I'm female, married, Canadian, and a member of the lost generation. 1942 born in London, Ontario.

My interests are:

reading
photography
creative writing
painting, acrylics, oils and watercolours
sewing, design my own appliqué-style quilts
sailing
tinker with house building, we've finished our retirement home and it by necessity, has to be the last one

RVing, we keep our RV in Fayetteville, North Carolina and go there for short holidays during winters for relief from the cold

gardening...am an avid square foot gardener, an intensive planting method. Like to make preserves
cooking

I do know how to play golf, but don't play often. (I'm not a keen sports fan, nor do I watch much TV)

Anyone's hobby or interest, I like to hear about provided they have expertise.

I have one grown daughter and she blessed us with two beautiful grandchildren, a girl, and boy. Bre wanted to go to University this fall, but her marks weren't good enough for acceptance. She's gone back to High School and is taking more courses in an attempt to bring up her marks. Tory, her brother, is 18 months younger and because of the dates of their birthdays, both will attend university Fall 2008.

My career spanned several jobs and careers. I started working at age 16 as a typist. Christine, my only child, was born when I was 18. We grew up together. L0L And what a delight she was...intelligent and striking in appearance.

I went back to work just before she started kindergarten and worked in offices for an additional 6 years. The job that inspired me to go to University as an adult was after being hired by the University of Western Ontario, Richard Ivey School of Business to operate their IBM1130. That's when I found how deficient my education was and decided to go full time. To go to unversity I needed to get three grade 13 credits, which I attended night school to get before taking an entrance examination for admittance to Huron College, University of Western Ontario on the basis of being an adult student. (I did not attend grades eleven, twelve and received only three credits from grade 13.) My experience at University made me ecstatic, but the summer after completing my first year, I had my third operation for ovarian cysts. Unfortunately, the cysts were malignant, but I wasn't told until November when my gynecologist had no choice because he wanted me to take cobalt treatments. I withdrew from university in late November before starting the treatments because I didn't think I'd be able to concentrate on my studies. Taking the treatments improved the prognosis and after getting better, the following fall, decided to return to school. But it didn't make sense to consider long term goals at that time in my life and elected to take a one-year course at Althouse College, University of Western Ontario (Teacher's training school). I received my diploma and my permanent teaching certificate two years later. I left the high school where I enjoyed teaching and taught commercial at Fanshawe College on a 'supply basis', because of the missing undergraduate degree. My husband's business (he started a yacht-building business in 1980) and needed my services and I left college teaching to join his company as the Secretary/Treasurer.

There I found my groove and stayed in that capacity 'til the present. Quite a fascinating career, meeting people, building custom boats, maintaining our company website and making up promotional material, attending shows and taking up sailing ourselves in the 1960s which we've developed over the years. Our daughter joined us in sailing and ran the foredeck of our competition boat.

Ooops didn't mention that Haydn and I were involved in sports car rallying at the international level. Met super interesting people across Canada and parts of the United States while involved in that male-dominated sport. We retired from that sport when Renault no longer made rear-wheel drive cars. Haydn, my husband, never could get the hang of driving around corners with front-wheel drive and I refused to navigate for him unless and until he could. I developed a distinct distaste for driving off the ends of tee intersections at speed into gullies and trees. I hung up my helmet and told him I'd navigate for him again after he'd mastered corners. L0L He never did and rolled the brand-new R12 Gordini, Renault had given us as a replacement for our old R8-Gordini that won the 1971 BC Centennial Rally that started in Ottawa and finished in Victoria, BC. Prime Minister Trudeau was supposed to have been at the end to award Haydn his trophy, but unfortunately, he did not arrive. Pity...meeting Pierre in person would have been a joy.

Both my husband and I experienced fascinating lives and always look forward to new interests, sports and things of interest from a wide range.

I'm the traveller, Haydn not so much and it's getting increasingly harder to convince him to travel to places that lack western amenities. Since I don't like to travel without him, I adopted the strategy of limiting mine to areas where he'll participate.

We would like to take our 27' sailing trawler that Haydn designed and built and become members of the Chicago Great Loop Association. That route starts in the fall from Chicago, travels down the Mississippi waterway, joins up with the Tombigbee Waterway, exiting in the Gulf of Mexico. Winter in Florida or the Bahamas, or fly back and take the return Spring trip using the Florida Inland Waterway System, a 30 mile Atlantic trip to the Hudson River, travelling north to the Erie Barge Canal to Lake Ontario, staying in Kingston then travelling North up the Rideau Canal Waterway to Ottawa, back to Kingston, travelling west across Ontario via the Trent/Severn Waterway, holidaying in the North Channel and perhaps travelling back from Lake Huron to Lake Michigan to begin the Great Loop over again using a slightly different route to get us back to the Gulf.

There are hundreds of inland waterways that present places to go, people to meet and things to do and the sailing trawler presents the perfect boat to do it.

Our daughter's interest in sailing seems to be percolating again. She and her husband joined us this summer and sailed with us. We've told them they can use the boat anytime they want to and she's now re-acquiring the skills to operate it and go places. They're also thinking about using our RV in North Carolina. It pleases both of us that we own some things we'll be able to give to her after we no longer use them.

Still lots of things we want to see and do and we'll be able to do them together if she and her hubby and our grandchildren would like to share our adventures with us. No one in our family, including us, has any desire to cross vast oceans of water to get to places, but we enjoy reading about and seeing other people who don't have the same interests we do.

I'm now in the process of 'finally' completing my undergraduate degree that I started in 1969, and expect to graduate with my BA, framed and hanging on my wall Spring 2008. The five courses I'm taking are from Lakehead University, North Bay, Ontario, offers them online. Technology is fantastic--the world, a wondrous place that offers unlimited challenge, opportunity, excitement and choice.

Canuck