The Core Sample

nightshine @ 2006-02-12T16:20:00

2006-02-12T05:06:43Z

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If there is something that you should tell me about, I am listening.

The Night the Rain Stopped

2006-01-14T02:32:15Z

Sorry I haven't been posting so much. Its been busy this semester!
I just realized that I have six classes left until I graduate. I'm in four right now, meaning that if I pick up two this summer, I will be out of here. I am stunned and incredibly pleased.

There is a raccoon that has taken residence beneath the old shed right next my place. He ought to have been a delightful addition to all of the other wildlife on the property. I remember reading about families in Maine setting out saucers of milk for this exact creature on saucy July nights. You would give him bread and he would dip it into the lake before eating, in a classic postcard to all things wild.

Yet as this tale developed, I came to remind myself of the tourists who have mistakenly believed that grizzly beers were as huggable as their loveable cartoons.

Our outdoor cat is now afraid of small noises and tiny movements. These days, she bounds into my brother's place like a donkey chased by the proverbial stick. I then catch her darting straight to the window and peering avidly outside whilst twitching slightly. Meanwhile, a nocturnal bachelor has started making impressively loud forays behind my bedroom deep in the night.

Last week I heard rain dribbling against the metal drainpipes of the house- a slow sonorous back and forth trickle. After a few moments, it got louder. On impulse, I banged on the far wall that was by my bed.

The rain stopped.

Earlier that day, I had fought hard for the raccoon to stay. Still remembering the mythical Maine cottage, I told my brother that to have such unique wildlife on the property was a mark of distinction, meaning that we were living a lifestyle that few in North America enjoyed. He told me bluntly that some animals carried diseases, and not unlike rats, got into garbage. They could get rabies, froth at the mouth, and bite a passerby.

When the cat let out bloodcurling shrieks in the dark and further put paid to my fantases of peaceful coexistence, I thought it was all over with. The "raccoon people" were summoned. They arrived in a truck loaded with gear and proceeded to be paid a hefty sum to catch the feral fellow and (ro my relief) safely release him up on the Malahat, a mountainous area that frames the roads needed to travel "up-island" from Victoria.

So one week later, I was lying in bed. No one else was on the property; my brother was on a ski trip somewhere. There was a crash in my closet, then a scuffle. I was tired and tried to ignore it until it registered: someone was breaking into my place! There were two options: it could be Davy Crockett's nemesis or an actual human being. Since I had freaked out at deer noises last summer, I opted for the former and phoned my parents at five thirty in the morning instead of dialing 911. "I thought the thing was gone!" I told my dad.

"No, no. There is a trap behind your kitchen. Its probably in there thrashing. That must be it," my father concluded. Even though I told him not to come over, he turned up in his nightclothes, squinting in at the door of my bedroom and going out back to check the trap.

It was empty.

Last night, the grating rain started again.

I turned over in bed, shook my head and sighed.

Ringing the Changes

2006-01-09T00:00:51Z

Happy New Year!

Since this is my first post this year, I wanted to do a fast retrospective of my favourite entries for the two years that I have had this journal. This is not a complete list or the entries that got the most comments- but are just some of my favourites. Please keep in mind that some time has gone by since the odyssey.. :)

Hope the year is going well!

http://www.livejournal.com/users/nightshine/37719.html The Super Deluxe Room

http://www.livejournal.com/users/nightshine/37360.html California Strawberries

http://www.livejournal.com/users/nightshine/2004/07/24/ A Summer Odyssey

http://www.livejournal.com/users/nightshine/11163.html Old School Nightshine

The Lightness of Being

2005-12-18T23:05:58Z

All over the island, the sun is out. Its in the yard, where the cat was prowling around and her dark fur became shot through with auburn. Its glittering off the ocean a short trek away. Sun is spangling the rotten apples that are fat and falling apart beneath my neighbour's tree- the dead songs of September.

Yesterday on campus people had rolled up sleeves and unzipped winter jackets. Exams are almost over. Most of my friends are heading "home"- taking ferries and then busses all the way into the heart of the Interior, or catching sky trains into great tall Vancouver, with its close buildings and seasonal hustle.

I'm going for a walk to the beach with my camera. I usually leave town in December, when the dark presses in on us and the long nights are quiet. This year, almost by accident, I am still here, only to be surprised by this week of daffodil light.

Welcome to my hosannah.

Saanich, CA

2005-12-16T07:00:05Z

So finally the semester is ending! (yay!!!) I am still working on my godforsaken (sorry for that) final website. I've kind of maxed out on my topic, but I'm doing my best..

I don't know if I will get time, or if it is feasible, but this course is being offered in my area: http://recreation.saanich.ca/reconline/Activities/ActivitiesDetails.asp?ProcessWait=N&aid=32544"

Introduction to the wonderful world of bees. Providing the basic knowledge to manage a colony of bees. Theory, practice and technique will be covered in this 10 week course. Includes two Saturday field trips to work on hives.

Its being offered my local rec centre and the classroom is in a high school that is a fifteen minute walk from my place. Its on Tuesday nights from 7 to 9. I am so tempted, although I keep having visions of bees swarming into my hair, chasing me around the neighbourhood, or falling off precariously balanced ladders while I am managing insects. I did casually ask my brother if he would be open to having hives on the property and sharing "liquid gold". He gave me a snarky grin and then began wondering aloud whether he could keep a Doberman in my suite. I guess he doesn't think we're that rural ;) Its not that likely that I would have room in my schedule for such a consuming project but you can certainly tell how bored I've been of late. Obviously I haven't been risking my life enough this year! =)

But before I found the bee course, I did notice some other wacky reacreation offerings:

Theme Parties
Everything from "pink poodle" parties to Hallowe'en scream. This class will "teach" you how to decorate for and organize a theme party. So weiird.

The following are verbatim:

Spirit Guides
Learn to validate your intuitions and subtle perceptions. You know and perceive far more than you give yourself credit for. Learn to connect with your friends in spirit and discover how they can help you.

Tea Cup Reading
http://recreation.saanich.ca/reconline/Activities/ActivitiesDetails.asp?ProcessWait=N&aid=17081
Share your wisdom with others through the ancient technique of reading tea leaves. Learn traditional symbols, how to find pictures that tell the story and how to open your intuitive gifts.

Each class costs $54!!!! Wow..Isn't that just sort of taking a class just for the sake of taking a class? Personally I wouldn't do it even to meet people because I would rather hang out with the cool people and their out of control bees than socialize with someone who wanted to find their excitement in blowing a lot of cash on some hokey cups of tea. Do people have nothing better do with fifty dollars? Either this is a symbol of how irredeemably yuppie this entire area is becoming, or it is a sign that Saanich needs to work a few of the finer points in its fairly extensive recreation programming.

Maybe I'm being harsh, though. After all, I did use to read palms and got to be fairly good at it, although I would never charge people for this- how silly! or put genuine faith in the activity. But I always felt a little weird when people took a reading too seriously- you didn't want to break the magic for them, but at the same time the look of awe on their faces really made you wonder how much control that even you, the reader, had over the implications of what you were saying.

To me the "pink poodle" parties have a strange rich California matron vibe to them. I love everyone from California that is on my friends list, but the scams that take place down there are just unbelievable. I remember picking up skin cream from a Beverly Hills dermatologist (don't ask) for fifty dollars and breaking out in red welts because it contained alcohol, even though it was supposed to be for sensitive skin. Right now I am using moisturizer from a little farm in Kildonan, BC. I'm not sure how much it cost, but nothing could be as horrible as the stuff on offer to the poor Californians- incredibly expensive, and really bad for you. The staff at the makeup stores just push it on people even though it is commonly known in the industry that alcohol based stuff can really worsen irritated skin. For example, when I walked into Ulta near San Francisco the woman there tried to sell me on a cream with alcohol in it to fix the problem that an alcohol based product had already caused.

All of the stuff I use here at home is made locally and could even be eaten by accident and it wouldn't seriously hurt you. It is unheard of to break out in reaction to it unless you don't wash your face, gob it on, or are specifically allergic to one of the ingredients.

Two blondes and a brownie =)

2005-11-27T03:54:01Z

So my distance course books arrived. They're pretty heavy. I realized that the course was cheaper than I had thought because the cost includes textbooks, which usually end up running from $75 to $150. Niiice.

Tonight I am working on my website for my web design class. There is so much to do, and so little time all of a sudden :) I just realized that its the last week of classes.

Some of my girlfriends and I went out to the hair salon yesterday. We had a great time, and they got to touch up their blonde. It was pretty hilarious. When they walked in, they had different shades of blonde hair, and when we left their hair colour was identical. They started to look like sisters, because they had inadvertently chosen similar colour treatments. I think that one of my friends had toner in her hair so when it washes out it will lighten up a bit- and hopefully create some variation. I mentioned the similarity and they both started laughing and joked about how they couldn't be seen together because they were wearing the same outfit, so to speak.

I actually feel a bit bad for girls who have light (or dark blonde) hair and just need some colour to look authentically blonde. You can't resist getting it done, since you will look exactly like a true blonde, but all of the hair dyes are crammed with carcinogens. jdnoa was telling me that the dye preparations have to use a special chemical to penetrate the hair shaft, and because its designed for this it can't help but penetrate the scalp as well. As a result, all hair dyes increase your cancer risk if you are exposed to them on a regular basis.

With my skin and "midnight hair", I would look ridiculous as a blonde, so thankfully don't need to be concerned with this, but this story is kind of reminding me of the whole sun damage/ cancer/ tan fiascos that were so big in the '80s.

As a side note, I also didn't realize how long it took to dye hair! I got a nice cut and then wandered across the street to go shopping. I bought a couple of things that I needed at the mall and headed back well over an hour later- convinced that everyone had given me up as a bad job and already headed out of there. But the girls were still at it, with tinfoil in their hair and painting and at least another forty minutes to go. They were holed up in the salon for about four hours ;)

Looks like I'm getting deep conditioning on our next visit- that should kill some time! :)

What a Freak Show

2005-11-26T10:30:34Z

And herein I am referring more specifically to: http://web.bcnewsgroup.com/portals/monday/

and to the profile of Denis Oliver at the bottom.

His 238 votes were fewer than half as many as the next-to-last finisher.

What I want to know is, who were the 238 people who voted for Oliver in the last city election? 238 people are walking around in the City of Victoria, population 148,000, who support the following:

One candidate in the Victoria municipal election describes himself on the British Spanking website as "a life-long patriarchist seeking a permanent live-in slave." In a profile published on the fetish site, Denis F. Oliver says, "I believe that females exist to serve males."
Oliver, who is running for a seat on the Victoria city council, uses his full name on the site and includes his 1956 birthday as well as his location in Victoria. His list of interests includes, "patriarchy, politics, the environment . . . computers, bicycling, physical fitness."

He has also posted to at least three other sex or fetish sites, including rating videos using "Denis F. Oliver's spanking scale."
Asked about his online activities, Oliver says, "I'm an anti-feminist. I'm a patriarchist. I think feminism is detrimental to mankind."
In a later e-mail he elaborates, "I believe that the place for women and girls is in the home performing housekeeping and childcare duties. Although this may cost me votes, I won't lie or be deceitful."
It's not as though Oliver is likely to have a whole lot of votes to give away. Well-known as a counter-protester at Take Back the Night marches, he ran in 2002 and finished last out of 24 people. His 238 votes were fewer than half as many as the next-to-last finisher.

Soo.. How is YOUR living situation going? ;)

2005-11-20T07:31:48Z

I can only qualify this by saying that I have had some of the best roommates ever as well. I've had roommates that I woke up at three o' clock in the morning to tell them about my night, housemates that threw a birthday party for me after I had moved out, harmoniously shared a townhouse with a girl that helped teach me to climb, and lived with sweethearts that drove me places or shared stories and food.

BUT

Details about people's living situations are always given out enthusiastically in September. However, close to Christmas, the fun begins ;) No matter how well people get along, in the close days of winter, there isn't a person I know that lives with others that doesn't have a storehouse of annoying behaviours to relate.

It has gotten particularly interesting this year. One of my friends can't handle how territorial her roommate is being. "I thought we had a lot in common because we had really similar life experiences, but we're very different people," she lamented a couple of days ago. "A. seems to think that she is just a better person than me," she continued. "I borrowed a cup of milk from her, told her about it and replaced it with the entire container. When I got back, she had already bought milk and said she didn't want it. She told me that she didn't use my stuff, so she expected that I wouldn't use any of her stuff again. I mean, I replaced it almost right away with almost three times as much. What kind of person is that?"

I went straight from that conversation to another girlfriend's house. "What's that smell?" I asked cautiously upon walking in. There was a musty scent to the place.

"It smells like-" our other friend wrinkled her nose.

"It smells like boy" the girl who lived there interrupted accusingly. "See? You guys smell it, too! My whole house smells like boys," she said, gesturing and shaking her head.

"Actually it smells like stale pee," said our other friend. The moment she said it, the smell made sense.

"Oh my god. I don't even know where it is coming from. The place is supposed to be clean," said the resident girl, shaking her head. It did look clean. We cased out the house, sniffing. The smell was coming from one of the boys' rooms, we realized after half an hour. The room was full of gear for sports which obviously was, well, stinking.

The other day someone had spilt something in the fridge and the roommates had to have an immediate meeting to deal with the chaos. Unfortunately one of them was holed up in a room with his girlfriend and wasn't too happy about having to march down the stairs to cries of: "Will you please deal with this?" Two of them ganged up on him to drag him to the fridge cleaning session.

"Honestly, its such a gong show," the girl roommate sighed. And one of the guys kept eating her food. It was really disrespectful. But the other guy wasn't perfect either: "X ate my organic salsa," she said. "I mean, he has crappy no name salsa from Safeway. How do you confuse that will six dollar a bottle salsa? Ugh. And he told me that I could have his cheap stuff instead."

This is all predictable, but really amusing if you're not living with these people. Keep in mind that all of these people have gotten along fairly well most of the time, and were very into each other in September.

I've been there. I've had good roommates and bad, and basically nothing about a person actually prepares you to live with them. Some of my best roommates have been people that I would never have met in so-called "real life".

Anyway, none of these minor dramas top what happened last year, when my friend Ryan had this roommate that he had a "neutral at best" relationship with. Things were going along all right, when he arrived home to find an eviction notice on his door. He had three days to pack up and leave. What was going on? He lay in wait for his roommate only to find out that he had apparently stolen the roomie's very distinctive socks. "But these are my socks," Ryan protested. "My mom gave them to me for Christmas."

The socks were very expensive and only one store in Victoria carried them. It wasn't possible, apparently, for Ryan to have the same pair.

This debacle resulted in Ryan actually having to phone his mother up-island so that she could confirm to his roommate that she had indeed purchased this exact pair of socks for Ryan. Only then was the eviction rescinded. The frazzled roommate had been so angry that his face had turned red and now he had apparently somehow lost his supersocks into the bargain. The entire event resulted in my christening him "Sockzilla" and this has become the primary mode of reference when anyone in our circle occasionally remembers him.

He and Ryan continued with fairly tenuous relations for the rest of the year until they both moved, but not without some final accusatory debates over people's damage deposits.. just to sum the whole mess up :)

I don't want to exempt myself from roommate messes either, because that just wouldn't be fair, so here's the dish:) When I was in second year of university, one of my climbing partners decided that he liked me. Rather than address it directly, this guy for some odd reason got one of his women friends to actually move in with me (since he knew that we were both looking for roommates) and then proceeded to come over all the time. What ended up happening but that the girl, who had a long distance boyfriend, fell for him and then invented a boyfriend that I didn't tell people about. She asked me to put a picture of myself in the main room that had me chatting away with a guy (a foreign student from Germany), and this guy became the secret boyfriend. So secret that even I didn't know about him ;)

I didn't figure out what had happened until I heard about my so-called boyfriend from someone a couple of months later: "..but wasn't he that guy in that picture with you in your living room? X. told us all that you guys were dating but keeping it private..." and by then this enterprising chick had already moved out with some of my stuff.

Ahhh.. Roommates. Can't live with them.. but wait.. you are...

Down the Rabbit Hole =)

2005-11-20T04:11:42Z

I get sent pictures of climbers quite a bit, now that the summer season is on. It seems like every couple of weeks my guy friends have scoped this wall or that wall, and there are some really stunning shots. This particular picture is from my friend Steph who isn't actually a climber and did something a little different this time and went caving last weekend in Tahsis, BC. Her crew had a great time and the walls of this place totally reminded us of the inside of a human intestine when we checked out this shot after she got home. I thought you guys might appreciate seeing it. Its not the most flattering picture of her (in fact, its terrible- she's a lot better looking in person) but she's definitely got a grin on her face.

Enjoy.

I'm just heading out to climb a local hill with a friend in the dark. As I have been mentioning, I have sort of let my fitness level slip over the past year and a half. However, quietly and carefully, I think that I am starting to find my way again :)

Oil Barons, Cyborgs, Oncomice: Served Cold + Uncut

2005-11-15T22:28:31Z

calories 300(so far..) number of instants 0. hours of exercise 0. number of hours spent on essay 0. number of skeptical looks from TA in meeting 3. cost of not knowing the difference between amazon.ca and amazon.com 6 days (sans my essay books). bridget jones flashback(?)priceless.

**************************************

Finally registered for my distance course! woot woot :)

I'm paying an extra two hundred and thirty dollars over my regular tuition. This is why a couple of my friends never do distance. But since I am doing the class from Alberta's distance university, and not B.C.'s its still cheaper.

The Open University $800 a course
Athabasca University $630 a course. Of course I had to pay a onetime $60 registration fee. I am positive that the Open U has a similar cash gouge, though.

And yeah, I saved by going to Alberta. Yay prairie oil money! Apparently the province of Alberta is trying to spend their almost billion dollar reserve before the federal government grabs it again, like they did in the eighties, when it gave away all the extra money to Ontario and the Maritimes. I was also reading in McLean's magazine (popular Canadian news magazine, vaguely like U.S. News and Report) that we should watch out for the position of Alberta universities* on their yearly rankings. The other uni-s won't be able to compete with them in a couple of years, because they are all being "aggressively funded".

(*I should explain that we don't have college in Canada. Here, college means community college, and you only go if you don't have the grades for university.)

In related school news, back to the essay. I'm reading Donna Haraway in the original (hence the cyborg reference in the title), and she takes time.

Sacred

2005-11-06T09:25:57Z

do you think i'll make it
will the storm let me through
will the world just fake it
in the dusk can i turn to you

do you think i'll make it
i can see where i need to be
do you think i'll make it
from where you're sitting here with me

SACRED

i'm taking the headland
he's waving both hands
beaches were made for prayin'
(i think you know just what i'm sayin')

the beach so grey bright
his voice in the light
air cold against our skin
i feel so sacred while i sin

feet leave tracks in the sand
i can feel the clenching of his hands
my watch has ten minutes
but the sky says forever in it

the sand it just won't leave me
the sky made us feel free
bright salt shimmers up our skin
i feel so sacred
(don't know why i feel) so sacred while i sin.

Nightshine HAS COPYRIGHTED these lyrics.

touche mon frere?

2005-11-06T09:07:01Z

My brother: Oh god, you're like a nagging wife.
Me: No, I'm worse than a nagging wife, because you can't divorce me.

Ahahahahaha (!)

I am eating frozen strawberries out of the bag that I bought at Safeway on the walk home from studying.

Happy Diwali, my amaazing friends. (You know who you are:))

"When you stand on the shoulders of giants, it behooves us not to piss on them": a response =)

2005-11-03T06:39:13Z

All kinds of nice news floating my way lately. I've also handed the application form for my distance course in, and I really hope that it will be approved. Apparently it was reviewed recently and should transfer as a third year credit (and it is a fourth year course) so this is quite hopeful. It should take about five days to find out.

I'm busy reading all of these modern theorists for Soci. They're interesting, and totally different from what I expected. I sort of thought that I had a handle on sociological theory because I have done wacked projects like reading Bordieu in the original. Still, there is way more to this type of theory than I imagined.

I remember two years ago when I was in this really terrific class, I asked the prof something that I had been struggling with for days: "What exactly is the difference between sociology and anthropology?"

She laughed and whispered her answer. "Don't tell anyone.. they're the same, but if that got out, half the sociologists and half of the anthropologists would lose their jobs!"

Really, its quite common to see anthropologists taking ideas from sociological theory and vice versa. Plus, fads in anthropology affect sociology, etc.

It's a trend across North America for sociology and anthropology departments to combine themselves, and anthro departments in general are fighting for resources. One of my girlfriends was in a prestigious grad program in the east and she used to love to tease me about whether anthropology was even relevant.

"Its the handmaiden of colonialism," she would spark at me mischievously. Or, big eyed, "do you think that it has a place in a modern university?"

I remember when she came back for a short while recently, I mentioned to her cautiously that some people thought that the system of classifying hunter-gatherers, pastoral societies, etc. was a bit racist and are classifying the society based on a few key variables which outsiders saw as relevant ie. how people get their food- and then using it to debase that society. "It almost seems like some people want to gatekeep anthropology to keep it that way," I added.

I have never seen her laugh so hard. "Well, with the roots of that discipline..are you really surprised?"

There is of course a major problem with this whole analysis, and that is, if we don't like the current classifications, then we have to replace them with something, and goodness knows what. I can't fathom what you would write in an intro text for anthropology instead. They represent years of thought from collaborating thinkers, and one or two people could hardly invent a better system singlehandedly. And its the intro texts where this even really becomes an issue: upper year courses in anthropology where you are working with contemporary critical theory sort of sidestep this debate altogether. They're off somewhere examining cyborgs or pregnant women or feminism or doing ethnographies (which may start with the above premise, but don't always belabour it). (**Much of this paragraph is taken from the ideas of a professor who is working in the field and has had time to consider these issues.)

A good friend of mine took an anthro class at a community college before moving on to university, and there were native students in the classroom. She read a number of papers by a theorist that referred in his literature to first nations females as "women of easy access". The theorist was presented by the professor as one of the foremost authorities on the subject of first nations in the area.

In response to the above comment: its an easy statement to make only if the giants aren't pissing on you- isn't it.

nightshine @ 2005-11-02T19:50:00

2005-11-03T04:47:44Z

A good friend of mine and I have started working on a paper together, and we're pretty optimistic and excited to be working together. The town is kind of dead these days, but all kinds of random nice happenings have been occurring from time to time that reassure me that for many on the island, we're all in this together.

I am home tonight studying. I will read my way through the winter, crewing for school as surely as someone scrubbing decks on a freighter in the raw wind. Its just as routine. School. I read the papers, and I figure out what people are saying. Sometimes in the back of my mind there is a commentary, a scant volley of surprise back at the printed page, that is tempered by the aggressiveness of the published word. If I were sent to a publisher to be black and white type, one cream coloured ream of paper after another, to be placed on shelves, to be referred to disparagingly or with a kind of mental lust, would I be more or less real?

Baudrillard thinks, of course, that being placed on a shelf, or in front of a viewer's face, is the only reality that is acknowledged in today's conditioned world. But then Baudrillard is trendy because he deals with tiny micro fragments- one bitty picture after another. When the scale is small, you offend no one. One hopes.

Anyway back to the ship metaphor. The island could be a ship, trolling up and down the BC coast. It would explain
...the quixotic weather, the change change change of the rain to hail to sleet to grey broiling oceans and white lank skies...
...the abundance of bad sushi, because fresh fish is cheap and thus can be abused in the hands of lesser chefs as well as by the few greats that exist.

The other day I ate caf sushi at school and vowed never again- something that I do every six months. The sushi at school is thick with salty mayonnaise that is its first and last taste. My Vancouver friends order it with easy assurance and then frown at paying five dollars and fifty cents for something that tastes like provincial crab salad from a fifties potluck.

My hands are clean but the fingers are red as a sailor's sunset and here and there bright red vegetative matter is embedded in my nails. I am eating anar, fresh off the boat like an sailor's eastern sunset that bled its way through the heart of the earth and up into an alternate reality. The other day I saw a white guy in a grey suit standing in the centre of Lakshmi's Cloth House. Now I have turned into him because I am stained red in the middle of this grey night.

Anar is sour on this side of reality. I could squeeze the seeds and add sugar and drink. I could stop typing and do something useful. I could go to the gym. I could hang with my brother. I could pack up my laptop and go and find a coffee shop to study. I could kick someone off my friends list. I could take care of myself. I could go another date with someone. I could leave the city. I could get an 'A' in all of my classes if I finally reverted to my default mode. I could apologize. I could accept an apology from someone and move on. I could never forgive someone else who tried to destroy my life.

I could do just about anything.

Creationism Comes to Campus

2005-11-03T03:49:40Z

Was just checking out this semester's exam schedule last night when I saw a white piece of paper pinned above the room assignments for classes.

They've rented a room on campus.

They have something to say, for two whole hours.

They have a website.

www.CreationBC.com

I am really wondering if anyone is going to come to this. The David Lam Auditorium holds three hundred people. Filling it isn't exactly a cakewalk.
I should know..
I've done it =)

Strike Two =)

2005-10-31T05:19:41Z

I had a pretty good weekend =) I'm applying to take a course online from Athabasca University. Has anyone on my list taken classes from them? There is an exam at the end that you have to sit, and I am wondering if I actually have to physically go to Alberta to do it. Not that such an event would wreak mass havoc or anything :)

Yesterday Lin and Lex got hitched. Congratulations, kids.. Just to make it clear- they did invite me to their wedding and encouraged me to come, but it seemed like I would make it into a gong show with the number of people that they were having to juggle. They had a ton of people in their tiny apartment, and they had passed people off to friends and were still running out of room. Rather than turn the wedding into the mob fiasco of the year, I decided to visit some other time- when they might need more excitement than they do at present.

So it was a pretty slack weekend. I took some time off school to go and watch a movie on campus put on by the Indian Students Association. It was called "The Rising: the ballad of Mangal Pandey", and it was about India's first war of independence in the late 1800s. The ISA is a good crew. Its a lot of effort to put Bollywood movies on regularly for the public, but they make time to do it. They could easily get together at someone's house and just watch a DVD with a great deal less trouble, but not only do they put the movies on, they also sell samosas and other treats at the door for everyone. I don't think they really get renumerated for their efforts, which is also what makes them special =)

Also, pash29 and I got caught up over the weekend and really enjoyed ourselves chatting over the developments in her life and the latest Victoria news. She hadn't heard about the general strike that crippled the entire city. I had posted what I felt was an interesting description of the situation, but eljay ate it and I was too busy to throw together a recap. Life out here certainly has not been dull.

After striking for almost a month, the teachers are finally back at work. Last Monday, everyone from the public library to the university sessionals' union was standing out on the pavement to support them. I spent the day marooned at a local coffee shop studying, listening to people come in and out with strike talk. From my window, I could just see the government liquor store employees across the way cowering under a small pavilion, holding their hand lettered signs in the wind spattering rain. I couldn't go the recreation centre to work out, since the doors were locked and people were marching about in the parking lot. Even the Canada Safeway at the corner, which is currently renovating (an tale of oddities in itself) had some people that refused to come to work because they, too, are unionized. Teachers poured in from all over the province for a rally at the legislature, only to have no way of getting there because the busses stopped running. Gordon Campbell, our premier, could not be seen or heard from all day.

Meanwhile, Jinny Simms, the president of the BCTF (the BC Teachers' Federation) stood on the leg lawn saying things like, "I may have to go to jail"- (because the strike was suddenly illegal due to back to work legislation), and adding "We will not be broken. You may bully us, but you will not break us!"

There was a lot of sympathy for the teachers' because their agenda included things like support for special needs students and a restriction of class sizes. A small covey of high school students poured coffee a few streets away from my place and drank as the wind blew, standing next to their teachers in the downpour.

The government kept resorting to the rather lame observation that teachers should be setting an example for youth, and that breaking the law was not the way to model appropriate behaviour. But they were in a bit of a quandry, because it would have been quite the mess if they had, in fact, arrested Jinny Sims, a woman who looks like she could have been your high school home ec teacher.

The whole thing was sorted out with an agreement through binding arbitration, for which everyone is thankful. I couldn't go to class on Monday because the unions had blocked the entrance to the university circle. I'm glad that the decision around crossing a picket line was taken out of my hands. Most likely, I would not have done it, but the option not to miss a class that was taking place would have made it uncomfortable.

All that this story leaves is..- Telus. The buses actually didn't run in part because of the Telus strike, since the phone company employees stationed their pickets around the transit yard. The government had to get a court order to get the drivers back to work, and the first bus rattled by my little station in the coffee shop in the early evening.

Now that the teaching drama is over, everyone has forgotten the locked out Telus employees, except for an unavoidable fact: not a single pay telephone on campus is usable anymore.

They are all still plugged with quarters.

Keeper of A Bug Zoo

2005-10-24T02:02:39Z

If you took a look at my place, with its buff hardwood floors, east indian mats and low divans, you wouldn't guess at its alive side.

By alive, I mean the flying, creeping, spinning, anything- from- none- to- fifteen legged critters that keep dancing through the area and running amok.

I was over at my brother's the other night. In his cleaning closet, amid a forest of brooms and buckets, I could clearly see a giant web, spun as if it were expecting a fresh hatch of bluebottle flies to veer into it at any minute.

"Where are you?" I asked.

My curiousity was addressed when a giant spider moved into view crawling purposefully up a wooden mop handle. It was a rush to capture it with a piece of tissue and throw it outside- just in case my brother got to it first, and wanted to kill it.

He's never liked spiders. When he was a kid, he used to wake me up in the middle of the night to deal with them a couple of times a year. So its a major irony that now our place seems to be the corner pub as far as the arachnids are concerned.

"I don't understand where they are coming from," my brother mused. While I listened, I opened the bottom doors on his kitchen cabinet under the sink and stared at two more spiders idling past. These were daddy long legs, with pale brown furred bodies, and appendages so spindly that the trademark legs seemed to have been whispered into existence.

I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised when I startled a particularly exotic looking orange-striped vixen in my bathroom a couple of minutes later- more often than not, there are insects of some kind skating over the tub. If I don't notice them in time, they start to drown in the water and its a tough job to fish their spinning bodies out and drop them over the garden patch- just so that they can work their way back into the house again.

Once in a while I luck out- like the time that I found an intensely green slug a block away with the most amazing drive imaginable. I rescued it from the middle of the road. It writhed with such energy as it circled my closed palm that I will never again use the word "slug" to describe anything lacking haste. But generally the arachnidae inside the house run the show.

I wrote this piece up because, as I was sitting here working on my assignment, I could have sworn that I felt a shiver across my forehead. I looked up and saw the tiniest of black spiders dangling right in front of my eye, having launched its slim thread from a piece of my hair.

So, if you can't come to my house and see nature red in tooth and claw, don't despair.

They've even followed me to school.

Welcome

2005-08-04T04:22:41Z

EXCLUSIVE MEMBERSHIP: to be a StAr, you must know me or my friends in some way. It is rare these days that I add new people, but I never make decisions about who to add without hearing from you first.

INSiDe: ..is the story of a femme, and her perspective on The World.

OuTSide: feel free to browse this journal's open content- remember, it does not represent what is inside.

I do hope that you enjoy these pages! =)

I still like fortune cookies better

2004-11-28T05:15:21Z


sociology is love
brought to you by the isLove Generator

What do you think true beauty is?

2004-10-23T00:23:55Z

Someone from one of my classes pointed out that the Dove Soap website (http://www.dove.ca/beyondcompare/) had a questionnaire about 'true beauty'- not manufactured, retouched, lacquered over, or made brilliant with a fifty dollar tube of lip gloss.

I got all inspired, and instead of giving my thoughts only to Dove, a corporate entity, I decided to post them here and ask YOU for your definition of real beauty. (They asked for your ideas in 50 words or less.)

Speak to me :)

MY DEFINITION:

Wit, confidence, intelligence, savvy, nice grooming, and an overall kinship with all people, so that you are kind to them all but able to assert yourself when you, or others around you are treated unfairly. If that strength of purpose is missing, and you can be bought or sold by popular opinion, you are not beautiful. Without a certain charisma, that ability to light up a room, even the most glamorous woman falls flat, and with it, even the plainest is lit by an inner light.

"I am a phenomenal women, phenomenally. Phenomenal woman, that's me."- Maya Angelou

Note: To everyone who wished me Happy Birthday, thank you very much! Today is comment answering day, I'll be sure to let you know personally :)

nightshine @ 2004-10-01T15:56:00

2004-10-01T22:57:07Z

I just noticed that my Lipton Cup of Soup has more msg than chicken.

I'm really not sure what this means...

2004-07-31T01:06:32Z

Take the quiz: "What dessert are you"

apple pie
You are apple pie! WHolesome and smart in every way!

She smelled like teenage Gretzky

2004-07-18T09:16:21Z

You know you are having a weird day when you go to do your laundry, pull it out of the washer where it has been half-drying all day, and your hand hits a stick of deodorant that is also sitting inside. You fumble around, pull it out, and realize that the stick is completely empty. There is no deodorant left in it at all. So, you give your clothes a casual sniff.

Ah- can you say a teenage boy on his first date? ;-)

I didn't have time to rinse everything, so I must have been sending off quite the stench as I walked across campus yesterday. Oh well- at least nobody can claim that I smelled BAD (in the classic unwashed sense, anyway!). The really crazy thing is that my brother told me that the stick definitely didn't belong to him, which made us wonder where it came from in the first place. (grin) It was some kind of ancient men's deodorant with a black casing and NHL hockey logos across it.

</edit:>

gossip in a vic journal- imagine that ;)

2004-06-15T08:15:14Z

Its so late; I shouldn't be up. Had kind of an adventure tonight but am about to crash,

stolen from sukanya:

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It comes out different every time I enter my username. This wasn't even the most interesting permutation- just the one that I figured would offend the least number of people ;)

a few of my favourite things..

2004-06-03T13:06:13Z

Just to prove that I really do get up early once in a while, I had to post. Its five thirty in the morning- beat that uncommoncold!!

The sun is blushing translucent red in the distance outside. Its a clear day so you can see the Olympic mountains in Washington State against the horizon.

You know what? As crazy as my life has been lately, I just love being at school. I love

handing things in and getting them done, and the sense of accomplishment that results.

the little nineteen year olds in their tight jeans and their exuberance,

walking across campus and leading the outdoors club meetings,

wacky classes, and standing in the halls socializing five minutes before things start,

the Munchie Bar in the Student Union Building, where I seem to know half of the staff and there is always some hot conversation going on,

talking to Peter, the homeless guy that squats in the Student Union Building, about life, and to the huge cast of characters that he has introduced me to, all different, over the last year,

that when a prof has screwed us over, there are ten people with which to vent. I love

how if the university has screwed a prof over, we write letters and go to their office and hug them.

going over to people's houses to work on insane projects where we all panic about how we are going to pull it together because the other people don't have exactly the same ideas as us.

the hideously overpriced sushi, the Rocky Mountain muffins, and the pub on campus where the service is sketchy and where you can get carded three times in one night and not at all the next day.

the late night debates over theory and the way that you can meet people just once and argue like hell with them and then for some reason they ask you out for a date the following evening;-)

You know, there are a lot of other things that I could be doing with my life at the moment, and some of them might be a lot better, but suddenly it dawned on me that I have never talked about some of the little things that make my life infinitely luckier and richer than probably two thirds of humanity.

So there you go, God, I am truly grateful.