Kerr

Maybe I should live in New Zealand. It turns out I might be in pretty good company. I know New Zealand is great and running off and doing something new is certainly appealing, but this is actually more about a name. I was reading about a World Names Profiler this morning and thought I'd pop in my surname and see what it had to say. Well, it turns out that my surname comes up more than a 1000 times for every million people in NZ. That's more than any other country (if Scotland is considered part of Great Britain). Scotland itself has the largest concentrations of Kerrs, according to their research, which comes as no surprise considering the heritage of the name. But if Scotland isn't my speed, numerous regions of NZ follow closely, with Australia not far behind. No wonder I felt so comfortable when I visited those parts of the world.

Interestingly, Antrim in Northern Ireland is the city with the largest concentration, followed by some Scottish cities and then Bartlesville, Oklahoma of all places. Maybe a road trip is in order.

Cooking is like love. It should be entered into with abandon or not at all.

-- Harriet Van Horne

Seen at the very tasty Milford Bistro in beautiful Prince Edward County.

The quote was both inspiring and challenging though I'm not sure whether more for cooking or love.

I'm working on my magical goal. I have tried to be the change that I want to see and I feel good about that. Of course, it may not bring magic to me in the ways that I envisioned but I trust that it is taking me in the right direction. Now if only I could feel that way about all aspects of my life. Having said that, the goal that I have set out for myself speaks to all aspects of my life even if I'm not enacting it throughout. I hope that makes sense.

I had a moment of clarity last night in the midst of a cloud of flu/cold-iness. No, I'm not talking about decongesting. Rather, I feel like I had a epiphany about what I want more of in life. It's just one word. That doesn't mean it's simple, but it's a good target:

Magic.

And it keeps getting weirder...

Turns out the woman who loves boogers so much has quite the history.

Pet cloning service bears five baby Boogers

(Im)Maturity wins the day! I couldn't help but post a link to an article with that kind of by-line.

Etiquette lessons from an up-and-comer

It is one week to the beginning of the 2008 Summer Olympics in beautiful (and somewhat less polluted) Beijing. The auspicious 08/08/08 will arrive and with it, many thousands of people for China's "coming-out party". Without digging deeply into my conflicted thoughts and feelings about China's selection as the host country I would like to highlight an article I just read. It references the efforts of the government to change the populace in very direct ways. I find it culturally very interesting as many of the concerns never seemed to be considered a problem before. More than teaching etiquette, they seem to be promoting (largely) western ideals. Who wins? Who loses? I wonder.

Back from the... Well, back anyway.

Apologies to anyone who may still find their way here. My blogging has fallen off severely in recent months and I'm not completely clear on why. Plenty to process has been part of it, I guess. But considering how many things I do to escape my thoughts and responsibilities, I'd have thought the blogging could've served such a purpose (even if there was nothing juicily personal). And so, I'm back. Regularly? We'll see. In any case, you're here, I'm here and that's a good start.