My Life

A late night at work.
Twenty-sixth day in a row,
Not counting pre-Nov.

Will it ever end?
Optimism states "For sure!"
Reality: No.

Do I like my job?
Indeed, and I love my team,
But late hours are rough.

Fave Coach Beiste Quotes from Glee

Beiste: My name's Shannon Beiste, I'm the new football coach. Spelled B.E.I.S.T.E. It's French.

Beiste: Do NOT get up in The Panther's business, lady. You're all coffee and no omelette.
Sue: That doesn't make any sense.

Beiste: Alright boys, pizza party - dig in. Everyone gets four slices, let's go! And when you're done, full pads out on the field. We're doing wind sprints. First ten to puke are off the team.

Beiste: I am captain of the U.S.S. Kick Ass, not the U.S.S. Back Talk.

Beiste: Stop staring at me like a donkey with a wooden leg, go get suited up!

Beiste: Watch your tone with me Missy, you crap on my leg and I'll cut it off!

Beiste: Maybe I'll get a job as a cooler at a honey-tonk bar, or maybe an ice-road trucker.

Beiste: You really think I'm pretty Will?
Will: Inside and out.

Will Orlando be the most magical place on Earth?

I guess I'll find out.

When I was in grade 9, my family (Mom, Dad, Jenna) went on a vacation to Disneyland in California, and it was pretty much the best place ever. It rained every day there except for the day we arrived and the day we left, we even had to buy raincoats there. Apparently that was more rain in that little timeframe than they normally get for the year, so I kind of get a kick out of that. I find myself thinking back on that vacation frequently, and I feel so lucky that I got to go and I've always had this feeling that nothing would ever top it, or that I wouldn't ever want anything to top it.

Now I'm living this opportunity to compare Disneyland in Anaheim with Disneyworld in Orlando very soon, and I'm so excited. I know it will be spectacular but I'm wondering how I could ever get it to top California? The way I've been trying to describe it to people is: remember how you felt when you were 15, how everything was either AMAZING OMG :D or KILL ME NOW :( ... well, Disneyland was actually amazing, but I was 15 when I went there, so how is a vacation to the most magical place on Earth when I'm 24 going to compare to when I was 15? I guess it'll just be a different kind of amazing, or maybe I'll find myself 15 again.

MLIA :(

As sad as this is, I'm really only posting today because it's the last day of September and I didn't want to have nothing posted this month.

I'm missing being a student. I was sitting in Trifons yesterday with Chris and I was watching the students walk by, with their backpacks and a general aura of urgency, and I realized that I'm not a part of that culture anymore. I still carry a backpack and wear scrubby clothes, but it's not the same at all. I want to cling to it but kick it in the face at the same time, it's weird.

O.M.G.

I was googling for fun, and I decided to google "chrisism" to see if it came up with anything. I actually assumed it wouldn't come up with anything, because I thought I had coined the term, but what I thought to be an original word actually had quite a few hits.

My definition of "chrisism" is any phrase that I feel no one but my Chris would say, ever...ever...because half the stuff he says is just so wonderfully weird, no one but him would think to say it. Language is super fun to play with, and he gets that. Often they are deliberate, but I swear just as often they are so weird I wonder whether he just talks without thinking :)

To my surprise, the very first result was from Urban Dictionary, and the definition is as follows: "A verbal thought or question spewed forth without any thought given to it."

So how's that for evidence for the Jungian collective conscience theory? Is that enough proof?


And speak of the devil:

Chris has been playing this game called "Shores of Hazeron" and he made what I can only describe as the most horrifying creature you would ever want to play. It has a horse's torso, human legs, human arms, a dragon's tail, and two heads. Oh, also butterfly wings. He showed me just how he created this monster, and we played around with the program for a while, all the while making this thing more grotesque and comical. It eventually had huge feet and huge arms, which when set in motion looked hysterically funny. Chris was actually to the point of tears he was laughing so hard. I asked him why he had made the feet and hands so large, and he said "It's so he can feet while he walks!"

Also, his creature has the fighting power of "psychic radiation," where he'll attack you with, you guessed it, psychic radiation, and if you get hit with this psychic radiation you will eventually die of brain cancer. This also had Chris in tears :)

Little bread-and-butterflies kiss the tulips, and the sun is like a toy balloon

Today after work, I cut across Victoria Park on the way to the bus stop. Usually I stick to the sidewalk within the park, but today I decided to walk across the grass, and I'm happy I did. A few steps in, I noticed a butterfly, and it must have noticed me back because it fluttered beside me until almost the very edge of the park.

For a few minutes I had the prettiest companion in the world.

There are so many different kinds of trees

Last night while Chris and I were walking to The Abbey, the conversation turned to trees.

Verbing a noun: "They birched up from the ground, and we decided to call them trees."

My life is heaven.

This is the beginning. The beginning of the story. The beginning.

So I actually managed to convocate. Holy crap, right? With all of my negativity it still managed to happen. I kind of thought it would all come crashing down on me (karma for being so negative, if one believes in such things), but no, it definitely did not.

The ceremony was at Conexus Arts, and when I arrived they gave me my gown, hood, and degree, and then we all waited (not unlike cattle) to be herded into our seats on the stage. The ceremony itself had some interesting parts, but it also felt like a lot of waiting.

Here I am, waiting under the extremely hot lights of the stage.

Almost there, Megan! It's not like you already have your degree tucked under your arm or anything!

Family photo afterwards. If you're wondering why most of us are squinting, it's because it was misting out and the sun was shining in our eyes and there were mosquitoes and also the mosquitoes were biting us.

This is the ending. The ending of the story. The ending.

It's beginning to look a lot like CHRISISM

Verbing an adjective: "That kid is very runny." (not as in his nose is runny, but that he runs a lot)

(image: hyperbolyandahalf.com)

Slainte Mhath

So this was the first year I ever went to Mosaic, and it was an experience and a half. There were 19 different cultural pavilions to visit, but there was no way to visit them all in just three short days. Chris and I managed to go see 12 though, and they were all awesome in their own way. We bought our passports, and originally there were only a few places I wanted to check out, but having that passport (which also doubled as a buspass to each pavilion) stamped at each location was kind of addictive, I just wanted to see everything there was. I admit that after the end of each day, though, I was pretty tired from all of the travelling around!

• the Carribean pavilion was our eighth stop, and had the hugest line that we waited in, and was also the most disappointing stop for me. It was very overcrowded and I thought it had more good hype than it was worth. The steel drums were pretty sweet though.


• The Chinese pavilion was our seventh stop, and was one of my favourites. It had a beautiful bonzai tree garden (I had no idea there were so many different types) and I got my name written in Chinese (they took the sounds of my name and reinterpreted them into their writing system. It turns out I'm 'flower-root' which is pretty sweet). They also had a Chinese Yo-yo demonstration, which was pretty amazing. I almost tried it out, but then I got all weirded out because we had to be on stage and then there were only little kids trying so then I was all like "Yeah, NO!"
  
  
  

• Ethiopia was our ninth stop, it was really close to the Caribbean pavilion and in my opinion much better. They had belly-dancers performing and we ate some tasty sambosas.

• the German pavilion was stop number ten, and was the only stop where we saw any rain (and even then it was only for about a minute). We stepped inside and I instantly had a flashback memory of Disneyland in California, where my family stopped at a German-themed restaurant (odd, I know). It was all big wooden tables and traditional clothing, and was quite lovely. Chris ordered a bratwurst but I was still happily sated from the sambosa.

• the Irish pavilion was our very first (official, but actually second) stop, and I must say that it was very hard to top it. They had a traditional celtic-folk band on stage, and we also saw some irish dancing. There were lots of interesting kiosks for food and displays (including a money display, which was totally super awesome).


• Laos was the third place we visited, and my favourite part of that was the display of common phrases (Laotion-->English) and I got to see Chris' inner linguist. We spent a little bit of time analyzing the words and phrases and making hypotheses, which is more fun that I'm willing to admit here! haha

• The Greek pavilion was stop number four, and it was interesting. Chris bought some chamomile flowers for tea and some olive oil soap, and I was tempted by a pretty perfume bottle but ended up saying nay


• our fifth stop was the Kyiv Ukrainian pavilion, where Chris got his precious shishliki. There were lots of cool things to see, including a sheep carved out of butter

• the Indian pavilion was where we bought our passports, and admittedly we didn't actually go fully inside. There wasn't enough time before the bus was supposed to arrive and we decided there were other places we'd rather go.


• the Filipinas pavilion was our sixth stop, and inside they were doing some traditional dancing onstage. We browsed the jewelry and watched some dancing but ultimately didn't stay very long .
  

• the Scottish pavilion was our eleventh stop, and it was pretty sweet. The front was all decked out like a castle, and there was bagpipe music everywhere (a weakness of mine). I ended up buying a pewter flask with a beautiful knot design (below). The only trouble was at the entrance, where we had to check Chris' backpack. No other pavilion had this policy and it was unfortunate that we had to leave it at the front because it had lots of Chris' important stuff inside it.


• our twelfth and final stop was at Chile, and it was one of my favourites because they had awesome enchiladas. I'm a sucker for food.

There were seven pavilions we didn't have enough time to get to:

1. Aboriginal Peoples


2. Miorita Romanian


3. Italian


4. Balaton Hungarian


5. Poltava Ukrainian


6. Latin American


7. Austrian Edelweiss

My one regret all weekend was the bus, or rather, how much I complained about the bus. It was loud, crowded, and always late, but really I could've just manned up about it :) live and learn.

I'm a bird! I'm a bird! I'm a bird! I'm a bird! I'm a bird!

This post perfectly describes how I felt at the end of the workday today, minus the bird:

http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2010/05/sneaky-hate-spiral.html

(Both from hyperboleandahalf, obviously)

Chrisisms

Since Chris always seems to be making me laugh/feel delight because of his sayings, I'm dubbing his sayings "chrisisms"

Latest and greatest: Clearly a lack of sleep was involved, and possibly a lack of wearing glasses, but not lacking his sense of humour. This is a Facebook comment made about some sushi he and I made (can you guess which side is mine? it's the side with most of the white ones).

Friend: That looks really good. Is that fish eggs??

Chris: Heh, I wish. Any idea where to get some? (on my part), but it'll be a day or so before it's posted.

I'm not even sure what to do with this one! It's two, maybe even three sentences that just decided to hang out way too close together, and even after they realised they were too close, they just decided to go with it and morphed into that beautiful gem :)

I hope everyone knows that these "chrisisms" are not meant to be judgmental, I'm actually quite delighted with Chris' language use and this is only an observe and report kind of deal. Recordings for posterity, I suppose, because sometimes I tend to forget things so if I don't save them now they might be lost to me.

Anyway, I had a long day at work so that's all for now :)

I'll go crawling back to the city I love, because it's already taken everything

I'm so excited! I have three official destination plans for this summer already, where the last few summers I've just stayed in the city for work/school.


Next weekend: Regina Beach (S.K.) with my boyfriend/a few friends

Late May: Toronto (ON) with my sister for a wedding

Late July: Quadra Island (B.C.) for a family reunion


It's so sweet, now put the train in gear.

Look at your man, now back to me, now back at your man, now back to me

I just got an email confirmation that my honours paper is officially done forever! Done forever! Done forever! I think I'll miss working on it.

So what will my next challenge be? I have to do something.

On a side note, as a celebration I totally broke translation party:

Before you get any crazy ideas about where that phrase came from, it's the title of a short story in a Bruce Coville book I read when I was younger!

WHY have I not found this before?

This is kind of amazing, please check it out! http://translationparty.com/

You take any English phrase, plug it in, and it tranlates it to Japanese, then back to English, then back to Japanese, and back and forth until it finds an equilibrium. I know you will have fun! See below for my favourite ones I've found so far (click for larger image):

Interestingly, punctuation seems to affect the outcome.

IF I SPOKEN TO MY PARENTS HOW KIDS TALK NOW DAYS I`D BEEN KNOCKED OUT

Believe it or not, this is an actual group on Facebook. Please tell me I don't have to tell you everything that's wrong with that group name :) I really try hard to not to be judgemental, but this stuff blows me away sometimes. When I took Linguistics 100, I was told that linguists are only supposed to "describe" language, not "prescribe" it, but with that comes some huge problems, the biggest one being how lexically ambiguous English can be.

Honestly, a few years ago I was a huge stickler for spelling and grammar (grammar is what attracted me to linguistics in the first place), but I'm pleased to say that I've mellowed regarding that subject. However, when a database like this Facebook group falls into my lap, I can't help but analyse it.

I took some excerpts from comments people left on the group's wall, indicating how the English language can be completely misinterpreted if it's used incorrectly or without enough context (I haven't edited or omitted anything). English is so ambiguous sometimes that you have to be super specific, or else some random person (in this case, me :D ) will take what you're saying the wrong way.

• "I was married with my 5 children. The F word was never spoke in our house untill my 3 oldest children started going out and running around. I can't stand that word and all of my children and grand-children know it. The people in the world today has no respect for their self." You were married to your five children?
• "My parents would duck tape me and put me in the closet if I WAS BAD. Nowadays thats child abuse." You have tape made out of ducks? Plus, I'm pretty sure that was child abuse back then too.
• "It's kinda like the difference between 1st and 2nd degree murder? I don't much like either, but I will grant you that there is a whole heck of a lot of people who deserve it." Okay there isn't much to misinterpret in this one, but I am kind of afraid for my life.
• "TALK BACK TO MY DAD? loooool i'd rather jump off a bridge because he is RIPPED and he would pound the hell out of my ass :p" Umm...
• "I got the belt across my butts if I talkd bak,." You personally have multiple butts?
• "GET A BEET DOWN!" Are you swallowing beets?
• "What's worse is when you got it at school for fighting on the playground and then the school contacted your parents and you got grounded and licks when you got home" Your parents licked you as punishment?

On a side note, what horrifying traumas must have happened to a person (actually, almost two million Facebook users) to have them relate so fervently to such a blatant pro-child-abuse forum?

Trying is the first step to failure

I'm not actually feeling emo, it has just been a long week :)

I've been rewriting my paper, and I have done the majority of it (I think) but I think I'm getting too tired for this because I just wrote a list of stuff I still need to do, and it included absolute gems such as:

• redo table of contents = duh


• fill in abstract = duh


• add footnote re: data = duh


• amend conclusion = duh


• learn how to make footnotes = FAIL AT LIFE :(

I so can't wait for this to be done. I enjoy the challenge but I'm not impressed with my performance at this. I feel like all I'm doing is complaining and I need to snap the heck out of it. I feel like I'm a liar when I tell people I'm getting my honours, this is so not ideal.

Sorry, I guess I am a little emo.

HAPPY PICTURE!

what UP?

I love lamp

Here are two more of Chris' lovely sayings:

Causifying: "We tend to Englishify things"
Adjectiving a verb: "He walkingly went there" - This is my personal favourite so far

Why do I find this funny?

And why am I an idiot when it comes to posting videos?

Seek it out yourself, friends!!

"SNL: Who Wants to be a Millionaire: Steve Harvey"

http://www.nbc.com/saturday-night-live/video/who-wants-to-be-a-millionaire/1222357/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cR1fEowAClU

Sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast!

1. There is a potion that makes you shrink.

2. There is a cake that can make you grow.

3. There is a real place called Wonderland.

4. Animals can talk.

5. Cats can disappear.

6. I can rewrite my honours paper.

If wishes were horses, I'd be eating wish meat every night

True story.

Specifically, I have two wishes in mind today.

One: I'm happy for those friends of mine who live happy healthy lives; my wish for those friends of mine who don't yet live happy and healthy lives is that they soon will. I know a lot of people who seem to get kicked around by the world sometimes.

Two: I wish my paper would write itself. My prof sent me an email saying my paper needs some rewriting to be done, and I'm okay with that, I just don't know how much more I can do. I'm at the limits of my writing ability already, truly. Do other people ever get this far and have nothing to show for it at the end of it all? I wish I knew. And now I'm thinking about it some more, and I think I see that getting this paper back for rewrites again isn't necessarily a bad thing. Actually, in the long run, I think it's a good thing, because who wants to do a terrible job and get pity-passed? Not me. I want to do so good, and the first step is doing those damned rewrites. The thing is, if I can't bring this paper up to par, I will have nothing to show for it. I hope it doesn't come to that..


*EDIT* My mom just said that wishes should be light like a salad :)

"Clever Title"

The last LIA to grace this blog; behold, in all it's glory:

This post is of general interest

If you understood the title, you are awesome. If not, you are still probably awesome. Probably.

When I was younger, my sister and I would listen to a lot of audio books borrowed from the library, and one of the best ones of all time was Cheaper by the Dozen by Frank B Gilbreth Jr and Ernestine Gilbreth Carey. It is autobiographical, chronicling what it was like to grow up in the early 1900s in the Gilbreth family. There were twelve children, six boys and six girls, and their upbringing was interesting because of the weird ways they were all raised. Their father was a motion study expert who was constantly looking for ways to make things more efficient, and in the summers they would all live in a couple of lighthouses on Nantucket Island. Enough about the book though.

Recently I was boredly browsing the internet, and I decided to look up the Gilbreth family. I had this image in my mind of what they all looked like, and so I really should have left well enough alone, but my curiosity always gets to me so I just had to find them. I thought there would be lots of pictures available since this is a pretty famous book (numerous publications and several movies have been made), but pictures were scarce. The pictures I did find, however, totally shattered my childhood memories. Of the pictures of the family members that I could actually find, none of them were anything like what I had imagined, and for a while I felt like I had ruined the magic of the book. I've since gotten over it, but it's strange how much it affected me at the time.

If seeing what the Gilbreth family actually looked like wasn't shocking enough, I just had delve deeper, and I found a complete list of birth years...and death years. Why did I look this up? Why? I knew they all grew up in the early 1900s, why did I actually have to go and confirm what I should have already known? Reality sure bites sometimes. I knew that the parents would already be dead, they were both born in the 1800s so if they were still alive I'd be kind of creeped out. And their father dies in the book so I've been over that one for years anyway. But out of twelve children - oldest born in 1905, youngest born in 1922 - only Fred is still alive (born in 1916). Can you imagine coming from a family of twelve children and being the only one left? Honestly, I'm not sure if I'd ever be able to handle it if my sister died, and she's the only sibling I have, so I can't imagine what it would be like to experience eleven sibling deaths. But then again, I think it would be hard for Fred to be as close to eleven people as I am to my sister, so maybe it wasn't as bad as I'm thinking.

I looked all of this information up recently following receiving my very own copy of Cheaper by the Dozen (audio book) as a gift. I recommend it to everyone, even though I'm not really giving it a fair chance here with this post :)

What's that? *gasp* Just the wind!

Thinking about it, I'm afraid a quite a few things. I never really thought of myself as fearless, and I never thought I was a scaredy-cat either, but my list keeps growing :) methinks it's time to conquer some or all of these:

• Spiders
• The dark (I wasn't always afraid of the dark, this one is relatively new. And it's only sometimes.)
• Developing Alzheimer's Disease
• Heights
• Possibly not amounting to anything important in the world
• Birds (Just pet birds, and I'm not sure why, they just freak me out.)
• Becoming blind someday (I'm not afraid of going deaf though, I'm pretty sure I could handle that without too much trouble.)
• Dying (Okay, I can't really conquer this one.)
• If Mirror Megan started moving around independently of Real Megan
• SPIDERS!

Sorry about all of the lists lately, I'm going to have to get more creative.

My Five Biggest Pet Peeves of Written English Language Use

In no particular order:

1. Using "your" instead of "you're"
2. Misuse of there/they're/their
3. Using apostrophe S ('s) on plurals (e.g. taco's should be tacos, DVD's should be DVDs, 1950's should be 1950s)
4. Writing "should of" instead of "should have" (it's based on hearing "should've" and then misinterpreting the phonemes for the words)
5. Writing a comma where there should not be a comma (e.g. "Writing a comma, where there should not be a comma.")

Bonus pet peeve: When people give you a list of there item's, and then they list bonus item's when they could of just extended the list. Seriously, your not stupid, so why list a bonus, when you don't need to.

LOUD NOISES

My boyfriend makes the most interesting linguistic choices. I think I will start chronicling them as they come along before I forget them. I'm really quite lucky, the stuff he says is often delightful:

Verbing: "She likes to lawnmow"
Backforming: "So it's not badminton, it's goodminton!"
Pluralizing non-count nouns: "We can use lots of different rices."

Wow when I started this post there were at least five things I wanted to write down, but I've forgotten some clearly. Fear not, I will be back.

Umm...What?

I looked up my grad photos online today, and all I can say is wtf? I got these professionally done and the photographer didn't even notice that my hair was flipped up? He took like 20 photos, and maneuvered me and fixed my hair on several occasions, and didn't notice this. So now I get to choose from 3 different photos (below) that are basically all the worst ones by default.

Also, I typically don't photograph very well, so only giving me 3 options to choose from is generally not gonna do it for me, as proven yet again by this set. Seriously, there isn't one photo in this set where I don't look nuts! You can definitely see my resemblance to my dad (not that my dad looks nuts, mind you), particularly my eyebrows do the same thing his do when he's smiling (one arches up while the other does not). Also, my one eye looks smaller than the other when in real life they are the same size.

I dunno, I think maybe number 3 is the best? Or maybe number 2? But definitely not number 1.

And again with the hair! Bah.

Honey Honey, how they thrill me!

I love musicals, they are just so wonderful and fun and addictive. I really enjoy live musicals, but musicals-turned-movies are amazing too. I dare you not to like at least one movie in this list of my favourites (in no particular order):

• Mamma Mia
• RENT
• Jesus Christ Superstar
• Grease
• Almost every animated/computer animated Disney movie (waaay too many to list, plus if I listed them would you finish reading the list? I think not. Suffice to say (again) that Disney is awesome)
• Annie
• Hamlet 2
• The Prince of Egypt (with an amazing multi-lingual song if you search the special features)
• How the Grinch Stole Christmas
• Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (1971)
• Hairspray
• The Wedding Singer (this movie would never beat up your landlord)
• Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog

Your Head A-splode!

Posting this particular Life is Average comic is not without a little tongue-in-cheek :P

You don't! Wanna mess with Darnell!

2009 Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest entries that made me chuckle:

Folks say that if you listen real close at the height of the full moon, when the wind is blowin' off Nantucket Sound from the nor'east and the dogs are howlin; for no earthly reason, you can hear the awful screams of the crew of the "Ellie May," a sturdy whaler Captained by John McTavish; for it was on just such a night when the rum was flowin' and, Davy Jones be damned, big John brought his men on deck for the first of several screamin' contests.
-David McKenzie

She walked into my office on legs as long as one of those long-legged birds that you see in Florida - the pink ones, not the white ones - except that she was standing on both of them, not just one of them, like those birds, the pink ones, and she wasn't wearing pink, but I knew right away that she was trouble, which those birds usually aren't.
-Eric Rice

Detective Pierson mentally reviewed the group of suspects milling around the recent crime scene - two young siblings eating gingerbread, a young girl in a red hoodie, a beautiful girl with narcolepsy, and seven little people with the profession of miners - then gave his statement of "It's a grim tale" to the press.
-Shannon Gray

Darnell knew he was getting hung out to dry when the D.A. made him come clean by airing other people's dirty laundry; the plea deal was a new wrinkle and there were still issues to iron out, but he hoped it would all come out in the wash - otherwise he had folded like a cheap suit for nothing.
-Lynn Lamousin

A quest is not to be undertaken lightly--or at all!--pondered Hlothgar, Thrag of the Western Boglands, son of Glothar, nephew of Garthol, known far and wide as Skull Dunker, as he wielded his chesty stallion Hralgoth through the ever-darkening Thlargwood, beyond which, if he survived its horrors and if Hroglath the royal spittle reader spoke true, his destiny awaited--all this though his years numbered but fourteen.
-Stuart Greenman

The Cunard "Carinthia" glided through the starry waters of the Bering Sea, 843 passengers aboard, including Harriet Dobbs, resignedly single for over a decade, while a nautical mile due west slunk the K-18 submarine, under the command of lonely Ukrainian Captain First Rank Nikolai Shevchenko: ships that passed in the night (although the second technically a boat).
-Dr. Sarah Cockram

The serrated butter knife tossed capriciously onto the 38th Street sidewalk amid the detritus of Salem cigarette butts and a Mentos box was devoid of zero trans fat margarine, but glinted invitingly in the sun nonetheless, poised for the opportunity to be repurposed to cut up a Snuggie, and Vladimir took it.
-Amy E Gross

Using the flint knife to gut the two amphibians, Kreega the Neanderthal woman created the first pair of open-toad sandals.
-Greg Homer

On a lovely day during one of the finest Indian summers anyone could remember--a season Germans call "old wive's summer," obviously never having had Native Americans to name things after, but plenty of old wives, and "Indian summer" in German would refer to the natives of India in any case, which would make even less sense than the current naming system--on such a day, however named, John Baxter fell in the creek and drowned.
-Deanna Stewart

I entered the bedroom again, looking for anything the killer might have missed in his obvious attempt to clean the crime scene, when it hit me, the victim hadn't been eating just any potato salad, it was German potato salad, the kind usually served warm, with bacon and although most people prefer the traditional American potato salad, it was clear that this victim didn't, oh no, he didn't prefer it at all.
-Lisa Lindquist-Perez

Elsewhere...

I was just in the kitchen visiting with my mom. She's making rice krispie squares, and measuring the rice krispies, and she says "*gasp* Oh no! That's too much. Hmm, no, too little? Actually, maybe is it the right amount?"

The extremes in this house are intense :)

Why Jenna is Awesome

Email conversation today, one of the many reasons I love my sister

Megan:
I got my essay finished last night/this morning :) now I just have to wait to hear back from my prof/fix the mistakes and I'm done

Jenna:
Yay! Did you find out about convocating yet?

Megan:
No, I just emailed one of the registrars like 20 minutes ago though so maybe I'll hear back by the end of the week? That's being hopeful

Jenna:
Ugh, I know, they're so irresponsible. I emailed my advisor and when she finally emailed me back she said it wasn't a good time for her (I asked to meet with her to discuss my options) and she asked if we could do it in a couple of weeks so very GRACIOUSLY I said yes. She has not since contacted me or responded.

Megan:
That's so dumb. The only way I've gotten them to talk to me successfully in the past is to go there and lurk outside their door.
Once, I emailed Luther to find out what their office hours were because I had an essay to hand in (they didn't have them on the web site, which is like the dumbest thing ever), and I didn't hear back from them so the next day I just went there to hand in my essay. Then two weeks later I got an email back with their hours. So useless.
I can't believe she hasn't gotten back to you, it seems kind of important you know? They suck at this stuff, and it's stupid because that's what they're there for, to help :P

Jenna:
I know. I've been to her before and she's pretty good. Although once I went in to complain because they wouldn't move one of my exams that conflicted with army, and she sent me to the dean without telling me who he was. Which is slightly embarrassing. Not that I was rude or anything but I basically went in there and told him how it was, then he was like "Hi, I'm the dean." I probably wouldn't have had the guts if I had known. He was really nice though.

Megan:
Nice, I've never met a dean. He let you move your exam?

Jenna:
Oh of course. I was pretty mad about the whole thing. That weekend was our shooting exams so you can't miss it, and when I told my professor that I needed to reschedule my exam because I would have no time to study she said that she didn't reschedule exams for anyone for any reason. She said "lots of people have jobs, everyone's busy" and I totally blacked on her. I said everyone wasn't busy fucking defending their country and this was not a normal circumstance, the army isn't just a job. She said she wasn't going to reconsider and I got so angry I actually became calm. I just looked at her and said, watch this. Then I went straight to the advisor and via her, the dean. I said I found it hard to believe that since I know for a fact professors make their own policies on those issues that there was no way she could reschedule. She said that she wasn't allowed I knew that was a lie and I told the dean I found it hard to believe there was nothing that the university could do for a serving member of the forces who was trying to get an education. Worked like a charm. She emailed me that night with a sudden dean-inspired streak of generosity and let me reschedule.

God Went to India

To see the elephants.

God adores elephants.

He thinks they are

the best thing

He ever made.

They do everything

He hoped for:

They love their children,

they don't kill,

they mourn their dead.

This last thing is

especially important

to God.
Elephants visit the graves

of those they loved.

They spend hours there.

They fondle the dry bones.

They mourn.

God understands mourning

better than any other emotion,

better even than love.

Because He has lost

everything He has

ever made.

You make life,

you make death.

The things God makes

always turn into

something else and

He does find this good.

But He can't help missing all the originals.

-Cynthia Rylant

I'm not sure why I like that so much. Maybe because elephants are awesome.

Two updates in one day, hooray!

Hello! The previous post was a little depressing so I thought I'd spruce things up with a little Life is Average awesomeness (alright, LIA okayness).

I got so much essay writing done today, so I'm feeling on top of the world now. It's a pretty great place to be, albeit a little overwhelming still. I'm handing in my paper on Saturday, if I can manage to get it printed in the right format at the school computers. If not, then I will unfortunately have to hand it in on Monday. I wish it weren't so finicky to print, but at least that is the most of my problems.

I will mention that this LIA is funniest if you've already seen the previous two that I already posted, although I will still readily admit that I may be the only person in the world to find these funny.

Your report is the crap that crap craps!

Yesterday I was having a pretty good day at work. It was a nice Tuesday following two, almost three straight weeks of having to work overtime every night, so at the end of the day it was really nice to get to leave on time. I was leaving work feeling great because I had the next day (today) off, so I was free. Free! Until I got a phone call from my boss at around 5:00 telling me that I had gotten my days wrong and I don't actually have the day off until March 31st.

Normally this would really suck, and it did, but normally it also wouldn't matter and I'd suck it up and just take my day off when it was actually assigned. This was not a normal circumstance though. I have my paper due this weekend, and I so very desperately needed today off so I could work on it. So I asked if I could have Thursday off instead, because then at least I would still have one solid day off this week in which to work on my paper. That was also a no-go.

At this point in the conversation, everything seemed to hit me at once. I really don't ask a lot of my workplace when it comes to days off. In fact, in the year and a half I've worked there, I haven't taken one day off, except for the day I had a dentist appointment to remove a couple wisdom teeth (and I came in to work the next day, miserable sore swollen face and all), and once I left after an hour of coming in to work because I was sick, so it really didn't seem like too much to ask to have this day off, especially when it's typically our slowest work day of the week. And so when I was told that I wasn't able to have this day off, I'm ashamed to admit that I burst in to tears and couldn't keep it together. I actually begged my boss to give me the day off. Yup. I felt exactly like how Marshall Eriksen felt in HIMYM when his boss yells at him about the ninja report, even though my boss was not yelling and was and is actually quite nice. She then said that she would get in touch with the other managers and get back to me.

I spent the rest of the evening feeling sorry for myself and being miserable, which is very embarrassing. Being around Chris helped a lot though, because he's willing to do almost anything to make me laugh, including eating about a quarter of a purple onion (which he would've done had I not practically pried it from his fingers). Wackiness is appreciated. Around 9:00 that night I got a call from her stating that, after discussion, I was able to have the day off. The immediate sense of relief was also immediately overtaken by guilt and...shame? Is shame the right word? It'll do.

I remained feeling weepy for the remainder of the evening, and I found myself asking why. I got exactly what I needed, so why did I still feel like this? I then found my thoughts wandering and they stopped on something I remembered Paul Antrobus saying in class: what you see depends on what you're looking for. So I asked myself again, why did I feel this way?

I think I was mostly mad that the situation itself actually occurred, and these emotions were just residual after-feelings of what I felt to be a completely unfair circumstance. So even after I got the day off (even if I do still feel a little guilty about it), I was still angry that it happened in the first place. So after I managed to see it like that, I was able to let it go.

Thank you day off, you make everything better.

Won't you take me by the hand, take me somewhere new?

I want to write about how awesome last weekend was. To pre-preface this, if you could combine the good feelings you get when you walk into a used bookstore, remember the way candy tasted when you were young, walk through the park in the summer, and experience the best hug you've ever had, it would come pretty close to how awesome last weekend was. To preface this, nothing of huge significance happened last weekend, it was more of one of those magical occasions that can only really happen with certain people on certain days, and I was lucky enough to have that already this year.


Highlights:

On Thursday I asked the bf if he wanted to go see The Princess and the Frog sometime on the weekend, and with a facepalm and a sigh he begrudgingly said yes :) So Saturday afternoon we braved the massive crowd of children at the Rainbow Theatre and I was thrilled to see a new animated Disney film.

After the show we walked to Old Fashioned foods, which is very close to the theatre. After buying a few items (including a bag of rice, which has its own story in and unto itself, later) we continued walking in the direction of downtown. It was a slushy day outside, so the cuffs on my pants were pretty wet at this point.

We decided to walk to Darke Hall, and along the way we stopped to explore the legislative building, which happens to have some lovely window sills and hidden benches to climb and sit on.

When we got to Darke Hall we climbed the stairs as high as they would go to a very large empty room, where we sang and danced, and it seems silly now but at the time is was completely wonderful. It was very retro, all of the windows (and there were a lot of windows) stretched to the ceiling and all of the lights (of which there were also a lot) hung down low. The room was also way overheated, so by the time we left it my pants cuffs had dried a wee bit. Other parts of the building we covered: lots of old stairs, lots of old windows, lots of old corridors, and the creepy basement (which I'm told was even creepier about a year ago). Overall I think this was my favourite building in my day, it felt like a secret and forbidden place and I hope to go back.

For supper we went to the Copper Kettle. The restaurant was absolutely packed so they led us up some spiral stairs to what I would describe as their storage room for broken and forgotten things. There we shared food and wine and company.


Like I said, it wasn't a weekend where anything spectacular happened, but I think I'll always remember it as one of my favourites.

How does a linguist to go into a coma from deciphering a Native American language?

That's what I'd like to know, Lex Luthor.

I'm working on my paper again, and instead of driving me crazy, it's driving me comatose. I'm really terrible with essays, I'm really not that great of a writer and words often escape me, as do paragraph transitions and a general appealing flow.

I want cookies.

I'm hoping that blogging will maybe make me better with words; practice makes perfect, right? But for now I know that writing in here will not help my essay, it is too distracting. Much more fun though.

My blog is simple
But sometimes it won't make sense
I heart Chuck Norris

So my paper...yeah. It's going not so smoothly. It's much harder to write about the Nakota language than I thought. I mean, a year ago I wrote a shorter form of this very essay that will be my honours paper, but it was much less intense and involved. I guess that's the point though right? I don't know. I feel like, let's see, I feel like I should know more than I know, you know? I got my linguistics degree but where did my knowledge go? It's all very strange. And for someone who majored in linguistics you'd think I'd be better with words. I also majored in psychology so you'd think I'd be better able to answer these questions I have, but I can't, I feel unable to. Again, it's a strange place for me to be.

Oh well, time for me to try and rise above :) this post is starting to sound emo so it's best I let these thoughts trail off here. As Paul Antrobus would probably say, it's how you look at the world that matters.

I think he'd also say that it's time for me to have a cookie.

IRRELEVANT QUESTION

I feel incredibly busy. (How busy?) So busy that I can't even find the time to update my blog. Nope. No time. Clearly.

This Life is Average (or LIA) is not the strongest, in fact I think it's the weakest, but I think I'll include it here anyway for the sake of it.

Hope you have a great night!

Oh what a tangled web we weave, when first we practise to deceive!

At the beginning of 2010, my workplace initiated this wonderful idea, Fitness at Work. This initiative has several different components, like "fitness breaks" where we use our two fifteen-minute breaks each day to be active (e.g. taking a 1.5 km indoor walk, strength-training sessions, stair climbing, etc) and monthly challenges. I love taking part in the fitness breaks, they break up my day beautifully and I honestly can't imagine going to work now without taking the time each day to destress like this. I was also really enjoying February's challenge, stair climbing, until people started lying about their totals.

The way the challenge worked was this: each day you would count how many flights of stairs you climbed (twelve stairs=one flight) and at the end of the week you would send your daily totals to the person in charge, who in turn would send out an email to the floor the next day stating who had the highest total for that week. There was a 50/50 raffle held at the beginning of the month, where half the money went to the ticket holder selected and the other half would go to the person who had climbed the most flights at the end of February.

In week one I climbed 590ish flights, and the email sent out stated that the highest number of flights climbed was 630ish. I thought "Fine, that just means I have to work a little harder."

In week two I had climbed 1160ish flights, but the person in first had climbed 1300ish. And I thought "Fine, that just means I have to work a little harder."

In week three I had climbed 1900ish flights, but the person in first had climbed 2300ish. And I thought "Wow, I have no chance in winning this." and I resigned myself to losing. This in itself was fine, because in the end, even if I had won the money, I would have gained something even more important than that (not to go all campy and everything ha).

At the end of week four I had climbed 2700ish flights. Here's the part that makes me mad though: the person with the highest number of flights climbed had a total of 4200ish flights. What the, where did that come from?! As IF you doubled your stair count in the last week! Honestly, I really feel like the person who won the money was lying. If it took this person three weeks to climb 2300 flights, do you really expect me to believe that he climbed 1900+ flights in one week? Please.

Let me tell you, I averaged almost 99 flights of stairs a day (with lowest day 10, highest day 201), and that was extremely difficult to fit into my schedule. It's not like my life is super busy or particularely complicated, but I'm at work from 8:15-after 5:00 most days, and to incorporate that many stairs into my day is a real challenge. A large portion of my stair climbing total came from the fitness breaks, where the regular participants (myself included) had decided to include more stair climbing in support of the challenge. This person who won with 4200 flights has never, to this date, come on a fitness break, or come on one of the lunchtime stair-climb/walks, and I'm expected to just take it at face value that he found the time to average 150 flights per day? Not happening. Even if he went to the gym either before or after work every day I would find it a little hard to believe. Actually that's not completely true, I would have found this to be a completely believable total if not for the discrepancy between the first three weeks and the last. In the last week he would have had to have climbed 271+ flights per day, which is an absolutely amazing amount of stairs to be climbing, given a full work day.

What really gets me is that he would have won anyway without that tremendous lie.

But let's say that he isn't lying, and that he really did do just a tremendous amount of stairs in a small amount of time. I can accept that maybe I'm being a bit of a sore loser. I really do believe that his total was stretched, but I also believe that what I gained from this challenge far outways the fact that I didn't win the pot of money.
1. my calves got beefy and sexy.
2. my cardio has increased slightly.
3. it takes me longer to work up a sweat.
4. I now have the stamina to sprint up at least 12 flights of stairs without feeling completely killed, which is a farcry from the 6 flights I could manage at the beginning of the month before I would have to stop to dry-heave for 30 seconds.
5. I learned that I still have the ability to push myself for the better, which was something that, until now, I really thought I had lost.

In conclusion, yes I am still kind of mad, but I think the change in myself as a result of this challenge is stronger than that. I'm amazed that it took a silly competition for me to step up and take better control of my physical well-being, but I think that that's the case for a lot of people. That makes me feel like I'm more connected to the world around me, but at the same time it makes me want to rise above these conditions that I feel tied to. Does that make sense?

Slackers Unite! Tomorrow.

Something I've noticed is that the internet isn't nearly as fun unless I'm procrastinating. When I'm completely free as a bird I could almost care less about it (almost), but when I'm actually doing something, say, writing my honours paper, it becomes this amazing Wonderland that I can't stay away from. Just like Alice, I always lose the path that leads back because that stupid broom-dog has erased it. Or something like that.

Unfortunately for me, my paper is fastly becoming due, and I feel the pangs of guilt coming on. How is it that I spend a couple hours most nights on the computer, but only get about half an hour's worth of essay done, if that? This is kind of pathetic. I always thought that eventually the procrastication thing would maybe just weed it's way out of my system, but no, it turns out I've just been fine-tuning it all these years. Now I find it hard to even study for a test unless I have the "night before" stress of it to motivate me.

This paper is going to kill me.

The biggest thing I'm afraid of right now? A typo.

Life is Average

So I'm not the biggest promoter of the Carillon, but in the 07/08 semesters there was a comic published called Life is Average, and once I got past the horrible grammar and semi-bad drawings (it's not really like I could do any better!) I found most of them quite enjoyable. I don't really know why I saved them, I had no use for them, but I'm a little happy I did now.

Here for your (okay, mostly my) viewing pleasure:

No Pressure?

I've tried setting up blogs before, but they always fail because I can never think of what to say. Starting is often the hardest part. There's a sort-of pressure to make the first entry really good, so good as to ensnare readers for life! Except not scary like I made that sound.

Hmm, I guess "unterrible" is just as good as it's going to get