it's easy, let it go Overheard at my apartment this morning:

Chief: can you do me a favour today?
deVaughan: maybe. what?
Chief: Don't clean anything.  | ¶ 3:06 p.m.

  the men of steel, the men of power are losing control by the hour This is HUGE news - one of George's buddies busted. Actually, he's just another in a long list. These guys are terrible.

DeLay Indicted in Campaign Finance Probe

The funny part is that the Republicans are trying to spin it as a partisan Democrat looking for headlines.

"We regret the people of Texas will once again have their taxpayer dollars wasted on Ronnie Earle's pursuit of headlines and political paybacks.

But as pointed out over at DailyKos, Mr. Earle has been plenty hard on Democrats in the past too.

"...11 of the 15 politicians he has prosecuted over the years were Democrats."

DeLay has had this coming for a long time; he's just a bad man. When will they get to Rove and Shrub, I wonder.  | ¶ 2:27 p.m.

  see, I'd have all the money in the world, if I was a wealthy girl Last August I turned in my resignation at a law firm where I detested the lawyer I worked for. Today I turned in my resignation at a law firm where I really like the lawyer I work for. I had none of the glee today that I experienced last time I quit a job.

Here's the scoop: I applied for a position at froo's company and they interviewed me and made me an offer I couldn't refuse. I keep saying: "more money, less stress". And that about sums it up. The dance of joy stuff that I was referring to yesterday was simply because they offered me more money than I asked for in the interview. Significantly. More. Like I said, couldn't turn it down. It's a sweet offer, and I'm pretty thrilled to accept a position with more manageable hours at a place where I can leave the job at work and still have the time and energy to have a life.

I was telling someone today how when I went back to school last year, I found myself thinking, "what exactly have I been doing for the past seven years?" And sure, you do a lot of growing up, gaining work experience and figuring out who you are in your twenties, but as far as concrete accomplishments or noteworthy milestones, I think I was lacking. So I don't want to spend my thirties in a blur of stress and crisis management - a "holding pattern", my friend Mark would say (he's a bit of a punk, but the stuff he says sometimes makes sense).

My new boss said to me the other day while making me this job offer that, "the fact that you went back to school and got your degree" sealed it for me and put me ahead of the other candidates. It was precisely the validation I have been needing since getting that degree. This job is not the peak of a career path for me, but it feels like a solid step in the right direction. More money, less stress. Time, energy and cash to devote to planning the next step. Maybe. We'll see.

And as far as leaving my current position, I'm ambivalent. It has been great to work with somebody as cool as Stacey, and I feel bad that she is losing somebody that she valued too. She was looking pretty bummed today. Blame it all on Boss, people. That man needs to get his act together. And I get the sense that Stacey thinks she's stuck with him. Not me; I'm jumping ship.  | ¶ 8:01 p.m.

  so don't let the bastards grind you down Over-used: "LOL"

Over.
Used.
Gah.  | ¶ 6:00 p.m.

  so wave and blow me one more kiss Holy! What's with me and the not-blogging?! I'm becoming like so many of those people who seem to have forgotten that they're supposed to keep me up to date...

Well, it's been a different kind of week. Devin arrived on Thursday and I took two days off work (man, what a nice break). We haven't been keeping a hectic pace of sight-seeing or anything. He's becoming familiar with my area of the city, at least, and we're branching out gradually to other areas. Calgary IS a big city, but fairly easy to learn your way around. We've been over to the family compound, so he's met everybody but Dalt and Keri (they've been at work both days we stopped by).

Friday was a good day - I was calling it "good news day". First Devin got a call from Bishop's about his wallet, which somebody turned in - with money still in it (but how much?). We went down to 17th Avenue to get froo for lunch and the three of us strolled over to "Burger Inn" for a yummy lunch (it's one of those places that's always voted "best burgers in Calgary", etc.). Next is the part of the story where I get my FANTASTIC NEWS, but it's not quite ready for public consumption (tomorrow I'll explain). Let's just say I kept telling everybody I saw that I was celebrating and would spontaneously break into the dance of joy.

So Friday we headed to Bottoms Up for some celebratory drinks. This is the part where Devin becomes "deVaughan". Pammy's friend Roz couldn't seem to remember his name and kept guessing "deVaughan?" Eventually we all switched over to that, and I think he'll keep it, on this site at least. The night went long, and it was around 3:30 that deVaughan and I finally hopped in a cab outside Roz's place, after a few rounds of "rummy cup" (a variation on dominoes...?) and some loud-tune-playing-dancing-around-the-livingroom. Pammy and Roz unfortunately insisted on playing a whole lot of what deVaughan I considered to be BAD 80s music (a bunch of Talking Heads stuff that I was not familiar with). I begged for some Coldplay and finally got my wish. Fred spent the night at BU.

Yesterday I was in fairly rough shape and had zero ambition to get out. deVaughan, on the other hand, must have something very wrong with him and was out jogging when I stumbled out of bed at 8:30. To give him a chance to explore on his own, I sent him downtown on the c-train (and bus) to fetch Fred. Later, with me still in my pyjamas on the couch, I sent him off to froo's place to go to IKEA with her. After "good news Friday", yesterday was a zero-productivity day for me.

And what today? It's another beautiful sunny day, last day of my wonderful 4-day weekend. We'll see.  | ¶ 11:00 a.m.

  [content update courtesy of frou] GOOD VIBRATIONS - Marky Mark & The Funky Bunch

(Chorus:)
It's such a good vibration
It's such a sweet sensation (2x)

Yo it's about that time
to bring forth the rhythm and the rhyme
I'm a get mine so get yours
I wanna see sweat comin' out your pores
On the house tip is how I'm swinging this
strictly hip hop boy I ain't singing this
Bringing this to the entire nation
black, white, red, brown
feel the vibration

Come on come on
Feel it feel it
Feel the vibration  | ¶ 12:30 a.m.

  donne-moi ton coeur baby I did a bit of a download blitz the other day. First I checked some global music charts, then started torrenting (can I say that?). One album I'm a new fan of is one called Va Best of Disco 2005. I was looking for a link and it appears that this album is a mainly Czech product (I did find it on a Prague-ian music chart), so no english links, except to more torrent sites. Anyway, there are some catchy dance remixes like the Global Deejays version of "What a Feeling" from Flashdance. Fun tunes. Another good one is "Femme Like U" by K-Maro (a mostly French song). One album I was kinda disappointed in is Gwen Stefani. She's only got a couple songs that I like - her singles, I think, because they sound familiar. Anyway, I've got lots of good new jogging music.

I was mad at work today. It's getting to be a fairly frequent emotion, actually, because I simply can't take the stress of working at this pace anymore. Just because I'm capable of doing eight things at once doesn't mean I want to, for EVERY MINUTE OF EVERY DAY. Today I said something to Boss about it being an unsustainable pace, and he says something about how he's been doing it for 25 years. That was just infuriating, because I've seen how much "work" he does. Stacey and I have been busting our butts for a solid month of chaos, and he's been out fishing, golfing, schmoozing, etc. He thinks we had an easy month, and mentioned the other day that things were going to pick up and we'd be operating at full capacity. Yikes, man. Sure, he brings in the deals - he's quite the charmer to his clients when he wants to be - but Stacey handles the bulk of the work on his files, and that means that I do, too. She's only 27 and is still learning a lot herself; it pisses me off that he waltzes in at the last minute to find fault with her work or smooth out deals so effortlessly. If he would just be more involved to begin with we wouldn't have to be in the frenzy that we are constantly. I'm fed up with it. It's not that I don't want to work hard; it's that I don't want to work hard every friggin' day.

Okay, that's my rant. I'm off to jog.
I can have it all, now I'm dancing for my life  | ¶ 8:46 p.m.

  thank God you're timeless Lately I've been getting lots of visitors at my apartment. This is actually a difficult chore for visitors, because my apartment building is lacking a buzzer / intercom system, so unless I know you're coming, you'll have some difficulty getting into the building. Keri has started gently throwing things at my livingroom window. I'm on the second floor, though, so it's a bit of a toss - and one day all he had was his bike helmet, so it scared the shit out of me when I heard this thudding on my window as I sat here playing poker.

Tonight he, Gina and Ella were out for a walk on this brisk fall evening and stopped in to visit. Ella is two, so she travels in the burley (one of those heavy-duty kid chariots with the big wheels so you can jog, rollerblade or attach it to a bike). She was mostly here to see Salsa, but Salsa was hiding under the couch, so we tried to include Ella in some conversation.


Gina: Ella, tell Stacey what you did today.
me: did you spend the day with Mom?
Ella: no...
me: did you spend time with Gram?
Ella: yes...
me: did you GO somewhere with Gram?
Ella: yes! appointments!
me: oh, appointments.

The kid isn't three yet. But she's got appointments, you see.  | ¶ 12:20 a.m.

  enjoy all your struggles, and appreciate the plight I was up way too late last night. On a school night! But I was distracted by the Emmy Awards. They had a nice segment where they honoured the three big network journalists, Tom Brokaw, Dan Rather and Peter Jennings and it was really touching; I still find it so terribly sad that Peter Jennings is gone.

I spent three hours at work yesterday. Since I spend a lot of my working days being a "junior lawyer", my more menial admin work gets pushed aside, so I dedicated my time to assembling closing books. I made good progress on two of the deals we closed recently. Just four more sets to do. Ugh.

The day was rounded out with a nice long jog. Okay, it wasn't "nice"; the run was actually tough, because I increased my time and distance a bit. The other route was getting too easy (even with a big hill to climb) so I figured it was time to challenge myself again. So I slept like a log last night, and then had a really hard time getting up this morning.

The good part about this work week is that it is short. Since Devin arrives Thursday, I'm taking a couple days off to play tour guide and hang out with him. Don't tell him, but I'm almost looking forward to having the days off just as much as hanging out with him; it's good of him to come to town and give me an excuse to take holidays (!).  | ¶ 7:08 p.m.

  we lose our way, we come unwound It's clear that Cody was a popular young man. I don't think that if I died we'd see fifty ninety over a hundred people doing Google searches for news about me. It's probably not very reassuring to find my site as a result. I didn't know him. I don't even know what he looks like. I do remember, however, what it's like to be a university student and have to come to terms with the heartbreaking death of a fellow student, a peer. The only time I was ever in the Bishop's campus chapel was for a memorial service, in 1997.

Yesterday froo told me that Keri and Caia were coming over to visit after work and she invited me to join them for dinner. We strolled over to Earl's and had a nice meal (mm, curry chicken). Then froo dropped us off at the train station afterwards so Caia's day of adventure could continue with an exciting c-train ride home. Hey, the kid's six years old and if a c-train ride is exciting to her, well, that's cool.

Keri and I got talking about this sad Bishop's event and he noted that although these things seem shocking and unfair, the sad fact is that they will continue to happen and that this could have happened to almost any of us during our crazy-partying university days. When you're 19 or 20 and have recently left home for the first time, you have a lot of discovering to do: drinking limits, decision-making, social networks, risk tolerance, boundary testing and personal responsibility. We sometimes learn these concepts the hard way, with dumb decisions and sober consequences, but most of us are fortunate enough to come out scarred but intact. It's maddening that a plain old dumb decision can have much more tragic results some days.

I walked the arches once. Drunk. A lot of kids do. Last year a girl leaving the former Loft lounge decided to slide down the railing. She misjudged the location of the railing and plunged three floors down to the hard basement floor. She broke some bones and they closed the Loft to student drinking. Some people drive drunk. Some people boat drunk. Some people let strangers drive them places in the middle of the night. We're all guilty of a certain amount of bad decisions, and if we're not, well, we're probably not really living. It sounds like Cody was a guy who really lived.  | ¶ 10:00 a.m.

  finally the tables are starting to turn Alberta to cut 'prosperity bonus' cheques

Based on private-sector forecasts that the province's year-end surplus is headed toward $7-billion, the pool of money for bonuses could be as high as $1.4-billion.

Dear Ralph,

I don't want the money.

Okay, sure, I could use the money, and it sure would be nice to have cash gifts randomly given to me at times, but this time, I want you to do something different with it. Maybe it's because I wasn't raised here in Alberta, but I have come to this province with the ability to recognize just how fortunate the people who live here ALREADY ARE. They have more jobs, more money, more security, more prosperity, and because I live here (a random choice at best), I benefit too.

But why? Because this province happens to sit on a resource that the world is in desperate need of and will pay handsomely for. It's not because we work harder or are somehow entitled to a better quality of life than the rest of the people living across Canada in non-oil-rich provinces. How have we gotten to the point where we think we somehow deserve so much more?

I would ask about why we aren't using this surplus money on improving our own provincial health care system, or generally upgrading existing social programs or investing in education, but I have a different focus today. Today I want you to consider the places in this country that struggle year-round to run basic charity programs. Recently I've seen news items discussing the challenges facing food banks and soup kitchens in the Maritime provinces. Specifically in my home town of Moncton, New Brunswick. Ralph, I'm wondering if you would just send my cheque to one of those places. Let's send some of Alberta's good fortune outside the province, to places where they need it much more than we do.

Is is a handout? Some might say so. Is it a handout to help your brother feed his family? Is it a handout to help your grandmother get the care she needs? Does there have to be a payoff in order to extend some compassion and a helping hand?

Anyway, that's what I plan to do if and when I receive my cheque. I challenge other Albertans to do the same. Let's leave the politicians to battle out the rules governing who gets what and do a small thing that will make a meaningful difference regardless.

Sincerely,
the Chief Executive Officer  | ¶ 4:58 p.m.

  anyone who’s ever had a dream Bishop's student found dead in Massawippi river

Cody ... was partying near the river around 2 a.m. on Wednesday morning when he made the fatal jump.

What a sad, sad occurrence. And not the best publicity for the school, when the new principal is trying to clean up its partying reputation. The accidents at Bishop's are getting worse every year, it seems.  | ¶ 12:34 a.m.

  poor people are gonna rise up and take what's theirs In case you were wondering, the SFOD did not close today as scheduled. This is for our client who started out as a private company, merged with a publicly traded company, and proceeded to file an AIF and do a "short form offering" in the same week. There had been some debate about whether the former public company needed to file quarterly financials and it was decided that they did not need to. But what we didn't know (and apparently this catches a few people in similar situations) is that the former private company should have actually publicly filed their quarterly financials. Who woulda thought? So it turns out that the new amalgamated company is in default, and since a "certificate of no-default" is a standard item required on most closings, well, that presented a problem.

We also had an issue with the agents on the deal accepting subscribers both under the minimum and over the maximum limits that had been agreed to a long time ago. This was apparently an even bigger issue than the default status of the company, although I'm not sure why (hey, I'm no securities lawyer).

Since I have close to twenty hours of overtime already this month, I've pretty much decided that I can't do any more. It's just too hard on my body and mind. Lack of proper sleep, lack of proper nutrition, a gradual narrowing of perspective and inefficient brain functioning are not really my idea of the optimal state.

Tonight I finally got out for some groceries and a bit of shopping (it's payday, after all). Somebody said to me recently that "for a girl", I sure don't have many clothes. And that sad fact is all too true. My "office wardrobe" is desperately in need of assistance. Shoes and dress pants were my goals tonight, and I got some of each. I'm wearing the shoes around my apartment to decide if they're acceptable. And the pants need to be hemmed, but they're a solid choice. I hate shopping.  | ¶ 12:11 a.m.

  honey, I'm home and I had a hard day It was another day of prolonged stress at the office. Trying to get ready for a closing by preparing the documents that should have been completed for the last closing (only we didn't have an official "closing" and no time, so we never got the stuff organized). I came home wired and stressed. And cold. It's friggin' freezing in Alberta right now. Even with arriving home at 8, I had some ambitious plans for the evening: laundry, groceries, maybe some exercise. I figured with all that adrenaline I could accomplish a fair amount and then get a decent night's sleep so I can do it all over tomorrow.

But I got home and started making dinner, logged into MSN to let Devin know the package he'd sent me had arrived (even with the lack of apartment number!), and started chatting with Scott. We proceeded to get into an argument, which is very odd for us because we were pretty good friends all last school year and never fought.

But I miss him. And I've been getting annoyed (i.e. angry) that he doesn't write me more emails. The Chief Executive Officer needs lots of attention, you know. So numerous factors combined to create some ugly tension between us and the next thing you know we're brawling. Okay, you can't really brawl via instant messenger. We worked it out pretty quickly - communication is our friend - and it's a good thing because otherwise I'd have to fly down to Quebec and give him the business in person.

So it's almost midnight and all I managed to get done is one load of laundry. That short window of time you have in an evening just isn't enough when you work three hours of overtime trying to assemble closing books and draft resolutions (and you have to get some poker playing in!). I'm beat. And it's only Monday.  | ¶ 1:34 a.m.

  oh superman where are you now, when everything’s gone wrong somehow

There was water, there was food, and there were choppers to drop both. Why no one was able to combine them in an air drop is a cruel and criminal mystery of this dark chapter in our recent history. The words 'failure of imagination' come to mind.

Worth reading.  | ¶ 3:47 p.m.

  this year is gonna be incredible Next up in the birthday season rotation, Keri.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, KER!!
Today is his birthday, but we had the family party last night. It was a bit of a last-minute plan, so we were missing froo and Caia (where was Caia, Ella?).

I'm joining the crowd of flickr users, so you can see the slideshow from last night's festivities here. I'm still learning how to use it, so don't mind the part that says "photos are from Jan 1". I gotta figure out how to change dates.  | ¶ 12:51 p.m.

  I've been wandering 'round with the same old blues Random looking-backs:

One year ago today:

I've been reminded how much walking a person does when they are a student. I think I'm losing weight already! And I'm very tired today (see previous posts about excessive last-hurrah-ing before leaving Calgary). My MWF schedule has a lot of breaks in it, so I'm still figuring out whether leaving campus in between class is practical. I gotta plan my snacks better so I'm not leaving specifically to eat cheap at home. Better to get my butt to the library and do some studying / researching / writing of papers.

Nine months ago today:

you know you're a student when... you wake up at some ungodly hour and think it's a good idea to get up and start studying. [Today: 5:23 AM] I must be stressed...!

Eight months and one day ago:

now that I've proved that I can do this school thing, I'm determined to be a star student this semester. Yup, I'm aiming for six marks in the 80s, people. It's easy to be ambitious at this point, of course. But why not? Staying focussed for the next twelve weeks shouldn't be too hard. I could be wrong about that, though.

Six months ago:

I actually skipped my two afternoon classes today. I convinced myself that I could afford to miss them in order to dedicate some time to my looming projects. I gotta hand in my religion paper on Thursday. I worked on it on the 8-hour plane ride from Amsterdam, but it needs work still.

Three months ago:

I almost doubled my running time tonight. Seventeen minutes, people - up from the miniscule ten minute jogs I started with. And it wasn't even too hard. I turned up the "house" playlist on my iPod, and it was fairly smooth sailing

One month and two days ago:

I had an amazing, amazing day whitewater rafting on the Kicking Horse River.

  | ¶ 10:36 p.m.

  you had a bad day

Remember when Bill Clinton went out with Monica Lewinsky? That was inarguably a failure of judgment at the top. Democrats had to come out and risk losing credibility if they did not condemn Bill Clinton for his behavior. I believe Republicans are in the same position right now. And I will say this: Hurricane Katrina is George Bush's Monica Lewinsky. The only difference is that tens of thousands of people weren't stranded in Monica Lewinsky's vagina.

-Jon Stewart

Other good quotes from TV hosts.  | ¶ 2:21 p.m.

  was it tiredness that made you sleep When I go out to jog I lock my apartment door, leave through the back door of my building and put my keys in Fred's back hatch. When I get back, I retrieve my keys and walk the ten feet to my back door and re-enter the building. I don't want to bring keys with me on my jog, and I don't want to leave my apartment unlocked, but what I'm doing seems a little silly, too.

Today I wrote a very big cheque. Nineteen hundred dollars. That was for my WaveForm shares. Luckily Dalt is buying half so he covered some of the cost. And luckily we're already making a profit. The shares closed at $3.15 today. Not bad. Now if only they stay up there until we're allowed to sell in early January.

At the firm we're still working like maniacs. I have all these post-closing filing forms to prepare for that private placement. Investors in five provinces and one territory means filing six forms with the various securities commissions (the 45-103F, in case you were wondering). And one investor in California (ahem, Dave) means filing some special California form (no other states have this requirement). Oh, and I have to do the TSX form. This is in addition to all the other stuff we have going on - we're filing the AIF and the SFOD for another client tomorrow, too. And preparing their escrow agreements and agency agreement. It's a lot to manage.

I definitely can't keep this up for long - the frantic pace of work. In this line of work there is just never an end to the deals and the chaos, so it's not like you can ever catch up, really. It's just GO-GO-GO all the time. And what's that worth, in the long run...? I don't get a promotion out of it. I might get a small raise. I don't get much appreciation - when it's your job it's just expected that you perform like a star, running your butt off all the time. They will work you as hard as you want to work. I sometimes joke about camping out under my desk for the night, but it's almost not a joke; there's just that much work to do.

So after work today I jogged. I haven't measured the distance of my new loop but it takes me 25 minutes, so I figure it's probably around the 3.5 km mark. I'm finally feeling like I've made some progress in my cardio fitness because although the jogs are still tough, they aren't terrible. The 3.5k loop used to be something I saved for the weekend because it kinda knocked me on my ass for a couple days. I guess we'll see how I feel tomorrow before I know whether this was such a great idea. These days, though, the running really is a great energy burn after the office chaos. I'll sleep like a champ tonight.  | ¶ 11:08 p.m.

  we gon' sip Bacardi like it's your birthday (I'm a gangster, don't you know)

H A P P Y B I R T H D A Y!

It's Kris' turn to celebrate (multiply beers by seven to get his age).  | ¶ 5:18 p.m.

  there you were, wild and free I was rockin' out with the Backstreet Boys tonight. They were playing at the Saddledome here in Calgary and I won tickets at work the other day, so I'd invited my 8-year-old nephew Kyle to come to the show.

We almost didn't get to see the show, actually. When the agent at the door scanned our tickets, she said that they had been refunded and were no good. And it kinda made sense to me, since in the email they circulated at work, they said that they didn't know who'd ordered the tickets and nobody had claimed them. Turns out that that person had cancelled the tickets and had them re-issued. I was a little panicked, thinking I was going to be disappointing my nephew. But the Ticketmaster people were sympathetic and told us to sit and wait while they tried to figure out how to get us in to the show.

After only a few minutes, though, we were approached by two different people who happened to have extra tickets and didn't know what to do with them. They couldn't use them and didn't want cash for them, so I accepted the offer from the girl who had two (the first offer was only one ticket, and I couldn't exactly send Kyle in alone). And it turned out that these tickets were probably better seats than our original ones. People can be very nice sometimes.

The show was quite entertaining. I'm not exactly a diehard fan of the Backstreet Boys, but I've heard enough of their songs on the radio to recognize most of the ones they played tonight. Due to the large volume of teenage girls at the show, the "Boys" themselves almost didn't even need to sing; that's the loudest crowd singing I've ever heard at a concert. It pretty much drowned out the Boys at times.

I was impressed with the stage presence of the two blond dudes (Nick, and someone...?) more than the other guys. They both looked like they were having a lot of fun performing, and they both made an effort to connect with the audience. It makes a huge difference when you have an artist who acknowledges random people in the crowd with waves, smiles, winks, whatever. It's charming.

Since Kyle has his first day of grade three tomorrow, we left before the show was over. The poor kid is up 'til almost eleven on a school night! I hope he's not too tired tomorrow.

How can it be you're asking me to feel
the things you never show...  | ¶ 1:03 a.m.

  blessings not just for the ones who kneel It's been a hectic weekend after a very hectic work week. But all our work putting together Mom's party was worth it. We had the 70 people we were expecting, tons of food, the weather mostly cooperated, and I think everybody had a great time.

Saturday I was at the Safeway when they unlocked their doors in the morning. I stocked up on cheesecake ingredients and got baking. After that Kris, Tannis and I went over to the mall again to pick out decorations and get 60 helium balloons. Then it was on to the family compound to get decorating. They were in charge of "lighting", so they placed candles in mason jars all along the edge of the fence. And I put streamers and balloons everywhere - all along the fence in the front yard and back yard, and inside the house. See?

I also made punch, in this lovely bowl that we rented (Gina was supervising):

froo selected an excellent chocolate cake and Mom blew out her candles with the assistance of the numerous kids in attendance.

It can be bit complicated making time for all the party planning when you've got family in town. You end up spending time visiting with people that you don't get to see all that often and must still coordinate the stuff you're in charge of. We had also decided to do a family photo (of the five kids) for a gift for Mom, so we had to set time aside for that too. Charles, the photographer, took some excellent pics and we're pleased with several of them. We're leaving the ultimate choice to Mom after ruling out the "bad" ones. This is one of our top 5 picks.

Everything went really well. My brothers, froo, Dalt, and numerous friends get big credit for coordinating all the wonderful food we ate all night, too. There was corn on the cob, shrimp, empanadas, various salads, fruit and vegetable trays, cheese and crackers, breads, candies. All fantastic.

You can see the entire set of party pics at frou's flickr page.  | ¶ 3:29 p.m.

  you belong with me, not swallowed in the sea It's a bit like Christmas around here. September 3, a sunny late-summer day. Why Christmas...? Well, first of all, I usually only bake chocolate cheesecake at Christmas. But since we're having the big shindig today for Mom's birthday, I decided to whip up some cheesecake. It smells dee-lish. And it's miles away from low-fat, so throw out your diet today.

The other thing is that the whole family is in town. Granted, four of the five Ryan children now live in Calgary, but Kris flew in, and even my aunt and uncle from Moncton are here, since they're passing through on their way to drop off their youngest son at UBC (does it seem like everyone's going to UBC these days?). Mike actually has some kind of golf scholarship - he's quite the little athlete, you know. Anyway, it's nice to see Gerry and Eva, and to have our "original five" together.

Those cheesecakes smell ready. I better get 'em out of the oven.  | ¶ 12:30 p.m.

  nothing's really making any sense at all; let's talk Last night I worked until 7:30. Which was okay, because I took a proper lunch break (Starbucks with Persuade for some catch-up after her trip to Trinidad). Stacey rolled her chair out to my cube and we sat down with three or four precedent AIFs (filed by other oil and gas companies) to try and re-write the "Business of the Corporation" section of our client's AIF which was desperately in need of help. Unfortunately, our client, the oil and gas company in question, has not been terribly motivated to assist us with this. So you've got two young women who know nothing about their industry (the "well servicing" business, to be precise) trying to write somewhat authoritatively about coil tubing units and double service rigs. Yikes.

Stacey wanted to take me for some drinks after work so we headed down to Dakota's for some unwinding. She was meeting friends at Mynt "Ultra-lounge" and invited me to tag along. The result of the late night was that I made no progress on any party prep. Tonight I'll be up late baking cheesecakes. Tomorrow morning I'll shop for decorations and put them up in the afternoon, while simultaneously mixing punch. Party starts at 5:00.

We managed to find some language that was generic enough to apply to our client's business. Just so you know, that's a lot of what lawyers do when drafting documents - look for somebody who's done it before. No re-inventing the wheel. It's a little like plagiarizing, but not, somehow. Dunno. So we sent out our creation to the client to make sure we weren't lying about their business practices. And we further edited this morning, then sent it off to the lawyers on the other side of the financing offering that we're doing concurrently for their sign-off. Anyway.

Thank God it's a long weekend, is all I have to say. I need a break from these coil tubing units.  | ¶ 3:00 p.m.

  the clock is another demon that devours our time in Eden I've started reading this guy's blog from New Orleans. He's apparently on one of the upper floors of an office building downtown and is reporting the "real story" of the aftermath of Katrina. I haven't watched much TV this week and haven't seen a lot of images or heard what's being reported, but I get the impression that the media is maybe not reporting accurately about how brutal it is there.  | ¶ 11:19 a.m.

  destiny is calling me; open up my eager eyes This week has been all about stress. Pascalle is away from the office (she's Boss' assistant). And since Stacey does most of the work on Boss' files, she basically has two assistants helping her (since Boss is away most of the time these days). With Pascalle away, well, there's just me doing the bulk of the admin work (and a lot of document drafting, too) for all these deals. Tuesday we had that closing and two shareholder meetings to prepare for. Did you know that shareholder meetings have a complete script written by legal counsel? In addition to preparing the documents for the amalgamation ("articles of amalgamation"), we write out what the president of the company will say, word for word, at his meeting.

So I haven't taken a lunch break in three days. I don't know who decided it would be a good idea to do a financing and file the AIF ("Annual Information Form") for the company basically the minute it has amalgamated, but that means were drafting a "short-form offering document" (the "SFOD") and the AIF at the same time as preparing for the shareholder meetings and that closing of the Client A private placement on Tuesday. I've got four hours of overtime just this week. It would be more if I'd been able to take lunch, but when you haven't left your desk all day, it's pretty much impossible to keep staring at your computer screen much past 5.

Then after being all go-go-go for eight or nine hours, it's kinda hard to get the adrenaline to stop flowing, so I haven't been sleeping terribly well. Add in some general stress about car repairs, house-cleaning and preparing for guests, party preparations (WHEN am I supposed to bake cheesecake...?!), and you don't have the happiest Stacey.

Last night I got my shit together, though. I went home and did some cleaning and laundry, ate a snack, and forced myself to go running. Pushing yourself to run is extremely difficult but definitely worth it later. After the meeting at Keri and Gina's to review party prep, I drove Kris and Tannis to my place, climbed into bed at a decent time and crashed pretty hard. So I feel better today, thanks.  | ¶ 1:12 p.m.