Happy New Year

I'm off to see Picasso and Jason McLean at the vag. Maybe I will be stunned once again by how beautiful Vancouver is, even in the rain. Maybe it will turn out to be sunny. Maybe there will be a protest there that I can take pictures of. How am I to know?

First Night's not on this year, not that I was planning on going, but still it's sad that we can't seem to have any sort of big events without an incredibly huge police presence. Other cities can do it. Why can't we?

I still think I should do some sort of year in review but I don't really want to. Other than having a party, I don't really think there's anything really significant about New Years. Is it when the school year ends? No. Is it when the fiscal year ends? No. Will January 1, 2006 be drastically different from today? Probably not, though I guess we have to wait and see about that.

How do you end a completely pointless post? Happy new year, I guess. Seems a pretty pathetic way to end the year. Maybe next year I will have something better to say.

Uprooted

I saw this car on Robson. Only on Robson.

It used to be called Robsonstrasse, because there were so many Germans around, and so many fine German restaurants, if there really is such a thing. Then it turned into funky little boutiques. Now it's nothing more than an open-air shopping mall with decent restaurants. No Germans. Where did they go? We just disappeared.

My mother and I do this German thing. It's weird, because there's nothing really German about us, except for some vague family history. You can find birth records, christenings, marriages, deaths for everyone and trace them all back to Europe, and that's where it ends. Try as you might, you can never find the people that were around before the ones you knew that came to Canada.

I don't think you're really supposed to be able to find them. People came here to disappear, to reinvent themselves.

They did a great job, because Canada is all I've ever known. We've all been completely uprooted from Europe and yet we do this German thing, as if we can't quite bring ourselves to do something Canadian, or even worse, there isn't really a Canadian thing to be done. It's weird.

I'm sure I had something meaningful to say, but words escape me.

Infestation

A couple in the throes of passion, a malevolent glance and then the ugly little creamer is knocked off the table only to shatter into a million pieces across the floor.

You feel sorry for the little creamer? That is because you're crazy. You can buy a new one at Ikea.

I loved that little creamer. It did not deserve to die.

And yet somehow I still manage to find myself inside that wonderful feat of suburban big-box architecture, lured most likely by the irresistable temptation of an Ikea $1 breakfast ($1.07 after tax). Damn Swedes and their clever marketing.

I can't put my finger on exactly what it is, but there's something about Ikea that turns me into a little kid. It's just an inherently fun place to go, I guess, especially since there are quite literally a million and a half things to put on my head and a wide range of curtains to wear.

We all know what you get for the $1 breakfast, but guess what's for lunch?

Gravlax with a side of polyester rat.

Nothing for dinner

My dad says he's glad that I'm drawing again, but I can tell that sometimes he's not so sure. Seems to me that if you click that picture, you can see a bigger version.

Sunset over lumberyard

Fortunately, we had planned to visit my grandmother on Boxing Day.

Unfortunately, we had planned to visit my grandmother on Boxing Day.

Fortunately, we didn't leave nearly as late as we usually do.

Unfortunately, the car broke down about three blocks from our house.

Fortunately, we got it towed the two blocks back to the garage.

Unfortunately, that ordeal took us two hours. We could have pushed the damn thing faster.

Fortunately, we hadn't had our act together enough to actually phone ahead and order any food from Hon's.

Unfortunately, I was really looking forward to having some deep fried crispy milk.

Deep fried crispy milk!

Oh well. It's not like they have cool fortune cookies.

But still, deep fried crispy milk!

Erin casts her eyes upon the horizon

The problem with this time of year is that I feel obligated to make lists like everyone else of the best things I did, or my favourite albums or something. Every year, I rack my brains trying to come up with something meaningful to say about what I did for the past year, and I tend to come up blank. The fact is that by December, I can't remember further back than June.

Besides, I already did this back in August, and maybe I'll do it again next August.

So, I'm going to try something completely different. Predictions.

January I will be back in school with four classes, one, which will be hard but interesting, one which I will absolutely hate, and another two that I will complain about because everyone else is doing it, even though they won't be all that bad. Anticipating the fact that I will (once again) most likely not get enough hours over the summer where I regularly work, I will begin applying without discrimination for every lifeguarding job advertised. I will be one of the lucky bastards that gets to count ballots for the election on January 23, after having voted in one of the advance polls. I will most likely move into my apartment, or at least that is the hope.

February will be full of school-related things, though I'll find some time to squeeze in other things as well. I will consider breifly signing up for recerts, but I will decide against it. I will suck up to the rowing team, and they will agree to let me be a coxswain, on the condition that I lose 20 lbs. If not, there's always coaching. I may possibly go to a conference on AIDS in Banff.

By mid-March I will have loads of papers to write. A conservative estimate says that I will be called for at least 4 interviews. They are nasty 2-4 hour long cattle-call interviews where you always get stuck working in groups with complete idiots, all the while trying hard to not look like an idiot yourself. I get to do strength tests, swimming exams, practical skills and first aid assesments, take home exams and create lesson plans, all lovely hoops to jump to prove that I can do exactly what my certificates say I can. I get to do one at every place that I applied. I will begin inhaling Sudafed by the bottle. It will make me extremely jittery, which will add to the slightly paranoid feeling that I get every March, April, May.

This is about the time when I suddenly realize that all my qualifications are expiring and I freak out and sign up for all my recerts. Invariably I will walk into interviews with old certificates and promise profusely that I will update them later. I will walk out completely certain that I have fucked every single one up, though I probably haven't.

My sister and mother will go to Tijuana for a week. I would have gone with them if I wasn't so busy. They will have lots of fun building a school for impoverished children.

I will dance at two festivals and most likely place 3rd and DFL, respectively. I will hate my costume from the moment I see it.

April arrives in all its fury, plunging me straight into exams for school, exams for lifeguarding and personal interviews at every place I applied. I will screw up my first sit-down-and-talk-to-a-person interview and not be called back for a third. Then, as soon as I think that I'm finished, I will have to do teaching interviews. Once again, I will walk out feeling like I have screwed them up completely. In a moment of panic, I will realize that
I might possibly have scheduled my recerts at the same time as my final exams. When I check, they will not overlap, but will be dangerously close.

May will come. I will have considered by now taking a course like intro German for intersession, but someone will have talked me out of it. It doesn't matter, because by this stage of the game, I won't be able to scratch together money for coffee, let alone tuition. This will translate into me spending a lot of time sitting around, doing nothing and feeling sorry for myself. My parents will tell me that there is no reason why my apartment should be such a bloody mess if I'm at home all the time, I will agree completely with them, and that will do nothing to help my mood.

I will come up with an elaborate plan to escape to Norway and not act upon it.

In the beginning of June, I will get conscripted into service at my parents' house, doing mainly gardening, but also to redo the floor in the livingroom. I will get some hours where I regularly work, and as predicted, they won't exactly be enough. I will once again be the head backstage runner for our yearend dance show, where I will be hugged, kissed, cheered for, screamed at and praised for being the calmest person around. I will continue to hold my breath and wait for the phone to ring. Eventually it will, and I will proudly accept a second job, putting me further over the 40 hour work week than I care to think about.

July. I will work at one job, then I will work at the other. Then I will sleep. I will try my damndest not to blog about work so as not to get myself fired, and will choose instead to bore people with pretty pictures and stories about the weird-as-shit people I meet on the bus. Someone will phone me about going out and doing something social, and I will decline because I have to work.

August, likewise, will be spent working. I will forget my own birthday. I will suddenly realize that I have no life whatsoever, call Kathy, and suggest that we do something fun and non work-related. She will decline because she too has much work and little life. At around this time we will once again give up our crazy idea of writing a novel over the summer together. Alison will finally get back from living in Malaysia, and we will go for coffee, because that will be all the time I can afford to spend on her before September. I will order something matcha flavoured and suggest that we take Quantitative Research Methods together because I can't possibly go it alone.

Two weeks into August I will begin to run on autopilot, reading textbooks on the bus to work and counting down the days until

September, when I will go back to school, completely burnt out. I will have signed up for the highest possible number of courses that are completely unrelated to my major. Frosh week will bring with it lots of non-alcoholic fun, and Frosh weekend will be sure to involve plenty of alcohol. Everyone I know will use the entire month to do a lot of catch-up for the partying that they missed over the summer, myself included. I will consider getting a job shelfreading at the library, but probably won't. It will take me a while before I stop feeling like crap.

In October I will rediscover my groove, just in time for midterms. I will procrastinate more than ever, only to vomit forth papers faster than ever. The month will end with yet another awesome Haloween party that I will probably go to dressed up as a frumpy old lady.

November will be spent finishing papers and projects. It will otherwise be uneventful. I will finally take some time to figure out what all the nifty buttons and settings on my camera actually do.

December will be nice, relaxing exams. I will decide upon a list of things that I want to accomplish over the holidays and not complete most of them. We will either decline invitiation to or not hear about Christmas dinner with my father's family, but we will have some sort of get-together with my mother's family. Grandma may or may not be present, depending on how bad her MS gets between now and then. It's not something that I care to predict.

That turned out much longer than expected, though it's really more for personal reference than for you. Sorry. Cookies for me if I'm right.

Grandma

My grandmother never ceases to amaze me. There is no medical way possible that she should be as alert, happy and seemingly healthy as she is at her weight and age, with the amount of drugs she's on. Though she was kind of fuzzy on some things, like what her age was. I don't suppose it actually matters much.

We took her some books and a care package with some nice soaps so she doesn't have to use whatever they have at the hospital. She had some presents for us too: some soup mix, some clip-on old lady earrings for my sister, and two chocolate bars in a box for me. She thinks about us, and that's really all that counts.

We took Waking Ned Devine to watch with her and as always, it was hilarious. I'm not completely sure if she really understood what was happening in the movie, but it was a good way to make visits to see grandma a little more entertaining than usual.

Even still, as I was watching, I couldn't help not enjoying myself. Not only did I have a bad headache, I also couldn't stop thinking about Annie, the lady that lives across the room from my grandmother. She's always been in that room and she's always been an absolute scream. Last night though, she was so frail that she was having trouble holding her phone to her ear. Somehow I don't think she'll be there the next time we visit.

All the way home, we played upbeat music much too loud.

Greetings

Hello you canuck!

I just came home from our christmas gathering and the food were as always very good. I didnt eat too much due to the christmas dinner later tonight. I want to be ready for that. I always think that I am going to starve until the christmasdinner, but always end up emptying all the cans with candy. Oh well. There are always room for dinner anyway.

When we came home i spoke to some friends on msn. In fact i showed them that drawing you made. They were absolutely made up because they thought it was so good. My mother also saw it and she was really impressed as well. She appreciate good drawings because she is drawing a bit herself. And I definitely didnt get those skills from her. I am totally disabled and retarded when it comes to drawing. But you know that dont you :)

Anyway, 24th of December is the day we celebrate christmas, and there are many traditional things we have to go through every year. One of them is to try hearing the bells from the church at 5 o`clock. Thats 5 KM away. Sometimes we hear them, other times not. Well, most of the time we dont hear them, hehe. We need wind from the west to hear them ring :P

This is the first time I ever write such a christmas greeting, and it probably will never happen again. So now you can feel special :)

Wish you and your family a merry christmas, and see you later.

Greetings

Tom Roger

The busiest shopping day of the year

That's me when I was six. Neat eh?

We were originally supposed to go shopping with my grandmother today, but she worked herself into a terrible snit and decided instead that she would scream at my mother on the phone. Oh well. I can't really say that my day was ruined.

Talked philosophy and religion on Santa's lap. Got a candy cane for my thoughts.

Du says I tired her out with shopping. I thought she was the shopper of the family.

Spent with reckless abandon on gifts for my mother with my father.

Talked dysfunctional family with my mother. Apparently my grandmother wants her sister, Sharon, to be invited to whatever kind of festivities we're planning to have. I forsee two problems with this. First of all, she won't come if she knows that I will be there, and if she does come, she won't bother to acknowledge my presence. We will sit and stare at each other from across the room until she leaves early. Then she will tell my grandmother that she wished that she had had a chance to get to know me. It's the same every year.

That being said, I think it's terrible that my grandmother is so hard on her for visiting her husband's grave all the time and even though she's miserly and she hates me, I still wish her a very merry Christmas.

I'm finished my shopping and I'm glad.

Thoughts

As soon as Du saw this picture last night, it ceased to be mine.

A few things occur to me this morning:

I have been struck recently by the amount of nutritional information written on the packages of British food. Why is it that in spite of all this information, the British diet is so terrible? I don't think British people are stupid. There must be some other reason.

It is the winter solstice. Regardless of if anyone really bothers to celebrate it or not, we all seem to notice it and think it's sufficiently important for us to write it down on our calendars. And yet, it doesn't really matter much in the long scheme of things. The days get a little longer, that's all, and yet we make a big deal of it. My cat doesn't care. She accepts and moves on. Maybe she's smarter than the rest of us.

I have come to the conclusion that Christmas shopping is a lot more fun when you actually have money to spend.

I'm not looking forward to January.

Shopping

Christmas always reminds me that I would love my mother more if she was easier to buy for. Every year it is the same. We all poke and prod at her to get us to tell us something, but she never really says much.

This year she would have us believe that all she wants is a new pair of slippers. The problem is that it is tacitly understood that mom is supposed to get the most presents. After all, it is also understood that we would surely descend into chaos without her.

The plan this year then, is to buy her tons of little things and then squirrel them away, so that when she wakes up there are gifts everywhere: the kitchen table, cupboards, the bathroom, her underwear drawer, etc. I'm not sure what else to do.

Du and I have been helping dad for a while with an anti drinking and driving campaign. The local liquour stores donated some of their bags to schools for kids to decorate with some sort of "happy holidays drink responsibly" message and then our job was to sort through them and pull out all the ones that were overly negative or wrong in some way or other. Some of the good ones were quite amazing, and some of the bad ones are downright hilarious. I think the one pictured today is very good, except that it kind of misses the point. Some of them kind of remind me of postsecret.

Sothing

Remind me to never let an eight-year-old mix my drinks.

On second thought, maybe I should.

Glitter

An office tacky gift exchange has left us with a copy of Dame Edna's autobiography. It has already made an impression on Du, who has taken great delight in being absolutely scandalized by some of the more ridiculous things she's read there. The only problem, of course is that she has to share her incredulity with the rest of us, which is getting a little tiring.

It's my cousin's birthday today, so we made what was to be a quick trip to the little terror's house to deliver some gifts, the crowning glory of which was a Dora the Explorer backpack, just like the one Dora wears. That got her pretty excited and she had to shreik and run around the room for well over an hour. Regardless, I think that she may in fact be slowing down, finally. Perhaps I'm being too optimistic too soon.

My aunt has finally learned what it really means to be a parent: lots and lots of crafts and glitter. Crafts and glitter that you don't really have the space for, but that you can't possibly get rid of because your very own kid made it specially for you. I know there are several boxes of that stuff in my house, somewhere, though perhaps some of it went missing when we moved.

She told us the epic story of the Santa Claus advent calendar. Apparently in my cousin's world, Santa has four eyes, three of which eventually ended up in the toilet. As I'm sure I've already said before, she's an interesting child.

Auntie Evelyn went back to 1962 to get my aunt a Christmas card. Inside was a letter that was pleased to announce that her granddaughter had phoned my grandmother and they've decided that my grandmother is still mentally sharp, in spite of her age. I feel somewhat obligated to point out that though my grandmother is rude, racist, cruel and completely lacking in grace, there is nothing wrong with her mind. The reason why she's living in a home is because she can't walk and she kept falling out of bed. Besides, Evelyn's older.

My aunt claims that she must have taken up smoking her own home grown. Maybe she's right.

I hear The Sound of Music coming from the opposite end of the house right now, and to be honest, I'm a little perturbed.

Margin notes

Tomorrow I write my last two exams of the semester/year. I am glad.

Quoth Abby: "Damn, I could swear that Dame Edna is a man."

That's because she is, Abby.

Good night.

Family history

Enough cats.

Alec liked to jog. He liked to jog to the post office.

Evelyn, my mother's aunt-in-law has taken it upon herself to write a biography of my great-grandparents for a publication about the history of the town where my grandmother grew up. I believe that this publication has something to do with the local museum, as in something kind of related to academic things.

See Alec jog. Jog Alec jog.

It reads like Dick and Jane. Evelyn, you see, is an elementary school teacher. Has been for years. My mother also contends that she is crazy. While I'm not sure about the insanity, she does have perfect handwriting, which does not bode well for her.

Alec had six cows. It was hard to get the cows in the corral but somehow Alec did it.

In Grandma's own words, "Yeah, he used to beat the crap out of those things with a whip. That's how he got them in there."

My mother was somewhat perturbed that when Evelyn named my grandmother, she used Grandpa Bill's last name, and that she should have used my grandfather Harold's last name, because he was the only person she had ever been married to. "But I can't do that, can I?" she said, "because that would have meant that heaven forbid she had lived in sin!"

"Your mother is sin," my dad replied.

"With a capital S," mom added.

Apparently I have to go Christmas shopping with Grandma on Tuesday. I'm not really looking forward to that.

Bath

And to add insult to injury, I photographed the event. She has been bathed in "serenity", a sensuous blend of lavender and chamomile. Like she cares.

She's back

I left my computer on while I went to take a shower the other day, and this is what I found. Somehow or other, my cat wasn't the only thing that was crashed.

When I finally got my computer to work, the keyboard wouldn't work. No reason. I typed things and they just didn't show up on screen, which was extremely disconcerting to me, because I use a laptop.

I realize that what I am doing right now is in effect making up more excuses for not posting something for the past couple of days. I also realize that 'my cat crashed my computer' isn't really a very likely story at all. You've got to give me some credit for it though. I bet you'd never heard that one before.

I wish I could say my life has been interesting the past few days.

On Monday I had a not so good day.

Tuesday I had a staring contest with a Norwegian postal worker via webcam after he said that Norwegians were stupid and I disagreed. I lost.

Wednesday I wrote an English exam that was suspiciously easy.

Today another Norwegian tells me about some upcoming concerts here in Vancouver by fellow Vancouverites that I had never heard of, ie. Geoff Berner, accordionist extraordinaire.

The world is a strange place. I'm definitely not looking forward to the day when it ceases to amuse me.

Anyways, something interesting I found today: knitting as graffiti. So warm and fuzzy and rebellious at the same time.

I forsee a storm on the horizon. The other cat has taken up smelling, for lack of a better word, poopy. There is some lavender shampoo in the bathroom that no one ever uses...

Soporific

See how quickly it sneaks up on you? It's hiding in a song, an idle thought, some trivial thing that someone says to you, and all of a sudden you go from being perfectly fine thankyouverymuch to spending the rest of the week walking through air that has suddenly congealed around you. Suddenly you're wishing that you could just crawl up into a dark hole somewhere to wait out the storm.

If you were to touch me now, I would probably dent.

Distraction

In his article, "The Long Tail," Chris Anderson describes a new market model for the entertainment economy. Briefly explain what is meant by the "Long Tail" and describe how blogs, tagging systems, and social networks reinforce Anderson's idea.

Just one of the questions I'm working on right now on my other takehome. Speaking of Anderson's "long tail" and social networks, some sort of glitch at last.fm has left me with a temporary subscriber account. I'm sure that that will amuse me sufficiently to keep me away from what I'm supposed to be doing right now.

The people upstairs are arguing right now. I can hear high heels clicking across the lino floors, punctuating angry sentences. There is special sound insulation between me and them, but it never seems to be enough to drown everything out. They're talking about her mother, who passed away not long ago.

She always seemed like a nice lady to me. Every time she saw that we had done something to fix up the garden, her face would light up, and sometimes you would find her sitting out there, enjoying it. It's very sad that she's gone. Though, I find it more sad that the people upstairs are always fighting. Seems like a terrible waste of time, especially since life is so short.

Besides, they're distracting me from my exam.

Speaking of distractions though, another article that I have to look at is here, and though the article itself loads just fine, I get a popup message that looks like this:


My question is why my browser seems to think I should care if the ads on a site don't work. I'm trying to think of some sort of clever analogy, but at the moment I'm coming up blank. I should get back to work.

Missing day

My watch says December 7, and that's where my mind is too. Somehow or other I just lost a day. Time does that to me sometimes. 30 days hath November. Best not to forget that.

I'm finding it more and more difficult to capitalize the words at the beginnings of my sentences. Apparently excessive use of msn has rotted my brain and left my pinkies completely incapable of making the long stretch all the way to their respective shift keys. Luckily Microsoft Word is there to ensure my strict compliance with societal norms and conventions of the English language.

I have found myself having a lot of impassioned, one-sided debates on moral and political issues with myself lately. I will be doing something like reading for an exam or washing the dishes, and suddenly I will start talking, often about views and issues that I usually keep to myself. I have no idea why I seem to feel like I should justify myself and my beliefs to my computer screen or the kitchen window but I do. Maybe I'm studying too hard.

I decided to get out of the house for a while to prevent myself from going completely crazy from working on my takehome. I hopped onto a bus and went to school for the sole purpose of picking up one of my papers that was waiting for me in the office. I took a book with me that somehow didn't get read.

The bus driver cheerfully informed me that bus service in my neighbourhood is being expanded and some routes are being revised. I can't remember the exact details, but they can be found here. It looks like many other routes are also changing too. If you use transit around Vancouver, you may want to check it out. Changes come into effect on Monday.

Arriving at school, I learned that I had forgotten my student card and as a result, could not collect the paper I had come for. So as not to go away completely empty-handed, I spent an exorbitant amount on textbooks for next semester. I'm not sure yet if that was a wise thing to do, so close to Christmas.

Coming out of the bookstore, I ran into Colleen from my English class. We rode the bus down the hill together and then she convinced me to go with her to get some coffee. But no sooner had she gotten her drink, she decided that she suddenly had to go shopping and left. Apparently she does this to other people too. I'm not sure if I am annoyed or not.

Studying

I'm letting my political economy takehome sit on the back burner right now. I have apparently seven more days with which to write no more than five double-spaced pages about Robert McChesney. Considering the incredible amount of information force-fed to us throughout the semester, this takehome feels more like a joke than anything.

Regardless, there are always critics, like the guy in the back row who thinks the exam is much too difficult for him to accomplish. He was also the guy who complained that it was unfair that late papers and assignments were penalized 10% per day. Some people are never happy.

I promised a friend that I would draw a portrait for him from a picture I have on my computer. It's not going as quickly as I would have liked, because Lou likes to help. You can see her helping there. She types too, just never the things I want her to type.

What is it about this time of year that turns me into a cat magnet? It would be really nice if I wasn't trying to study for my exams.

Massacre

Today is December 6th, the anniversary of the Montreal Massacre and I feel I should say something. Maybe I'll say this:

My mother tells stories about how her father used to beat her mother regularly. One day my grandmother had had enough. She packed up her kids and left. I can't remember where they moved, but it was away from him. He arrived one day with his truck and stole their washer and dryer, drove them to his friend's house and left them in his front yard. Somehow or other, they ended up moving back in with him.

A few weeks later, the friend showed up on their doorstep with a garbage bag full of clothing. "He left the washer and dryer out on my lawn," he said, "and I didn't realize that there was still clothing in it. My wife said I should bring it back." Things like this happened more than once, from what I've heard.

I used to have this idea that he only ever touched my grandmother, that somehow or other, my mother was never affected. I used to picture her in my mind as a talented and outstanding student when she was in school. Maybe that's the way that she'd rather remember it. One day out of curiosity my father went back to their high school and made a copy of her transcript, and the sheer volume of absences marked in there told a completely different story.

She tells me sometimes about how he used to drive with her to the pub when she was little and leave her in the truck for hours on end while he drank inside. Then he would drive her home, drunk. My grandmother has a scar on her forehead from when he got into an accident once. Mom remembers little things, like how he gave away her dog to his friend without telling her, like how he stole and drank a bottle of wine she got in a Christmas gift exchange at work.

And one day she decided she had had enough. She left it all, and his entire family turned its back on her because it refused to admit that he was an alcoholic. She went out, got a master's degree, created a new family for herself and tried hard to not look back. She's always apologetic about the fact that my sister and I never really knew anyone from our extended family. I have never thought that she should be.

When he died, we recieved numerous phone calls from relatives that I knew only by name. Again and again we heard the same message that they weren't sure why she had divorced herself from the family, but that they knew he was an abusive drunk and his death wasn't exactly a tragedy. They had nothing but love and support and understanding for her. And the more times I heard this repeated, the angrier I got. Where were these people thirty-five or forty years ago, and why didn't they say anything then?

I can't help thinking that if someone had just said something, that things would have been different today, that I would have a family and that my mother wouldn't have to hold back so many tears.

I wish that I didn't have to hold back so many tears.

Not really a massacre, I suppose, but a little closer to home.

Hurra Torpedo

8:30 tutorial started with the standard five minutes of dumb silence. "So, what did you think about the readings?" Andy asked at last, just as Joanne walked in and sat down beside me, "Do you think that praxis will change the way corporate media will operate?"

Upon sitting down, Joanne immediately turned to me. "What are we talking about?" she asked.

"Praxis," I answered, "and corporate media." She smiled and hunched over the table, wrapping her fingers around her coffee mug, immediately launching into a criticism of camera phones that have mp3 players in them and bugs in new technology that she felt should be fixed. A girl across the room began to giggle.

"What does this have to do with praxis?" Andy asked.

"Well nothing, but new technology has problems that we have to sort out," she replied.

A guy was asleep in the corner. We woke him up to see if that would help stimulate some sort of meaningful discussion, only to find that he was completely stoned. The girl across the room began to giggle again.

"What do you think about the value of blogs and alternative media sources on the internet," Andy asked me, "will they change anything?"

"I don't know," I replied. Then he just had to remind me that that was what I had written my term paper on. The girl across the room giggled. I don't think she said a single word for the whole hour. I really could have used whatever she was on.

Some days are just like that. I'm glad that it's the last day of school.

I have just discovered that there will be a documentary on the strangely endearing Norwegian cult band Hurra Torpedo, and that clips of it can be found on Pip Simon's site. At the moment, I am thoroughly amused.

If you have absolutely no idea what I am talking about, I suggest you watch either this video (Windows media) or this one (Quicktime).

I have a takehome exam to pick up right now. Wish me luck!

Hiatus

To make a long story short, my sister and I went to go see a couple plays that her friends were in at a local high school. The plays were written by the students and were extremely well done. I wonder why we couldn't have written our own plays when I was in high school. It makes so much more sense than doing Grease over and over.

Promptly after the play we got lost in the snow, looking for a Starbucks. We walked around for at least an hour before we finally found one about four blocks away, because evidently neither of our brains were working. If my brain had been working properly, I would have ordered a tall Cafe Estima, but instead I had a gingerbread latte, which on second thought, was probably a good idea, seeing as it was already about 9:45 and no doubt it would have kept me up much longer into the night than my latte.

The Starbucks closed at 10:00 and kicked us out. We wandered around through the streets until we were thoroughly cold, and then got a ride home from our parents who apparently accidentaly got stuck watching Harry Potter instead of whatever movie they had actually bought tickets for.

I'm afraid I'm not going to have much to say for the next week or so, because I should really be studying for exams.

Snow

I think this is the first year I've really noticed the days getting shorter. I'm not sure why that is, but I remember people mentioning it and not really fully understanding what they were talking about. Funny how that happens.

I can't remember the last time it snowed this early in the year. I think it's nice for a change, though I'm sure that in a week the novelty will have worn off. For now, it's really pretty.

So far the snow has confined itself to the mountains. Rather civilized, I think, because you can drive up to it, enjoy and then leave when you get tired or cold. When you get home, there's nothing to shovel. I took my camera with me to Burnaby Mountain yesterday and I'm fairly pleased with the results.