Shannon Larratt is Zentastic

Kind of silly and lame, but I love doing flip books…

We all went out to the Word on the Street book festival today. Nefarious mostly hung out at the TVO Kids stage, but afterwards we went around getting as many helium balloons as we could and then tied them to a stick. We kept tying on more until the weight/lift had equalized, so our construction was able to hover… Unfortunately (or fortunately depending on how you look at it) the weather changed — I guess pressure went up? — and suddenly it shot up to about 200 feet and just sort of hung out there, to our both amusement and horror. It was fun watching everyone notice it…

This is her at the Anne of Green Gables tent. Caitlin took this picture and there’s another from the day on her site as well. Nefarious also really liked the show put on by Tapestry New Opera — at five she has more patience for opera than I do at (as of tomorrow) thirty five…

We also set up my PS3′s webcam so that Nefarious can have video chats with her mother (which other than a stressful burst when the sound was muted worked well for them this afternoon). Speaking of the cam, I downloaded the The Trials of Topoq game, which is sort of like a modernized body-controlled Marble Madness and have had lots of fun playing it on the PS3 Eye as well.

Also cooked a another yummy supper, starting with crazy delicious salad with chopped onion and quartered mandarin tomatoes (I think that’s what they’re called) with a dressing of lime, worcestershire sauce, sweet sushi vinegar, sea salt, olive oil, and pepper… So, so, so good!

The main dish was noodles with a veggies (asparagus, shepherd pepper, orange pepper, zucchini, broccoli) in a lime and really mild coconut curry sauce, as well as jumbo scallops (cooked separately but in the same sauce because Caitlin is not a fan of this stringy-but-gelatinous-texturally-offputting delicacy). It all turned out extremely well I think. You can never go wrong with good food.

I had some of the locally produced Great Lakes Pumpkin Ale with it, which I think was a good match for the meal although it really didn’t taste anything like what I expected (no obvious pumpkin or pumpkin pie aura, at least not how I had imagined — I think the nutmeg was the clearest addition to the beer’s flavor)… And, now to see how the new Simpsons and Family Guy seasons begin!

Ok, no stop motion movie (see my previous attempts with my nuclear flip-book paste-up animations and my flippy-guy animation) for you today because we went to the pool instead where we built makeshift rafts out of the flotation tubes, I swam underwater laps of the pool, and Nefarious climbed onto my head (as in stood on my skull, for maximum height) and used me as a diving board. Then I made another delicious and inexpensive supper — cooking is really one of my pure pleasures in life (although really, there are so many), completely relaxing and satisfying.

And then, another beautiful sunset.

One of the good things about going through a tough divorce and highly unpleasant legal dispute is that it forces you to either become a bitter, angry person, or to really look at your life and the world around you and appreciate the wonder and joy in all things — the glass half full so to speak. I chose the latter! I mean, I wish I could have realized that without having to go through all this (to say nothing of wishing others who did nothing to bring it on — Nefarious and Caitlin most obviously — hadn’t had to go through it), but I’m definitely thankful for the life lessons learned.