The Seated View

Have you seen the Cadbury eyebrows comenrcial? No? Go watch – it’s veru funny. BUT! And you knew there’d be a but, didn’t you? A Glass and a Half Full Productions? With a glass of milk graphic?? So in other words, giving your kid a Cadbury chocolate bar is like giving them 1 ½ glasses of milk and are they seriously trying to sell that message? Is that even ethical? Hrmph! Still, the commercial’s damn good… Museum of Animal Perspectives . Endlessly fascinating. There are cameras by the nests of different birds, animal borne cameras showing you the perspective of another species and I’m going to stop talking now so you can go see. Never knew there were scholars fighting about fairytales . You learn something new every day. People of Walmart. The story . The website . DavidG sent the list of Utah names . In case you’re looking for options to some of the more common baby names. Also, Rutland Weekend Television which was new to me,...

Me? Superstitious? Nahhh... (knock wood): "'Are you in remission?' I cannot answer. My throat is closed, the words caught somewhere deep within. I can't even answer the question in writing, instead starting the sentence and then deleting, starting another one, phrased slightly differently and delete that, too, before I even get to the part about the R-word. Just writing it in that first sentence of this post makes me feel all antsy and uncomfortable. Those nine letters positively pulse off the page, making me feel as if I am tempting fate, calling attention to myself, inviting disaster. Because we all know that the flares are out there, don't we? Know (sort of) that all that's needed for one to remember that it has a life -- your life -- to take over is saying that you're doing okay and the next morning, you won't be." Pop over to MyRACentral to read the rest .

--> Before I get going, I need to say how much I’ve enjoyed the comment section of my last post. There were quite a few groans and I almost spurted tea on my keyboard more than once - absolutely made my day(s)! And now to something completely different... There's a handful of authors who I'll read even if they've just published their grocery list and Jeffery Deaver is one of them. The first time I read The Bone Collector , it blew me away. Not only is it wonderfully geeky with all the forensics, but Lincoln Rhyme, the hero of the story, is a wheelchair user and the second hero of the story, his partner in solving crime (and eventually romance, as well) Amelia Sachs, has rheumatoid arthritis. And they catch bad guys using forensics, knowledge and vast brainpower. What's not to love? So every time Deaver comes out with a new book, I'm first in line to get it. And when I discovered Audible, he was naturally on my short list. There I wa...

The other day, in response to someone's inquiry of how I was, I found myself prattling on about the details of my pain levels and I realized that I often do this with people who knew me well and with whom I speak often. And it's been nagging at me a bit and making me wonder whether I should just shut up about it. I don't do it because I want pity - offer me pity and I will go medieval on your derrière - and I don't do it because I want an extended conversation about it (because lord knows, most of the time the pain bores me senseless). I talk about it because… well, probably two reasons. The first one is that pain is a very much a part of my day, sometimes muttering in the background, sometimes being how I spend my day and if someone asks me how my day was, pain is part of that. The second reason is that when it’s loud, it helps to say it, to have someone else know. Pain is a uniquely solitary experience. I can tell you about it, about the qualities of p...

I’d planned to write about something else today, but got majorly sidetracked by a fit of apoplexy. I'm on a couple of email lists and one of the members is an older gentleman, quite conservative, who delights in sending really awful jokes (that are often so awful that they're very funny) and sometimes, he sends jokes and opinion pieces, right wing ones. I usually just skim-and-delete because he's entitled to his opinion, but the latest one has me foaming at the mouth and as I appear to be incapable of ranting at my elders, I'm going to do so here. The e-mail in question is entitled "Life Magazine Photos, Old History - but could it happen again?" And by the time I got to that e-mail, there was a follow-up talking about the astonishing early colour photography, but how the last two frames were a bit much. I got little paranoid and ran the attached pps file through my antivirus and my anti-malware programs first and then sat back to check it out and it ...

One of Laurie's recent posts was a transfer meme from Facebook in which you list 15 books that’ll always stick with you and in a grand gesture, she tagged everyone who read it. And it made me think about the books I have left on my shelves. For years now, miscellaneous neck issues have prevented me from reading books in the traditional manner, instead listening to audio books, but for a long time, I hung on to my rather extensive collection of "real" books. And then at some point, I took a look around and had the overwhelming urge to minimize the amount of stuff in my home. Luckily, this was around the time where Michele volunteered to help me achieve that goal and it's something we've been doing on and off for a couple of years now. First there was the storage room, then the kitchen and then we started on the bookshelves. The project isn't finished yet, but when it is, then there will no doubt be a post about the before and after. However, today is...

This week's HealthCentral post wonders what if it's not you who have RA - what if it's your kid? "When I was a teenager, I wanted nothing to do with doctors, hospitals and physical therapists. I was done with blood tests, trying medications that weren't working and soaking my hands in paraffin wax until it accumulated and became a gross glutinous glove that made my skin smell disgusting." You can read the rest here .

Dear Buskerfest , It's no secret that I'm not fond of you. For years, you've invaded my neighbourhood the last weekend in August and when I say invaded, I mean take over and fill up sidewalks and streets to the point that I can't get to the grocery store for the throngs of people. A few years ago, you added an extra day to the point where your bloated festival takes up four days, which means that for four days, my neighborhood looks like this Don't get me wrong, I love a good festival as much as the next person - sure, it's not always easy to get through the crowds when you use a wheelchair, but Woofstock (for instance), which also invades this neck o’ the woods for 3 days in June, is a lot of fun. What makes your shenanigans particularly bothersome is the fact that the buskers? The reason we're all here? The entertainment? Is hard to see for me. After all, when this is your view of the aforementioned acts, not once, but all the ti...

When selecting the winner of the birthday contest, I thought of asking Mojo to get involved, but she tends to look at me as if I've grown an extra head whenever I've asked for assistance in picking winners, so that didn't work. The Tinks didn't quite get the concept of picking a number, so I decided to wait until they're little older before I called them again. So naturally, I chose numerology (what? Naturally? Well, why not...). I added the numbers in my birthdate and came up with #9. Congratulations, LynnM! Depending on the state of my shoulder, I may be updating my Flickr page this week, so you if you want to wait until that happens, just let me know. If not, e-mail me your choice and your address and I'll get it off as soon as I can. And on to the link-o-rama… I'm starting with a few favorites from the lol group: this one (turn up the speakers) had me howling and I keep laughing every time I play it (which has been more than once). It's ...

In the grand tradition of the shameless self-promotion that happens in this space on this day, I'm going to be All About Me and announced that today is my birthday. Well, the beginnings of - today is the actual day, but celebrations will, as usual, be stretched out over a week or so. I'm not sure exactly when my circle of people switched from birthday to birthday weekend and then to birthday week, but I can highly recommend it. This year, my birthday present to myself is a three-day weekend of doing nothing that I don't want to do. As usual, Kathy Reichs has released her latest book in the last week of August and the usual, I'm more than half convinced that she's doing that especially for me (thanks, Kathy!). Today, that might be a lunch thing, the odd phone call or two with misc. international birthday songs, Reichs in the park and this weekend, there are no plans at all. Nothing. Nada. Just whatever floats my boat and I cannot tell you how much I am lo...

This week, I post about pirates at HealthCentral: "I got hijacked last week. Not by pirates with cutlasses, eye patches, bad teeth and a shoulder-perched parrot squawking obscenities. Instead, my week was hijacked by something much more bureaucratic: an agency deciding I needed to devote days to doing enough paperwork that I suspect they'll need to build an extension to their offices to store it all." The rest of the post, pirates and all, is here .

About six months ago, I finally gave in and joined the Canadian version of Netflix. I'd resisted because I tend to watch movies based on what I'm in the mood for and that's not something you can do when you never know what's arriving next in your mailbox. However, my local video store now has the poorest excuse for a library of old releases I've ever seen and since I love old movies and weird movies, I really had no other choice. And it turns out I may like surprises after all Brief pause to allow a number of my family and friends time to hoot hysterically at the thought of me liking surprises. Done? Right then, moving on. On my list that Rogers Video Direct is a bunch of movies I never got around to seeing for various reasons and last week, The Lake House arrived in my mailbox. And it was better than I'd expected, sweetly mindless, as long as you ignore the gaping holes in the plot. Keanu Reeves wasn’t too bad, although he really made me awar...

It all started with Bridget Jones's Diary .   The messing with Jane Austen, I mean. Well, I'm sure that there have been people messing with Austen before that, but if you're looking at the most recent tendency to mess with her, Bridget started it. And did it well. It’s a fantastic book, turned into a fantastic movie that I watch on a regular basis and the only problem with it was that it persuaded all kinds of other people that they could successfully mess with the master. Some have been pretty good and then… then there’s Pride and Prejudice and Zombies . Somebody got the idea to take Pride and Prejudice and add some zombies by inserting period-appropriate bits and dialogue about zombies.   The idea is that 25 years or so before the book takes place, a strange plague hit England creating Unmentionables (i.e., zombies) and these Unmentionables are fought by men and women alike. In fact, the five Bennett sisters have spent several years in China learning the art of ...