Dinner with the Pink Flamingos

Our Cornerstone Sports Night team, the Pink Flamingos, had our team dinner at Rob and Kathleen's place at the beginning of the month. It was a potluck dinner. Since I can't cook I brought a caramel cake and four bottles of pop.

I was the first to arrive. Early. I came straight after my boarding home visit. Rob and Kathleen were still getting their food ready. Rob made ribs and Kathleen was working on a variety of appetizers like Jalapeno peppers stuffed with cheese.

Not everyone could make it. Ricky was out of town. I believe some people were sick like Freda and possibly Andrew. Either that or he was busy. Winnie made it out though. So did Philip, Derek, Josh and Kim.

Dinner was good. There was a lot of food. We had to take the leftovers home.

After dinner Philip brought out his board game, Ticket to Ride. I believe it's an award-winning game developed in Germany. The idea is to gain points by either building sections of train routes and completing longer routes between various cities on the game board from the route cards you pick up.

I believe up to five people can play at once. The game board gets pretty crowded at that point. You can build train routes by picking up coloured cards (up to two) on your turn. Route sections on the board are colour coded. To build a section you have to collect the number of coloured cards between the two cities. It's pretty simple. The problem is if someone else builds on the section you want. Then you could be in trouble.

Anyway, we played two games. I won both. At first everyone was employing the same strategy - trying to building the long sections of track connecting to distant cities.à

In the second game I tried something different. I didn't concentrate on connecting the long sections of track between two distant cities. Instead I noticed that a lot of points were awarded for building long sections of track (15 points for building a six section track as opposed for 1, 2 and 4 points for building one, two and three section tracks).

So I concentrated on building random six section tracks around the game board. Though I didn't get many points for connecting distant cities, I built up such an immense lead that no one else could catch me. And I finished all my trains before people could connect their distant cities. So they actually lost points for the distant cities they didn't connect.

I have to admit that strategy probably strayed from the main idea of the game, but it was a sure way of winning. Oh well.

Anyway, it was nice for us to get together to get to know one another a bit better over the holiday season. Our team is pretty strong overall. I think we'll do well this season.

On the Road with Nadurra

My friend Rob works at Nadurra. They're an eco-friendly hardwood flooring supplier. Last Friday he wanted to go out and shoot some places that the had supplied flooring to. In hindsight maybe we should have called first.

Our first stop was the Ontario Science Centre. They had ordered some reclaimed wood flooring for one of their projects there. It was while we were waiting for one of the department heads there that I bumped into my former colleague, Reay, and his daughter. They have a yearly membership to the Science Centre and Reay takes his daughter fairly regularly because there's a kids' section there that she likes.

After a short wait the Science Centre contact met us. He told us they were using the flooring in the Banting and Best display they were setting up. Frederick Banting and Charles Best discovered insulin in the early 1920's. It was used to treat diabetes.

Unfortunately the display (which was supposed to be a recreation of their lab) was still under construction. The only thing that was finished was the flooring. Rob mentioned it normally should be installed last so it wouldn't get damaged by anything else falling on it during the construction process.

While we didn't get to take pictures here the department head (whose name escapes me) took us on a behind-the-scenes tour of his department. It was a large workshop area where they made all the displays for the Science Centre. They had all sorts of woodworking machinery and a graphic design shop. They do everything in house. In fact they even make displays for other museums or galleries and ship them overseas. Neither Rob nor I had any idea they did any of that stuff there. It was so neat to see. The area was huge.

Our next stop was a Regent Park condo project called Paintbox (by Daniels). Unfortunately after speaking with the onsite property manager we were informed we would have to submit an application requesting permission to shoot whichever areas we were interested in and the board of managers would have to approve it.

Next we headed to the University of Toronto Mining Building at 170 College Street. They had installed some flooring on the fourth floor in one of the public areas of the student lab.

At first we tried taking the elevator up. But, you needed a card to access certain floors. So we tried the stairs next. Same deal. As we turned to leave down the stairs from the fourth floor one student was on his way up. Rob asked him how we could access the floor. He told us you had to sign out a key fob that would allow you entry. He mentioned he didn't have one either. But, he was going to call a friend (who was already inside) to open the door for him. Before he did that another one of his friends opened the door and we followed him in. We spent about 20 minutes there taking pictures.

Next stop was a private residence in the Bloor and Christie area. A young couple was in the process of renovating their house and had used some of Nadurra's reclaimed flooring. It looks great, but costs an arm and a leg (at $9-$10 a square foot).

While they were still living there, again they were still in the process of renovations. So, like the Science Centre, they weren't finished either. The couple had installed the flooring both on their main floor and upstairs. Rob and I moved some of the clutter around and I got a few reasonable shots of the dining room/kitchen area. We may return later after they finish completely.