by Sue Horner | Aug 22, 2008 | The Red Jacket Diaries blog
All summer, I kept working away on hot days, even with a pool coolly beckoning. “I’ll finish this project now and swim late in the day,” I told myself. I can’t tell you how many times a glorious sunny day turned dark as rain swept in about 4...
by Sue Horner | Jul 16, 2008 | The Red Jacket Diaries blog
When my elderly neighbour passed away more than a year ago, his daughter took time to mourn. Then she started the task of cleaning up and fixing up, intending to sell the place. It’s a small two-bedroom bungalow, so the likely buyer will be elderly. The...
by Sue Horner | May 20, 2008 | The Red Jacket Diaries blog
Yesterday marked the birthday of Queen Victoria, who reigned when Canada was born. It’s a classic Canadian holiday, dubbed “May two-four” in a nod to both the date (the Monday closest to May 24) and the ceremonial purchasing and consuming of at least...
by Sue Horner | Mar 26, 2008 | The Red Jacket Diaries blog
Easter was early that year; March 26. I was awake but still in bed when the doorbell rang. It must have been something like 7 a.m., so my parents and I knew something was wrong; we arrived at the door at the same time, throwing on robes. There was a police officer...
by Sue Horner | Feb 22, 2008 | The Red Jacket Diaries blog
The Toronto Star wine critic, Gord Stimmell, alerted me to the fact that tomorrow is Open That Bottle Night. Started by Wall Street Journal columnists John Brecher and Dorothy Gaiter, the event is basically a call to wine enthusiasts to stop waiting for a special...
by Sue Horner | Jul 1, 2007 | The Red Jacket Diaries blog
Twice in the past couple of weeks I’ve been to events “celebrating the life” of someone who had recently died. Let’s just say there were lessons learned from each. The first was a hockey teammate of my husband’s, gone at age 58 due to...
by Sue Horner | Apr 30, 2007 | The Red Jacket Diaries blog
Fresh reminders this weekend that life is short, and as I blogged about recently, you need to find beauty in each day: a cousin just found out she has ovarian cancer after it had spread to her lungs. a good friend’s mother, diagnosed recently with a brain tumour...
by Sue Horner | Apr 16, 2007 | The Red Jacket Diaries blog
A post by Seth Godin led me to the transcript of a discussion with Washington Post writer Gene Weingarten. The topic was an experiment Gene conducted to see if violinist Josh Bell (incognito in a baseball cap) and his Stradivarius playing in a transit station could...
by Sue Horner | Apr 5, 2007 | The Red Jacket Diaries blog
At one time, radio ads for Workopolis (“Canada’s biggest job site”) featured various people talking about “the job that changed my life.” It was a great series, with both inspiring tales of jobs that led to interesting careers and...
by Sue Horner | Mar 21, 2007 | The Red Jacket Diaries blog
There surely is proper etiquette for visiting the dying, and I recently had an occasion to try to figure it out. My elderly neighbour, a widowed Scot in his eighties, knew he was dying of cancer and had just been moved to Ian Anderson House. This is a warm, homey...
