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Posts Tagged ‘#365Ways2025’

Least Expected

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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Today, Mr Man is out in the woods being woodsy, and his cell connection is weak at best. He called with a story about an adventure, full of drama and excitement, near misses and impossible tasks. 

Ninety seconds into the tale, the call cut out. Oh no, I thought, he just set up the problem, how will he triumph? What happened next? I waited by the phone in anticipation.

Another call, another 90 seconds, another cut line, another moment of drama as he hung, metaphorically speaking, between victory and defeat. It happened again, then again. 

I started answering his callbacks with “And then what happened?”

After many episodes I got the whole story, and it was a good one. Let’s just say that most of us would have found ourselves stranded in the bush waiting to become a bear’s dinner, but through creativity, deductive thinking and mechanical know how, he found a way!

And I enjoyed an excellent reminder of the power of suspense in story.

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The only guaranteed way to succeed is simple: don’t quit.

— Arnold Schwarzenegger

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Ok, this is amazing.

And if you wired other nearby plants and trees, would they all play in synchrony?

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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.

from wildlife photographer Gamander López

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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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“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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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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Today, a fun bit of free short fiction from Carrie Vaughn and Clarkesworld Magazine.

The Job Interview

She hit send and hoped that this would be the last she had to think of it. Engineering would get the work order, run the diagnostics, the glitch would get fixed, all would be well. She was also very aware that this would probably not be the end of it. She couldn’t tell if the cramping in her stomach was lunchtime hunger or simmering rage.

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“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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