December 1 The exact nature of the thing is yet to be disclosed. It might be the result of a right-good trouncing but in all likelihood the secrecy is not real secrecy but merely an intellectual laziness that can easy take hold in such circumstances. Or, we don’t know because someone just hasn’t got around to telling us yet. Being the first day of the last month of the year there is a desperation, of a sort, to pull together the loose threads of the year. Get it done. Con-clude. From the backseat, Claire — after an attempt to explain the ten minutes of her recollection prior to when they picked me up at the grocery store — exasperated: groans. Yes. Groans. And says Just [...]

For the entire month of June I’m planning on writing a series of blog-a-day posts based on a set series of open-ended questions to myself. This is one of those posts. June 9th // Something You Have Heard I’m sitting here at the computer in my basement pondering what to write while iTunes hums away through my music collection in the background. And here I am again thinking about the so-called spirit implied by these questions. I mean, I could just tell you what I’m listening to right now and get onto playing some Minecraft instead of trying to write a blog post — which is all I pretty much feel like doing right now — but instead I’m caught in this vaguely half-assed attempt [...]

Today is my brother Derek’s thirty-second birthday. Most readers either (a) know that or (b) don’t care. I only mention it now because nine years ago today, thanks to a reminder and according to the little script currently running on this blog, I posted a happy twenty-third birthday wish to him in the form of a fairly ridiculous song-lyric-schmozzle-bad-joke, all of it very probably indicative of our brotherly-relationship at the time… but who can say. In fact, at the time of that particular post, he’d have been married for the better part of a week and both Karin and I were complete absorbed in the other fact that, nine-years-ago today, she had just taken possession of that wee little subletted basement suite (where she lived [...]

wherein… …we garden… …filling the spaces, pots, and planters with an assortment of foliage, plants, seeds, and other recently purchased bits of life, flora, soil, et cetera, in a vaguely directional attempt to beautify this little chunk of land we call our back yard, a haven for rapid greening in a short five month window prior to yet another inevitable snowfall that reduces it all to brown chaos, death, and depression. …we party… …or at least as much as a couple with a tag-along child can at a birthday-slash-going away party at Jess and Martin’s house, grilling various meats with folks we sorta-know through past associations at similar gatherings in distantly fleeting memories. …i run… …logging yet another nine point some kilometers around the neighborhood [...]

Having just returned from Red Deer where we were lured for a pair of belated holiday parties — the last two for a long while — I thought I’d take a few minutes and fix the biggest complaint I was offered all weekend: apparently I haven’t been prompt enough in supplying new photos from the past few weeks of merry-making. (After all, what are sister-in-laws for?) Though, now since I’ve collected a hundred-and-some more over the past couple days — and I still had pictures on the camera from weeks ago now (for shame!) — I figured a few of those complaints may actually have been justified. So, as these things tend to go, those who already know where to find my increasingly massive collection [...]

It’s been nearly ten years since we could write the date coherently with just zeros and ones, such as 010110. It’s 2010. Woot. Did you see last night’s blue moon? Slightly after midnight the sky was so clear and the moon was so bright it was like dawn at midnight. Were it not so cold I would have gone for a stroll. Our community association put on a twenty minute fireworks show in the park near our house last night. It was surprisingly awesome for a community association and the two-hundred odd people who showed up in the bitter chill to watch. In about an hour I’m going to be lining up for a five kilometer run. It’s minus twenty-something this morning. It’s going to [...]