Yes, I'm lazy but I wanted to share this article...

And I promise to provide a 'real' post soon. I swear. Cross my heart.

Although this article on the lost of art of handwriting is a few days old and it's likely illegal to copy and paste someone else's work into a blog post, I thought I'd share it as it's a sentiment that I completely agree and identify with (minus judging people). I do recognize the irony of posting an article on handwriting on a blog, but nonetheless, I too am sad that handwriting appears to be going by the wayside. I still love receiving letters and cards in the mail and going to the mailbox is still something I look forward to everyday - as a kid receiving a letter or card was the absolutely highlight of my week.

Anyways, having read India Knight's piece, I am now going to make a more concerted effort to send friends and family hand written letters and cards - it's a nice friendly way to stay in touch and selfishly, it'll be a good way to practice my handwriting :)

Here's the article without further adieu:


From The Sunday Times May 23, 2010 (http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/india_knight/article7133889.ece)

The kiss of death for romance
by India Knight

I judge people by their handwriting, which isn’t an especially nice thing to do but can’t really be helped: it’s one of those tiny snap judgments you make almost subconsciously, like the ones about shoes or ties.

If people’s handwriting is terrible — “thick people’s handwriting”, as I uncharmingly call it in my head — they can slide down a notch or six in my estimation; they risk a complete cull if they are older than 14 and dot their “i”s with fat circles (I’m a bit sniffy about fat, round letters generally). This isn’t remotely fair, but there you go; snap judgments seldom are.

Imagine my horror, then, on discovering that I now have thick people’s handwriting myself. I’m writing a book at the moment and last week something struck me as I was sitting in a cafe. I was without a laptop but I did have a (paper) notebook on me, so I started writing by hand.

First two pages of A4: no problem. Third page: thick people’s handwriting with knobs on — I might as well have been using my toes. My hand ached almost immediately; two more pages and my fingers had practically gone into spasm. Worse, when I got home, I could make out only one word out of 10 in the last few pages. I felt as if I was trying to decipher a doctor’s prescription, except the scrawl was my own.

Like everyone of my generation, and the generations before mine, I used to write reams without thinking twice about it. School essays went on for pages and pages without any discernible loss of calligraphic ability. University essays were practically books; you’d rub or shake out your hand every 5,000 words and just carry on. Novelists wrote in longhand — in fact, I know a couple who still do. Everybody wrote all the time — notes, letters, postcards, instructions, essays, schoolwork, billets doux.

Now nobody does — not even someone like me, who spends all day writing for a living. The only things I handwrite, I realised last week, are shopping lists, birthday cards and my signature on the odd cheque. Everything else is typed. (The other weird thing is that I can’t organise my thoughts properly on paper any more. They make sense only if I can see them before me on a computer screen. I’m sure it means some important hand-eye part of my brain is slowly atrophying.) I love technology more than most but this is really a pitiful state of affairs. A love email — or a love text — is never going to be the same as a pen-and-paper love letter of the kind you carry around with you until it disintegrates. The letter you’ve always wanted to write to your dying father loses something by being delivered via Outlook with a cheerful “ping!”; the diary you keep electronically will never have the emotional heft of the bulging, tattered five-year version you had as a teenager; an ecard isn’t the same as a Valentine.

It isn’t just the sadness of all of the above that concerns me (which it does — it’s a loss of the poetic, a loss of romance on a vast scale). It’s also the fact that we’re forgetting how to write — how to hold a pen and form aesthetically pleasing letters.

Does this matter? Well, yes: if you believe — I do — that beauty brings little darts of pleasure into your day, that a beautifully addressed envelope gladdens the heart. Then, yes, it matters a lot.

You pick your font carefully when you type, or you may even pay some absurd company a fortune to come up with a logo and typeface for you, so it seems mad not to apply the same care to your handwriting. (This is particularly noticeable when you get a typed letter on beautifully designed, letterheaded notepaper — everything made just so, to convey a particular impression — and find, three-quarters of the way down the page, that the sender signs his name like a monkey.) I’m constantly having a go at my older children about their handwriting, which actually makes me feel ashamed on their behalf. They, in turn, are constantly pointing out that nobody “needs” handwriting any more — not when you can type your homework and email it in.

Of course, even that’s going to change: by the time they’re at university, nobody will type by pushing keys — the exertion! — any more. We’ll all be gently stroking our touchpads, and presumably human beings will eventually end up with tiny withered hands that have giant, splayed, spatula-like fingertips.

A survey of 1,188 British schoolchildren aged 7-14, by the charity World Vision, found last week that one-fifth had never received a handwritten letter and one-tenth had never written a letter themselves. In the previous week alone, almost half of the children questioned had either sent or received an email or a message on a social networking site.

This is better than nothing — it’s communication, after all — and although some of the messages or emails will have been in phonetic text-speak, at least the social networking sites are full of voluble grammar Nazis. And I like the fact that children can type — if I were boss of the world, all children would be taught to touch-type at the age of five.

They would also be taught how to write properly, with care and attention given to letter formation, and encouraged to send letters and cards. It’s nice to email your granny — but how much better to send her something you sat down and wrote thoughtfully, rather than dashed off in 30 seconds; something that caused you to find a stamp and meant you bothered to walk to the post box.

Writing is magical when you think about it: you can communicate anything you like just by drawing a sequence of little loops and squiggles, and anyone who honestly believes that the loops and squiggles don’t have a ton more charm than Times New Roman has a section of their brain missing. Handwriting a letter is usually an act of love, which no one could ever say about typing.

Happy Easter and Spring Cleaning

Happy Easter! I hope you were treated to chocolate and treats!



This gorgeous photo is most definitely not mine but one I pilfered from the very beautiful blog Full House.

With this first rite of spring, I've been inspired as of late to spring clean around our apartment and started with my closet full of clothes! The following photo was taken by me - as if the quality doesn't automatically scream point-n-shoot - and is evidence of my effort! As always, I could have never completed the task with the support and supervision of my Moose! Note the stink eye he's giving me...hhhmmm...



On this particular Saturday (about 3 weekends ago), I managed to purge 12 pairs of pants, 15 tops, 4 sweaters, 1 pair of shoes, 1 pair of sandals, 1 suit and 1 purse - and of course I still have full closet! It felt good to declutter and to get the closet cleaned and organized. I then went through our outdoor/deck storage and laundry room and tidied and purged them too. Moose did his part and purged some of his toys that he never played with and donated them to the Everett animal shelter. And in the vein of tidying and reorganizing, I've done the same with my blogs-I-love column to the right - I've moved some of the less active blogs or those that have gone silent but are super resourceful to the So Helpful column.

I have a LOT of updating and recapping to do here and hope to get to it this upcoming week! Not only did is this post based on historical events but I've been extremely horrible with not posting photos from a very awesome trip in January that we took with my family and my day extrusion to Vancouver during the Olympics. So fingers crossed, I can get all the photos upload, formatted and posted this week!

Have you heard of Instructables?

It's a really neat DIY website where you can learn how to make almost anything you can think of! I plan on trying this Instructable recipe on the weekend - the 5 minute chocolate cake!

Heellllooooo cake!




There other project I'd like to try is this one - hack a regular pilot pen and replace the ink cartridge with a fancypants Mont Blanc rollerball refill! Instant upgrade for $12!



Happy Instructable-ing!!! :)

PS - Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Statement of the Day

"I’m so relaxed and happy here, at this hour, that I can turn over a Marc Jacobs bag, look at the price, and not immediately vomit. It’s all so perfect. Like the world would be without all the people."

Ahahahaha! :)

This gem comes from an article in The Times (London) - see, they're not totally evil, only during major world sporting events apparently - and is about how lovely department stores can be at 9:30am, the store in this piece is Selfridges on Oxford St, London.

She's ssssoooo awesome!!!

All things old

So this is a bit of a hodge-podge post compiled of a bunch of little things that I have just consumed from my couch in the past hour and bare with me, there is a common link.

Randomness #1

So Who Do You Think You Are?

This was originally a BBC series, which I believe continues to air over the UK, and was adopted a few years ago by the CBC and now (finally) has come to America! What is it? Well, it is a weekly program that traces the family history of celebrities. What's cool is not that these people are celebrities but rather how fascinating genealogy is and how much you really don't know anything about where you come from until you have the opportunity to dig in to the family gene pool and story vault. Tonight was the introductory episode of the U.S. version and Sarah Jessica Parker's mother's maternal line was featured (btw, her mother is adorable). SJP's family did not disappoint, her lineage had quite the story to tell from the California gold rush to the witch trails of Salem! Nerds likes me get a kick out of these kind of shows and I can't wait until I can start my genealogy search! This leads me to the next bit of randomness.

Randomness #2

So 10 years ago I started looking into my dad's parental family as I already knew a few things about them which included the name of the first Rivard to set foot in Canada from France, Nicolas Rivard. I ended up with a fair amount of information and was even able to trace the family back by two generations into France! Fastforward 10 years to this past December and I found the old word doc I had created 10 years earlier (happily not corrupted!) and started to Google the French ancestors and the places they were born and was thrilled with what I found! First, there is a plaque in a French village noting Nicolas and his new world compatriot's baptisms in France. Then with the help of Google maps, I was able to get an idea of where exactly in France my peeps were from! As I was doing all this searching one random night in December I was getting so excited and suggested/told Mike that if we get over to France again, I want to travel all to these villages and see if I can find out even more about these people, like my own Who Do You Think You Are!

Randomness #3

While cruising through PerezHilton.com - you know you all read it too! - I came across this super cool moving picture! It is from 1903 and is the first ever Alice in Wonderland movie! The British Film Institute Archive found the old reel and although it was badly degraded through the wonders of technology have been able to restore it. It can make for a long 9.5 minutes but it is very cool to see what they were able to do with movie making technology 107 years ago!!!!

Check out:





So the common link? All these things are old. That's it, that's all.

Anyways, bon weekend!

PS - Mike received some great news today! He's been named the Administrative Professional of the Year for his wing command! Yay! Congrats babe! xoxoxoxo

O Canada!

So we may not have "Own(ed) the Podium" BUT on the penultimate day of the Vancouver Olympics, we, Canada, do have the most GOLD MEDALS of any country (!!!) and provided Germany doesn't catch up tomorrow, we will have established the record number of gold medals won by a host country in a Winter Olympics! And even if we walk away with 25 or 26 medals total (Dear God/Yahew/Budda/Allah/Vishnu/Krishna, please let us win tomorrow!!!!!!), we still did a fantastic job and we should be immensely proud of our athletes, the cities of Vancouver, Whistler and Richmond and VANOC.

Oh, and Dear International Media - in particular The Times (London) - SUCK IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Especially you, The Times, you've been nothing but miserable, rude, pathetic gits these past two weeks, and well sorry mates but we've now got 13 Golds and the world has said that they've had a great time in Van...so there...I only hope London goes as well because won't you have a lot of egg on your faces then.... :)

PS - To everyone else who isn't The Times, apologies for the aggression but they've really been mega jerks in their coverage and it was both against the spirit of the Olympics and the levelheadedness typically displayed by the paper - basically poor sportmanships and poor taste.

PSS - I DO realize that my ranting against them (nearly) lowers me to their level but you know what? Sometimes bullies need a taste of their own medicine!