We had our first barbecue of the season last night at Lena and Jeremy's up in Little Italy. It was delicious; Jeremy made giant skewers of veggies, and further grilled up a whole plate of veggie burgers. With a giant bowl of hummus (prepared for Amita June, but we siphoned some off for the barbecue) and topping it all off with spring berries and cream for dessert, it was an ample meal.
Jeremy and Lena are from the West Coast of Canada, near Victoria on Vancouver Island. She came out to go to library school at McGill, which is how she and Maj met. Since they were both moms at the time (well, OK, Maj was just a burgeoning mom -- on the cusp of motherhood, so to speak) they hit it off and have been pals ever since. Lena works in various libraries around Montreal, including the monumental Bibliothéque Nationale that was just opened last year.
They have two beautiful daughters, Clea and Sylvie, who were dressed as fairy princesses when we arrived (complete with wings). We also got to spend more time with Sally, who's also a McGill library school grad (the most interesting people...) and who's off to Ontario in a week to open an electronic archive there.
tags: jeremy lena clea sylvie sally maj barbecue berries mcgill
Ikea
I enjoyed going to the Placard event so much with Amita June yesterday that I decided it would be great to spend today with her out and about, too. It's time for her to get a "big girl" bed for sleeping on her own, and my Mom got these great floor mattresses (we call them "tuffets", but I'm sure they have some Swedish-sounding Ikea name, too) from Ikea, so I figured we'd go get her a bed. She's coming up on her 9-month birthday, so it's time for a nice gift, anyways.
Maj, who was going to stay home and work, kept piling on suggestions for other things to get at Ikea while we were there, so Amita June and I had a powwow and decided to invite her along so we wouldn't have to remember so much. We got out there to huge crowds (hey, Sunday afternoon at Ikea -- what did we expect) and ended up piling 2 huge carts full of all kinds of gewgaws and knickknacks.
We found a really cute expandable baby bed that would fit perfectly in Amita June's nursery, but it turns out that it was sold out. The main reason we came, and no dice! Fortunately we got Amita June a big plastic orange juicer, and that seems to have appeased her need for gifts. She fell asleep in the sling while we were wandering around in the warehouse pickup section trying to find our SULTAN SOLA mattress and bed, and she slept in the car on the way home. Such a good baby.
I spent the evening on the kitchen floor incorrectly assembling bookshelves and listening to The Island at the Center of the World on audio disc. It's a pretty poorly written story about a fascinating subject -- the Dutch colonization of New York, New Jersey and Connecticut in the 17th century. Most interesting to me is the information on the tiny colony of New Sweden which grew up on the Delaware River in the 1640s and 1650s. It was definitely captivating enough to keep me occupied through a lot of allen-wrenching.
As usual, I put things together incorrectly and didn't figure it out until it was all finished, but I was too disheartened to start again tonight. It'll have to wait until tomorrow.
I didn't even start writing a blog entry until some time after 11PM tonight. Kind of pushing things close to the edge there; I haven't missed a day since I started.
tags: ikea amitajune maj sunday baby bed new sweden new amsterdam new netherlands
Firefox 1.5.0.4
So, there's a new Firefox 1.5.0.4. I wonder when it's going to get into Ubuntu. Security fix for Dapper?