Hello and welcome to the Year in Review. The typically picture-heavy account of what Zoe and her doting parents got up to over the year.
Health & Fitness
It was a good year for keeping active and doing things.
We were busy through the winter. Skiing and snowboarding was something the family got quite a bit better at– Zoe through ski lessons, Tim and Ewa largely through survivorship bias.
Zoe and I took part in a weekly badminton session during the first part of the winter. It was a bit of a bummer year for cross-country skiing– snow conditions weren’t great and we only got out a handful of times.
The Spring had Zoe (and me) running around in an orienteering activity. This was new for us and a surprisingly fun activity. Theoretically, orienteering could include: map reading, skill building, course selection, and other elements of strategy. In practice, it was wild mayhem of kids running through the woods.
«Monday – Fun Day – Run Day», again, didn’t quite achieve its stated frequency of one run per week, but the happy news on this front is that Ewa joined me for a couple runs. The more the merrier. I did get a couple great international runs in also. The early morning zip twice around the lake in Biskupiec Poland near Ewa’s mom’s house is my favorite. The ring around the Stare Miasto (old city) of Kraków is lovely also.
How was everyone’s PNovember? Ours was pfucking pfantastic. No. It was actually quite pterrible. All 3 of us came down with and recovered from pneumonia. It was awful. We’re all over it now and hoping to stay healthy through the holidays and into the new year.
Arts & Letters
It was a good year for books, movies, and music in the house this year.
We first became Beliebers as Zoe discovered the catalogue of Justin Bieber songs. He’s got some real bangers! We considered becoming Swifties as Zoe discovered some of Taylor Swift’s song catalogue, but that didn’t stick as much.
The focus shifted off Pokémon a bit– we dove deeply into the Harry Potter universe. Once the family made its way through a book, we’d watch the movie. By the end of the year, we’ll have probably made it through 5 of the books and movies. Zoe is asking us questions about why this or that part of the book wasn’t in the movies– it’s great!
There are two really good book and TV series that are simultaneously coming out. Anthony Horowitz’s Susan Ryeland series is actively getting written and getting made into TV series. And also, Mick Herron’s Slough House/Slow Horses series has a number of TV seasons available and many novels that extend beyond what has been produced. The former are «murder mystery within a murder mystery» kind of stories, and the latter are «John Le Carré flavoured stories about spies in administrative purgatory». Both were and are excellent for both reading and watching.
Upon our return from Europe this summer, full of 1€ croissants and 1€ beer, I began looking for explanations for why those things were so expensive here. Thomas Philippon does a good job digging into this in The Great Reversal; he begins by observing that: 20 years ago cell phone and internet bills in the US were half the price of what they were in Europe. And today the situation in reversed. The rest of the book is a detailed and dismal dive into the how and why of this– as economists are wont to write.
The most fun read of the year was Starter Villain by John Scalzi. It is an absurd romp through the world of over the top James Bond villains with talking cats and swearing dolphins.
Flora & Fauna
The Fishing Part of the Letter
Foremost, it is unwise to forecast your fishing plans ahead of time as I did in the last Christmas letter. Live and learn. Subsequently, we did well enough with fishing this year despite the gaffe, read on.
We did make it to Réserve Faunique Papineau-Labelle in the late Spring with trout on our my mind.
If you read just a little bit about Papineau-Labelle, you’d think there are so many brook trout there that they’re the ones checking your reservation and showing you how to operate the motor for your boat.
It is not exactly like this.
The warden did inform us that it was mandatory to declare the fish we caught even if we didn’t keep them.
This uncomfortably removed several degrees of freedom from the fish tales one allows one to tell himself.
We did not catch any trout on this trip, but did have a lot of fun swimming and boating around in a beautiful part of Quebec with Talia and her dad Eric.
Patterson Creek is a reliable standby for fishing with kids. Zoe and I made it out there a couple times this summer and caught many sunfish and once saw a spotted gar– an endangered species in Ontario– just floating along in the Rideau canal! New fish on the animal map!
https://pipedreamer.org/lyingbirds/lyingBirds.html
On an Uncolo Day, Adam, Andrew, and I took the girls (Zoe and Naomi) out for hotdogs and fishing at a trout farm. You pay for the trout ahead of time, and there isn’t any mystery– you’re catching fish. It was a big win for Zoe and Naomi, a bad day for the trout, and a mixed day for this angler. Yup– the kiddo got to see a trout, we got dinner, but the challenge-payoff equilibrium was off balance. It was too easy.
It was only around Thanksgiving that things fell into place. We spent Thanksgiving at a cottage in Val-des-Monts on a lake. I brought the rods up so that we’d have something to do off the dock– hopefully catch a couple sunfish with the kids. I brought the net because ‘everyone needs to be able to carry something’, especially 4 and 7 year old’s. Just as the girls were getting bored and it was coming time to pack up, we hooked into a large fellow deep off the dock. We landed a LAKE TROUT!
Some important details:
- We all caught the trout;
- Ewa was there. She actually saw her husband catch a fish! and
- We’ve all got our (googly) third eyes on because we’re about to attend a yoga class given by my sister Gill in the cottage– in case that wasn’t obvious.
For the Birds
It was a mixed year for birds.
Zoe and I did our usual Snowy Owl prowl around Ottawa to see some snowies. It is always a lot of fun– binoculars, timbits, hot chocolate, walkie-talkies, and birds. Only this past year was very difficult for the snowies– very few of them came down from the north and it was a bad year for breeding. Hopefully they bounce back. We did get eyes on one of the handful that came down to Ottawa last winter.
Otherwise, Zoe and I made it to Czechia to visit my buddy Marcus and his family. He’s married to Lucie– a serious ornithologist– the Paul McCartney of birds in Czechia, some say. I spotted some birds at the farm house for my Merlin App– Eurasian Golden Oriole, Hawfinch, and a couple Eurasian Blue Tits. And I got schooled in birds a little bit too– there are no hummingbirds in Czechia. Hard to believe, but when you get it straight from the Paul McCartney of birds for the country, you’ve got to accept it.
Sins Against Taxonomy
There are a couple other notable animals that we crossed paths with over the year. Still in Czechia, Zoe, Marcus, and I caught an exhibit with sturgeon fish. On a boat ride in Croatia, we spotted a small pod of dolphins bobbing along. And in the Macoun Mash, just off the Beechwood Cemetery in Ottawa, we caught up with a blue-spotted salamander.
https://pipedreamer.org/lyingbirds/lyingBirds.html
The wild animals get added to the animal atlas I’m building. The classification system is even more bullshit than last year– dolphins are of course mamals, but I don’t want to use the icon of a llama to identify a dolphin. So, enjoy the map if you like, do not dwell too much on the abuse of taxonomic rank (I’ve also included the total solar eclipse on the map).
Science & Technology
I’m working on keeping current and ensuring that Zoe sees enough of the things she could need later on in life. Man, this takes work.
Generative AI
Zoe was the first household member to generate anything AI-related. At a friend’s house she requested a creature that looked like a cat Pokémon. Subsequently, and after a couple panic attacks about my 7 yearold lapping me on computer related things, we dove in a little deeper with generative AI. At some point in the year I was concerned that there wouldn’t be photographic evidence of glorious fishing success to include in this letter, so I began exploring Midjourney to see what kind of glorious fishing success ‘evidence’ could be manufactured. Then one thing lead to another, and then another. Hey, why not also achieve all of my fitness goals with AI?! That’s how we got to yours truly, handsome and fit, wrestling a 500 lb tuna out of the Mediterranean surf. It isn’t exactly how I imagined it though, and that’s because «with topless European women standing around amazed at my strength, looks, and fishing prowess» was rejected by the program for being too risqué.
3D Printing
We also dabbled a bit with 3D printing. The University of Ottawa’s Makerspace has a weekly community day where you are able to pop in and print up your designs. We printed off some pretty cool articulated Pokémon toys– Gyrados obviously!
Path of Totality
We caught Eclipse fever this Spring and realized that we weren’t too far from the Path of Totality. So we found a way to drive ourselves onto the Path of Totality– like so many other Ottawans. Spencerville, on the way to Cornwall, is where we stopped to take it in. We had our eclipse glasses and a pinhole projector that we made out of a cereal box. It was much cooler that we thought it would be.
Varia
I became a bit of a local celebrity when I became the first person to buy beer at our local milk store. I’d been chatting with the cashiers a bit about what they thought of imminently being able to sell beer– so excited! They were convinced there would be a line up at the door at 7am to buy beer. So shortly after dropping Zoe off at school I popped in to hear about the madness– which presented me with the opportunity to be the first to buy beer at the milk store. Two Steam Whistles at 8:55 and my ticket to fame got punched.
Moving Around in the Summer
Babcia (Ela) came to Ottawa in the Spring for a couple weeks. We took her to the usual spots and haunts and she got to be a fly on the wall of how our family operates. Then we all flew back to Poland with her. After a couple days in Biskupiec, paths diverged.
Ewa went to Lublin to visit with our good friend Ilona and relive her party days in the city she attended university. Very few specifics emerged, but a good time seems to have been had by all.
While she was partying it up, Ewa’s husband and child went to Czechia to catch up with Marcus. Tim and Marcus notionally attended grad school together. Marcus has been living in Czechia for many years now– it was time to see the farm and properly meet his whole family. The part of Czechia Marcus and his family live in is beautiful. My eyes don’t often happen upon the kind of long expansive views that are everywhere you look in Hostĕjov, they’re pleasantly disconcerting.
The family reunited for a night in Kraków, and made the most of it. We walked the old city (I ran it in the morning) made it to dinner at one of my favorite restauraunts Dobra Kasza Nasza https://www.dobrakaszanasza-krakow.pl.
Then we were off to Split Croatia for a couple days. We hiked the hills, splashed in the Mediterranean, got out on a couple boats, spotted the dolphins, and melted in the old town filming locations of Game of Thrones (hot sun, not dragon fire).
We spent a couple days with Agnieszka in Warsaw before heading home. Her petit coin of Warsaw always amazes me. It is safe to walk, there are paths and parks and things you need conveniently all around. The math they’re teaching their teenagers is a little suspect though.
Upon return to Canada, we made it out to Algonquin Park for some camping at the Achray campgroup with Talia and her dads. A good hike yielded some natural rock water slides and a great afternoon.
Shuffling into the Holidays
We got the mostly whole gang together for the Santa Shuffle in Montreal this year. We had 5k runners and Elf Run runners. This is often the kick off to our Christmas season, and my cue to get the Christmas letter sent out.
Let’s see how we’re doing. Light and clever swearing: ✅, glorious fishing success: ✅, tasteful nudity: ❎ no help from Midjourney, but thank you teenage Warsaw math wizards: ✅. Wow– that’s just about all the necessary parts of the Year in Review –all I need now is a clever remark about how Ewa dislikes this letter or how no one reads it and I’ll have wrapped this thing up! ✅✅
2024 was a full year for us. Among this letter’s audience, there were some good, some bad, and many unknown 2024s. We’re keeping you all in our thoughts and wishing you a restful holidays and a happy new year.
Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, Grievous Festivus, and Happy New year– Tim, Ewa, & Zoe
