 |
welcomes you
to her
Archives |
Now playing :
Bob Seger's
"Old Time Rock'n Roll"
Click here for the
French version |
Summer 1999
Calgary Stampede: July 8-18, 1999
The kids all dressed up for a free pancake breakfast!
And my last two, brand new pages:
My Lion Collection and
My Lion Calendar
The following, is an update on the different areas of my site as of August 1999:
Em'Lynn's Casablanca Tribute
My Casablanca page has evolved into six updated pages,
to include the setting, the movie, links, quotes, characters and pictures.
The Lion Home School
My homeschooling pages now include some pictures and
two forms I designed: a monthly report card and a weekly track sheet.
Em'Lynn's Bookmarks
I completely updated my bookmarks: a single but easy to navigate page;
all the links were checked in June 99 and it will be updated at least monthly.
Em'Lynn's Archives
While updating this page, I updated my Archives;
they now include our move with some pictures and all my small banners.
Em'Lynn's Family Photo Album
Not yet updated, it includes some family pictures
from my father's childhood in World War 1 France to 1998 Calgary.
Em'Lynn's Babylon 5 Domain & Referral
I updated all 15 Babylon 5 pages, checking all links
(and a lot of good sites shut down with the final episode last winter).
Em'Lynn's Babylon 5
Landscapes and Interior Views
I added this new 11 MB address to my Babylon 5 site;
it currently contains 107 video captured images viewable in several ways.
Em'Lynn's Crusade Chronicles
This tribute to the Babylon 5 spin-off series Crusade,
now contains 7 pages including 10 outdoor + 10 indoor views of the Excalibur.
Em'Lynn's Crusade
Episode Pictures
I added this new 11 MB address to my Crusade site to present
about two dozen video captured images from each of the 13 episodes.
Em'Lynn Web Design
I updated my web design area; it now has 5 pages.
I added 4 new backgrounds from Babylon 5 images, zipped fonts and a color table.
How to Build a Homepage
I thorough revamped this page, still with children in mind
but most of the (updated) links are intended for grown ups.
Calgary
My children's tribute to their home city now has a new look.
As much as I enjoy creating new pages, updating and checking links
is really not very exciting - especially when my site keeps growing and growing... I now have 188 pages of my own spread out over 5 transparently interwoven Geocities addresses! That doesn't include my children's sites - 5 other Geocities addresses - which I haven't updated since the spring of 1998... (and next on my update list, after this page)! I really do feel kind of overwhelmed!
Of course, it's not 188 different topics as each subject can cover anywhere from 1 to 20-some pages. This number does include, however, the French side of my website which has the translation of some of my English topics
(homeschooling,
photo album,
Calgary,
building a homepage,
news,
archives,
lions,
France,
Canada) but also it's very own topics, not translated into English:
French poetry and my favorite singer of all times:
Michel Sardou! I haven't bothered to translate my Babylon 5 and Casablanca sites because I just don't have enough information or links on those subjects in French... As for my bookmarks, I just added the French links onto the English page - it's just too big to translate and it changes too often to update in both languages!
The three sites I haven't developed yet remain:
France,
Canada and
Lions - with the exception of my brand new
Lion Collection and
Lion Calendar mentioned above!
My biggest news is described at the end of my Homeschooling page: I sent my kids to school for May and June and now to daycamp for July and August so that I could to work as an office temp for various personnel agencies in order to somewhat improve our current financial difficulties.
Life for a family of six on a single (restaurant manager) income can only be tough. Ours is made up of a huge debt load and a willingness to put aside personal pride to drive beaten up old cars, buy mostly second-hand and never hesitate to ask about subsidies! The truth is, working exclusively for new cars, new clothes and loan payments does not appeal to me, not at the expense of the children who would have longer days than us, very little time with me and a lot less with their father; and especially not while I would have to pay some stranger to look after my youngest...
So I'm trying temp work while I can, but assignments aren't as readily available for me as they were 15 years ago when I first started out... I guess that a 7-year absence from the workforce is much less acceptable than I had anticipated... I worked 6 weeks, then nothing for 5 weeks, then a 4-week assignement which has now been extended an extra two and half months...
So I'll be working into the fall, hopefully only Monday through Thursday. I wouldn't if some idiot (near-sighted? brain-dead?) didn't try to steal both our old and ugly cars, the day before my birthday, incurring $800 damages on each one!!! We got the better one of the two fixed but the other one just wasn't worth the repair cost. So we went looking for a replacement car and bought one (smaller, but 5 years newer, at least) for $300 + $450 repairs. So $1550 later, we need to pay for it all...
But I've decided to keep on homeschooling. This will be quite interesting as Daddy will have to homeschool two days a week, on his days off, and I'll have to homeschool two or three days, on my days off, depending on what is needed, and we'll need a babysitter for the remaining two days... The kids should benefit from the shared teaching and from having their father more involved in their schoolwork.
Ideally, to avoid childcare while continuing to homeschool, I'd like to do some part-time computer-related work from my home but I haven't found my "niche" yet... Most of my skills are superficial. Fortunately, though, my top qualities are adaptability, efficiency and fast learning. I just need to find the right field. I'm not really a "people's person" - preferring by far to be behind-the-scenes rather than in the spot light, and I'm definitely not a salesperson. I have no investment whatsoever available. Basically, I can't think of many options. Suggestions would be most welcome!!!
I don't watch a lot of "commercial-infested" TV as I usually prefer to stick to movies on video! But there are always a couple of shows that I watch regularly - after videotaping them first, of course, so that I can watch them when I want and fast-forward all the commercials...! Right now, I'm enjoying, in this manner, the Babylon 5 spinoff Crusade every Saturday and a show that I used to watch when I was a kid, and that my children are now enjoying with me: "I dream of Jeannie". What I find funny is that, re-watching Major Neilson in Jeannie, I can't help but see Dallas' evil JR whereas when I used to watch Dallas (a long time ago, and only for the first few seasons), I never once thought of bland Major Neilson! I guess this shows how much a strong role can mark an actor!
Here are a few links to "I dream of Jeannie" pages:
I Dream of Jeannie
www.idreamofjeannie.com
Jeannie's page
Jeannie Land
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Fall 1998
This fall, thanks to the
Space Channel, I started the daily videotaping of
Babylon 5,
my favorite TV series, from its very first episode
all the way to the end of its fifth and last season. And, every evening,
the whole family is enjoying the 1991-94 series
Dinosaurs which the
Family Channel is airing five days a week. The Sinclair family is
like the Simpson's, but a little less obnoxious!
Babylon 5 |
Dinosaurs |
Unfortunately, as I was saying before on this page, I think
I overdid myself when planning my website! And making it bilingual
automatically doubled the number of pages! The maintenance is what really
takes time. I must now have about 120 pages in total...! So, once
again, please accept my apologies if the part of my website that you
really want to visit still isn't quite ready... I hope to finish my
(Lion
pages real soon but probably won't get a chance to really get into
France and
Canada
until after Christmas. In the meantime, please don't hesitate to send me
any relevant links on those topics: I would welcome the help gladly
as I don't get to surf nearly as much as I would like to...!
And if you could report any dead links, I would appreciate that
greatly too! |
Back to Index
Spring and Summer 1998
Since April 15th, I haven't had a minute to myself -
that means no Internet time except for a quick daily email check!
First, it was packing - until our June 2nd moving date. Then it was
renovations (remodeling the basement and installing parquet flooring in
the dining and living rooms). Then we went through our annual 10-day
Stampede madness
(we go out everyday for free breakfasts and entertainment throughout the
city!). Then it was time to unpack, sort and
organize everything (and, boy, do we have a lot of stuff!). Finally,
I had to set up for our new year of
homeschooling.
All of this while fighting an on and off flu virus and controlling
four over-excited kids!!!
So, what a Spring and Summer 1998 we just went through! But it was all well worth our efforts: from a small 3-bedroom 2-storey house with an unfinished
basement, we went to a 5-bedroom bungalow with a fully developed
basement...
Our house in summer |
Our house in the fall |
Upstairs is a large L-shaped living room/dining room with a
raised red brick fireplace; a good size eat-in kitchen;
the master bedroom with its full ensuite, the bedrooms of the two youngest
and the main bathroom.
Our upstairs fireplace |
Our living room |
Our kitchen |
Our kitchen table |
Downstairs is the bedrooms of the two oldest,
a third bathroom, an under-the-stairs Barbie playroom, a cozy family/TV
room with a grey brick fireplace, a "real" schoolroom
(with 4 individual
student desks, a teacher's desk, a blackboard and two computers) and,
finally, a huge open play area - and the laundry/storage room.
Our schoolroom |
The Barbie playroom |
It's so nice to have space with just about everything unpacked,
including those things that had remained in boxes for years (for
lack of space and/or fear of kids!!!) such as:
My Lion Collection
(most of my smaller lions) |
My Grandmother's
Doll House |
The kids love having their own bedrooms and a "real" schoolroom.
There's less mess, less arguing and more privacy! Of course, the
increase in mortgage payments is proportionate to the increase in
comfort!!! |
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Early 1998
Here, in Calgary, the year 1998 started with a cold spell (-35 Celsius from
January 1st to the 20th) but the warm Chinook wind soon worked it's
magic and brought the temperatures above zero again - until our surprise
giant snowfall in mid-March! We had two feet of snow in less than 24
hours (what a mess to shovel up!) but it melted away in just a few days!
It was beautiful, so white under a blue cloudless sky - just really messy!
I really hate cold weather and I must admit this was a lucky year:
except for the one cold spell and the one snow fall, we had
an exceptionally warm and pleasant winter - especially after the
last two dreadful winters we had (freezing cold, lots of snow, slippery
ice and no "melt-down" for almost six months straight...)
Spring and Summer were very hot with some very heavy rains (mostly at night)
but mostly lots and lots of sunshine. July and August were extremely hot (above 30 degrees C
average) with too few clouds. There were lots of agressive bugs this year -
mosquitoes from May to July and wasps in August and September. Luckily,
we had to settle into our new house and spent more time indoors than out!
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Homepage Design Information
In the Spring of 1998, just before getting ready to move, I created
my own
Web Design page including my very own
lines, buttons, bullets and
backgrounds. Please feel free to use any
of them, just please copy them onto your own site and include a link to my page. I don't have any sophisticated graphics software but just experimented with Paint Shop Pro and
Alchemy Mindwork's GIF Construction Set...
Long before that, I uploaded two pages for testing text colour on various
backgrounds. The first one,
"
colors" (plural) has one line of text written
once in each of the 216 colours available; the second one, "color"
(singular) has 30 lines of text written in the same colour to test
photo-backgrounds (where different areas of the picture are different
colours).
Feel free to copy the html code for these pages and use them to test out
your own backgrounds. All you need to do is change the background image on
both and the font colour you select on the second one (in two places but
on the same line)... And if you just want to look at samples of all 256
colours, visit this useful page which helped me design my "colors" test
page: J.Gilson's
256 Colour Table.
For those who haven't created a homepage yet, it's not so hard! I made a
reference page for my children (but just as useful for grown-ups) with the best links to learn HTML,
find graphics, music and everything else required to build a homepage.
Check it out!
|
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My Small Banner Collection
Feel free to copy the one(s) you want,
to include a link to my pages!
|
My first home in
Geocities' Area 51:
SciFi and Fantasy
 |
My second home in
Geocities' Heartland:
Family, Pets, Home
 |
My third home in
Geocities' Paris:
France and Tourism
 |
What's New
on my website
and in my life?
 |
My Guestbook
open for viewing
and for signing
 |
Homeschooling
Why? and How?
Pros and Cons
 |
Babylon 5
Domain and
Reference
 |
Casablanca - the
classic movie with
Bogart and Bergman
 |
France
and Paris -
where my heart is
 |
Canada
and the Rockies -
where my life is
 |
The Lion
King of the
Animal Kingdom
 |
Family Album
four generations
of souvenirs
 |
Bookmarks
my whole
collection
 |
Archives
everything I save
from older pages
 |
And one extra banner
for good luck!
 |
Back to Index
That's it for now - come back and visit!
|
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Last update: February 12, 2000
~
Write me at
emlynn@geocities.com
Send me your comments and suggestions,
and please let me know if there are any dead links
as I don't have the time to check them too often...!
~
Background: © Em'Lynn
Horizontal rulers: © Pegasus
Music: Music Odyssey
~
All my pages are hand-coded,
no HTML editors have been used.
~
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