Jasper knelt down on the driveway and swept up two fistfuls of fallen crabapple petals with his hands. “This is joy!” he said, and threw them in the air. He’d just written and read his first word on the sidewalk, in chalk: Bad. Soccer practice hadn’t quite tired him out. His Burgundy Bears beat the Mellow Yellow’s by one goal. Jasper got an assist. Simon had his first ice cream this past weekend. Maple walnut. He approved. The Monk will be 1 on June 15. I’m mourning the end of lilac season, but am looking forward to reliving it, as I do every spring. Jasper and I fly to PEI…

I’m exhausted. And I was just going to go to bed but I checked my Web stats for this site and discovered that more people read Walden today than any day over the past 2 weeks — which is odd; I haven’t written here since last Thursday. So I’m a slave to you, reader. Henry David Thoreau would be ashamed of me. The holiday weekend was a wash-out. Despite a sunny forecast, it rained for 3 days straight on my family camp site at Murphy’s Point. Suzy woke up in the middle of the night Friday and was so panicked about the kids being cold that it scared me. It…

What a week! If the House had fallen, Project Porchlight might have ended even before it began. We have a plan now, 20 pages of great details on how to distribute 60,000 compact fluorescent light bulbs. The Member of Parliament now suddenly doesn’t have to campaign for the next five weeks — so maybe we can move ahead quickly. Dan has made a nice little button to put on supporter Web sites. I’m so lame I haven’t even put it here yet, but it’s on his site. Thanks, Dan! But this weekend I’m taking a break. Thoreau would be pleased. I’m going to sit outside and watch the trees grow,…

Seeking value and pleasure in external things always leads to unhappiness. It’s a basic principle of Buddhism, and just common sense. Everyone knows, deep down, that the new car won’t make you happy, or the old Queen. So why do we cling? The car I can kind of understand, but a doddering old foreign monarch? Please. It’s time we put Terry Fox on the paper money. Instead of indulging in some artificial and useless sense of pomp and grandure, we can celebrate qualities that can inform and motivate our actual lives here and now. Clinging to the royal robe is is just timid. If you really have to, here’s the…

So Belinda Stronach has crossed the floor to the Liberals. Thank God, there may not be an election this Spring! But as the dust settles, the focus turns to Peter MacKay, Stronach’s boyfriend and fellow Conservative MP. Some say Peter feels “betrayed.” What comes around, goes around, Peter! David Orchard is probably smiling today, and there was no sex involved in that relationship (that we know of, anyway).

My brother told me tonight to stop writing about my vasectomy. “I only did it twice,” I said. “Yeah, and then you did the follow up part about the soldering bits.” It’s true that there’s only so much mileage you can get out of a little bit of spaghetti-like tubing–though I have to say I was amazed last week at a dinner party when a senior doctor (female) family friend leaned across the table over her pasta and asked me, “Is it dry now?” She’s been a doctor and psychiatrist for 30 years and never had the nerve to ask about this before. I was touched. “No, it’s still wet.”…

I have an idea. It’s consuming me. And for the first time since a few friends and I tested it last year, it looks like some seriously big partners just might buy into it and make it work on a large scale. I’ve been working on a proposal for the idea for two weeks, reading, researching, writing, obsessing. I get more excited, and more sure I’m just fooling myself. If the gap between awareness and action can really be bridged by giving out one free light bulb to every house in Ottawa, how come it’s not being done. But the evidence is striking, the business case strong. It’s almost a…

It’s 7:30 am on Friday the 13th. I’m sitting in a cafe in downtown Ottawa, enjoying a bacon and egg sandwich with Swiss cheese on brown toast. Because I only had five bucks on me, I have to wait for coffee because I enjoy having that at my desk at work. I’d be there now except I forgot my key at home. Friday the 13th. Why does this day strike fear into the modern heart (I can hear you, Suzy, “It doesn’t.”) Already today I’ve heard three random references to the date among people around me sipping lattes, carefully. I distinctly remember as a child being terrified that one year…

So the Rolling Stones are coming to Ottawa. Big deal. The last time they were here was in 1989 for their Steel Wheels Tour. That was to be there last. It should have been. I’m embarrassed for those old guys. Can they really be excited about performing the same old songs, again and again. Really, wouldn’t you get tired of doing that? It’s an amazing phenomenon how people can be so excited about something so done, so over, while at the same time, in the same town, the prospect of an election makes people yawn. Think about this: If the Liberal government is so corrupt, and so tired, why is…

My colleague Diana and I went out to meet my friend Alex at lunch yesterday. It was very sunny; we were looking for somewhere air conditioned. Diana spotted a 12″ plastic snake on the sidewalk at Metcalfe and Albert. After shawarmas Diana needed twine to tie up cedar hedge trimmings. So we went to Zellers. There we met Jackie, who said she’d rather be at Mooney’s Bay where the guy with the big snake hangs out. Later I hopped into a cab for the ride home. Alex had given me $20 I didn’t remember he’d owed me. I saw Jackie on the street so we pulled over to offer her…

Jasper has Puddy. Diana’s is Snagglepuss (oh, puhleese). What’s the Greatest Cat Name of All Time? Another colleague suggests Tapioca, but why would you name a cat after lumpy cold pudding, really? I particularly like Fradey or Scardey. Any other ideas?

The doctor just called with the test results. It’s official. I can’t have any more kids. (See Snippit of Experience, below) The lab told me I had to drop off my sample within 30 minutes of “producing it.” But they don’t provide special rooms. And when I got there at around noon, I turned my back to the reception desk to put my name on the clear sample bottle. The technician put his hand on my shoulder and said, “Look, don’t be so bashful, we’ve seen semen before.” Still, it felt strange. I’m shooting blanks.

I’m reading a fascinating feature in Harper’s about the 1500-year-old Buddhas at Bamiyan, Afghanistan. They are 150′ statues of the Buddha carved into sandstone cliffs the Hindu Kush mountains north of Kabul. Or I should have said were — the Buddha’s of Bamiyan were destroyed by the Taliban in 2001. Now the statues are being rebuilt. A UN agency is using sonar and other sophisticated equipment to painstakingly identify, number and reassemble the pieces, even though much of the masonry was pulverized to dust and pieces have shown up on E-Bay. You gotta wonder about that. Why rebuild statues in the middle of a devastated country where most of the…

Nominate a song, and receive a CD compilation of “80s Songs I Never Want to Hear Again” Suzy’s best friend Linda is hosting a ’80s theme graduation party this weekend for the Public Relations class of Algonquin College. She’s taking suggestions for the “do not play” ’80s songs. I hereby nominate “Electric Avenue” by Eddie Grant. This morning I had “Black Stations, White Stations” in my head, but I kinda like that song. Got a suggestion? Leave a comment below!

Does anyone hitch hike anymore? Yesterday I was late coming home from work and ended up taking a bus that leaves me about 3 km from my house. As I was running down Kilborn (trying to get home so Suzy could get to aerobics), it occurred to me to turn toward the traffic and stick out my thumb. I was immediately swept back to 1987 on the French Riveria. My cousin’s cousin Tyler Aspin was passing through Nice on a solo backpacking trek through Europe. I was studying in Villefranche, a small town between Nice and Monaco. After hanging out for a few days, Tyler suggested we ditch the Riveria…