial thought has been modified to "whooaah... this is my life and its really well written!" (the book's main character is a studyholic chinese girl with poor social skills, so dont take that too literally)