A Collection of Daily Wisdom by Dennis Sylvester Hurd since September 2003.

It's nice to have summer visiting us. I love a day without clouds.

Now, the only problem is that I will be teaching today. I've seldom taught on July 23rd. I can be sure of this fact as it's my birthday today. I don't ever remember having taught on my birthday before. This is how I used to spend the summers!

I will keep adding a few shots like this every week until I make a noticeable dent in the photo box that dad sent. Maybe I should find something where I'm wearing a shirt, at least! After all, my eJournal and images is public.

Labels: New Hampshire, weather

Since living in Canada, I've come to know that there are a great many famous celebrities who have hailed from the land north of the USA. A long time ago, I mentioned one very local boy from New Westminster in my eJournal and images. Other actors might be immediately recognized as Canadian while others may not. For example, I wasn't aware that recently-deceased James Doohan was born in Vancouver.

Realizing that Star Trek's "Scotty" came from here, prompted me to search for a more complete listing. There are many places on the web where partial ones occur. The site www.CanadianCelebs.com is perhaps the easiest to locate with many popular actors and musicians.

Maybe in the future, I should work on formatting a page which contains this data.

Labels: stars, Vancouver

Click this small thumbnail in order to launch a larger image in a new browser window. This was taken earlier in the week. There's nothing better than going around one's own city with visitors. Being a tour guide seems to rekindle an interest in the local attractions.

The image was taken from the Granville Bridge. The area shown is Grandville Island. We walked all the way along Grandville from the Waterfront and ate lunch in the Market before further exploration of Vancouver.

After twenty years, we finally made it official

Finally! We've had no 'real' summer up to this week but things are finally getting warmer. Here's a graph of temperatures in centigrade for the past week in New Westminster.

This data is updated whenever this page is
loaded. It is from a guy who has a local
weather station on the Net.

Labels: New Westminster

Yesterday evening I was finally able to sit on the balcony and enjoy the summer weather. For some reason, it seems as though it's taken a long time in coming this year. It becomes very hard to sympathize with the news of sweltering heat in other locations, when one still has a quilt on the bed. Here are a few thoughts that I wrote after a hard day of teaching and a glass of Canadian Club.

"I'm watching barges and pleasure craft running up and down the Fraser River. The top of Mr. Baker, in Washington State, looms over the horizon. People who are barbecuing dinner on various balconies are providing a wonderful aroma of burning sauces. There are quite a limited number of people at the New Westminster Quay considering how fine the weather is. Perhaps I'm just comparing the present numbers to those who were here for this weekend's Fraserfest firework shows.

After a wait, I must've felt the same technological contentment that my friend, Bret must've felt well over a year ago when we installed a wireless network in his house. At that time, he was able to do computer work while sitting near the fountain at the small oasis at the back of the house. Here it my balcony that matters.

I just returned an email to my sister whom I hear from on occasion. I am so pleased to have got to know her more in the last several years than the previous two decades. It's also nice knowing that Lynne and Joel will be up for a short visit from tomorrow. Although their visits are rare, it only takes a second before it feels like we've never been out of contact.

I'm also happy that Jay will return from work shortly."

Labels: balcony, Bret, Joel, New Westminster, Quay

After a hard day teaching, preparing for Sunday's entry generally means dipping into a box of pictures that dad was kind enough to send parcel post.

Here's a precious one, well before my sister came along. Considering the clothes, we were probably at a holiday dinner at my Great Aunt's house in Methuen, Massachusetts. Olive was my grandmother's sister and she married George Krikorian. They moved to Florida when they were still quite young and spent years working and throughout their retirement there. I believe I recall hearing stories that they met in a TB sanitarium. What was that all about? Olive and George both passed on during the decade of the 1990's.



From the photo, just my dad and I are still alive and kicking. Here, my grandmother was to the left and appears quite young. Look at the hairdo and frames my mother was wearing; this was obviously the 1960's! My dad looked a bit bored but somebody must've told me I was quite the handsome and photogenic young man. Don't you think?

Labels: Mother, New Hampshire