Dear Open Toed Shoes (including but not limited to Flip Flops, Sandals, Crocs and “Peepers”),
Hello my warm weather friends! The weather is heating up, so it’s time we meet again. My children have been requesting your presence both in their closet and on their feet ever since temperatures officially hit the 70’s a few weeks ago. And I understand, because I like you too (especially you Mr Flip Flop) but before you make your return this year there are a few things I’d like to talk about.
1) Your durability. It’s mediocre at best. I’ll take partial blame on this one for purchasing you from Target rather than LLBean. But still, I expect more than a weeks worth of wear, even on an elementary school boy.
2) Your mastery of the game hide and seek. Similar to the other shoes involved in...
Lifestyle
Dear farm helper;
Thank you for all that you do for us!
You work hard! The farm is not a place for the faint of heart. Working hard is relative, so if you thought you were going to “work hard” playing with horses or getting a tan, you quickly found out you were wrong. Thank you for using your muscles, keeping going and getting the job done.
You anticipate our needs! Especially if you’ve gotten to know the place, you have intuitively clued in to how we like things. You know that we like the hallways and not just the aisle swept in the barn. You know that you don’t ever walk past an empty water bucket – you stop and fill it.
You care about our business! Even though it’s not your own business, you care about ours. The quality of your work matters to you and therefore...
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I am into the ninth day of my personal protest against the cuts to teachers in schools. I write to let you know that support for mass protests is strengthening.
We will not be silenced, you may have blocked our School Associations from contacting parents through the school office but dedicated parents have set up facebook pages and have stood and collected email addresses so that all parents can have a voice.
Parents are frustrated at your lack of action and are looking at the summer break as the perfect time to rally and call your Government to account for slashing education in the state.
The Taste of Tasmania is such a wonderful showcase for Tasmania and a drawcard for tourists. Parents plan to rally during this time to get maximum exposure and to embarrass your Government into...
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Dear Kevin, Dave, Scott, Mark, and Bruce,
I’m a grown woman. I’m 27 years old now. I’m at the age where I would have finally figured out how to balance my checkbook properly if we still used checkbooks.
However, something happened to me when I watched your new show Death Comes to Town yesterday. I resorted back into pubescent 15 year-old nerd girl who used to make Headcrusher home movies in her basement instead of hanging out with kids her own age. The dweeb who used to fantasize about Bruce McCulloch’s little man dance jerks instead of Justin Timberlake’s not little-man dance jerks. The kid who anxiously fidgeted on the school bus ride home every day, contemplating what back-to-back episodes of Kids in the Hall were recording on the VCR and what flavor of Hot Pocket she was going...
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Hi Santa, it’s me, Tennet. Remember? I asked for the GT Snow Racer when I was nine but got a Rubick’s Magic and a set of encyclopedias instead. Yeah I got good at puzzles and learned some new words, but I never did get to have the experience of that GT roped behind the snowmobile like I always wanted. And then there was that whole thing with the clothes in the Nintendo box the following year…
But I digress. I’m an ‘adult’ now — long since, actually — and I have something I’d like to clear up, once and for all.
These days, Santa, you’re a Coke drinker. Everybody knows this. All of us have seen the pictures over the years, depicting you leaning back for a nice swig of crisp Coca~Cola, straight out of the original glass bottle after a long night’s hard work. It’s no big secret. We...
3,046
Dear Sarah,
I am writing to express my continued gratitude for the Wings For Autism event held in Anchorage, Alaska.
Jack and his cat
Jack and his cat
Our 11 year old son Jack experiences high functioning autism, which he was diagnosed with at four years of age. While Jack did fly at ages 5 months and 9 months respectively, in his memory he has never been on an airplane, which raised concerns for us, since we have scheduled air-travel this summer.
The Wings for Autism experience was far beyond any of our expectations (our family of 4 attended). The attention to detail, real life/real time airport experience of obtaining tickets, line waiting, Transportation Security Administration (TSA), airport exploring, more waiting at the gate; it was all so needed, and so appreciated...
7,184
Dear Indie Booksellers,
I have been thinking all day about what I could write that might possibly express how truly grateful I feel about THE BRILLIANT FALL OF GIANNA Z. winning the E.B. White Read Aloud Award at BEA last night.
First, I thought I’d say thanks for all that you do — for authors and teachers and librarians, for families like mine and kids like my students — every day. You cheer for our books, help our kids grow into young adults, help our young adults find their places in the world, and make our communities stronger. I was a fan of yours long before I had a book in your stores.
Then I thought might tell you a funny story about where I was – making dinner, still dripping wet from my first lake swim of the season – when my agent called from New York to share the news...
2,187
Hi,
It’s Darin and I wanted to write a special note to you.
Really it’s a reflection of the past two years and kind of a culmination of events that took place last Saturday.
Two years ago I made an offer to a trainer in Green Bay to work with I and my business partner Andy to help him grow his business, but in a much different way than he was comfortable in doing. The business that we layed out for him was Fitness Renegades.
After a couple of meetings it was obvious that he was happy with his current model and that was in fact the best thing that ever happened to the future of Fitness Renegades.
Andy and I saw that using fitness and the proper nutrition we could change peoples lives in a major way. So we decided to make an investment into this business. An investment of...
2,892
Dear Megan,
I woke up this morning, as I’m sure you did, to a rainy, warmish Halifax day. I chatted with the electrician before getting coffee on the way to my first class. I’ve spent a lot of time over the last 11 weeks imagining what today might be like, and working to bring about change for Canada. When I woke up this morning, though, I couldn’t escape the feeling that everything was radically…the same. It doesn’t feel like we’ve imagined any differently at all by electing Justin Trudeau.
The NDP has been the only party to offer me a vision of this country that is consistently vital, dynamic and beyond everything else, morally sound. We are a party of principle and I’m proud to say that I vote NDP. However, I think that you and I both know what it means to live with the chronic...
2,417
Dear College Student,
Hello! Welcome back! I know you’ve been back in town for a couple of weeks already, but I’ve only just now forced myself to face the reality that summer is over.
It’s not that I love summer so much. After all, my own young children don’t have school, which means they spend a lot of time jumping on my throat. But other than that, summers around here are really just … peaceful. Us sad old non-college-student-people do lots of boring things, such as gardening and hiking in the Fells and trying to find an area beach not littered with cigarette butts.
But inevitably, the temperature starts to drop and the moving vans converge and suddenly you guys are back. Happens every year.
Given that we’re going to have to spend the next nine months with each other, off...
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