The Inviting Life

 Hello people of the bloggy sphere. How are you?  I hope you are getting along okay, that you are safe and healthy and thriving, or if not thriving, surviving.   For many individuals, the last two years have brought about sea changes. With that, I am no exception. For 25 years, I was a dedicated public servant, working in health care, first at  Royal Jubilee Hospital, then at one one of Victoria's newest Urgent and Primary Care Centers.  At the clinic I was routinely inspired by my caring and dedicated coworkers, but a volatile and increasingly angry public, made the environment  untenable. I needed to stop working in customer service if I had any hope of maintaining a modicum of sanity. It had simply been too long.  Thanks to a tinge of spousal nepotism and a niche that needed filling at just the right time I retired from health care and moved into the private sector. I will be taking over admin/bookkeeping tasks at my husband's modest secur...

  Hello. I am writing this in the wee hours on a dark, wintry morning, plagued, as I often am, with insomnia. The quiet of the early hours is lovely and almost makes up for my bleary-eyed stupor.  How are you? I hope you are getting along okay. Over the years, people have frequently told me, with a slight sneer and a certain haughtiness that "I must have A LOT of time on my hands if I cook for myself", I am  perplexed as I have always cooked out of practical necessity and I assumed that most other people did that also. Most of us are not independently wealthy. As a young adult, I did not have enough disposable income, no, make that, I had NO disposable income, that would allow me the luxury of eating in restaurants every day. And I did not wish to subsist on a steady diet of prepackaged food, loaded as it often is with trans fats, preservatives, salt and sugar. Take out, while a lovely treat, now and again, (who doesn't love the occasional pizza or Thai curry?) tends to b...

  Hello there! How are you? I hope you are getting along okay.  This post is arriving on the heels of another, which is, perhaps, overkill, but I promised myself I would write a blog post every Friday so, TA DA, here we are!.  Because I  made a couple of recommendations in my previous post, and because I am a little bleary from my booster shot, (thanks Moderna, work your DNA mojo on my immune system. Omicron be gone!), I will keep it short today.   Here we go, a couple things that boosted my serotonin levels this week. 1. Lucy Dacus dazzles on Tiny Desk with full-on, homespun, small town realness. I could listen to her dense, buttery vocals all day. Dacus's friend and occasional collaborator, Phoebe Bridgers, gets all the limelight, and, don't get me wrong, Bridgers is great, but it is Dacus's vivid recollections, evocatively told, that keep me coming back.   2. Writer director Whit Stillman never quite got the recognition he deserved for his effe...

Howdy, people of the blogosphere. How are you? I hope you are getting along okay. I have been thinking about social media platforms and their modus operandi of bombarding us with algorithms that appeal to the lowest common denominator, our basest selves. It is a clever gambit as the more time we spend staring at screens and filling our heads with garbage, the more likely it is that we will purchase consumer goods to fill the gnawing chasm of loneliness and boredom.  It is a viscous cycle. I hope that one day, some intrepid content creator will create a non-profit social media platform we can engage in, devoid of advertising and immune to the spread of harmful  misinformation. I am not holding my breath that will happen any day soon but, hey, a girl can dream, right? I have decided, in an informal resolution, that in surfing the net, I will prioritize only the content that nourishes me creatively and intellectually. I have decided to become my own ad hoc personal cultural curat...

Hello, citizens of the blogosphere. How are you?  Are you getting along okay? I hope that, in spite of the difficulties of these times, you feel a sense of renewal and excitement for the year ahead. I have been prevaricating on  what I would ideally like this space to be.  I am less cultural critic than I am cultural enthusiast and therefore, I thought I would mention a couple of things that have enlivened me this week, in the hope that  they, in turn, might make someone else out there happy.  I will endeavor to account for different tastes and inclinations. There will  be times when "the cheese stands alone", particularly as my tastes are eclectic and far-ranging, or, as some might say, schizophrenic. Given the prodigious emotional intelligence of my friends who, will probably be the only individuals who will read these missives, I hope you will look kindly on me for any oversights which are, assuredly, unintentional. I would love, love, love to hear of yo...

 Hello again, citizens of the blogosphere!  I hope you have been getting along okay.  Today is officially the first day of spring. Here, in James Bay, the Great Blue Herons have made their way back to the park.  Majestic prehistoric-looking creatures. A few things have crossed my path this week, that have, in Marie Kondo's words "sparked joy".  None of them involve folding underwear in tidy concentric bundles. Come to think of it, I should be putting away laundry right now, but, before I unknot my knickers, I thought I would share a couple of things. Retro Pick: The China Syndrome (Criterion Streaming Service or rent from Pic A Flic Video).  If you liked the grimly fascinating HBO mini-series Chernobyl, bookend it with this retro thriller.  Featuring Hollywood luminaries Michael Douglas, Jane Fonda, and Jack Lemmon. China Syndrome raises formative questions about how safe nuclear power plants really are.  At its core (see what I did there...

 Hello, people of the blogosphere.  How are you?.Are you managing okay?  Spring is on the horizon and, if all goes to plan, vaccines.  It is hard, for even for the most curmudgeonly among us, not to be feeling at least a sliver of optimism.  So, in keeping with a certain happy hopefulness, I thought I would share a couple of things that brought me happiness this week, along with one of my favourite recipes.  Last year, alas, we do not get around to watching many movies.  Shift work (me) and long work hours (Steve) conspired in such a way to make hunkering down, even for a couple of hours, a challenge. Our attention spans were fractured from workplace worries and demoralizing news headlines.  This year, we decided to make a concerted effort to watch movies, and boy oh boy, we did not expect our dedication to pay off the way it did with Lee Isaac Chung's lovely,  semi-autobiographical movie Minari.   MOVIE PICK: Here is a review f...