Sunday, April 29

Nothing unusual

As usual, I was home for only one day and already hit the library. Hard. After the third trip down south in 6 days my brain has eaten a good chunk of "Paris 1919" and "Mere Christianity". So far the first is fantastic food for the ol' neurons; there is so much to learn about the Treaty of Versailles considering how much it shaped the face of Europe and the Middle East. The latter book it beautifully written. Having already claimed to dislike Christian literature this is in a different class. Although what I'm looking for is that relationship, well-written or poorly written, I don't think a book can make it real all of a sudden.

Tomorrow I have to start the torturous process of job hunting. The interview I traveled back to the north for last week went well but apparently not well enough: someone else got it. It just means I'll be sticking to the plan to spend as much time as possible in South America, but first I need some money.

On these many trips by car through the Canadian shield we saw some interesting things. A truck with its cab full of boxes blazing on the side of the road. A black bear. Evidence of greed. The water levels of the great lakes the the road curves around are the lowest since the 1930s. Hundreds of feet of sand that hadn't been dry in decades are growing grass. One likely culprit is the U.S. more or less secretly draining the water for their own use. Just like the bumble bees being thrown off course by our obsession with cell phones all of our actions have repercussions, some that we will never find, some in areas that couldn't have been guessed.

packing up three years...not so easy

I have a bruise on my leg that happens to be the same gold/brown and purple/green/blue as a dress a designer made on Project Catwalk tonight. I thought the dress was wonderful (even before realizing the unbelievable connection to my ruptured blood vessels) but the judges weren't such big fans.

When would I have to get a giant bruise all over my body to have turned the golden/brown colour all over by the time the Bermuda trip hits?

Tuesday, April 24

of space and time

I don't have the heart to tell my family but right now I need space. Not that they haven't given it to me and I'm glad to see them but adjusting to the idea of being finished and being back home just takes time. Like eternity and spandex body suits I can't wrap my mind around my present situation. Done university. The four of us at 236 will never be living together again. If the interview goes well tomorrow I could living in the Sault, with the parents, for a whole year! I'm grown up but have no plans.

Tomorrow is a big interview for a year-long internship with the Rotary club and some other non-profit organizations. Basically I would be doing research and designing a marketing plan for the club in town and working in the office. It is not my ideal job but it pays well and even if I am not thrilled about my degree it could be good experience to try out what I have learned. It scares me and that is why I had to apply and have to do the interview. I am terrified of failing at the job, of not being qualified or ready for it. I can't learn or improve without attempting something I haven't tried before. It is entirely possible that I won't get this position too; there are six other qualified candidates but I'll try. The hardest part is convincing myself to prepare properly for the interview. I despise preparing for interviews but it has to be done.

Saturday, April 21

moving out soundtrack

The three songs on repeat while I pack all of the things I own into cardboard and plastic are:

"Lollipop" by Mika
"Grace Kelly" by Mika
"Aglow" by Sarah Harmer

life just won't slow down.

Thursday, April 19

dessert pizza and cookies so far today

Some spontaneous fun is always in order when celebrating a significant accomplishment. Yesterday I dressed myself, oh, and I finished university. In relation to one of the two aforementioned activities Jilly B. and I drove up to London to dance the night away with Mere only to return to Guelph 12 hours later.

Mere lent me a fancier top than I had brought with me, we all donned jeans and some heals and took hector to a downtown club called Old Chicago where salsa is taught every wednesday night. Being somewhat rhythmically challenged I was impressed how quickly I picked up the basic steps and a few moves (aided muchly by the very talented M. Brown). We danced for hours with the rule that if a man asks you to dance you have to accept. Some of the men were fantastic dancers and led so well that it made us/me look like I belonged on the dance floor. Jack would pause for a moment at the beginning of each song the band churned out and then proclaim it to be "Merengue", "salsa", or "bachata" (none of which meant much for me in terms of movement) and then would start to move. He would also whisper little hints ("ok, now walk backwards" or my favorite "im going to spin, you just keep dancing around me"). Did I mention that Jack is about 65 and a dance instructor on a cruise ship? He would tug at the front of his shirt with the thumb and index finger of both hands each time he mentioned his widow friends in cape cod. Our other new friends included an older Indian man, Pierre from the south of France and an Asian student who may or may not have reached 5 feet. A great night finished off even better with a good chat until 3 am with hannah before I must have dozed off and let her and Mere tuck me in on the couch.

Tuesday, April 17

coughing up all those butterflies

DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE
FINISHED FINISHED FINISHED FINISHED FINISHED FINISHED FINISHED FINISHED FIN

MY UNDERGRADUATE DEGREE HAS BEEN COMPLETED!

This needed to be recorded. I have no specific emotions. My stomach was in twisties after the exam, likely from releasing all the stress I held inside it today and over the last little while. Now comes the scary part though, moving on from the familiar to the unfamiliar. What is out there?

Sunday, April 15

"They knew better, because you said forever"

Board games and group games are definitely a love of mine. I won't disclose anything else I like now lest you happen to come over and play my game. Its called Whoonu by the makers of cranium. The beauty of the game is that it fits into about 15 minutes. Its best with 5 or 6 people and is similar to "apples to apples" except all the cards say random items on them like hotdogs, the weather network, musicals, etc. Each person gets a few cards except for one person who gets to be the Whoonu. They players with the cards must then choose the one card in their hand that they think the Whoonu would like the best and gives it to them upsidedown. The whoonu then rates all the things on the cards in order from most liked to least. Points are awarded accordingly and everyone passes their cards to the left; someone else taking the title of Whoonu. Ok, it is jolly fun even if it doesn't sound it.

To continue with entertainment, I finally watched a film a friend had been raving about all year and thoroughly enjoyed it. "La Grand Seduction" is a Quebecois film set in a small fishing village dependent on welfare since the fish ran out. The towns last hope is to bid for a factory moving into the province. The major drawback is the lack of a doctor so they set out to lure one. Through some interesting circumstances a doctor agrees to spend a month in the town to try it and the townspeople set up a plan to make him fall in love with the village. They tap his phone lines, watch new sports and catch frozen fish. The characters are so real and the relationships between the main character Germain and his best friend Yvon is wonderful, they have obviously spent their while lives in a town with no more than 125 people and love each other very much. I recommend. There is some strong sexual innuendo right at the start and the finish but its french and other than that its about as clean a movie as you will get.

Friday, April 13

Sugar and Spice and Everything Nice

Today I sold back some of my textbooks for $77.15. For about 5 texts. Oh the crime. To celebrate I decided to spend the money as if it had never been mine (a good idea, no?). To the mall I went after my exam today (three down, one to go!) with the intent to purchase a satin top from Le Chateau only to realize that I didn't love it as much as I had the first time. So instead I spent $89 + tax for a suit at smart set. It was justified practically solely on the price. A whole suit! For less than $100! I have a suit already but its black and heavy and this one is lighter (both in colour and material) and could pass as a summer suit.

Also, the thought of spring (although obviously not the appearance or feel of spring outside) has brought out some of my long patient accessories. The best piece added was actually bought at a garage sale last summer from an old lady for about $1. I doubt I even paid that much. I would place it in the early 70s and so tacky its great but I have probably received more "That is a great purse!"'s and "where did you get that"'s than for my more conventional wardrobe items. It pays to be a junk picker.

Thursday, April 12

Another Night, Another Dream (but always who?)

So, don't read this if you're tired of my dreams. I get a break every time I finish studying a case for my exam tomorrow so I am using the time to record another dream I had that, as usual, was just so wacked-out I don't want to forget it.

Mostly it involved people whom I am friends with in my program. We were driving back to Guelph from Barrie I believe and were estimating it to take about 3 hours, arriving in at midnight. We were all anxious to get back on time because we all had to study for a big exam the next day (actually, I think one of my housemates was there as well and was planning on waking up at 3:45 to study the next day, a time that kept getting pushed forward throughout the dream)

Somehow we ended up in an airport and could not get through the parking lot due to some odd construction going on. We had to park the car, go through some back alleys, climbing over things and through fences, etc. where we reasoned that we would be able to retrieve out car. We spend quite a bit of time doing this only to end up on the roof of a building which we need to jump across to another platform to be safe. About 20 stories below was a road and some vendors selling fruits and baskets. I decided to try and went out to the edge only to come back believing that i would never make it across jumping and proposing to try to jump straight down and break my fall on the vendors canopies (Aladdin style?). In the end someone else tried to jump and we believe he was killed on the street (no worries, I didn't see it in my dream). Eventually we all decided to jump and aim for a window of the building, hoping to crash through.

I jump and make it into a window where a man working at his desk threatens me to leave. I immediately blackmail him back and somehow set up a trap with electrical cords so he cannot get out. I meet up with my classmates in the hallway and we walk through the building at one point stumbling upon a casino and picking up decks of cards discarded all over the room. (I mean, who doesnt' want decks and decks of cards when they are trapped in a building?)

The time keeps getting later and we realize we will now not likely be home until 3am or later. How will we ever study? The last part of the dream consists of us finding some political debates set up in large offices (resembling classrooms on the second floor of MacKinnon). The debates were hosted by young students representing their parties and kept changing. The speakers just never seemed to be loud enough and we kept asking them to speak up. Thats about all I got.

Weird thought during the dream: we were driving on the road and I was worried about there being drivers from other countries and ethnic backgrounds (mostly Chinese and arab) on the road. Not because I have any stereotypes about them being bad drivers but I thought it unsafe that they had their own driving styles of driving diagonally and sideways. Hmm??? I think it had something to do with the linguistics book I was reading before bed where different cultures write in different directions (the somethings in Gullivers travels write diagonally

Weird, weird, weird.

Tuesday, April 10

only in my dreams

This is an attempt to record a dream I had last night. It was so surreal, real feeling and I can remember minute details.

twelve people, myself, a housemate and 10 strangers are on a interactive survivor/amazing-race but without the TV cameras. We have to complete tasks one after another for which we have to find clues, complete the task and return to a dock in a shallow lake. The first person to return after each round gets a prize.

The setting: a well-lit forest in the summer on a lake front. In the dream I believe that its the soo but it more closely resembles the area near our previous home in wawa.

The challenges: one challenge involved a clue about water flowing in and out. Everyone spent hours trying to figure out the clue to be able to find ... well...another clue i suppose. All the strain caused me to lie down when i had a sudden flash of brilliance. Water in and out: TIDES! So i jumped up, dug around in a bulk container of TIDE laundry detergent and found a glass bottle with a few pieces of paper inside.
eventually we were all walking through an alley (but not a sketchy one) in what we thought was downtown Calgary. For some reason i seemed to know where I was and even claimed to have been there before with Hannah (could have been in another dream). Of course we were racing so I decided to run because i knew there was a business district ahead. My endurance was incredible, but i was running awkwardly with tiny steps. I considered correcting it but decided to go with it since it seemed I could run forever like that.
Eventually we reached an area where we had to pair off and run a McDonalds and we would be judged on how profitable we were able to be that day. i paired with this blonde haired guy (who, although he was made up by my brain, I had quite the crush on him and was glad to be paired up). We went into the Mcdonalds and somehow (luckily) I just ended up playing with children in a small classroom. They all seemed to know who I was saying i had volunteered there before.

The last challenge I remember was we were given a location we had to find as a team. Everyone got something different and once there we had to complete a task. We had to find an old castle converted into something and answer 99 questions about old movies. Another group had to find an abandoned diamond mine in the bush (ps. i was upset because i knew exactly where it was). We could not locate this place, we got out the yellow pages, called all these old castles (yeah, all the old castles in the soo...?) to no avail. It ended somewhere there.

Many of my dreams tend to end in some type of frustration and repetition of the same task only to get nowhere. Even still, it was a good change from the "having to go to the bathroom and not being able to find one" that happens quite often.

Monday, April 9

home all weekend and a little stir crazy

I am actually looking forward to the American elections. They can't seem to come soon enough. Maybe this isn't all that unusual since most Americans are doing the 'pee-pee-dance' of anticipation when someone, anyone, but Bush will be in charge. What interests me most is the way it looks right now with the US two-party system it will either be a woman or a black man. I must admit I thought it would be decades longer before either of those events occurred but it looks like the set up could be perfect. Sadly, it looks like the US will even be beating us in terms of electing someone other than a white man (yes, Kim Campbell, but that was by default and for three months so I move to strike that from the record in terms of this discussion).

Speaking from a purely biased perspective and considering almost solely race, ethnicity and maybe overall political party I have to say that i want Hillary to win. Do I like her? Meh. Do I know a whole lot about what she stands for other than 'liberalness'? Not so much yet. But, she's a woman. If I had my choice of which underrepresented group to take office it would be a woman. Like i said, i'm completely biased having only X chromosomes to go with. Her win would be a victory for more people though, think about it...half the country is female. Black women benefit too. So do hispanic ones.

I could be mistaken but I could see Hillary winning partly by default. There are so many people now that will vote anything but republican in the US so point for her. Also, the same people who are still going to vote republican (ie. the real texans with lots of oil money), i'm willing to bet that a large percentage of them don't like Black people. I guess for them it's a lesser of two evils maybe? That is where I think Obama is quite clever. There has been quite a bit of publicity circling him and much of it is disguised as against but really could do quite a bit for his campaign. What i'm talking about is are the theories that are saying that he isn't Black. *gasp* I know, i've seen pictures of him too. I believe most of the theories point out that he is actually not "african-american-Black" in the sense that he is not actually a descendant of slaves but of pure African ancestry (maybe he's mixed too...that is just my speculation). Some people think that this makes him not Black.

How does this work in his favour? Well, if he gets people to go out there and look like they are attacking him with these theories he gains in one way. Those hardcore republicans feel better about voting for him (hey, he ain't really black) and this doesn't really hurt his Black vote because 1) most Black people hate republicans 2) those who were going to vote for him probably don't really care, hey, he look a whole lot more black than white, don't he?

There is my entirely biased and likely politically incorrect interpretation.

Thursday, April 5

Canadiana

"Some people think I eat too many chocolate bars or that I don't wash my face. My brother says that I will grow out of it, but right now, I don't think so..."

This commercial was quoted endlessly in elementary school. Poor acne kid, I wonder where he is now. And a point of clarification: not SPANISH !! He was Quebecois! Or maybe native. But not spanish!

Wednesday, April 4

basic emotions

I am sad that this year is almost done
I am sad that 'twas not my very most fun
I am sad that I'll have to say goodbye
I am sad, so sad I just might cry

I am glad that there'll be no more exams
I am glad that i've avoided eating SPAM
I am glad that travel, I finally will
I am glad, so glad i can't sit still

I am tired of reading my textbooks
I am tired of our drain being clogged by gook (ie. j.well's hair)
I am tired of sitting 'round and studying
I am tired to the point my brain be puddlin'

I'll miss the pile of laundry in my closet,
i'll miss when sarah whistles and ashley doesn't
i'll miss the dirty grey-carpet stairs
I'll miss the comfy rozanski chairs

I'll miss the people that i know
I'll miss the walking to and fro
I'll miss strolling down wineguard
I'll miss the cannon and...crazy people in the UC

Sigh. A poet, I will never be. I was going for a bit of a green eggs and ham thing but I really am sad to be done!

Sunday, April 1

Jesus was fully human too

When it comes to Jesus it can be very difficult (impossible?) to understand the dichotomy of fully God and fully man. This often leaves me imagining him as God trapped inside a human body. However, this isn't right. To be fully human he would have had to have limitations. Could it be that he even had limitations on his understanding? Ok, I can't find this verse right now so please correct me if I am mistaken but I believe the Bible says that we cannot see God because it would be so awesome and overwhelming that we would die right then and there. Our understanding of God is so limited by what can be processed and fathomed by our finite brains. Would Christ have fully understand God? Would he have really known the glory of heaven that he was to ascend back to and sit at the right hand of God or did he know only as much as God was able to reveal to him with his human brain? Don't get me wrong, I think he had a better understand than I do, or any of us really will but still, was it limited?

He must have had to trust God. Actually trust him that this was the best decision, that glory was waiting beyond death, that his death would bring salvation to the world. How does this relate to John 11, the death of Lazarus? Well, I did say loosely but we were discussing it in a Bible discussion group and came across the verse "Jesus wept" (John 11:35). the question, of course, is why? The easy and obvious answer is that he was sad that his friend died, duh. Granted. But my first reaction to that was still: isn't that weird? Why would he cry moments before seeing his friend's tomb if he knew that his friend would be raised from the dead in just a few minutes? He should be anxious to get it done and rejoicing if anything. But, instead, he weeps.

From a human perspective this makes sense. A human body and mind are bound by time. Even though Christ knew that Lazarus could be raised (and that it would happen) he still had to trust this (if you look he gives the glory to God and thanks God for doing what he asked, Christ could still only do it through the power of his father being limited by the human form) and at that moment his friend was dead. I have a feeling this is does not make a boatload of sense the way that it is written but the main point is that Christ was human. The fully human part is just as important as the fully God part. There was likely a time in his life that God was revealing his plan to him, times when he was afraid, times when he didn't really know what his future held but just that God had a plan of redemption and that he was part of it. It is hard for me to wrap my teeny brain around this. Challenge me if something seems blasphemous but this is hefty stuff (for me at least~!)