Of course most of us in the GTA and surrounding area woke up to a bit of the white stuff on the grass and rooftops this morning. Photos were all over facebook. The funny thing is that they were talking about it on the news every day last week that we would probably have snow for Halloween. Well, it only rained during trick or treating…the snow came later. I knew it was coming because the condo put the snow mats down on Wednesday. That is always my sign that it is here, and we can’t run away from it. (well, maybe in retirement when we can run south for the winter and escape it).

November is also the start of “mo-vember” where men stop shaving for the month to bring awareness to mens cancers. I think it is great, and hopefully like the ALS campaign this summer, brings not only awareness but donations to the cause.

For the writing community, it is also NaBloPoMo and NaNoWriMo which is National blog posting month (30 posts in 30 days) and National Novel writing month (50,000 words in 30 days).

How do I think about the blog posts I want to write? Sometimes they are very specific and have a direct purpose to them, and other times, as I have mentioned in the past I will sit down to write (type) and when I looked at the finished post it has turned into something different than my thoughts. That happens a lot. I am not sure if the non stop thoughts in my head are just because I am creative thinker or it happens to everyone. Maybe it happens to everyone but not everyone can (or wants) to write about their thoughts.

I started writing in 2009 just after my car accident. I told this story before about waiting at the airport to board a plane to New Orleans three weeks after my car accident. Alone in the terminal waiting for my flight I had tonnes of thoughts, but not even a pen and paper to write my thoughts.

When I got home from that trip, I started to write.

Thank you for always reading my stories, it means a lot. I am trying to grow my readership so if if you enjoy what I write, I would love it if you would share it. We live in a world of “shares”, “likes”, “tweets” and it would be great to have my thoughts shared with more people.

Have a great day and stay tuned for a lot more where this came from.

Cheers,

L

Yesterday I went to meet a friend for lunch. I knew what area she worked in and suggested a few places and she mentioned a new sushi place had just opened up. I asked the address and she didn’t remember the street number but told me it was on Don Mills, west side just north of Lawrence.

Of course it was exactly where I thought it was – 1300 Don Mills Road, old home to my very first job in travel – The Last Minute Club. From early 1990 to mid 1993 my home away from home. My first full-time job.

I have so many thoughts about my first job, and the fact that the building is still standing is really humorous actually. That building was “old” in 1990. I had a desk in the corner of the call centre and I would often hear the pattering of feet on/in the roof over my head. Not really ever sure what they were, and I never really wanted to know. It always had temperature issues as you would imagine, never cool enough in summer and never quite warm enough in the winter.

If you were around that ‘hood at time that you would have probably have gone to O’Tooles. That was the restaurant/bar that was in the building. And after that, there was Last Harry’s which was homage to the former owner of The Last Minute Club, whose name was of course Harry and a legend in his own mind.

That was also ‘back in the day’ where people could still smoke inside buildings. There we were, in one big call centre, with cubicles and no walls, and yet there was a smoking and a non smoking side of the room. Smoke still wafted through the whole room not matter what side you were on. There was also a smoking lunch room and a non smoking lunch room, with a window in between. You could see the smoked filled room through the window, and wonder how anyone could spend any amount of time there, let alone each lunch there.

If you ever watched friends, do you remember when Rachel had to smoke because her employer smoked and all the ‘good’ stuff happens outside? Well, that is what the back door was like at the office. All the smokers would gather around the back door (especially in the winter when it was cold) and if you wanted to find out the real scoop, you needed to be ‘part of the group’. Sometimes I would go out and get ‘air’ just to chat and catch up.

It was a family run company, which are far and few between now. There were random pizza days, there were summer barbeques where you could bring your family. We even got to have champagne and caviar with Robin Leach when he was the spokesperson for The Last Minute Club.

I went on my first FAM (agent) trip with a group – to Jamaica. I was just laughing with a friend about that last week.

A lifetime ago. I am not being dramatic about it. It was more than half my life ago. A real lifetime ago. It was a great place to build a foundation on. A foundation that lasted twenty-four years. Crazy to imagine.

It is nice to look back at good times.