 |
Just for a change, I thought I would show some soccer pictures this week
. Both Emily and James played in the
Soccer-by-the-Sea festival in Eastern Passage this weekend. James' team, the Sidewinders,
played on Friday evening against the Eastern Passage Panthers. They played a very good
game, despite having no substitutes, and won 4-1. They played again on Saturday morning
at 9 AM against the Cole Harbour Kickers and Screamers, who lent us a couple of
players as we only had six. We started off slowly, being down 2-0 at one point, but then
gathered momentum and ended up winning 6-2, James scoring a hat-trick. At 11 AM
they played against the Anacondas, also from Dartmouth United, this time winning
convincingly 9-0. All in all, an excellent tournament for the team and a much better
result than I was expecting. All of the kids played as well as I have ever seen them play.
It was a good way to finish off the season.
 |
Emily's team, the Fury, also had a game at 11 AM on Saturday which I had to miss as I am the coach of the Sidewinders. They played well against the DU Xtreme winning a close game 1-0. At 2 PM they played the DU Canadians, a team that included several girls that I coached a couple of years ago. Though the Fury played well, they had trouble putting it in the net. On the other hand, Laura, on the Canadians, had a sure foot and scored a hat-trick, leading her team to a 5-2 victory. Emily played again this afternoon against the Cole Harbour Tornado. They played well once again, but lost a very close game 2-1. Soccer is now over for the summer, but David will be playing again this fall and winter.
While Emily, James and I were in Eastern Passage this afternoon for Emily's game, Ann, Katy and David went to a barbecue in Porter's Lake for the church Youth Group. Several of the group gave Katy going-away gifts as it will be the last Youth Group function she attends before going off to Acadia next weekend. No sooner was David back from the barbecue than he was off again to a party at the house of one of his friends. That was the second party this week for David (another of his friends had a birthday party on Wednesday); there seems to be a lot of parties in these last few weeks before school starts again.
On Friday, Ann, David, Emily and James visited Ingrid and Mike's new cottage, on the seashore just outside Lunenburg (Katy and I were both working). David stayed for the night so that he and Ingrid and Alex could play a round of golf on Saturday morning before coming back to the city.
 |
I have been taking it easy at work this week, going in for the mornings, staying for my lunch time bridge game, then going home. That has given me some time to do a bit of badly needed gardening.
Thursday was Ann and my 21st anniversary. Emily and James were invited to Ashley and Brett's for a sleepover, David to Alex's, and Katy went to her friend Laura's to watch TV in a tent in the backyard (I'm not joking). That left us the whole place to ourselves. In the afternoon we went for a bike ride along the Lake Charles trail and its new extension, then we treated ourselves to dinner a da Maurizio's, one of the best restaurants in Halifax.
Today was David's last soccer game of the season as they did not make it to the play-offs. They played the Celtics, the team of Alex, Ann's godson. The last time they played it was a 2-2 draw, but today, after a fairly lacklustre effort by both teams, the Celtics won 2-1. David capped off his season, seconds before the last whistle, by sprinting deep to the right corner of the Celtics end, forcing a corner kick, then taking it quickly before the defence got organized, right onto the head of one of his team-mates for a goal.
Meanwhile, Ann was out at the airport picking up four kids, a 16 year old boy and three 14 year old girls, who are part of the Canadian International Summer Villages program. They have been at Camp Pagweak, near Pugwash, for the past week and are now on their way home. Some of them flew out today (which is why we picked up ours at the airport) but the rest don't fly out until tomorrow morning and so they needed a cheap place to stay for the night. Ann was contacted by an old friend, who knew she was a soft touch, and persuaded to host them. Alex and Alix, his French exchange student, also came over, so we cooked up a 5 kilogram salmon to feed them all.
 |
In keeping with our theme for the summer, I have yet another picture of David playing soccer. That seems to be mostly what I am taking pictures of these days. Unfortunately I can't take similar pictures of Emily and James while I am coaching. David played Cole Harbour on Friday evening winning 3-2, though they were winning 3-0 at half time.
While David and I were at the soccer game, Ann took everyone else to see Shakespeare by the Sea's production of The Adventures of Robin Hood. Apparently Emily and James found it very amusing and enjoyed it immensely.
On Saturday evening the Dave Brothers Band had another gig, this time as part of the 25th Anniversary of the Harbour Folk Society. Dave Chapman was one of its founding members and I was on its executive for many years, but neither of us have been involved directly for some time now. The concert was supposed to be at the Cole Harbour Heritage Farm Museum where we played on Canada Day (see the Archive), but it rained all day and was moved to the Cole Harbour Fire Hall instead. There were six different acts, each nominally of half an hour each, though some went a bit longer. They were all musicians that have been involved with the Folk Society in one way or another and that we have known for ages. The quality of the performances was good (even ours wasn't too bad) and everyone seemed to have a good time.
Today we had no commitments other than Ann looking after the nursery at church. David and I rode our bikes along the Lake Charles trail which has now been extended for another kilometre or two past the end of Lake Charles. It looks as if they are planning to take it up to Waverley and Fall River next. Most of the afternoon was spent trying to get the garden back into some semblance of order.
Katy's friend Stephen is still with us, though he flies home early tomorrow morning. He and Katy have been out carousing with Katy's friends most nights this week.
 |
As you shall read below, events on the last couple of weekends have prevented me from updating this page, so it is now a little more than a week overdue.
Two Friday's ago, Ann, Emily, James and I drove up to Wolfville to pick up David from guitar camp in time for a 5:30 soccer game. That meant that he could not play in the end of camp concert, but he did not seem to mind too much. He and Alex both had a good time there and I think he learned quite a bit. Ann stayed behind to watch Alex play in the concert and got a ride home with Ingrid and Mike.
The soccer game was the first of the Dartmouth United Tier 1 tournament, which dominated most of our weekend. Because this was the tournament of David's home club, we not only had to get David to and from four games, but I had to be at the field at 7:30 each morning to put up the netting on the goals (this is my volunteer position for the team) and Ann volunteered to be the field marshall for another game. David's first game was against Conception Bay South, a team from Newfoundland. DU won 2-1, with David scoring one of the goals. The next game was against the Fundy Strikers, from St. John, New Brunswick, at 9:30 AM on Saturday, which ended up as a scoreless draw. The win and tie were good enough to get them into the medal round on Sunday. The first game was against Cole Harbour at 9:30 AM. After a close and hard fought game, the score was 2-2 at the end of regular time, then no goals were scored in two five-minute sudden-death overtime periods. That meant the dreaded shoot-out; five penalty shots from each team. David was chosen as one of the DU shooters and scored coolly to the bottom left hand corner. DU won 4-3, so they were in the gold medal game. Unfortunately I could not watch it (more below) so I can only report that DU lost a close game 3-2 in overtime, so they came away with the silver medal.
That was also the weekend of continual fireworks. On Saturday night there were fireworks set off from the Macdonald bridge to mark its 50th anniversary. David and I stayed home to get some sleep, but everyone else went to see them. Ann reports that they were the best that she remembers seeing in Halifax. Then on Sunday night there were more fireworks on Lake Banook to mark the anniversary of a local insurance company. Then on Monday there were more still in the middle of the harbour to celebrate Halifax and Dartmouth's Natal Days.
After lunch on Sunday I set off for St. John's to attend the conference of the CFD Society of Canada (CFD stands for Computational Fluid Dynamics). The weather was sunny and clear the whole way and, having a window seat on the plane, I was able to track our whole route up the centre of the Nova Scotia mainland, past the Canso causeway and Bras d'Or Lakes, past Glace Bay, then across the water and over the Burin Peninsula and on over St. John's itself. The conference was held in the Fairmont Hotel, right downtown, on Monday and Tuesday. I chaired the first session after the keynote speaker on Monday morning. I was also the first speaker of the session, which is somewhat unusual as one normally is not the chairman for one's own paper. However, I did get all of my obligations over with early, so I was able to relax and enjoy the rest of the papers. I flew home again on Wednesday morning.
 |
Alex, Ann's godson, is participating in a Canada-France student exchange. His student counterpart arrived last week just as Alex was leaving to play in a soccer tournament elsewhere in the province. This was doubly troublesome because the student, Alix, is a girl, and finding accomodation for her on the trip would have been difficult. So, we agreed to take care of both Alix and Joey (Alex's guinea pig) until his return. To complicate matters, Alix was scheduled to pass through Toronto just after the Air France crash that closed the airport. She finally arrived a day late, quite jet-lagged, and with no luggage. She turned out to be a charming guest, putting up with the general pandemonium of our household, and with being dragged off to sit through soccer games. On Saturday evening David and Katy invited a bunch of their friends over to meet Alix. We barbecued vast quantities of hamburgers and there was general teenage revelry until about 11:30 at which time everyone had to leave to beat the midnight driving curfew (in Nova Scotia, for the first couple of years that you have your licence, you are not allowed to drive between midnight and 6 AM).
This past weekend has also been a busy one. David was in action again this past Friday evening, playing a good game against Dunbrack (a very strong team) but losing anyway. There was another game on Saturday afternoon against the Valley, a team which they should be able to beat, but they did not play so well and lost again. David also refereed a couple of games on Sunday morning.
On Sunday, after David's refereeing job and Ann's stint in the church nursery, we all packed into the van and headed down to the Lunenburg Folk Harbour Festival. It was another hot sunny day, so all the outside venues were open. I spent most of the afternoon at the stage on the wharf seeing Jenny Whiteley, the Gord Stobbe Trio (friends of ours), and Artisan. After dinner at Big Red's, we caught the evening show in the tent on Blockhouse Hill. I particularly liked Les Chauffeurs à Pieds a high energy group from Quebec City featuring fiddles, accordion, whistles, and occasionally the French horn! We didn't get home until well after midnight, causing me to miss updating this page for a second weekend in a row.
Today Alix went to Alex's, but Stephen, a good friend of Katy's and also the son of good friends of our's living in Calgary, came to fill her spot. And we have more visitors on the horizon when he leaves next week. Luckily it is not my bed that is being passed around, so an extra person or two in the house doesn't affect me all that much.
July 2005 Archive
September 2005 Archive
Archive Table of Contents