Tag Archives: Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge

Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge: Languages I’m Learning or Want to Learn

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 pink mug that has the phrase “la vida bonita” written on it in a cursive font.

La vida bonita – the beautiful life.

I’ve been studying Spanish this past year and am more than halfway through the Duolingo course for it.

While I’m not fluent in it yet, I can have simple conversations in it and often understand the gist of what someone is saying in it if they’re not speaking too fast.

On average, I spend about thirty minutes a day practicing Spanish, but I’m hoping to do even more this year now that I have some of the basics down and don’t have to look up every single word.

Listening to music and watching tv shows and films from this language seem to be a logical next step for me.

Once I do become fluent in it, I’m hoping to learn French next. It’s one of the two official languages here in Canada, so being trilingual would open up a lot of doors for me both professionally and personally.

 

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Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge: New Words I’ve Learned Recently And Their Meanings

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.

I learned all of these words from the same Mastodon post earlier this month. Isn’t it nice when things like that happen?

Closeup photo of an assortment of Scrabble tiles. They are a random grouping and do not spell any words, but you can see letters like r, j, m, and s included in the pile. Respair

From the 16th century. It means fresh hope and a recovery from despair.

 

Gruntled

happy or contented; satisfied

 

Gormful

Sensible; not foolish, senseless, or gormless.

 

Ruthful

compassionate or sorrowful.

causing or apt to cause sorrow or pity.

 

Feckful

Powerful, effective, efficient, vigorous.

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Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge: A  Celebrity I’d Like to Meet

Hosted by Long and Short Reviews.

A black and white photo of Fred Rogers that looks like it was taken in the 1960s or 1970s. He is smiling ,has a full head of hair, and is wearing a white shirt and tie underneath a cabled sweater.

Fred Rogers. Photo credit: Terry Arthur

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.

If Long and Short Reviews is secretly hiding their ability to bring back deceased celebrities, I’d love to meet Fred Rogers.

If Long and Short Reviews does not currently have any magical abilities, I’d pick Dwayne Johnson.

Why? It’s simple.

I prefer spending time with people who are kind and thoughtful.

From what I’ve read, both Fred and Dwayne are – or were – well-known for being genuinely good human beings.

I’ve read so many stories about both of them going out of their way to make other people’s lives better in both small and life-changing ways.

A photo of the American actor Dwayne Johnson. He is wearing a button-down blue shirt, a suit, and is smiling.

Dwayne Johnson. Photo credit: Eva Rinaldi

There are other celebrities out there whose work I’ve admired, but I have no idea what they may be like behind closed doors.

Maybe they’re also fantastic, of course, but all I know about them comes from what they’ve created and not what their personal lives may or may not be like.

Therefore, I’m going to pick people who have developed strong reputations as individuals who are a joy to be around every single time.

Life is short and sometimes difficult, so why not choose the most agreeable company you can?

Also, wouldn’t you love to see Mr. Rogers react to one of Dwayne’s comedic films? I think that would be delightful.

 

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Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge: Hobbies I Used to Enjoy

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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.

Welcome back, everyone!

Some of these answers may give clues about my age.  Here are four of the hobbies I used to enjoy but no longer participate in.

Tamagotchi

A photo of a Tamagotchi toy that was popular in the late 1990s and early 2000s. It’s made of pink plastic and has a tiny little screen where a pixelated pet can be seen sitting in the centre of the screen.

Photo credit: Tomasz Sienicki

This was a virtual pet that was wildly popular back at the turn of the century (Yes, I’m being a little tongue-in-cheek here).

I never actually bought one. Instead, my best friend gave hers to me after she  grew tired of it.

I spent  many happy hours over the summer keeping my Tamagotchi happy and healthy before passing it onto my siblings.

We must have given it to someone else after that, but I don’t remember who was the next lucky kid to play with it. Here’s hoping they loved it as much as we did.

Cycling

A teal bicycle that’s Ben chained to a no-parking sign on a quiet city street. The building behind the bicycle has been painted a beautiful shade of light pink. When I was a kid, I spent hours going on long bike rides over the summer.

My family lived in a housing development at the time, so the only traffic there was local. The streets were quiet and safe to ride on 99% of the time.

Once we moved into a small city, I only cycled on the residential streets close to my home as there weren’t any bike lanes on the main roads through town and they were far too busy to accommodate cyclists.

After I moved to the big city, I didn’t cycle at all because there weren’t any bike lanes to speak of at the time and it was terribly dangerous to ride alongside cars. There was also the problem of bike theft. You have to be quite careful about where you chain up your bike and how you chain it up here if you would like every part of it to still be there when you return.

Toronto has begun adding bike lanes to certain streets which has definitely improved the safety aspect of cycling here, but theft remains a big issue. I hope that changes someday as I really miss this form of exercise!

Poetry 

A closeup shot of pages in a book being flipped through rapidly. I used to love reading and writing poetry, but both of those hobbies faded away in my early 20s.

Despite several attempts to revive my interest in them, I’ve never been able to recapture the old magic of that experience.

Maybe when I am an old woman I will find one or both of them enjoyable again.

 

Picking Up Trash 

Close-up photo of a white person holding open a white canvas bag. Inside the bag are an assortment of glass and aluminum bottles. Okay, so I might need to explain this one a little.

I spent much of my childhood in rural places where there’s honestly not a great infrastructure for picking up trash that accidentally – or maybe purposefully – gets left behind.  Much of it would just sit there until a kind stranger picked it up, the county assigned people to pick it up as part of court-ordered community service, or a inmates did it on day release from the local jail in order to make a little money.

My family were among those private citizens who picked trash up without being legally required to do so. Sometimes mom and dad would turn it into a free date night activity for themselves. They’d leave us kids home for an hour or so, go clean up the neighbourhood or a local road, and talk about whatever it is grown-ups discuss when their children aren’t around.

I took note of how my parents behaved and would sometimes go out on my own trash-finding adventures. Most of the items I picked up would be soda cans, beer cans, or plastic bags.

In college, I took Ecology as one of my science credits, and one of our assignments was to clean up all of the trash by the side of the road next to our school. That was a fun project. We did it in March or April and found everything from broken toys to cassettes tapes to, I believe, a few Christmas decorations as well.

Toronto was such a clean city that I never got into the habit of doing that after I moved here. We have city employees who drive machines that suck up every the smallest pieces of trash here, so there was usually nothing to pick up.

That began to change when Covid happened. Unfortunately, most of the trash I see on the streets these days would be dangerous to pick up with bare hands. Think broken glass, used hypodermic needles, dirty masks, human or animal excrement, etc.  You don’t see it on every block or on every day, but it unfortunately is the sort of trash I’m seeing more often over time now.

If or when I begin seeing other sorts of trash in my area, I will start carrying a pair of gloves on me and once again keep things tidy.

 

 

 

 

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The 2024 Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge Topics

An image of a laptop sitting on a wooden table. The large text reads Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge. In the white box below, the topics for each week in 2024 are listed.

Long and Short Reviews has released the list of topics for their sixth year of Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge posts. All of the details on how to participate can be found on their site.

If you’re having trouble reading the graphic above, scroll down for a transcription of the weekly topics. I plan to participate every week and hope to see you all over there next year.

 

January 3 – Hobbies I Used to Enjoy

January 10 – A  Celebrity I’d Like to Meet

January 17 – New Words I’ve Learned Recently & Meaning

January 24 – Languages I’m Learning or Want to Learn

January 31 – Series I Wish Had Just One More Books in Them

 

February 7 – Things I Like to Do on Stormy Days

February 14 – What’s New in My Life Lately

February 21 – Pets I Used to Have (or Wish to Have)

February 28 – How I Amuse Myself in Waiting Rooms

 

March 6 – Non-Fiction Books I’ve Read Lately

March  13 – A Book Trope I Wish Happened IRL More Often

March 20 – A Book Trope I Wish Wouldn’t Happen IRL

March 27 – An Interesting Story About Family or Friends

 

April 3 – Books on My TBR List the Longest

April 10 – A Moment I Wish I Could Relive

April 17 – Introvert vs. Extrovert: Which One Are You?

April 24 – Songs That Confused Me When I Was a Kid

 

May 1 – Villains I’d Root for Instead of the Protagonists

May 8 – Books/Movies/TV Shows I Wouldn’t Revisit and Why

May 15 – Funny Things I’ve Googled

May 22 – How I Feel About Staycations

May 29 – Museums/Galleries I’ve Visited/Want to Visit

 

June 5 – Books That Are Tearjerkers

June 12 – Characters I See Differently Now Than I Used To

June 19 – Things I Totally Misunderstood as a Kid

June 26 – A Skill I Wish More People Had and Why

 

July 3 – My Thoughts on Social Media

July 10 – Do You Enjoy Shopping? Why or Why Not?

July 17 – Something You Might Not Guess About Me

July 24 – A Sport I Want to Try

July 31 – Would I Stay in a Haunted House? Why or Why Not?

 

August 7 – Funniest Advice I’ve Received

August 14 – Things I Wish More People Talked About Openly

August 21 – A Book I Wish Were More Popular

August 28 – A Funny Animal Video, Photo,  Story, ect.

 

September 4 – Things I Like/Dislike About the Mystery Genre

September 11 – Books With Fantastic Endings

September 18 – Books That Should Have Ended a Different Way

September 25 – Describe Your Sense of Humour

 

October 2 – A Genre I Want to Read More Of

October 9 – Something That Was Better When I Was a Kid

October 16 – Something That’s Improved Since I Was a Kid

October 23 – What I Do When I’m Bored

October 30 – Superstitions I Secretly Believe In/Find Interesting

 

November 6 – Things I’ve Learned from Another WWBC Blogger

November 13 – My Thoughts on the Mystery Genre

November 20 – How I Spend My Weekends

November 27 – A Musical I Liked

 

December 4 – Something I Wish Would Come Back Into Fashion

December 11 – Myths or Legends From Where I Live

 

 

 

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Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge: Gifts for People Who Are Hard to Shop For

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 closeup of a blue box wrapped in a dark blue velvet piece of cloth and tied wih a medium blue ribbon. It’s been a fun year with all of you as always! Thank you for being such an interesting group of people to talk to each week.

Here are my ideas for gifts for people who are hard to shop for:

1) Experiences

For example, you could give a gift certificate for their favourite restaurant, a massage from a professional massage therapist, or tickets to a play, concert, sporting event, museum, or some other event that suits their tastes.

2) Donation to a Charity They Like

I have relatives who sometimes buy a goat or chicken for each other through certain charities in lieu of giving physical gifts for the holidays because they honestly already have everything they need.

(That is to say, you give the charity X number of dollars, and they use that money to buy a goat or chicken for a family living in a developing country who can use that animal as a recurring source of food and/or income. If your budget is huge, you could even buy someone an entire cow.)

If I were going to do this one, I’d be tempted to buy a little plastic or cloth chicken or goat to include with the certificate that says what sort of animal you’ve donated in that person’s name.

3) Time 

You decide how you give the time. Think a night of free babysitting so parents of little ones can have a break;  doing home or car repairs for them; deep cleaning the homes of those who can’t physically do all of that lifting, bending, and scrubbing anymore for whatever reason; organizing photos (and noting who is in each photo, roughly what year the photo was taken, and how everyone knows each other!); researching genealogical records for their family tree; sitting down to record stories from their life for future generations; or whatever else it is they’d appreciate that you have the time and energy to do.

 

4) Gourmet Food and Beverages

You could bake them some fancy homemade cupcakes, share your top secret family recipe for a dish they love, pick up a nice bottle of locally-produced maple syrup or wine (or whatever delicious food or drink your region is known for), or surprise them with favourite candies from other countries that are hard to find where you live.

I’ve done this one a lot. It’s a very economical way to give a physical gift that, allergies and medical issues aside, just about everyone loves.

 

5) Teaching Skills 

Not everyone knows how to crochet, troubleshoot a malfunctioning computer, run a professional social media account, create a thriving garden, speak multiple languages, fix a car, or do any other number of useful things. If they’re interested in learning and you know how to do X, this could be a great gift that also gives you a fabulous excuse to spend some quality time together.

 

6) Hobby Supplies

This is one of those cases where asking exactly what they want is an excellent idea, but you could give all sorts of things that people use up while doing various hobbies: yarn, paint, coloured pencils, canvases, ballet slippers/tap shoes, sports or hiking gear, tools, empty notebooks, heirloom seeds, a cutting or seedling from a plant you’ve grown that they’ve admired, fancy pens, shelf-stable baking supplies,  rolls of film (for traditional photographers), a higher quality or limited edition version of X that you know they would never splurge on themselves, etc.

 

See you all in January!

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Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge: My Winter Holiday Traditions

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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.

Content warning: mental health

To be perfectly honest with you all, the winter holiday season is something I do not look forward to at all.

Frozen red fruit covered in a thin layer of frost and hanging from a bent tree branch. the background is blurry but shows many other tree branches covered in snow and frost. I get the winter blues every year, so the lack of sunlight at this time of year dampens my mood in and of itself. (Seriously, Ontario. Why must you be such a cold and dark place now? Ha.)

I used to work in a field that was horribly busy during the winter holiday season. This meant that I worked weird, late hours, couldn’t eat meals at the same time every day, was often sleep deprived, and had a much higher chance than usual of running into impatient, furious, and unkind customers multiple times every single day. (The vast majority of our customers were perfectly lovely people, of course, but the bad apples made an already difficult time of year so much worse).

The relatives I wish I could spend the holidays with live far away. This can be a lonely time of year to be so far away from them.

So when the holidays start threatening to roll around again, I need an action plan to deal with my low mood, bad memories, and loneliness. My goal each year is to find the joy in what I can and do everything I can to minimize or eliminate anything that fills me with a sense of dread.

What sorts of things do I like to do?

 

1) Look at Christmas, New Years, Chanukah and other holiday lights. Toronto is filled with them, and it makes me so happy.

2) Splurge on delicious food. For example, I might go out to an upscale restaurant for one night or buy that fancy cut of meat, vegan advent calendar, or non-local type of fruit or vegetable at the grocery store that I’d usually be too thrifty to add to the grocery cart.

3) Send care packages to loved ones. Shipping to the U.S. from Canada is expensive, but it’s so worth it to get their excited texts when the goodies arrive. There’s nothing like the joy of giving.

4) Play Christmas music. This is kind of funny because I don’t really celebrate Christmas otherwise. Some of those carols are beautiful and have really stood the test of time, though!

5) Celebrate the Winter Solstice with a walk and special meal. I’ll do the walk outdoors if the weather permits it, but the food is always eaten indoors because December is so cold and dark. The menu changes around most years but often includes pie because that’s such a delicious dessert. No, I’m not pagan….I’m simply always relieved to finally have more sunlight on the way, and what better way to celebrate than with food?

6) Say no. I set aside the last two weeks of December as a time to rest. Unless it’s something mandatory, urgent, or a fun social event that I genuinely can’t wait to attend, I say no to a lot of things I normally say yes to. I simply don’t have the emotional energy now that I do in other seasons, and that’s okay.

7) Reread and rewatch classic Christmas and winter stories. I find it comforting to revisit tales like A Christmas Carol or A Christmas Story in December.

8) Choose kind and pleasant people. I can get along with anyone and have a history of bending over backwards to include folks that might not be included on many other guest lists for any number of reasons. With that being said, I trim down the list of people I’m willing to spend time with to folks who have a solid history of being wonderful and empathetic human beings when December rolls around and my emotional energy has worn thin. It doesn’t matter if we’re legally related or how we know each other. Anyone who is a joy to socialize with is happily invited to hang out with me now.

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Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge: Like or Dislike True Crime? Why?

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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 drawing of a magnifying glass that has a dark yellow handle. The glass is magnifying three fingerprints that are on a white background. Content warning: domestic violence and murder. I am only including details that are 100% necessary in order to understand my feelings about this topic.

I dislike True Crime because of:

1) the way this genre can exploit the victims of violent crimes and re-traumatize their loved ones by sharing these stories without consent,

2) how some True Crime programs exaggerate or even make up details about certain cases to make them more interesting,

3) how some True Crime programs lionize murderers and abusers,

4) which victims are and are not discussed. That is to say, pretty, young, straight, white women are far more likely to be featured on them from what I’ve observed. It feels deeply wrong to me to overlook people from other races, sexual orientations, ages, sexes, etc. for these stories. The grief all of their families and friends feel is the same no matter what the victim looked like or how they identified.

Now to dig into a more personal reason why I avoid this genre.

Someone I attended high school with was murdered by her abusive ex (who was also a student at our school) in front of their small children a few years after graduation. He is still incarcerated so far as I know.  Their kids survived and are safe with relatives now.

What happened to my classmate and her family was horrible. I think of her story every time I overhear discussions about this genre. I’m sure it feels like a harmless hobby for many fans, but a lot of True Crime stuff can take on a sinister tone if you have personal experiences with the topic and see how uninformed and unkind some folks can be about the cycle of abuse and how dangerous it is when a victim tries to leave.

I cringe when I hear people talk about what they would have done differently in certain cases or how they thought someone should behave when faced with a homicidal ex. It makes me feel like they’re dissecting a book or tv show instead of talking about the tragic deaths of innocent people who could have easily been any one of us instead.

If you’re going to consume this genre, please speak respectfully about the victims and be careful about the assumptions you make about what you would or would not do in their shoes. You may know far more people who have been through something similar than you think. Kindness and compassion are key.

There’s so much important work that can be done to reduce suffering in these situations. I wish the True Crime community would focus much more of their energy on crime prevention, assistance for victims of abuse and their loved ones, and honouring the dead in whatever ways they have the time and/or money to do so.

Wouldn’t it be a relief to live in a world where the True Crime genre comes to an end because there are no new murders for them to talk about?

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Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge: Bookish Memes That Make Me Laugh

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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 theme was “Memes That Remind You of a Favourite Book or Show.” I had so much trouble narrowing down my favourite media to just one show or book that I decided to tweak this topic a little and make it about bookish memes in general instead.

A grumpy orange cat sitting on top of an opened book. The text reads, “that’s not how it was in the book.”

I’m normally pretty forgiving of changes that are made to adaptations of books so long as there are good reasons for them and they blend seamlessly into the character and story development, but this meme still makes me laugh.

 

Aragorn from the film version of Lord of the Rings clasping his thumb and middle finger together in a circle and looking serious. The text reads, “one does not simply return from the library without a book.”

I 100% agree here.

 

A black woman who is grinning and wearing a white tank top as she reads the back cover of a book. The text reads, “when you find the next book of your dreams without even trying.”

It is so amazing when this happens!

 

Merida from Disney’s film “Brave” is sitting at a table and throwing her head back in sadness and annoyance. The text reads “when you get to an exciting part in your book but people keep interrupting you.”

My spouse has an uncanny knack for this. It’s a little irritating in the moment but kind of hilarious the rest of the time. How on Earth do they sense that I’ve reached an incredibly exciting scene so reliably, and can we somehow use this special power to make a lot of money someday? Ha!

 

President Obama making a surprised face. The text reads, “when you have to read a book for English and it actually turns out to be pretty good.”

This is such a great feeling. While I didn’t like everything we were assigned, there were a lot of books I ended up really loving and intentionally read more from those authors because of my positive first experience with them.

 

Photo of a person lying on top of a library bookshelf face down and with a defeated posture. The text reads “Google can bring you back 100,000 answers. A librarian can bring you back the right one. - Neil Gaiman”

I couldn’t agree with this one more. Librarians are incredible and deserve so much respect for all of their hard work.

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Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge: Criticize Your Favourite Book, Show, or Movie

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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.

Poster for the tv show The Last of Us. Poster shows the two main character, Ellie and My favourite pieces of media can shift a lot over time, but I will follow the rules and only give one answer this week. 😉

One of the shows at the top of my list is The Last of Us. You’ve all probably heard of it already, but if not it was a science fiction zombie show based on a video game that came out last winter.

The first zombies in this universe were created when they ate food made from (or were otherwise exposed to) flour that was contaminated with the cordyceps fungus (This was strongly hinted at in the first episode, so it’s only a mild spoiler).  In the real world, certain types of this fungus really do infect ants which still scares me a little.

Here are my criticisms of this show:

1) Normal human body temperature is too high for cordyceps to survive in. Some people literally eat this fungus as a dietary supplement or food, and it has no ill effect on them.

2) It’s rare and difficult for an organism like a fungus to learn to jump species, especially ones that are as wildly different as humans and ants. They would have probably had to learn how to infect many other species between us before people were ever in danger, so the characters should have had many generations to notice this was happening and stop it.

3) Given that the vast majority of people do not eat raw flour or raw dough, how did the cordyceps surviving the scorching heat of baking process and manage to infect so many folks nearly simultaneously?

4) The mycologist in one of the first episodes of this show say there are no treatments for fungal infections, but that’s false. Yes, some fungal infections can be difficult to treat, but this isn’t a completely new and unknown pathogen by any means. We currently have many different anti-fungal medicines, after all.

Basically, I wanted the scientific explanation of the origins of this disease to be more accurate. Apparently, I can believe that cordyceps could take control of the human mind and turn folks into mindless zombies in this universe, but I can’t suspend disbelief when to comes to the idea of anything surviving being baked in an oven for an hour. Ha!

 

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