The False Ducks Blahg

      I know it’s been more than a month since I published a blahg.  I tried…really I did.  I sat down to write this blahg and my server went down and I lost part of the blahg.  So, many things happened since then and I’m going to try and get to them all now.  First, the Toshiba saga is done.  I’m going to start off with that because I’ve paid far too much attention to Toshiba and they deserve none of it.  The end to my Toshiba experience is one of the things I have to celebrate.  It took two months of persistent phone conversations with far too many representatives of Toshiba.  I’ve been very clear that this is not the way customer service should be.  But let’s close this experience.  The last interaction with Toshiba that I noted was that I returned my BDX2155KC to Toshiba via UPS on May 23rd.  In the box, I had included a letter requesting a phone call from Toshiba to tell me they had received the Blu-Ray player and a subsequent phone call providing a tracking number for the replacement BDX 2300. 

     By Friday, June 1st, I had heard nothing from Toshiba so I decided to try Mike’s personal number to make yet another inquiry.  I was put through to his voice mail and I left a detailed message requesting an update.  Mike finally called me back around noon on Monday, June 4th.  He explained that there had been a delay in sending out my replacement BDX 2300 but it had been sent out late Friday afternoon (sure, after I called and left a message asking for it!).  I was provided with a tracking number that I checked online and verified that the Blu-Ray Player had been shipped and I further discovered it was out on the truck for delivery to me.  Unfortunately I had to go out and missed the Purolator delivery (yes, Purolator, even though everything had been UPS up to that point).  When I got home later, I found a delivery card and arranged for Jeanette to pick up the BDX 2300 at the Purolator depot the next day.  Cut to the chase.  It was the BDX 2300 and I hooked it up and to my delight found that the USB port that had been on the rear of the BDX2155KC was on the front of the BDX 2300.  Finally, Toshiba got something right.  I inserted a USB drive and played a one hour file from beginning to end and the machine did not shut down.  If you’re confused about all of this then read my previous entries because I’m done with Toshiba now. 

     The title of this blahg is “Some Things To Celebrate…” and I want to get onto more important things.  Yes, I celebrate the fact that I finally got something from Toshiba but there wouldn’t have been cause for celebration if Toshiba Customer Service had done their job right in the first place.  But as I said, enough about Toshiba and more about those other things to celebrate. 

     On May 30th, of this year, Jeanette and I celebrated 25 years of marriage.  In my family, other than my parents and my sister and her husband, there hasn’t been a great track record in marriages.  Twenty-five is a milestone that you don’t make every day and I want to take a moment to celebrate that.  We did have a nice gathering of some friends and family and there was way too much food left over.  My son took lots of photos but I’ll only share this one of us looking happy and cutting the cake.

     Ten years ago I created a DVD Picture Show as a gift to Jeanette on our 15th Anniversary.  I had scanned in many old photos and created slideshows to music of our life together and separate ones of each of our children.  All of the slideshows were set to the music of Frank Sinatra (surprise, surprise).  Sinatra had recorded songs with the names of two of our children:  “Emily” & “Noah” but there was nothing in his repertoire with the name of “Abbie”.  With a little creative license I utilized the song “Pocketful of Miracles” which is nice child like song that Sinatra recorded with a children’s chorus.  For the menu, I chose the song “You Will Be My Music”, which was the Sinatra song at our wedding.  For the slideshow of us as a couple, I chose Sinatra singing “As Time Goes By”.  I’d like to share that with you here:

     Let me share a couple of poems I’ve written over the years about my union with Jeanette.  The first was written about two weeks before our wedding: 

love poem # 3 (of sorts)

marry me I said

and she said

yes

but if it were

that easy

to get what I wanted

then maybe

I woulda asked fer

world peace instead

     Now let’s jump ahead about 5 years later: 

I’m rememberin’ a girl who could raise hackles

 I’m rememberin’ a girl

who could raise hackles

in humans?

and as I remember

she turns to me half asleep

and kisses my back

where I think my hackles must be

     It’s been a long time since I wrote my wife a poem, maybe in a card, but if I do write her a new one, she’ll be the first to know. 

     Now back to the “some things to celebrate”.  A couple of weeks ago we had some graduations to attend.  First, my youngest daughter, Abbie, graduated from grade 8.  This may not seem significant to anyone else but to her, and us, it’s a big deal.  She’s leaving a country school, well it’s in the country anyway, that all of our children have attended and she starts High-school in the city come September.  This is an even bigger deal because she is not attending the same school that all of her classmates will be attending.  Most of them will be going to the big Secondary school here in the County while Abbie takes a 30 minute bus ride to Belleville to Centennial Secondary School where her two older siblings have gone.  The choice was hers.  Most grade 8 graduates of schools here in Prince Edward County go to Prince Edward Collegiate in Picton unless they get special permission to attend a school elsewhere.  Elsewhere being Belleville.  Abbie applied for the Arts Program at Centennial, as did my oldest daughter Emily, and was accepted.  Her brother, Noah, will be there for one semester in January but she’ll be the new kid on the block in September. 

     Back to her graduation.  Abbie’s dress was stunning and she was beautiful (as can be seen in the picture above with my wife and I…at least Abbie’s hair looked better than mine that night).  She received three awards the night she graduated.
She tied with another girl for the highest academic award, tied for the highest marks in Math, and won the Language Arts award outright (pictured at left).  Her Principal credited her receiving this award to all of the comics she reads but corrected herself to the term of “Graphic Novels”.  Abbie does read those but she’s a voracious reader of regular novels as well.  She looked beautiful in her dress and her hair, which took about an hour and a half, was gorgeous.  I’m very proud of her.  

     The second graduation we had that week, two days after Abbie’s, was Noah’s grade 12 graduation from Centennial. 

He was also an Ontario Scholar which meant he graduated with an average of 80+ and he also received a technical award for his work in Theater Arts. 

He has been very active in theater and theater production at his school.  He played the second lead pirate in the school’s production of “Peter Pan” this year.  Last year he was Mr. Salt, the father of Veruca Salt, in the production of “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory”.  He’s also been in Centennial’s productions of “The Music Man” and “Sound of Music”. Check out the photo of his proud parents from the night of graduation. 

     Now, readers of this blahg (again, do I have readers?) will recall that I have three children.  Our eldest daughter, Emily, was not able to attend our Anniversary celebration nor her siblings’ graduations.  She has been very busy herself out of country. 
Since the beginning of May, she has been serving as an Intern with the Digital Advocacy Research Group at the Canadian Embassy in Washington, D.C.  We miss her very much but a couple of weeks ago, and the subject of an upcoming blahg, we managed to drive down to Washington over a hot long weekend at the beginning of July and spent some time with her.  The picture above is the only recent photo we’ve been able to snap of all three of our children since Emily has been in the USA.  Emily’s the one in the middle…not the absolute middle, that’s Lincoln.  She returns in August and we can’t wait to have her home. 

     The last bit of celebration, which has some sadness attached to it but I will save that, too, for a later blahg, concerns a new addition to our family.  We recently adopted a new kitten.  It’s been about twelve years since we’ve had a kitten in our home and Abbie, being the youngest child, has never had the chance to name one of our cats.  I named Frank, the subject of a previous blahg “The Christmas Cat” and before that, June was already adopted pre-named.  She was adopted from Robyn’s Nest in Picton, Ontario.  This store adopts out animals that have been brought into the local animal welfare society so it’s only fitting that we provided a home for a rescued kitten.  I don’t know the story behind our kitten but she was either brought into the local shelter or was born there.  She has made a loving addition to our home and after two days, Abbie provided her with the name “Stella”.  She’s very playful and she likes to sleep on me early in the morning.  She is so small that I don’t feel her walking up me while I’m sleeping.  I’ll close with two cute videos of Stella on the back of the sofa watching television. 

      Hopefully, my next blahg won’t be so long in the making.

Tags: Celebration, Scott Henderson, Sinatra, Toshiba

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