The road to a friend's house is never long.

That's easy for me to say, since I didn't make the trek. But our friends, Joe and Mary, drove 3,000 km from their house in Colorado to ours in Ottawa (including across Kansas, which I have learned is the most boring drive on the planet) - and we are so glad they did.

We welcomed them to the back yard with bubbles!

Turns out, bubbles are kind of tricky to photograph.

There are so many things to see and do in Ottawa, but they had already visited Ottawa many years earlier, and we had limited time. For the first day in the city, we went out to the RCMP Stables, home of the Musical Ride. The Ride is out on tour this time of year, but we had a tour of the museum and the stables. 

We had a very cute guide!

That is one immaculate tack room!

Horses are BIG, y'all!
These are the training horses.

We (or, rather, Emily) also managed to gain the interest of Creepy Guy.

Hey, Creepy Guy, keep looking.
I will render you impotent and blind with my laser eyes!
And stop playing with yourself. Yeesh!

He's just lucky I didn't notice him until I was looking at the pictures on my camera. 

Leaving Creepy Guy behind, we went to the Byward Market for lunch, then took a tour of the Rideau Canal by boat. Unfortunately, I once again forgot how to adjust the aperture on my camera, so most of the scenic pictures turned out like crap.

The next day we went to the Glengarry Highland Games, the reason for the timing of their visit. (We had attended the Longs Peak Scottish-Irish Highland Festival together in Estes Park, Colorado for several years, so this was continuing a tradition.) 

Fortunately, the day was cloudy and rainy, so there were no crowds. Unfortunately, the day was cloudy and rainy, so we didn't stay as long as we'd planned. But we did have time to:

Watch the highland dancers, in all their regalia.
The young lass on the left is practicing for her competition.

Watch beefy men throw heavy objects over high bars.
(We also watched beefy women throwing weights a long distance,
but they were less photogenic.)

Catch the tail end (pardon the pun) of the sheepdog demonstration.
Steve's grandfather used to breed champion sheepdogs, so they
hold a special place in our hearts.
I never tire of watching these very smart animals.

We ate Scotch pies and Beavertails (a Canadian treat), which were all very yummy and didn't stay in one piece long enough to be photographed. Then Steve went kilt-shopping. He's been talking about getting a kilt for years now and finally took the plunge.

Looks good on him, though I must say it's pretty
special with the Hawaiian shirt and baseball cap.
This tartan is the Black Stewart. Steve's family is
from the lowlands, so no tartan, but I am from the
Stewart lineage, so Steve chose one of the many Stewart tartans. 

Emily also chose a kilt, but in Dress Stewart.

Rather a different look on Emily than on Steve.

And then she saw a tam! 

Looks perfect with her newly black hair.

I think it was that evening that we finally had my famous Maple-Glazed Ribs!

Best served with stir-fried veggies and potato salad.

As a reward for those of you who have read this far, here is the recipe:

Maple-Glazed Spareribs

Boil/simmer for about an hour:
     3 pounds baby-back spareribs cut into sections of 3-4 ribs
Meanwhile, in saucepan, heat to boiling:
     ½ cup maple syrup (real maple syrup. "Pancake syrup" will not give the same taste.)
     ½ cup minced onion
     4 cloves garlic (or 4 teaspoons minced garlic)
Simmer on lower heat for seven minutes or until reduced by half.
Remove from heat. Stir in:
     1 cup ketchup
     1 Tablespoon chili powder
     2 Tablespoons soy sauce
     1 teaspoon ground allspice
Drain ribs. (For parties, I often stop at this point and refrigerate everything until we're ready to cook up and serve the ribs.)
Baste ribs with sauce. Grill 5-10 minutes, turning and brushing several times. Boil remaining sauce 1 minute before serving with the ribs.

Are you ready for a rest yet? I was, so the next day I stayed home while Steve took Joe and Mary to see the cat sanctuary on Parliament Hill, the Busker Festival (which we didn't even realize was happening), and to see the locks on the Rideau Canal.

Joe and Mary left at zero-dark-thirty this morning. I wish them a safe drive home; we miss them already.

Muddy Waters

Our pool construction was completed so late last fall (October!) that we didn't even turn on the pump or the heater. It would've cost a fortune to heat all that water and, frankly, when it's chilly and rainy out, who feels like swimming? Not I!

So we covered it with a big, blue tarp to keep the leaves and rain out, and we let it be. Come spring, we drained all the melted snow and ice off of the pool cover, and this is what we saw.

Steve dropped a brick onto the tarp in the deep end,
so that he could syphon off as much water as possible
before removing the cover.

It was still too cold to open the pool, so we focused on getting the terraces and gardens done. We're still plodding away at those. Finally, after a miserably rainy May, June brought some sunshine with it, so we pulled off the cover. This is what we were greeted with:

We accidentally spilled much of the contents of the cover
- including the brick - into the pool. Plus more leaves and pollen fell.
(The hose is topping up the water. It took HOURS.
Good thing we don't live in Barrhaven where there is a water ban in effect.)

There is so much dirt and algae in the water
that it is opaque in the deep end.

A visit to the pool company ($250) and two days of chemical blasting later, and the pool looked like this.

The algae are dead, but are suspended in the water, so it is
still so cloudy that you can't see the bottom, but at least it's not green.

A full series of chemical treatments - over the course of a week - and the water now looks like this:

Look: you can see the bottom (occluded by the reflection and still a little cloudy).
In fact, you can see the brick that fell off the protective tarp into the pool.

By the way, the water isn't actually blue; it only looks that way because of the blue liner and the reflection of the sky.

So far, it is not heated, but Emily has been in swimming. I'm still waiting for a sunny day when I happen to be in town. Then we need to clear all the work equipment off the patio so we can have a PARTY!

Photo Class: Shadowland

Today's assignment for the online photography class I'm taking is "Shadows," so k.d. lang's Shadowland ran through my head all weekend, her plaintive, pure voice lamenting,

I'm a shadow since you've gone

Just a shadow in the dawn

Frustratingly for this assignment, Ottawa was NOT shadowland this weekend. Or maybe it was ALL shadowland and NO shadows! The sun taunted and teased, but slipped away faster than I could grab my camera. The sky was mostly a uniform grey, turning everything monochrome and sad.

Nevertheless, as Brian and I went out to the Museum of Science and Technology on Sunday afternoon, I grabbed my camera.

Like most modern museums, the lighting in the museum is very moody. There is minimal ambient light, but lots of focal lighting. In a sense, the space is flooded with shadows. I did manage a few interesting shots.

Unfortunately, there is a lot of "noise" in all of these pictures because the lighting was so low.

The ramp going up towards the Crazy Kitchen.
Leading lines are powerful in this one.
[Haha! Just had a Star Wars moment: "The Force is powerful with this one."]
f/2.8, 1/15, ISO/1600

One of the final exhibits we saw had this little backlit scene of a woman entering a room.

f/2.8, 1/100, ISO/1600

It's an interesting tableau. I decided to make it a story-telling picture, with a sense of portent.

Are you scared?
Perhaps you should be.
The lock is useless.
What's in the hand she's holding behind her?

I don't know which picture I like better. Do you have a favourite?