For some reason I missed the memo on the anniversary of the wrist watch last year. These days, we simply call it a watch and don’t add any information about its location on a particular body part. But back in the day (1912 and earlier), watches lived in pockets or on broaches. Apparently, the watch […]
Watch, look and listen Read More »
In general, Canadians wave our flag much less frequently than Americans. In a typical American city or town you can see at least 5 flags from any given vantage point, while here the only place you are guaranteed to see a flag is outside a government building. Except at the cottage. There is an unwritten
Just like a waving flag Read More »
The Yellow Pages arrived on my porch a couple of weeks ago. At first I wasn’t sure what brick of paper was blocking the top of my stairs as I thought the Yellow Pages had gone the way of the telephone booth. But no. Someone within the Yellow Pages organization still thinks a physical directory
Video killed the radio star Read More »
Apparently hand writing is on its last legs (or more correctly, its last arms). Specifically, cursive writing is currently in the academic cross hairs, although block printing is probably not too far behind. Much like we no longer teach long division or the dreaded times tables because their efficacy has been eclipsed by calculators and
The writing is on the wall Read More »
The second time I voluntarily went to school in the summer was to attend a 6 week French immersion course. With all of the logic the Federal government (who funded the course) could muster, the location chosen to transform us to French fluency was the Scarborough outpost of the University of Toronto. I had only
School’s out for the summer – Part 2 Read More »
When you are a kid, there is nothing better than the day you are let out of school for the summer with two whole months to do pretty much nothing. And there is nothing worse than being sentenced to go to summer school as penance for lack of judgement during the school year. The worst
School’s out for the summer Read More »
As you may know, I was recently away on vacation in Russia. What you don’t know is how many photos I took. Want to hazard a guess? Whatever you guessed I’m guessing you are wrong. I took none. Zero. Zippo. Not a single view of St. Basil’s church, or the church of Dimitri of the
Kodachrome – you give us the nice bright colours Read More »
My new favourite magazine is Bon Appetite. This is from someone who has about 7 magazines delivered to her door each month. Anyhow, the rest will have to live with the fact that Bon Appetite is my current golden child because it has given me the inspiration for this post. It seems that for some
It wasn’t a rock – it was a rock lobster! Read More »
I was hanging out in the lobby of the Metropol Hotel (rooms from 7450 Rubles) in downtown Moscow yesterday. This is a fairly grand hotel, located right next to Red Square. It was built in 1901 at the very beginning of the rein of Czar Nicolas the 2nd. I am not purveying this information in
Nyet nyet Soviet jewellery Read More »
There are many things that people who should know better say with complete confidence that turn out later to be completely false. I think this started with the caveman who stated emphatically that there would never be a faster mode of travel than your own two feet and continued on with falsehoods perpetuated by new
The truth is out there Read More »
