Canada, the sign of the critter, a sixtieth birthday and a challenge all in one magnificent post!

This is my 555th post. What is the opposite of a beast? Nothing - no antonym could I find. So I decided 555 wasn't the opposite of the sign of the beast anywho - it was a lesser beast - a critter. This post is under the sign of the critter. OK - that is done with.

Keeping up with the number theme, today, one of my closest pals, the guy I write plays with and play with - Malcolm Callaway - is sixty years old. Imagine!!! The Sweet Patootie and I are going down the shore to Chester to help him celebrate this and I will expected to do a roast of sorts. I will have to appear clever and funny - that will take hours of preparation.

Malcolm shares his birthday with Canada and it has sometimes made him grumpy to do so. The benefit is that all of us, as we age and our memory goes, can easily remember his birthday. I love  Canada Day or Dominion Day as it used to be called. Why? Because I love this big old unmanageable BEAST of a country. I love what it isn't - American or British. I love that it is a tapestry of diversity and never a melting pot. I love that we have the best national parks, the best national radio, and the best comedians on the planet. We have to be funny - there is just too many dark cold days lying about in our long johns drinking Molson's beer and eating flapjacks with maple syrup to not be funny.  Of course, many of our comedians, upon reaching fame, leave Canada and go live in LA but hey! Or eh?

l to r - Dawn Harwood-Jones, Jim Henman, Boney Maloney, Malcolm Callaway, me - a promo shot for our play - Death, the Musical

Other changes in our domestic lives - Felix has left. His parents arrive today and pick him up and take him on a whirlwind tour of some of Canada's cities (not the Canada I'd want to highlight but hey!). I just looked around his room - all neat and tidy and empty of anything personal. Very weird. And dearest step-dot got a job yesterday. I picked her up from school where she was getting her very good report card, and took her to the market where she got trained. Yes, dear old timey readers, all those years of taking her to the market on Saturdays has culminated in her getting a job at an organic veggie stand. Yahoo! Lots of kids I know have tried out their new working selves at Norbert's so I'm especially glad for her. And it means that tomorrow morning (after feting Malc til all hours) we'll be rising at five so I can get her there on time. Then I'm going to a Pow Wow that is happening in Halifax on the Commons with music, dancing, regalia, drumming, and tipis(mysteriously as the indigenous folk of Nova Scotia were not tipi users). I'm so looking forward to it. Talk about Canadian, eh?

The Friday Challenge - I want you all to riff on where you think you're from - be it a culture, a country, a city, a family. Just go with it. Explore it down to the bottom of its emptiness and back up again. Who are you when you define yourself geographically or genetically? Then do the same for a protagonist in one of your stories or novels. How does where they're from or where they think they belong influence their story?

Good luck and I'll share my process later on this weekend.

Now to party! (Well, after putting in two chapter edits and writing my roast!)

Dad and my brother in the Rockies - this seems the essential Canadian photo to me right now!