Archive for the Category ◊ The Ms ◊

03 Dec 2009 Mail From The Ms
Author: Gail |  Category: Music, The Ms, Videoclips  | Leave a Comment

in the mail

I love getting stuff from the Ms (my nieces and nephew), whether it’s a drawing or two or three or four — usually five. Today it was a Christmas card that smelled like gingerbread and some magnets of the kids’ school pictures. Melissa, who’s now 10 (!), phoned me and we talked about our cats and how crazy they are. What a cute conversation, filled with grown-up-sounding words from Melissa like “cautiously” — oooh, adverb! — and lots of giggles.

The wrapped gift wasn’t part of the mail, though, it was from a Christmas party I attended this evening, hosted by the agency that found me the part-time job at The Firm. I wasn’t feeling 100%, but I wanted to introduce a couple of friends to the agency, and thank the consultant for helping me land this position. It’s a perfect fit and I’m very grateful to her for the matchmaking! If you live in Toronto and are searching for a personnel agency to represent you, send me a gmail [gailatlarge] and I’ll put you in touch with her, she’s great!

Oh, and it’s time for some music, like I promised:

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02 Sep 2009 Happy 9th Birthday, Michael!
Author: Gail |  Category: The Ms  | Leave a Comment

My (only) nephew, Michael, turns NINE years old today! I wish I were in BC to celebrate with him in person, but alas, I’m thousands of kilometres away and not as mobile as last year…

A bunch of my favourite M2 pictures:

Michael at Laity Farm

Two years old, at Laity Farm in Mapleridge, BC.

Mister Grumpypants is not so grumpy now

Nearly seven, at Mace’s on the Sunshine Coast, BC.

Kermit asks: "Did you miss me?"

Aged seven and a half, with Kermit in BC, Spring 2008.

And my favourite cameraphone photos of us back in 2007 just before his seventh birthday:

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28 Jul 2009 7th Blogiversary Cake!
Author: Gail |  Category: The Ms, gailatlarge.com  | One Comment

My blog is seven years old today! The above is a cameraphone pic of a cake I shot in New York City, December 20, 2006. It’s very “Gail at Large”, wouldn’t you say?

This blog has benefited me in many ways, not the least of which has been to connect me with many interesting people who I’d never have met otherwise. A recent example of this is from my Ottawa road trip the other weekend when I met up with two well-travelled people through totally different channels: Zhu, a multilingual expat blogger from France, and Lisa, an Ottawa native who was referred to my blog by someone else and works in the aviation industry. Who knew when I started writing in this space that in seven years it would morph from a working university student blogspot templated rant to a mostly pictorial account of my ever-evolving life filled with cameras, airplanes, cats, code-tweaking, and blurry cameraphone shots of food? Certainly not me!

Speaking of travel, I got a very cute postcard today from my nephew, I’ll scan it after I get home later… which I’m sharing with you because it brought a big smile to my face and if it doesn’t bring one to yours I’ll be a monkey’s uncle (auntie?):

postcard from my nephew Michael, age 8

Aww, poor Kermit, he’s probably got heatstroke!

Michael and I had a funny conversation on the phone a couple of days before their road trip. (Bear in mind he’s a little over a month away from turning nine years old.) Here’s a snippet:

Me: “Have all my postcards arrived yet?”
Michael: “We got one from Bra… Brats… Brat-sylvia.”
Me (chuckling): “You mean Bra-ti-sla-va. Do you know where that is?”
Michael: “No. Where is it?”
Me: “Slovakia. Do you know where Austria is?”
Michael: “That’s where Beethoven is from. But I don’t know where Austria is. I’m only in Grade 3, Auntie Gail, Geography is in Grade 5.”

Earlier in July, when I phoned Melissa for her 10th birthday, she told me they got my postcard from Rome.

Me: “Do you know where Rome is?”
Melissa: “I’ve heard of it.”
Me: “Have you heard of the Pope?”
Melissa: “Yes, he lives at church.”

Maddy (nearly eight) was too busy plotting world dominance playing to stop and talk to me. The twins (age five) are talking like crazy and say funny things, but they don’t like to talk on the phone… yet, anyway. Once they do, I’ll be sure to post the gems.

03 Apr 2009 Flashback Friday Part 1: The Ms, 2004
Author: Gail |  Category: The Ms, Videoclips  | One Comment

I was looking for a particular video to upload for Flashback Friday and found this little gem. Oh my goodness, the cuteness kills me! I’ll see if I can dig up the other video I had in mind later.


The 3Ms Sing Happy Birthday from Gail Edwin-Fielding on Vimeo.

July 2004 — it was their mama’s birthday. I love the hiccough partway through.

Melissa just turned 5, Michael was 3, Maddy was 2.

12 Mar 2009 On Discovery
Author: Gail |  Category: The Ms  | Leave a Comment

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The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.
- Marcel Proust

02 Mar 2009 Backlog? What Backlog?
Author: Gail |  Category: The Ms, Travel  | Leave a Comment

Maribeth

My original plan was to snooze through my red-eye flight, but when I clicked through the list on the entertainment selection screen I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to catch Slumdog Millionaire (you might have heard of it?) and Mike Leigh’s Happy-Go-Lucky — two movies I wanted to see, anyway. I was a bit skeptical of Slumdog as I don’t buy into hype or buzz, but it was captivating and right up my anthropology alley… I also like Danny Boyle’s early work (Shallow Grave and Trainspotting, specifically).

It is a rather sad state of affairs lately that the majority of my film-watching happens on airplanes, but I can squeeze in four during my Toronto/Vancouver journeys so I put on the headphones and forfeit sleep.

Forfeiting the sleep, however, has its consequences in the form of broken English and limited brain power the whole day after I deplane, so I’ll keep this short while I continue to plow through my backlogged TO-DO list and tackle the easier stuff first — like backing up all my trip photos (1,000+ in less than two weeks). The cutie-pie in the picture is Maribeth on our birthday outing. She’s tiny with a wee voice but she has a big personality.

01 Mar 2009 Melissa’s Bell Tower
Author: Gail |  Category: Out + About, The Ms, Videoclips  | Leave a Comment

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I took all the kids to Science World on Saturday, and we had a grand ol’ time like we always do at “The Big Ball of Science”. Melissa really outdid herself in the Contraption Room and built a bell tower all by herself. Check it out:

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23 Feb 2009 Umbrella Time
Author: Gail |  Category: The Ms  | Leave a Comment

Megan Joy, with her new flying piggy umbrella

Miss Megan Joy, with her new flying piggy umbrella that I bought her for a belated fifth birthday present. It was at Maribeth’s suggestion because she says Megan loves pigs. (Thank you, Maribeth!) I took Maribeth on a belated birthday outing, just the two of us, which included shopping to find her a set or two of sheep pyjamas, to no avail. You’d think sheep would be the easiest animal to find on jammies, but alas, no.

I think I jinxed myself with talking about consistently sunny skies, as it rained parts of Sunday. I should follow my own advice and never talk about the weather again! But it did work nicely with my plan to take the whole gang ice skating sometime during my trip. I balanced myself precariously on skate blades AND held an expensive camera AND a child to keep her steady… yikes! Didn’t fall once, but I’ll have to post the photos at a more reasonable hour.

For now, one more umbrella shot with Megan. The photo above was straight off the camera, and the one below is obviously retouched but only a little bit.

hello sunshine

01 Dec 2008 Double Pinky Swear
Author: Gail |  Category: The Ms  | Leave a Comment

On the way to the ice show with Melissa on Sunday:

“Did you bring your camera, Melissa?”
“No, I forgot.”
“That’s OK, they actually don’t allow photography, anyway.”
“Why not?”
“Because then people might sell their photos, but Disney won’t get that money.”
“But what if they double pinky swear that they won’t sell the photos?”
(laughing) “I don’t think Disney would accept that… but what exactly does double pinky swear mean?”
“It means that a person is trustworthy.”
“Does double pinky swearing actually work as a promise?”
“In my class it does.”

There you go, Disney. Let us take photos (*cough*cough*) and we’ll double pinky swear we won’t sell them.

01 Dec 2008 That’s About Enough Disney For The Next 10 Years
Author: Gail |  Category: Out + About, The Ms, Videoclips  | One Comment

with Melissa at High School Musical - The Ice Tour

Disney On Ice: High School Musical

The last couple of mobile phone entries give no explanation as to why I would willingly subject myself to not one but TWO viewings of Disney’s “High School Musical: The Ice Tour” in a single weekend. I know — how on earth did that happen?

Weeks ago I bought tickets for Maddy and me to see HSM on Sunday at 4:30pm, but last week I started wondering if I could do better than the Lower Blue section at the Pacific Coliseum. So I kept an eye out for better tickets on Craigslist (all gone), and took the plunge on Friday morning to buy VIP tickets (Row 2) for Saturday and put the Sunday tickets on Craiglist. Then I thought about it some more, and decided to take Melissa on Sunday because she really wanted to go, too. This way I would keep my promise to take Maddy out on her own. As for my dislike of Disney: I sucked it up. Big-time.

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