Land of Quakes

What does it mean to be prepared in a land of potential earthquakes? We've all seen the pictures from Hurricane Katrina and Superstorm Sandy. People are always urged to have 3 days of food and water supplies on hand - to be able to be self-sufficient for at least (at least) that long. But how many of us actually do that?

Belief-o-matic

I was looking for the readings of the day yesterday... the Catholic readings, the Koran readings... something to feed the writing well. I eventually landed on a website called Beliefnet.com. They have all sorts of things... Hindu, Muslim, Christian, Taoism... You name it, they have it.

One little thing caught my eye - a quiz called Belief-o-matic. Twenty questions that will tell you what faith category you fall under... Hmmm... too irresistible for me! The disclaimer is kind of cute too: "Belief-O-Matic™ assumes no legal liability for the ultimate fate of your soul." Alright, I've been warned!!

Life of Pi

I know... this poor blog has been languishing for exactly 7 months (almost to the day). Life has been hectic and busy... and with the year away, I now have some time to devote to writing.

Truth be told, the urge to write has never gone away, I just haven't let it had free rein! But we'll see how this goes.


The Life of Pi. It's a book. I'd heard about it about 10 years ago but never read it. Never had any desire to read it actually. And it's by a Canadian author too! Has won many medals... And yet was never on my radar screen until a few weeks ago. That is when I started seeing ads for a movie version of Life of Pi. It looked interesting but that is about it.

Time Warp

Alright, I don't know about the rest of you but... I'm pretty sure that time has speeded up a lot in the last year or two. Somehow it never seems like there is enough time in a day or a week or a month. The days just speed by and the weekend is over before it even began!

What's happening?? Is this just a "getting older" thing? Or does time really speed up? I think back to when I was in my 20s and 30s and I seemed to have a tonne of free time! What happened? Do I just have way more projects on the go? Or is there just less time?

Fascination with the Old

The web/smartphone app "Instagram" has been on the news lately... snapped up by Facebook for a ridiculous amount of money. I didn't understand the fascination with Instagram until I installed it on my smartphone a week ago. Oh my goodness... what fun!

To Do List

Ah the humble to-do list. There are so many ways of keeping track of the various things we need to get done in a day or a week or a month. Usually a piece of paper is sufficient - sometimes the back of an envelope or a receipt. Sometimes an actual notepad or notebook. Sometimes a tiny little sticky note. Whatever it might be, the to-do list is there to serve us. If we can find it... Because let's face it... to-do lists have a habit of being mislaid... or of walking of away... And so we start a new list with the first item being "Find old to-do list"!

What the heck is NESS?

Have you ever heard of NESS? I guess you'd need a context... it has nothing to do with the Loch Ness monster. It stands for National Emergency Stockpile System. Does that help? Probably not... Maybe you heard on the news that the federal government of Canada recently released a supply of drugs from its emergency stockpile due to a shortage from supplier Sandoz. That's NESS.