A 2014 Message To Your Secret Identity

We all have a number of different roles we take on, depending on who we are, where we are and who we are with at the moment: parent, lover, professional, garbage-taker-outer, clown, miracle worker, couch potato, sports fan, Grand Poobah barbeque chef, dishwasher, super hero... And then we have this private person inside of us ~ our secret identity.

Your secret identity is the you that speaks quietly when no one else is around. It's the you that holds onto your dreams, and the you who understands and lends comfort in those private moments when you're confused or hurting. It's the invisible part of you that puts the twinkle in your eyes when good things take shape and nags at the back of your mind when things are off track. It's the person who knows you best and is always there, in the background, while you're busy making others laugh, fighting crime or cheering on your team.

May 2014 find your secret identity safe, healthy and happy.

Cheers, Rand

My 2013 Top 10 Things That Didn't Happen

As we move closer to the New Year, news people rate their best stories, late night hosts reveal their favorite moments and sportscasters evaluate the greatest games and players. It's only natural for us common folk to reflect back at what has happened in our year too. Hopefully, what we look back on is stuff that happened to us that we enjoyed or made our lives better in some way. Not to be contrary, but I take solace in what didn't happen. Here's my top ten:
10) I wasn't personally twerked by Miley Cyrus
9) The Mars rover Curiosity has not revealed the location of My Favorite Martian
8) The rash I would have been waiting to go away never showed up
7) I didn't unleash my inner sex kitten
6) I never had to sit through a daylong Dance Moms marathon
5) The doctor didn't look at my chart, shake her head, sigh and start talking about best before dates
4) Beer was not placed on the endangered species list
3) Snowden didn't release my tax files... (wait... why is Revenue Canada at my door?)
2) No one looked at any part of my body and said, “Implants, right?”
And last but not least, my favorite thing that didn't happen in 2013 (drum roll, please)
1) Rob Ford didn't raid my fridge.

The One Thing We Could All Use More Of

An expert is someone who has succeeded in making decisions and judgements simpler through knowing what to pay attention to and what to ignore.
Edward de Bono
Read more at http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/keywords/simpler.html#2Leyf65gJAVl9ekS.99

“Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.” ~ Leonardo da Vinci

In case you haven't heard, Christmas and New Year's are just around the corner. It's a season of giving, reflection and resolutions. There are a number of things I'd wish for everyone, but at the top of the list I think I'd wish for life to be less complicated: Simpler. Like the effortless beauty of champagne bubbles rising in a glass.

There is a phrase in the design world: Simple is good. It's one of the most difficult things to master. Keeping things interesting without being boring and bland is a fine line to walk and an ongoing process because every job is unique. Simple means shunning things that make the work irritating and unnecessarily complicated – stripping away everything but the essentials, doing away with elements that delay understanding and superfluous things that only serve to confuse the eye. It means concentrating on the basics of color, movement, organization and balance. And it means telling a clear story.

Simplifying life is like that. It means having less clutter to trip over, fewer distractions and more wide open spaces to imagine great things. Fewer things to worry about and more room to explore. And we all could use more of that.

I was going to write more, but let's keep this simple.

Happy holidays.

The Good Thing About Bad Situations

"For your condition you are in great condition" ~ Hawkeye

We've all been there. Right there where we really don't want to be and where we never figured on being. But one thing leads to another... and we end up making the best out of the situation. And if we're really, really lucky we come out the other end a better person, even if things are a bit different.

There's been a lot of professional online chatter lately about how it's okay to make mistakes as long as we have the right attitude and we learn something. But there isn't a lot being said about those who unfortunately find themselves somewhere they have to put up with a situation that they didn't ask for; but find themselves in nonetheless.

Things like illnesses. Things like disabilities. For those of us either inside looking out or on the outside looking in; who find it in ourselves to perform actions of care, then that teaches us something about ourselves.

In the end it is up to each of us how much we take away and ultimately how much we grow because of it. Some already know that hope for ourselves is built from compassion and caring for others. Even if we have our own troubles.

Here's hoping everyone this holiday season will remember that others are putting up with being where they don't want to be and making the best of it.

And a kind thought is a gift.

Orifices And The Dangers Of Wrong Placement

Warning: this post is in danger of possibly going south rapidly. It's about putting things into things. (You see the need for the warning.) People are always putting things where they don't belong. Feet in mouths, forks in microwaves, monkeys in parkas in Ikea stores. It's a big problem. And it seems like with all this interwebbing going on people are also putting their noses in when really, they might be better off using that time for something higher education related. At one time in my life or another I have been guilty of all of the above (with the exception of the monkey thing). The foot in mouth thing has been a well known practice of mine.

Fingers appear to be a big part of the problem. They're continuously being stuck in noses, pies and eyes. But I want to concentrate not on fingers but on orifices; mainly because they're so cool (for those orifice challenged, it means opening). They're so cool because we all need an orifice to put something into something else which is an important thing not only theoretically but practically. We need to put things into other things like plugs into sockets, movies into players, food into mouths, trains into tunnels... and in some cases we need to let things out to lessen pressure, evacuate unwanted contents (and I'll stop there). The act of putting in is important but potentially dangerous when the object in question is not meant to be there in the first place; in other words if they cause pain, interrupt the natural order of things, or are actions that require surgical intervention to get back out things that weren't meant to be put in (according to the natural order of things). Hospital emergency department and mother in law stories abound.

We couldn't live without body orifices. These openings provide opportunities for feeding, hearing, breathing and other pleasurable experiences. But fools will be fools and therefore someone really should invent an early warning "Wrong Orifice" alarm app. Someone smarter than I should take advantage of the idea. I'll take a cut.

Then again, if that app had been around in the fifties, songs like "Beans in my ears" would have never been written. A definite loss for mankind.

Winter, Snowy Days and Booby Trapped Mittens

Happy December. Seems like just a year ago it was December first. And it seems like not too long ago at all that waking up to the first snowfall of the season was a time of magic, excitement and trying to remember what closet your galoshes were in. Growing up in Ottawa, not the coldest but the snowiest capital of the world (around 200 cm per year), meant adopting a lifestyle where bulky one-piece snowsuits severely limited your range of movement and after spending ten minutes getting it on; the certainty the sudden urge to pee would hit the moment the zipper was pulled up.

One got used to voices muffled with scarves, perpetually runny noses and rosy cheeks. The good thing about mittens was you could make a fist inside them with all your fingers together for warmth. The only bad thing about mittens was when you first started wearing them and your mom gave you the ones with the string connecting them that ran inside your sleeves so you wouldn't lose them. We called them "idiot mittens" and they were booby trapped. The theory was if one mitten was off and one on, if someone pulled on the loose one it would make your other hand hit you in the nose.

And as the season went on the snowbanks became taller than you and walking along their tops became the favorite way to walk to and from school. After school meant building snow forts for snowball fights against imaginary marauders and odd-looking snowmen. Or lying in the snow thrashing arms and legs about to make snow angels and contests to see how far you could slide down the patch of ice in front of your house without crash landing (sliding with feet sideways worked best). And weekends meant throwing toboggans into the station wagon and throwing yourself down snow covered hills. Of course, memories would not be complete without images of ice skating outside (not in some arena) on the school rink and pickup games of hockey on shoveled ponds.

It was a wonderful time of the year back then. One wonders, as we grow older and wiser, what happened to winter? It seems to have become quite the bother. Unless one is looking out at it from inside a warm room beside a roaring fireplace...