http://peacockink.ca/View Askew at http://peacockink.ca/9/5/2010 6:32:52 PMen-ushttp://peacockink.ca/viewaskew.html?blogid=1&blogentryid=170At the upcoming G8 Summit Canada will champion a worthwhile initiative to improve maternal and child health in developing nations as an extension of UN Mil...7/2/2010 12:29:00 PMhttp://peacockink.ca/viewaskew.html?blogid=1&blogentryid=167Yesterday a small banner on the car in front of me at a stoplight caught my eye. It read, Support Not Stigma on top with the Canadian Mental Health logo un...5/20/2010 1:06:00 PMhttp://peacockink.ca/viewaskew.html?blogid=1&blogentryid=163The volcanic eruption in Iceland is a natural rather than man-made disaster. As Earth Day approaches it should serve to remind us of how small the planet ...4/21/2010 1:52:00 PMhttp://peacockink.ca/viewaskew.html?blogid=1&blogentryid=160Sexual abuse of children exists throughout society. A number of recent studies suggest that it is not limited to the Catholic hierarchy and is actually si...4/7/2010 9:55:00 AMhttp://peacockink.ca/viewaskew.html?blogid=1&blogentryid=159The trouble in messing with tradition is that you can't possibly get it right. Case in point is the brouhaha surrounding the tentative plan to ‘tweak' the...3/5/2010 11:05:00 AMhttp://peacockink.ca/viewaskew.html?blogid=1&blogentryid=156Ah, the Super Bowl! There were chills and spills and commercials good enough to be prime time entertainment. And there was The Who. Time Magazine once ...2/12/2010 8:55:00 AMhttp://peacockink.ca/viewaskew.html?blogid=1&blogentryid=155It's easy to mock Florida. I did it and in writing too; while it's hard to un-ring that bell, after spending three years in the Sunshine State, I'm trying...2/7/2010 2:43:00 PMhttp://peacockink.ca/viewaskew.html?blogid=1&blogentryid=152Thanks to our San Diego friend Jill - who lived in Oaxaca México for almost a decade - we met a young Mexican/Zapotec woman, her daughter and exten...1/12/2010 12:19:00 PMhttp://peacockink.ca/viewaskew.html?blogid=1&blogentryid=147I think it's safely official. Given baseball's steroid scandals, Kobe Bryant's cheatin' heart and Michael Phelps bong imbroglio, it's time to accept that ...12/9/2009 9:57:00 AMhttp://peacockink.ca/viewaskew.html?blogid=1&blogentryid=146What's a gal to believe anyway....or a guy for that matter? First we read that Pap smears and some prostate tests provide little value in detecting cancer...11/19/2009 8:44:00 AMhttp://peacockink.ca/viewaskew.html?blogid=1&blogentryid=144Stereotypes should never be applied willy-nilly unless they happen to apply to most of the people in a given category. Let's call this category ‘men and t...11/4/2009 10:53:00 AMhttp://peacockink.ca/viewaskew.html?blogid=1&blogentryid=143Recent happenings in the Catholic Church have caused my normal 120/80 blood pressure to rise alarmingly. I was raised a Catholic and despite not h...10/28/2009 12:28:00 PMhttp://peacockink.ca/viewaskew.html?blogid=1&blogentryid=140Watching reality shows really revs up my imagination. Certain shows in the genre make me imagine that I'm a far better physical specimen than I really am ...10/15/2009 10:36:00 AMhttp://peacockink.ca/viewaskew.html?blogid=1&blogentryid=138The airways are abuzz with the news that talk-show funnyman David Letterman had sex with women that worked for his production company and that an attempted...10/7/2009 12:16:00 PMhttp://peacockink.ca/viewaskew.html?blogid=1&blogentryid=137I called an old friend recently and got the message, “Message centre is full." So I e-mailed him to tell him to delete messages. That didn't work e...10/1/2009 7:07:00 PMhttp://peacockink.ca/viewaskew.html?blogid=1&blogentryid=135A friend recently sent me a purple wristband and a link to a web site www.acomplaintfreeworld.org. The site explains the phenomenon of an unknown Missouri...9/24/2009 2:33:00 PMhttp://peacockink.ca/viewaskew.html?blogid=1&blogentryid=132Incivility was the topic of this column a few months back but recent events may justify a repeat on the subject. I'm in good company. Over the past week ...9/17/2009 9:36:00 AMhttp://peacockink.ca/viewaskew.html?blogid=1&blogentryid=129I recently read about a tech guy from Berkley California who is flogging a new software project called Dispute Finder. It's a browser extension for Firefo...9/10/2009 6:53:00 AMhttp://peacockink.ca/viewaskew.html?blogid=1&blogentryid=127The debate about health-care reform in the United States is heating up to code red proportions. The many outlandish and extreme objections would be funny ...9/4/2009 9:25:00 AMhttp://peacockink.ca/viewaskew.html?blogid=1&blogentryid=126Squashed between two young, handsome 300 pound football players isn't as much fun as you might think. On a recent trip from British Columbia, the Calgary ...8/29/2009 2:49:00 PMhttp://peacockink.ca/viewaskew.html?blogid=1&blogentryid=123The Toronto Star recently published a science literacy quiz. “Get 80 per cent of the following questions right and you can consider yourself science...8/17/2009 12:58:00 PMhttp://peacockink.ca/viewaskew.html?blogid=1&blogentryid=120You miss a lot when you limit travelling to the usual places via the normal routes. Air travel keeps you high above the action and way outside the loop. ...8/13/2009 5:06:00 PMhttp://peacockink.ca/viewaskew.html?blogid=1&blogentryid=117My hubby is a pretty smart guy but the lowly dandelion may have bested him. We've been in our current house for about three years, which for me means it's...8/13/2009 4:55:00 PMhttp://peacockink.ca/viewaskew.html?blogid=1&blogentryid=116Summer is finally here. In our neighbourhood people are out walking every day and sometimes a couple of times a day. We live on a circle at the top of a ...8/13/2009 4:54:00 PMhttp://peacockink.ca/viewaskew.html?blogid=1&blogentryid=115Have you ever noticed that when you buy a new car, you start to see the same model everywhere? I owned a Gremlin in 1972. Even though only a million of t...8/13/2009 4:53:00 PMhttp://peacockink.ca/viewaskew.html?blogid=1&blogentryid=114This summer ‘cottage country' has been rife with tragedy. Drownings, spectacular car wrecks and a couple of plane crashes have all made the news. In most ...8/13/2009 4:50:00 PMhttp://peacockink.ca/viewaskew.html?blogid=1&blogentryid=113One of the great things about the place we spend our winter is the incredible wealth of continuing education experiences. Within walking distance I can ac...10/28/2008 12:38:00 PMhttp://peacockink.ca/viewaskew.html?blogid=1&blogentryid=109I keep saying that I don't like the 2-party system in the U.S. but it sure does make things easier albeit a little less democratic. If I were an American ...10/2/2008 9:26:00 AMhttp://peacockink.ca/viewaskew.html?blogid=1&blogentryid=97We had a couple of dogs when I was a kid. The only one I remember was named Princess, a sweet natured female with long silky hair and big stand-up ears th...9/11/2008 12:39:00 PMhttp://peacockink.ca/viewaskew.html?blogid=1&blogentryid=96I confess to feeling just a little bit sheepish in paying so much attention to the politics of a foreign government. In my own defense I can hardly help i...9/11/2008 12:38:00 PMhttp://peacockink.ca/viewaskew.html?blogid=1&blogentryid=95Living in Muskoka is expensive - there's no doubt about it. Touted as the playground of the rich, a recent article in the Huntsville Forester reported tha...9/11/2008 12:36:00 PMhttp://peacockink.ca/viewaskew.html?blogid=1&blogentryid=94Maybe it's because it's the graduation season that I've been getting a lot of offers to buy a fake university degree in my e-mail inbox over the past few w...9/11/2008 12:35:00 PMhttp://peacockink.ca/viewaskew.html?blogid=1&blogentryid=93Monday was a long day. I had to fast in preparation for a colonoscopy: any time I can't eat for 24 hours it feels like the day has 48 hours in it. Screen...9/11/2008 12:33:00 PMhttp://peacockink.ca/viewaskew.html?blogid=1&blogentryid=92I recently had an unexpected encounter with fame. Well, it wasn't so much an encounter as it was a tiny brush but hey, it's the closest I'm likely to get....9/11/2008 12:32:00 PMhttp://peacockink.ca/viewaskew.html?blogid=1&blogentryid=91A few days ago I called a friend's cell phone and got the message, “Message centre is full. Please delete old messages.” So I e-mailed him to...10/28/2007 10:29:00 AMhttp://peacockink.ca/viewaskew.html?blogid=1&blogentryid=89We're in the countdown to a six-month departure from Canada and I'm on high organizational alert. Every time my eye alights on something I do an instant a...10/28/2007 10:20:00 AMhttp://peacockink.ca/viewaskew.html?blogid=1&blogentryid=88This past weekend I helped out my photographer daughter-in-law at her art gallery. It was a hectic Saturday in Huntsville; the antique car show and the Ci...9/23/2007 9:29:00 AMhttp://peacockink.ca/viewaskew.html?blogid=1&blogentryid=87Now that we own a place in the sunny south, we have friends and family who want to visit us. That's fine with us - it's nice to see a familiar face when y...9/23/2007 9:28:00 AMhttp://peacockink.ca/viewaskew.html?blogid=1&blogentryid=86In a gabfest men and women are fairly equalI knew it. Men do talk as much as women. A recent study said so and it's not the first time. I wrote about th...9/20/2007 6:33:00 PMhttp://peacockink.ca/viewaskew.html?blogid=1&blogentryid=85Sitting in my office a couple of days ago, I heard the familiar beep that tells me I have a new e-mail message. I hit the Read Mail icon and there was a m...9/20/2007 6:31:00 PMhttp://peacockink.ca/viewaskew.html?blogid=1&blogentryid=84Oh no! There they are again! I'm looking out of my office window at three of the cutest little kittens you've ever seen. One is all black, the other bla...9/20/2007 6:30:00 PMhttp://peacockink.ca/viewaskew.html?blogid=1&blogentryid=83George W. Bush has spawned a veritable library of quotation books devoted to his sayings. Since I'm a reluctant news junkie (it's like being inexplicably ...9/20/2007 6:29:00 PMhttp://peacockink.ca/viewaskew.html?blogid=1&blogentryid=82The indignities of aging begin to appear once you hit 40. By 50 they've amassed into a list of stuff that cannot be ignored. As to other decades - I'll h...8/11/2007 9:27:00 AMhttp://peacockink.ca/viewaskew.html?blogid=1&blogentryid=81Sitting in my office a couple of days ago, I heard the familiar beep that tells me I have a new e-mail message. I hit the Read Mail icon and there was a m...8/11/2007 9:26:00 AMhttp://peacockink.ca/viewaskew.html?blogid=1&blogentryid=78A few years ago my husband's grandmother died at the great age of one hundred one years. It was my assumption that there wouldn't be more than a handful o...7/24/2007 8:08:00 PMhttp://peacockink.ca/viewaskew.html?blogid=1&blogentryid=76And we thought that money could buy happiness. Well it can't and it can't buy you a well-trained butler either. Apparently old money families and the newl...6/27/2007 11:35:00 AMhttp://peacockink.ca/viewaskew.html?blogid=1&blogentryid=75Now that we own a place in the sunny south, we have friends and family who want to visit us. That's fine with us - it's nice to see a familiar face when y...6/27/2007 11:34:00 AMhttp://peacockink.ca/viewaskew.html?blogid=1&blogentryid=74My favourite self-satisfied phrase used to be “I never get sick.” This has recently been replaced by the far less satisfying, “Sick agai...6/27/2007 11:33:00 AMhttp://peacockink.ca/viewaskew.html?blogid=1&blogentryid=73A builder friend told me that clients are asking for two so-called master bedrooms in family homes. When I did a little research - meaning I asked all my ...5/30/2007 8:22:00 AMhttp://peacockink.ca/viewaskew.html?blogid=1&blogentryid=72There's been a lot of press about a recent study from Statistics Canada and I thought I'd jump on the bandwagon. The study is titled Time Escapes Me: Work...5/24/2007 6:51:00 AMhttp://peacockink.ca/viewaskew.html?blogid=1&blogentryid=69The great spring weather has taken me outside every day for the past week or so and a disturbing fact has come to light. The streets in the Muskoka tri-to...5/16/2007 7:18:00 AMhttp://peacockink.ca/viewaskew.html?blogid=1&blogentryid=68A study out of Concordia University this spring is attempted to explain human relationships - read sex - from a genetic, biological and neurological level....5/16/2007 7:16:00 AMhttp://peacockink.ca/viewaskew.html?blogid=1&blogentryid=67Earth Day is “done like dinner” for another year but I'm just getting to I, despite my feeling that celebrating Earth day is a largely ‘feel go...5/16/2007 7:15:00 AMhttp://peacockink.ca/viewaskew.html?blogid=1&blogentryid=63You can blame my back-to-back book rants on the fact that I've been away from home quite a lot lately. My sabbatical from my normal busy life left a void....4/19/2007 8:25:00 AMhttp://peacockink.ca/viewaskew.html?blogid=1&blogentryid=60Someone who (apparently) doesn't know me very well gave me Robin McGraw's book, Inside my Heart. It's been sitting on a shelf since September 2006. Since...4/10/2007 12:05:00 PMhttp://peacockink.ca/viewaskew.html?blogid=1&blogentryid=59I think I've had my fill of gore...and I'm not talking the global warming guru, Al. In the not-to-distant past, any glimpse of something the least bit gro...4/10/2007 12:02:00 PMhttp://peacockink.ca/viewaskew.html?blogid=1&blogentryid=58The stereotype of ‘ladies who lunch' is of women who have nothing but time on their hands. I envision these divine creatures as noshing on a sprig of pars...3/20/2007 3:45:00 PMhttp://peacockink.ca/viewaskew.html?blogid=1&blogentryid=56My reputation is that of being something of an anti-shopper. I'm one of those rare and annoying-to-retail individuals who only buy something if it's ‘need...3/13/2007 7:16:00 AMhttp://peacockink.ca/viewaskew.html?blogid=1&blogentryid=54After being away from friends and family for almost two months you might expect me to have missed them terribly. And I did. Really. It's just that some ...3/6/2007 7:39:00 AMhttp://peacockink.ca/viewaskew.html?blogid=1&blogentryid=53The tradition of the New Year's resolutions goes all the way back to 153 B.C. Janus, a mythical king of early Rome was placed at the head of the calendar....3/5/2007 8:55:00 AMhttp://peacockink.ca/viewaskew.html?blogid=1&blogentryid=44As I've already admitted, I've long been a big mocker of the Sunshine State and the people who go there. All of the jokes about it being ‘God's waiting ro...1/15/2007 9:11:00 AMhttp://peacockink.ca/viewaskew.html?blogid=1&blogentryid=43Few people who know me will believe this, but I like to travel in complete silence. Driving long distances feels tailor-made for reflection and not necess...1/15/2007 9:08:00 AMhttp://peacockink.ca/viewaskew.html?blogid=1&blogentryid=42I don't know if you have to be of ‘a certain age' to be especially grateful around the holidays but I think it helps. When I was younger I both wanted and...1/15/2007 9:06:00 AMhttp://peacockink.ca/viewaskew.html?blogid=1&blogentryid=41I love Christmas. I went through a lengthy period when I wasn't so crazy about it but that's history. Now, Christmas and me...we're like...that! One of ...1/15/2007 9:03:00 AMhttp://peacockink.ca/viewaskew.html?blogid=1&blogentryid=3692 year-old Jack la Lanne - the grandfather of modern day fitness - fast-talked his way into my living room on one of those late-night ‘paid programming' s...10/10/2006 12:45:00 PMhttp://peacockink.ca/viewaskew.html?blogid=1&blogentryid=33Baby boomers have enjoyed an incredible hold over popular culture for the past few decades. But all good things come to an end and this will too as the ol...8/28/2006 1:49:00 PMhttp://peacockink.ca/viewaskew.html?blogid=1&blogentryid=29A good friend, who has a great relationship with her grown kids, shared the secret to her success with me on a recent road trip we took together. It was m...8/15/2006 3:08:00 PMhttp://peacockink.ca/viewaskew.html?blogid=1&blogentryid=27We've sold our house in Lake of Bays and in mid-September, we'll become ‘townies' once again - the town being Huntsville. Moving offers a wonderful opport...7/16/2006 7:09:00 PMhttp://peacockink.ca/viewaskew.html?blogid=1&blogentryid=25I've been visiting a friend in California with a side trip to Mexico thrown in for good measure. Jill and I met in Guatemala, as two gringas traveling sol...7/2/2006 1:16:00 PMhttp://peacockink.ca/viewaskew.html?blogid=1&blogentryid=17As the time approaches when I set off on a solo travel adventure, friends sometimes ask me why I would want to go on a vacation without my husband. I thin...6/11/2006 5:22:00 PMhttp://peacockink.ca/viewaskew.html?blogid=1&blogentryid=16In the next few weeks I'll be visiting a friend in California. We're going to get into her old jeep, top down (the jeep - not us) and follow the Trans-Pen...5/25/2006 6:31:00 PM