Until things get fixed up here, I’ve migrated this blog to http://onelife.solarcrash.com/
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Find yourself 30 minutes to sit down and do nothing else but watch this.
Some of us have wings, that we just don’t know about…
Shades from the U2 3D concert. These look a lot cooler than the red-and-blue paper glasses I use to use.
will.i.am has another Obama video out
Stellar loves her new monkey
I recently saw this add at a public transit stop that is supposedly going up across Canada. No one quite knows what it’s for.
Our entire family has been sick in some way the past three weeks. We seem to be passing it back and for to each other. Although it does seem that quite a number of people I know happen to also be sick for an inordinate amount of time this year. (I’ve been having flashbacks of Stephen King’s movie “The Stand” where everyone starts getting sick and then it’s cough, cough, cough… everyone in the world is dead).
Anyhow, being sick combined with busyness just drives me crazy. I’ve been trying not to over exert myself, I’ve declined a number of speaking engagements, and I still find myself far behind my deadlines. Anyone got tips?
Here’s a shot of Stellar in the snow. And no, we don’t leave her in the snow when she’s sick. She makes me smile every time I think of her crazy face.
Now this is creative… go obama…
Stellar’s doing better, thanks so much for all the prayers.
A few reflections on the whole experience
There were periods Stellar would be breathing so rapidly I wondered how her little heart could keep up, and other times when her breath was so shallow we weren’t sure if she was breathing at all. Nothing much else matters in these moments.
In these moments you start thinking crazy crazy thoughts in silence. Who passed this on to her? Was it me? Is this the resulting consequence of some past sin? Might these be my last moments…?
In my struggles to live a disciplined life of prayer, I found no need to have to pray, it was simply the cry of my heart every moment.
I tell new parents how resilient kids are all the time, I guess it really is different when it’s your own.
Life sometimes offers us forever-defining choices with very little clarity. Should I rush to the emergency, or am I over-reacting and what’s best is to let this will pass? Sometimes you just need to believe that inkling of a voice within your heart, and act.
Stellar has always kept us busy with her high-fives and attraction to dirt, garbage, and just about all things dangerous. During her sickest moments she became almost void of her personality. We ached for all her special traits to re-emerge again. We realized that these sometimes tiring characteristics were signs of life, and what made her, her.
The internet is loaded with horrifically sad stories on just about every illness and disease. Sometimes knowing more information that you can’t action on, really doesn’t help.
Hospitals are rarely happy places. I have many friends in the medical profession I greatly admire, but there’s something about the ’system’ I think that often bothers me. Sometimes it seems to enforce helplessness as you’re often not told what exactly is going on, your life is at the mercy of strangers, and I often feel like conclusions are often drawn before proper assessments have been made.
This has only deepened my admiration for just about any parent who loves and raises a child, regardless of how their children turn out emotionally, spiritually, physically, etc. You are to be honored.
This angel full of life, is so far from it right now.
She’s battling bronchitis/pneumonia and a really high fever right now.
Your prayers would be appreciated.
Go to this site to check out this viral video on “The Story of Stuff“. It’s about 20 minutes long but communicates the key messages of extraction, production, distribution, consumption, and disposal with brilliant simplicity.
Below is one of my favorite segments of the video,
I’d love to hear what you are or or plan on doing about it all…
Since I’ve joined facebook, I’ve been horrible with making the most of the connections I’ve established through it. I’m backlogged in replies, and friends I haven’t spoken to in fifteen years, well, I still haven’t connected with them, though we’re now ‘official’ as friends.
I declare this Sunday December 30th International Facebook Day. I’m going to dedicate a chunk of my time on it and see where it goes. It’s long overdue and I don’t exactly have pressing deadlines at the moment. Maybe you should do the same!
Two stories I’ve read online in the past week have made it into my real-world conversations.
Check out:
Strangely Beautiful by Deana as she shares about her ‘dysfunctional family’
and
Cindy Beall shares her story in five short blog entries/chapters on the day her life completely changed
hey folks, fyi - comments appear to have been down for quite a while if you’re using internet explorer on this site. I have no clue when it will be fixed, so if you’d like to comment here use firefox instead, it should work fine.
Otherwise you could try commenting on my other site at solarcrash, sometimes i dual post between the blogs.
and for all you lurkers out there, this might be your chance to de-lurk.
Baked Salmon and tomatoes on a bed of bacon risotto
Grilled chicken on Ceasar Salad
Carrot and onion soup - pureed together with crouton and yogurt garnish
Green onion and asparagus wrapped in sole and baked
Local grown organic steak from the St. Lawrence Market / pan-seared and gently baked with onions
For my audience around the world, yes it’s cold in Canada, and yes we do live in igloos, but only in the winter.
Here’s our family braving the blizzard this weekend. We went out just for pics and kicks.
Our babysitter had to push back her commitment to us till January, so I’m hanging full-time with my daughter till then while Yvz has returned to work.
I can’t quite imagine having a more blessed life. It’s been a week of seeing Stellar try new foods and take further steps in life. I’ve been taking her to the doctors, the early-years-center, and the mall. Every day there are stories to tell that are a joy to share.
Life’s been incredibly busy and drama-filled lately, but at the end of the day at least I know I’ve got two things right.
These two.
Some thoughts I jotted down while cross-boarder shopping and waiting in the dreaded cheesecake factory lines.
like rats in a cage
or mice in a maze
wherever the sales sign lead
I go where they say to go
joyfully letting this wallet bleedwhat a steal
we beat the system, got a better deal
got something shiny, something new
by trading in the old
who knew it was actually my soul they stoleworthy cost savings,
or a life worth living,
I’m not sure, which one, we want morehere we are in line
at the cheesecake factory
waiting for this darn box to beep
watching others go in before us, patiently
filing in and eat and pay excessivelythis is life, life in the mall,
they’re all busy buying stuff,
yet I too, am one of them
and i just can’t wait, till it’s my turn to go in.
I don’t really use stumbleupon but I was procrastinating 10 minutes ago, and decided to login and checked to see if others I knew were also already registered on the website.
It cross-referenced my gmail account, and I added a few friends. To my dismay I didn’t realize that it checked to spam everyone else who wasn’t on stumbleupon in my address book as well by default!
Now in one instant, I’ve spammed well over a thousand people in my address book with a stupid stumbleupon registration request! This includes people I haven’t emailed in 4-5 years, and other distant acquaintances. How awkward.
If you’re one of them, I’m so sorry. I tried deleting my account in embarrassment, and supposedly stumbleupon can take as much as 2 weeks before the deletion can take place. This is just ridiculous.
Again, my apologies. What a horrible way to hear from me after all this time.
Check out this speech delivered to the United Nations by twelve year old Severn Suzuki
Not the brightest of videos, but I love the opening lyrics…
When I was,
A young boy,
My father, took me into the city
To see a marching band
He said, “Son when you grow up,
will you be the saviour of the broken,
the beaten and the damned?”
It’s just crazy how many times Stellar’s fallen and hit her head already…
Now, this is an awesome commercial…
Oh goodness, I’m such a geek.
I’m on two hours of sleep after wrapping up four papers last night. I’ve got a night class to still get through. Just a matter of time before I completely crash.
I’ve been shaving my head about once a year for the past few years. I’m too cheap to pay for a hair cut and don’t quite know how to cut my own hair, so I just shave it all right off.
My wife has told me in the past that I look good with the clean bald look. For some reason, this time around, she said maybe I should stick with hair. I like the management-freeness of it all.
Plus, it sure makes me feel a whole lot holier. It seems to work for the Dalai Lama. You decide.
I’ve been ‘using’ Stellar for a number of illustrations in probably half of the presentations, workshops, and sermons I’ve given over the last year.
I figure she won’t be letting me do so in a couple years so now’s my chance.
Wasabi-Ginger Salmon on a bed of slow-baked onions
Cantonese fried Chow-Mein with vegetarian toppings
Dumplings, portabella mushrooms, with egg noodles
Tilapia fillet pan fried and coated in a coke-batter with mango salsa. It’s arranged in an XO pattern, I call this one “hugs and kisses from the sea”
Blogrush just upgraded to v2, and I just added it to the sidebar here. I’ve been using it on my other blog, SolarCrash, and it’s had a bit of traction, though it’s still hard to gauge. You can give it a try with my referral here.
Regarding Google adsense, it’s been almost a year I’ve had their ads on my site and I’ve made maybe sixty or so dollars. This is fantastic being not employed and all, but once I hit the $100 payout, I think I might drop the ads altogether, we’ll see.
I just noticed I was quoted on the frontpage of ricebowljournals regarding my last post, cool eh?
What’s weird, to be honest, is I love having people I don’t know from all over the world reading my blogs, but sometimes I’m a bit hesitant about sharing it with those I know right in my community. With networks like facebook, and google’s coming opensocial, it’s becoming harder and harder to hide!
On another note, I keep a running list of all the things I want to blog on, but I just can’t seem to find the time to turn them all into posts.
Thanks so much to all you readers for staying tuned!
Yvz and I were leading a workshop on dating recently… and I think something arguably profound actually came out of my mouth. In discussing finding ‘the one’ and when you’re ‘ready’ and how we know what love is… I said…
If you can honestly love someone even if nothing about that person should ever change, OR, if everything about that person changes… then you just might be ready.
The reality is that some things about people may never ever change, and sometimes things happen that can change everything. ie. check out Robertson McQuilkin’s book “A promise kept” who drops everything to love his wife as she succumbs to Alzheimer’s.
I hear from newly weds quite often about all the ‘things’ they love about their other half. Truth is, much of what we often find so incredible about another person can disappear in a moment. This is why we ultimately long for unconditional love. When we are loved even in our must unlovely states.
I suspect this is how God is with us.
and no… i’m not suggesting anything about how yvz has changed over the years here… she’s always been crazy. I just thought it was a hilarious photo!
The latest TED talk I’ve watched on Greening the Ghetto. Let me know what you think if you ever get around to it.
Some reason I can’t embed it, see it here.
This is brilliant marking, but so cool.
I know I completely trashed the latest Transformers movie, but still.
Send a message to a friend of yours by phone for free - via the voice of Optimus Prime.
For those of you who don’t know, Microsoft is offering Office 2007 Ultimate edition to all current students for $59 US, or $64 Canadian.
This is a great deal if you ask me. OneNote alone makes it worthwhile if you’re a student… especially if owning legitimate software is your type of thing.
congrats to Gary and Sylvia on entering the world of marriage!
For our date night this week we hit cirque du soleil, Kooza. Only way we were able to afford it was through a big discount they were offering for students and teachers, which worked out just right for us.
It’s absolutely phenomenal what the human body is capable of.
My favorite parts of the night were when the performers slipped up, one guy fell off the high wire and managed to cling to the rope on his way down. I loved this because it helps you realize just how difficult and risky some of this stuff is. The perfect execution with many of the stunts were brilliant, but I loved when the humanity of it all was showcased.
Whenever a performer slightly slipped up, and then found a way to recover, the audience would cheer even louder in appreciation. For a few moments through the night, the audience was able to give something back to these incredible performers.
One early morning a decade ago, I heard on the radio that the first one hundred people to line up to purchase Radiohead’s OK Computer would be given a free ticket to their North American premiere at the Opera House.
I didn’t have a car at the time and ended up pulling a friend out of a test that morning to drive down and line up. While I was dropped off so that he could find parking, I ran towards the line and was handed ticket number 100, the very last ticket.
We debated this for a while, and decided the only fair thing to do would be to scalp the ticket and split the cash.
We’ve regretted it ever since.
Anyhow, I just discovered that Radiohead delivered a blow to the recording industry today and is offering their latest album for sale directly from their own website, cutting out all the middle men. On top of that, it’s pay whatever you want. You could literally put a cent into the honesty box and walk away with the album legitimately.
Kudos to Radiohead for once again doing things a bit differently…
No, I’m not quite a vegetarian yet, but my wife and I have definitely been trying to consume in a more sustainable way.
We went to a farmer’s market that turned out to not be too far from our home and bought a whole bunch of local grown food, and we’ve had four vegetarian dinners in a row. Not as tough as I thought it’d be. I’d still be salivating for a steak if I saw one though.
Here’s a vegetarian / zucchini lasagna that I had made.
I also recently bought my first coffee maker through a friend who works at starbucks. I bought it so that I could offer free coffee from time to time for those who share our floor at our apartment. We handed out little promos with our daughter to every door.
Only a few people made it out, but got to talk to some people that I had no idea lived in such proximity to me. I even handed out coffee to our custodian and entrance guard. They were quite surprised. Next time around I think we’ll host an evening mixer floor party.
With the coffee maker I’ve also started making Frappuccino’s when we’ve had guests. Check it out.
Overall the last while has been a beautiful time just living simpler, better, and sharing the beauty of it all with others.
After watching the “Earthlings” documentary my wife and I have been taking stock of what we eat and how we live again.
I bought a Moby CD over ten years ago, that included the facts below in the liner notes. For some reason they actually mean something to me now.
FACTS THAT I’VE COLLECTED:
In the past 20 years approximately 1 million species have disappeared from the world’s tropical forests.
From 1960-1985 over 40% of the central american rainforests were destroyed to create grazing land for cattle.
The united states imports over 100,000 tons of beef from central america each year.
It takes 23 gallons of water to produce a pound of tomatoes.
It takes 5,214 gallons of water to produce a pound of beef.
One acre of land can produce 20,000 pounds of potatoes.
One acre of land can produce 165 pounds of beef.
The u.s. cattle industry produces 158 million tons of waste per year.
Livestock production is the #1 cause of water pollution in the u.s.
22 million acres of land have become unusable due to desertification.
85% of the topsoil loss in t he u.s. is the result of livestock production.
In the u.s. 33% of ALL raw material consumption is used solely in the production of meat, egg, and dairy products.
It takes 1 pound of grain to make 1 pound of bread.
It takes 20 pounds of grain to make 1 pound of beef.
75% of the grain sent to third world nations goes to livestock production.
The countries with the diets highest in animal products are also the countries with the highest rates of cancer, heart disease, diabetes, osteoporosis, etc.
50 percent of men who eat meat regularly die of heart disease.
80% of usda chicken inspectors no longer eat chicken.
If the average commuter passenger load in the u.s. were increased by just 1 person per day we would save 33 million gallons of gas each day.
Americans spend over 1 billion hours stuck in traffic each year.
30% of u.s. greenhouse gas emissions come from cars.
Air is sold in mexico city for $1.15 a minute by sidewalk vendors.
What greenpeace spends in a year general motors spends in 4 hours.
million children under the age of 6 suffer from lead poisoning.
in europe 50% of the cars still use leaded gas.
2 million gallons of motor oil are dumped in american waterways each year.
over 8 million tons of oil are spilled in the world’s oceans every year.
5 billion gallons of water are flushed each day in the united states.
Sewage treatment facilities in the u.s. discharge 5.9 trillion gallons of sewage wastewater into coastal waters every year.
u.s. tuna fisherman are permitted to kill over 20,000 dolphins every year.
2 million sharks die in driftnets in the north pacific every year.
Only 1 in 10 baby chimpanzees survive the trip form the jungle to the zoo.
1 billion animals are killed each year in experiments.
17 million animals are trapped in the u.s. each year for fur.
Many traps are so painful that animals check through their own limbs to escape.
For every fur animal trapped two other animals (dogs, cats, deer, etc.) are trapped and killed.
In 1997 450,000 minks died on fur farms from heat exhaustion.
1 ton of recycled paper saves 17 trees, 7,000 gallons of water, and enough energy to heat the average home for 6 months.
Enough wood and paper is thrown away each year in america to heat 1 billion houses for a year.
Six times more jobs are created by recycling as opposed to landfill operations.
The amount of money spent on trash disposal in american schools is equal to that spent on new textbooks.
Out of every $10 that americans spend on food, $1 pays for packaging.
65% of garbage in the u.s. is packaging.
50% of all trash thrown away could be recycled into new products.
500 new dumps are built each year in the united states.
Over 1 billion trees are used to make disposable diapers every year.
Americans throw away 20 billion disposable diapers each year.
Americans dump the equivalent of 21 million shopping bags full of food into landfills every year.
billion batteries are thrown away each year by americans.
over 700,000 tons of hazardous waste is produced in the u.s. every day.
americans throw away 10 million cigarette lighters every week.
500,000 people die of cigarette related diseases in the u.s. each year.
pesticides that are banned in the u.s. (such as ddt) are regularly sold to third world countries.
90% of all food borne pesticides are found in meat and dairy products.
10% of nursing mothers who were vegetarians had ddt in their breast milk.
90% of nursing mothers who were meat eaters had ddt in their breast milk.
In 1945, before widespread pesticide use, u.s. corn growers lost 3% of their crops to insects.
Last year they lost over 12%.
74 different kinds of pesticides have been found in drinking water.
Over 100 chemical contaminants have been found in the breast milk of nursing mothers in the u.s.
of the 34 chemicals most widely used on lawns, 25% are widely believed to cause birth defects, genetic mutation, and cancer.
Americans spend 6 billion dollars on their lawns each year.
25% of u.s. nuclear reactors would not be able to contain a core breach meltdown.
A 1985 study predicted a 45% chance of core breach meltdown in the u.s. before 2005.
In 1992, 430,000 people in the world died from cancers resulting from nuclear testing radiation.
More money is spent in the u.s. on nuclear weaponry in one year than was spent on housing from 1980-1992.
To date cleaning up storage facilities for nuclear debris has cost taxpayers 200 billion dollars.
In 1989 the u.s. military used 200 billion barrels of oil, enough to keep all american public transit systems running for 22 years. 1 ton of toxic waste is produced by the u.s. every minute. (Source)
Stellar makes no excuses for herself.
Just because she’s a baby and doesn’t know how to crawl, doesn’t mean she can’t try to stand on her own. You go girl.
Stellar’s favorite thing to touch… is anything just out of her reach.
What is it in the human spirit that longs to for something more? …that is not satisfied with simply being handed things? …that is willing to stretch out in faith for what could be?
A better question might be, why do we so often stop?
For almost five years now my wife and I have set course for moving to Ottawa (Canada’s national capital) in the summer of 2008.
It appears that after five years a city can really grow on you. It’s been tough having our heads in two places the last few years, and we’ve finally decided to change course and further lay foundations in the beautiful city of Toronto.
Let me tell you a bit about this city of mine
- Population > 5.1 million people - fifth largest city in North America
- Ranked by the United Nations as one of the best cities in the world to live in
- Richard Florida who wrote “Rise of the Creative Class” describes Toronto as being one of the most creative cities and is on set to be “a world leader in innovation and prosperity”
- Yet 550,000 people live below the poverty line
- The most diverse city in the world - Over 100 different ethnic communities
- Fast Company classifies Toronto as a Global Village - one of the ‘fastest’ 30 cities in the world
- 49% of the population have immigrated to Toronto in the past 10 years
- On track with a ten year plan to becoming a Global Cultural / Creative capital
- Over a thousand various festivals a year, with some of the largest in the world including Caribana, Pride week, and the international film festival
- and of course one of the Facebook capitals of the world
Life’s been pretty sweet with our whole family at home this summer.
I finally got around to learning to play risk last week. My brother-in-law bought the Star Wars: Original Trilogy Edition, where you can play an even more complex and strategic version of the game as well.
Here’s a shot of the board as three different factions (the empire, the rebels, and the hutt) pursue galactic domination. I feel like such a geek playing it. 
Here’s my wife’s two-time undefeated hutt army
Okay, I’ll admit it. As a guy, I’ve always wanted a son. When we were trying decide on baby names, I spent months tossing around exclusively boy names. Not that I was ever against daughters, it just never even occurred to me.
When we found out we were having a girl, I thought, that was just amazing. (I’ve always had this theory that boys with older sisters tend to be in a bit less trouble… and a girl with an older brother, and older guy friends, well that’d just be nothing but trouble… feel free to slam me on my theory as well).
However, something in the back of my mind still said, I guess we’ll just have to have a boy next time around (as if that was for me to decide)
But now, everytime I look at my daughter, I am just so completely floored, and I realize she is so much more than enough. She lacks nothing, and she is a total joy to me. I’m so glad she’s my little girl.
I took an assessment a few years back that diagnosed me with having ADD/ADHD, but who doesn’t these days?
I just stumbled on to this movie documenting the factors we all suspected (pharmaceutical industry, parents, teachers, media, etc) leading to the over-medicating of our children.
We had an awesome anniversary. I don’t know about other guys, but every year I think, how on earth am I going to top the last year?
This year my goal was to spend no more than ten bucks on the night (I was so tempted to do the fancy dinner thing, but that’d just be too easy, wouldn’t it?)
I told Yvz that we had reservations (it was with the sunset) and we rushed out the door as our friend Gloria babysat.
We headed down to the beach and roller-bladed by the shore to find our food.
I was banking on a hotdogs (My wife loves hotdogs oddly) and Ed’s Real Scoop (a popular ice cream shop downtown) to keep it under five bucks each.
Unfortunately, I was shocked we weren’t able to find any hotdog stands! We ended up caving into some random sushi place (it was okay, hotdogs would have been way better)
I’ve got a bit of a fascination with Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, so Yvonne made some for me from scratch! Check out how colossal hers were compared to the puny originals!
Earlier in the day I organized a speed-art project where we would both paint something that we loved about the other person.
Amazingly we had very similar concepts, though different ways of expressing it.
Yvonne’s, depicted my ‘fiery’ passion in the darkness, and how it lit up ’sparks’ in other people. the folks to the right is our family (click for a close up), I love the cute baby Stellar she painted in!
Mine, was a silhouette of my wife and how God so often pierces her heart and brings about life-changing conviction. But it never just stops there. It always erupts out of her soul as she longs to share her passion with others, bringing light to those around her.
We painted them on canvas paper and added them to a new book of memories we’ll be creating together… memories we hope to be celebrating for all eternity.
I thought this was cute
Looks like the web hosting provider for my other site SolarCrash has been completely down for the last day. It was a great deal with next to no limits and being free, but being unavailable for this long without any information has been a bit of a pain. If this doesn’t get resolved soon, I might need to switch.
Does anyone know of any reliable providers that offers php/sql? Preferably free and bannerless, but if need be I might be willing to pay a low low fee (I’ve already tried freehostia and awardspace, and I’m currently with clearify). Now that I think of it, I’m possibly open to sharing a quality paid space with others as well.
Anyhow, we just got back from traveling with a few friends from university days (who now all have families) in Pennsylvania
Stellar and I managed to fit into the hotel crib together
So tired of driving…
Stellar was getting tired of driving too…
Continuing the technology series on how I get things done… For me, Google Picasa is the only way to go in terms of photo management. I’ve got about 22,000 photos right now and Picasa handles it all with style and ease.
1. You can organize through folders or albums or search via tags and descriptions. Photos are instantly discovered and added to picasa.
2. In the tray, you can do batch editing and incredibly easy photo touch ups. My wife couldn’t care less for this geeky computer stuff, but she loves the ability to easily manipulate an image through this (ie. red eye removal, cropping, soft-focus, etc.). You can also email, blog, geotag, or send these photos easily to an online web album as well.
3. You can easily scale the albums and photos to your liking. Scrolling through photos is incredibly slick. Pictures can also be integrated easily into a slideshow or a screensaver.
Picasaweb albums is really the online counterpart to Picasa’s desktop software. It doesn’t quite have the community that Flickr offers, but it’s simple and free. ie. Check out the album for my latest trip to Boston. I like how it doesn’t scale down photos to tiny grainy shots like many other free photo sharing sites do.
What’s also fantastic that I’ve recently discovered is that there are plugins that have been developed for it, so that you can upload directly to other photo communities like flickr and facebook!
Google has also recently added additional shared storage between picasa and gmail you can purchase for a decent price. But the free space will be plenty enough for me for quite a while.
Overall, definitely one of the best free desktop applications that have helped enhance my productivity, period.
I pre-bought the latest Smashing Pumpkins album, Zeitgeist, off of itunes… I can’t say it lives up to their former glory.
They do however have a song that goes by the same name as my daughter, and it’s a decent tune. If only the lyrics in some way echoed my daughter in all beauty. Maybe I’ll just have to write my own some day.
I think I’ll head to their concert if they come to town though… just for old times’ sake.
An inconvenient truth… there are so many out there aren’t there?
My wife and I finally got around to watching Gore’s film. Anybody have thoughts on the movie, or better yet, anyone else doing anything about practical about it?
My wife and I have always loved chicken wings. I find the skin of chicken wings an incredible medium for flavor and there’s something about sizzling chicken grease spurting back at you as bite into it.
I tried doing some flavor experimentation this week and didn’t want to risk an entire batch so I created a multi-flavor tasting experience for our dinner.
From Left to right:
Ginger and Wasabi / Lemon, orange, and garlic covered in bread crumbs / BBQ sauce and red pepper flakes / Coffee, brown sugar, and cinnamon, Honey, Raspberry vinigarett, and chili oil / Sweet and Sour and Sprite / Onion spice, paprika, and rosemary smothered in butter.
Do you have friends who’ve had children and it seems like they’ve given up on living their own lives?
Everything is suddenly about their children, and its as if they’ve transferred all of their own hopes and dreams onto these unsuspecting kids. Sometimes I’m tempted to just throw in the towel myself, just be a good parent, and bank on the next generation to do something extraordinary.
My concern is, if all we do is model for our children how to be great parents, well, they’ll just be great parents.
Nothing so wrong with that, but what if rather than simply being great parents and propagating more parents, we modeled living extraordinary lives ourselves? Wouldn’t we want to see our children do at least the same whether they have a family or not?
I’m sorry sweetheart you’re going to have to fold the laundry on your own while we go live life to the fullest… for you.
If you’re not on it, I just don’t know why… Of all the social networks - myspace is too messy, friendster’s too old-school, linked-in is a bit too business oriented, and google-sponsored socialstream is still just a dream - facebook is clean and it works well.
One in three Canadians use it, and Toronto has been reported to being the facebook capital of the world with 700,000 members (Although there are reports that London, England may be usurping the crown).
It seems like everytime I sneak a peak as I pass by laptops at the library, in coffeeshops, and at schools, people are staring at that classic facebook screen. Our provincial government recently banned facebook for all staff.
I’ve found that it’s been phenomenal for connecting with old friends, networking with peers, and being one-step closer to those who might have simply been acquaintances.
It’s also great if you’ve got question’s like…
Are the cool kids back in high school still cool?
Does this friend and that friend of mine know each other? because they should.
What are my co-workers really like outside of work? Photos posted by their friends usually tell all.
Is she still with him? Because I never thought that would last
Some call it stalker-central, others say it’s better than crack, if you’re a regular here, feel free to look me up.
My only concern is that one day it could come to this…
Her bib and hands got into her mouth, and then I just gave up and welcomed the photo-op.
I’m fairly ambitious, but sometimes I get into those lazy funks.
Sometimes I take look one look at my daughter all my angst and passion to change the world just melts away.
Now that I’m a father, I’m excused… or am I?
It’s so easy to simply settle because I’m already more than I ever dreamed of being.
Stellar likes to sleep with her arms up. She’s so hard to resist.
She’s finally found her feet!
Life’s just better when it’s in 3D
My two favorite ladies
You can check out some 3D street art while you’re at it.
A fellow voxtropolitan has just informed me that comments aren’t working. I just verified, it seems to only be my site at the moment when browsing through Internet Explorer or Opera. Everything seems fine on mozilla based browsers ie. firefox, flock, seamonkey.
I’m not sure how long this has been going on or when the problem will get fixed, but now’s as good a time as any to recommend you to firefox if you’re not already on it. Especially if you want to comment on the blog.
Besides being faster and offering tabbed browsing, firefox has a wack load of extensions available to customize to your needs. My personal favorites are BetterGmail, ColorfulTabs, Customize Google, Google Browser Sync, and mouse gestures.
I’ll know whether you’ve taken my recommendation by your ability to comment here.
A few pics from Montreal…
Stellar and I crashing at T & A’s
Mmm… those Montreal Bagels…
Post brunch shot
