Flood Watch - 2011 - The bad news continues

For the first time yesterday, we were told that the river will surpass 1976 levels. Just how much remains to be seen. I also heard someone say that this was our "flood of the century". That's not very comforting.

We received even more bad news last night. The whole neighbourhood (with lots of generous volunteers) busted our butts for two days getting ready for another rise in river levels. Then we heard that they are calling in the military because it’s might get even worse. We still don’t know how bad, but it’s the worst possible news to date.

While we are waiting for news, I figured I'd post the pictures of the sandbagged house. If things are going to get a whole lot worse, these small dikes will rise.

.I didn't sleep at all well last night, so this morning I'm pretty much at the end of my rope. I don't know how much more of this I can take.

One more thing: The area is pretty much a disaster zone. If you don't live in the area or don't need to be here, please don't come down just to take a look. You'll see all you need to see on the news or in the newspapers. Of course, after all of this is over, we'll welcome you with open arms.

If you'd like to volunteer to sandbag or help out, please listen to the news for details.

Disclaimer: If you came here for information about the Manitoba Flood 2011, you've probably come to the wrong place. This post (or series of posts) will focus only on my backyard and house. If you are looking for general information regarding the flood, try the Government of Manitoba website, which can be found here or here for more area specific information regarding the Cartier, St. Francois Xavier and Headingley areas.

Flood Watch - 2011 - My Backyard - This is unreal

May 6th - Morning - Did a little sandbagging at two houses across the highway. Things had calmed down quite a bit and we were told that the river was stabilizing. It did look that way. We were told that a second peak wasn't expected because of the way they were managing the river. We were planning a nice relaxing day.

May 6th - Afternoon - Got an email saying that river levels were going to rise dramatically the following week and we had 7 days to prepare. Panic!!!! From what I understand, this isn't another peak, but something else. It's not clear to me and right now it doesn't really matter.  

May 6th - Late afternoon and evening - Lots of behind the scenes (for us) action. Spent that time moving sandbags into position to get ready for bagging. Many houses in the neighbourhood were going to need it.

May 7th - All Day - Volunteers, equipment and food descended on the neighbourhood. Sand dikes were erected including one around our house. From our standpoint, things went really well. Rain is forecasted for a number of days. That is not good news.  The volunteers, neighbours, food and support staff were wonderful.  Thanks so much.

May 8th - All Day - See May 7th.

High water levels, flooded land, and wearing hip waders or boots all the time are starting to feel like normal.  Others entering the area for the first time say it looks like a war zone.   Sad times. 

More later including photos. 

Flood Watch - 2011 - Would you like one crest with that or two?

It looks like the river has crested or is very near the crest. There's still a lot of water out west that has to come our way yet, so it's definitely not over. We might see another crest in a couple of weeks. Depends on who you talk to, this water could be around for 3-6 weeks. Yikes!

Our house is completely surrounded by water now. We still are not sandbagged and hope that it stays that way. The water is about 30 feet from the house in the backyard. Two days ago we could still walk to both neighbours' properties without boots. Yesterday, it was down to one. Today we are surrounded. It's not an ideal situation, but we are making due. A nice couple a few doors down has offered us their spare canoe. (They are already paddling down their driveway). We haven't taken them up on it yet, but we are thinking we will.

The TV stations were out late yesterday and all day today. We didn't personally talk to them, but a few of our neighbours did. I love seeing people I know on TV. It's too bad it has to be because of this stupid river. On CBC, a tiny clip of our house and car were on the news (CBC was talking to our neighbours). On CTV, both of us were shown (with others) sand bagging a failing dike. On Global, our house once again was shown (the news people were in the neighbour's yard on the other side). We PVRed all of them ;)

Here's a photo of me in my new hip-waders. I look dumpy, grumpy, old, worn out and tired, but that's pretty much what I look like. I'm standing on the driveway (front yard) half way to the road. The river should be in my backyard about 600 metres behind the house. Now that we can't get out of the yard without boots, I'm sure I'm going to be wearing them a lot more.

That's it for now. Life is an adventure.

Disclaimer: If you came here for information about the Manitoba Flood 2011, you've probably come to the wrong place. This post (or series of posts) will focus only on my backyard and house. If you are looking for general information regarding the flood, try the Government of Manitoba website, which can be found here or here for more area specific information regarding the Cartier, St. Francois Xavier and Headingley areas.

Star Wars Year by Year: A Visual Chronicle by Ryder Windham, Daniel Wallace and Pablo Hidalgo

As part of DK Canada's May the 4th Be With You promotion and contest, here's a review of a book in their Star Wars collection.

Star Wars Year by Year is a visual chronicle featuring the Star Wars movies, creators, crew and actors against the backdrop of other events happening in the world. The book goes month-by-month showing how the Lucas empire started as an idea and progressed into this mega cultural phenomenon. It's divided up into 5 sections: Life before Star Wars, The Original Trilogy (1973-1983), Between the Trilogies (1984-1996), The Prequel Trilogy (1997-2005), Clone Wars a& Beyond (2006-2010).

This is such an awesome book. I thoroughly enjoyed it. I'm not the biggest Star Wars fan on the planet, but I have seen all of the movies; some of them more than once. I love that the book shows what was happening in the world in relation to everything Star Wars. There were lots of behind the scene details and stills of the movie sets. It's simply amazing how the world affected these movies and how these movies affected the world. The book also showed how technical advances allowed Lucas to carry out his dream with finer details and special effects and how these movies affected other movies in turn.

The book features many two-page spreads with fantastic photos. Because of the size of this book, you can see the finest details on these. Speaking of photos, this book has too many to count. Some are large; some are small; each one is pertinent and interesting. The book also has the ads and movie posters associated with the movies as well as many of the toys and games that came out as a result of the movies.

The book is filled with tons of interesting tidbits about the movies, cast and crew. An avid fan might know this stuff, but a lot of it was new to me. For instance, did you know that episode six started out as "Revenge of the Jedi" not "Return of the Jedi"? Anyway, I learned a lot about George Lucas, the six episodes, ILM and the world in general.

My favourite pages in the book deal with how the movies have become entrenched in our society. Here are but a few:
pages 72-73: Star Wars holiday greeting cards. Hilarious.
pages 230-231: The different lightsabers used in the movies.
pages 242-243: Yoda in his many forms. As a plushy, board game, bubble bath container, mouse pad, candle holder and on and on. Cute, they are.
pages 282-283: The Vader project, in which contemporary artists were given a replica of Darth Vader's helmet to customise. The results are amazing.
pages 274-275: Star Wars 30th anniversary stamps created by the United States Postal Service.
pages 288-289: The Lego Star Wars minifigures.

Included with the book are two ready-to-frame prints that are housed in a protective sleeve attached to the inside cover. I particularly enjoyed these. Who doesn't love swag with books? They are:
Lighting Concept by Matt Gaser of Obi-Wan Kenobi and the Duchess of Mandalore from season two of Star Wars: The Clone Wars, 2008
Harrison Ford on set during principal photography of The Empire Strikes Back, summer 1979

The table of contents lists the 5 sections and the years within those sections. It does have lots of entries, but I'm not sure how useful it's going to be. The index is quite long and contains lots of relevant entries, which should aid the reader quite nicely.

Highly recommended for Star Wars fans.

For more information about this book, please visit DK's website.

I'd like to thank Chris at DK Canada for this review copy and for inviting me to participate in the May the 4th Be With You promotion.

Star Wars Year by Year: A Visual Chronicle by Ryder Windham, Daniel Wallace, Pablo Hidalgo (Lucy Dowling, Editor), Dorling Kindersley (DK), ©2010. ISBN 9780756657642(Hardcover), 320p.

You Can Draw: Star Wars by Bonnie Burton

As part of DK Canada's May the 4th Be With You promotion and contest, here's a review of a book in their Star Wars collection.

You Can Draw: Star Wars is a guide to drawing the characters and objects from the Star Wars movies. It offers instructions in the basics of drawing these items as well as information about the supplies that can be used. There's lots of tips to get started drawing and some to make your drawings better. The book also includes some stencils to use in making a comic.

I really like this book. It's designed for children, so some of the instructions are pretty basic and not extremely detailed, but the advice is useful and practical. It's definitely enough to get anyone started on drawing these figures. I really like that there is a bit of an introduction to some of the characters. I've seen all of the Star Wars movies, but I don't remember all of the details or characters. It's nice to be reminded of some of these.

Of the three sections in the book (Pencil Drawing, Inking and Coloring, and Creating a Comic), the Pencil Drawing section is my favourite. It's the most extensive and covers many topics including equipment for drawing and the elements of drawing (shading and light, foreshortening, perspective, etc.). It also covers drawing various body parts, droids and aliens, weapons, vehicles, star ships and all other things Star Wars related. I love drawings done in pencil so it's fun just to flip through the section to see the all of the wonderful finished works. The instructions are pretty good for young artists. For complex drawings like R2-D2 and the Millennium Falcon, the book refers the reader/artist to other drawings, photos or books (published by DK) for more information about the subject to complete the project. That's a little disappointing, but these items are so complicated that the author couldn't include all of the details in this one book.

One of my favourite parts of the book are the velum overlays. These feature rough pencil drawings (stick figures) on velum, which then overlay final pencil drawings. They allow the artist to see the basic shapes which make up the final drawing and how they relate to that drawing. It is actually pretty cool. Another great aspect of the book are the flip-out pages. The design is quite neat. Combined with the velum, they show the rough pencil drawing on velum, the final pencil drawing underneath, and finally the ink drawing on the flip-out page. It's a little hard to explain, but kids will love it.

The Inking and Colouring section includes a two-page layout on Manga style. While the section is very brief, I appreciated it because I knew very little about it. I think younger artists would get a kick out of the Creating a Comic section. Who doesn't want their own comic book?

I tried drawing a few items from the book and was thinking of including a photo here, but they aren't very good and still need some work. It was really fun, though, and I'm going to continue to work on the few that I started and hope to do a few more.

The table of content lists the subjects or lessons within each section. The index has lots of entries; among them are characters names as well as the elements in drawing. Both of these things should be useful to the reader/artist.

Highly recommended for the budding artist and/or the young Star Wars enthusiast.

For more information about this book, please visit DK's website.

I'd like to thank Chris at DK Canada for this review copy and for inviting me to participate in the May the 4th Be With You promotion.

You Can Draw: Star Wars by Bonnie Burton, Dorling Kindersley (DK), ©2007. ISBN 9780756623432(Hardcover), 97p.

MAY THE 4th BE WITH YOU!

DK Celebrates Star Wars™ and Reading in Canada!

DK Publishing is delighted to announce a special online event celebrating reading and Star Wars!

On May the 4th, ten Canadian blogs and websites will each be posting reviews of a selection of DK’s Star Wars titles (including the New York Times bestseller – The LEGO Star Wars Visual Dictionary) and the DK Canada website will launch a contest where Canadians are invited to send in photos of themselves, friends and family reading Star Wars books.

For every photo submitted, DK Publishing will donate a “toonie” to Frontier College, Canada’s original literacy organization. One of the photos will be selected as a winning image, with the entrant receiving a complete DK Star Wars library (valued at $400). Also a donation of a complete DK Readers Star Wars collection (29 books) will be made to the Canadian school or library of the winners choice.

The May the 4th Be With You Photo Contest will run from May 4th until May 31st and will be accessible online at the DK Starwars page. 

Participating Websites:
Jedi News
The Supermom
Serendipitous Readings
Daisy’s Book Blog
One Movie Five Views
Canadian Ladybug
Another Day, Another Thought
Bored Mommy
Sal’s Fiction Addiction

About Frontier College:
Frontier College has been a leader in providing literacy programs since 1899. Literacy is an essential skill in today’s world. At Frontier College, we believe it’s a fundamental right. Low literacy skills are directly linked to poverty, poor health and high unemployment. Through a network of thousands of volunteers, Frontier College is helping Canadians to realize their potential and seize the opportunities that come their way. For more information about Frontier College visit www.frontiercollege.ca

About DK Publishing
Founded in 1974, DK (Dorling Kindersley) is the visionary publisher renowned for its innovative nonfiction books in which words and pictures are closely integrated to combine comprehensive reference material and superb design in order to present information with unrivalled clarity.

STAR WARS™ and related properties are trademarks and/or copyrights, in the United States and other countries, of Lucasfilm Ltd. and/or its affiliates. TM & © Lucasfilm Ltd. All rights reserved. All other trademarks and trade names are properties of their respective owners.

Flood Watch - 2011 - My Backyard - The Situation Worsens

I haven't been posting much (especially book reviews) or keeping up with my Google Reader because the flood situation has gotten much worse. Anxiety is high, patience is thin and nerves are getting frayed.

The house is still high and dry (for now), but I can't say the same for our yard. We are not completely surrounded by water yet (unlike some of our neighbours), but we might be by the time this thing is over.   Our sump pump is going like crazy and we have two other pumps standing by.   We still don't have plans to sandbag (that could change any minute), but we have been out helping with sandbagging other houses.

Two nights ago our front yard filled with water and covered part of our driveway. It's getting deeper by the minute and is now coming in from different directions. Our side yards have been filling up for a few days and will more than likely flood our sheds. There's even more water on the way.

I have tons of photos to share, but right now it's taking up too much of my time to post them. Maybe when things calm down a bit.   The crest should happen in a few days, but the water is likely to stay around for weeks.   Not good news. 

I have a couple of book reviews that I promised I'd have up for the 4th. I will be posting these on time.

Once this flood situation is more stable I hope to get back to more book reviews.

Thanks for your patience.