Purple Shirt Day 2025

This past Wednesday was Purple Shirt Day, AKA Epilepsy Awareness Day. Last year Lee-Anne spent it getting an intra-cranial exam for her seizures, which even the surgeon called "auspicious" timing. 

She was offered to have her first procedure done on the same day this year, which felt like fate. However, due to the short notice and some things happening on our end, she felt she couldn't do it at the time. Didn't take much speed out of things, it just got scheduled a week later. 

Obviously I've been supportive in her taking the lead on how this is managed. Still, a small part of me wished it would happen on Epilepsy Awareness Day. I'm a little superstitious, and the fact that she would be getting treatment for her seizures on such a day twice in a row seemed like a writer's choice. Even taking the aspect of fate out of it, there might be a psychological component. No doctor wants to screw up a treatment for a condition on the day its dedicated to.

But she still spent March 27th doing epilepsy-adjacent things. Before the big event happening this coming week, she needed to have a few tests done to make sure she's in condition to do it. This means that she travelled up to Brampton to stay with her parents on Wednesday so that she could transport herself to the hospital in Toronto on Thursday and Friday.

I wore my tie-dyed purple shirt for Epilepsy Awareness Day. I forgot to remind people at work about it so participation wound up low. A few of the members did wear purple though. When one of them saw what I was wearing, he even said "Epilepsy Day!" He definitely made an intentional outfit choice. 

However, another member saw that he matched us and chimed in to announce his contribution. I asked him why he was wearing purple. He threw up his hands and shouted "It's Wednesday!"

Physical Gryphood

I made a hard copy of my food blog.

This is the second edition. My first one was in a binder that I got from a Rexall drug store.  At the time, we only had a black-and-white printer that could only print one-sided. I hand-wrote the title and "laminated" it onto the front with Scotch tape. 

It had a sort of "hand-made" appeal and still felt like a step up from looking at the blog directly. Don't have to worry about the battery dying on a hard copy, or it powering down while you're cooking and needing to input the password again.

However, eventually the pages began to fray from constant flipping. I ordered some hole reinforcers and that was my solution for a time.

Later, we were at Staples for something and I saw plastic page protectors. I thought that would be even better. Lee-Anne was enthusiastic by the idea and pointed out some binders she used to have in school. These were larger and featured a plastic sheath on the front, which I've used to insert a title page. 

At this point we also had a colour printer that could do double sided. I thought this meant that I would use half as much space, but what I didn't account for was that the page protectors added some bulk of their own. So instead of reducing by 50%, I increased by like, 33%. Didn't really cause an issue.

I'd also bought some dividers to separate it into food categories. However, they attached directly to the metal rungs of the binder unlike the page protectors, which had an extra strip of plastic that connected to them. So the dividers didn't protrude over the recipes, ruining their visibility. If I could have put them in page protectors it would have solved the issue, but they have a little paper tab that is supposed to indicate their category, which meant they didn't fit.

Lee-Anne found some old dividers that are large enough to use, but she only has a set of four. I'll need a lot more if I go that route. In the meanwhile, I'm just using sticky notes.

Right now the categories are:

• Rice
• Noodles
• Oven Bakes
• 3-Piece Mains
• Soups
• Stews
• Curries
• Dips and Sauces
• Sides
• Salads
• Breads
• Dessert
• Breakfast
• Kitchen Care

This covers 86 recipes. Potentially too many categories. I could put rice and noodles together under "Bowls". I could amalgamate soups, stews, and curries. I could combine sides and salads. I didn't have much of a method, I just went through my recipes and sorted them in a way that felt natural.

On the front page, starting from top left, I've got cheesesteaks with sweet potato fries. I do have a sweet potato fry recipe but I don't think the ones in the picture are homemade. Then I've got blueberry tarts, pretzels, fattoush salad with souvlaki skewers in the back, and Irish stew with soda bread and a Guiness in the background.

Originally I used a picture of butternut squash soup instead of the cheesesteaks, but the Irish stew already looked kind of soupy and I didn't want to look repetetive. I also considered using my quick pickles.

The font is Garamond. I remembered a friend of mine in college recommending it based on what he thought I'd like. It's what I used for my resumes. I hadn't thought about fonts for awhile, but the default Arial looked a little too plain for a cover. I thought I had been overenthusiastic about Garamond back in the day due to the friend recommendation, but after some exploring it's what I landed on again.