From the category archives:

Life

The Art of Correspondence: A Month of Letters

February 2, 2012 Life

When Care (Care’s Online Book Club) told me about her goal of writing a letter a day this year, I knew it was something I really wanted to do, too.
But an entire year of writing a letter a day? A year was just way too overwhelming. It was okay that I didn’t actually know 365 [...]

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My Mid-January Goals Update

January 19, 2012 Books and Reading

One of the perks of blogging is the truly awesome accountability tool it can be. It’s mid-January already (four days past the mid-point, actually) so what better way to motivate myself goal-wise than post this little update?
So how have I been doing with all my new year goals? Well …
This week has actually been the [...]

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Welcome, 2012!

January 1, 2012 Life

(Photo credit)
Happy new year, everyone!
I can’t believe how excited I’m feeling about this new year. There’s an almost palpable, tangible energy in the air right now, a really good energy that’s lifting me right up there.
All this, despite another heavy deadline-filled week ahead of me. But after that, things shift back to normal – [...]

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A Harry Potter Christmas!

December 28, 2011 Books and Reading

Happy holidays, everyone! I’m still in the middle of festive celebrations, as we have some family “dos” scheduled this week. And then, of course, there’s New Year’s, although Ward and I have been so busy, we haven’t actually figured out what we’re going to be doing on New Year’s Eve.
My Christmas Day was all [...]

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Planning for 2012

December 14, 2011 Creativity

It’s that time of the year, when the new year approaches and you find yourself sitting back and taking a look at what you want to accomplish in the twelve blank, fresh-and-new months ahead of you.
Except that I normally don’t feel this way until I’m actually IN the new year. Usually, right around this time, [...]

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A Life Lesson from Decluttering

December 9, 2011 Life

My new office – with lots of bookshelves!
We have finally finished the massive amount of decluttering we had to do because of our move into the city. (Well, okay, maybe “finished” is a bit optimistic; there are still bits and pieces at the house waiting for disposal.)
It’s been quite a chaotic six weeks (including [...]

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The Big Catch-Up Post

November 12, 2011 Life

It’s been six days since we moved into our new place in the city, and while I’ve been active on Twitter, I haven’t been here on the blog at all. So I thought it was time for The Big Catch-up Post!
The Move
The actual move itself went quite well. We hired a fabulous moving company that [...]

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This is the Difficult Part

September 29, 2011 Books and Reading

So Ward’s home from Okinawa now, and almost all rested from his jetlag.
Which means it’s time to start:
1. Packing the things we’ll be moving with us.
2. Listing things on Craigslist and Kijiji.
3. Giving things away.
4. Getting things ready for storage.
And it also means …
tackling the difficult part. Meaning, this:

These are the bookshelves in our living [...]

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Some Bookish Television

September 21, 2011 Books and Reading

Ward’s away on his trip to Okinawa, and if anyone had asked what I would be doing while he was away, I would have said, “Why, reading, of course.”
I even stocked up on a few audiobooks: Gambit, by Rex Stout (a reread), A Trick of the Light, by Louise Penny (I’ve been SO looking forward [...]

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A Change of Plans

September 14, 2011 Life

Last week, I posted about the sale of our house, and the start of our housing search in Toronto’s Annex area.
Well.
It didn’t quite work out the way we’d been planning. After an exhausting week in which we traipsed into the city almost daily and viewed several houses, a condo unit popped up in the Yorkville [...]

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The Adventure Begins …

September 3, 2011 Life

It’s been a whirlwind couple of weeks around here. We finalized the sale on our house earlier this week – the closing date is the end of November. Yay!
Ward and I are being somewhat daring. After 15 years of home ownership, we’ve decided to lease a place in the city rather than buying another place. [...]

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The Summer Update Post

August 15, 2011 Life

I’ve been quiet lately, both on the blog and also out and about in the blog world and on Twitter. But there’s been a lot of stuff happening here over the summer!
The publishing industry is definitely getting back to speed – and from my perspective, it’s not just back on track after a couple of [...]

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Not Your Typical Travel Video

July 20, 2011 Life

My daughter Hayley went to Europe earlier this month with her friend Meaghan and Meaghan’s mother. She had a blast, and most of her souvenirs were in the form of pictures and videos. She definitely put her camera to good use!
Here’s what she’s done with some of the clips she captured on her camera while [...]

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Being Canadian

July 1, 2011 Life

Happy Canada Day to all my fellow Canadians!
 “Happy Canada Day!”
I was thinking this morning about how much I love being Canadian, how much I love living in Canada. I know the idea of a “Canadian identity” is still kind of a fuzzy thing; our identity as Canadians is more often based on all the things [...]

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A Bookworm Declutters

June 2, 2011 Books and Reading

We have started the process of decluttering our house, in anticipation of putting it up for sale sometime this summer – and I have to say this:
Decluttering is a painful process!
Painful especially when it comes to my books. Over the past 20 years, I have amassed many, many books. Looking at the stacks and [...]

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May Intentions: Tackling Procrastination

May 1, 2011 Life

Photo credit: Darren Hester
When I first started writing this post in my mind, I filled it with the wide range of intentions I have for this month.
And then I realized something.
Every single one of my intentions has to do with tackling procrastination.
I am, I confess, a Master Procrastinator.
My main dilemma? I don’t [...]

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R to Z: It’s a Wrap!

April 27, 2011 Blogging and Blog Events

Blogging challenges aren’t really my thing, but I have absolutely no regrets about doing the A to Z Challenge.
For one thing, I discovered the magical way writing prompts work.
And I also found some new blogging and writing friends along the way.
For my wrap-up post, I thought I’d take a look back at what April’s brought [...]

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Saturday Snapshot: N is for Nostalgia

April 16, 2011 Blogging and Blog Events

They were just so adorable back then. And they’ve stayed adorable throughout the years.
This September, both my two older kids will be in university.
It feels a little strange; I often hear people say, “It feels like it was just yesterday” and it seems like such a cliché thing to say.
Yet … it’s true. It really [...]

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C is for Catch-up: Daughter, Early Rising and Fun (and that takes care of D, E & F)

April 8, 2011 Blogging and Blog Events

If you take a peek at the latest posts by those participating in the A to Z Challenge, you’ll see a lot of “F” posts today. As I mentioned, yes, I am woefully behind.
But Joe gave me some great advice yesterday – he suggested doing a series of small posts to get right back in [...]

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Prom Dress Shopping!

March 20, 2011 Life

Yes, that’s right. I went prom dress shopping last week.
The last time I went prom dress shopping, I was 18. Let’s just say a handful of years have passed by since then, and leave it at that, shall we?
My daughter and I made a date to go into the city last Wednesday, during her [...]

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… And So the Week’s Slipped By

March 18, 2011 Life

I’m sitting here remembering what things were like just a couple of months ago. That’s right, back when I was in deadline hell, and had so few moments to call my own, I had to multi-task the basic necessities of life (and I’ll just say here, it’s really hard to eat your lunch while you’re [...]

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Inspiration Monday: Happy Valentine’s Day!

February 14, 2011 Life

Happy Valentine’s Day, everyone! According to my “posting schedule”, today is Inspiration Monday, and I’m thinking that love and inspiration go hand in hand quite nicely (well, I don’t actually have a “posting schedule” – I just like the idea of it!).
We celebrated on Friday evening, with a “family” Valentine Day’s dinner at a local [...]

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Inspiration Monday: Love, Prompts and Comments

January 10, 2011 Creativity

I’ve been thinking a lot about inspiration lately. And since this is January, the month of fresh starts, I’m coming up with a lot of new intentions. One of these intentions is living an inspired life.
I love feeling inspired; too often inspiration tends to come when I’m deep in deadlines (like I am this month). [...]

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[TSS] My Year of Creativity

January 2, 2011 Books and Reading

I’m not one to make resolutions – they just don’t work for me. And perhaps it’s a matter of semantics; “resolutions” and “resolve” have a hard-edged feel for me, and I much prefer the softer ease of “intention”.
So at the beginning of each new year, I like to make some general intentions for the days [...]

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The Holiday Catch-Up Post

January 1, 2011 Books and Reading

Happy new year, everyone! It was a very hectic December for me, as evidenced by the scarcity of posts here. And after I finished my last deadline for the year, I came down with the flu. Christmas week was kind of a blur for me as a result, but this past week has been great, [...]

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Weekend Cooking: Food Art!

December 12, 2010 Life

I’m still steeped in that avalanche of deadlines here, but luckily my husband has been keeping me well-nourished with his cooking. AND he’s been branching into whimsical little pieces of food art – I’ve been enjoying his work so much and wanted to share them everyone.
If anyone knows of a good book about creating food [...]

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Making Magic: Appreciation

November 23, 2010 Creativity

(Photo credit)
I am immersed in deadline after deadline right now, and in days of yore (I’ve always wanted to use that phrase in a post!) I would have let myself be pulled into a static, drone-like existence, working long hours day after day, late into the night.
No fun, no creativity, no laughter. Just work, work, [...]

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My iPhone Life: Work ease and productivity … ahhhhh

October 22, 2010 Life

Last year, for my birthday, I got an iPhone.
And my life changed. No, seriously, it did. And it’s changed enough that I’ve decided it’s high time I blog about it occasionally.
Take my indexing work, for example – which, by the way, is THE perfect day job for a writer. Sure, it’s deadline driven, but my [...]

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Google employees: It Gets Better

October 20, 2010 Life

I’ve always thought the way we run high schools is rather bizarre. If you step back from it, and take a good look, in many ways they’re kind of like psychology experiments run by a team of mad scientists. Purely artificial communities with rigid rules and regulations, a world stripped of choice, in which teenagers [...]

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Thanksgiving Feast!

October 11, 2010 Life

This year my sister Dawn hosted Thanksgiving dinner; yesterday, we went downtown to her place, armed with our own contributions to the feast (all courtesy of my husband Ward, since, as most of you know, I’m not the cook around here).
This year, with both my husband and my daughter going vegan, the Thanksgiving table was [...]

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