Category: Life, the Universe and Everything

Worlds collide

I have a confession to make. I wanted to tell you before somebody else did, or before you figured it out for yourself. I knew I couldn’t keep it a secret much longer.

You see, I’ve been cheating on you. I have another blog.

*waits for gasp of dismay and betrayal*

Don’t worry, you’ll always be my first bloggy love. But I needed somewhere to put my ongoing research into the field of government communications and social media, and no amount of non-sequiturs and failed segue attempts could bridge that in with Tristan’s potty adventures and #26.

I wanted to tell you about it because it’s becoming increasingly difficult to lead this double bloggy life. I went to this absolutely fabulous meet-up yesterday of people who are interested in public relations and social media, and I was having a massive identity crisis the whole night. I earned my blogging “street cred” here, but my professional blog stuff is over on the other blog. Every time I joined in the conversation, I vacillated between veteran mommy-blogger and newbie communications blogger. As if I don’t have a hard enough time keeping track of just one identity!

And then there was the sharing of information. I have government of Canada business cards with the standard contact info on them, but no URL; and I have my funky little Moo cards with pictures of the boys from my Flickr account and this URL. (Love love LOVE my Moo cards!!) Which is more likely to give me professional credibility: a biz card with a URL scrawled across the white space in the middle, or a picture of Simon colouring Easter eggs or both boys in the bathtub with my blog title and URL on the back? Of course, I went with the Moo cards, because in the end it’s all about my boys, isn’t it?

So I figured I’d let you in on my secret bloggy life now, because it’s getting increasingly difficult to keep the two blogs separate. I have no intention of linking back here from there, as the goal of the blog is more to be used as an internal collaboration tool, but if you’re interested in the intersection of government communication and social media, feel free to stop by for a visit.

But, um, please keep in mind that many big bosses above me, who are responsible for important things like my paycheque and my computer access, will be following the comments on that blog. As opposed to here, where they probably also read but with a lot less scrutiny and a lack of proprietary interest. I’m just sayin’.

So, without further ado (and you know how I love the ado), I present for your link-surfing pleasure, the Canadian Cybrarian.

Food, glorious food!

As I mentioned earlier this week, I seem to have overcome my inability to plan meals.

Since I’m so grateful to you for all your mealtime suggestions, and since I frankly can’t think of anything else to blog about today, I thought I’d share with you my week of dinners. Many of you said you were stuck in a dinnertime rut, too. Maybe this will inspire you – or, more likely, you’ll realize that you like your rut just fine, thanks.

Sunday
Meatloaf, recipe stolen from here (Yummy!)
Sweet potato French fries
Baked beans cooked in the slow cooker
Mixed green salad with mandarin oranges, slivered almonds and Toasted Sesame dressing

Monday
Quesadillas made with low-fat refried beans, cheddar, and diced onions, tomatoes and red peppers, topped with salsa and home-made guacamole

(Does anybody have a good salsa recipe? I’ve always wanted to try making salsa.)

Tuesday
Pasta with stir-fried chunks of red pepper, zucchini, mushrooms and snow peas, tossed with pesto sauce. (I usually make rotini with this, but thought I’d try farfalle this time. Blah. I’ll go back to the rotini for next time.)

Wednesday
I worked late, so Beloved was in charge of dinner. Pizza and wings from the place at the corner. Oh well.

Thursday
Lasagne (from a box)
Mixed green salad with feta, dried cranberries, walnut chunks and home-made dressing
(The boys ate Scooby-Doo pasta from a can.)

Friday
Home-made bean soup (frozen leftovers from last weekend)
Fresh bread
Cheddar cheese slices

Saturday
Chili (one of my specialties – lots of beans and tomatoes, and very spicy)
Toast
Devilled eggs

Repeat for the next 51 weeks and I’ll only have to think of new dinner ideas once a year.

(Stay tuned next week, when I blog the contents of the bottom of my purse. Citizen journalism doesn’t get any more scintillating than this, folks!)

Pluto is the word of the year

I’m such a word nerd. Last week we had the banished words of 2007, and I am now pleased to share with you the American Dialect Society’s word of the year: pluto.

“To pluto is to demote or devalue someone or something, as happened to the former planet Pluto when the General Assembly of the International Astronomical Union decided Pluto no longer met its definition of a planet,” according to the press release. I can’t say I’ve heard it used before, but I think it makes a lovely substitute for the démodé “to vote someone off the island.”

Other finalists in the contest, which drew tens of internet voters, included climate canary, a species which acts as an indicator for global warming; murse a man’s purse, and to julie: “to organize an event. Also as a noun. From Julie McCoy, the character of cruise director on the television show The Love Boat.”

While all that was rather interesting, what I found most fascinating was the addendum to the press release, which shows the word of the year and justification, going back to 1990. It gives me vertigo to look back and see what is now commonplace or even quaint terminology and how revolutionary it was just a couple of years ago, not just in technology but in popular culture as well:

1995 Word of the Year: (tie) World Wide Web on the Internet, and newt, to make aggressive changes as a newcomer. Most Likely to Succeed: World Wide Web and its variants the Web, WWW, W3. Most Useful: E.Q. (for Emotional Quotient), the ability to manage one’s emotions. Most Original: postal or go postal, to act irrationally, often violently, from stress at work. Most Outrageous: starter marriage, a first marriage not expected to be the last.

1994 Word of the Year: (tie) cyber, pertaining to computers and electronic communication, and morph, to change form. Most Promising: Infobahn, the Internet. Most Trendy: dress down day or casual day, a workday when employees are allowed to dress casually. Most Euphemistic: challenged indicating an undesirable or unappealing condition.

1993 Word of the Year: information superhighway, network linking computers, television, telephone, and other electronic means of communication. Most Likely to Succeed: quotative like with a form of the verb be to indicate speech or thought. Most Useful: thing premodified by a noun, e.g. “a Chicago thing.” Most Imaginative: McJob, a generic, unstimulating, low-paying job. Most Amazing: cybersex, sexual stimulation by computer. Most Unnecessary: mosaic culture to describe a multicultural society.

1992 Word of the Year: Not! expression of disagreement. Most Likely to Succeed: snail mail, s-mail, mail that is physically delivered, as opposed to e-mail. Most Useful: grunge, a style of clothing. Most Original: Franken-, genetically altered. Most Amazing: Munchhausen’s syndrome by proxy, illness fabricated to evoke sympathy for the caregiver. Most unnecessary: gender feminism, belief that sex roles are social, not biological. Most Outrageous: ethnic cleansing, purging of ethnic minorities.

1991 Word of the Year: mother of all —, greatest, most impressive. Most Likely to Succeed: rollerblade, skate with rollers in a single row. Most Successful: in your face, aggressive, confrontational, flamboyant. Most Original: molecular pharming/pharming, genetically modifying farm animals to produce human proteins for pharmaceutical use.

1990 Word of the Year: bushlips, insincere political rhetoric. Most Likely to Succeed: (tie) notebook PC, a portable personal computer weighting 4-8 pounds, and rightsizing, adjusting the size of a staff by laying off employees. Most Useful: (tie) technostupidity, loss of ability through dependence on machines, and potty parity, equalization of toilet facilities for the sexes. Most Amazing: bungee jumping, jumping from a high platform with elastic cables on the feet. Most Outrageous: politically correct, PC, adhering to principles of left-wing social concern.

The Greatest Canadian Inventions

I’m in love with CBC TV lately. Last night, I got completely sucked in by an unexpectedly delightful TV special called The Greatest Canadian Invention. It used a combination of archival clips and commentaters to count down the 50 greatest Canadian inventions, as ranked by the Canadian public.

It was full of cultural references and asides spanning the Wiggles to the Kids in the Hall to CSI, and a good dose of quintessentially Canadian humour. Astronaut Chris Hadfield, for instance, in describing the iconic Canadarm, explained that it was so sensitive that it could “take a pencil and stick it up your nose.” He also mentioned that there wasn’t a lot of forethought put into inscribing the Canada wordmark into the insulation around the arm, but when NASA saw that logo in every camera shot beamed back to millions of viewers on Earth, they were quick to put an American flag on the back of the space shuttle to compensate.

The commentaters, a collection of B-list Canadian personalities ranging from Margaret Atwood and Will Ferguson to Mitsou to Mike Holmes and Debbie Travis (I can just hear my American readers saying, “Who??”) and the archival clips of everything from Pierre Trudeau paddling a canoe to the old WonderBra commercials from the 1970s (remember that song? “Wonderful wonderful… WonderBra”?) transformed this into a clever, witty, culturally-laden and ultimately fascinating look at the history of Canadian inventions.

And about those inventions… who knew? I couldn’t find an easy-to-copy list on cbc.ca, so I lifted this one from Wikipedia (I’ve put my “I had no idea” revelations in bold):

Alkaline battery
Ardox Spiral Nail
Automatic Lubricating Cup
Basketball
Birch-Bark Canoe
BlackBerry
Bloody Caesar
Canadarm
Caulking gun
Cobalt-60 “Bomb” Cancer Treatment
CPR-Mannequin: “Actar 911”
Crash-Position Indicator-CPI
Electric Oven
Electric Wheelchair
Electron Microscope
Electronic Music Synthesizer
Explosives Vapour Detector
Five Pin Bowling
Fog horn
Goalie mask
Green Garbage Bag
G-Suit
Instant Mashed Potatoes
Instant Replay
Insulin
Java programming language
Key Frame Animation
Lacrosse
Light Bulb
Marine Screw Propeller
Marquis Wheat
Pablum
Pacemaker
Paint roller
Plexiglas
Poutine
Radio Voice Transmission
Retractable Beer Carton Handle
Robertson screw
Self-Propelled Combine Harvester
Separable Baggage Check
Ski-Doo
Snowblower
Standard Time
Telephone
UV Degradable Plastics
Walkie-Talkie
Weevac 6
Wonderbra
Zipper

These are in alphabetical order, rather than the order in which they were ultimately ranked. The top three, though were insulin, the lightbulb (invented by Canadians, and then the patent was sold to Thomas Edison for $5000) and the telephone.

I love the fact that the retractable beer case handle and poutine made the list! Kudos to CBC for putting together such an enjoyable and ultimately educational show. I hadn’t meant to watch any more than a few minutes, but from the start I was hooked for the full two hours. Bravo!

Banished words 2007

It’s a new year, and time for us to take a look at the annual list of banned words, courtesy Lake Superior State University. We did this last year, too, remember?

Every year, LSSU takes votes from contributors on the words and phrases that should be banished and compiles them to a year-end list. The list is clever, but it’s the pithy comments from contributors that make it worth reading. The banished words for 2007 include:

  • NOW PLAYING IN THEATERS — Heard in movie advertisements. Where can we see that, again?
  • ARMED ROBBERY/DRUG DEAL GONE BAD — From the news reports. What degree of “bad” don’t we understand?
  • COMBINED CELEBRITY NAMES — Celebrity duos of yore — BogCall (Bogart and Bacall), Lardy (Laurel and Hardy), and CheeChong (Cheech and Chong) — just got lucky.
  • BOASTS — See classified advertisements for houses, says Morris Conklin of Lisboa, Portugal, as in “master bedroom boasts his-and-her fireplaces — never ‘bathroom apologizes for cracked linoleum,’ or ‘kitchen laments pathetic placement of electrical outlets.'”

Last year, you suggested we ban ‘my bad’, among other terms. And lookit that, I just realized the always-prescient Marla predicted one of this year’s banned words!

So whaddaya think? Do you agree with the list this year? What words or phrases would you banish from the vernacular?

It’s a new year!

I’m fond of odd-numbered years -they seem to be lucky for me. Beloved and I met in 1995 and married in 1999. We conceived Tristan in 2001 and Simon in 2003. We also bought this house in 2003, and I started my current job that year. In 2005, I earned a promotion. I like odd-numbered years. I have a good feeling about this one.

Without any attempt at a segue whatsover, I’d like to introduce the latest member of our family. On Boxing Day, Beloved got a great deal on a new desktop to replace the old one that died this summer. After reading all your comments about kids and computers, I realized it was high time the boys had access to a computer of their own, so rather than putting this back in the basement, we decided to keep it in a central place. On the weekend, we picked up this little desk/cupboard so we could keep it on the main floor – and hopefully keep the clutter to a minimum.

You were so right, bloggy friends. It’s freaking me out how easily Tristan is taking to the computer, considering how limited his exposure has been. He’s seen a computer practically every day of his life, but far as I know, the only mouse he’s played with significantly has been the one at the bookstore – and it’s a Mac.

I remember how long it took me to coordinate the mouse in my hand and the pointer on screen, way back in 1986 or so. And yet, Tristan does it like he’s moving the pointer with his mind instead of the mouse. What really blew me away was that he figured out within the first three minutes how to grab the top of a window and drag it across the screen. He’s seen me do it a dozen times or more, but there’s nothing intuitive about it – for an old girl like me, anyway.

It’s a whole new year, and a whole new era in our house. There’s a desktop in the very heart of the house, wide open for the kids and us to share.

I can feel it – this year is going to be amazing!!

Happy new year!

Feed my family!

Okay, bloggy friends. I need your help. (Yes, again.)

In the last couple of weeks months, I’ve gotten into the habit of only buying two or three meals worth of food at the grocery store. Three days later, I’m back in the grocery store again, agonizing over what to make. Two trips a week to the grocery store is neither fiscally prudent, nor incredibly efficient.

The reason is a complete lack of inspiration in the meal-planning department. I’ve never been overly fond of my role as chief meal planner, but in the last little while, it has become an arduous task. I don’t even mind the actual cooking, one I get going; I just can’t think of anything to make. My meal-planning list has been reduced to five or six meals in heavy rotation, and frankly, we’re all getting a little sick of them.

The rotation lately has mainly consisted of spaghetti, chili con carne, tortellini, lasagne, and tacos. Yawn! We need some variety. I pawed through my cookbooks a couple of times (I have all the books in the Looney Spoons collection – LOVE them!) so I can even come up with a few main dishes. But then there’s the whole “what goes with it” side-dish conundrum.

Seriously, I need your ideas. Desperately! What’s your favourite easy, healthy family meal? From soup to nuts, spell it all out – and if you want to leave me a recipe or two, I’m willing to try just about anything at this point!

CBS announces Rockstar: Wiggles *

CBS and Mark Burnett will launch a new reality series that promises to find the next great rock star.

ROCK STAR: WIGGLES, from “Survivor” executive producer Mark Burnett, combines the world of preschool ditties with relationship-style unscripted drama, performance competition and a weekly contestant elimination. The last singer standing will become the lead singer of the internationally renowned band The Wiggles and embark on a worldwide concert tour with the band and be part of the group’s ongoing bid to dominate the world of children’s entertainment.

Each week, the show will feature a LIVE performance competition that will eliminate one contestant, as determined by a combination of celebrity judges, Wiggles band members and preschool audiences around the world. Blonde ingenue Wendy of Bob the Builder fame will co-host, a role popularized by Rockstar hottie Brooke Burke.

Speculation has been rampant about who would replace the band’s lead singer, Greg “the Yellow Wiggle” Page, after he recently announced his retirement from the band due to illness. “We’ve already been contacted by representatives of Elton John, George Michael and Billy Corgan,” said purple Wiggle Jeff Fatt. “We told them that they would have to try out just like everybody else.”

The series, which will be broadcast weekdays starting at 6 am and repeated thrice daily, will also focus on the relationships and interaction between the contestants as they live together with a select group of fans in a Hollywood Hills daycare facility.

The new show will be produced by Mark Burnett Productions. Mark Burnett, Captain Feathersword and Wags the Dog are executive producers. Dorothy the Dinosaur is co-executive producer.

The Wiggles are Australia’s highest-grossing entertainment act. They have sold more than 17 million DVDs and five million albums worldwide.

(* not really)

Northern lights alert

The skies over Ottawa may or may not be clear over the next couple of nights, but at least it will be mild. That will make it a lot more comfortable for me as I stand out on the back deck, scanning the skies for the northern lights.

According to this article from CTV.com, a significant solar flare will be rushing past the Earth over the next little while. The plasma wave surrounds the Earth and when it collides with the gases in our atmosphere, the collision results in energy being emitted as photons which cause the aurora borealis – the famous and unforgettable northern lights.

Have you ever seen them? I clearly remember my first time. I was driving from Ottawa to Sudbury one Christmas – maybe 1990 or so – with my ex-husband and his brother. It was brutally, bitterly cold and we nearly froze to death standing on the side of the highway where we had pulled over to admire the display. I’ve seen them a half a dozen or so times since then, but never have I seen dancing curtains of multicoloured light like that first time.

According to this observers’ page, last night’s display was seen well into the US. If it’s clear where you are tonight, it may well be worth taking the occasional peek outside to check for the northern lights!

Christmas crazies

In the Citizen this morning, there was an article (sorry, subscriber only – why do they do that?) about the hot ‘toys’ this Christmas and how people are frantically bidding outrageous amounts for them on eBay. The article notes,

Over the two-week period beginning Nov. 23, eBay has sold 6,470 Wii units across Canada — most at double their retail price of $280. The Playstation 3 has sold 7,060 times at an average of $2,317 — four times its retail price of $550. Meanwhile, the Elmo T.M.X. has been sold 10,247 times for an average of $30 more than its retail price of $44.99.

I’m going to have to back this rant up a little bit. I’m going to ignore for a moment the whole idea of the bidding wars, and just shake my head in dismayed disbelief that anyone would pay more than FIVE HUNDRED DOLLARS for a video game console. I’m not spending $500 for both boys combined, and don’t anticipate doing so any time in the near future. Not in this lifetime. (If the lottery fairy dumps a load of cash in my stocking and deems it must be spent on home electronics, a new computer for the family and a Canon Rebel digital SLR are at the top – and bottom! – of that list.)

But seriously, did you see that last line in the quote? People are spending an average – an AVERAGE! – of $75 for an Elmo doll. And while I think $75 for Elmo is questionable in an eye-brow raising sort of way, I simply can’t conceptualize paying over two thousand dollars for a video game system where you still have to pay extra for the damn games. I don’t have enough italics, caps and exclamation marks to fully express my astonishment and contempt.

These things will all be back on the store shelves, not to mention their regular price, by mid-January. What on earth is possessing people to pay these outrageous amounts?

What’s the best gift you are giving this Christmas, the one you can’t wait to give? And would you pay four times the retail price to give it?