Welcome to my renovation. Steve, the adventurous, intrepid man that he is, figured out how to meet my demands: wallpaper, photo on the header, better layout and better labels. He even managed to figure out how to import a calendar.

My entire contribution consisted of providing him with a wish list of things I had seen on other blog sites and staying out of his way. I did do the changes to the photograph in the header. Photoshop has this thing called "settings" (if I remember correctly, it was several hours ago) that allows a photograph to be manipulation in all kinds of ways. Turn it into a watercolour, or a poster and so on.

On New Year's Eve day, at -17 degrees windchill, we went searching for a tree we had seen the day before. I thought it was a cool tree and would make an interesting photo.

Of course, I couldn't remember where I had seen it, so we had to retrace our steps. Luckily it was further away than our own driveway and not at the end of the day before's walk. The longer the photo took to shoot, the louder our conversation became. Not because anyone was cross, but because shouting keeps the cold away. Did you know that? Shouting works very well in airports, with people who don't speak your native language and in sub-zero weather. All problems in those situations simply disappear.

I've read a few other blogs these past two days, looking for wallpaper to download, and everyone is either doing a retrospective (of the year just past incase you didn't know what I meant) or new year's resolutions. Since I can rarely recall what i had for dinner the night before, a retrospective seemed like too much work. I have given up on resolutions. Either I don't really want to be doing what I resolved to do (like losing weight), or I forget by February (like cutting back on chocolate) or its too much work (like losing weight). In all these years, I have made only two resolutions that had any interest or I remembered the full year. 1) remember to write more neatly so I know what I meant to say to myself and 2) don't read a book if it still sucks by page 25 and that includes the "Canada Reads" selections and most everything on the Giller Prize list.

Instead, yesterday and today, I cleared my desk. I can see it now. I figured the rule about "clothes not worn in the past 12 months will not be worn again and should be given away" applies to pieces of paper. I have cleared 2 linear feet from my desktop. I did the same to my new daybook. I took out any paper that "might" be needed in the coming year ahead and said "I dare you to haunt me." I can pick up the daybook and 38 things don't fall out.


This is freedom people. (I don't look entirely convinced) We talk about finding simplicity and spiritual practice in our daily lives.... get rid of the paper!