Good Times Bad Times

It is starting to feel like spring, and to celebrate I have bought myself two Led Zeppelin albums. For some reason, Zep always sounds like spring to me, even when they are trying to be all dark and Celtic-like.

Feeling Good

This has been a half-decent weekend. I went to the Last PAPM Formal Ever, as someone has ominously titled their Facebook album documenting the event. It was pretty good, but I left early, because I just didn't have the energy.

Saturday I only left my apartment to do groceries. There is homemade soda bread and a bunch of reading done as a result of my efforts. Soda bread is great, great, great because you don't have to let it rise - just mix the dough, score a cross in the top, and bung it in the oven. So much less work and waiting than making actual leavened-with-yeast bread. Perhaps next I will see whether my pizza dough recipe can be converted to foccacia.

Elise and Mum are in Toronto, and I wish I could be there but the trip was just too long for such a short time. I needed a weekend to chill out, and it would have been very easy to chill out with them but I was not up for the ten hours on the bus. This does mean we won't see each other until May, most likely, but we will just have to deal with that. Nearly five months is quite a long time.

While waiting for a family reunion, I will bolster my already-reasonable Cheer Levels by perusing the following reinterpretations of classic cartoon strips:

Nietzsche Family Circus

Garfield Minus Garfield

And speaking of family reunions, here is my Unofficial Cowboy Husband singing about them: enjoy.

Electoral Funsies

This coming American election was important from the start; the past eight years have left many people demoralized, no matter their ideological outlooks. There is a litany of disasters I could run through: the erosion of rights and freedoms; tax cuts for those who need them least; the poor and insensitive response to Hurricane Katrina; zero national action on climate change; wiretaps; the flourishing of an unsustainable mortgage system; detention and torture; two wars, one unnecessary by any reasonable measure and both expensive in treasure, lives, and stability. I realize this is more or less the same rant I posted after the 2004 elections, but so little has changed in this administration's approach to the world. America's reputation and resources have taken a beating, and this worries me. For all the foibles of the Excited States of America, and for all my compatriots' tendency to hate on them, as a Canadian I would most definitely rather have the U.S. in charge of world order than the People's Republic of China.

And no matter how much the rest of the world may hate Americans, Americans are doing a pretty good job hating each other. The relational dysfunction that has consumed America has Americans speaking of each other not as fellows in debate, with whom we may disagree, but as libtards, Paultards, Rethuglicans and Dim-o-crats, Christo-fascists, fascists, homofascists, corporate pigs, feminazi bonerkillers, fundies, neo-Condi rice-and-beaners, guilty white secularist liberals and on and on and on until the purported differences are so big that we can't even speak to each other like human beings anymore. Noise and name-calling have consumed the political debate. It seems there is less and less space for reasonable people to disagree, and fewer and fewer people to occupy that space. I have been part of this; I have un-secretly cackled when the hubris of a Vitter, a Foley, a Libby comes crashing down around him. I hope that people are tired of this; that all of these divisions are yielding a real desire for honesty, freshness, and a change in the way politics is conducted. I think there could be a figure who could rally a movement for reconciliation.

Last week, Barack Obama gave a politically difficult and intellectually spot-on address about race, one of American history's great festering sores. He said things that both whites and blacks might not have wanted to hear, but did it without incriminating anyone.Anyone who believes that speech counts for nothing in politics is clearly missing the point -- the way we speak of others shows how we think of them. Yes, he is ranked as being very (gasp!) liberal. Yes, it is wrenching to me, as a self-identified feminist, to find myself not supporting the first woman with a serious chance at the presidency. But even though their platforms are fairly similar, I really do feel that Clinton has a different understanding of politics than Obama does. His campaign is drawing in people who have traditionally felt cut off from their country's political life, and so far has not been as enthusiastic in its use of politics-as-usual tactics as the other campaigns. So in November 2008, I plan to support someone who speaks to Americans with respect. Usually I am cynical about this kind of idealist populist blah-blah, but just this once, let the healing begin.

Visitors

The Easter Bunny brought me a Colleen! We didn't really do much while she was visiting, just chilled out and went to dinner and the movies. Sunday night (yes, Easter Sunday) we went to a comedy club with Notl and Rooke, because Notl kindly hooked us up with free tickets. We did some walking around the Glebe, worked out on Monday, and some chilling out. It was all very nice.

I also slept, much and happily. There is nothing like a few nights of really good sleep to make you feel better about life.

Green Is The New Black

Green Week has been a resounding success so far! CUSE did a pretty fantastic job organizing it, I've gotta say.

Hopefully Not Homeless!

I think I have found an apartment! I love it. It is practically perfect in every way. There is just one other option that I am going to look at, and then I am sold for certain. It will be such a relief to finally be able to stop looking. I feel like I have spent the past two months on Craigslist and Kijiji, looking up places that are never quite satisfactory, so to have something nice fall into my hands like this is really quite a treat. But then, I should hold off on the present-tense until I have actually signed papers and such.

Architects Take Note

OK, all but one of the bachelor apartments I have looked at are square rooms. Why would I want to live in a square room, where it is nigh-impossible to separate things off so that I am not staring at my unwashed dishes and unfinished reading while trying to sleep, or confronting my guests with my unmade bed? There is no discernible advantage to this layout, and you cannot tell me it would be that much harder to organize the plumbing and such with a longer, narrower room. Tut tut, architects of whatever decade all these complexes were built.

The only place I really liked for its physical attributes (lovely cabinets, pleasing shape of room, ample storage, high ceilings) was both out of my price range and out of my target neighbourhood. It was also inhabited by smokers. Natch!

A promising new lead has come up; an old school chum from home has offered me his place starting in May. Tomorrow I will go to meet it and see if we will be friends.

Wherefore Spring?

Ottawa is a snow-blighted hellscape and it is impossible to get anywhere. I have just turned around from what should be a 15-minute walk to the library because there was snow up to my knees. Winter, you may stay if you stop trying to bury us alive. But if you carry on, then I am afraid we are going to have to ask you to leave.

Sisterhood

Happy International Women's Day, everyone! Now let's get to work on the other 364 days of the year.

Lester, Now, Lester, Now, Keep It Together

Corb Lund and the Hurtin' Albertans: awesome, handsome and talented.

Certain members of the Corb Lund audience: shouty, plastered, and irritating.

Mum, you will be pleased to know that Corb has gotten a haircut, the better to accentuate the good bone structure you always knew he had.

I Wanna Be In The Cavalry

CORB LUND IS TONIGHT WOOOOOOOOO! He is the best Canadian country artist, methinks. Or at least the one I like best.

This week has been exciting; Matt dumped me for some good reasons and for some reasons I hadn't considered problematic, viz."values". At the moment I am a person comfortable with her values. After all, not being a committed Catholic does leave me more time for my sideline job selling meth outside the elementary school.* I am also rather enjoying the inferno of righteous indignation consuming my various internal organs, and the extension of my emotional repertoire to include such favourites as "embitterment" and "shrewishness". This is odd because I thought that if he left me I would be extremely sad instead of extremely pissed-off and judgmental. Work has been good this week, though I will confess I spent a certain amount of time spent trading messages with the Uppity Wimmins Solidarity Network regarding the foregoing events.

This latest in my series of breakups was preceded by a thoroughly awesome weekend at Mont-Tremblant, shredding the slopes with fifty per cent of the interns. There was some ice but it was not as bad as all the horror stories Mum has told me of rocks and trees bursting forth from the snow to smite the base of one's board into splinters. Nevertheless, the helmetless among the group were dubbed Team Concussion. Though we had planned on rocking it Saturday night, we settled for a soak in the hot tub, a few glasses of wine, and bed by 12:30. It's a long way to the top if you're too tired to rock'n'roll. In other intern activities, Khallad and his roommate Bahe revealed themselves as total pool sharks on Thursday, to the amazement of all.

Roda de capoeira this weekend! Let the destruction of my knees, feet, and pride begin. My blisters-on-blisters are looking forward to acquiring their own blisters. Grandblisters, if you will. If you are all very good to me I will refrain from posting photos of these horrors of podiatry.

*Note to law enforcement officials: I have never sold controlled substances outside any educational institution.

March Is The Angriest Month

Already it does not like me. I'm lucky this weekend was so awesome, with all the snowboarding, because the rest of the week is going to be a doozy. And by "a doozy" I mean "terrible and depressing in various ways". It's great going in with a positive attitude, isn't it?