Author Archives: Valerie

Irony and Acronyms – a user’s guide

Warning! For your own safety, please put down all food and beverage before continuing with this post. You’ll thank me at the end…

For a writer, I’m not overly literary, don’t generally get my knickers in a twist when somebody dangles a participle or anything. But, perhaps because I love it so, I do get riled up when somebody says something is ironic when it isn’t. I’ve run into it a few times this week, and thusly, must commence my rant… Continue reading »

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Haunting Parallel Between Web Development and Dating

So, as per my last post, I recklessly and courageously dove into the back end of my website – after carefully backing everything up and then doing a bunch of updates. Several hours later, my one noticeable change to the look of my website was losing the custom favicon I’d already worked really hard to figure out how to install [insert stream of profanity here]. Continue reading »

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Don’t Let Ignorance Stop You

If there’s one thing I’ve learned from hanging out with Protospace geeks it’s:

Don’t let ignorance stop you from trying to do something cool. Continue reading »

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Waking up to Winter

It’s funny how much a snowfall can change everything.

All Fall I’ve been slowly grieving the end of summer. As the days got shorter, the nights cooler, the landscape shifting into sepias, you could almost hear the wailing nooooo! coming from deep inside me.

So you’d think when I woke up to snow this morning it would be the last devastating blow to my clinging to summer. Not so. I was really excited, thought everything was fluffy and beautiful. Even in the throws of a headcold I got out my snowboots and toque and headed out for an adventure down along the escarpment – including using my squishy corduroy backside to slow my sliding down the ravine I had to descend to retrieve the sunglasses I’d dropped (same philosophy as snow tires: something softer, wider surface area, better traction than just my boots).

The light filtering through the trees, thin and horizontal even in the mid afternoon, had up ’til today seemed like a disappointment, a failure to be summery and warming and strong. Through the leafless trees, glinting off the snow, it finally seemed somehow right. That slow decline I’d been railing against all Fall wasn’t the end of Summer, it was the start of winter.

And I realized as I walked back to my car, that’s running a parallel with my life. An inability to let go and accept a dormancy, a period of darkness. I’ve been clinging to a summer that’s long past, a period of bright activity and lush growth that has already moved into something else, whether I thought it should or not.

It’s not been a peaceful Autumn in my soul. But waking up to winter, metaphorically as well as meteorologically, is gonna help.

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Take an Underpants Day

I’ve had a lot of pyjama days in the last few weeks, but it’s another thing entirely when you commit to an underpants day. Something special happens when you decide to spend a whole day in your knickers. First off, you’ve pretty much committed to not leaving the house. Now pyjamas, you can wear those practically anywhere – anyone I’ve driven to the airport before 10am knows this. But when you’re in your unmentionables Continue reading »

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