medium & the message

The Dundas Cactus Festival is THE hit of the summer and my very own husband was it in this year!

Now, I don’t want you to get the wrong idea…Hubby is NOT a parade guy that when he told me I thought I her was yanking my chain. He told me he wanted to support the martial arts club he recently joined and signed up.

I thought that was very admiral of him.

However, a friend at work, who has not missed a parade in 18 years, asked if Hubby was going to do a kata in the parade. It’s very customary for the cute little kids in their martial arts uniforms to stop walking and suddenly turn to the crowd and do their routine.

We both agreed that Hubby should do his kata. Keep in mind that the martial arts he is studying is krav maga with a side of jiu jistsu. Krav is….well, “an eclectic form of marital arts”, as Wikipedia so accurately puts. It’s more of a real life training in the sense that you are trained to maim and then get out. You know, for like spies and Isreli police.

There is no kata. But, I still encouraged him to do it. Let’s watch the video to see what happened:

Seriously, what is it about dogs and the car window? My dog, like many others I know, would probably fall out if I didn’t hold on to her so tightly. Check out the video below:

She even has twitchy body movements, otherwise known as ‘Wind Swimming”:

In my next life, I hope I’m a dog. They truly know how to find joy in the the simplest of things. Anyone else agree?

If you want to melt like butter check out my flickr stream of Spanky 2.0. If you want to melt like butter on a hot day then come and meet her in person. She knows how to make people smile

I got a couple of emails from friends wondering why I haven’t posted in over a week. Isn’t that stalkerish sweet?

Actually, it makes me realize that although I posted where I was on my facebook status and twitter it goes to show that somethings do get through the cracks. And actually, reading those emails made me feel good, because someone out there not only cares about me but also cares about reading my blog. So thank you, I will make sure that I’m more diligent in posting or letting you know if there is some sort of needed break.

On that note, let me show you what  wonderful time I had at my friend, Todd’s cottage. Aside from taking video and pictures I left technology (relatively) behind. Sure, I took advantage of electricity and running water but I had no cell phone, computer, twitter, no checking facebook or emails. I was far too busy

This is where I was for the past week:

Here is some of the fun stuff we did:

One of the cool things about the cottage was it’s history. I can’t remember the story but it was left to an aunt who stayed up there while she was ill and then got passed down from generations. There was a picture of the guy who built the cabin and so many funky knick knacks that people have brought over the years.

Check out my flickr stream to see the items in closer detail.

It got me thinking about my own family history. My parents immigrated from Greece so our family history in Canada starts with them. Back in Greece people don’t really have ‘cottages’ but even if they did, most of the stuff my family had was taken by the Greeks when Macedonia was taken over in the early 1900s.

But there is still a lot of history there. A lot of family. It’s been too long since my last visit (I was 16 at the time) and I think most of it has been a fear of communication. I don’t speak Greek very well and I only know 2 words in Macedonian.

Being at the cottage made me miss my heritage and my family. It also made me realize the importance of the history of your family and keeping it alive in some way.  The importance of creating that history when it doesn’t exisit. A history that my great-grand kids can look back and write their blog posts about.