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Scribbling Madly Off in All Directions...because my mind tends to wander. |
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| Be warned: I have a sense of humour which I've been told is a little odd, and my posts tend to be long-winded because it's generally quite some time before I figure out how to say what I want to say. Oh, and while I do try to keep the angst toned down in public, I do have a slight tendency towards depression; it's (thankfully) beginning to fade now as the more optimistic side of my personality kicks in again, but I may lapse from time to time, and such lapses may be reflected in what I say here. Feel free to skip these entries if you like. That said, welcome to my little corner of the internet. If I already know you, it's good to see you again; if we've never met before, it's nice to meet you. =) |
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| Jun. 26th, 2009 @ 10:02 pm Writer's Block: Environmental Confession | ||||
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Mental state:
 cheerfulListening to: Intellectual Boys (Coco Love Alcorn)
The first thing that comes to mind is that I do a lot of driving. It's an unfortunate necessity; I live too far away from everything except an overpriced golf course (even the nearest bus stop is a half-hour walk away from home) to be able to get anywhere any other way in any reasonable time frame. Not only that, but sometimes in the summer I'll put the car's air conditioning on for a few minutes to take the edge off the heat because I find it difficult to concentrate on driving if I feel like I'm baking to death. |
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| May. 13th, 2009 @ 11:18 am Would You Like Some Milk On Your Medication? | |||
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Mental state:
So apparently Cheerios are a drug. Or at least they would be, if the claims that General Mills makes on the box (lower LDL cholesterol, treat and/or prevent heart disease) are an intended use of the product. amusedListening to: We're In This Love Together (Al Jarreau) Frankly, I'm laughing at both sides—I'm laughing at General Mills for going so far with their assertions about this product, and I'm laughing at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for asserting that these claims constitute an intended use for a bowl of cereal. :) |
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| May. 4th, 2009 @ 08:49 am These Things Happen... | |||
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Mental state:
The alternator on the car quit on Wednesday as my mother was on her way down a hill—she tells me that she was actually able to coast into the parking lot at the place where she was going, then get the car running for long enough to pull into a parking space. The car had to be towed over to the Toyota dealership (we've got that car on a lease agreement, so any servicing has to be done there), and originally we were supposed to have the car back by Friday, but since we don't have access to public transit and we live so far away from most things that a taxi would be prohibitively expensive (more than $20 each way every time we needed to go somewhere), they lent Mum a courtesy car.( Read more... ) amusedListening to: Stand By Me (Playing for Change) I think that after this, I'm going to be keeping a travel bag in the trunk of the car containing a change of clothes and shoes, a hairbrush and a toothbrush; that way all I'll need to buy next time is toothpaste and deodorant! |
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| May. 2nd, 2009 @ 03:06 am Losing a Place I Love | |||
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Mental state:
Warning: this is going to be a long one. sad and restlessListening to: Top Deck in Perth (The Victoria Police Pipe Band) See my user icon? It's part of a photo that I took late in the morning of my twenty-fifth birthday. There was a heavy fog that morning; walking around, I felt almost as if I could easily get lost if I strayed too far from the section of road that, some thirty years earlier, my maternal grandfather had helped to clear when some inconsiderate people kept blocking the "real" one. When I made my way down to the lake, it was so calm and so still that it was very much like a large mirror, reflecting the sky above and the thick fog which still lay across part of it to such an extent that it was almost impossible to tell where the sky ended and the lake began. At present, the camp where I had stayed the night before is owned by my mother's sister. I have many happy memories there; I learned to swim in that lake, and I've been staying overnight there since I was a small child. My aunt and uncle don't go out there very often, so in the last sixteen years my aunt has let my mother and I more or less have the run of the place, and we've been taking care of the electric bill and paying for whatever costs we incur on the phone (which, by the way, don't generally amount to much). Since I got my driver's license I've frequently gone out there when I needed to go someplace to think, get away from the heat of summer (there's usually a nice breeze off the lake, and even when it's hot out there, it's still cooler than it is in town) and once I even had my mom drop me off out there to recover from a nasty cold that jumped on me when I was already down because I'd had a particularly exhausting week. I couldn't have wished for a better place to recuperate, and I think it went faster because I was out there. I've always even slept better out there for some reason. Lonely Lake has always been a place where I could find peace, so perhaps that's why. But after this year, I'll never be able to see it again. ( Read more... ) |
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| Mar. 31st, 2009 @ 02:01 pm *Eyes Bug Out* | |||
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Mental state:
Three months...? Oops. overall, quite pleasedListening to: Oor Ain Fireside (Simon Fraser University Pipe Band) I've been well, and I hope that everyone who reads this has been, too. This hasn't been a good year for me with computers so far, though I feel intensely spoiled in regards to my access to technology to begin with. First, early in January the hard drive in my two-year-old MacBook failed, apparently beyond repair, and I haven't been able to find a suitable replacement for it; other damage (unfortunately not covered under warranty because it was the result of my clumsiness) made this an unpalatable solution in any case, because it's not clear how much longer the computer would work even with a new hard drive anyway. Then, the iBook that the MacBook was intended to replace two years ago (oops) finally quit for good around the 16th. (I'd been able to resurrect it a couple of times, but this time it doesn't look like I'll be able to get it working again without Very Expensive Professional Help, and even then it's far from being certain.) So, that's the bad technological news—but shortly after my iBook died, my mom surprised me when she ordered me a new MacBook, which I didn't think we could afford. Our financial situation isn't as worrying as it was a few months ago, but we're still being careful (not, I think, a bad thing) and I'm still looking for work, so you can probably see why it was a bit of a shock. It's a nice machine, though (lots of storage space and 2 GB of RAM, which is almost four times what I've been used to using), and she had Apple pre-install Final Cut Express on it, knowing my penchant for video editing (I've done a few X-Files vids and one for the Matrix trilogy). That's been fun to play with so far, and as I said, I feel extremely spoiled. And I've kept fairly frequent backups of my information, so I didn't have to worry about having lost more than three iTunes music purchases and a couple of days' worth of writing which I've managed to reconstruct and even improve upon. Besides that, life's gone on pretty much as it has for the past few years. The cats keep my mom and I amused, and I've been able to talk to my brother more often, which is nice. Things are going well with both my choirs and though I'm still feeling more than a little quiet lately, the more social side of my personality's starting to kick in again. (I love it when that happens—I'll always be an introvert at heart, but that doesn't mean that I have no interest whatsoever in social interaction.) I've even been feeling a bit more energetic lately. So, not bad in general. :) |
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| Dec. 23rd, 2008 @ 11:29 am Fractured Christmas Songs... | |||
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Mental state:
*snickers* amusedListening to: The Holly and The Ivy Of all the trees The Holly and the Ivy Peace on earth and mercy mild, Hark The Herald Angels Sing Silent Pennfana, holy Pennfana. Silent Night |
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| Dec. 22nd, 2008 @ 03:56 pm Random Thought | |||
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Mental state:
Ever notice that the people who tell you that you don't want to step on any toes are usually the same ones who wouldn't think twice about dancing a jig on yours? slightly annoyedListening to: The Fire Truck (John Powell, "Evolution" soundtrack) |
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| Dec. 16th, 2008 @ 04:45 pm *headdesk* | |||
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Mental state:
My mom—a nurse—had a couple of friends (also nurses) over for tea this afternoon. One of them was continually extolling the virtues of Gastric Bypass surgery. aggravatedListening to: Johnny English theme - Salsa Version (Bond) Can we say "trigger"? *grumbles* If I hadn't already eaten my lunch by the time Mom's friends came by, I'm sure I'd be fighting the impulse to starve myself for the rest of the day. As it is, I'm just incensed that someone who should know better because she's a health care professional has been spewing this tripe about how wonderful the surgery is for the |
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| Dec. 6th, 2008 @ 11:12 am Quiz Results | |||
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Mental state:
I admit that I like doing online quizzes. Unless the results are extremely off-base, they don't often tell me anything that I wasn't expecting to see, but it amuses me anyway. This morning, I stumbled upon a "Rate My Life" quiz, and I thought that the results were quite interesting, to say the least. contemplativeListening to: French Suite in E-Flat Major (J.S. Bach) The quiz rates your life based on your mind, physical health, spiritual life, relationships with friends and family, your love life and your finances. There's also an overall rating for your life, based on the scores given for each of the categories. What I found so interesting, though, was the apparent assumption that there are certain standards for each category that everyone has to meet or their life doesn't quite measure up. For example, I have a small but wonderful circle of friends and a larger circle of pleasant acquaintances, and I'm perfectly happy with that—but because one of the ways in which the friends/family category is scored is the size of one's circle of friends, I was advised to make more friends, because apparently everyone needs a large group of friends to be socially fulfilled. I never understood that idea myself, though; I may not have many friends, but I know I can count on the ones I do have, which isn't exactly a terrible thing. And then there's the "love life" section of the quiz. I was told, Your love rating is a measure of your current romantic situation. Sharing your heart with another person is one of life's most glorious, terrifying, rewarding experiences. Your love score is very low, indicating trouble. There is love out there for you. Seek the advice of wise people on how to go about finding it. Do not lose hope. It simultaneously amuses and disgusts me that there's an assumption that everyone who takes the quiz who doesn't have a high score in the "love" category must be desperate for a wonderful romance. The truth is that I'm not looking for a romantic attachment at this point in my life. It's not that I've lost hope or any of that rubbish—it's just that I don't particularly want a romantic relationship. I've simply got too much personal stuff to sort out first, and to enter into that kind of relationship now wouldn't be fair to me or to whoever the other person might be. The "body" category contained pretty much what I expected to see. "Eat right and exercise", commonly known as a code phrase for "LOSE WEIGHT!!!!!" is there, and of course some of the advice for people whose score wasn't unusually high for that category assumes that such people must be lazy, unhealthy eaters who don't get any more exercise than lifting the channel changer or walking to the kitchen for another round of pop and junk food. If I weren't feeling better about myself now than I have in the past couple of years, I think that reading those comments might have triggered another of my lapses into starvation-type eating-disordered behaviour. I refuse to comment on the score I received for my financial behaviour, save for that it was better than I thought it would be. (Not that either my score or my behaviour is terrible—it's just that there are things that are still a sore point with me, not least the fact that I've been unable to find a job in the teaching profession thus far.) The score for my mental health was encouraging, to say the least. And the "Spirit" category was a particularly pleasant surprise, though when I checked the advice given by other people who scored high in that category, there were a few comments which stated that Christianity as the One True Right and Only Way to develop a fulfilling spiritual life. Most of the comments were much more inclusive, though, and the overarching theme seemed to be "figure out what your best path is". (Makes sense to me. But then, as I've noted before, my spiritual life hasn't been anything even approaching "conventional" by pretty much anyone's standards since I was about fourteen or fifteen.) There was one comment there that almost broke my heart, though—it was from someone who "recently deconverted from Christianity", and it was filled with so much bitterness and hate towards their former faith that even though I no longer identify as a Christian in any normal sense of the word (singing in an Anglican choir quite aside, the best way to describe my present spiritual path is probably something like "Eclectic and Somewhat Bewildered Christo-Pagan"), I wondered what had happened to that person to fill them with so much hostility. I know that I left the Roman Catholic Church years ago for reasons that are similar to some of the ones this person has for leaving whatever denomination they came from, but except for a brief period in which I would probably have been bitter anyway (my maternal grandfather had just died and the Catholic priest who officiated at his funeral was one who I'd always disliked because he always seemed to be smug about being a priest), I didn't think of the faith I'd left in such angry terms. I suppose that to me, the kindness of the people I've met has outweighed the often bloody history of the religion. That doesn't mean I'll ever entirely go back, though I do realize that the fact that I sing in an Anglican choir might somewhat undermine my credibility as a Pagan, but it does mean that I still have some measure of respect for Christianity and for the people who it has helped, regardless of the bigotry and boneheadedness still displayed by people (usually men) in the upper levels of various Church hierarchies. Eep, didn't mean to go off on such a tangent there. Anyway, just thought I'd share my thoughts about this quiz. I know that I came off as being more than a little critical of it, but despite that, I thought it was an interesting little exercise. |
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| Dec. 2nd, 2008 @ 03:36 pm Thoughts about Current Canadian Politics | |||
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Mental state:
Beware—this post won't be particularly unified. It's just a collection of thoughts I've had over the past few days as Canada's federal government gets itself—and the rest of us—deeper and deeper into an unfortunate situation. contemplativeListening to: The Fire Truck (John Powell, "Evolution" soundtrack) Anyway. This isn't the first time that I've been thankful that even if the Conservatives ended up back on top, at least they have a minority government; Harper doesn't seem to want to admit to the fact, but I'd hoped that it would limit the damage that he could do to Canada. Unfortunately, he seems to have forgotten that he is Canada's Prime Minister who has a minority government and not the Imperial Royal High Grand Dictator that he seems to want to be. Did he and Flaherty really think that the other parties would just sit quietly and watch while they could enacted measures that would completely bankrupt everyone except for the Tories themselves? Did they really think that there would be no outcry when Flaherty announced that they were simply ignoring the recession and doing the budgetary equivalent of sticking their fingers in their ears and yelling "NAH, NAH, NAH, NAH! I CAN'T HEAR YOU!" instead of actually coming up with a plan for dealing with it? I swear, it's almost like they wanted to put themselves into a position where the other parties could declare that the Conservatives had lost the confidence of the House of Commons. And now they're acting like it's such a big surprise and betrayal for everyone else to have called them on their BS in the most noticeable way possible. I've noticed that the Conservatives' biggest defenders are the ones who say that "Canadians have spoken, and they chose Harper for Prime Minister". Um, no, that's not quite the way it went. 62% of us actually didn't choose Harper, and the unfortunate thing is that the 62% was split among three other parties. All that this says is that we didn't really choose Harper, he just got a bigger percentage of the votes than the others did and therefore got back in by default, the same way he was elected in the first place. Now, I'm hardly the first person to have observed this, but I think it's quite interesting that Harper's position on coalition governments has changed in the past four years. After all, this time he's the one at risk of losing power, and everything that he and his cronies have been doing in the past few days to try to do some damage control smacks of desperation and panic. But how can they discredit the opposition when they themselves have already been so thoroughly discredited? There are people who still believe that they're Canada's best choice, but from what I've seen, those are mainly the people who accuse anyone who leans even slightly to the left of being a "commie". By the way, you'd think that those people would be able to come up with better insults than that. Or maybe not; I've never seen much real creativity from most of those people. (Well, the ones I've met, anyway.) But really, it's like they think that the best way to shut someone up with whom they disagree politically is to accuse them of being a communist. If there's logic there, I don't see it. And I don't get why so many of those same people are insisting that a coalition government means that Canada's going to be led by separatists. It doesn't; the Bloc Québécois have agreed to support the Liberals and the NDP. There's been no indication that the Bloc will have much, if any, more power than they did before even if we do end up with a coalition government. All this fear-mongering can't possibly be doing anyone any good. There's no perfect solution to this situation; the Conservatives have apparently become as corrupt in two years as it took the Liberals a bit less than eleven years to do when they were in power, if not more so; keeping them in office would be a manifestly Bad Idea. And a coalition government is hardly ideal either, because it could fall apart in so many ways. And nobody can convince me that it's a good idea to call yet another election less than two months after the last one. Gods, what a mess. |
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| Nov. 26th, 2008 @ 12:49 pm *sigh* | |||
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Mental state:
So, I've done it. I've applied for a job at a call centre, and I'm starting the first part of their hiring process tomorrow (testing of some sort, apparently). I didn't want to have to do this, but since I haven't been hired for anything else I've applied for in the past couple of years, and since recent developments make it absolutely necessary for me to have a job of some sort, no matter how awful, I feel like I've run out of alternatives to Customer Service Hell. I'm trying to keep optimistic about it—I've applied for part-time work there at the moment, so I might have some sort of abstract chance at being able to keep doing the things that have kept me from suffering a full-on attack of severe depression in the past couple of years—but I've heard absolutely nothing good about those places. And if it ever comes to the point where I have to choose between that job and the things that make my life worth living, I have no idea what I'll choose. I've had a couple of panic attacks in relation to the idea, actually; I know that I'm not suited to it and I despise the thought of having to give up my interests and activities in favour of having to sit and take abuse from  indescribableListening to: James Brown Ate My Bagpipe (Taxi Chain) Which is not to say that my life has totally gone to the dogs. My family life is still good, my social life is actually starting to come back from the dead, I'm still with my choir and still teaching my bagpipe student, and I'm still tinkering with the occasional bit of creative writing, both original work and fan fiction. Furthermore—and this still surprises me—I've recently joined the choir at the local Anglican cathedral. Their choirmaster also directs the community choir I've been a member of for eleven (!) years, and for the last couple of years I've been playing my bagpipes for their Remembrance Day services. This year, he asked me if I'd be interested in joining the choir there, and I said I'd think about it; after quite a bit of soul searching (if it had been only a musical decision, I'd have said yes without a second thought, but this choir is part of people's spiritual lives, and it's part of a belief system that I don't entirely share), I said that I'd give it a try. Not that I'm converting—I don't feel the need, and I have it on good authority that it's not necessary—but I find that I'm enjoying it so far. And while I'm still finding it a bit unbelievable that I, of all people, am involved in a church choir of any kind, I'm welcoming it as an interesting addition to my spiritual life, which I must admit was already more than a little odd by anyone's standards. Eventually, I may find that I can't reconcile my personal beliefs with what I'm now part of every Sunday, but for now I'm OK with it, and that's what matters. If nothing else, I'm singing with some very nice people, and my ability to sight-read music is developing at a surprisingly fast pace out of sheer necessity. So there are definitely some bright spots in my life as it is now. I'm afraid of losing them because it took so long for me to find many of them in the first place, but they're there now. I know I should just shut up and be grateful that I have anything to smile about at all when so many people are so much worse off than I am, but I do sometimes find it difficult to be happy when I'm very conscious that it could easily be yanked out from under me like a greased banana peel on a polished marble floor, especially in these uncertain times. |
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| Nov. 19th, 2008 @ 08:14 am Not all the bad drivers are young, you know! | |||
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Mental state:
I understand that bad driving is a serious problem—I see far too many examples of it every day—but Ontario's provincial government is following a good idea (banning the use of hand-held phones, etc. while driving) with a terrible one (the proposed restrictions on drivers under the age of 22). Yes, there are young drivers who do some pretty stupid things, but the majority of the bad drivers that I see every day are middle-aged adults. I'm rarely tailgated by someone who looked like they're under 22 years old, though I suppose that it's remotely possible that Sault Ste. Marie has an unusual concentration of people in their teens and early twenties who are going prematurely grey. Talk about a belief in extreme possibilities! displeasedListening to: Untitled ("Descent" CD, track 6) The fact is, most of the people I see running red lights look like they're significantly older than I am (I'm 26). Most of the drunk drivers I hear about are over the age of 22. Of course, none of this particularly surprises me, because since most people in the area (according to the 2006 census, at least) are over the age of 22. I've actually spent much of this morning doing some (admittedly unscientific) research. I've dug up as many news reports as I could of collisions in the area since the beginning of January where charges were laid and put together a spreadsheet with the drivers' names, their ages, the causes of the collisions and any additional details that I thought were worth mentioning. Of the 60 news articles I found which contained enough information about local collisions for me to reliably catalogue them, this is what I found: 45 of the people who were charged were stated to be 22 years old or older (only two were 22; of the drivers who were below that age, four were 21, two were 17 and one was 18; the ages of eight more drivers were unreported, including one who was described as simply being "young"). 38 of the drivers who were charged were male (the sexes of three other drivers were unreported). Of the people who were charged, 14 were drunk, 10 drivers ran red lights or stop signs, 14 drivers were careless in one way or another, one was too tired to be driving, one couldn't see out of their front window, one was street racing, one accident-prone guy reversed into another person's vehicle and later struck a utility pole (he fled both scenes but was caught later), one unsecured load resulted in a flying mattress which broke another driver's windshield and gave him minor injuries, three drivers were tailgating, two were cyclists (one was riding on the sidewalk and another ran a red light), and one incident where the cause wasn't reported, but which involved an impact which spun the car around—it eventually landed on its roof. I found reports of many other collisions, of course, but no charges were laid that I know of—they were all weather-related. So, this is the conclusion I came to: don't punish young drivers because they're young. Clearly drivers over the age of 22 are as much a part of the problem as the younger ones are—maybe even more, if only because they've had more time to develop those bad habits that make the road so dangerous. Intelligent driving is not a gift that's magically bestowed on a driver at the age of 22. So if you think that the younger drivers need more help, then find some way of giving it to them. Don't just pile restrictions on them and expect things to get better. They've earned their licenses just like the rest of us have—and since the graduated licensing system was introduced in Ontario in 1994, it's been tougher to get that license in the first place. Personally, I'm cynical enough to be thinking right now that the Ontario government is simply trying to look like they're being "pro-active" (Gods, I hate that word!) about the issue while not actually offering any viable solutions, but then, that could just be me. |
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| Nov. 11th, 2008 @ 12:03 pm After piping for an elementary school Remembrance Day ceremony... | |||
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Mental state:
We say "Never again!" on Remembrance Day, and yet once the pretty ceremony is over with, the lessons that we're supposed to have learned by celebrating this day seem to disappear into thin air. And it breaks my heart to think that despite generations of schoolchildren being taught about the evils and the horrors of war since the end of the two World Wars, so many of them, now that they're adults, think that war is a great and glorious thing. I'm not disputing that it's sadly necessary in some circumstances, but I believe that it's not something that should be embraced or glorified as it so often is. annoyed and sadListening to: When the Pipers Play (Moira Kerr) All of these shouts of "Never Again!" and we still haven't learned anything. People still die for politics. It makes me sad, and while I admit that it's incredibly naïve and yet strangely pessimistic of me to say this, I hope with every cell in my body that someday, somehow, the human race will wake up and realize how senseless and tragic war really is. |
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| Nov. 11th, 2008 @ 08:04 am There's snow on the ground, and I'm thinking of summer. | |||
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Mental state:
This might not be the most logical time for me to have thought of this, but even though a lot of people claim that summer is their favourite season, it seems like most of them aren't ever really pleased with it. If we have an extremely hot one, with temperatures regularly reaching 35°C, they complain that it's too hot. But if we have a summer like the one that we had this year, where temperatures tended to stay between 25°C and 30°C, they complain that it's too cold out! thoughtful and amusedListening to: The Ira Kane? (Evolution soundtrack) Personally, as someone who produces enough body heat to start becoming very uncomfortable when temperatures reach 31°C, I'm perfectly content when we have one of those cooler summers. :) |
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| Sep. 4th, 2008 @ 11:41 am IT'S ALIVE!!!!! | |||
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Mental state:
I guess it's about time that I updated this thing, eh? *grin* cheerfulListening to: Bad Moon Rising (CCR) August wasn't a bad month, overall. I had a piping gig on the 8th which I was a bit nervous about—I had learned some tunes out of the Sullivan Ross Collection of Pipe Music, which a friend gave me a copy of several months ago. One of Sullivan Ross' grandsons still lives in the Sault, and I was asked to play some of his grandfather's music for him. It was a wonderful way to spend an afternoon, and I've been asked to make a recording of some of the tunes from the book. I'm working on learning them now, and I hope that the results will be satisfactory. My brother was in town for about two and a half weeks, and we had a great visit. I even managed to drag him out to camp for a day or so. :) Other than that, there's not much to tell. I've been writing again, some fanfic (including a follow-up on the Death Eater tent revival story and an X-Files/Harry Potter crossover that I'm having a bit of trouble with), some original fiction and even a bit of poetry. I'd forgotten how much I enjoyed putting my thoughts into a set form—so much of my recent poetry has been free-form or haibun—and I've been tinkering a bit with various forms, especially pantoums and villanelles. I'm considering setting at least one of the results to music, if only for my own amusement. :) I got bored with the yellow colour scheme that I've been using lately, so today I thought I'd switch back to something similar to the original colours I had when I first set this journal up. I put the yellow up at a time when I was feeling particularly distressed about several things as an attempt to cheer myself up a bit—and usual, the attempt rather backfired because I found that I hated all that yellow staring me in the face every time I paid my poor, neglected LJ a visit. I guess I just can't force myself to be cheerful. :) But I like the new purple theme, and I think that even if I do tinker with it now and then, I'll keep it for awhile. So...what else? I've signed up for another online AQ course this term. This time, I'm going to work on adding the Junior basic qualification to my certificate—I'll be able to teach grades 4-6, as well as the grades (7-12) which I'm already qualified to teach. I'm looking forward to it, and perhaps the knowledge I'll gain about this division will be helpful in developing my approach to teaching grades 7 and 8 as well—most of my classes in teacher's college were geared towards teaching in high school, which wasn't really all that helpful when I had my placement in a grade 8 classroom! And that's about it for now. Maybe now that I've got a colour scheme on this journal that I actually like, I'll write more frequently here again. :) |
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| Jul. 30th, 2008 @ 05:07 pm Stolen (as usual) from Lady Whitehart | |||
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Mental state:
Bold the ones you've done: cheerfulListening to: I've Got a Lovely Bunch of Coconuts (Danny Kaye) 01. Bought everyone in the pub a drink 02. Swam with wild dolphins 03. Climbed a mountain 04. Taken a Ferrari for a test drive 05. Been inside the Great Pyramid 06. Held a tarantula 07. Taken a candlelit bath with someone 08. Said “I love you” and meant it 09. Hugged a tree 10. Done a striptease 11. Bungee jumped 12. Visited Paris 13. Watched a lightning storm at sea 14. Stayed up all night long, and watched the sun rise 15. Seen the Northern Lights 16. Gone to a huge sports game 17. Walked the stairs to the top of the leaning Tower of Pisa 18. Grown and eaten your own vegetables 19. Touched an iceberg 20. Slept under the stars Conclusion: 45 out of 200. Wow, I've led a narrow life. ;) |
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| Jul. 10th, 2008 @ 12:14 pm A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Consciousness... | |||
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Mental state:
My mind played a really dirty trick on me this morning. amusedListening to: Me Clootch Is Awee! (The Victoria Police Pipe Band) First, you need to know that I'm still up in Thunder Bay visiting my brother—I'll be here until Saturday morning, when I'm due to catch the bus home. (Mmm, lovely long ride—great scenery and the chance for a lot of reading.) A good friend of ours lives about 25 minutes away from the house that my brother and his girlfriend are renting for the next year—I've been sleeping in their spare room—and Steph and I had made plans for me to stay at her apartment last night. Anyway, I woke up at about 5:30 this morning and couldn't get back to sleep for awhile. When I did, I dreamed that I walked back to Jordan's house and flopped on the bed that I've been sleeping in here. So, when I actually did wake up, I had an intense moment of disorientation—not least because Steph's roommate (whose room I was using last night) has set up her room in almost exactly the same way that the spare room at Jordan's place is! |
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| Jul. 4th, 2008 @ 01:09 pm Thought of the day | |||
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Listening to: I'm On Your Side (Keb' Mo')
Inspired by Eleanor Hibbert/Victoria Holt/Jean Plaidy/Philippa Carr, Nora Roberts/J.D. Robb/Sarah Hardesty/Jill March, Jayne Castle/Jayne Ann Krentz/Amanda Quick and many others...Why publish books using multiple pseudonyms when you're just going to let everyone know that it's still you? You might as well just pick your favourite and use it for everything, since your publisher—whether or not it's your choice to do so—will probably put something like "Gertrude Puntkammer writing as Lavinia Fairfax" or "Lavinia Fairfax, who is also Gertrude Puntkammer" or "Gertrude Puntkammer, also known as Lavinia Fairfax" on the cover of your books anyway. There's no shame in branching out under your own name, you know. And yes, I realize that this is somewhat hypocritical coming from someone who's been using the pseudonym "Pennfana" for years and has two people on her friends list on LJ who know her real name. =) |
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| Jul. 1st, 2008 @ 11:26 am Thoughts About Privilege | |||
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Mental state:
I've been thinking a lot about privilege this morning; I randomly surfed in to Alas, a blog and, in the Male Privilege Checklist category, found a list of "privilege checklists". And it got me thinking...perhaps people don't notice their privileges in some areas because that privilege is cancelled out elsewhere. For example, as a white person I can be reasonably sure that if I ask to see "the person in charge" somewhere, I will be facing a member of my race—but not of my sex. Because I have no visible disabilities, I don't necessarily have to worry about people making assumptions about my mental capabilities—or at least, I wouldn't if it weren't for the fact that people of my size are frequently assumed to be lazy, stupid and unhealthy no matter what our actual habits, intelligence and health status may be. Because I'm straight, my femininity isn't called into question because of my sexual preferences—but because I don't wear much makeup (some nail polish and, once in a very long while, a shade of lipstick that's close to my natural lip colour), because I play the bagpipes (still very much a man's instrument, though female pipers are becoming more common) and because I have no desire to marry or have children, I've been accused of being unfeminine, an ice queen and even (and I quote) "a lesbian in denial", both implying that there's something wrong with lesbians and that I was too stupid to realize that I was one, even though I'd never been attracted to a woman in that way. Go figure. reflectiveListening to: Hymne (ERA) Anyway, do you see what I'm talking about? Privilege might be given for one reason only to be revoked for another. Now, I'm not saying that I have that bad of a life—I have a (mostly) good family, a sturdy roof over my head, healthy food to eat, a comfortable bed to sleep in and I'm typing this post out on my very own laptop computer. I know how much of a privilege this is in itself, and I'm thankful that I have it. But I am saying that sometimes privilege isn't such a cut-and-dried subject as people think it is; does an advantage really exist of something else cancels it out? Personally, I think that this game of "who's persecuted the most?" is silly at best, and at worst it causes trouble between groups of people who really should be working together to make this a better world for all of us. But then, maybe it's just my privilege—a privilege of ignorance, perhaps?—to think of it in these terms. |
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| Jun. 6th, 2008 @ 02:09 pm Piping Again! | |||
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Mental state:
I picked up my pipes today for the first time in awhile. It felt good—the old rhythm of inflating the bag, striking in the drones and sounding the chanter still comes as second nature to me. Not surprising, perhaps, because it's really only been a few months since I was able to play for any length of time. This is the longest I've gone without playing, though, since I started; I gave the chanter and uniform I was using back to The Frost back in March because I knew I wouldn't be using them anytime soon, and I'd never got around to buying my own chanter because it just never seemed to be a good time. contentListening to: All Right Now (Free) Anyway, I ordered my own chanter (along with three new reeds, some black waxed hemp* and a couple of tunebooks) a couple of weeks after I returned the one I'd been using, but the sod I ordered it from never actually shipped the thing. I never heard a word from him about why, either, in spite of calling his shop once and leaving several messages via his online store's message system. Last week I finally got fed up with waiting, notified him that I was cancelling the order if he didn't tell me what was going on in three days and, after hearing nothing, had the credit card payment cancelled. I placed the same order at another place that afternoon—the place I probably should've ordered from to begin with, since they've never let me down before. A few minutes later they actually called me to say that the chanter I'd ordered was out of stock, and asked if I'd like to choose another one. I did so, and yesterday my order arrived. I tinkered with the chanter and reeds for a bit yesterday, of course—had to hemp the chanter so that it would actually stay put in its stalk on my pipes, for example—but I didn't really have a chance to just have fun with my new "toys". This afternoon, though, I managed to play for about 45 minutes. The first bit wasn't that pleasant, since the pipes can be an unforgiving instrument to players who have neglected them, but I managed to get everything more or less in tune and still had enough stamina left to play for awhile. Like I said, it felt great. Mind, various muscles used when playing the pipes are now complaining quite grumpily at me, especially my upper left arm and my jaw and neck muscles! It's going to be awhile before I get back to where I was, endurance-wise, but at least I now have the means to do so. Overall, I think it went fairly well and I think I'm going to be playing pretty often from now on. *Note for non-pipers: thinly-spun hemp twine, both waxed and unwaxed, is commonly used by pipers to make sure that the reeds used in bagpipes stay where they're supposed to stay, as well as to fill in the gaps where air might leak out on the sliding bits of the drones and where the drones, blowpipe and chanter attach to the pipe bag. Overall I favour the waxed kind, since it doesn't swell as much as the unwaxed variety does when it gets wet, but for the drone slides themselves I usually use just the unwaxed yellow kind because the waxed kind tends to stick. |
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