Who Would Have Thought ….

Happy Anniversary P.

I ragazzi di Roma – November 6, 2010

Love P.

The word for November 23^rd is:
Anniversary /ˌanəˈvərs(ə)rē/: [noun]
^1.1 The date on which an event took place in a previous year.
^1.2 The date on which a country or other institution was founded in a previous year.
^1.3 The date on which a romance began in a previous month or week.
Middle English: from Latin anniversarius ‘returning yearly’, from annus ‘year’ + versus ‘turning’.
We do ^1.2 and ^1.3 – means more champagne!

The Way We Were

Happy 41st

P. from P.

November 23rd is Flossing Day – and here I thought you were supposed to do it every day?????

Forty Years On

Lisbon – November 23, 2018 – Forty Years On.

Since 1978:

There have been 17 different residences in 10 cities. Which means we have packed up and moved 16 times.

Of those 17 there have been 11 houses or apartments in 5 cities where we have actually lived together.

Ottawa – 4 Aylmer – 2 Warsaw – 2 Rome – 2 Charlottetown – 1

I have commuted to 5 cities: Mexico City – Cairo – Chicago – Amman – Beijing

We have attempted to train but have been trained by 4 Dogs – Bundnie from Cairo, Reesie from Chicago, Nicky and Nora from Rome.

Laurent has had 3 jobs – I have had 10 (that I can remember).

In 2007 after 29 years we figured that things were probably as permanent as they were going to get and decided to get married.

During that time neither one of us has – wonder of wonder – committed murder (though I’m sure the odds were very close on that one.)

So tonight we will raise a glass of something sparkling and bubbly to 40 years that have been many things but the one thing they have never been is dull.

Love from P. To P.

On this day in 1978 – Laurent Beaulieu came over for a drink and has yet to leave.

2000 and Counting

This will be my 2000 post since I first started Willy Or Won’t He* on November 12, 2006. That’s a little over 200 items a year for the past 9 years which is a heck of a lot of writing when I stop and think about it.   I said in my first entry that one of the reasons I had started the blog was to capture our trip to Vietnam in words and photos.  I was able to do that though mostly in words. Oh the frustration of trying to upload photos on dubiously advertised bandwidths in tiny shops in Sapa and Hoi An with little success.  Sadly my second post was a tribute to my dear Ryan who’s absence even nine years later is still a gaping hole in my life.   And in one of those early entries I posted the first picture of my beloved boy Reesie who was to feature so often until that sad final entry in December the following year.

In that first year the trials and tribulations of the house in Aylmer and my beautiful garden were often the topic of the day.  As that summer approached the plans for our wedding and the move to Italy became more of a concern; as did the adventure with Telecom Italia and the oh so Italian saga of actually getting the internet once there.  After connections were made the next four years were to be ripe with events – opera, art, travel, history, food et al – that often meant as many as three posts as day.  “A life crowded with incident,” indeed.  And of course the Hounds from Hell – much fabled in story, song, video and photo ops – appeared giving a measure of acceptable chaos to both our lives and the blog.  Puppy pictures will do it every time.

The return to Ottawa brought it’s own challenges – on a day to day basis and also when it came to postings.  Gone were the heady delights of Europe and replaced by a different lifestyle in a city that though home had changed in many ways – as had we.  It often became a challenge and frankly a chore to post anything.  But as life settled into its inevitable pattern it became easier to put fingers to keyboard.

There were times when I gave the whole thing up – in the first nine months of 2015 I had posted 23 items with a lengthy hiatus from April to September.  There was nothing to write about!  I sat at a computer all day writing for a living why the hell would I want to do it again when I get home?  It’s just too much work and nobody reads the damned thing anyway.  It’s so much easier to throw something on Facebook.  I’m sure anyone who has written a blog knows the cant.  After my move to WordPress this past September it became a matter of learning a new programme – always a challenge and an inducement to use old swear words in new and creative ways.  But it seems it gave both Willy Or Won’t He and me a new lift.

It now looks like we may have some new adventures on the horizon – perhaps a change of venue and a few exciting travel plans:  all fodder for the blogmill.  Time to get thinking about posting #2001 and beyond.

*I worked with a crazy – in the best sense of that word – lady who had punning nicknames for anyone she liked and a few for those she disliked.   I counted myself amongst the blessed when she christened me Willy Or Won’t He. 

Willy Or Won't He

I wrote my first blog back in 2000 while working at the Warsaw Business Journal. I found my job there as web editor through one of my best friends, Bev Toomer. She, her husband Kev and Silver and Sobie – the real important ones – are family. Distant family at the moment as she is Afghanistan, he’s in Sri Lanka and the pups are on Galiano Island. But that’s a story for another time.

Back then I promised readers a daily update of ex-pat life in Poland. That promise was well-intentioned but more often than not it was a broken one. Blogging on a regular basis can be time consuming and lets admit it most of us don’t have that much excitement in our lives that warrant a daily post. Basically I’ve started this blog to keep a record of our trip to Vietnam in December. We’ll see how that…

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Thirty-seven and Counting

To P.

 

from P.

On this day in 1491: The siege of Granada, the last Moorish stronghold in Spain, ends with the Treaty of Granada.