Today marks the 30th anniversary of the start of the Marathon of Hope. Thirty years ago today Terry Fox dipped his foot into the Atlantic Ocean and began to run across Canada to raise funds for cancer research. With one artificial leg (his leg was amputated due to osteosarcoma), he ran the equivalent of a marathon each day until it was discovered his cancer had spread to his lungs. He died nine months later.

Terry’s run ended in Thunder Bay, Ontario, but many continue to run, year after year, on Terry’s behalf.

This is a photo of an image of Terry before his highschool formal, which has been placed on a signpost/marker for the Miracle Mile running trail in Toronto. Significant in its own right as a photo of a hopeful young man who later became a nationwide (and worldwide) symbol for hope itself, I took this photo when I noticed the reflected sunlight on the sign accidentally creating a…well…just perfect effect.

Thank you Terry.

Read Terry’s letter. And donate whatever you can.

This is a photo I took, which has been shortlisted in a group of 40 (out of 400) in the BlogTO “99 Cents” contest. I’m quite pleased I’ve made it this far! It would be a dream for me if I were one of the final ten exhibiting in Toronto’s fabulous CONTACT photography festival…a chance for me to dip a toe into the Toronto photography pool.

If you’d like to help me out, click the image above, or HERE. You can vote by clicking the red box at the bottom right of the photo. If I’m voted into the top five, I’m automatically in the exhibit. If not, the final five will be chosen by jury. So…if you can take a moment, vote at home, at work, on your mobile device…anyplace you see a computer and a connection. And pass on to your friends if you can. If that’s not possible, just cross your fingers for me….

Stay tuned.

I’m here to report that my 21-day vegan adventure was mostly successful and I owe a lot of that success to some extremely tasty balls. Though there may have been an ounce or two of cheese and one unavoidable dollop of ice cream on my journey to vegandom, I’m quite proud of my achievement and feel I’m well-equipped to continue being mostly-vegan. That is, as long as I can put my mouth around some balls when I crave decadence.

As I mentioned in this post, I owe a lot of my vegan inspiration and guidance to Alicia Silverstone and her book, The Kind Diet. The recipes she includes are tasty and satisfying and, once you’ve managed to track down (hello Whole Foods) some of the more obscure ingredients (I had never heard of Umeboshi plums before), fairly easy to incorporate into a routine.

Though dessert-like snacks probably should not become part of a routine, I have a feeling The Kind Diet‘s ”Raw Balls” (recipe found reproduced here) will be making regular appearances in (and, more frequently, out of) my freezer. I’ve already made them three times (pictured above is the batch I made last night), shared them with a number of friends and have had an equal or greater number of requests for the recipe. Who knew a combination of walnuts, almonds, dates, maple syrup, carob powder, almond butter, vanilla and coconut could make an acceptable–if not preferable–substitute for a chocolate bar. Even if my non-industrial grade food processor is now suicidal (it was smoking last night trying to mix the thick, gooey concoction), I am one hundred and seventy-three percent SOLD.

Pete Schweddy needs to add this recipe to his repertoire. We should all have the opportunity to enjoy a sackful of Raw Shweddy Balls.

*SNL “Shweddy Balls” skit transcript here.

I never used to drink coffee. I frowned upon it through university, through post-grad years and well into the nine-to-five slog. This is not to say I was caffeine-free, as I held myself up high for consuming mass quantities of Diet Coke: the healthy, sugar-free, alternative. Yeah.

It was only about five years ago that I had my first taste of vanilla-flavoured coffee bean-y goodness (double-cream! double sugar!) at a restaurant across the street from my office. After that first dip of the toe into those hot, steaming ambrosial waters, I’ve since flung off the hip-waders and am now, effectively, using them to drink from. (Have you seen the new Starbucks waders?) Ah…tis an ugly, embarrassing extra-foamy addiction and it all needs to stop. Now.

And why not now? I’ve mainly succeeded in the first eleven days of vegandom (barring the fact that I just couldn’t take another day of unsweetened soy milk in my–ahem–coffee), so why not make the “journey to wellness” complete with a cold-tofurkey approach to coffee?

What’s prompting all of this is the time I spent obsessing in front of the mirror last night over some recent dental work. I had a chipped tooth that my dentist tackled twice to match to the others. The last try was a great success, though last night I could swear that tooth is a tiny bit darker than the others. I can only surmise coffee is the culprit.

So here we go. And no, I’m not leaving work early to lug home five cases of Diet Coke or to drown myself in Earl Grey Tea. It’s going to be water. With maybe a hint of lemon. Or lime. And the occasional sip of juice. But not grape juice, because that stains.

Be a dear and pass me the extra-strength Tylenol in about five hours?

I’m obsessive when it comes to beginnings, and the fact that a new month kicked off at the start of a new week in a relatively new year didn’t get past me yesterday. I decided to start making some positive changes toward wellness. So, yesterday at 5:30 a.m. I was up and running. Literally. I ran for 20 minutes along the waterfront. Not much, but a start. My calves are testament to that this morning.

As well, in recent weeks, I’ve been doing a bit of research on the vegan lifestyle as a direct result of stumbling across Alicia Silverstone’s new book, The Kind Diet. I was skeptical at first, as Silverstone’s notoriety comes largely from a film called “Clueless”. But I was pulled into this book because not only did I find her research and arguments incredibly inspiring, but I also discovered her thoughts tend to parallel my own when it comes to thinking about our ecosystem. “Following a plant-based diet,” she notes, “dials down our insane consumption of resources like fresh water, oil, coal, and the precious rain forest. It helps to heal the environment by denying support to toxic food industries. It is a significant move toward ending world hunger and distributing food more equitably.” This philosophy is not only about being kind to animals, but rather a holistic sort of kindness: being kind to everything around us. This falls in line with a Neil Young quote (from the song “Falling From Above”) that I’ve had pinned to my cubicle wall at work for years: “A little love and affection/in everything you do/will make the world a better place/with or without you.”

Silverstone’s book makes me want to take better care of my body as well as my companions on this planet (human beings, animals…even plants). To this end, my research has taken me to the PCRM (Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine) website and yesterday I started their 21-Day Vegan Kickstart. Because I’ve been vegetarian for about six years, I don’t anticipate this will be as challenging to me as to non- “veggies”, but I’m looking forward to exploring a world of new foods as well as new combinations of foods in my existing rotation. Just last night, I discovered that the intermingling of tangy lime with sweet potatoes and a punch of garlic makes me more excited than any amount of bacon ever did!

Care to join me?

Scrooge trembled more and more.

“Or would you know,” pursued the Ghost, “the weight and length of the strong coil you bear yourself? It was full as heavy and as long as this, seven Christmas Eves ago. You have laboured on it, since. It is a ponderous chain!”

I turned 40 in LA this past Sunday and somehow I’ve convinced myself that, because I wasn’t in Toronto (or even in Canada), it didn’t really happen. My thinking is this: perhaps if I manage to exit the country on birthdays everlasting, I’ll convince myself the ‘she’s in her forties’ whispers are meant for someone else. At least for a decade.

Nevermind. I just came here because I’ve resolved to blog again. I don’t know if it will be daily, but I’ll aim for weekly. That should be do-able.

Highlights since I last blogged? Oh…a few minor things. Like the Toronto International Film Festival; like getting hugged and kissed by Nick Cave at his Toronto book signing; like my nephew Gavin’s first birthday party; like trips to SanFran & Santa Rosa, the latter of which reinforced goat love (see photo above); and like the LA40 birthday extravaganza I just mentioned, where Morrissey sang to me in Pomona (it’s a town, not a language) and then later listed it—in this letter—as one of his favourite shows of the year. Because of me.

I could have blogged about all of these things.

But I didn’t.

Or did I?

Tomorrow marks the opening of an 8 acre downtown Toronto park designed by Douglas Coupland for the Concord CityPlace development. One of the grand features of this park is a trail dedicated to the memory of Terry Fox: The Terry Fox Miracle Mile. Since I doubt I’ll make it to the opening at mid-day tomorrow, I decided to walk over there this evening. Before my camera battery died, I managed to snap a few photos of the accessible landmarks: mainly Terry-related artwork as trail markers…and a giant-sized red canoe.

Terry Fox continues to be a tremendous inspiration to me. Through the eyes of my beloved (and inspirational in her own right) grandmother, he was saintly. My grandmother has been gone for nine years and I believe she would be pleased to know that, at first opportunity in the next couple of days, her granddaughter will eagerly strap on her running shoes to test out Terry’s Toronto trail.

Oh, and this is an incredibly over-the-top corporate promo, but alas:

All images ©katcentric

This morning I was talking with fellow cube-dwellers about how my LA partner-in-crime might find himself in close proximity to Oprah this weekend if she chooses to grace the Daytime Entertainment Emmy Awards with her presence. He might get close enough to touch her! I’m imagining the next time I see him something almighty and otherworldly might happen when we embrace…. But it gets better than this: Oprah is slated to attend the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) in less than two weeks’ time. And so my personal dream might yet be fulfilled. O! the (O!) power when LA meets TO, having both been touched. We will become one unstoppable force of goodness and rightness. Yes.

A good friend forwarded me a clip from an episode of 30 Rock that I haven’t yet seen. It is clear that Liz Lemon holds the same passion in her heart that I do. Sigh…that lucky, lucky Liz Lemon:

Because I know we’d get along famously.