Canadiana.

Ok. I just told Candyman that I didn't feel like posting. Well, now I have something to post.

I'm minoring in Canadian Studies..which to some people is like saying that I'm minoring in basket weaving, or underwater video gaming. It's mostly because, well...it's something I'm interested in. Bonus points because it's a teachable minor and I can use it to get into the teaching certificate program. Justy and I were talking about Canadian culture and what exactly that meant. We both figure that some of the defining things of Canadian culture is "We're not American", hockey and beer. Another is...

...

Actually, that's pretty much it. Hockey, beer, not American.

"Any you are truly Canadian if you base your memories around HOCKEY! If you remember...where you were...that glorious day! That memorable day...when...when...Alan Eagleton...went to prison!" Paraphrased from Royal Canadian Air Farce.

The reason that we were talking about this was because I just finished reading one of my books for my CNS course...The Electrical Field...and I posed an interesting question to him.

Me: So, I'd like to know...why does pretty much all "good" Canadian literature...well...
Him: Suck?
Me: EXACTLY!! It's all stupidly depressing and irritating. I just don't understand why it has to be so bad!

I enjoy his answer. From what I remember in my current exhausted state, his reasoning went kind of like this.

Premise A) We don't like be like Americans.
Premise B) Much popular American literature is good.
Premise C) Our popular literature must be different than American literature.
Conclusion) Our popular literature cannot be good.

This makes sense to me. Of course, there are notable exceptions (mainly in the science fiction and fantasy fields) but I am unwilling to mention them right now because I'm tired and can't think of any, and it also allows for comments with people supplying me with their lists of good Canadian authors that I can read. Please proceed with your recommendations.

New Record

Six people were looking at my site just now. Just thought I'd share.

okthxbyei'mdone.

(W)e (O)wn the (O)ther (T)eam(!!)

6-1, baybeee!! Go Canucks Go!! Candyman and I went to Silver City to watch the Canucks game against Phoenix. It was probably the most fun game I'd ever seen played. Note to self: remember to take cough syrup before leaving the house next time. :/ I was coughing like crazy through most of it, but DAYMN was it ever a great time. I think I'm going to have very happy dreams about Geoff Sanderson blowing past all the defensemen tonight. My God, can that guy skate. He looks like he straps booster rockets onto his skates.

I think that the best part was how they didn't get a shot in until 12 minutes into the first period. Or the fact that we got something like 40 shots on goal, and they got like...15. Yeah. We ownzed them. Enough gloating though. We're still a point behind Colorado since they won tonight as well. >:(

Anyway. I get to work in the morning. :p Cash shift, so I theoretically don't have to do supervisor stuff...but that never happens. So yeah. I go to bed now.

Textbooks.

Can you tell it's been a couple months since I took any classes? I'm all like...motivated. And...excited...

I'd better not look back at all the whining and bitching I did about classes last fall. :/

I've been searching the web for the last couple days for textbooks I need for next semester's classes. I bought two today from Chapters and my mother had the Laurence one...wrong year, but I don't think that should be too much of an issue.

So, I've glanced briefly at both
Why I Hate Canadians and The Electrical Field. I haven't started Margaret Laurence's The Diviners yet, but meh. I'll get on it eventually. It's not like I don't have time...the semester doesn't start until May.

Baby showers and stuff.

Yesterday I went to my first baby shower for someone of my age group. No one that I've been close to has ever had a baby, so this is a first time thing for me. It was very exciting. :) I was overwhelmed by the amount of people who were there! Candyman and I got there within an hour of the start of the party and the entire condo was filled with people. I hope that if/when I have a baby I have that many people who care about us. We couldn't stay long because we had another function to go to.

My mom's sixtieth birthday went really well. When we were doing presents, she kept saying "This is crazy!! There's so much." It's kind of nice to do that for her...we always got get outrageously spoiled on our birthdays so when someone else organizes it I feel that she sometimes get the short end. However, I think that she did pretty well. We went out for a nice dinner at a local pasta place and then came back to the house for cake, presents and moving my bed downstairs. Oh, and hockey. Daymn. What a good game that was.

I slept ok on my new bed. I always have trouble sleeping in a new place, and a new bed is pretty much a completely different place. But I made do. I think it would have been better if I hadn't been sick. It's a whole new perspective on my room. I've been sleeping on a box spring and mattress for the last six or seven years, which was about a foot and a half tall. Now suddenly I've got a frame, larger box spring and MUCH larger mattress. It feels like it's about three feet tall now. I think I like it.

BC bloggers, follow the below link.

Here

Ok. I figured that since Candyman did all the work, I'd let him blog about it first. Not to mention that I was absolutely exhausted from cleaning my room yesterday. I'm getting a new bed (well, we're doing a big bed switch today...my mom's getting a new one, so the old one's going into my dad's room and I get my dad's.) and so I had to make sure that there was a place to move my bed out of and the new one in. So while I was doing a horrendous amount of cleaning, my absolutely rocking boyfriend made my bathroom liveable.

Hurray!!

w9rd.

All right. Let me know how it looks now. *hand out in front, fingers gesture inwards* Bring it on.

Cat, I linked you. ;) Sorry about the delay...you're on my bookmarks and so I usually find you through there. Uh...Ikea? Next week? I'll have my schedule on Saturday and we can figure out times.

Okay, I'm done. I'm going to go have dinner lunch breakfast dinner from last night.

People post at 0230?

Besides me, I mean. :) C/M helped me fix the sidebar. I feel silly...it was really easy to do. Now we just need to fix the blogroll and the all consuming stuff.

Good night.

Oh, I have also determined that I spend way too much time in front of the computer when I'm sick. And that my typing goes to crap after midnight. That is all.

Argh!

I'm starting to get very fscking irritated at my template. If I knew more than I do about HTML, I'd make myself up my own template. I'm so sick of having the sidebar be so wide. I'm REALLY sick of having my "currently reading" stuff down at the bottom of the page for no reason that I can figure out!

I think it's time for bed. I need to buy my mom a card and a present for her 60th birthday. My mom is turning sixty. Yikes.

Oh, I cleaned up stuff from around my bed. Currently it's sitting on my bed. This is because I'm getting a new bed and it's wider, so I need to have some room around it. So, I had to clean up the pr0n. Now I need to put it and the rest of the junk all away before I go to bed. Dammit. And I'm hungry and want to take a shower but I can't because my bathroom is still in a million pieces.

I have a wonderful loving boyfriend however, who offered to come over yesterday to do all the stuff that was needed to be done to make my bathroom useable again. This includes (but wasn't limited to)...putting the shower curtain up, repainting the ceiling, touching up behind the toilet and door, taking all the tape off, putting a new toilet seat on, putting the corner shelf together and up, putting the medicine cabinet together and up and general cleanup. This is all in addition to picking up all the supplies needed to get everything up. I love my boy. It just sucked because I couldn't take him up on it because I was too sick to deal with anyone. :( So I still don't have a bathroom. And I didn't get to see him. But I might still get to see him tonight or tomorrow. Probably tomorrow. I'm sleepy right now.

the once and future king synapses

Someone did a search for the above phrase and made their way to here. :) Not only was it number four on yahoo.com's search engine, it was also number ten from a different section of the page. *grin*

I was feeling much better last night after eating that soup...I am not feeling as good as I did last night, but I feel better than I did yesterday morning. I made another batch of the soup...it's good stuff. I'm also seriously considering not taking a honey chaser when I dose myself with Buckley's anymore...I'm starting to associate honey with Buckley's. Blech. Maybe I'll chase the Buckley's with Nyquil.

I hope I'm better for Saturday. I have no name yet's baby shower and my mom's birthday dinner. I'm definitely not going to the baby shower if I'm sick. I want no name yet to have the baby after labour...not because she coughed really hard and it popped it out. :) Besides...she's so good about not taking medicine while she's pregnant, and I'll be damned if I'm going to give this cold to someone who won't medicate it into oblivion.

Feeling better?

Well, with any luck, this cold will rip its way through my body and leave as quickly as it came. I'm feeling much more human since I took a shower this evening...partly due to the "icky" factor of not being able to take a shower, and probably partly due to the steam. Daymn. Did that ever feel good. Drank down some more Buckley's, nursing a Neo-Citrine and am currently waiting for a pot of soup to heat up. I used Justy's recipe that I suggested several ingredients for, many moons ago...

The Soup I Ate For Lunch, That I Feel Better For Having Eaten

One can Campbell's chicken noodle soup
One can water, as per directions
Three cloves garlic, chopped (I used five, but only because my garlic was dessicated and I needed to peel down pretty far to get to the fresh stuff)
One pinch thyme
Two 300g echinacea capsules (Did not add, partly because I have none, and partly because Justy mentioned that the taste was kind of off and that might have been a factor.)

Mix in pot and heat. Consume. Enjoy garlicky taste. For hours. Brush teeth and/or consume entire pack of breath mints before going out in public. (According to one of my books, chewing on parsley or...something I can't remember...helps sweeten breath.)


Now, I am off to check on my soup. Mmm.. Soup.

woo.

You are Trinity, from "The Matrix."
Strong, beautiful- you epitomize the ultimate
heroine.


What Matrix Persona Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla


I used to think I looked a little like Carrie Anne Moss, especially when I had my hair cut really short. :)

Send me an angel...

Love


?? Which Angel Or Demon Are You ??
brought to you by Quizilla

It tastes awful...but it works.

Ooohahhh!!! Just downed teaspoon number two of Buckley's cough syrup...had another dose about two hours ago. I have to be pretty much dying before I'll drink that crap...in fact, it's going to be the acid test for whether my kids are sick enough to stay home from school or not. "Ok, you can stay home, but you're drinking a dose of Buckley's every two hours."

I'm just glad it didn't come back up like the stuff I took this morning. :p What is it with me and puking when I have a cold? That never used to happen when I was a kid.

So, my head and legs are aching like crazy, I've got crap in my nose and lungs and I'm exhausted, but can't sleep or focus on reading or anything. TV and computer screens make my headache worse. :( I'm in baaaaad shape ladies and gentlemen.

Too true

An article about "stuff" and how there's too much of it in most people's houses.

In other news: I feel wrecked. Completely, car in the ditch and frozen over wrecked. (It's a metaphor...my car is fine. My body is hellacious.) That scratchy throat I had last night has mutated into a brutal head cold that is threatening to take over Vancouver.

In other other news: I called my best friend today who I hadn't spoken to since Christmas. Not because we're mad at each other or anything...we're just stupidly busy and life got in the way. So that was nice, we're going to try and get together in the next little while.

Oh yeah...

I'm in a much better mood now...Candyman came over last night and by the junk food that we bought at 711 you'd think that one of us was pregnant... (two kinds of ice cream, taquitos, nachos with evil cheese and a Dr. Pepper slurpee [not for me. blech.])

Rona is having a paint sale which ends today, so I'll be heading down to buy some paint before I go to work. Plus, I need to buy gas. I hate buying gas...it's so expensive. :p

Parenting skillz

(A conversation between my aunt and my mother when/just before I was born)

(knowing that my mother was all "go breastfeeding" and "woo, natural" [she grew up in the sixties...] )
My aunt: So, when the baby starts crying, are you going to...you know...use a soother (pacifier...whatever)
My mom: (totally deadpan) Dipped in rum if I have to.

Now, I'm pretty sure that she never did that...with me. My brother on the other hand was totally colicky, so there's a possibility there. :)

Sidenote: I got called in to work today from 1:30-9:30. The supervisor who was supposed to work today slipped and fell in the shower doing something nasty to her back...and she's 7 1/2 months pregnant. :/

Irritated.

IM from me...
"It's very strange. I refuse to make a decision, and feel like I need to be coaxed...but I don't want to be bothered by anyone either. It's an odd conundrum."
Message could not be delivered because the person appears to be offline.

Well, crap. I didn't know you were LEAVING.

Working Girl...or not...

So here it is, 9:50 pm on Monday night and I am officially finished work for the week. That's right. I got 10 lousy hours this week and I'm finished. The talent agency better come through with some work for me this week, that's all I got to say about that.

Huh. I don't really have much else to say. I'm seriously upset about some stuff (logged for my own benefit.) but don't really want to use this as an outlet for that.

Yeah.

Oh, I scraped wallpaper over at no name yet's place. Someone kill me if I ever talk about how easy it would be to strip wallpaper from a place I'm planning on buying. Or if I ever decide to use wallpaper, anywhere, even if I like it at the time. After all, take ten years off your life...were you smart then? So, will I still like that wallpaper in ten years? Probably not. (the same applies to tattoos, but that's off topic.)

Ageism.

Candyman writes about "coming of age". The italics are his post, the stuff underneath is my comments and the bold is my extra comments.

I turned 19 many moons ago...almost 88 in fact. That said, not being a drinker at all, and since I tend not to really celebrate my birthday, but that's another issue. So I'm trying to figure out whether or not there's a suitable passing of the torch, coming of age, or whatever you want to call it. You know for celebrating when the boy becomes a man. So this is a request for suggestions. What is a suitable celebration for this once in a lifetime event?


I think that the usual response these days is "strippers and booze". It's kind of sad though...we really DON'T have any specific cultural "coming of age" for boys, or girls for that matter. I mean, I suppose that girls have their monthly event, but there's really nothing public or official about growing up. No more hunting your first buffalo, etc. Maybe that's one of the reasons why our society has so many childish adults...they don't have something milestone-ish to aspire to, and therefore they don't.

I think that one of the issues of not having a cultural milestone is the blurring of the lines between adulthood and childhood. As you mentioned in a previous post, maturity is somehow bestowed based on a number of days that you exist on the planet, and there's something inherently wrong about that. I know some thirty year olds who I wouldn't trust with a sharp stick, and I know several teenagers or young adults who I would trust to deliver a baby...given that they had some medical training. :)

Now, seeing as this comment is longer than your post...I'm going to transcribe it into my blog. :)

Incidentally, something that I really hate is ageism...you know...where someone who's five or more years older is all like "Oh, you're so young...you'll get over it." or some other variation of that. I mean, sure you've got more experience time-wise than I do, but I've made some way better decisions than you did when you were my age, so looking back on your life I'm way farther ahead than you were at this time. Don't tear down my accomplishments because you fracked up your life. Ok, I'm done now.