Articles Tagged with “life”

Recently I marked my first month as the owner of a brand-new 2023 Kia Niro EV! I’ve known for a while now that I wanted my next vehicle to be electric; I didn’t expect it to happen quite so soon. However, the timing was right. The venerable 2010 Mazda 3 I was driving until this summer was finally costing too much, in terms of annual maintenance, and I found myself in a position where…

My school’s graduation ceremony was an opportunity for me to celebrate my students and also myself.

Not actually about shoes but rather the need for radical collective action. All of us deserve more than just survival. We deserve luxury too.

I broke my elbow in early June. This was the first time I broke a bone, and the experience was enlightening on many levels.

Every once in a while, someone remarks or asks of me, “Don’t you ever wish you could have lived in simpler times?” or something along those lines. And every time, my response is some version of, “Hell, no.” Setting aside the obvious benefits of clean drinking water (at least, in this part of Canada) and flush toilets, I am forever grateful to have the privilege of being able to stay in contact with people I’ve…

I’m not always down for a “year in review” kind of post, except maybe for my reading—it’s not that I dislike them, but hey, they require effort. Yet 2017 has seen so many dramatic changes in my life that I feel the need to set something down in this record for posterity. Disclaimer: I know that 2017 has been a shit year for many people, but for me personally, it has been rather great. If…

Hey, look, it’s been ten years since I graduated high school. Look at that. Time flies.

This post isn’t really about graduation decennials, though. This is about quitting my longest-held job.

Eleven years ago I dropped off a resume at the Thunder Bay Art Gallery. I was just finishing up Grade 11, and I wanted a summer job that wasn’t going through old files in the creepy storage room beneath the Chapple Building for…

Those of you who occasionally pay attention to my posts on Twitter and Goodreads might have noticed I’ve been quieter than usual. May has been a busy month, to the point where it has seriously affected my reading (and that is saying something). I’ve only managed 5 books in May (and 7 books in April—what is wrong with me?).

One of the reasons I’ve been so busy is that I’m buying a house (hence, you…

At lunch today I was talking with a colleague. She’s cool; I really respect her attitude towards pedagogy and also like her as a person. But our conversation on the environmental dangers of cows led us to talking about lab-grown meat, which then led to a discussion of whether food grown in a lab is any better or worse for someone than food grown in a farm. And my colleague mentioned that she thought the…

I’m home. I’m sitting in my bedroom, in my slightly-too-short-for-this-desk rolling chair, a cup of tea in my big blue Eeyore mug to my right, and my fabulous bookshelves to my left.

Oh, and my room is a mess. My suitcases lie on the floor in front of the bookshelves and TV, bulging and gravid with my life in England. I haven’t even attempted to unpack yet. I need to tidy the room first, for…

Picture if you will: finding it difficult to get a job in your chosen profession near home, you elect to move to an entirely different country to start your career. Now, some of you might have actually done this. So factor in having stayed in your hometown for almost your entire life, including university studies, with only occasional forays to other places. Oh, and you’re not a people person—you generally find their unspoken signals and…

Some people I know lead off their blog posts with massive photos of the minute and the mundane, photos that set the mood for the entry that follows. So I'm going to be a copycat and do the same. Muwahahaha.

There are some objects that, against all odds, manage to stay with us through childhood, adolescence, and into our adult years. These objects acquire and then store memories for us, exceeding their original purpose as…