Tag Archives: change

March 19, 2023 · 8:47 am

The Challenges with Changing Appointments

I don’t know if anyone else feels the same way, but what is it about changing an appointment that can put my stomach in knots, in ways that few events can?

At the root of the feeling is the simple fact that I take my commitments seriously. When I’ve made a commitment, I like to keep it. It’s a pride thing, for sure.

When life happens and a commitment needs to change, for some reason, deep down, I feel a sense of defeat… even when it’s not my fault… or nobody’s fault.

Even though I am confident in my negotiation skills and acknowledge that most people are pretty understanding, changing an appointment seems to have a triggering effect on me.

Does that feeling originate from my school days and the looming threat of losing points if an assignment was handed in late?

Could it come from the steep fines that certain businesses charge if 24 or 48 hours’ notice isn’t provided to change an appointment?

If the pandemic taught us anything, it’s that things can unexpectedly happen (… and quickly!) that can de-stabilize situations no matter how much we might like certainty and clarity. Continue reading →

Another Company Name Change… Cue the Eye Roll

One of the greatest ironies about getting older is that despite the whispers of life experience and wisdom through which we can better take life’s drama with a grain of salt, and to view it with the perspective and acceptance that prevent our heads from exploding on a daily basis, there is one troubling reality: new situations to replace them… which still hold the power to make our heads explode.

To me, a recent bugaboo has been company name changes.

A few weeks ago, my partner and I received an email from a company we deal with, announcing their name change. Frankly, it wasn’t a big change. They just dropped a few letters from the end of their name.

I felt empathy for the poor employees having to drop everything to update all of their forms, templates and signature blocks, at a time when their plates were probably already full. It brought back memories of a position I have been in more times than I wanted to recall.

I sometimes wonder if it’s just me who thinks that company names seem to be changing at a faster pace than before.

But the evidence speaks for itself when watching a vintage episode of “The Price is Right” on YouTube and noticing that many company names that were household names in the 1970s have completely disappeared.

I have to admit that remembering names is not my strongest attribute. Continue reading →

50 Things I Did Not Miss During the Pandemic

There is no doubt that the pandemic meant huge adjustments for everyone. Everything we do was impacted in one way or another, whether that meant work, school, hobbies, shopping, cooking or cleaning.

Seeing friends and loved ones face-to-face became a risky activity. As a result, our celebrations and traditions either changed or got deferred.

Throughout the pandemic, there was a tragic loss of life and businesses suffered tragic losses as well.

While I think everyone could come up with a long list of the things that they missed during the pandemic, there might be a bit of a bright side when thinking of the things we did not miss, during the stay-at-home advisories.

Here are my top 50:

1. Commuting;
2. Driving in snow;
3. Driving in rain;
4. Driving in freezing rain;
5. The fear of driving in freezing rain;
6. Driving around potholes;
7. Driving around random road construction;
8. Driving in peak construction season when it seems that every east-west artery is under some form of road repair;
9. Navigating through traffic jams;
10. The fear of having the car break down unexpectedly and becoming the cause a traffic jam;
11. Navigating through poor road conditions when the plow hasn’t cleared the snow yet;
12. Navigating through poor road conditions even though the plow “cleared the snow”;
13. Navigating around car accidents;
14. Navigating around bad drivers;
15. Spotting a driver with their eyes on their cell phone rather than the road; Continue reading →

1 Comment

Filed under Humour, Lists, pop culture

Tagged as adjustment, bright side, change, changes, Covid, Covid-19, hope, inconvenience, levity, missing, pandemic

November 17, 2019 · 8:55 am

Where Are My Grocery Bags?

It is a mystery that repeats itself often enough that an intervention by Sherlock Holmes, Miss Marple or Hercule Poirot could be warranted.

Over the years, in an attempt to be more eco-friendly, I must have acquired at least 25 reusable fabric grocery bags. Yet how is it that I often find myself without one, where and when I need one?

When I first jumped on the reusable grocery bag bandwagon, I bought three, thinking that this would be enough for all of my grocery needs. “Never would I buy more than that in one grocery run, for just one person”, I thought to myself.

While that may have been true in theory, it didn’t account for the possibility of having something like a meat product or a dairy product drip.

In that instance, it didn’t feel terribly eco-friendly to wash just one bag in a wash load nor did I want to combine it with a load of good clothes. And hand washing anything that involves bleach scares the crap out of me for fear of creating a bleach stain on whatever I happen to be wearing at the time.

So I decided to wait until the next convenient opportunity for the grocery bag to hitch a laundry ride with the eco-friendly washable dust rags. But that was still a couple of weeks away. I placed the bag under quarantine (in a plastic bag, I’m sorry!) and that was when my three grocery bags became two.

It didn’t take long for two to become one, as history repeated itself, which then raised the urgency level on the grocery bag wash, for fear of not being able to continue doing my good deed for the environment. Continue reading →

2 Comments

Filed under Cats, home, Humour

Tagged as bags, cat, cats at play, change, environment, groceries, grocery, habits, plastic, plastic bags, plastics, reusable, routine, shopping, single-use

November 3, 2019 · 8:00 am

The Bright Side of Daylight Savings Time

When getting ready to leave the house, I have mini-milestones in my routine to stay on track and to ensure that I am out the door at the right time, to ensure I am at my destination on time.

It doesn’t matter if it’s a weekend activity, a work day or just going out to run errands, the “fun” is the same. Have you ever had things go like this?…

One Saturday morning, I finished my workout at 9:10, according to the clock in the basement, which I know runs a little fast. I thought I was off to a good start and that I must be a little ahead of schedule.

According to the bathroom clock, I was out of the shower at 9:25, meaning I was still five minutes ahead of schedule.

On my way to the bedroom, the cat stops me for a morning belly-rub.

But by the time I finished picking my clothes and laying them on the bed, slathering on some face moisturizer and applying my anti-perspirant, according to the bedroom clock, it was suddenly 9:40, which meant I was five minutes behind.

I wondered to myself if I had briefly dozed off while offering the cat some attention. Time to speed it up! Continue reading →

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Filed under Humour

Tagged as back, change, clocks, daylight, daylight savings time, drift, eastern, fall, forward, spring, standard, standard time, time

September 8, 2019 · 1:43 pm

When the Cat Has an Upset Stomach

From the time when Ivy the Wonder Cat joined me, I have to admit that my floors and I have been pretty lucky.

With only a few rare exceptions, it seems that she has a stomach made of steel, metaphorically speaking, of course.

And as much as friends and colleagues warned me about volcanic eruptions of hairballs and everything that comes with them, Ivy has been pretty good in that department as well.

Funny enough, it’s when she is nervous about something, whether it is change, disruption, car rides or temporary relocation that I can almost guarantee that she will need to barf… three days later.

Why three? I don’t know.

But it isn’t a problem, it’s not her fault. That’s her stress reliever.

If that’s her way of doing the Taylor Swift “Shake it off” to move on with her life, all I can do is to empathize and to clean it up. Having experienced anxiety issues leading to severe knots in the stomach and eventually throwing up, I completely understand. Like father, like daughter. Continue reading →

2 Comments

Filed under Cats, Humour

Tagged as animal, anxiety, anxious, cat, cat care, Cats, change, cleanup, dairy, dairy products, disruption, fur, grooming, hair, hairballs, health, nervous, patience, routine, stomach, throwing up, trouble, tummy, vomit

February 17, 2019 · 8:12 am

A Renaissance of Storytelling

As a little dude, I remember that both my parents were avid readers. And as far back as I can remember, I was surrounded by books, not only in my parents’ library but in the growing library in my bedroom as well.

As an only child with an inclination for “the great indoors”, it didn’t take much coaxing to get me to share in their joy of reading and the love of a good story.

This love followed me around for a lifetime, in all of its forms whether movies, TV dramas, soap operas, biographies, classic novels, contemporary novels, plays, musicals, operas or even newspaper articles. You could say I have been a glutton for good, well-told stories.

Good stories have tugged at my heart and have inspired me. Good stories made me love some characters while I loathed others. Good stories have taken me to places near and far, real and imagined.

Stories have been a constant in my life, no matter how busy I got. There was always time for a good story here and there, for those moments I needed a little escape… or even a big escape.

I don’t know why, but lately I have noticed that my appetite for good stories is growing, bordering on insatiable. The more I see great stories, the more I want to see.

I savour every moment of stories of triumph, stories of personal growth, stories of courage, stories of social change, stories of love, stories of gratitude, stories of survival and stories of our ancestors.

Sometimes when I hear a great story, I sometimes pick up on one idea, one character, or one thread of the story line and think that you could throw the spotlight on just that one element and create a whole new story around it. There is really no end to the potential of storytelling. Continue reading →

Cat Food: When Her Favourite Is No Longer Her Favourite

When it comes to Ivy the Wonder Cat, mealtime is usually pretty straightforward. She has four or five types of good quality wet food on rotation, she has a bowl of her favourite dry food, she has three kinds of treats in the cupboard, she has an exercise/feeder ball in the play room and she has plenty of fresh water to wash it all down and to stay hydrated.

Most times, she has a pretty healthy appetite and her bowls of wet food are gone in three or four visits. Sometimes, my social eater might gobble them down in two visits.

And based on the way Ivy operates, mealtime seems to confirm what I have heard and read about cats liking structure and aren’t fans of change.

She likes her meals served at the same time each day, and you can set your clock by Ivy. My extroverted kitty has no problem waking me up from a deep sleep that encroaches on her meal time.

Similarly, she doesn’t like me to diverge too often from a small rotation current favourites as it seems to disrupt the routine, resulting in uneaten portions. That being the case, when I am at the pet store, there is really no guesswork involved. I know what her favourites are and I just have to keep buying them, which certainly makes life easy for me.

That is, until the dreaded day one of her favourites is no longer her favourite. Continue reading →

3 Comments

Filed under Cats, Humour

Tagged as behaviour, care, case, cat, Cats, change, changing, eater, favorite, favourite, feeding, finicky, food, funny, humor, humour, meal, mealtime, Murphy's Law, pet, pets, picky, price, return, wet

October 21, 2018 · 1:00 pm

When a Favourite Product is Discontinued

Back in the 1980’s, when I used to work in retail, there was a customer who used to come in to the pharmacy regularly who was well known among team members. She was a little eccentric and she had what you might call a unique sense of fashion, but she was still very sweet and we were always happy to help her.

But we really got to know what she was made of when her world came crashing down at the news that her favourite shade of lipstick was discontinued.

As I understand it, she had her colours done back in the day and was told that this particular shade of orangey-red lipstick was the perfect shade for her. She obviously took this very much to heart as it seemed that every subsequent visit was punctuated by a question about her non-negotiable shade of lipstick.

I don’t think we ever knew her name, but through her relentless search, she became known to us as the “Orange Lipstick Lady.”

At first, she bought up all the remaining lipsticks in that shade. Then in the months that followed, she asked our head cosmetician to order some for her until the distributor couldn’t supply us with any more.

When she had tapped out our supply chain, she still came in at regular intervals to check EVERY lipstick on our shelves to make sure that there wasn’t one that was missed.

I’ll never forget that lady. And I often think I have turned into her when a company discontinues my favourite product… which seems to be happening regularly lately. Continue reading →

2 Comments

Filed under 50+, Humour, Misc blogs

Tagged as autumn, change, change management, colours, company, cosmetics, discontinue, discontinued, fall, favorite, favourite, frustration, item, lipstick, make-up, orange, product, products, progress, retail, scarce, scarcity, seasons, shopping, solution, spring, summer, Transition, winter

March 11, 2018 · 12:07 pm

Where Have All the TV Theme Songs Gone?

This season, the American television network “The CW” launched a reboot of the favourite 1980’s prime time soap “Dynasty”. In watching the very first episode, I was delighted to see several nods to its original series, including having kept its great orchestral theme song. The only thing was that it was a much shorter version of it.

Similarly, Netflix has recently rebooted “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy.” Again, a really unique theme song, but chopped down to just a few bars of its original.

Have you noticed how the opening themes for many American TV shows have gotten shorter and shorter over the years? Now, some shows don’t even have them at all.

If I mentioned the names of program like “All in the Family“, “Golden Girls”, “Three’s Company”, “The Brady Bunch” or “Gilligan’s Island”, even if you weren’t a huge fan, I’m sure many of you would be able to recite a few words if not the whole theme song.

These theme songs became deeply entrenched in our pop culture, and some have become synonymous with the decades when the shows originally aired. In doing so, they also became entrenched in our hearts and minds.

As young kids, we couldn’t play “Batman” without singing few rounds of the famous theme from the 1960s. Continue reading →

2 Comments

Filed under 50+, music, pop culture, TV

Tagged as brand, branding, catchy, change, childhood memories, ear worm, evolution, favorite, favourite, fond, habits, history, icon, iconic, jingles, memorabilia, memorable, memories, music, name that tune, Netflix, networks, pop culture, popularity, programs, songs, technology, television, theme, theme music, theme songs, TV, viewing

Tag Archives: change

The Challenges with Changing Appointments

Another Company Name Change… Cue the Eye Roll

50 Things I Did Not Miss During the Pandemic

Where Are My Grocery Bags?

The Bright Side of Daylight Savings Time

When the Cat Has an Upset Stomach

Cat Food: When Her Favourite Is No Longer Her Favourite

When a Favourite Product is Discontinued

Where Have All the TV Theme Songs Gone?

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