I’m not doing Earth Hour. Yes, obviously I’m against climate change. But I think the whole Earth Hour notion is pointless and misguided for a number of reasons. First, it’s yet more preaching to the converted. What’s the point of an event which caters only to those already sympathetic and in the know? Second, it’s […]
Random rules for living
Everyone and his brother seems to be listifying rules for life these days. So here’s my totally random list of wisdom, at least as it bubbles to the top of my mind at the moment: In matters of plumbing, the answer to the question “Gee, do you suppose there’s still water in that pipe I’m […]
Ah, spring
…or not. That’s a picture of my front garden as it appeared yesterday afternoon. The other day I was going through my photos looking for something else entirely and I happened across this picture (below) from March 13 2007: Note the lack of snow covering the garden. Note the beginnings of crocuses. Today is March […]
I feel unclean
I was listening to someone’s playlist on last.fm and it caught me off-guard. Hey, I thought, this is pretty good, what is it? Radiohead?! Bleah!
The book
Thursday evening I excavate M’s backpack and pull out two Magic Tree House books which she has chosen to bring home from the school library. Stories! We’ve had week after week after week after week of educational nonfiction books about sea creatures. It’s entirely karmically appropriate given my own childhood reading preferences that I am […]
On the way home
My colleagues and I settled into our VIA trip yesterday. The snack cart went by, then the conductor came by to collect our tickets, perhaps 30 minutes out of Windsor. Just as the conductor was returning our ticket stubs his radio squawked: “Uh, we just hit something, over”. “OK” responds the conductor tersely, disappears. The […]
Walking
Quotation of the Day for February 25, 2008 “Walking, ideally, is a state in which the mind, the body, and the world are aligned, as though they were three characters finally in conversation together, three notes suddenly making a chord. Walking allow us to be in our bodies and in the world without being made […]
Book a Month Challenge – Heart
The February challenge was to read and review a book about “heart”. I intended to flake out with a fluffy and enjoyable romance but Telling Tales: Living the Effects of Public Policy (Sheila Neysmith, Kate Bezanson, Anne O’Connell, 2005) came up in my library hold queue and having read it I can’t think of a […]
They don’t make it easy
$244 to Vancouver, or $245 to Paris? Well now. Good coffee in both places, but Vancouver baguettes cannot possibly compare…
Don’t Get Too Comfortable
By David Rakoff Don’t Get Too Comfortable is a series of Rakoff’s essays on the simultaneous pleasantness and embarrassing excess of modern American life — as it says on the cover, “the indignities of coach class, the torments of low thread count, the never-ending quest for artisanal olive oil, and other First World problems”. It’s […]
They can. They just won’t.
Here are the tracks left by one of the sidewalk snow plows by a park in my neighbourhood. You know, the plows that “won’t fit” on the sidewalks in front of people’s houses, but somehow manage to fit on the bits of identical sidewalks adjacent to city property — parks, schools, bus stops…. As Spacing […]
29* things to be happy about
If Mark Morford can come up with 29 things to be happy about, I imagine I can too. Central heating and a non-leaky roof. I’ve spent enough time living in tents that I really grok the utter luxury that is the concept of Inside. Get wet? No problem; you can go inside where it’s warm […]
Book a Month Challenge – Time
(I’m a bit late with this review, but I plead work-related travel.) The January challenge was to read & review a book on the theme of time. I rather randomly chose Madeleine L’Engle’s An Acceptable Time off a shelf of kids’ fiction at the library. I remember enjoying A Wrinkle in Time when I was […]
Picture yourself lounging in that chair… mmm…
Picture yourself lounging in that chair… mmm… Originally uploaded by morecoffeeplease. Or you could remember that no, that chair was last week, and this week there is an office and email and 4032 unread items in my RSS. Sigh.
Good point
Quotation of the Day for January 5, 2008 “Because it does not take much courage to fight when you still believe you can win. What takes real courage is to keep fighting when all hope is gone.” – Deqing, Shaolin monk, explaining why heroes in Western action movies (who usually succeed) are less heroic than […]
On skivvies, skimpiness of
Her Way Sucks, I Prefer His: I discovered accidentally, about 10 years ago, that men feel entitled to wear comfortable underwear that covers their entire ass. The whole thing. Can you believe it? They feel entitled to comfortable underwear that covers their whole ass. Both cheeks entirely. They don’t feel they should shrink their ass […]
Happy Introvert Day
The existing holidays are well and good, but they’re all missing something: time in which everyone else, no matter how beloved and non-intrusive, goes away and leaves one in blessed peace and silence. Think about it. Valentine’s Day? About being with other people. Easter? ditto, but add even more sugar. Halloween? For the hordes. Christmas? […]
And so, 2008.
Some of us are not well suited to staying up late, so we hauled out the ginger ale and maraschino cherries and champagne flutes and celebrated New Year’s GMT* at 7pm our time. Having remote grandparents means that M has been well familiar with the concept of timezones for quite a while, so we didn’t […]