Clark MacLeod's banal weblog
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I’m sitting on a flight from Calgary to Toronto, en route to home. The screen is a blur, my glasses stowed in my bag in the overhead bin above. I could grab them, but the dapper old gentleman sitting behind me might have a cardiac episode if I went near his bags in the same bin. He appeared quite offended that I took time to store my luggage. Or maybe it’s my ragged dress. I was in Calgary to…
It seems to work, didn’t see dog poo on the sidewalks we walked on. I’m thinking of proposing this for Montague, or simply a sign for my neighbour.
I'm sitting at a Tim Hortons in Montreal Airport, which feels familiar -- we were here a couple of weeks ago under similar circumstances. We arrived from Dublin and were funneled through some makeshift security corridor to reach our gate, like walking through the inside of an old mall, dark corridors and weird doors, except punctuated by about five layers of security. I'm tired and crotchety, and…
Yesterday I was hiking with Sheryl up a cliff near a northern suburb of Dublin when my doorbell rang -- a delivery back home. I could see the car on the camera and asked the driver to leave the package at the door. A little further along the trail, I mentioned to my daughter Catriona that someone had come by. She was on a call with someone on the other side of the world. Today I was in a pub in…
Sheryl and I went to Read by the Sea earlier this month — nice, if far too short. Apple Maps took us on a route I'd never been on, and Sheryl hadn't seen since she was a kid. Read by the Sea was held in River John , a small place I'd never heard of. You can get there via Route 6, which follows the coast through some pleasantly narrow roads from the Caribou ferry. The actual highlight of the day…
I am sitting at Starbucks in the Ottawa airport, listening to cheers from the restaurant nearby as Spain looks set to win. We came to Ottawa for the weekend -- an unusual choice, but we haven't been here in years, and the winter and spring in Montague felt long. I needed to get off the Island. An expensive mental break, but a needed one. Unfortunately, Air Canada had other plans. Flights out of…
Camren and I had a good time suffering through the heat.
I set up a daily task in ChatGPT and while it has only performed it once, I'm a bit surprised by its usefulness. It finds articles and insights across the web tailored to my professional interests, summarizes them, and gives me actionable insight on each one. That's far more useful than Google Alerts, an RSS feed reader, or other methods I have tried. The downside is that it takes me farther and…
Eight years back in Canada, and most of the reverse culture shock has faded. So have the memories — or at least the complicated ones. What remains is mostly romanticized: fruit stands on every corner, the food, more food, the general modernity of life in Taiwan and China. But twenty years shapes you in ways that don't fade as quickly. Lately I've been thinking about work — specifically about how I…
I sat down at the table, coffee prepared, iPad open, white page waiting. I'd already written in my diary — which is like a warm-up before a marathon — and I was ready. But nothing came. Or more likely I didn't want anything to come, so I set new writing aside for another day. The weather has been wonderful, and the gap has filled itself with other things. Physical, sweaty things: running in the…
