My veggie garden

Our vegetable garden is 250 square feet small, but still represents some real work to set it up and aerate early season, fence and feed it as well as irrigate it regularly during our long and sometimes hot summers. So are all these efforts really worth it? 

For the moment, I’d say yes, but I’m not sure that’s quite true given all the hard work and expenses involved. So what am I hoping to get with continuing this gardening habit of ours that started some 20 years ago? 

For one thing, crop diversity isn’t a priority, as we focus on lettuce, strawberries and herbs given the small area we’re dealing with and the mountain’s rather brief growing season. 

Still what we get is fantastically fresh and tasting good, plus we know what made it grow and we enjoy caring for our tiny crops and harvesting them. 

I’ve also learned patience through tending a veggie garden as there aren’t many shortcuts available but letting time, sunshine and enough water work their way as we would expect them to. So, even if our lettuce, parsley, rosemary and strawberry are far from cheap, we value them for being ours and very tasty, so that’s why I decided yesterday that, God willing, I’ll continue tending our veggie garden until I turn 80…

Taking a day off?

It’s in 2007 that I begun writing this blog, following my Achilles's tendon rupture in March. On November 29, it would become daily and bilingual (English-French). 

Since that time it has never taken a day off. I precisely wanted to do it yesterday to celebrate the European Labor Day, but thought instead to reflect on all that time passed and glance into the future. Not only I have enjoyed writing so far, but it has never been too hard for me to find subjects that interested me enough and discuss them through this medium.

How long will this practice continue? I’m not exactly sure. Probably as long as enjoy it and keep on asking myself questions or wanting to address subjects that are important to me. 

So far, this blog has provided me with a great creative outlet and has forced to look deeper into topics I wouldn’t have explored so intensively otherwise, and it has educated me in the process. 

Some say that as we age, we need to make sure our minds stay active. My daily practice has certainly put my brains to work, even when they didn’t feel like it at all! 

Over the years, it’s been a pleasure for me to share my opinions and ideas with my readers, so please don’t be shy; when something motivates you to do so, chime in and let me know that you’re still thinking, alive and well!

Why I love snow removal

Second only to skiing, removing snow from around my home is my preferred winter activity. I like it for several reasons.

First, when there's snow to clear, there's good skiing to be had, and that's paramount to a ski-addict like me.

Second, it's a very concrete task. You begin with a space that is filled with snow and you liberate it from that invading white stuff. At the end, you can see and measure what has been done. There are few paid jobs left in this world that we are willing to do and that let you get that kind of satisfaction.

Finally, for perfectionists like me, it's another chance to act on my obsessive compulsive disorder, and strive for doing the best job possible and this is worth all its weight... in snow moved around!

Old talents revisited...

After I threatened to return to my old passion for illustrations, I received many comments from old buddies of mine that managed to dust off some ancient artworks of mine that they had providentially kept.

Needless to say that I couldn't remember any of them as I was all but a collector in these days, and was quite shocked when I rediscovered them.

The one I most recently got were comic strips and I must say that, upon close examination, these art samples woefully failed to meet my current standards!

This said, if I were (as I said I will) to revive that old pastime of mine, I would have to accept stepping into a phase of initial and extended mediocrity before I get closer to what my “standards” of the present day could be.

Clearly, there's no free lunch, and if relearning and all the pain it entails is part of the price to pay, so be it!

Blogging for ten years!

Just ten years ago today, I began this blog, as I was getting ready to undergo an operation to re-attach a broken Achilles's tendon.

I had long considered writing a blog, but never got serious about it. I liked to write and I also wanted to maintain my written command of French, my native language.

So simultaneously, I launched this blog in both English and French. At first, I didn't wright a blog everyday.

It's only in December of 2007 that my blog became a daily occurrence. To this date, you can find 3,651 blogs in English and 3,639 in French.

I've enjoyed writing all this and I hope you've enjoyed reading it as well!

Between the rocks and the hard place

Last week, I splurged on 5 tons of pebbles, ranging from 2 to 5 inches in size, as I wanted to play landscaper and fix a number of areas around my house that I felt had been poorly addressed by the pro hired to do the job two years ago.

So, last week, a big dump truck came to the house and dropped my mineral purchase next to the driveway. Since then, I've been handling rocks almost everyday.

At this point, I must have spread half of the pile around my house and my wife remains confident that we can find some good use for the entire delivery. I would agree with her assessment, but now begin to question the size of the task as it relates to my aging body.

Still I enjoy doing that job and remain confident that I will see the pile wither away. Not much thinking is required for that job, just a tiny bit of patience and some basic puzzle skills (you don't just dump the bucket and walk away, you must make sure these little pebbles dovetail nicely). Don't forget a never-ending stamina to push the wheelbarrow or carry the heavy buckets of stone.

Oh, by the way, I sleep soundly at night!

Video back-log

Yesterday, as I had not much going on, I've came to realize that a significant video footage was still lingering in my “raw footage folder.” That's when I begun to step in and did something about organizing these random shots into video form that made more sense.

I began with last Christmas and I'm still working on winter stuff. With some luck I should be through that project by next week. You see, building our new home not only had a disastrous effect on my skiing, but it also substantially slowed down my cinematic projects. Now, that I realize the hole I've fallen into, it's only right that I start some clean-up of my own.

What was great, though, was to discovered how memories are fleeting and how some seemingly memorable episodes - just a few months ago - appeared to have been long forgotten. Let me also add that preserving little, fun memories is just what creating family movies is all about!

Beat up!

Like most years before, we've been volunteering at the Sundance Film Festival and while our work shift was unchanged, from 6:45 am to 10 am for six days, it just killed us this time.

Perhaps it was the drastic change of pace for our cushy routine, with a 5 am wake-up call and a morning run in the complete darkness with headlamps?

Maybe it was the fact of standing up for hours in a damp, cold tent working the cash register for me and going up and down some distant flights of stairs for my wife, but it took the very best of us. Felt like lots of work and brutal wear and tear.

Will we recover? I hope so... Will we doing again? I'm afraid so...

The joy of chores

In the past, when I still had a full-time job, chores where just what we called them: Chores. Today, they are morphing to take a different aspect in my eyes. They're still unique, happen with low frequency and pack a dose of dread that, on second look, is perfectly unwarranted, and can be turned instead into wonderful opportunities.

Chores are activities, just like skiing, mountain biking or river rafting. They bring change to our lives that keep us from attracting sclerosis upon ourselves, they keep us a bit more flexible and maintain us fit by burning excess fat. So with that perspective, chores are suddenly both glorified, deified and perfectly justified. They've lost their sting, they suddenly become sacred opportunities, not to ever be missed...

GoPro frustrations

Using a GoPro video camera is subject to both elation and frustration. When it works, the results are pretty cool. When it doesn't, for some arcane reason, it's immensely frustrating. When it functions properly, this wonderful video camera deliver the goods, but setting it right and getting feedback that it is in fact recording, are the downside of the device.

First, the instructions for using the device were made by engineers for engineers, not for normal folks like you and me who look at them, but won't read them from A to Z. Last night after missing two great shots while skiing with my daughter yesterday, I brought the printed directions to my bedroom, but when I started to unfold the piece of paper (it spreads out like a huge map, not even a little booklet) I fell asleep.

I need to remember to take them with me, next time I catch a “red-eye” flight to Europe; it beats “Ambiant.” Early this morning I found a ton of tutorials on Youtube. That says a lot about the user-friendliness – or lack thereof – of any product. Perhaps that 16 month after owning the helmet cam, I'll finally learn how to use it!

Searching for the ultimate ski video

Great snow always offer the opportunity to create wonderful, magical and all-telling ski videos and this is a quest I've been after for quite sometime and still searching for... I'm confident it will come some day and that's why I'm still trying and learning in the process.

Yes, good video producing is taking a toll on my personal skiing!

The Ghirardelli project

Before all, it's about a lot of (delicious) chocolate, it's yards of strand and it's a bunch of large, glittering balls. It's a project that came out of nowhere, one evening, that we were munching on what's known as a Ghirardelli Square. This is not your mom's Tobler, Cailler, Godiva or even Leonidas. It's an all-American confection established since 1852 in the San Francisco area.

These square delicacies, while delivering the perfect balance of intense, slow-melting chocolate, are wrapped in colorful Mylar that I always hated to simply toss away. That special wrapper is a polyester film known for its high tensile strength and reflectivity among other reasons. So one day (at least a couple of years ago) I decided to make a ribbon out of one single wrapper, by tearing it longitudinally in small 1/4 inch wide stripes that would be knotted to each other.

Of course, this was much easier thought than done. I had first to open up the chocolate without messing up the paper, then be careful in tearing up the stripes and finally, use all of my dexterity (through some big, fat fingers) to attach them together.

I eventually did it, built up a 10 foot long garland that would later be rolled up, would soon grow into 8 inch in diameter and today, heaps of chocolate later, we have several such balls. Shortly, I'll be shooting a film documenting the whole adventure, but for the moment, I'll leave the details to your imagination.

End of Fest

By this evening we'll have seen 14 movies during the Sundance Film Festival that has officially closed yesterday. Tonight screenings are for locals only, but overall, this year's event was a very good one with excellent movies, lots of inspiration and never a dull moment!

We are glad it's over though because we're tired of running from theater to theater, to stand in line and to somehow stress out too much. Plus, we need to go back to our routine, go skiing again and live “normally” for a change...

I've absorbed a lot of ideas that will help me enhance my video work and will also help me take my favorite hobby way further. This experience is – once more – telling me that everything is possible, which I knew, but feel good being reminded of!

Movie envy

Seeing all these great movies during the festival is not tempering or slowing down my new-found passion for video and filming. Quite the contrary! Now, I'd love to produce a full-length documentary.

I almost know what it will be about, but I'm not ready to tell anyone just yet. For the moment, simply be patient; you'll know in time!

Can video also kill skiing?

You may remember the 1979 song “video killed the radio star,” well the same is happening with my skiing. My addiction to video is now doing some serious damage to my skiing as I spend more time shooting and editing video footage that I used to spend skiing into deep powder and around skis.

It's true that winter chose to come one good month later this year. Maybe will I be able to juggle my two dependencies. We'll tally the whole thing and draw some conclusions at the end of the season...