Noetic Revalations

I feel crampy.

Brain cramps to be specific.

Like the kind you feel right after you've crammed for an exam, but then realize you memorized a pile of useless facts, only to be given a multiple choice basic math quiz. Only I don't feel like doing any math.

Why all crampy, you ask? 2009 and 2010 (to date) has been a crampy year all around for many reasons:

• Way too much travel. Hitting Air Canada's Elite Gold Status in under 3 months sounds fun until your body has to actually do it (and all in coach)... I did a quick calculation and I have travelled over 100,000 miles in the past 8 months. That is 4x around the world. India, Indonesia, France, Nashville, Toronto, Montreal...




• Too much renovations. I am still working on the inside finish work of this enternal renovation and yes, the darned deck. Railings? Who needs railings?!? Apparently I do. And a cement stone path as well.




• Not enough riding. I picked up a new Trek Madone in the summer and have well under 200km on it. Why? See my "Too much" list.




• Not near enough writing: 21 blog posts in 2009. What was up with that? Yes I had probably 200+ Facebook or Twitter updates, but that doesn't count.

So here's what I tried:

• I tried replacing the crampy feeling with high quality scotch, but the hangover was a wicked 2 days of blurriness.




• I tried replacing the crampy feeling with Facebook status updates. All I got was a bunch of Farmville requests in return.




• I tried reading all of Reddit, but did it all and then saw the repeats on Digg the next day.




• I tried increasing my noetic stimulation by broadening my Twitter feeds, but realized all I received in return was a plethora of data which required manual extrapolation into meaningful informaiton .

So I have to bump my wring again. My notebook is out, and in the past few month many scribbles have been taken but none crafted into prose.

A prime example of some note-pad scribbles from this past year:

Toronto:
everyone wears a scarf - fashion over coldness.
couldn't understand why I wore shorts
women are better looking. What? Well, better dressed. I think Little Italy had something to do with it.
Bikers - crazier, no helmets. I aspire.
Less panhandelers more hot-dog stands. Standing at Bloor & Younge gave me 4 choices within 100 feet. Nice

For inspiration I have stocked up my bookshelf with some 2009 Giller Prize nominees:

• Kim Echlin for her novel THE DISAPPEARED
• Annabel Lyon for her novel THE GOLDEN MEAN
• Anne Michaels for her novel THE WINTER VAULT

So the table is set and I will read with veracity...and hopefully let the cramps be gone!

Who says I can't code?

After an hour of recoding in HTML, I managed to re-insert the blogger comments field.

Comments are back up!

LP

A brief update...

Yes, it has been awhile since I posted...

Since March I think I only have been home for about 14 days total:

...flew back from India, slept for a few days, traveled to Nashville, then Toronto, back to Victoria - where I finally had a weekend at home so I promptly packed and left for Hornby - returned home, but left for Vancovuer, then repacked and went to France. Fortunately I departed out Europe the morning of the European airspace shutdown, otherwise I would still be there. Arrived home, and after 2 days the wanderlust had already kicked in so I traded my dress clothes for comfort and then left again for Hornby, where I was forced to relax (in the pouring rain) with 2 children (and a dog!) in a small enclosed trailer.... but arriving home seems to have triggered my body to rebel and it won't make it out of bed this week... I think it is a combination of the flu, a cold, travel shots and swollen tonsils. I am supposed to leave for Asia in 3 days, so if I don't get better it looks like I will be grounded.

Maybe that is a good thing...

On the flip side I've got a new camera that is taking some good pictures of my travels. Here is Vancouver from the air, as I flew into Downtown.


Now I think I'll go watch Ferris Bueller's Day Off...

LP.

PS: In case you're wondering Haloscan totally screwed up the comments field and I need to recode the blog to make it happen.

A colored set

Jordan was so excited today when we stopped at the store to pickup some new deck chairs for the house.

"Can I pick the colors?" is all I heard.... I agreed and after much deliberation about what mom would like the best, this is what he picked for me to bring home:




If his mom is impressed as much as he is excited, this is going to be awesome.

Put those on your hummock and smoke it....

YYJ to BLR

I just was just subjected to a 10 hour flight from Vancouver to London while sitting next to a loud snoring Norwegian. I missed sitting next to the Swedish something Olympic team (yes, all blonds) by one row. Now another 9 hours of flying to India and I'm stuck beside a 7 year old who wants to know if we are there yet. We are still on the tarmac. This is going to be a loooooong flight.

Kids notes this week:

Haley on Pizza: "I don't' want black circles, just ham & Pizza." "You mean olives?" "Yeah,
black circles!"

Jordan on skating: "You just put on your skates & walk!"


Ohh, they have so much to learn....

The digital domain is not coveal with prose...

John Threlfall was right. Archived text files and blogs will never be the same as reading your words in print.