The Brown Knowser

It's like when I was a teen, when I decided that I was done with dressing up and going door to door, trick-or-treating. No one told me that I was too old. It was a conscious decision that my friends and I had made. The first time that we had decided not to go out on Hallowe'en (yes, I still insist on spelling it that antiquated way), we went to hang out at the shopping mall, which seemed ghostly quiet. We just sat on the benches, doing nothing. It felt great to be out on a night where so many young people, our age and younger, were roaming the streets, and we were doing nothing. My kids are still dressing up in costumes, but this year they've decided to abstain from going to the neighbours, asking for candy. They're just hanging out with friends, eating candy that they bought for themselves. And doing nothing. For myself, I find myself wanting to take a pass on Hallowe'en. I won't be putting on a dark robe, trying to scare the kids who come to our do...

They said flurries and I grumbled, but didn't fear it. On Tuesday, at the office, the overcast sky and wind chilled the air, and tiny white particles fluttered about the parking lot and surrounding forest, as though that non-existent entity had shaken its long, grey hair and let loose flakes of dandruff. On Tuesday, those flurries melted on contact. Thursday started of mild: no frost on the windshield, dry roads all the way to work. There was a slight breeze but nothing to chill the bones. A hoody and gloves kept me warm. On the radio, a risk of rain was promised with a chance of snow. The rain, the CBC announcer said, would carry through to Friday. I hadn't yet stopped, this week, for my Hog's Back Project photo. Indeed, I hadn't posted any of the photos in about three weeks, and I feared that I would lose track of the ones I had already shot. I didn't relish the prospect of shooting the falls in the rain—had avoided wet days for most of the previous 42 wee...

Sink's in place (but not connected). Range hood has arrived (but not installed). Electrician has made his final visit, connecting wires to the island, installing pot lights, puck lights in glass-door cabinets, and hung pendant lights. (I picked up the pendant lights, making a last-minute decision--texting images to DW, who was at work--hours before the electrician arrived.) The kitchen is brighter than it's ever been and will be even brighter when we install the under-counter lighting. We haven't chosen those lights yet but got the electrician to install the wires. I trust myself enough to hook them up myself. Here's the kitchen, as of last night. Next on the agenda: the drywaller arrives next Tuesday; the counter top gets installed on Wednesday. I will cut and install the baseboards after that and will move the family room furniture back into place. Then comes the backsplash, the range hood goes up, the plumber installs the dishwasher and hooks up t...

We just saw the sofa, imagined its deep, chocolate leather against our antique-white wall, contrasting with the natural oak floor and complementing the dark-brown wall on the opposite side of our family room, and we wanted it. When we started our home renovations, we decided that it was time to retire the two sofas in our family room. One went to the curb; the other went to our basement, where I suspect it will stay for the rest of our lives. We decided to stay with leather for our large sofa: Edwin, our black cat, seems to hold no interest in leather, neither to sleep upon nor to use as a scratching post. Because our budget doesn't allow us to buy a new sofa, we've been scouring Kijiji, looking for a great deal. We knew the colour that we wanted, and our style preferences are basically similar. I need a sofa I can sleep on, so the arm rests can't be too high. Neither of us likes cushions that are baggy, nor do we like buttons or studs as accents. We like clean lines an...

They said it was going to be a one-week job. That was three weeks ago. My laptop contains all of the photo-editing tools that I use, and for months, that computer had a glitch that we could no longer overlook, especially with our home renovations and space on our main floor being at a premium. Several months ago, our laptop developed a problem where the battery would hold a charge but would not recognize that it was fully charged. As a result, the computer could not operate on the battery at all. If the machine was running and became unplugged from the power cable, it would immediately die. It wasn't a huge problem, as the computer worked perfectly fine, as long as it stayed plugged into a power outlet. During the demolition stage of our kitchen and family renovation, I would constantly cut the power to various parts of that area, and sometimes I would inadvertently hit the wrong switch at the power box. If DW was working on the computer at the time, I would learn very quic...

No, I'm not a grumpy old troll, living under a bridge. But sometimes, you've got to go low to get a good shot. It took a long time for the Vimy Bridge (aka the Strandherd Bridge) to open, but I think it's one of the prettiest bridges in our city, spanning the Rideau River on the south end of town, linking Barrhaven to Riverside South. Even now that the water levels have dropped, with the leaves in autumn colours and the sun setting low in the sky, this is one of the great areas in which to capture the season. And no, I found no trolls. Happy Friday!

For those who follow my other blog, Beer O'Clock , I have to acknowledge that I haven't posted a review in more than a month, but I have a couple of reviews written and I will publish them in the coming days. I haven't stopped trying new beer and making notes: I just haven't typed up those notes. If you follow me on Twitter or Facebook, through Untappd , you know that I haven't stopped drinking beer. As of this blog post, I have checked in on the social-media beer database 1,456 times with 802 distinct brews. I started using the app more than four years ago. I don't drink a lot: I drink often. When I think about the various beer that I've consumed in my lifetime, my thoughts have occasionally turned to the beer that I drank when I lived in South Korea: Hite, OB Lager, and Cass were the three major beers that could be found in corner stores in 1997 to 1999. These were the ones I drank on a regular basis, when I wasn't drinking soju , mokolli , ...

I'm not a tall man. DW isn't tall either, so it comes as no surprise that we have petite daughters. Still, it doesn't keep them from trying. Here's a recent phone conversation that I had with my youngest squirt: DD13: "Hi, Dad, I'm very tall." Me: "What makes you say that." DD13: "I'm wearing very tall heels. I'm tall, now." Me: "You think that makes you tall?" DD13: "Yes. I'm so tall that I had to bend low to throw something in the garbage bin. I'm so tall." Me: "But artificially so." DD13: Pauses. "I don't want to talk to you anymore." Me: "Okay. Take care, shorty." DD13: "I'm going to hang up on you now." Hangs up.

It's been a few weeks since I wrote about our home renovations, and many friends, family members, and work colleagues have asked me about the progress with our kitchen and family room. The last time that I blogged about the work, we had finished the first coat of finish on our hardwood floors and had covered up the dulled builder's white and the burnt red on our walls. Lots has happened, since then, but in other ways, things have slowed as we wait for contractors and we pick at some of the work ourselves. Work also slowed, a couple of weekends ago, after I fell from a ladder while I was touching up some of my flaws from painting in our first week. I didn't hurt myself, luckily, considering I fell onto the hardwood from about four or five feet up, and was holding a paint brush, trying not to let it hit our new floors. The electrician has come once, to install new switches and outlets. He couldn't finish the work because our cabinets hadn't been installed, and h...

I look in the mirror and another face looks back at me. It's older, tired, worn. The cheeks sag, look depressed. The jaw line is dark, round , full. It's not attractive, not that my face ever was. But the old face held youth. A smile. Bright, ever -observing eyes . That old joke from my days in elementary school comes to mind: Is your face hurting you? 'Cos, it's killing me . That was the locker-room talk that my friends and I had. Cheap jokes that made fun of each other. Occasional talk of girls in class: "Did you check out so-and-so's butt in those jeans? Nice!" Sure, it was immature and wrong, but we never bragged about wanting to force ourselves on anyone. That's not locker talk that I've ever heard. Ever. But I digress... I was talking about my face. I've always looked younger than my 51 years. Sure, I walk like a 90-year-old man, hobbling on my deteriorating feet , but my face has always looked young. I have usually kept a c...

I really like Ben Wood. He's a bright, young lad who always seems to carry positive energy and thoughtfulness. He's a very good photographer who loves his city and seems to know it very well. I first learned about Ben when he solved the very first Where In Ottawa photo challenge, and since then has solved several more. When I have asked readers who think that they know Ottawa to prove it, Ben has done so time after time. And for the latest challenge, Ben has proved himself to be knowledgeable yet again. Congratulations, my friend. October's challenge was doubly difficult because, not only did I capture a small portion of the complex, I modified the photo to make it seem like an aged print (which of itself was a clue), but Ben used the image with the four other clues to correctly discover that this month's location is the Booth Street Complex, otherwise known as CanmetENERGY , a government research facility for Natural Resources Canada. As Ben added in his ...

On a cool, foggy autumn day, it's still nice to pick up the camera and see what's out there. And even though you've been to a place countless times, there is no such thing as the term too much . Happy Friday!