Tag Archives: Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge

July 6, 2022 · 1:00 am

Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge: Have You Met Anyone Famous? Who?

Hosted by Long and Short Reviews.

Click here to read everyone else’s replies to this week’s question and here to see the full list of topics for the year.

A black squiggly autograph

The Internet says this is supposed to be an autograph.

I’ve never met anyone who is universally famous like Beyoncé or President Obama, so my answer to this question depends on your definition of the term fame and which social circles we may or may not have in common. Here are a few people who are famous in some subcultures that I’ve been in the same room with.

Curtis Hinds

Those of you who have followed my site for a while might remember that I was a preacher’s kid growing up. Curtis was (and still is) well known as a travelling pastor and speaker in certain Protestant circles. I knew him as a family friend who would occasionally come to visit us in the Midwestern portion of the United States or take us out to dinner when we travelled up to Ontario.

He was (and I’m sure still is) a friendly man who always had amusing new stories to share about his travels.

 

Robert J. Sawyer

Robert is one of Canada’s most famous science fiction authors. I’ve blogged about several of his books here like “Calculating God” and the Neanderthal Parallax Trilogy in previous posts.

He sometimes pops up at various literary events and festivals in Toronto. I’ve met him once so far. He was a kind and welcoming man to everyone around him that day, so do say hello if you also enjoy his work and see him around at a bookish event someday.

 

Devon Soltendieck

This one might take a little bit of explaining. Much Music is a tv channel that is like Canada’s version of MTV. Devon was a Much Music host in the 2000s. In the mid-2000s, I was riding the subway when I saw someone who looked really familiar to me. I couldn’t stop staring at him as I tried to figure out why he was so familiar.

“Okay, so how are we related?” I silently asked myself. I had occasionally run into distant cousins and other relatives whom I recognized but whose names did not immediately come to mind when I lived in the United States. Due to this, I assumed it was another case of me seeing a third cousin or something and needing some time to realize we shared recent ancestors.

It was only after I’d arrived back home and turned on the TV that I realized I’d probably seen a famous person instead.

He was facing away from me on the subway, so I hope he didn’t notice me staring at him. I would have politely ignored him if I realized we didn’t actually need to play the “how are we related” game after all. Ha!

 

Person photographing her white dog. That is the sum total of my celebrity experiences. I tend to avoid celebrity culture and take an alternate route if I see paparazzi clogging up a sidewalk here in Toronto, but I hope everyone who is into that sort of stuff has plenty of opportunities to rub elbows with celebrities if they so desire to.

I’m ending this post with a stock photo of someone photographing her dog because the thought of domesticated animals being famous makes me giggle. (Although there are some famous furry friends out there, too).

 

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June 29, 2022 · 1:00 am

Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge: A Real Life Event That No One Would Believe

Hosted by Long and Short Reviews.

Click here to read everyone else’s replies to this week’s question and here to see the full list of topics for the year.

An empty city street that has warm sunlight streaming down onto it and the brick wall of a building on it.

This isn’t our street, but it evokes the same emotions as you’d find there.

This story happened about five years ago when my spouse and I were walking down the street on a warm, sunny day on our way home. We were as alone as people could be on a busy city street when the weather is nice and everyone is out and about.

Suddenly, I felt and heard something hit my right forearm. (It didn’t hurt, but it was a surprise). My spouse heard and felt it, too. It may have brushed between us and bumped both of our arms, but neither of us could see anything on the ground below us even after searching diligently.

“That was weird,” we said as we proceeded to go home.

The last few minutes of our walk were ordinary. After we’d arrived home, removed our shoes, and washed our hands, we heard something scuttling on the walls.

I’m being precise when I choose that word. It sounded like an agile little mouse clicking sharp nails against the wall as it climbed up and down it impossibly quickly. Our heads both moved in the same direction as we followed the sound up and down over the wall and then over to the door where it made a scratching sound on the door like it wanted out. It was eerie.

”Do you want to get out again?” my spouse asked it.  There was more scuttling on the walls while he opened the front door.

“We didn’t mean to bring you home with us,” he said. “You’re free to go.” The scuttling sound rapidly moved around wall around the door as if it was leaving, and it was gone.

Let’s eliminate some possible explanations for what happened:

No, neither of us were under the influence of alcohol, drugs, or any other mind-altering substances. We don’t imbibe the latter at all.  I used to enjoy a glass or two of wine once every few years, but I now have medical reasons to avoid it entirely.

There were a few other people on the street that day who were half a block away, but even if one of them had thrown something at us I can’t imagine what invisible item or creature that scurries up walls and can probably fit into someone’s pocket realistically exists in our world.

Yes, we sometimes hear sounds from other apartments when people move furniture or drop things, but these sounds were very clearly coming from inside of our apartment only a few feet away from where we were standing.  I could hear the sound of individual little nails on its paws (talon? hand?)  tapping against the wall as it ran around looking for an exit.

 

So that is my odd little story. If anyone has a rational explanation for it, I’d love to hear it. I sure haven’t been able to figure it out. I have it tagged as a Real Life Ghost Story simply because I wasn’t sure how else to classify it.

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June 22, 2022 · 1:00 am

Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge: Your List of Auto-Buy Authors

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Click here to read everyone else’s replies to this week’s question and here to see the full list of topics for the year.

Two white gift bags with black and white tissue paper sticking out of them. What a fun topic!

Let’s talk about my definition of the term auto-buy author. I know there are some readers out there who would buy literally anything their favourite authors write. That’s amazing, but it’s not quite how my brain works.

There are many authors whose work I generally adore but who occasionally publish books that I don’t find appealing for any number of reasons. I may skip that particular tale, but I will still remain just as excited to see what they come up with next.

I think these authors should count as auto-buy authors because of how thrilled I am to keep tabs on what they’re working on. It’s totally okay that our tastes don’t match up 100%. There are very few humans on this planet who could find that level of agreement about anything, much less something as personal as what to read.

With that being said, here are the contemporary authors whose work I am always eager to hear about:

  • Margaret Atwood
  • Katherine Arden
  • Becky Chambers
  • Rivers Solomon
  • Nnedi Okorafor
  • Neil Gaiman
  • Sarah Waters
  • Andy Weir
  • Emma Donoghue
  • Patrick Ness
  • Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
  • Tiffany D. Jackson
  • Paul Offit

If all of these authors ever release books in the same month, none of you should expect to hear much from me at all until I’ve tried every last book on that list. Ha!

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June 15, 2022 · 1:00 am

Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge: Best Father in a Book, Movie, or TV Show

Hosted by Long and Short Reviews.

Click here to read everyone else’s replies to this week’s question and here to see the full list of topics for the year.

Benjamin and Jake Sisko from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. They are smiling and posing together in their Star Trek uniforms.

Benjamin Sisko and his son Jake.
This image is copyrighted, but used here under Fair Use guidelines. It is owned by Paramount Global (was ViacomCBS and/or Paramount Pictures and/or CBS Broadcasting, Inc.)

My all-time favourite father in a TV show is Benjamin Sisko from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.

After his wife died in a tragic accident, he raised his son, Jake, as a single parent while simultaneously taking over command of the Deep Space Nine and helping Bajor’s recovery from the recently concluded Cardassian occupation.

(Cardassians and Bajorans were enemies at this point in the Star Trek timeline. They had recently called for a truce after a bloody war, but tensions were still running high to say the least).

If you are not a fellow Star Trek fan, don’t worry. Those are all of the details you need to know about this character’s occupation.

What I loved about Commander Sisko was how well he balanced every portion of his life. You might see him broker a peace deal between species that deeply mistrust each other or welcome refugees in one scene only to go play baseball or do some other father-son bonding activity with Jake in the next one.

He had a lot on his plate, but he was always a warm and loving father. If you watch this series through until the end, you’ll also see Jake grow up. I thought it was fascinating to see how he evolved as a character and what lessons he learned from watching his father juggle single parenting, dealing with grief, running a starbase, and even finding some time for dating in there as well.

Now that I’ve finished this post, I have the urge to rewatch a few classic Deep Space Nine episodes featuring this wonderful family. Maybe I’ll do just that this weekend!

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June 8, 2022 · 1:00 am

Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge: Design Your Perfect Wedding

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Everyone reading this might chuckle at my answer.

A four-tier white wedding cake with orange flowers on the top of it. You see, I am not a particularly romantic person.

If I were to get married again, I’d be perfectly happy to once again do it at the local courthouse wearing a simple white dress I bought on sale that was not actually marketed as a wedding dress just like I did the first time.

This time around, I’d invite more people if I could. The wedding to my current spouse only had about 25 attendees due to the fact that I moved out of the United States before getting married, but in retrospect I wish more friends and relatives could have attended.

There is something wonderful about being surrounded by so much love on that day.

I wouldn’t have bridesmaids or pick a theme. I wouldn’t care one bit if guests showed up in formal attire or more comfortable but still dressy clothing like I’d wear.

Only two things would truly matter to me enough to splurge on them.

One: I’d hire a photographer and pick the priciest photo package I could afford. I do wish we had more photos of my first wedding.

Two: I would go all out on the food, especially the wedding cake!

My spouse and I were are poor as church mice when we got married, so we didn’t have a cake at all and ended up eating at an upscale buffet for our wedding dinner. The food was decent, but I would definitely spend the money on a fancy, traditional wedding cake and higher quality of food if I could redo that day.

I’d choose a tiered cake that had traditional white frosting and some lovely flowers on it because this is the only wedding thing I’m at all sentimental about.

The flavour of the cake itself could be something a little more daring like devil’s food, or maybe each layer could be a different flavour so every guest would have a choice between a few different options.

My friends and family run the gamut from vegan to something similar to the Atkins diet, so I’d offer several different entrees that would work whether you include a lot of vegetables or very few of them at all in your diet.

What would really matter is that we were together celebrating with delicious food and crisp, clear photos of such a special day.

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June 1, 2022 · 1:00 am

Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge: Book, Movie, or TV Show Set In or Near Your Town

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Click here to read everyone else’s replies to this week’s question and here to see the full list of topics for the year.

Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel book cover. Image on cover shows tents with lights shining in them. The tents have been placed on a grassy field. It’s midnight and dark out. There have been quite a few books set in Toronto over the years!

One of the recent ones was Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel. I read it when it first came out in 2014 and do remember enjoying it.

Since my brain has decided to only retain vague memories of what I liked about it and why, here is the official blurb :

Set in the days of civilization’s collapse, Station Eleven tells the story of a Hollywood star, his would-be savior, and a nomadic group of actors roaming the scattered outposts of the Great Lakes region, risking everything for art and humanity.

One snowy night a famous Hollywood actor slumps over and dies onstage during a production of King Lear. Hours later, the world as we know it begins to dissolve. Moving back and forth in time—from the actor’s early days as a film star to fifteen years in the future, when a theater troupe known as the Traveling Symphony roams the wasteland of what remains—this suspenseful, elegiac, spellbinding novel charts the strange twists of fate that connect five people: the actor, the man who tried to save him, the actor’s first wife, his oldest friend, and a young actress with the Traveling Symphony, caught in the crosshairs of a dangerous self-proclaimed prophet.

If you like books that are half science fiction and half literary fiction, you might enjoy this one!

Someday I’ll try to read it again and see if I can dislodge any old memories of it. Isn’t it irritating when you read a book but can’t remember much about it at all? 🙂

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May 25, 2022 · 1:00 am

Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge: Favourite Quote from a Book

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Click here to read everyone else’s replies to this week’s question and here to see the full list of topics for the year.

Dozens of small candles lighting up a room together. I’m good-naturedly shaking my fist at the person who came up with these prompts!

How on earth are we supposed to pick only one quote? Can’t I pick twenty instead?

(Yes, I’m being a little silly there. It was hard to narrow it down, though!)

The imagery in the quote below makes me smile.

Individually, our efforts to change the world might not look like much, but they can add up to more than the sum of their parts if we work together and do what we can.

 

 

“Each person held aloft a single lit candle—the city’s traditional way to express its appreciation for that year’s peace prize winner. It was a magical sight, as if a pool of stars had descended from the sky; and as Michelle and I leaned out to wave, the night air brisk on our cheeks, the crowd cheering wildly, I couldn’t help but think about the daily fighting that continued to consume Iraq and Afghanistan and all the cruelty and suffering and injustice that my administration had barely even begun to deal with. The idea that I, or any one person, could bring order to such chaos seemed laughable; on some level, the crowds below were cheering an illusion. And yet, in the flickering of those candles, I saw something else. I saw an expression of the spirit of millions of people around the world: the U.S. soldier manning a post in Kandahar, the mother in Iran teaching her daughter to read, the Russian pro-democracy activist mustering his courage for an upcoming demonstration—all those who refused to give up on the idea that life could be better, and that whatever the risks and hardships, they had a role to play.

Whatever you do won’t be enough, I heard their voices say.

Try anyway.”

― President Barack Obama, A Promised Land 

If you haven’t already read the memoirs that President and Mrs. Obama have written, I recommend picking them up. They are both excellent storytellers.

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May 18, 2022 · 1:00 am

Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge: What You Do When You’re Not Feeling Well

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Click here to read everyone else’s replies to this week’s question and here to see the full list of topics for the year.

This week’s prompt didn’t specify what sort of illness we might have, so I’m going to assume it’s a contagious and common one like a cold or the flu that we’ve all experienced multiple times in life as opposed to diseases that only a small percentage of people have personal experience with.

These are the steps I tend to go through when I feel these sorts of viral illnesses sneaking up on me:

A thermometer and some pills lying on a white surface.

Step 1: Denial

No, of course I’m not sick! My sore throat and stuffy nose must be due to allergies of some sort even if it’s the middle of winter and everything here in Ontario is frozen solid.

This stage usually only lasts for a few hours or a day at most.

 

Step 2: Why? Sigh! 

Why did I have to get sick this week? Doesn’t my immune system know I have 1,043 things to do (or, even worse, that I was looking forward to a relaxing vacation)?

 

Step 3: Grudging Acceptance.

I suppose I will give in and accept my fate as germy sick person, but I do not agree to be cheerful about it. Harrumph.

 

Step 4: Naps and Soup

Schedule permitting, let’s squeeze in as many naps and bowls of warm, soothing soup as possible.

I almost never eat soup when I’m healthy, and of course I do eat other foods when I’m sick, too. There is something about soup that’s extra appealing when I’m sick, especially if it’s chicken noodle or a soft version of beef vegetable that’s friendly for a sore throat or upset stomach.

If my symptoms include a fever, this is when I start taking my temperature a few times of day and writing down the results.

 

Step 5: Ugh, This Cough Is Never Going to End

Is it pneumonia, consumption, or maybe even something worse?

I think I should spend inordinate amounts of time on WebMD looking up every symptom and seeing what the worst case scenario is for them just in case.

 

Step 6-9: Slightly Better, Slightly Worse 

Why am I coughing more today? Why am I coughing less today?

How soon can I exercise? How much can I exercise? What does the Internet say about how quickly I can go back to normal habits without risking the rare cases of heart damage that happen when people exercise too soon after a viral illness?

Shall I google it all a dozen different ways over the next couple of weeks until my cough disappears completely?

 

Step 10: I am Actually Well Again! 

I think this one is pretty self explanatory. There’s nothing like feeling like your old self again.

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May 11, 2022 · 1:00 am

Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge: Do You Believe in Aliens? Why or Why Not?

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Click here to read everyone else’s replies to this week’s question and here to see the full list of topics for the year.

A little green alien flashing a peace sign. I’ve been looking forward to this week’s discussion ever since Long and Short Reviews first released their 20222 list of topics!

My answer to this question all depends on what you mean by the term alien.

Do I believe there are little green people running around on Mars? Not at all.

Do I believe that aliens in shiny spaceships have visited Earth? No. Among many other factors, sending organic beings on longterm space missions is horribly dangerous due to all of the radiation they’d be exposed to during that trip. It takes years to travel between planets in our solar system and prohibitive amounts of time to travel between solar systems with our current technology. I can’t see other sentient beings attempting, much less actually making, that trip here. At best they might send a probe…but who knows if even a probe would survive such an arduous journey!

Do I believe that aliens abduct people, create crop circles, or kill livestock in bizarre ways? No. There are perfectly rational scientific and medical explanations for experiences like these. My first impulse is to believe simple, ordinary explanations of extraordinary events wherever possible.

Do I believe that aliens currently exist (or have existed in the past)? Yes. In fact, I think we could find the first evidence of life on other planets or moons very soon given how many probes we’ve already sent or will soon be sending to places like Mars, Venus, Titan, and Mercury.

You see, I think the kind of alien life we are most likely to find out there is microbial. Some of it may have already gone extinct and will only reveal itself as tiny little fossils, but I’m hoping we’ll find at least a few unicellular aliens that are still thriving deep underground or swimming happily in salty, half-frozen puddles somewhere.

Titan seems like the best place in our solar system to find larger and possibly even (slightly?) intelligent forms of life due to it’s vast methane oceans that may be protected from radiation and other dangers by its dense atmosphere and the thick layer of methane ice that sits on its surface. Only time will tell if that hunch is correct and if we’d have any practical way to communicate with those creatures if they do exist.

It’s difficult for me to believe that life exists on Earth and nowhere else, especially when small creatures like tardigrades have been known to survive long-term on the moon and in outer space. I think there must be something out there that exists now or used to exist in the past. Here’s hoping we’ll someday confirm my suspicions no matter how big or small the aliens might be.

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May 4, 2022 · 1:00 am

Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge: Best Mother in a Book, Movie, or TV Show

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Click here to read everyone else’s replies to this week’s question and here to see the full list of topics for the year.

Mother holding child up with joy at a beach at sunset. My choice for this week’s prompt is Mrs. Dorothy Quimby from the Ramona Quimby series by Beverly Cleary.

Ramona and her older sister Beezus could be rambunctious and stubborn kids. Everything in their family was written from little Ramona’s perspective, and she didn’t always understand the world the way her parents or even her older sister did.

I loved seeing how patient, empathetic, and understanding Mrs. Quimby was with her daughters. When young Ramona decided she wanted to run away from home, Mrs. Quimby helped her pack her suitcase with everything a kid would need to survive to give the girl a chance to reconsider her decision. (It ended up being so heavy that little Ramona changed her mind).

She gave her daughters space to make their own decisions even if they didn’t always necessarily make the right ones. Her love for them was unconditional, and she had a wonderful sense of humour, too.

I only wish the author had written one of the books in this series from the mother’s point of view!

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