the pomegranate tiger

. . . so thought I'd sign on and post a few thoughts. It's funny how you get attached to people you've never met. Over the years I've been active online, I've developed some unique relationships with people from across the globe. A few have come and gone, much like face to face relationships. You meet, you exchange niceties, exchange information, maybe spend time together, but you eventually move on in your respective lives. Just another part of life's experiences. Yet, I wonder about the individuals that I made a connection with on the 'net, no matter how brief. I wonder about Susan in New York who gave me a great recipe for Zuppe de Pesce that I still use and the person who introduced me to the writing of George Gissing. I wonder what happened to the guy who helped me through debugging my first internet virus. I wonder about the early members of TBF like Holger and Tobytook and Dawn. Do they still remember me as I remember them? I guess we were ju...

It's been a lovely Christmas - a nice blend of family, food and activity. We had Christmas eve dinner at my sister's and Christmas dinner at my house. My sister (or more precisely her husband, since he does most of the cooking) normally doesn't 'do turkey'. She says it's too much work and bother. (She'd rather come to my house for turkey dinner because we love turkey and all the trimmings and have it at least two or three times a year.) Well, this year, she decided to try one of those pre-stuffed, de-boned frozen turkeys. It even comes with a package of pre-made frozen gravy. You just take it from the freezer, put it in a pan, stick it in the oven, roast for the designated time, and voila - turkey dinner. Well, it looked kind of like turkey - in a sort of rolled up, white/dark meat with brown stuff in the middle kind of way. It tasted kind of like turkey - in a didn't taste like chicken or duck sort of way. But, I'm sorry sis, it didn't seem like...

The past two days, I've been going through the house, room by room to do a general clean-up before getting out the Christmas stuff. Having just gotten back from vacation, it's been hard getting back in the swing of things. We have a lot of books and paper in our house. Books, magazines and paper are piled on every conceivable counter, shelf and flat surface. Bookshelves are double-stacked and crammed to overflowing onto the floorspace in front. Papers and books march inexorably up the side of our front hallway stairs. Part of this comes from having avid readers in the house, part of it comes from having full-time college students who leave both completed work and works-in-progress everywhere, part of it comes from a spouse who doesn't know how to throw out, well, anything. So, it occurred to me that the house needs more than a simple tidying. I started pulling out textbooks and manuals that haven't been looked at in years, magazines that are twenty years old, stuff on t...

My father died one year ago. It's probably no coincidence that I was away on vacation for the anniversary of his death - though at the time we booked our trip, it didn't enter my mind on a conscious level. Now that Christmas is approaching, I'm still not in a festive mood. Not depressed by any means, but just not in the flow of making lists, decorating, etc. that I usually am. I'm one of those people who usually gets their shopping done by the first week of December, then sits back and enjoys the season. This year, I haven't even made a list! I know I'll have to get cracking because my sons keep asking when the tree is going up. Now that their exams are over, they've even offered to go help me pick it out and bring it home. Funny. It doesn't matter how old they get, they still like the traditional Christmas they grew up with: presents in the morning, breakfast and coffee while we admire the tree, trying out new games or doodads we received, the smell of ...

Ever get the feeling you're not wanted somewhere? Or feel you've outstayed your welcome? That's how I feel. So despite my tendency to embrace all and blather on and on as if it matters, maybe it's time to pull in the reins. It's time to remind myself that not everyone is interested in my opinions. Hence, I shall try to keep my more personal scribblings in this space for those who find them. This blogging business is still an experiment for me. I've kept personal journals on and off for years and I've shared some reviews and writing on my website (which is woefully out of date), but this is the first time I've tried free-form, stream of consciousness journalling in such a public manner. There is, of course, the problem of revealing too much and leaving myself open to scorn, dislike or indifference. Should I care? No. Why bother? Well, over the years I've discovered and met some of the most interesting, intriguing and, at times, puzzling peop...

For those of you who don't know , the Grey Cup is the Canadian Football League's (CFL's) championship game. It's the equivalent of the Super Bowl for the NFL. This year, the Grey Cup is being held right here in Vancouver, right now as I write this. It's a big deal. Parties, parades and various events have been going on all week. I've been following the CFL since the 60s. So why am I not watching now? Well, for one thing, our home team, the BC Lions, imploded last weekend and lost in the western semi-final. Not that they lost badly - the score was 28 -23, I think. Their season record wasn't terrible. It's the fact that they started the season with 11 wins and 0 losses, then ended up losing the last 7 out 8 games. Talk about falling apart! Anyways, when the hope of our hometown Lions playing the final at home blew away with the prairie winds of Edmonton, my interest in the Grey Cup blew away, too. Now, I suppose, if I were a diehard fan, I...

Further to examining the 'mother' issue in my previous post, I was steered to the Myers-Briggs typology test (click to open in new window). I was skeptical, at first, so took the test twice. Both returned the same results: INFJ I proceeded to look up the meaning of the results and was stunned. Amazingly accurate! For anyone interested, here are a few links that describe me frighteningly well: INFJ Profile Portrait of INFJ Careers for INFJ It's reassuring to know that, at least, I ended up in the right career path.

Okay, I've decided I really must address this issue of being motherly! Today, I got a very nice pm from an online friend who spoke about how she views me as being 'motherly'. This isn't the first, or even second time, that someone has told me I'm maternal. So, what makes me seem so motherly? At first, I didn't think too much of it. Now, I'm wondering why I come across this way. It's certainly not intentional on my part. Not that I mind being thought of as motherly - just a bit disconcerting when people keep mentioning it. I can't help the fact that I am a mother, but not to everyone! I've racked my brain over this because even when raising my own, now adult children, I never talked down to them. I never used cutesy-poo babytalk or dumbed-down language. I spoke to them in a rather adult manner from a very young age. If they didn't understand, I'd explain. So, it can't be in my manner of speech or writing. With the exception of parent...

I've been spending the last hour looking for bloggers that are within at least a decade of my own age. Why, you might ask. Generally, I like the internet because there's a certain anonymity when it comes to age. You can learn a lot about people without the prejudice of age. I have absolutely no problems conversing with younger people and enjoy the vitality and enthusiasm, but sometimes it's good to hear from those with similar life experiences or who have gone through the same life passages. It wasn't as easy as I thought it would be. I finally resorted to clicking on similar interests of things I thought might actually return some people close to my age. I went through favourite movies that I thought would appeal to an older demographic - no luck. I went through books the same way - no luck. I went through music and, voila, hit upon Gordon Lightfoot! (I also found a lot of Canadians, but that's okay.) I followed a few more links and lo and behold, people my age. ...

While perusing someone else's site, I ran across a bunch of top 10 lists. Naturally, I started thinking about what would go on my own top 10s. So here are a few lists with the proviso that they are subject to constant flux, as is my brain: Most memorable childhood books : The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe - C. S Lewis The Secret Garden - Frances Burnett A Connecticut Yankee In King Arthur's Court - Mark Twain Little Women - Louisa May Alcott Winnie the Pooh - A. A. Milne The House at Pooh Corner - A. A. Milne Legends of Vancouver - Pauline Johnson Sue Barton Nurse; series of about 6 books - Helen Dore Boylston Pippi Longstockings - Astrid Lindgren Heidi - Johanna Spyri Sci-fi and Fantasy books : The Foundation Series - Isaac Asimov Dune - Frank Herbert A Canticle for Leibowitz - Walter Miller Jr. Oryx and Crake - Margaret Atwood The Martian Chronicles - Ray Bradbury The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Dougla...

naive: Marked by or showing unaffected simplicity and lack of guile or worldly experience I've been insulted and called various unflattering things in my life, as one does if you've been around long enough and choose to participate in society. But two terms that have been used in a disparaging way towards me have always been a puzzlement: 'naive' and 'idealistic'. The first because I know I'm not naive, and the second because I don't see idealism as being negative. Actually, these two terms often seem to go together. For example, "You're too naive and idealistic." Or, "How can you be so naive? It'll never work. You're too idealistic." (Other terms that get thrown my way are Pollyanna, goody-two-shoes, soft-headed, do-gooder, etc., etc.) I'm one of those people who think, on the one hand, that the world is going to hell and that we'll probably nuke ourselves out of existence. But, on the other hand, still care abou...

Last night I started watching my son's DVD box set of Battlestar Galactica - Season One . He'd been bugging me to watch it ever since he got it and I always had some excuse or another. Since I didn't have much else to do and it was still a bit early to head to bed, I thought, why not. So I popped in the first disc. Big mistake. Not that it was a mistake to watch it - a mistake to start watching so late in the evening. I was hooked. You see, like many people, I had seen the original series with Lorne Greene, Dirk Benedict and Richard Hatch. It was a fun, popcorn spaceadventure series. Fun at the time, but not entirely memorable (to me, memorable would be the series "V"). I'd read good reviews of the new Battlestar and my son waxed poetic about it, so I was expecting better, but what it delivered far exceeded my expectations. It is superior to the original in almost every aspect - acting, writing, graphics, sound, storyline, everything. It also didn't hurt ...

Ramblings of a dichotomous mind: What a dilemma. Everyone's doing it. Why not me? - But do I really want to be just one of the masses climbing onto a bandwagon that maybe's already passed? That would be just like me. Last one in on the latest fads. - Nah. Not worth it really. I have a website already, albeit not updated in months. - But I really want a place to just jot down my 300 words a day without having to take out pen and journal. - Lazy, that's what I am. - I like reading other people's blogs, but do I want people to read my inner thoughts? Well, yes and no. Yes, because it's probably therapeutic in some way, but no, because inner thoughts should be inner thoughts shouldn't they? - But just think of all the people I could tell off and they wouldn't even know it. - Yeah, but then what would be the point? I could send them an anonymous email and they'd never know. - Crap, I write stuff all the time anyways, why not blog too? - That's t...