2023 Posts
Suburban Status Report 20230304
For more than 140 days, all the lights have been on in the house behind me. Every single bulb is ablaze 24/7. The house is for sale and has been on the market since last October, with at least one ...
Cottage Status Report 20230416
The first task when opening the cottage is to assess the damage, both physical and financial. This proceeds in a logical order, starting with arriving at the dock at the bottom of the hill. This year, the dock made it ...
Spring Cleaning
I was cleaning ancient clothes out of the spare room closet (as one does every ten years or so whether it needs to be done or not) and came across an artifact I had completely forgotten. It’s a suit bag. ...
First World Travel Problems
My KLM flight to France left from Terminal 3 in Toronto. Those of you who are frequent flyers and have visited Terminal 3 will know of what I speak. Terminal 3 has only a passing acquaintance with the Nexus card. ...
Cottage Status Report 20230611
The minute the hummingbird feeder went up, I had customers, and it appears they are the same assholes as last year, chasing each other away even though there is more than enough to go around. Luckily, the racoons (the other ...
Cottage Status Report 20230701
I was planning on writing about something else today, but since it’s Canada Day, what better to talk about than life at the cottage. The Monarch butterflies are back. They are my excuse for letting the milkweed run rampant near ...
Summer Rituals
What you probably thought I was going to talk about is s’mores by the campfire or jumping off rocks into the lake (okay, I’ve never done this but people much, much, braver than I have) or staying up late (or ...
Getting Spoiled
More and more, I’m noticing that the online version of something steals the thunder of the hardcopy version. Or even worse, online content manages to give the story away in the headline, making it completely unnecessary to read it. Herewith, ...
Wrong Number
In May, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) said it will introduce 942 as Toronto’s new overlay area code on April 26, 2025. The new digits will come a year before all existing 416, 647, and 437 phone numbers ...
Cottage Status Report 20230910
One of the highlights of island life is occasionally getting off the island. Although I do like my slice of forest and shoreline, it’s nice to experience some form of civilization. A mainland trek always involves several errands: visit the ...
Cottage Status Report 20231001
There are typically two times of the year when things break: the beginning of cottage season and the end of cottage season. Neither of these times is more preferable to the other. When we arrive in the spring, it’s pretty ...
The End of Time
In case the news escaped you, as of October 10 the Canadian Broadcasting Company is not longer airing the National Research Council’s official time signal every day at 1:00 p.m. Eastern time. In case you have no idea what I’m ...
Suburban Status Report 20231029
My ongoing subversive plot to get kicked out of suburbia continues to bear fruit. Yesterday, a Municipal Enforcement and Community Standards Officer paid a visit to follow up on a complaint. I suspect the snitch was the same neighbour who ...
Cairo Calling
Despite what our tour guide said, Cairo is not the third largest city in the world, only the 15th. Perhaps she meant the third noisiest, and if that’s the case, I sincerely don’t want to visit the second or first ...
Suburban Status Report 20231203
I continue to indulge in my suburbanly-incorrect practice of brazenly walking to places like the grocery store. Naturally, this is preferably accomplished via sidewalks. Naturally, suburbia persists in its relentless mission to kill me by blocking off said sidewalks. This ...
My word!
Like many of my boomer cohort, I am in deep denial with respect to my chronological age. In my head, I am in my early forties, officially grownup but still able to stay out way too late on a school ...