Gifted Typist

See my column here.
My neighbourhood is under siege. The European Fire Ants have arrived. They are little red ants that sting.
Actually they arrived some twenty years ago off the ships but only recently have people been getting up in arms about it.
These little devils set up colonies with multiple queens. So you can’t just kill [...]

… and like Princess Diana, we’ll probably remember where we were when we heard the news of the King of Pop’s death.
There are similarities: both were staging a come-back, both were global celebrities and both died too soon.
And everyone was shocked.
Of course, Jacko was deeply troubled and far more *out there* than Diana ever was.
But [...]

I must confess to you, my dear bloggies, that I’ve been cheating on you.
It’s true. I’ve been living a dual on-line life: One here on GT and the another on Twitter.
For the longest time I tried to keep the two worlds separate, like Jon tried to do on Jon and Kate plus Eight.
GT is still [...]

Apparently our province has more centenarians than most other parts of the country.
The average number of 100-year olds is 14 per 100,000. In Nova Scotia, it’s 21 per 100,000.
I have personal experience of this. My own grandmother is 104 and in good health, except for her knees and her hearing. She’s getting forgetful. She forgets [...]

Today’s the day:  Summmah.
It’s also the longest day of the year. Hooray.
It’s raining, but that’s OK, we’ve had a beautiful spring which is remarkable given the string of hideous springs we’ve had in these parts for the past 7 years: usually it’s three months of rain, fog and dampness.
So this typist isn’t complaining.
Long live summah!

Go to my Herald column here.
Organizing doesn’t come naturally to me.
Dunno what it is about me, but I can just walk into a neat room and make it messy – without even trying.
I do occasionally mount an assault on the mess, but it just comes back again. So I’ve learned to embrace it.
I am slob, [...]

In the past, updating this blog has been traumatic as this humble typist grappled with the complexities of FTP, servers, deleting and replacing the correct files.
Such is the joy of having a blog of one’s own.
But since Wordpress 2.7, our world has become easier.
Now it’s just one press of a button on the dashboard and [...]

Last year, the politicians of this province lavished $9M on something called Democracy 250. The idea was to engage young people in the democratic process.
They brought in two former premiers – old, grey-haired,  stodgy men – as co-chairs of this “celebration.” Typical of Nova Scotia politicians, these men have all the charisma of an aging [...]

Link to my Herald column here.
That’s because the election noise is over. At last.
For American and out-of-province visitors, it went like this:
The old bumbling guys went out off the toe of our collective boot.
And the new guys got in for the first time ever. And the came in on a majority.
We live in a nice [...]

OK, so the WHO has just declared a Swine Flu pandemic.
Not sure what to think.
Initial fears were calmed by the mild nature of the illness, but if it’s anything like the killer flu of 1917-18 the worst of it will hit in a second wave. Is this it? Or is this just the preparation.
So who [...]

These were the search terms for a hit I had from Bostwana, Africa this morning.
It gives pause for thought. What, exactly, does a typist do?
The name of this blog came about in response to the dreaded cocktail party question:
And what do you do?
Um, erm, ahhhhh????
My resume is a dog’s breakfast. I’ve done so many things [...]

There’s a petition going around asking Pixar to make more animated movies with girls who are not princesses.
In a letter to Pixar Linda Holmes points out:
Of the ten movies you’ve released so far, ten of them have central characters who are boys or men, or who are anthropomorphized animals or robots or bugs who are [...]

By scanning the reviews, I knew the flick Up would be good, but I must say it came as a surprise when the story of this grieving old man and his plumb eight-year old sidekick found its way into the heart of this crusty typist.
Let’s just say tissues were needed in the same way that [...]

See today’s column here.дивани
Just ask Susan Boyle.
She went for the dream, but didn’t see the steaming locomotive of fame and celebrity coming her way. And when it hit, she wasn’t prepared for the dung heap cargo of media intrusion, paparazzi and nastiness.
Now she’s recovering from emotional exhaustion in a clinic.
Her story is a morality tale [...]

On the way home from the marvelous Cirque Du Soliel show the other night, I spotted a rat scurrying away from Province House. It scuttled out of the gates and ran across the street.
The symbolism was delicious, hilarious and quite poetic.
Let’s hope that rat was right next Tuesday when we have the election and the [...]