I spend my days with more than fifty other people, and the majority are coffee drinkers. We draw our rations, at 60 cents per, from a machine that is filled on a fairly regular basis with several kilos of beans, and the grind, although not one that would receive a rave review in the press, serves us well. Until.
posted in health | Comments Off on The day the coffee dried up | 135 words
The UPEI strike is through day ten and counting. The faculty association and the administration have studiously ignored the real issues, held their respective lines in the shifting sands and decided that the money is never quite enough, either in the bank or in the pay cheque.
posted in politics | Comments Off on No winners in this contest | 120 words
I have to admit it; the Rick Mercer Report just gives TV a different flavour. Sort of like a bowl of banana-blueberry ice cream. Tonight, the good fellow probed a cow, had his portrait painted by Mendelson Joe up in Huntsville (so that’s where the guy ended up!) and gave a heads up on the newest Harper stealth governing. No more press scrums.
posted in media | Comments Off on Not your average news show | 95 words
Off our east coast, the seal hunt is underway. A few people will make a small amount of money for very physically difficult work; an opportunity that may disappear within a few years.
posted in environment | Comments Off on Vacation choice | 164 words
One of life’s little pleasures comes from watching a puppy “grow up”. The whole childhood is compressed into a series of a few weeks, so the change is rapid. Take, for example, our little baby shark. The needle teeth have already started to fall out (thank goodness) and my arms will eventually heal. The original scale-tipping at fifteen pounds has gone to twenty-six pounds in a matter of fourteen days; a quick mathematical analysis shows that the eight pounds of puppy chow is doing REALLY WELL, unless there is a hidden food source (kids??) that is giving us value-added.
posted in pets | Comments Off on Weight gain | 174 words
Some meals require more “hands on” than others. The real, lay down a foundation, pour the cement, cut the materials kind of meals. One example is a large pan of lasagna.
posted in health | Comments Off on Constructing supper | 205 words
The spillover from one background to another is sometimes manifested in the odd details supplied by my children in our cross-cultural household. This morning, son number two headed off to write his entry examination at a local CEGEP. After a return delayed by the family taxi which went missing in action (note to self, place a road map or a GPS in the next vehicle), the obvious question was about the difficulty of the exam session. The response “A bit like a Fun With Dick And Jane reader” caught me off-guard. Except for the briefest of contact with a reprinted copy at my sister’s earlier this month, there is no way in any context that he’s had the intense pleasure of reading that particular work of literary history.
posted in history | Comments Off on Cross-wired cultures | 149 words
I attended a short seminar today on the basics of podcasting in the classroom. No hard sell, even though the presentation was sponsored by Apple. Rather, a short look at how the tools have now evolved to a point where any class with a simple setup and a ‘net feed could begin to announce what they had to say in full audio/video to anyone who cared enough to listen in.
posted in technology | Comments Off on Podcast your optimism | 147 words
Budget promises are funny animals. Today, the provincial government showed off a shiny new budget that included a measure where they would pay for bus transport. Now, the fine print shows this is not exactly true. What is offered is to give a tax subsidy to any company which institutes a program to fund public transport fares for their employees. The company must create and administer the program in one of the few areas of the province that has a public transit system. The employee will not be fiscally penalized for participating in such a program. The figure given for such a measure is utopist.
posted in politics | Comments Off on Divide and conquer | 220 words
The (in)fighing is almost over. All levels of government have agreed that the task of running a zoo is beyond their competence, and in less than two weeks, all the animals must find a new apartment. Wait; I thought moving day in Quebec was officially July 1st. Do you think the animals have called in the necessary truck reservations for the “big move”?
posted in politics | Comments Off on Psst… wanna buy a used bear? | 158 words
