I found out a few weeks ago that New Zealand defines the first day of spring differently from the US. It had never even occurred to me that different countries would have different first days of spring. The US uses the equinoxes to separate the seasons and I had just assumed everyone did that - after all the equinoxes happen at the same time ( Read more... )

It’s spring in Christchurch. I can tell because I’ve got daffodils in a vase on my shelf. (Well, actually, they’re in a cup. I cannot locate my vase. Does anyone have my vase?) Christchurch does spring daffodils in a big way. Also the odd bluebell, lots of snowdrops, and heaps of blossom trees which are all either fully out or getting there at the ( Read more... )

A year ago, I had a really bad August. Just one of those months. Way overly busy, and anything and everything going wrong (well... not everything. The earthquake waited ‘til September). It ranged from little things like food exploding in the microwave, to real nuisances like bike maintenance issues, to proper Bad like a colleague whose dad had a ( Read more... )

I went to bed last Sunday night still very unconvinced that there wouldn't be school in the morning. There'd been some hail in the afternoon, but it had all melted. And, by the time I was on the way home from church there was some snow-like stuff happening, but it was very wet, and I wasn't convinced it would stick. You've got to remember - where I ( Read more... )

Probably like a lot of the news-media consuming world, I spent this week watching the riots in London. Not quite as avidly as I followed the progress of the winter storm that is, supposedly, just about to break over the city, but I followed it. I must have read every news story with a headline about disaffected youth printed in any large scale ( Read more... )

 For the uninitiated, this is the wikipedia article about custard squares, or, as they are apparently called in the fancy culinary world, mille-feuille. Custard Squares, in the form that we get them here - a layer of pastry followed by a thick layer of custard, followed by a layer of frosted pastry - seem to be a comfortable-with-their-history ( Read more... )

Back when I was in university I had an encounter with a drunk guy just across the street from the Gates on the corner of Sherbrooke and McGill College Ave. I can't remember when it was exactly - I think it must have been during my first year because I don't have memories of going home and telling Tegan about it. I was probably coming home from ( Read more... )

 "Why, [Emilio] had once wondered, would a perfect God create the universe? To be generous with it, he believed now. For the pleasure of seeing pure gifts apprecitaed. Maybe thats what it meant to find God: to see what you have been given, to know divine generosity, to appreciate the large things and the small..."
~Mary Doria Russell. The Sparrow.

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 We’ve all heard of Dr. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross’s five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. By contrast, I realized, happiness has four stages. To eke out the most happiness from an experience, we must anticipate it, savour it as it unfolds, express happiness, and recall a happy memory.
~ The Happiness Project, ( Read more... )

Thursdays I get to sleep in. Not lots - I still have to be at work by 8.30. But I don’t have to be there any earlier, because my first class isn’t until 11, so there’s never any planning that I have to finish before the kids show up, or any urgent photocopying. I often sleep all the way until 7 - practically indecent, isn’t it?

But for some reason ( Read more... )