Oh, Interwebs!

Jane Long takes old photos and creates beautiful, fantastical composites.
Hat tip to Kylee-Anne; seen at MyModernMet.

Welcome to my periodic round-up of things I've found online that make me smile, cry, laugh, think, shout, or drop my jaw. 

Of impulse shopping and miscommunication

A 20-year-old two-person hot tub

What do you do if you and your husband accidentally get a huge bargain on a hot tub that neither of you wants? Here's the story.

Oh, Interwebs!

Kilchurn Castle, Loch Awe, Scotland
More reasons why Scotland needs to be on our vacation bucket list on EarthPorm

Welcome to my periodic round-up of things I've found online that make me smile, cry, laugh, think, shout, or drop my jaw. 

All Dried Up

My pharmacopoeia

The good news is: I have access to excellent health care and can afford the medications I need to help me live as well as I can for as long as I can. The bad news: side effects.

Dorothea and Francisco: A Fairy Tale

Lavender harvest

The first bit of fiction to share with you since the writing camp I attended in July 2015, with Gail Anderson-Dargatz.

     Once upon a time, there was a maiden named Dorothea. She came from a family that was not wealthy, but was hard-working and lived comfortably. When she was very young, she had had a charming prettiness, but as she grew to be a young woman, her mother saw that her beauty was radiant and felt that Dorothea was in danger and so convinced her that she was unlovely and unlovable. Each day that Dorothea looked in the mirror, she heard her mother's words, and her reflection changed so that her hair lost its silky curl and became dull, her skin flaked with dryness and had no colour, and her eyes became cold and hard. In time, she herself said the words, "I am unlovely and unlovable," and looked in the mirror to see hair like broomstraw, skin rough and patchy and eyes that pierced the soul.

Oh, Interwebs!

Amazing photos of mountains of water by Ray Collins.
Found on LifeBuzz (Thanks, Margot!)

Welcome to my periodic round-up of things I've found online that make me smile, cry, laugh, think, shout, or drop my jaw. 

More dogs than you can shake a stick at.

Kane in the back seat, on our way to the Kingston Sheep Dog Trials. 

Every August there is a Sheep Dog Trial held just outside of Kingston at Grass Creek Park, and most years (even when we didn't have a dog), we've tried to make it there.

Have you been published?

Have you tried to get published? #TenThingsNotToSayToAWriter

— Baratunde (@baratunde) July 28, 2015

Recently, the hashtag #TenThingsNotToSayToAWriter went viral on Twitter. I read a selection of the tweets in the CBC Books article, and laughed and laughed and laughed. Oh, how I laughed. I even shared the link on Facebook along with a comment that there should be a parallel hashtag #TenThingsNotToSayToAPhotographer.

And then, the next day, someone who was interested to hear that I'd attended a writing camp asked "So, have you been published?" and I laughed again before answering.

Oh, Interwebs!

Saint Basil's Cathedral in Moscow looks like something out of a Roald Dahl book.
Bird's-eye view panoramic photography by Sergey Semenov
See more of his work on his website AirPano.com.

Welcome to my periodic round-up of things I've found online that make me smile, cry, laugh, think, shout, or drop my jaw. 

A punny thing happened . . .

Gail Anderson-Dargatz (a.k.a. Gail Krupp) with me at the Providence Bay Writers' Camp.

Writers are very fun -- and funny -- people.

I loved loved loved my week at writers' camp. We had so much laughter around that table! But the greatest surprise of the entire week was what happened on our last evening together when I lobbed a gentle pun to my classmates (six other writers and our teacher) as we lounged on the patio before doing our public readings (eek!).

Tech Tools to Love

Perhaps the greatest pleasure of retirement has been the ability to do things (for the most part) when I feel like it, when the mood strikes. The greatest pitfall of retirement, however, is the ability to procrastinate so long that nothing gets done because I'm too busy waiting for the mood to strike. Today, I'm sharing a couple of tools to help you -- whether you're retired or not! -- avoid procrastination and become more productive.