January 4, 2012, 2PM

I'm rebelling from doing homework right now.

In the past few months, I've been trying to adhere to the idea that "shy" and "outgoing" are not permanent personaly traits or states of being, but rather actions. I've been *trying* to be a more outgoing person. But is that really true? Some people like olives, some people don't. The people that hate olives can still make the choice to eat the olives, but that doesn't mean those people will like olives. Perhaps the words "shy" and "outgoing" don't necessarily refer to the actions associated with those words, but rather, they refer to what people like - what makes people feel good. Sure, you can go into a public place, and make a point of talking to a lot of people, but that doesn't mean that you necessarily like talking to people. Why bother doing something you don't like to do?

I used to hate vegetables. I didn't like to eat vegetables. I ate them anyway because they are healthy. Now, there are days when I crave vegetables. I now enjoy eating them (except green beans, lol). I did an action I didn't like because it was good for me, and I changed what I liked. I became a person that enjoys eating vegetables. Outgoing people have better carreer opportunities because they are better able to communicate with people. Outgoing people have a better chance at making friends and making good connections. The action of outgoing is a good, healthy action, therefore, I should make the effort to do the action of outgoing more often.

It seems as though I've developed a certain...um...anxiety over the past few months. It's very frustrating, because I'll become really upset over something extremely trivial, or I'll be mad about something that is so obviously my fault, and yet rationalizing and telling myself that it's okay and I don't have to be angry doesn't seem to work. It's as though I have two minds - the rational one and the wildly emotional one, and they become at odds with each other. It becomes worse when I go as far as freaking out and making a scene. When it happens, and it happens in front of other people, I become overwhelmed with cognitive dissonance (the feeling you get when things are out of balance; such as when you do something wrong and you receive trivial punishment, or when you do something contrary to what you believe is your typical behaviour). This isn't who I am, this isn't what I do, I'll think to myself, but the damage has already been done, and any action after that would either make things worse, or be incongruous. I have a problem doing things that are incongruous with previous circumstances. Things have to match up. There has to be a clear, observable line between A and B. But at that moment, I'm dealing with two opposing things: my current emotional freaking out, and my desire to not cause a scene, to allow other people to have a good time, and above all, to not cause anyone to feel embarrassed (you know the feeling of being embarrassed FOR somebody else? I fear being the somebody else). However, Once that embarrassment has already occurred, there is no possible way to fix it, no action that I can take, and I basically have a meltdown.

I hate spending money. I hate changing plans. If I say I'm going to do something, I'll do it, and I don't want to do anything that would prevent someone from doing what they said they were going to do. I hate interrupting people. I hate feeling embarrassed. I hate paying for cabs when I already pay for a car. I hate feeling like a tag-along. These are the things that are always in my mind, and if I ever do something that I hate, it causes me a lot of anxiety. But not doing some of the things I hate also causes me anxiety. For example, if I go out to the bar, I don't drink because I don't like spending money. I become the only one not drunk, and the only one not talking (often because it's too loud), and thus I become the tag-along. I don't take any risks when it comes to meeting new people; I won't approach anyone unless I already know that they will respond positively. You get the idea.

I suppose one step to not having anxiety freak-outs would be to stop overthinking things. To be okay with incongruity. A and B are the same. A is B, B is A. Everything is already connected and part of one grand whole. Why worry about the transition, the mechanical processes involved? When A, and wanting to be B, simply be B. Another step would be to acknowledge that having a panic attack or a mental breakdown is A way to gain attention, but not the BEST way. If I want attention, I should just say to the people I care about "hey, I need attention". Another step would be to acknowledge that even though rationally my emotions might be silly, they're still important enough that they are bugging me, and thus important enough to talk about. Therefore, even if I'm upset about something silly, I should still talk about it. And lastly, I need to stop relying on other people to create my social life for me. I need to call people myself, invite people out myself, take the initiative necessary to meet new people, and to acknowledge my personal weaknesses and work through alternative methods to doing things rather than just giving up.

New Year's Resolutions:
That's it for now! I'm off to run some errands, go to class, and maybe do some more homework, but we'll see. Bai Bai!



November 10, 2011, 4:30pm

Just a quick update. It's my birthday today! I started working at Tim's again this week. Yay for having a paycheck. I'm moderately on top of my homework, for now. I've thrown in the towel and I'm going to drink coffee every day. At least two cups, maybe.

I made my birth date invisible on facebook to see how many people would actually say Happy Birthday if they weren't reminded [edit: compared to the 23 people that said "happy birthday" on my facebook wall last year, 16 people said "happy birthday" in person, via text message, or through facebook messaging, but not a single person posted it on my wall. A few people confided that they weren't sure if I wanted my birthday known, hence they messaged in other ways. On the whole, it was an interesting, pointless experiment, haha].

In my last post, I talked about the concept of love, and that triggered an idea while researching for my honours thesis on prospective memory. McDaniel, Einstein, Graham, and Rall (2004) discuss one possible reason for why interruptions hinder prospective memory. The idea is that we maintain our intentions on a general level, such as, "I've got something to do" (p. 535). There is a certain...mental tension that causes us to continuously spontaneiously remember what it is that we have to remember. If we get interrupted by another task, and we complete that interrupting task, then we feel generally that we have done something, and this reduces the mental tension. Hence, we forget to complete the interrupted task. In regards to infatuation, if you intend to contact the person you are interested in, then this would create tension on a general level. Because fear of rejection causes you to not contact this person right away, that general tension remains until you complete that action (just forget about what I said about doing another action reducing that tension for now, okay?). That general tension causes you to frequently recall what it is that you intend to do, and that intension is linked to the person that you are interested in, therefore you continuously, spontaneously think about this person. Can't stop thinking about someone? Perhaps it's because you have the intension of contacting this person. Let's say that you've already contacted this person, but they haven't responded. They're playing "hard to get", or maybe they're just ignoring you because they want nothing to do with you. Chances are, you've already worked out a reply to whatever they might say to you. This reply to the reply becomes the prospective memory task, and the cue is their reply. Even if that reply never comes, you still have this prospective memory task in your head. You still have this intention, this tension that causes you to think about what it is you intend to do, which is linked to the person involved, which means that because this person has not responded to your initial contact, you continue to think about this person all the time. I don't know if there's actually any connection, but it is an interesting thought.

Here's the citation for the paper I mentioned: McDaniel, M. A., Einstein, G. O., Graham, T., & Rall, E. (2004). Delaying execution of intentions: Overcoming the cost of interruptions. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 18, 533-547. DOI 10.1002/acp.1002.



October 20, 2011, 11am

Okay, there are plenty of things that I should be doing right now instead of writing this, but I'm SOOO distracted by my thoughts lately that it's nigh impossible to concentrate on anything. Since my last update, I have not purchased any drink in a disposable cup, however, I did buy a coffee at Starbucks (and used my travel mug). I have not bought fast food, although I haven't been eating quite as much fruit in the last week. I spoiled myself with cake a few days ago. I continue to not do homework everyday. I've been drinking tea instead of coffee the last few days, so I suppose that's better than coffee.

Today, I want to talk about Love. What is love? What does it mean to love someone? What does it mean to be in love with someone? How can we reconceptualize this idea?

What is love. Many have tried to define it, and many have failed. For the purposes of my discussion, I'll simply go with my perception of love, and what it means to love someone. To love someone is to react in a strongly positive, emotional way to said person. Being around this person elicits the experience of positive emotions. Your brain learns that being around this person makes you feel good, so you develop a desire to be around this person. I should probably know which neurotransmitters are actually involved, and which areas of the brain light up (we talked about this in neuropsychology a couple years ago for valentines day, it was interesting, but I don't remember the details). That's the biological side to it. What it means to love someone is a little more complex, and is of course influenced by my own personal ideeals. Ideally, if you love someone, it means that you care about the other person's well being. This is the most important. If you love someone, it means that their happiness makes you happy. You want what is best for them, and ideally, such love is selfless. I suppose from a biological standpoint, that doesn't really make sense. From a biological standpoint, you would simply want to continue experiencing the good happy feelings, and experiencing such good happy feelings would expectedly equate to always wanting to be around said person, regardless of the person's well being. But, one can also experience good feelings from doing altruistic acts - from helping out another person, from giving, from making another person feel better. So, I suppose, "love" is the relationship between our desire to be around a person that elicits the good feelings we desire, and our desire to do good, selfless acts. Ah! Okay, so this doing of selfless acts, let's call that our expression of love. We feel love in being around the person we like, and we express love by being selfless.

Now, of course, that kind of love can be felt towards anyone - family, friends, lovers, pets, and I suppose you could extend this towards complete strangers, too. It is possible to love someone you don't know - or rather, it is possible to express love towards someone you don't know. Let's think about the relationship between desire to be around a person and desire to do good as being a continuum. Towards some people, you feel more desire to be around a person than you feel to do good. Towards others, you feel more desire to do good than to be around them. This of course, is not a relational thing. I mean, it is NOT that as one goes up, the other goes down, but rather, there are different ways in which love can manifest for different people along this continuum. Does that make sense? There are also many things that would influence how love is felt/expressed, but I'll come back to this point in a moment.

What does it mean to be IN love?

What does it mean to be in love? Social conventions would have us believe that typically, you are in love with someone from the gender that you are attracted to. You care about this person, you are passionate about this person, you would do anything for this person, etc. Alright, so let's approach this from a different angle. Let's compare "significant other" to "best friend". You care about what happens to your significant other. Just as you care about what happens to your best friend. You would go out of your way to help your significant other, and I assume that you'd probably go out of your way to help your best friend. You listen to what your significant other says nonjudgmentally, just as you would for your best friend. You thoroughly enjoy spending time with your significant other, just as you do with your best friend. And, you'd be really upset if your significant other left, just as you would (or might) if your best friend left (this is a little arguable, but I'll come back to this point in a moment). So, you have all of these qualities that are the same between a person who holds the status of significant other and a person who holds the status of best friend. Where do the differences lie? What is the difference between a significant other and a best friend, in terms of love? One difference that could be talked about is sexual attraction. You're obviously attracted to the person you're in a relationship with, but you're not attracted to your best friend.

But what if you are? If you are sexually attracted to your best friend, is there really any difference between your best friend and your significant other? In terms of love, I would say that there isn't. I would say that it is perfectly reasonable that one could be in love with both one's significant other and best friend, and it's perfectly okay.

Let's then reconceptualize this idea of love. It is possible to love many people, and this feeling/expression of love can manifest itself in many different ways. You can love your family, your pets, your lover, your friend, and complete strangers, but we make a distinction between loving and being in love. But why? What is this distinction? I propose that the distinction is merely what you expect from the people you love. Alright, now let's come back again to the point I made about being sad when your significant other leaves you, and being sad when your best friend leaves (in the sense of moving away). There may be a difference in how sad you feel simply because you have different expectations for your significant other than you do for your best friends. You expect that your best friend is his or her own person, with his or her own goals, and you expect this person to branch out, to experience life to its fullest. You do not expect your best friend to be by your side every single day. You do not expect your best friend to move whenever you move. You do, however, have these expectations of your significant other. You expect that your significant other will typically come home to you every day. You expect that when you are upset, your significant other will be there to comfort you. You expect that when you move, your significant other will move with you. You expect that you won't have to feel lonely because your significant other will always be by your side. You expect that when you want to get it on, your significant other will put out (BAHAHAHA - I had to put that in - it IS one of the expectations that people have, although I suppose it's not always guaranteed that the significant other will put out - but that's a different discussion). A significant other fills this particular role, and because of that role and those expectations, you'd probably bawl your eyes out a little more over your significant other leaving than you would over your best friend moving away (for the most part, a best friend can still fill the role of companionship even over distance and time). There are many people who can fill the role of best friend as well, whereas society tells us that there is only one person who can fill the role of significant other.

Okay, so that's it then. A significant other is a person you are in love with because that person fills that set of roles. Or is it? You could argue that pets also fill this role. They comfort you when you're sad, they're always at home when you come home. They move with you when you move. And to some extent, pets fill a role that even a significant other cannot fill - they are undoubtably loyal. Sure, a significant other can be loyal, and that can be an expectation that you have of your significant other, but because your significant other is a human being and capable of making his or her own decisions, loyalty isn't necessarily guaranteed. We expect guaranteed loyalty from our pets, and typically tend to receive it (unless they run away or something, but just go with me on this). This is why a person may be even MORE upset about losing a pet over a significant other (at least I would be, or at least equally upset. I STILL miss my cat, and I STILL cry about it every now and then, and I know that I'll get her back in less than a year).

So, are we IN love with our pets?! My answer to that is, well, sure. Yeah. Let's go with that. Or rather, let's go with the idea that there is no distinction between loving and being in love. Let us simply conceptualize love in the continuum of desire to be around the person that makes us feel good - desire to do good towards this person (or feeling love and expressing love), and the heartache we feel when we are separated from significant others is merely the attachment we developed based on our expectations of the other person. Let me say that again. This distinction of being in love with someone is not a manifestation of love itself, but is dependent upon our expectations of the other person.

Taking this forward; what does all of this mean? It means that it is possible to love many people. It is possible to be in love with many people, and THAT'S OKAY. It is OKAY to love, and be in love, with many people. That's what we do. That's how we function. In terms of loving more than one person romantically, the problem is not that you LOVE more than one person, it's that you are expecting more than one person to fill the same roles. The problem is not love, but expectations. The problem is NOT love, but expectations.

Speaking of all that, Why is it necessary that only one person fill the role of significant other? Why is it that one person is loaded with all of these expectations? Maybe poly-amorous relationships aren't that bad of an idea (I'm drawing on the content of Penn and Teller's Bullshit!, Season 3, episode 2 entitled "Family Values"). I would agree that if both parties in the relationship were completely okay with it, then having more than one person to fill the role of "significant other" would be a healthy way to have a relationship. Granted, there are a lot of other things involves, such as feelings of jealousy (how do those happen anyway?), and discomfort caused by a lifetime of social morals and values dictating that monogamy is the only way to have a healthy relationship and polygamy is wrong, wrong, wrong! Regardless of how things actually are, I think it would take any person some time getting over that and getting used to a new way of conceptualizing relationships.

The concept of love is a continuum involving feeling desire to be around a person that makes you feel good and feeling desire to express love through selfless, altruistic acts, and love can manifest itself in many different ways along this continuum. The real distinction between loving and being in love is not a manifestation of love itself but rather a difference in the expectations that a person has for another. It may be possible to negate the negative emotions one feels when being "in love" with more than one person by perhaps changing one's expectations of the other person (however, it is difficult to say whether that would really work; it also does not acknowledge how the other person feels in return, which would complicate things). It would be interesting to discover what this reconceptualization of love means for other concepts such as jealousy, and sexuality. Perhaps in a future discussion, I will attempt to attack these other concepts.

There. I have tried to write this in an essay form in order to prevent myself from rambling. In the past, when I wrote in my blog, I would ramble and repeat myself to the point where I couldn't stand reading what I had written, lol. Hopefully this has been at least interesting to someone else. I do not claim to speak for everyone - this is MY PERSONAL conception of love, and does not necessarily relate to anyone else. Everyone has his/her own definition of love. Everyone has had his/her own experiences that influence how he/she think about love and relationships, so my ramblings are not generalizeable to the population as a whole. It is merely a way of thinking about love. It is my way of thinking about love, at this particular moment. Maybe tomorrow it will change. Anyway, that's what's been on my mind for the past week or so. Hopefully by writing it down I can stop thinking about it long enough to do some homework.



October 12, 2011, 5pm

Hello all! Quick update on where I stand in my goals. I bought fast food once since I last updated (a bagel at Tim's on the way to Regina for a football game - which I avoided, haha. I drove there, I did not attend). I have bought and thrown out 4 take-out cups. I do not do homework every day. So far, none of my assignments have been handed in late. I finished my Lindt chocolates yesterday, so, they lasted longer than 1 month :) I buy fruit at the grocery store, and my guilt over wasting food compels me to take fruit to school instead of other things. So far, it's been working; I have at least 1 1.75 cup of fruit every day that I'm at school. I was at a point where I would only have one cup of coffee per week, instead of several a day. Lately it's been a cup almost every day. I've definitely been procrastinating lately more often than not. As you can see, I'm currently writing in my blog instead of doing homework. Hopefully if I draw attention to my shortcomings so far, I'll make an improvement.

Facebook is stupid for expressing your thoughts. I'm always wondering if people will care about what I say. I'll sit for five minutes thinking of a possible statement to sum up my day, and usually I log off without writing a status update because there's no one line that can sum up my day that doesn't sound like a cry for attention or something that is extremely boring. Then, there are things that would offend other people, or would make family members question your character. So, I'm moving away from the "private" world of facebook and publishing my thoughts completely publically, and perhaps more anonymously, because who reads this blog anyway?

The thing that was on my mind today is a conversation I had with someone that apparently made said person want to punch me in the face. I don't know why. You don't ask someone's opinion on something and freak out when it's different from yours. It's not my fault if you don't word your question of opinion in such a way that I talk specifically about your own particular perception and confirm it. The question I speak of is: "What does it mean to be a woman?"

What does it mean to be a woman. Well, if we talk about this in general terms, as in, what does it mean for any person to be A woman, then the only answer I can possibly provide is that A woman is someone with a vagina, and that is the ONLY description I can give you. I've watched many a drama where the main woman character, by some turn of events, ends up dressing up as a man and taking on a man's role in a man's society (i.e. an all boys school, a university in the days where women were put to death if they attended said university, a boy band). Said woman does everything that would be expected of a man, but she is still a woman. Perhaps there are some differences in how she acts. Maybe she's more caring or more sensitive to emotion. Would you say that a man who is sensitive to emotion is a woman? If a woman was cold and logical, would you say that she was NOT a woman? Okay. So you could say that a woman is someone who can give birth to children, and this is something entirely womanly because men cannot become pregnant. Would you say that a woman who chooses not to, or is not physically capable, of giving birth is NOT woman? You can talk about all the gender stereotypes in the world, and there will always be exceptions to those rules. Not all women claim to be right in a relationship. Not all women manipulate. Not all women are more emotional than all men. Not all women can give birth. Not all women prefer catty bitchiness over physical violence. Not all women are concerned with appearances.

What does it mean to be a woman in social terms? I suppose that would depend on the society that you live in, the people that you surround yourself with, your expectations up against the expectations of the people you're around...and it's different from one person to the next, because everyone has different experiences and different ideas, different associations, different meanings for such ideas. Womanliness and Manliness are determined by social interaction - people react to you based on their idea of what being of a particular gender means, and you also act in terms of your own expectations of what you should be like, even though, in truth, these identities are pretty much arbitruary. In short, gender identity is socially based, socially influenced.

What does it mean for ME to be a woman? How do I personally identify with my womanliness? In truth, I'm not particularly concerned by my own gender identity. Sure, I feel pretty and feminine if I wear a dress or a skirt and make myself look beautiful, but I'm still just as much of a woman if I dress up in men's clothes. I get along with men easier than I get along with women, but I still consider myself a woman. I took an online quiz once that said I had a man's brain (whatever that means), but I'm still a woman. I don't identify myself with my gender. I wouldn't say that I am a certain way because I'm a woman (unless I'm poking fun at gender stereotypes). It means more for me to say that I am a certain way because I'm a student of psychology. I'm shy because I grew up around shy parents; I'm not timid and demure because I'm a woman. Gender Identity means less to me than what I do.

So why get so bloody angry? If you're going to ask my personal opinion on something, don't get angry because my opinion doesn't coincide with your opinion. If my opinions aren't based on fact, and it's obvious that I haven't done my homework; if it's obvious that I'm just really ignorant, then yes, okay, get angry. Get angry about the fact that I'm so opinionated about something I know nothing about. That's why I don't talk about politics, because I don't bloody know anything about politics. I don't talk about raising children or the proper way to be a parent because I don't have kids. I might have opinions about certain, specific things simply because I've read/researched them in psychology, but on the whole, I have no experience with children besides being one. A single one, an only child. I don't know about kids, so I'm not going to talk about it. But I think I would have some bloody experience about being a woman. I think I would have some experience about my own, specific perception of womanhood and womanliness.

And god damn but I'm irritated with people in general. Okay, so I'm pretty strict with myself, in that if I know that I'm going to be designated driver, I won't drink ANYTHING. But if other people are committed to being designated driver, they'll at least have a few. Or fucking seven. Okay, fine, fuck, whatever, maybe you have really high limits, and maybe you really won't blow over, but can I feel like I just can't trust other people's self discipline, or lack thereof.

Another thing that I have an opinion about, is apologies. Can someone at least agree with me that if you apologize for something, you should at least follow up with actions that are different from the ones that preceded said apology? If you break someone's favourite cup, should you not in the future be more careful when handling said person's dishware? If you're late for something and it negatively affects someone else's life, should you not try to be on time in the future? An apology should signify a determined change of action. It should not only be about aleviating your personal guilt. And an apology worded as "I'm sorry, but..." is not a bloody apology.

Note to self. I will continue to work on the goals I set out earlier. As an added goal, I'm going to pull up my socks and get my shit together. If I'm being depressed in order to get attention, I could just bloody ask for the attention. If I'm jealous over other people's sociability, I should be more open and talkative. Shyness is a choice, not a predestined, predetermined, unalterable personality trait. Shyness is a decision. Interactions with people go both ways. I can't feel ignored or abandoned unless I've made a general effort on my end to communicate with people, to stay in touch, to connect. I won't wait by the phone, or wait at home, expecting that someone might need me at any given moment, and neither will anyone else. And if I'm moping about the fact that I'm behind in my homework, uhh...continuing to mope ISN'T GOING TO SOLVE THE BLOODY PROBLEM. So, my goal for the coming weeks is to stop moping, pull up my socks, and get my shit together.



September 6, 2011, 9am

A year passed, and here I am, waiting in line to get a new student card. I still have my old one, but my name has changed, and I'd rather not have to carry around over 9000 pieces of ID just to prove I am a student and I am who I say I am. Later this week, or month, I'll have to change everything else. Being spontaneous is fun and all, but it's a lot of paperwork.

In other news, we've moved into the new place, and everything seems alright. I feel anxious around new people and places though, so the first little while might suck, haha. I miss my cat, so maybe I've appropriated her resistance to change in order to remember her, lol.

3:30pm

I suppose now would be a good time to bring you up to speed on the events of the past several months. I think the last time that I've legitimately updated was around May. That was the time that I continued reading The Wheel of Time, and I subsequently spent my time reading instead of blogging, haha. Then my laptop caught a virus it could not recover from, and I was too lazy/broke to fix/have it fixed, so I just didn't update very often. I made a few random blogs on my new Samsung GalaxyTab, but they didn't actually make it to the internet.

August was a pretty busy month. I started reading psych papers and preparing for my honours thesis (I got into the honours program for psychology at the UofS), and every weekend we would try to do something cool while we were still in Halifax. A couple friends from S'toon came and visited with us, and showed us around Digby and the surrounding area. It was a nice little holiday, even though I didn't have to take time off, hehe. We went camping in PEI for a couple days just before moving, and that was pretty fun. We spent many evenings partying with friends, which will explain the last two entries I made, haha. Moving itself was pretty hectic, but not as much as it was when we left S'toon for Halifax a year ago. We spaced it out more so we weren't as rushed to get everything done, but we did have to make a lot of hard decisions about what we were taking with us and what was staying in Halifax. We packed up the car as full as we could, while also leaving room for us and Wren, and left Halifax at 9:30 at night. It was probably good that we left then instead of waiting until the next day, what with hurricane Irene threatening the coast. We drove all night, stopped somewhere in Quebec at 6am for a quick nap, and made it to Brampton by nightfall. It was my first time driving on the express way, and I was pretty nervious about driving on a 5 lane highway, but I managed alright. For the next 6 days we spent time hanging out with Wren's friends and family, touring around downtown Toronto and Niagra Falls, and visiting with some of my friends I hadn't seen in many years (and one friend I knew from the internet but had never actually met!). We had a lot of fun, although it was very bittersweet, because I left my cat in Halifax, and now I was leaving my friends for a long time. By the end of the week, though, I was ready to head out and finally have a place to live again. We did better, this time, with the whole planning aspect of our adventure. We had a place lined up to live, and Kevin had a job lined up as well before we even left Halifax, so that was really nice. It's fun sometimes to be spontaneous, but not having a place to live, and not knowing when your next paycheck will come, can be very very stressful. I think the only really stressful part of our trip was driving for 15+ hours in a day, haha! Money was also kinda tight, but not so much that we had to really worry about it.

Now, it's as though we never really left. The fact that we are back in S'toon doesn't feel very remarkable. It just is as it has been; new place to live, different bus route, roommates that we've never met until yesterday, but all in all it's rather...unsurprising. Don't get me wrong - I'm glad to be back, and I really enjoyed seeing everyone we've seen so far, and I'm so very relieved to be back in the routine. The university is a little different now (so much so that I was a little lost upon first arriving), and the stores are different in some places, but overall, things haven't changed too much.

My Goals for the Next 8 Months:
Well that's it for now. Hopefully you don't hear back from me too often, since that will indicate that I am procrastinating, haha! bai bai!



August 13 or something (2011)

So, pretty spinny drunk. It's 3am ish. I work in 3 hours or so. I LOVE our friends. They are so awesome. I am so happy when I think of them. I can never be upset again because of the reverse tear, and the literal flipping of shit, haha! Moving sucks.



August 2, 2011, 1am

I'm so thouroughly happy and sad at the moment. Our roommate who moved away came back on a surprise visit and i was so unsurprised that it was surprising. We joked that we threw out the meat he left in the fridge as if he'd merely been on an extended stay with his girlfriend. I'm so happy to have us all back together again, and i)'m sad that in little over three weeks we'llball be half way across the country from each other. Maybe i'm just getting older, but i geel intolerant of change and i want to latch on to these friendships. It seems wholeheartedly appropriate that we should all buy a house together and stay together forever. I want this to last forever. That's acceptable, right?

Okay, so kinda drunk on the wine. But dead serious. I'm going to "settle down" with all my friends, k? That's okay, right?



July 12, 2011

So here I am, sitting in Starbucks, drinking sugarless coffee with milk. It's 2:30 in the afternoon, and I'm on a 3 hour break. I sit here wondering about a lot of things, mainly, what my plans are for the near and distant future. I ponder over my work skills, and wonder, not for the first time, if I'm truly adequate. I wonder if there was something that I missed, or I wonder what I forgot to tell the new girl that I'm training. I worry, not for the first time, over getting through the remainder of my shift without looking like an idiot. It's strange that i would worry about something so often, considering I've worked at this job for almost 8 months. I guess I worry more so now because the manager who would tell me about all of my shortcomings is back from maternity leave. I don't resent the criticism, but rather, I feel that without strict guidance for so long, my abilities thus far will fall short of her expectations.

I suppose in truth, it doesn't really matter, since I will be moving back to Saskatchewan in little over a month. It REALLY doesn't matter if in fact I never work as a waitress again, especially if I graduate in the coming year. So why the anxiety?

That brings up the next step in my near future - the big move back. A detachment from the majority of our accumulated things. A detachment from our new friends, the new connections that we've made, and most important of all, a detachment from our cat! I think the coming school year will be a difficult one, in that we will have to live our lives as guests, living off the goodwill of others. We will have to experience momentary unattachment. Perhaps I shall develop a better "Buddha nature". At the very least, perhaps without as many distractions, I'll be better able to focus on my schooling. On the subject, university is something I've been thinking about a lot. For example, what could I do for a thesis that would truly be beneficial? What could I do within such a short time frame? I guess a 8 months is a decent amount of time, but I bet it won't feel so long with everything that I'll have to do.

Rambling. I tend to do that a lot lately. Further along in the future, I have many decisions to make once I graduate. Where will I go for graduate school? Do we move back to Halifax? How will I find a job in my field? How will I decide what exactly I want to strive for in my field? And what about our plans for building a sustainable farm? Am I wasting my time trying to become a psychologist? Should I give up now and work towards building this farm now? Of course, that would be ridiculous - you need money start anything that big, money that I don't currently have. I suppose there are worse things than having a doctorate to fall back on. Assuming I can get a doctorate.

There are a lot of things I have to plan for in the future. The best thing I suppose is to simply plan ahead for what I can, and not fall into the habit of worrying about it all. If it's been planned for, what more can I do? Worrying accomplishes nothing besides increasing my stress levels. I'll take every bit of criticism I get as something to learn from, and also something to pass on to others as well. I'm ready to go back to Saskatchewan, but I'm still enjoying my time here as well, so I'll make it my goal to get through this time enjoyably. Waiting is silly. The future is in the future. This moment is happening right now, and if I spend this moment waiting for something, then the experience becomes meaningless. This moment, I drink sugarless coffee with milk, write a note in my blog, and then read a psychology magazine to keep my mind sharp. I'll enjoy the misty rain from the inside of this building, and I'll try to find some measure of peace.

9:30p.m.
Alright, so I could have done better at my job tonight. I haven't been very diligent about going over my mistakes before work. Through the process of elimination I discovered that by writing out a list of my common mistakes and reading through it before my shift, I tend to make fewer mistakes. I didn't do that today, and consequently made more mistakes. I guess I just wanted to go to work and.not have to do "homework" everyday. Tomorrow I shall know better.

On a slightly happier note, while I was waiting for the bus, some random person gave me a flower ^_^ that made me happy.



2011, Sunday, June 5, 11:30PM
Weather: was sunny today! with blue skies!
No work today!
Mood: content
Reading: Just finished Dracula by Bram Stoker
Word of the day: malapropism

I don't really feel like writing that much today, but I finished reading Dracula. There were a few days when there were a lot of sunshine instead of rain and coud, which was nice. I haven't been keeping up with making a note of weather and whatever every day. I just haven't really felt like it, lol.

I had sushi today with my husband and our upstairs neighbour. It was nice ^_^. I like splurging on good food every now and then.

That's it for now



2011, Friday, May 27, 10:30PM
Weather: foggy, cloudy, tried to be sunny for a little bit
Worked: 12 hours
Mood: was irate earlier, but I'm in a good mood now
Reading: Dracula by Bram Stoker
Word of the day: saturnine

Saturnine is an adjective descriptive of someone/something that is sluggish in temperament, gloomy, etc. Or suffering from lead poisoning.

Earlier today I was irritated more than usual by people and their abruptness; their tendency to cut me off when I'm saying something; to, in essence, walk away from me when I haven't finished talking; and the complete refusal to enunciate. Uhh..no...I'm not talking about work...

I'm in a good mood now though after coming home from working at the restaurant. I tried employing the mental imagination technique, but I would have to not suck several days in a row, especially on busy days, for it to really mean anything. Of course, this isn't a completely valid experiment, because I've also decided that it would be a good idea to get a decent night's sleep, and to load up on B vitamins and caffeine before going to work, lol. I figure if I get enough sleep, my working memory capacity will be greater and I'll be less likely to screw up so often, lol.

That's it for now - it's late, and I want to get some sleep, lol. Oyasuminasai!



2011, Monday, May 23
Weather: partly cloudy
Worked: not today!
Mood: Anxious
Reading: Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden
Word of the day: connubial

Connubial - of or pertaining to marriage. I just finished reading Memoirs of a Geisha today. It was a really good book! And I have to say that the book is way better than the movie. I thought for a while when I was reading the book that the movie stuck fairly closely to the plotline of the book. To some extent it did, but I watched the movie again the other day, and there were a lot of things that were just not mentioned, or that they changed just a little bit. It was really upsetting, though. [Spoiler alert!] Throughout the whole book, Sayuri did everything in her power to be with the Chairman, and the best that ever came out of that was to be his mistress, since he was already married. It just seemed like everyone got the shit end of the stick. Pumpkin didn't get to be the adopted daughter of the okiya. Sayuri became the adopted daughter, but eventually cut all ties with Okaa-san and moved to the States. Hatsumomo disappeared somewhere and probably ended up as a prostitute. Nobu didn't get the girl of his dreams, and the Chairman had to basically keep the woman he loved in the shadows. And what about the Chairman's wife? I'd hate to think how SHE felt through all of this. But then, maybe having a mistress wasn't that big of a deal in Japan during the 40's and 50's. I think the person I feel most sorry for though is Chiyo's father. That was probably the saddest part of the book - learning about how his previous family died, and now is family was being taken away from him all over again.

Going back again to the book about Wicca, I remember there being a question about how it all works. I don't even remember what the answer was in the book, but I do remember that I didn't particularly agree with it. But, I think I have a good idea of how magic really works (of course, it's just an opinion).

Okay. We have in our minds a mental representation of the world around us. We have mental maps of the places we've been. In these maps, not only do we have information about the spatial layout, but we also have other information, such as the emotional associations we've made with the environment. For example, you have in your mind the spatial representation of your apartment, or house or whatever. You can bring to mind this area, you can navigate your way through this area with ease because you have this mental map in your head. You know where you are, you know where your things are, and you could probably find your way around in the dark. But this isn't just any apartment or house. This is your home. This is the place where you return at the end of the day, and feel relaxed, comforted, loved, whatever. Whatever emotions you've felt in this place have been encoded into your memory along with the spatial layout, along with the episodic memories, etc. So with that, this place has meaning to you. The same is true of everywhere else you've ever been. Your mind encodes all of this information and basically creates a world within your mind. Now, of course there isn't an ACTUAL world inside your head. It is just a representation of everything you've ever experienced.

Not only do places have meaning to us, but also objects. The things within our environment also carry emotional weight. A pen isn't just any pen if it's your favourite pen. A guitar isn't just a guitar if it was given to you by a significant other. Of course, the objects themselves, as they exist in the "real" world so to speak, don't have any special qualities in and of themselves. We make them special in our minds, and it is the representation of those objects in our mind that have significance.

Now let's apply this to the idea of magic, starting with sacred objects and spaces. When you purify an object, or purify an area, nothing happens to the actual area/object outside of ourselves. We are merely affecting the mental representation we have in our minds. I'm not saying that these actions of purification are meaningless or pointless. We react differently to an environment based on how we feel about it; based on how we perceive that environment. By purifying the area or object, we free the area/object from our own personal negativity.

When one performs rituals, one is not changing the world outside of oneself. The world affected is the one represented in the person's mind. Let's say a person performs a spell to protect him/herself from evil spirits. The person performs a series of actions in order to purify the space, call upon the powers that be, and envisions a forcefield of energy that protects the person from evil. In my opinion, I would say that the person is not actually creating a physical wall of energy outside of him/herself, but rather, is creating a mental barrier to protect him/herself from his/her own projected negativity. The physical actions that the person does merely helps the person create this inner, mental barrier in the same way that scientists use models of atoms to help them understand the behaviour of atoms. What do I mean by this? Well, the mind is pretty abstract, and so is this mental representation of the world. Actions like dance performed in a ritual make the "magic" a little more concrete. The person performs the actions in the outer, physical world, setting up the sacred space in the other, physical world, but the world that is affected is the one reperesented in our minds.

I don't know; that's just something that has been floating in my head lately. It's the most exciting thing I could think to write about, haha!

Come to think of it though, the week hasn't been completely uneventful. I finally got around to inviting a couple people from work over for food and socializing on Sunday. We had Wren and our roommate here, as well as our upstairs neighbour too. It was a lot of fun! I'm happy that I've actually made a couple more friends here in Halifax. I have a really hard time inviting people out to do things unless they've already invited me out to do things before. It's not that I'm worried that other people don't like me. I don't care if other people don't like me, but what I worry about is that they might not like me but they'll put up with hanging out with me "to be nice" and suffer through the whole ordeal! I just don't want to be the reason why people feel awkward, lol. Anyway, as I was saying, it was a lot of fun ^_^ We had a barbecue, and the steak we made turned out perfectly ^_^. We also enjoyed cheesecake and caramilk cake for dessert - it was sooo good! It was nice to have the opportunity to just relax, eat good food, and laugh and joke around with the people we've met out here. I'm excited for next weekend, since we're celebrating Kevin's b-day ^_^.

I guess at least I should explain why I feel anxious. I had a somewhat tough day at work on Saturday. I feel like crap because I kept screwing up, but it was things that I've been told to do or to not do before, and I'm so frustrated with myself for just not getting it, you know? It's not like I try to suck at my job, and it's not like I try to make mistakes. It's just really frustrating that I haven't lived up to my own expectations (let alone my boss's). Maybe it's just that there are so many things to remember, and I haven't made a good enough effort to remember them all. I should make up a list of all the things that I've been doing wrong lately, and imagine myself doing those actions correctly. Earlier, I found that simply memorizing a list of things that needed to be written in for both kitchen and sushi dind't help me to remember to write them in for both. If you asked me which ones needed to be written in for both, I could list them all off perfectly, but when it came to doing it, I would forget to write it in for one or the other. Then, I tried imagining writing the item down for sushi, then kitchen, and I did that for every item at least once before every shift. Since then, I haven't forgotten that. So maybe I just need to apply that to the other things that I forget to do, or do incorrectly. Another one of my problems is that when I get really anxious, or we're really busy (which would cause me to become more anxious), I tend to panic when I have many things that need to happen at once and I sometimes do things in the wrong order. Perhaps imagining these scenarios, and imagining myself doing the correct action, would also help. It's a shame that I've not only taken a class on Human Memory, but also tutored another student in Human Memory, and yet I'm finding so much difficulty in applying that knowledge to help me when it really matters. You would think that if I couldn't apply the knowledge I learned in that class to this everyday situation (that probably many other people deal with as well), then I've perhaps already failed as a psychologist. Okay. I'm going to work on the imagination techniques. Let's see how this week at work goes. Don't wish me luck; wish me success. If I do better because of luck, I've gained nothing. If I do better because the imagination techniques actually worked, then maybe I'll have something I can share with others.

Oyasuminasai!



2011, Sunday, May 22
Weather: Overcast, a little bit of sun at the end of the day
Worked: not today!
Reading: Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden

2011, Saturday, May 21
Weather: foggy/overcast/rainy
Worked: 13 hours
Reading: Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden

2011, Friday, May 20
Weather: foggy/overcast/rainy
Worked: 13 hours
Reading: Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden

2011, Thursday, May 19
Weather: overcast
Worked: 8 hours
Reading: Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden

2011, Wednesday, May 18
Weather: foggy/overcast
Worked: 8 hours
Reading: Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden

2011, Tuesday, May 17
Weather: overcast
Worked: 13 hours
Reading: Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden

2011, Monday, May 16
Weather: overcast
Worked: not today!
Reading: Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden

2011, Sunday, May 15
Weather: overcast
Worked: not today!
Reading: Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden

2011, Saturday, May 14
Weather: Overcast/trying to be sunny
Worked: 2.25 hours
Mood: happy
Reading: Wicca: A Guide for the Solitary Practitioner by Scott Cunningham
Word of the day: evanescence

Yay! My work week is done! It was pretty cool, I got sent home early from the restaurant because we weren't really that busy. I suppose everyone who would have come in today came yesterday because it was Friday the 13th, lol. Not because of the nature of the day itself, but perhaps because people were like, "hey, it's friday the 13th! let's do something cool!" or something.

On Thursday, I managed to somehow stab myself in the elbow with a pencil. I think it was sticking out of the pocket in my apron and the lead became lodged in the side of my arm! I pulled it out and it was fine, but that was an odd injury to get at work, lol.

How does a person remember to remember something? It seems as though the main problem I have when working at the restaurant is that I forget to do something, or I get distracted and then I forget to put half the order in, haha. So, in a fast paced environment where there is a lot of background noise, and one is often interrupted during one's task, how does one remember actions that need to be done in the future? I think that if I am to be a psychologist some day, this is the type of question I should be able to answer. Well, I've already improved in one area. I used to forget to put things into both kitchen and sushi when an order required it - I would put it in for one, but I would sometimes forget to put it in for the other. I had tried listing the things in my head every day before work that needed to go in for both kitchen and sushi, but to no avail. Then, I tried visualizing the action of writing the word down for kitchen and sushi, and going over the visualization for each item at least once or twice before work. I seem to have had some success - lately I haven't forgotten to write things in for both kitchen and sushi. Yay! Now to improve in more areas. I think the next thing I have to work on is controlling my anxiety. If I'm anxious, I tend to forget things more often. I should also try to trust my own knowledge more often, and, for heaven's sake, use my head! lol. I'm sooo scatterbrained!

I flipped through The Book of Spells by Micheal Johnstone the other day. On the whole I was largely unimpressed. From my perspective, I think the spells written in that book were somewhat...um...superfluous. By that I mean that you have all of these things that you need, and ingredients, etc. and then you get to the end of the spell and it contains the actual thing that makes the spell work - action. I suppose the spell iteself isn't ENTIRELY unnecessary. It puts you in the frame of mind to be more aware of the things in your environment that would lead to said spell having some effect, or to change your own behaviour in order for the spell to work (for example, if you conduct a love spell, you're not going to just sit at home and wait for love to drop in on your doorstep, but you'll go out, you'll meet people, and your expectation that the spell will work will instill confidence in your actions and demeanour so that the people of the opposite sex around you might notice you more...or something to that effect). If you conduct a spell to get rid of your debt, chances are you'll try a little harder to pay your bills rather than spending money all the time (especially if part of the spell tells you to cut up your credit cards, lol). On the whole, I think that the "magic" behind spells is just self-fulfilling prophecy, coupled with hindsight bias. What do I mean by that? The expectations you have influences the outcome. Why else would you need to design a double-blind experiment? We already know that the expectations an experimenter has will influence the results of the experiment, so, naturally, it is also possible that the expectations of the spell-caster influences the results of the spell. In the case of hind-sight bias, perhaps the spell-caster merely forgets about the times the spell didn't work, only remembering the times that it did, and thus comes to the conclusion that the spell always works. Of course, this is just my opinion; my hypothesis. I haven't tested it, so I can't say definitively that the effectiveness of a spell is psychological.

There is a difference between witch craft and wicca as a religion. Wiccans may practice "magic", but not all people who practice "magic" are wiccans. According to the book I'm reading now, the Wicca religion is a form of shamanistic religion based heavily in nature. It seems very similar to eastern religions, such as Chinese Folk Religion (I use this for comparison because I took a class on it, not necessarily because it's the closest in relation), and a bit of Taoism. It's a very interesting read. I shall discuss this more later, but that's it for now!



2011, Friday, May 13
Weather: Overcast/rainy
Worked: 13 hours
Reading: Wicca: A Guide for the Solitary Practitioner by Scott Cunningham



2011, Thursday, May 12
Weather: Overcast/rainy
Worked: 13 hours
Reading: Wicca: A Guide for the Solitary Practitioner by Scott Cunningham



2011, Wednesday, May 11
Weather: Overcast/rainy
Worked: 8 hours
Reading: Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind by Shunryu Suzuki



2011, Tuesday, May 10
Weather: Overcast/rainy
Worked: 12.5 hours
Reading: Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind by Shunryu Suzuki



2011, Monday, May 9
Weather: Overcast/rainy
Worked: 8 hours
Reading: Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind by Shunryu Suzuki



2011, Sunday, May 8, 10:30P.M.
Weather: Overcast/rainy
No work today ^_^
Mood: content, but somewhat resigned (at no longer having a day off tomorrow, haha)
Reading: gave up on Quantum Questions, finished The Time Machine by H.G. Wells, and about to start Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind by Shunryu Suzuki
Word of the day: lugubrious

I just realized that I used lugubrious incorrectly the other day. I, for some reason, thought it meant something more akin to lethargic, but no. According to dictionary.com, it is an adjective meaning "mournful, dismal, or gloomy, especially in an affected, exaggerated, or unrelieved manner". I might be prone to sullenness and sulkiness, but I have not recently been mournful, dismal, or gloomy. Therefore, I have not been lugubrious.

Finally!! A bloody day off! And wouldn't you know it? Although I was supposed to have two days off, I agreed to go into work tomorrow. Oh well.

Speaking of more hours of work, I've gotten a couple extra days at the restaurant as well! So instead of the normal 50 hours a week, I get approximately 60 hours, lol. Not that I'm complaining. The extra money will be nice. Or rather, necessary in order to save up in case I do go to the UofS this coming fall. I still have to wait another month before I find out if I'm going or not. Ugh.

I gave up reading Quantum Questions because after reading 80-some pages, I felt as though there was nothing more I could really gain from it. The main point of the book was summarized in the introduction. The rest consisted of writings from many well-known physicists who were also mystics. Overall, my impression of the book was that it was somewhat interesting, but on the whole wordy and rather pointless. The question was whether physics could prove or disprove religion (which it could not). You would have the same result if you tried to explain away psychology using the laws of physics. Anyway, I had to reread several paragraphs just to understand what exactly the author was trying to say, and after all that, I didn't really remember what I just read. Hence, I decided my reading the rest of the book was fruitless and gave up. On to more interesting reading!

I read through all of The Time Machine today. Short book, interesting, but somehow disappointing. I think I had simply come in expecting the book to be better than it was. Maybe it was just the way it was told. The whole story was told from the point of view of someone external to events. Basically, the Time Traveller, unnamed except for this title, tells the story of how he travelled forward in time and back again. The perspective you as the reader take is as one of the people this Time Traveller is speaking to. As the reader, you're not really experiencing this time travel, but rather, you're experience is that of sitting in a room with a bunch of other people listening to this guy tell this epic story. It was an interesting way of telling the story, but I was somewhat disappointed by it. I had also seen the movie several years ago, and although I can't remember much of anything from the movie, I have this impression in my mind of the movie being better than the book. I'm not even sure if it actually is or not, it's just the impression I get.

It's amazing what a good night's sleep can do for a person! Since I slept for about 10 hours before my long day, I was good! I was awake, and on top of things! I didn't feel exhausted after work. I could understand a little more of what the author was trying to convey in Quantum Questions than I could when I was tired and reading it. I should probably get more sleep than I usually do, but think of all the reading I've accomplished by staying up that extra hour or two! lol. Maybe when I go back to university, I'll make a point of getting more sleep. That'll probably work for the first month, and then when I realize how far behind I am in my reading I'll be sleepless for the next couple months while I try to catch up, haha!

I said I was going to properly explain the word "noumenon", and now I shall. Accepting that there is a "real" reality out there, and also accepting that what we personally experience can only ever be an approximation of that reality, noumenon would refer to the "real" reality whereas phenomenon would refer to the approximation of reality that we experience. Noumenon refers to the object as it exists separate from the mind; separate from observation, perception, and interpretation. And, on the note of defining things, a simpler definition of "ontology" would be "the study of being (what is the nature of the phenomena being investigated)" - as taken from my notes in the Qualitative Study of Lives (PSY 323 at the UofS).

I've decided that I really like Kimchi. I bought a whole tub of it today. I'm pretty excited about it, but at the same time, I'm worried about constantly smelling of garlic, haha! I had kimchi soup at a restaurant today, though, and it was super good. I'm hoping that boiling some of the kimchi in broth will make an equally tasty soup as the one we had at the restaurant. Just need to pick up some tofu, hehe.

Well, that's it for tonight! Oyasuminasai ^_^



2011, May 7; Saturday
Weather: Overcast/rainy
Worked today: 13 hours
Reading: Quantum Questions - Ken Wilber

Again, didn't write today. I spent my time between the two jobs reading, and then after working at the restaurant, I hung out with a couple of the waitresses. I was pretty tired after coming home so, once again, I didn't bother to write anything. Thus ends my twelfth day in a row working.



2011, May 6; Friday
Weather: Sunny!!
Worked today: 8 hours
Reading: Quantum Questions - Ken Wilber

I was too tired to actually write today. After work I napped on the couch while trying to read, and then I gave up and went to bed around 7pm and slept until the next day.



2011, May 5; Thursday
Weather: overcast/rainy
Worked today: 8 hours
Reading: Quantum Questions - Ken Wilber

Just making a note; I didn't actually write today



2011, May 4, 10P.M.; Wednesday
Weather: drizzly
Worked today: 8 hours
Mood: exhausted
Currently Reading: Quantum Questions - Ken Wilber
Word of the day: ontology, tautology

Tautology is needless repetition. An example would be saying a widow woman, when obviously a widow is a woman and using the word woman offers no new information. I suppose a synonym would be redundancy. If you're talking about logic, It would be a statement where any outcome would be correct: "the candidate will either win or will not win". Another fun one, "it's not perfect until it's perfect". The definition of ontology, taken from dictionary.com, is "(From philosophy) An explicit formal specification of how to represent the objects, concepts and other entities that are assumed to exist in some area of interest and the relationships that hold among them."

A lady came through the drive thru today and offered me a box with picture frames on 5 sides. It looks pretty nice. Just totally random!

Once again, no donuts today.

I don't really feel like writing much today, so perhaps more next time! Bai bai!



2011, May 3, 11:30P.M.; Tuesday
Weather: rainy
Worked today: 13 hours
Mood: okay, but really tired
Currently Reading: Quantum Questions - Ken Wilber
Word of the day: Noumenon, trenchant

I don't have a lot of time left tonight, so I won't bother trying to explain what noumenon means tonight. I don't understand the dictionary definition, so tomorrow I will research and determine the meaning of "noumenon". Trenchant is "incisive or keen, as language or a person"; "vigorous, effective, energetic"; "clearly or sharply defined" as cited from dictionary.com.

I had a muffin yesterday since I didn't have a banana, but the muffin is slightly better than the donut because it contains more vitamins, haha. Today I had neither muffin nor donut - just a bagel and a banana. I wonder if there's a similar thing like, have a banana a day, keep the doctor away, kinda thing. Why do I bother writing what I had to eat at work? Simply to guilt myself into eating just a tiny bit healthier. If I publish my blog to the internet, there's the possibility of someone judging what I write. That possibility alone is enough to add just that tiny little motivation to practice some self restraint. Or at least, that's the answer I've come up with so far.

Might be getting more hours at the restaurant, which is cool. I'll have less free time, and I'll be pretty freaking exhausted 3 days out of the week, but it means extra money. And besides, what else am I going to do with my time?

The book I'm reading right now deals with the question of whether science, or rather, modern physics can prove or disprove mysticism. Or rather, it establishes that modern physics offers no positive proof for mysticism, yet, many of the great physicists were mystics themselves. I haven't read very far into it, but it looks really interesting. It does read a bit like a philosophy textbook, though, so it might take me longer to read than the other books. I'll write a review of it when I finish ^_^ (a half-assed review, anyway).

I forgot to mention my adventures on Monday! After being called into work, and successfully completing an 8 hour shift, I was very productive. Kev and I went to vote. We also went shopping for some books, and I managed to find the next book of the Wheel of Time. I'm going to hold off on reading it, though. I want to read all the books I've bought over the past couple years and never bothered to actually read. I also got a new battery for the watch that I thought I had lost. I had been quite upset over that. It was a grad present from my aunt and uncle, and is the first watch I've ever owned that actually looked nice. Several months ago, I thought it had bounced out of my pocket while I was walking home from the grocery store. Only recently, Kev discovered that it had been in the pocket of a hoodie hiding in the back of the closet. He put it through the washing machine, but after getting a new battery, it works just fine. I was so happy! It was good that I lost it for a little while though. I'm not quite so obsessive about the time. And, I've managed to live my life according to real time. My watch had always been set 10 minutes ahead of the rest of the world so that even if I was late by my watch, I was still on time by someone else's, lol. Then I lost my watch and I didn't bother to set all my other clocks ahead. Now, I can be on time even if my watch isn't set fast. Speaking of time, I no longer press the snooze button for at least an hour in the morning, lol. I've gotten to the point where I only press it twice. Hopefully I don't annoy the neighbours as much anymore. Not like they've ever complained before, but I can imagine it would be extremely annoying to hear an alarm clock go off every 10 minutes between 5 and 7 in the morning, haha. I'm making very slow, very small changes. I moved out here thinking that life would be different; that it would be easier to live a better lifestyle. But it seems that even after moving, I have to change myself first. I still have to make healthy choices, regardless of what food is offered for free at my job, etc. I've had a lot of free time out here, but only over the past couple months have I done anything remotely productive (like reading books I've been meaning to read).

I'm tired, and I'm hungry, so I'm going to take off for now. Bai bai!



2011, May 2, 6:30P.M.; Monday
Weather: was rainy, now just overcast; 9 degrees celcius
Worked today: 8 hours
Mood: content
Currently Reading: Quantum Questions - Ken Wilber
Word of the day: Hado

A word of note: I didn't update yesterday because I didn't feel very well when I got home from work. So, for the record, yesterday, the weather was overcast, I worked 4 hours (was called in to work at the restaurant), my mood was content for the better part of the day (until I got a headache), and I had finished reading The Secret Life of Water.

Yesterday was a fairly good day. Kevin woke me up at 5am (on my day off, mind) to go and have a campfire on the lake. It's too bad that the sky was overcast, otherwise we could have watched the sun rise, but it was still fairly nice. Scrambled eggs taste pretty good when they're cooked over a fire ^_^. It reminded me of when we went on our 5 day camping trip in Banff and Jasper. So cool that we can go "camping" right across the street, and then still come home to a hot shower and warm, comfy bed, hehe.

As mentioned, I finished reading The Secret Life of Water by Masaru Emoto. Emoto discusses the power of emotion and words to affect the crystalization patterns of water crystals. You may have heard reference to his work if you've watched the movie What the Bleep Do We Know? Since watching that movie I had been really interested in looking up Emoto's work, but have only recently had the opportunity to do so. After reading the book, I'm a little skeptical. I do agree with the basic message that one should project thoughts of kindness, love, and thankfulness towards nature and towards other people. I do agree that it is most beneficial to let nature do it's thing and to not interfere with the natural ecosystem. I disagree with the emphasis on prayer being the way in which people can affect the world. I'm not saying that it's entirely impossible that it would be effective to some degree. If anything, by praying for the betterment of the environment, you prime yourself for environmentally friendly thoughts, and you are more likely to choose environmentally friendly actions rather than not.

More than anything else, I am skeptical of the science behind this research. Emoto admits that "the selection process [of the photos of water crystals] is not strictly in accordance with the scientific method" (p. 130), and after taking Research Methods and Development at university, I would have to say this is somewhat of an understatement. Basically, he takes a sample of water and divides it into 50 petri dishes. Each of these is frozen to -25 degrees C and then examined and photographed under a microscope at -5 degrees C. Crystalization occurs during a two minute window of opportunity. The 50 photograps are grouped into seven categories: Beautiful, Rather beautiful, Hexagonal pattern, Radial pattern, Lattice pattern, Indefinite pattern, Collapsed pattern, and No crystal formation. Now, you would think that the picture chosen to represent the sample would come from the group with the most pictures, but that is not always the case. Not only are the group definitions subjective, but the selection of the most representative picture is also subjective. There is no way to control for the emotional state of the person taking the pictures. There are just so many variables one would have to control for, and many are not taken into account. In the end, I would say that his research would not be able to definitively say that emotions or words have any effect on the crystalization pattern of water.

It is important to point out, however, that although the researh might not be very scientific, our expectations have a huge impact on our perception. And although emotion directed at a bottle of water may or may not affect it's crystalization pattern, what emotion we project has a huge impact on the other people around us. Our emotion affects how we react to our environment. Your perception of that bottle of water would be different depending on the emotion you feel/project.

The long and short of it: the book is good, and although it fails to justify the concept in a truly scientific matter, the essential message of the book is the most important. How you feel towards your environment affects how you act towards the environment, thus affecting the environment itself. So, be thankful towards the environment, and to other people. Project feelings of goodwill instead of hate. Tell people words of encouragment rather than telling them that they're stupid. Be kind instead of hateful, and you WILL change the world around you and make your own environment just that much better.

On another note, hemp is pretty cool! It has many, many uses, such as making paper, fabric, oils, plastic, and biodeisel! There is a model of electric car to be released in 2013 that has a body made of HEMP! Check out this site for more info!

Well, off to Mowzie and Wren's for a night of socializing, bai bai for now!



2011, April 30, 11:45P.M.
Weather: Clear, nice and warm
Worked today: 7 hours
Mood: content, tired
Currently Reading: The Secret Life of Water - Masaru Emoto
Word of the day: Philtrum, Ubiquitous

Apparently, the vertical groove between the septum and the upper lip is called the philtrum. Random fact of the day, lol.

Today was an alright day. I really didn't want to get out of bed this morning, but then, who does want to get out of bed at 5:30am? lol. Day five of not having a donut at work! I ate a bagel, a banana, and drank two cups of coffee. I got curious and looked up the nutritional information on what I was consuming, and with the coffee, bagel, and banana, I intook approximately 700 calories. Considering that I would often eat two donuts as well, my total calorie intake while at work was 1200 - 1300. Not that it really means anything. I'm more interested in the amount of sugar I intake, and how many beneficial nutrients there are in my food. If I ate two glazed donuts as well as the coffee and the bagel and all that, I would intake over 100 grams of sugar every day, and that's just at work. If I don't have the donuts, I still consume close to 50 grams of sugar. According to this reference, the average person should limit one's intake of added sugar to 40 grams per day. Perhaps next week I should aim to use less sugar in my coffee. Or, I could bring in a squeeze bottle of honey and put honey in my coffee instead. I wonder how THAT would taste, lol. This site discusses at length the question of whether to use honey or sugar. I think I might actually do that.

I warned you that I would talk about what I had to eat every day. You thought I was joking, didn't you?

I finished reading Knife of Dreams! And now I have to wait until I buy the next books to continue reading the series -.- Oh well. I think I'll wait until I get paid next instead of splurging all my money, and read some of the other books I own but have yet to read.

It was super nice out today! I was too warm wearing a hoodie - it was awesome. I walked with Kev to the grocery store, and that was my adventure outside. I would have gone out to the lake, but I'm not much of an explorer, haha. Besides, I was in the middle of a dramatic part in my book, so I favored reading to being outside for a super long time. Yes, I'm that lame.

I'm super tired, so I'm going to bed. Oyasuminasai!



2011, April 29, 11:30P.M.
Weather: Rainy
Worked today: 8 hours
Mood: content, tired
Currently Reading: Knife of Dreams - Robert Jordan (book 11 of WOT)
Word of the day: dross, suet

Suet is the hard fat found around kidneys in cows and sheep. I read about a character from the Wheel of Time that was described as sitting in his saddle like a pile of suet. I just had to share that with you.

Fourth day without a donut! I didn't even have a muffin today! It's sad that I consider that an accomplishment, but there it is.

I've decided that vampires are beings that are infected with a type of protein that cannot be killed since the protein itself is not alive. Vampires don't burst into flames in sunlight - nor do they SPARKLE, god damn it! - but rather, they are very susceptible to sun burns. Maybe because the protein in the blood of a vampire reacts differently to sunlight. Or something. And it's not like they lose their soul and become creatures of evil. Can you really say that the average person has a "soul" to speak of? Anyway, because the person needs to consume blood (I haven't decided why yet), a person would have to get over their moral boundaries in order to stay alive. In the eyes of others, they might seem as evil, but rather, they're just higher up on the food chain. Some vampires might retain some morals and feed off the blood of animals instead, but not everyone does. Just some random imaginings. If I were to write a story about vampires, this would be the start of an explanation for how vampires exist. Like I'd ever commit to writing a story though. Ha!

Well, it's late. I just wanted to at least attempt this whole writing-something-every-day thing and see where it goes. Ta ta for now!



2011, April 28, 4P.M.
Weather: Rainy/Overcast; 11 degrees Celcius
Worked today: 8 hours
Mood: Irritable, hungry
Currently Reading: Knife of Dreams - Robert Jordan (book 11 of WOT)
Word of the Day: Petulant, Reminisce

I am going to try to write in my blog more often. Perhaps if I try to write something every day, I might have more to look back on and reminisce. Or I might have a lot of really boring entries that no one wants to read because they're all about the weather and what I ate for breakfast that morning or something stupid. I've had three cups of coffee, a bagel, banana, and a muffin so far. Lately, I've been eating a lot of donuts (at least 1 donut every day that I work at Tim's, and usually it's 2 donuts). Today is the third day in a row that I haven't eaten any donuts. I haven't worked on learning Japanese in several months, mainly because I've been busy reading the Wheel of Time. I also haven't played guitar or drawn anything for the same reason. I've been drinking wine with some frequency of late (by that, I mean a glass or two every Sunday when Wren comes to visit). I finally watched the final episode of Star Trek Voyager, and was quite satisfied with the ending. It seemed a little abrupt, considering the previous episodes didn't really lead up to the last one, but it turned out well regardless.

I feel envious of those who don't have to live by such strict deadlines. I have to pay rent by the end of the month. I have to pay certain bills at certain times. I am envious of the people that don't really have to care about whether or not they still have a job. Having responsibilities sucks. And it is such a slap in the face when other people my age can prioritize things like alcohol and whatever else above..say..rent, but only in principle. It's not like it REALLY matters...I'm just envious. ESPECIALLY of the little high school teenie boppers that have jobs but no responsibilities, lol. At the same time though, I'm pretty lucky. It's actually pretty hard to get a job out here, but I have two, and one of them is full time. I never have to worry about money, amazingly enough, so really, it's all okay. I'm just acting like a petulant child. Or wishing to be a petulant child? lol.

In other news, you may have noticed that I deleted all of my poetry from this site during the latest layout change. I also un-split all the blogs and deleted most of it. I never updated the other "blogs" anyway, so there was no point in keeping them. I haven't read through my poetry in YEARS, mostly because I'm embarrassed by it. I was trying to be all deep and emotional when I was younger, but most of the time I was writing about things I didn't even feel simply because that's what I thought good poetry was about. So I deleted it. I deleted the artcam thing too, because that was stupid. Maybe a little neat, but still stupid, and an epic waste of time to watch.

Life is hard. I'm sick of waiting to find out whether I'm going to school or not. I'm sick of waiting for my real career to be able to happen. People I graduated with in high school are already starting their careers as teachers and legal assistants and whatever else, while I'm STILL going to be in school. And then what about after that? How do I even go about finding a decent job? Oh well. :P

S'pose that's enough for today. Bai bai.



2011, April 27, 11P.M.
First update of 2011...nearly five months into the year, haha! Well, I've been busy. Or pre-occupied. Or just lazy. Take your pick, lol. In catch up, not much has changed over the past several months. Amazingly enough, I still work at both Tim's and the Japanese restaurant. I haven't been fired from the restaurant yet, despite my last post, although I'm still probably not as skilled as I should be *sigh*. Oh well. I'm not really sure how the next few months will go. I might be getting a promotion at Tim's, but then I might not. There might still be the opportunity for full time hours at the restaurant, but I'm beginning to suspect it's unlikely. Of course, I can't entertain both opportunities at once, and there's no guarantee that either possibility will blossom. I'm also waiting to find out if I've been accepted into the Honours program at the UofS. If I am accepted, we'll be going back to Sask for a few months so I can finish my bachelors. There are so many things that I'm uncertain of, and all I can do is wait.

Meanwhile, I've immersed myself in the Wheel of Time series by Robert Jordan. I am currently on Book 11 out of 14. When I started reading it, I was sure that the series had been completed, but I just recenly found out that the 14th book won't be released until 2012! And the 13th book is sure to leave off with at least eight cliffhangers...oh woe! I had powered through books 4 - 10 thinking I'd finish the series by the summer, but now I've lost my enthusiasm. I guess that's probably a good thing in terms of productivity - that's part of the reason why I haven't updated my website lately. Or drawn anything. Oh well. I still plan to read up to book 13 before summer, and I plan to read a few more books before university starts.

Weather, mild, but icy. Snow's gone now, grass is turning green, while snow still falls in Sask. Pretty sweet. Not too social, but more so now that my friends here are done with university for the summer. Beyond that, my life's not very interesting. I work, I read, I sleep.

I've FINALLY updated the layout, and changed the basic formatting that I've used for the past several years. No more iframes, and the font size is no longer fixed with css coding. I decided to change these things because the desktop is hooked up to our tv, and it's hard to read font when it's really small. I wanted to be able to change the font size in the browser without having to zoom the whole page. I took out the iframes because, after trying to view this site on an android phone, I realized that iframes were not supported. I'm still not completely done updating, but this will be all for tonight. I do have to work early in the morning.

Until next time! Ja ne!



2010, December 20, 1:30P.M.
I'm really bad at staying on top of this updating thing, lol. I didn't even upload the last post, so really, I haven't updated in 3 months. Oops! First things first...Vegas! I shall tell you about our exciting adventures in Vegas!

It was a cold -10 degrees Celcius when we got out of bed and piled ourselves into the car at 4a.m. Thursday morning. Poor Kev wasn't able to get very much sleep the night before, so I was the one to drive to the airport. We printed off our tickets, went through security, and grabbed some coffee and tea from Tim's while we waited for the plane. I was excited - we were FINALLY doing it! We were finally on our way to Las Vegas, after talking about it for so long. The plane ride was somewhat uneventful, although when we stopped over in Montreal, we had to be rushed through security and customs since our next plane was already boarding when we got off the first plane. I watched Toy Story 3, without any sound because I was too cheap to buy headphones, lol. I got the gist of what was going on, and remarked to myself that perhaps the reason why children like such movies is because the actions are very animated, and it's easy to tell what's going on even if you haven't learned enough of the english language to truly understand everything. LoL, the things you'd never think about until you were forced to watch a movie without any sound.

After 7 long hours, we arrived in Las Vegas 4 hours after we left Halifax. It was bright and sunny, and a disappointing 5 - 10 degrees Celcius. I was hoping that it would have been a lot warmer. We took a cab to the MGM Grand, and after a little confusion, made our way to the hotel room. Kev's parents weren't expecting us quite so early, because a few days before, I misread the plane itinerary and thought we'd be arriving at 10pm instead of 10am, lol. Fortunately, they were still at the hotel, and we were able to meet up and make plans for the day. We grabbed some authentic American fast food (lol), checked out some of the other nearby hotels, and marvelled at the fact that the hotels were bigger than the malls back home (with more places to shop than the malls back home, too!) Kev and I didn't do any souvenier shopping - only shopping for necessities like deodorant, lol. In the evening, Kev's parents went to see the Cirque de Solie while Kev and I tasted some fancy drinks at one of the many bars in the MGM Grand. And, after a long day, we were asleep by 9pm. In Vegas. But, I feel completely justified because it was midnight our time and we'd both been up since 4am, and with little sleep. The next day we went for breakfast at the Rainforest Cafe or whatever it was called. It was a pretty decent breakfast. After breakfast, we all headed out and took the bus down to the Riviera so I could pick up some tickets for the Dao performance. For future reference, if you ever go to Vegas and want to travel along the strip, take the bus. TAKE THE BUS, god damn it! It's WAY cheaper than taking a taxi, and the buses run every 15 minutes or something. It costs $7 to ride the bus ALL DAY. After picking up the Dao tickets for Kev's mom and myself, we all decided to walk all the way back to the MGM Grand, and stop at all the neat attractions along the way. My favourite that we stopped at was the Venice Hotel (or whatever it's actually called). It was so cool! walking through it reminded me of my trip to Italy. And the way the ceiling was painted, it looked like the clouds were moving as you walked. It may be that the ceiling was painted with two layers so that there'd be a parallax effect (i think this term would be correct in this context) as you walked through the mall/hotel. We visited a chocolate store while we were there too, and I spoiled myself a little and bought myself some chocolate :) There were other places that we visited, but The Venice Hotel was the only one really worth mentioning, lol.

We returned to the MGM Grand and grabbed something to eat. With only a couple hours until the Roger Waters concert that Kev and his dad were going to, and the Dao performance that Kev's mom and I were going to, we soon parted ways and went to our respective performances. The Dao production was very good. It made me feel bad about my own physical capabilities because I will probably never have that level of balance or acrobatic skill. I should take up martial arts again and at least develop some basic ability and physical fitness, lol. Anyway, the performance featured martial arts and dance, feats of balance such as spinning plates and umbrellas, as well as stacking chairs at angles and balancing on top of the chairs. There was also a part where they "threw" knives at a person from the audience - although really, they just made him think that they threw knives by blindfolding him, and then popping the balloons without actually throwing the knives. It was very funny to watch. After the performance, we walked by a bar that had a live jazz band playing, so we stopped for a bit to watch that. It was super cool :). Once we got back to the MGM, Kev and I went to hang out at some of the bars. We did jello shots, drank martinis (I drank martinis, he drank beer), and gambled at the penny machines. I was pretty tired, though, so we went back rather early (before midnight, anyway).

The next day, Kev and I decided to do our own thing for a bit, and we walked down to the Mirage hotel to check out Sigfried and Roy's Secret Garden. I got to see dolphins and white tigers and lions. It was so cool! They were so cute! I took a bunch of pictures, and hopefully I'll get them up soon. After seeing the Secret Garden, we stuck around at the Mirage hotel and checked out a store that had a bunch of autographed merchandise and posters and stuff. It was all pretty expensive, although if I had disposable income, I totally would have gotten the autographed collage from the Lord or the Rings, or perhaps one from the Matrix. We then stopped for some food, which turned out to be really tasty. After filling up on some good food, we made our way back to the MGM Grand, taking pictures along the way. We killed some time at the penny slot machines, and had a drink at the one martini bar that we had been frequenting the entire trip (and were served by a terrible waitress - perhaps she was new), and then headed off to see Zumanity - the sensual version of Cirque de Solie, lol. It was actually a very entertaining production. It was kind of weird though to see a production where everyone was topless or very scantily clad the whole time, lol. They were very talented and acrobatic though, so despite the toplessness I think it was a very respectable production, hehe.

Following the Zumanity production, we wandered around for a bit more. I was unfortunately very tired though, so I went to bed pretty early once again. The next day was the day we were to head back, so we packed up our stuff, headed for the airport, and we were on our way back to Halifax. This time, I caved and bought some headphones, and watched Eat Pray Love on the way back. It was interesting, and made me think about my desire to travel more, but I can't say that I REALLY liked the movie. It would fit more into the "slice of life" genre since it wasn't necessarily one contained storyline but had a lot of elements to it. It wasn't very climactic or exciting, but it was still a good movie. After that, I watched part of a documentary about ...something religious, lol. It was very interesting, but I don't want to talk about it for fear of embarrassing myself by telling you the wrong things, lol. I'll have to find it and watch it again, lol.

After returning from Vegas, I was so excited to have a whole day off (since before Vegas, I had worked for 14 days straight, lol), but unfortunately, I spent the better part of the day puking my guts out. May have had something to do with the leftover week-old pasta I ate the night before, or it may just be that I contracted a stomach flu virus while in Vegas. I wasn't feeling terribly well on the plane ride back to Halifax, so that may also be the case.

Over the next couple of weeks, things were going pretty well between the two jobs. I had taken mondays off from Tim's, and since the restaurant is closed mondays, I was guaranteed to have one whole day off a week to relax. And I was starting to catch onto things fairly well at the new job, so I felt a little less anxious about going to work. The past week didn't go so well though. It was tough when there was only me and one other waitress, and I was trying to take on more tables so that I could at least be competent. But it was fairly busy, and I kept making stupid mistakes and being a general clusterfuck. Then, just the other day, I forgot to ring things in on a couple different orders, which ended up eating into a fair bit of my tips. On top of that, I realized that I had been ringing in a certain dish incorrectly and thus undercharging people. The one owner was super mad at me for that, and said it was obvious I hadn't studied the menu. That hurt, because I DID study the menu, it's just that the take out menu (which is the one she gave me to take home) didn't have everything that the actual menu has on it. And, even though I've obviously seen the full menu when giving it to people and seeing them point to the things that they want, I didn't look at the prices because I assumed I wouldn't need to know that. And, I'm pretty sure I just misremembered what I was supposed to ring in for the one particular item. I know I was shown the right way to begin with, but I must have just forgotten and created a new memory of the incorrect way..etc. etc. Anyway, I wasn't worried about the fact that I had to pay for the incorrectly rung in orders or the missed orders so much as the fact that I looked like a total idiot and had let down the owners of the restaurant. Needless to say, I can't quit my day job yet, lol. I just wish I wasn't so forgetful, and that I could be better at my job. I really like working there, but that doesn't mean that they necessarily like me working there. I just have to try really hard to do better and improve. It's a little disheartening though when I think that way everytime I go to work. I'm not slacking off or trying to be a pain or deliberately sabotaging the restaurant, but rather, my best effort is still not good enough. Oh well. I'll just try harder. And if worst comes to worst and I do get fired, it won't be because I'm lazy or always late or a bitchy waitress, but rather that my particular weaknesses of being scatterbrained and absent minded make it harder for a small restaurant to run smoothly, since good memory and organization are essential. My particular weaknesses make it harder for me to work that particular job, whereas at other jobs those particular weakenesses are not so worrisome. Besides, I eventually want to become a psychologist of some sort, so it's okay if things don't work out at one of my jobs before then.

I hate feeling like I'm not good enough. I hate being criticized. But ultimately I'll learn to be better from that feeling, and from that criticism. It just takes time and hard work.

So, embarrasment aside, my stupid teeth have jumped up on the priority list. The epic credit card bill is still epic because we had to get the breaks fixed on the car (and that cost a whopping $975 - to fix only half of them), and now the tooth that has been bugging me for the past couple of months has finally chipped. I can't even brush on that side of my mouth, so I have to go to the dentist tomorrow. Bills keep coming relentlessly every month, and rent comes out of my account so I really have to make sure I have enough money. I hate how expensive everything is, and how things just keep coming up that have to be dealt with immediately. With all of this, it's sickening to think that there are people who just have money handed to them, and yet all they do is waste that money on "entertainment" and end up bumming off of other people that work for their money. I'm glad I don't have any vices that I can share. I don't drink often enough to say that I drink, and I don't smoke, so I can never lend anyone a beer or a cigarette.

Speaking of money, I've watched a lot of korean drama lately where the show is based around some rich family and some poor, parentless character, and the rich people are often portrayed as either heartless and cuthroat, or so naive that they just cannot understand a poor person's perspective to the point that he or she causes some great harm. It's like the moral of the story in each of these dramas is that "rich people suck", although I'd like to think that it's not true for ALL rich people, lol. It makes me really, REALLY angry though when rich people think they're better than poor people just because they have money (and therefore power). Not that I've ever had to deal with that personally. I wonder if I'll ever run into that situation. Probably not. I am glad however that I was born and raised in Lower-Middle class, if you can talk about canadian society as having classes.

I suppose that's it for now. Maybe if I get around to it today, I'll post some pictures and artwork and such. Maybe.

Ja matta ne!



2010, November 18, 4P.M.
It's been a month and a half since my last post, and a fair bit has happened since then. October came and went without much happening. Halloween was fairly tame - Kev and I went to a comedy night at Yuk Yuk's with Mowzie and Mike; Mowzie and I dressed up (and were the only ones dressed up because it was 2 days before halloween, lol). The stand-up entertainment was actually pretty good - I thoroughly enjoyed myself :). It was around this time, as well, that it came up in conversation that Mike, from Ontario, was planning on moving to Halifax and was in need of a place to stay. Lo and behold, since the beginning of November, we have Mike as our roommate. It's weird going back to having a roommate after living for two years with just the two of us, but so far everything has been pretty good. We all get along, and it works out so that everyone involved has super cheap rent and bills (which is awesome considering we have the vegas trip coming up - very good timing, lol).

Near the beginning of November, I went onto kijiji.ca for the sake of curiosity and looked through the jobs that were available. You see, I had been feeling a sense of disappointment in myself that I still continue to work for Tim's even though I said I was going to do something different once we came out to Halifax. So, with this feeling of disappointment, and a curiosity to see whether there were any *cool* jobs available, I happened upon a listing for a japanese restaurant. Now, if you know me at all, you know that I'm all into the Japanese culture (admittedly not well versed in Japanese history, but I know more than your average Joe just from watching countless japanese drama and anime shows, lol), and that I've been attempting to learn Japanese (albeit rather unsuccessfully, since I have nowhere to practice, lol). So here is this ad for a job where I could learn even just the tiniest little bit more about japanese culture than I already know. I was pretty excited about it, but at the same time, I doubted if I would actually get the job. The ad had already been up for 5 days, and I have no experience in waitressing. I even contemplated not even bothering to apply, but I decided that I would apply regardless, and let chance decide whether I made a change in my life or if I stayed working the same job. I wrote up a coverletter expressing my desire to work there - and there specifically - explaining my lack of experience in waitressing but my desire to learn. A couple days later I made my way downtown and handed in my resume. I was really nervous even just doing that, but I prepared myself mentally saying that I was just handing in a resume - it didn't mean that I would even be called back, let alone hired. However, just hours later, the manager from the restaurant called me and arranged an interview. An INTERVIEW! I was soo excited. And nervous. Really nervous. I was shitting bricks over the idea of an interview. I continued to birng myself down to earth and say "it's just an interview, not a job guarantee". So I went to the interview, dressed as professional as I could manage, yet prepared for the possibility of rejection. It was so scary! The whole time I felt like I was being judged (which - let's face it - I was), and that I would be deemed incapable or unworthy or whatever. It turned out well enough though. I got the job!

My birthday was on November 10. I turned 22, and started training at the new job (while still working full time at tim's - it was a long day). And of course, still shitting bricks in anxiety because I've never waitressed before and I really didn't want to get fired or told that I was horrible or any number of negative things. My first day went fairly well. At least, it went as well as any first day. Of course I was a little slow, and i didn't know everything (or anything, rather), and I was so nervous that my sentences were getting screwed up and words put in the wrong places so I ended up sounding like a retard, but all that can be expected. I worked four days in a row (this overlapping with a 9 day stretch at Timmy's...I was pretty tired during those 4 days), and at the end of it, they said that I was doing good. They said that they could see I was trying hard, and that I was to come back the following week. My next shift is tomorrow, and wouldn't you know it, I'm still super nervous. *moan*

In earlier posts, I mentioned that I was working graveyards. I suppose I should clarify that it was only a temporary thing, and I'm now working the morning shift at Tim's (starting at 6am, typically). I plan to continue working two jobs at least until my credit card is paid off. Considering that my credit card will more than likely be maxed out after going to Vegas, it might be a month before I'll be close to paying everything off. After that, I'm not sure if I'm going to quit working at Tim's entirely or just work part time. I do still have $10000 in student loans to pay off. If I had two sources of income, then I could pay it off more quickly. I enjoy having time to myself though...and I need time to draw and build up my portfolio. *sigh* I guess we'll just have to see. First priority: credit card. Second priority: dentist appointment. Third Priority: Art. Fourth priority: student loans.

Speaking of art, I FINALLY finished the painting P.S. from s'toon requested of me, and mailed it off and everything! It feels nice to finish things. I've also completed 5 pictures for someone who contacted me via facebook and am about to start a 6th, and I did one picture for my mom too. I'm so excited that my art is starting to bring me money instead of costing me money, lol. I really hope that I get more commissions - it'll really help me improve my skill and build my portfolio.

There's an interesting thing that I've noticed about trust, and honesty. See, I tend to dislike people that lie to me. That's the one thing that I cannot stand - a person who is dishonest. The funny thing about that is, I don't mind if a person lies to me and I figure out that it's a lie on my own. I'll forgive a lie that was told to hide something really embarrassing or hard to talk about, because if I were in a really embarrassing situation, I'd probably twist the truth myself. The time when I find lying unforgiveable is when I actually believe it. So really, it's not that I don't like people who lie, it's just that I don't like being made a fool of. I don't like when my expectations about certain people are wrong because someone else told a lie about that person. It all comes down to pride. I don't like my pride being hurt. It's not that you lied to me that I hate you, it's that I believed your lie, that I hate you. I mean, there are other cases when I tend to dislike liers for being liers, and that's when it happens often, and for no good reason. I hate that I can't really trust a person who's lied to me before (in such a manner, where I believed it and/or the lie was for no good reason). If it's a lie about something stupid and mundane, it just means that the person is likely to lie about other stupid, mundane things in the future, and then I never know if I have the right information.

Thievery is another thing I really really dislike. But that's probably because I've worked in retail for so long, lol. I get so irritated when people blatantly brag about lifting something from a store (and then offer to give it to me, no less). And, once again, it's not necessarily the principle that offends me, but it probably has more to do with the fact that I earn my money, and I honestly pay for the things that I own, and I'm jealous of people that can take things for free so guiltlessly. Of course, that's not to say that I've never stolen anything ever in my entire life. I've used pirated programs before, isn't that stealing? (I try not to anymore though - all the programs on my computer right now are free ware ^_^). I may have downloaded a movie or two in my day. If there's an unsecured wireless signal nearby, I'll use it to connect to the internet. If I notice after a transaction is done that something wasn't rung in (as in, the item passed by the scanner but the person wringing the stuff in didn't notice that it didn't scan), I might not go back to the counter to get them to wring it in. And yeah, okay, I could probably make up some arbitrary boundaries between thievery that is not so bad and thievery that is that bad, but when you get right down to it, the thing I really hate is having to work more than others to get the stuff I have, not that the act of thievery is wrong (granted, I do get upset about that too; it's not like the idea of principle is non-existent, just that it's not the only thing that upsets a person). I guess the other thing that could be involved there is that if a person is willing to steal from a company, from a store, from another person, can I really trust that person not to steal from me? There we have it again, the idea of pride. If someone steals from someone else, they might steal from me, which would hurt my pride; making me into a fool.

I need to stop eating so many donuts. It sucks that the things that are free to eat when I work at Tim's are the things that aren't good for me. Bagels are probably okay, I guess, but donuts and muffins and cookies have a lot of sugar and other bad-healthy goodness that I shouldn't be injesting 5 days out of the week, lol. Maybe when we get back from Vegas or something, I'll make it my back-from-vegas resolution to cut out the things that are really high in sugar from my diet (while I'm at work at least). It doesn't help that I have a cavity and sugar will only make that worse. *sigh*

Well, I have pictures to draw, japanese food and menus to learn about, and korean drama to watch! lol. ja ne!



2010, September 30, 9A.M.
I am extremely frustrated right now. See, I've been working on a separate website that would be dedicated to commissions and submissions of requests and the like. I spent HOURS looking up how to do an email form, setting it up the way I wanted (only to realize that I couldn't add a thing where a person could attach a reference picture through straight HTML and thus spent more time figuring out this php-based form I downloaded from bluehost - only to realize that it DIDN'T WORK), and then more time trying to at least make the simpler HTML one work, only to find out that my efforts thus far have been for naught. I checked and rechecked the code against several different html-tutorial sites, and it looks like I did it all right, but when I click the "submit" button it doesn't actually send all the information from the form in an email, but opens a new "send email" page that is BLANK and useless and omfg I am irritated! I even downloaded mozilla to see if it was just internet explorer. In that respect I made a tiny bit of progress. At least this time the email wasn't blank - it had a bunch of weird symbols and stuff mashed together with information from the form. OKAY. So at least if I were to get an email like that I would probably be able to read it. But that isn't how an email form is supposed to work, is it? It's just supposed to...you know, send on its own? UGH. Whatever. I posted a cry for help on a forum, so hopefully I get a reply.

I made the mistake of buying a box of halloween bite-size chocolate bars - the 90 in a box sorta deal, and so I've been eating a LOT of chocolate. I think I'm gonna get sick or something.

In other news, I looked up the ph-balanced coffee I was raving about in the last post (the one you won't read until after you've seen this one because the internet was down when I posted it). Turns out, it's "coffee" made from Reishi mushrooms, and is supposed to have a bunch of crazy health benefits. This mushroom has been used in traditional chinese medicine for 4 thousand years, and the coffee even tastes good enough to pass! (where is my source for this info? just google Reishi mushrooms - it was what I read on every page I looked at). I was really tempted to purchase some, but I would feel guilty over spending money on expensive whimsy, so instead, I signed up to receive free samples of healthy, organic related things in the mail. I tried to find a place that offered free samples of this mushroom coffee, but I was out of luck. I wonder what kind of free samples I WILL get? I'm actually pretty excited. The thought of buying into such a thing came from Mowzie and Wren's blog. Why not get free stuff in the mail? I miss the excitement of looking forward to checking the mail every day, and if I didn't have to spend a whole bunch of money on ebay to obtain that feeling, all the better!

Japanese word of the day: dohatsuten - furious, infuritated. kyou watashi ha dohatsuten desu. sugoku dohatsuten. I wonder if my grammar is correct. I'm going to bed now. Oyasuminasai!



2010, September 29, 1:00A.M.
God DAMN do I ever love coffee! It's been two months (or so) since I last drank coffee, so I can legitimately say that I'm no longer addicted to it. Therefore, I decided it'd be okay to have some esspresso. I really love the taste of it :) I just need to find some ph balanced coffee so that I can drink it all the time and it won't hurt my digestive system. Too bad the internet decided to not be connected, otherwise I'd be looking that up on the interwebs right now. Stupid internet. We're sharing it with the people upstairs so it's not like I can just unplug the router and modem to fix the problem, and I feel awkward about going up there and saying "hey, your internet isn't working...fix it!" lol. It's okay. It's not like I'm dependent on it for school, so I can wait.

I'm so happy; I finally have some friends in Halifax. I always feel like a tag-along when Kev hangs out with his friends, so it's nice to have some...autonomy? Anyway, long story short, I went for coffee and a movie with my new friends today and it was a lot of fun ^_^. We saw a documentary about Joan Rivers, and I've decided that I'm going to check out her comedy/acting once the internet connection decides to work again. She's a very interesting woman, with a very strong personality. To be 75 and have that much energy - that is admirable. I can only hope that I could be well respected at that age. Maybe if I actually FINISH my psych degree and get my doctorate, that might be a possibility. We'll see though.

The whole graveyard thing I've been doing lately is turning out alright. It's nice, it's quiet, I don't have to feel really stressed out, and it works out that when I'm off work I can wake up Kev and make sure he's on time for work. And, when he gets home from work, I'm usually up, so we can still spend time together. I'd still prefer if we were on the same sleeping patterns, but at least this doesn't suck quite so hard as I would have thought. I also feel better about working there because I haven't been spending as much time watching videos online lately, but rather doing productive things like drawing. As long as I can convince myself that my life has a deeper purpose outside of work, then I'll be fine.

I just found out that waitresses don't always make minimum wage - but instead make less because they are expected to make a lot of money in tips. I suddenly feel bad for not tipping at restaurants (I tip sometimes out of guilt, but not all the time). I always thought that they were making at least minimum wage, and that they were already being paid to do their job, so it wouldn't matter - but maybe I'm wrong. Oh well. I'm not going to stress over it.

One of these days, I think I'm going to book an appointment with an academic advisor and see what my possibilities are for switching universities. If I don't have to take too many classes over, and if the programs are similar enough to adapt, I may just transfer to Dalhousie and finish my degree here. I'm pretty resistant to change, so we'll see how that goes over. It would be a lot of money to move BACK to s'toon for one year just to finish my degree and then move somewhere else, so maybe Dal's my best option right now. *sigh* doushiyo?

I wonder what life would be like; being a gay man trapped inside a woman's body, opting to get a sex change and trying to adjust to the world as a gay man? Would people think that the woman was cheating somehow - like, if most women are attracted to gay men, but one woman succeeds in having a relationship with a gay man by getting a sex change...I wonder how that would go over. Not to mention the sudden onslaught of prejudice and descrimination.

Well, that's it for now. Ja ne!



2010, September 21, 1:30A.M.
I'm so tired. I wish I was sleeping right now. Unfortunately, I have to stay up to switch my sleeping pattern to graveyard shift. In order to do so, I've decided to take on the daunting task of making bread in the middle of the night. I figure I should go to sleep around 6am, and it'll probably take that long to make bread, so yeah.

I was really happy last week. Someone contacted me via facebook about drawing some pictures, and I just finished one of the pictures tonight. Typically I don't draw animals that much, but all the pictures I have to draw are of dogs, so it'll be a little different. I'm really happy with the way the first one turned out though. I was worried; when I draw people, the part I find most difficult is the hair, and dogs are covered completely with hair! lol. I'm excited to finish the rest of them. I'm even more excited by the potential for this to turn into a viable source of income. If I got enough business drawing and painting for people that I could make enough to live on, I would be soo happy. I will have officially completed my life dream of being an artist, haha. I would give anything if I could quit my day job (or night job, as the case seems to be this week), but I need to earn money to pay bills and rent and all that. However, I've decided (for a second time, it seems) that I need to build a better portfolio. I need to develop a kickass portfolio specializing in tattoo-related art so I can even have a hope of getting an apprenticeship. I also want to put myself out there more in the way of doing commission artwork for people (I just have to be motivated enough to finish it on time, lol). If I can do that; if I can start towards building a career path in something I want to do, perhaps I'll be able to live with myself while working for Tim's. Nothing against the company itself, but it's not my life calling. It's not where I want to be even a year from now. Or now. but money's money, and I'll just have to make due.

Speaking of which, I miss the old Tim's. I miss being the funny one at work. Now I'm just the bumbling, fumbling newbie who messes up orders and is out of sync with everyone else. I can understand when people get angry with me when I mess something up, because I was probably equally angry with other newbies I've worked with. I can't hold it against anyone, I just miss the feeling of security and self-assurance. Moving out here hasn't changed my motivation to work. Yeah, I was really excited for my first day of work because I knew I'd have income again, but now, I feel like I want to go home two hours into my shift...just like I did back in S'toon. Well, it can't be helped. I just have to suck it up and deal with it...brainwash myself and change my bleak outlook into something more positive.

Where do you find office jobs anyway?

We got some curtains for our bedroom. I think they add a lot more personality to the room. Oh, speaking of things for the bedroom, I have to relieve some shopper's remorse I've been suffering from. We bought a set of two pillow cases for $50. That's been bugging me for the past three weeks, and I don't know if I'll ever be able to forgive myself for not realizing that I was buying 50 dollar pillow cases. We can't return them either because we already washed them. Oh the horror! lol. That'll teach me for shopping at the Bay instead of Zellers.

I wonder if I can take a nap at 1:30am and have it still be a nap? You know, I remember when I was younger and I used to blog all the time. I remember also that I never had anything to talk about because the people I'd talk with read my blog also, or I would have dealt with the things I was feeling by writing them down and no longer had a reason to talk about them. I wonder if the same thing will happen now that I've been writing more often? eh...probably not. I don't have a comment function, and I just assume no one reads this, so I talk about all the stuff I mention here anyway, haha. I'm rambling because I'm tired. I'm going to pretend to do something productive for a bit.



2010, September 19, 11:30P.M.
I was going to write something about the concept of doing and being shy, and decided I've spent enough time writing about how much of a weanie I am, so I'll just skip all that.

What's more important, intention, or result? Is an action okay as long as you mean well? Is there a significant difference between a person who opens an orphanage out of the good of his or her heart, and a person who does so because it "looks good"? Surely intentions would play a role. Different intentions may cause each of these people to look at different details. Let's pretend though, just for argument's sake, that regardless of intention, every action done by each of these people is exactly the same. All the little particular details that may be different because of intentions are the same. So, if you have the exact same actions, and the exact same results, what does intention matter? Of course, this is probably very unrealistic to assume that every action would be the same between the two people. After all, the reason why they developed such things as Double Blind experimental settings is because intentions and expectations DO affect the results. I suppose the most important factor wouldn't be intention or action, but rather perception.

Why do people talk about the weather? Why do people talk about anything, really? What makes it so important that human beings connect with each other over such mundane matters? Maybe it's just to confirm that the world around us isn't just in our heads, but also in the heads of others. Perhaps talking about the weather proves the existence of such thing as weather, and forms some semblance of a concrete reality. If you can agree on some external event/environment/consequence with someone else, then maybe you're not crazy.

I've decided on a theory for why girls like yaoi. Good feelings are associated with good looking people. Typically, girls feel those good feelings when looking at good looking guys, and not as much when looking at good looking girls (assuming these girls are heterosexual). So, when watching/reading a romantic movie/manga, if you have a guy and a girl as the the objects of attention, you're only getting those good feelings whenever you see the guy. If you have two guys as the main objects of attention, you get a double dose of good-feeling-oooo-look-at-the-hottie! Going back to the significance of intention - how much does intention play a role in attraction to a particular genre? Do people start reading a yaoi manga thinking to themselves "I am reading this because I feel that this is an ideal portrayal of relationships where men instead of women are objectified, and where the relationship is free from the worry of pregnancy"? I doubt that most people are so deep as that. I read manga because I like beautiful art. I like shounen-ai because the boys are drawn very prettily, haha. So maybe that's it then. And the reason why girls write slash? Simple conditioning. They happened upon a fanfiction dipicting people as being gay, and realized that two hot guys are sexier than just one. They grew accustomed to reading such material, and when creating their own, they went with the flow. How many people think about societal implications when writing slash?

I guess it makes you wonder about things like psychoanalysis - about science that tries to find some deep intention for one's actions. It seems as though intention, at least in some cases, is more of an afterthought than a precursor to action. So then is psychological study of the mind (pretend that I'm speaking from a dualistic point of view where mind and brain are separate), just that - an afterthought? A fruitless endeavor to describe what already happened in some deep and complicated way when really, it has nothing to do with social conscience and everything to do with biological desire?

As a student of psychology, I wonder what exactly it is that I study. Ma ne, I guess I should go to sleep. Oyasuminasai!



2010, September 8, 11:30P.M.
Let's talk about fear. Over the past few weeks, I've definitely felt very afraid. The first brush with gut-wrenching fear happened in Quebec, when we were sure that the car would need a new engine, and when I contemplated over whether we'd even be able to make it to Halifax. I thought of trying to find a job in Quebec, or a place to live, when neither Kevin nor myself spoke any french. Or, when considering that we might be able to make it to Halifax without the car, I thought about all the things that I would have to part with - all the stuff we loaded into the car. It's moments like that when you realize your true priorities. I discovered that first and foremost, above any of my possessions was my cat. I love my cat so much, and after having to part with her once before, I never want to again. All of my art that I considered so precious, suddenly wasn't the top of my list anymore. I could make new art once I got to where we were going. I'm glad I didn't have to part with anything, but at the same time, I realized how attached I am to my stuff. It seems kinda pathetic to be so attached to mere objects.

Now I live in a new city, and although we finally have a place to live, I've yet to secure a job. I've applied at many places, gone in for a few interviews, yet I still don't have a job. I don't exactly handle rejection very well either. I do have one more interview tomorrow, and I hear back from another interview tomorrow as well. It's getting to the point where I'd settle for anything..even McDonalds, which I thought I'd never work at, lol (although surprisingly, I haven't seen one out here yet). I only applied at two Tim Horton's locations though. Maybe tomorrow I'll go around and apply at some more. Spam businessnes with my resumes or something. Ugh. I just hate feeling so insecure. Although, had I not moved, I would regret that I never did anything interesting in my life. Haha, it's funny, but I remember a quote from some drama I was watching, about how sometimes things don't seem like very much fun at the time, but you remember them better later on...or something like that. Right now it's all scary and unsettling, but later I'll say that it was a grand adventure.

Things could be worse. We do technically still have some money saved up, so if worst comes to worst, we can still pay another month's rent and cover bills and stuff. I just can't help but worry...

(trying to convince myself) This is an adventure. I might as well enjoy it. That's not anxiety - that's excitement! Excitement over doing something new and spontaneous. I didn't just sit around, stuck in one place and one job and one rut, but I moved across Canada. I've now seen most of the provinces. I'm going to meet new people, learn new things, and I'll never think to myself "wow, my life is so boring; I haven't done anything exciting!" because this...this is an adventure. And at least it's not the kind of adventure where I have to save the planet and I have to worry about Darkfriends and crazy people trying to kill me every day. So yeah. Everything will be okay.



2010, September 6, 10:30P.M.
No reply from the Timmy's I applied at. It's really crappy that it's the long weekend, because a lot of places are closed. I can't go anywhere to print off resumes to hand out so it's really putting this whole job hunting adventure on hold. Tomorrow, bright and early, I'm going to find some place where I can print off a bunch of resumes, and I'll start doing the rounds.

I felt pretty homesick today. And a little mystified by the fact that after all this, we live in an apartment a lot like our last one (just maintained a little better), in a city about the same size as the last one, and once again I'll be working a low end job (if I ever get one...lol!). So, we basically blew all of our money on changing the name of the city we live in. All of that saved money...just gone... Although, we DO have a new old car - there is SOMETHING to show for all the money we spent. I got pretty depressed over that fact. Deciding that I needed to do something, I went for a drive downtown, parked in a random parking lot, and lo and behold, I was able to access some free wireless internet, lol. After checking my email and all that, I somehow felt a lot better. Perhaps my feeling down was accentuated by the fact that I'm over 4000km from anyone I know. Sa...

I'm now in the middle of organizing the files on my laptop and three flash drives. I wish I felt like drawing. I have my pencil crayons and markers and stuff, I just don't feel motivated to draw. It's too bad; I could have drawn a lot over the past week. Oh well.



2010, September 5, 11:30P.M.
Huh. I start a lot of entries with "so", or "well", or "okay". [omitting the "so" I would have started with] Kev's new friends from upstairs were nice enough to lend us one of their couches for a while, which I am eternally grateful for. The couch also has a hide-a-bed, and I'm really happy about that. Sleeping on carpeted concrete gets old really fast, lol. It's odd, though: my mixed feelings about it. I feel somewhat put off at the idea of being indebted to other people, especially after so many people gave us money for the wedding and helped us so much in our move out here. In a weird way, I also felt somewhat disappointed by the fact that I could no longer brag about the fact that I slept on concrete for a week or two before our stuff arrived. I get a sense of satisfaction and enjoyment from hearing others comment about me "you're hard core!". Perhaps it has something to do with the desire to fool other people, or to prove the point that what you see ISN'T what you get. I look sweet and innocent, and yet I do things to contradict that image - such as getting a lip ring and tattoos. I wonder, is that the direct cause; the direct reasoning behind me getting those things or am I just overthinking?

Ever think about why you do things? Ever think about the fact that you have to think about why you do things, and wonder why you don't automatically know the answer, but rather, piece together an answer from observations of your own behaviour? I remember hearing a particular theory in one of my psych classes that we are observers of our own behaviour. I never really thought about the theory that much until seriously thinking about why I did the things I do (in particular, I thought about the action of constantly pulling up the strap on my tank top and considered that I never really thought about it before...dance...creepy guy slobbering over my hand...I wrote about it in an earlier post), and realising that I was making an inference about my own behaviour, not specifically remembering a conscious motive. I wonder just how many of our decisions are conscious and how many are unconscious. And, of the unconscious decisions we make...what drives those?

Kev and I were discussing the meaning of the words "wherefore" and "how come" and how they both mean why. I suggested that "how come" could be a short form of "how has this come to be?", and that wherefore is just the opposite of "therefore". "Therefore" is a word to indicate cause and effect. There was an effect, therefore there was a cause. "there" indicates a something that exists...you know, like "oh, there it is". But if you take out the existence of "there", you're left with "where?" and so, "wherefore" indicates that you don't know the effect of the cause, or the why. lol, these are the things that I think about when I'm bored, haha.

I managed to finish reading that article I mentioned yesterday. The actual article was only 93 pages...the rest were all notes and references and appendices. So, not as epicly long read as I made it out to be, lol. I'm not actually going to make a point about it right now, I just thought I'd let you know I finished reading it O.o. I really hope Tim's calls me tomorrow about a job. I want to make money again, and if I could not worry about sucking at my job while I'm trying to get back on my feet, that'd be pretty awesome too. Well, I'm going to go to bed now. Oyasuminasai!



2010, September 4, 11:30P.M.
So, no word from the person who was supposed to call about the job. Guess it's back to the ol' drawing board, although it's hard to look for jobs if you don't have the internet, or a printer to print off resumes. I'm sure the public library would offer both, but I'm not sure if it'd be open on the weekend. Oh well. I applied at Timmy's yesterday, and I'm waiting for the manager to come in on Monday to look at the application. They DID have a hiring sign in the window, and I would be a little mystified if they hired a total NOOB over me, but who knows. If I don't hear back by noon I'll start applying elsewhere.

Hurricane came and went, and it really wasn't that bad. I've heard that other parts of the city had power outages and trees blown over, but none of that happened near our apartment. There's a couple twigs in the parking lot, and some leaves. The power went out for half a second. Other than that, it was just really windy. I'm pretty grateful nothing terrible happened.

I've slept so much out of boredom lately, lol. I had two hour-long naps today, and I'm still going to bed before midnight. I practiced writing out japanese characters, and tested myself by giving myself the english word and then having to physically write out the kanji for the word - which is a lot harder than simple recognition memory. I got through...maybe half of the flashcards I have made up. I don't feel like I'm really getting anywhere though. Sure, I'm learning some new words, but it doesn't help me if I can't remember how to make a sentence. I can do basic sentences, but I've already forgotten things I learned a month ago. I guess the best way to make it stick is to make up a whole bunch of my own sentences. Generation effect..or something. Things that you generate yourself are better remembered in the long run. But it just seems so tedious! lol. Oh well, on the bright side, at least I have SOMETHING to do in this empty apartment. I also brought my art supplies; I finished colouring a picture since coming here, and I might draw tomorrow. It's too bad that I don't feel like doing anything though - maybe it's just that everything I WANT to do requires an internet connection -.-

There are a lot of really big spiders in this apartment, and it's kinda creepy. Although I'm doing pretty good with the whole not freaking out thing. Instead of killing them, I captured 2 spiders in a cup and set them free outside. The third, I let Pino play with. Should I be disturbed that my pet cat killed a spider and didn't eat it afterwards? Is this proof that other animals kill for enjoyment? Should I feel guilty for not saving the spider and putting it outside? Hmm...

You know how sometimes you feel like you have "no food" in your house and you have to go buy groceries, but really, you have at least several months worth of rice and pasta and other stuff? The situation where it's not that you don't have food, you just don't have food you FEEL like eating? This is the first time in my life I've actually experienced not having any food in the place. I mean, we have food now, but when we run out, there won't be a bunch of food saved up somewhere. I don't know how I should feel about that. There's probably no chance anything'll go bad, but at the same time, if we're really hard up, there's nothing in reserve to fall back on. Oh well. I guess it's not really true that we don't have a reserve of food. We have a bunch of rice and pasta being shipped with the rest of our stuff, so there IS a reserve, it's just not here yet. Wow, that was all pretty pointless, wasn't it?

The other thing I've been doing for fun is reading this 124 page article I used as a reference for my research proposal. It's entitled Eroticism for the Masses: Japanese Manga Comics and their Assimilation into the U.S. by Timothy Perper and Martha Cornog. It's actually really interesting; it basically talks about the sexual content in manga and what it says about sexuality, gender identity, etc. Perhaps I'll write a review of it...or something. It's funny that I tried reading a fantasy novel and I opted for reading a research article instead, lol. Anyway, I'll quit with the mindless chatter and go to bed. Oyasuminasai!



2010, September 2, 9:30P.M.
Well, this is the second day at our new apartment, and it is extremely BORING, lol. It's so hot outside I haven't felt like going out too much, and there is basically nothing to do without the internet, or furniture O.o Although aparently, I should take up smoking. Kevin's met so many people since coming here simply because he went outside for a cigarette. I'm kidding about the starting smoking thing, but seriously, am I ever a recluse or what? Oh well.

We also may have a job by tomorrow; we're just waiting to hear back from the guy to see whether we got the job or not (yes, both Kevin and I applied for the same job, lol). It's a public outreach program that basically gets people to donate money, and it all goes to a series of charities including Red Cross...and some others I don't remember, lol. Not too bad; at least I'm not trying to sell life insurance or vaccuum cleaners or anything, lol. But I'm definitely going to be out of my comfort zone on this one. Generally, I'm really shy, and I don't like just asking random people things. But, if it's for a job, I could probably do it. I hated upselling at Timmy's because it always made me feel awkward, but I was able to do it because it was "part of the job". I just have to keep telling myself that "outgoing" is not a personality trait. It does not refer to what a person IS, but rather, what a person DOES. A person is not a composit of adjectives, but a being capable of making choices and performing actions, and regardless of a person's "tendencies", the individual still has the choice to either act shy or act outgoing. All that sounds fabulous, but I still default to saying things like "I can't, I'm shy!" Oh well. Perhaps I'm worrying needlessly; we might not necessarily get the job. Although I'm proud of myself for looking for other interesting jobs before defaulting back to Tim Horton's again.

Oh yeah, hurricane is supposed to hit this Saturday. Our parking lot is full of trees - just watch a tree fall on our car after all our luck in having been able to get it out here. Does SGI cover you for "acts of god?" lol.

Alright, well I must go check the laundry, and then I may go on an adventurous tour with Kevin's new friends, lol. Ja ne!



2010, August 29, 12:30A.M.
So here we are, in Halifax. It took us six days of travelling by car, but we made it. We left our hometown in Saskatchewan the day after M.K. and J. now K.'s wedding. The night of the wedding was when we said our goodbyes to people, since most of the people we knew were there. Actually, it was kinda nice that our wedding, A.U. and I.U.'s wedding, and M.K. and J.K.'s wedding were close together; we got to see most of the people we didn't get to see very often, all before we left. It was really sad though, on the last night before we left. I'm really going to miss everyone from S'toon and my home town. Our travels started out Sunday, and for a couple days, it was fairly uneventful. We drove from Wadena to Kenora on Sunday; Kenora to Sault Ste Marie on Monday, from Sault Ste Marie to Ottawa on Tuesday. Wednesday is the day were things got interesting, and a little stressful. We got up bright and early - 6am Ontario time, went for a swim in the pool of the new Holiday Inn Exress. We enjoyed a full continental breakfast, and set out to continue our adventure around 9:30am. So far, so good. However, things got a little hectic when, through my awesome map reading and directing skills, I accidentally got Kev to take the road into Quebec city instead of bypassing it like we wanted to. We turned into the Chemin Saint Foy area of Quebec city, trying to turn ourselves around and go back to the highway. However, when we slowed down, we noticed that the engine was sounding kinda rough. We pulled over in a parking lot beside a Tai food restaurant, and popped the hood to see what was up. Kev checked the oil, and lo and behold, the engine was completely out of oil. So, that sound we heard was that of the engine about to seize. Kev called his dad (an auto mechanic) to see what he had to say, and he said that we were basically boned. FUCK.

There we were; lost in Quebec city, thousands of kilometers from home, with a nearly seized engine and not enough money to fix it. I tried calling the Hyundai dealdership to find out what exactly we could do - if maybe it was their fault somehow (we just got the oil changed before we left) - ANYTHING that would help. They gave me the number of a Hyundai dealership in Quebeck, but when we called, they said they wouldn't be able to do anything until AT LEAST Friday. We then got Kev's sister to give us a list of tow trucks in the city. After calling three numbers, we finally found someone who spoke a little bit of english. Unfortunately, it wasn't a tow truck company, it was a garage. However, the guy said that he could call a tow truck for us and take the car to his garage. Once that was sorted out, we rearranged our stuff so that we could live out of one suitcase, put the cat in her carrier, and set out to find a hotel. We called several taxi companies before we found one that spoke english, and then went to three different hotels before we found one that accepted pets. We finally made it to the super 8 motel (which was a lot more expensive than i would have liked, but oh well). We got some liquor and some food from the gas station on the corner (they have booze in gas stations in quebec!), then headed back to the hotel to plan out what we were going to do. We rounded up a list of numbers for places to rent in Halifax, and priced out the differences between renting a car or taking a train. The next morning, I called around to set up appointments to view apartments. I called VIA rail to book a couple train tickets. After that, we packed up our stuff and the cat, and took a cab to get our stuff from the car and take it to the train station. However, when we got to the mechanic's, he said that our type of car was nutorious for making the noise that it did, and that it would be an easy fix. He changed the oil and the filter, put some fuel additive in the car, and a mere $130 later we were driving our car out of quebec city. I cancelled the train tickets and we were good and clear. We drove to Muncton and stayed there for the night, and the next morning, six days later, we FINALLY arrived in Halifax!

Now, we're just in the process of acquiring an apartment. I think we may have something lined up. We put down a deposit, and the guy said we were 99.9% guaranteed approval, he just had to show that he made a phone call to our previous landlords, make sure we paid our rent, didn't wreck up the place, etc. The only thing that I'm worried about is that Progressive will blame the mould problems and the hole above the shower (both of which we told them about MONTHS ago), and the crack in one of the windows (which happened during the week we went to Banff, and was probably caused by the shifting of the building) and thus give us a bad reference. I'm not nearly as stressed out as I was in Quebec, but I'm still a little worried. I really REALLY hope that we get the place. I want to feel like we actually HAVE a home to go to. You know that feeling you get when you're stressed out - that you want to just "go home" - well, that feeling becomes really unsettling when you don't have anywhere to go home to. Oh well. It'll all work itself out eventually. I suppose another good thing is that the person who we'll be renting from also owns a couple of motels, and he said he'd give us a deal on a room for a few days until we can move in. Considering we're paying a little over $110 for the hotel we're staying in right now, and that he's offering $79 a night, we'll be able to save close to $100 over the next few days. SWEET!

The next step will be for us to find jobs. Sad to say, but the first place I'm going to apply is Tim Horton's. I want to know that I can make some money and be secure again. We've spent most of the money we had saved up on the move out here and on the new (old) car, and we'll be spending more on hooking up utilities, paying for rent, damage deposit, food, and all that. Plus, I have a maxed out credit to pay off asap...so yeah, I want a job as soon as possible, and Timmy's is probably the easiest I'll be able to find at the moment. I might even get a second job for a few months so we can get caught up and save up for the trip to Vegas in November. Ugh...I hate worrying about money. Oh well, I guess it could be worse. Had I not gotten us lost in Quebec city, we might not have noticed that the car had run out of oil, and driven the car until the engine really did seize. We could have spent a bunch of money before we left, when we were planning on getting a hitch for the car (we actually got a moving company to haul or stuff out, since hauling 2000 lbs worth of stuff in the tiburon may be possible, but after 4300 km we'd probably burn out the clutch. Anyway, all our stuff, even after giving away a bunch we didn't need, weighed 3400 lbs. So, getting our stuff hauled cost $5300 instead of an estimated $2000. Had we anticipated on $2000 in cost, and spent a bunch of money on other things while still in S'toon, we'd be really screwed). All in all, we're pretty lucky, and even though living out of a hotel for now is a little worrying, things could be a lot worse.

So that's it! Our grand adventure out east. I'll do my best to post some pictures soon ^_^ Ja ne!



2010, August 11, 2:00PM
Okay, so I guess it kinda just hit me a couple days ago that we really haven't planned anything in the way of moving. I mean, that was sort of the plan (lol) that we go on this grand adventure without planning anything too specific so that we have the freedom to do what we want. Well, now that I'm unemployed, and soon to be homeless (since we already gave our notice to move out), this whole not-having-a-plan thing is starting to make me anxious. I've spent the last couple days emailing people about renting houses in Nova Scotia, and so far we've only received 2 "maybe" replies. We're waiting for the one place to check out all our references, and the other, well, I'm waiting to see if it will be rented out by the time we get there. I looked into the price of renting a moving truck to get us out there, and it would have cost OVER $4000 JUST for the truck and gas. OMFG. So, I logically reasoned that it would be CHEAPER to buy a car that we can keep after the whole trip, and just attach a trailer hitch. So, looking on kijiji for a new car, we found a 1998 Hyundai Tiburon for $2800 (and a beetle for $5000, which we were leaning towards, but it wouldn't have been able to tow anything). The Tiburon can tow things, but when we called around the city to find a place that would carry trailer hitches for it, no place in the city had it. We then proceeded to search online, and sure enough, a supplier on ebay had them. We're just waiting for Kev's dad to call back, just in case there is a closer, slightly more convenient option, before we buy the hitch online.

I'm just worried that after all this, we'll end up living in a place that is just like S'toon, but we won't know anyone and we'll be stuck out there working dead-end jobs with not enough money to even come back. Well, whatever happens, it will be an experience; it will be something we can talk about years later, even if it fails. [breathes] Whatever happens, it will be okay.

Oh yeah, Animethon. I guess I could tell you about how that went. It was pretty good. When I was actually selling art, it was fun. When I wasn't selling art, I felt dejected, lol, but that was just on the first day, so that's okay. I was surprised that most people wanted commission drawings on the spot, and weren't interested in prints. As well, of the actual artwork that I had, most people prefered the paintings to the drawings (understandable - paintings are more rare than drawings at an anime convention). All in all, I made $75, which was pretty cool. I probably could have made more if I could draw faster, lol. As far as the convention itself, well, it was kinda boring, lol. It was cool seeing a lot of different people in costumes, but I wasn't really interested in much that was there. The vendors were fairly expensive, and anything I would want to buy I could make myself; except for manga, but I want to read the ones I have before I buy anymore (that'll take a long time - I have 16 volumes of X and they're all in Japanese....so I have to learn to read Japanese first..HAHA). It was cool that the voice actors from certain shows were also there, but I watch all my anime in Japanese so I wouldn't know who the english voice actors were, lol. Beyond that, I just didn't have time to go check out any of the panels and stuff. I'm sure it would have been a lot more interesting if we went to the convention just to go there and not to "work" there as part of the artist alley, but I still had a good time. I found it really interesting that, although you would think that most people there are dressing up to become fictional characters, there were actually people there that felt more at ease to be themselves. For example, a person who is a woman trapped in a man's body could dress up as a woman and no one would think twice about it. It would be more socially acceptable for that perosn to be themselves at an anime convention than at any other function.

All in all, it was an experience. If I'm going to an anime convention in the future, however, I won't be in the artist alley if I'm going with other people - I'd rather actually experience the anime convention itself. If I were going by myself though, I'd probably have more fun in the artist alley.

Well, that's it for now. I'm going to go agonize about impending homelessness for a bit, lol. Ja ne!



2010, August 5, 5PM
Soooo I'm kind of irritated with people in general, lately. Not because of any personal offense, but because of an offense to people who are close to me. I'm generally the type of person that will try to rationalize other people's behaviour, and to try to come up with external reasons for other people's behaviour than by simply saying something like "oh, that person must be an asshole". Well, I can only do that for so long. I can only say things like, "well, everyone probably thought that someone else would plan it, and therefore no one bothered to take the initiative themselves to plan it". "Your friends just aren't the type of people to think about those kind of things, so it probably just didn't cross their mind to plan anything." "Perhaps, even though this person talked about doing something before, he thought that it wasn't his responsibility to do it." or "Well, it's true that you had talked to him a few months ago about putting something together, but he *was* inebriated at the time, so he probably didn't remember". But it gets to a certain point where all of these excuses suddenly don't cut it anymore. That, of course, is the point at which you realize that these same people WENT OUT OF THEIR WAY to plan something epic and amazing for other people, but somehow FORGOT when it came to planning something for -at least I would have thought- someone that they considered a friend. I wonder if anyone would have even considered it if I hadn't remended certain people about it. Even then, it turned out that it was going to be late -okay fine, better late than never- but then these certain people that are late with their planning, just happened to decide to have this event coinciding with something that I and the person-being-planned-for have had planned for SEVERAL MONTHS. Not only that, but they suggested he forego this plan that has been in motion for several months for some event haphazardly thrown together just a few days before. I won't lie, that pissed me off. But when asked my opinion, I said I was fine either way (to some degree that's true - an Anime Convention has the potential to be really awesome or really boring, depending on what we do there, while a night of guaranteed drunk-till-you're-puking-your-guts-out-ness and a goal to humiliate the one the night is for...also has the potential to be fun or suck. That pending, it was entirely his decision which he would choose). What DOES piss me off though is the fact that these people, who conveniently forgot to plan anything before hand, who couldn't be organized enough to plan something until after (and only after my suggestion), had the gall to override an event that was PROPERLY planned for.

Looking back, it really irritates me even further that the reason why things didn't pan out well was because people tried to plan things when they were inebriated. I'm so SICK of that being an excuse for things. "Oh, I'm sorry, I don't remember; I was drunk when you told me." WELL, then, WHEN THE FUCK do you suggest I actually try to ask you something, then? Am I to try to stalk you throughout the day to determine whether or not you've hit the bottle yet? Should I leave thousands of messages reminding you of the things that you've agreed to do? WHATEVER. I'm sure that there are many reasons on both ends to rationalize how things turned out the way they did, but honestly, in this particular circumstance, you FAIL.

As a disclaimer, I'm taking out my rage on the general, non-personalized "you", not anyone in particular

Now that that's off my chest...OMG!! Animethon is TOMORROW! I haven't finished my costume, but I don't really feel like it's necessary. I'll probably take my wings off after a little while anyway because they'll be uncomfortable, and I'll have to take my gloves off to draw, so I won't bother finishing them in the first place. I'm not participating in any costume contests either, so THERE. I'm so freaking sick of sewing, anyway, lol. Oh yeah, I have a bunch of art to upload to the site. I have most of it up on deviantart because I crave attention and recognition, lol, so if you want to see it you can go to http://sadisticshiver.deviantart.com. I spent a bunch of time today printing off prints to sell, too. I didn't print off very many, since I don't actually expect to sell that much, lol. But I found a pack of glossy photo paper that I bought years ago and never had a use for until now, so I used up the pack of paper (20 small sheets). I'm bringing my tiny camera printer too so I have the option to print more there, right on the spot (although I'll have to search for an outlet). I hope I actually sell something though...it would make me feel special :)

Anyway, I have to go. Ja ne!



2010, July 28, 3:30AM
Well, it's official! I'm now a married woman ^_^ The wedding went really well. I was worried that it would be one huge embarrassment or something, but it was okay. Everyone seemed to have a good time, I had a good time, Kevin had a good time, so it's all good. The weather ended up being absolutely perfect, considering that for the past few weeks it's rained at least once a day. There was rain the day before and the day after, but the actual day of our wedding was clear. It was pretty scary on the way back to Saskatoon though, because as we were driving, there were funnel clouds starting to form over us. I have a bit of a tornado phobia, so I was trying really hard to ignore the clouds and keep driving. It hailed too, and it was enough to dent up the top of the car. I was pretty happy though. The dresses that Zephyr and I made turned out really well. Everyone complimented them and said how pretty we all were in our dresses.

I'm glad that it's finally done with though. It was a really awesome weekend, but it's nice to finally be done waiting. Two years is a long time to be anticipating a wedding, lol.

The songs that we danced to for the first dance were "Stay or Leave" and "Stolen Away on 55th and 3rd", both by Dave Matthews. We picked those songs because they represent a lot about our relationship. It's funny that the second song, I always misremember the name as being "stolen away on 33rd"...considering 33rd was where Kevin lived just before we got back together :)

I'm so excited to quit at Tim Horton's, lol. I can't wait to be unemployed! It'll be so much fun! And I won't be completely screwed for money, since I have a couple painting commissions lined up :D I'm excited to sell more of my paintings. I almost feel like a real artist, HAHA. Oh! speaking of which, I need to upload a lot of new art!

Well, I'm tired, so I'm going to go to sleep. Oyasuminasai!



2010, July 9, 12PM
I've rediscovered live-action japanese drama, and I've been watching A LOT of tv over the last couple weeks. Whenever I watch it, I usually have a goofy grin on my face...I love it so much! Especially Kima wa Petto. It's the best series ever...it made me so happy to watch it because the character's were so cute! AND it had a happy ending. I like happy endings. When I was in high school, I used to love the melodrama, used to love the types of shows and movies that would make you bawl your eyes out because they were so sad. Now though...I don't like watching them as much. Not that they're any less good, I just don't want to be reminded of how easy it would be to lose the things that I love. In high school I felt like I couldn't really live if I never experienced pain or sadness. For some reason, I felt like I NEEDED to experience sad things in order to be able to connect with other people, understand other people, or to even consider myself as an artist. Kinda makes me want to travel back in time and scream at myself GET OVER YOURSELF!!, but what can you do. Nowadays, I'm all too aware that life can go awry, that things can change and make your life very sad. I want happy endings to reassure myself that things can work out alright too. Besides, crying gives me a headache, and I don't want to have a headache after watching a good series, lol.

An update on the wedding stuff so far: mostly everything is done; there's just a few little things to take care of. We've pretty much finished all of the dresses, and I even made ties for the groomsmen too! Now that everything is starting to come together, I'm actually pretty excited about this wedding.

On a completely other note, I've been thinking a lot about the concept of "truth", and what it means to tell the truth. The thing about it is that there are some things that people say that aren't necessarily true or not true, but rather, people say them because they have a certain goal. I say "have a nice day" not because I'm wishing you a nice day, but because this is my way of telling you that you can leave now. When you say "hey, let's go for coffee", it doesn't necessarily mean that you're going to drink coffee. You might drink tea instead, but you still say "let's go for coffee".

That's all I'm going to write about for now. Ja ne!



2010, June 24, 2AM
Just some heavy stuff to get off my mind (so I can bloody sleep, lol - although, my insomnia is probably due to that cup of coffee I had just before leaving work at 11pm, lol.)

My first topic of the night is that surrounding the concept of pedophilia, molestation, etc. I'm going to provide a FICTIONAL story to help illustrate my point. It's about a broken candlestick, and how it got broken. An older brother was bugging his little brother about this story - about how when they were younger, the older brother threatened the younger one to stop acting up or he would shove a candle up the younger brother's ass. Well, when the younger brother continued to be a pest, the older brother held true to his word and actually shoved the candle up his ass. If you shove a foreign object into someone's anus, does that not count as molestation? Of course you're saying "oh no no no, you see, it's obvious that the older brother was just fooling around. He was just doing what older brothers do - torment their younger brother when he's being annoying. There was no sexual intention, no one got off throughout the event, so it is different from molestation." Okay, so no sexual intention. But then I start to think of other sitatuations, such as a person in jail being raped. Most of the time, the person who is doing the sexual assault isn't doing it for the sex, but for dominance. To assert control. To put another person in their place. To humiliate them. But when I think about it like that, the intention seems similar to the original situation - the older brother is trying to put the younger brother in his place. To punish. To humiliate. So then...by all intent and purpose, does that not mean that the older brother...raped...his younger brother?

Of course, of course, I say all that to be over dramatic. "Rape" is such a strong word, and illicits a lot of anger when spoken in accusation. Most people would see the situation illustrated as brothers being brothers, and candles shoved up one's ass in those circumstances are not related in the slightest to the concept of rape or molestation. I wonder how the little brother feels about it though. How would he tell this story to a friend or significant other when he got older?

On the same note, it is interesting, and frightening, how much yaoi/shounen-ai anime portrays the "couple" as an adult man (in his 20's, I would say) trying to seduce a young boy (like, around 12, in many cases), while the young boy protests to the sexual advances of the adult. An adult seducing a young adolescent... is that not pedophilia? [actually no - not unless the child is pre-pubescent, but it's still frowned upon, and illegal] And of course, in these shows, it is always a steaming hot adult male and a kawaii bishounen. Are they trying to associate "pedophilia" with "sexy"? If people who watched this type of shounen-ai religiously were to hear about a young boy being molested by an adult male, would they respond with "oooo that's hot"? It goes even farther than that with shows like "Papa to Hold in the Dark", which is EXACTLY about what the title suggests - a romantic relationship between a father and son. WHAT THE FUCK?! and of course, the young boy in these relationships protests, but wants the relationship as well, and wants to be with this older person.

There are two points that I can make on that. Or rather, questions one might ask. The first, why? Are women really turned on by the concept of a pedophile relationship between an adult male and young boy? Are women getting back at male sexists by portraying a male being sexually taken advantage of? Or, is it trying to show the - dare I say - romantic side of such a pedophilic relationship? By that I mean that perhaps, in a real life setting, such a relationship would be just as confusing, and the people involved (or perhaps just the adult involved) don't really see age difference but are convinced that it is a relationship of love?

I throw around a lot of really strong words, like rape, molestation, and pedophilia, all of which carry a lot of weight. Society has associated such negativity with these words and anything related to them. I guess the second point that I wanted to make was that circumstances have a lot to do with how something is perceived. What do I mean by that... Okay, take the example of a relationship between a twenty something adult and a twelve year old boy. The boy in this relationship might truly believe that there's nothing wrong with the relationship; might actually love this older adult. Does he perceive it as molestation? When the child grows older, and learns about how society describes, defines, and views molestation, does his memory of the event change; become bitter and jaded? Does a person's perception of a memory change after it's been labeled? Is it worse for the victim if people react to such words as rape, molestation, and pedophilia with such horror and revolt?

What's more, there are some culture's where it is not only acceptable for an adult to have sexual relationships with young adolescents, it is encouraged. In these cases, I think it is basically to teach younger people about sex before they get married....I think that's what I had heard about it anyway. My point is, the whole concept of sexual relationships between adults and young adolescents is a very cloudy subject. It's not something that is necessarily set down as RIGHT or WRONG, but is more a matter of perception (keep in mind, throughout this entry I'm talking about the types of ..um...relationships where there is no maliscious intent, and the children involved have hit puberty, if not just barely. I guess in that sense I'm not talking about pedophilia as it is defined by the DSM-IV-TR, where the child has to be PRE-pubescent). Is this anime about pedophilia, or just a misunderstood, misrepresented love relationship? Did he shove a candle up his brother's ass because he's a jerk or a child molester?

Some heavy stuff to talk about...



2010, June 3, 10:30PM
Soooo I feel pretty proud of myself. I managed to pull off a successful surprise birthday adventure for Kev, and I finished sewing my wedding dress!

Kev's birthday was pretty sweet. I began planning it a few weeks before, but I accidently told everyone it would be on the day that he worked (which just happened to be his actual birthday). So, I called his work and asked his boss to let him have the day off, but not tell him he had the day off so it could be a surprise. Then I made a reservation at the new sushi place in town, and all I had to do was wait and keep it all a secret. It was hard whenever he would say dejectedly that he had to work on his birthday for the third year in a row. Once I had to turn away so he couldn't see me grinning like an idiot, LOL. Then, the night before, I left a note in the car that read "Surpise! You don't work today. Come back inside, I'm making breakfast" - I left it just in case I slept in and he went to work anyway, and didn't realize until four hours later that he didn't have to be there, lol. So, next morning, I actually woke up with him (at 7:30am or so), and just as he was leaving I told him that his birthday present was in the car. He gave me a look that was like...WTF- why would you put it in the car - and then when he actually saw it, he had a hard time believing it (he had assumed that because he's only working there temporarily that he wouldn't be able to take days off) and questioned me several times to make sure that I wasn't joking. We then proceeded to have an awesome day ^_^ we went to pick up some groceries at 8 in the morning, came back and made some breakfast, and then we went for a walk together. I got a call from the art store saying my blending marker was in, so we walked all the way from here to 2nd ave downtown (it takes about an hour and a half one way), bought ONE marker, and one tube of paint, and then walked all the way back. It was good though. We got to just hang out and talk with eachother the entire time. After that, we rested for a bit at home, then went to the new sushi place for some food. Only half of the people I invited came, but the other half were busy and stuff, so it was understandable. I had texted one of Kev's friends from back home and he was able to drive up to S'toon, so that was pretty cool. After food we went back to our apartment and hung out here. All in all, it was a good day.

Feeling the pressure of the wedding coming up, which is now less than two months away O.o, I decided to start working on the wedding dress on my own, so I could work on it whenever I had some free time instead of coordinating with other people (which is really hard to do when we're all pretty busy, lol). After many days of sewing, and trying to figure out a pattern from directions that were too vague just didn't make much sense, I managed to complete it! I'm so happy, and it actually fits perfectly! I was worried that I would have to alter it, or it would look dumb, or something like that, but it looks good. The part around the "neckline" that attaches to the sleeves is a little off - the fabric seems twisted just a tiny bit, but other than that it's good. I'm excited to see all my friends again, especially before we leave the province for a couple years. There are so many things that are going to change...changing my name, my location, my job, making new friends...I wonder how everything will be... It's kinda cool though, me and Zephyr are gonna set up a thing so we can livestream out art on the same page, and we can do art together even though we live thousands of kilometers away. We'll see how it goes, but I hope it turns out.

I'm going to play with my new markers, now, I think. Oyasuminasai!



2010, May 21, 2AM
This past week or so has been pretty good actually. Several days ago, Kevin took me on an adventure to the ice cream store, and he bought me an ice cream cone, and then we went for a walk down by the river. It was so pretty, and so refreshing to finally have some decent weather. We decided (again - we had had this conversation before LAST year, lol) that we needed to walk down by the river more often. We also decided that sometime before we leave S'toon we're going to kayak down the river too ^__^. It should be fun. Then, I finally worked up the nerve to ask one of my coworkers over for drinks, lol. I'm glad that I decided to be outgoing, for once, because it turned out really well. I had a really good time hanging out with her and her man, and it was nice to hang out with some new people. It's pretty sad that I've lived in this city for 3 years and I've made about ... 3 friends? lol. Oh well. Not only that, but for fear of making a bad impression on new people, Kev and I cleaned the whole apartment and it still looks pretty clean ^_^ YAY for motivation, lol.

My last two shifts at work have been at the other store (there's a Tim Horton's not even a block away from the one I normally work at *sigh* - and they were short staffed so I went over there to help out). It was interesting, I suppose. It's a fairly small store compared to the one I work at, and it doesn't have a drive thru so it's not nearly as busy (especially considering the one I work at is - I kid you not - the busiest Tim Horton's in CANADA), and although I know how to do everything, I still felt like a noob because everything was in a different spot, and the tills were set up completely different from the ones I'm used to. But it was nice to experience a change of scenery. AND, because the other store closes at 11 now, and I was working evening shift, I got to take home the food they were throwing away. I now have enough buns and bagels in the freezer to last a few months! It's kind of mortifying though, thinking about how much food gets thrown away simply because it was made [less than] 24 hours ago, when there are people all over the world that don't have food at all. I hate that if I make a sandwich wrong, or put the wrong sauce on it or something, I have to THROW IT AWAY and make another one. I get someone's coffee wrong? pour it down the drain. Coffee pot was brewed 25 minutes ago? Pour it down the drain! Seriously, why are we REQUIRED to be so wasteful? You talk about "standards" and offering "only the best", but there are millions of people all of the world that would KILL for what we throw away. It's even more sickening to think that we throw out so much in just ONE store - and there are thousands all over Canada. And even at that, I'm only talking about ONE franchise. What about all the other restaurants in the city, that make servings far too large for most people to finish, and end up throwing away a portion of everyone's meal that has been ordered? And then, after that, there's not just the food waste, but all of the packaging from fast food places, not just of the food when you get it, but the overpackaging of the stuff BEFORE you get it. The coffee grounds that we use come prepackaged in small foil packages - one for each pot - just imagine how many foil wrappers are thrown out in every Tim Hortons in Canada, in just a single day!

With all that in mind, I've decided that I'm going to try to alter my lifestyle so I'm not supporting such wasteful behaviour. I'm going to try and avoid fast food restaurants, if I go to a restaurant I will try to remember to bring my own tupperware container to take my extra food home in instead of having it put into styrofoam, and I will try to buy as much in bulk as I can. Of course, I've grown up in the consumerist society, and I'm used to it, so it will be really hard to change my lifestyle. I might even just give up and decide it's not worth the effort. But I've decided that I should at least try. It will become a part of my goal for the next two years. I will try to live less wastefully, and I will aspire to BE an artist, whether it's a tattoo artist, or just selling my paintings and drawings to make money. Of course, we'll have to see how that pans out.

OMFG speaking of being an artist and selling artwork, I am OFFICIALLY going to be in the Artist Alley at Animethon 17 in Edmonton! My contract has already been accepted; I just have to practice drawing people in cosplay and get back into drawing anime style - I haven't drawn in that style for so long! I also caved and decided to buy some copic markers to try out. I bought a pack of 12 for $50 on ebay - which is surprisingly a good price considering they are $80 at the art store downtown. And just the other day I bought some special paper for them too. I'm so excited to use them! hehe. My new addiction is shopping at the art store and drooling over markers and drawing supplies, lol.

Well, it's getting late so I'm going to go to bed. Oyasuminasai!



2010, April 27, 12:30AM
wahaha! I'm done with finals! OMFG I'm so glad I don't have to stress out anymore. Not that I was as stressed out as I usually am...the past years I stressed out A LOT more than I did this semester. I'm pretty happy that I handed in every single one of my term papers on time this semester. I did skip one class to finish the last paper, but whatever. It was just a review class, and we had the topics for the exam questions, so I didn't really need to go anyway. And as far as I know, I've done okay on my finals. I'm just waiting for two more marks. My average will probably stay above 80%, which means I might be able to get into Honours, but as far as Clinical Psych...well, I don't know if I'll be able to get into clinical for grad studies. I heard a horror story of someone with an 85% average and really good references being rejected from Clinical grad studies. Not only that, but of the 55 applicants last year, 5 were accepted. FIVE. Sooooo we'll see. I'll try to kick ass in my fourth year, and if I can't bring my average up enough, then I'll try to get into research grad studies. Oh yeah!! So, change of plans. NOT going to Europe this summer, even though I'ved talked about it forever, lol. We decided that instead of going to another country and becoming the immigrants that are stealing other people's jobs while the economy is going bad in Europe, and then coming back from Europe and picking up exactly where we left off in terms of career building, and EXTREMELY broke, we're going to move to the east coast, maybe Halifax, and try to find some cool jobs. I'm going to TRY to become a tattoo artist, and kev's going to try to try to get his apprenticeship doing piercing. But we'll see. This is just a tentative plan, I've decided I'm not going to say anything for certain until I'm already doing it, lol. If that falls through I'll try to find work at the university helping out with research so I can have references for when I apply to grad school. I might even do both! Who knows.

Oh yeah, and I'm TOTALLY going to the animethon in Edmonton this August! I'm going to apply for the artist alley so that MAYBE I can gain some recognition as an artist, or if anything just have something to do while I'm there, lol. My idea is that I will offer to drawings of people in their costumes. One full colour picture takes me about 3 hours, so I could probably do it ^_^. I'm excited. I have my heart set on making a costume for Alexiel from Angel Sanctuary. I thik I might also go as Re-L Mayer from Ergo Proxy, and perhaps Edward from Cowboy Bebop, but I'm not sure yet. There are three days, so one costume for each day! Uwahaha. I also have to start making my wedding dress. I'm getting married in less than three months. LESS. THAN. THREE. MONTHS. omfg. *works on invitations*

Oh YEAH! lol. I got Pino back!! the lady that took her wanted to give her back because Pino kept hiding under the bed and didn't want to come out for very long, and she was scratching the lady's windowsill or something like that. WHATEVER, I was just so happy to hear that, because she emailed me right after we decided we weren't going to Europe anymore. So I said I'd take her back, and she's been home and super cuddly and omg I missed my cat so much. I feel so much happier now that I have my baby back. Marina's still with her new family, and I think she'll be happy there. She can go outside there if she wants, and she couldn't with us because we live in a city apartment. So, I guess it's for the best. But yeah, omg I'm so happy to have my Pino bak ^___^.

Following up on the whole idea of becoming a tattoo artist, I decided since that I would take my art more seriously and really work to improve my art. I've been trying to improve my colouring skills with pencil crayon, and I'm really happy with how much I've improved over just a couple months. I've FINALLY got the shading of skin tone almost down. I did a bunch of self portraits from pictures i took with my phone, and I was determined to do a self-portrait that was of better quality than the original picture (which isn't a huge leap considering phone pictures are pretty grainy). Speaking of which, I kinda feel like drawing now...

Ja ne!



2010, March 27, 7PM
Interesting thing happened at work today. Okay, so, generally when people are in drive thru, tips are divied among those working in that area throughout the shift. We have these little individual tip cups that we can put our tips into. The person who was on window had them all nicely divided, but hadn't put the money into the individual tip cups yet. The people that came to take over for us (I'm actually talking about one person in particular) had taken that money and divided it instead between her and the other people that had just come onto that shift. Well, window person called on the person who took the money, saying "did you divide that money that was sitting there amongst yourselves?" and the person who did it gave this sort of facial expression that you typically see on people who do something unkind to someone they don't particularly like, or the kind of smile where someone is illegitimately reaping the benefits from someone else's lack of lack-of-trust. It pissed me off mildly, because although I'm sure this person who took the money was probably meaning specifically to slight the window person, she also slighted me in the process. I mean, I don't care THAT much, it was like a dollar or something that i was specifically denied. It's not the money, but it's the fact that she would react so non-challant about taking what was obviously not hers (especially when day shift was, well, still on shift. it's a different story if the day shift leaves and forgets to divy up the money. if everyone from one shift leaves and forgets to take their respective tip money, then its fair game. but i digress). It's not like I'm going to be all like "oh, she's a bitch" etc. etc. And it's not like I can say that "oh, she's THAT kind of person" because one act does not define a person. If anything, she was merely easing her own cognitive dissonance by laughing it off and thinking to herself that the window person deserved it. Anyway, the point of all this is that the most upsetting thing from that experience was that one has to wonder if the reason a person can understand another person's facial expressions, does that not mean that one has made those facial expressions oneself? In the sense that one has been there, done that, and has been that person - and that's why one can be perceptive of another person's malevolent facial expressions. I mean sure, I can put myself at ease and rationalize that it's also possible to learn what a facial expression means vicariously (watching other people make their facial expressions and subsequently observing the outcomes), but on some level, to some similar extent, I've probably been a bitch too, and therefore can't pretend that I'm above such childish behaviour.

So, kinda feeling like my self image has taken a dramatic beating. But I guess that serves me right for being a narcissist, and thinking that I'm somehow slightly different from everyone else. Serves me right for not entertaining the possibility that I could be THAT person. You know, the person you feel embarrassed for when they talk. The person you would feel uncomfortable hanging around in public. The person that really is that much of a bitch. Oh, and in case you were thinking that I'm just being too hard on myself by calling myself a narcissist, I'll let you in on a secret I've never actually disclosed to anyone before. I never window shop. I never look into the glass of a building to see what's inside it, because I'm usually looking at my reflection. I wonder if you'd think of me differently knowing that.

The other way you could consider me narcissistic is that I tend to think I'm something pretty fucking special when I'm hammered. As if it's like some fucking privilege just to see it. Like yeah, okay, people tell me I'm fun to hang out with when I'm drunk, and since I don't drink that often (as in, maybe once every few months, at best), maybe for some it is a rare treat. But for me to acknowledge that, and try to monopolize on it, and have the FUCKING RIGHT to feel pissed off when people leave at the peak of my drunkenness, is rediculous. Stupid. Stupidstupidstupid.

I have no logical reason to be upset. It doesn't change the fact that I am, and acknowledge the lack of reason in my emotions doesn't make them fucking go away. So there. That's all I have to say for today.



2010, March 12, 1AM
I feel delirious. I suppose I've had an excessive amount of caffeine today. It seems like it doesn't make me feel as awake or energized anymore. I feel out of sync; out of balance. I must not drink so much espresso, I think.

I have a lot of homework to do, but it's hard to stay focused; to stay motivated. I watched about two thirds of the anime series Peach Girl, and then I started watching the live action version of the show (in Taiwanese). After watching that through, I started watching another drama entitled "Boys Before/Over Flowers". It was pretty good; some parts were annoying (like when the characters would scream and shout unnecessarily). I stopped at episode 8 or 9 or something though, because it took a turn that I didn't like. Honestly! Whyyyy would she get back together with Gu Jun Pyo (sp?), who was extremely inconsiderate, and throughout everything, he's still trying to win her over by throwing money and things at her. Not to mention that, but he physically forces her to go along with whatever he wants, talks disrespectfully towards her, and is just an overall arrogant prick? He's the type of person that would have no qualms about making another person suffer, and yet she gets back together with him?! Ugh! and Ji Hoo is wayy hotter than Gu Jun Pyo; more graceful, more softspoken and caring and just...*melt* Anyway, I didn't think I could follow the twists and turns, and continued falling in and out of love with both characters for another ...twenty or so hour-long episodes. Interestingly though, there were quite a few elements between Peach Girl and Boys Before Flowers that were similar. All about the love triangles. I can honestly say I'm getting a little tired of the theme, lol. I'm glad I didn't have such a dramatic high school career, although I suppoes the point of watching drama in the first place is catharsis - something you can compare your life to and be like "ah, thank god my life isn't THAT bad!"

I feel like I have no time (and yet here I am, writing in my blog, talking about how much drama I've watched lately).

Would you think of me differently if I openly admitted that I seek attention? That I like to be in the spotlight? Or would you just chalk it up to the human condition?

There was a talk today. I can't remember the name of the professor that was speaking, but he was talking about Taoism, Chinese religion, and the Jesuit movement in relation to Confucianism. It was all very interesting, but one of the things that I thought was most interesting was how he talked about how people "do dialogue". We talked about doing dialogue while discussing discourse analysis in PSY323 (Qualitative Study of Lives). Not really important, I just thought it was interesting.

I think I should go to bed. I should study, but I also work at... 6am. SHIT! I thought I worked at 7...I totally forgot! Ja ne!



2010, February 27
Soooo I had a bunch of fun on eBay over the last couple weeks, lol. I decided I would spoil myself and I bought a plush Mokona hat (Mokona is the bunny-looking thing from Tsubasa Chronicles and XXXHolic). I'm so excited for it to come - I'm going to wear it EVERY DAY! wahaha! I also bought a few articles of lolita goth style clothing - I had a hard time NOT spending a few hundred dollars on clothes, lol. I managed to only spend just over $100, haha. Oh well, whatever. I'm getting just under $2000 back in tax returns (I love being a student!), so I can justify it. Let it be known, however, that going shopping with your credit card is a bad idea, lol.

I've officially decided that I really like painting with oil compared to acrylic. It seems like it takes a lot less time when I paint with oil, and it's so much easier to blend the colours. As well, my new favourite colour is Azilarian (sp?) Crimson ^_^ When I get a chance, I'll put up scans of all the paintings I've done with oil this semester.

I have a really hard time hearing what people are saying when I'm out at the bar. I get tired of asking people to repeat themselves, so I tend to just nod and smile a lot. Of course, this doesn't always go too well. One guy was trying to talk to me and R.M., and he seemed to be somewhat shy and insecure. I didn't really understand what he was saying, but apparently he said something like "you guys must think I'm really annoying", and I did the "nod and smile" thing! OOPS. Oh well, I think he was trying to pick someone up anyway. Moral of the story: don't try to have a serious conversation with someone at a loud bar - because I'm probably not the only one that will nod and smile if I don't understand you.

Speaking of the bar, though, I've actually been going out a lot on the weekends lately. Just about every weekend for the past month or so, I've gone out with my friends...which is cool, because I feel like I have a genuine social life! lol. It was funny last night though, because I went with Kev to a punk show, and since I don't really like punk music that much, and because I was also DD, I decided to take some homework to do while I was there. Kev said I committed a huge faux pas by reading a book (on The Fundamentals of Tai Chi Chuan, no less) at a punk show. Ironically, I did more homework there than I would have at home (since at home I have access to anime, haha). The music WAS alright though - I should mention that I don't HATE punk music, it's just not my favourite genre in the world, lol. Besides, I was there mostly because my friend was in one of the bands, haha.

While I was at the punk show, I noticed that when people are dancing to music at a show or a nightclub or whatever, the style of dancing tends to be very...primal in nature. For example, at your typical "club", dancing tends to take on a very sexual nature, whereas at a punk show, you see people dancing very aggressively (at this particular show people were running around, running into each other, and pushing people). It was also interesting to note that when people were "dancing aggressively", if one person shoved another, the person shoved would look at the shover and smile, do a rock out hand motion or whatever, and continue on. People displayed aggression, but when aggressed against, the acts were not perceived as hostile but rather out of...comaraderie? It was intersting nonetheless. As for me, you would never find me moshing with other people - I don't like getting hurt.

That's it for now; I have some homework to work on. Hopefully I shall update again soon ^_^



2010, February 5, 5PM
Okay, I feel like shitting on people today. First off, Amazon.com SUCKS. Especially the one click buying method thing, because it doesn't tell you the ACTUAL shipping costs, and doesn't confirm the total price with you. So, I ended up spending well over twice as much as I thought I was going to on something. Okay, so I'm actually the stupid one for not checking these things, but still, the shipping costs with Amazon are FUCKING REDICULOUS.

Canadian Tire is also stupid. I called ahead to see how much the car repairs would cost, and they full out lied to me. I thought that I would be spending less money by going there, based on what they told me on the phone, and I ended up paying more than if I had gone somewhere else. I officially HATE Canadian Tire.

I've decided that I'm just going to BE addicted to coffee and not try to fight it, as trying to resist will interfere with my ability to do my homework. Now I can't function without a cup of coffee in the morning. I've become a regular at coffee places.

I freaking LOVE Mass Effect though! (just for something positive).

**[edit: Feb.27.2010. The order on amazon was actually cancelled - perhaps the person decided that having me pay three times as much as the actual item just on shipping was rediculous and decided to do me a favour, lol. Okay, so amendment: Amazon is probably okay, as long as you read all the details, lol. And the person on the phone at Canadian tire probably just made a genuine mistake, or perhaps they were talking about how much it would cost to assess whether I needed a new starter. I was just raging out when I wrote this post, lol.]



2010, January 31, 6PM
Had lots of fun last night; went out to Jax with Zephyr's room mate for a good ol' night of dancing ^_^. There was one guy in particular that really pissed me off, though, in the way that he approached me to try to "pick me up" so to say. Here's basically what was said.

Mr. Douche: why do you run your hands through your hair and play with your shirt strap when you dance?
Me: *shrug* Uh..I don't know [I couldn't think of anything to say on the spot - I usually don't think about things like that. Later I came up with what would be the answer to that question - the shirt I was wearing was defective and the one strap kept slipping down my shoulder, so, in an attempt to be decent I was trying to keep it in place. As for the hair, it gets hot when you're dancing in a crowded place, and if its down it's constantly getting in your face and it gets really irritating, lol.]
Mr. Douche: I like your glasses, and the lip ring; my name is Mr Douche [I don't remember his actual name, so we'll just use a pseudonym, lol]. *extends hand to shake mine - I shake his hand because I figure it would be rude not to - and he kisses it in a creepy-leech-blood-sucking manner. I pulled my hand away and pointed at my engagement ring since I find body language is more understandable in a loud environment*
Mr. Douche: Oh, you're engaged? *looks at the ring* How much did he pay for that - twenty five cents? *scoffs* Well, you can do better.

Ok, it was at this point that I decided to just ignore Mr. Douche, since it was too loud in the bar to really ream him out. I'll do it here instead, wahaha.

Dear Mr. Douche: RE: you can do better.
Better, you say? And, are you, by chance, suggesting that you are that "better" choice, when you haven't even met my fiance? Are you saying that you are a better choice than a man that actually respects me and listens to what I have to say? Would you go out into the freezing cold just to get me ice cream? Here's what I can gather by your behaviour so far. Number one: The first thing that you point out to me is how sexy you think I dance. You've noticed my physical attributes; congratu-fucking-lations. The fact that you would even consider trying to pick me up on that basis alone, without even knowing whether or not I'm actually a psycho-bitch-monster of death, communicates that your ONLY interest is in my physical attributes. Number two: by attempting to slobberingly make out with the back of my hand, you've just overstepped personal boundaries, which means that you have no respect for boundaries. Third, by insulting my fiance even when you've never met him (and thus highly insulting me), you have just communicated that your advances are completely self-interested. You're trying to promote yourself as - what - someone to fuck with? You've obviously no respect for, or a concept of what a long-term relationship is like. You're just an inexperienced loser trying to get laid at a bar. At least you're direct in your failed subtlety, however, your first question should not been about the way I dance, but why I was there in the first place. If I had replied with "I'm just looking for some shmuck to fuck", then maybe it would have been your lucky night - after all, the only girl that would take you up on ANY offer you made would be one with an agenda of her own - and, I might add, very low standards. So - who were you saying was "better"? Go fuck yourself.

I call it, Discourse Analysis of Failed Flirtatious Advances...or something like that.



2010, January 9, 11:30PM
So, I've decided that instead of boring you with the intricacies of my [boring] day to day life, I'm going to focus on a particular topic. I've been noticing in the media, especially movies, that there are more and more surfacing themes of cheating in relationships, and divorce. And, interestingly enough, a lot of times the whole premise of the movie is about how the person cheated, got divorced, and yet everyone somehow had a happy ending, or the person who was cheated on appeared not all that upset about it. Or, if it's not ending happily, it still seems to convey the message that this sort of thing is commonplace, just a fact of life, etc. etc.

Since the topic of "cheating" is one in which a lot of people have very strong opinions about, I've decided to use that as my topic for today's blog. What do I consider cheating? And, is cheating cheating, or do circumstances matter?

Let's define "cheating" as any sexual activity with another person (of either gender) while one is currently in a monogamous relationship. As far as I'm concerned, yes, cheating is cheating - there are no other labels that can be applied to differing circumstances; however, circumstances do matter. What do I mean by that? Well, in terms of making a decision about whether to end the relationship or to try to work things out depends on whether the person is genuinely remorseful, whether it was a one-time thing or multiple occurences, and whether the person is honest about it or tries to hide it. At the heart of all three is the motivation for cheating in the first place.

People make mistakes. As they say, "to err is human", and everyone screws up in different ways. So, it is entirely possible for someone who is completely in love with their significant other to screw up and somehow fall into a...sexual situation...with another person. If the person does really love their significant other, then he/she would be extremely guilt-ridden and remorseful, and chances are that he/she will make a genuine effort to change his/her behaviour. However, it is also possible that the person who cheated really doesn't care that much about the relationship, and cheated out of lack of respect for his/her significant other, in which case there would be no point in trying to make the relationship work. In this latter case, it is a sign that the people in the relationship are just not right for each other, whereas in the former, perhaps there is a specific problem within the relationship that needs to be dealt with (for example, a feeling of distance, lack of communication, lack of sex...etc).

When I say "whether it was one occasion or multiple occasions", what I really mean to get at is whether it was a situation that arose out of circumstances...you know...the kind of thing you would later describe as an event that "just happened", as opposed to deliberately planning to sleep with another person. Using an example to clarify this: a "just happened" situation would be like being at a party and getting so drunk that one's ability to think things through is inhibited, and some other person climbs on top of him or her, and he or she - being a state of mind to go with whatever's happening - ends up having sex with this other person without truly paying attention to what's going on (keep in mind that I'm NOT saying that "being drunk" is an adequate excuse for cheating; I'm using this as an example because it's probably the most common scenario for the "just happened" sort of event). In the scenario of deliberately planning, an example would be calling home to say that you're "working late" when you're actually planning on meeting up with another person for an affair. The reason why I make this distinction is because in the latter scenario, especially if there are repeat occurences, it makes it obvious that the person is not willing to address the REAL problem in the relationship with the person with whom they are in a relationship. An example to clarify: if you feel that your partner is becoming very distant, or if you feel that he/she is unsatisfying in bed, you should TALK to your partner about spending more time together or trying something new in bed rather than seeking someone else out to fill that gap - OR just end the relationship and start fresh if it's unfixable. Having a continued/multiple affairs is running from the problem and is extremely unfair for the significant other

Finally, probably one of the most important things is whether or not the person owns up to his/her behaviour. At least, as far as I'm concerned, lying is worse than cheating. If the person has the strength to actually tell you about what happened, it's probably a good sign that he or she is willing to at least try to make sure it never happens again; is willing to try to work through whatever difficulties there are in the relationship (operative word being "probably"). It is important to keep in mind, however, that the things I've listed aren't hard and fast rules for making a decision. Deciding whether to work through the cheating issue or to end the relationship is a judgment call that an individual has to make, and the biggest factor in that is what a person can deal with. If thinking about your significant other being with someone else makes you want to vomit violently, and this feeling doesn't change, obviously circumstances aren't going to matter to you. And even if you are the type of person that could live with that thought, there are lots of other factors that play in as well, such as how serious your relationship is or the circumstances that you found out. If you found out in the first few months, you'd be less likely to tolerate it than if you found out after you'd been married for 20 years. In regards to circumstances, I would imagine walking in on it, and actually seeing it first hand, would definitely change things as well. It's harder to rationalize something that's staring you in the face. And this is why I said before: cheating is cheating.

After all of this, please keep in mind that i'm not trying to say "cheating is okay" or that it's okay to cheat in certain circumstances. I'm saying that there are certain circumstances when it is possible to work through it and eventually come out okay in the end, and there are also circumstances when you can't work it out. It depends on how you perceive the situation (not how it actually happened, but how you perceive it), and what you can live with. I would think that cheating in and of itself is a sign that there's something else going on, especially in a serious relationship (if it's not that serious, then it's probably a sign that he or she is just not that into you). Maybe the real problem is that the other person has a problem with drinking to the point where they "lose control" so to say. Or maybe the problem is that you both haven't been communicating well, or that there has been a growing distance in the relationship.

If you want to have a good, long lasting relationship, there are a few important points to take to heart. If you feel like you're not getting enough attention, or if you feel ignored or whatever, tell your significant other about it! Not telling him/her isn't going to make the fact that you still feel that way go away. Chances are, the other person just hasn't really noticed that he/she was coming off as distant or negligent. If you don't say anything, the other person will just assume that everything is okay. It is really, REALLY important to be able to communicate with each other, especially about things that are bothering you.

Well, that's all I'm going to write for tonight. And remember, this is my opinion on this specific topic, so please don't have a cow if you don't agree with it, lol. Oyasuminasai!



2010, January 7, 1AM
You know that feeling when you look at everything you've done; the culmination of all of your efforts, and it falls just short of your expectations, or at least short of what you had wanted to accomplish, and thus feel like a complete and utter FAILURE? That's my feeling right now. I look at my artwork. FAIL. I look at any picture of me that has ever been taken, and compare it to this secret image of a beautiful person I have inside my head, and FAIL. I look at my most recent marks in university, and they fall short of my expectations. UTTER FAIL! I try to play guitar, but it's choppy, the strings buzz, and my voice sounds like a trainwreck. Yeah yeah yeah, it's not so bad. I tend to be really hard on myself, and I don't know whether it's a good thing or a bad thing (in the sense that it would motivate me to do better, or if it would make me depressed to the point where I lose motivation to do anything, and get progressively worse, and more depressed, and it just becomes this violent downward spiral into DOOM).

I often wonder if a person feels crappy because they want to feel that way, or if feeling crappy is something that is out of a person's control. After all, I could just change the way that I think about all the things I just listed. If I know it's possible to change the way I think, why couldn't I choose to think positively instead? And what does it say if I choose not to think positively but to dwell on the negative? Do I gain some sort of satisfaction from it? Or is it rather that I'm searching for attention or recognition, or some other form of reward?

*sigh* oh well. I'm going to bed now.



2010, January 5, 11:45PM
Woot! first day of classes! I was at the university for 7 and a half bloody hours, and hence decided that I didn't feel like going to karate afterwards (it's cold, I had a headache, and I was hungry), and decided ultimately that I'm not going to take karate anymore - since I don't really have any other time other than on Tuesdays. I might drop in at karate every now and then, but I'm not going to go all the time. I've also had a fairly productive couple of days homeworkwise. I managed to put 7 chapters' worth of definitions in flashcard form (which is quite a feat, considering there were 200 definitions for chapter 2 alone of my neuropsych text!). So, naturally, my head hurts now ;_;

I was exceedingly embarrassed by my attempt at Stairway to Heaven in the audioblog, so I put up another version of it. This time, I only played it in chunks and then mashed it all together in the audio mixer thingy I have. It sounds a lot better. It's not an accurate representation of my actual playing abilities in real life, but I guess most bands will record their stuff in such a way that it sounds better, lol. I'm leaving up the older version so I have something to compare it to.

I'm sleepy....oyasuminasai!



2010, January 4, 11:30PM
Okay, so I was doing homework when I decided that I was going to put up some new emoticons on my website! wahaha! All the ones you see on this blog are from Anikaos.com. I came across the onionhead ones and OMG they are so cute and so anime-characteristic. I LOVE THEM! So I'm throwing them in with the other emoticons, lol.

I'm really excited for my first classes to start tomorrow. And I'm excited for next week too, because I'm starting my job tutoring! (still working at Tim Hortons, btw). I'm tutoring someone in PSY 255 - Human Memory, which was one of my favourite classes. I'm so stoked! Plus, I'm getting paid $15/hour...pretty wicked, eh? Of course, I'll only be excited about all of this until I have to start actually doing some homework...HAHA.

I've been reading this book called The Blak Hole War by Leonard Susskind, which is about his "battle with Stephen Hawking to make the world safer for quantum physics". Basically, it's about how Leonard Susskind has worked to prove Hawking wrong about his notion that information is lost in black holes. I highly recommend it if you're even the tiniest bit interested in physics - it explains a lot of the concepts I had trouble with in high school physics in such a way that it is very understandable. Seriously, that book should be a high school physics book, because it's INTERESTING!! When I'm done reading this book, I might possibly take out a book from the physics library about String Theory, but we'll see how this semester goes.

I got my hair done today ^_^ I had it cut shorter (about chin length a couple weeks ago), and today I got it highlighted. Although - it's a little more blonde than I had really wanted, but it still looks okay. I'm not too entirely sure how I feel about it yet. ma ne, shikataga nai. I was also able to sell enough text books from previous classes in order to cover the cost of my two fairly expensive text books for this term, so I was really happy about that. Oh!! and I totally forgot to mention! After grading in November for Karate, I ascended to ORANGE belt! I was pretty happy about that. Perhaps, if I'm able to keep up with it during this semester, I can get my green belt before I leave the country. We'll see though.

Well, I'm going to attempt to do some more notes on my text books. Ja ne!



2010, January 3, 7PM
Well, today, it is official; I no longer have any pets. I put an add up on Kijiji for my two cats, and within a day I already had responses for both of my cats. They are now both given away to good homes, and we no longer have to spend money on cat food and cat litter. I bawled my eyes out after giving away Pino though. And just today I gave away Marina, the cat I've had for nigh on ten years. Now I'm just depressed, lol. Oh well. I guess it's better to give them away now rather than wait until later when I'm more attached to them and it's even harder to give them away. I just wasn't expecting people to reply so soon. It's almost like I wasn't given enough time to say goodbye, but the cats wouldn't have understood it. I'm sure they won't even miss me...they' just cuddled with me for body heat and because they knew I fed them.

On a happier note, I had a really good Christmas and New Years. I got to spend time with the family, and just relax. Although, I made a pie to take to my Aunt and Uncle's, but I forgot to put oven mits on when I picked up the pie plate and it flipped over onto the floor. I actually cried when I did that too; I was so upset that I had wasted an ENTIRE saskatoon berry pie. Well, almost - I salvaged what I could from what didn't actually touch the floor. Besides that, though, Christmas was good. And for New Years we celebrated R.M.'s birthday ^_^. I even baked a chocolate cake that didn't have any milk, eggs, or butter in it, and it was actually really easy. We played this game where we had to write something down from a certain category like "things you shouldn't do naked" or "things you shouldn't say to your wife", and then after they were read out you had to guess who said what. It was really fun - we had a lot of good laughs at some of the answers. As a reminder for the future, however, Tequila does NOT taste very good on its own - lemons are a must for the next drinking occasion, lol.

Term papers and finals are all finished. I start my new semester tomorrow...and I'm soo happy that I don't have to do any intensive studying or research for a little while, anyway. The worst part about doing term papers is that I have chosen to go to University, to take the class, and to write the damn paper, and even though I could choose to drop out of the class/university, I don't. I can't legitimately complain about doing term papers or writing tests beause it's my choice to do them in the first place. I can't wait until this semester is done, because then I get to take a couple years off.

That's it for now, ttyl.



2009, November 24, 10:30 PM
So, the term paper that I'm working on now has been given yet another extension, so that it will be due next Tuesday. Unfortunately I have two other term papers due next week, so I should really try to get this term paper done by Thursday. Here's to hoping, haha (notice how I'm currently updating my blog).

My birthday passed by pretty smoothly. Went out to Jax on the 10th, and that was alright. It was the middle of the week so it wasn't totally packed like it usually is. The next day I was supposed to go to spirit training for karate (basically you just get up early on a holiday and go to karate at 8 in the morning), but I was feeling really crappy (and no, I wasn't hung over, I only drank water when I went out on my birthday, haha), so I ended up staying home during the morning. Afterwards, R.M. and I went for coffee on Broadway and, instead of sitting in at a cafe, we took a stroll down the street and looked in at all the cool stores ^_^. We went into one place and - lo and behold, they had the hooker boots I've been looking for FOREVER, and they were on sale for only $60! (the ones I wanted from Gothical were just over $200, and weren't as comfortable). So...I bought them! lol. I happened to mention along this adventure that I had always wanted to get a vertical lip piercing, but the thing holding me back was work (we're not supposed to have facial jewelry, even though lots of people do anyway, lol). I decided to test fate: if I could get them to pierce my lip with the retainer so that I could have it in at work, then I would get my lip pierced. Turns out they didn't have the bioplast in right then, but they could get the clear balls in by the next week. So, after this epic adventure, I came out with some shiny new black knee-high lace up 5 inch platforms, and a lip piercing. I think I said once that I would never get my lip pierced...funny, I tend to always go back on those sorts of claims.

Speaking of term papers, I'm going to continue working on the bibliography for all three of them (that's always so tedious), and skim through a few of the sources.

Ja ne!



2009, November 7, 2:30 AM
Raaa! I'm so hardcore I had to find a new emoticon! lol jk. So my horror of needlessly spending money and my obsessive compulsive need to obtain symmetry has driven me even out my ear piercings...with my own hands! I still had the earings that were used to pierce my left ear, which happen to be exceptionally pointy, so after much sanitization I shoved the earings through my ears. Of course, it was a slow process compared to using a piercing gun. Such a strange feeling...feeling the skin break on both sides of your ear as you willfully push through a bar of metal...creeped out yet?

Ok so not that exciting, I'm sure there are quite a few people that have done their own piercings. I just wanted to rave about it for a bit.

In the past couple of weeks I have finished watching 3 different anime: Yami no Matsuei, Ergo Proxy, and Death Note. I was disappointed by the latter half of Ergo Proxy, as the ending really didn't explain very much. It seemed like the storyline had a lot more potential than what they actually did with it. It was very good, but it could have been better. Death Note...I watched episodes 24 through 37 in one day, haha. OMG what an amazing series! Every episode was filled with intrigue, and the ending was absolutely perfect! (after having just finished Ergo Proxy, having a concise ending in Death Note made it that much better, haha). and Yami no Matsuei was a short, sweet, albiet strange shounen-ai-ish series. The storyline was actually fairly decent, and I want to read the manga to see if it's any better. BTW, I have a problem with watching anime, lol. I haven't done any real homework in a while...oops!

Well, I gotta go to bed, it's late. Oyasuminasai!



2009, October 7, 3:30 AM
I was determined to stay up until I actually accomplished something. I've been slacking a bit in my homework, so I want to try to get back on track, or at least pass my exam coming up on Friday, lol. So far so good, I've managed to start studying on Monday, which is impressive considering I usually study the night before. Of course, I've only accomplished a minute amount of studying, so really...

Just watched the latest episode of House M.D., and omfg what an interesting, and very loaded episode! It brings up a lot of very valid questions of morality, the biggest one being: If someone who was responsible for thousands of deaths, and would be responsible for countless more, were to come to a hospital, would it be more ethical to treat this person and make him/her healthy (thus allowing him/her to continue destruction of other human lives), or would it be more ethical to "accidentally" kill him/her? By saving this person's life, would you be indirectly responsible for the countless deaths at the hands of this murderer? By ending this person's life, would you be saving those countless lives, or would you yourself become a murderer? If by distancing yourself from the entire situation and not becoming involved, are you released of all responsibility? Or does the mere fact that you could have made a decision; could have acted in the situation to make the world a better place lead you into bad karma because you chose not to act?

That's one of the things that scares me about becoming a psychologist. On the one hand, I would have to maintain the utmost confidentiality with the patient. If the patient tells me that he/she plans to do harm to another person, or that he/she has sexually abused a child and may continue to do so, then I am required to warn someone about the potential harm to other people. What happens if the patient is just relaying what they would feel like doing, not what they would actually do? By breaching confidentiality on a false alarm, I would be in serious trouble. If I didn't breach confidentiality and something terrible happened because of that, I would still be in serious trouble. I really...really hope that I'm not faced with such a difficult decision (I probably will be, but one can always hope).

HOLY OMG WOW! Over a year and a half ago, we were told that we would be getting new counters put in within a WEEK. Now, FINALLY, we have the new counters!! And new sinks and taps that don't shake violently every time you turn on the hot water!! There's still a very long list of things wrong with this apartment, but hey, we finally have new counters! I consider that a reason for celebration!

I'm actually pretty excited about doing my research proposal for my 300 level psych class. I'm going to be doing the research proposal on the yaoi/shounen-ai fanfiction/fanart phenomenon...how freaking awesome is that?! I've always been interested in the subject, just because it's so bizarre, and now I have a legitimate excuse to do research on it (or pretend to prepare to do research on it, haha). For once, a paper I am genuinely excited about!

Speaking of which, I've started writing my fanfiction as a form of distraction from doing homework. I managed to complete another chapter! Yay for semi-productive distractions ^_^

Haha, I drank some Mana potion to give myself some energy and keep myself awake. I was tired until just this last hour or so. Seriously? What inconvenient timing...oh well. Maybe I'll get something accomplished.

Oyasuminasai!



2009, September 28, 1 PM
I've remembered how much I dislike doing homework, and, lo and behold, here I am! Granted, so far, I've read more of my textbooks than I would usually have read by the end of a semester, so yay! I'm in some sense staying afloat. However, in the last few days, I've been increasingly more distracted by the tv - if someone else is watching something, even if I hate the show they're watching I'll pay attention to it anyway. That's why I hate going to bars that have tvs in them, because I'll tend to watch them instead of socialize. I also missed an assignment, which I am completely mortified by. Here I was starting out all good and I didn't even DO an assignment! I blame that on the fact that I didn't write it down in my dayplanner, though. If I don't use a dayplanner, I tend to remember when things are due, or I'll have it in my head that I need to do them. Problem is that I get dates mixed up or there's the possibility of forgetting something. If I use a dayplanner, everything is organized, I can plan out my studying, but because it's all there, I don't have to remember when things are due, and if I forget to write something down, I'll completely miss it.

Oh yeah, continuing previous thought - because I've been so distracted by the tv lately, I've decided to set up my laptop in the spare room. Desk is cleaned off, I have my little coasters so I can have a cup of tea, I'll get all my text books in here so I don't have to go anywhere, I'm sitting on a chair instead of a nice comfy sleep-inducing couch, and I've redirected the wireless broadcaster to point towards this room instead of the living room. So far, I've noticed that it's a lot easier to type since my laptop is at a higher level (before I had it on the coffee table). We'll see how it goes though.

So, not too sure about the date anymore, as I was too slow in booking the Wadena hall for the 24th...Oh well! I'll have to work that out pretty quick though.

Every year, when I get a textbook from the library, or I'm doing research on something, I find a book that I want to read for myself, I take it out, and every time I return it without reading a page of it. Well, this time, when I got a book for myself from the library, I read the whole thing! It's called Crooked Cucumber and it's about a Zed Buddhist prist that came to America. It was actually quite interesting, and I would suggest other people read it.

As a personal goal for myself, I need to work on being more outgoing. I feel that my shyness actually probably just makes me come off as extremely rude (in that I tend to not intruduce myself to people or ask for their name). So, I will start with at least introducing myself to people when I talk to them.

Anyway, that's enough distraction from doing homework. I'm going to try to get this assignment done before the sun sets (instead of staying up until 2am trying not to fall asleep).

Ja Ne



2009, September 3, 9 PM
Yay! First day of classes was today. I'm sooo happy that university has started again. I was getting so sick of working full time, haha! I even took off 4 days the weekend before school started just to bring the end closer, lol. That was a good decision, however, because Kev and I went to the Temple Garden Hotel in Moose Jaw and had a very relaxing weekend. we went swimming in the mineral water pool, stayed in a room with a jacuzzi, and just RELAXED. It. Was. Awesome.

As well, I've OFFICIALLY decided that it's GOING to happen. We are GOING to the UK next year for sure! We can easily save up enough money for it over the next year, and then some. Yeah, I'll be taking off before I've gotten my bachelors, but if we put it off for another year, there will always be another reason to put it off even more. So...screw it! We are going NEXT YEAR, god damn it! The wedding will be next July, probably on the 24th. Just before the wedding, or just after, we'll move out of the apartment and either sell, give away, or let other people use temporarily, all our stuff, and then after the wedding we'll go on a honeymoon for a week or two, hang out in Wadena for a bit, go to another wedding, and then we're leaving the country for two years!! I'm so freaking excited, I don't know how I'll be able to contain myself for the next year.

Speaking of weddings and such, I got the fabric for my wedding dress and the bridesmaids dresses, and I picked out my wedding ring too! About February or March, Zephyr, R.M. and I will get together and start sewing our dresses...woot!

In other awesome news, I finished...FINISHED reading The Lord of the Rings. Holy omfg wow what an EPIC novel! I was really surprised though, because as long-winded as a lot of the book was, the battle scenes weren't as epic as I'd expected them to be, lol. Granted, it is hard to write a battlescene, and, considering the fact that I watched the movies first, that probably skewed my expectations. I think it's a lot easier to depict an epic battle scene in movie form than in writing form. I was also irritated by the fact that the book stuck with specific characters for long periods of time, and didn't switch to other characters when things were going on simultaneously. In that sense, the book didn't go in precise chronological order, but went back and forth in time - which, by the end of the book, was starting to get on my nerves, lol. On the other hand, one got to experience the same event from several different perspectives. I started rewatching the movies, as well, since the last time I saw them was years and years ago. I think I like the movies a lot more since reading the book, as they did a pretty good job of keeping things fairly accurate. They are really long movies though! I'm only part-way through the Two Towers, lol.

Oh hey, and did I mention? I've started taking Karate again! And since I'm paying for it, I can guilt myself into going if motivation fails me, haha! I'm feeling in better shape than I have been, and if I don't go for a while, I really feel it...I just feel like crap. Well, hopefully I'll be able to keep up with it throughout the school year. I worked it into my schedule so I definitely have time to go, and it's not even that inconvenient because I can just go downtown after class.

Work is going to be changing a lot, pretty soon. Angel, one of the managers, has left for another province. There was a going away party for her, and I was able to get drunk with my manager (which is a rare event because she doesn't really drink anymore...except on special occasions, evidently, and I don't usually socialize much, haha). I even stayed out late to party with some of my coworkers, which was fun. It's nice to branch out every now and then and hang out with people I don't normally hang around. Anyway, as I was saying before, the other manager will be going on maternity leave, and they've brought one of the managers from the other store over. It's going to be quite a different experience. Hopefully it all turns out ok. Oh well. I'm quiting at the end of next July. I'll just keep that firm in my mind from now until then, lol.

Well, I've got homework and stuff to do, ttyl!



2009, August 7/8, midnight
So that streak of motivation I was talking about in the last post lasted approximately a week...and now things are back to normal, lol. Oh well. I've taken up karate though...yay! I'm finally doing something physically involving, haha. Sensei says that I may even be able to get my orange belt by fall, too, so that'll be cool.

In the realm of work...OMFG I CAN'T WAIT TO NOT WORK FULL TIME ANYMORE!! lol. I've been working the same job for two years, so I feel like I've learned everything I really can (besides becoming a supervisor, but that would just be more uber-stressful than challenging, haha), and therefore I feel rather...well, bored. Not to say that the job itself is boring, but I'm just sick of being there, sick of eating the same food for 5 days a week...but what other job will pay 12 dollars an hour, offer benefits even with part-time, and allow me flexible-enough hours so that I can plan my school year exactly how I want it? *sigh* ma ne, shikataganai yo.

I'm really excited for school to start ^_^ although I'm also kinda nervous... apparently third year is supposed to be really intensive and a lot of work, and the third year psych classes are all about research and doing experiments...all of which I HATE, lol. Sometimes I wonder if I really want to be a psychologist, but while I was at the restaurant the other day, and someone marvelled at how well the waitress was able to remember the multiple orders, I had to restrain myself from excitedly explaining exactly how the waitress remembered it...haha. I just hate doing a lot of work, lol.

I've taken it upon myself to read all of Lord of the Rings this summer, and so far, I'm almost done The Two Towers!! yay! I'm hoping to finish it before school starts. It's taken me the whole three months of summer I've had to read this far, though, lol. But I don't read it everyday, and when I do it's usually one chapter at a time. What can I say? I'm a slow reader, and reading puts me to sleep (conditioning from always reading textbooks while lying on the couch).

The tattoo is FINALLY finished, too! It's all coloured in, and I've decided I'm not getting any more tattoos for a long time, haha. I'm just waiting for it to heal, and then I may possibly post a picture of it :D but I promise nothing.

Well I've got to go to bed, I have to go to stupid work in the morning, lol. Ja ne.



2009, June 4, 8am
Lately, we've been trying this new thing where we become motivated people, and instead of lying on the couch watching reruns of House (I freaking love that show!), we've been trying to actually get things done. I feel very proud of myself for the last couple days, because yesterday and today, even though it was my day off, I got up early, and I didn't go back to sleep after the alarm clock went off! Trying to break the SNOOZE habit, and so far we're off to a good start :) (I usually press the snooze button several times in a morning, always for at least an hour, usually between an hour and a half to two hours). We've been saying for, quite literally, months that we would get up in the morning and make breakfast, but every single time one of us will press the snooze button until it's too late for breakfast, but both yesterday and this morning we got up and had breakfast! YAY!!

Yesterday, as well, instead of napping all day (another bad habit of mine, haha) and wasting away on the couch, I cleaned the appartment, did the dishes, donated a couple dollars to the Camp Day thingy going on at Tim Hortons (played the roulette wheel and won a $5 travel mug - NICE!), cashed in my Tim Points [points we get at work for being extra awesome, lol] and got a couple gift cards for Sobeys. I looked up a recipe for a brand new dish we've never had before and used the gift cards to buy everything I needed to make Moussaka, a Greek casserole featuring lamb and eggplant. It turned out really good, too ^_^. On my way back from the grocery store I bought a flower for Kev, hehe. I got a tiger-lily since he mentioned wanting to grow them (although I think he meant for eating purposes, haha), and because I really wanted to have just one flower among all the other plants we have, lol. And, in my cleaning rampage, I also organized the recycling room, which was, to say the least, a bit of a disaster area, lol. Yay for motivation!

I've also been walking places instead of driving everywhere (mostly because my car won't start and I have a phobia of driving Kev's truck). I walked downtown to pay the rent last Friday, stopping at the university to do some stuff on the internet. Today I'm going to walk down to the university to upload the updates to my website and check my email and all that. It's a good hour long walk, but it's nice to get outside. If I'm cooped up in the appartment for too long I start to get depressed, lol.

I went through all my old notebooks...the ones I used to write in in high school, and I tore out all of the pages that had my journal stuff and tore the pages to pieces and recycled them. I figured it was time to say goodbye to the melodramatic teenager, and lay to rest everything I once thought and believed, because most of the things I wrote about, I no longer feel the same way about them. And all the things I wrote because I was feeling emotional and angry...I don't want to go back over those things and be reminded of them. And finally, I wouldn't want to keep them so someone else could read them, because another person would judge me based on who I was then, not who I am now. And so, the notebooks are gone. I still kept my History 20 case studies though, because I put way too much work into them to just get rid of them, haha.

Speaking of old stuff, while I was in Wadena I went through the stuff at my Dad's and brought up a bunch of things, namely, my old sketchbooks! Sometime I'll scan in the old art and put it up here. I won't bother putting it up on DeviantArt just because it's so old, but you lucky people will get to see where it all began, wahaha. I also brought back a couple binders full of recipes from McCall's Cooking School, which is where I got the recipe for Moussaka from. Hopefully this summer we'll pick out something different every week or so and try something new. I'm so excited!

Well, I'm off to start a brand new day full of adventures! Ja ne!



2009, May 29, 2am
Holy omg wow, the lengths I have to go through just to get the damn internet to work! I was on the phone with the LYNKSYS technicians trying to troubleshoot my router woes, and after being on the phone for an hour it was decided that the router is defective. The funny part is that in order to fill out the forms to get a replacement router and get my internet back, in need to go to their WEBSITE. OMFG! Whatever...I'll just hit the university on my way downtown in the morning. Of course, even if I send away the router and get another one, it'll probably take several weeks for the bloody exchange. I might as well just buy another one (except for the fact that I'm quite broke). oi.

I also need to confirm the registration for my new domain, but the registration number is in my email, and I can't phone them back until I have the registration number ready. Yet another thing I'll have to do on my errand run.

Do you ever write down an explanation of who you are - a poem, a blurb, whatever, and then come back to it a few months or years later and realize that the things you said don't even apply anymore? The concepts and ideas that you identified with become obsolete; the images you were so in love with you realize were just a personal fad, and now you feel embarrassed and ashamed by everything you thought you once represented? I wonder if it ever stops, or if a person is doomed to perpetual shame and embarrassment of one's former self? If one IS doomed, then doesn't that mean that a person is ALWAYS shameful and embarrassing? When it comes to other people, you take them for who they are - you don't mull over THEIR past sayings and embarrassments, and in all likelihoood, no one else is going over YOUR multiple embarrassments, so it's possible that the shame one feels is completely redundent... Ahh It still bothers me though. I cringe with embarrassment when I think of the embarrassing/hurtful things I said when I was five years old. Everything I've ever done wrong haunts me. I find a lot of time I'm trying to rationalize and justify actions I did so many years ago that it doesn't even matter anymore. I'll replay conversations I would have had with someone - alternate conversations with better wording, more articulate; or I'll wish desperately that I could take something back...why the bloody hell did I say that?! It was so obviously tactless, tasteless, rude, so terribly rude... and I cringe every time.

It's not like I could supress or forget the terrible moments, because if I did that, I'd just repeat the same damn mistakes and then I'd have some new experiences to feel ashamed over. *sigh* If a person is doomed to continually look back and feel ashamed of every terrible moment throughout one's life...how do old people feel when they look back on their lives? I wonder if it's exhausting to remember so many mistakes and feel bad for every single one of them? Haha, perhaps the memory loss that occurs with old age is a psychological defence mechanism.

I'm hungry, but I don't want rice or pasta. And it's 2 in the morning.

Well I should header...the immense amount of caffeine that was in my system before is starting to drain. Oyasuminasai!!



2009 May 22, 2009, 2am
Well, I sure do make a habit of not updating very often, LoL. Well, after a long (yet very fast) second year of university, I have successfully managed to maintain my average above 80%, not go completely insane at work, have a little bit of a social life, and, god forbid, spend money on myself!! Uwahaha! Okay, so update from last post: Pino had a mammary inflammation of some sort, not cancer, and therefore getting her spayed prevented her from having any more lumps ^_^. My classes all went okay, although I must say that I absolutely DESPISE term papers! I had also picked out all the classes I was going to take in the upcoming years, deciding that I would get my astronomy minor as well as religious studies. However, that meant taking summer calculus classes and another math and physics class in order to be able to take the 300 and 400 level astronomy classes. However, after enduring the first few days of calculus, I decided that plan was a dumb idea and dropped out of calculus! This ended up being a good thing though, because when I was looking up different classes to take, I looked up the physics class I wanted and it no longer existed, lol. I would have had to take THREE different physics classes just to meet the pre-requisite requirements, and consequently I would need to go to university for another whole semester (which would also amount to an extra $3000 spent on classes I didn't actually want to take, lol). SO, I'm taking more painting classes ^_^

As for not spending money on myself, I made up for that over the last month or so by getting a few piercings and adding to my tattoo ^_^ What better way to spend money on yourself than paying to have permanent alterations done to your body? lol. See, we were planning on buying a *new* car, and I took out $1000 from my savings to pay for the downpayment, but alas, we thought better of it since having a car to pay for over a period of several years would hinder our ability to leave the country, so we ended up not getting the car. So, having this money that I would have spent anyway, and expected not to have, I decided to spend it on myself! (Now I can't complain about not being frivolous, lol) I also bought a couple new pairs of shoes, and external hard-drive for better organizing, some new jewelry, and a mocha-bubble-tea-with-bubbles-and-whipped-cream on many an occasion throughout the school year, lol. After I get my tattoo coloured in, however, I'll have to do some heavy duty saving for the next year!

Now that it's summer, I've decided to read the books I've been meaning to read, starting with Lord of the Rings! Hopefully I actually stick with it this time...I got halfway through the first book and quit while I was in high school, but perhaps this summer will be different.

Work has been going alright too. I got another raise, so I feel better about working there, lol. It gets tiring though. I've been there for almost 2 years, and after having the food from there at least 4 times a week, and being able to do almost everything in the store, the work day goes by slower and I feel less enthused about going to work. Oh well. I think it's more that I'm just tired of doing work not related to psychology. EIGHT MORE years of school...omfg...but at least I'll be able to start doing psycholgoy related things in about 4 or 5 years...lol.

I've also toyed with the idea of running an animal shelter instead of raising children, but we'll see how that goes.

They have manga at the public library. I was thrilled to discover this. I was even more thrilled to discover that you can read manga online at http://www.mangafox.com.

Oh yeah. January my laptop's hard-drive died, and although I was able to save my homework (thank god!) I lost my pictures from the last two years. Luckily, however, I have psycho stalkers on Facebook that post pictures of me and past events, and my friends also have a lot of the pictures I had, so not all is lost :) Because of this incident, though, I took to writing my notes in pencil, transfering the notes to the computer, ERASING the notes and reusing the paper! Yeah, I'm helping the environment! (although I fall asleep with the lights on sometimes, so I don't help that much, lol)

Ok, well, I think it's time to header. Oyasuminasai!



2008 November 6, 12am
Holy fucking omg wow I haven't updated in....*counts*...5 months! woops! Okay, so quick overview...August, Kev quit KWH and talked me into going to Banff with him, had a great time even though it rained pretty much the whole time. We camped in a tent, cooked over a fire, and enjoyed some of the fancy cuisine at both Banff and Jasper. Heard Gackt on the radio or whatever was playing at one of the Japanese restaurants, which was somewhat surprising (although it probably shouldn't be that surprising, seeing as how he's so famous and everything, it was just weird to hear a song I recognized and listened to a billion times). Oh yeah. OMG, I should have mentioned this first...Kev asked me to marry him! and I said YES! uahaha, so we're getting married July 26, 2010...or around then. He did this sometime over the summer, and we told our parents at the end of September...we wanted to do it in person :)

University has started, and I've been working more than last year trying to save up for a trip to Europe that might not even happen...lol. I'm working about 32 hours per week, school full time, and I didn't increase my loan limit amount thinger so I've been paying most of this year's tuition out of my own pocket. I'm freaking broke. I spend on average about $10 per pay period on myself. I don't have a social life because I've been trying to get good marks in all of my classes (seeing as how 80% of my classes this year are psychology classes, and the other ones I have to get an 80% average in as well because they make you do well not only in what you want to do but your extra classes too...oi, lol) For a while it was getting rather depressing, but now I find I don't even enjoy going out and spending a lot of money, so hey! Personal growth. I've gotten rid of one of my desires...or so I keep telling myself. On the same note, I've also decided presents are stupid. What's the point of wracking your brain over trying to buy a present for someone when they're only going to kinda like it or put it away in the closet for the next decade until they dig it up and sell it at a garage sale? Ok, kind of exaggerating, but my point is, I don't want any presents this year. People keep asking me what I want, and I keep telling them I don't want anything, and they keep insisted I need to have a present, and then they get me one and I'm too broke to get them one, and I end up just feeling guilty and crappy. See?! presents do people (me, specifically) harm! And yes, I know that was a retardedly long run-on sentence, but you know what? I don't need to breathe when I think, and I'm just writing what I think. So ha! This is not a representation of my writing skills! Omg...I just read what I wrote...I don't need to breathe when I think...haha. I meant I don't need to pause for breath because I've run out of it in the process of thinking...err, that's not right either...Ok, I can breathe at the same time as thinking and I don't need to indicate pauses where I breathe because my thoughts are continuous and not related to my breathing patterns...err...whatever. Point of the entire paragraph, I'm broke, I'm okay with it, and I don't want any presents.

Work has been going alright lately. They've been putting me on different positions lately, and I feel like they value me more. I even get the whole "you're my favourite employee!" thing once in a while, lol. It's not exclusive to me, of course...but it makes me feel happy anyway. I just feel kinda like I'm being shafted when I'm making the same amount as the noobies I'm training when I've been there for a year and a half, but whatever. I couldn't ask for a raise for myself without asking for a raise for everyone else that has been there forever...otherwise I'd feel like crap, lol. Granted lots of people have quit, including the people that have been there forever, so maybe it's worth a shot. I'll put it on my to do list.

I complained a lot about how much I suck at painting, so I'm now taking a painting class. I'm getting better at painting! yay! I mean, I'm not as good as some of the people in my class...or most of the people in my class, lol, but I AM getting better. As well, my grandpa gave me my grandmother's oil paints and paintbrushes, which made me feel infinitely special ^_^, and I've made it my goal to get really good at painting so I can carry on the tradition. However, I want to get really good at painting people, because my grandma always did scenery...I want to do something different. Another thing on my to do list. [just an aside, it cost me $200 for my paint and paintbrushes for my class...I just about died, lol]

I took my kitty (Pino) to the vet a month ago because she had a freaky lump on her abdomen, and after they did a cytology they told me it was a basal cell tumor. I took her in today (technically yesterday) for surgery, but the lump had completely disappeared on its own. Weird, eh? Cancer isn't supposed to do that, apparently, so they're going to have another look at the cytology thingy and see if it was something else. Wouldn't that be weird if my cat really did have cancer and fought it off on her own? It's unlikely, but say that was the case...which brings up the other question...if they wanted to do tests on my baby for the sake of finding a cure for cancer, would I let them do it? I honestly don't know if I would...she's my baby! And she can't give her own consent! What if it were painful? Oh well, it's not like it would ever happen. Most likely a 99.9% chance that it wasn't cancer to begin with.

I feel sick, and achy. I want someone to make me chicken noodle soup, give me a massage, and let me sit on the coutch and watch cartoons while eating popsicles all day....but I have homework, and it's the middle of the night, and the only person who would do that is asleep and has to work early in the morning. Being an adult is poo sometimes.

Oh yeah, I'm turning 20 in 4 days. I have 4 days left of teenager-hood. It's rather disturbing.

g2g, homework to do yet. I might try to update more often. Maybe over Christmas I'll try to finish the updating I started over the summer. But I make no promises.

Ja ne.



2008 June 6, 10pm
well well, it's been a nice day out today... I love not having to wear a jacket or a sweater when I go outside. It's a bit of a shame that we don't have air conditioning, but a fan will do for now, hehe. Since last I wrote, I went camping over May Long with a bunch of people. We all gathered in Wadena and headed out to Barrier Lake, to some really obscure part where it was pretty much all bushes, lol. It was so scary driving out there though. There were five cars driving out on a dusty grid road, and there was so much dust that the ONLY thing you could see was the tail lights of the person ahead of you. If the tail lights disappeared, all you could see was dust, and you wouldn't know where the person ahead of you was going. Of course, they were driving fairly fast too, so I was pretty stressed out the whole way there, lol. It was alright once we finally arrived. We set up our tents in the dark and settled down for some hotdogs ^^ I love campfire hotdogs (although a whole weekend of them made me very happy to eat fruit and veggies when we got back home). It was good to get away from the city for a while. I got to relax for the better part of the weekend, not having to do anything or be anywhere. I could nap all day, eat whenever I wanted, go to the little beach area and look at the pretty scenery...I love nature...although I was really REALLY happy to use a normal bathroom after we left, lol. On the way back home we stopped in Wadena again to plant a garden at my dad's place, visit with some of my friends, and visit with my parents and kev's parents. When we got back to the city, I was incredibly happy to be able to sleep in a normal bed instead of on the ground.

Other than that, I haven't really done too much. I watched all of the anime series "Monster", which is an awesome series. I played through the game Beautiful Katamari, which is really weird but really fun, lol. Basically, you have a ball, and you roll up things that are smaller than your ball. Your ball gets bigger and bigger, and you can pick up bigger things, until you can eventually roll up the entire planet, lol.

We got a new tv too! I was excited...not entirely because of the tv itself, but because I've been wanting to rearrange the living room for months, and I finally got to ^_^. The tv works as a monitor for the computer too, so I got the desk out of the living room, and now the spare room finally looks like it's purposefully furnished instead of obviously just being a spare room. I got to reorganize the living room and the spare room over 2 days, and unfortunately, that's been about as exciting as the past while has been, lol. Oh! and just today we bought some bedroom furniture and just finished bringing it home. It's still all over the place...we're going to organize it later tonight...maybe...

Today was a very weird, surprising, lucky day. I got called into work this morning because they were short a couple people. It meant that I'm now working 6 days in a row, instead of having a day off in between, but they offered money on the spot, so of course I went in, lol - I'm perpetually broke...any opportunity for more money and I'm there...er, almost any opportunity anyway. After work we went to go pick up the bedroom furniture. When we got the first load home, we decided to have supper. We couldn't decide between scrounging for food at home, ordering in, or going out to a restaurant. Finally, we decided to go to the Asia Buffet. As we were walking up to the building, Kev and I noticed money on the ground. At first I saw a couple twenty dollar bills and then a five, and then I looked out in the parking lot and there was money flying everywhere! We started gathering it together, and some other people had found some money too. We all gathered together in a mass of confusion - after all, what does a person do in a situation like that? We decided to put all the money together and see if maybe it was a lost deposit from one of the businesses nearby. After checking and finding no claim to the money, the woman who was holding the money divided it amongst everyone there, and then we all nervously went into the Asia Buffet to eat. I felt so weird taking the money! But what does a person do? I mean, yes, a person could leave the money with one of the businesses in case someone went there to claim it, but what if no one claimed it? What if someone in the business simply pocketed it? The people in the group had toyed with the idea of giving it to the police, but decided that the police might just keep it (not a lot of faith in the system, ne?). And what if it were simply some experiment to see how people would react to finding a large sum of money on the ground? After all, a large portion of the money was conveniently placed between a sign and the curb - perhaps it was put there on purpose? Who knows. I suppose another thing to think about would be the consequences of someone having lost such a large amount of money. If it were a deposit, someone may lose their job over it. Is someone getting beaten up over it? Is someone going to get evicted because they lost their rent money? Is some rich person swearing over having lost some "pocket change"? Is some researcher looking over his/her results of the day? Sa ne... I guess we'll never know...or at least I won't because I don't read the paper or watch the news, lol.

But, anyway, I have to go move around some bedroom furniture... bai bai!



2008, May 6, 1am
Holy wow it's been a while since I've updated! My site was down for a while because the company to whom Gecko pays his fees didn't automatically take the money from him, and therefore assumed that he wasn't paying his fees and suspended the site. Oh well, it's all sorted out now, yay! And I'm done my first year of University! YAY!!! No more classes, no more finals, for a whole 4 months! I have my marks for 4 out of 5 of my classes; I'm currently just waiting on my English mark. I'm a little nervous about it though, because I know I didn't do as well as I should have on the final (I can never finish the essays in time *sigh*). I'm fairly sure that I got at least a 60% on the final, but I could be wrong. Even if my mark was a 60% on the final, I'm fairly sure that my overall average will stay above 77%, which is what I need to even be considered for the B.A. Honours program. I just looked that up the other day, lol, and it came as a bit of a shock, as I was under the impression that the minimum was 70%. I know I'll definitely have to work harder next year, because it's apparently very competitive (they only allow 30 people per year to get into the program *gulps*). Oh, speaking of next year, I have all my classes picked out *yay*! I've decided to take a minor in Religious Studies, just because when I was looking through the courses, a lot of the religious studies ones looked really interesting. Unfortunately, a lot of the psych classes looked really boring, haha. Ma ne, we'll see when I take the classes. I've also decided to take the art class that specifically deals with painting. I took correspondence from Art Instruction Schools, but I still really suck at painting, and I want to get better. I also need to fill an elective, so I might as well take it. I'm just happy I know what I'll be doing for the next year of my life.

As you may have noticed, I updated the layout of the website finally ^_^ It takes a couple days to change a layout, so I haven't done it while in school. I'll try to update it a lot over the summer. There's a lot I want to add, and it'll probably take all summer to get it completed. As of now, I've resized all the thumbnails for the artwork and photos page, so they all fit properly and don't look too squished our unevenly placed. I've added different sections in the blog too (as you may also have noticed, upon coming to this section, lol). There are a few new works of art and a few new photos. I even have one of Pino!

We've acquired a few chairs, a table, and some blinds for our appartment, so now we can invite people over for supper. It feels good cooking for other people, hehe. Maybe that's because I'm a woman though; it's an ingrained thing, one of those adaptive qualities of females that help their offspring to survive ^_^ Speaking of womanly things, my plan tonight is to do laundry and experiment with cleaning with vinegar. I want to try cleaning a whole bunch of different things and see how it works, haha. Hey, if you've got motivation to clean, you have to see it through to the end, because when it's gone, it's not coming back, lol.

What else has changed since January? Hmm.. well, Kev and I have become more interested in buying fair-trade stuff and buying/using things that are more eco-friendly. I've become more intrigued with shopping at Value Village, as they had a bunch of really cool books that are now adorning our bookshelves, and some really nice clothes too. All of my pants are getting worn out, and I was pleasantly surprised to find a few pairs that were my size (I only bought one pair though because we bought a lot of other things, lol). I'll have to go back when I have more money...although buying things makes me depressed these days. I've conditioned myself to feel horribly guilty whenever I buy anything for myself, so as to limit my spending. So far, it just makes me depressed, and I buy things for myself out of pity, haha. I've also started reading again ^_^ I finished Angels & Demons by Dan Brown, and now I'm reading The Da Vinci Code by the same author. OMG is he a good writer! I'm excited to read Deception Point, another book of his, after I'm done the one I'm reading now. Ahh, it feels nice to have time to read and do the things that I want to do, and not feeling guilty because I could be doing something more important, like homework.

Anyway, I should get going, it's fairly late and I still want to do stuff tonight. Ja ne!



2008, January 28, 8pm
Yesterday was the coolest ever ^_^ After work, I get the random inclination to make crumpets - just because you sometimes hear people joking about tea and crumpets - and we invited people over for actual tea and crumpets! LoL. I was a little nervous about serving them to people, seeing as how it was my first time making them, but they turned out okay. I think the best part about the night was just that we got to sit down, relax, and just hang out with some of our friends. Ry.M. & R.M. and H.K. & Cas. came over, which was pretty awesome because I don't get to see them very often (I don't get to see anyone very often, lol).

The best part about it was that we could all just sit and talk. We didn't have to worry about paying an arm and a leg for a few drinks at a noisy bar, or paying for bad coffee when we could make it for free here. AND, we don't run the risk of having to be in the same proximity as my ex-antagonistic-roommate, lol. I find that I like going to the bar less and less, especially if there are going to be a lot of people around. I like it best when there are only a few people and you can actually engage in a conversation involving everyone in the group. Too often, if there's a large crowd, you'd have to taylor what you say, depending on the environment and the general likes of everyone who's there. Unfortunately, when there are a lot of people in the group, it involves mostly people who work at Rogers or some form of cell phone service (or have worked there in the past) so we tend to have a lot of conversations about cell phones (or rather, everyone else does, lol). Or, you also get the parties that, for the most part, involve playing video games (Such as Guitar Hero or Halo 3). For me, it's not really so fun to watch people play video games at a party - especially since I'm just not into the newer ones. Any time I try to play them, I get so disorientated and frustrated, so I just don't like them. So, as you can imagine, if everyone else is playing video games at a party and I thoroughly detest watching them, and dislike playing most of them, it's just not my idea of a really good time. That's the main reason I was a little wary when Kev got the Xbox, but thankfully, it hasn't become the main focus of our apartment, lol (it was the main focus of the other place for a while, but that's just because we lived with gamers).

Anyway, it was really refreshing to be able to sit and have tea and crumpets, and genuinely socialize. I was talking with R.M. today and we both agreed that we have to do that more often, hehe ^_^ I'm thinking scones for the next time! lol. We need more chairs though, if we're going to have more people over. There were just enough places to sit for all of us, and I want to be able to invite over some of my other friends from University, too. Haha, we still don't have a kitchen table, either. Zephyr's grandparents were possibly giving away/selling a table and some chairs, so maybe I'll look into that soon. I want to be able to have people over for supper, just because that would be so cool. I want to invite my aunt and uncle over, since they've had me over for supper so often, and I want to return the favour. It's a really nice feeling, cooking for people. Maybe it's because I'm a woman lol.

Anyway, I have to go and do homework now....Off my tea break! Ja ne!



2008, January 15, 8pm
Alrighty, so first off...Kev and I moved to a new apartment! We no longer live with roommates! YAY!


I was pretty worried at first that we weren't going to get the place, just because we've been turned down at a couple other places (I don't handle rejection as well as I should). Of course, now that I think about it, it's a good thing that we didn't get the other places that we looked at, mainly because they didn't accept pets. The place we have now does accept pets, which is what we've wanted for a really long time :) It was a lot of stuff to move though - I hadn't realized that we had so much stuff ^^; we have enough to almost fill the apartment, haha. Granted, when we first moved in, we had no place to sit - at all. The day after we bought a set of furniture from someone who used to live in Wadena. We got a black leather couch and love seat (technically pleather...I believe, but they still look really nice) for $500. I was so happy we got it! At first we were deciding against it because it would set us back in the way of having money, but if we didn't get this, we would have had to get other furniture with a payment plan, and that would have cost way more. We don't have anything for the dining room, but Zephyr said we could borrow her table that she isn't using for at least a year or two, so I think we'll take her up on that. It's so cool though, because even though this apartment is a little ghetto (the stove is probably from the 70's, there's water damage everywhere, doorknobs were in backwards in some rooms until Kev fixed them, the buzzer's been destroyed on the front of the building, we have countertops that are seriously warped and have yellow flowers on them, and we still don't have a mail key yet...lol), it still feels more like a home than our other place, which was a bachelor pad through and through. We have this ugly brown carpet, so we went shopping and I actually spent $150 on - get this - a couple of area rugs! And I was excited about it! Omg, I'm not a kid anymore...going through the housewares in stores is fun for me! I really like the rugs though, because they bring the room together, and when you look into the room, you see the nice rug instead of the carpet. Yay for Interior Design in high school! Now all we need are some wooden slat blinds...

Aside from obsessing about buying pretty things for the apartment, I've been working really hard to catch up in my classes. It's been harder for the last week or so though, because I've been working a lot of hours at work. That's okay, though, because moving is expensive and I really need the money I make. I also have to pay the second part of my tuition this month, so things'll be pretty tight for another month.

When I look back on how things were at the other place, living with the roommates I had, I feel a little disappointed in myself. I spent a lot of time complaining about the little things my one roommate did, and a lot of time being immature. I know for a fact that I'm not necessarily cleaner or nicer than they are, and it's not like I'm any better at keeping up with the bills (I keep up with most of them, but I forgot about the last bill from my old cell phone 6 months ago and JUST got it paid off...WOW do I feel like a retard). I can't REALLY say that I manage my money better because if I have money and others don't, generally it's because I have both a loan and a credit card to fall back onto. I just feel stupid for thinking every now and then that I was more mature, and better at handling my life. Well, okay, not thinking - I knew I wasn't any better, but I acted like I was. I can still go on forever about my ex-antagonistic roommate, of course. Just because I'm aware of my shortcomings doesn't make them go away. I'm starting to feel bad about even mentioning his name, though, because I know that hardly anyone else likes him, and everyone else can also go on forever about this person - and usually do whenever his name is mentioned. Thankfully, we don't live in the same place anymore, so I won't have to deal with him. Granted, there's one more thing left to take care of, but after that, it'll be over :)

Oh yeah! Speaking of which, I forgot to write about Christmas! It went alright. I was able to get presents for people, so I didn't feel completely hopeless. I only saw my friends I haven't seen in forever for just a brief while, but it was still nice. We got to hang out with the family a lot, which was cool. I got to have a poutine at Dave's, which made the whole trip worth while, lol. It's still by far the best poutine ever! I had ONE good poutine in the city, and it was super expensive (I had it at the Copper Mug, in case anyone's interested in trying a good poutine while they're trapped in the city, lol). We came back to the city for New Years and had a party at our old place (we still lived there then...we've only been at the new apartment for a week). Big Jason was there as well, and while taking a break from doing homework on New Years Eve, I came downstairs and Jason handed me a shot. Naturally I took it, and proceeded to drink more until I was completely wasted by 4 in the afternoon! It was so funny though, because my antagonistic roommate had a shot waiting for him, and he didn't want to drink it. I said that I would, under the condition that he would help me with dishes the next day. Jason wouldn't have any of that, however, and soon made the bargain that my roommate was to do the dishes himself and clean the whole main floor! That was probably the best part about New Years, haha.

As for presents, we got a lot of stuff that we really needed. Stephen got us a really awesome knife set, my mom got us a set of pots, Kev's parents got us both a year's worth of CAA Insurance, gift cirtificates for the grocery store (cool!!) and a lot of other little things that we needed. I got a sweater and some really fuzzy pj's from my aunties, and money from other relatives (also cool!!). I think it was especially cool that we got the CAA insurance, not just because it covers for me being a forgetful retard who locks the keys in the car, but it shows that his parents really think Kev and I will last, hehe. And then, we also got stuff that was just really awesome, like chocolates, manga from Zephyr, a supersoft blankie from Zephyr's family, more chocolates...lol. (I've already eaten all the chocolates...sigh)

We also got a kitten! (not for christmas, but just last week). A friend of a friend of ours had it, and she was going to put it down, so we decided to save her :) Her name is Pino - named for the adorable character form Ergo Proxy that is often seen in a cat suit, not the wine, lol. I swear to god though, she must be on crack all the time! She rips around for several hours straight, fights with you for a while, and maybe an hour out of 24 she's calm enough to sleep, lol. Granted, she's getting better now. Perhaps it's because I've had to squirt her with water a billion times...ugh, lol. She's cute though, and it doesn't feel like I'm all alone when Kev's at work, which makes all the tyranny worth while ^_^ We have to get her declawed though, before she starts wrecking things....

Well, I should take off and start doing that homework I said I was going to do. Take care all! Maybe I'll update soon! Oyasuminasai!