Category Family
Cash Cow or Cash Cat?
My wife tore up the letter from the City of Ottawa, or I would have posted it here. It seems Marshall’s license is due for renewal. If you read this blog regularly you know that Marshall was our cat, who died last month. The city knows we have a cat because the Ottawa Humane Society […]
A Walk In The Woods
Sunday was a beautiful Spring day, so instead of going home right after church we went for a walk. Ottawa is blessed with an abundance of urban forest. I looked it up and though the numbers seemed a little fluid, it seems the city has about 40,000 hectares of forest and parkland. That number seemed […]
Warped in Calgary
I was telling this story recently at a family gathering, and my brother, who had not heard it, said I should do a post about it. It took a long time to tell, complete with hand gestures. Here’s the short version, you’ll have to imagine my gesticulation while you read. In 2006, on a family […]
Vet Bills
This was going to be yesterday’s post, but then Marshall took a turn for the worse. It was written between vet visits, before I knew that his treatment was going to cost a couple of thousand dollars. The sign in the photo I snapped at 2 a.m. Monday says it all: “Financing Available Here.” If […]
Back To The Vet
9:20 a.m. Tuesday March 17. The phone rings. It is our usual veterinary clinic calling. They weren’t open at midnight yesterday, but they had been faxed the details by the emergency service we used. “How is Marshall?” I give an update. They don’t like what I am saying. “You can’t wait until we open at […]
The Vet Visit
“Dad wake up, Marshall is sick.” Marshall is the younger of our two cats, the orange tabby. I looked at the clock. 11:42 p.m. I had had maybe an hour of sleep. Why did this have to happen when Vivian is away? The cats are her problem. I prefer not to be woken unnecessarily, I’m […]
The Epidemic
North America has been seized by a measles hysteria. Should I admit I have never received the measles vaccination? Or would that admission cause panic? In Ontario there have been 15 cases reported (in a population of about 10 million) and that fact leads the radio newscasts. I am a little puzzled about that. I […]
The Parable of the Two Daughters – II
We have all heard that you can’t legislate morality; government should not even try. Many social changes of the past half century, from the legalization of gambling and liberalization of drug laws to changes in how sexuality is regarded, have come from government abandoning its role in areas once thought to be proper for it. […]
The Parable of the Two Daughters – I
I came across a modern parable in my newspaper and thought you might be interested in it also. You know what a parable is, right? In the Bible you know that when he was teaching his disciples Jesus often spoke in parables, telling a story that makes a moral point. Here is a paraphrase of […]
The Good Lie
When I first heard of The Good Lie, at its Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) premiere last September, I knew it was a film I wanted to see. That was reinforced after viewing the trailer and seeing an interview with the stars that took place at TIFF. Brilliant move to make a film about […]
random thoughts from lorne 
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