In My World

Tanka Tuesday: Trees Tanka is a form of poetry similar to haiku. It's short, and the lines don't need to rhyme. The just must have a set number of syllables: 5/7/5/7/7. Today's tanka prompt is: trees. a walk through the woods shady canopy above our heads the breeze makes whispering sounds the fresh smell ground spongy under our feet

Today's Prompt: Birthday Cake Tell me what your favorite kind of birthday cake is! My favourite cake in the whole wide world is carrot cake with walnuts and cream cheese icing.  I love all three things separately so when they are all together my world is good.  My favourite store-bought carrot cake is from Real Canadian Superstore.

As soon as I started reading the back cover of this book I just had to have it.  Love's Civil War contains the letters and diaries of Anglo-Irish novelist Elizabeth Bowen and Canadian diplomat Charles Ritchie.  They meet and fall in love.  She is married.   The front cover says "Their obsessional, thirty-year love affair".  Seriously it has to be riveting.  I'm picturing fabulous writing and romance and world travel. I guess I'm not a fan of epistolary books (I learned about this genre in a coursera.org course) because before the 100th page I put the book back on the shelf and I've never picked it up again. 

From Wikipedia: The Ennis Sisters, Maureen, Karen and Teresa, started playing music at a young age, encouraged by their father John and their mother Ceilie. The trio released their first album, Red is the Rose, on June 25, 1997. The album sold 15,000 copies within 18 months of release, and has gone on to sell more than 40,000 units. By the end of the year, the album was named Best Folk Album by the Music Industry Association of Newfoundland & Labrador (MIA). The following year, they received Female Artists of the Year and Group of the Year awards from the MIA. The Ennis Sisters released their second album, Christmas on Ennis Road, in 1998. The album also landed the girls their own Christmas special on CBC, An Ennis Road Christmas. In 1999, Maclean's magazine named the trio one of the Top 100 young Canadians to watch. They returned to the studio to record their third album, Three, in 2000. The same year, they received an East Coast Music Association (ECMA) award for Album of the...

Today's Writing Prompt: Living the Dream How would your life be different if you were working in your dream job? I've never been able to decide what my dream job is. I get bored easily. I've always wanted to try so many things and was never able to decide which thing would make me happiest. I guess I'm just one of those people who has never had a true calling.

Today's Prompt: Artwork Do you own any pieces of art? Tell us about them? Hal was working in a customer's basement many many many years ago and spotted this painting.  He loved it and mentioned that to the customer . . . who gave it to him. We contacted the artist, Gaston Petridis, at some point and were told our painting could be valued as much as $2000.  That was exciting.  No, Hal has no interest in selling it.  He still loves it.  I do not. If you would like to see a few more of Petridis' works, check out this link .

Today's Writing Prompt: Back to School If you had the resources and extra time to go back to school, what would you like to study? If I had the time and money to go back to school I would like to do my Masters Degree in Political Science. I loved going to university as a mature student and I would go back in a heart beat if someone were willing to pay my way . . .

It's time for the next installment of Tanka Tuesday! Tanka is a form of poetry similar to haiku. It's short, and the lines don't need to rhyme. The just must have a set number of syllables: 5/7/5/7/7. Today's tanka prompt is: play. play once meant something different when I was young playing games and sports getting dirty and skinned knees I do not miss the skinned knees

Today's Prompt: Guilty Pleasures What are some of your guilty pleasures? Sitting in my pyjamas and scrapbooking even though I know there is a load of dishes in the sink. I love chocolates with sea salt.  I love chips . . . pretty much any kind. I love the quiet that is my life when no one is around and I have no deadlines which is a weird thing for me since I love to be busy and social as well.

419 scams are a type of fraud and one of the most common types of confidence trick. The scam typically involves promising the victim a significant share of a large sum of money, which the fraudster requires a small up-front payment to obtain. The last Will Ferguson book I read was  Canadian Pie .    419  is so completely different and it is "genius" just as the cover says. This book is about the effects of a 419 scam on a family and it also tells so much about life on the other side of the world where the scam that caused a Canadian father to take his own life originates.  The writing is absorbing and cinematic.  This is one of those books you won't want to put down until the very last page.

  Emm Gryner (born 8 June 1975 in Sarnia, Ontario) is a Canadian-Filipino singer, songwriter, recording artist, and author. She has released 20 albums as a solo performer, and has collaborated with artists including David Bowie and Chris Hadfield. Gryner's childhood was spent in Forest, Ontario. She started to learn piano at age 4, picked up bass around age 14, and later took up guitar as well. Gryner attended North Lambton Secondary School in Forest, Ontario. Following high school, she graduated from Fanshawe College's Music Industry Arts program in 1995. Gryner started her music career in Toronto, where her original song "Wisdom Bus" won a nationwide songwriting contest sponsored by Standard Broadcasting. With the prize money, she recorded an album called The Original Leap Year and released it on her own Dead Daisy Records. The album attracted the attention of Mercury Records, who signed Gryner to a recording contract. Gryner's first release on Mercury was 1998...

Today's Prompt: Bathroom Secrets Name three things you have in your bathroom, right now. This may be an exciting question to ask some people but I don't haven anything unusual in my bathroom.   I just have regular stuff like hair dryer, toothpaste, hair brush . . . sorry I couldn't come up with anything interesting . . . Wait . . . I have some art up that I think is interesting.

Today's Prompt: Fear What has scared you this week? I have a couple of big fears (lightening and electricity and storms) but I am happy to report that nothing has scared me this week . . . yet.

Tanka Tuesday: Change Tanka is a form of poetry similar to haiku. It's short, and the lines don't need to rhyme. The just must have a set number of syllables: 5/7/5/7/7. Today's tanka prompt is change. pennies nickels dimes  quarters that's what change was when  I was growing up  the penny is gone but we  now have loonies and twonies

Today's Prompt: Personality Change If you could change one personality trait about yourself, would you - and which one? I would like to be a calmer person.  Anxiety is a daily problem for me to start with . . . but if someone messes with my plans or schedule suddenly I become so agitated that I make myself crazy.  Yes, I would definitely like to be calmer.

I have lost track of how many times I have read this book.  It is a fascinating story which earned the the author, Pearl S. Buck, a Pulitzer Prize.  Buck is also a Nobel Prize winner.   That Buck lived in China is very obvious in her understanding and descriptions of the places, people and their lives.  The novel is about Wang Lung, a poor man, and his family who live through one of the most exciting and terrifying of times in China, the early twentieth century.  I feel like I know and understand the characters.  To me, that is the sign of a great novel.

Emily Savitri Haines (born 25 January 1974) is a Canadian singer and songwriter. She is the lead singer, keyboardist and songwriter of the rock band Metric and a member of the musical collective Broken Social Scene. As a solo artist, she has performed under her own name and as Emily Haines & The Soft Skeleton. Haines possesses the vocal range of a mezzo-soprano.

Today's Prompt: Dessert What's your favorite dessert? I have two favourite desserts -- ice cream and cheesecake -- just about any flavour you can think of.

Today's Prompt: Visit If you could visit anyone on the planet right now, who would you go see? Why do I have to pick only one???  I would rather plan a big party and invite everyone I know . . .

Today's Prompt: Marital Status What's the best thing about being either single or partnered, whichever one you currently are? August 25, 1983 (wedding) February 14, 2015 (vow renewal) Hal and I have been married for amost 40 years . . . or as my dear hubby says when he "thinks" he is funny . . . on our second life sentence. Being married is the most annoying and fulfilling status in the world. It sometimes feels that Hal is always trying to push my buttons. You know the ones. Those little things that irritate the hell out of you. And just when you are just about ready to lose your mind, he does something so sweet that you forget all about how  annoying he is . . . until the next time. 

Tanka Tuesday: Flood Tanka is a form of poetry similar to haiku. It's short, and the lines don't need to rhyme. The just must have a set number of syllables: 5/7/5/7/7. Today's tanka prompt is: flood. rapid flowing flood water moving dangerous  fast flowing won't stop carving a new path where ever it wants to travel

How many times have we heard that Anastasia Romanov, the youngest daughter of Russia's last Czar survived the execution of her family during the Great War? In  The Secret Wife  it was Tatiana who escaped execution by the Red Army.  She was secreted from their home/prison so she could meet with her lover, a young cavalry officer, to plan the escape of her entire family.  Everything went wrong.   In 2016, an English journalist escapes to her mysterious grandfather's cabin in America after a difficult break up.  While renovating the cabin, she finds a spectacular jeweled pendant.  This prompts her search for the story of her ancestors. We read this book in our local book club and it received mixed reviews.  My biggest concern was that the writing wasn't particularly . . . mature . . . elegant . . . I'm sure there is a better descriptor but it eludes me at the moment. On the other hand, the story itself was very good.  I ...

Today's Writing Prompt: Obstacles What's standing in your way right now? Really the only thing that stands between me and what I want to accomplish is time. There are just not enough hours in the day. I could cut back on my expectations for myself but instead I just keep trying a little harder.

Today's Prompt: Family Why are families important? What do families provide that makes them better than living on our own? It seems to me that family grounds us, gives us a place where we can feel like we belong to something more than ourselves. I think that may be why family is so important to me.

  Emilie-Claire Barlow (born 6 June 1976) is a Canadian singer, arranger, record producer, and voice actress. She has released several albums on her label, Empress Music Group, and has voiced characters for animated television series. She performs in English, French, and Portuguese. Barlow's first album, Sings, was released in 1998. She has received seven nominations for Canada's Juno Awards with her album Seule ce soir winning for best Jazz Vocal Recording in 2013 and Clear Day winning the same award in 2016. Seule ce soir also won Album of the Year – Jazz Interpretation at the 2013 ADISQ Awards. Barlow was also nominated for the Jack Richardson Producer of the Year Award at the 2016 Juno Awards. Barlow was named Female Vocalist of the Year at the 2008 National Jazz Awards. She has named as influences Ella Fitzgerald, Tony Bennett, and Stevie Wonder. Barlow has voiced various characters for animated television series, including Sailor Mars and Sailor Venus in Sailor Moon, Cour...

I am not going to even pretend to be an expert in the field of finance and economics. In fact Economics 101 at Western a few years back was nearly the death of my brain cells. I passed but oh what a struggle it was. So here is what I do understand. According to Metro every year there is a period of price freeze between grocery stores and suppliers from Thanksgiving to the end of January. It isn't a rule. But it is what happens. Unless you are living on what you grew, preserved or hunted, you will have had the opportunity to find the prices in stores climbing weekly. At least it feels that way. Stats Canada says grocery prices have climbed 10.8% since last year, the fastest pace in over 40 years. Loblaws decided to do something to help the consumer out by instituting a price freeze between the stores and customers . . . but only on no name products. I'm all right with that. I use a lot of no name products already and don't mind being steered to more packages wrapped in yello...

Today's Prompt: Hug Write a simile or metaphor that describes how you feel when you get a really good hug. When someone wants to hug me I am often as nervous as a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs. When I get that hug I feel safe as a brick house. 10 Reasons Why We Need at Least 8 Hugs a Day by Marcus Julian Felicetti Hugging therapy is definitely a powerful way of healing . Research shows that hugging (and also laughter) is extremely effective at healing sickness, disease, loneliness, depression, anxiety and stress. Research shows a proper deep hug, where the hearts are pressing together, can benefit you in these ways: 1. The nurturing touch of a hug builds trust and a sense of safety. This helps with open and honest communication. 2. Hugs can instantly boost oxytocin levels, which heal feelings of loneliness, isolation, and anger. 3. Holding a hug for an extended time lifts one's serotonin levels, elevating mood and creating happiness . 4. Hugs strengthen the ...

Today's Prompt: One Phrase What's one phrase you would really like to hear right now? "It is spring."