I really did eat a  piranha on the Amazon River - it didn't eat me because it was a vegetarian. Really.  I thought  - piranha - big, sharp teeth, man-eating carnivore. But did you know that in the rivers of South America there are more than 30 different species of piranha? And some eat primarily vegetation.

Vancouver BC: On a miserably cold, rainy night we took the Skytrain from downtown Vancouver out to Douglas College in New Westminster. We went to see a student production of Charles Mee's adaption of Euripides' The Women of Troy. I was overjoyed to experience a production that was so much a visual and auditory delight that it made our sodden trek out to New Westminster more than worthwhile.

Vancouver BC:  Columbia University professor Wallace Sayre famously quipped in reference to competition in the academic realm, that "competition in university politics takes the most vicious and bitter forms because the stakes are so low."  The same concept, that the smaller the stakes the fiercer is the competition, has been promulgated by many others including educational guru, Laurence Peter of The Peter Principle ("In hierarchical organizations every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence").

Vancouver, BC:  In Vancouver, September is synonymous with Vancouver Fringe Festival month. Over a couple of weeks, venues on and off Granville Island are crowded with people. Some love to cram in as many shows as they can, while others come to see a friend perform and the Fringe Festival may be their first exposure to theatre.

We chose Javier's Cantina & Grill at Irvine Spectrum for a double birthday  celebration. We arrived quite early, five adults plus two kids, converging on the restaurant directly from work and after-school programs, all of us very hungry.

A rich lobster bisque and a creamy mushroom soup are my two favorite soups so my natural first choice on the BRIO Tuscan Grille restaurant week lunch menu was the lobster bisque. I was pleased to see that the restaurant week menu featured items on the regular menu.

Breakfast at the Original Pancake House was the choice of the youngest member of the family as the best way to celebrate his recent achievement. When we arrived at the restaurant around 9:30 on a Sunday morning it was packed, and patiently-waiting patrons were spilling out onto the pavement to soak up the welcome sunshine. Although we were initially told there would be a lengthy wait, it was actually only a few minutes before a table was cleared and we were seated.

The Kobe Japanese Steak and Seafood House with its knife-twirling chefs and teppanyaki grills has been an iconic Vancouver restaurant  since 1968.

My mature adult brain seems to have re-entered a period of accelerated learning as I try simultaneously to master the intricacies and nuances of several important social media platforms as fast as I can. As I figure out how to link and post efficiently to Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Google+ and YouTube - just for a start - I can almost feel the impulses whizzing along neuronal pathways and embedding new concepts in my already crowded memory filing system. It's exhausting!