The Edmonton Journal censored my comment yesterday. I don’t know which rule I broke, but what I said was apparently bad enough to cast my words into the depths of local journalistic purgatory. I was responding to an article about the convoy of trucks that paraded through Canada to Ottawa. The truck drivers began their […]
I’ve been making hats. It’s a pastime I began a couple of years ago and I picked it up again this winter. When you arrive at the confluence of time, isolation, terrible weather, and a supply of random leftover yarn, that’s what you do. I’m not a great knitter or crocheter, but I can handle […]
Last winter the springs in my recliner-couch lost most of their oomph and so I went online to buy a replacement. From a popular furniture store sale, I bought an armchair recliner and a loveseat to replace the uncomfortable old couch. I thought I had bought a matching set, but it turned out that the […]
Recently, my local community centre invited seniors to a drop-in. They wanted to find out what services this group of local people would like to see offered at the centre. The drop-in was to be between 1:00 and 4:00 PM on the Tuesday, so I made a note of it on my calendar. They said […]
Recently I have been getting very frustrated with my phone and computer technology. They keep upgrading and making matters worse. I know you know what I mean. After every upgrade some key programs or settings get changed and it takes forever to figure out what happened. To add to my frustrations, I switched out my […]
Today I learned that I have one ear longer than the other. You would think that by the time I got to be seventy-two years old I would have figured this out by now, but no. I found out today. The reason I found out was that I pierced my own ears today. If the […]
It all began about six weeks ago. Well, no. Actually it started several years ago when I first experienced osteoarthritis in my fingers and, coincidentally, insomnia. But, for the sake of this tale, the story began six weeks ago when I saw an ad on Facebook for CBD gummies. In case you have never been […]
Imagine for a moment that you are a seasoned solo traveller. You have been to a lot of places and done a lot of things, and you have pretty much figured out travel by road, air, and sometimes train. You also have a good handle on computer and cell phone technology so you can do […]
Yesterday I started out on a little adventure. I took a trip to Nanaimo on Vancouver Island. “How lovely!” I hear you thinking. Well, it may be lovely eventually, but yesterday was a bit of an ordeal. My first flight took me from Edmonton to Vancouver, and then an hour after I landed there I […]
I gained weight during the last sixteen months of Covid restrictions. Not only that, but I was already above my fighting weight before all the isolation and social distancing started. So, about a week ago, I signed on with an app that is very popular in helping people lose some of those pounds. Here is […]
This morning, somewhere between sleeping and being awake, I was trying to remember Dolly Parton’s name. I could see her in my mind’s eye, but I couldn’t recall her name. I knew the shape of her first name and that it had two syllables and that it probably ended in “y”, but I couldn’t remember […]
OK, bear with me. This is a completely unbaked but possibly brilliant idea related to the vaccine-hesitant. I live in an area in which a significant minority of the population is refusing the Covid-19 vaccination. Their justifications are varied and often contradictory, but these vaccine resisters are a part of my community. You probably have […]
Now that the news is fairly humdrum compared to the last few years, the time I spend reading newspapers online has reduced considerably. I’m still mostly housebound because of Covid-19 and cold weather, so I have been looking for things to do. I finally finished making a child’s hat and scarf that I began about […]
There are some things that are not immediately obvious and that we cannot know unless someone tells us. Things like having to change the oil in the car occasionally, or to change the furnace filter now and then, or that the earth revolves around the sun. They are things that are either not in plain […]
The temperature in Alberta during April is notoriously unreliable. It can change twenty degrees (Celsius) within hours. This week on my Facebook feed, friends in Red Deer showed pictures of snow while some of us in Edmonton had endured only a little rain. I am trying to persuade some vegetables and herbs to grow from […]
Q: Who is dumber than a box of rocks? A: Someone who packs a box of rocks around for forty years. And who do you know who has packed a box of rocks around for forty years? Yours truly. That’s who. I have often picked up and taken home attractive rocks. Once, on a trip […]
Snowbird of Paradise 