129 TABS

 My tapestry has many unknotted threads. It's overdue to clear my cache.

The Lifecycle of an Almond

After a trip to California, where there were groves of trees that provide so much of our food even this far away that were growing in near desert conditions. This article gives the perspective of this that took me a drive through the San Joaquin Valley to realize.

Villa Diodati

Did you know that the stories Frankenstein and Vampyre were both created in a villa in Switzerland in 1816, the year that was called "the year without summer". This was due to the volcanic eruption called Mount Tambora in Indonesia the year before. Lord Byron rented the villa, and was visited by friends that included Percy Shelley and Mary Godwin(to be Shelley).

Muskellunge

I saw this fish on a sunny day paddle boarding along the St. Laurence "Lac St Louis". It was a thrill compounded by seeing a Kingfisher on the same trip, and the fact that I didn't fall down (or stand up!)

Claude Theberge

I have spend many hours exploring the art and architecture of the metro system, and I was surprised to see a concrete design in the De L'Eglise station attributed this artist I knew well from pop art that I first saw with vibrant colours raincoats and umbrellas, mostly from Quebec City.

Jordi Bonet

Similarly, this artist has done remarkable artwork for the metro.  In this case, his Citius, Altius, Fortius (Faster, Higher, Stronger) mural in the mezzanine of Pie IX metro. This is the motto of the Olympic Games adopted by Pierre de Coubertin since its renaissance in 1894.

I found him in the foyer of Place des Arts during an entracte at Les Grands Ballets. I suspect I have seen his work on doors somehere in a church.

Notably, his biography notes that he was born in Barcelona, and died where he had set up his studio in St. Hilaire on Christmas Day.

Micheline Beauchemin

This female textile artist has a piece along the windows of the Place des Arts called Curtain of Light. 

Telfair Museum

My one foray into Georgia was a day trip to Savannah from Hilton Head. There are many highlights including this museum tour, and I love that I can visit from afar and relieve the architecture tours of the Jepson Center and the Owens-Thomas House and Slave Quarter's.

Escape room puzzle ideas

Clue in a balloon

Oil on glass

Bold letters in a chocolate box menu

Invisible ink - lemon juice, oil on glass

Padlock a pair of scissors

Set a broken clock or watch as a combination clue

Cypher on popsicle sticks

Lockets

Photoshop a framed picture

Write in a foreign language

Craft a cryptex with styrofoam cups

Bilingual law language

Massey Lectures to listen to on Ideas

Norman Borlaug and the Green Revolution

Nobel Peace Prize, credited with saving over a billion people from starvation

The Difference between dilly dally and lollygagging

Dilly dally, from "dallier" in French, "to amuse oneself slowly". Today it refers timewasting and indulgent. The pair of words doubles the effect, called reduplication.

Lollygagging, from lally.  Also timewasting, but usually describes the way two people in love would act around each other, sometimes referring to bawdy public behavior between couples

The Evolution of the Nutcracker Ballet

Achalandé English bustling (full of people) or well-stocked (store)

Antidote writing assistance software - get hi

Stonewall Riots 1969, Greenwich Village bar, mafia run, haven for LGBTQ, police raid leads to mob, no injuries, 1970 First Gay Pride parade begins from Stonewall

Raëlism Rael was a French born self-proclaimed profit, announcing the future arrival of extraterrestrials called Elohim. A connection to Quebec of this Swiss based "UFO" cult was a branch that moved near Valcourt in 1992, with a museum opened called UFOland (closed as financially unviable). A female "secret society" formed called the Order of Raël's angels (1998). A claim was made that the first human clone, named Eve, announced by Rael's partner and successor Bousselier in 2002. In 2004, Raël's Girls were the subject of Playboy issue.

Who By Fire Leonard Cohen song (spanish guitar and poetic paradoxes), Who shall I say is calling?

W. H. Auden 

Herman Melville (quoted by Louise Penny's Gamache in Still Life)

Evil is unspectacular and always human

And shares our bed and eats at our own table.

CEGEP program (technique de bioécologie) I hoped for my budding naturalist

McGill's Ciphers of The Times (Victorian Agony Column Game)

Mayan Number to Decimal/Arabic converter

Lectin - found in food, carbohydrate-binding proteins

Starling murmurations

Governing Security: The Hidden Origins of American Security Agencies, by Yolanda and Alberto's son, f, now a scholar and leader

English words of Arabic origins T-Z

E la verita - sung with a dementia patient and her daughters

Pluvio restaurant - nice food with big prices, diminished by the company who was rude and irritable and made a scene

Nanaimo Bars recipe

BOOK REPORT: BIG MAGIC

 This is one of the most inspirational books I have read in a long time. I have enjoyed reading Elizabeth Gilbert on a few occasions, but this nonfiction book about « Creative Living Beyond Fear » is my favourite.

I was like many others,  being introduced to the author with her autobiographical hit « Eat, Pray, Love », which was a travelogue as much as a good story made into a great movie. 

After that, I read another autobiographical nonfiction called Committed, which explained her complicated international monogamous status, and gave an even more intimate look at her personal life.

Next, I read her fiction « The Signature of All Things » , which was a opus that was both beautiful in its details and a little strange (some might find it sacrilegious or too sexual).

« The City of Lost Girls » was a disappointment to me, in the vein of fictitious hyperbole that I disliked in « The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugh ». Set in New York, I found her characters unemotional and vapid.

16 years ago, Ms. Gilbert gave a TED talk about creativity that I found inspiring. Now, reading her treatise on creativity, I am even more inspired! 

Very early on, her stories allow the skeptic in me to embrace her hypothesis. Creative living is a choice, and its « Big Magic » is waiting for an open channel to use to allow genius to occur. It’s compelling to embrace her line of thinking, and suspend disbelief in the logic that can prevent my imagination from growing and inventing new ideas.

The table of contents flows well, starting with courage, moving on to enchantment, commenting on permission, recommending persistence, developing trust, and ending with divinity.

Highlights include:

« Done is better than good. » p.176

TUTSI AND HUTU

 The Tutsi are a Bantu-speaking ethnic minority from the Africa Great Lakes (Horn of Africa/Rift Valley). At the time of the Rwandan genocide, they were the minority ruling class.

When Belgian colonists (colonialists) conducted censuses in the 1920s, they defined Tutsi as anyone who owned more than 10 cows(a sign of wealth) or the physical features of a longer thin nose, high cheekbones, and over six feet tall.

The Hutu are a Bantu-speaking ethnic minority

Rwanda was ruled by Germany from 1897 to 1916, and by Belgium from 1922 to 1961.

The Hutu majority in Rwanda revolted against the Tutsi in 1962, taking power and killing up to 200, 000 Hutu. Rwanda and Burundi declared independence that same year. While many Tutsi fled, exile communities gave rise to rebel movements (Rwanda Patriotic Front was primarily in Uganda).

In 1990, with Ugandan support, and experience from the Ugandan Bush War, the RPF attacked Rwanda with the intention of taking back power, sparking a three year civil war that ended with the Arusha Accords on August 3, 1993. Intended as a negotiation to share powers between the rebels and the government, it favoured the RPF.

In 1993, Burundi’s first democratically elected president Melchior Ndadaye, a Hutu, was assassinated by Tutsi officers, sparking a genocide in which Tutsi and Hutu losses were each as many as 25,000.

In 1994, the Burundian president Cyprien Ntaryamira, a Hutu, was shot down in an airplane flying to Kigali, while the UN Security Council presence was initially 2,548 soldiers. This was a catalyst for the Rwandan civil war/ genocide, which spanned 100 days and led to over 1 million deaths, at least half of which were Tutsi. The genocide was markedly violent, with neighbours often murdered and murdering each other, and sexual violence with up to 500,000 million women raped. The war ended in the RPF defeating the government, and many Hutus involved in the massacre of Tutsi fled to Zaire (now DRC or Democratic Republic of Congo), contributing to regional instability and triggering the First Congo War in 1996.

Since the 2000 Arusha Peace Process, Burundi has a more equitable share of power betweeen the Tutsi minority and Hutu majority.

DACHA

 A dacha is a Russian country second home that’s often used in the summer. They can range in size from a small shed to a grand villa. The word means gift, originally referring to land allotted by the tsar to his nobles. In the Soviet Union, land for gardening or growing vegetables were similarly given to good workers as a reward.

RUNNING AND REPAIR

I have long been obsessed with ultra runners, having first read Born To Run and Natural Born Hero’s by Christopher McDougall, as well as Scott Jurek’s Eat and Run. I listened to a number of inspiring Ultramarathon podcasts, so riveting that I still remember where I was for some of the inspiring and sometimes crazy interview.  

Recently I have fallen into some other resources thanks to YouTube’s algorithms that have kicked me back into training videos on running, like the Running Channel and an Australian group of trainers for runners over the age of 50.

The biggest change in philosophy that I have adapted is that running needs additional strengthening to stay uninjured. What I used to do was just run, with a few sparse activities as “cross-training”. Being younger, I mostly got away with it, but I did stop running a couple of times from a self-diagnosed meniscal tear in my right knee. I stopped for a prolonged period of time after the marathon in part because I wasn’t prepared for the down side of the marathon. 

What I learned watching those videos is the concept of zone 2-3 training. The concept is basically that when you push your body to its limits, you can avoid injury if you spent a large part of your training in a low impact zone instead of pushing your limits constantly. Here is a nice summary of the concept:

The basic proportion is 2/3 1/3,  with the goal of building endurance by staying in the cardiac aerobic zone of 60-75% of maximum heart beat for 60-75% of the activity.

DROID

Growing up, Star Wars was a family favourite, especially with my two brothers owning many action figures that I still remember. 

R2D2 

ADVICE TO LOVE BY

Romance Movie on Global Freeplay

1. Signal interest - flirtation, intention

2. Connect meaningfully - life goals, dependability, humour

3. Demonstrate worth - share dreams, crack defenses, respectful

4. Establish trust - consistency, reliability, openness

First date

Movie, Coffee, Picnic

Second date

Leave comfort zone, physical activity

Third date 

Discover new things together

Fourth Date 

Show romantic side to partner

Fifth Date

Meet the family

Sixth Date

CHERISH YOUR WILDERNESS AND DATING PERRY

STROM SPA AND FUTURE PLANS

My boyfriend and I went to the Strom Spa located at "Saint Sauveur" (Piedmont), 74 km away, that used to be the Polar Bear's Club. The deal was a good one, but it was a little complicated. We bought gift certificates in advance, which appeared full price for thermal entry fee but only cost $47.83 for a November weekday Mon-Thu.  It was well explained, and extensive. It was also the first time that either of us had taken seriously the spa cycle of heat, cold and relax. 

Highlights for me were the eucalyptus steam room, a hot tub with a grotto behind a waterfall, a cold dip in the river, sitting outside by a fire watching ducks during the daily, watching the rapids from a warm room, and eating a really nice pretty meal in a bathrobe!

It was hard not to be annoyed when people were talking, but it was not easy to be quiet when you had decisions to make. I had brought a book and pen, so we could write in those moments.

It was such a hit, that we had researched prior, so here are the fruits of our search so that we plan the next visit!

Strom St Hilaire 43 k, Ile-des-Soeurs, 

La Source Rawdon 70 k

Mon-Thu 17-20 $42  5h from 10-17 $69 18-21 $52  5h from 10-18. Bring your own robes.

Balnea Bromont 99 k

Forena, St Bruno- whisper baths

Nordic Station Magog

Amerispa Morin Heights

Scandinave Mt Tremblant (old port)

---

Montreal

Bota bota

Beaux Reves - ladies (Yo's idea) lunch and yoga Wednesday $99

Spa Finlandais Rosemere 4 hours Mon -Thu $54 Bring robe and towel or pay $10

SLOW PRODUCTIVITY

The Art of Accomplishment Without Burnout by Cal Newport

(From Big Think)

1. Do fewer things (at once) - avoid attention "residence" (the cost of task switching)
2. Work at a natural pace (accept seasonal differences) Ed. sunshine, monthly cycles, menopause
3. Obsess over quality (Invest in better tools and create better systems)

Ed. In other words:
Do less, better

Other links: 

Atomic Habits by James Clear
1.Success is an aggregation of small wins
2. First, we make our habits, then our habits make us. 
(Holly Bardutz of Brain Health Institute would say: First we make our brains, then our brain makes us!)

3. Consistency beats intensity.

4. Eliminate friction for good habits. 

5. Master the art of habit tracking.

6. Optimize your work environment.

7. Good habits take time to form.

8. Choose your social circle carefully.

9. Don't fumble hard-earned progress.

10. Make the path of least resistance.

11. Find an accountability partner.

12. Fall in the love with the process.

13. Winners and losers have the same goals.

14. Success is a lifestyle, not an event. Ed. a direction, not an ending

15. Talk is cheap; you are your actions.

16. Good habits take a long time to build.

17. Your identity is your future.

18. Results are a lagging indicator of habits.

19. Trajectory is more important than the current position.

20. You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems.

Ali Abdaal's How I Manage My Time Without Burning Out

Backlog and Active Projects

Each project has an overhead tax. The fewer active things, the more effective the overhead tax

The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg

(elephant and rider)

Warren Buffett's 5/25

It may be falsely attributed, but it's probably still true.

1-3-5 Rule 

SPARK 2025 HABITS AND QUARTERLY QUESTS

It is clear from neurodevelopment and behavioural psychology that the only way to change is to overcome old habits and create new ones. Will power is a finite resource that requires a lot of energy. Habits are key to personal growth.

"You do not rise to the level of your goals, you fall to the level of your systems." - James Clear

Ali Abdaal has a productivity youtube channel with simple life hacks and book reviews. He models a practice of achieving goals that are evidence based on how to achieve good habits. He breaks them down into:

Quarterly Quests, Weekly Reset, Morning Manifesto (Daily Review/Journaling).

This comes from How to actually achieve your goals in 2025 (Evidence Based) that lists the references in the shownotes.

1. WRITE THEM DOWN

Set your goals. This is so simple. Just write them down! He references Jim Rohn and his own book called FeelGood Productivity. The evidence implies an increase of 42% in your likelihood to achieve them. Don't pick too many, though. Write down all of them if you like, but focus on 3-5.

2. REVIEW THEM WEEKLY OR DAILY

The reticular activating system is located at the base of your brainstem, and it determines what information your brain pays attention to. The brain filters out what you are not focusing on. 

3. MONITOR YOUR PROGRESS

What were my weekly goals? How are they going? It can be simply binary - yes or no, or green/yellow/red. Consider a visual with small steps e.g. word count. Monitoring goal progress has a modest impact on performance.

4. VISUALISE OBSTACLES

Mental contrasting goal setting by Gabriele Oettingen: 

WOOP 

Wish, Outcome (Goal), Obstacle (feelings like demotivation, time restraints, interpersonal resistance), Plan (to address the obstacles)

What could go wrong? What to do about it?

5. TIE THEM TO AN IDENTITY

Doctor, Entrepreneur, Author, Husband, Healthy, High Performer, Voter

"The strongest force in human personality is the need to stay consistent in how we define ourselves." 

Tony Robbins

Slow Productivity

Cal Newport

Who am I by achieving my goals?

Identities:

Sane and happy

Mother

Sister

Daughter

Friend

Neighbour

Athlete, healthy body

Doctor

Teacher

Mentor

Partner

Lover

Writer

Mortal

Artist

Art lover

Animal lover

Domestic goddess

Artisan

Hostess

Home owner

Financially Independent

-----------------

For myself:

GOALS:

*Fit back into snow pants (athlete, lover)

*Rehab ankle and restart running (athlete, sane and happy)

*Fix basement (Domestic goddess, mother, sister, partner)

*Teacher/Osler Fellow/Wellness (doctor, teacher, mentor, sane and happy)

*Edit Chateau Laurier (writer)

*KonMari home (Domestic goddess, hostess)

Simplify menu prep

*Seasonal invites

Rehab garden

*Repaint interior (domestic goddess, artisan)

Get ready for girls/guests (mother, sister, partner)

*Return to work

*Synthesize the memories

Quarterly Quests

Solstices: Winter Spring Summer Fall vs. January 1 April 1 June 1 Sept 1 

Meet 3 ring goals daily with stretching, strengthening, and cardio

List and request losses from flood, and get quotes for work on house, roof and floor

Document CME 

List wellness resources

Repaint windows and install curtains upstairs

Weekly Reset

MONDAYS 

First quarter: Jan 20, 27, Feb 3, 10, 17, 24, Mar 3, 10

Repeat: 60 minutes of exercise, yoga or stretching daily

Jan 20

60 minutes of exercise, yoga or stretching daily

List with google doc, then data enter on link given

Repaint dining room and hang curtains

Jan 27

60 minutes of exercise, yoga or stretching daily

Call Darlington, Elder, Bernard

Book Osler

Review CME for 2024

Repaint library and install blinds

Plan for hosting dinner

Feb 3

60 minutes of exercise, yoga or stretching daily

Repaint Kitchen and install curtains

Review finances for 2024

Finish wellness finances

Feb 10

60 minutes of exercise, yoga or stretching daily

Feb 17

60 minutes of exercise, yoga or stretching daily

Feb 24

60 minutes of exercise, yoga or stretching daily

Mar 3

60 minutes of exercise, yoga or stretching daily

Mar 10

60 minutes of exercise, yoga or stretching daily

Morning Manifesto

Workdays and Freedays are different

On free days, plan for 4 hours of concentrated work. Consider a second installment if not too tired or if the tasks vary.

On workdays, get the basic physical in as priority