The University of Waterloo's fiftieth anniversary is coming up. As part of the celebrations they are producing some sort of retrospective document or book or pamphlet or magazine or some such thing; I'm not exactly sure what the form factor is.

[UPDATE: The form factor is a special insert section in the local newspaper, the KW Record. It is, at ( Read more... )

Once again we are having “story hour” at Question House on the day after Thanksgiving!

We’ll provide a toasty fire, hot cider, mulled wine, tea, and a pile of our favorite books of short stories.  Please bring snacks (or leftovers!) to share and a fun short story or poem. Or, make one up if you like.

This is a family-friendly event until 8PM.  Then ( Read more... )

Many years ago when I was in high school I had an English teacher affectionately (OK, fearfully) known behind her back as "the battleaxe" because of her uncompromising high standards, tough grading and take-no-prisoners attitude towards teaching effective English communication. One particular exchange with the battleaxe is forever burned into my ( Read more... )

 I'm sure you knew that I wouldn't be without a boat for long. I have just arranged to purchase "Goin' Postal", a Bieker II, and the best part: delivered from California. In one of those great coincidences, the guy was coming to Seattle anyway to move a boat back to California; this way he simply won't have an empty trailer on the way up!

I am super ( Read more... )

There is the most gorgeous example of a double-supernumary rainbow I've ever seen over Redmond right now. I wish I had my camera!

Over the weekend the food services vendor which runs my employer's cafeteria posted a ten-point list of their principles, all of which are entirely sensible for a service organization. You know, stuff like "we look for problems and fix them immediately" and "we apologize to customers for mistakes", blah blah blah. If only every food service ( Read more... )

We're home and safe, thank goodness.

Burning Man was an extremely trying experience for me and Leah.  The good parts were amazing -- the art was indescribably incredible, I made wonderful new friendships with great people, and the sheer scale of the thing was amazing.  Forty thousand people came this year! Words fail me to describe the scope and ( Read more... )

My day so far ( Read more... )

http://www.local6.com/news/9717727/detail.html

The best part here is the quote from the expert:

"I would hate to be watching a movie about snakes and have a rattlesnake bite me."
No kidding!  I would go further than that, personally.  Like, I would hate to be eating a big bowl of soup and have a rattlesnake bite me.  I'd hate to be painting my ( Read more... )

My friend Nicole's recent post reminded me of an old This American Life episode which asks the question "which would you choose, the power of flight or invisibility?"

The usual caveats apply.  Invisibility makes you invisible, not your clothes, so if you want to be invisible you're going to have to run around naked. And flight is the power to fly ( Read more... )