These are my personal clovent guidelines, ones that I follow pretty regularly. These are not designed or thought of beforehand, but cultivated or developed over time. They seem to work well for me and reflect my sense of style.
Do not scare, insult, keep it clean
Involve the family
Seek permission from both the family and the kids
Make it look effortless
Cast some doubt, test, and if successful positive encouragement
Leave the person with changed emotion, be it happiness, disappointment, frustration
promote education, especially science
Give thanks to the opportunity
Wish the family well
Have a good, fun time
At any sign of rudeness, pushiness, aggression or slight discomfort, disengage.
Weary, I am, though I do not tell anyone else. Why, you may ask, but to not burden others. For to trudge on, with a smile, is the right thing to do.
No one notices, and really, no one need notice. To those who have thrown up hands in frustration, I see your point. To those that have done something radical as a result, I also see your point, though we tell ourselves we will get through it.
At times it seems unbearable, but we trudge on. Oh, to Transform myself into a rock.
Rest assured, I have not started a pharmacy and am not promoting illegal drugs on my personal blog. Oh no, as I am a “No Drugs” type of person. I was the victim of the Pharma Hack. This virus changes your indexing on Google Search so when people search for your site instead of your blog entry title they get ads for pharmaceutical drugs. I was not happy about this. After many extensive changes in beefing up WordPress security, so far Google search has started to index me correctly. This might take a couple of months, so bear with me.
The human body is composed of roughly 80% water. To say that fresh water is vital to our existence is quite true. Living in Toronto, Canada, we get our drinking water from our municipal water purification plant and water supply piping system. While those in condominiums and large apartments rely on property management companies to worry about these minute details, the rest of us that live in houses must fend for ourselves. Municipal water arrives from a pipe deep underground, protected from the frost. There is a water shutoff on your front lawn, as well as main water shutoff inside your house. If your main water shutoff has seized shut or open and you cannot turn it in either direction, you will need to replace it. Without a way to shut off the water in your house you risk flooding your house if a water pipe bursts, for whatever reason. Here is how to change your main water shutoff in Toronto, Canada.
This editorial cartoon is a play on the US popular rejection of the Keystone XL pipeline being proposed to run from Canada, through the US, down to Texas. The proposal is facing stiff opposition, with some Canadians editorializing that we should just redirect the pipeline to China.
And because he asked, my Mandarin is quite good. I love this editorial cartoon.
The more the US has access to cheap oil, the more they will waste it. Overall I think the US and therefore the World would benefit by more expensive oil prices. This also applies to us Canadians. While we all talk conservation and environmental protection, I see way too many SUVs and other large vehicles transporting one driver, and a lack of motivation to fund and build mass transit. I hope that gas prices will double and therefore match that of Europe.
Inside a Solid Waste drop-in Depot, Toronto, Canada. Garbage everywhere.
Not all garbage is disposed of in the same matter. Here in Toronto, Canada we have fairly strict rules of garbage disposal. There are organics, recyclables and yard waste, all with their special pickup schedules. And then there the pickup for “the rest”, that that is destined for land fill, tilled down and buried into some hill, whereabouts unknown. Old shingles from my recent shingling task needed to be disposed of, so off to the Toronto Solid Waste Drop-off Depot I went.
After three weeks of sleeping in the basement living room, somewhat stateless with no place to store his clothes, Little Weed was finally able to return to his bedroom. It was a monumental event for him and a good step back to normalcy in our house. A stable home is so important for kids.
Let me state the obvious that it is easier to blog than to roof. Roofing is hard work and dangerous. My south exposure roof was looking tattered, with shingles curling and losing a lot of small particulate. As I have not found a steady full-time job and could not afford the +$6,000 CAD fee for a professional roofer, and fearing a roof leak, I decided to DIY a large section of my roof. The roof job is progressing very well, though I have not gotten used to the hard physical labour.
My entries have been missing these past weeks because life has interrupted my normal routine, shifting me in unplanned directions. I suppose this is how life unfolds. I needed to remove my attic insulation, upgrade a ceiling pot light and vapour barrier, fix the attic vapour barrier, vent my bathroom fans to the outside, redo soffit venting, and then get everything back to normal. I get lemons and then make lemonade.
Reshingling of part of my roof went well. I did not fall off. Dirty yes, but it had to be done.
