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Showing posts from January, 2012
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Pursuant Monday's xkcd... http://xkcd.com/1007/ I have determined (where "I" stands for "Google"  http://books.google.com/ngrams ) that written  occurrences  of "The Quest" are in dramatic decline -- starting about 1998. Being the year that Leora was born, I suppose I have to shoulder some of the burden, but I think we need to rally to the cause. Occurrences as a percentage of all English words/phrases vs time I have a couple of other things to share with you today, as I avoid my house cleaning ;) The first is this awesome scan from the Prince Albert Daily Herald .  I'm 13 years old in this photo. Same as Leora is right now. And no, she isn't allowed near any skateboarders! I was a proud (where "proud" =  "disinterested") deliverer of said newspaper for a couple of years in the mid 80s. It was during that time that I owned one of my prize possessions of all time -- The Radio Watch. I'm certain I would stil

Always the Breath... Always the Story: A Quest on the "touchy feely" side

The Preamble I've just spent what could have been a nothing-to-do weekend at a work-sponsored class on storytelling. Having known about it for a month or so, I have been living in anticipatory dread the entire time. I didn't really know what I thought was going to happen. On reflection, it was a problem I have been dancing around all year. I'm scared to let myself down. If I don't blow away expectations, I feel like a failure. No pressure there. To combat this problem, my usual solution is to lower expectations so that it is easy to surpass them. That is likely familiar to some of you. Perhaps you are someone who eats expectations for breakfast. I'm working on it. For right now, I lost not a few nights of sleep worrying about what story I might do and thinking more than once about giving a co-worker, Jim, my spot in the workshop. I'm sure he wishes he could have taken part. Having managed to go, in the end, I wouldn't trade it for anything. And I didn

37.68 billion km! Happy 40th to me!

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When the girls were quite young, though not so young that they don't still remember, I told them that my big plan was to break the human record for longevity. I thought I should give a progress report... I've got ways to go yet. If I'm even to break the Canadian record, I've got a good 70 billion km to go. Marry Poppins said, "Well begun is half done." I guess I'll have to settle for the imortal words of the late, great, Karen Carpenter... " We've only just begun... " Quester's Voyage -- Anwyn D Those of you who followed my Honduras travels last March will know why it is that you can't see the little quester's mouth in the above photo. Poor guy. I hope he remembers to take his gravol next time :( Thanks to all of my well wishers today (both human and automated). I am indeed having a happy birthday. You may be surprised to discover that I wish to share some photos with you today. As they were leaving for school today, the