The Brown Knowser

It was as though the world had unleashed a Ninja-sized nope card on me, this weekend. On my vacation, last week, DW and I rented a camper van, packed up the kids, and hit Prince Edward County and the St.Lawrence Seaway before we returned the kids home and continued on to the Montreal area and up to Joliette. To keep our teenaged, technology-prone daughters occupied at night in our four-person mobile home, we picked up a card game that we thought would keep them engaged while their electronic devices were charging. That game was Exploding Kittens . Turns out, the girls had played it before. Luckily, they loved the game. One of my favourite cards was the NOPE card, which you could play at any time to negate the action of any other player's move. Except, it doesn't save you from an Exploding Kitten card. For today's blog post, I meant to write about the adventures in travelling with my family in a camper van, but this weekend, in real life, played a giant NOPE car...

This is the first Thanksgiving, since we lived in Korea, that DW and I aren't celebrating the holiday. Of course, I'm thankful for my family and friends, the fact that we're all healthy and happy, and that we have food in our bellies and a warm roof over our heads. Instead, we've rented a camper van and have hit the highway, exploring along the St. Lawrence Seaway. I'm also taking the rest of this week off from blogging. The Brown Knowser will return next Monday. But I thought I would take the time to announce that Where In Ottawa was solved, last week, by one of my writer colleagues, Tina Klein Walsh. Tina correctly guessed that last week's photo was shot at the Carp Library. Congratulations, Tina! Here are the clues, explained: There's more where that came from: I was referring to the photo of a book. There are plenty more books in a library. Maybe the Guardian knows: in the late 80s, one of Canada's greatest observed UFOs landed i...

There's a dragonfly in this photo. I'm not going to tell you where it is. I didn't know it was in my frame when I composed and took my shot. When I cleaned up this image, I almost removed it, mistaking its wings and long tail as a speck of dust on my camera lens. It wasn't until I zoomed up, ready to blend the surrounding pixels over its graceful body, that I saw it for its true self. Of course, I had to leave him in the image. He and his companions were silently fluttering around me, unnoticed, keeping the mosquitoes away so that I could do my work. I won't tell you where he is. I don't want to disturb him during this tranquil-sunset moment. Happy Friday!  

Twenty years ago, DW and I had become fairly familiar with our new country, South Korea, taking advantage of the weekends to hop on an inter-city bus and see the countryside. With so many temples, ancient sites, and cities to visit, we certainly got around. It's not like we had a lot of weekend chores or kids to look after. While I did travel with my expedition hat on most of the excursions, I did accumulate a couple of straw hats to wear on particularly hot weekends. These hats often had ridiculously wide brims, were so large that I had to keep them in the overhead storage on the buses. they took up a ton of room. Here, at home, I wouldn't be caught dead wearing one of these hats; but, in Korea, I never gave it a second thought. Obviously, I didn't bring this one home with me. Happy Thursday!

When I was 19 and had finished high school, I took a year off to figure out what I wanted to do with my life. In that time, I took on full-time hours at the paint and wallpaper store where I had worked in my spare time while in school. I also applied for my first credit card. At first, I was afraid to use it and promised myself that I would use it only in cases of emergency, that I would still use cash as my primary form of payment. For almost the first six months with my card, which originally had an $800 limit, I never touched it. It was a friend who worked in another bank who told me that it was a good idea to use the card at least once every six months, to keep the account from going dormant. And so, just before my six-month, semi-anniversary, I used my card to purchase gas at my local Sunoco. I felt instantly grown-up, felt that I was a responsible member of society. I tried my card again, at a nearby restaurant, Hurley's, on an evening with my friends. I showed them...

It's autumn, my favourite time of year, and while we started this season with the summer weather that we deserved in July, it's finally started to feel like fall. It's also the first Monday of the month, and for this blog that usually means the beginning of my Where In Ottawa photo challenge, though, like many things this year, it hasn't always come as expected. For those of you who don't know how this game is played, or for those of you who have played but need a reminder of the rules, here's how you do it: Below, you'll see a photo that I shot somewhere in Ottawa. Your task is to locate where I shot it, as precisely as you can. When you think you know this Ottawa location, leave your guess in the Comments section of this post. DO NOT TRY TO GUESS THROUGH E-MAIL, TWITTER, FACEBOOK, OR ANY OTHER SOCIAL-MEDIA FORUM. The Comments section for this post is the only place where I'll acknowledge your guess, whether you're right or wrong.  Yo...