Bicycle Commuting

At the office, on June 2, to be precise, I had what I think will be a formative experience: I got my bike stolen. This was a bike I'd bought off Jacob for a very good price, and it was without a doubt the highest quality bike I'd ever owned, a 2002 Kona Cinder Cone. Very light, great shocks, and well-maintained. We'd gone out for a day in Gatineau Park, just shredding up the trails like nobody's business (well, it was pretty good for my first day, at least) and I'd resolved to make mountain biking a part of my lifestyle. The following Monday, I walked out of the office clad in my biking gear, ready for a relaxing jaunt home, only to discover that my bike was nowhere to be seen. I will long remember the unpleasantness of having to walk home, in one's nerdy running tights, sadly clutching a now-useless helmet. And I don't think it was my fault, is the thing: my combination lock was, admittedly, kind of shitty, but the ring where my bike was parked had been sawn through.

This experience has opened up new worlds of righteous indignation to me. At my building, people who cycle to work as their form of transportation are forced, effectively, to leave their personal property outside all day, unattended and completely unsupervised, as the security cameras don't even capture most of the racks on the south side of the building. Two e-mails to the facilities people haven't gotten them to remove the sawn-through ring on the rack. The bike storage situation means that people who make a choice to cycle to work - a lifestyle that reduces greenhouse gas emissions and I'd bet health care costs as well - are not being offered the same services as employees who drive to work and have a nice cozy parking garage in the basement, which cyclists are forbidden to use. We would be dangerous coming down the ramp, you see, and could get in the way. My favourite argument against letting cyclists put their bikes in the parking garage is that by permitting this, the government building could find itself competing with private bicycle storage providers in the area. Why, that would be preposterous! That would be like the government running a parking garage when there is a perfectly good privately owned parking garage right across the street!

As it is, my new and fabulous replacement mountain bike is not going anywhere near my place of work, and I'm going to purchase a beater for commuting. This doesn't actually reduce the risk of theft, since bike theft seems to take place mostly at random, but does reduce the financial impact of replacing bikes. As people become more aware of sustainability and environmental issues, as well as the advantages of an active lifestyle, I think more and more employees will place a premium on a bicycle-friendly workplace. I'm certainly learning to.

She's Baaack

It's been an awfully long time since my last update, and a lot has happened. I had a fabulous trip to the Caribbean, Argentina, and Tucson. If you'd like to read more about it, you can check out my travel blog. I got to spend time with one of my dearest friends and attend the wedding of another, celebrate my grandmother's Significant Birthday, and get to know people and places I'll never forget. I also learned the joys of setting your schedule according to your own whims (don't think I'll ever really recover from that discovery) and of spending lots and lots of time in the great outdoors. Since coming back to Ottawa, I've picked up more or less where I left off, singing with ORYC and training capoeira, but minus Carleton and plus work. Yes, I've started work as a real employee, at the same office where I had my co-op placement last year. It is going fairly well so far, and I have managed to outlast my director general, who is leaving for another assignment on Monday (the DG is my boss' boss, for those unfamiliar with the ranking system of Canadian government departments). Sometimes I feel a little under-employed, just because I haven't got people yelling at me about tight deadlines, but I've got a few files on my desk, and they are all really interesting to me, so that is a good thing. There are lots of good things.

What.

In preparation for the backpacking trip starting next week, I'm listening to some Argentinean radio online. I was hoping to practice my Spanish, but instead I am confronted with a show called Los Clasicos playing the B-52s' Good Stuff. I have, however, learned from Dad's comment on a ten-minute weather report that it seems to be typical of Spanish-speaking countries to spin out any verbal interaction into a long conversation. To which I say, dandy, I've got time!

Sisyphus

It is my belief that few tasks in the universe are more crushing in their Sisyphean futility than the shovelling of the top layer of loose snow from its underlying layer of compacted snow, under skies threatening more snow, in January, in Canada. To sum up: pah.

The past few weeks have been, on average, much more pleasant than that incident. A bunch of friends went out for my birthday this Saturday and had a pretty good time and made some pretty stupid faces for my camera. Said photos will not be posted here, as some of my friends likely wish to have jobs or be married someday. However, they will live in my hard drive, or "infamy".

Most of my time is devoted to squaring away the administrative and logistical details of both my travels and my life. A few solid days in the library with my language tapes has improved my Spanish - it is admittedly woeful, but consider that a few weeks ago I knew no Spanish that was not from a Taco Bell commercial, the beginning of that Offspring song, or La Madrastra ("Contestame! Contestame!").

It isn't all quiet library time around here, though. Both of my parents are jetting around trying to help out my grandmothers. Dad's out of town seeing to his Mum in Northern Ireland. In a few weeks, Mom will be going to see her mother in Arizona. Grannie is starting to have memory problems, and Grandma is laid up at my aunt's place with valley fever, or coccidioidomycosis, a respiratory infection caused by a fungus that lives in the desert. While my aunt and uncle go on a long-planned (and super-cool-sounding) trip to Antarctica at the end of the month, Mom will go hang out with Grandma as she recovers. My grandmothers are both incredible ladies; they are both well into their eighties (Mom's mom turns the big 9-0 in March) and both live on their own. Last year, Grandma bowled a far better score than I could ever hope to, and Grannie continues to garden with enthusiasm. They both have a wealth of stories and love, and it is sad to see them getting a little older and more frail every year. But time marches on regardless, just as certainly as there will be more snow on our driveway next week. We all do the best we can.

New Year, New Me

So here are my New Year's resolutions for last year:

1. Be competent

2. Listen carefully and absorb what you are being told

3. Sleep 7 hours nightly

4. Exercise at least twice weekly

5. Eat less junk

I have made what I feel to be sterling progress on three of these, but my love of oatmeal cookies abides, impeding progress on 5. Regarding 1, I have booked a big multi-country trip with assistance from parents and a travel agent, done business travel on my own, and found and (sort of) maintained my own apartment, all with no major disasters. My listening has never been great, but I think now that people are using Facebook and e-mail more for communication, my retention of stuff has improved. And I'm organized and attentive at work, even if those traits don't generally transfer over to my personal life. Number 3 was wishful thinking from the start; the amount of sleep I get is inversely related to the number of classes I am taking, and my family seems to have a genetic propensity to stay up as late as possible. Since coming home for Christmas I have stayed up past 1:00 with my parents several times. I have exercised at least twice weekly almost every week, just because of capoeira, and during the summer was walking about 6km on a daily basis. I am no slimmer than I was, but I'm in pretty good physical condition.

So that's not bad, overall. This year's resolutions will take some thought. Does anyone reading have any resolutions that have turned out well? Any that have gone down in flames? I am interested.

Bah Humbug Now With Added Wonderfulness

On Tuesday I wrote my last exam ever. Wednesday was my last day of work. Thursday is my last day in Ottawa until April. I am going to miss it here; over the last year Ottawa and I have gotten very close. It is truly a beautiful place in the summertime: the streets are full of happy people revelling in their ability to go sit on a patio (like, an outside one! You don't even get frostbite, it's the coolest thing, you guys!). Gardens overflow with flowers planted in a charmingly random fashion I like to think of as Civil Service Haphazard. The air is warm and humid, but usually not uncomfortable. I spent most of the summer (as I recall) tripping about idyllically, tending to my tarragon and cherry tomatoes, making salade nicoise, and wearing sundresses. You can only imagine how fondly I look back on such sunlit, potentially hallucinated memories now that we are in the season known as Awful, getting freezing rain layered over two feet of snow and experiencing mysterious and cruel temperature fluctuations. Compounding the misery is the OC Transpo strike. I cannot imagine how anyone who lives any distance at all from downtown has gotten anywhere in the past eight days; it is hard enough for me, and I'm about 3km from where I work: a pleasant jaunt in the morning and evening, no serious hassle apart from the weather. This morning it took one of the admin ladies three hours and twenty minutes to get to work. Neither the city nor the union seems particularly interested in helping people get mobile again, and to all of them I deliver a resounding Bronx cheer.

Anyway, some extremely nice things have happened this week. The choir's annual Sankta Lucia celebration went off pretty well, although I did manage to have a coughing fit in the middle of Stilla Natt (Silent Night, for any non-Swedes reading). Five of the guys get to carry wands with stars on them every year, and can be relied upon to make an amusing spectacle of themselves over who gets to have the wands, who is whose fairy godmother, and things of this nature. This year the boys who got wands were all very miffed because the small children who were part of the procession had wands with stars at least twice the size of theirs. Then we drank glog (umlaut not included here), which is a deadly Swedish concoction of spiced cider stuff and vodka. It tastes like mulled wine teleported through a stained glass window.

The second nice thing preceded the first: I entertained! I decided that instead of trying to get together with various batches of friends before I left, I'd just invite a whole crew over for drinks and cookies and such. It was quite a nice evening! People didn't mingle as much as I'd hoped: the room basically had choir people on the couch, capoeira people by the papasan chair, and B.PAPMers on the table'n'chairs and standing in the kitchen. Now that I write that down, it seems weirdly reminiscent of the collective dynamics and personalities of each of those groups. Hmm. Anyway, aside from that it was All Good, and really lovely to see everybody before I left. The choir gang (consisting this evening of Dannik, John, Steph, Brian, JP, Nicole, etc) threw on some impromptu four-part harmony (like we do, what what!). Steph brought her Matt, and Graham brought some homemade wine that I am very much looking forward to drinking if it is anything like as good as the stuff that comes out of his kitchen whenever we're over for dinner. Glinski drove up from Kingston to be there! It wasn't hard to put on, either, because I have an awesome former roommate. A few weeks ago Katherine and I got together and made vast quantities of baked stuff for this extravaganza, which was the ideal Christmas present from her and made life much easier for me - all I really had to do was buy some artichoke asiago dip and nice fresh pita, make a batch of hummus, and get the drinks together. Oh, and spend three hours making a snowflake mobile when I should have been studying. Oops.

Finally, Garrafa/Sebastien tried to kill me at capoeira on Tuesday by making me play the entire class. I assumed it was just a little goodbye game to celebrate the end of a good session, but then people kept tagging out the person I was playing rather than me. I think I was on my fourth game before I figured out what was going on, and by the end I was more into repeated flailing actions than actual playing. Ah, the combination farewell and hazing ritual.

That's about it for now. Watch out, Bubble, I touch down in 37 hours.

Ingrates!

Your daily schadenfreude: President Bush assaulted with shoes on surprise visit to Baghdad. Maybe it's just me, but I just can't understand what this gentleman could possibly be angry about.

Sorry - sarcasm doesn't look good on most people, but there are times when it is the only possible reaction to bury eight years of frustration.

UPDATE: someone else much funnier than I (on the Jezebel forums) has written that this is "one small shoe from man, one giant shoe from mankind."

Significant Digits

1: this is the number of hits that are actually me on the first page of results I receive when I Google my name. It is a page about my track awards in high school and doesn't even link to anything anymore. That's kind of sad.

454: the number of posts this blog has as of that last post - I have a pound of posts! In grams!

Viajo!

This is going to be a great spring! I will be living like a pauper in a variety of locations of varying sunniness, as follows:

February 3-13: St. George's, Grenada, for a visit and beachy good times with Katie

February 14-20: Havana, Cuba, for Kelly's wedding to the nice young man she met on exchange there (I haven't met Andres, but everything I have heard suggests that he is nice)

February 20-22: Horrible airplanes

February 22-March 25: Buenos Aires and other Argentine destinations, for cosmopolitanism, nomadism, and a potential intermission in nine years of mostly-vegetarianism

March 25-27: Horrible airplanes

March 27-April 1: Tucson, Arizona for Grandma's birthday (she is not a day over 46!).

It is to be an epic journey and a marvellous one.

From the Mouths of Babes

For no particular reason, I thought yesterday of something I did in fifth grade. At the time it was tremendously embarrassing, and I felt ashamed for being Wrong rather than Clever. This is a feeling that guarantees a memory will burrow into my brain and lodge itself there for all time. In retrospect, though, it's hilarious and I'm glad to have brought some merriment into my wonderful teacher's life. It happened during social studies. Mademoiselle Violet asked the class who the president of Russia was, and following this question there was a resounding silence lasting, in my recollection, about five minutes. Then, a bolt from the blue! I had an answer. I gasped! I raised my hand! "Newt Gingrich," I declared.

The Dream Dies

Today I learned that I can never be Betty Cooper, everyone's favourite all-American blonde, because it is extremely hard to sing and play the tambourine at the same time.

Flavour Of The Week

My favourite quote of the past two weeks is from my good election-night buddy Jacob, who made the following declaration regarding monies owed to the Canadian Revenue Agency,

"They never ask for documents, remember?"

Other notable recent events have included a showing of The Blue Planet, which features great numbers of jellyfish and similar freaky wondrous sea-blobs (some venomous!).

Probably the best thing, though, was hosting Boopsie for the weekend. She got to meet my hooligan choir friends on Halloween, so now she will not recognize them unless they are dressed as woodnymphs, mariachi bands, or alarmingly realistic pregnant ladies. We also went out for brunch at Von's with Tamara, her roommate Joey (real, awesome name: Giuseppe), Sandra, and Steve. They make a mean omelette at Von's and the portions are satisfying but not so much that you can't enjoy a rum ball at the Wild Oat afterwards. We drooled over everything in the display cases at Magpie Jewelry; my favourite was a rather expensive necklace in the shape of very delicate olive branches. It made me want to buy it and wear it with togas forever and ever.

Sadly, Boopsie and I both had schoolwork to do, so much of Sunday was spent bumming around the apartment, working. It was quite pleasant to have company, though, and I was very pleased when she remarked at the bus station that the trip had been easy and we should do this all the time. Both of those things are true!

Tomorrow I am going to see Spamalot with Kristen and Jen. RULAGE! Other upcoming fun includes a presentation I'm giving to our departmental sustainable development committee regarding the EU's Sustainable Consumption and Production/Sustainable Industrial Policy. There is a pretty fab summary posted here, but it is only up-to-date for July. Anyway, should be good times. I have started talking about policy again so clearly it is time for bed. Something raucous is going on outside my building, but I don't anticipate it will stop me sleeping. Arrivederci!

Politics Nerd Time: Yeah We Did!

Hell of a week! The phrase "President-elect Barack Obama" sort of rolls off the tongue, non? I have spent so many hours this week e-mailing particularly good editorials and interviews to other interested persons, and every so often being submerged in these tremendous waves of sentimentality. I hope that this is the start of good things. I think he is a capable, intelligent, and decent man, and I am confident he will stand the tests well. The simple act of electing him has done so much for the image of the United States, but the real work is on its way. There are a lot of things I'd like to see in the first hundred days, so here's a little wish list for you.

Maybe with the legislative and executive branches Democratic-controlled we will (despite Obama's vote on FISA) get some kind of due process back for accused terrorists. That is a relatively cheap step to take, and it might not be complete within 100 days but it could be started. It would also cement international goodwill if America started acting like the land of the free again.

I would also like defence accounting and contracting procedures tightened up, to avoid excess spending on contractors, because there have been some magnificently stupid things done in that arena in the past few years.

The climate change file is about to get even more interesting in the US, so I'll be watching that attentively. Personally, I don't expect the Canadian offer of a bilateral agreement aimed at carbon markets to get much of an airing in Washington. It wouldn't hurt to harmonize the carbon markets, because more reduction projects in the markets would make the markets more competitive, making carbon reductions cheaper, which is a Good Thing. That could be done at the same time as a domestic cap-and-trade system, so long as the accounting procedures were compatible between the two systems so that reductions created in Canada could be applied for US companies and vice versa. The Albertan fear that the fuel carbon standards idea will spread from California may be well-founded, and that could put a serious kink in bilateral relations. It will be interesting to see whether Obama honours trade agreements or tries to follow California's lead and get around them by arguing that the environmental exceptions in GATT apply (there's a decent case that they do, because I wouldn't expect any American-produced oil to have as heavy a carbon footprint as Canadian oil).

As far as the economy goes, I honestly have no idea what should be done. I oscillate daily between the "string the bastards up!" and "bail the bastards out" schools of thought. A more progressive tax plan, such as Obama's proposal from the campaign, would be a good strategy for the slightly longer term. It amused me that some people invoked (gasp!) Sweden as an example of what happens when you have progressive taxes. Yes, it must really suck to have a high life expectancy and raise your children in an environment of equal opportunity for all. Beyond that, well, we'll see. I have some sympathy with Sarkozy and Lula's calls for an overhaul of global capitalism, but I am unsure what, exactly, would replace it. The same goes for health care; I am by no means a health policy expert, so I won't give big strident opinions on that.

Lord, all I ever talk about is policy. And you, gentle reader, have more of that to look forward to, because once I have finished my term paper on the Iraqi security forces, it will probably be turned into a post for this blog.

Remembrance Day Concert

Ottawa area readers, I have something for you to do if you would like to spend this coming Friday night remembering the people who have died because their country asked them to. Faure's Requiem is a great piece, so hopefully you will be able to join us! Please contact me for tickets if you are interested.