June 19, 2006
My Brother Benja - New Games
Check out: www.benjagames.tk - flash games with lots of violence!
Posted by mishkin at 11:00 AM
March 03, 2006
My Brother Benja the Flash Maniac
My brother Benja does flash animation. He just sent out an email announcing a bunch of new stuff. WARNING: violent, gorey and offensive material!!! (But also really really hilarious!) Here it is: Benja's Flash Site.
Posted by mishkin at 01:25 PM
November 18, 2005
Travelling
Tomorrow we are driving from Richmond back home to Stouffville. The drive took us 17 hours coming down, but we'll all be in the same vehicle this time so hopefully it won't be quite as long a drive. I'm really looking forward to being home for a little while: it's been almost three months since we were all home. Ug!
Posted by mishkin at 02:32 PM
August 04, 2005
Twisted but very funny
My brother Benja has a web site with lots of Flash animations: www.freewebs.com/fiveskateboardsnewgames/ - they are mostly very violent - CAUTION!
Posted by mishkin at 12:59 AM
July 17, 2005
New Blog: Family Function
I've started a new blog called Family Function about my own family, and how to help your own family function more lovingly, more effectively. I intend to make it a moderate activity blog - hopefully a few posts per month.
Posted by mishkin at 11:05 PM
July 02, 2005
Justice's Seventh Birthday
I can hardly believe that he's seven years old! He's a fanatic about three things: Civilization III, Lego, and reading. He just said: "I only really want to play Civ, Civ, Civ... It's really crazy isn't it?!"
Posted by mishkin at 12:19 PM
June 30, 2005
Pics of our new house.
Melanie has put up some pictures of our new house on her website. There's not many there yet, but she intends on adding lots, I think.
Posted by mishkin at 12:44 PM
June 03, 2005
Going Home Tonight
Finally! I really missed my family this week. This weekend is going to be incredibly busy: kids' lessons, I've got a meeting with some Toronto agile folks, there's a Baha'i community meeting at our house, regular weekend stuff (groceries, prep for travel, cleaning), digging holes for trees in our yard.
Posted by mishkin at 04:44 PM
May 21, 2005
Tomorrow is Verity's First Birthday
She is taking baby steps (as in walking a few hesitant steps). She is babbling like crazy and even sometimes seems to make sense. She responds to her name. She falls asleep in her crib without too much fuss, often with none, but she wakes up every night between midnight and one AM to nurse. She played a great game with Justice and Haifa this evening and was laughing like crazy. She plays by herself in the sandbox for long periods of time. She loves steamed broccoli and carrots, rice with plain yogurt, peas, and lots of other things. She naps at 10:30 am, 2pm and sometimes at 5 or 6 pm. She is playful and smiles a lot, and she rarely cries. We had family portraits taken today. I'll post up a scan of them when we get them.
Posted by mishkin at 10:15 PM
May 15, 2005
An Amazing Weekend
On Friday, and yesterday (Sat.) I had a whole lot of fun with Justice - we took the training wheels off of his bicycle and practiced riding. I held the seat at first, then after a few very brief times letting go (one or two seconds long), I moved to holding the middle of the handlebars. That way he could see me letting go and build confidence. Finally, I held onto his waist. Then he could feel me letting go and also see that he was in complete control. He quickly got up to being able to ride for several seconds on his own. Next weekend we'll get a lot further I suspect.
Last night I went to Toronto to see my brother Cal's play "Soy". It's a comedy about nothing in the style of "Seinfeld". The script is incredibly sophisticated, has some amazing comedic lines and is also fairly complex. I liked the performance a lot. There were a few times when the timing and delivery of lines was just exquisite. Near the end in particular, the performers seem like they are getting to a very very weak ending for the performance. Everyone is quiet, and I thought that the lights would go down any second. After maybe 10 seconds, the silence is broken by the delivery of a hilarious line that relieves the tension perfectly. And then there's a bit more to the play which ends it very strongly. So it turns out that Cal won the most prestigious award for acting and writing (he co-wrote the play with his friend Matt). Congratulations!
And then my mom visited overnight. That was really nice. We made fantastic crepes this morning for breakfast. She spent most of her time with the kids - they needed a little grandma time :-)
Posted by mishkin at 09:47 PM
April 26, 2005
My Brother in the News
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/english/doc/2005-04/21/content_436114.htm
Posted by mishkin at 06:18 AM
April 24, 2005
The Center of the World
Justice asked me if the Earth has a center. I talked about the center of the sphere. He pointed out that if you are on the surface, you are at the center of the surface. That was cool.
We went to see Robots yesterday. It was fun to go with Justice and Haifa. We played a bit in the arcade before the movie started. They liked the movie, but I don't think it was as big a hit as The Incredibles. Certainly I didn't like it as much.
Posted by mishkin at 09:33 PM
April 03, 2005
Playing in the (bizarre) snow
Yesterday and today it snowed constantly. It accumulated to about 12cm this morning. So, given that it was also slightly above freezing, there was only one thing to do: play in the snow. Justice and Haifa and I got all bundled up and went outside. First we made a normal snowman on the deck. Justice made the head. Then, we walked around front and had a little adventure getting the mail - it was a long walk for Haifa. We held hands because she was tired. Justice spent most of the time running ahead, throwing snow into the ditch and generally having a fun time independent of us purpose-driven folks. I thought Haifa would go in at this point, but she insisted that she wanted to play outside more. So we went back into the back yard. I decided that I wanted to make a _really_ big snowball. I started at the very back of the yard since there is a nice long strait stretch with uninterrupted pristine snow. I rolled for a little while and then Haifa noticed I was doing something interesting. She came and helped me by pushing and also by adding snow to the ball so that it was a smooth round shape. I decided that I would make it into a big wheel. By time it was about a meter in diameter, Justice came to help as well. When we finished up, it was a big disk about 70cm thick and 1.5m in diameter. I tipped it on its side. And then I made another one, also with the help of the kids. I tipped this second one so that it was leaning on the first. Made a pretty tall pile of snow for the kids to climb on. Unfortunately by that point we were all pretty much soaking wet. So we came inside. Since the temperature is forecast to go up to about 10C tomorrow, I doubt the snow disks will last long.
Posted by mishkin at 09:33 PM
January 07, 2005
Wow! In Fort McMurray
Yesterday morning Melanie woke me up and said "let's go to visit your dad today!"
My dad lives several thousand kilometers from us. So I looked into flights and found that I had enough aeroplan points for us all to go and that there was a red-eye flight from Toronto to Calgary and then to Fort McMurray. And we did it! So. I'm on vacation :-)
Posted by mishkin at 11:54 PM | Comments (1)
December 29, 2004
Trouble in Distant Parts
A couple of days ago we received news that an uncle of mine has fallen to a very low degree. Once considered a very stable element in the family, he's hid himself away with a very young woman and has admitted to being on crack. Strong steps are being taken to help him out, but who knows what the end result will be. It's a little bit shocking to hear of this, but in some distant manner I can relate. People can do some pretty odd things in the name of love.
Posted by mishkin at 08:31 AM | Comments (0)
December 15, 2004
Recent Photos
The kids are growing up. Justice is reading and reading and reading. Haifa is getting interested in learning to read. And Verity has started backwards-crawling. This evening we went to Justice and Haifa's first gymnastics recital. They were great. Another cool thing is that the club has an olympic gymnast so we got to see some top-level performances. Melanie said she really was surprised at the encouraging atmosphere at the recital. It makes her feel much more comfortable about our kids being there.
We've finally settled into our new home. We're very happy about it in most respects: it is beautiful, spaceous, well laid-out, and is on a very large lot. The photos above give some sense of the interior, but really can't do justice to the incredible amount of light and the good feelings of being here.
Posted by mishkin at 11:11 PM | Comments (0)
October 27, 2004
Support
My wife is the most supportive person in the world! I love her!
Posted by mishkin at 09:42 PM
August 30, 2004
A Nice Dinner
Yesterday Melanie and I went out for dinner. Kristine and Celine watched Justice and Haifa for us, and we took Verity along. We went downtown to Kristine's apartment at 57 Charles Street (right beside our old apartment in 55). The kids watched some highlights from the Olympics including some gymnastics. Kristine helped Melanie and I to try to find a restaurant to go to. We were looking for something high-end to have a really nice experience. After looking through a restaurant guide for a while, we decided we would just walk over to Yorkville area and see what we could find. We walked with Verity in the stroller. It was drizzling a bit, but quite warm. Eventually we decided upon Sassafraz. Melanie got a lobster dish and I got a pheasant dish (I've never had pheasant before). We also ordered the soup (sweet potato) and a dessert each. I had a maple cheesecake with cherries. It was amazing: it had just a hint of mint to it which made it a really unique taste. Including tax and tip we spent $150.00 - probably the most I've spent per person on a meal ever. Given that we didn't have any alcohol, you get the idea of how pricy the restaurant is. But overall it was a great experience. Melanie suggested that we do something like that for our aniversary every year.Posted by mishkin at 11:59 PM