Tatiana's Wanderings

After COFFEE TIME, I had to go out at 11:20 to meet Mom and Dad for my new reading glasses and some lunch. Mom wondered why I didn't turn my cellphone on - why not save battery life if I don't NEED it on all day? She wasn't impressed when I told her that, but whatever! At home, I just use it to briefly check things like redundant Youtube notifications / Facebook messages and texts. When I'm out and about, it's a different story!

We had stew beef noodles, hot and sour soup, long Chinese dumplings (wo-teep), and siu long bao (soup dumplings) for lunch at Dinesty. Dad told me that she was slowing down, so I had to look after her - if I feel like it, maybe. Then we went to the nearby herbalist (whom she asked for dollar store intel when I'd already told her about Dollarama and Dollar Tree) - where I saw testicles apparently for sale - and Staples where Mom got a bunch of clearance stuff. No, I didn't want any of that even if she wanted to buy it for herself.

Mom also wanted to pay for my one pack of 12 blue Z-Grip Pens (January 17, 2019- the last one on the shelf) which I was going to pay for myself at the cash register. Then she played the martyr about it when they weren't the cheap kind ("why don't you get some other kind..."), but eventually paid for them. The next stop was the Dollarama at Lansdowne, where Mom paid for one pair of reading glasses, then stopped by the Smart n'Save for some crunchy Wah Yuen BBQ fried dough. Mom also almost killed herself by crossing the street too slowly at Lansdowne Mall with oncoming traffic - shades of Grandma! Later, we got one more pair of reading glasses at Dollar Tree before they finally dropped me off at home at 1:10 prior to helping Ayler and Hiero with swimming lessons.


Random stuff from Mom and Dad: two pairs of dollar store reading glasses (2.50 and 2.75 - NEEDED: 3.00), a small pack of Cadbury mini-eggs from the dollar store, a 12-pack of Z-Grip pens which I was going to pay for myself since we were at Staples anyway, Every Living Thing by James Herriot, a thin beige scarf, an ORGANICS FOR LIFE tote bag, a blue neck scarf, a thin white scarf, a knitted white hat which looks like a doily, a knitted black and brown hat, a black buttoned SEQUENCE coat, and a thin sky blue zippered Tabi vest.


Pan-fried pork potstickers or wo-teep! Long Chinese dumplings!




Wah Yuen BBQ fried dough!




Touch toothpicks - 1000 regular ones! Mike almost stole them from me by keeping them at his mom's place in Point Grey because she supposedly needed them for a party appetizer in 2014! Thank goodness I took them back when we were there next time... phew!

Jack Daniels is from Chile?!




Mrs. Weiner and Mrs. Butt taught at the Jewish Community Centre?!




From Grammarly: How To Write Good, by Frank L. Visco!

Caveat emptor. Carpe diem. O si villi, si ergo, fortibus is in ero. Et tu, brute.

My several years in the word game have learnt me several rules:

1. Avoid alliteration. Always.
2. Prepositions are not words to end sentences with.
3. Avoid clichés like the plague. (They're old hat.)
4. Employ the vernacular.
5. Eschew ampersands & abbreviations, etc.
6. Parenthetical remarks (however relevant) are unnecessary.
7. It is wrong to ever split an infinitive.
8. Contractions aren't necessary.
9. Foreign words and phrases are not apropos.
10. One should never generalize.
11. Eliminate quotations. As Ralph Waldo Emerson once said: "I hate quotations. Tell me what you know."
12. Comparisons are as bad as clichés.
13. Don't be redundant; don't use more words than necessary; it's highly superfluous.
14. Profanity sucks.
15. Be more or less specific.
16. Understatement is always best.
17. Exaggeration is a billion times worse than understatement.
18. One-word sentences? Eliminate.
19. Analogies in writing are like feathers on a snake.
20. The passive voice is to be avoided.
21. Go around the barn at high noon to avoid colloquialisms.
22. Even if a mixed metaphor sings, it should be derailed.
23. Who needs rhetorical questions?