The Blork Blog

Hip folks like me like to complain about how stupid the workers are in stores like Future Shop and Bureau en Gros. Radio Shack is another one that often takes a beating. Some other stores, like CompuSmart, have better reputations for the helpfulness of their staff. While I’ve found these generalizations to be useful at [...]

All last week I struggled with a chest cold that turned into a sinus cold. The main symptoms, aside from gallons of phlegm, were a constant headache and un-ending lethargy. Regardless, I spent Sunday afternoon making three lasagnas and two shepherd’s pies — meals to put in the freezer so I don’t have to do [...]

I’ll take a sunny, freshly-snowed blue and white day like today over last week’s mucky and smoggy unseasonal days anytime. Or, as Ernest Hemingway would have put it: The snow was white and the sky was blue. It was a good day. Or, as Margaret Atwood would have put it in the 1980s: She preferred [...]

England’s biggest Ikea store opened in London the other day. The English are such a quiet and reserved bunch — a few people showed up and they all sat quietly and had tea.

The other day I happened upon a Web site that has some kind of salary survey for people in marketing. Naturally, I checked it out, but it did me no good at all. For one thing, all it gives is survey results yet it calls itself a calculator. Also, it only applies to the U.S.  [...]

Martine and I just watched the first episode of the new CBC NewsWorld show, Au Courant. That’s the thirty-minute weekly English TV show about what’s going on in French Canada, the one that has seen some controversy over the choice of Mitsou as the host. I thought it was a tempest in a teapot — [...]

Meet Mini, the neighbourhood stray kitten that we seem to have adopted. The joke is that when Mini gets bigger we’ll have to call him Maxi. Mini has been with us for almost ten days, but we’re still not sure we’re going to keep him. I think he really wants to be kept, however — [...]