Home again!

Yes indeed, it is 4:43am on new Year's Eve and I'm still awake. I got home around 12:30 and shot the shit with Jenn for a while before she went to bed and I got into the shower. The thing about my grandparents' house is that they just have a hand-held shower head in the bathtub and that's a big pain because in order to rinse out your hair really well you need to use both hands and holding the sprayer makes that difficult for those of us with only 2 hands and no opposable thumbs on our feet. My point is, home = good.

The bus ride was sooooo long - about 15 hours total - but it was alright. I had a single-serving friend from St. Stephen, NB to Moncton, a dude who told me a bunch of crazy drunken stories. Then after that I needed rest and quiet time and the person who sat next to me had headphones on so it worked out perfectly...like the universe was conspiring to make the trip as painless as possible. But I really need to get some sleep now, the problem is I have to wait for my hair to dry so that I don't sleep on it and make it go..you know...all funny. And my shiitake log will be occupying the bathtub for 24 hours, starting after jenn's morning shower, so I need it to look good at least until that's all done.

Hair=almost dry. Nighty-night.

First, let me say...

...happy holidays, whatever you celebrate. I come from a Christmas family myself, but I'm also a Solstice girl. Less pressure and materialism, and no I'm not opposed to people singing religious Christmas carols or putting up creches - although from the conversation around here you'd swear that every non-conservative had that as their hidden agenda, the "War on Christmas" and all that - but why not be a little more inclusive, y'know? Who does it hurt? I read in the paper here the other day that a bunch of Republican supporters threw out their cards from the president because he went with the "Happy Holidays" instead of "merry Christmas" message on the inside. And yet it's the liberals (small-l)who are intolerant...figure that one out. Anyway.

We had a nice Christmas here - great food, lots of laughter - I can't complain. And some members of my family have just amazing taste in gifts. I got a Betty Boop calendar from my aunt Dottie, an alarm clock/radio that can wake you up to the sound of the ocean/rain/rainforest/etc from Dad, and a shiitake log from my cousin Emily. that's right. A log on which you grow shiitake mushrooms. My Em does all her Christmas shopping at Red Envelope and picks out the neatest stuff.

I made Portobello Wellington for dinner and it was sooo good. I'm still stuffed nearly 6 hours later. Oh and I sprained the middle finger on my left hand catching a football.

Adam had Christmas dinner with my Mom's side of the family - all 31 relatives and significant others who currently happen to be in Nova Scotia - and Mom says he handled it pretty well. I'll have to do something nice for him when I get back! Until then, he has Mom's fudge and cookies.

Anyway enjoy yourselves, folks, and I'll be home soon enough. Julie: see my response to your last comment!

I belong in London - Julie, you should take me!

You Belong in London

A little old fashioned, and a little modern. A little traditional, and a little bit punk rock. A unique woman like you needs a city that offers everything. No wonder you and London will get along so well.

What City Do You Belong In?

Y'all should see the tree here. It's a retailer's wet dream.

The rest of the family arrives today, which I'm loking forward to as it will shake up the routine around here and hopefully cheer Dad up. He's been keeping to himself a lot since we got here, and my social skills are not evolved to the level where I can easily engage people in conversation on uncomfortable issues. It's also scary to me, being at the point in my life where I'm working towards having some kind of stability in my life, to see that that stability is far from guaranteed - even brains and a great sense of humour can't keep it at bay.

Intestingly, I just finished reading The Alchemist which is a lovely book about finding one's destiny and knowing when to rest and when to act or change. Alhough I found the story itself male-centric, the message was universal, at least to anyone who believes in unknown forces outside themself that act upon their lives. It fits very well with my pantheism and I've started looking at the events around me in a different way because of it.

Unfortunately, I've almost blown through all of my reading for this trip and i need to take a trip to a bookstore soon to restock. I think I'll pick up something by Garcia Marquez since I've been dying to read some of his work ever since my Spanish prof Florencia made such a big deal about him this semester.

I now have plans for New Years: I'm going to see Joel Plaskett with Jenny (not the roommate, a different Jenny) at the Marquee. She's a great concert buddy, as I learned when we went to see Hawksley during the Halifax Pop Explosion. I miss everybody in Halifax and I'll for sure be making some phone calls once I get back.

Apparently

...it's evil for the Democrats to attach anti-torture legislation to a military spending bill but perfectly respectable for the Republicans to attach legislation allowing drilling in the Alaskan National Wildlife Refuge to one - and shameful, at that, for the Democrats to filibuster said bill due to their opposition to the ANWR stuff tagged onto it.

At least, that's what I got from my good buddy Rush on his radio show today...

If there is a God, she's testing me.

Article

On the door of a State Farm office in Portland:

"Unaccompanied children will be given an espresso and a free puppy."

On a radio ad for a fur store:

"Life's to short to go without a mink!"

I feel like I'm in a foreign country...oh wait.

So far, no Fox News...

...but left-wing news is always welcome. Hipster in Training is way ahead of the game with the article on how polar bears are drowning because of climate change so thanks for that!

Well after a looong bus ride I got to sleep in this morning for a good long time and then go shopping for fun hippie food. Clif and Luna bars are deliciously cheap here, and I found soy chorizo sausage and vegan hemp brownie mix (any more hippie and it'd be illegal). Then my great aunt and uncle came over and reminisced for a few hours and talked politics a bit - mostly bashing Hilary Clinton so I easily exempted myself from the conversation by appealing to my Canadian-ness.

My grandfather spent about an hour tonight telling me stories from his time in the army, which is intersting because he never used to talk about it much - to anybody, apparently - but the stories are coming more and more often these days. Maybe his health scare earlier this year made him decide to tell his stories while he still can.

Anyway, it's off to bed with me...I'm going shopping at 11 tomorrow.

Finished my last essay this morning. It's just so wonderful to have the weight of the semester lifted off my shoulders, even for a little while. Adam made me scrambled tofu for breakfast and we watched the end of The Bird Cage. I ran all over Sackville this afternoon and now I'm procrastinating the dishes. Seriously, this place is a fucking mess, what with me writing exams and Jenn working 48+ hour weeks. But, well...the water's too hot. And...I have to...let it cool down...

It's not as if I didn't have anything to do...I have to pack and make my lunch (and dinner and snacks) for the bus ride tomorrow, and I have two Christmas parties I'm supposed to go to. So often I'd go about all that stuff just because I said I would, but right now I really need some Me Time. The weather out there is miserable and Metro Transit is being slow and wanker-y so I might decide to socialize later or I might just stay in and pack, clean and read a book. Over the next two weeks I'll probably come to miss my friends but why force myself now to do things I don't want to do? I'm on vacation, fools!

I'm frustrated with the lack of updating and commening that is going on in my blog universe. Don't you people realize that this is an important source of procrastination for me? Especially those who are DONE THE SEMESTER - you know who you are. Update! Daily! I demand it...

One more exam and that &!#@~ paper left to do.

Oh, for a stiff drink. That one there is compliments of Natalie Dee, by the way. She rocks.

So Jenn has bought some space-age water fountain drinking dome thingy for the cat. Problem is, he doesn't seem to have any interest in it...she swears he was all over it before. I say she's a crazy person. Over and out.

On art appreciation and the horrors of studentdom

Ok first of all, a curse on my computer, or on blogger, or on whatever is preventing my fantoga picture from uploading.

So, I definitely modeled nude today. It was so cool, I sat around and got a picture painted of me and drank tea and ate oranges and then after three hours I got paid good money for it all.

The funniest thing is that most women would freak out if they came home and their husband was hanging out with a naked twenty-something. His wife, on the other hand, came into the studio to chat, critiqued the painting, complimented my figure and tried to feed me cookies. I love this job!

Now I'm home and trying to get into the mood to study. It's not happening...I just can't wait for this semester to be over. Then I can relax and watch lots of Fox News. On second thought...

In precisely two weeks I will have finished the semester and be in Maine - not just regular Maine, but the Fox News capitol of Maine. So between 17 and 30 December, if anyone would like to email me or post anything left-wing or Stephen Harper's newest ludicrous comment, that would be warmly welcomed.

Speaking of Harper, interesting news item from a few days ago...one of his election platforms is to roll back the GST. Apparently it's a brilliant campaign strategy. Economists are appalled: cutting down a consumption-based tax aparently is bad for the economy, instead they should apparently be lowering income taxes to encourage people to earn more. I'm ambivalent about this point (let it be known that I consider conventional economics to be pretty idiotic in general - I'm more of a Genuine Progress Index kind of girl), and in fact surprised that Harper would be intorducing such a seemingly left-wing measure. Regressive taxes like the GST hit lower-income earners harder than higher-income ones, as opposed to progressive taxes like income tax which is more equitable. However, the ecologist in mke is saying "NO! Don't make mindless consumption cheaper!" Anyway Dave mentioned something that I never thought of before: the opinion that resource-consuming goods should be taxed but services shouldn't. I think that would be a good happy medium for my sensibilities: lower the (regressive) tax on services, which don't inherently involve ripping resources out of the planet, and keep the tax on resource consumption. It's not perfect, obviously, but what is? Besides Better Pecan Tofutti, that is. MMMMM...

OK, papers to write now about Aboriginal political representation in Canada, and effective family planning provision worldwide.

Where's the quidditch?!

Mmm, mindless blogging after a long night of the 5-page essay from Hades...

So I was researching SDS (Students for a Democratic Society, a totally bid student movement organization in the 60s) and somewhere, somebody mentioned the Free University Movement. We have a Free School in Halifax but the time and location are inconvenient and I never have any idea what's going on, or when. But at Williams College they have Free University during their Winter Study (the extra mini-semester between Fall and Spring Semester - basically, for the month of January they do an independednt study or whatever floats their boat).

So people who know about fun stuff like astrology or skateboarding or UFOs or stickin' it to the Man put on free courses and you can sign up for them and learn about fun stuff. For free. I think the people teaching the courses get credit for them or something, but Keith showed me the listing of courses when I was down there last winter and the idea of it just rocked my world. I don't have time to push for it at the Mount but maybe that'sll be my project in law school (haha like I'll have time for anything then).

Know what else rocks this girl's world? The worl "loquatious." Hermione Granger is my hero. And the people who produced The Goblet of Fire would also be my heroes IF they had tacked 3 more minutes onto the running time of the movie to actually insert jsut a little bit of quidditch into the QUIDDITCH WORLD CUP SCENE. Because without seeing Viktor Krum actually play, I found it very difficult to buy everybody's fascination with him. Just because a character SAYS that he's cool doesn't make it so. Show me the damn quidditch!!!

What about the voice of Geddy Lee? How did it get so high?

There's a tribute to The Pixies and Pavement at the Attic tonight. Which is awesome, I love Pavement and I wish I could go. But it seems to me a very odd thing to do a tribute to bands that so many people have never heard of. Tributes are usually for legends: Pink Floyd, Zepelin, the Stones...and the Pixies and Pavement? Oh well it's cool.

So I presented my funding proposal to Society Affairs today and they're generously provinding nearly a third of the funding for twelve of us to go to Montreal to do Poli-Sci nerdy things and be all chill in Montreal. And that'll be awesome because our first night there is TOTALLY by birthday. So having that over with and that funding secured is a huge weight off a lot of our backs. Now I can focus some more on essays (mountains of 'em) and, more immediately, FANTOGA!!!!

If anybody has ideas about a possibility for a prize for the best toga, please let me know. I'm trying to think of something iexpensive, fun, toga-related and not made by little children in Bangladesh.

And of course, I expect everyone to be at the party in your best sheets!

Curses! My brain is so very mushy...I have this weekend to get a million things done, a 10-page collaborative essay not the least among them. I'm currently in the Cornerstore, 3.5 hours through a 9.2-hour shift and my cognitive functions are no longer functioning. Perhaps i need coffee. Or, as is more likely the case, that would only make me feel duller.

The Globe and Mail from Wednesday-ish is currently splayed across my floor...I bought it to read about the results of the Gomery Report but my progress has so far been agonizingly slow. The Coles-notes version, as far as I can tell, is: Chretien is partially responsible for keeping control of the program within the PMO, which was not the proper procedure, but now Chretien's threatening to appeal that in court to clear his name, and Martin's been absolved of all responsibility because there's no evidence saying that he knew anything about how the money was being spent (or misspent). If I'd been following the procedures more closely and if my brain weren't feeling so gelationous I might feel like commenting on that. As it stands, however, I'm just trying to kill time without actually engaging any grey matter.

In fluffier news, my room just got 34.6% prettier yesterday...Bruno gave me a nicee poster in exchange for me helping him out with his anti-clearcutting campaign, so now there's something on my walls besides a calendar.

Baby I'm Back

Holy month batman. I'm sort of moved in...at the very least I have my bed, and a few of my posters are up in the apartment. Still using Jenn's computer but that's a-ok because it's way better than mine.

So I went to the Hawksley concert at the Marquee on the 14th...Adam got Jenny and I on the guest list so we got to pretend that we were all cool and such. Andthat man is SEXY live. CDs do not do him justice. Jenny put it best when we were leaving the Marquee and she said, "Is it wrong that I have the overwhelming urge to touch myself right now?" The moral of the story is, Hawksley is sexy.

School is wow...I stayed up until 7 this morning writing a take-home midterm while the cat attacked my feet through the quilt. Then this morning he jumped on my head. That is one crazy animal. But anyway. You know you should have worn makeup when the person stting next to you in class says "you look like you were up late writing this." Wow thanks dude.

Anyway...out tonight for Angie's birthday...oops I mean the STAFF SOCIAL...Angelah has decided that she's not having any more birthdays. I think she's being silly.

Anyhoo, it's off to Vinnie's I go. After my nap. Whee!

Eeshwow

So I'm...KIND OF moved in to the new place. My bed is still in Sackville along with the rest of my furniture, and my mattress has yet to be purchased...but that's ok, I have my clothes and lots of food and THE PLACE TO MYSELF FOR THE WEEKEND!!! Haha if only I had time to do somehting other than study and make stuffing and mushroom gravy...

Stay tuned for a housewarming party, possibly of the FANTOGA variety - that's right, Fantasia and (optional) toga-wearing. Just because we can. Anyway, I have nothing interesting to say today. Ciao.

Pictures!

And here, my friends, are some more of my summer pictures...arranged in an appallingly bad manner on a ridiculously simplistic site. I need help.

Pictures

The first of this summer's photos

This is the only one that survived from the first roll of film...most of the pictures on in were Mom's, and all but one of mine failed to expose properly. Curses. But on Tuesday i'm getting two more rolls so I'll post more very shortly. And someday i'll have time to surf so that I can update the fun stuff on my sidebar. Someday...

Holy horseshit, Batman

So I was reading my complimentary copy of the Globe and Mail yesterday, and it seems that in the midst of this catastrophe in Louisiana and Mississippi, Congress chose to spend their time passing a bill that will make it mandatory for anyone crossing the US/Canada border into the States will require a passport to get through. Not only will this hurt Canada's economy (even more than softwood lumber, "mad cow" and whatever other violations of NAFTA they happen to commit against us) because the 77% of Americans who don't have passports will forgo their visits to Canada for fear of not getting back into their own country, but GET A LIFE PEOPLE THERE ARE MORE PRESSING CONCERNS! You can bet that anybody planning another attack to compare to 9/11 could come up with another, less predictable way to do it than crossing the Canadian border - that's already been done. And meanwhile, Katrina and the aftermath are expected to take upwards of ten thousand lives - that's more than three times the deaths from 9/11. How's that for priorities. The Bush administration is under fire for their slow reaction to the disaster, even though they knew it was coming...not to mention the fact that, according to Bruce Wark in this week's Coast editorial, they cut New Orlean's flood control funding by nearly half, allowed more destruction of wetlands necessary to control stuff like that (for a somewaht more detailed explanation of the role of wetlands in hurricane and flood control, start with Vandana Shiva's Water Wars) and refused to join the world's efforts (i.e. Kyoto) to curb global climate change, which many experts say could have been a significant factor in this and other disasters.

And one more thing. If you're going to actively work to prevent access to birth control and abortions, you're going to have to deal with a burgeoning population. And all those people are gonna have to go somewhere...for example, into cities that are well below sea level and are probably vulnerable settlements. And if people have to go there, then you need to look after them. But obviously that hasn't occurred to the fundamentalists bigwigs in Washington. The world is just fucking insane, if you ask me.

Going to bed now. it's already past my bedtime, so if this rant makes considerably less sense than I intended, that's why.

Not rich, but cultured

A most excellent weekend, if I do say so myself. I saw my Dad and baby sister on Saturday which i don't get to do nearly often enough, and then, to offset the silliness of being tagged with Winnie the Pooh nickname, went to Matt's going-away party that night. We all sat around at the Tribeca being trendy-ish and talking about intellectual things and drinking obscure brands of beer and then we all left at midnight to go home and sleep because we're just that cool.

Yesterday JennJenn and Lisa and Marky and Sean and Mark and Adam and I went to see Pericles at Shakespeare By the Sea...we were late because it takes longer to walk to the park from Spring Garden than a map would have you believe, but oh well. We saw most of it and it was hella fun. I'm going to miss these random adventures when school starts up again!

Melanie's in town for a week and somehow I need to get in touch with her because we're scheduled for a "group hang," if you will, with a bunch of my SU friends etc.

Anyway I suppose I should pretend to do my job. more later, when I encounter something new and interesting.

It's not the heat, it's the monotony

I've been reading abouta book a day for the past few days. I'm almost ready for school to start, just to break the monotony. Almost. The catch is that once school starts I shall once again become a slave to my own keenerness. And that's just a little stressful.

Anyway, yesterday I learned how to make a calendula salve, becuase we got a workshop on healing herbs for the Urban garden Mentors program. And I gave it to my brother because he's having a reaction to some medication he was taking and just completely broke into hives. It's a pretty shitty deal for him.

So I was all happy that I made a salve and it smelled nice and I got some zicchinis from our UGM garden so I went over to Adam's (taking advantage of my free time while I still have it) and made Mexican-y zucchini wraps because I'm one of those hopeless nurturing types and I like to make sure that he gets at least one nutritious meal a day...

Then at the bus stop to go home I saw a little cat trying to cross the road. It tried once, hesitated on the centre line, went back to the side of the road and started running off, and I thought ok good, it'll be safe. But then it tried again...and didn't make it. I saw the cat, saw the car, saw what was going to happen, hoped like hell that I was wrong...and then heard that unmistakeable "thud." Adam covered my ears and hid my face. I had to go and see if it was maybe still alive, but it was nowhere to be seen so I have to assume thatit wasn't. I thought about K.C. and about my cat Nigel who was hit by a car when I was a kid, and I wanted to cry. I thought about it all the way home on the bus and by the time I got to Sackville I thought I was going to be sick. Poor kitty.

Silly Email Quiz!

I don't know about anybody else but these are a total guilty pleasure for me. However, to avoid clogging my friends' emails with unwanted mail, I'll post it here so you can read it if you want to and ignore it if you don't.

WHAT ARE YOU READING?
”A Room of One’s Own” by Virginia Woolf

WHAT'S ON YOUR MOUSE PAD?
Pinky & the Brain

WHAT'S YOUR FAVOURITE BOARD GAME?
Risk!

FAVOURITE MAGAZINE?
Ready Made – how to make lots of random stuff from random stuff, like lightswitch plates from beer cans

BABIES?
How did this question get in here? Was there a mistake? I’m confused…

FAVOURITE SOUND?
Lapping waves

WORST FEELING IN THE WORLD?
Hangover

FIRST THING YOU THINK OF IN THE MORNING?
I wonder if I could get away with just staying in bed?

HOW MANY RINGS BEFORE YOU ANSWER THE PHONE
3ish

FUTURE CHILD'S NAME
Dylan and Adrianne. I’m not having any more than 2! Although if I happen to have either 2 girls or 2 boys things might get a little more complicated…

WHAT IS MOST IMPORTANT IN LIFE?
Having faith in something, whatever it happens to be, and making the world a little better than it was before you arrived.

IF YOU COULD PLAY AN INSTRUMENT, WHAT WOULD IT BE?
Bass guitar. For some reason I just think they’re really hot.

DO YOU LIKE TO DRIVE FAST?
I probably would like to if I could drive…but I probably wouldn’t anyway.

DO YOU SLEEP WITH A STUFFED ANIMAL?
Sometimes, but Jeremiah the Bullfrog is currently in the wash.

WHAT TYPE WAS YOUR FIRST CAR?
Hopefully it will be a Smartcar convertible

WISH YOU COULD GO BACK IN TIME AND TALK TO?
Dr. Bronner (as in, the Moral ABC’s, One-God-Faith soap guy!)

FAVOURITE ALCOHOLIC DRINK?
Dark beer - St. Ambroise, or Horsepower

WHAT'S IN THE TRUNK OF YOUR CAR?
A body.

DO YOU EAT THE STEMS OF BROCCOLI?
Pshhh yeah, who doesn’t?

IF YOU COULD HAVE ANY JOB YOU WANTED WHAT WOULD IT BE?
Travelling the world to buy stuff to sell at a cool imports store

EVER BEEN IN LOVE?
"The Greatest thing you'll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return." Yeah, I've been there.

IS THE GLASS HALF EMPTY OR HALF FULL?
I consider myself lucky to even have a glass with stuff in it

DO YOU TYPE WITH YOUR FINGERS ON THE RIGHT KEYS?
og coyrse!

WHAT'S UNDER YOUR BED?
Dust bunnies and bobby pins

WHAT'S YOUR FAVOURITE NUMBER?
8. It’s just the random number that I usually pick when I need to pick a random number.

WHAT IS YOUR FAVOURITE SPORT TO WATCH?
Power Cheerleading

IF YOU COULD BUILD A HOUSE ANYWHERE WHERE WOULD IT BE?
In the middle of Manuel Antonio National Park in Costa Rica – away from the tourists!

BEACH, MOUNTAINS OR CITY?
Beach

TECHNOLOGY OR ART?
technology hates me so I’m going with art

COMEDY OR HORROR?
COMEDY

FAVOURITE TIME OF DAY?
Lunchtime

THE LAST CD YOU BOUGHT?
Lover/Fighter – Hawksley Workman

LISTEN TO THE RADIO?
Usually Q104, although sometimes I just have to turn it off. BagelRadio (Internet) is great when I’m at home and actually have speakers coming off my computer.

WHERE'S YOUR FAVOURITE PLACE TO BE?
Bed

FAVOURITE PLACE TO BE MASSAGED?
On my neck – it’s where I carry my tension, apparently

WHAT'S MOST IMPORTANT, STRONG IN MIND OR STRONG IN BODY?
If you’re strong in mind, theoretically you’d have the discipline to go to the gym and work out. So I’ll go with that

WHAT TIME DO YOU WAKE UP IN THE MORNING?
Usually 7, although I’ll take any excuse to sleep in

DO YOU BELIEVE IN AN AFTERLIFE?
In some form, yes

WHAT IS YOUR FAVOURITE SEASON
Summer

IF YOU COULD HAVE ONE SUPER POWER, WHAT WOULD IT BE?
The whole Elastigirl schtick

WHICH DO YOU PREFER SUSHI OR HAMBURGER?
Sushi with no fish

IF YOU HAVE A TATTOO, WHAT IS IT?
A faerie silhouette on my lower back

WHAT IS YOUR FAVOURITE DAY
The day after exams

WHAT IS YOUR FAVOURITE CARTOON?
The Strawberry Pancake guy

WHAT IS YOUR FAVOURITE MEAL?
the one that tastes the best

IF YOU COULD TAKE A VACATION ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD WHERE WOULD IT BE?
If we’re talking vacatiosn as in, relaxing not adventuring, then the Greek Islands. If we’re talking adventure then India.

DO YOU HAVE PETS?
Not until either my parents get another dog or I move in with JennJenn and K.C.

BAM!!! Did you have fun? I know I did.

ummmmm...

Can somebody tell me how to post pictures? I am useless and proud.

Listening to Kenney's music

It's another hot one in the C-Store, and I'm eatinh a whole-wheat multi-grain bagel and listening to the CDs that the Students' Union general manager left here. Kenney's one of those really interesting people to talk to...you know the type. he has something like 4 degrees and one of them is in Shakespeare or something like that, and he was involved in the Toronto theatre scene and he writes plays and walks around singing along with the singing/dancing Shakira inside his head. So I'm listening to some CD called "God Made Me Funky." The best way I can describe it is disco hip-hop. It's kind of fun.

So on Saturday I went to a BEAUTIFUL wedding at the Acadia University Botanical Gardens and then woke up around noon on Sunday morning with a vicious headache, most likely a combination of too much sun and too much wine. But somehow, JennJenn convinced me to go to the beach and what do you know, my headache went away. We did a little swimming and mostly sat on the beach tanning (I know, I'm SUCH a girl) and eating lots of junk food. Well, tortillas and salsa and peanuts and crackers and Nibs and carbonated fruit juice on my part. But that counts because the people around me were eating REAL junk food. Then we went to the Buskers and instead of actually watching any buskers we shopped for jewelry at the random Buskerfest vendors and ate cotton candy and sat around the Grand Parade looking at the trees and stars.

Such weekends make for rough Mondays. Even more so when you have to put a convenience store BACK TOGETHER after other people have been painting it. So I was cranky. Tired and cranky and hot and Monday-ish. But then Adam came to see me because that's what awesome boyfriends do. We had planned an LSATs-and-Buskerfest date but it turned into a nap-and-LSATs date because we were both exhausted and he wouldn't let me get out of studying. At least one of us is responsible.

Anyway I now need to recruit for my mid-week pub crawl. My cousin Nick from Calgary leaves on Thursday and is staying at our house on Wednesday night so I've been charged with the responsibility of making sure he has a fun night downtown. Unfortunately everybody has to work and shit so it's not turning out to be a big group. But, here's hoping that it'll work out...

long-awaited update

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't August supposed to be all laid-back and stuff? Because here I'm looking around and thinking HOLY SHIT I HAVE SO MUCH TO DO and it's bothering me. Bah!

Ah well, I got to Mahone Bay last weekend to do some sailing and take trips to the beach and spend time with my cousin from Calgary so it works out. Now I'm back in the Cornerstore with the incompetent suppliers and the humidity and oh God, help me find the strength to resist that jar of frosting.

So on the to-do list: write those 3 articles for the Mount paper, get my shit together for CPSSA, get my driver's licence and sequester myself in my bedroom until I'm ready for the LSATs. And work and eat and occasionally sleep and maybe even catch a few episodes of the Daily Show or even (gasp!) have a social life. It's not gonna happen. I'd have to be superwoman. And I'm not. I'm just Cornerstoregirl. My superpowers include keeping my temper when Scotsburn messes up our order every week, running with world using nothing but my wits and a cell phone, getting free drinks at bars for doing absolutely nothing and riding the bus 4 times a day withoug going mad. Most excellent skills, to be sure, but sleep is definitely beyond my capabilities.

Alex's day

Smack alarm. Roll over. Go back to sleep. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Drag ass out of bed and to the Mount. Eat bagel. Make coffee. Read the Coast. Place a Scotsburn order. Pray taht they don't fuck it up again this week. Sell some coffee, pop, coffee, pop, Fudgee-os. Work on articles for Mount paper. Chat with Scott and that dude that I chat with every Monday and Friday (shit, what's his NAME??). Eat some curry that Angelah brought me (mmmm). Make plans for tonight. Discuss with Keith how bad we've both been about keeping in touch with people from Costa Rica. Email Alexandra and pretend that I've redeemed myself. Sympathise with people who come in and complain about being tired and/or hot. Notice that the freezer is no longer functioning (again). Call the manager. Consider drowning my sorrows in another (deeply satisfying) Simcity 3000 session. Realize anew what a dork I am (see the official taxonomy of misfits, below). And all before 2:30pm.

Bah.

The Misfit Taxonomy

Well, after much debate over our respective labelling systems, Mark and I have finally collaborated on the Taxonomy of Misfits (Official Draft).

Any comments or suggestions are always welcome; just post it here, or email me!

For future reference: I see myself as a dork (specifically keener) and an ecogeek. That is, of course, open to debate, but don't be mean.

In other news, I finally got my hands on a copy of HBP. have i emntioned this before? Anyway, work was slow yesterday, and as a result I am half-way through. For the record, Harry Potter's got the magic stick.

I went to yet another barbecue yesterday. Which gave Kenney a chance to see Adam for the first time in many moons, so maybe Kenney will no longer feel the need to come up with excuses to ask me about Adam. Oh my - what will he and I talk about now?

The important news learned from that experience is that Tofutti Coffee Break Treats are really good. They kind of taste butterscotch-y with a coffee aftertaste. And they're frozen, creamy, vegan-y goodness!

Then proceeded to Allan's for a small boozy gathering, where Allan's new girl inquired whether she had slept with me before. Just a typical Allan's-apartment shindig.

STIIIIICKEEEEE!!!!!

The Cornerstore has no air conditioning. Have I mentioned this before? Just a bunch of stupid fridges that produce extra heat. Good thing my job doesn't require me to expend energy.

So Marky declined to lend me his copy of HP & the Half Blood Prince...seems he wants to read it over again, taking longer than 24 hours this time, so that he can truly appreciate it. I think he's just being selfish. But my consolation prize was that since I was over at the apartment to beg for it anyway, Sean lent me Wolves of the Calla (Stephen King) and I'm happy. I have somewhat of an unhealthy fascination with those books...it bothers me to have to take more than one sitting to read them. Thus I am quite tired this morning. And still not even close to finished the book.

No "hard-hitting political commentary" today. Just a comment on the legalisation of same-sex marriage in Canada: about bloody time.

Hippie-hippie Shake

And what I mean by that, is that my brain feels like it's gone through a blender. It's currently 11:37 am and the Cornerstore is bloody hot. I usually like the heat but this is ridiculous. Add to that the fact that I'm still sleep-deprived and it makes me a very cranky girl. Plus I'm bored because I don't have any attention span to keep me occupied with one task for any appreciable amount of time. And the shelf under the counter that usually serves as a footrest is borken and all the little paper bags keep spilling all over the floor whenever I absentmindedly try to rest my foot.

Although I didn't get the editor job, I've decided that I'm going to be a superkeener in terms of contributing to it. It's gonna kick ass and some of the credit is going to me. The bonus is that I can let my contribution slack when the pressure's on...whereas if I had gotten the job, that option would not have been available to me. Whee! Plus, B has expressed disdain and skepticism about the prospects of the new Mount paper so I'm determined to prove him wrong.

Allergyism

Yeah, I'm allergic to dust in a big way. And we just had a yard sale.

There's nothing like a good yard sale to make one reflect on how ludicrously materialistic our culture is (what, do you expect ME to NOT comment on this?). Impulse purchases, useless gifts that nobody really likes or wants but that are given just because gifts are expected, and then kept around unused for years because figts are not supposed to be sold or re-gifted...stuff that we keep around "just in case" because we're terrified of someday not having enough. Then when we're tripping over all our junk because we've run out of places to put it, we stick a 25-cent price tag on it and somebody buys it so that it can collect dust in their basement. It's fascinating, really.

Admittedly, I'm more anti-consumerist in theory than in practice. I just skip the plastic junk and electronics and consider myself better than other people. I'm working on that one. But today I resisted the temptation to visit the other yard-sale tables on my street and I'm proud of myself. No more junk! Well, Manda gave me a movie. But it's William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. I swear, I'm over Leonardo DiCaprio (who, interestingly enough, looks exactly like Billy H on the movie cover). But I am eternally in love with the work of Baz Luhrman.

Anyway, I'm off to partake of some fresh air that will hopefully relieve the burning in my eyes.

"Paris Keen for Keenan"

In case you live under a rock and haven't heard, the French recently created a monument to my awesomeness. It kicks the Louvre Pyramid's pansy butt.




In other news:

Price-Gunning Cashier Discovers Mysterious Rise in Price of Nerds

Universit Brochure Arrives from Auckland

Bad Singers Rock Sidelines Tonight

Pod Life

Did you exchange a walk-on part in the war for a leading role in a cage?

Blah. Maybe it's due to being somewhat sleep-deprived for nearly a week now, but between that, and being confined to MSVU-home-Adam's place (just down the street from MSVU)-the bus between home and MSVU, I feel kind of cut off from the rest of the world at the moment. I'm used to doing Sierra Club stuff and just generally being all over the place and engaged in what's going on in the world, but lately I haven't been so I feel kind of trapped. Worst feeling ever. But tonight I'm going to bed early and Tuesday night I'm going (woot woot! camping so I should get over it soon enough.

And right now? I'm learning Greek!

Rant

As soon as I published my post yesterday I heard about the bombings in London. Since then I've heard plenty of comspiracy theories...whoever did it, and for whatever reason, it's absolutely disgusting that innocent people are killed, and that innocent families are destroyed as a result, to advance somebody's political agenda.

My condolences go out to everyone whose lives were affected by this latest event. But while everybody's watching out for news on this latest attack, attention is being diverted once again from poverty in Africa...and poverty in the rest of the world for that matter...and a whole bunch of things that also really matter and are on a much huger scale and can be HELPED if the world would only pay attention to them long enough to actually do something. How about Zimbabwe's situation? 70% unemployment, 4 million starving people, the government is knocking down the slums and driving the poorest citizens out of their homes in the middle of (their) winter and call it "urban renewal." It got an editorial in yesterday's Globe, but most people have forgotten about it already. It's like in Hotel Rwanda (If you haven't seen it yet, SEE IT), when an American journalist tells the African who's trying to save his family and friends from slaughter that people in the rest of the world will see coverage of the genocide on TV, think "Oh that's terrible" and then go back to eating their dinner.

I'm a poli-sci student...I hear lots of complaining about the media giving shallow coverage to things. But aren't we also to blame? The media gives shallow coverage because we have shallow interests. Maintaining an abstract idea of poverty and violence and AIDS rather than seeing them as issues affecting real pople with real lives protects us from feeling guilty when we do nothing about it, even go about our business in ways that perpetuate the problems. But I'll try to leave my cynicism at that for the day.

In fluffier news, I had a really good beer yesterday at the Tribeca. It's called Griffon, it's made in Montreal and it's BEAUTIFUL. Bruno has great taste in beer. Go Bruno!

It's purple!

That would be my new shirt. Sale rack at AE, first article I've ever bought from that store. $9.95 plus tax. Good thing I bought it, too, because after about 40% of a litre of wine I ended up crashing on Ange's bowl chair and I needed to come straight to work from there this morning. So at least I have something to wear.

I also found APLLE CINNAMON POP-TARTS!!!!! Which I have been looking for everywhere, they're unforsted so they don't have gelatin in them. Apple-cinnamon Pop-Tarts are one of my guilty pleasures, when I can find them.

Speaking of food, I told one of my SU friends about the Crisper thing, and then she wanted to know what was in everything that she bought. So I told her and then she was traumatized and then another SU friend came in and said, "Alex, are you ruining food for people?" Hey, don't balme me - if people ask, I tell them. Sometimes I tell them even if they don't ask, but quite often they do. And a seeker of truth has to be prepared to learn things they don't like. Aaaaand i'm also a bitch. And a vegan. Anyone who hasn't read the "Passive-Aggressive Vegan Grocery Clerk" (see sidebar) is strongly advised to do so. Although I'm sure some of the humour is lost on those who are not passive-aggressive vegans.

Anyway it's early registration day so the store is sort of busy. Thus, today's entry will be short-ish and shallow...no hard-hitting (sarcasm intended) political commentaries this time. Ciao dudes.

"food" products

Somebody else got the editor job. Ah well, as long as she does a good job I'm happy...and as long as Angelah doesn't hire too many people for the store in the fall, I'll be making more money.

So I wrote off 52 bags of expired Crispers today. For a store this size that's a lot. Anyway I took a gander at the ingredients because that's what I do...you know, 5 years of vegan training and all. Those mothafuckas have a lot of weird shit in them. My mission this afternoon, should I choose to accept it (and I do), is to look up the ingredients of which I don't know the original source. And I'm taking you along for the ride. Here we go:

Sodium acid pyrophosphate: This would appear to be one of those mysterious chemicals that are spontaneously generated in test tubes, as I could find plenty of information on its usage but nothing on its source. Apparently it's considered safe for use in food. Good thing.

Sodium Stearoyl-2-Lactylate: Could be made from milk products but not always. I know it also has vegetable sources, I learned that in grade 12.

Sodium Bisulphite: Not sure where it comes from, but apparently it's also used as a bleaching agent in the pulp and paer industry.

Ascorbyl palmitate: It's made from ascorbic acid, sulfuric acid and palmitic acid. Which, of course, magically appear in the test tubes.

Sodium acetate: Used as a runway de-icer.

Monosodium glutamate: According to Wiktionary, it's "the mono sodium salt" of glutamic acid, an amino acid that comes from plant and animal tissues. Best known for bringing to mind images of lab rats with brain tumours.

Annatto: A seed, used to colour stuff.

Sodium metabisulphite: Apparently it's not allowed to be added to wine in Australia.

Until sodium acid pyrophosphate grows on trees, I think I'll stick to crackers. Even chips - at least Lays are now trans fat free, even if they do still give you cellulite.

Job conundrum

I've always wanted the word "editor" in my job title. Now I potentially could...if the Students' Union reopens the University's newspaper editor position (highly likely since the lone applicant didn't even show up for her interview the first time around) and if I get the job. The one problem is that they want to have an issue done in time for school to get back in session...and because of some stupid ass stupid union by-law, a person can't work at 2 SU services at once. So I'd have to quit the store in August. That would mean that Angie would have to hire someone new, which wouldn't be so hard because the Cornerstore is a really cushy place to work. But I'd be losing out on a LOT of money because full-time hours selling chips pay way better than the monthly salary of the newspaper editor. As in upwards of $500/month more, which is significant for a student. Plus it would be a more stressful job during school. But amazing experience and a fantastic resume-builder and I'd get an office. Emphasis on the office (cue porn music). And I'd get all this amazing creative input into the paper. Kenney says that the writers are going to get lots of input this year, too, so I could consider doing that. But the writers don't get paid. Or the job title. Or the office.

Anybody know somebody who's hiring for August?

heat exhaustion

Or maybe just regular old exhaustion. Summer has begun, kicked off with a triple-BBQ weekend.

Friday Chris and I headed to DeWolf park to do some Canada Day volunteeryness for Shinerama (University fundraiser for Cystic Fibrosis). It was rainy and crappy and we waited around for 1 1/2 hours until we figured the other people who were supposed to meet us there were DEFINITELY not coming. they then proceeded to call us at 1pm (when we would have been DONE) to inform us that our event was cancelled. Hmm. So then we did the barbecue thing at his house.

Saturday I had my barbecue/tie-dye party/backyard shindig. It was really relaxing despite the constant digs at vegetarians made by certain individuals present, and there was tie-dying and Scattergories (oh God i'm such a DORK!!!) and a bunch of people sitting around shooting the shit and it was a good day.

Today I went to Clam Harbour with Yin and a bunch of his friends for a barbecue on the beach (I love the beach) and I played soccer with the boys. Eventually I accidentally fell asleep (we were there for about 6 hours, okay?) so I got back too late to go to Chris's sermon and I feel really shitty about that because I said I would go.

It is now 10:45 pm and I'm sitting in my bedroom with tan lines on my back and Dar Williams in my computer speakers and whole-wheat spaghetti in my belly, and I'm pretty content. Going to bed soon, because I was going to study for the LSATS but my brain can't handle it right now. Looking at law schools abroad, and I don't think the LSATS even count for anything outside of North America so I could be wasting my time. But I suppose I could surprise myself and end up happily studying on my own continent. End of tangent. Good night.

(Blah) day today

Whee! for not enough sleep.

I haven't been talking to my stepdad yet, but Mom liked Adam. Except she said the weirdest thing: he reminds her of Moroney. I mean, that's not a bad thing, my parents liked Moroney, but Adam is NOTHING like him. I have this thing, every single guy I date is completely and utterly different from the others. If I meet a dude who's too much like one of my exes, I'm like "didn't I break upwith you already?" and then I run away. Far away. Not because I have any real animosity towards them, but just because I fear falling into a pattern. Patterns are icky and I refuse to have a "type."

So we went to see Madagascar, and what can I say...it really wasn't good. There were some funny parts, like the monkeys talking about flinging poo, but most of the jokes were replayed ad nauseum and when the credits started rolling I was still waiting for some kind of plot to come into play. Blah.

It was, however, interesting to watch the movie from a vegan perspective. There are quite a few movies (Ice Age being, in my opinion, the best) that address the carnivore conundrum, i.e. making friends with the person who's supposed to be your food. I know that Keith, for one, objects to my referring to non-human animals as "people" even though he's a tofu head too. But, preferred terminology aside, I couldn't help but think that this movie has probaby been used by McDonald's or BK to sell cheeseburgers. Which is kind of disturbing because it's about someone finding out that their food has a face and a personality.

But anyway, I always watch this kind of film with curiosity to see how they treat the subject and how they resolve it. Ice Age didn't really ever resolve it, but they left the topic hanging in kind of a melancholy way, quietly acknowledging the impenetrability of certain moral issues. But Madagascar completely copped out, becoming in the end an advertisement for pesco-vegetarianism (a misnomer, in my opinion: if you eat fish you can qualify for the "tofu head" title but you're not a vegetarian) by giving every animal in the film a personality EXCEPT the fish. Kind of like Dreamworks' badly-written response to Pixar's absolutely wonderful yet predictably over-merchandised Finding Nemo. It reminds me of a book I read a couple of years ago called "The Sexual Politics of Meat" and I wish I could remember the author's name, but she talks about something called the "Absent referrant," and how ignoring the individuality of a living thing is a psychological mechanism that allows human beings to justify both meat eating and rape. Really interesting book, I highly recommend it although it's not exactly light reading.

Long rambling post

Most excellent weekend. Not only was it finally SUNNY and BRUTALLY HOT, which is exactly the way I like it, but for Allan and Lisa's birthday a bunch of us went to the the Thirsty Duck and drank beer for something like 3 hours, before going to the Pogue and where the hot frontman for the band loved us because we shared his taste in cover songs. Then at Pacifico JennJenn was supposed to meet her loverboy but she ran into this Hottie McHotness from grad night and pawned him off on Lisa (who was more than happy to take him off her hands). Crazy antics all around.

Sunday night was an even wilder party, with the family throwing a surprise party for my grandmother (she was NOT surprised) where everybody ate KFC and I gagged and my grandmother ate lobster and I looked straight at my pasta salad so that I wouldn't hurl. Even when I wasn't a tofu head I thought lobster was icky.

Ok now I'm shuddering. Happy thoughts anyone? Still trying to figure out how to get to Rollo Bay for the festival.

And Adam's meeting my parents tonight. My parents have been nagging about it and I know that they'll feel much better about me shacking up with him while his roomates are away, if they actually know who he is. So Mom's first question was, "Does he eat meat?" I swear she actually grinned when I said yes. Silly Mom. So she's making him steak and I cut a deal with him...I won't make faces at him while he eats cow, and I get to pick the movie we watch tonight. This is very important because we have very different taste in movies. We can agree on stuff like Rain Man and Spirited Away...but then he'll make me watch crap like Titus which was HORRIBLE. Ok, let's watch people do awful things to other people and then people do bad things back and then everybody is dead. The end. So, I get to choose today. I pick Madagascar. Funny animals that talk. Aaaand, end of tangent.

My brother is also moving in for the summer because he has a job in the city. My baby brother is now 18 and is getting a tatoo. It's sick and wrong. He's too young to be a legal adult, and he will always be too young.

Interesting article in the Chronicle Herald today about tidal power. This used to be a really questionable form of energy production because it required putting dams in place that messed with marine ecology and all that jazz. Now apparently there has been success with a model that is basically like an upside-down wind turbine in the water. Water is more effective at pushing the blades so they can be smaller than air turbines but still produce the same amount of energy, and they're slow-moving enough to have a minimal impact on mobile marine wildlife. It's finally beginning to be recognized that the answer to the energy problem is probably NOT huge plants, but rather a diversity of smaller local, green options. Which is interesting, because I read last week or whenever that Candu reactors are being largely rejected by the international community in favour of higher-output reactors, even though Candus are meltdown-proof and apparently a really high-quality power plant. Nuclear power is sketchy, with the nuclear waste issue and all, but they're now being largely paraded as the only answer to the global warming issue...and global warming is pretty sketchy, too. I know there are questions being raised about it, and it's all very confusing. Selene says she has an edition of Mother Jones about how most of the climate-change dissentors in the scientific community are being subversively paid by Exxon Mobil or something? I don't like to blindly believe everything put out by the leftist/environmental movement, but Exxon Mobil is sketchy, too. So who the hell knows what to believe? Anyway, I'm a huge believer in energy conservation and green (non-nuclear) energy, but it seems very likely that those can only take us so far... and when weighing the evils between a dependence on fossil fuels and the nuclear sketchiness, then hey, small nuclear power plants as part of a diversified clean energy program just might come out on top. Comments?

Doggies!

As usual, I'm idle at work and killing time...I just came across this and it's so sweet...the stories of street dogs in Bangkok. It reminded me of Costa Rica, where there are stray dogs everywhere and it just breaks your heart. They wander in and out of sodas (small open-air restaurants) and nobody pays any attention to them. They're generally really sweet animals but they're just covered in fleas and ticks and mange. I imagined my dogs living that way and I just wanted to bring them all home and make them healthy again.

It also took me a while to figure out what was so unusual about the dogs in Costa Rica. Then one morning I was sitting in Soda Frank in Playa Jaco (incidentally, if you're ever in the area, Soda Frank makes THE BEST gallo pinto I tasted during the 6 weeks I was in the country, and I ate pinto every chance I got so I consider myself somnewhat of an authority on the subject, at least for a born-and-raised Canadian girl). A dog wandered in and then it hit me: stray dogs have testicles. It just looks really silly, especially having grown up surrounded by neutered animals. But that's my Costa Rica story for the day. I'm feeling so desperate to go back that I need to appease the urge by talking about it constantly. But without further ado, I give you the street dogs of Bangkok.

http://bkkstreetdogs.blogspot.com/2005/01/welcome-from-casanova.html

The Corner$tore: the ultimate tourist destination

There's an annual conference that is held on campus every summer. The participants do lots of leadership-y things, madiatiation, and, allegedly, have kinky group sex...although I don't buy that one for a second. Adam blames it on my inherent trust of hippies. I say boo-erns to him. I did housekeeping for them a couple years ago...no signs of group sex. But whatever. They're nice people and I've been giving directions on what's worth seeing in the city, which makes me feel quasi-important. Plus we're getting rid of a bunch of Metro Transit maps that would otherwise just sit in the store until they became obselete and we threw them away. So yay for that.

In other news, it's been remarked that my postings are always indicated as having been posted abnormally early in the morning. Let me state for the record that I am not in the habit of getting out of bed before 6:30 unless travel (preferably international) is involved, and under no circumstances am I fully functioning before 8am.

Anybody know of any good movies to watch? I'm waiting for War of the Worlds to come out on the 29th, not because I'm a huge fan of Tom Cruise or anything but because I used to watch the fantastically cheap, tacky tv show when i was a kid, and although the movie's unlikely to have any similarities to the show I'm still dying to see it. Same with Bewitched. I'm willing to sit through a Will Ferrell movie just because of the way that the name hearkens back to my childhood.
I watched Spirited Away last night which was fab because I've wanted to see it ever since it came out at Empire and I was working day shifts with Josh and we wanted to go sit in the theatre and watch it but the manager was constantly lurking around and we were 2 of the only 3 ushers on the floor so we couldn't. Ahh, good times.

Shoreline Festival

If anybody's free July 8 (after 4pm-ish), 9 and 10 you should come to the PEI Shoreline Festival! Bruno and I are trying to get a group together to hopefully rent a car. There will be acts like Joel Plakett, Buck 65, Kid Koala, Jimmy Swift Band, etc., camping and just general awesomeness. Do it do it do it! www.shorelinefestival.com

Don't eat chocolate frosting with a spoon

Somebody needs a change of scenery...the occupational hazards of working in a convenience store (especially a campus one during the summer) are mindblowing.

I gardened in the rain yesterday, as part of the Ecology Action Centre's Urban Garden Mentors program, which I think is amazing because it gives senior citizens the chance to share their gardening skills with the younger genreations, and they've set up all these urban gardens around the city (www.ecologyaction.ca). Besides, there is nothing in the world as fun as getting dirty. Afterwards I sat in the tub with a book for hours until my toes got all wrinkly. whee!

Now let's see some fgbhqing sunshine!

It's a mad, mad world folks

If I'm not mistaken, a few months ago Tommy Douglas was voted The Greatest Canadian by an oh-so-scientific phone-in poll of CBC viewers. What a bizarre bit of irony, then, that the Supreme Court should rule aginst one of the principles of Tommy's baby, Medicare, Canada's #2 sacred cow (#1 being Tim Horton's cofee, of course...never mind that it's not Canadian it's Central American or whatever and absolute crap besides). private clinics are now allowed to operate in Quebec, and the Supreme Court has set a precedent that will basically force them to bring down the same ruling when similar cases inevitably crop up from other provinces.

Pessimists see this as the beginning of US-style two-tier health care, while optimists point to mixed systems like in the UK that have both private and public health care provisions. I'm not a big expert on the UK's system but I have heard it touted as a model that our own should follow. However, a commentator in Saturday's Globe and Mail pointed out that this is not the UK, this is Canada, and Canada has a little thing called NAFTA biting us in the ass. Apparently health care is only exempt from NAFTA regulations as long as Canada maintains its publicly-funded system, and once we allow private providers then we have absolutely no power to stop American private providers from coming in and taking advantage of our government's subsidies etc. Again, I'm no expert, but the possibility of our health-care system turning into the American model scares the shit out of me. Yes, the waiting lines and funding shortages are bad. Very bad. In-desperate-need-of-a-better-strategy-and-more-money bad. But skyrocketing costs and inefficiency, an insurance system that often leaves people in the dust just when they need it the most, and slews of people (and not just the poorest members of society, either) being forced to declare bankruptcy due to sudden serious illness...that's worse.

It all left me feeling very confused and sad so I went out and got a clothes-drying rack (we still don't have a clothesline, grrrrrrrrrrr) and a low-flow showerhead. Reducing fuel consumption and having nice-smelling clothes make sense to me.

Welcome to eternity, Baby

Another slow day at Yea Olde Cornerstore...the kind of day that makes you look around and wonder what you're going to snack on next, until suddenly you have a stomachache and you're 8 feet wide. Or at least I would be if I ate normal food like mormal people do.

At any rate, it's better than what I did yesterday...I took care of my neighbour's elderly mother while he went to court to try and win some respect for the disabled. So I was glad to help him out, and his mother's a nice lady with a great sense of humour, but the poor thing can't remember what you told her 5 minutes earlier so she asked me 387 times where her son was...I soon resorted to "I don't know, he'll be back at suppertime" and left it at that. So 10 hours of this. Then during the last hour she convinced herself that her son was gone for good and that everybody was going to leave her alone in the house so she kept repeating "I'm scared. Are you scared? I'm scared."

You know what scares me? The idea of getting old and not being in control of, or even aware of, what's going on in my own life. And the fact that I'm likely to get like that, because the women in my family tend to live for a long time and get senile. Which means I'm fucked.

Know what else scares me? Creepy stalker guys. And apparently I have one. A few weeks ago I was on the bus home from the farmer's market and I ran into somebody that I know so I talked to hime for a while. Anyway, the next week some random dude started talking to me...apparently he had listened to my previous conversation and remembered everything that I had said. He seemed starved for friendship so I had some polite (but guarded) conversation with him...and now he seems to be on the same bus as me every Saturday, no matter what time I head home. And then last night he was at the bus terminal when I was on my way into the city. So he decided to ask me out for coffee (Dude! you're like 35 and not in a good way!) but fortunately he kind of left me alone when I declined. But then when I got off the bus he yelled "Oh, tell your mother theat she's lovely!" *Shudder* how the fuck foes he know my mother? He must be a patient at her office or something...Mom has my picture posted up by her desk at work so that she can brag about me when people comment on it. But now I might beg her to take it down...dude that's just CREEPY.

The Cat Whisperer

JennJenn thinks her cat has a crush on me. He, and her roomates' cats as well for that matter, try their best to get in my face whenever I'm over. But then when I go to pet them they're like, whatever bitch don't touch me, and they walk away. No wonder I like dogs better. I miss my dogs. Last night I had trouble sleeping because I started thinking about it, and how Max used to take over my bed so that I would wake up feeling all cramped from sleeping in a mangled position so as not to disturb him, and with a puddle of bulldog drool all over the bed.

I've had a few nights like that lately, where the absence of something that has been absent for months or even years suddenly becomes a completely unnatural experience. A week or so ago I couldn't sleep because I had the most unnerving feeling that soemthing was wrong...then I realized that it was simply being warm and dry in my own bed, in the silent house, rather than perpetually damp in a sleeping bag on a bunk bed in an uninsulated wooden cabin with rain falling incessantly on a metal roof above my head. I mean, I guess I can attribute that one to the travel bug, I think I need to go somewhere again real soon (this time last year I was getting ready to leave for Costa Rica). But the fact that I was all isomniac over it is just really weird.

On a completely unrelated note, I might get to learn how to set up a yurt! Yurts are these cool-ass-cool buildings originally built by the Mongolians. And at this treehugger-y event I'm attending with the Sierra Club in a couple weeks, Selene's partner is most defintiely setting one up. If there's room in the car I get to tag along in the early morning (and yet I'm still excited) to help thems et it up. What can I say? I'm an experience whore.

Hi Mark

Thanks for helping me set this up...computeriness hates me. Now let's see if I can keep it up without pulling my hair out. ERROR ERROR ERROR ERROR