Filed under: Activism, City of Ottawa, Drama, General, Holidays | Tags: donations, fire, ottawa, shelters, women's services
As all of you know, Christmas is only a little over a month away. Thoughts this time of year turn to gifting friends and loved ones with special presents to show we care, and many of us make extra donations to the Food Bank or other charities in order to give back to our community.
This year our community needs an extra showing of generosity. Due to two recent fires in a downtown women-only rooming house and a women’s shelter, resources for women in crisis in Ottawa are stretched far too thin.
There are a number of organizations accepting donations of money, food and clothing — many thanks to Ian Capstick for assembling and circulating the following list:
(more…)
Filed under: Activism, Awkward Conversations, My Kids, Things I Overheard | Tags: environmentalism, Fit-in 15, greenpeace, kids, overheard
I incorporated some machine-dodging and crater-hopping into today’s Fit-in 15 entry and took #2 on some neighbourhood errands. While walking on Armstrong behind the GT Express, #2 spied some litter in the road and made the following comment:
Filed under: Activism, Diaper Fluff, General, Review Things, Work at Susie's | Tags: cloth diapering, cloth diapers, environment, product review, reviews, soap nuts, soapnuts
Those of you who know me well know that I’m a bit of a cloth diaper nut. I was rather sad when #2 finally toilet-trained, as it meant packing away all that beautiful fluff for an indefinite period of time.
In the few years since then the cloth diaper market has exploded and they’ve become much more accessible to the average consumer. Accompanying this trend, natural laundry washes, soaps and detergents have multiplied on store shelves — increasing consumer options and leaving me feeling, at times, as though I went to university just to be able to read the ingredients labels on cleaning products.
Filed under: Activism, Dwell On Things, Things I Do, Things I Read | Tags: #amazonfail, amazon rank, erotica, LGBT
Shamelessly borrowed from those wonderful ladies over at Smart Bitches, Trashy Books:
Amazon rank: (verb) 1. To censor and exclude on the basis of adult content in literature (except for Playboy, Penthouse, dogfighting and graphic novels depicting incest orgies); 2. To make changes based on inconsistent applications of standards, logic and common sense.
Etymology: from 12 April 2009 removal of sales rank figures from books on Amazon.com containing sexual, erotic, romantic, gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgendered or queer content, rendering them impossible to find through basic search functions at the top of Amazon.com’s website. Titles stripped of their sales rankings include “Bastard Out of Carolina,” “Lady Chatterley’s Lover,” prominent romance novels, GLBTQ fiction novels, YA books, and narratives about gay people.
Example of usage: “I tried to do a report on Lady Chatterley’s Lover for English Lit, but my teacher amazon ranked me and I got an F on grounds that it was obscene.”
Alternate usage: “My girlfriend wanted to preserve her virginity, and I was happy to respect that, then she amazon ranked and decided anal sex was okay.”
Filed under: Activism, My Kids, Overanalyze, Random Geekery, Things I Do, Things I Eat | Tags: disaster planning, disaster preparedness, foil hats, home canning, organic, tinfoil hat, urban homesteading
I realized today, upon leaving the library after a brief discussion about eating local produce in the winter, that I am never really sure where the line is between “urban homesteader” and “paranoid hippie wingnut“.
Me in a foil hat, Summer 1998
