I'm also working in fundraising for a (pretty large) charity registered in Canada. I feel your pain. We are very open about our admin and fundraising costs, so we get calls all the time from people who are absolutely IRATE about how we're wasting their money, although over 80% of the funds we raise go to our projects.…

Besides the fact that meat from carnivores apparently doesn't taste very good, it's actually incredibly inefficient to raise them for consumption. Lions, for instance, need up to 15 lbs of meat a day, so you're way better off just eating that meat yourself. You could go off and hunt them in the wild, I suppose, but…

When I moved to a city where I knew absolutely no one, I joined a karate club. I've found that martial arts groups generally tend to be very friendly and sociable and welcoming of new members of any gender or fitness level. The group I was in was always going for drinks or dinner after practice, and we met a few times…

I swam in the Antarctic Ocean! I lived! It was pretty damned cold, though. And probably technically more of a "dip" than a "swim". Still, it can be done, and the record for a Southern Ocean swim is something like 1 km.

Yeah, except that smoking decreases QUALITY of life in addition to QUANTITY of life. It's not like dying from smoking-related causes means you'll drift away quietly in your sleep just as things are starting to go to shit. It just means things will start going to shit about ten years sooner.

I feel your pain. I just noticed tonight that my cat has managed to shred a nice chunk of the BRAND NEW (like WEEKS old) carpet. In the exact same spot that he absolutely destroyed the old carpet. Little bastards, all of them.

Set a trap!

My theory is that as women we've been so conditioned to be on our guard all the time anyways, that going abroad is pretty much just business as usual. Don't be out alone after dark, don't accept drinks from strangers, don't even talk to strangers, don't even drink at all, dress modestly, don't attract attention to…

I spent a year and a half backpacking through South America all by my lonesome - I met up with friends and other travelers here and there, but for the most part I did it solo. What struck me was that the majority of solo travelers that I met along the way were other women. Men for the most part were traveling with a…

Especially if you pronounce it with a French accent. Delicious and classy!

I have and it was AMAZING. I always wondered if I would be able to spot "game" techniques in the wild, and that encounter made me realize just how laughably obvious they are. It was actually quite amusing watching this guy attempt to manipulate my reactions and struggle to keep the upper hand in the conversation…

You won't regret it!

Ha, I always feel slightly awkward when I recommend this recipe to people as something they might want to put in their mouths. The recipe is actually originally from the Whitewater Ski Resort in the Kootenays in BC - they named it after a ski bowl at the resort called the Glory Bowl. I've always kind of assumed that…

This is DELICIOUS, probably my favourite tofu-based recipe: [Glory Bowl recipe]

Just an FYI: if you contact the IRC and ask that they no longer share your info, they'll stop trading it. That should get you off of the other mailing lists as well, since as far as I'm aware the other organizations aren't allowed to keep your info. You're probably getting a one-time piece of mail every time your name…

And by "Iraq, Turkey and Syria" I meant "Iraq, Turkey and Jordan."

Doctors Without Borders is also doing some really good work there. They have hospitals set up in Syria and are providing medical relief for refugees who do manage to get into Iraq, Turkey and Syria. They also work with rape victims.

How do we know that they didn't just film this for three straight hours, then show the minute where he happens to get it right three times in a row? Hmmmm?

Bolivia, if you can get there cheaply. I've travelled quite a bit through SA and it's one of my favourite countries. It's also super cheap (the cheapest South American country, I believe), and there is LOTS to see and do - salt flats, jungle tours, fish for piranhas, swim with dolphins. Since it's not as big a tourist…

Ha, I'm sort of in the picture - I'm mostly behind one of the trees, you can just see one of my arms and legs. And no, no one is Amish. These guys are Argentine gauchos.