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Snowbird of Paradise

Living and Learning in Alberta and California

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Category: Writing

February 8, 2021Snowbird of Paradise

Three Books About Family

Here are three more books you might like and my thoughts about them. Little Cruelties by Liz Nugent. Sometimes children fight for their parents’ affection and/or attention. This story is about what happens when that competition continues into adulthood. It involves three brothers, each of whom is not very likeable but each for different reasons. […]

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January 31, 2021January 30, 2021Snowbird of Paradise

I Don’t Dream

I don’t dream. I can go for months or years, even, without being aware that I have dreamed. Once in a while I might be startled awake while dreaming, but after I have gone back to sleep I don’t remember the dream. I haven’t woken up in the morning remembering a dream for years, until […]

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January 22, 2021Snowbird of Paradise

Reading Thrillers During A Pandemic

Today I have three books ready to give away and before I do that I thought I would write a short review of each of them. Where I live, the libraries are currently closed as are most retail stores, but thankfully Indigo (aka Coles, aka Chapters) bookstore is available online. I sometimes also get books […]

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January 15, 2021January 14, 2021Snowbird of Paradise

Obscuring The Message

There are many ways in which you might obscure a message that you are trying to send. One of them is by burying the main idea somewhere in the middle of a body of text instead of at the beginning or at the end. Another is by providing too much background information. Similarly, being too […]

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November 21, 2020November 19, 2020Snowbird of Paradise

Possessive People

My therapist told me the other day that I need to find my people. I think she is right, and I am going to get on that, but it struck me when reading my local paper that Ray Wold, a complete stranger who comments on newspaper articles, will not be one of them. Because of […]

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July 8, 2020July 8, 2020Snowbird of Paradise

Wordless Wednesday: 8 June 2020

May 25, 2020May 25, 2020Snowbird of Paradise

Suffering From Gutenberg’s Block

I interrupt this series of posts about murals to (a) apologize and (b) vent a little. The apology is necessary because I have no idea how my posts appear on your electronic device but I’m pretty sure my last couple of posts were a bit haphazard, graphically speaking. They looked more-or-less OK to me before […]

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March 7, 2020March 8, 2020Snowbird of Paradise

Another Underappreciated Woman

In a week when the person most qualified for the US presidency withdrew from the race, it seems appropriate to draw your attention to a woman who should have much greater historical significance. San Jose State University has a marvelous library, named for Dr. Martin Luther King, and within it is a room dedicated to […]

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January 1, 2020Snowbird of Paradise

A Decade Of Living And Learning

Happy New Year! It amazes me to realize that I have been maintaining this blog for a decade. I would not have imagined that to be possible when I began it. The years 2010-2019 have been full of new experiences, accidents, and opportunities. I have moved from Red Deer to Edmonton, traveled to England, Scotland, […]

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July 7, 2019July 8, 2019Snowbird of Paradise

Cleaners, Cleaning Ladies, and the Biases of SEO

When I first started this blog in 2010, WordPress provided me with a perfect platform. I didn’t have the skills to create a website, and WordPress made it easy for me. I was able to upload text or to create text directly on the site and soon thereafter to incorporate photos, all without technical ability […]

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June 21, 2019June 20, 2019Snowbird of Paradise

Please Make A Decision For Me

When I started this blog I had the idea that I wanted to write a book but needed to start with smaller writing projects. Snowbird of Paradise has been a good place for me to gain some writing practice, and I find that I like writing blog-size pieces about my life. The book I wanted […]

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February 8, 2019Snowbird of Paradise

Doing a Google-inspired Happy Dance

I am SO happy! I just got an email from a friend I haven’t seen or heard from since the 1970s. We were students together at Bretton Hall College back in the day when we wore bell-bottomed jeans. Isn’t that marvelous? I have been doing the dance of joy in my kitchen. A little while […]

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August 26, 2018October 11, 2018Snowbird of Paradise

A Terrible Way To Teach

OK, I was wrong. But did you have to be so nasty about it? A couple of weeks ago, I made the mistake of engaging in a comments-section discussion in the Guardian online.  The topic was the world’s overpopulation and I threw in my, under-informed, two cents worth. I had forgotten that the online comments […]

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June 14, 2017June 14, 2017Snowbird of Paradise

Bloglovin’

Follow my blog with Bloglovin If you like reading and/or writing blogs, you may be interested in Bloglovin’. It’s a site designed just for people like us. I am signing on there today and will have my blog posts available there in future.  My blog’s home is still WordPress and I will continue to link […]

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June 5, 2017June 10, 2017Snowbird of Paradise

Why Does This Message Feel Creepy?

You’ve heard of fake news, but have you heard of a fake personal email? Well, I got one this week. It has become more and more difficult for local businesses to attract our attention because they cannot afford ads on television, few people listen to radio, and flyers are often dropped directly into the recycling […]

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Blogging Research Wordie
April 24, 2017April 24, 2017Snowbird of Paradise

Blogging Awards

I have been nominated for four blogging awards in the past, and I am pleased and honoured to have been considered.  The process, however, requires a kind of chain-letter nomination of other bloggers, and this makes me a little uncomfortable.  In the spirit of recognizing great blogs, though, I do want to thank the people who […]

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Marmalade
April 10, 2017April 10, 2017Snowbird of Paradise

Had had and that that

Try explaining why using “had had” or “that that” can be grammatically correct. For examples: “The woman had had a bad day,” and “I can see that that bothers you.” Go ahead.  I’ll wait. This week I tried to explain this to my English as a Foreign Language student, and instead simply gave more examples […]

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Lecturer with presentation
January 14, 2017January 14, 2017Snowbird of Paradise

Learning in the Dark

PowerPoint must be the most popularly misused software on the planet.  Ever since it first appeared, we have used it badly and for all the wrong reasons. It has so much potential, but we have really made a muck of it, most of the time. Printouts of Slides Yesterday I went to a training workshop […]

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Boy rolling his eyes
December 28, 2016Snowbird of Paradise

The Funny Thing About Unfunny Humour

Someone on the Nextdoor message feed yesterday was complaining about a homeless encampment near his house. He wrote, sarcastically, “Wow, what a wonderful site!” What he probably intended was to write “sight” not “site.” The message could have been read to mean that he liked the encampment, or that he liked the view, when in […]

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October 14, 2016Snowbird of Paradise

Seasonal Affective Decision-making

  How it works This how seasonal affective disorder works. It keeps you in the house, makes you regret every bad decision you ever made, bashes you over the head with your personal shortcomings, and then teases you with all the things you could have done but didn’t. Here I sit in my little apartment, […]

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I am a snowbird who travels south for the winter. When I get there I have a bird of paradise plant on my patio.

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Recent Posts

  • Butter, Eggs, and Outrage
  • Domestic Weirdness
  • My Stalagmite
  • Wordless Wednesday 17 February 2021
  • Wordless Wednesday 10 February 2021
  • Three Books About Family
  • When Is A Flipper Not A Flipper
  • Wordless Wednesday 3 February 2021
  • I Don’t Dream
  • A Year Of Masks
  • Wordless Wednesday 27 January 2021
  • Mistrust Has Consequences
  • What It Is and What It Feels Like
  • Reading Thrillers During A Pandemic
  • From Riches to Rags
  • Rundle Park IceWay
  • Obscuring The Message
  • Wordless Wednesday 13 January 2021
  • Dwile flonking: another strange English tradition — Notes from the U.K.
  • Hawrelak Park, Edmonton

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