Between the Idea and the Reality

Posted on 05 September 2026 by Isabel Gibson

I feel as if I’ve been MIA on this front for a few months, but the Official Record shows two posts in August and a steady-ish supply in July. I’m surprised: It feels much spottier than that. My head has definitely been elsewhere. Herewith, a non-chronological summary of the last few months.

In Ottawa, we decluttered, cleaned, prepared/staged, listed, showed, and sold our abode of 18 years. We arranged movers and de-arranged existing basic house services. We executed an extended Farewell Tour. We cleaned our abode again, decluttered again, organized our stuff for packers/movers, hosted said packers/movers, and cleaned our abode again. And we left.

In Calgary, we searched for, bought, and interim-financed a new abode. We arranged new basic house services. We cleaned again. We hosted movers again and began unpacking boxes, placing items in spots both hoped-to-be permanent and known-to-be temporary.

Continue reading →

Posted in Feeling Clearly, Photos of Landscapes, Through Canada | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Tooth and Tail

Posted on 16 August 2026 by Isabel Gibson

Scotty, the world’s largest T. rex, was discovered in Sask. 35 years ago today.
– Headline from CTV News article

Isabel, the world’s scattered-est blogger, was sighted in Ont. today.
– No headline, ever.

No, my daily trials and achievements don’t often rate a headline, but they’re my life, so there’s that. As we slog our way through the moving-preparation work and hug our way through the Farewell Tour, there has not been much time for blogging. Or, for that matter, for field trips to discover “the base of a tooth and a piece of a vertebra from the tail”, later determined to be from a T. rex.

It took them 10 years to dig out the rest of the skeleton after that initial find. Talk about your slogging. It took another 10 years to clean up the bones so they could make a cast for display, the actual bones being too heavy, one of several things I learned from this article.

There must be several metaphors possible at this point, but the one that seems apt this morning is that tiny things that are easy to overlook can lead to great discoveries. The high-school principal who joined the expotition and who found “the base of a tooth and a piece of a vertebra from the tail” might just as easily have passed them by. Maybe more easily, no? I’ve been in the badlands of Alberta, Saskatchewan, and the Dakotas: They’re big. Vast, even. And yet buddy found “the base of a tooth and a piece of a vertebra from the tail” in that vastness. Amazing.

And wonderful to think what finds await us as we wander through our own lands, bad and good.

 

Posted in Appreciating Deeply, Through the Calendar | Tagged , | 11 Comments

Just Because

Posted on 01 August 2026 by Isabel Gibson

As the Farewell Tour continues — as we say goodbye to old friends who, unaccountably, choose to remain in Ottawa rather than to move en masse to Calgary — my phone also continues to capture moments that lower my blood pressure. May at least one of them be therapeutic for you, also.

First up, a bee methodically coating itself in hollyhock pollen.

Next, an in-traffic study in red and yellow . . .


Continue reading →

Posted in Appreciating Deeply, Laughing Frequently, Photos of Faces, Photos of Fauna, Photos of Flora, Photos of Landscapes | Tagged , , , | 16 Comments

A Task That Must Be Done

Posted on 24 July 2026 by Isabel Gibson

The choice of coffin is often a task that causes emotional reaction among the bereaved. Most large funeral homes have a “casket room,” a display area filled with the variety of available coffins. For many, walking into this room brings the bereaved into stark confrontation with the reality of death facing them. For some, it can be a terribly disconcerting experience. For others, it brings a sense of peace and relief. Whatever the reaction, it is a task that must be done.
 – My Jewish Learning

As you see, the excerpt is from a site called My Jewish Learning, but this bit about choosing a coffin is not, in fact, a specifically Jewish learning. Nor is it religious in any sense, really.

For some, it can be a terribly disconcerting experience. For others, it brings a sense of peace and relief. Whatever the reaction, it is a task that must be done.

Continue reading →

Posted in Feeling Clearly, New Perspectives, Thinking Broadly | Tagged | 6 Comments

That Moment

Posted on 18 July 2026 by Isabel Gibson

We’re moving from Ottawa to Calgary in August, so my attendance here has been spotty for a while and will likely continue so. But I still see stuff . . .

Like faces. (Scroll all the way down if you want the version with the decoding legend.)

 

 

 

Like reflections and clouds and a teeny-tiny sundog.

Like reflections of clouds. Continue reading →

Posted in Appreciating Deeply, Feeling Clearly, Photos of Built Stuff, Photos of Faces | Tagged , , | 10 Comments

Bees, sweat

Posted on 17 July 2026 by Isabel Gibson

Not, you note, “Bees sweat.” Bees do not sweat. Neither, apparently, do insects in general, a fact I confirmed through rigorous Google search. The only exception Google found for me? The arid-land cicada.

Unlike mammals, which regulate body temperature through metabolic heat production or sweating to cool off, insects must use behavioural adjustments
(Ed’s note – flapping wings or hanging out in shady areas) to reach their desired body temperature. – Journal of Experimental Biology

All right, then. Bees, sweat. What do I mean? Based on my extensive bee knowledge, I’m thinking like an index:

Bees, honey
Bees, killer
Bees, sweat

They are usually called sweat bees, although I prefer to emphasize the bee, not the sweat.

Continue reading →

Posted in Appreciating Deeply, Laughing Frequently, Photos of Fauna | Tagged , | 8 Comments

What’s the Mother of Peroration?

Posted on 03 July 2026 by Isabel Gibson

Hot weather is the mother of procrastination —
my energy is at ebb tide —
I’m getting caloricly stupid —
Tried to read . . . mind stumbled
on a ponderous perioration (sic) (I think)
 and fell in between two paragraphs
and lay unconscious for ten minutes . . .
– Diary of Thomas Edison, July 20, 1885

Thomas Edison kept a diary for all of 10 days in his 84 years, but clearly someone else kept it on his behalf and on ours. I thought it was cute, so I posted it.

I had to look up perioration.
– A correspondent of mine, July 03, 2026

I might have looked it up too, but I had decided to ignore my faint misgivings about the spelling and go with my vague sense of its meaning from context — A long-winded thought or argument, yeah? — because there was a delightful image beckoning to me from the far side of this peculiar word.

(My) mind . . .
Fell in between two paragraphs
and lay unconscious for ten minutes.

I’ve had reading experiences just like that.

Continue reading →

Posted in Language and Communication, Thinking Broadly | Tagged , | 17 Comments

Car Reflections

Posted on 20 June 2026 by Isabel Gibson

One advantage of going to familiar places is that I know what to look out for: in this case, the in-full-leaf trees reflected in the sunroof, windshield, and hood of our SUV parked in its usual spot, as viewed from my usual spot on the second-storey deck.

New vistas can be exciting; familiar ones can be exquisite, joining hands across time to draw from and add to each other’s beauty.

Posted in Appreciating Deeply, Photos of Built Stuff, Photos of Flora | Tagged , | 6 Comments

Naming the Clouds

Posted on 20 June 2026 by Isabel Gibson

Heigh ho, heigh ho,
It’s off to work we go.
– Song from Snow White

How did the Seven Dwarfs get into things this week? Well, I was reading The Invention of Clouds, a book whose existence I stumbled across when trying to find out whether clouds had seasonally distinctive appearances, in order to justify my belief that a given cloudscape was a harbinger of spring which, in turn, would justify the associated photographically induced departure delay. I was not entirely successful in this quest, which is often the case when searching for self-justification, but I got a new book out of it, so there’s that.

Continue reading →

Posted in Appreciating Deeply, Laughing Frequently, New Perspectives, Through History | Tagged , , , | 8 Comments