under a blanket of silence

Sometimes life takes a most unexpected turn. The change can make us catch our breath -- not because it is a bad change, only that we did not see it coming. A new world takes a little getting used to. A couple of days ago test results showed that my niece Corrina is profoundly deaf. It's not the result I was expecting. Both Mark & Dave had hearing issues as children -- Mark was even completely deaf at one point -- but theirs were reversible. Corrina's deafness is not like that.

My Mom said it best as she often does, "this changes nothing and it changes everything". It changes nothing about who Corrina is, she is no less than she was before. It changes nothing about how much we love her or what great things she may grow up to do. It changes everything about how she will learn to communicate, how she will go to school, how she will be parented. Corrina is now part of the deaf community, and as her family, so are we. I have no idea what that means.

What it means for Dave & Janie is a big decision in the next little while -- do they pursue a cochlear implant or not? They have a great write-up on their blog that explains things better. It's a decision that will require a lot of thought and a lot of prayer, and probably not in that order. All day today I kept thinking about James 1:5 that talks about "if anyone lacks wisdom let him ask". I looked it up in the Message and I love the way it's worded there "If you don't know what you're doing ask the Father. He loves to help."

Mark is always telling me that "change isn't necessarily bad, it's just different." (What are big brothers for if not dispensing bon mots?) I think that's the case here. Whichever route D & J choose, Corrina's world will be no less wonderful than that one I live in. There will be no less laughter, no fewer reasons for it. She may not hear it the way I do, but she is already adept at reading faces and believe me, she laughs. I think the world just got a little bigger, not smaller. I don't know what it will look like, but if Corrina's there, I'm all in.

heads up

The good news is that I finally got my new header up (yeah for cuteFTP and the easiest file transfer ever). I still can't get the blog title to disappear -- I've reduced it to ` to take up as little space as possible. Isn't the new Blogger supposed to be easier? In old Blogger you just toggled the "hide blog title" button. Argh. I was doing so well.

To the designers among you (you know you who are) I know that the green behind my profile no longer "goes" but neither did any of the colour choices Blogger offered. If anyone can pull the hex for one of the blues in the header photograph, I'm all ears and open to suggestions. In the meantime, I was able to do *most* of this by myself, even the photo. That's me in my favorite reading spot on the quiet end of the beach.

One of my goals this year is to keep track of everything I read for the year so there will soon be two lists of books on the blog. I'll keep a short "recently read" list near the top and the full "Books of 2007" down below. I promise not to add a book to the list until it's actually finished. If I was posted a reading wish list it might take over the blog :)

seeing the beauty

It's been snowing here lately and I have not been a happy camper. I wouldn't mind it so much if the roads were ploughed, or if I could afford to hire a driver until it melts. I'm not in the demographic Volkswagon was aiming for with their "Drivers wanted" campaign. Truly, I'd really rather not. It's been snowy since Wednesday, five white days so far, and I realized today that I have almost completely missed the beauty of it.

Snow-covered rooftops, snow-laced branches, dogs chasing flakes along with their tails -- the world in white is incredibly beautiful. I have been so focused on the traffic reports I've almost missed the show. And I wonder why it is to so hard to see beauty in the midst of fear, the good with the bad, the unexpected pleasures mixed in with a situation I would never have chosen. There have been other times, other seasons, when one aspect of my life has so completely eclipsed everything else it was as if the world consisted only of the source of my worry. And thinking now, it seems that there's never a time when I need to see the beauty more than when one thing has grabbed my attention so completely.

It reminds me of a quote I came across the other day in an article that was talking about commitment. "Commitment," the author wrote, "isn't showy. It's subtle and common." Several days later I'm still chewing on that, but it's such a great picture. Commitment is a thousand tiny gestures done so frequently that they are commonplace. I've been reminded of that in these cold, white days when I've needed some help and it has come through time and again. There's a startling beauty in that as well and I need to make sure I don't miss it.

happy new year 2007!

Welcome to 2007! You know you've really become a west coaster when, while getting ready to head to the beach on the first morning of the new year, you look out the window and hear yourself think 'it's not raining THAT hard' and continue to get ready. My initial plan for the photo above also included a festive sparkler but the wind and the rain really picked up down by the water and I couldn't get the crazy thing to light.

So far 2007 has been pretty great. I got to welcome in the new year last night exactly how I wanted to (luxury) and now so far this year I've been to the beach, finished a good book, and indulged in a latte and a few chocolate dipped strawberries left over from last night. It's an unsustainable lifestyle to be sure, but well worthy of reveling in in the hours of vacation that remain.

It's impossible to escape the looking back this time of year. For myself I have to be careful not to wallow in it. But looking back over 2006, it was a good year. It wasn't 365 days of roses and rainbows, but it's in the past now and we choose the filter through which we view our own history. I choose to smile. Some of the good was fantastic and some of the bad truly sucked but I got to spend time with the people I love and I never went hungry. I have enjoyable and interesting work and somewhere to come home to at the end of the day. It may not technically be Xanadu, but I'd wager it's pretty darn close.

tech question re: new Blogger

I am appealing to the collective tech once again. I switched my blog over to the new Blogger and I'm right back to an issue I had with the old Blogger -- how do I keep the blog title from pasting itself right across my header without also removing it from the page title in the browser (and also in my profile)?

I managed to get the graphic itself back in by recycling the code from my old template. I know there was a way around the text-over-graphic thing, but the last time I edited my template was about two years ago. (I know...) I do have a new header graphic to put up but it's not quite ready to go yet, still needs some tweaking.

Any ideas? Helpful hints? Backdoor code?

christmases long, long ago

Many Christmases ago when I was a little girl - 5 or 6 I think - I received a set of Mr. Men cookie cutters for Christmas. Who could have guessed that all these years later I'd still be playing with them? I have no idea how many times I have made cookies with this set but one thing I always wanted to do was to outline the details in black and do fancy run-in work to ice in all the colours. I can remember my Mom saying many times what a lengthy process that would be and suggesting straight-up buttercream icing as an alternate. My Mom, as I have long known, is a wise woman. But this Christmas I decided to take the long route, just for fun.

Kendra had always wanted to try exactly the same technique so over Christmas this year we pulled out the vintage cutters and got to work. I have to say, in writing and for the record: Mom was right. It took AGES!! First there was the careful outlining -- no easy task on Mr. Small let me tell you. And then run out work which it turns out should be called painstaking - guiding - tiny - drops - of - icing - around - with - a - toothpick work. It was probably madness even to attempt it, but even as our fingers began to cramp it was great fun and the results as you can see above are quite impressive. True, the recipe makes about 4 dozen cookies and we probably got around to icing about half that, but that's really not the point :)

In news of a Christmas decidely more recent I am delighted to have spent another wonderful Christmas with my other family. It is an amazing thing to be able to spend Christmas with people on whom you have no claim -- in blood or the law -- but who have invited your into their hearts willingly. What a great way to acquire extra family. There were aunts and uncles, cousins, nieces and sisters, presents and baking and puzzles. The TV was off for three days straight and no one noticed. Merry Christmas indeed.

For my parents, here are the photos of me opening the enormous present you trekked most of the way across North America for me. It was so big we'd nicknamed it "the giraffe" but it turned out to be even better than that.
Imagine you remembering on your far away holiday that my old hammock had finally given up the ghost. I can hardly wait for the weather to clear up enough to go and hang this in the backyard. I have just the right spot. Could there be anything better than a shady spot with a hammock to read in?

the accidental manicurist

First of all, Merry Christmas! Can you believe it's the 23rd? As my brother would say when we were growing up "it's the Eve of Christmas Eve!" We were big Christmas celebrators at our house. All the decorations had to go up each year, we baked the cookies and used every cookie cutter Mom had cutting them out. Then we'd spend all afternoon decorating. Good times.

Who knows which of us will online in the next day or two so in case I'm not, or you're not let me give you my Christmas greetings now. May you see all the reasons you have for your heart to be bright. And for the ones who live farther away than I wish you did, know that I hold you in might heart even if my arms can't quite reach that far.

You may be wondering what all this has to do with an accidental manicurist, well not much so far so let's take care of that. I learned a lesson in the importance of clear communication today. Kendra and I headed off to our favorite Manicure place to get some fancy nails for Christmas. Traditions come in many forms.

I am a recovering nail bitter but of late my nails have been in decent shape. The plan was to try something new and have the technician add a layer of acrylic over my existing nails to give them a little extra strength. I thought I was pretty clear about that. I sat down and 10 seconds later the technician had taken a pair of clippers, cut my nails down to stubs and pulled out a box of acrylic tips. "What are you doing?" I asked, only partially succeeding in concealing my growing panic. But the time for clear communication had passed. Long story short, I got a little more fancy than I bargained for:
I have never had nails this long -- or this SQUARE -- in my life. They kinda get in the way. The square part I can take care of with a decent file, the fake part will take some time to grow out. I suppose it's a good lesson -- know what you're getting into and if it goes badly, time will often fix it. I struggle with trying new things, it's something I've learned about myself and I'm working on it. I guess the nails aren't the only thing that will take time.

looking like Christmas

There are only a handful of days left until Christmas and around here things are certainly looking the part. The tree is up, the stockings are hung, the mantel is full and the cat is trying to eat everything. The house smells of pine -- one of the things I'm certain Heaven smells like. I sat staring at the tree so long this morning that Kendra asked if I was okay. Apparently I had an eerie stillness about me. I couldn't help but think how many memories are hung on the tree each year and how wonderful it is to have such a season to unpack them.
This is a mosaic of a few of my favorite things (or favorite deckies as we called them growing up). Top left is an ornament I made when I was three. It's supposed to be a bell, fashioned from egg cartons and glitter. My favorite out everything on the tree. It has crossed the Atlantic ocean and traveled the full width of North America. It reminds me of my Mom who always has time for crafts and of the magic that transforms something empty and used up into something beautiful. I always hang it near the top of the tree.

Next is a snowflake I bought last year in the gift shop of Salisbury Cathedral. Salisbury dates to the 13th century -- literally hundreds of years of worship are soaked up in the stone walls. I remember being there and falling silent. A snowflake, it turns out is a beautiful picture of just that.

I don't know where the robins came from, but they have always been a part of Christmas. Robins figure prominently in English Christmas cards. We had a set growing up that would get wired into the decorations in the house. When I moved out I asked to take one with me. The robin reminds me of my Dad because he used to hide the robins each year and my brothers and I would sit in the living room trying to see who could spot them first.

The Disney ornament is in memory of my birthday trip this year. When I spotted it in the vastness of the World of Disney store I knew it was too perfect to pass up. What a great way to remember a perfect birthday celebration.

The stocking is for my Nan, a champion knitter in her day. There's a whole set of these knitted ornaments -- stockings, candles, snowmen, candy canes. I have no idea how that works. My parents have a complete nativity that she knitted one year. Shepherds and staffs, kings and gifts, it's all there.

The ink well is for me, a reminder to keep writing, a reminder of the power of words and story. This particular ink well was also purchased last year, when I went to visit Shakespeare House. It was the strangest thing to stand on stone flags that once chilled the little toes of a boy who would grow up to transcend the ages. Flesh does not endure, but words can.

This last photo is for my family, because everyone has been posting lovely family pics and I haven't. So here you go. This is me at the company Christmas party with Leah & Lynnette. You can't go wrong with a black dress (even if everyone else has the same idea).

ferocious beastie

I was trying to get a "festive" photo of the cat but she refused to participate. Antique bells on red rope -- she would have none of it. Instead I got this shot of my fierce jungle tigress 'sounding her barbaric YAWP over the rooftops of the world'. (Points to anyone who correctly identifies the quote, double points if you get the non-movie reference as well.) I took this as a sign that the photoshoot was decidedly over. 'Nuff said.

In other wanderings, today I came across an interesting article about a professor who tried to prove Wikipedia was fallible. He failed. In his experiment he added erroneous factoids to several obscure articles. He expected them to last several weeks, but all 13 were gone in 3 hours. The professor conceded that the system clearly worked. Colleagues however were less convinced.

One quote really struck me, "But doubters of the approach -- and in academe, there are many -- say Wikipedia devalues the notion of expertise itself." Are these professional academics really saying that knowledge has no value in itself? Are they claiming that expertise only matters if I have it and you don't? How can knowledge lose value by being shared? Surely the only useless knowledge is that which is hoarded and kept private.

I wonder if they're speaking out of fear? Do they think that Wikipedia will one day replace the universities (they way the naysayers predicted television, or the internet for that matter, would wipe books from the face of the earth)? I can't understand teachers that root for less information, less knowledge. It's such an ignorant position.

about face

In a very strange congruency, the idea of prosopagnosia (face blindness) has come up a couple of times over the past few days. First it was the case du jour on this week's 3lbs (a show I doubt will make it past mid-season, but it stars Stanley Tucci so I'm watching anyway). Then it popped up again in the November issue of Wired. What must it be like to live in a world where the faces are no more recognizable than the famous apple-obscured bowler wearer in Magritte's Son of Man?

The Wired article talks a lot about the isolating aspect of the condition. Imagine not being able to recognize your own face, not realizing when the love of your life just walked into the room. Think of conversations without the benefit of expression or any facial clues. What a confusing world that must be.
There is so much emotion wrapped up in the idea of faces -- everything from recognition, to communication, identity. It's a big part of the world to be cut off from. I'd imagine it feels like losing half of your words.

In Orwell's 1984 there's this whole idea that you can curb thought if you simply remove the words to express that thought. I wonder if someone born with prosopagnosia would be less likely to use facial expressions having never seen them communicated? Years ago Discovery Channel did a series on how the brain processes faces. In addition to face blindness there were people who could only focus on one part of a face at time and could not put together the whole. There were others who could see the face but could not attach emotion to it. I remember one young man who was convinced his Mom had been replaced with an actress who looked just like her. He recognized the face but felt nothing for her. There was still one more who could see faces but could not distinguish a new face from one he had encountered before.

It must be a particularly heavy burden to have to keep introducing yourself to someone who loves you. There's such a strong element of selection in love -- I choose to be with you and no other -- would that choice, and thereby that love, be questioned if there was always a moment's hesitation before he or she moved towards you?

Heavy questions for a Sunday night. I did my first year of University as a pre-med student (and graduated with an English degree, long story). I remember taking a course on Brain and behavior that year. We didn't cover prosopagnosia, I wish we had, but it was fascinating how much we still don't know about the human brain. We can get all the way to the moon and back, but cannot travel all the way into our own heads. I wonder if it's for our own good.

happy feet

The holiday season has officially begun -- my Christmas socks are here. Every year since I went away to university my Mom has had a tradition involving festive socks. It's silly, I know, and that is exactly the point. Each year mid- to late-November a pair of Christmas socks arrive in the mail along with a note telling me that Christmas is coming, my parents are thinking of me and reminding me that the season is so wonderful even footwear can celebrate :)

Over the years there have been socks with Santas, sock with cats wearing holiday wreaths and one pair with bells attached that threatened to split my cat's personality in two. "Must attack bells! Must not bite Food Lady!" Ah the existential trials of fur on for legs.

It's funny how something so small -- a little pair of socks -- can be a celebration if time and attention are put into it. Funny and also wonderful. There are a certain number of major celebrations in a given year and a good many of them are beyond our control. (I cannot, for example decide to move Thanksgiving to February, or choose when it's time for a new niece or nephew or join the family) But if I'm willing to expend time and attention there is no limit to the celebrations I can create for myself and those around me. I can celebrate any time I feel like it.

If you go just outside my front door right now and stand very still you can hear a wonderful sound. Drip. Drip. Drip. Drip. The snow is melting. The roads are becoming passable again. Tires are finding purchase on the asphalt and white knuckles are getting their colour back. After 5 days of treacherous driving it is a beautiful sound. I think I'll go out and celebrate it.

snowman's paradise

It's snowing in White Rock and it shouldn't be. We're just outside of Vancouver, a stone's throw from the ocean. We're supposed to get two weeks of a light dusting of snow at the beginning of January. Clearly the snow had other plans.


It began last night. Kendra came in from the back room and announced "it's snowing." Like a character from a bad 80s movie I responded "no way!" and headed outside to see for myself. Sure enough it was snowing -- and not the barely frozen rain that passes for snow in these parts, but actual snow. This looked like the snow we got in Ontario as a kid. Packing snow, snowball snow. . . in those days pray-for-a-snow-day snow. It was unbelievable. I didn't expect it to last the night so I headed outside to take a few shots in the dark. Not only did the snow stick around, but it snowed straight through the night and as I am writing this, early afternoon of the following day, it has not stopped snowing.
This is what our street looked like early this morning. White Rock has a tiny, if existent, snow removal budget which makes driving in these conditions nasty. We get so little snow here that no one knows how to drive in it. Half the people drive 5 km/h and the other have drive 80. Both cause accidents. I'm already a little punchy after a recent accident on dry roads. I'm probably the only person in White Rock praying for a quick overnight thaw.

The backyard is beautiful. It's been like living inside a snowglobe today. Everything is white, the edges softened, the leaves thrown into colourful relief. In a true testament to west coast weather my Japanese maple tree still has deciduous leaves peaking out from under this new blanket of snow. Kendra and I headed out this morning to try and rescue the boxwood hedge. It was bent almost all the way to the ground under the weight. A couple of hours later and it is in the process of getting covered all over again.

These pictures are a few hours old now and the snow just keeps coming. The world gets prettier and prettier, the roads worse and worse. I'd like snow just fine if I didn't have to drive in it. I went out to frolic after saving the hedge and shoveling the driveway. It would be wrong to let the snow come and go and not throw some of it around. My aim with a snowball is still terrible, but that's rarely the point. Kendra and I thought about making a snowman, but they take a while so we opted for the miniature versions at the beginning of this post. I can see them on the picnic table out the living room window. They are half buried under new fallen snow.

After so many years in Ontario it is a little funny to think that snow in late November is newsworthy but it just doesn't happen here. It's like that year they got snow at DisneyWorld over Christmas and all the fountains froze. No one saw it coming. Every now and then a gust of wind comes through and shakes the trees and the white world gets even whiter. What a good day for a fireplace and a hot cup of tea. A snowman's paradise indeed.

UPDATE: 2:00 Sunday

This is what the tree in our front yard looks like now:

This is the same tree that's in the night time shot up above. It's completely covered in snow. The boxwood in the backyard is starting to bow again. The driveway looks less and less shoveled. And the snow just keeps on coming.

CNN gets a little closer

Every few months I run a Google search on myself to see if anyone is stealing my articles. Today there were no thefts of the list but I was very surprised to see an entry labeled "CNN.com - Transcripts". Of course I followed the link and it turns out that back in October Anderson Cooper read one of my comments on air during a segment at the end of AC 360! How very cool.

The first week of October 2006 CNN sent a couple of teams to Africa to cover the situations in Darfur and the Sudan. Anderson Cooper hosted a week-long special "The Killing Fields: Africa's Misery, the World's Shame". It was, hands down, some of the most disturbing television I have ever seen. Night after night there were stories of such unbelievable suffering. It was so hard to watch but it just didn't seem right to turn away. Cooper often speaks of the importance of bearing witness and this whole week was like that.

Tuesday of that week Dr. Sanjay Gupta posted a blog entry about some of the things he had seen. Inside the camps, he wrote, "They complain bitterly of not enough food and clothing. They wish they had better roofs over their heads than sorghum branches tied together with twine." However, he went on to write, "living conditions throughout much of Chad are so terrible that many people will simply pack up their belongings and move into refugee camps, which ironically offer a better way of life than most people in Chad could ever hope to see."

I was so shocked to see that sentence, that branches and twine were more than people could hope to dream for. I submitted a comment to the AC360 blog and was thrilled to see it actually appear on the site. CNN gets hundreds, sometimes thousands of comments on the blog. They post up to a hundred of them or so per post. From time to time Anderson reads two or three on the air and October 4th he read mine live from Rutshuru.

I can't believe I missed seeing it on air -- it was a Wednesday, I'd signed-up for a class. Fortunately transcripts live forever so I know about it now. CNN does sell individual copies of past shows and I think I'm just geek enough to order one. How often do you get to hear your name on CNN? Until then, it's right there in the records. If you follow the transcript link, scroll all the way to the bottom you'll see this:

COOPER: Jeff, stay safe. Appreciate your reporting. Thank you.

Before we go, we wanted to show you what's on the radar, some of the responses to our programming on the 360 blog.

Sharla Jones from Buckeye, Arizona, writes on the blog, "Watching this series right now on 360 is really making me re-evaluate my own life and how I'm living it... Watching the pain and suffering right now... it made me cry."

This from Kelly in Marietta, Georgia, "It shames me to think that we apparently learned nothing after Rwanda. Why are we, nor the rest of the world, helping more?"

And Claire Colvin of White Rock, British Columbia, writes, "I can't wrap my head around someone fleeing to a refugee camp of their own volition because the conditions there are better. Surely we can do better than this."

I was on CNN. Well, sort of.

stand in the wind

I have never been an adrenaline junkie. I take no pleasure in taking risks, but for some reason I cannot resist the sea when it's inflamed. The wind picks up and starts to roar and I have to go and hear the water roar back. Today the wind was up. I grabbed my Gortex and headed to the beach.

At the shoreline everything was in motion -- the water and the wood and the grasses and the trees. Only the gulls trying to fly into the wind were still, suspended in their animation. I love standing there surrounded by the wind, feeling small. I think it's good for us to feel small for time to time. It helps to remember that so many things are not under my control, so much is beyond my grasp. It reminds me not to try so hard to hang on to it.

Going down to the ocean in a storm always feels like going to church. The awesomeness of God is inescapable there. It's in front of you and behind you, in your ears, in your face, pulling tears from the corners of your eyes. Huge drifting tree logs are no match for it, this huge expanse of open water cannot resist it. I know that most people look for quiet to meditate in, but I find myself meditating in the rush and the noise and the motion of the storm.

One of the many things I love about White Rock is that every time I go to stand in the wind there are others already there. People come alone, they bring their children. Up and down the beach you can see them, brightly coloured coats bobbing right along with the drift wood. When the storm is really good every one has a camera. And you can see as you walk by, every one of us is smiling.

baby, you can drive my car

And now, thankfully, so can I. It's been a couple of weeks since the accident and while I am still mourning the lost of my little, black Civic it does feel pretty good to have a car in the driveway again. I was really hoping that my Civic was fixable. When the insurance guy called to give me the news that it was a write-off his comment was "your car is a lot shorter than it used to be" and I knew the Civic just wasn't coming home.

I've spent the past couple of weeks doing paper work and making trips to ICBC. There is something undeniably depressing about being handed a bag with the leftovers from your car in it. But it's all done now. There will be other Civics.

In the meantime, I am now the proud owner of a 05 Nissan Sentra. So far its lived up to everyone's expectations and is a solid little car. I'm starting to warm up to it. I bought my Civic while at University so it was a base model. Standard transmission. The only "extra" I put in it were floor mats. The new car has toys. And it turns out, I kinda like toys.

By far the funniest thing that has happened was when I brought the car home and realized that it is EXACTLY the same colour as my cat. The photo to the right has not been Photoshopped in any way. I swear I didn't do that on purpose. (Although during test drive the car did feel oddly familiar...) I haven't taken it fast enough to see if it purrs yet. All in good time.

I helped edit CNN

I'm pretty sure that I helped edit CNN.com today. The midterm elections are happening south of the border so I stopped by CNN.com at lunch to see how things were going. Much to my surprise there was a grammatical mistake in the tag for the main article. It was front and center on the homepage of CNN International. I took a screen cap because I was planning to blog it. (Yes, I know. Still.)


Right at the beginning it says, "Republicans were facing with the possibility..." Nasty. I decided the decent thing to do would be to at least tell someone at CNN about the mistake, rather than just mock it. It's election day afterall, a busy day for the site.

CNN has a pretty good feedback system so I sent them a quick message and suggested an alternate wording. I didn't expect anything to come of it and went back to work. Imagine my surprise a while later when I actually got an email back from CNN. The nameless CNN employee said that they would pass my email on to the Webmaster. "Right," I thought, "okay."

I couldn't help checking the home page about five minutes later and lo and behold, the text had been changed.


Yeah! Good grammar triumphs again. I'm sure this is the closest I will ever get to having a hand in anything that goes on at CNN. But hey, for an editor this is kindof like catching a glimpse of the band just as they're getting on the bus. (Yes, I know. Again.)

trick or treat

It's amazing how a scent can take you right back. And not just to where you were but how you felt. Last night as I carved the top off of the first of these pumpkins I took a deep breath of childhood. One sniff of fresh, raw, pumpkin and I was back with my brothers at a kitchen table covered with newspapers. Pumpkin carvers in hand we were all set to go. (To this day I don't understand how they cut pumpkin but not skin.)

There were years when we had a pumpkin each and years when we had one huge pumpkin between us. Either way what I remember along with that scent of pumpkin was the anticipation. Something wonderful was about to happen. It happened about the same way every year. I loved the feel of "pumpkin guts", Dave didn't like it as much. Mark tried to smear it in my face. I squealed. Our designs stayed on a theme. We were mostly a traditional "faces" bunch. This was long before we'd learned the finer points of pumpkin carving, the importance of carving the tiniest details first and largest details last. But it was something we did together. And it was wonderful.

Tonight as I've been on the other side of the trick-or-treat door I was thinking about the costumes I can still remember. I was a clown several times, an Indian squaw (complete with brown woolen braids). There was the year I was Wee Willy Winkle and learned why Hallowe'en costumes should have as few props as possible. One year I went as a high society lady swanning around the neighborhood in my Grandma's real fur coat. She would have had a FIT if she'd known. I remember Mark as the blue ghost from PacMan one year and a gangster another. Later on Dave would prove to be the best at costuming. He has an imagination that dreams entire worlds.

I remember the trial of eating dinner Hallowe'en night. (It took so long.) We had endless existential discussions of what constitutes "dark". "Is it dark now Mom? Can we go?" After the frenzy of the night was over my brothers and I would meet in the front room. I don't know why we always met in there, it was one of those rooms that you weren't really supposed to use. But each year we met there dumping out our bags so the yearly sort could begin. Anticipation gave way to excitement and then in the manner of children, bargaining. It seemed that we went out that night in the fullness of Fall but found winter waiting for us in the morning.

All these years later it's all still there. Just waiting in the scent of fresh pumpkin.

only that which can be fixed is broken

The good news is that I'm fine. Bruised, but fine. My car is not looking so pretty. Coming home from work last night I was in my first car accident ever. I would be quite happy for it to be the last.

Everyone is fine, thank God Himself. Only that which can be fixed is broken. As the doctor told me the car did its job and "sacrificed itself to take the brunt of the force". Poor little car. I feel very fortunate. It could have been so much worse. I was looking at the accident report the police officier gave me. There are two tiny little boxes labelled "Number of Injured" and "Number of Dead". Mercifully both boxes on my form are empty.

I've spent today resting. Driving is a little painful -- seatbelt buckle resting on top of a seatbelt buckle bruise. I went to the local pool to sit in the hottub for a while. I think it helped. Public hot tubs are a strange concept but we haven't quite gotten one installed at the House of Mirth just yet. Needs must.

There were four of us in the spa and I was the only one without tattoos. How strange. One guys had two half sleeves and it was hard not to notice them. No one looks anyone else in a public hot tub. Sleeve guy and I made eye contact only once, brief and awkward, shattering the lie that each of us was here alone.

For the next couple of days I'll be bumming around in a rented Chevy Aveo. As the commercials promise it does have a "neat-o sound system" but I'm not convinced that it's "fun to drive". Here's hoping I'll be back in my little, black Civic before long.

got moo?

This has to be one of the coolest things I've seen in a long time. Everytime I look at it I get a head full of a thousand ways to play with it. It's like a really big box of crayons for grown-ups only so much cooler.
Moo.com is a company out of London that is offering custom printing of minicards from your Flickr photos. Cool right? But here's the best part: they're $20/100 and you get to choose up to 100 different images per pack! There's also space for up to 5 lines of text, full colour, on the back along with your Flickr buddy icon (optional). No additional charge.

Imagine the possibilities. . .

A contact of mine who is a professional make-up artist has started using them in place of traditional business cards. I'm imaging art projects and think that I might just have found the ultimate cure to grey cubicle walls. There is already a gallery of what people are doing with these on Flickr. Just looking at the promo photo inspires me. So much colour, so many choices. So much fun! And at this price, I can afford to play.

I'm placing my order this week-end.

amazing indeed

Over the week-end I finished reading Michael Chabon's Pulitzer prize-winner The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay. Wow. Wow. Wow. If you're looking for a feast, this is your book. It's taken me a couple of weeks to finish, not because it was slow or uninteresting but rather because the story, the language, is so delightfully dense. It's like my Mom's British Christmas cake -- so rich and full of flavour that it would be a sin to rush through it.

This is a book that begs you take your time and well rewards those willing to linger. I found myself reading sentences over again. I caught myself reading aloud in places because the music of the text was too good to waste in silence. I savoured this book over breakfast and at the beach and in bed and in stolen moments waiting for the office microwave to warm-up my lunch. It was so worth the savoring.

Chabon made me reach for a dictionary more than once, so he'd have my gratitude if had he written a story only half as satisfying. This is a truly epic tale. On the surface it's about a pair of cousins who stumble into the comic book business in New York just as the jaws of the second world war are opening to devour Europe. But just past the cover of what they are supposed to be doing lies a world of real heroes: a boy trying to save the family he left behind, a girl reaching out to an unreachable boy, a man stepping into another's responsibilities, a child speaking the words the grown-ups have forgotten how to say. It is a story of family, of struggle, of loss, of the great surprise of coming home and the paradox that sometimes the only way to truly get home is walk out of your own front door.

I had to delay the book that was next on my list and sub-in something lighter. My brain isn't ready for another serving of solid food quite yet. I'm still digesting this one. I picked up a short novel, something to cleanse the pallet. It would be disrespectful to go back to the table so soon after being so well satisfied.