a different kind of annual

so yes, i know there is noone here anymore, but i don't care. i'm doing my post for the year.

quick update, back from a country, and awaiting a visa for another. learning to decode cultural changes quickly. it's incredible how quickly things change here in canadia... and how obvious the changes are when you get the snapshots every year or so.

neato thing number 1: using canvas bags for your groceries no longer makes you a freak! they are everywhere!!!! woot woot. i like this. it makes sense. as does people asking 'do you need a bag', not assuming, and as does discounts for using your own bags. but you know what doesn't?

stupid thing number 1: megastores that charge you for plastic bags!!! cheap bastards. and i don't mid occasionally picking up the plastic bags when i forget the canvas.. because after living for a year in a country without plastic bags, i've learned the value of a couple hanging around under the sink (makes taking your shampoo back to canada a lot easier with that plastic bag...). and really, megastores are not a friend of the environment, so them passing the buck is dumb.

neato thing number 2: the carbon tax. i know, who knew i would ever support a liberal policy, but ha! i do. blah blah, a thousand ways they could have done it better, but they dropped the right tax brackets, and they taxed the right thing: gas. so yeah, i'm cool with it.

stupid thing number 2: the response of the ndp. meh. also stupid, the continued environmental policies of the liberals. i like the carbon tax, but i hate hate hate the rest of their response.

neato thing number 3: heather mallick is still writing for cbc. i know this isn't a change but i am soooo happy about her continued articles.

stupid thing number 3: cbc felt the need to buy into some ill-conceived notion of 'modern-blog-democratic-media-interaction' which led to a comments section added to all the news stories. i read blogs for blogs. i read cbc for the work done by journalists. i don't want to get to the end of the story to hear some dumbass who spends all his time trolling the stories waiting for the chance to spew some racist/sexist/ignorant crud and feel like he's involved. jesus, at least make people take the time to write something and email it to someone or something so that i'm not subjected to every wackjob with too much time on his hand's opinion. meh.

hm.. i've ranted for a while now haven't i. anyway, that's it for at least a while :)

bloggy blog

hello

well i have a new blog i've been using... if you want the address, leave me a comment and use your email with it so i can respond please!

cheers

i posted this on the wrong blog

while in the uk airport, the blogger services were all in german. so i accidentally posted this entry on the page i made a few months ago but never used. oops.

Monday, March 19, 2007

6 minutes until takeoff?

as jason and i have settled in quite nicely to the heathrow airport (and by settled in, i mean paid for an hour of internet access) i'm curious whether or not our flight will in fact take off in, well, i guess what is now 5 minutes. we are en route to amsterdam after a nice weekend in cumbria (outside carlisle to be specific, at a dairy farm where my friend clare and her family lives)

doh, flight is now being called. we've already been delayed 1.5 hours so i guess they are determined to get us out before the dreaded 2 hour delay point at which we get to demand vouchers etc.

so gotta run

talk to you all later,
julia and jason

and we're off...

our flight leaves in 2 and a half hours... i'll post real soon :)

bah humbug

well it's officially not international women's day anymore. so the big long analysis of feminism and such that i'm half done is not getting posted. i'd like to pretend it's because i want to illustrate how every day should be a day to reflect on these issues, but really, it's because i spent the entire morning at a cafe drinking coffee, trying (and failing) to use their free wireless all because i was hiding from the mouse and his arch nemesis, the pest control guy.

hiding from the mouse was for an obvious reason, but hiding from the pest control guy had much to do with the current state of our apartment*.

and with it being international women's day, one might presume that it is anti-feminist to hide from the pest control man who was coming to set traps because my house was too messy. one might presume that i feared he would see the messiness as a reflection on me, my skills as a homemaker, and my value as a woman. one might presume that i need to throw off the shackles of gendered concepts of the private sphere and gendered values and desired traits based on genitalia. but one would be wrong.

i was really worried he'd think badly of jason.


* to picture the apartment, just think of how my homes looked before jason moved in. scary i know...

my stop gap measure

well the kittens never showed (for good reasons i guess, the one who was going to come live with us got adopted instead) and the mouse problem has continued. but now there is a new bitch in town and her name is lulu. lulu's mama ms. jess is at work today, and we realised we could solve lots of problems if she let her puppy come stay with me during the day. so far today we have walked to my doctors office, gone to starbucks, and spent an hour in the park hanging with a very nice man and his doggy pasha. the good thing is pasha liked chasing a ball, and lulu liked chasing pasha. so now lulu is all exhausted and i'm going to read a book. and maybe even put some nice posts up here since i can write without worrying the damned mouse is going to attack me and eat my toes while i'm lost in the world of verbosity. (you have to be in that world to even think of using words like 'verbosity' which may not even be a real word in most other places).

and only 9 days* until we leave for bangladesh!!!!

*if the visas come through on time :)

in case you read the previous post...

the mouse
had a friend

thank god my rental-kittens are coming tomorrow

in case you got a phone call earlier...

or had to bring your dog over...

the mouse
is dead

leah mclaren, you are beautiful

12:04: Forest Whitaker wins best actor.

Leah12:05: Wow, Forest Whitaker for best actor. A member of my peanut gallery observes, "Black is the new Old."

this is from the live blog that the globe and mail ran of the oscars. i'm not sure if i should rant, or let everyone fill in with their own reactions.

but i do love that leah is *gag* the only person slightly resembling my peer group at the globe and mail (if i base that strictly on market research determining factors). it does follow nicely that the last time i accidently read something of hers it was a few years back when she got bitchy about being told she resembled renee zellweiger (renee was portraying bridget jones at the time so it meant she was fatty mc fatster). i am thrilled that most of her other oscar comments were commentary on earring styles (i've got perez for my bitchy fashion commentary thank-you-very-much). and i guess my favorite aspect of this dumb-ass piece of shit racist comment is that she attributed it to some unnamed member of her peanut gallery. coward.

hmm... i guess i just did my own rant there. but please, i welcome more.

i want to marry them both

for the original youtube post go to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZYhlm9GTAQ0

aaaand it also reminds me that jason and i forgot to have a first dance. oops.

thanks for the tip jenn!