sara graduation

First of all, belated Happy Birthday wishes to Phil Allcock, Taunya Shiffer, and Scott Snyder!

Congratulations to Lloyd Llanda and Karen Linsley for being named one of the five finalists in the Mars Society's Rouget de Lisle awards. They will be performing their song, "The Pioneers of Mars", on August 12th in Toronto at the Mars Society's annual conference (the song will be on the Society's Ares CD-ROM). Not only that, but Lloyd and Karen have also been nominated for an Aurora Award for outstanding achievement (category: other, fan) in Canadian Science Fiction. The winners will be announced July 16 at Toronto Trek. People can vote without being members of "Canvention" but to do so costs $5 and you have to go to the following site: www.sentex.net/~dmullin/aurora/. That five bucks enables you to vote in all categories. The deadline is June 30th. I notice that other filkers are also on the ballot...Joel Polowin (under the Fan Achievement category), for example. Lloyd and Yvonne Penney have also been nominated for several categories...though they're not strictly filkers, they ran a great con suite at FilKONtario for years. :-)

Graham Leather's CD is available for just CAN$15...just send him an e-mail for more info.

Graduation

My 5-year-old niece Sara graduated from senior kindergarten last week! Jeff and I took the morning off work to attend the event; we've been attending for three years now, since Sara started at the school. There were about 5-6 classes of children, and Sara was the very last one to graduate (classes were presented youngest to oldest, and in alphabetical order within each class). Each child was asked what they wanted to be when they grew up. There were lots of teachers, doctors, firefighters, and paleontologists (obviously there was a school trip to see the dinosaur exhibit at the museum :)). Sara said she wanted to be a ballet teacher when she grew up.

As I watched her walk up to the podium for her certificate, I couldn't help but remember how uncertain and small she was when she was led to the same podium three years ago, and how much more confident she was now. Next year she starts at another school, for first grade.

Afterwards, Sara came running up to us, bursting with excitment. Ruth told her how proud she was of her, and that seeing Sara graduate had made her teary-eyed.

"I made you CRY?" asked Sara in wonder. A huge, delighted grin spread across her face. "You CRIED, Mommy?"

"Yes, Sara, you made me cry." Ruth was smiling.

And yes, I was all weepy, too. :-)

Today's blatherpic is a photo of Sara and Annie from several years ago. The blanket that Annie is lying upon is the one I laboriously crocheted when I heard that Ruth was pregnant was Sara. It was my first and last successful needlework project.