THE TIP:

When closing the Firefox browser, a dialogue box comes up asking you if you would like to Quit and Save, Quit, or Cancel.

Quit and Save: The browser will save your position in terms of which Tabs you have up. The next time you launch your Firefox browser, it will open with those same pages and Tabs already lined up.

**Quit: **The browser shuts down without saving any of that information and on next launch will simply bring up your chosen start page.

**Cancel: **Closing the browser is aborted and you’re back to where you were when you clicked on the Close button (X).

Lately I found myself exiting Firefox with four basic Tabs in place: ***Sympatico.ca ***(my start page); Facebook | Home (my Facebook home page); Surfacing (my blog page) and Twitter / Home (my Twitter page). And by the end of the next session, I usually have the same pages/Tabs up.

**Eureka! **😯

Why not close all but the four basic pages before closing Firefox and then choose Quit and Save? That way they’re all there automatically when I next launch Firefox.

Eureka No. 2. 🙄

The closing dialogue box also has one of those “Never ask me again” boxes, so why not check that box and make it fully automated?

Ta-da! 🙂

I don’t know how this might work with other browser, Internet Explorer in particular. But I put it out there in case anyone might find it interesting and helpful. (And I’m sure the computer wizards amongst us probably have some super-gee-whizz process that makes all this look childishly rudimentary, but that’s OK.) 😉

For those who need to know more about Tabs and such

I assume just about every one knows that you can choose which Web page comes up when you launch your browser. Years ago I switched to Firefox for browsing and set it to open the Sympatico start page upon launch.

I no longer use any third-party toolbars from Google or Yahoo or anyone else. So, in descending order, this is what the top of my screen features:

• The name of the active site (white text on black).

• The standard horizontal list of menus (File, Edit, View, etc.).

• The address line with, from left to right: The usual buttons — Back, Forward, Revise, Stop, Home.

The address (URL) field, complete with a few shortcut buttons at the right for editing the bookmark, getting sight information, posting to Twitter and searching the social web for the text I’ve just entered.

Then there’s the field for conducting searches. (I have Google set as the default, with a drop-down menu if I want to choose another search engine. I can also reset my choice for the default search engine.)

Finally there’s a button for launching Cooliris, a very cool program that displays pictures as an easily scrollable wall of pictures.

• Below that comes my Bookmarks Toolbar where I put the bookmarks — usually one’s most frequently used — that I want easy, one-click access to, without having to scroll the rather long drop-down Bookmarks menu. I really like this toolbar and have made great use of it. There’s even a drop down menu that lists the overflow — the bookmarks I place on the toolbar but get pushed off for lack of space.

This toolbar is easily editable, including altering at will the order of items. Thus something like my Twitter /Home page may have pushed the online bookstore Chapters/Indigo off the visible list, but it comes up quickly on the overflow list.

Again this saves me scrolling through the regular drop-down list of bookmarks, combing through folders and subfolders for the right shortcut.

• The last line below all of the above is perhaps my favourite, my horizontal list of Tabs. I LOVE it!

The beauty of Tabs

The addition of Tabs as a Firefox feature a few years back was a great step forward. In addition to opening new sites in a separate windows, one could now open these separate windows with a Tab attached, identifying the page and acting as a place mark.

So now when I want to open a new site without closing the current site, I open the new site as a new Tab. I can then quickly jump from page to page by merely clicking on the appropriate Tab. A Firefox add-on I recently downloaded makes it even better in that not only do the Tabs come up in different colours but I can choose (even create) colours and assign them to specific Tabs.

Thus at this moment, as I write this, my list of Tabs, from left to right, reads: Sympatico.ca (light blue), Facebook | Home (light purple), Add New Post Surfacing (dark green because it is the active Tab) and Twitter/Home (a softer shade of light and dark green). Not only does it help in quickly identifying each Tab, but it just looks nice as well. Or at least it would, if I were an old softy. 😉

As mentioned at the top of this article, I used to have my Firefox browser launch with just the Sympatico start page open. By the end of my sessions, I usually had three other tabs up, placeholding my Facebook Home page, my blog Surfacing and my Twitter Home page.

Now when I launch my browser, all four pages come up, attached to corresponding Tabs and I’m ready to check my usual online stomping grounds.

First, a flashback to Gaspé

A while back I set up one of my favourite photos of the iconic Percé Rock as the wallpaper on my desktop PC. It was to get me in the mood for, and remind me of, an then upcoming train trip to Gaspé, Quebec.

The town of Gaspé is on the tip of Quebec’s Gaspé peninsula, which separates the Bay of Chaleur, between Quebec and New Brunswick, and the St. Lawrence River, where it opens up into the Gulf of St. Lawrence.

When the kids were younger and we were spending a couple of weeks each summer at a seaside cottage in Prince Edward Island, we’d always save the last week for touring some maritime area before heading home. One year we finally drove around the Gaspé Peninsula and it was beautiful.

We spent a night in the town of Percé and it was magical, especially the carriage ride around town with all the trees decked in white Christmas lights and patios and backyards all around with people partying in a gentle, happy manner. (No open drunkiness or rowdiness.)

Unfortunately, on the train trip we didn’t get anywhere near the rock. Just a distant view from the tip of the bay just above the rock in the map/picture above. Though I was eagerly looking forward to another look at this magnificent rock, I should have realized the very steep inclines leading in and out of the town of Percé would obviously affect the train route.

The train stuck to the forests on a ridge west of the town rather than going right through the town. Thus the only view from a distance. Oddly enough, it didn’t matter. The distant view was enough to remind me of the rock’s grandeur. Also, we’d already determined that we’d have to come back and next time, like our new-found friends on the train, we’d stay over a few days, rent a car, and tour the area, including the short trip down from the town of Gaspé to Percé.

Then we’ll get all the closeups we want of the rock and the surrounding area. This time the waves — which on our first visit were a beautiful aquamarine with white frothy tops — may not be too large for the tour boat to dock at Bonaventure Island, which is a bird preserve literally covered with sea birds. Another great reason to go back.

Getting to the point — at last

OK. Time to end this digression — as wonderful as the memories are — and get back to answering the question posed in the title of this submission.

Recently I went to the official site of our hometown NHL hockey team, the Ottawa Senators, to look up some information. While there, I decided to check out their 2009 offerings of wallpaper. There were two, and I did download both. I even saved them to my Senators subfolder in the Sports subfolder of the Wallpaper subfolder in my Pictures folder. (Am I anal, or just well organized?) 🙂

It turned out I didn’t particularly like either one of them.

One featured some text — “A FORCE UNITED” — beneath a logo with a splash of colour with sharp, ragged edges as if scraped (mutilated?) by hundreds of skate blades. Pardon the pun, but I expect the designers considered this graphic pretty edgy. For an old coot like me, despite its simplicity, it was far too busy for my liking. And to be looking at every day.

The second one featured another splash of colour with the Centurion face graphic peeking around the edge of two stacks of calendars — for the six and a half months of the 2008-2009 regular season — with all the scheduled home and away games marked on the calendars.

The big problem is that even at 1600×1200 resolution, the calendars are needlessly hard to read.

So scrap those two.

An old favourite

And then, while in that folder, I noticed a wallpaper photo from last year featuring my favourite Sens player, and captain of the team, the highly talented and equally hard-working Daniel Alfredsson — aka Alfie.

I figured why not. The team really struggled last season and lost their opening game at Madison Square Gardens against the New York Rangers last Saturday to start this season. So maybe I should throw Alfie back up as my wallpaper as a sign of support, and hopefully a good luck sign.

So up he went. And last night guess who scored the winning goal — on a penalty shot — against our arch rivals, the Maple Leafs, right in their home rink. Looks like Leaf fans may have to go back to booing Alfie each time he touches the puck.

On the play, Alfie was filling in for injured new Sens forward Milan Michaleck, who has been high-sticked in the face on a drive to the Toronto net. With Michaleck holding his bloody mouth while being lead to the dressing room — he returned and played well later — Alfie stepped in to take the penalty shot.

It was slightly ironic that on the shot, Alfie easily beat fellow Swede, the huge rookie goaltender known as The Monster (for his size, not his demeanour). The Monster, whose real name is Jonus Gustavsson, played well despite the loss. Certainly better than the so-called No. 1 goalie for Toronto, the ever-so-leaky Vesa Toskala.

My hero

Special mention should go to low-paid, well-motivated grinder Shean Donovan, who was inserted into the lineup for this game, no doubt to provide Ottawa with more grit and determination around the opposing net. It paid off with Ottawa’s first goal.

But the real hero for the night, because as usual he lead by example all night, but especially for scoring such a pretty winning goal, was of course Alfie.

I think I’d better leave my current wallpaper up for a while. 😀

Daniel Alfredsson, No. 11, and captain of the Ottawa Senators

(If you’d like a wallpaper-sized copy of the above photo, send me an e-mail at bill@provick.ca)

** Enter the Lamb Lady

**

We met a nice lady at Acorn Creek Farm’s Melon Fest and Pepper Pow Wow who ran a farm where she raised a different kind of livestock — yaks. We were more interested in the lamb she had for sale, but she was all out when we met her.

She did encourage us to come visit her at the Ottawa Farmers Market (www.ottawafarmersmarket.ca), where she promised to have some lamb. We dubbed her The Lamb Lady.

Genuine farmers markets

So we went to the Ottawa Farmers Market, at Lansdowne Park, the following Sunday (Sept. 13) and were almost overwhelmed by the number of booths, and the wide array of meat, vegetables, fruit and assorted other things. (See list of purchases below.)

Somehow in all this, we missed her booth and ended up getting our rather very fresh lamb from the Natural Lamb booth, run by a couple of local farms. The lamb may have been pricey, but in keeping with the concept of you get what you pay for, a lot of things are a little more expensive at this market. Ottawans, however, seem quite willing to pay the price for good quality.

A newspaper article a while back pointed out how, for example, some farmers charged $3 for a few tomatoes at the Parkdale Market in Ottawa’s near west end and $5 for the exact same amount and quality of tomatoes at the Ottawa Farmers Market, at Lansdowne Park.

It was explained that there were two main reasons for this price difference. At the other markets in the city, the Parkdale Market in the near west end and the legendary Byward Market downtown, farmers were competing with resellers, those who buy produce elsewhere — like bargain tomatoes from Montréal, for example — and truck them into town to sell at these markets. Local farmers say they can’t compete unless they match the bargain prices.

However, only producers — genuinely local farmers with truly local meat and produce and such — are allowed to sell at the Ottawa Farmers Market. So the farmers take it as an opportunity to sell at what they consider a fair price. And the customers, like ourselves, obviously agree in terms of getting fresh, local product of high quality and, at the same time, supporting local farmers.

The other stated factor is that the overhead — rental fees and such associated with leasing a stall — is much higher at the Ottawa Farmers Market. Again, customers are willing to pay for the convenience of having a truly local market right in the city.

Bye bye Byward

Many of these farmers don’t even bother trying to sell at the much bigger, more established Byward Market because it has become known as a home to resellers. Which creates other issues. Like out-of-town resellers setting up on the sidewalks right in front of establish fruit and vegetable stores who operate year round and obviously have a much bigger overhead.

As revealed in a recent newspaper article, at least one such fruit store owner says he has to actually lay off staff during the summer because business is so slow trying to compete with the temporary stand of the resellers parked right on his doorstep.

While the Byward Market was rich and vibrant with local farmers during my childhood, I do believe it has become more of a tourist attraction these days. It has even become almost better known for its robust night life, with all the bars, clubs and restaurants in that condensed, central area.

I know from experience that the addition of so many tourists can make the Byward Market far too crowded for comfortable shopping. Which is why I switched to the much smaller Parkdale Market years ago — before we got into true farmers markets featuring real local farmers and locally grown, raised or fabricated products.

Naturally delicious lamb

Now, back to the prices we paid for the lamb we got from Natural Lamb (www.NaturalLamb.ca), which also provides fresh lamb to local restaurants. (This idea of local restaurants obtaining ingredients from local farms is a growing, and quit pleasing trend. A number of chefs even visit and enter into contracts with specific farms, which assures the restaurant of fresh ingredients and gives the farmer a stable revenue source to aid in his business of running a farm.)

Note: 1 kilogram = 2.2 pounds    $1 Cdn. = $1.07 US

R****ack of lamb: $44.00 per kilogram ($20 per pound)   Bought: .366 k (small rack) for $16.10 Cdn.

Lamb chops: $36.60 per kilogram ($16.63 per pound)   Bought: .298 k (4 chops) for $11.80 Cdn.

Ground lamb: $18.15 per kilogram ($8.25 per pound)    Bought: .414 k for $7.51 Cdn.

Now this lamb is considered organic because it is declared pasture-reared, hormone-free, antibiotic-free and pesticide-free. It also contains Omega-3. It is described as being from Katahdin lambs which are said to produce “a high-quality, well-muscled (meat) that is naturally quite lean and consistently of a very delicate flavour.”

Now I confess I really don’t know lamb prices. I do sometimes order lamb in restaurants and enjoyed a very delicious rack of lamb at Fitzgerald’s Restaurant (www.fitzgeraldsrestaurant.ca) in Almonte, late this summer. But until now, for home consumption we’ve bought legs of lamb, usually frozen and from New Zealand, at the grocery store.

As Mariette does the shopping and even if I did later check a label, I have no idea how much they cost. I do know the lamb was usually very good and quite plentiful at mealtime — which is why we preferred a whole leg of lamb.

But however the prices above check out, all we know is that the lamb we enjoyed was worth every darn penny. I’ve never had lamb this good outside of a restaurant. It was everything it was said to be and more.

I was able to do the rack of lamb more rare than medium, just as we like it, and it was exquisite. As were the chops on the BBQ.

Even the ground lamb was superb. I mixed it with a lesser amount of butcher-shop quality lean ground beef for use with basmati rice as the filling in my stuffed peppers. Even mixed with the beef, the lamb was so distinctive and so very darn tasty. I made far too much filling — and probably didn’t need the beef — but we reheated the excess filling (meat and rice) the next day and it was still superb.

**T-bone steaks to yak about

**

But of course the title of this article doesn’t even refer to lamb. So back to the woman we’d dubbed The Lamb Lady.

In one last look around the market that Sunday morning we finally noticed The Lamb Lady. (Her friends at Natural Lamb had said they hadn’t seen her but confessed they’d been confined to their booth since before the market opened.)

We felt we had spent enough for lamb but decided we’d try her yak meat. I knew yak to be a bit dry, so I opted for T-bone steaks. We bought two for $30. (The package was hand-labelled so I don’t recall any weight or price-per-weight information.)

Early yesterday afternoon, running short of items to BBQ, I took these steaks out of the freezer and left them in the fridge to thaw overnight. Tonight, with the potatoes and cauliflower already in the steamers, and the BBQ warming up, I took them out of the fridge, unwrapped the brown paper and discovered two things — the steaks were THICK (2″ thick with only a slight taper at the end furthest from the bone) and they were still PARTIALLY FROZEN!

So on they went right away and I mentally cancelled the planned salad as I had to keep close watch on these monsters, leaving no time for chopping and dicing or anything.

They actually came out not too bad. Not burnt but fairly well cooked on the outsides and what we call medium-rare (slightly more rare than medium) at the centre. And the centre, fortunately, was as hot as the outside.

I confess that each of these monsters darn near overwhelmed our plates.

The verdict

So, how was it?

Better than I feared but not good enough that we’d buy more.

It’s not as gamy as say, venison, but it certainly is different.

As I said to Mariette: “At least if we ever went to Mongolia and they served us yak, we’d know we could eat it without a problem.” However, at home, the problem was we didn’t like it anywhere near as much as we like all our traditional meats, the ones our palates are familiar with and enjoy.

Now I confess I had a late breakfast — two eggs, fried potatoes, two slices of excellent pea meal bacon (from the Pork Guy at the OFM) and toast — at around 3:30 p.m. or so. (I’d gotten up late and then distracted on the computer and wouldn’t have bothered, but I’d been looking forward to this breakfast so long, I couldn’t resist.) So I didn’t have a lot of room. I made sure that I tasted enough of the monster T-bone to form my opinions, then concentrated on the potatoes and cauliflower. I didn’t even finish a normal serving of those.

Mariette also didn’t eat much of her steak. She’d forgotten the steaks were yak meat and was wondering why they tasted strange. Until she thought to ask me. In the end, we agreed it was an interesting experiment but we’ll pass on yak from now on.

Purchased at the Ottawa Farmers Market (Sept. 13)

Chamomile, catnip, calendula and orange peel tea

(Very good, very relaxing. Came with two tiny quartz crystals “charged with the healing intention of each tea blend.”)

Almond-coconut “hand-crafted” granola

(Delicious. I tended to sprinkle it over my regular healthy cereals so it would last longer.)

Elk smoked sausage

(Another “experiment” due to be eaten in the not-too-distant future.)

Homemade salsa, with sun-dried tomatoes.

(Very good. I even used some instead of ketchup on my BBQ hamburgers.)

Sun-dried garlic and feta dip.

(That’s according to my scribbled notes. This was for Mariette and she said it too was very good.)

Pea meal bacon.

(Had it today for the first time. Some of the absolute best I’ve ever tasted.)

One duck leg.

(Made the mistake of throwing it on the BBQ with the hamburgers at dusk. The burgers were finished much sooner and the duck leg half forgotten in the dark. It ended up rather burnt on the outside and dry in the inside. One quick taste and I ditched it. Will try again another time.)

Apple and date oatmeal cookies.

(Tried to stay away from baked goods but these looked every bit as mouthwatering as they turned out to be.)

Raspberries.

(I prefer my faves, blueberries, on my cereal but these fresh raspberries — so delicate they have to be eaten quickly — were pretty darn good.)

Blue and green grapes.

(The small basket was half-full with blue grapes, half-full with green. The blue grapes were delicious. The green ones were far too sour, even for Mariette, so we ended up tossing them. For me, the blue grapes alone were worth the price of the whole basket.)

One candy apple.

(A dee-licious bit of nostalgia. See the article Candy-coated memories further down in this blog.)

Assorted plums.

(From small yellow ones to large-egg-sized blue ones. The yellow ones were too squishy, and a little sour for my tastes. But the larger yellow, and red, and especially the blue were quite tasty, if eaten almost right away — like over two days or so.)

Broccoli.

(By far the very best we’ve had all year.)

Califlower.

(About the size of a bowling ball. I kid you not. So fresh and white and perfect it was almost too bright to look at. Took three meals to finish it off and it was beautiful each and every time.)

Brussel sprouts.

(I have always loved Brussel sprouts, but these were disappointing. Too much dirt. Also, bruises that needed cutting out, giving them a flat side, which tends to burn when sautéeing as they tend to roll on to the same side every time. I agree with Mariette that they were still quite tasty. But I’d have liked them to cook a little more evenly. BTW, Mariette only learned to like Brussel sprouts when I learned to sautée them, instead of boiling or steaming them. I kind of like them better in a hot frying pan as well.)

New small potatoes.

(Varied in size, from marble-size to slightly smaller than a ping pong ball. I intended to roast them with the rack of lamb. Unfortunately my potato cupboard was full and the cupboard I did store them in, well it was higher — above the kitchen counter — and the door was opened a few times every day. Meaning the potatoes were too warm and ended up too soft and had to be trashed  when I went to use them.)

Spinach.

(This summer we learned all over again to really love a good, fresh, spinach salad, especially with our favourite mango-poppyseed vinaigrette — which we no longer buy one bottle at a time. I do do a mean spinach salad and a good fresh bunch of spinach usually provides for three nights of salad. It ain’t soup but it sure is Mmm-mm good!)

Support your local farmer

** **So hopefully this will give area residents an idea of what’s available and where. For others, perhaps it will encourage them to check out what’s available in their area.

Despite the mention of crystals and granola above — the crystals were like a surprise in a box of Cracker Jacks — we’re not hippies (though I am still proud of my ’60s heritage as at least a semi-hippy). Nor are we health fanatics. And we still shop at grocery stores between visits to farmers markets. But it’s just something we found fun, probably good for us, and worthy in terms of supporting local farmers.

We’ll still hit some of the markets for fall stuff. And now that we’re hooked on fresh, local produce, fruit and meat, we’ll probably be making a lot more visits next year to some of our favourites sources — the Carp Farmers Market, in Carp; the Acorn Creek Vegetable Farm, near Carp; the Ottawa Farmers Market, at Lansdowne Park in Ottawa. And probably a few new ones, like the Chelsea Farmers Market at Chelsea on the Quebec side of the river and who knows what others we might discover here in the Ottawa Valley.

Not only has shopping for fresh ingredients become a lot more fun, but the meals are also far more dee-licious! 😀

An Irish breakfast

Mariette and I just got back from a great Sunday morning. We started off with an Irish breakfast at our local pub, Greenfields (www.greenfieldspub.ca), with my brother Gerry and his wife Arlene, our son Tyler and his wife Miche and our darling granddaughter Rachel.

I was especially pleased to see Rachel as I haven’t seen her for a while now. I was ill the last couple of times Mariette provided babysitting services.

I hadn’t seen the others for a while now either, so it was great to finally get together again. As usual, there was much catching up, as well as the almost mandatory stories and jokes. There was much laughter between mouthfuls, which is just as we like it.

Rachel was, as usual, on good behaviour and feasted on fruit — mostly grapes — and sausages that her mom cut up and placed on her plate. She’s still at the “no utensils” stage and greeted each handful with a wide grin.

I even managed to describe some of our train trip to Gaspé and back without getting lost too often or talking too long. (At least it didn’t seem too long to me.)

Eventually we were all pleasantly full and looking for our waitress to bring our bills. As planned, we were taking Tyler, Miche and Rachel for a visit to the Canadian Museum of Nature, housed in a landmark stone building down on Metcalfe Street here in Ottawa. It’s the building that looks a bit like a castle.

We invited Gerry and Arlene to come along but unfortunately they had other commitments.

The Canadian Museum of Nature

The museum — http://nature.ca — is an old favourite. On the drive downtown, it struck me that as kids, and even as teens, my brothers and I, and our friends, would regularly hop a bus downtown to hang out and explore this, our favourite museum.

It seems funny now, the idea of kids regularly and voluntarily going to a museum, without any parental or adult influence.

Looking back, I kind of like the idea that amidst the host of our boys-will-be-boys activities, a love of museums blossomed all on its own. I also look back and wonder at how independent we were. How readily we’d take buses downtown to attend movies — Disney films played exclusively at the Elgin Theatre and the lineups were always around the block — sporting events — stock car races at Lansdowne Park — and cultural sites — like museums.

We never asked our parents for rides, even when we lived in what was then known as the near-west — first near Carling Avenue and Bayswater Avenue, and later near Richmond Road and Island Park Drive. For us, drives were what we gladly took with our parents on Sundays, most often in the country.

The Museum of Nature, formerly the Museum of Man and Nature, has changed over the years. In fact half the museum has been renovated and the other half is closed for renovations until next year. (The entire museum closes on Monday, Oct. 5, for a month for further construction.)

Fortunately for us the half still open on Sunday housed the sections we most wanted to see — the mammal displays, the bird displays and of course the dinosaur displays.

**Mammals

**

I chose first and we took the only working elevator — large but slow — to the Mammal Gallery (2nd floor). Despite the more modern look all around, the dioramas featuring mammals of all sizes, from the largest moose to the smallest vole, are much as they were, just cleaned up, freshened up and repainted.

Rachel, who loves her book about Brown Bear — “bwown burr” — was a little intimidated by the two stuffed grizzlies on display, but the more I referred to them as “brown bears, brown bears,” the more she got into them. Of course the huge polar bear, and her cub, were “white bear and her baby.”

Though the musk ox and the bison and the caribou were all rather large, she quickly learned to take them in stride. It was cute to see her walk up to the glassed-in dioramas and give a little reassuring shout to see if any of the animals actually moved.

It was good to see all my favourites still in their favourite surroundings.

Birds

We coloured and cut out paper birds in a craft area near the Bird Gallery (4th floor). Some rather cheerful assistants put them together for us so that they hung from a piece of yarn and the wings flapped as the yarn was pulled up and down. Rachel’s bird, coloured by her and her dad, was most energetic in flight as Rachel moved her arm up and down rather rapidly. But the smile on her face as she “flapped” about was priceless.

And when that one got a little mushed up, I gave her mine.

The birds on display were so abundant, we fairly zipped through this area. Rachel continued to alternate between running around and being pushed in the stroller. Good thing it came with a seatbelt, her dad being such a speed demon at times. 😉

Dinosaurs

In Miche’s favourite area, the Fossil Gallery (1st floor), there were the usual displays of full-sized skeletons of various dinosaurs, plus fossils and hands-on stuff, including, as on other floors, a lot of touch screens on which to check out all kinds of related information.

I actually didn’t like this new gallery; too bright and white, and somewhat sterile. I preferred the old rooms that were darker. One could stand among the towering skeletons and let one’s imagination generate a certain awe.

Still a new section, filled with several full-sized replicas — dinosaurs with bodies and colourful skin, and eyes and tongues and such — was fairly cool. I had Miche take a picture of me holding the end of one dinosaur’s rather large and long tail. Of course with limited room in which to back up, all she got was me and the tail. Viewers will have to imagine the rest of the dinosaur.

What was neat though was that in the picture I seemed to be standing in a mist or light fog.

I later joked about getting a picture of me bent down looking up under a horse-sized dinosaur to see if it was male or female. I was just kidding but when Miche raised her camera, I figured, what the heck, why not. Unfortunately the angle didn’t work as well as hoped. The flash on my bald spot created a distracting white glare. 😆

There was so much to see and hear that we had to move fairly briskly through most of the areas — trying to do a quick visit to the three floors we wanted to see before Rachel or I tired too much. (I didn’t fade first, but in the end I faded the most.)

We all agreed there’d be many more visits in the months and years ahead and that as Rachel gets older, we’ll probably be able to take our time a bit more. As for Grampa, well he’ll probably end up being the one who gets pushed around — in a wheelchair rather than the free strollers provided by the museum.

Of course our final visit was to the Gift Shop where the grandparents got to slightly spoil their granddaughter. I kept seeing such cute stuffed toys but the rule is no more stuffed toys, or other large items, as even though they’ve just moved into their first house this summer, space is still at a premium and they’re still feeling a bit overwhelmed by all the toys and stuff.

I did find a grizzly bear about 3¹/₂ inches long, “sculpted” in that hard rubber. I quickly got permission to buy Rachel this brown bear and got to experience the joy of seeing her eyes light up when I gave it to her.

I also spotted something for me. A grey T-shirt with the silhouette of raven in black, beneath which were two words in black: Raven Lunatic. I told Mariette it was so appropriate for me, I just had to have it. While picking up my T-shirt I spotted a kid’s T-shirt with a funky (aka cute, cartoonish) dinosaur on the front. The thing was the dinosaur was kind of quilted and its face was attached in such a way that you could lift it, like a flap, and reveal the mouth and teeth underneath.

It happened to be in orange, one of Rachel’s favourite colours, and a size 2, slightly large but still small enough to fit. So Oma (grandmother in Dutch) got to buy that for Rachel.

In the end, we all went home quite tired,  and quite happy.

And now that I’ve finished this, I can go for a much needed nap. 😉