If you want to find Cherry Tree Lane,

Sometimes a question and sometimes a gratitude

Thu, 26 Nov 2009 00:57:24 GMT

I didn't get the JF position.

...which for some reason I figured was going to happen. I'm disappointed, but not too badly, since I wasn't sure if I would have even accepted it in the extremely unlikely event I got it. I'm sure the disappointment will catch up with me if only because I spent so much time thinking about it and turning it over in my head and thinking about what it would be like. I'll get interview feedback and then I'll learn a bunch more and apply next year and bust my ass off to get it then and I'll be the best damn JF ever - for now I just don't know enough and I'm not confident enough and it's a good thing. My dad emailed me all the way from Whitehorse (to tell me it's okay to stamp my foot and be a jealous bitch if I feel the need, ahaaaa Daddy), and I got a lovely email from Mama Hen about it (and she asked permission to invite the girl who got it to the next exec meeting. lol, like I would throw a stapler at her head or something?), and it was an honour to even have been selected for an interview, so I'm good. I'll be good :)

I have another SO presentation tomorrow, as well as a French-language one that I have two other people doing. I'm more nervous about that one, since I won't be there or even be available because I'll be doing my own. It's the first time I've booked a presentation knowing for sure other people would be doing it without me there - obvs I am a control freak, but this program is my baby and I really hope they hit it out of the park. I'm sure they will, because the presentor is awesome, I'm just worried about logistics and technology and hoping it all goes okay. Fingers crossed!

P.S. I don't think the heat in my house works, or else we have even worse insulation than I thought. This house is an ice fishing hut. I AM WEARING THREE SWEATERS AND HAVE HAD TWO POTS OF TEA IN THE LAST 45 MINUTES AND IT'S NOT EVEN DECEMBER YET.

Quotes of the Day:
CONTESTED PLACES PROFESSOR: So I've talked about racism and ethnicity and war and Israel so far... just to make sure I piss EVERYBODY in this class off at least once, today we're going to talk about religion.

"Ah, be cheerful, sir.
Our revels now are ended. These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits, and
Are melted into air, into thin air.
And like the baseless fabric of this vision:
The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself -
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve.
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on; and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep."
-Prospero, The Tempest, Act IV

mecteol asked me five questions!

1) What's the story behind deciding to live in Belgium for a while? Have you lived abroad anywhere else? Is there anywhere you'd like to live outside of Canada in the future?
It was for a foreign exchange for part of my Grade 11 year. I knew I wanted to go on an exchange: initially I had chosen Italy and was super-excited and teaching myself Italian, but all the Italians they had wanted boys as partners, so :( I had a partner from France come to stay with me, but it didn't work out (loooooooooooong story there), so I was rematched to a girl in Belgium and went to live with her and her family. It was a wonderful experience and I learned a lot - there's a lot of things I would change about it, but I'm glad to have done it. I haven't officially "lived" anywhere else, though I've done a lot of travelling. I would LOVE to live abroad, and I actually plan on it. Canada's awesome, but I'm going to live lots of places before I live here. I'm a city person, so I'd love to live in NYC, Washington, or Chicago: there are several European cities I love as well, but mainly I'm drawn to Africa. I plan to work there - I'm not sure where yet, but I know I love it and it would be so different. I also like Australia (especially Perth, Sydney, and Fremantle) though I have no idea what I would ever do there, haha.

2) When you were younger, what did you want to be when you grew up? How has that changed to what it is you want now (if it has at all)? I really wanted to be a zookeeper when I was younger: not so much a vetrinarian, I just really wanted to hang out with monkeys. I don't necessarily agree with zoos, but I think it's possible to have zoos that are a lot better for animals and more natural. Zookeeper and animal conservationist were high up on my list before I knew the actual name for them. I also wanted to be an author.
I'm still very invested in animal conservation and endangered species: I guess my focus has just shifted to people? I think that's because there's less science required, and the ways to learn about and solve issues like poverty and hunger and loss of territory for people are more suited to my learning and thinking and doing styles. As to the author thing, I realized a while ago that A) I am not self-motivated enough to be able to write for a living, B) the things I like writing aren't the things that make the best books, and C) I'm not good enough. That doesn't mean I'll never be or that I'm no good, but there are always going to be awesomely amazing writers a million times better and I'm far more comfortable reading what they write and being in awe of it. I also realized that I'm a better editor than I am a writer.

3) What are your thoughts on religion and spirituality? (You mentioned in another getting-to-know-you meme that you believe in God; basically, I'm curious as to what you mean by that.)
I do believe in God, though the limits of that belief are still sketchy to me. I'm not much for religion: it interests me, and I understand and respect it, it's just not something that I feel drawn to personally as a means of connection or expression. When I went to church (half of high school) I went for the people.
God and spirituality isn't something that crosses my mind on a regular basis, and I don't actually believe in a God as in a being who controls our lives: I guess it could be vaguely summed up as me feeling a deep and definite something towards the world and the universe. Sometimes it's more of a question, and most of the times it's more of a feeling of gratitude. I don't really have a way of explaining it, and it's not something I think about or question on a regular basis, but I think there's something just a little bigger than us because this whole thing is just too much just for us, awesome as we are.

4) Similar to #2: Is there anything you were interested in before that you're no longer interested in now?
Not really. There are things I don't spend as much (or any) time on, but I still like them. The one that comes to mind is probably horseback riding, which I did from about age 7 to 16. I even had my own horse at one point: I love horses, and I miss it, but it's too much of a time/money investment, and to me it would be unfair to the horse to only be halfway involved. It makes me sad that it's not as much of a crucial part of my life as I once thought it was.
There are a lot of other things I'm interested in or like doing that I just don't do as much anymore, but I can't think of anything I've just completely stopped being interested in.

5) What is one thing that everyone else seems to be bothered by but you're not? (Or alternatively, what is one thing that annoys you but doesn't seem to annoy anyone else?)
It might not seem like it, since LJ is where I come to complain, but I'm not bothered by a lot of things to the extent that some people are. I don't get bent out of shape easily by things, especially little things. I notice it most when I travel: if a car breaks down or a restaurant's full or our flight's delayed or something goes wrong, I'm more like to go "Oh well!" while the people I'm with usually get pissed off or fume about it or get it fixed. I'm more likely to shrug and find something else to do or another way to do something. Oh, and other people think it's weird to not shower every day or every other day, wheras I don't and just think that as long as your body gets used to it and you don't smell bad, there's no reason to. I understand if you think that's weird, though.
I absolutely must have a clean kitchen area, or at least the sink. Stuff doesn't go in the sink and I'm crazy at wiping down kitchen surfaces. And people not keeping in touch annoys me: I understand it, but I don't like it.

Sure Fire Winners

Tue, 24 Nov 2009 02:29:04 GMT

I had my JF interview tonight!! I was so nervous for it - I left Arabic half an hour into the class because I realized that because of bus traffic I would only have 10 minutes at home and I had to print my resume and references and application ~~and straighten my hair~~... once I got home, all the lights in the bottom two floors of the house went out, so I had to use Val's printer on the top floor - it was a day of close calls! I put on my nice red plaid dress and caught an early bus over in the fog (seriously, the weather forecast for Ottawa is "freezing fog," I can barely see a few feet in front of me. I'm hoping this means we get some legit snow up in hurr) to go over possible questions for an hour before it started.

I think it went pretty well - I wasn't as coherent as I would have liked (nervous babbling much?), but I wasn't incoherent, and I got to talk a lot about Kenya (at one point one of the interviewers, a past JF, was nodding and making 'oh I KNOW' faces, so I figure that went well), and I felt confident - and I NEVER feel confident in interviews (or, uhm, most of the time?) so hopefully it went well! We'll see. :D
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I am *LOVING* my geography course, Contested Places. It's so fascinating - it's not so much about world issues as it is about the idea of 'place' and why people get so upset when you mess with it and all the ways it's influenced by other things. We spent most of the beginning of the course doing theory, but it was still interesting theory, and we're now into the case studies (the US/Mexico border, territoriality in Israel/Palestine, ethnicity in Afghanistan, racism in American cities and New Orleans/Hurricane Katrina, and next week is religion in Canada), which are an interesting mix of theory and things that are relevant. It's so, so interesting, and not only that but it makes a lot more things easy to understand - maybe easy isn't the word, but it's been incredibly useful in learning that conflicts are more than one group of people not 'getting along' with another, or both wanting the same piece of land. It's complex, it's unseen, and this course has been amazing for it. (Also today we got to watch 'When the Levees Broke,' and I was reminded of this gripping picture.) The final assignment was also interesting, because it wasn't about regurgitating anything, it was something completely different than what we'd done in class, but we really had to use the materials, it was really cool (even if I hated doing it, but that's just because I'm lazy).
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Death Essay #2 is now finished! Only one more final project to do (and the worst, ugh) - the essay was okay to write, though it wasn't that interesting.
COLLINE: The purpose of politics?
BURDZ: The purpose of politics is to make me miserable... take that, Aristotle... take that

I celebrated the completion of this essay by buying For Your Entertainment from HMV today (I know, I know, a CD. I'm a traitor to my generation). I'm just listening to it as I type this, and I think I'm going to have to have a dance party tomorrow before I make up my mind - I definitely hear the QUEEN in there, though.
HMV MAN: Oh hey! Adam Lambert! Have you heard of-
COLLINE: The whole 'Out' magazine thing? Yeah.
HMV MAN: Sounds like his handlers are trying to put the genie back in the bottle, so to speak.
COLLINE: Dude, did you watch the AMAs last night?*
HMV MAN: Uhm, no?
COLLINE: Trust me, that one's not going back in ANYWHERE anytime soon.**
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I was distracted from the essay by the advent of MysteryGoogle - which is more fun than it has a right to be, considering how creepy it is. Basically you just c&p the statement into the search box until it gives you a "mission" (a phone number and something to do). My roommates and I called someone in Kentucky and sang them some Mulan, it was amazing. Someone else wanted a bedtime story, so I texted them one about a swan princess who moves to Bel Air. You can also put your own mission in: Catya got someone to send her 'Bohemian Rhapsody' lyrics. It's a complete and utter waste of time, and some of them are creepy (you want me to send you a picture of my feet? Sorry, not gonna happen), but it's kind of fun, too!

*Full disclosure: I didn't either (ha), I just saw the gifs afterwards.
**Adam made out with one of his dancers, Tommy. In front of several million people. It was kind of amazing, lol (AND I *SO* CALLED IT, TOO. I SAID THERE WOULD BE A MAN ON A LEASH AND THAT ADAM WOULD PROBABLY MAKE OUT A DUDE, AND LO AND BEHOLD, IT HAPPENED).

Insensitivity Training

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 22:05:32 GMT

Last night was Laughter Without Borders, an awesome improv comedy show at the campus bar that EWB had organised - it went GREAT, there were so many people and it was hilarious! Everyone had such a good time, I'm so happy and proud we pulled it off. Also, I love the troupe, they're so delightfully nerdy and smart - and such great facial expressions, lol. Once I stop having essays due on Mondays, I'm definitely going to go to their Sunday night shows :)

This morning I sat up and went "...oOOoh, that doesn't feel right." I had gone to bed with a sore back, and woke up unable to move my neck. I shuffled around the kitchen trying to fix it, seeing how far I could bend it, turning my head this way and that, but I guess I pulled a muscle? Or something more than that, since I literally cannot move my neck. I thought it was getting slightly better throughout the day, but I guess carrying giant tupperware bins on the bus and doing school outreach presentations isn't really conducive to that sort of thing, since I can't even look up and down now, and I could this morning. Like, I'm just moving my eyes. It wouldn't be so bad if it was stuck straight, but I have to keep my head tilted to the right, so I look like a complete lunatic, whereas this morning it just looked like I was doing the Robot.

The presentation was Energy Matters, which I've never presented by myself before, and which I've only seen once. I consequently had to do a lot of studying and prep work, since it's about Energy and Electricity and yeah, like I know how solar energy is actually made. I just know it has something to do with shiny screens. Thankfully I know most of the development aspects of the presentations, though: the activity is a little weird for EM, I'd really love to fix it. It was made crazier today because I presented alone, but the kids are still awesome.

KID 1: Hey, we have $800 left! Let's buy two candles!
KID 2: But we don't need two candles. We don't even really need ONE candle.
KID 1: But we *can*! We have $800! EIGHT HUNDRED DOLLARS.
KID 2: You're going to make a great government official someday.

THIS IS WHY KIDS ARE AMAZING, LOL. I enjoy kids, I find them awesome, but I've never really connected them or known what to do with them. I still don't, but I still think they're awesome. And DAY-UM, these kids are smart. Even though one of the kids made the observation that during the activity "it was actually more fun to be a poor country because you had more things to do," I was able to work it around to point out that if you have to spend all day watering fields and fetching water, you don't have time to go to school, but also to go skateboarding or hang out with friends or have hobbies. Which in Canada, we do because we have free time: so it was neat to get them thinking about that too, because it's an angle I wasn't expecting to come up.

I have bought groceries (this time I even remembered to bring my wallet! Oh, self...) and had great conversations with Jeremy, my Mom, and Gomez in Ghana. Jeremy has H1N1 - I've known a few people so far who've had it and been okay, but a professor at our university died yesterday :( and he was 38 and perfectly healthy - so I had to yell at him about not pulling all-nighters.
JEREMY: OKAY. I PROMISE. No more all-nighters until I'm better.
COLLINE: OKAY. And that means Real Better, too, not just I-can-stand-up-without-falling-over-better. Now go drink two litres of gatorade.

My Mom had plenty of stories, from my Dad getting to meet Gordon Lightfoot on his birthday (basically my Dad's biggest hero, especially cool since my Dad had bought his first Gordy album on his 12th birthday) to the farewell present my dad's coworkers gave him: a beautifully carved cherry paddle, with a tiny Diavik diamond set in it (which I'm thinking they all pooled for, lol. One of my dad's biggest projects over the years was the Diavik Diamond Mine in the Northwest Territories; he was doing environmental and first nations affairs with it, but Diavik and Ekati and other NWT diamond mines have been pretty instrumental as alternatives to blood diamonds and the Kimberly Process, which authenticates diamonds that don't come from conflict sources, which is pretty cool).

Guess I should write another final essay, huh? At least this one's about Plato and doesn't require me to live on the NYT and Guardian websites.

in the night, I hear them talk, the coldest story ever told

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 21:34:37 GMT

MARC KIELBURGER IS ON THE COLBERT REPORT TONIGHT!!!!!!!!!!!!
Not as the guest, I think, since colbertnation shows someone else, but perhaps as a mini-segment? THIS IS SO AWESOME, IT'S ALMOST AS GOOD AS WHEN NEIL GAIMAN WAS ON. But I am sort of dismayed - which one will I marry? (For those who don't know, Marc is the older brother of Craig Kielburger, who founded Free the Children. He is spectacularly awesome, and very inspiring. I've met him, and he's also a complete sweetheart.)

COLLINE'S FBOOK STATUS: Marc Kielburger on Colbert Report tonight!!
FRIENDS: YAY SO WATCHING :DDD
COLLINE: IT IS EVERYTHING I LOVE IN THE WORLD. MINUS PUPPIES.
EVAN: AND THAT LAMBERT GUY
COLLINE: OMG EVAN THAT WAS ONE TIME*
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Listening to Kris Allen's new album - I CAN'T BELIEVE HE LEGIT PUT 'HEARTLESS' ON IT ~~even if he was apparently really unhappy with how this version turned out and didn't want to~~ ~~put it on~~. So far I love it: I'm finding a few of the songs sound the same to me, but am very pleasantly surprised so far. LLWD FTW :DDD
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IR was so horrible today - I cannot WAIT to do teacher evaluations for this one, because today I was reminded of everything I detest about this prof. He seems like a pleasant individual, and I like it when he's all sarcastic and feminist and shuts up stupid people, but since that's been like probably a cumulative half hour so far over the course of the semester, the rest of it is NO. Ugh, so annoying and confusing. I didn't learn a single thing today (other than that Samuel Huntington angers me, which I already knew).

Twenty Years Ago [November 1989]
Age? Was not born yet, skipping rest of section.

Ten years ago [November 1999]
Age? 9
Were you in school? Yes, in public school (which is what Canadians call elementary school)
Where did you work? I didna.
Where did you live? Muskoka, northernish Ontario
What were your regular haunts? My grade 4 classroom, the barn, my cottage, Mginnion's house
Did you wear glasses? No
Who was your best friend? It was the year before my BF came to my school, so I don't remember. Jess Haber, maybe?
How many tattoos did you have? 0
How many piercings did you have? None, my parents made us wait until we were 13 to get our ears pierced.
What did you drive? I rode the bus. I "drove" a horse though?
What was your biggest goal? Have fun, eat lunch, be a ballerina, love my sisters, and enjoy life. Pretty simple.

Five Years Ago [November 2004]
Age? 14
Were you in school? Yes, Grade 9 in high school.
Where did you work? I didn't.
Where did you live? Still Muskoka.
What were your regular haunts? The barn, the school library, the Bean
Who were your best friends? Seahorse
How many tattoos did you have? None
How many piercings did you have? Ears
What did you drive? Still nothing, lol.
What was your biggest goal? To be a zookeeper, to make and keep awesome friends, and to never leave Mr OT's english class ever

One Year Ago [November 2008]
Age? 18
Were you in school? First year of university!
Where did you work? The toy store
Where did you live? Ottawa :D
What were your regular haunts? The caf, the basement of Marion, the third floor of LeBlanc residence
What was your favorite song? 'Will it go round in circles?' by Billy Preston
Who were your best friends? My friends from home plus Pearl, Burdz, Catya, Marley, and Coyote
What was your prized possession? My sanity.
What did you drive? My mom's Toyota Highlander when I was at home.
What were you looking forward to? EWB conference, and Christmas
What was your biggest goal? Learning all I could so I could kick ass in the world

As of today [November 2009]
Age? 19
Are you in school? Yes
Where do you work? The toy store when I'm at home
Where do you live? OTTAWA
What are your regular haunts? Home, the EWB office... I don't really go many place :(
Do you wear glasses? No
Who is your best friend? Same, plus Val and Mariyya
Do you talk to your old friends? Yes! Not as often as I'd like, but we definitely keep in touch (and they send me their essays to edit)
How many tattoos do you have? None
How many piercings do you have? The same two
What do you drive? The highlander, plus my sister's Jetta and my dad's red toyota thing when I'm at home.
What was (IS) your biggest goal? Learning even more and becoming a whirlwind :D

*I made the mistake of showing the Details shoot to Burdz during the potluck (which I have issues with, but the article was amazing, and I am totally serious) but it is sort of hard to look at unobtrusively, and thus all my friends were looking at the pictures and through the magazine and 'OMG COLLINE IS THIS A GAY MEN'S MAGAZINE,' to which I replied 'IF IT WAS THEN HE WOULD BE MAKING OUT WITH A DUDE,' and they were like 'TRUTH' but they found some sketchy ads in it to back up their claim, and now all of my friends ~~think~~ know about my love for Adam Lambert and think I buy porn magazines and will not shut up about it, especially Evan. It's kind of hilarious, actually.

Cyprus is the new Hollywood

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 02:59:00 GMT

HIGHLIGHT OF MY WEEK THUS FAR: "Paying taxes is like going to the zoo - admission's $20. You can't go 'here's $18.50. I don't like zebras.'" -Jon Stewart

First OoB: Final Essay Count: 1 down, 2 to go. 15 PAGES OF MY LIIIIIIIIIIIFE, haha. Which I suppose is not that much, but it was the years and years of research that really bit me on this one. I'm not used to writing late-night papers or having to pull all-nighters: that's not me, that's not how I operate. I do things last-minute, but that normally means a few days before. And now it's like BAM, THIS THING IS DUE IN SEVEN HOURS AND I'M ON PAGE FOUR WHAT. Which is my fault: forgetting the past few weeks, I didn't leave the house on Saturday or Sunday, and still most of it was left. I had 18 tabs open and was doing it half-assedly. Which I don't want to do anymore - though it's going to be even harder not to do, since I've discovered that I can. And not only am I capable of doing it, but I can also do it and get a 90% (in IR, a class I don't even like). Though I still am wondering where that came from, lol, because I thought that paper was HORRIBLE. Guess I got an easy TA to mark it? I already know one of the TAs for Contested Places is hardcore because of the midterm (:/), so I guess we'll just have to wait and see.

At one point, as I was editing the conclusion, it just wasn't what it needed to be and I couldn't figure out how to get it there (I SUCK at conclusions), so I just went all-out Hollywood on it. Like, full stops. I quoted Romeo Dallaire, you guys. That's how desperate I was. Guess this is where the Sekrit English Major tries to sneak in - my Apology paper was all "ONE MAN. ALONE. AGAINST A WORLD DETERMINED TO CONDEMN HIM. TRYING TO SAVE A CITY HE LOVED FROM ITSELF. ~~~FLY FREE, SOCRATES. FLY FREEEEEEEE~~defyinggravityftw~~" before Burdz fixed it.

Second OoB: I really wanted to volunteer for the 'InsideOut' LGBT film festival this weekend, but I don't think it's going to happen :( I'm not sure if I'll even be able to go see a film: another essay due on Monday, and Karlee is visiting me this weekend. SAD PANDA. There are quite a few things I wanted to volunteer for this year that I either didn't get a chance for or time to do, and some that I probably could have done if I'd just sucked it up and got organized and gave up on ~~kradam fic, lulz~~ all the other random stuff I do.

Third OoB: Had another enjoyable Political Thought class today - the prof is so bizarre and SUCH a dork, I love it.
(talking about Greeks under Roman rule) "There's a hole where my citizenship used to be!"
(reading us quotes) "This one's always a little long to read aloud... oh well. I *am* getting paid."
"Belonging to a group and having an identity has an impact on human life. Rarely do you meet someone on the street and they say 'I feel fine, I'm a part of the human race.'"
(talking about eschatology in Christianity, or the belief that history will end at some point, the second coming of Christ, etc): "It's like living in a place you're going to leave in six months. You're going to stick up some newspaper so people don't see you naked, but you may or may not actually hang drapes."
(immediately afterwards): "That's one of the more hilarious things I've said, that's awesome."
"I was thrown off by your applause. Do that all the time and I'll be criminally confused."
"Every once in a while you do something up here and right afterwards you're like 'what? what was that?'"

(during class)
BURDZ: My mom's been texting me, she used 'LOL' again...
COLLINE: Midlife crisis?

(these were notes I found scrawled in the margin - to myself or to Burdz - and I have only a dim recollection of what spurred them)
"lol public masturbation"
"This isn't your mom's philosophy!"
"'Platonic Love' = bromance'
"I'm glad we talk silently"
"Why doesn't he use a thermos?" "That is a thermos, I think it just doesn't work very well"

And Marcus Aurelius threw in his oar as well:
"If our intellectual part is common, then reason also, in respect of which we are rational beinds, is common: if this is so, common also is the reason which commands us what to do, and what not to do; if this is so, there is a common law also; if this is so, we are fellow-citizens; if this is so, we are members of some political community; if this is so, the world is in a manner a state. For of what other common political community will any one say that the whole human race are members?"

But my favourite is still the Romeo Dallaire one, part of which I used in my essay, that I remembered from going to see him last year:
"We have to be prepared to make a committment and go in for a while. We've been in Cyprus for 40 years, and now they're sitting down and talking and maybe in 20 years they won't need us anymore. And if they can progress forward in serenity, then hasn't it been worth it? What's 60 years in the life of a nation? [...] These things take time. Time and effort invested in these missions and nations and processes are necessary in our collective evolution towards a time when I hope we will no longer have conflict due to the friction of our differences." <333

Dichotomous Key

Sun, 15 Nov 2009 18:09:55 GMT

Though what I really need to do is break my writer's block on my essay (12-page monolith for Contested Places/Geography class about media coverage and representation of ethnicity, territoriality, and significance of place in the Cyprus border conflict; it's actually a really interesting paper and should be easy, I just need to actually write it), I am going to do today's writer's block question: if you could have any extraordinary talent, what would it be?

I would love to say charisma, negotiation powers, leading a country, or inspiration, but if I'm being truthful about it, singing. To have a crazy-impressive voice that could do whatever I wanted it to do. I can sing - I have sung, I've been in musicals, and I have no trouble singing the right notes or following a tune or not sounding like a pair of asthmatic bagpipes. But there's a difference between being able to sing the notes and making them sing themselves. In Ensemble C'est Tout, the main character loved opera because she said her father told her the greatest instrument in the world was what humans could do with their own powers and own voice. So yeah. I would love to be able to do that: not to be an artist or to impress people or necessarily do anything with it (well, okay. I wouldn't say no to doing musicals), but just to have it to do whatever I wanted to do with it. That would be cool.

Examples (okay, so there are lots of people with lots of beautiful voices, I've just been listening to these two a lot, so that's why):
Feeling Good - Adam Lambert (this whole song, but in particular the last minute. Just... what I wouldn't give to be able to do that).
One - Adam Lambert (it's a beautiful song, and to be able to do it justice is <333)
The Valley - k.d. lang
Ready - Kelly Clarkson
Breakaway - Kelly Clarkson (I have been on the BIGGEST KC kick ever lately. Which is weird, as it is normally NOT my type of music)
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It was my dad's birthday yesterday, so I phoned home. I knew what my mom's present had been for a few weeks, so it was neat to hear how excited he was to go to the Gordon Lightfoot concert (he bought his first album when he was 12, is fan number uno, et cetty rah)... and then afterwards to get the pictures of him meeting Gordy, shaking hands, talking, getting a cd signed, and giving Gordy one of his own cds - my mom's present after contacting the producers.

Jeremy sent me a message the other day saying "YOUR DAD IS AWESOME," and I am inclined to agree, especially since he just gave Jeremy a professional design job to do a logo for him. Jeremy's ridiculously excited to do it and thrilled, and my dad's all excited too. There's a lot of new excitement going on, what with deciding new career moves - my mom said it's nice to hear "Oh boy," and "what about this," and general optimism about what to do next. I got a copy of the farewell email my dad sent out to all his collegues and contacts, which included a line from Mary Poppins, which next to Sound of Music is probably my dad's favourite movie in the world. Lollllll only him.

I feel kind of like I'm missing it though, missing all this excitement of him deciding what to do next: it's not that I don't know, because I get updates every time I phone home, but I don't get the dinner-table discussions, the thoughts as they happen. Being outside the family nucleus doesn't seem to be entirely geographic anymore.

It's not just the new employment antics I'm missing, either. I talk to my sisters once a week and get the sound-bite updates of their lives, which is mainly school. But I don't see what they're wearing, I don't know whose houses they're hanging out at, and I don't get to tease them or be teased by them at dinner. I don't like relationships based entirely on keeping in touch and bringing each other up to speed, and what's said on the phone, or what they remember as significant while they're on the phone is not the most important thing. I don't get to be around my family every day to see the things they're going through or go through those things with them. I'm adding commentary.

And that's probably a part of it, the growing up and getting my own life, and I wouldn't give this up to sit around in Muskoka and go to Nipissing or whatever, nuh-uh. No way. I've got my own little nucleus here, and I knew that I wouldn't get to see my family as often, but this isn't a vacation I get to come back from at the end, it's a sort of forever, because I'm my own person now, I'm on my own track that doesn't include living at home for a significant, extended period of time. I know I'm always welcome, I'm not gone, it's still my home and they're still my family, but I feel like I'm mourning my episode of creation within that nucleus.

Of course it's not that simple, and of course I need this: the point of life is to make my own, but I'm still a little bit of a baby girl who wants back in that circle for more than Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Easter.

Food for Thought

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 21:49:19 GMT

Reasons I love my house:
#1
I arrived home last night to find Catya, Nic, and Marley sitting around the kitchen table. "Hey," they said, barely looking up. All of them were peeling potatoes. A lot of potatoes. AN ENTIRE 10-LB BAG OF POTATOES. Between the four of us, we turned this bag of potatoes into a 3-course meal: mashed potatoes, hashbrowns (with onions and green peppers), and baked potatoes. Apparently it was prompted by a friend's horror story about having a funny smell, opening a bag of potatoes, and finding exploded green mushiness (or something) everywhere, and since we're all psychotic and paranoid, we decided that even though we only bought it in September, the whole bag of potatoes had to be eaten -OR ELSE. (It was so epic <3 I love my roommates and our crazy ideas.)

#2
For her sociology class Val has to observe someone like she's never seen them before, so she's going to watch me do dishes sometime (I'm so nervous, lol). We were going to do it this afternoon, but got sidetracked and made peanut butter cookies instead. It reminded us of the time we made chocolate muffins, and found a system of scooping that had her with a spoon, me with a fork. It ended in cutlery sex, needless to say. With muffin-mix lube.
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I had another school outreach presentation today - this time it was Food for Thought (about world food systems, food aid to developing countries, subsistence farming, reasons behind hunger, etc) to a class of Grade 9s, and I had a volunteer (who was AWESOME, omg I love him. He was - thankfully - in civil engineering [he wants to be a structural engineer and build sustainable and enviro-friendly buildings, yeaaa] so he covered those questions, and was really comfortable with the class and into it. On the way back we just talked about how much monkeys are like humans, and Thailand, and his older brother who's in Music Comp).

The presentation went well - it was kind of awkward because I had to stand mostly in front of the screen in order to access my laptop, and I'm not as comfortable with F4T as I am with Water for the World yet, but I think it went well. It was a bright group - they needed some coaxing, and had a low knowledge base on the stuff (but I always forget that most people don't) but were really engaged and struck by the information. At the end, when I was talking about ways they could help, clubs, etc., I asked if they'd ever heard any of this before, and got a No. I asked if they thought their friends had, or if their siblings or parents knew this stuff, and got another No, and a couple of the kids - you can pick them out, the "cool" ones who are way more intelligent than they like to appear to their classmates - seemed very "Wow, that's kind of crazy, I had no idea..." about it. Which is really interesting, because I have two more presentations with this same class, so I'll be able to build on that, give them even more information, and it'll be neat to see if that builds into a "I had no idea, that's not fair, let's fix this" thing.

I love doing this :)
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So everyone on my flist seems to ADORE this (as do I... SO WEIRD... AND YET SO AMAZING), and I found it a few days ago ~~via Adam Lambert's twitter, lulz~~ and since Catya is OBSESSED with Lady GaGa, we did nothing but freak out and dance for like 3 hours. She's not my favourite, but I enjoy her music generally, and this is pretty cool :PP

That mark our place; and in the sky the larks, still bravely singing, fly

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 01:38:09 GMT

I have determined that I will never be able to be Prime Minister because I will never be able to hold it together during a Remembrance Day ceremony - even before 2007 I was still very affected, but ever since then it's been more intense. My housemate Nic says that sometimes people admire compassion in a leader, which I agree with in the case of a lone tear and strong jaw, but with me there would be snot involved, so there goes that.

In all seriousness, though: I couldn't go to the university service because I had class, but there was an even larger one at the War Memorial just off campus. I had class at 11:30 that I couldn't skip, but Burdz and I decided to go anyway. Stephen Harper was there, Michaelle Jean came, and then Prince Charles and Camilla (wearing a funny hat, because I suppose that is what the British do on solemn occasions) showed up - people actually clapped for them. Not sure whether that's because no-one really wanted to clap for Stephen or whether it's because we see him all the time but these are New People, or because we only realized by the third shiny car that we should be clapping? Not sure, but I saw the royals today, so I guess that's neat.

It was a beautiful day - sunny and clear and only chilly, not cold. The crowd stood close around each other, a few small children on shoulders. We sang O Canada together, something I rarely get to do but love doing, everyone at a different speed and pitch and volume, most quietly murmering, but singing it nonetheless. And then Taps started and I was GONE. Throughout the two minutes of silence, the end of Taps, the flyby, the 12-gun salute, and the cannon firing, I couldn't do anything but cry silently and think of it: of Darryl, of his friends, of my grandfather, of my grandfather's friends, of all the people my age and younger having the biggest responsabilities in the world. And I don't have those, don't have to, and I don't think I'm big enough to fathom what that means, what it means to give that. To go through that. Or to be someone who grows up with war, around war, with firing guns and blood and uncertainty. I don't know at all, and likely I won't ever, and I flinched every time a cannon or gun went off, and I'm not sure if I'll ever have the words to describe why it is that Remembrance Day hits me so hard but it does. I can't help but be overwhelmingly thankful, though and in and amongst all the thankfulness there's a feeling of loss, too.

And I felt ashamed last year, felt ashamed this year too, because it feels a little like I don't have a claim to that feeling - I haven't lost what Jolene, what Darryl, what so many others lose. But I love them and thank them too, I guess. They helped me too: isn't that the point, that so many people gave this to people they wouldn't ever know? When they started laying the wreaths Burdz and I had to start leaving (which made me feel horrible), walking through the crowd with small "excuse me"s and "sorry"s and "thank you"s with me looking an aboslute wreck, still shuddering every time they fired the cannon. And - this is true -

A soldier in the crowd stopped me, put his hand on my arm and told me to wait while I snuffled and blinked at him, sun too bright, and he pulled a kleenex out of his backpack and gave it to me, and the lady beside him said 'Bless you' and I don't even remember what I said, but it was one of the biggest gifts anyone's ever given me. He probably needed it more than I did, was in the military, probably knew and loved some people that died and knew what it meant, but he didn't know that, he gave a crying girl a kleenex and just. In loss there's human love, and I hope I said thank you but I don't remember.

I remember lots of things today.

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved, and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

— Lt.-Col. John McCrae (1872 - 1918)

Remembrance

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 01:02:43 GMT

Today is another Remembrance Day; I was thinking of my darling Jolene all day today, as well as her brother, Trooper Darryl Caswell, who was killed on June 11th, 2007 by a roadside bomb north of Kandahar in Afghanistan. It's been two and a half years now, and I know he's still missed dearly, by Jolene and many others. (Darling, you're by far the strongest person I know.)

And... I didn't know him, but I remember him, and I think of him, and I thank him more than words can say. Just... thank you. So so much.

<3

don't trip off the glitz that i'm gonna display

Sat, 07 Nov 2009 18:32:06 GMT

My mom and little sister came to visit me this weekend :) They arrived Thursday night along with Nic's mom and little sister, and after doing a house tour and meeting the roommates, I went back with them to the hotel and sat in the restaurant with my mom for several hours drinking wine (!) and talking about life. The following morning I went with them for breakfast pastries and we went to Chapters (I, like, live there now) before sitting in the Chateau Laurier (a v v fancy hotel) and catching sight of a Stephen Harper lookalike. We would have thought it was actually him were it not for the fact that he was walking alone, which Stephen Harper does not and would not be allowed to do. But still!

We tried to walk around the mall, but our list of things to do was a bit limited because Nic's mom has a broken foot - I had to leave for a meeting and my politics class (during which Burdz and I finished an entire crossword puzzle! So proud of ourselves...), but went to see an IMAX with them afterwards. The IMAX wasn't that good :( I miss the old IMAXes, the ones about coral reefs and rainforests and the Nile, where you get hardcore motion sickness and helicopters going through valleys and stuff. Those were epic.

We brought Nic, Catya, and Marley with us to dinner and then the Roommates and I went off to see Musician Man's show (a classmate of ours has a band - very good band - and he'd asked us to come and we were perfectly thrilled to), which was all the way out in bumfuck nowhere, but we made it! It was in a CHURCH which had been converted for the night into a SKATE PARK. Yeah, you heard that right. It soon became evident why he had asked us to come.

CATYA (via text): Is this going to be a high school party?
HE: I dunno but it's gonna be siiiiiiiiiiiiiiiick!

(We quoted him on that for the duration of the night, ps. No-one says that and gets away without a little bit of teasing.) It was mostly high-school students - actually, mostly grade 9 boys in hipster shirts (lol), but it was pretty cool, and their band is really good! They were the second set, so we all rushed up to stand under the stage (...pulpit?) and pretended to be bowing, lol. It was a lot of fun, and he obviously appreciated having us there (since we were, like, the whole crowd), and they were AMAZING! <3 I went for crepes this morning with the family before they had to leave. I love seeing them!

P.S. JON STEWART YOU WERE ALREADY MY FAVOURITE PERSON BUT NOW I LOVE YOU EVEN MORE. I don't think anyone's allowed to say you can't act anymore, lol. XDDD

P.P.S. I have listened to this song like 18 million times. Each time it gets more hilarious - especially because I have one that has Ryan Seacrest's radio show on either end and so I have to listen to him say 'bro' every time. Also I seem to be on some kind of Kelly Clarkson kick, which is odd as I don't normally like her style of music but I have honestly done nothing but listen and dance to it for like two weeks now.

you can only ignore Dumbledore for so long, you can pretend that the Ministry knows what's going on

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 00:00:57 GMT

First Things First: I HAVE DROPPED RESEARCH METHODS BECAUSE IT IS NO USE TO ME AND I WILL SOON BE AN ENGLISH MAJOR.

Aaaaaand I celebrated by spelling "celebratory" wrong in my fbook status. *FACEPALM* Wow, what a great way to start off, huh? Clearly I am destined for *~*greatness*~*

I finally had my Appointment of Doom with my faculty (and really I shall miss them, their office is in the nicest building on campus) and the lady was the most confusing person on the history of the planet, but I think I know what's going on, and I just have to fill in a form and then wait for the Administrative Powers that Be to process it and ~voila! I will be an English major. Once that happens, I can go to my new faculty and declare a minor, and in the meantime I can pick out my courses for next semester and start trying to register for them. Even though I wasn't entirely sure this weekend that it was the right thing to do, life = nothing 100% (IF YOU SPOT THIS FIC QUOTE THEN YOU WIN EVERYTHING FOREVER ~~including ai podfic, apparently~~) so I just went ahead and did it, and I really just feel like a big weight came off my shoulders. *g*

I got a few midterms and assignments back, and they weren't great :/ I really haven't been putting in enough effort this semester. And, uh, I like my scholarship. So it's time to stop staring into space, methinks. I also picked up a pamphlet from the yoga place down the street and am planning on getting the arse into gear (pun very much intended) that way as well.

Marks aside, I've had a few pretty good classes recently in Contested Places (<33) because we started Territory and Territoriality, and have spent like four classes straight on Israel and Palestine, which I never felt I had a good bead on before but it's so simultaneously fascinating and sadness-inducing (studying history always does to me what horror movies do: all I can think is that yelling "DON'T GO DOWNSTAIRS, YOU FOOL! DON'T YOU *KNOW* THAT'S LIKE THE WORST POSSIBLE THING YOU CAN DO, YOU'RE JUST MESSING EVERYTHING UP! WHAT ARE YOU *DOING*!?!?" isn't really helpful).

"Virtue is a mean between two vices, one of excess and one of deficiency, and it is a mean because it aims at the intermediate condition in feelings and actions. And that is why it is hard work to be excellent." -Aristotle

Halloweek

Sun, 01 Nov 2009 15:24:50 GMT

THINGS I LEARNED FROM HALLOWEEK:
-There is indeed such a thing as too much makeup.
-That I enjoy being in-character, even if that 'character' is just a doll: I skip down stairs, hold my purse like a little girl, and do doll blinks, and don't even realize I'm going it.
-Narcissism makes for some pretty awesome photos.
-It doesn't matter what you do to your hair - the wind will fuck it up.
-The vast majority of people will never say anything out loud about weird clothes; they will, however, stare at you and silently judge you.
-The vast majority of people love it when weird things happen.
-It is entirely possible to completely forget that you're dressed like Robin Hood and wonder why people are staring at you.
-Don't take yourself seriously. You're dressed like a 6-year old doll, self. Take a chill pill.
-If I don't have a piece of clothing I need, my roommates will.
-Always wear shorts under your costume. ALWAYS.
-How to be comfortable being different/standing out/looking ridiculous in public. So what if I look like a freak show? I ~OWN~ my ridiculousness, and I refuse to feel stupid about being awesome.

Not that Halloweek is particularly profound, or really anything other than a random piece of fun for two people, but I - believe it or not - am a relatively self-conscious person. And on a normal day, I don't stand out. Nobody's liable to watch me while I ride a bus, or look at me funny in class: I've got the privilege of Looking Normal And Harmless, and I've never had that happen before. And even though most of the costumes involved us looking at least somewhat attractive, as soon as you put a coat or a backpack on and add wind and scratch your face, you're going to look silly. And people are going to think you look silly. And people are very unsubtle creatures, so you will undoubtedly know that you look silly, or that other people think you look silly. But if I'm walking to school dressed as a bowling pin and I'm grinning from ear to ear because I love costumes and being dressed up as fun, and someone walking the other way gives me a once-over (in my rain-spattered tights, red band around my head, and backpack buckles done up over my coat) and a '~Seriously? Ugh' look? And I'm supposed to feel like I'm being judged, or that I look stupid, or I'm anything less than fabulous?

Too bad. I don't care. Because I'm having the time of my life, and you're judging me for looking like the fool I love being. Enjoy your life! Because mine's pretty awesome :D

I like to make myself believe that planet Earth turns slowly

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 20:15:06 GMT

I really love today's costume because it is both low-maintenance (NO MAKEUP! I CAN TOUCH MY FAAAAACE. Oh the relief) and awesome: we all sat in formation in class as bowling pins (in all-white with red bands around our foreheads). Alas there could be no flash mobs because our bowling ball had forgotten to dress up and also it was raining like a mofo (WHY MUST IT RAIN HERE? WHY CAN'T IT RAIN IN KENYA, WHERE THEY ACTUALLY *NEED* IT?). International Relations became moderately interesting when some idiot in the back was all 'there's no reason Canada should help or have to help anyone else in the world. Like, they're in their own conflict on another continent' and then like 19 hands in the class went up and my dear Burdz was able to put my anger into words that were more elegant than my own, which was somewhere around the lines of 'Colonialism, bitch. Learn about it. Also, it's called being a human being.'

Because it is his wont, the prof only let the discussion go on for a few minutes before he dragged us back to mercantilist views of IPE (because obviously that's so much more engaging). There's been a colossal amount of stupid - and self-centred idiocy - in both of my politics classes over the past week (like, 'Canada gives so much money to foreign aid, why should we improve or give more?' BECAUSE POVERTY STILL EXISTS, DAMMIT. WHAT DO YOU THINK FOREIGN AID IS *FOR*??!). Yesterday's discussion group for Political Thought turned into a 'why poor people are poor' discussion, and even though there was thankfully none of the 'they're not trying hard enough' wank going around, there was still enough disconnection and privilege and 'well some people choose not to finish high school, you know' irrelevancy happening that it just gets hard to respond to at some point. Like, sometimes you can't even discuss things rationally (as that MTQ would say "it's like trying to do math with someone to whom 2 means 6 and 3 means paprika").

The article under discussion was another of the 'Uses of a Liberal Education' series, this time by Earl Shorris, and can be found here if you want to read it.
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I'm still confused about the switching-majors thing... my appointment is next Monday, and I'm still bouncing back and forth between whether I want to or not, aghl. I just want to get this out of my life, and I know if I don't I'm still going to want it, but I'm still thinking my current degree is better for what I want to do. Let the second round of introspection commence!
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And because I'm basically spending the next 48 hours dancing my face off and dressing up and engaging in the kinds of activities that will one day make it difficult for me to run for elected office, may I wish you all a Happy Halloween. Here, have a classic Even Stepvhen on the subject. "THERE GOES STINKY STEVE!" "I WANNA BE A VAMPIRE!" "GO ON, RING MY DOORBELL!" :DD

The one above is for Canucks, here's the American link here:

Down the rabbit hole

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 03:10:00 GMT

As a side-note before I begin: I EFFING LOVE THIS SONG AND IT IS MY NEW ANTHEM. THE END.
-----------------
Halloweek continues to be AWESOME. Yesterday was Robin Hood (complete with construction-paper hats and feathers, as well has two sets of bows-and-arrows: one from Canadian Tire, one fashioned from random stuff in our backyard) and I had to take the bus alone again and I'm sure I was laughed at - but as soon as I came into Politics and plopped down beside Catya, all was made well. The prof (a man I despise for his horrible teaching skillz, even though he seems like a moderately pleasant person) looked up and said we had nice hats and spent the next ten minutes trying to scare us about H1N1, and the following 20 minutes actually being awesome and sarcastic and tearing people apart for being all 'well Canada gives lots of money to foreign aid' and 'I'm a student, I shouldn't have to help' and it was awesome because he just started swearing and being intelligent. But then he got boring again so I stopped paying attention.

We staged the photoshoot on the front lawn, which had trees and fences and piles of yellow leaves - and good thing we did, because when we walked by today they were blowing all the leaves away (#45 Things I Hate About Our Society: electric leaf-blowers. What is the point, you morons?) and had an amazing time.

Today's theme was Lost Little Girls, so Catya was Little Red Riding Hood, and I was Alice in Wonderland (because as you know I have the dress) - it was odd in that it wasn't immediately obvious I was in a costume, so I just got weird looks for wearing a ribbon on my head and 18 trucks of makeup. But we found a path with lampposts by the gorgeous old theatre building (all the buildings on our campus are ugly, so it was really the only option) and had another epic photoshoot with Catya's basket of cookies and rain everywhere :D

Funny story about the cookies. If you needed more proof that my house is ghetto (other than the whole in the kitchen floor and the fact that two weeks ago we had to punch 20 holes in the basement/Catya's bedroom to connect the heating system to the furnace)? I was baking cookies, whatever, and apparently the insulation melted off the coil and it started sparking and making mini-fireworks and it's all okay (I tried to bake the cookies in the toaster oven but that was weird) and we got it replaced, but yeah. This house. Is crazy.

Pictures from the first two days up on fbook, those of you who have me on there. If anyone wants to add me on fbook I can provide you with the deets - I just won't ever be putting IRL pictures of myself out on the Wide Internets.
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In seriousness now, I need opinions: tomorrow's theme is Super-Human Strength, and Catya is going to be a superhero and I will be a Maasai Warrior (because I own the shukahs and the bow). However, I was only going to change into it for the photoshoot (on a fire escape!) and not wear it to my discussion group because I'm a bit unsure about it. Because the maasai aren't storybook characters or archetypes or traditional figures open to public whoring-out (not in that sense, but I can't quite say what I mean here) like the other ones: they're people, and it's a complex culture, and it's a culture that's not mine, and I wouldn't want anyone to think that I was making it into a joke or a stereotype or just exploiting the "pretty"ness of the traditional wear, because that's not why I'm dressing up as a Maasai Warrior. Now obviously I know a bit more about the Maasai than random people in my discussion group, and I can talk about (and obviously learn way more about still, because I am clearly not actually Maasai and three weeks of knowledge is nothing compared to a lifetime) the culture and the history, but I would hate to give the wrong impression, or make a misstep, or hurt or offend anyone. So. Opinions? Should I wear the shukah and strut proud into my discussion group in-costume (since that's the whole point of this week), or should I keep it just for our own house and photoshoot, or should I not do it at all? Because I don't really know enough about issues like this yet to be able to put my finger exactly on what would be wrong with it, and I feel like on some levels it wouldn't be wrong at all, but obviously my perception of the costume is going to be different than other peoples'. (Let me know, and don't spare my feelings. If you think it's totally cool, then cool.)

For those unsure about what I mean by Maasai? I present Felix, my Maasai Warrior Husband. (Also, Felix now has FACEBOOK, WHAT. LOL FELIX.)
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TAYLOR SWIFT CONCERT SHOULD I GO Y/N?

The crinoline's for insulation

Tue, 27 Oct 2009 02:03:17 GMT

First day of Halloweek: officially a success of epicsauce. Last night Catya and I tried out our makeup and costumes, and woke up at unholy hours this morning to get it just right. I wore this dress over a red tutu and a white frilly tanktop, with white ballet tights, white ballet flats with bows, and with my hair in pigtails with white ribbon. I also did EPIC doll makeup and honestly the bus ride to school was SO MUCH FUN, I was just reading my newspaper, nothing to see here, and I would look up and people would be full-out STARING and GRINNING THEIR FACES OFF.

In Contested Places, Burdz and I sit close to the front, and today - the one day! - I put my hand up to answer the prof's question and did so while he proceeded to try to act normally but couldn't stop looking. In Political Thought, I started a tally of how many times the prof looked at me awkwardly - he started avoiding looking at me (Burdz said I was being self-involved, but I COULD TELL), and in the last five minutes I was just looking at him, head tilted, and he looked at me and I slowly tipped my head to the other side and didn't change expression and he did the most EPIC double-take of life. Muahahahaha! Arabic is such a small class that people actually asked questions, and the prof didn't notice until I answered a question and then said "What is going on here? I love your eyes!!" and Hot Boy In Front gave me like the biggest grin ever.

It was so much fun - more like a social experiment than anything (I learned that NOBODY will EVER ask you, I suppose because we're so schooled to be "oh whatever, they're doing their own thing, I won't judge"), and not only did dressing up like an awesome doll make me feel super cute the whole day, it was also so much fun to see how thrilled people get from people dressing up randomly and walking around campus. Catya and I had an epic photoshoot on the columned front of the main building (it was SO FREEZING) and EVERYONE was looking, including a little girl who like ran away when I waved at her. lol.

Tomorrow is Robin Hood and Little John for politics class, photoshoot on the front lawn with the trees, and then GROCERY SHOPPING. It's like a week of flash mobs (even though Friday is the one we've actually planned flash mobs for). I love flash mobs: just people being awesome and happy FOR NO REASON WHATSOVER OTHER THAN BECAUSE IT'S AWESOME. For those unfamiliar with the concept: Wiki tells me it is a large group of people assembling suddenly in a public place, performing an unusual action for a brief time, then dispersing. Some examples:
-designed to attract attention/publicity stunt: flash mob dance of 'Single Ladies' in London. These girls have mad skillz, yo.
-designed to make people awkward: a random one in the middle of a cafteria. Everyone is SO AWKWARD.
-designed to be cool: everyone freezes in Grand Central. (I've done this one before in Toronto, people come RIGHT UP TO YOU.)

And MY FAVOURITE (SO MANY HAPPY TEARS EVERY TIME I WATCH IT), the epic Sound of Music one in the Netherlands.

And long overdue, another KenyaTale: not a comprehensive one this time, but a straight journal entry from May 31st written on the plane from Nairobi to Amsterdam. Apologies for the purple and also the interspersed Bruce lyrics (I get maudlin on recycled airplane air :P). All the KenyaTales are here.

I finally cried. The last few days - the last lorry ride to Nairobi in particular - I had just been trying to soak in as many maize fields as possible, and wondering why my heart wasn't feeling the ache and pull my brain told it it should be. Last night at dinner, I kept catching the waiters' red tunics in the corner of my eye and thinking it was Felix. On the airplane, I looked through all of my pictures while 'Africa' played. I wrote postcard after postcard that dulled the past three weeks to simple sentences I mixed and matched.

I watched 'The Wrestler,' and thought the movie was sad, the dying scene (no pun intended) brought about the Bruce song. I sat and listened to the beautiful, proud, pathetic song and looked across the plane out the blind window, thinking of blue and green maize fields, and I cried.

I cried because I realized that with my iPod, a few more t-shirts, and a new tube of toothpaste, I could have stayed there. I could have. I would have. I felt as if I had finally discovered something better than what makes me the happiest: what I need. All I need. Good, dirty, physical work (hardening muscles under a cloudy sun with cement under your fingernails). Amazing people who make you laugh and think and be (bearded orange laugh and cheeky red swishing blankets). A place that just gives and gives and gives, its heart wide open (mountains of red soil and torn school uniforms stamping out the beat). All the small things and big that fit a rhythm you'd heard before, but not with your eyes open (jostling lorries in rivers of mud and steaming milky chai).

I heard a worn, beautiful voice tell me about one-trick ponies and leaving with less than I had before, and I thought of hte ground streaming away below the plane. I can say right now that this is my life, that this will be my life, without knowing exactly what 'this' is other than only and everything I need.

There are things waiting for me at Pearson - things I like and like having and have been overdue on having for over three weeks now. But I don't need them. I'm scared to go back and need them again, have them again, let them rule me again. I can make you smile when the blood it hits the floor. I miss Africa already. I need Africa. I want to wrestle with this for the rest of my life.

Let the Wild Rumpus Start!

Sun, 25 Oct 2009 16:29:50 GMT

Yesterday I accomplished nothing due to me waking up at 11:00 - I have never slept in that late, but after a week of early mornings and late nights (the late nights being no-one's fault but my own, of course. Or perhaps I could blame internet porn. LOL) I really needed the recharge. I went downtown with A-Dubs to meet Mariya - it was a mini-reunion of the Kenya Crew! We had lunch at La Marche/Richtree (all different states from different parts of the world, too much good food to handle) which in my case was a brunch of Pizza Margherita and Pecan Pie :DDD

And then we went and saw Craig! He was giving a talk as part of the Ottawa Writers' Festival because he and his brother have just finished a book called 'The World Needs Your Kid' about how to raise compassionate and aware children. I love seeing him speak, because he's just SO INTO whatever he's talking about, and it was a speech about what he does, of course, and about what youth can do, but also about his own childhood and how the things parents and teachers and mentors do help shape children who are not - as the Dalai Lama says - "dispassionate bystanders." After he was done there were some very good questions from both the awesome CBC personality/moderator and people in the crowd, including like an 8-year old who STUMPED Craig by asking him if there was one thing more he had not yet acheived that he wanted to in helping children.

When it was over we all lined up to sign things, and Craig is so awesome: he was thrilled to find out the three of us had been to Kenya together (and that we recognized Nbala from his slideshow!!) and asked us what we were doing and we talked about the MOBilizers trying to get started in Ottawa and We Day and it was just so epic because he's amazing and talked to us for quite a while before we snapped a beautiful picture and dashed off. ~~I wanted to give him a haircut, though.~~

Mariyya had a car, and after we discovered she and I both wanted to see 'Where the Wild Things Are' she drove us out to the movie theatre. We hung around in Chapters (you guys. The computers in Chapters have a search function where you can LOOK UP BOOKS THAT WERE ON THE DAILY SHOW) reading books and looking at travelogues and biographies and going to the kid's section to read 'Where the Wild Things Are,' and then we went to Montana's for dinner before going to the movie theatre.

I loved the movie <3333 It was gorgeous and sad and adorable all at once. The main actor was BEAUTIFUL, he was so good! Oh my heaaaart <3 It was an amazing movie: not necessarily FOR kids (it's actually pretty scary for kids, I thought), but about kids and about childhood and about imagination and wanting and oh it was beautiful. The kind of movie that you can write essays about, with the themes and the overlapping between real life, and just the perfect little portal into that world we all once knew. There are funny bits, and scary bits (actually, it probably scared ME more than it scared any of the kids that were there), and sweet bits and sad bits, but it's just a beautiful, beautiful movie.

It was so wonderful to get back together with some people who went to Kenya and talk about things: about Felix, about the other people on our trip, about what more we want to do (Mariyya and A-Dubs are probably going to India with Free the Children this summer) and a lot of the things I don't talk about on a regular basis. I talk about world issues and poverty and Africa a lot, but not about specific experiences or what I remember, and it was great to be with people who knew what it was like. And also they're awesome people - Mariyya and I basically have a giganto list of places we need to travel to together now, haha. And as Mariyya said, "Every time I see Craig I just get reaffirmed once more in what I want to do and what my priorities should be and I feel like I'm on the right track."

WORD. Also I spent wayyyyy too much money yesterday :/ Time to read 'Nichomachean Ethics,' fun times. Also, I saw TWO KIDS yesterday just around Ottawa that were at my school outreach day. Weeeeeird. Pictures from Kenya? YES:

Love is a temple; love is a higher law

Sat, 24 Oct 2009 02:13:07 GMT

Today was the third day this week that I was awake before five o'clock in the morning: this time for a full day of school outreach presentations - my first! I had to get to campus, go to the office, get the buckets, and start a bus journey that lasted over an hour and a half just to get to the school. It was a hassle logistically only because I was alone with two very large rubbermaid bins that were RIDICULOUSLY HEAVY. My computer was in them, as well as sand and rocks. I carried bins of ROCKS through a bus maze during rush hour. I feel I should get a medal. Though because of that (plus waiting 45 minutes for a bus on the way back in the cold and having my arms start legitimately seizing by 5pm) I'm achey all over, I still had a really good day.

I'd forgotten - or maybe discovered - why the hell I signed up to be head of School Outreach in the first place. Even though four back-to-back presentations was very intensive and I had to make a lunchtime dash to find somewhere to buy more cotton balls for the afternoon groups, it was fun! It was fun and it was challenging and I felt good at it! Grade 9 kids aren't usually subtle about letting you know when they're not into something, and I had the rowdies and the noise and the requisite few with one iPod earbud in, but they were so engaged! And man, Grade 9s are smart! I don't give them enough credit, I think: my style of presenting is very much a "can anyone think of why...?" "who can tell me what...?" "what do you think...?" style because if I'm talking just to fill the silence I start blathering and dithering and "uhhh, uhmmmm" because I fail at speaking English coherently. And they really liked that, because if they didn't know the answers they would try to make connections, and they were really eager to prove the things that they knew.

The teacher usually introduced me as "an engineer" and then I had to start off MY schpiel with a bright "I'm actually NOT an engineer {apology squick face} but I hang out with a bunch of them so if you have any questions about engineering I'll probably know the answer!!" and perhaps because of that got quite a few suspicious questions about why was I in the club then, why was it made of engineers if that part didn't matter, and what WAS I studying, anyway? Thus they found out that I spoke Arabic and I was made to demostrate this to the class :| But the one girl who asked was all "omg you don't even have an accent that's awesome!!" so I was :DD

One thing about doing these presentations in a city like Ottawa is that there's a fair portion of the population that was born outside of Canada or whose family was or who has strong ties outside of Canada. Thus when breaking them into country groups I would always get specific "requests":
KIDLET #1: Oh can we be Somalia?
APOLOGETIC COLLINE #1: I'm sorry, I don't have Somalia :(
KIDLET #2: I want to be Korea!
APOLOGETIC COLLINE #2: There is no Korea either :(
KIDLETS #3, #4 & #5: Hey, what about a middle eastern country?
APOLOGETIC COLLINE #3, #4 & #5: I have none :(
KIDLETS: ... why the fuck not.
APOLOGETIC COLLINE: I DON'T KNOOOOOOOW BUT I LOVE YOU ALL.
KIDLET #1: Ethiopia's close enough I guess but I don't want to take it because you're not holding any money so Ethiopia's probably poor.
COLLINE: THAT'S NOT THE POINT OF THE ACTIVITY.

Oh they were wonderful <3 And crazy, and would always try to flirt with me so they could get more materials and called me "Miss" and stole money from the World Bank while smiling like butter wouldn't melt in their mouths and they were all so ADHD and really receptive and I really got comfortable in it and worked in a lot of zing-shots about poverty and why they should care and that the system is effed-up. A few in particular seemed really impacted, and a couple are sending me their email addresses :DD One zing shot in particular?

COLLINE: Around 30 000 people die every single day from water-related diseases like cholera and diarrhoea -
KID: *snorts with laughter*
COLLINE: Yeah, I know it sounds funny ~~because you're an immature 14-year old boy~~, but you know why it seems funny? Because you live in Canada, and getting diarrhoea in Canada isn't anyone's idea of fun, but it won't kill you like it kills these 30 000 people a day. It likely won't be the last thing you ever do. We sometimes think it's funny because it's out of our realm of experience: it's the same thing with sexist jokes, or teasing someone about their accent because their story is not our reality. To us diarrhoea a passing thing of a day, not the biggest killer of children under 5 years old. But for these 30 000 people, that is their reality: that something that is so trivial in Canada can kill them. Something so easy to fix can kill them, just because they're poor and they're not like you.

Yeah, they shut up after that. I may have been slightly less harsh than the above sounds, but that's what I said and you know when you catch peoples' eyes and they say "Oh. Oh, I - Oh. I get it now"? IT'S FUCKING ADDICTING. I kind of like teaching, I think. I can't wait to get better at this. (And I needed this, SORELY, because the logistics and planning and stress of it just gets so consuming and stressful that you need to remind yourself why you wanted to do it in the first place.)
-------------
Sarah, one of the other EWB execs, went as our delegate to the conference our CEO was speaking at. There was a panel about bringing back officer training to campuses, and you know what she did? When they asked for questions, she stood up and told the head of the Canadian Army to look at his panel and around the room and that she challenged him to make women a priority and focus on how to get more women into positions of leadership, because if they want to engage the general public they have to challenge the fact that she was one of the only girls there.

Then she sat back down and the HEAD OF THE CANADIAN ARMY basically offered her his job. No word of a lie. George (our CEO) told Sarah afterwards that if it hadn't been almost over he would have stood up and offered her his seat on the panel. SHE'S MY SUPERHERO, Y'ALL <33333
--------------
I also love Roommate Catya because she and I are doing HALLOWEEK. That's right. SO MANY COSTUMES, EVERY DAY OF THE WEEK. Tuesday we are being Robin Hood (her) and Little John (me; I was going to be Maid Marion but we decided that then EVERYONE will assume we are lesbinic together), Thursday she is being Little Red Riding Hood and I am being nothing because dressing up to sit around the house is lamesauce, Friday ALL OF US are being bowling pins (all in white, with red bands around our foreheads) except for Val who is the bowling ball and we are going to have EPIC FLASHMOBS of her running us down and us scattering out of Politics class and then reenact it all over campus. As for Actual Halloween, Catya and I are going as the Misfit Toys from that Rudolph claymation movie: I am the polka-dotted elephant, and she is King Moonchaser, the lion governor of the island who has epic hair and makeup (seriously, it's such an aamzing costume). We were going to make Nic be the abominable snowman with us but he has decided that Aladdin is cooler. Pffaah.

GUESS WHAT I'M DOING TOMORROW. OH NOTHING. JUST SEEING MY BOYFRIEND CRAIG KIELBURGER. <3333

scalia would disapprove

Thu, 22 Oct 2009 16:44:46 GMT

ETA: sorry about the layout. It's having its time of the month (note: not a metaphor) and I'm trying to fix it, but it's either this or photobucket stuff all over the place. Just add ?style=mine to the end of the URL (if the URL already has a ?, put &style=mine instead) to view the entry in your own, less effed-up, style.

it's my 1000th entry shit yeah that's like one thousand entries or something, i don't know

You know what that means. Oh yeah.

OH YEAH.

PARTY POST! LET'S KNOCK THIS PLACE DOWN.

Why? Because one thousand is a lot.

ACCEPTABLE WAYS TO PARTY:
-FUNNY PICTURES
-CAPS LOCK
-WRITE ME THINGS
-TALK ABOUT ADAM FUCKING LAMBERT. OH MY GOD LOLL
-LINK TO PARTY MUSIC
-ROCK OUT
-PORN
-LEAVE ONE-WORD OR INCOMPREHENSIBLE OR LATIN COMMENTS JUST TO USE ICONS YOU NEVER GET TO USE
-IDK WE CAN PLAY GAMES OR JUST TALK ABOUT HOW AWESOME Y'ALL ARE OR HOW DELICIOUS APPLESAUCE IS OR SOME SHIT
-This would also be acceptable

So yeah. This LJ is almost four years old, or 1399 days, which means that there has been approximately one entry every 1.4 days. I'm torn between being impressed, alarmed, and very skeptical about my math skills. I got it on a snow day in December of Grade 10, a few days before Christmas, and have basically non-stop since then been projectile word vomiting all over the place, in both constructive ways and not. I really like LJ: I like having a journal, I like reading old entries and being able to remember little things that happened and big ways I felt about things. But I like people telling me what they think, and meeting awesome people from around the world and finding things in common with them and being goofy and being serious and learning from what I'm going to assume is the smartest and craziest flist ever. Though of course my frame of reference is limited.

Obvs my life is not that exciting, but there have still been a few things that have happened in my life, I suppose: having an exchange student that was manic/depressive; living in Belgium for two months; being editor of a school newspaper; acting in plays; going to university; going to Kenya(!). And other things, less events than processes: a slow evolution of learning more about the world and wanting to help it; finding a purpose; making mistakes.

Reading through a few of the entries I’ve made, it’s been getting more and more obvious how much I’ve matured, even in the last year. In Grade 12 I thought I was the smartest thing since Einstein, but when I read what I wrote, the way I wrote, what I thought, I find myself wanting to say “oh honey, you don’t even know.” Even entries from last year show me how much of a – well, an idiot – I’ve been and am capable of being. And I’m sure I’ll say the same thing next year looking back at things I’m writing now. One of the things I love about this is having a document of the things I’ve done, sure, and fun things that have happened, but it also allows me to watch myself over the years from two-sentence entries about going skiing for the weekend to dashed-out and self-absorbed entries about being busy and not knowing what I want, to what I do now. It allows me to remember and document things of wonder I might not otherwise keep in my brain, but it also lets me chart my progress as a girl, as a person who’s learning how to think and might not be very good at it yet, but is changing and thinking more and in different ways and about different things.

So yeah. That's pretty cool. I mean, I'm a fan.

HIGHLIGHTS/FAVOURITE ENTRIES:
-Wonderwall
-hailing a taxicab
-coming back from Africa
-that time I wrote kanye west poetry
-my totally awesome history professor
-a few typical entries: being mistake for the Irish and living my life in a lump sum

MAJOR TURNING POINTS/MOMENTS IN TIME:
-whoa there james joyce
-We regret to inform you (Columbia) : I’ve grown up a lot since then, and learned a lot since then. I don't look at the experience the same way now, but this was probably the first time I tried for something and wanted something, but didn't get it, and was able to learn from that.
-Coming Back from Belgium
-Wasting time in High School : oh, high school and high school self
-Making High School Count : brick by brick and my decision to actually DO SOMETHING about the issues I cared about. Basically the first step that got me to where I am now.

FOR YOUR ENTERTAINMENT, SO YOU CAN ALL LAUGH AT HOW PROFOUND 15-YEAR OLD ME THOUGHT SHE WAS, HERE IS MY VERY FIRST ENTRY.

INDULGE ME. TELL ME WHAT YOU REMEMBER: SPECIFIC ENTRIES, THINGS THAT HAVE HAPPENED HERE, A CONVERSATION WE’VE HAD, TAGS.

QUOTES, aka REASONS I LOVE MY FRIENDS:
“I also got this amazing idea while watching it for a retelling of the whole 'Santa' thing, like you make Santa this miserable, drug-addled guy, and the elves are his enslavers and there's this rigourous class system, and Rudolph is an outcast and goes into the woods and joins this, like, Communist gang and there's guerilla and OMG IT WOULD BE SO HARD-CORE.”
-
DOUG: Really. *Really* Colline, you don't know what a 'brah' is?
COLLINE: It's not my fault, I live in the woods!
-
Z: What songs can we sing that everyone knows?
SIMON: Anyone know any Beatles songs?
Z: I think 'My Humps' would make a great singalong.
COLLINE: What about 'Baby Got Back'?
Z: We should fix it, though: I like big brains and I can't deny... uhm... when a girl walks in with a lot of knowledge...
COLLINE: You get INSPIRED!
-
KARLEE: All I'm saying is that an orgasm is an orgasm.
COLLINE: I have 4 words for you: Pictures. Of. Anderson. Cooper.
-
COLLINE'S BRAIN: "Student?" You are not a student. You are DONE WITH THAT SH*T. Frankly, you were done with that months ago. Haha, look, Jon Stewart videos. Wanna go dancing? I don't even know what a topic sentence LOOKS like! wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!
-
COLLINE: Hey! You've got loads of checkmarks! Where are my checkmarks? WHY DON'T I HAVE ANY CHECKMARKS?
JEREMY: Your checkmarks are implied.

Party forth!

Geological Time

Tue, 20 Oct 2009 21:08:54 GMT

Last night I pulled my first-ever all-nighter in an attempt to write my theory paper for International Relations, which was a success in that I managed to remain relatively awake, got three hours' sleep and am sure there are no spelling mistakes. Other than that it's anyone's guess because I stayed up with Catya, whose essay was definitely much more in-line with what I think the prof wants than mine is. But I'm still not in any kind of state to speculate about whether mine was or was not good, lol.

I'm feeling pretty horrible for having dropped the ball on some EWB stuff - I had to confirm some presentations (five of them in one day at the same school this Thursday) before I held the volunteer training sessions, and I put off investigating car rentals until today (to be fair to myself, the only time I could have done it would have been before last Friday, but I still should have done it earlier) only to find out that EVEN WITH a copy of my parents' insurance and EVEN WITH the university's corporate account and insurance policy, I still have no possible way to rent a car because I'm under 21. Which not only puts me in the unfortunate position of having to cancel a rather large committment only two days before, but means that I will personally be unable to facilitate or even book any presentations outside the immediate downtown area or bus range for this year. We could eventually get a volunteer who has access to a car, but since this year all the booking seem to be large-scale, I feel that's an unfair thing to ask of someone to dedicate an entire day of their time and use their car when they're just getting involved. I feel pretty unprofessional about it - thankfully Mama Hen is being awesome about it and talking about 'identifying root causes' (ohhhhhh EWB). ~~I can't even be happy about having my Thursday back yet~~ okay so now they're renting a shuttle to drive me out there? IDEK. And I have to cancel my Friday appointment with the faculty to do presentations then, too. :( :( I WANTED THIS TO BE FUN, WTH.

I'd arrived at the conclusion that I wasn't going to apply for the Junior Fellowship (summer volunteer position with EWB in development sectors in Africa) - I'm going to be starting a new semester and changing programs so I have a lot of personal introspection already going on, EWB is already more than I can handle time-wise, the craziness it would bring to me and my belief that even if I were somehow miraculously to get it, I wouldn't do a very good job. But our current Junior Fellow (who I've been communicating regularly with, and am one of the only members of our chapter to do so) sent me the following email:

"Dude. Tell me you're applying for JF. 'Nuff said."

So. There goes that, I guess. (!) :/

I'm still reading The World Without Us - it's taking me a long time since I only get to read little snippets on the bus every once in a while (and, uh, during IR class) - and I'm currently reading about all the nuclear reactors, power plants, uranium, and all the other crazy toxic chemical stuff being held all over the world, and it was shocking and almost terrifying to hear about all the unnatural things we've created, the averse effects they've had on the environment already, and how we're using things we have no idea what to do with and how most of this stuff is going to be with us forever. FOREVER. GEOLOGICAL TIME.

"Until 1989, the United States made plutonium detonators for atomic weapons at Rocky Flats with somewhat less than a lawful regard for safety. For years, thousands of drums of cutting oil saturated with plutonium and uranium were stacked outside on bare ground. When someone finally noticed they were leaking, asphalt was poured over the evidence. Radioactive runoff at Rocky Flats frequently reached local streams; cement was swirled into radioactive sludge in absurd attempts to try to slow seepage from cracked evaporation ponds; and radiation periodically escaped into the air."

"The Rocky Flats asphalt where drums of radioactive oil spilled was also scraped and shipped to South Carolina, along with three feet of soil. More than half its 800 structures were razed, including the infamous 'Infinity Room,' where contamination levels rose higher than instruments could measure."

(about Rocky Mountain Arsenal, another plant that made mustard and nerve gas): "its core was once called the most contaminated square mile on Earth [...] that required draining and sealing an Arsenal lake where ducks once died moments after landing, and where the bottoms of aluminum boats sent to fetch their carcasses rotted within a month. Although the plan is to treat and monitor toxic groundwater plumes for another century until they're considered safely diluted, today mule deer big as elk find asylum where humans once feared to tread."

(continued from above) "A century, however, would make little difference to uranium and plutonium residues whose half-lives start at 24 000 years and keep going. The weapons-grade plutonium from Rocky Flats was shipped to South Carolina [...] where two huge buildings are so contaminated that no one knows how they might be decommissioned, high-level nuclear waste is now melted in furnaces with glass beads. When poured into stainless steel containers, it turns into solid blocks of radioactive glass [...] Glass being one of our simplest, most durable creations, these hot glass bricks may be among the longest-lasting of all human creations. One day, should power go off permanently, a chamber full of decaying, glass-embedded radioactive material would get steadily warmer, with shattering results."

It was incredibly to disturbing to learn a lot of this stuff - I admittedly don't know a whole lot about the production of energy or how these plants operate or just how dangerous they are, and it was shocking to learn. It's probably because it isn't my career or field o study, but I cannot imagine every creating or being around some of the things the book talks about, let alone having to deal with so much danger of explosion and utter catastrophe - some things seem to me to be almost too powerful for us to try to handle (ESPECIALLY when we don't know what to do with its waste).

The book also talks about what's left of Rocky Flats: things too hot to move that were covered with concrete and where the US Dep. of Energy is legally required to dissuade anyone from coming too close for the next 10 000 years. What was interesting about this was how they mention that because language changes so fast (in 600 years becoming close to incomprehensible) they were at a loss as to how to do this, but just ended up putting it in six languages and pictures on a giant slab of stone.

I am so glad I'm reading this book, because it's not just about one thing: I'm learning a lot about different issues, and it makes you think and consider and ponder, like, 18 different issues per chapter. Oh reading, what would I do without you.

I am really enjoying my Political Philosophy AKA Socrates class, mainly because of the prof who is SO BIZARRE and yet SO AMAZING and I just cannot get a handle on who he is and it bothers me (TONGUE RING?!?). There have been a few moments in that class recently...

PROF: but Plato distinguished between real and unreal pleasures. He says that what we think of as pleasure is really just relief from pain: eating is a relief from the pain of hunger.
STUDENT #1: But what about sex? There's no real opposite to that, so it would discount his theory, right?
PROF: True. It's like tickling, you know, a kind of purely physical thing.
CLASS: That's not what you really mean.
STUDENT #2: But wouldn't sex just be the relief of the pain of being horny?
CLASS: ...
CLASS: *uproarious laughter*
PROF: That makes sense. You've got an itch, you gotta scratch it, I guess. I'd never thought about it that way.
~~JOE WILSON~~ CLASS: You lie!
CLASS: ... and what do you mean, you guess?
PROF: So this is awesome. I'm going to move on.

MORE QUOTES FROM PROF OF GEEKY MYSTERY:
PROF: There was also Pythagorus, who we all know as our dear friend rom lousy high school math classes.
PROF: People who like shiny things like democracy.
PROF: *pauses* Do I smell a candle? Or am I having some kind of stroke?
PROF: You can tell this is older - these are dated fonts. (it's like, Garamond. lol)
PROF: Being a prisoner is rarely the best thing you can be in a society.
PROF: It's not like I spend any of my time outside, I don't know why I'm so excited.

BURZ: Do you think he uses ancient greek pick-up lines?
COLLINE: This ain't a material reflection, baby... it's a true form.
BURZ: You and I would make only gold-souled children.

Now, in Links I Have Stolen From everysecondtues :
-An amazing picspam of women farmers around the world, with a link to an op-ed by Hillary Clinton about global food security (OP has a note about the view of farming internationally as a predominantly male vocation, though the reality is the exact opposite).
-To mock, or not to mock? The problem with poking fun at mistranslations between English and asian languages.
-A boy's life: transgendered children. I posted this article last year, and while it is a bit long, my roommates and I were discussing it the other night so I thought I'd post it again, since it's still very interesting and thought-provoking.

Off to finish answering EWB emails, ~~read new fic~~, and fill out applications! And then sleep. SLEEEEEEEEEP.

feel free to tell me to leave your flist alone, lol

Sun, 18 Oct 2009 18:22:26 GMT

View Poll: This is a tag about tagging

How can we be so heartless? (we're nihilists!) How can we be so heaaaartless?

Sun, 18 Oct 2009 18:12:04 GMT

I baked a scone today (and thus got into a pronounciation debate; mostly because I apparently also pronounce basil and cumin oddly). My roommates are continually amazed at the number of things I make "from scratch." I started to say "how else am I supposed to make it? I don't think they make instant scones-" but then I realized that I live in North America, and thus any thoughts that begin "they don't make instant ___" are foolish and untrue.

This is why I like going to grocery stores whenever I visit the States. Spray cheese in a can! Baconnaise! Oh it is endlessly amusing what you/we eat. Val and I also examined our jam jars closely to see whose had the least chemicals (I win muahahaha!), and were amused that the jars basically said "this is not a significant source of, well... anything, really."

I used to say I couldn't cook, and I still like to joke about it, but I've been realizing that's not exactly true. Or it is, but not to the extent I've always believed. If I can make awesome spaghetti sauce from scratch, I don't think I can claim FAIL status anymore - as I once did, hoping that Craig Kielburger would really like carrot cake. I still don't really like it, especially in our small kitchen, where all preparation, cooking, and eating is done on the kitchen table amid plates and newspapers and computers and chaos (especially when baking from scratch, which requires like a kajillion incredients). However, I have had successes, including winning a prize for raspberry jam tarts on Pi Day (homggggg Pi Day) - which, admittedly, was won more for my dorkitude of putting the Pi symbol on each one, but still! I think it counts. And now thanks to jessica_june I have a failsafe cupcake (and icing!) recipe (though I have been informed by the roommates that it is necessary to put food colouring in the icing because it otherwise "looks like someone jizzed on a cupcake"). Admittedly my strengths are mostly limited to desserts and sauces, but it will come, I suppose.
-----------
My roommate Nic is off to Montreal for a SOLAR PHYSICS CONFERENCE. We were like a bunch of proud mamas, all "have fun!!" and waving him off (poor fellow. It's his fault for living with five ~~crazy feminists who revolutionize the way he views the world~~ girls). Seriously though, solar physics? Buddy's a genius.

CATYA: When I came out of the shower I just stood for like ten minutes in front of Nic's room because he was listening to the most beautiful piano music. I was going to ask him what it was - I just had to know - but. Well. I was wearing a towel.
COLLINE: I know. I keep forgetting he's a boy.

NIC: This seems to be a constant theme in our house.
COLLINE: What does?
NIC: The smell of tacos.

WHY HAVE I NOT COME UP WITH A LEGIT TAG FOR THIS HOUSEHOLD YET? NEXT POST'S A POLL ON THE SUBJECT, I SWEAR.

And because I'm now addicted to Hugo Chavez "singing" and it makes me a nerdy sort of happy, I present to you the news, auto-tuned. As soon as Obama starts singing I just... lol forever. And Keef. It's dumb, but it made me laugh.

In Which No Ass Is Gotten Off Of

Sat, 17 Oct 2009 21:35:52 GMT

I have wasted a rather spectacular amount of time this week - Thursday was meant to be Figure Out My Life day, but apparently you have to make appointments far in advance to talk to the Faculty, so I'm going back next Friday; I had a meeting with the Faculty of Engineering for EWB, and spent the rest of the afternoon... well, I don't really remember. Friday I spent most of the day on campus even though there were no classes, giving presentations for EWB. After all my scrambling to get French presenters, only two people came to the French presentation, and only four to the English presentation. :( It's nobody's fault, but it's still kind of disappointing.

What was cool about the presentation was that it was in a legit classroom/auditorium in the Engineering building, which is all new and fancy and big. I was wearing clicky-boots, and using a GIANT-ASS SCREEN and a remote, and a prof gave me a microphone to wear, one of the ones you clip on. I didn't end up using it because I didn't need to (and it's sort of hard to have it hanging off a dress, lol), but it was really cool. I felt all *~grown-up~* and *~professorial~* and *~authoritative~* in such a big classrom where my boots made echoing noises and... well, it was a cool feeling XDD

Last night it was Coyote's birthday, so we all headed over to his house and then downtown. I was kind of 'eh' on the bar (other than them playing 'Single Ladies' and Catya dragging me to the bar and us ROCKING THE F*** OUT) until the live band came out, and then it was EPIC. The band was really great; since it was for a dance floor, they were playing songs everyone knew, but AWESOME songs (Semi-Charmed Life, MGMT, The Fratellis). Catya manoeuvred us to stand in front of this GIANT FAN so our hair was blowing everywhere and we knew ALL THE WORDS and Stefan was so excited to hear every single song. Oh it was epic.

Today I slept in, rushed to campus in order to get to GoENG Girl, but as soon as I got there, Polly said 'I hope you brought your homework.' It was DEAD, apparently the big rush of people was in the morning and they were all in workshops so we were just chilling out. I was kind of angry that they hadn't let me know and just told me not to bother coming in, especially as I don't exactly live close to campus. Not to be helped, and it was nice to see Polly, but it was kind of a waste of time. I wasted more time at the library not writing my essay, and then at the grocery store. It's 5:30 and I haven't even started the exercise for Research Methods that's due on Monday, or the Politics paper that's due on Tuesday. I've been lazy and apathetic towards assignments before, but these ones are just... they're USELESS ASSIGNMENTS. The essay is just 'take two theories from the textbook and explain them to me.' Basically it's an exercise in 'how well can you use a thesaurus to rewrite the textbook?' And the RM one is all about variables and constants, shit I learned about in GRADE FREAKING SEVEN. Any coincidence that the same prof is teaching both courses, and they both suck? I am so over this semester, and I don't like that feeling. At ALL :(

I was expressing my frustration at the textbook (the chapter on Constructivism, which I'm guessing is new, is FULL of typos and the author keeps using 'I' randomly and not backing himself up and it's annoying and unprofessional at the same time) with one of the new members of EWB, who did his first degree in English and PoliSci.

NEWB: Was it written by Collins? I bet it was. If you ever hear anyone complaining about a PoliSci text, Collins wrote it.

I need to get over my ugh-school mood ASAP or I'm going to end up losing my scholarship or losing resolve altogether - I guess I've gotten used to enjoying what I study, and being substantially busier this year than last is meaning that I haven't done a single reading in... I'd say over two weeks now :/ SELF, GET OVER YOURSELF. LOVE, SELF.
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I learned today from The World Without Us that on the DMZ between North and South Korea, 'large loudspeakers atop South Korea's positions have blasted regular insults, military anthems, and even strident themes like the William Tell Overture across the divide.'

WHAT?! LOL. That's amazing. Like two kids in the backseat of the car trying to piss each other off by humming loudly or putting their fingers slightly on the others' "side." LOL X A MILLION. Way to stay classy, S Korea. I like it.
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I am ridiculously excited for Toy Story 3. Honestly, I hate sequels but those movies are so good and just <33333 I can't believe I was only 9 years old when the last one came out, especially since I can remember it so well.
I really want to see The Men Who Stare At Goats, lol. History geekiness+comedy+George Clooney? YES??!
Also, even though I never read Where The Wild Things Are, every review and preview and glimpse I've gotten of it is just making me need to see it more.

have you come here to play Jesus to the lepers in your head?

Thu, 15 Oct 2009 03:17:46 GMT

So I have come to the conclusion that I don't really know how to deal with stress. This seems odd to me, as this is not the first time I've been stressed, and I'm obviously still here and ~~mostly~~ sane, so I've obviously dealt with it (after a fashion, at least) before in a somewhat-satisfactory method. But I think I just suck at it, if the past 2-3 days are any indication (sobbing, making like 18 private LJ entries using my rage icons, and eating vast quantities of food are Not Very Helpful Coping Mechanisms, Ever). Like, not only am I just not the kind of person who knows what to do, but it doesn't seem to be something I'm learning particularly well, since I KEEP GETTING STRESSED and then I KEEP BOTTLING IT and then I KEEP BURSTING INTO TEARS ALL THE TIME AND ALARMING PEOPLE.

Well, okay. Slight exaggeration. Not all time. Just during the exec meeting, and then while walking across campus, and then again after a phone conversation.
CHRIS: I think you need to go do something not stressful right now.
COLLINE: Can I fall asleep on the office couch?
CHRIS: Yes.
COLLINE: *does not fall asleep, but decides to do inventory instead*

I am now at the point where I can critically examine my stress, and not just... well, stress about it. And blame it on me just generally being an emotional person, or not hating disappointing people, or having some kind of VORACIOUS APPETITE for signing up for EVERYTHING EVER, but when things blow up am I not particularly good at just dealing with the issue.

The issue of the past couple days has been 1/2 EWB/School Outreach, 1/2 Life Plans/University/Homework, and a little bit of everything happening at the same time. Today? I had two midterm exams. Neither of which I got to study for. Which has never happened to me before: if I haven't studied for a test, it's been because I decided to play Sims2 instead, not because I genuinely had no time in which to do it. I haven't done a class reading in over two weeks, and I'm a little unsure of what exactly catching-up strategies are. You think I'd have figured that out by now. Guess not.

Thankfully the S.O. stuff is seeming more manageable this evening (BARELY), or at least I have some sort of plan for the next two weeks. And my tear ducts seem to have stopped going off every time I open my School Outreach email inbox. I wish I could direct this into some kind of piano-playing, kick-boxing whirlwind of emotion-siphoning, but I have a feeling I'm not that kind of person, either. So at this point my strategy is 'Man Up, Work Harder, Cry Less ~~In Front Of People~~.' Let's give that a whirl.
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Mission: deal with stress and get back to being 100% happy in a maximum three-day period, if only because I am *NOT* making my 1000th post a whine-fest, dammit!

Side note: Saturday I get to volunteer at GoENG Girl, an awesome conference/thing trying to promote Engineering (or even just math and science) to girls in Grades 7-11 at which one of my awesome presidents is speaking. Considering only like 10% of our university's ENG students are girls and that the faculty doesn't even sell ENG clothing in girl's sizes, I'm thinking it's an awesome event; it's hard to want to go into something like that or stay in something like that if it's an All Boys' Club (and ENG culture at Canadian universities is INSANE, it's very male-dominated). Even though I'm just Being There all day, I'm super psyched for it because it will be Smart Girls Being Awesome All The Time, basically. And Also Proving Larry Summers Wrong (because Larry Summers is a Super-Huge Dickface, and I don't care who knows it).

To shamelessly steal from Neil Gaiman...

Sat, 10 Oct 2009 19:54:04 GMT

If you were wondering

what kind of day it was

it was this kind of day.

a stick! a stick! there never was such a stick.

om nom nom i loves my stick.

please throw us the stick. (look at their plaintive leetle faces)

This morning the sky was a brilliant blue, the moon was still visible, and all the leaves around our house were shaking orange out of them. I drove back from town with my windows slightly down, playing the Regina Spektor cd I bought on Thanksgiving two years ago. The road to my house was a gold canopy that sent magpies and small swallows flying out from the car’s wheels and the road’s ditches to lead the way through. Over the music I could hear the flutter and clatter of dry leaves disturbed by the car’s wheels. Our house is full of the smell of bread and cinnamon, and the puppies are dashing through the bushes, sending leaves flying.

I love fall <3
I love scarves and jackets and bright sun. And pumpkin pie and apple pie and cherry pie and stuffing. And orange leaves and red leaves and yellow leaves. And dogs that go swimming in the swamp. And sisters that go swimming in the swamp. And apples. And corn on the cob. And pumpkins. And pumpkin lights in the window. And cousins who visit from New York. And apple dumplings. And beautiful fall days.

Tell me what you love about fall.

Fall music:
-everything from ‘Begin to Hope,’ by Regina Spektor (but especially ‘Hotel Song’ and ‘On the Radio’)
-Working on a Dream, by Bruce Springsteen
-Drugstar, by Indochine
-Her Morning Elegance, by Oren Lavie
-Holland 1945, by Neutral Milk Hotel
-Hoodoo Voodoo by Billy Bragg & Wilco
-All Soul’s Night, by Loreena McKennitt
-No Rain, by Blind Melon
-Love You ‘Til the End, by the Pogues
-Je L'aime a Mourir, by Francis Cabrel
-Two Faces, by Bruce Springsteen

Happy Canadian Thanksgiving <3

The Collapse of Quebecois Bridges

Thu, 08 Oct 2009 16:08:48 GMT

I'm trying to use today to prepare for next Wednesday's EWB meeting, when I have to train people how to lead School Outreach workshops (brief background: this year I am one of the VPs for my Engineers Without Borders chapter, and head of School Outreach. That means that I am in charge of advertising, booking, organising, and presenting a variety of workshops and presentations designed to get high school students engaged in international development and poverty issues [as well as engineering as a possible outlet to creating change]. We have 3 main presentations: Water for the World [about global water systems, issues around water conservation and access to water], Food for Thought [about the global food system, global hunger and food/resource inequality], and Energy Matters [about rural energy systems, different kinds of energy, and how electricity and energy relates to development]. My goal for this year is to establish a solid base of volunteers and presentors, which means attracting and recruiting them, training them, keeping them engaged and involved, and booking presentations for them. I'm trying to do this for our French and English sectors, which has gotten more difficult since my Director for the French presentations mysteriously disappeared). And I'm slowly freaking out about it.

Mostly because I already have presentations booked; not a problem, because most of those I can just present myself and it's not a big deal, but we have two coming up next Friday for all the Grade 12s that will be visiting the school, and one of those is in French AND I HAVE NO FRENCH PRESENTORS. No experienced ones whatsoever. Ahhhhhh. IT'S NEXT FRIDAY. And even if there are interested and competent people who come out to the training session next Wednesday, that's only two days before so there's no way they would be ready or comfortable and I'm not throwing anyone into that situation. I have a few email addresses, but it's still very alarming. NOT TO MENTION LAST NIGHT, when Hart told me to "not freak out" and then showed me an email from the faculty wanting us to do an all-day event for 150 students. NEXT WEEK.

Uhm, no. Thankfully Hart agreed with me that we didn't have the time or the resources (or the time to GET the resources), but now they're trying to book it for two weeks away and that's still too soon and I'm freaking out because I can't do that. I just -- I can't. I would need SO MANY volunteers that I just don't have... okay actually I'm looking at it again and if it's on a Thursday I'll just do the whole thing, I can probably get a few volunteers, it'll be okay, but... ahhhhhh. Crazy. I think I really underestimated the amount of time this would take. Not to mention that it's not like I'm old hat at these presentations EITHER. ~~I can't effing do public speaking, what is this? How the **** am I supposed to inspire Grade 8s? What is this?~~

</freakout>

Never mind. I've got it covered. I can do this. Fight fight kill.

I'm also fairly sure now that I'm not going to apply for the JF. I'm going to do the application process, but I know that in the slim event I were actually chosen, I would not be ready. Since I just figured out that I'm going to have to stay at university for five years, that gives me a few more summers to try my hand. We had a big meeting/presentation on the overseas stuff last night and it was incredibly inspiring and invigorating and awesome. I stayed behind afterwards to talk with one of our new members, a very awesome fellow from Out West who did his undergrad in English/PoliSc, and is now getting a second degree in Civil Engineering. We had a great conversation about politicization/americanization of universities, riding bikes in the cities, people getting sued, and how bridges in Quebec always seem to be falling down. He also mentioned his fiancé (second 'e' not there for a reason, ahuhuhuhu), and idk what it is, but whenever people talk about 'my fiance' and get all happy and goofy about it like they just still like saying the word, it makes me 15 different kinds of happy and squishy for them.

By the end of it, though, I was literally hopping from foot to foot, I had to go to the washroom so bad. I know this is TMI, but I was - no hyperbole, no word of a lie - doing the dance that four-year-olds do and he didn't notice. Lol. I got home and had a dinner of cake (I have awesome roommates) at 10:45 pm (such is my life). I also found a lovely package on the kitchen table!

CATYA: So you got a package! I'm sorry, it's been in my mouth. I bit it. I was trying to carry a lot of things inside. Then I saw that it came all the way from Thailand and I really don't want to know what it's touched along the way. So I regret that.

It was indeed from Thailand, because Kaz is awesome. The jewellery! The earrings with little giraffes ~~that I managed to break don't worry about it I'm just stupid, I'm going to find some glue~~! The green tea! The cat purse! All the postcards! And the gorgeous cabochon ring... there is a funny story about that. I was just so pleased to see it that I picked it up and shoved it on my middle finger to admire. And then I realized that it felt a little tight. And that it would probably be better on another finger. Alas, the ring decided it liked where it was and that it did not wish to come off. Ever. I spent fifteen minutes and nearly half the butter we had trying to get that thing off. I was sort of panicky at that point, thinking it was going to have to get cut off, but it did (eventually) come off, and now I have a very swollen finger. But now I know that the ring is going to go on a different finger.

CATYA: So I've decided that you and I are going to have hardcore workouts this year.
COLLINE: And why have you decided this?
CATYA: Because you're a tank.
COLLINE: Owie. My finger hurts.

It is 12:00. I have put on Real Person Pants (by which I mean a skirt) for the day, but am still in my pyjama shirt and the school outreach planning scared me so I think I shall take a break even though I have not officially started. ~~Pff, semantics.~~ And then back into the fray. *crosses fingers*