the pomegranate tiger

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...