Madeline?

Someone pointed this out to me today, the second time it's happened since I moved to Vancouver. It's true. I haven't had any sort of fashion plan. No flags I've been meaning to wave. I simply put on clothes that please me viscerally. Most are hand me downs from friends (and so remind me of them), value village scores (for the win), or gifts from a fashionable brother (which makes me feel lucky). My yellow pea coat has followed me from Edmonton to Victoria to Calgary to Winnipeg, Madrid, London, and Vancouver. The mary janes are newer, I got them during the famed Spanish rebajas (sales) in Madrid last summer. I love wearing my black Camper boots in the winter and black mary janes the rest of the time. The combination of coat and shoes was inevitable. Little did I know I would be unwittingly channeling the charmingly impetuous, irrepressibly mischievous, Madeline, the feisty French girl created by Ludwig Bemelmans. I did not grow up with the stories. I have never seen nor read any of the classic Madeline. How I've gone this long without knowing this character, astonishes me! That I happen to now dress (unknowingly) like her gives me a thrilling shiver of amusement. I must find her stories and devour them! I need to know about this girl. I have a feeling I'm going to be smittened. I don't know why I'm channelling the fashion sense of a little Parisian girl but that's what I've done and it's damn hilarious.

Mindfulness 2.0 – The Future Of Mood Management?

Nancy Dougherty, an engineer at Proteus Biomedical, made her own set of "mindfulness pills" with embedded sensors that transmits signals to her phone, recording each time she took a different pill. By playing with technology and the placebo effect, she has found a way to manage her mood through mindfulness and quantified feedback via her phone. For example, she found that taking the "energy" pill actually made her bike harder, and a "focus" pill made her do more work. As a result, she found she didn't need to use the "calm" or "happy" pills. Watch this fascinating video for more details.

Vancouver Zombie Walk 2011

All photos by Shehani Kay.