Hello and welcome (back) to the Year in Review. The typically picture-heavy account of what Zoe and her doting parents got up to over the year.
Winter
Mountain Sports
We started the year off up to many of our same old tricks. Zoe skiing and Ewa and I snowboarding. Zoe is improving as kids tend to improve at things they practice– by leaps and bounds! Ewa and I have come a way fair way also– there have been some good genuine “this is enjoyable, and we won’t die today” afternoons on the hill. We’re snowboarders now. It has even become a bit of a social thing– we’ve been up on the hill with Zoe and her friends and their parents (our friends). There was a pretty good Après Ski at the Pataterie Hulluoise one night– it is a small restaurant and we took it over!
Hockey Skills
I scrounged up a bit of resolve and sought to develop some hockey skills in the family– in addition to my already prodigious ones, of course. We figured out if Zoe was righty or lefty and got her set up with a stick and some equipment. We got out on a sheet of ice with the family over the holidays and otherwise found a «stick & puck» program run by the city.
Mudpuppies
Very few people tend to associate the dead of winter with ideal conditions to spot amphibians. And yet, around Oxford Mills just outside Ottawa, you can do just that. Fred and Aleta have, for years, run friday «Mudpuppy Night» tours just under the weir on Kemptville creek. I’ve known about Mudpuppy nights for about 20 years.
For those who do not know, mudpuppies are large, enigmatic, aquatic salamander found in Ontario. They are sometimes called Hellbenders or snot otters. They resemble axolotls very closely with their frilly gills that remain on the outside of their heads. Though, as we learned, mudpuppies aren’t that closely related to axolotls– there are numerous evolutionary paths that take salamander to aquatic salamander, apparently. Mudpuppies become most active in the cold of winter and at night– so that’s the time to go see them (Friday night obviously, because– what else could you be doing that night?!) This is the longest-running winter herpetological outing in Canada!!
I’d known that the evening was open for people to bring their waders and a net to go into the river and catch their own mudpuppies for observation, so of course I did. The pregnant pause and its insightful revelations only came after I’d gotten myself thigh deep in a creek in January:
- Although I am keen, it is not obvious that I am at all skilled at catching mudpuppies; and
- I am one slip on a slimy creek bottom away from hypothermia.
So I made my way out of the creek and enjoyed the mudpuppies that were caught by the more qualified mudpuppy catchers. Mudpuppies are always amazing– this time Zoe and a bunch of her friends got to know it also. This is how mudpuppies got added to our atlas of encountered animals.
Spring
A call from some keen parents at Zoe’s school came out– was there interest is setting up a chess club? Yes there was, and I’d be able to volunteer some time if that was needed. So after the kids gobbled down their lunches, they’d join Maciek and me in the activity room to take learn about chess.
Ewa and I had always heard from Zoe’s teachers what a delight she is to have in class– always listening, following directions, and acting as a calming influence among others. I really wanted to meet this Zoe. She’s the lovely same Zoe of course, but in a context I don’t often get to observe her in. Chess club worked out great– I got to be a spy in the school and see Zoe learning chess!
After doing the requisite preparations, Zoe did her First Communion at St. Pat’s. Uncle Terry (my uncle, Zoe’s great uncle) said mass and gave Zoe her first communion. One of Zoe’s First Communion gifts was a PWHL jersey of the Montréal Victoire.
She became a fan of the Victoire when we attended an Ottawa Charge/Montréal Victoire game in Ottawa. I don’t know how she became a friend of the Montréal hockey team, but I was impressed at how it turned out.
The Victoire ended up playing the Charge in the playoffs, and we scored a couple tickets. And Zoe now had a Victoire jersey to wear! Only she didn’t. We made it to the game early enough to see the players’ bus roll in– the Victoire bus! There was a fan giving a Victoire jersey to an official looking person from Victoire squad for autographs, and Ewa boldly decided to do the same with Zoe’s jersey. Shortly after, a minute or two, Ewa and I realized we had no clearly understood way of getting Zoe’s jersey back– and our Spring adventure had begun!
After a good bit of texts, calls, emails, and a side-quest on one of our trips to Montréal, we got our jersey back. Signed by Marie-Philip Poulin and her teammates!!
We managed one more good adventure before the start of summer. Like the throngs that descend on Montréal for the F1 weekend, Zoe and I made our way to Montréal. We weren’t there for the Grand Prix though. We were there for Cirque de Soleil’s Luzia show. We attended with Zoe’s cousin Naomi in the Old Port of Montréal.
Summer, Mostly in Poland
Following the end of school, Zoe and I made our way to the airport and hopped on a plane to Poland. Attentive readers might now be asking themselves: aren’t there supposed to be 3 characters in this play? Where is Ewa in all of this? Why isn’t she flying to Poland also?! Good catch reader! Ewa was and had already been in Europe for more than a week. She went over a week early to go on a girls jaunt to Sicily!
Ewa met us when we landed and we spent a couple days in Warsaw with Agnieszka around the Ursynów neighbourhood. I love hanging around Ursynów– things are convenient, walkable, and accessible. Instead of heading to the old town, Agnieszka showed us the Las Kabacki, an urban forest in Warsaw. We spotted a Eurasian Kestrel riding the currents on the way in (Family Atlas of Animals) , and settled on the aerial park among the many things one could do in the park.
We took the train over to spend a couple days with Ilona. It had been >10 years since I’d been to Lublin– it was neat to see how things had twisted in my memory.
While walking the downtown, we took a brief intergalactic hop to the planet of Kalgan and visited the happening club where Han Pritcher first encounters the Mule. Ok, let me unpack that last sentence. We visited the distinctive looking Centrum Spotkania Kultur (Centre for the Meeting of Cultures). Later that summer, while watching season 3 of Foundation, that same distinctive looking building served as the club where Han Pritcher meets the Mule (these are both characters from Isaac Asimov’s Foundation series of novels that I read years ago). Don’t look too closely at my shoes in the photo, I got most of the space-dog poop off of it before the photo 🚀🐕💩.
A cool feature of hopping over to Europe is that I become Mr Morning Person– it is uncanny how good at getting up in the morning I am. By stark contrast to how I live the rest of my life. This allowed me to go for a number of early morning runs like a crazy person. I run mostly so that:
- I can find creative ways to mention to people that I went for a run; and
- Over time, I can accrue the health benefits of running.
I used one of my early mornings in Lublin to go for a run. I packed my phone instead of my ipod so that I could use the map (not get lost) and spin up some more thoughtful tunes than my usual Black Eyed Peas bangers. I made it by the Majdanek Concentration Camp for a look, and a think, and some reflection. A sombering and worthwhile visit for whenever you get the chance.
Poland, A Prompt for Reading
Poland spurned a couple of the books I picked up over the year. Olga Tokarczuk is a celebrated Polish author that I’ve had mixed results with. I picked up her The Empusium: A Health Resort Horror Story to read while we were in Poland. It was odd to read, but I’ve come back to it and thought about it over and over quite a bit since reading it. So, it is a pretty good book.
East West Street by Philippe Sands is the other polish inspired reading I did. And a bit by my run in Lublin. It traces the origins of crimes against humanity and genocide in the months following the end of WWII– still on the ground around Poland. It is some of my heavier reading this year.
Feats of Strength
When schedules coincide and we get a couple days to hang out with Marek (Ewa’s brother, my brother-in-law), we’ll do a Polish Vodka Party! Or, as they are known in Poland, Vodka Party! I think these go back to an old tradition of testing the mettle of would be suitors of daughters or sisters. They’re lots of fun. Absent any indication of failure, I infer that I passed and get to remain in the family until the next test!
Until The Next Time Poland
With my morning person skills, I got a number of good runs in– around the lake in Biskupiec is my favorite. We spent some time by the sea and in Gdansk with Babcia.
The facilities to swim at in Poland were notably exceptional! The Suntago water park is immense. Your first choice is to decide if you’re interested in the Zen Relaxo side of the park with its saunas and no talking zones, or would you rather lose your hearing in the Crocodile Pirate Adventure side of the park? With your 8 year old daughter, we found that the Crocodile Pirate Adventure side of the park was a lot of fun.
On our way out, we did Warsaw up! As the final stop on our trek of an evening we went to the Pijana Wiśnia (The Drunk Cherry), with our child obviously.
Fall
Polish Tennis Heartbreak
In case you aren’t following women’s tennis very closely, there is a Polish woman consistently at or near the top of the rankings. Iga Swiątek. Our household follows her exploits very closely. And at this year’s National Bank Open in Montréal, we had an opportunity to watch her play! We got all done up in the czerwony and were out to represent.
And Iga ripped out hearts out. She played, according to some in our household, “her worst tennis ever”. It was still fun to be out on the Jarri Tennis grounds out among the crowd.
Fishing (Mis)Adventures
This was an odd year for fishing. We started off ambitiously with some shore fishing, with Zoe and a friend of hers’ along the Ottawa river. The most notable thing we pulled out of the river that day was that friend of Zoe’s after she fell in the river.
Later in the summer, as the pressure of still not having achieved glorious fishing success began to weight heavier on the year, Zoe and I set out with the kayak for Réserve Faunique Papineau-Labelle (RFPL) in Duhamel Québec. We were off to do some adventure fishing. Ah, adventure fishing. RFPL has more than 600 lakes– it is only a small minority of them that have maintained access for small boat access. You can fish the unmaintained lakes under the adventure fishing program. I built a web map of all the lakes in RFPL and figured out which ones were close to roads.
Zoe, Gyrados (our kayak), and I checked in at the gate and informed the ranger which adventure lake we were planning on heading to. The park ranger, after throwing an eye to our (conventional) AWD SUV, suggested we’d not be making it to the lake we’d chosen. She recommended a closer more accessible adventure lake– even closer to the road! With our GPS maps, and Zoe exceptionally riding in the front seat, we tracked ourselves driving around the lake without actually ever seeing the lake. Thinking the inlets and or outlets to the lake might get us to the water, we sought those out. Now, each walk into the woods looking for the lake is a preview of how far you’ll have to haul the kayak (twice). With that in mind, you don’t want to hike to far through the woods. It didn’t really matter, we weren’t able to find the lake.
Lakes in Papineau-Labelle have vanished in the past– beavers take their well deserved retirement, the dam falls, and where there once was a body of water now only a stream can be found. I’ll not pretend that is what happened in this case, dear reader. Definitely a lake-seeker problem, not a lake-existing problem. Besides, I’ll need your sympathy and understanding further along in this tale, best not to use it up this early.
The ranger was sympathetic to our inability to find the lake, and offered us a day of fishing on one of the reserve’s managed and stocked lakes. We were off and fishing!! And boy was this lake stocked– the fish finder was a non-stop fish party! Only, we were fishing towards the end of August– the year’s least amenable time to catch trout. They were all deep and lethargic. And entirely uninterested in our baits, lures, jigs, spoons, spinners, and worms. Now, reader you might be asking yourself: “Wait. You couldn’t catch trout in a stocked lake?! Isn’t that being unable to procure services at a brothel?!” To which I have 2 remarks:
- Dear reader please?! This is a Christmas letter, there’s no need for your bawdy allegories; and
- Yes– exactly!
Despite all this Zoe reports that she does have fun when we go out fishing, so we’ll keep doing it. Next year we’re inviting the fish.
(Remaining) Arts & Letters
There was much music, books, and movies in the household this year. Has anyone else heard of K-Pop Demon Hunters? We have– it starts with an alarm to get the house started and doesn’t stop. The songs are pretty catchy– there’s probably one playing on the radio right now. One of us even went out on Halloween dressed a Mira.
Books and TV, to a measure, weave together. Once I caught preview of the Murderbot Diaries TV show scheduled to come out in the Spring, I pressed myself to get through the first book before I could watch the first season. Both book and TV series are great, not too serious fun! Alas, I picked up another book/TV series to keep up with– in addition to the Slough House/Slow Horses series from Mick Heron and the Susan Ryeland/Atticus Pünd series that are excellent and have continued being excellent.
I mixed up some of the heavy reads with light reads– this was very helpful for doing a bit more heavy reading than I usually do. John Scalzi’s ‘What if’ book When the Moon Hits Your Eye, that imagines what would happen if the moon suddenly turned into cheese, was a delightfully absurd romp about (the space billionaires race to the new moon, and then blow themselves up). It was a helpful balm against Omar El Akkad’s gutting One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This.
For this year’s St Patrick’s day, our household made a Chocolate Guiness Cake– it turned out really well. The green frosting we made might have really finished it off properly, but the ladies of the house preferred that it not be added to their cake, so I was left to add it to my slices individually. It also got me thinking about using beverages as the source of moisture in baking. What other beverages could be used in baking? Could Mountain Dew be used in baking? As it turns out, Mountain Dew can be used in baking. There are the conventional lemony cakes that can make use it of, of which I plan to bake on this coming year.
But enough about next year, the elephant in the room this year– the obviously small room in which desserts made from beverages are discussed– is Taco Bell’s long-rumored Baja Blast™ Pie that became real this Fall. In my searching, before the release of Baja Blast™ Pie, I came across this (possibly nihilistic) woman’s account of making her own version of the Baja Blast™ Pie. I think the blog post is Art– Capital A, fancy, mixed-media Art! I thoroughly enjoyed all the Baja Blast™ news that came out this autumn. Facebook keyed in on this enjoyment, and responded– you wouldn’t believe what their algorithm made my feed look like. There were many who got notes and messages on the subject– none more so or who wanted them less so than Ewa (thank you wife, for not killing me).
Shuffling into the Holidays
Grinch suit max– Ottawa better than MTL for this event
The Santa Shuffle is my usual cue to get the letter out, so let’s see how were doing:
- ✅ Some stealthy guerilla marketing for Mountain Dew
- ✅ Awareness raised for Canada’s longest running herpetological outing
- ✅ Entertaining– though unsuccessful– fishing adventure
- ✅ Italians in speedos (Reader, did you miss them in the background of this photo?)
Ok, that’s all of if. Lets get this letter out. 2025 is winding down, and we’re looking back and appreciating the year we had. We’re, of course, scrambling to get things sorted and ready for the holidays. But were also thinking of you, yours, and wishing you all a restful holiday season. Drop us a line, we’d love to hear from you. We’d especially if you have been able to try the Baja Blast™ Pie– such things aren’t yet available in Canada😭.
Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, Grievous Festivus, and Happy New year– Tim, Ewa, & Zoe