Calendar Girl Blog: Needed-Fax Machine

My fax machine circa 1990 has gone to the great office supply depot in the sky. Toast. Cacked. Done like dinner.

Thinking that the cost of fax machines had likely dropped since the bygone days, I hopped over to my local Staples with the intention of purchasing a replacement.

Well just imagine my surprise when the $300.00 price tag revealed itself! Given my fax requirements....receiving a couple of orders and sending a couple of statements a week, copying things that need copying and using the attached phone, it would take years for me to get my money's worth out of such a contraption.

Of course using my computer to receive will not work thanks to the funky yet well established phone splitting system I have in place. It did make sense at the time. Still does if you scrunch up your eyes a bit.

I could have purchased an ink jet requiring, none phone option unit for a lower price but I'd prefer a laser fax/phone combo. I don't want to purchase anymore ink jets. And the phone comes in handy.

Sooooo.......

Does anyone have a dusty, not being used laser fax machine they'd like to donate to the Breast of Canada machine?

Calendar Girl figures that some folk update their office wares BEFORE their equipment goes kapoot. And maybe she could offer such equipment a fine and friendly home.

Calendar Girl
artjam at artjam dot org


Tags: Calendar Girl Blog, calendar girl blog, Breast of Canada Calendar, Sue Richards, middle of normal. Guelph, education.

Calendar Girl Blog: No Bra Day

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Calendar Girl

Tags: Calendar Girl Blog, calendar girl blog, Breast of Canada Calendar, Sue Richards, middle of normal. Guelph, No Bra Day.

Breast of Canada 2007 is now available.

Blog Guelph is waiting to show off.

Calendar Girl Blog: Slowly Returning

Return of the Blogger , originally uploaded by Sue Richards.

I'm taking the slow lane return route to Calendar Girl reality. Click on the picture and go to my Flickr site for further proof....

Calendar Girl will admit that she does like her vacation time.

Calendar Girl

Tags: Calendar Girl Blog, calendar girl blog, Breast of Canada Calendar, Sue Richards, middle of normal. Guelph, Flickr. Pleeeeze order a Breast of Canada today. Find out what’s going on in Guelph, the birthplace of topfree Ontario.

Calendar Girl Blog: Gone Fishin'

In keeping with my comment yesterday about my own level of 'brightness', I would like to demonstrate that I can still be counted on for some clear thinking.

In short, Calendar Girl needs a real holiday. As much as BlogHer was fun, fun, fun, it was also work, work, work. Calendar Girl has learned (but then forgotten only to remember again) that all work and no play makes Calendar Girl very unhappy. Very unhappy will get her nowhere good. Nowhere indeed.

So then, Calendar Girl will now ride off into the sunset where she will sleep in her tent, laugh with funny friends and rest her eyes and bloggy brain. She promises to return before you turn your calendar to September.

Until then be well and please go forth and multiply.

Calendar Girl


Tags: Calendar Girl Blog, calendar girl blog, Breast of Canada Calendar, Sue Richards, middle of normal. Guelph, education. Pleeeeze order a Breast of Canada today. Find out what’s going on in Guelph, the birthplace of topfree Ontario.

Calendar Girl Blog: Reality

Here is one of my realities.

It is our first and perhaps only time we'll meet. She is around 35. Within 2 minutes of polite chit-chat she tells me that she has just had a very routine blood test. The results indicate that she has breast cancer. She is fearfully waiting for another appointment date to arrive. She is shocked, terrified and unfocused. Her family is very worried. She needed someone to talk to.

I was not expecting this. Our meeting was for other reasons. But because of Breast of Canada, women, many of them strangers to me, stop me on the street, in the grocery store, in my garden to tell me similar stories. The fear in their eyes is the hardest part to witness. I have no solution. I listen. Touch them gently. Encourage them to breath.

Someday's I feel like a sponge for other peoples pain. When I started this project I thought I was filling a big gap with much needed breast health information. It never crossed my mind that I would also become a touchstone for potential and newly diagnosed breast cancer patients.

Sometimes I'm not very bright.

This is when the project gets hard. I'm at the beginning stages of at least four long months of grunt work. After six year's of executing this project, I still cannot pay myself any wage for my effort. I feel selfish for complaining, crazy for carrying on so long and crushed by the weight of obligation. I've created something that is vitally important to a few thousand wonderful people. But in the larger context of the big ole world, Breast of Canada is but a drop in the 'bleeding heart' bucket.

I read the business section of the paper each day. I know that billions of dollars are spent on bullshit ventures that benefits no one but shareholders. I wonder when, if, how a project that actually touches a person deeply, that exists to benefit people and the planet could cut through the crap and be supported. Who out there has the bucks to get involved. Who has the courage to be a patron.

Calendar Girl was recently told that Breast of Canada is not a good investment because there is no financial return. After she removed her wrist from her mouth and surveyed the marks left by her teeth, she practiced what she preaches. Breath Calendar Girl, breath.

Calendar Girl

Tags: Calendar Girl Blog, calendar girl blog, Breast of Canada Calendar, Sue Richards, middle of normal. Guelph, education. Pleeeeze order a Breast of Canada today. Find out what’s going on in Guelph, the birthplace of topfree Ontario.

Calendar Girl Blog: Boxed

And so it goes. The stage of the calendar business that I find the least satisfying has now arrived.

Calendar Girl doesn't mean to complain. And she will get into the swing of deftly flipping the tape gun around the cardboard mailer without capturing a rogue swatch of hair. Certainly carrying the heavy packages from house to car and car to post office will build up muscles and make her strong. Of course Calendar Girl realizes that each box carries important breast health education information to valued customers.

But, Calendar Girl also knows that she has 2,000 calendars to sell, package and ship before January 1.

Calendar Girl

Tags: Calendar Girl Blog, calendar girl blog, Breast of Canada Calendar, Sue Richards, middle of normal. Guelph, education. Pleeeeze order a Breast of Canada today. Find out what’s going on in Guelph, the birthplace of topfree Ontario.

Calendar Girl Blog: Blog Hole

Funny boy that Gareth Lind. To see what the Breast of Canada designer has to say about blog holes, check out his blogs latest post here.

Calendar Girl laughed. Outloud.

Calendar Girl


Tags: Calendar Girl Blog, calendar girl blog, Breast of Canada Calendar, Sue Richards, middle of normal. Guelph, weltschmerz, blogher, funny. Pleeeeze order a Breast of Canada today. Find out what’s going on in Guelph, the birthplace of topfree Ontario.

Calendar Girl Blog: Elkit

T, originally uploaded by elkit.

I met Elkit at Woolfcamp, the post BlogHer unconference I just attended in Redwood City, California. Sitting in blogger Badgermama's living room, with everyone tapped into her wireless network, each of us balanced our laptops on our knees. We cruised each other’s blogs and Flickr sites, discussed the previous two days of Blogher conference experiences while posting our thoughts and impressions on the spot to the Woolfcamp blog.

This friend is 'Live friggin’ Blogging'.

After introducing myself in the circle-go-around, an email arrived in my inbox. Someone had just purchased me a PRO upgrade to my Flickr account. Surprised and somewhat shocked I clicked on the link to find out who my benevolent photo patron was. Elkit's photo appeared.

Unsure of the appropriate 'wired' way to reply, I waited. Eventually the conversation came around to the importance of recognizing 'good things that happen'.

"I've just experienced a 'good thing", I announced to the group. "Someone in this room just purchased me a Pro Account on Flickr".

Elkit looked over at me from the opposite side of the room and smiled. "You need to take more photos", she responded.

Calendar Girl has taken Elkit's suggestion to heart. Although always in possession of a camera, Calendar Girl has never tried to master the process of working the device. Thanks to this random act of kindness, she's much more motivated to learn.

Calendar Girl

Tags: Calendar Girl Blog, calendar girl blog, Breast of Canada Calendar, Sue Richards, middle of normal. Guelph, Woolfcamp, blogher, Women. Pleeeeze order a Breast of Canada today. Find out what’s going on in Guelph, the birthplace of topfree Ontario.

Calendar Girl Blog: B is for BlogHer

B for BlogHer, originally uploaded by Sue Richards.

Perhaps you see a bunny when you look at this photo. I see the letter b.

My blogging gloves made the trip to BlogHer and saw some action at Friday nights cocktail party. Here I am making an effort to start a 'secret sign' so that blogHERS everywhere would be able to identify each other anywhere, anytime with the flip of their fingers.

Calendar Girl

Tags: Calendar Girl Blog, calendar girl blog, Breast of Canada Calendar, Sue Richards, middle of normal. Guelph, pinkadelic, blogher, Women. Pleeeeze order a Breast of Canada today. Find out what’s going on in Guelph, the birthplace of topfree Ontario.

Calendar Girl Blog: New Breast Ambassadors

I've returned from the high adventure of California Dreamin with a fine slew of new Breast Ambassadors. These cool cats crossed my path while at BlogHer, Woolfcamp and San Luis Obispo. If memory and all the business cards with my chicken scratch on them serve to be remotely accurate, each of these folks have a 2007 calendar. Most of them took the Breast Ambassador pledge to Go Forth And Multiply. And I'm hoping some of them will tell their readers about Breast of Canada sometime during the upcoming breast season. Heck, they might even place one of our purdy banners on their blogs.

Calendar Girl invites you to check out these 'breast friendly' bloggers. Leave them comments. And please tell them Calendar Girl sent you.

Calendar Girl

For your general interest, I'm regurgitating the BlogHer experience on My Menopause Blog too.


Tags: Calendar Girl Blog, calendar girl blog, Breast of Canada Calendar, Sue Richards, middle of normal. Guelph, pinkadelic, blogher, Women. Pleeeeze order a Breast of Canada today. Find out what’s going on in Guelph, the birthplace of topfree Ontario.

Calendar Girl Blog: Marketing

Bubble gum alley is just that. This remarkably long narrow alleyway, leading off of the main drag in San Luis Obispo, was covered in chewed gum wads as high and low as the arm could reach. Grossly fascinating, my bloggy pal and I boldly 'borrowed' freshly chewed gum from two gals so that we could insert a Breast of Canada card onto the sticky landscape.

Calendar Girl enjoys the creative challenge of Guerrilla marketing. Even better when done in the company of a fellow Guerrilla marketing lover.

Calendar Girl


Tags: Calendar Girl Blog, calendar girl blog, Breast of Canada Calendar, Sue Richards, middle of normal. Guelph, pinkadelic, Bubble Gum Alley, Women. Order a Breast of Canada today. Find out what’s going on in Guelph, the birthplace of topfree Ontario.

Calendar Girl Blog: California Dreamin'

Calendar Girl is getting back in the swing of life here in Not-California. She hopes you understand the challenge of transitioning from zooming around in a sporty yellow car, eating out everyday and generally behaving like a movie star to fending for herself, driving her millions-like-it 1995 Saturn and wading through a caseful of new blogging information.

Until Calendar Girl is confident that her brain will not explode, expect a stream of photos to appear here. Once she is back on firm Guelph-reality ground, her typical pithy moans will resume.

Calendar Girl


Tags: Calendar Girl Blog, calendar girl blog, Breast of Canada Calendar, Sue Richards, middle of normal. Guelph, blogher, bloghercon, Women. Order a Breast of Canada today. Find out what’s going on in Guelph, the birthplace of topfree Ontario.

Calendar Girl Blog: Guerrilla Marketing

Despite what you might think, given the silence of my blogs, I have not been captured by crazed bloggers and forced into some form of sex-blog slavery. Rather, I am quietly going about my business, spreading the good vibe of Breast of Canada up and down the California Coast and having a none wired, live experience.

Eventually this rock and roll lifestyle will come to an end and I will find my way back to the bloggers way of being. Then I will regale you with rich stories of intrigue that will make your baby toe cry out and your palms drip with salty sweat.

But before I disappear into the haze of 'very good for me happy times' I must tell you one little trick I am playing.

Here you will see one of my subversive methods of marketing. Thanks to my menopause, my bladder requires regular washroom visits. Being inclined to prefer 'feeding more than one bird with each seed', I do my um....business..... then carefully and artistically place my adorable wee cards just so in an obvious spot. A good detective would have little trouble following my trail along the coast of Cally-forn-I-eh. Heck a lame dick with poor vision would find me easy to track.

This is an actual example of 'Calendar Girl Guerrilla Marketing 101'. Please meet the Ladies Room at Fat Cats Cafe on Avila Beach. Calendar Girl enjoyed one bigger than life breakfast with her bloggy pals while Ms. Pacific Ocean waved in the background and Sea Lions barked hello.

Calendar Girl

Tags: Calendar Girl Blog, calendar girl blog, Breast of Canada Calendar, Sue Richards, middle of normal. Guelph, blogher, bloghercon, Women. Order a Breast of Canada today.