Because I’m not a Facebook devotee I didn’t know they were encouraging people to write 25 random facts about themselves until I read about it in a piece in The National Post. Writer Gene Weingarten rose to the challenge and wrote 26. I say a resounding ditto to his number 19, about never stepping on… Read more »
?Buenos días, Señora Rivera,? I said one morning last week when my co-worker came in to work. This isn’t quite as bizarre as it may seem at first blush. Mrs. Rivera is Mexican, my colleague, and my Spanish instructor. Hey, at that point I already had two hours of instruction under my belt. I have… Read more »
This past weekend my sister Sherry, her fiancé Jim, Roy, and I went to Hinton to visit our youngest sister Gail, husband Todd, and daughter Hailey. The catching up was fun. The dinner out at the Chinese restaurant was good. The best part, though, was sitting down to play canasta. Canasta is an old card… Read more »
After having been to Puerto Vallarta on our previous two trips to Mexico we knew we wanted a change this time. Last October when we seriously began looking at other options a number of factors came into play. Could we fly WestJet, hopefully non-stop to somewhere on the west coast of Mexico with an affordable… Read more »
There’s a good chance Roy and I were the whitest people at the Mexican resort when we arrived January 31. As we departed one week later, not much had really changed. At least not colour-wise. We had slathered on the SPF 60 sunscreen and sought out umbrellas and other shade structures. I realize this sounds… Read more »
One of the premises explored in the bestseller The Secret was the idea of visualization. Visualization is touted as one of the steps to manifesting reality. Like everything else in the book, this is not news. Athletes have used this strategy for years to rehearse and pre-play award-winning performances. Visualization largely occurs in one’s head,… Read more »
Never before have so many hopes by so many people been pinned on one simple man. Not in my adult lifetime has there been a more eloquent political speaker. Nor a man who could through word and deed galvanize a nation out of apathy and despair and into hope and action. That man is of… Read more »
At this moment in our house there are four pieces of luggage littering the hallway. They will become our ticket out of town, out of this wretched winter. In November we were all quite smug in Alberta as one unseasonably warm day stretched into another until before we knew it the whole month had become… Read more »
This column originally appeared June 20, 2008, in issue 1625. Thursday night Roy was shaving before a late shower. Before long, with the air of a beaten man, he announced the sink wouldn’t drain. We assumed the culprit was hair in the trap. Removing all the products under the sink, finding an ice cream pail… Read more »
In less than 10 days many of us will gather in living rooms or basements all across the country to celebrate Christmas. The gathering may be Norman Rockwell-ian in its old-fashioned wholesome sensitivity. Or more likely it will be a collection of souls connected by DNA strands and years of shared (if sometimes disputed) memories…. Read more »