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Changing Times, Changing Names
The Edmonton team in the Canadian Football League (CFL) is no longer called the Eskimos. So too in the USA the Washington Redskins are changing their name also. Social attitudes constantly shift. The Eskimos nickname was adopted 70 years ago, a tribute to the people of Canada’s north (who are now referred to as Inuit). […]
Unexpected Fruit
Sometimes you miss things that are right in front of you. Like lemons. We live in the warmest part of Germany, something I have been told many times. I do miss the Canadian winter, but there is something to be said for the assortment of fruits growing locally. I’ve mentioned them before: apples, pears, cherries, […]
Moving Day
When you carry all your worldly possessions on your back, the decision to move to a new location is an easy one. Or so I would think. Snails are not an uncommon sight where I live, but Wednesday was the first time this year I have seen one with its shell. I don’t know where […]
Must Be Wednesday…
… which is as good a time as any to inject a little humor into all of our lives. If working from home becomes the new normal, parents are going to demand that schools re-open. Did your mother have eyes in the back of her head? Did you behave better because she did? When […]
Independence Day 2020
It is an election year in the USA, and for the most part I have been ignoring that in this space. I thought today would be a good day to start a series on the state of America in 2020, but have reconsidered. It is a holiday in the US, the anniversary of the day […]
Birth of a Nation
July 1 is a holiday in Canada, the birthday of our nation. For me, a Canadian living in Germany, it is just another work day. But I’ve been thinking about my homeland, and what it means to be Canadian. That probably happens to a lot of people when they live in another country for extended […]
Isn’t Life Fun?
Today’s post has been hijacked by the IT people, who don’t share my opinion of “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” I needed to install new software in order to take advantage of a new videoconferencing platform. I didn’t see anything wrong with the old one myself, but it was work-related, and I do […]
If I Complained, Would You Listen?
Standing in my kitchen yesterday I felt like I was getting whiplash. My head was jerking back and forth, left and right as I was trying to track the fly I could hear buzzing but couldn’t see. I had the flyswatter in my hand, and before long I had dispatched four flies to meet […]
All In The Marketing
I needed new earbuds to use on my various devices. The ones I bought a few months back at a dollar store in Ottawa were showing signs of impending death. The still worked, or at least one ear did. And while no-one had complained about my microphone, my computer kept sending me messages that my […]
Hanging In There
Real life isn’t quite like that of course. When you reach adulthood you quickly learn that the freedom you envisaged is much more restrictive than you expected it to be when you were a teenager. You can’t really do whatever you want. Those of us who have passed that initial threshold of adulthood are the […]
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