I’ve ranted about this here before, so I’ll keep this short: This time of year it’s easy to get frustrated by things, like cold feet, cracked knuckles, imminent environmental collapse. Last month I went with my friends Mike Perry and Elizabeth Harvey (find them on Lavalife) to Mike’s hometown — Fenelon Falls, Ontario. A local hardware store had donated 50 compact fluorescent bulbs to our Project Porchlight campaign. We are motivated by the fact that if every household in Canada replaced one light bulb with a compact fluorescent, the reduction in pollution would be like taking 66,000 cars off the roads. So, how many Canadians does it take to change…

Don’t try to shake the V8 after you open it. Deep breathing in meetings makes people suspicious. Avoid contact with small animals on cold outdoor rinks.

It’s still cold in Ottawa. But you already knew that. In other news, Suzy is using a Swiffer wet jet behind me. That guy got rich. I wish I’d been in the room to see the circumstances surrounding the moment of revelation when Mr. Swiffer realized that floors could be cleaned with a squirt and a sanitary napkin. The cold was mitigated muchly yesterday by my friend Mohammad’s birthday party. He’s now 33, just back from two weeks of touring Europe alone, and on his way next month to Cuba to visit a girlfriend he met there in December. He’s happy. You may recall that Suzy and I met Mohammad…

Here’s a challenge: What’s the One thing you absolutely have to do before you die? It’s easy to pick the obvious things, like “see the Pyramids” or “have a family.” But what do you really Have to do? I never would have thought this before, but one thing I had to do was experience death up close. When I held my son as he died 5 years ago, it changed me forever. And that night I walked out of the hospital and saw one star in the Toronto sky. Light reaching my eye after millions of years of travelling through space — raining on my grief. I knew then that…

New Christmas Album. Flashback Video: Ten years ago Walden was a clearcut and I wore goofy hats. (Waldencabin.com disappeared today, which figures — I’ve been writing more regularly.) This morning I had this great story ready to write about Llubjana, capital of Slovenia. It’s a tiny, unappreciated capital city of an underestimated country just across the Adriatic Sea from indulgent and overexposed Italy. Venice is a short train and boat ride away. It’s like the New Brunswick coast to PEI. What prompted this was eating a Balkan yogurt that Suzy bought specially for me thinking my mind and bowels would benefit. I don’t eat enough for breakfast and, after a…

It’s -40C today. I want to go to Mauritius more than ever. As I was running out the door this morning, my wife yelled “Only an idiot would go out without a hat today!” Passive aggressive much? So I pulled up my hood. Now I’m looking for a toque on-line but I have to find out how to spell it first. Good thing I’m “Director of Writing” at gordongroup. Now I know why my colleagues do the little quotation mark action with their fingers when they introduce me at meetings. So now I’m warm at work, and I found a great Toque and a good laugh. Among the headlines today…

-25C today. I washed my mitts this weekend and didn’t quite dry them completely. Waiting for the bus, my hand was locked as if in an enthusiastic wave. It occurred to me then that I could live anywhere. Why put up with another winter? The guy sitting next to me on the packed bus didn’t look like he was thinking at all. He stared straight ahead and didn’t so much as fidget once. I did enjoy the heat of his arm against mine. Warm. Ahh. When I got to work, I discovered my cell phone was gone. Must have popped off and dropped on the bus. No one’s answering it.…

There was a lot of hype about Walrus but, like lots of things from Toronto, it turned out to be stuffy-whitebread and boring. Though I did like their recent article on marriage — kept thinking: “Oh, so true. So true!” Enter Maisonneuve, arguably Canada’s coolest magazine. And what do ya know? It’s from Montreal. To shame, Ontario! Subscribe to Maisonneuve now for $19.95 and get all of the ’04 issues, a hip Montreal band CD and some postcards. You can’t go wrong with that! — or a magazine subtitled “Eclectic Curiosity.”

I like Mauritius, but I’m not sure why. Could be because we share a birthday. We’ve exchanged cards over the past two years (me and an island in the south Indian ocean), and I’m determined to visit someday. Luckily, Maurituis was not hit by the tsunami.

I resolve to be more mindful this year, to notice things more. Mindfulness and awareness of impermanence are two pillars of Buddhism that I can accept; it’s the karma thing that trips me up – kinda like the literal Noah’s Ark in the Christian tradition. The down side to mindfulness is acute awareness of things that piss you off. So I’ve started a list. Maybe you can help add to it, and we can all get closer to Enlightenment. Little things that piss me off: 1) Cookie sheets and muffin tins. Who invented these? Do we still iron with 50lb cast iron? The cookie sheet is an unfortunate holdover from…

Sometimes it takes looking to the stars to put things in perspective. Like sudden death and VISA bills. I’ll never forget the 1998 summer night at Walden when I first saw Saturn’s rings through my little cabin telescope. The gas giant planet, tens of times bigger than Earth, was a tiny spot in my viewfinder, with delicate filament-like rings casting shadows on its milky surface. And the Andromeda Galaxy. Did you know you can see a galaxy of 100 billion stars, the same size as our Milky Way, with the naked eye? Think about this for a minute: 100 billion suns. If just .0001% of these has a planet around…

It’s the most wonderful time of the year. Christmas is over. I always love it in November, even up to about December 15 or so. Then, ick. By early January I can’t stuff the Rubbermaid fast enough. And I’m reflecting on this tonight — by the fire in the livingroom, kneeling on my meditation bench with a glass of wine, pitching crumpled year-end newspaper wads and fist-fulls of balsam needles into the fire to watch them pop and roar. I always leave the tree up one last night after the decorations are off, with just the lights on it and all the presents ferreted away. It’s a final hurrah, and…

First Jasper got it. Then I did. Stomach flu weekend. Ick. Friday at about 3PM I felt like I was slipping into the Abyss (note capital A). I had to excuse myself from a meeting and just barely made it home before 6 hours of violent nausea set in: Hello toilet bowl! At about midnight it was all over, but the next 24 hours I felt like I’d been hit by a train. One thing I did wrong (in case you get this, take note): Don’t try to drink lots of water between bouts of vomiting. Apparently, the flu bug makes it almost impossible for the stomach to process food…

“Let them keep their Christmas tree … It isn’t as nearly as bright, Menorah!“

And apparently makes you look like you have a broom shoved up your ass. Oh, well. At least I got my point across. And it was early in the morning. Check out my live TV debut on Breakfast at the New RO, talking about the Empower Suit campaign for the Snowsuit Fund. If you don’t have hi-speed, try this version.