Well, it’s over. Waahhhhhhh! The last two days zipped by; one moment I was facing two chapters left to write, feeling nervous, excited, and already nostalgic for this unbelievable month of novel writing called NaNoWriMo, the next I’d typed the last word, pressed the Save button, and it was all over. I wrote 1,420 words…
Category: Personal
NaNoWriMo Has Created So Much in Me
Only two more days, two more sleeps, two more chapters until the end of National Novel Writing Month. I’ve had so much fun, writing alone yet in a group of hundreds of thousands, that I’ll be sad to see it end. I’ve achieved far more than I expected; heck as of today, I achieved the…
Santa Claus Comes to Town
One of my favourite memories of winter was when the snow first fell and Santa Claus came to town. I wrote this short, memory-story for an e-mail course I took to relearn how to write back in 2003. It took place on a day like today, many years ago, when Santa Claus came to Toronto,…
My Early Days of NaNoWriMo
I’ve completed four days of National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), and I do believe it was a good decision, joining NaNoWriMo. The days and the writing have been scary, like pulling hens teeth, slow, and exhausting. But no matter how much I think I’m not going to do it or how much I want to…
Day One of NaNoWriMo, and I’m Off!
When I first heard about National Novel Writing Month, I thought that I could never do. When I read about it last month, I thought, hmmmm… When I came across other people talking about it online, I thought this is just what I need to get my novel written. I don’t have someone to organize…
The Core of The GI Diet by Gallop: The Glycemic Index
Aside from my rebellious first impressions of The GI Diet by Rick Gallop, I have to admit that this book does one thing very well: makes the glycemic index intelligible and practical. Dr David Jenkins* at the University of Toronto developed the glycemic index as a way to measure how a particular food affects glucose…
First Impressions of The GI Diet by Rick Gallop
It’s been almost 4 weeks since I started The GI Diet by Rick Gallop after my Type 2 Diabetes diagnosis. Before my brain injury I had been following a low-glycemic index (GI) diet; but not being able to cook for many years and the other changes wrought by the injury resulted in me having strayed…
What Does it Take for a Person to Change Their Diet?
The Toronto Star today calls the Canadian diet a “dog’s breakfast.” Citing toxic foods and a sedentary lifestyle as the causes of obesity, it looks into how one Québec doctor, Dr. Jean-Pierre Després, is developing a program to counter this trend. I saw two problems with his work: all male — why in the 21st…
My First Walk Down Word on the Street
This year I’m going to The Word on the Street, I vowed. And so I did. I started my foray down the street on the northbound lanes of Queen’s Park where the Fringe Beat was. There I found two people I’d met through the Internet: Lorina of Five Rivers, and Paul Lima, whose e-mail course…