Just-talking-out-loud

I follow @CanadaPaintings on Twitter. Sometimes, I can get lost in some of those photos. I got to start painting again.  A colleague told me that she decided to retire early and do art for a living. Why can't I just do that? Why am I not brave enough to do cooking or painting for a living? 

It is customary to do a deep cleaning of your home right before Norooz, Iranian new year. People wash their walls, windows, rugs, and basically everything. This is not really a tradition for my mom. She is very clean and organize. She never allows for the dust to stay. So basically her home is always spotless. I wish I could say the same thing for my own home.  Anyway, since I don't really have time to clean my house, I can at least dust this blog. It always  makes me happy to visit this place and read my own posts as well as the visitors comments. One of my goals for this year is not allow this blog to gather dust again. 

Beautiful view but we did not stay there. We went higher to have a better view of the port at sunset. I highly recommend visiting this magical place. 

During one of my trips to Toronto in 2014, I walked around and took some pictures. I love this one. 

*I could not find a better translation for this. 

I am sick of the store-bought salad dressing I have in the fridge. I think it will stay there until it expires and I get ride of it. I am and have been a big fan of Chef Michael Smith for a while. This week, I tried replicating one of his salad dressing and it was a hug success. I never enjoyed my salad as much as I enjoyed it with this salad dressing. There is also something to say about the real high quality Tunisian olive oil that I used. If you want to make the dressing, follow this recipe . I did not add any herb because I did not have any. It was still very decisions and great motivation for eating more salad.

I can smell the dill and rice on my hands and my clothes. I normally don't like the smell of the food on me but dill rice is different. I am enjoying the smell and let it take me to far far away places, north of Iran, when I was only a young girl. It warms my heart. it takes me back to those Norooz and summer holidays. It reminds me of those family gathering.

Job interviews are like going on a date. You spend sometime with strangers trying  to impress them and get to know them. Then, you go home and wait for them to contact you back. It's been 4 weeks since my 2nd interview with an office and they did not have the decency to call or email me to let me know they have decided to go with someone else. If you are responsible in hiring people, treat them with respect. Don't let them wait for you. Help them to move on.

I remember once when I was in school, couple of friends suggested skipping the class and going to see a movie. Of course the nerd in me couldn't handle the stress of missing a lecture. So I announced that I wouldn't go with them but I would gladly go to class and share my notes with whoever likes to have them later. I don't recall the content of that lecture nor do I recall the course but I never forget that I didn't watch 'the Banu Ordibehesht' with my friends.

My sister gave me this book by Klauser 2 Christmases ago. I finally picked it up today and I'm on page 50 now. It is an easy read and I am wondering why I didn't read it sooner. The whole concept and the idea of the book is not new to me. I heard it before. If you have a goal or if you want to get some thing in life, write it down and it will become true. Once I wrote a list while back, when I lived in Vancouver and I forgot about it. Couple of years later, when I was going through my stuff and decluttering  for my move, I came across it. I went through the list and I realized that one of the items in the list was 'to live in a place with wood burning fireplace'. At a time, my tiny little apartment had a fireplace. Recently, I  have come across many bloggers who blog full time and earn money; this is their job. I have to admit, I envy them and wonder how they have become so successful. Many of them are full time moms. They have either published books or got a contrac...

One night 5 friends walked into a bar. The oldest one was asked to show her ID. Those days are clearly gone now.

There was a time that group of us wrote regularly. There was a time that we had our very own community. There was a time that I spent many hours thinking and drafting what I wanted to write next. There was a time that publishing a new post or comment was very satisfying. I miss those times and that person; who was practicing reflection daily; who had a purpose in life; and who was all about self improvement. I miss the habit of blogging. I miss the togetherness with my virtual friends. I want to start writing a weekly gratitude journal. I need to back on track. What I'm the most grateful this week is for my lovely protective family. I'm grateful that dispite all problems with health care in Quebec, we can still rely on them. I'm grateful for sitting by the fireplace in this cold winter.

Just remember that this shall pass too. Let me be grateful for all the things I have and dream for things that I want to have. Let me be grateful that as long as the issue is not health related noting is important to be worry about. Let me try to be strong and stand for myself.

According to this article in The Huffington Post, keeping a gratitude journal and performing an act of kindness are the two most effective and efficient ways for having a happier life.

For the past two weeks, my primary task was to clear my stuffy nose and try all sort of remedies to get ride of this cold. I am really tired of being sick. I can't even enjoy the fall and all its beautiful colour. However, I managed to finish The Girl Who was Saturday Night by Heather O’Neil. What a strange, amazing, and wired book. “They say in Quebec that if you are conceived on a night when your parents are drinking, then you are going to be melancholic your whole life. If your parents conceived you the first time they ever had sex, then you will be lucky your whole life, and everyone you meet will fall madly in love with you.” P. 103  “There was no difference between the expressions I like you and I love you in French. You could never declare love like that in English. We loved in a self-destructive, over the top way. A way that was popular in sixties experimental theatre and certain Shakespeare plays. P.280 From the girl who was Saturday Night by Heather O’Neil

June 2014, Toronto After a very hectic weekend and two moves later, I am sitting in my new living room, surrounded by boxes, smelling the rain and enjoying the breeze. I am looking at the wedding pictures my friend sent me today. It was absolutely lovely ceremony and I enjoyed my role as the made of houner. Basically I was just holding a beautiful bouquet of lilies and orchids next to the bride. This is another advantage of having a small wedding. No one gets stressed out over the details. All the guests get to know each others. Everyone will have fun. I just wish that my plus one came with me that night. I miss him now. The life, faith, destiny or whatever you want to call it is very peculiar. You never know what might come up and in what sort of situation you might find yourself. The only think you can hope for is that the good things come before you and you meet good people who are generous with their hearts. Enjoy this song by Jill Barber, http://youtu.be/ntvEgliyQXM ...

I went for my first canoe camping this weekend and it was amazing. I really enjoyed the canoeing and the sceneries. No wonder the aboriginal people were using canoes to travel around this vast country. There are so many lakes, rivers, and waterfalls and I have only seen a little bit of it so far. I was away from internet and phone for the past two days. The only sound I heard was the bullfrog, our neighbour in the camp site, and the loon. My back and arms are sore because of paddling, I have thousands of mosquito bits, and a little bit of sunburn. When you are a novice camper, these things happen; you just need to do it more often.

I think this is a very interesting and creative idea; benches, in the form of books, around the city are designed and painted by local artists. What a great way to encourage kids to get interested in reading. I remember I became a reader when my mom bought me a copy of The School for Robinsons by Jules Verne. I read that book and more books by Jules Verne. So if you are in London, take your kids and visit all the benches.

My colleague calls Prezi “a motion-sickness inducing recipe for instructional disasters”. I have not used Prezi for a while because it takes a lot of time to design a good presentation. There are advantages and disadvantages with Prezi. Prezi is great if you know how to use it right. The approach for designing a presentation in Prezi should be very different than in using PowerPoint. You should not just take your slides from a PowerPoint presentation and convert them to Prezi. It requires great amount of storytelling skills and creativity to come up with an excellent Prezi presentation. So I think a well done presentation using Prezi is more powerful than a well done presentation using PowerPoint. Also a bad presentation in Prezi is worse than a bad presentation in PowerPoint for the same reason. I think Prezi works better for global learner audience. I am a global learner myself and I need to always have a bigger picture. So I enjoy watching a good Prezi presentation. ...

This is another set of photos for The Doors Project.