9

Flickr turned 9 this weekend, and the challenge was to take a picture of "9". I was out of ideas and came up with this at the last moment. I wish I had fancier editing tools, or some way to blur parts of photos or something. I took this with my phone, and I had a decent focus on the 9, but some of the other keys came out sharper than I'd hoped. Oh well. I don't plan on winning any photography contests anytime soon.

I have been on Flickr for about 7 1/2 years. My first upload was August 15, 2005.



From my 2004 trip to Japan and Southeast Asia. Not even a digital photo. I had to scan that baby to get it online :-)

Over the years, I have uploaded over 6300 photos. The majority are from trips. My photos are organized with tags, and the two most common, not entirely surprisingly, are japan and france, with paris and egypt not far behind. Other tags include camping, apartment, puppy, and, somewhat oddly, volleyball.

The photo that has been viewed the most, with over 1,000 views?


Since that same photo is the one that has been favourited the most, which is the second-most favourited photo, with 4 people (rather than 5) calling it a favourite?


I have 108 sets grouped into 19 collections. Some of them are embarrassingly small. Some of them are embarrassingly incomplete. Some of them are either too large or too thorough. Someday I'll go through and compile a "Best Of". Someday I might actually get up-to-date on what's in there. At least, there's always hope.

Some of my favourite photos are from the Inuyama Festival in April 2007. You get the chaos and splendour of the one-day festival that takes over the town, and the magic of the lanterns on the shrines in the evening. It's a mini-Takayama Festival. I also took one of my favourite shots ever that day, far from the madness, noise, and bustle of the festival:



It's far from a perfect shot, but while the sky and water are grey, the walkway along the riverbank is paved and impersonal, and the distant landscape is bleak and industrial, the focus for me is on the ladies picknicking in the foreground, enjoying each others' company and relaxing on the mild, late spring day.

Of Beer and Men

Last year, I made only one New Year's resolution. It was a good one, and I managed to keep it all year. I enjoyed the execution of that resolution so much, in fact, that I made it again this year (plus a few others).

I resolved to drink as many new and different types of beer as possible.

Those who know me well (and, OK, even those who know me not so well) know I like beer. I'm not a heavy drinker, but I do like a good beer.

Last year, not entirely coincidentally, I also started frequenting Pub Italia, an Italian-restaurant-meets-Irish-pub just down the street from where I live. Truth be told, its food selection is mostly mediocre, but you don't go there for the food - you go for the Beer Bible.

Usually when I go, it is with my friends Jon and Jess. Jon is a beer nut - he wholeheartedly endorsed my 2012 resolution as well as my decision to trudge it out again for 2013. He has, however, no pretension to be classy about beer. Every night at Pub Italia with Jon is an adventure. He decides on a "theme" - beers in great bottles, beers with the most vowels in the name, beers that start with P, etc. One of the more memorable evenings was the night he kept challenging the waitress to bring him the most awful beers she could think of - we had some terrible ones that night, but one or two were decent.

I am not as dedicated to the cause of beer as Jon is, and as I'm usually only having two beer in the evening (and only rarely a third), I want them to count. Jess is the same way. So we don't always go all-out and join Jon in his theme, though we do of course engage in much aiding and abetting.

Sometime this past summer, we came up with a great rating system. Forget beers that have "notes of oak that last with you like a lingering summer breeze", forget a standard ranking from 1-10. Our rating system is visceral. You just GET it. We rate beers like relationships. The Kronenburg White with Frulli on top? It was like that time in college when you decided to experiment with, ahh, alternate relationships. Titillating at first, but ultimately not your thing. There was a beer that tasted like smoky bacon (I forget its name, unfortunately), that was like that guy you just couldn't shake out of your mind - the bad relationship guy where you knew it wasn't going to last; he was going to run off with that redhead in the end; but you just had to keep going back for a little more each time. You knew you shouldn't like him, but you couldn't help it. And the beer that is the gold standard, the one that is so good, the one you want to be still waking up next to when you are 80. For me, that beer is Innis & Gunn. There might be more exciting beers, more refreshing beers, more beers that have more punch or zing or zip, but in the end, I'll come back to my Innis & Gunn. Bliss.

The problem last year is that I drank a lot of new beers, but didn't keep track. So I decided 2013 would be different. 2013 would be the Year of Beer Documentation. We'll see. I'm not as good at keeping resolutions that involve some kind of regular, recurring action [see: blogging]. But I'll try.

A couple of weeks ago, Jon, Jess, and I went to Pub Italia, and I took notes. Yes, I am just that nerdy. But now, you get to read them!


Yellow Snow IPA from Rogue Ales
Described to me by the waitress as "citrusy with a bitter finish". I was in a weird mood, so anything with bitterness at the end struck me as being very à propos. This beer was kind of like the guy you date for a month or two - you want to like him more than you do, and you wish he liked you more than he obviously does. So you keep agreeing to another date for no good reason, even though you know there are better beers out there. (Full disclosure: I may have been projecting a prior failed why-did-I-bother relationship onto this beer.)


Mickeys
One of Jess's beers. Comes in a cute bottle (a stubby). There's a rebus puzzle in the cap. But as Jess said, the beer itself is the one referred to in those generic Canadian beer commercials, where the guy says, "If you wanted to drink a lake, you'd drink from a lake. Get yourself a real beer." The package is pleasing, but the product is boring, dull. This one lives in Barrhaven.


Hawaiian Pale Ale from Spearhead Brewery
Jon's first beer. (Challenge: beers with lots of letters. In the menu, this was listed as an Indian Pale Ale, so there are 2 more i's and one more a for you.) Starts out great and makes you go, "Wow," but fizzles off into empty feelings soon enough. A good time, but not The One. Which is sometimes all you ask from a beer.


2XIPA from Southern Tier
Jon's second beer. This one was the friend who ends up at the bottom of your favourites list. He's a nice enough guy, but nothing more there. You'll call him if you're having a big party and inviting everyone else; otherwise, you probably won't bother. Sorry, Double IPA.


Hacker-Pschorr Weisse
Jess' second beer. It was really very good, but in the end, not the beer for me. It was, as Jess said, the beer you don't want for yourself, but you want to set up with someone awesome.


Westmalle Abbey Tripel
My second beer, a Belgian Trappist beer. Not for the faint of heart. A sophisticated beer. Jon instantly thought that it could very well be the beer for him. I was not convinced. But then, later, I realized the beer had a hidden sweet note, and it was growing on me. Will definitely revisit this one (all - eep! - $15 and 9.5% of it).



Wellington's Iron Duke
Jon's third beer. I've had this many times before. I think it's good and deserves a good go at seeing if a relationship could work out, but not for me in the end. Would I set it up with a good friend? Sure! Jon and Jess think, on the other hand, that I need to give it more of a chance - that it could be one of those beers that start out weak but end up developing into an amazing relationship, as it has a lot of subtle flavour that creeps up on you.



There have been other beers in the last couple of weeks. I went, for example, on a tour of the Kichesippi Brewery which is just off Carling Avenue in Westboro. I love Kichesippi beer as a good, honest, friendly beer that never disappoints. Sad to see their seasonal Logger go - pictured above is the last growler I enjoyed - intrigued by the replacement seasonal Wujack (sp?) Black IPA. Richard is not crazy about the IPA; he finds the aftertaste too strong. I know what he means, but I find it oddly compelling.

musings on life and death

unlike these moths that could not stay out of the candles,
the blog is not dead

but it's not quite alive these days either

i'm considering my options, and a reboot may be in order; i'm just not sure yet what form it should or will take

but hey, in the meantime, i've uploaded a bunch of photos to flickr from the past year; you should take a look

Happy New Year 2012!

Visual representation of how I felt this morning when I woke up:



And further visual representation of the post-NYE morning (well, early afternoon) debauchery:

aka breakfast cereal and coffee with friends, complete with invitation to zombie movie marathon (alas, i did not make it)


Happy New Year 2012!
this is pixxiefish in the sea, making no promises for the year to come :)

Who has time to post about Egypt?

When there are so many fabulous books to read?




And when there is yarn needing to be re-wound and then knit into something?

New Year, Day One

I don't really have any real New Year's Resolutions. New Year's Resolutions are just made to be broken, so I don't want to make any!

However, things I will aspire to this year:

1) Drink more water. (That one is recycled from 2008. It lasted a decent while before I got slack again.)

2) Take better care of myself. (Is that loosey-goosey enough for you?) This will take place on a number of fronts, including food and exercise, plus I want to get more arts-and-crafty.

3) Endeavour to post pictures within a year of having taken them. This one will be a challenge, but I figure if nothing else, it will help me blog more often, the one resolution I have consistently refused to make!


I have also decided that I want to take more pictures. Those of you who are familiar with my GIANT, never-ending Flickr stream of 1,001 photos of the Arc de Triomphe and other vacation stand-by photos, are thinking, "What??? That's not even possible, is it?" But what I want to do is take more photos, and get better at doing so, and including pictures of the everyday. I'm going to try to take at least one photo a day, even if it's stupidly mundane, and many of these, if not all (I have learned to not promise more than I can actually offer), I will post here.

So here, just before the stroke of midnight, let me offer you Picture Number One. However, it's your lucky day. I couldn't decide between two very different pictures, so I am giving you a two-for-one deal.

The Festive:


And Loving Boy Meets Evil Dog:

New Year, New Blog Post

Happy New Year, everyone!

I hope you all rang the new year in in style. We decided to take it easy and stay home (my brother had invited us over, but we'll go next weekend instead). We ordered Indian take-away, which I went to pick up around 6:45. The excitement of the evening was that when I arrived at the restaurant, I realized I had a purse but no wallet. Gah. So I drove home (luckily not too far) and then back out again. The second excitement of the evening was that, while I was inside the restaurant picking up the food, someone parked and blocked the exit to the parking lot where I was. Double gah. Luckily it was a larger lot and I could exit from another spot. But it was annoying!

And you see - THIS is why I don't blog on a daily basis. But I'm going to try to be better. (No, that is not a New Year's Resolution. If it is, it's DOOMED to be broken.)

Anyway, so we ate Indian take-away - very dee-lish and lots of leftovers await us. We started watching a new (to us) TV show, called Avatar: The Last Air Bender. It's a Nickelodeon cartoon that ran a few years ago for 3 seasons, and they recently made a live-action movie which is apparently terrible. But the cartoon was great! I highly recommend it.

Then it was 9:30, so we decided to watch The Matrix. I hadn't seen it in a year or two, and it's aged quite well. What a great film. We are debating whether to watch the other two Matrix movies this weekend as well...they're not as good...

At 11:58, we managed to get a live Internet feed of the ball dropping in Times Square on the TV via my computer. (Almost didn't make it!) Somewhat anti-climactic, I found. I seem to remember in the past that the ball dropped much farther, for much longer. This was a short drop (yes, still spread over 10 seconds), with a bunch of distracting advertising. Blech. I think I am just turning into a cranky grump.

I called my mom, and then we watched more cartoons. First, another episode of Air Bender. Then, one of the craziest, most twisted things I have ever seen, Happy Tree Friends. I still shudder slightly thinking about it. It stars a bunch of cute, cuddly, happy cartoon animals...and I'm just starting to wonder if this is a show for kids or not...when all of a sudden one of the bears gets pinned on a giant stick and his heart is torn right out. Uh, yeah. Not for kids. Got it. LOL.

After that, we needed something to cheer us up again. We put on a show called Invader Zim, which was bizarre and amusing. But one of the characters sounded just like Kevin McDonald, from Kids in the Hall, another show we started re-watching recently, and it was driving us CRAZY! Turns out, yup, it's Kevin McDonald. Cool.

Anyhow, that was New Year's.

So...I haven't been blogging but I really should have been. I've been busy as a beaver for the last month or so putting up old pictures on Flickr. This was spurred by two things: (1) I felt guilty, and (2) I was worried following a hard drive crash that Randal suffered sometime in November. He has lost most of his photos from Japan onward! I figured if I get them up on Flickr, at least I will always have a copy available in some form.

So what do I have?



- a TON of photos from Paris and Strasbourg, where we went in June 2009. That collection is almost complete, two days left to go! I might blog about some of it separately, at some point. (Don't hold your breath.)



      

- camping at Charleston Lake, camping at Bon Echo, camping at Voyageur. We also went camping at Murphy's Point, but, alas, the photos from that trip were on Randal's hard drive.





- my family proves they are able to do more together than play Rockband, and we all go hiking in Gatineau Park on the Thanksgiving weekend.




- I've also done a TON of knitting, if you're into that kind of thing.



I plan on blogging again later today about my New Year's Resolutions...not that I have any...not that I'm not perfect already...plus what we did at Christmas.

Flubbed shot, my a$$

Sorry. Coming on the electronic heels of my previous story (yeah, 6 weeks later, I know), I had to laugh when I saw this:

Tiger Woods flubs shot and gives us the best golf shot you'll ever see.


Read the full story on Yahoo! Sports here.


Freakin' déjà vu. Except I, of course, never saw what hit me. Literally. And I suspect Tiger's flubbed shot was not quite as powerful as the one that hit me, else we probably wouldn't be able to view this picture at all.


Yes, I will post proper news again someday. Someday. Something interesting has to happen first, that's the catch, see?

How I missed the Ottawa Tulip Fest again

I started to write this post a few weeks ago, about the two back-to-back conferences that I went to in May. But then the entry started to get longer and longer, as I went through more and more of my conference notes. I have 10 pages of typed notes so far, and I'm not even on conference #2! So I'm not going to post any of that here, though if anyone is interested, I can send you my notes.

Then it occurred to me that, perhaps far more interesting than the conferences themselves, was the fact that, while I have lived in Ottawa almost 3 years now since returning from Japan (and for 2 years before that), I have managed to miss Tulip Fest almost every single spring of those three years. Or, rather, I have indulged in tulips elsewhere.

In May 2008, we were in Quebec City.


In May 2009, I was in Halifax.


In May 2010, I was in Hamilton (and also Windsor, but I didn't see any tulips there).*


Following this realization, I completely forgot (again) to finish this draft post. The pictures made it up on Flickr but this entry sat here, unfinished but not unloved. Until now.

So anyway, from May 8-12, I was in Windsor, Ontario, at the annual conference of the Canadian Association of Law Librarians. It was, comme toujours,** a great conference. I didn't particularly like the venue (Caesar's casino in Windsor), and the city of Windsor was uber-depressing,*** but the sessions themselves were fantastic, and I came out with some good ideas and inspiration.


My boss Margo and I, doing a good job of pretending it wasn't wicked cold and windy.**** Click here for a few more pics of Windsor-Detroit.

I left CALL early on the last day to hightail it up to Hamilton, for the Workshop in Instruction in Library Use (WILU). This is an awkwardly named conference, but it was incredibly excellent. It's basically for librarians (and others) interested in information literacy, and I'm thinking I'd like to add it to my annual conference repertoire.

WILU finished at lunchtime on Friday. Afterwards, my colleague Andrée and I went to the Royal Botanical Gardens in Hamilton, and then, since we were both headed to various corners of Toronto for the weekend, Andrée gave me a ride into town.


Hot! Lovely! Beautiful! ...The weather was sunny and pleasant, too, and the tulips were colourful. Click here for the full set.

And that, albeit in a less literary fashion than Mr. Dickens, is my Tale of Two Cities. And I'm going to post it before forgetting about it again. Will attempt to be more interesting next time. ...Well, there's always hope.


* For the record, if anyone cares, in May 2005, which was my first spring here, we were in Amsterdam, but after its tulip season. In May 2006, I think I may have caught a tulip or two between three (3!) visits to Toronto (mentioned here and here. In May 2007, we were in Japan with nary a tulip to be seen (they're in bloom in March and April).

** "Comme toujours" = all two times I have been.

*** We were originally going to go to Detroit to sit in a pub to watch a Detroit Red Wings game. The Wings got eliminated right before the conference began, however, so we didn't bother crossing the border, though it was right there, and I have trouble ignoring borders that are, like, right there. After hearing from a few people who did cross over to Detroit, I have decided it really wouldn't have been worth it. Although it looks pretty from across the river, with big shiny buildings, it's apparently as desolate and depressing as Windsor. Sorry Windsor-Detroit.

**** I'm not sure why, but Margo and I seem to be starting an annual tradition of travelling to cold places together.

Why I am too busy to post (Part 3 of many)

Because I have been busy eating





...as well as trying to make things grow.*





I've also been busy undecorating Christmas trees**





...and tracking the early arrival*** of Ottawa's annual Tulip Festival.





All this, and more, on my Flickr site.



* Also known as "trying not to kill too many growing things", a pastime at which, alas, I am not so good.

** Or, more accurately, I've been busy taking pictures of others undecorating Christmas trees.

*** And early departure, for that matter.

Bloggy Doggy

So I received the following string of emails, forwarded to me from Randal, a few weeks ago.



From: Randal Kowalchuk
Sent: Mon 22/02/2010 11:54
To: Julie Lavigne
Subject: Monday morning

Inbox (128 new messages)
R.


----------------------
From: Kowalchuk-Lavigne.Rion [mailto:Kowalchuk-Lavigne.Rion@dogmail.com]
Sent: February 22, 2010 9:05 AM
To: Randal Kowalchuk
Subject: I SAD



Where are you? Can I come?





----------------------
From: Kowalchuk-Lavigne.Rion [mailto:Kowalchuk-Lavigne.Rion@dogmail.com]
Sent: February 22, 2010 9:15 AM
To: Randal Kowalchuk
Subject: COME HOME



I have a stuffy for you.





----------------------
From: Kowalchuk-Lavigne.Rion [mailto:Kowalchuk-Lavigne.Rion@dogmail.com]
Sent: February 22, 2010 9:22 AM
To: Randal Kowalchuk
Subject: NICE OUTSIDE



It looks nice outside. Just thought you should know.





----------------------
From: Kowalchuk-Lavigne.Rion [mailto:Kowalchuk-Lavigne.Rion@dogmail.com]
Sent: February 22, 2010 9:37 AM
To: Randal Kowalchuk
Subject: HEARD A NOISE



You weren't here so I barked for you.





----------------------
From: Kowalchuk-Lavigne.Rion [mailto:Kowalchuk-Lavigne.Rion@dogmail.com]
Sent: February 22, 2010 9:53 AM
To: Randal Kowalchuk
Subject: IS IT "WEEKEND" YET?



??





----------------------
From: Kowalchuk-Lavigne.Rion [mailto:Kowalchuk-Lavigne.Rion@dogmail.com]
Sent: February 22, 2010 9:57 AM
To: Randal Kowalchuk
Subject: I SAD



I howled. You missed it. COME HOME.



...



I think I am going to put that dog to work on my blog; it might actually then have a chance of being updated semi-regularly.

Photoblog: The Tale of Gnome Chumpsky [1]

once upon a time, a gnome went to a quiet garden to muse about the meaning of life.



but suddenly, the garden gnome started to think that maybe this wasn't such a nice, innocuous garden after all...



time to take matters into his own hands.



... and the gnome flees the awful scene on his trusty bicycle before the police arrive on the scene.



many animals came to pay their respects to the fallen plant monster. their sympathy was tempered, however, by the ghosts of cows that the plant had consumed.



eventually the site was abandoned, as it gave everyone the willies, and signs were posted to keep out.



land prices later skyrocketed, however, and an enterprising developer built fancy condos on the site. rumour has it the beckhams and cruises have both bought units, perched high on the edge of beautiful hatchet lake.



meanwhile, somewhere in southern manitoba...



but in the end, as is their way, the mounties got their man.



his plea of self-defence having failed, he was locked away in a high-security facility with other gnome miscreants, where he is likely to stay for a very long time.


THE END [2]


And now you know, my faithful readers, why I have not been blogging these past 6 months. I've been very, very busy.

Some of you may have thought, "But you went to France this spring! You spent weekends this summer camping! Fall ushered in Thanksgiving turkeys and Christmas trees and snow! People have gotten sick[3], people have gotten engaged [4], people have had babies[5]! Surely some of this was blog-worthy!"

... I understand that it was tempting to think my life is otherwise interesting. Yes, you'd think these things were blog-worthy, but well... ... ... For starters, we haven't even had any snow yet. I mean, c'mon. What else is worth writing about besides the weather?



[1] Yes, groan. But as a former communications/media studies person, I think I'm allowed.

[2] For now. Who knows what might happen when/if the gnome gets day parole? Also, I think this means I have to stop teasing my mom about her elaborate Webkinz stories, right?

[3] Not me, though both Randal and Rion have had that honour, to mention but two within my immediate household.

[4] Also not me, though my good friend Rebecca T. falls in that camp.

[5] Definitely not me, though a few people I know fit that bill, not least of all my good friend Mark and his wife Amynah who are expecting a baby girl literally any day now.

Fêtez la Fête nationale!

À l'honneur de la fête de Saint-Jean-Baptiste, j'ai mis mes photos de notre voyage à Québec en mai sur Flickr.



Any excuse is as good as another, right? Anyway, we celebrated Saint-Jean-Baptiste by driving back from Toronto to Ottawa (ie., not at all). Toronto was, as always, good, though we didn't do much. We ate sushi. We met up with our friend Shoshanah for some (more) shopping and sushi. I got my hair cut. We bought a bunch of prints for our townhouse. The dog got wet in the rain, and wetter in my mom's gardens. There was hail and a funnel cloud (didn't see either, sadly).

A good time was had by all.

This post got me to thinking, however, and I have realized that in 3 of the past 4 months of May, we have travelled somewhere.

Last year, in May 2007, it was to Kyushu.*


The strange but cool Canal City in Fukuoka.

The year before, we didn't go anywhere exotic, though I note, looking through my archives, that we did go to Toronto for a weekend right at the beginning of the month. To be fair, though, we were gearing up for a year in Japan and so not really able to take off at the drop of a hat.

In May 2005, we went to Amsterdam.


A rare, non-canal shot of Amsterdam.


So we'll have to figure out something neat for next year... Suggestions?


* I am embarrassed to note that I have completely neglected to ever finish uploading the Kyushu pictures - Nagasaki, which I think is my favourite city in all of Japan, is noticeably absent! I will rectify this oversight soon!!!

Rumours of her blogging abilities were greatly exaggerated...

Taking a page from Rebecca's book*, I have disappeared for over 3 weeks and now am reappearing to provide bloggified reasons as to why I haven't blogged in so long. ...Well, not really. The reasons are not very interesting, and I don't remember most of them anyway. Suffice it to say, I have been busy digging myself out of snow, traveling to Toronto to play Guitar Hero 3 to all hours of the night with the fabulous Judy**, and being sick as a dog.***

Many blog entries were written mentally in my head, usually late at night whilst unable to sleep, and promptly forgotten the next morning.

Anyhow, the point of this Meta-Blog is to create an agenda of upcoming topics of bloggation. The following shall (perhaps) be discussed:

• The Ghost Who Came Back, Not The Very Next Day But About 20 Months Later


• Why 19-Year-Olds Should Not Be Given Paper And Pen To Write Poetry


• Books I Have Read And Loved or, Alternatively, Fiercely Hated


• Blogging On The Fake Blog: Have You Visited My Flickr Lately?


• Huh? I Went To Japan Last Year? No Way! Cool, Dude.

* As I am wont to do.

** And before he gets jealous, let me say that I would have included the magnificent Robert in that statement if he had a blog worth linking to...or any blog of any type at all. So there.

*** The "plus side" to being sick as a dog (by which I intend no insult to dogs at all, as I know for a fact that dogs are wonderful, loveable, unsick creatures) was that I got to stay home for 2 1/2 days from work, watching endless episodes of Buffy (I think I watched about 11 in total over 2 days), drinking hot chocolate, eating chicken noodle soup, and generally having Randal fuss over me to some degree. In other words, not so different from my usual life, minus the staying-at-home-from-work bit.

Last post ever.

On this laptop, that is. Fred has arrived, and will be picked up tonight on my way home from work.

Wait a minute! I'm still AT work!* So I'm not even blogging on the old laptop at the moment! That would make my last post, the last post ever on the old laptop, whereas this post now becomes a post about how the main statement of the post (that it's the last post ever) isn't even true!

Which, in a way, makes this also somewhat of a pointless post. Meh - I'll submit it anyway.***


* But done for the day, so don't worry - not blogging on company time.**

** Also: I'm slightly disturbed that I started this blog post from work as casually as if I were sitting at home in my jammies. That either means I really like my job and feel comfortable there, or I am at work so much that it feels like home. *shudder*

*** If nothing else, it will keep my fans happy, as it will add to the number of times I have posted this week. LOL

Why I don't blog on a daily basis

6:56 a.m. : Wake up with a start, realizing I've hit the snooze button on my alarm at least four times already. Crap. No time for breakfast. Again.

7:04 a.m. : Take a shower. It's nice and hot.

7:32 a.m. : Decide that since I'm probably going to be late for work anyway, I can sit for an extra 3 minutes on the couch.

7:57 a.m. : Step out of the house only to see that it's very, very icy (it had been raining on and off since Sunday afternoon) and so I have to be very, very careful.

8:04 a.m. : Finally make it off my front walk and across the little parking lot to the park across the street. (This usually takes about 30 seconds, and is possibly the only interesting part of my day today.)

8:10 a.m. : Get to bus stop. Wait.

8:11 a.m. : Board bus. Take out book. Read.

8:37 a.m. : Get off bus.

8:39 a.m. : Realize it is Family Day and all 3 of the coffee shops in my building are closed. Damn. I'm dying for a muffin. Why, oh, why do I work for the federal government? C'mon, Mr. Harper, give us the day off!

8:41 a.m. : Get in to my office and turn on the computer.

8:42 a.m. : No new emails. Read the daily update of happenings on Parliament Hill. Turns out Jack Layton is giving a press conference on the Hill today where he will ask Mr. Harper to extend Family Day to all federal employees (ie., make it a federal statutory holiday). Or maybe he issued a press release; I don't remember. Anyway, I'm amused that Mr. Layton and I agree on something.

8:46 a.m. : No new emails.

8:51 a.m. : Since there are *still* no new emails, I decide I can't avoid the inevitable any longer, and start real work. My task: Find all the provisions of the criminal law statutes of Australia, South Africa, and Scotland which grant a sentencing judge a certain type of discretion. No problem.

9:12 a.m. : Argh. As I'd suspected in preliminary searches on the topic that I did on Friday afternoon, the situation is very complicated. For starters, criminal law is individually administered by each state and territory of Australia, meaning there are many different criminal law statutes, none of which specifically refer to what I am looking for, and, further, to add insult to injury, that many of these jurisdictions have additional non-criminal laws that create criminal offences. Everyone should just follow Canada's lead and have ONE Criminal Code for EVERYTHING.

9:32 a.m. : Double argh. South Africa has a similar hodgepodge of criminal law (although just at the federal level, but it's spread out over many different statutes).

9:37 a.m. : Triple argh. Scotland, in fact, has NO criminal code but just charges people with offences as outlined by hundreds of years of common law precedent. Excellent.

9:40 a.m. : Discover that, no, there IS a Scots criminal law, but it isn't yet in force (despite being passed in 1997), at least not in its entirety.

10:12 a.m. : I'm really tired, and it's time for a break anyway, so I shut my door, put my head down on my desk, and have a 10-minute nap. I've never done this before and it feels awesome.

10:27 a.m. : Go see one of the other librarians about the lack of criminal laws in other jurisdictions. She finds this amusing and, in the end, gives me a number of good suggestions about how to proceed. She also gives me some tea bags and a cup so that I can make myself a cuppa', which I desperately, desperately need. (I meant to bring a spare cup in this morning, but forgot.)

11:00 a.m. : Sipping tea and composing a preliminary email to the client regarding the criminal law problem.

11:27 a.m. : Finally a new email! One of the lawyers in my department would like me to search for the whyfores and whetherhows of a certain regulation. This means pouring through old debates in the hopes of Parliamentarians having mentioned a regulation (odds are slim to none).

12:21 p.m. : Finish drafting the preliminary email to the client regarding the criminal law problem, and go see the same librarian as above. We chat some more, bouncing off other ideas.

12:51 p.m. : I should go for lunch.

12:53 p.m. : But first, I pop into the office of the lawyer looking for regulations, and we further discuss what it is she needs.

1:15 p.m. : I finally get out for lunch. I have not brought something today, thinking I'd get a sandwich from one of the coffee shops downstairs. I hope Mr. Harper realizes that his lack of action on Family Day has caused me to go without a nice healthy sandwich!

1:23 p.m. : In a food court a block away, most of the eateries are closed. I get some pizza and a chocolate milk, and bring it back to my office. I also, in a move I will soon rue, pick up a small bag of white cheddar popcorn. Smartfood, it's called. How bad can it be?

1:35 p.m. : Play some Scrabulous on Facebook and read a few online articles. Check CBC's website for interesting news. Try to relax. It's lunchtime.

1:51 p.m. : This popcorn is kinda icky. I shoulda known.

2:15 p.m. : Back to work. I telephone someone else in the library to follow up on an email I sent last week to see about the status of an unreported case I'd requested (she would normally then contact the courthouse to get it). No answer. I call someone else in her department, who also sometimes does this. No answer, and her voicemail says she is off today. Then it hits me: Family Day strikes again. Oh well, the client's not going anywhere; it can wait till tomorrow.

2:23 p.m. : I have to stop munching this terrible popcorn.

2:30 p.m. : I call the client who is looking for the criminal law provisions, and explain to him the immensity of this task. I offer to send what I have uncovered so far. He agrees. Seems like a reasonable guy.

2:47 p.m. : Another lawyer has emailed me, asking if I can find articles on a certain subject. Sure, I tell her, but not today. I put her research off till Wednesday, which she says is fine.

2:51 p.m. : Remember that I was supposed to email another one of our lawyers about some journal articles he is looking for. I haven't had time to do this yet. I email him, and thankfully he replies to say tomorrow, or even the day after, is fine.

3:03 p.m. : Hmm, when am I going to have a chance to look for the justifications for that regulation? I tell the lawyer I'll look in Hansard (the debates) tomorrow morning (I have to go to another location to do this). Meanwhile, I look online for articles that may have already done the research for me.

3:47 p.m. : No one seems to care about this aspect of the law. No one has written about it. Argh.

4:04 p.m. : I go see the other librarian, one last time, to ask a few stupid questions.

4:17 p.m. : I'm asked to find an online report and, finally, for once, the gods are smiling down on me, as I find it right away. At last! Proof I am not completely incompetent and/or useless around here!

4:19 p.m. : A phone call! It's the client who I sent the lengthy list of criminal law statutes to earlier in the day. And, hurrah! Good news: He's explained the complexity of the question to his superiors and they have decided that he (read: I) only needs to find TWO examples of this particular clause from each jurisdiction, not every single occurrence. I tell him I can probably do that in the next few days.

4:30 p.m. : Time to go but I'm trying to finish some stuff up before heading out.

4:32 p.m. : Randal calls on my cell. He wants to know if I'm going to the gym. "No," I tell him. I'm stressed out from the day, and my belly is slightly off anyway. I'm going to go to the grocery store and pick up some milk, of which we are in desperate need, then go home.

4:35 p.m. : Decide that, rather than go to the Loblaws near my house and risk the ice and possible rain, I am going to go to the grocery store downtown, which is about a 10 minute walk from my office.

4:47 p.m. : Finally make it out of the office.

5:01 p.m. : Get to the grocery store. Closed for Family Day. Figures.

5:12 p.m. : Back to the bus stop near my workplace.

5:15 p.m. : Get on bus. Take one of the last seats at the back of the bus. Take out book. Read.

5:37 p.m. : As the bus nears my stop, I look out the window to see if the Loblaws is open. I can't tell, but there's no one parked in the lot. Fine, then, I'll just go to Zellers in the mall. (Can you tell where this is going?)

5:39 p.m. : Get off bus. Look towards Zellers. All the lights are off. Shake head in disbelief (yeah, yeah, I shoulda known), then call Randal, who is still at work, on my cell. Ask him to find a convenience store somewhere, anywhere, downtown, that is open, and buy some milk. (I need my Ovaltine before bed.)

5:57 p.m. : Home again. Dog is happy to see me. I put him outside, get changed, bring him back in, curl up on the couch and read a magazine for a bit.

6:38 p.m. : Randal arrives home, milk in hand, and announces his intention to go to the gym tonight. This we know is open, because I looked it up on the Internet this morning, and it specifically announced it would be open on Family Day.

7:35 p.m. : Randal leaves for the gym. I reheat some leftover Chinese food.

7:55 p.m. : Randal arrives back home. Huh? Turns out that while the gym is, indeed, open, the mall wasn't, and he didn't feel like walking all the way around the mall on the icy sidewalks just to go to the gym and then have to walk all the way around again (it's a big mall, and usually we cut right through).

8:20 p.m. : Start writing a blog entry about why I don't blog on a daily basis. It was originally planned to be a much, much shorter entry. But somewhere along the way, it turned into this.

8:57 p.m. : Start reading the blog entry back to Randal, who instantly wants to know why it sounds like I live alone. My reply: "Because it was 6:56 in the morning and you weren't up until I left to say goodbye." His reply: "Blah. I was busy at 6:56 being woken up by your alarm." And now you also know, my dear readers, why I don't blog about mine and Randal's conversations on a daily basis. LOL

A resolution or two...

So seeing as how it's the New Year, a good time to take stock of one's life, I thought about whether or not it was worth my while to make any resolutions. Is there any point in trying to improve perfection, I ask you?

But what could I possibly resolve? I couldn't resolve with a straight face that I'd start going to the gym, since I already am going to the gym, having taken out a membership at my local Goodlife back in early November. And I've been pretty good about going since then, with the exception of the past few weeks which were largely spent traveling here, there, and everywhere.[1] I in fact like going to the gym and I will go again. Tomorrow.[2]

Other ideas that crossed my mind were: travel to an exotic land, learn a new language, search out old friends now lost. But you know what? 2007 was a good year. I traveled to Japan and a myriad of other exotic Asian countries, I at least pretended that I was learning Japanese (that one could perhaps use a new resolution), and I reconnected with a bunch of folk from high school and elsewhere thanks to the wonders of Crack -er, Facebook. On a related note, I might take a trip to Quebec City later this year - that's pretty exotic.[3]

Some people resolve to get a better job. Well, seeing as how I've been unemployed for over 5 months now, I figure almost any job is a better job, if of course you subscribe to the silly notion that sitting around at home playing with the dog all day is not a job.[4] At any rate, I already belong to the best profession in the world, and couldn't ask for a whole lot more.[5]

I entertained the idea that I might give up, once and for all, procrastination. But, you see, I've worked it to somewhat the level of an art, and would feel bad giving it up now. Maybe next year.[6]

What else? I already cut my hair short (what? I didn't mention that?), learned to knit, take the dog for daily walks, read as many books and watch as many old(er) movies and play as many boardgames as I possibly can, and am in the process of memorizing all the words to all the ABBA songs ever recorded[7].

I decided, then, to make two simple resolutions:

1. I will drink lots of water, somewhere near the recommended 8 glasses if possible.
A weird resolution, I know, but something that is recommended time and time again by doctors and nutritionists and healthy people. I did it for a while a few years back and I felt great. But all too often, I spend my days nearly dehydrated. So look out toilet! I'm going to visit more often.[8]

2. I will learn to cook.
Of course, I know how to cook. I even enjoy cooking once I get down to it. However, my repertoire is rather, shall we say, limited. I have 7 different variations of pan-fried chicken[9], I can make mashed potatoes and rice[10], I am locally acknowledged as the maker of delicious hot dogs, and I did fry up two hamburgers the other night, but really, there's a wider world of food and cooking out there that I want to discover. I've had some really good cookbooks on my bookshelf the last few years, and I plan on using them. But I'm slow as molasses about getting anything ready, and I don't try new things. Maybe I will occasionally share some of the cooking successes (and/or disasters, since it's possible there may be more of those) on this site.

And on that note, since Randal had his first day back at work today, I'm going to look into making some dinner. I think I might try a soy-simmered chicken, though I note I have neither star anise or cinnamon sticks- Do people really keep those kinds of things in their kitchen on a regular basis? *sigh* I have so much to learn.



[1] Also known as Toronto three times and Winnipeg once.

[2] Or maybe the day after. I mean, today's almost over, which means tomorrow is almost here, which means I need tomorrow to do the things I was supposed to do today.

[3] There's been rumblings of a 15-year high school reunion back at QHS. 15 years? Yikes. I'm sure I'm not old enough to be attending that.

[4] 'Course, I don't get paid for it. I should really try to negotiate that.

[5] Someone actually pays me to sit around with books all day long, research interesting topics, help people find what they are looking for, and even teach. Well, when I'm actually employed, that is.

[6] It also occurred to me that such a resolution might entail the inclusion of timely updates of my blog and my photos on Flickr. I just can't espouse the adoption of a resolution that I am inevitably going to break, and in record time, too! But you know what? I'll try to be better.

[7] OK, that's not true. I in fact am fiercely proud of being, perhaps, the worst person in the world for singing along to songs for which I have absolutely no idea what any of the words are: "It had to be you, it had to be you, dee dee blah blah blah, something something blah blah, no matter whooooo..."

[8] On that note, don't ask me how much water I've had today.

[9] With soy sauce, with mustard (preferably dijon), with honey and cayenne pepper (my favourite), with Thai chili sauce, with beer (I love cooking anything in beer, actually, since you then have the "excuse" to drink the rest of the bottle), with hoisin sauce, and with apple slices and white wine (OK, I've never done that one - I needed to come up with a seventh - but it sounds kinda good, no?).

[10] Not together! Those are two separate entities. I haven't mastered the art of noodles yet; they scare me.

To my adoring fans...*

I'm working on it. Yeesh.

* Namely Mark. Even my mother has stopped harassing me about when I'm going to next update this blog.**

** Speaking of which, I did write some new book reviews on pixxiefish in the stacks, so you could go read those in the meantime. In particular, Mark, you will undoubtedly enjoy my oh-so-critical review of Anil's Ghost, a book of which I know you hold nothing but fondness in your heart.

bloggus operandi

We're leaving for Winnipeg tomorrow for 9 days. That's all I have to say for now. Just didn't want anyone to accuse the blog of having once again kicked the bucket or anything like that.

In other news, we are snowed in. Almost literally. It's been snowing hard all day. Randal went out to the store in the late afternoon, and the snow had drifted up across our front walk so that it was almost halfway up his thighs. I haven't seen waist-high snowdrifts like this since we lived in Quebec City. I tried to take some pictures but they didn't really show the scale very well. I may try again tomorrow on our way out. It's really neat - I like it!

It's my birthday. So there.

Things have been so up in the air around here that I just haven't really felt like posting, not that there's much to post about. Randal and I moved into our townhouse on October 30, and since then, there has a been a flurry of shopping and unpacking and organizing and going to Toronto and coming back and more unpacking and more shopping. I think Randal and I have done more shopping in the past few weeks than we've done in our entire relationship to date!

I'm working on taking photos of our place and will start posting them, bit by bit. Still no employment for me, so I really have no excuse other than my usual procrastination and laziness. I just put up the entire Roadtrip to Winnipeg, so please feel free to amuse yourselves with viewing those in the meantime.

In other news, after two tiny snowfalls in the last two days, we are now having our first real snowfall/storm of the year. It's beautiful, but what I really dig about the whole thing is the current feed from the CBC-Ottawa webcam:



God, I love Canada.*

* In other news, rumour has it that Elliott (he of the no-I'm-never-updating-this-again blog is thrilled.