Woodland Park Zoo, Seattle: Part 1 of 2

We spent a whole sunny day on the grounds of Seattle's Woodland Park Zoo, our first visit.

This was taken in the Butterflies and Blooms Pavilion, where the critters land on and alight from your hand.


Komodo Dragon.


Orangutan in the Tropical Asia "Trail of Vines" area.


Bald Eagle from the park's Northern Trail.


A very tame parakeet.


Taken with my Pentax K10D and DA 50-200mm f/4-5.6, DA 16-45mm f/4, and FA 50 f/1.4 Pentax lenses.

I'm curious about where some of the zoo's animals are housed (its tigers, giraffes, etc.) when winter comes—indooors, I suppose.

Barnes And Noble, Bellevue

I spent a few hours at the Barnes and Noble in Bellevue last week. I picked up the following (Buy Two, Get the Third Free!) at US prices, which, given the favourable exchange rate, ended up being a pretty good deal.

Bel Canto because it sounds and looks interesting, and seems to have garnered a lot of positive reviews.


Stardust because the movie adaptation is currently playing at the theatres.


Kitchen Confidential because two of my brothers recommend it. One of them is a chef.


BTW, my five-year old and I got into a tiff. Because there were no children books to his liking (and mine), and he didn't want to leave the bookstore empty-handed, he started to pick up anything and everything for purchase. After several terse "No"s, the silly boy took off from me. I found him at the opposite side of the store, flipping through the pages of a magazine. He spent his timeout back at the hotel room closet.

The ZEOS zeitgeist

Flipping through a 1993 issue of PC/Computing magazine brought back a flood of memories of my computer distribution days (at a now-defunct wholesaler). This was when OKIDATA, NEC, AST, Hayes, Harvard Graphics, Nanao, Conner, CompuServe, and Quarterdeck ruled the roost or were players in their respective areas.

Lotus and WordPerfect were already on the wane and Dell was on its ascendancy.

So many sales calls on so many by-gone products and brands.

Even the magazine bit the dust. Remember Creative Computing and recent victim Byte? There I go again lamenting the passage of time—sorry. The November 1993 issue pictured here had 546 pages, and if page count is any measure of the peak of a New Idea, then the Golden Age of home computing had played itself out fifteen years ago.

There was one familiar name on the masthead of that magazine, that of Penn Jillette, penning [!] an article about Uma Thurman and public-key encryption. Penn's one of my favourite entertainers. No Bullsh!t.

***

ZEOS—The Company That Didn't.

***

Conner—Can you make that an MFM drive, please?, RLLs are so yesterday.

Mindfulness

A relative warned me about the person sharing the semi-private hospital room with my father-in-law. He looks like a gang member, a young Chinese guy with body jewellery, I was told. Did you talk to him?, I asked. No, was the reply, he was too scary-looking.

We went down to VGH later that evening. The roommate was asleep, the mouth of his foreign face agape, and shirtless, his slight brown upper body showing. I told Shaula and Matthew to keep it down. As Betty's father recounted his day, he mentioned that his roommate was scheduled for some scans and exploratory tests. Betty's dad took in much of what the doctors and nurses said because his roommate spoke only Cantonese and required the services of a translator.

My father-in-law has since returned home. Before his discharge, he overheard the results of his neighbour's tests—there was little anyone could do to save him. The patient asked the doctors whether going to the US could result in a different outcome, and was told no, his liver cancer was too advanced.

The "gang member", the "scary-looking" tough guy, I would learn, spent much of the time during my father-in-law's two-night stay in agony, sobbing, in tears—crying.

Last Weekend

Sunday. Off to Tiffany & Co., where we were helped by an associate reminiscent of über actress Uma Thurman. Then it was chic and tony Robson Street for some chow at celebrity haunt Cin Cin. The sign on the door said Open at 5:00PM, so we improvised and lunched at the IDIBC award-winning Tropika instead. We sat across from A-List news anchor Mi-Jung Lee. The afternoon ended with a jaunt over to the VAG for the Monet To Dalí exhibition.

Since I'm on a roll dropping names left and right, Suzanne Vega owns one of my B&W prints. I have an autographed copy of Hans Fenger's The Langley Schools Music Project, and happen to know somebody who once got Sarah McLachlan's husband upset by accidently sitting on his jacket at the Juno Awards. And when people say "Les Miz", I know they mean Les Misérable, that's how "in" I am.

Toodle-loo for now!

***

On a more serious note, I would recommend the Monet to Dalí show. The paintings and sculptures are the real things, on loan from the Cleveland Museum of Art. I was especially thrilled by one of the side rooms: flanking Rousseau's Fight Between a Tiger and a Buffalo were a Max Ernst and a Dalí (see paintings below).

The exhibition catalogue, good as it is, is no substitute for looking at the originals, more like frottage. The Matisses hanging on the walls were more vibrant than the reproductions of them in the book, for instance, and a sense of scale is altogether lost in printed form—Dalí's The Dream is physically rather small, requiring very small strokes and a steady hand to render the tiny background figures, something not apparent to the reader.





So yeah, it's worth the trip down there, if not just for the people watching.

It's Mostly a Nonfiction Week!

Three hundred pages into this 700-page memoir, Hollywood Animal, and it's still going strong. If I'm not too lazy, I'll post a capsule review. Sure is one ugly jacket cover, though.


I've read two of Harpur's books over the last two decades. Water Into Wine is his most recent. Another "god"-awful dust jacket design.


I already have the softcover edition of To See Every Bird on Earth, but at $6, couldn't resist picking up the hardcover as well.


my new filing technique is unstoppable consists of sets of one-page clipart-based comic strips. Oddly, each strip does not end with a punch line. The title caught my eye, a quick skim, and I had to buy. $2 at Chapters.


Let me mention that I'm sweating profusely while typing these words out. I almost slipped off the seat, I'm so bloody warm....

My next read will mostly likely be Lolita.

Canada Day 2007

We went down to Steveston on Canada Day for the Salmon Festival. Parking was a nightmare, probably because we arrived so late. The parade was already over. We ended up parking almost 2km away from the heart of the festivities, on a sidestreet. Our first stop was for lunch at a small Mexican restaurant, a little off the beaten path.

I ordered a mild chicken burrito to share with Matthew along with a hot-as-hell habanero version for myself. It was so hot that I started to tear and my nose turned red. Shaula accused me of trying to poison her when she sampled some. Needless to say, our next stop was for ice cream to quench the burning.


What follows are snapshots of some of the activities.

Entertainment, crafts, a trade show, booths, and a huge kids' play area at the Steveston Community Centre.


Free Sun Chips and Brisk beverages.


The folks from Sirius Satellite Radio Canada were out in force. I've recently ended my subscription with them—just having XM will do.


Watching the buskers.


Several blocks were closed to traffic. I've never seen so many white folks in one place in Richmond as today. :-)


We're definitely going back next year. Maybe we'll even find the Japanese Canadian Cultural Centre where, I'm told, they have the salmon barbeque.

***

Shaula explained tying shoelaces to Matthew as "strangling one bunny ear with another."

***

Gray is to silver as yellow is to gold.

Heart Surgery

My dad went to the hospital last Tuesday morning for a stress test on the treadmill. He had been complaining about a sore left shoulder and being out of breath when out on his walks, and had finally convinced his GP to order some tests, that the pain was not caused by rheumatism. And a good thing too: my father tested "positive" [for heart disease, I presume—the attending physician was not exactly forthcoming with information] , and needed to stay in the hospital for observation. He had an angiogram the next day at St. Paul's to determine the extent of the blockage.

Fast-forward to today, Monday. My dad's going under the knife tomorrow afternoon for a triple bypass. He should come to at around 5:00PM.

My recommendation is that he change doctors.

And All I Got Were These Two Pictures...

We took advantage of the forecasted sunny breaks of what was otherwise a mixed-bag weekend by heading out to Kitsilano early Saturday morning. We had brunch at Sophie's Cosmic Café, my third time there in the past ten years or so. My conclusion as to its popularity is Location Location Location. It certainly can't be the food— not bad by any means, but nothing special. There is also the people-watching aspect. While Betty and the kids were across the street at the Lululemon mothership, I stood in line for about fifteen minutes behind three women who got intimate by running their fingers through each other's hair and then caressing one another.

Nutritional needs out of the way, I walked along West 4th looking for photogenic store fronts. I noticed something new. The display books at Duthie's all had elastic bands tied around them, to keep the pages from flipping open and getting damaged (an educated explanation on my part). I saw the same treatment at Brigid's Used Books on West Broadway later that day.

I eavesdropped on a few conversations. One was between a past-middle-age gentleman and a twenty-something bookseller. They were talking about the struggle and sacrifice one has to make to become a professional musician. One of them mentioned that Weezer once opened for a now-forgotten local band at the Anza Club, and that the White Stripes, in its early days, played the Student Union Building out at UBC.

I learned one other thing—more a confirmation of what I already know, really. Nice, clean, well-to-do shopping districts make for poor photography. All I got were the following two shots of Pez dispensers.

***

An old co-worker of Betty's spotted us at a food court Friday evening. She (the co-worker, not Betty, let's be perfectly clear now) was so despicable I wanted to change my sexual orientation right there and then.

***

I had the pleasure to use the following words this weekend: ramshackle, chubby, and hog (as in not sharing).

Adjust Underwear

To be young again...

Swades, A Review, 4/5*

Swades comes highly recommended by a workplace friend. The film is about an NRI (non-resident Indian) professional working in the US who decides to spend two weeks in India to bring his boyhood caretaker back to America. While there, he falls in love with a childhood friend, Gita, and finds himself fully immersed in the culture and drawn to its people and traditions. Weeks become months. Begrudgingly, he returns to the US alone. After the predictable lack of sleep and restlessness, he sacrifices his very promising career as a program manager at NASA and returns to India to better his people and find happiness and love. [I’m an expert on Indian film now, this being my first full-length feature from that country, all three hours of it.]

I can see why Swades resonates with my friend, himself an NRI, and a Compaq, Canon, and Creative Labs owner: the main character, Mohan, travels back to his homeland in style, armed with a digital camera and a notebook computer—electronics being the first things NRIs buy when they land on these shores.

And like Mohan, I suspect every tech worker sent out west has to juggle success and progress with tradition and spirituality, both personally and collectively as part of the newly globally affluent. The film addresses this struggle as one branch on a tree, then tackles the tree and finally the forest—India herself. Issues such as the emancipation of women, poverty and the caste system, and the ineffectiveness of government are brought to the fore.

While I can’t speak for my dear young friend, I can understand better his hesitation when answering the oft-asked question “Why not stay, surely things are better here than in India?”

***

I didn’t care much for the singing and dancing, minimal as it was, especially Gita's parts. An acquired taste, no doubt. Nevertheless, Swades gets a few bonus points from me. Any film that mentions the stars and showcases a telescope, even a flimsy one of the department store variety, gets an additional ½ star rating. Also, all the technical NASA-speak shores up my belief that program managers in fact do nothing. And oh yes, wrestling, no matter what country you’re in, is just not a normal activity.

All-in-all a good movie with tender and humourous moments. Other apt titles could very well have been "Crossroads", or, "A Tale Of Two Indias". Now, everybody, go light your bulbs!

BTW, I am told that NRI jokingly stands for “non-returning” Indians for a large number of those working in the States.

Some Profound Thoughts, and Real Estate

If I were to start a music band, I'd call it Convenience Store.

***

I thought about my old friend Robert Lin while shopping at Chapters this evening. Pity that he isn't around anymore. I'm sure he would've shared a thought or two with me about the Asian customer perusing the newsstand with her caucasian male companion. I ended up buying Cormac McCarthy's The Road for $9.99.

***

I've read that bananas are on the list of foods preferred by test pilots because it tastes pretty good in vomit form. Along these lines, my A-list of pleasant after-meal burp foods include the Big Mac and smoked oysters.

***

Earlier last week, we made an appointment to view the house next door. Once again, we weren't impressed with the floor plan, decor, upkeep, and anticipated reno cost, certainly not at the exorbitant asking price. We weren't thrilled with the realtor either—he unabashedly farted while talking to me about home theatres, and then again while extolling the sweet sound of tube-based stereo amplifiers. He also gave us some lame explanation for the ants crawling across the reception room floor—that they had gotten a ride into the house via a rolled-up newspaper. Matthew and Shaula spent the rest of the visit chuckling among themselves, explaining to me later that they had heard the realtor fart while he was busily stomping on the ants.

***

I'm getting into Facebook now. Everybody and their cats and dogs are there.

***

I booked the whole day off today to take my father-in-law to VGH for two CT scans, and to do lunch with a friend at Milestone's. Nice to see her again.

This Much I've Learnt...

Paint peels
Cars rust
Photos fade
Things break
—and —
People perish

Old Magazines: September 1991

In anticipation of moving to more commodious quarters, I've spent the past few days sifting through all the magazines I've accumulated over the years with the aim of recycling the bulk of them. I'm trying to minimize how much we have to transport, so this has been a great opportunity to throw away out-dated and no longer important brochures and how-to's, most of which have been updated and made freely available on the tree-friendly Internet.

Our sexual mores can change in a matter of decades, but looking at the following Pentax ad from the September 1991 issue of the recently defunct Petersen's PHOTOgraphic magazine, apparently the same fate befalls our collective graphic arts sensibilities. Sheesh!

Here's something we won't see on the cover of any current magazine—a slide film showdown. I got pretty excited way back whenever the mags did this sort of test. As far as I know, Velvia and Kodachrome are either dead or moribund.

The September issue also featured a long Darkroom Basics article. Inside, to drum up sales, the magazine mentions that new subscribers are eligible to win a top-of-the-line Beseler enlarger. I think I'll add enlarger to the list already containing the ditto machine, typewriter, cassette deck, and the VCR.

Mother's Day Card 2007

This is the card Shaula made for Betty. Demented, no? I'm trying to digitize artefacts like this to reduce clutter. The paper version has been consigned to the big blue box in the sky.

Random Thoughts For May

Betty and I have this notion of a "Sunday Deep", which is a short, but very deep, Sunday afternoon nap. It usually takes 15 minutes to snap out of an SD, before one's strength returns. I took an SD this long weekend, right after a trip to the local White Spot for a late lunch selected from the "Lifestyle" section of the menu, which usually means an anaemic green salad sprinkled with pine cones and bird seed.

What I really wanted is what Shaula ordered, pictured below, a Fettucine Alfredo, or perhaps a burger. But (sigh) I'm on a diet again... Sleeping after a meal is definitely not an auspicious start.

***

I can't stand spiders. They plain freak me out. I had two encounters last week. A brown one ran out from under my computer keyboard at work. The second incident saw one dangling from my bangs, then my glasses, right after I got out of the car from a lunch jaunt to Taco Del Mar. Lucky for me, they were smaller than house ants, so I did myself proud by managing to refrain from issuing high-pitched girly screams.

***

I saw this variation of Jean Jacques Rousseau's famous line in The 100-Mile Diet.

Man is born free, but everywhere he is in chainstores.

A Dedication

They lost one of the good ones today, just let you walk away.

Freed of the keys once meant to let you in but now led you nowhere, you made your way down the stairwell one last time, the echoes of your footsteps applause to my ears for a job well done, reverberating in unison with a thought you shared—

I have been thinking about whether one should work at being just rather than good. People who are concerned with fairness or justice are people who know the difference.

So here's to truth, justice, daydreams, and a new beginning.

Mother India

We took my mother out to an Indian (East African) restaurant Saturday evening. People of her generation and culture are pretty set in their ways and opinions—tunnel visioned, IMHO—so I wasn't surprised when the "oohs" and "aahs" weren't forthcoming as she tried (clockwise, from top left) the naan, tandoori chicken, butter chicken, and fish biryani, among other dishes.

She's been ill lately, complaining of fever and chills, and a general lack of energy and appetite, so that might partly explain her less than enthusiastic reaction.

***

Internet-savvy Shaula recently asked me to explain the term "pen pal". That certainly made me chuckle. Yep, I'm getting old. Had I been a professional hockey player in my younger days, I'd now either be a coach, a commentator, or just plain fat. A few month ago, I spent an evening looking at the bios of some centerfolds. Sagittarius, born 1960, one of them read. Taurus, 1962, read another. Okay, so I didn't feel as old anymore. But then it struck me that these were back issues from, like, 1979!

Did I say centerfolds? I meant hockey cards.

Rainy Day People

The weatherman was once again wrong, dashing my plans of a day of picture taking at the local arboretum. Instead, I spent the afternoon walking the drizzly streets of my neighbourhood, taking shots of and "interviewing" some of the local shop denizens.

Everybody says I'm lucky because I was born with green eyes and blond hair, but if only they knew the truth. I don't do so well at school—mostly 'C's and a 'B' in Phys Ed (I like soccer). My dad's a big jerk who works the night shift, so life at home can get pretty rough. My complexion's pretty good, but I have open lesions—warts, I think—on my hands. I want to be a mechanic or play in the NHL. I have one brother, Jake.

-Danny

Before you pass judgement on me, I want you to know that I have my act together now. My boyfriend says I look like Sinéad O'Connor in this photo, but I don't think I'm nearly as pretty. I decided to shave my hair off when I started to lose big patches of it. My weight is back up and I'm not so wild anymore. When I look at how well all of my friends from high school are doing, I feel inspired. People tell me that I'm a very nice person and deserve better.

-XOX Jen

Last Days Of April

Every April Betty and I have to file tax returns for seven people, a marathon of sorts.

We crossed the finish line at around 10:00PM Thursday night when we batch submitted all the files via the Internet. In anticipation of my refund, I had placed an order earlier that day for two Pentax lenses, a 12-24mm F4 ultrawide angle zoom, and the 77mm F1.8 Limited, reputed to be one of the best lenses ever produced by any company, bar none. Very, very hard to find in stock to boot. They arrived Friday, from Edmonton. I was impressed by the one-day delivery time, and the store's willingness to price-match.

On Saturday morning, we took Matthew to the doctor's for his immunization and chicken pox shots, in preparation for kindergarten come September. Took it like a man. In the afternoon, the four of us went to Wing Nuts on Main Street for a "small bite" that morphed into our very late lunch, a decadent one at that: deep-fried chicken wings and drumettes (skin-on, of course). Twelve Honey Garlics, twelve Smokehouse BBQs, six Spicy Thai Peanuts, six Jamaican Jerks, two cans of pop, and a side of fries later, we were off to Costco. I bought the latest issue of Men's Health there, probably out of guilt.

Sunday, I went to the Fred Herzog exhibition at the Vancouver Art Gallery (my second time) with two friends from work. I think they enjoyed the photos. I, for one, enjoyed their company, especially their astute remarks about Herzog's wonderful prints. We did lunch and parted ways.

Damn glad that tax season is over. And oh yes, I won a $300 travel package at work. Can things be any better?—a tax refund, a prize, and the Canucks in the playoffs! (Tongue firmly planted in cheek.)

Spring Collection #2

High School Hip Spring Collection 2007

Glasses—frame by Flexon for Nike, lenses from IRIS Optical, $600, covered by the wife's health care plan, so $0
Jacket—by Club Monaco, approximately $29, bargain shelf
Top—by Somo Athletics, $19 from Costco
Pants—by American Eagle, approximately $30, bargain rack
Watch—by Zodiac (sapphire quartz), $80, the Fossil Factory Outlet, Marysville WA
Sneakers—by Skechers, $50, the Skechers Factory Outlet, Marysville WA

Hair—Eight weeks since the last cut, trying to prove to myself that I can still let my hair grow to the same length and thickness as in my high school days (decades ago!). Proved right, though I'm starting to pull a Richard Gere and tweezers have become my best friend.
Car—by Subaru, six years old with 76 000km and dirty seats
Location—East Vancouver

All-in-all, a much more extravagant clothing year than 2006! The stuff I have on adds up to way too much. I'll have to work on correcting that throughout the coming months.

Boobs (Still In Progress...)

And I don't mean the "simpleton", "blunder", "boob-tube" variety, and certainly nothing to do with the tropical seabird.

Still in progress, been busy filing tax returns......

Vaisakhi Vancouver

I'm glad the weather was good Saturday morning. Otherwise, I would've skipped this year's (and my first) Vaisakhi Parade here in Vancouver. We got to Little India at 11:30AM, just when the police was beginning to close a long strip of Main Street. We circled around till we found a parking spot three blocks away from the corner of Main and 49th, parked, and then hoofed it in.

The first stall—more of a makeshift food table—I visited surprised me. They were handing out plates of some spicey Indian rice. And further down the street, there were samosas, naan bread with chick peas, sweets. All free, unlike the food concessions at every other street festival I've been to. Near 52nd they were literally shoving juice boxes and bottled water into my hands.

Betty mentioned seeing homes literally opening their kitchens doors to serve hot food to passerbys, and concluded that generosity was the operative word of the day. I would have to agree, with the qualification that this generosity was not confined to the material world of food and drink, but applied equally to the spiritual world of kindness: While attempting to make a candid street shot, a woman stopped dead in her tracks and offered to pose with her child, with her smiling husband looking on. Another first. And get this. While I was looking through the viewfinder, carefully composing a vertically-framed shot, which meant I had one elbow high up in the air, I felt a jab near my armpit. A Sikh man in his sixties had quietly come up and was purposely attempting to wreck my concentration by tickling me with his finger!

Sathwick was also there in the throng taking pictures and getting fed, but we never met up. He later commented about how crowded it was.

As for the photography, it was very difficult because of all the people. This was echoed by Sathwick, and in a conversation I had with two D-SLR enthusiasts who were taking a break from the tumult. I didn't talk to them for long, though—smug Canon owners, you know.

Tight head shots was the only viable option, which is how I managed to get this:



As for the parade itself? I missed it altogether. We had to leave by 1:00PM to pick up Betty's sister (who was in from San Francisco) to give her a tour of Robson Street. Maybe next year, if the weather holds.

***

I've been using my cell phone in public more. All I have to do now to become a self-important asshole is to don some business attire.

Coming Soon

Easter Long Weekend

Betty and I took the kids to the fair at Lansdowne Centre. This has become an annual Spring tradition. We were game: I was eager to take some pictures with my new DSLR gear, Betty wanted to get some shopping in at the Winners store, and the kids were excited about the rides. A good time had by all.

Disappointingly, there were few photographic "keepers," especially given the fine weather and the rich colours typical of amusement park equipment and midways (I confess to being a colour junkie, and the more saturated, the better). Here is a paltry sampling.


The fledgling Photo Club at my workplace has "Spring" as its theme this month. I'll try my best to wrangle the above picture as an entry.





We had two extended family outings—turkey dinner at Betty's parents, and a Chinese banquet with my side of the family.

This weekend marks two whole months of financial self-control. My only "luxury" purchases to date have been a half-dozen photo mags. Why this restraint? Yep, you guessed it, all in the cause of some big ticket items: more lenses for the camera, and an Apple iMac!

Things As They Are #1

Camera: Pentax K10D
Lens: Pentax DA 16-45mm F4 @ F9.5
Details: ISO 200, 3s
Support: Manfrotto 055 tripod with Slik SBH-320 ball head
Model Details: No shower/hair wash since going to the gym earlier that morning, i.e., unkempt
Note: Existing light self-portrait

Vancouver International Auto Show

I went to the car show over the weekend principally to take pictures. Because there were so many people milling around the vehicles, my assessment was that closeup shots was the only option. Besides, when it comes to cars, it's all about the lines and curves and details, so I kept to that spirit.

***

I'm letting my hair grow for one more week. It's getting bushy. I intend to make one final environmental self-portrait—meaning in this case a non-studio photographic image of myself at home—of my fading glory days, before all of my hairs fade to white.

***

Two co-workers treated me to a belated birthday lunch today, really nice of them. We went to a company haunt, Seto's Japanese restaurant.

***

The sun was behind just the right kind of cloud on my way to work this morning, looking like a very bright full moon. I've never seen its disk like that before.

Benedictus #2

May your heart purr like a bumblebee
May all your backyards have a tree
May you always be HIV negative
I hope you meet a nice guy who
Treats women better than I do

-from Sister, by Dan Bern


Click here for Benedictus #1.

Vancouver Rain #1

Camera: Pentax K10D
Lens: Pentax DA 50-200mm f/4-5.6 @ f/6.7
Details: ISO 400, 1/45s, handheld panning, pre-focused on puddle
Location: Kingsway near Willingdon
Lunch: Sashimi and sushi

Practice Versus Theory

How is it that we can treat a complete stranger or a pet with unconditional kindness, but then turn around and be cruel to a family member, friend, or a co-worker?

This incongruity—the dichotomy of what we know in theory versus what we practice—has been weighing heavily on my mind. Perhaps it's a case of "as long as it's not in my backyard" thinking. The tsunami survivor, the little boy in the newspaper with leukemia, the impoverished—they are low-hanging fruit on some faraway tree, and hence easy to "love" because, ultimately, they are somebody else's problem.

Up close, our warts and bruises are all too apparent, perhaps dashing—certainly changing—our expectations of each other, this intimacy often bringing out the worst in us. People aren't the ideal gases we learn about in high school chemistry. We are real and complex, and have a tendency to run yellow traffic lights contrary to what we tell our kids.

My line of thinking is that to be genuinely kind, it's crucial we apply what we learn in the lab to what's really out there.

***

I came across Jacob Needleman's latest book, Why Can't We Be Good, at the Metrotown Chapters store. It'll be my next purchase, maybe it'll shed some light.

***

I twice gave to the Red Cross recently. I wish they would stop making and sending me those Canadian scenic calendars, the ones with lighthouses.

Two Thoughts

What matters most in life, and especially in death, is that I once mattered to somebody.

***

Guilt is Nature's way of preventing us from making complete assholes of ourselves.

Another Year Gone By