If you have followed along with any of my travel posts in the past two years, you will know that I have been having issues with my Kobo – which was a Christmas gift less than five years ago. Here’s the thing: I love my Kobo in theory, because I can “pack” many books for the long days of travel, but in practice, the glitching and lagging and sudden, unprompted rebooting over and over and over has been incredibly frustrating. I am not a violent person, but when I’m invested in a story and the Kobo suddenly freezes and the…
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Hi friends! I am home from a wonderful, nearly three-week trip to Spain. We arrived home at midnight last Thursday after twenty-four solid hours of travel, only fourteen of which were actually in flight. The rest was time spent at airports, for connections for our three flights, because I am this guy: I am not an anxious person generally or an anxious traveller specifically, but I have two travel-related anxieties: missing connections, and losing my luggage. For the latter, I take only carryon, even for a three-week trip, and for the former, I make sure – or, truthfully, My Husband…
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October is a really beautiful month around here: some trees are changing and some are not, so there is everything from green to red to look at, fresh fruit and vegetables abound, and harvest is over in the vineyard, leaving golden vines in its wake. It reminds me of the line in A Year in Provence, where Massot, the cranky neighbour, unexpectedly and poetically says that nature is wearing her prettiest clothes before spitting on the ground. Nature IS wearing her prettiest clothes, the sunrise is perfectly timed for the beginning of our morning walks, and we have had some…
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Happy Thanksgiving, friends! Recently I was looking through last year’s Ask Me Anything when I came across a question from my friend Steph (HI STEPH) that I had yet to address, ten and a half months after the fact. I did not mean to be so tardy in my response, but it turns out that the timing is perfect, as you shall see. Steph asked: How did Rex come into your life? I remember you saying it was a surprise and I wondered what the story was. Saturday marked four years to the day since Rex came into our lives,…
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Now that it is cooler in the mornings, and I don’t worry about Rex’s paws on hot sidewalks, I have been adding “urban” walks back into my weekly routine. I say “urban” because although the routes follow sidewalks and streets, we pass fields of cows and horses, flower farms, beaches, and the Country Club at which Rex is periodically boarded. Last Sunday we were taking such a route, a loop of 7 kilometres, when we came across a large amount of backed up traffic. I thought it was a construction delay, but no. As I approached the intersection it became…
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Last week I listened to a podcast on the case against convenience and efficiency in our modern life, and it was fascinating. Who DOES benefit from people being more “efficient” with their time? If we can get lunch delivered right to our offices, is that really better than walking to go pick it up? Who benefits? It’s not us, the people working through lunch. There is always a cost to convenience, and someone is paying. Sometimes it’s all of us, from an environmental standpoint, sometimes it is a workforce in poor conditions, sometimes it is through loss of personal security…
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I am rarely, if ever, affected by celebrity deaths. Usually I am surprised, as I frequently think the celebrity in question was already deceased, although sometimes I feel great shock and sadness at the cause of death, such as that of Rob Reiner or Phil Hartman. I was greatly affected by the death of Princess Diana and then later of Queen Elizabeth II, and I was sad to hear of the passing of Alice Munro. Generally, though, I feel fairly detached when I hear of the passing of someone famous, but I was deeply saddened to hear about Dolly Parton.…