metawidget: A platypus looking pensive. (Default)
2025-06-10 02:10 pm

Things I could use

As promised, here are a few things that I'd put to good use if you aren't using them:

  • Muffin tin(s)
  • Mixing bowl
  • Small plates (bread/side plate sized)
  • Saucepan (small or medium
  • Pitcher (1.5 L or so)
  • Chef's knife
  • Comforter for queen-sized bed
  • Patio stones (4)
  • Recipe box (index-card sized)
  • Salad bowl

Please don't go to too much trouble — these are less-urgent things that I'll get if they aren't floating around my local friends, but I'm hoping I can help you clear things out and round out the house for the kids and me!

Edit: Updated the list. Thanks [personal profile] ironphoenix, Simon and neighbours with "à donner" stuff at the end of their driveways!

metawidget: [garblegarblescript] Political! Science! for Amusement! [pictures of John A. Macdonald with swirly eyes] (politics)
2020-04-15 02:53 pm

The long game

The kids are getting more cuddly with us — we had five in the bed around 7 AM yesterday — and perhaps a little more fighty with each other. They're also getting more interested in school-type things, including Ada, for whom Elizabeth printed off some alphabet activity sheets so she wouldn't feel left out.

Speaking of not being left out, we're anticipating a big delivery of maple products from a sugarbush in L'Ange-Gardien. Review perhaps to follow! We'll miss our annual trip West of Ottawa but we'll make do.

There's an Andrew Coyne piece on how this doesn't change everything which brings by own thinking into focus. This won't automatically change everything, but we should be paying attention and ready to point to some of the innovations and habits we develop and demand that they become the long-term normal: income support, new notions of who's essential, more support for telework. Don't waste a crisis, as Naomi Klein might say.

In personal finance land, Expandinvestment ramblings… maybe only asimplelife will read this ) The short of it is… we're lucky to be stable money-wise and I'm trying to be calm and smart about it.
metawidget: [garblegarblescript] Political! Science! for Amusement! [pictures of John A. Macdonald with swirly eyes] (politics)
2019-03-12 08:11 am

Mundane post

I had a dream about shopping for dress pants last night, in two parts (the trying on right before close! The buying later!) I found a hole yesterday in a pair of pants, so thanks, literal brain.

I'm back at work and also writing away at the current step in the promotion process. Looking at what I've been up to through a technical competencies lens and thinking that whether I get a promotion or not my involvements are due for a prune. Had a conversation with one of my career-knowledgeable friends who backed up this idea.

We had a late morning start at home and a discussion of daylight savings time over rushed breakfast this morning. The take-away the we could agree on came down to us being at the wrong latitude for all this (or maybe we should just go full Saskatchewan and go to UTC -4 year round).