Happy Easter!

When I was young all the kids had to fnd their baggie full of chocolate

The older kids (of 13) hid the baggies in the hardest placest.

I remember one year, I could not find my baggie anywhere.

I had checked and checked, but nothing.

My brothers laughed at my despair.

Finally, one relented and got mine for me -
It was behind the clock.

Happy Easter

 

Dundas Square, Toronto is like Times Square now

The lights are much brighter there
You can forget all your troubles
Forget all your cares and go
Downtown!
- Toronto, that is.

Banff, British Columbia, Canada 2000

Birding, my Hummer and San Diego Photo shoot

Wow! My birder brother invited me to go to San Diego on a birding photo shoot.  I've never been officially invited by real birders to go on a birding trip, and it is pretty exciting, even it I can't go.  I just took my vacation and have none left until summer.  Wah.  Work sucks.  But it is nice to think I could have gone.

My daughter and I are part-birder, not full-fledged.  We get excited when we see a fresh bird and always keep our eyes peeled for unusual birds around, then look them up in our book that shows a picture and makes the call sound of the bird.

When she is bored, my daughter likes to sit on the front porch and call the rock doves - she does a really good imitation of the bird - then when they come in close and tilt their head to listen to her call, she presses the button on the book and it makes the screeeeeech! of the red hawk and scares the dove away. But they always come back for more. She likes the hawks better than the doves and sees them flying over her schoolyard. She points them out to the other kids - "Look! A hawk! A hawk!" But they answer - "So?" So, we are part-birders. She is also demonstrating a good eye for photography lately, so she has the birder/photographer family blood. She wants to go on a bird/photo walk through the Rouge and I know a guy from work who does the tours through there.

I do, however, have a bird-photo-trophy.  It is a hummingbird. Taken in St. Thomas, Virgin Islands, at the top of a huge mountain. I heard it fly by my head and go into the bush, so I took about 10 pictures in the direction I heard it land, but the sun was too bright on the viewfinder so I could not see what I was shooting. Turned out pretty good. My birder brother says it is a cool Hummer.  He thinks it may actually be sleeping -awesome - I caught a hummingbird sleeping!  But, I think it still has it's eyes open.
 
Check it out...

How I know it is spring despite the ice wind

In the cold sunshine,
On the stone wall,
By the wide, black highway
Oblivious to rush hour
Or the whooshing multitude
Of frenzied vehicles
Perched two puffed-up pigeons
Kissing

Code is not poetry, Wordpress

Wordpress.org has a slogan - Code is Poetry.
As a web developer, I thought that it was cool when I first saw it, then ignored it, pretty much.  But after writing a piece recently - a song - I started thinking about it.  I thought about all the poems I have written and then compared it to the code I have written.  I think I have come to my conclusion on the issue. Code is not poetry - but poetry can be code. The purpose of poetry is to encapsulate emotion. To create emotional bullets. Code does not. It does not contain an emotional punchline as you can find in most poems.  Songs can be poetry. Comedy can be poetry. Rants, rhymes and curses can all be poetry.  Code can be concise, precise and efficient - which some people may call beautiful, but it does not evoke an empathetic response in the reader and enhance the sense of human unity through shared emotional experiences - like poetry does.  Code is code, Wordpress, and even all your popularity and all the many pageviews by all your many daily users cannot turn that slogan into truth - or code into poetry.

Grateful Today: for the rainbow I saw through the rain while driving the highway to work. (Not a double rainbow, but I have seen one of those as well.  If you have never heard about the Double Rainbow YouTube thing, click here for more. )

Songwriting while driving?

I know you are not supposed to drive and talk on your cell phone, but
what about driving down the 401 singing and recording it on your
Blackberry? Well, I was only going 20 km in bumper-to-bumper traffic,
so it's not as bad as it sounds. Crows cawing as I write this, yeah.
So, I wrote these lyrics long ago and could never come up with a melody
to go with them - until today - and it happened to happen as I was
driving on the 401.
They go like this:
"Change is the only constant in life,
Forget the past, it only brings strife,
Move with the moment, learn how to dance,
Tomorrow's a dream. Today is your chance."
So, I had to record it before it got away - like the scent of a passing
woman's perfume.
No wonder I am not good at the high-profile jobs I always manage to get
myself into. When I focus on the job, I am great, "always on" and just
what everybody wants me to be, but as soon as I figure out how to do the
job and it gets to be second nature, I start songwriting in between
tasks and then juggling gets tough. But I can't help it. I am a
songwriter first. Everything else is really just the things I have to do
to maintain a life of status quo.

How to Modify the "Send To" Menu

When you right-click a file, you can send it to a program to open.  For instance, if you want to send your .avi file to VLC player and the file is currently associated with QuickTime, you can right-click the file, choose "send to" and you will see a list of programs in the menu.  But what if the program you want to send it to is not on the list?  Here is how you can modify that list:

 

To add a destination to the Send To menu, add a shortcut to the Windows\SendTo folder. To do so, follow these steps:

Click the Start button, and then click Run.

1. Type "sendto" (without quotation marks) in the Open box, and then click OK.
2. Add a shortcut using either of the following methods: (Go to the program files folder and make a shortcut from the program file - the .exe file)
• Drag a new shortcut to the folder:
  Use the right mouse button to drag a destination to the SendTo folder, and then click Create Shortcut Here on the menu that appears.
• Create a new shortcut with the Create Shortcut Wizard:
• 1. On the File menu, point to New, and then click Shortcut.
  2. Follow the instructions in the Create Shortcut Wizard.

Removing a Shortcut

To remove a shortcut, use the right mouse button to click the shortcut in the SendTo folder, and then click Delete on the menu that appears.

Harry Potter scarf - in the round

Harry Potter Scarf

Supplies

2 skeins red heart super saver in soft navy

2 skeins red heart super saver in lt. gray

Size 8 - 16 inch knitting needles that are attached to each other with a string of plastic (circular needles)

- yarn needle for sewing the ends together.

- crochet hook for making fringes



Scarf:


Using navy, cast on 72 st.itches.

Work in stockinette stitch.  When you are using a circular needle, this means just knit every row.  Put a safety pin at the start of the row so you can tell when you have finished a row.  Knit 21 rows of navy.

Switching color to silver/grey after 21 rows.  To switch colours, just cut the navy thread, leaving about 4 inches hanging on the inside of the work.  Then take the grey thread and leave about 4 inches hanging to match the navy on the inside of the work, knit a few stitches using the grey thread, then go back and tie a knot using the navy and grey 4 inch hanging pieces. 

Knit 21 rounds of each colour until 19 stripes are completed. Put the dark colur on the outsite - Red/Yellow scarves had red on both end. 

Bind off in the colour you were knitting.  Iron flat, then sew together. 

Make fringes.  Cut yarn into 14 in. pieces, enough for fringe.

Use the crochet hook and in groups of 4 fringe the ends together alternating colors.

Wear and enjoy.

Smile

 "A smile costs nothing but gives much. It enriches those who receive without making poorer those who give. It takes but a moment, but the memory of it sometimes lasts forever. None is so rich or mighty that he cannot get along without it, and none is so poor that he cannot be made rich by it. Yet a smile cannot be bought, begged, borrowed, or stolen, for it is something that is of no value to anyone until it is given away. Some people are too tired to give you a smile. Give them one of yours, as none needs a smile so much as he who has no more to give." ~Author Unknown

Kindergarten rules - a guide for life

Click here to go to my site for the poster to put on your fridge.



"All I really need to know about how to live and what to "do and how to be I learned in kindergarten. Wisdom was not at the top of the graduate school mountain, but there in the sand pile at school.

These are the things I learned:

Share everything.

Play fair.
Don't hit people.

Put things back where you found them.

Clean up your own mess.

Don't take things that aren't yours.

Say you're sorry when you hurt somebody.

Wash your hands before you eat.

Flush.

Warm cookies and cold milk are good for you.

Live a balanced life - learn some and think some and draw and paint and sing and dance and play and work every day some.

Take a nap every afternoon.

When you go out in the world, watch out for traffic, hold hands and stick together.

Be aware of wonder. Remember the little seed in the Styrofoam cup: the roots go down and the plant goes up and nobody really knows how or why, but we are all like that.

Goldfish and hamsters and white mice and even the little seed in the Styrofoam cup - they all die. So do we.

And then remember the Dick-and-Jane books and the first word you learned - the biggest word of all - LOOK.

Everything you need to know is in there somewhere. The Golden Rule and love and basic sanitation. Ecology and politics and equality and sane living.

Take any one of those items and extrapolate it into sophisticated adult terms and apply it to your family life or your work or government or your world and it holds true and clear and firm. Think what a better world it would be if we all - the whole world - had cookies and milk at about 3 o'clock in the afternoon and then lay down with our blankies for a nap. Or if all governments had as a basic policy to always put things back where they found them and to clean up their own mess.
And it is still true, no matter how old you are, when you go out in the world, it is best to hold hands and stick together."

[Source: "ALL I REALLY NEED TO KNOW I LEARNED IN KINDERGARTEN" by Robert Fulghum].

They are only young once

My twelve-year-old daughter was excited because it is her cousin's 13^th birthday.  She is excited also because she will be 13 in a few months.  She said:

 

"Then you won't have any kids anymore, just teenagers."

 

Then she started teasing me:

 

Then I won't run to the door when you come home.

Then I won't tell you I like your songs.

Then I won't hang out with you anymore.

Then I won't go to the movies with you.

Then I won't  colour with you.

Then I won't come with you to the store.

Then I won't give you a hug or a kiss anymore. 

 

I thought about my two other teenage daughters.  She is pretty much right.  Dang, what a good reminder to enjoy kids while they are young instead of hurrying them to grow up.

Win a car!

Did you know that you can Google "Win a Car" and you will find sites where you can win things?  The downside is that you have to give out your information, but hey, you may win a car...  http://www.win-free-stuff.ca/contests/contests-by-prize/win-a-car-contests

 

I dubbed her "562" - now has a home

Thanks to Animal Services in Toronto East and to Elle in Oshawa.  I drove to Oshawa twice today to make sure the kitty has a home. 

Happy Thanksgiving

On Thanksgiving Day, I usually put the turkey in the oven and go somewhere to see all the beautiful fall leaves.  Today, I was not feeling so well, so after putting the turkey in the oven, we went down to the bluffs nearby to look at the swans and the waves and the trees on the cliffs. 

A dog was barking at this swan and he had his wings up and was barking back.  The dog got a little freaked out after that.  Dang - what is that thing?  He wanted to leave, but his master thought it was all very amusing.  Eventually, the swan assumed he had won and swam away. 

We strolled around on this, the fourth beautiful day in a row, and then went home and had a lovely turkey dinner.  The cranberries were spoiled, so my daughter made a nice, but different, mango chutney. 

John Lennon Memorial, New York City

We went to New York in May and visited the John Lennon Memorial in Central Park near the Dakota.  It is at the edge of the park and there are people there all the time.  R.I.P. John Lennon.

Learn from failure

I just got a new job. It took a lot of work. Years of study.  Tests.  My daughter is complaining she can’t get a job. She says she thinks that her resume is a failure. Well, maybe it is, I said.  I told her that I have failed at many job interviews, but it doesn’t matter. Failure shows you what you need to work on next. If you pay attention to your failure and look carefully at what you say about it, you can learn how to do it better next time. Of course, it may take more than one try.

I know I took a long time to look at what I was doing wrong in job interviews and tried to correct them one at a time. Like cracking jokes because you are nervous. People laugh, but it just made me forget what I wanted to say. Or standing up when you give a presentation. You know the answer, but only when you study what happened and why you failed can you see how you should do thing differently in the future. So she thought about it and is going to rewrite her resume. 


I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work. - Thomas Alva Edison

I dumped a PRADA bag in Central Park

Yes. I did. If you find it, it is yours. Brand new. Just hot.

You see, we went to New York for a few days in May for our wedding anniversary. We had never been there before. So on the last night we were doing some souvenier shopping. We bought a snow globe with the empire state building in it and some I Love NY T-shirts.

We were heading back to the hotel and on 7th Avenue we got to the corner of 54th and there were some vendors selling things on the corner. Nothing new – they were there all day long, so we looked at some of the stuff and saw a purse that looked nice. I said I would like it and my husband said “How Much?” The old man answered $45.00, he looked skinny and nervous. He was Afghani or something with long robes and a pillbox kind of hat. In the dark I saw a triangle on the purse as my husband was passing over the cash. Prada. What? I wanted to get out my glasses. I said to the man – is this a Prada purse? He nodded, said “Oh, yes. It is.” Stuffed the cash as the sound of sirens started in the distance. A sharp whistle from two “stalls” down and each of the four vendors bent down and grabbed up the corners of the sheets that their wares were sitting on, threw the huge bundles over their shoulders and ran off down the street. All this happened in 10 seconds or so and I stood there on the street with the bag in my hand and my mouth hanging open.

Yep, says my sister when I got home. Yep, says my niece. Of course – It’s New York! Says my other sister. Well, I was stunned. So, anyway, I thought, I have a nice purse. I took it back to the hotel and was happy for about an hour. Then I started to worry. What if it was stolen? What if it was real? Just how much is a Prada purse worth anyway? I looked on the internet and found a similar purse for about $1200.00. Really? It looked like this.

I started to worry about getting it across the border. Just what I need to be stopped and held for some Prada bag. So I dumped it in Central Park. Damn. Nice bag, too.

So, what would you have done?  Would you have tried to cross the US border with what you thought might be an expensive, stolen Prada handbag?

My Goldfish Froze!

Yesterday I gave my goldfish to a friend who has a new 100-gallon tank and no fish. Today, she told me the fish died overnight – there was ice on the surface in the morning.   Poor fish. The fish was about 3 years old and was an Oranda – a fantail. I called her a she, but I never really knew. Poor fish.

“Bad cop, no doughnut“

So, at work today I decided that in order to make the slight modification to the database was going to involve a great deal of work and paperwork, my enthusiasm for the idea began to dissipate rapidly. I thought I would go get a coffee instead. My colleague suggested I get a doughnut to boot.

Which reminds me of the time I saw a “protest graffiti” on a wall along Queen Street West. There was some kind of police brutality incident in the news at that time and the offending officer got off easy. Too easy according to the graffiti:

“Bad cop, no doughnut“

What’s funnier is that I told this story to my eldest daughter in the kitchen one day and unbeknownst to me, my youngest daughter was listening from the other room. Later, some police officers visited her elementary school classroom and, after the presentation, asked if anyone had any questions. My daughter shoots up her hand and says: “Is it true that cops eat way too many doughnuts?” To which the female officer replies: “Well, we are really trying to eat healthy snacks now and so we try to eat bagels or muffins instead.” Don’t kids say the darndest things?

Media Girl

She sells blow-up dolls Lava-lamps and fringed fuschia pillows
Glass reindeer, optic art, fuzzy balloons
She laughs a red laugh
And smiles a white smile
At a gypsy cart in the middle
Of the big-city mall

Like a rock in a river
The crowd swirls around her
An ever-changing pallet
That paints her each day

Hair, blonde as Marigolds, flossed up in a cone
White skin, breasts mounded (plastic, you know)
Perfume wafting, deep amber musk
Tight skirt, spiked heels
Bangles gold at her wrists
And long pink legs
Crossed, dangling and lean

She knows where it's at
She's seen all the ads
She wants to get that lip thing
That makes you look pouty

Bombarded daily
With the media message
She has become
Their ultimate pitch

Conform! Conform! Conform! Just give me paper bags.

The pressure to conform takes subtle turns, but is constant, continuous and insidious. You may not even notice it when it happens, it can be so quick and innocuous, so casual and quiet. The pressure to conform looks like this:

I was bagging my groceries in Toronto where we have a tax - five cents per bag, so everyone brings their own bags. The woman beside me leans in close, says "Forgot your bags in the car?"

"No," says I, "I like to use the bags for compost" adding, "I don't know how anyone gets by without them." (Heave huge bag onto overfull cart for me and family. )

"I just use these," she points to the clear vegetable bags. "They are good for compost" I stare, thinking, "why didn't I ever think of that?"
We blather on with a few more inanities and off we go. In the parking lot she is parked beside me, her trunk available now because she has had the forethought to back her vehicle in, while mine is the wrong way around. Whatever.
So, I start thinking - I have more groceries, we eat lots of vegetables and fruits. Our compost bag bulges to the brim every day. That puny clear bag she pointed to would break. Therefore, she is wrong, I am right. Yet, why do I feel like my giant cartful of yellow bags is somehow now a big red flag - indicating that I do not conform.  I don't really care, but...
Behind me I hear a man calling out as he runs "Wait, I forgot my bags in the car!"

So, is it me? I suppose so. Eventually, I will come up with an alternate solution. (Maybe use two small bags together?). Pressured to conform, once again.

On the other hand, how about we use paper bags instead?  Like we did when I was very young. Groceries stores would give you paper bags - free - and they would be used for garbage. Wet things went in the toilet, cans in the can garbage, potato peelings were wrapped in newspaper and if the paper bag that you had lining the inside garbage can  did get wet, you would wrap the entire bag and contents in newspaper and put it out in the outside garbage can. Then they invented plastic bags.

Now, they tax you for the bag, expect you to buy reusable bags (which I did, but forgot at home) and overall make you feel bad for using plastic bags while raking in five cents per bag. So, City Hall - why don't you really fix the problem and pass a law that will make grocery stores give us paper bags again?

What I like about Windows 7

Desktop Slideshow! Awesome.

The wallpaper on your desktop can change every few minutes. I love it.
Also, an RSS feed can be setup and you can have new desktop background images downloaded to your computer! Security issues aside, how cool is that?

Gadgets:
Instead of the full sidebar that you had in Vista, you can choose which of these gadgets you like - just the clock, just the small slideshow, just the weather (security again), and you can drag them to anywhere you like on the screen.

Step Recorder:
This gives you the ability to "record steps" of a problem using the new "Step
Recorder". This will make it easier for techs to capture the steps to
resolve a problem or for users to record what is going wrong on their
computer. It is like a tape-recorder; you turn it on, do the steps as
it records, turn it off and it saves the file.

Printers:
Prints to a wps xml-wrapped jpg file that can be ported to another
printer with no need for printer-specific information to be coded in.

Firewall:
More configurable! Comes with plently of presets if you are unsure of
the port you need to open to allow traffic to come in on. Also, you
can set outgoing and incoming, so that unwanted programs that have
lodged like ticks beneath the skin of your registry cannot call home
every ten minutes.

IPv6 by default:
I like this because IPv6 will auto-configure the client segment of the
IP address and there is no subnet mask needed ever. It is a
globally-routable, self-configuring, unique IP address that makes DHCP
futile, redundant and superfluous. No more problems with reserving IP
addressing in the scope (perhaps...) It auto-generates a new client
portion of the address every 24 hours to maintain uniqueness. The
host portion is static and delivered from IANA to regional deployment
centres. It still recognizes IPv4 and allows you to enter a static IP
address.

OK. that's all for now.

Just for today I will change my behaviour

Today I feel like perhaps if I change my behaviour, I will get a different outcome.

Insanity is defined as doing the same thing over and over again and
expecting a different outcome.

If I always expect things will not go well in certain areas of my life, I always get those results. Maybe the first step is seeing that my expectation is "doing something". Maybe changing my expectation a bit will change the result.

African Lion Safari

We went to African Lion Safari this summer.  I took these photos there.  I can only imagine the nervous chatter going on in the car while these two huge rhinos stared at them.  What were they thinking?  Did they not like the colour?  Fed up with cars?  Just fooling around?  Like, who knows?  There are jeeps that go around and make sure that everything stays under control, but these two rhinos don't look like they care much at the moment if they were to be shot at with tranquilizer guns.  Would it even penetrate that thick hide?  Yikes! is all I can say. 

I was much happier to have this ostrich come tapping on our window.

My daughter teases him (her?) with an orange. I swear, they acted like teenage girls preening down the middle of the road trying to get the cars to notice them, tapping at windows, following cars.  This one tried for about five minutes to get the orange while we took pictures.  The oddest thing about an ostrich is that it has ears behind the feathers on the head and they kind of look like human ears.  The funniest thing is watching them take a drink from a pail and then lift their head and kind of gobble, gobble to make it go down their neck.

 Baboons are hoodlums.  Hooligans looking for action.  They jump on your car with the sole intent of doing damage.  They look for the cars they know they can do something to. They hang on the back windshield wiper of vans, yank it until it breaks, meticulously peel all bumper stickers off, wobble antenae back and forth until it breaks off and then they run away with it - a new weapon.  The jeep people chase them to get the antenae.  The baboons run up the tree and wait for the next van. 

 Zebras are celebrities.  They stand and let you admire them in their fancy outfits.  The turn and pose.  This one was just standing by himself at the edge of the road, waiting for attention.  The two behinds in the background were tired of people looking at them.  Fans can be so tiresome, after all. 

Giraffe's are afraid of people and run funny when they run away.
It is hard to believe that God was actually finished with this animal because he looks like he needs some assistance, some modifications in order to actually be comfortable.  I wonder if it true that they only sleep in twenty minute intervals?  Unfinished.  But I like them. e


Last year, it was this guy who stood outside our car and stared at us. Eeeeeek!  That was all I had to say.  Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeek! and Let's go now.

He is very, very big and very, very strong.  I am glad he was resting.  So were the lions who were mainly asleep both times we visited the park that is west of Toronto, Ontario, Canada, near Cambridge.  The kids love it.

The deer are happy and inquisitive. They huddle in clumps under the trees and don't stray very far from the other deer.  They like to check out the people carefully, with what seems to be a judgemental eye.  If they could talk, I bet they would ask why you were wearing that hat or where you got your hair cut.  They want to know about you.  But that's just my take.  You should go visit.  Even just once.  It certainly beats the zoo.    African Lion Safari

Poem: Hot Air Balloon Ride

Ballooning.
Peaceful, fat, bouncy, coloured clouds
that are nice enough to lower a basket
for puny humans to enjoy
their delightful exhilaration.

Foolish grins spread ear to ear,
basket to basket,
like lighting in a thunderstorm,
unstoppable,
exhilarating,
electric.

Above the world,
Nothing between you and the earth
But woven grass.
Dipping and bouncing.

Quiet,
No sound but the wind in your ears,
The rush and shoo of the intermittant burner,
And the supressed giggles of glee
That bubble up and go chasing after the birds.

The sky is so blue

It makes your heart ache

To think it will go away

With the day.

The sun,

Brilliant on the neat squares of farms

Between the white winding

Streamers of road.

Settled elation

What more can you ask for.

Duracell lasts longer than...

My suggestions for alternative slogans:

Duracell lasts longer than...

1. a subway breakdown at 8:50 a.m.

2. a heatwave without a fan.

3. a noisy neighbor the night before a job interview.

4. a colicky baby.

5. a postal strike when the cheque is "in the mail".

6. a washroom lineup at a concert.

Just thinking out loud.

Thank God for nothing

… or how God saved me from my own desires
There was an ad on CraigsList for a rolltop desk made of solid oak for $50.00 in East York. It was cheap, close to home and solid oak. I love rolltop desks! How could I refuse? Especially since I was just looking at desks at the Pottery Barn as I was going through the Eaton’s Centre last week and loving the new collection of “Printer’s” desks, cabinets and hutches. At the Pottery Barn, a writing desk costs $769.00 and it is a model that has no drawers. The actually “keyhole” writing desk has three drawers on each side and a long center drawer. I love that one, but it costs over a thousand. It’s my birthday, so I thought I might get a new desk.

Long ago I got a second-hand oak desk by accident. It kind of fell into my lap. We lived in a small rented flat of a house in the East End and there was a man who rented the second floor of the house. He worked at the CBC. One day he brought home a big oak desk from the CBC, but it was too big to go up the stairs, so he asked if we wanted it. No question there. I love that thing.

When we moved into this house, there was no where for it to go, so it went to the most available spot, which was my husband’s rehearsal studio. We ended up buying another second-hand desk for me. Laminate. It’s big surface area and three drawers on each side save it, but it has no middle drawer and it isn’t my oak desk.

I thought I could get a roll top desk for $50.00.

I emailed the link on CraigsList and we went last night. I was ready to lift that huge heavy oak desk, just me and my husband, even though I knew I really shouldn't.

Now here is the thing. I broke my arm in a car accident many years ago. I had nerve damage. I was in a sling for two years. My arm was paralyzed. (My manager visited me in the hospital and I never saw him again – thanks, Rich, I can still play guitar by the way).

I had a couple of operations, a metal plate, six big metal screws in the break. If I get an x-ray, you can see 6 holes now that they took the screws and plate out. I had an x-ray about 5 years ago and the doctor said: “I would be careful with that arm if I were you – there’s not a doctor anywhere who would touch that arm with a 10-foot-pole.” She said I should be glad to have the functionality that I do have and be thankful for it – everyday.

So, we go to get the desk. I had suggested we get a neighbourhood lad to help us with the desk. However, we ran out of time. The guy also emailed us that he had an appointment to attend – which left us about 15 minutes to get the desk.

We arrived at the mansion. Two teenagers came out to show us the desk in the third garage. It was an antique roll top. Smaller than I had imagined them to be – not a lot of surface area for a computer and everything else I own and put on my desk. So, I gave them the $50.00. They asked what about the rest of the money. I said that the ad said $50.00. They said the desk cost $500.00. Huh? They said they desk was reduced from $650.00 to $500.00. I must have missed a zero. I was sure I had not missed a zero. I had showed the ad to my daughter, who said it was so cheap that she could buy it for me for my birthday.

The father drives up and gets out of his expensive SUV. He strolls over. I tell him there must be some mistake because I had expected to pay $50.00. He smiles strangely. “No, it’s $500.00” he says. We say OK, sorry and thanks.

We get in the van. I look up the ad on my Blackberry and show it to my husband. Clearly it is $50.00. We run through various scenarios and scams that could have just occurred, all of them making him the crook and me the sucker.

Bottom line, I did not lift the desk and possibly injure my arm again for good. That means I can still use it to play guitar and record my songs. So… thanks God for that missing zero (nothing) and that my desire for a desk did not cost me my arm. Isn’t it a lesson to me to see how strong desire can lead us to do reckless and unreasonable things.

High-speed cars cause traffic jams

I am speculating on a theory that high-speed cars are the root of our traffic jams on 401 east around Toronto and probably around every large city.


Forty years ago cars did not go fast. It took 2 hours to go from Toronto to Willow Beach. Now it takes 45 minutes or so on a clear day at 5:00 a.m. because that is when the roads are clear enough to drive your car with no traffic jam. If you were to try the same trip at 6 or 7:00 or 8:00 a.m., it will take a lot longer. If you try it half an hour later, it will definitely take you a lot longer.  All of it due to traffic volume or fender benders or accidents.

There are other factors involved in this issue, such as an increase in population as well as an increase in cars on the road and an increase in places to live that are far from the city centre. But, the fact that a person believes that a trip from Willow Beach to Toronto is a “commute” instead of a “trip to the country” can only be attributed to the fact that the person has measured how long such a trip takes in their fast care at 7.4 kilometers per litre, and so buys the property, thinking that the trip on a Saturday morning is equivalent to the trip on a Monday morning. Therein lies the dilemma.

That trip on a Monday morning, during the regular school year and not on a P.A. day or government holiday, is slow and long. Longer depending on the time that you leave your house because people closer to the city will leave later and get in front of you on the highway, slowing you down even more.

Alas for fast cars.

Bus Perfume - killer for asthmatics

Bus perfume can kill, especially in the new buses where you can't open the windows unless you are six feet tall.

I learned this week that 9600 deaths per year in Ontario are attributed to air pollution and that an enormous amount of people now have asthma, me being one of them.

Asthma is "triggered" by certain things, like some kinds of "musky" perfume. Once, triggered, your lungs start to close up because they are swelling inside. Depending on how bad your lungs decide to swell, you can pass out and even die, if you don't reverse the swelling so you can breathe.

So, you take your puffer and after a few minutes, the bronchio-dilator makes the swelling goes down. But, just like a sprained ankle, where every jolt causes renewed pain and perhaps a second sprain, the asthasmatic now has to avoid any triggers or the asthma will flare up again. Just like a sprained ankle, It can takes months to be normal again.

So what are triggers? It can be any number of things, but generally it is "an overload" of one thing, like perfume, or smoke, or dust, or mould, or fur, or smog.

The thing that worries me is that I am suddenly, unexpectedly trapped in a stuffy express bus with someone wearing that musky perfume, for just long enough to trigger an asthma attack - and I left my puffers at home. I'll just have to cross my fingers and remember to bring them with me if I am going to be taking the bus now instead of driving to work. Perhaps that will cut down on some of the smog.

Uniqueness

To be an artist is to learn to stand on your own uniqueness. 

My daughter is a dancer.  She is a good dancer, but when she goes to dance classes four times a week, she sees there girls who are eight years old who are better than she is.  She gets depressed.  But, I say to her, you are a good dancer and you are a beautiful dancer.  You have a uniqueness that is very compelling and many people like it.  But I am not as good as she is, she says.

Sometimes, I say, you watch "So You Think You Can Dance" and see dancers of equal quality side by side and yet, you find yourself saying, "I like her better than the other one."  Everyone does it.  At that point, it is not about technical achievement, it becomes something innate in the artist, some style, some nuance, some turn of the wrist, tilt of the head, expression on the face that draws your eye and your heart.  This is the artist's "uniqueness" and the strength of the artist comes from finding that uniqueness and leaning towards it, encouraging it, accepting it and letting it grow.

It is difficult to do because we, as a species, are motivated to fit in and standing on what sets us apart is something that takes getting used to and something that is unnatural at first.  It begins by a small acceptance - by saying "I like that little thing."  Then this can grow into liking what you do as an artist.  It may not be the best, but it is your own, and no one else can do it better than you can. You have to take little steps towards having the courage to stand on your own uniqueness.

CBS Songquest - here is my song from last year

This time of year, CBC Radio 2 has a songquest contest. It is not really a contest, it is an event. Listeners nominate something to write a song about and a songwriter from each province is voted to write the song.

This year the topic is "road songs." They have been playing classic road songs, like "Let it Roll" and "Radar Love" and even "This Flight Tonight," which is a "travelling" song, so it qualifies.

So, I am going to try to write a song. Last year, I wrote a song for this event, because it is good to challenge yourself. It's like exercise.

Last year the topic was a favourite place in Canada. After listening to people all over the country call in to nominate some small bend in the road or vast stretch of lone sandy beach, I decided to write a song about Toronto. No one nominated Toronto, yet it is the biggest city in the country. Surely, there is somethimg noteworthy about my hometown?

The song is called "Downtown Toronto:"

Click here to hear "Downtown Toronto"

I went up the CN Tower
Thought I’d only stay an hour
Rode on a glass elevator
Thought I might throw up later

I walked on a big glass floor
Laughed cause I was scared some more
Watched the kids lie straight face down
Black and white and yellow and brown … they were

CHORUS

Downtown Toronto
Where else can you do that?
Downtown Toronto
Toronto’s where it’s at.

I could see for miles and miles
Way up there in the air
I looked out the windows south
My heart it came up in my mouth I saw…..

America, America
St. Catharines and more
Hamilton, Niagara Falls
On Lake Ontario shores

Chorus

Paddleboats, the big golf ball at Ontario Place
The Forum where Blue Rodeo played
And I want to play someday
Condos glitter in the west
Sailboats in the water rest
Ferries go to Centre Island,
Porter planes lift off and land

The golden sun sets on the lake
All 32 miles - she swum that day
Oh what was her name again?
Oh, yeah – Marilyn Bell.

Chorus

Up North I see a Pink Palace -
Queen’s Park where horses ride,
UofT for you and me
The streetcars of the TTC

And if you squint you can see
The castle where we’d like to be
Way up there - past the ROM
a small but wonderful Casa Loma

And in the east is Leslie Street
Greenwood Park and Harriet Hill
Where we'd walk down on sunny days
To Kew Beach where the music plays

Chorus

I can see the Danforth,
Over by the Twelfth Fret
Withrow Park, the Black Swan too
Riverdale and the Rio

The Horseshoe, the Gasworks
And the El Mocombo
Queen Street West
Where Much is best
A building up on pencils

From Wonderland to the Zoo
Toronto has a lot to do
The Eaton’s Centre, Dundas Square
Yonge Street lights tell you you’re there

Chorus

Audio Books versus Paper Books

I am listening to an audio book. It is only my second one and I am comparing it to using a paper book. I love books. I have a degree in English Literature. I used to read a new, fat book every two weeks in each of my classes and most of the time I would read on the TTC while going to school, which took an hour each way, or going to work, which took an hour-and-a-half each way. Some days, I spent five hours on the TTC, so a big fat book was good company.

I remember one of the senior managers at my old workplace was borrowing audio books from the library, copying them to an .mp3 file and said he spent Sunday afternoons on the grass-cutting-tractor listening to books. He lives on a big property with lots of grass, just east of Toronto.

My experience listening to books is that it is great. I can continue to listen while walking, which is always a problem with books and having to watch where you are going. I can listen while making dinner, which you cannot do when you are reading a paper book and you can listen while doing housework, like sweeping, or folding laundry or gardening – none of these can be done while reading a paper book.

The only thing I don’t like about audio books is that sometimes I can’t understand what they are saying and wish I had a visual reference to use. I am listening to “The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (2007)” It is a novel written by a Dominican author, Junot Diaz. The novel mentions the dictator a lot and also incorporates a lot of Spanish words that I don’t understand. I find that I can’t grasp the names of people when he says them and I had to Google the book to learn that the dictator’s name if Rafael Trujillo. The book won a Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.  I find that the writing is intense and realistic in it's detail and brutal honesty.  Starting from the details of the life of a loner, a gamer, a sci-fi nerd, an innocent, innocuous, harmless boy, you are drawn into the details of a horrific dictatorship and the lives of those affected by it.  I haven't finished it, so I don't know what happens in the end, but the foreshadowing does not bode well for innocent Oscar.

The main thing I don’t like about audio books is what happened today. I got to the end of an audio track and I thought I had the entire book on my player but it turns out that I didn’t – I ended up having to hang after the narrator asks “And guess who he was married to?....” Now I have to find the rest of that book and load it up.

Chinese Silver Dollar coins

Once I knew a programmer who was Chinese and hated programming. He wanted to be in security. He was going over the code for his program. He always said "empty" like "empa-tee". His name was Alex. He was there the day that I discovered the Chinese Silver Dollar coins in the import/export shop downstairs. I bought a page of silver dollars - eight for six dollars. Go figure. The next day I went back because I collect coins on the side. There was another page available for six dollars. I bought it and then asked if he had more. He had more. In the end I got about 8 pages of 8 coins.

I showed them to Alex, who was also a bit of a Chinese history buff. He told me about each of the dynasties represented by the coins. I forget it all now, but one thing he noticed was that there were chop marks on the coins and he said this was good. It was good because it proved that the coins were authentic. He said there were two ways commonly used to prove the authenticity of coins - one was to whack it with a huge chopper. If the coin survived, it was real. The next way was a bit more civilized and sophisticated and required a good ear. He demonstrated for me. He took a silver coin and held it in the middle of the coin between two fingers, then blew in an expert fashion hard on the edge, then quickly put the coin up to his ear as if listening to a tuning fork. If you can hear a ringing, it is real. I tried it, but could not get it to ring. I think it is in the angle and strength of his blowing. He did it for me and put it up to my ear and I could hear a small ringing.

When Alex got another job, I gave him one of the pages of chinese silver dollar coins. He was very grateful because he appreciated their historical value.  He was the only one who actually appreciated them other than me and he did help me figure out his spaghetti code before he left. Thanks, Alex.

Oh, yeah, after he left, I checked eBay and found that back then one of the coins sold for $7.99. So, I spent $48.00 for 56 coins and if each of them is really worth about $8.00 each, then each page is worth that much and I made a bit of a bundle on that deal - not even including the historical significance of the coins.