Definitely John Steed (Patrick Macnee) and Emma Peel (Diana Rigg).

And for those who don't know what I'm talking about...

As some may have gleaned from my previous post, the Cisco Ottawa Bluesfest started in the city last night.

There were a couple of acts that I wanted to check out, and Kathy and SteveB agreed to attend the shows with me last night. The first show started at 6:00 pm, and featured Amanda Rheaume taking the stage. She can best be summed up as playing punchy rock balladry with a blues feel to it, and I certainly enjoyed her performance along with that of her band, despite the heavy bursts of downpour and all. Glad I took my brolly with me. I really had a good time watching her perform, and her voice and piano work was just...superb.

The second show that I got to see was Jeff Beck. Jeff Beck has been around on the music scene for a long time, and his guitar work is well, legendary. That said, his 23-year-old bassist for the show, Tal Wilkenfield, stole the show completely with her rhythmic jazz chops and her really superb lead work when given the chance. SteveB, Kathy, and I didn't have a very good view of the stage. because we had to come from a different stage from the Amanda Rheaume performance to see Beck, but it's really all about the music, you know. And SteveB brought the set of binoculars that gave us a somewhat better "view" at times of the performance! :)

There was so much other stuff going on at the Bluesfest this first night, but one really couldn't see it all, but I had a good time. The three of us went from there to a Harvey's for a later-than-usual supper, and everything was good. It was well after 11:30 pm when I got back to the house, and my head was still spinning from the sights and sounds when I finally dropped off to sleep around 1:00 am or so.

Like I said, I'm not going to see a whole bunch of acts and performances at Bluesfest this year, but these two were folks that I had really wanted to see. And it was *good*!

Feeling somewhat tired this morning.

Went to the Ottawa Bluesfest last night to catch Amanda Rheaume and Jeff Beck (will blog about this later), and had a terrific time despite the rain.

As a result, I'm a bit dead on my feet, and there's a batch of work on my desk that needs getting to, but such is life. The weather looks like it's going to be somewhat warm today, and I think there's a chance of some rain today as well.

Lots of stuff to do when I get home today, as I need to do some work on my Desolation rpg game, both the scenario that I plan for next year's CanGames, and the campaign game that I want to get back to in the Fall. And there's also some laundry that I need to pick up from my mom's place. Don't ask; the dryer at home is broken, the belt that spins the stuff having died, so while I can do the laundry in the washing machine at home, I have to take it to my mom's place to do it in the condo laundry room. I'm waiting for a call from the service guys to tell me that the belt came in, but in the meantime, doing laundry is...awkward.

Back to the grind. And a cup of herbal tea.

And here's the report on the holiday Sunday.

Woke up in the morning, and felt pretty good about myself and about life. Had a nice breakfast of a plain omelette with cheese, and a couple of pieces of back bacon. Washed it down with some coffee, and while I was tempted to add some Bailey's Irish Cream to it, I resisted.

Went about doing some of the morning stuff that needed doing, and once that was finished, I got ready for lunch. Every time I opened the fridge, I desperately wanted to have another piece of blackforest cake, but somehow managed to exert my willpower in this regard. Had a lean hamburger on a whole wheat bun for lunch, with a cup of soup. And then it was time for the Sunday afternoon gaming group.

spross and oni_neko arrived first, and they were followed in relatively short order by Tammy. hub_ was the last to arrive, and then we got down to it.

spross had said that he would run Desolation and give me a break for a bit, as a sort of birthday present, and he was good to his word. Tammy, oni_neko, hub_ and I created characters for spross's game, and I was pretty happy with the character that I created. My character, Tesro Haldane, is a human craftsman (woodworker) who in the aftermath of the Night of Fire has taken to searching old ruins for stuff that folks can use. I don't think of him as an adventurer, per se, but I can see him evolving into one of the truly heroic types if necessary, and depending on where spross sees the game going. We finished off character creation, and then spross took us through some samples of combat, before we ended the session.

About 3:20 pm or so, we took a break and I cut the blackforest cake and we all had a bit of Bailey's Irish Cream, other than Tammy. When I tasted the cake, it was even better than it had been the night before, and I just savoured that lovely stuff going down my throat. oni_neko and hub_ both had a second slice, and there was still quite a bit of cake to spare. I gave Tammy a couple of slices to take home with her for herself and her mom, and spross got a slice or two to take home with him for his mom as well. The rest of the cake, about five slices or so, is now frozen (minus the piece that I had promised for Ellie), but boy, was that a good cake!

After gaming ended for the day, hub_ left for home and his other, Sunday evening gaming committment, while Tammy, spross, oni_neko, and I headed out about 7:15 pm to the local Kelsey's restaurant to eat dinner. Neither Tammy nor I were all that starving after the cake, so we didn't eat that much. I had some onion soup, and Tammy and I split an order of chicken fajitas. She also ordered a bruschetta, and I had a couple of pieces of that. spross and oni_neko had spaghetti and fish respectively, and neither of them finished off their meals. Large servings at Kelsey's! Good food. And the company was pretty good that night, too.

We finished up there about 9:30 pm or so, and split up to head home, spross giving oni_neko a lift home. Once I got home, I had to deal with a sink full of dishes from the afternoon, but that was all right. After the dishes, I took a twenty-minute walk outside, trying to burn off some of the calories from the day, but I was still feeling pretty full from supper when I got back home from that.

Needless to say, I felt pretty lethargic from all the sugar and the like during the three days of the weekend, and so was glad that I took Monday off from work. Pretty good birthday weekend as these things go, and now, aside from work, I've got the Ottawa Bluesfest to look forward to from now until the 19th of July. Not gonna go see a whole lot of performances, but there are a few artists I'm looking forward to, including Amanda Rheaume, whom I'll be going to see at Bluesfest shortly.

Looking forward to the rest of the week, even if I am a bit tired and all.

Here's the second report on the long, birthday weekend.

Woke up Saturday feeling a bit...hazy. Probably lack of sleep, as I didn't sleep soundly on the Friday night and into the morning hours. Felt a bit down, since the birthday was over with, but cheered up at the thought of seeing Kathy and SteveB for supper that night. Thought of having croissant and all that stuff, but I had had the cake the night before, and I was going to have more cake before the weekend was through, so I figured I would be rather careful. Make a nice mushroom and onion omelette with a couple of Omega-3 eggs, and had two pieces of back bacon with it for breakfast, washed down with decaf coffee.

Did a bit of stuff in the morning, went out for a walk, that sort of thing. spross came over in the early afternoon, and we chatted and talked about a few things. Went over to the Business Depot, and I did some photocopying of Fading Suns character sheets and a few other things, and then went back to the house. My mother came by while spross was still there, and dropped off a few things, including the blackforest cake that I had ordered two weeks before. It was the wrong cake! It was blackforest all right, but it was a 10.5-inch cake, and it was rectangular! At least it had the "Happy Birthday JMK" on it that mom insisted on.

spross took off for home, and mom and I had a piece of cake each with tea before she headed home a couple of hours later. (spross was getting his share of cake on Sunday, but that's another report!) Kathy, SteveB, and Ellie showed up about 7:15 to pick me up, as we were going out to dinner. They wouldn't tell me where, just grinned knowingly at each other, but that was fine with me. Surprises are fine, but they get me nervous and twitchy after awhile. Ellie had to see the birthday cake, and she was amazed at the size, but her mother told her that she would only get one slice, and that would be next Friday. I changed into some more acceptable restaurant clothes, and headed out for supper, SteveB driving their Jeep and Ellie coming with me and following in my Chrysler Sebring. It was a pleasant drive, and I liked spending a bit more time with my goddaughter.

I ended up following them down to the Keg restaurant, located down on Hunt Club. SteveB told me that he'd made the reservation about three weeks ago, as they had planned to take me to dinner. Kathy reassured me that there was no "forced female companionship" coming - it was just the four of us. I had a terrific dinner of some quesadillas, a side salad, 8 oz. steak, and baked potato with a side of veggies. Lovely food. From the Keg, we went back to my place around 9:45 pm. Ellie lay down for a bit, and the three of us sat back in the living room and chatted for a bit, with the stereo on low playing some Mike Oldfield. We had some tea and some biscuits that Kathy had brought with her, and then about 11:00 pm, they snatched up Ellie and headed for home.

I was feeling pretty tired myself by that time, and headed down for bed and an early night. Read a little bit, don't remember what, but it might have been a couple of chapters of Christopher Moore's A Dirty Job, and then I crashed.

A pretty good long weekend to that point, for sure.

As promised, here is the post (or group of posts) about the long weekend, which coincidentally had my birthday occur within it.

Friday started off pretty much as usual, since I had to go to work and put in a half-day. Didn't do anything unusual or anything like that during the day, and got home just in time to find out that the two big packages of Fading Suns gaming stuff had arrived. That cheered me up somewhat, except for the Customs and Handling fees! :<

The best part of Friday was the fact that I knew that I wasn't going to be running a game, I was going to be playing in one! :) Nick Roberts, one of my Friday night gamers, always runs a game for me to play in the week of my birthday, and this year was no different, with one exception: the Friday night gamers were hiding what game he was going to run, as it was to be a surprise.

Kathy, SteveB, and Ellie arrived first, and Kathy had the first "pressie" of the night. She had baked a cake - caramel, hazelnut, and a touch of apricot jam, with a divine icing. The cake was really good, as being diabetic (as are SteveB and Ellie), she wanted me to able to eat the cake without croaking or anything. Apparently they need me to GM games or something, and "you're not getting out of running Fading Suns again!" :) We put the cake in the fridge, along with the case of Canada Dry ginger ale cans, and then waited for Nick, Tom, and Joanne to arrive. While waiting, Kathy told me that she and SteveB were taking me out to dinner on the Saturday night, and that Ellie wanted to come along with us (and that she had promised to behave herself). (I suspect the bribe of the cake, both from me and Kathy had something to do with it!)

The other three arrived, and then I got the biggest surprise of my life. Nick was going to run Desolation! I had no idea that he'd even bought a copy of the game, and he told me that he loved the campaign of it that I had run (and will continue to run) and that he wanted to give me this as a present for my birthday. He'd bought the book and told the others not to tell me and all. What a great surprise this was, trust me on this!

We generated a batch of characters, and this took about an hour and a bit, and then started to play. One of the things I adore about Desolation is that the game is so neat. While being fantasy, it's post-apocalyptic, has a superb free-form magic system, and gives a brilliant twist to the various typical fantasy races. I knew that I wanted to play a magical type, and that I didn't want the magic to be necessarily overt. So it was either a Primalist (meaning I would take a Mongrel) or an Animist (meaning I would play a Loranthian). While the idea of playing a character with a lack of hygiene didn't really appeal to me, I thought that I would try the Mongrel and go with Primal magic. I took the Mongrel. Sakhut of Ridge River is my name. If there's enough interest in my doing so, I'll post the character here in my blog. (Just ask in the Comments of my blog.)

Once we wrapped character generation, Nick started us off on our first adventure. Travelling together for a variety of reasons, we came upon a wrecked caravan, and were then attacked by skorons. (Yes, the nasty beasties that I had created for the "Shadow of the Wolf" scenario for CanGames. Now I know why he had asked me for their stats about two months ago! Oh, irony! Oh, joy! <g>) Primal magic is soooooo much fun! After an hour and a half or so of actual play, we took a break, and had tea and some cake, and relaxed for a bit over that. Ellie was allowed to stay up this night and have some cake and milk with the rest of us, and then she curled up and went to sleep, before the rest of us continued to play for about an hour. I told Nick that I was having a blast playing the game, and he said that he was enjoying running it, and that he was glad he could rely on me to answer some of his questions about running Desolation and rules interpretations as we played, and I told him that I'm cool with that, but that he makes the final decisions and all that.

We finally broke up around 1:15 am, and everyone agreed that Nick was doing a pretty good job running the game. Joanne told me that she liked to play with me, and that it was interesting to see me from a player point of view, since I so rarely actually play in games.

Overall, a pretty good night, and I had a blast gaming. As usual, Kathy is a terrific baker, and the gang was pleasant to be with. Lots of fun had by all, and the company and the cake was delicious!

A relatively cool morning here in Ottawa, with a bit of rain coming down. Sort of comfortable, except for the dampness part.

The e-mail account is active and working once more. Happiness is me. :)

At some point when I have a bit of time, I will blog about this past birthday weekend. I keep meaning to do so, but other stuff keeps getting in the way. So, promise I will do so later today.

Back to business stuff for the nonce.

Yay! I have e-mail once more!! :) I am a happy camper!! :)

Therefore, for those who read this LJ blog, if you have sent me an e-mail in the past day or three, you might want to consider re-sending it, especially if you got a "mail undeliverable" message or some such back when the e-mail to me bounced.

I really hope that Bell has cleared the problem up. :)

I don't know where I got this, but it's been sitting on my old hard drive for ages. So, I figure I would post the meme here. We all like Star Wars, right? :)

To see what your Star Wars name is, follow the steps below...


Your Star Wars First Name
1: Take the first 3 letters of your last name.
2: Add to that, the first 2 letters of your first name.

Your Star Wars Last Name
1: Take the first 2 letters of your mother's maiden name.
2: Add to that the first 3 letters of the name of the town or city you were born.

So, let's see what we've got for me: Star Wars name (Real Name)

Kahjo Enmon (John Kahane)

So, what's your Star Wars name? :)

Came home from work about 3:20, and life is a bit better than it has been today and yesterday.

The personal e-mail account seems to be re-opened, and there is mail pouring into it (at last count 160 messages), but I won't be accessing any of the e-mail until some time after 8:00 pm tonight, as I don't want to take any chances.

In the meantime, while everyone else seems to be watching the Michael Jackson funeral stuff on the tube, I am happily watching a couple of episodes of Babylon 5.

Sitting here at work, just doing work.

Can't access personal e-mail (see yesterday's LJ entries for more on this), and the weather has me feeling a bit down.

Got back from the footcare appointment to find that there was no e-mail message or further contact.

In the only good news so far today, the foot care appointment went relatively well, and my feet and toes are doing all right.

Around 5:30 pm or so, I received another automated message saying that a service agent was looking into the matter, and that he would disclose to me the point of contention in regard to the Terms of Service violation.

At 6:15 pm, I get another message saying that there is an agent willing to work this out with me, and that I should go to the Bell Internet chat area.

The long and short of it is that I've worked out the problem with the Bell agent, and that the e-mail account will be restored and re-opened within 24 hours of the call. It turns out that the e-mail account being closed for violation of the Terms of Use was some sort of technical glitch of some sort, and they have to change my e-mail address password to access the account and figure out what happened.

So still no e-mail account for another 24 hours at least, and then have to figure out a few other things. In the meantime, anyone who has sent me e-mail and any mailing lists that have messages coming in to me will find the e-mail bouncing back to them with an "error" message about the account being closed, or some such. Just what I need, with all the stuff going on in my life....

Finally received an e-mail back from the folks at Bell. Unfortunately, it's a generic auto-reply saying that they received my e-mail, and that a service agent will deal with it sometime within the next 48 hours or so.

That offers me no comfort at all.

Anyway, I'm off to the Footcare Clinic for my appointment, so should be back some time later in the afternoon. Got a few errands I need to run as well, so might as well take care of those and then come back and see what's going on with this crappy situation.

Called the Bell line for assistance in cleaning up the mess with my e-mail address and sorting it out. No help there. The nice lady on the phone told me that she couldn't tell me voice what violation of the Terms of Use I had committed, and that I had to write an e-mail to the Abuse of Account department (or whatever one wants to call it) to get it sorted.

How the heck are you supposed to write an e-mail to someone to sort this out if you're e-mail account has been closed? She suggested a second e-mail account somewhere, a friend's computer, or some such. I was pissed off, but fortunately, the old Comnet account seems to be active. So I've sent off an e-mail, and now have to wait.

What the hell????

My e-mail account with Bell has been closed due to "Violation of Terms of Use"???

Oh, I can see it's going to be one of those days... :

I would like to wish all the folks in the United States of America, and all of my American LJ friends a very Happy Independence Day this Fourth of July.

This day is about enjoying life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and I hope that each of you is doing so today, and every day, in your own way and with your own passion.

Enjoy the fireworks and other 4th of July celebrations. And remember, alcohol and fireworks don't mix. Be safe, and be happy. :)

While today is my birthday, there's also something else...

Today, this LiveJournal is three years old. Yes, I started this LiveJournal on my birthday in 2006, and so it's got a bit of history to it now. To be honest, I never really thought that I would have all that much to say in the Journal, and yet, I guess things occur that one wants to write down for posterity, that one wants to be able to re-read at some time down the road, just to see how one has changed over time...hopefully for the better.

Frankly, I've never thought of myself as being a supremely interesting person, and feel myself to be quite mundane for the most part. As such, I never really expected folks to read the Journal, let alone comment on some of the entries (and to be truthful, there aren't a lot of comments on my Journal, at least not as many compared to some others I've seen), so it is good to know and see that someone actually reads the oft-times drivel that I write here.

So I want to take this time to thank everyone who reads this LJ for doing so, for commenting sometimes on the thoughts that I jot down here, and for being my friends, even only in a virtual sense (although there are some of you that I know outside the virtual environment).

So on to the fourth year's worth of journal entries....

Well, today is my birthday. I'm not embarrassed about my age; I turn 54 years old today. For the most part, I guess the previous year was pretty good to me, even though it didn't seem that way at times, and there were some rough patches. I like to think that I am something of a better person for it and all. The year saw various ups and downs in my life, but *that is life*. That's how it works.

So, what was 1955 like? Well, a lot of stuff happened in 1955.

The Wikipedia page on events in 1955 gives a good account of what happened during the year.

For some of the musical stuff that was going on back in 1955, check out this good link.

Some of the movies from that year include Bad Day at Black Rock directed by John Sturges, The Blackboard Jungle directed by Richard Brooks, East of Eden directed by Elia Kazan, one of my favourite films of all-time, Kiss Me Deadly directed by Robert Aldrich, Disney's Lady and the Tramp, The Night of the Hunter directed by Charles Laughton, Rebel Without a Cause directed by Nicholas Ray, The Rose Tattoo directed by Daniel Mann, The Seven Year Itch directed by Billy Wilder, and of course, To Catch a Thief directed by Alfred Hitchcock, to name but a few.

Lots of good stuff the year of my birth.

I'm not going to celebrate all that much this year, as I've got plenty of things to do this year, although I'll be spending some time with friends and family. I'm not sick or anything like that, thank Goddess ::knock on wood::, and my health is pretty good for the moment. And that's with the type 2 diabetes. Lots of stuff to do this month, as I've got a few roleplaying projects on the go. I'll likely go out to dinner a couple of times with friends this weekend, and am looking forward to that. There will also be a blackforest cake and a small dram of Bailey's Irish Cream on Sunday, but I'm not going to be indulging too much. (Besides, if I can't have a bit of cake or whatever on my birthday, when can I, I ask you?)

Anyway, I hope that I'm a better person in the coming year, and I hope that I get a bit of happiness, good health, peace and prosperity for the coming year as well.

Back at work this morning, but only doing a half-day, as I have an appointment with a diabetic nutritionist at the Diabetes Clinic in the afternoon. Temperature is all right outside, but it's a bit too humid for my taste, and the day threatens rain once more.

Had a pretty good Canada Day yesterday, and got in a bit of relaxin' and a bit of reading. Just started in on Christopher Moore's A Dirty Job and am loving this one. Like all of Moore's books, this one has the biting humour and sense of "main character is in deep", but keeps me entertained all the way through.

Yesterday afternoon, Kathy, SteveB, and I went out to see some jazz. The Ottawa International Jazz Festival is on in the city right now, and there are a series of free concerts going on. Caught Coeur de Pirate and had a wonderful time at the show, and found the music quite good. I love good piano music, and Béatrice Martin is a really good pianist.

Here's a link to one of the tracks that we saw live, although this is a studio session piece.



After the jazz stuff, we went and had an early supper over at Kelsey's. I was playing things smart, and had a bowl of chicken soup (with very few noodles, I might add), and a steak, salad, and the vegetables of the day. Came home, and we sat around and chatted for a while, and had a nice relaxing evening playing a game of The Princes of Machu Picchu. (Both Kathy and SteveB love the game, and wanted to play a three-player version of it. Who was I to argue?) The final scores were:

              Victory     Gold    Multiplier    Final      Spanish
               Points                           Score      Victory
--------------------------------------------------------------------
JohnK           19         26         2          19           38  
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Kathy           21         29         3          24           63
--------------------------------------------------------------------
SteveB          16         21         1          16           16
--------------------------------------------------------------------

It was a pretty good game all told, and the three of us were able to prevent the Spanish victory, although it was a close thing, and we managed to pull it off on Day 9 of the game. For a long time, Kathy and I struggled to get things done for some reason, but the around Day 6 everything turned around, and taking Priests and Virgins came relatively easy, and Sacrifice cards were flowing. Kathy picked up the win because I chose to take the last Virgin off the board on the 3rd Round of Day 9 instead of adding another Farmer to the corn fields, and thus I sacrificed the victory. If the Spanish had won, she would have had a clear-cut victory, so this was much more satisfying, oddly.

Overall, a pretty good day, and a nice way to celebrate Canada Day.

Catching up with a bit of the news, and reading the Ottawa Citizen, and I see that Karl Malden has died.

Karl Malden Dead at 97

While he's remembered these days for the American Express commercials and all, he had a lengthy Hollywood career and has been in some terrific movies such as On the Waterfront, A Streetcar Named Desire, and of course Patton. I will always have fond memories of him in The Streets of San Fransisco tv series, with a very young Michael Douglas. A terrific actor, and a terrible loss to the Hollywood community.

Rest in Peace, Karl Malden, 1912-2009.