Posted in Other, tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2025, Thoughts on October 24, 2025| Leave a Comment »
We drove out to woods yesterday, the gently curving country road surrounded by rolling hills and turning leaves and the crisp cool air of an autumn evening.
Welcome, fall.
“No spring nor summer beauty hath such grace as I have seen in one autumnal face.”
— John Donne
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Posted in Other, Writing, tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2025, art, creativity, inspiration, Thoughts, Writers on October 22, 2025| Leave a Comment »
Here’s an illustrated short by Rich Wells, capturing an epiphany he had outside a tire shop.
“I thought l’d take the words from my notebook and make something visual.
A reminder to myself that all this everyday stuff – admin, errands, school runs, park trips, waiting in lines, meal times –
it’s all a gift”
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Posted in Other, tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2025, inspiration, learning stuff, Thoughts on October 21, 2025| Leave a Comment »
It’s a brave act to embrace incompetence. What’s delightful is that it’s a temporary state.
— Michael Bungay Stanier
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Posted in Other, tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2025, Thoughts on October 19, 2025| Leave a Comment »
Ikea is many things: an overwhelming shopping destination, a supply chain and engineering marvel, an unexpected beacon of sustainability, source of endless jokes about infuriating instructions, and a good place for meatballs.
It can also surprise you, as it did when I went looking for one thing and discovered something I’ve been looking for years: An affordable, practical, decently sized cake carrier.
It’s not a big deal, but when you need to transport a cake across town without it ending up in heap in the back of the car, it can be important.
Important enough to consider shelling out for an overpriced carrier? Not quite, as it happens.
Because I don’t need to move cakes all that often, I’ve been putting this purchase off for years. I’m glad I did, because now, C$12.99 + tax later, I am the proud possessor of a decent cake carrier. (I also picked up a year’s supply of that critical Swedish ingredient, lingonberries.)
Thanks for this, Ikea, and for the reminder that solutions are sometimes where they’re least expected.
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Posted in Other, tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2025, autumn, fall, inspiration, nature, photography, Thoughts on October 14, 2025| Leave a Comment »
Mr Man and I were out for a hike a few weeks ago when a barred owl flew across the path. I hadn’t expected to see an owl in daylight, but there it was. We watched it for a moment as it nestled into the crook of a tree, and went about our way.
This is what it might have been like to stay.
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Posted in Other, tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2025, autumn, fall, inspiration, nature, quoteandaprettypicture, Thoughts on October 13, 2025| 1 Comment »
For those who have experienced the joy of being alone with nature there is really little need for me to say much more; for those who have not, no words of mine can ever describe the powerful, almost mystical knowledge of beauty and eternity that come, suddenly, and all unexpected.
— Jane Goodall
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Posted in Other, tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2025, autumn, fall, inspiration, quoteandaprettypicture, Thoughts on October 12, 2025| Leave a Comment »
“The autumn stars had come out, incredible in number and brilliance… the whole sky seemed to tremble, a shaking of diamond chips, a scintillation of sunlight on a black sea.”
— Ursula Le Guin, The Dispossessed
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Posted in Other, tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2025, autumn, fall, inspiration, quoteandaprettypicture, Thoughts on October 11, 2025| Leave a Comment »
After an extended flirtation with unusually warm weather, the seasons have well and truly turned. Fall has arrived, and with it, bright blue days and brilliant colors, crisp air and the urge to Get Outside before the snows come.
This is my way of saying that I’m going to be otherwise occupied for the next few days enjoying the weather. I hope you have a chance to get out and enjoy the season too.
In the meantime, I leave you with quotes and pretty pictures!
“If the leaves are changing, I feel poetry in the air.”
— Laura Jaworski
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Posted in Other, Writing, tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2025, creativity, inspiration, Thoughts on October 9, 2025| Leave a Comment »
“Every minute of every hour of every day you are making the world, just as you are making yourself, and you might as well do it with generosity and kindness and style.”
— Rebecca Solnit
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Posted in Other, tagged family, Futures, #365Ways, #365Ways2025, funny story, Sinclair on October 8, 2025| Leave a Comment »
I often run across funny stories in the news that catch my attention. Sometimes, it’s about a topic of interest, like libraries or space food or mushroom leather, for instance. And sometimes it’s about a dinosaur named Claire.
I was only two when my mother’s father died, so I never got a chance to know him. Now, I’m very much a green economy “let’s figure out how to live without needing several more planets” kind of person, but my grandfather’s work involved resource exploration for Sinclair Oil.
He was also by all accounts a wonderful person.
The fact that he was gone only made me more interested in what little I did know about him, including the fact that he worked for a company whose mascot was a friendly green dinosaur.* To a kid, that’s pretty cool, and I always kept my eye out for Sinclair stations when we traveled.
Sinclair’s advertising writers first had the idea to use dinosaurs in Sinclair marketing back in 1930. They were promoting lubricants refined from crude oil believed to have formed when dinosaurs roamed the earth.
This all came to mind because recently, someone in California stole the mascot from a Sinclair station in Brentwood. The stations often have a large (but not life sized, let’s not get crazy) representation of their dinosaur near the pumps. Very cool. So cool, in fact, that someone decided they wanted to take it home.
The dinosaur’s name, it turns out, is Claire.
Stolen California gas station dinosaur returned with apology note
The 4-foot-tall prehistoric mascot was stolen last week from a Sinclair gas station on San Vicente Boulevard in the Brentwood neighborhood. Video showed the person using power tools to remove Claire, loading her into the bed of a pickup truck that pulled up alongside the fuel pumps and driving away.
The good news is that a hue and cry was raised, and the thief, who must have at least one decent bone in their body, returned Claire to her rightful home.
More than once, I’ve wondered what my grandfather would think about the green energy transition and the push to move away from fossil fuels. While I don’t know what he would have said, it would have been a fascinating conversation.
He was a kind, thoughtful man who wanted only good things for his family and the future. I like to think that he would be happy to see humanity finding new ways to innovate, expand, and explore.
And I’m sure Claire and her family of Apatosauruses would approve.
* Although there’s a certain irony to making your company symbol a happy representation of the creature whose liquified remains power your product, but that’s a topic for another time!
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