Caffeine Free Since 2005
I’m so tired lately. A lot of people have been saying they’re tired. It’s hard to get up every day and read about what horrible new thing has made “normal†move another step towards “intolerableâ€. We’re all frogs in the pot at the moment, aren’t we? (Cue Bruce Cockburn: The Trouble With Normal Is It […]
A while ago I was chatting with someone about books and bookstores and all that sort of thing and the question was asked: so, what do I read? I answered rather stupidly — “um, not bestsellers” or somesuch — but it did remind me that I’ve fallen out of the habit of posting about books, […]
How I hate it when people live up to stereotypes. I look at the G20 coverage and that’s all I see. We had people marching peacefully for good causes, whose messages will now never be heard. We had the riot-helmeted cops marching in rows. We had idiots who like to break things and nobody stopped […]
I mentioned this recipe on Facebook and got requests, so here it is. It’s adapted from the KitchenAid ice-cream maker book, but of course any ice-cream maker will work. I should mention that making your own ice cream, although pretty easy, is a vanity project and not a money-saving one. This is REALLY good ice […]
I have to say something about this desperately sad story, in which two children, non-swimmers both, drowned and died along with their mother, also a non-swimmer, who had been supervising them as they swam in a hotel pool (without a lifeguard). It seems that one or both girls somehow got into trouble and the mother […]
M: Daddy, what is that? D: It’s a tie. M: It is? D: I understand how you might not recognize it. I haven’t worn one since… uh… (We pause to consider this question. Someone’s wedding? Maybe? We can’t recall any recent funerals…) D: … well, I haven’t worn one for a long time. M: How […]
Quotation of the Day for June 30, 2008 “It’s no good pretending that any relationship has a future if your record collections disagree violently or if your favorite films wouldn’t even speak to each other if they met at a party.” – Nick Hornby Back a million years ago when my record collection kept to […]
Here are the tracks left by one of the sidewalk snow plows by a park in my neighbourhood. You know, the plows that “won’t fit” on the sidewalks in front of people’s houses, but somehow manage to fit on the bits of identical sidewalks adjacent to city property — parks, schools, bus stops…. As Spacing […]
Quotation of the Day for January 5, 2008 “Because it does not take much courage to fight when you still believe you can win. What takes real courage is to keep fighting when all hope is gone.” – Deqing, Shaolin monk, explaining why heroes in Western action movies (who usually succeed) are less heroic than […]
I’m sure anyone reading this has heard my rant about Toys R Gender Apartheid. The place drives me nuts and I end up cursing myself every time I spend money there. But here’s a nice piece out of the UK’s “the f-word” that manages to say the same things but without all the swear words […]
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QOTD for March 12: “When he was younger Mr Phillips had hated meetings. Or at least he had once he had got over the grown-up feeling, the warm glow of inclusion, of being invited to his first meeting with his first employers, Grimshaw’s. Children and students didn’t have meetings; only adults, serious employed people had […]
Tea party Originally uploaded by morecoffeeplease. Maddy was given a teeny-tiny china tea set by Honorary-Grandma E. as an early birthday present, so we’ve been having pretend-tea several times a day. The good thing about pretend tea is that it doesn’t matter if you spill it. Plus, slurping spilled pretend tea out of the tiny […]
Triumphant Originally uploaded by morecoffeeplease. A bit belated, but here’s a picture of our easter-egg hunt. This was Take II of the hunt — I snuck outside and hid 30 of the small foil-covered eggs, but 45 minutes later when we went outside to hunt for them, all but three had vanished, presumably eaten by […]