Wandering

When you come to a fork in the road, take it. — Yogi Berra A little under a year ago we undertook a pretty sizeable life change. Around Christmas I was offered a job with the provincial government and in January we moved across the Strait of Georgia to live in Victoria, ostensibly permanently. For the most part, the move’s … Read more

A Personal Philosophy

Philosophy: the beliefs you have about how you should behave in particular situations in life. I’ve tried to live with a few simple guidelines for some time now. I’m not really one for manifestos or rigid creeds, but recently I’ve been trying to think of my values in terms of a simply stated philosophy. A few words that can encompass … Read more

Island Hopping Part 2: Salt Spring & Galiano Islands

In my previous post about our little island hopping adventure, I wrote about a few days on the Pacific Rim, between Ucluelet and Tofino. That post was reasonably light on words and very heavy on photos. I’m hoping this will be a shorter and lighter weight post. After our time on the west coast of Vancouver Island, we were spending … Read more

Island Hopping Part 1: The Pacific Rim

This post will likely be of little interest to anyone other than us, since it’s strictly to document part one of our week-long vacation up Vancouver Island to the Pacific Rim. Mind you, there are a couple decent pics, so if you’ll be hitting Ucluelet-Tofino you may want to have a peek. Of note, we have an older dog with … Read more

Building Better Habits

I’ve written about my desire to do more of this or less of that many times. I tend to get a little melancholy about the change I don’t make but strongly desire. My formula for doing so usually follows a pattern. Develop a goal, somewhat broad or vague in nature (get to bed earlier, read more, etc.), try to do … Read more

A new chapter, part 2

In my last post about moving to Victoria, I outlined the process of getting a new job and renting a place in James Bay. I’m happy to now report, we’ve concluded things. In truth, the Victoria relocation went about as well as it could have. After finding a pet-friendly rental on the first trip over, selling our condo and moving … Read more

A new chapter

I didn’t bother doing a year-end wrap up blog post for 2018. I haven’t been journalling much at all, and it was a pretty quiet year for the most part. Plus, those kinds of posts have always felt forced, as if I should have something profound to say as the calendar flips, but often really don’t. Particularly in 2018, I … Read more

Darby; a dog’s life in pictures

Darby

I’ve been grappling with something for ten months. It was August of last year when Darby was diagnosed with Osteosarcoma, and only a couple short weeks later when we put her down. I had intended to write a retrospective post about her life, and started to do so a few times, but I could never find a way to cover … Read more

Brody the rescue dog

After Darby left us in the fall of 2013, it was really hard thinking of adopting another dog for some time. We felt robbed of time we expected to have with her, and given that we confer people-like status to furry friends in our house, the thought of another dog almost felt like we were replacing her. Whether people or … Read more

The way she probably wanted to go

The most shocking thing was simply the suddenness of it all. A month ago, as far as we could tell, we had a healthy dog closing in on 11 years old. By all outward signs, Darby might buck the big dog trend and live to 13 or more. Then she developed a limp and now she’s gone. In fact, she’s … Read more