If you use Facebook at all, you will have seen some random questions occasionally. You have also, probably, answered a few of them. I once answered the question about how far I live from my birthplace, and the one about how many grandparents I can name. Mostly, though, I have resisted the temptation. These questions […]
Yesterday someone with my garage remote was accused of stealing packages from the mailroom in my condo building in San Jose. To say I was shocked and horrified is to understate my feelings when I got the email from the property management company. The email was quite terse and, I thought, unnecessarily accusatory. Here is […]
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 […]
Last week, I was idly looking for useful things to do when I opened the cupboard doors in my TV stand to see what I could clear out. (I’m experiencing a combination of Covid isolation and a late-life decluttering urge.) Inside the TV stand were some DVD’s that had been out of sight and out […]
I stopped using Facebook in March 2018 when I learned that Cambridge Analytica had hijacked information about all of our Facebook friends. I might never have reactivated my Facebook account if Covid-19 had not put us in quarantine. I missed being in touch with family and friends and so I reconnected in December 2020. My […]
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 […]
K and I enjoyed a nice walk in this new-to-me park today. As we approached the park we passed a golf driving range, a nordic skiing area, and a snowboarding park. Because of the season, the winter sport areas were not in use, but when we arrived at the parking lot for the Strathcona Science […]
A couple of years ago I took some photos of the lovely LaMarchand Mansion on 100th Avenue in Edmonton. At the time I promised myself that I would take a look inside one day, and today was that day. I had a few minutes to spare before an appointment nearby and so I went in […]
Edmonton’s High Level Bridge takes traffic southbound on 109 Street. It is an unusual bridge because cars and small trucks use the lower level, not the top. The upper level is reserved for the Edmonton Radial Railway Society‘s historic streetcars. One of these days, I want to take a ride in that streetcar.
Edmonton has some magnificent bridges and one recently caught my attention because it has a shared used pedestrian/cyclist path underneath the track for the light rail train. I had seen pictures of it and I wanted to walk across it to see what the North Saskatchewan River looks like when you are right in the […]
What is your opinion worth? If it is in the comments section of an online news article, it is not worth much at all. No one cares what you think unless you insult someone’s entrenched point of view. In your Direct Messages or email or apps, though, you might think your opinion can actually help […]
A few days ago, I expressed some frustration because I don’t know who is vaccinated. That makes me feel unsafe when I’m among strangers. I was worried about this because Alberta seems to have a high number of people who are vaccine-hesitant or resistant. In response to that blog post, Tildeb provided extensive comments for […]
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 […]
About a year ago, my dentist offered me a choice. He could replace a missing tooth with either a Maryland Bridge or a flipper. He explained the disadvantages of each, and neither option sounded desirable, so I demurred. I remember saying at the time that I could not understand why he was explaining reasons for […]
This time last year I bought some masks to use while removing some mold. I only really needed one, but they came in a box of 10, so I had nine left over when the Coronavirus arrived. They were N95, the Cadillac of masks, and the ones recommended for medical professionals. As such, they were […]
Every now and then I come across someone online who is mistrustful. They don’t trust the government, or the World Health Organization, or the traditional media, or the Centres for Disease Control, or even fact checkers. I can understand why someone would have their doubts about some of the actions of these institutions, but we […]
There are a lot of workers in Alberta who are without jobs right now. Aside from the cutbacks due to Covid-19, the resource industries are in decline. In January 2017 there were 297 active drilling rigs but by June 2020 there were only 11. (Government of Alberta) That number has gone up slightly since then, […]
Just suppose for a moment that you want to find out the price of a new car. Not a loan for a car; just a car, outright. But, when you ask, the dealership does not give you a dollar amount. Instead, they ask you first to tell them how much money you have saved, how […]
Everywhere we go in any city in the western world, we are being video-recorded. In stores, outside banks, at intersections, and anywhere near a doorbell camera or security camera. We have become so used to it that we don’t even think about it any more. Yesterday, though, I was given a reason to think about […]
Snowbird of Paradise 