Where angels fear to tread.

For much of the past month, I have been treading where sensible angels fear to tread. Okay, it might not feel like this to some of my readers. No big deal, some of you might say. What is it that was so scary? Building a web site for your husband? Just a web site? Phht!

Andreas - photo by Laurie Sawchuck - as he appears on his web site.

The thing is, like much of what I do, I am an absolute rank amateur. On a good day, I console myself and recall that I once designed a four storey, circular tower, which Andreas & I built in the 1970s, and lived in for close to thirty years. Better yet – the tower is still standing. In fact, it remains much truer to a plumb line than that other tower – the one in Pisa.

Like this web site, our house had a few glitches, such as the number four skylight that leaked for years, but maybe that is not unlike some of the website layout issues that still defeat me. I think when it comes to them that I will wait until a young person visits me. Somehow they all seem to know how to do this stuff and their head doesn’t ache when they think about it. I think the trick is that they know how to do it without thinking.

Still and all, I am glad to have tried doing it. It has also been amazing to revisit all the books, articles, radio dramas – you name it that the lad has crafted over the years. When we first got together, he was writing Shaking it Rough which became a finalist for the Governor General’s Award for non-fiction back in the days when only academics usually had a crack at the prize.

I remember that one night when he was working on this book, that he put a TV dinner in the oven, and went back to writing. Eight hours later, he remembered the dinner. The bones in the chicken thighs had become two delicate black sticks; the peas had been reduced to dots; and the mashed potatoes had poofed up into an intricate black lace.It had become such a work of art that we kept in our photographic dark room for ages for still life compositions.

Tonight’s dinner will be much better than that. To celebrate, we are going to Sushi 5517. It makes not only the best sushi on the Coast, but would be the hands on winner compared to most sushi restaurants in Vancouver – which is really saying something. Scallop popsicles – here I come. 

Afterwards, we are going to hear the newly installed pipe organ at St. Hilda’s Church. Somewhere along the way, I also hope to connect with Rosemary to pick up some more Denman Island Chocolate, which might just be the best chocolate in the world. The company is owned by her son-in-law. As his web site says, Welcome to chocolate Nirvana. 

Anyway, if you visit Andreas’ web site, and see room for improvement (probably easy to do), and can tell me how to do it in a way that I might grasp (this part is harder), well, then, I am all ears. Until then, I plan to be up to my eyeballs in sushi, chocolate and J.S. Bach. Ahhh…..