the happiest place on earth

well holy crap! within 15 minutes of sending out the tentative "canada day" "celebration" email... i recieved enough response to guarantee that there WILL be a party.

who knew you were all so flippin' patriotic?

friday, july 1st, 2005
2pm onwards...
hoolie house (yeah, i ain’t posting my address up here in *public* - call me if you have somehow faggotten where i live)

the funny thing is that i really don't have a BBQ. george forman grill is gonna get a workout.

here is what i will provide:
- pickles
- condom-mints (or condiments, if you prefer)
- buns for tofudogs and veggie burgers (if you want something other than whole wheat, bring your own)
- ice cream (and hopefully some soy dessert for you non-lactose lubbers)
- tabouleh salad
- rum
- a little some thing to smoke (mike f. and punk rock ryan - i am expecting you to be there)

and as far as entertainment:
- music (sorry people, i do not have a record player.... itunes it will be)
- games (scrabble, cards, chess, NES, more chinese drinking games if Y will indulge us)
- kiddie pool (bring your trunks!!)
- delightful conversation

things for you to bring:
- tofudogs or veggieburgers for yourself (please do not bring meat)
- maybe some sort of vegetable dish
- berries would be nice
- alcohol, pop, or juice if you want it
- swim trunks
- a friend or two (again... there is a strict no jerks and no hippies rule in effect)
- games to play
- crafts to work on (for you foxy/crafty types)

- Y has made passing suggestions that she will be roasting some eggplant (oh the things we vegetarians get excited about!!)
- S will be enticing us with sangria

if you do not have the time or the money to bring anything with you.... do not worry - i am sure there will be more than enough for everyone!!!

please arrange a safe trip home. i will be drinking my sorrows away... so i will not be providing rides home. you are more than welcome to stay the night - but, as usual, i will get to decide who sleeps in my bed with me (this would prolly be jef seeing that he is the only human capable of snoring as loud as i do).

RSVPs would be nice.... especially if you are planning on bringing something and want to let me know about it.

i am looking forward to spending a lovely day with you all... rain or shine.

toledo

It’s unexpected, really.

In the last week I have run into a best friend from junior high and a Montessori teacher that taught my grade 4 class. Both stopped and wanted to talk.

Less than 6 months ago, my brother and I were both hunted down and invited to a Montessori elementary school reunion.

This year will mark 10 years since I graduated from my high school and someone is bound to organize some sort of reunion.

And to those who know me, those that knew me, and those that think they know me – it is entirely unexpected that I do not attend reunions. One would think that I would jump at the chance to socialize, to talk shop, to reconnect, to chew the fat.

It is not so. The idea of being stuck in some hall or gymnasium or classroom or conference room with people that I no longer know and have made no effort to keep in touch with sounds absolutely hellish to me.

Michelle and Romy’s High School Reunion aside, I am under the impression that people attend reunions for one of two reasons: 1/ to prove to themselves and to others that they are not a loser after all. 2/ to prove to other certain people that those other certain people are still losers after all these years.

Is this cynical? Admittedly so. But really, if you are interested in what what’s-his-face has been doing since you hung out in grade 9, why not look for him on your own? Why did you not bother to hold on to his email address or phone number? What kind of meaningful exchange is going to happen under the ‘Class of 1995’ handpainted banner?

When the invite comes for the high school reunion, I may just send a profile for them to share. But it is a toss up with which direction I will go…. brutal morbid truth vs. amazingly amusing lies.

I will keep you posted.

good year for the roses

okay, for those of you that are tired of me telling you how fucking rad my job is... just skip reading this post.


top 5 things (in no particular order) that are rocking my socks off about my job:

1/ i now get to blog at work! (i mean, aside from the weekly posts to my own blog, that are sometimes done during office hours) - i am going to be maintaining and updating our organizational blog (on a variety of post-secondary education issues). fun-tastic!

2/ in order to keep me from laying on the floor and whimpering on hot days, my organization just bought me a portable air conditioner for my office. this place is like a greenhouse in the summer (heritage building - windows facing east) - and now i have an air conditioner to save me.

3/ after one of our fall meetings, i am going to get flown back to vancouver (from victoria) IN A HELIJET!!! it almost makes sitting through 4 days of ho-hum meetings worth while.

4/ this morning my boss and i dedicated some time to looking up hobo spiders on the internet. they cause some pretty gross damage. beware. looking up spiders together is one of the many useful things that we do in a day. we also talk about d&d, online comics, and gossip about politicians, gov't workers, activists, public personalities.

5/ i actually get to do work that involves some amount of creativity + using my smrts + drawing from my student activism years/ previous work + volunteer experience.



well, i better get back to my *other* blogging. hahahhahahahha. oh good lord. sweet, sweet work....

snowglobe

"Nobody move… this is perfect."
- danny michel

I realize now that I am not the only one who has to wake up some mornings and *remind* myself that my life is pretty sweet. I guess because I never had to be this conscious about it - - - I kept feeling that these ‘reminders’ that I give myself were somehow contrived.

But they’re not. Maybe it is mindfulness that I am learning, something that I didn’t know enough about to value for in the past.

I don’t know.

But I wake up these days and remind myself how well things are going – and that some of that can be attributed to me – and the rest of it can be attributed to something unnameable.

One of my counseling professors insists that everyone should go through a full blown panic attack and a full blown depression at some point in their lives. He believes that experiencing these things is essential to becoming a human. I smirk every time he says that. But I suppose that somewhere inside of me, I agree with him.

Statistically speaking, people are actually *more accurate* at assessing their life situations when they are depressed. I will find a link that explains this further in the future. The gist of it is that people are able to more clearly assess what the current situation of their life is, how it got to be that way, and where the responsibility lays – when they are depressed. This is scary, I know… but makes sense when you think about it.

I guess my interest lays in what people do with those stark realizations once they emerge from their depression or states of panic.

Me? I prefer to remind myself that ‘everything is going extremely well’, follow through with my interests and commitments, and dream up big and small adventures to take myself through.

And so, dear readers, if necessary – enjoy a panic attack or depressive episode today… word on the streets is that it may do you some good in the long run.

in a perfect world... all the geeks get the girls

you can bet that some of these words will be integrated into my vocabulary in the very near future....

clearly, foreploy is my favorite new word. read on:


The Washington Post's Mensa Invitational once again asked readers to take any word from the dictionary, alter it by adding, subtracting, or changing one letter, and supply a new definition.
Here are this year's winners:

1. Reintarnation: Coming back to life as a hillbilly.

2. Bozone (n.): The substance surrounding stupid people that stops bright ideas from penetrating. The bozone layer, unfortunately, shows little sign of breaking down in the near future.

3. Foreploy: Any misrepresentation about yourself for the purpose of getting laid.

4. Cashtration (n.): The act of buying a house, which renders the subject financially impotent for an indefinite period.

5. Giraffiti: Vandalism spray-painted very, very high.

6. Sarchasm: The gulf between the author of sarcastic wit and the person who doesn't get it.

7. Inoculatte: To take coffee intravenously when you are running late.

8. Hipatitis: Terminal coolness.

9. Osteopornosis: A degenerate disease. (This one got extra credit.)

10. Karmageddon: It's like, when everybody is sending off all these really bad vibes, right? And then, like, the Earth explodes and it's like, a serious bummer.

11. Decafalon (n.): The grueling event of getting through the day consuming only things that are good for you.

12. Glibido: All talk and no action.

13. Dopeler effect: The tendency of stupid ideas to seem smarter when they come at you rapidly.

14. Arachnoleptic fit (n.): The frantic dance performed just after you've accidentally walked through a spider web.

15. Beelzebug (n.): Satan in the form of a mosquito, that gets into your bedroom at three in the morning and cannot be cast out.

16. Caterpallor (n.): The color you turn after finding half a worm in the fruit you're eating.

And the pick of the literature:
17. Ignoranus: A person who's both stupid and an asshole.

shipbuilding

I have been thinking a lot about houses/ housing/ homes lately. At present, the vast (VAST!) majority of my friends live somewhere that they pay rent, be this an apartment, condo, house, room in a house, co-op, university/ college residence, etc.

Very few of the people I know seem to have a concrete plan for purchasing housing. I am curious as to why this is.

Many of my friends are college or university educated. And while we are surely not in the ‘entrepreneur’ category, many of us have decent/ okay/ pretty well paying jobs.

Up until a few months ago, I had imagined that becoming a home-owner would never be in the cards for me. However, the more that I think about it, the more that I realize that being a renter is more of a privilege for someone like me than being a mortgage payer would be.

I am not sure how to explain this.

Man, I long for a day that everything isn’t about my health – but in this case, my health now plays a central role in the type of housing I choose. Having an unpredictable illness has eliminated any desire that I ever had to have the freedom of being a renter. I just can’t do it. It is not, in any way viable for me. I know how fucking shitty disability income is. I know what it is like to live on welfare. I know that my long term disability insurance at work is going to do every possible thing to deny any claim that I will ever attempt to make. What I now know is that no human should be expected to live on $500/m. – whether they are abled or disabled. You cannot rent a place, have enough money to feed yourself, and pay for your medical costs by the means available to someone who is disabled and cannot work.

And therefore, I am putting my money on mortgage insurance. At least this way, on the inevitable day when I go blind (again), cannot get out of bed because of fatigue/ pain (again), or am struck with mobility issues that disallow me from doing my job – at least then my whole sense of home and safety and purpose and place might not come crashing down.

People continue to wonder what I am doing so far out in the ‘inconvenient’ suburbs. Well, I am hashing out a plan to finance the purchase of a small, air-conditioned, wheelchair accessible apartment. I *do* have the luxury of living rent-free (for the time being). I am learning how to make the most of it.

Houses, anyone?