L'Mao!
2007-08-24, 15:45

I know it's been two months, you don't have to remind me. Nuff said.

Add to my list of professional endeavours (first being a published author, of sorts), Professional Photographer. A month or so ago, I was contacted by a rep from the Leo Burnet ad agency (go play at their website, it's fun!) about their interest in possibly using a photo of mine (among others) in a Hallmark ad campaign. The photo, if you didn't click, features my lovely daughter wearing an antler-adorned hairband (was there an 80's hair band that wore antlers? What would they have been called? Buxx? Scatt? WhiteTail?). It was up to Hallmark as to which photos were included in final layout, and the agency would let me know if it was chosen. And Lo! and behold, it was! I got an email last week with the go-ahead to send in release forms for the baby and I - a Property Release for me and a Likeness Release for her. I guess that makes her a model now too, eh? For our trouble, we're getting 200 dollars, each. I'm going to use mine for more camera equipment, and hers is going into her college fund.

Speaking of "eh", we just got back from our vacation in Ontario on Monday. We were supposed to be back on Sunday, but some winner decided to commit a hit-and-run on the 401 leading into Toronto, and the OPP actually closed down the highway for four hours while they looked for the guy (they didn't actually find him until 2am that night, I heard). So a two hour drive took us over five hours. My sanity was nearly broken by the time we finally managed to find a place for dinner. It was already 5pm and we were facing another 8 hours of drive time. And then we heard about the nasty weather that was heading into Ohio, and that was the straw - we found ourselves a hotel room (two rooms, really, as there was six of us) and called in (emailed, really) sick days. It proved to be the right decision. I really didn't want to be driving half-mad at 2am in a torrential downpour.

The week in Canada itself was a good one. It was the five of us plus one friend of The Girl (another good decision - the week was virtually whine-free, thanks to constant friend-based diversion!) for eight days on Mazinaw Lake. There were days on the beach, lots of canoeing (featuring our very own canoe, which we strapped to the roof of the van for the trip out) and another day trip to Ottawa, to revisit the Canadian Museum of Civilization. (Technically it's over the river in Gatineau, Quebec, mais ne d�dublons pas les poiles, oui?) The museum even, unbeknownst to us until we arrived, featured an exhibit of Chinese artifacts, from ancient to modern. And much fun was had, once again, at the Canadian Children's Museum, located inside the same facility. That evening we crossed back over the river and watched a 'sound and light show' presented directly onto the face of the Canadian Parliament building. It was basically a "Yay, Canada!" program, but it was worth the extra hour stay before the long two hour drive back to the cabin. We got to get our traditional round of Fantasy Forest-based 'only known game' in, as well as a couple of games of Heroscape with The Boy, who now finally seems to be registering the concepts of strategy, if his constant playing the game by himself and testing different tactics with different characters was any indication.

And most importantly, Laurana was a champ the whole week. Whereas last year it was almost impossible to get her to go to sleep and her freak-outs were numerous, this time she fell asleep with relative ease and never once woke up in the middle of the night. She enjoyed our days on the beach, and trips in the canoe almost as much. My main worry was the long drive, but she did well there, too.