-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.

Ok, OK. Here are some recent photos of Jasper and Simon — with some adults who are in much less demand.

Fifty houses in a tiny mill town in Central Ontario have free compact fluorescent light bulbs tonight. How many Canadians does it take to change a light bulb? How many Canadians does it take to change things? Months and months after discovering by accident that changing just one light bulb in every house in Canada would reduce pollution by the equivalent of taking 65,000 cars off the road, the process has started — with a few friends, a brochure, 50 donated bulbs, and a good time in Fenelon Falls. Check out Project Porchlight. You’ll be hearing more about it.

Last week Simon got a tooth. Then another one. He’s drooling a lot, and constipated, so the progress he made saying “da daa” two weeks ago, has regressed to grunting. (BTW, he’s 5 months old, not a carnivorous older cousin or neighbour — just to be clear). Jasper (4) is singing Christmas carols in French. I don’t understand a bloody thing. And I’ve got him in a kids’ choir at the local United Church. They call the group “Cherubs” and dress ’em up in gowns with bunched bookish collars. Very cute. We’ve started taking him to church there Sundays because we felt a bit guilty about getting him into the…

It flew in from America on a sunny Ottawa morning. And the biggest disappointment was how small it was, smaller than I remember previous ones being, when I was a kid. And less flexible. Canadians used to enjoy shaping it, but today I just want to squish it and throw it against the wall to see if it bounces. Yes, Silly Putty. Thank God for Silly Putty! My colleague Amanda brought me some from Time Square, just in time to help me cope with the arrival of the Butcher of Baghdad. That other, even less flexible American import.

A study published today gives pause to parishoners. Going to church can kill you. A Dutch study of air quality in churches concluded that the air had more cancer-causing pollutants than air beside a major highway travelled daily by 45,000 vehicles. So that just proves that living in Toronto or going to church both bring you closer to God. President Bush is coming to town next week. Major protests are planned. Funny, I can’t get a certain Bruce Cockburn song out of my head. I found out today that this blog site you are reading is worth $1,366.66 US on Blogshares, which isn’t a lot. That’s 0.000027% market share.

It’s already too late to be early. The Jane Siberry CD (Child) is on shuffle again. How much orgasmic moaning can one person take? Apparently, about 35 days. Suzy informed me tonight that she’s moved up our tree decorating day to Dec 11 from Dec 18. She scratched my note off the family calendar and put a big red arrow to the week prior. My wife says the tree “has to be up more than a week!” OK, as long as it’s not five. Let’s just say, I’m not in The Mood, yet. But it’s building. It starts with frozen toes on November 11, followed by lingering sentiment. As I…