By the Numbers

Posted on 31 October 2025 by Isabel Gibson
  • 4 – Hours to notice an apparently out-of-place car parked in our neighbourhood.
  • 72 – Hours to feel confident that it truly is out of place.
  • 2 – Hours to connect with relevant neighbours to confirm the car’s out-of-placeness.
  • 1 – Hour for designated neighbour to report the car to the Police, to communicate their answer (Yeah, it was a car-of-interest in an investigation but not any longer. Call Bylaw.) to other neighbours, and to call Bylaw.
  • 24 – Hours for Bylaw to ticket the car, necessary before towing.
  • 1 – Hour for second neighbour to contact Bylaw after noticing the first ticket.
  • 4 – Hours for someone to remove the car.

Four plus two plus two plus one plus 4 plus one plus four, carry the 1, and yes, it’s official: A car that took less than an hour to abandon took more than 100 elapsed hours to remove.

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Parking-lot Planting

Posted on 30 October 2025 by Isabel Gibson

Vellum? Onion? Succulent? Fabric? Leather?

My Texture Identifier™ whirrs inconclusively for a few minutes before figuratively shrugging. It can’t quite peg what this leaf feels like: Different, anyway. Not, in fact, like a leaf at all, especially in the fall when I expect leaves to be stiff, crinkled, and dry, and to crackle when stepped upon.

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More Fall Colours

Posted on 25 October 2025 by Isabel Gibson

It’s been on-and-off rain showers all day. When I think about on-and-off paired with rain showers, I feel it’s likely redundant, so I check and yes, sort of. Mind you, the first thing on the search page that comes up when I just search for rain shower is, you know, a rain shower, nicely defined for us by Cambridge:

a type of shower (= a device you stand under to wash yourself) that releases small drops of water
coming from directly above you

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Posted in Appreciating Deeply, Laughing Frequently, Photos of Built Stuff, Photos of Flora | Tagged | 16 Comments

Free at Last, Lord?

Posted on 18 October 2025 by Isabel Gibson

Gluten-free
Seafood-free
Garlic-and-onion-free
Lactose-free but not necessarily dairy-free
Meat-free (vegetarian but not necessarily vegan)

I think this is the exhaustive list of food issues in a group with whom I am trying to have a potluck dinner. The vegetarian thing is a choice even though, understandably, it’s non-negotiable for the holder of that choice; all the rest are flat-out imposed-by-biology constraints, and one (the seafood) is an actual life-or-sudden-death allergy, which no one would ever choose.

I was doing fine (well, not fine exactly but OK) thinking about vegetarian and gluten-free main dishes until someone casually threw in “Oh by the way, I can’t eat garlic or onions.”

No garlic? No onions? In my house, that’s called dessert. And someone who does fabulous desserts had already spoken for that slot.

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Posted in Laughing Frequently, Thinking Broadly | Tagged , | 8 Comments

One Last Gasp. Maybe. I Promise Nothing.

Posted on 18 October 2025 by Isabel Gibson

Just when you thought it was safe to go back to the blog, someone posts more fall leaves from the bog.

I’m as surprised as you are. I’d thought that the last post would be, you know, the last post of fall leaves for this year. But a short walk last week at Mer Bleue turned up new images. Mer Bleue is a peat bog that is about 7,700 years old (I think they check the peat’s teeth or growth rings or something like that to determine its age) and about 20 minutes from our house by car.

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Posted in Appreciating Deeply, Photos of Flora, Photos of Landscapes, Through the Calendar | Tagged | 14 Comments

Scotties Face (Reflection)

Posted on 12 October 2025 by Isabel Gibson

In previous years I’d have called this a Kleenex® face, but now we can’t buy Kleenex® in Canada (®? ™? ©?). So it’s a Scotties® face, I guess.

As often happens, it’s a face I saw out of the corner of my eye; as almost never happens, it was the lips that I saw first instead of the eyes. My brain then filled in the rest, starting with the triangular eye socket on the upper right.

Posted in Photos of Faces | Tagged , | 13 Comments

I’ll See Your Chickpea Pasta . . .

Posted on 10 October 2025 by Isabel Gibson

You may remember the near-disaster a year ago last spring when I received six packages of Organic Chickpea Pasta from Amazon instead of six cartons of the health-food I had ordered:

SUGAR FREE DOUBLE DUTCH DARK CHOCOLATE
premium hot chocolate
Dairy Free/Plant Based/Vegan/Gluten Free/High in Fibre
(all use of capitals and non-use of hyphens as per the label)

Or you may not remember. Not because your memory is going, but because mine is. I was sure I had written memorably, compellingly even, about receiving pasta in place of hot-chocolate mix. I certainly told everyone I knew, but apparently I did not write about it.

If I had written about it, I surely would have started with the horror of the moment I realized that I couldn’t use the online form to return this mis-shipment because although it was clearly their error it was also (nominally) food. Now what?

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Posted in Laughing Frequently | Tagged | 10 Comments

Wonton Disregard

Posted on 10 October 2025 by Isabel Gibson

It could be a cute title for a restaurant review.

In recommending this dining establishment,
I disregard the gluey wontons
and urge you to as well:
the rest of the menu is stellar.

It could be part of an official Proclamation of Pasta Preferences.

We hold all soup dumplings to be inferior;
we hold wontons in particular disregard.

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Posted in Language and Communication, Laughing Frequently | Tagged | 4 Comments

Whew

Posted on 04 October 2025 by Isabel Gibson

Do I expect to be gardening hard enough to generate sweat on my forehead? Alternatively, do I foresee going through a stressful patch? Both would be uncharacteristic, but they’re all I can think of as I stand in the Home Depot looking at a bin full of work gloves, reviewing the selling points on the label.

Let’s take them one at a time. (Punctuation not as found in the original.)

Light-duty, high-dexterity. That sounds good, I guess. Better than the reverse, for sure.

Touchscreen-compatible design. That sounds even better. I actually have experienced the need for such a feature on a damnably cold January day, trying to get a photo of a bridge.

Non-slip grip. Sure. I mean, who wants a slippy grip?

Terrycloth for wiping brow. This is what has stumped me. I’m standing beside the bin trying to remember the last time I had to wipe my brow. Indeed, I’m trying to remember whether I have *ever* had to wipe my brow.

I can say with some confidence that these gloves are not targeted primarily to my demographic. I bought them anyway. They might be useful when taking phone photos in the cold, and buying them makes me feel that I am striking a blow against smart-aleck marketers who can predict my moves with far too much confidence. I will be an inexplicable blip a few standard deviations out from the average age of customers. Hah!

Of course, maybe this was their plan all along . . .

Posted in Laughing Frequently | Tagged , | 6 Comments