Agent Palmer

Every major city in the world has a talented writer. Every city in the world has a travel guide of some sort, but what City of Glass: Douglas Coupland’s Vancouver does is marry the talented writer with the travel guide glued together with a passion for one’s own hometown, to create not just a travel guide, but a glimpse into local life.

I read the 2006 Revised Edition, but originally published in 2000, this book is Vancouver’s ABCs, a local tourism perspective, the likes of which you’d need to find a very good local blogger to get from anywhere else.

I recently sat down and built the LEGO Ideas International Space Station (ISS). Like the Saturn V and Lunar Lander before it, the release of this set coincided with an anniversary.

Released in 2020, the set marks 20 years since the station helped start a continuous human presence in space. LEGO pays another wonderful tribute to the station that orbits Earth 16 times a day and is the work of five different space agencies: NASA (United States), Roscosmos (Russia), JAXA (Japan), ESA (Europe), and CSA (Canada).

On February 26th, 2021, James Turner commenced the final stream of season one of his Punch-A-Chunk world. The culmination of 13 months of work was, based on the reaction from his chat, as therapeutic to those watching during a pandemic as it was to James himself.

The mood in the chat began both celebratory and thankful. What started as a pre-pandemic joke in February 2020 clearly became a salvation for both James and his viewers as the community grew.

Back in 2018, I decided that I had too much stuff. I’m not a hoarder, but I do tend to hold on to things.

I didn’t go through a complete purge of my life asking if every item in my house brings me happiness because to me, that’s not always the smartest question. (Sorry, Marie Kondo, I won’t be joining your cult.) I’m not looking for a minimalist lifestyle either. I’m just looking for an organized and, if possible, optimized lifestyle.

The year 2020 may have seemed longer, but it was just a singular calendar year consisting of the standard non-leap year 365 days and 8,760 hours. But just like sitting in class watching the clock, circumstances have the unique ability to both speed up and slow down our perspective of time.

For some, as the joke goes, 2020 was the longest March in history. For others, this year flew by, and I definitely side with the latter.