It’s summer. It’s warm. It’s not raining…yet. And I’m zonked. Time to voluntarily take a staycation before my body demands it, which, uh, it already is. As of now, I’m on my 2 to 3-week staycation (my therapist chuckled at the idea of me resting for a whole 3 weeks) and plan on being offline…
Category: Personal
Jack Layton: The Spirit of His Legacy
Words fail me. That’s what I tweeted this morning, after I saw the Breaking News on Citytv’s Breakfast Television, as I was massaging my muscles post-weight session, that Jack Layton had died. That first announcement was brief, and Cynthia Mulligan had a hard time switching gears to traffic. Switching gears. That’s what’s happening today. Being…
Brainline.org on Five Members of a Club No One Wants to Belong to
“Groucho Marx got a lot of laughs for saying that he’d never want to be a member of a club that would accept him as a member.” (Katherine Wise) So begins the brainline.org article Brain injury Blogs: Voices from People Living with Traumatic Brain Injury about five bloggers, including me (!), whom they declare as…
Blood Pressure and Brain Injury: The Test
I had 24-hour blood pressure monitoring done twice this past week, sort of. The first monitor went kaput after a couple of hours. So the next day, back on the highway I went to the clinic and was hooked up to a 2-week-old one. Brand new is better than well used, except when it comes…
Sweating Brain Injury Heat
The heat dome rose up out of the US and expanded itself north to smother Toronto in record-breaking heat for July 21st, only 0.1 degrees Celsius off the all-time record for the entire month of July. On the news, reporters warned us to drink lots, to watch for signs of heat stress, and to watch…
A Wedding Marks Normal Parameters
I was at a wedding. Like many weddings, the marriage part was the shortest and quietest, the heart of the day, but only the beginning. Then came the photos, and then came the reception. The reception was appetizers and chit-chat; finding seats and wedding party intro; dinner and speeches; and dancing till two. What struck…
Follow-Me, Follow-You Authors on Twitter Miss Out
Okay, I’m getting a tad fed-up. It is one thing to have marketing folk follow you on Twitter then a few days later, unfollow you. Obviously they’re trying to boost their follower count. But it is another for an author or writer to do it. What are they thinking? That Twitter is just for marketing?…
Paradise, Your Name is Canada
Though not my native land, Canada is my home. She was the place my grandparents first felt settled after being kicked out of Burma by the Japanese during WWII and wandering India for decades. She was where my mother’s mother learned about “ice hockey” in her 60s and became an aficionado of Hockey Night in…
Publishing is a Series of Confusions to be Solved
Trying to get your work published is a series of confusions, one leading to the next, each to be solved before moving on. To be published by a large, traditional publisher, but not a small press, you need an agent. And besides it would be nice to have someone alongside, who knows the ropes. Writing…