My weekend.
This has been a relaxing (but boring) weekend. Okay, watching the Leafs lose 7-0 to Ottawa wasn't relaxing, but the rest of it has been pretty decent.
The bulb in my halogen lamp had been slowly dying, so I went out yesterday looking for a hardware store to buy a new one. I found a Home Hardware down at Yonge and St. Clair, and picked up a 150-watt bulb. Naturally, I had neglected to take the old one out of my lamp and bring it with me so that I'd know what to get - and when I got home, I discovered that the old one was 300 watts. So off to Yonge and St. Clair I went again to exchange it. Right now, I've only got the lamp turned on to the first setting, so it's probably only drawing 150 watts of power at the moment, and it's still brighter than it had been.
Today, I was browsing in Indigo (as I am wont to do on slow Sunday afternoons), and I came across a historical novel in the fiction section, with the interesting title The Banting Enigma: The Assassination of Sir Frederick Banting, by an author named William R. Callahan. I read the back cover blurb:
Keeping vigil on the easternmost point of North America, and providing a strategic haven to battle-ready U.S. troops during WWII, the island colony of Newfoundland was an essential contributor to the Allied cause. And, when the war was at its fiercest, this Atlantic sentinel would receive devastating body blows from a hidden, elusive enemy. Two key players bore witness to the ensuing drama.
Sir Frederick Banting: soldier, scientist, Nobel Prize winner. The enigmatic co-discoverer of insulin and his views on biological warfare would give rise to heated and long-lived controversy. Little did Major Banting know, word of his actions had reached the ears of the Führer himself, who determined the Canadian soldier-scientist would not live to see his goal of using biological weapons against Germany fulfilled.
Karl Otto Stroesser: saboteur, spy, murderer. Receiving orders directly from the upper echelons of Adolf Hitler's Abwehr syndicate, he is the instrument of Nazi Germany's private war waged upon Newfoundland. It is through the actions of this cunning, relentless killer that the island colony would witness some of the greatest tragedies ever to unfold in its history.
Steeped in political intrigue, power struggles, and espionage, The Banting Enigma looks behind the scenes at Newfoundland's role in World War II-and its deadly repercussions.
I was intrigued, and opened it to a random page. The first sentence I saw started, "Michael Grattan O'Leary was born in 1899, the descendant of Irish famine refugees, in the Gaspé..."
Now this is interesting for two reasons:
And yet, so far as I'm aware, there's no connection between these two bits of trivia.
Two other random observations:
Ah, 9 o'clock... time for Desperate Housewives. Be back in a bit.
The bulb in my halogen lamp had been slowly dying, so I went out yesterday looking for a hardware store to buy a new one. I found a Home Hardware down at Yonge and St. Clair, and picked up a 150-watt bulb. Naturally, I had neglected to take the old one out of my lamp and bring it with me so that I'd know what to get - and when I got home, I discovered that the old one was 300 watts. So off to Yonge and St. Clair I went again to exchange it. Right now, I've only got the lamp turned on to the first setting, so it's probably only drawing 150 watts of power at the moment, and it's still brighter than it had been.
Today, I was browsing in Indigo (as I am wont to do on slow Sunday afternoons), and I came across a historical novel in the fiction section, with the interesting title The Banting Enigma: The Assassination of Sir Frederick Banting, by an author named William R. Callahan. I read the back cover blurb:
Keeping vigil on the easternmost point of North America, and providing a strategic haven to battle-ready U.S. troops during WWII, the island colony of Newfoundland was an essential contributor to the Allied cause. And, when the war was at its fiercest, this Atlantic sentinel would receive devastating body blows from a hidden, elusive enemy. Two key players bore witness to the ensuing drama.
Sir Frederick Banting: soldier, scientist, Nobel Prize winner. The enigmatic co-discoverer of insulin and his views on biological warfare would give rise to heated and long-lived controversy. Little did Major Banting know, word of his actions had reached the ears of the Führer himself, who determined the Canadian soldier-scientist would not live to see his goal of using biological weapons against Germany fulfilled.
Karl Otto Stroesser: saboteur, spy, murderer. Receiving orders directly from the upper echelons of Adolf Hitler's Abwehr syndicate, he is the instrument of Nazi Germany's private war waged upon Newfoundland. It is through the actions of this cunning, relentless killer that the island colony would witness some of the greatest tragedies ever to unfold in its history.
Steeped in political intrigue, power struggles, and espionage, The Banting Enigma looks behind the scenes at Newfoundland's role in World War II-and its deadly repercussions.
I was intrigued, and opened it to a random page. The first sentence I saw started, "Michael Grattan O'Leary was born in 1899, the descendant of Irish famine refugees, in the Gaspé..."
Now this is interesting for two reasons:
- Michael Grattan O'Leary (known as Grattan) was my maternal grandmother's uncle;
- One of my mother's closest friends used to be married to Sir Frederick Banting's grandson, and growing up I was friends with her son, Kevin Banting.
And yet, so far as I'm aware, there's no connection between these two bits of trivia.
Two other random observations:
- The theme music to Stargate: Atlantis is really cool.
- Joe Flanigan is hotter than I realized from seeing still photos of him.
Ah, 9 o'clock... time for Desperate Housewives. Be back in a bit.