reign in blood

I am sorry. I cannot hold it back. I don’t tell this to you to rub it in your face or anything…

SARAH GOT BOX TICKETS TO SLAYER!!! SARAH IS TAKING ME TO SLAYER!!!

In the words of L, “I sure hope they are evil.”

Pure. Evil.

under the blade

I was just asked if I would be willing to pose for a calendar that is being put together by the lower mainland chapter of the MS Society of Canada. The calendar is going to be called The Many Faces of MS.

Anyway…

I said yes.

we all know art is hard

I have said it before and I will say it again… endings are hard.

I have been in friendships and in relationships that I felt clearly must come to an end. I have often instigated the endings of those partnerships. As many of you know, I am not shy about breaking up (in the platonic and the sexualized sense) with people who have a negative influence on my life. The catch is that it is, in some ways, more challenging to be on the pro-active end of things. It can be harder to take responsibility for the ending, to be expected to ‘justify’ the ending, and to been seen as having made someone else a victim.

It’s tough, man.

There are people who are of the mistaken impression that, because I openly encourage my friends and loved ones to *delete* negative people from their lives, endings are somehow easy for me. I will save you the suspense and tell you that this isn’t the case.

Whichever side of the whip you are on, there is a process of mourning to go through. Sometimes the mourning is as simple as “fucking good lord, glad that shit is over” and sometimes the sadness and heaviness crawls with you through many days/ months/ years. The ‘deaths’ of certain things in our life can set off a chain-reaction. We may be looking at a situation and see a reflection into past experiences. Sometimes we are unable to separate the current termination with the terminations that have happened before.

Something very simple in my life is about to come to an end. It is no big deal, really. However, as I was spacing-out during a business lunch today, I realized that I know myself well enough to know that I will cry.

I never know why, exactly, I am crying. But if you want to earn some good money, place bets that I will be raw and open and tearful when something comes to an end – no matter how small that ‘something’ is.

this is not an exit

if people actually knew how easy it is to make fruit jam, i wonder if they would ever bother buying the junk that you get at the store.

i wouldn’t say that my family has ever been all that healthy or homemade about our foods, though i do recall that when i was growing up that we didn’t eat a whole lot of processed or prepackaged food. i don’t remember having bags of cookies or bags of chips in the house. sometimes my mom would haul chold and i into the kitchen and let us help her make chocolate chip cookies or whatnot. tollhouse chip cookies were as close as we got to junk food.

we weren’t allowed to eat sugary cereals, pop tarts, pizza pops, fruit roll ups, or any such fad food.

we always had both strawberry and raspberry jam at home - and it was always made by my mom. the super cool thing was that my mom would take us out to abbotsford or chilliwack and chold and i would get dressed up in grungy clothes and be allowed to help pick the berries. there are some photos floating around of he and i with smushed fruit/ fruit juice down the front of our shirts and sand/ dirt stuck to the stains because we had been mucking around on the ground and eating fruit all day. i clearly remember eating one berry for each berry i put in the picking bucket.

mom would bring us home and wash us off before she would get to work making jams.

today i took L out to chilliwack to see a used motorbike that he was interested in and then we went on a wild goose chase for a strawberry farm that didn’t exist. after much driving and some grumpiness we arrived at an amazing U-Pick farm. $1 per pound of strawberries. w00t!

i thought that everyone got to go and pick berries when they were a kid, but L informed me that this is not so. this was his first time picking fruit and i was glad to be the one to pop his strawberry.

in about 30 min we picked 10.25 pounds of berries. yum.

having not picked berries before, L had also never made freezer jam. it is simple as pie. in about an hour we made enough strawberry jam to last my household for the next 2 years. we have already made plans to make apple-blueberry jam when the season arrives.

the moral of the story is that there are tasty strawberries and also tasty strawberry jam at my house.

the end.

school's out for summer

Well, it’s been settled. I would like to go back to school next September.

I have been strongly considering my future as a policy wonk and it turns out that I am not 100% sold on the idea.

Here is why:
- I am unsure of what the part time work opportunities are like in the field.
- I do not like contract work.
- The idea of working behind a computer all day / every day bores me.
- I am very confused as to what PUBLIC POLICY actually means…. and where me and my interests (gender, sex/uality, education/ literacy, disability, housing, drug use, family, health care, social services, etc.) fit in to all of that.
- The thought of working really hard to do research on policy papers that never have a positive effect on people’s lives would make me want to barf.

Let me be clear: I have not tossed the policy wonk idea out the window. However, I am strongly reconsidering making the programs for a Masters in Public Policy at both SFU and UVic the only ones I apply to.

Guess this means I need to get my ass in gear.

A couple of nights ago I was a bit high on codeine and started rambling to L about how important I think literacy is… how it is tied in to race/ class/ gender/ sexuality/ blah blah blah. I also was talking about how I feel that it is in places like community literacy programs that I may best be able to apply my background in counselling.

Apparently, one could do their Masters in Literacy. Who knew? I wonder if any of those programs would be interested in admitting a Sociology / Women’s Studies Major… hmmmmmm.

Regardless, the hunt is on. I am not afraid to spend my hard-earned dollars applying to various grad schools.

If you have tales of your own quest to find a Masters program or some kind of insight into how it has worked for people around you, please let me know. It is true that I have relatively small parameters in which I am searching.

The program MUST:
- Be able to be completed while I am in the lower mainland.
- Be part time (i.e. I am not willing to leave my work position to pursue my education at this time).
- Be a reasonable cost.
- Ensure that I will make more money than I currently do (which may be hard to do).
- Be ‘hands-on’ in some respect.
- Prepare me for a career where I am not stuck behind a desk all day, but where I would also be able to do the job should I become wheelchair bound.
- Be admitting students to start in September 2007.

Let the applications begin.

a headbanger's journey

Oh, the hipsters *do* love Montreal. Me? I think it is fine. To tell the truth, I think I had a better time in Ottawa than I did in our beloved province of frenchies. At any rate, I am going to lump everything together and give you a breakdown of my excursion.

Here is what was good:
- Fair trade/ organic/ biodegradable/ handed-over-in-a-biodegradable-plastic-bag runners that L found in a very small boutique on St. Denis. The shoes are adorable. Good call.
- Poutine. Yeah. Fair enough. Potatoes + oil + fat + cheese curds. No one does it like the Montreal people do it. (arteries) Go hard or go home.
- Friends! Got to hang out with some of the lovliest lovlies that I know.
- The architecture museum/ gallery thingie in Montreal. I could have spent another 2 hours there, but we had other plans to get to. Next time I will take chold with me.
- Question Period at Parliament!!! This was, by far, the highlight of my trip. The Conservatives look like little penguins all standing up and sitting down at the same time. Too many dark suits. I also wonder which Liberal policy wonk came up with the slogan "100 days of Harp-ocrisy, 100 days of shame!!!". I bet s/he is a little too proud of him/herself. The Liberals chanted this slogan at every possible moment.
- Airplane ride home. It was even better than the way there. Fun!
- The row house that we stayed at in Ottawa. It is pretty much my dream home, albeit the wrong location.
- Hull.
- Driving in Montreal.

Here is what I did not care for:
- The weather. It is safe to say that as a blanket statement. Hot. Humid. Hot. Groan.
- H & M. For all those that think this place is 'the shit', I hate to be the bearer of bad news. Really, it is time to get over it. One of these days they will open one up in Vancouver, and H & M will not seem so cool anymore.
- Smells. Montreal has way more bad smells than Vancouver.
- Fat phobia. I can't speak for Ottawa, but the fat phobia in Montreal seemed way more present, especially considering that they feed people poutine. How fucking crazy is that!?! Regardless, the women there were not any skinnier than they are here in Vancouver – they are just given much less choice as far as finding clothes goes. You think it is hard to find a size 12 or 14 in Vancouver… try finding a size 8 or 10 in Montreal. Ladies, get ready to look like a slutty sausage-monster, 'cause lots of the girls did in Montreal, and through no fault of their own.
- Falling down part of a flight of stairs. Terrible night vision of Multiple Sclerosis + my idiocy in not waiting for someone to turn on a light for me = me falling down several stairs. Seeing that I have broken my ankles several times, I was *sure* that the left ankle was a goner. It turns out to be a sprain. I request that no one kick me in the ankle for the next few weeks.
- Driving (and parking) in Ottawa.

Nuff said.