Santa was kind to us this year. And among the games we got was a quick one called Uno Flip. A nice twist on the classic Uno card game, here the players use both sides of the cards as the game progresses. There’s a new action card called Flip, which makes the draw pile, the…
For several years now, my wife and daughter and I have celebrated Jolabokaflod, the Icelandic tradition of giving books to each other on Christmas Eve. The phrase basically translates to Christmas (Jol – think Yule) book (bok) flood (flod), and is pronounced something like YO-la-BO-kka-fludt. It essentially comes down to giving new books (and perhaps…
Despite the craziness of this year–hey, don’t tell anyone, but planning a reno and then moving out while purging a ton of belongings that was long overdue, storing half of the kept stuff and taking half of it with you once you finally find a place to live, then having one third of the household…
I’m applying for a job. Since my daughter was in pre-school, I’ve been working at a temp services agency while being a stay-at-home dad. Essentially the agency is the kind of place a business would go to if they’re hosting a talk in a hotel and need people greeted and have their coat checked and…
We had a surprising accumulation of snow this past Sunday. It was my favourite kind of snowfall–big flakes that come down steadily but without driving or blinding; the perfect kind of silent snowing that you see in picturesque scenes in movies–and it stuck around for days in an unusual stillness of weather. The following morning,…
I recently read this (short!) post advising–with good reason–that people should write shorter stuff but more often. It struck a chord with me. I do, as I’m sometimes reminded (usually by my wife and daughter) tend to over-verbalize/over-write things. My wife sometimes tells me that when someone asks what time it is I tell them…
I’m home. It doesn’t look like it yet–I’d say there’s a solid 85% of our stuff in the house that isn’t where it’s ultimately going to end up, which is making for a lot of chaos with pockets of usable space–but we’ll get there. And in the mean time, it’s still home, and there’s simply…
My phone is dying. It’s a Samsung Galaxy S8, which was not quite the best one available from Samsung at the time, because I’m one of those types who balks at paying more for a phone than I would for a laptop, but it was up there. Merely the price of an average laptop. But…
It’s been a busy month of hunting things down for the reno and running around and picking up and dropping off and meeting and stress and calls and emails and then rinsing and repeating. I thought faucets were overabundant. But that’s only because we hadn’t gone too deep into the world of lighting. Good lord….
The Murderbot Diaries came up in a few lists I recently read of recommended books. My curiosity finally piqued enough to put myself in queue to wait for it at the library. And I’m sorry I didn’t do it sooner. It should be said that I’ve never been a huge fan of science fiction books….