Last Wednesday was the last day at the office before our break/truncated furlough. I decided to leave a bit early and made the rounds to wish people seasons greetings.
I got to my friend’s office and he warned me to be prepared since this would be my first big holiday without dad.
I started to cry. Continue reading ‘Home for the Holidays…’
I was in my hometown back in November with my mom and my brother for about a week.
There are some religious things that needed to be taken care of so we stayed a few days longer with the intention to work towards getting more things in my dad’s estate settled. On that list is my parents’ house.
Of course mom wants to get a decent price but the market is soft in cottage country (if only the house were in Toronto!) and the economic recovery hasn’t quite filtered down in such a way that has made a difference in the daily life of most Canadians.
So, what do you do? Continue reading ‘What Do You Do When the Real Estate Market Sucks?’
Or is it just me?
Yes, it was the Winter Solstice yesterday.
The first day of winter.
The shortest day of the year.
Of course it stands to reason that the days will start to get longer from now until the Summer Solstice.
This is an intellectual “Duh” but the day already feels longer. Continue reading ‘Are the Days Already Getting Longer?’
I have been going through You Tube and checking out music that I haven’t listened to in a long time- all this stuff from the 70’s, 80’s and 90’s.
(Bones creaking.)
I was listening to someone else, maybe The Jam (could Paul Weller any cuter than he was in this video???) and saw a link to Depeche Mode.
There is a ton of concert footage and some from this last tour. I saw them when they were in Toronto this past July and they were amazing! Continue reading ‘Depeche Mode Rocked!’
It has barely been a day and a half since the party and I think I am close to letting it go.
The idea was for people to have fun and enjoy themselves before the two-tiered furlough came into effect.
Though we had many compliments (some from people who are notoriously difficult to please) it felt like we were constantly barraged with complaints, both internal (social committee) and external.
I only wish people knew how close we were to getting absolutely nothing. Continue reading ‘Party Post-Mortem’
Like a lemming (not a particularly accurate analogy but still illustrative), I stopped on Yonge Street in front of the Eaton Centre with a few hundred (thousand?) others to wait for the Olympic torch relay.
There was a ceremony planned for 7pm at Nathan Phillips but I wasn’t really interested in an overblown ceremony with blustering and bombastic politicians, corporate sponsors and organizer/insiders.
I didn’t even know that they were coming down Yonge but that made perfect sense to me so I stopped to check it out.
We waited. And waited. And waited….
It has been a stressful few weeks back at work and despite my best efforts there are always extra pressures around the holidays- never mind the fact that I am Buddhist by association. Sometimes it is hard not to get caught up in what other people put themselves through- confusing what they think they should be doing with what they really want to be doing.
My family (thankfully) has never really gone cuckoo bananas with the craziness that this time of year seems to bring. We’ll make token gestures to the holidays (the quandary of finding or creating something meaningful with a $10 gift limit, pooling allowed) but this has always been about spending time with family and friends and food. (It is always about the food!)
But this year is different.
It is our first big holiday without dad. Continue reading ‘I’d Forgotten…’
I was finally starting to get excited about the office holiday party that is happening this afternoon. All the details were coming together and what almost did not happen was just around the corner.
A couple of us came in early to get a jump on what we could do ahead of the event so things don’t get too hairy. The sun hadn’t even come up yet but we were giddy with adrenalin- until we got frozen out by someone else on the social committee.
‘Tis the season my butt. Continue reading ‘Office Holiday Party Politics’
A noun, patriotism is defined as “devoted love, support, and defense of one’s country; national loyalty.”
Nowhere did I read that any dissention, major or minor, revokes your status as a card carrying patriot.
And nowhere did I find any mention that to speak against the Conservative Party is analogous to talking trash about Canada.
