nobody knows the secrets that we keep

Devin (upon exiting from the tent to see his camping partner dressed in her swimwear):
Who brings TWO bikinis camping?

Stacey (raising hand):
Me! me!

  | ¶ 12:55 p.m.

  I'm not rich, but I've made a million memories so far Last night I woke up around 2:30 just stifled with the heat. It's getting to that point here in Ottawa where it doesn't really cool off at night, so I think it stayed over twenty degrees overnight, and it was sure stuffy in my room. My only recourse is a tiny fan whose original purpose was as a space heater - it's only got a minimal fan setting for non-heat air movement. I set it on my chair and pointed it directly at the bed, hoping it would offer some relief. It seems to have done the trick.

The camping activity on the weekend helped create some momentum and enthusiasm for outdoor enjoyment that I wanted to maintain, so last night I headed out with Devin on a long bike ride around the canal. I've explored only limited sections of the canal (there are extensive pathway networks in this city), so I aimed for a part I hadn't ventured into before. This was our route - we went down the west side of the canal, around Dow's Lake, then crossed over the Hartwell locks at Carleton, continued to the beach at Mooney's Bay, then doubled back by the Hog's Back falls (impressive, they are), and followed the Rideau River home. We weren't trying to set any speed records, but we covered close to seventeen kilometres, so it was a good ride.

And finally, we took advantage of our building's outdoor swimming pool. That pretty much makes the perfect end to an evening of exercise in the humidity - diving into the chilly water and letting it cool you right off. Ah.  | ¶ 10:43 a.m.

  I hear the clock ticking time, better make up my mind Since I'm leaving Ottawa this week for a little jaunt back to Calgary, Devin and I wanted to get one short camping trip in this past weekend. We didn't really know where to go exactly, and we'd heard that you had to reserve a spot way in advance to get in anywhere at Algonquin Park, which is a place I'd like to visit. So I searched the internet and found a place only two hours away, sort of northwest of Hull in Quebec, past Gatineau Park - a place called Leslie Lake.

It was raining like crazy on Saturday morning before we left, but I kept checking the forecast for the "Pontiac" region of Quebec where Leslie Lake is located, and they said no rain. So although as little as 30 minutes from our destination we were still surrounded by showers, we crossed our fingers and hoped the forecast would hold. It did. We eventually hit dry pavement, then gravel roads, and it actually felt like we were driving to the middle of nowhere, but we eventually ended up at the secluded campground.

When they say they have fantastic campsites, they're not kidding. I was thrilled with our campsite this weekend. Tons of trees, tons of privacy, plenty of space in each site, great services, spectacular lake. What a getaway. I think it's amazing how you can go away for just over twenty-four hours and have it feel like so much longer, because you are so busy with activities and surrounded by good old nature that is so different from the typical routine.

Upon arriving, we quickly set up most of our gear before taking a stroll down to the beach. We observed that it was spectacular, so headed back to camp for lunch and coffee and a prolonged game of Scrabble before venturing back for a quick swim. Then a late dinner, some relaxing by the campfire roasting marshmallows, another walk to the lake to do some stargazing, then ready for bed.

I slept like crap, unfortunately. That instant coffee I picked up on the way out of town was maybe brewed a TAD too strong, and the noisy campers at a nearby site didn't help me relax. So I tossed and turned well into the night, but still rose around 8:00 to get started on breakfast, which was yummy despite the charbroiled sausage patties. We checked out of our site but parked at the beach to enjoy some canoeing and swimming in the sun before hitting the road back to Ottawa.

So, Ottawans, if you haven't discovered the beauty of the Pontiac region, I highly recommend it. More pictures are here.  | ¶ 11:51 a.m.

  I get this feeling that time's just holding me down I don't know what the general consensus is amongst my "friends", but I think Facebook is pretty cool. Hello, grade school best friend that I lost touch with back then. Hello, random girl who was friends with the people I played street ball with in high school. Hello, first real high school boyfriend.

It's the ease of connection that I like. People can make the tiniest of effort to "update" their "status" and all of a sudden you know. You know that Andrea had a successful c-section of her second child (another boy) (she was my best friend in grade four); you know that Arthur is in Africa still (high school friend); you know that Derek broke up with his fiancee (he was the bartender at BU); you know that your cousin is counting down the days 'til she delivers her first child (Kim is the same age as froo and me).

And or course you know lots of nonsense you don't need to know, like how infuriated somebody is with someone, who's fighting for miscellaneous causes (bob smith needs a profile picture!), and the people who insist on updating their status every eight hours or so, so you just know all about their day, whether you want to or not. Ah well.

I like it.  | ¶ 3:50 a.m.

  seriously. Please stop it. Stop pluralizing with apostrophes. In your emails, on your webpages, and especially in your advertising.

~ scenario's

~ Tuesday's (as in, "classes on Tuesday's all summer")

~ "Quality at it's best" (this doesn't fit my current complaint, but I saw it painted on a company van recently. Jebus)

Someone call the editor!  | ¶ 1:56 p.m.

  snowflakes are falling; now you're my long lost friend On a bad connection one day driving through foggy New Brunswick, I had this conversation with froo in Calgary.

froo: I need to buy some lamps
froo: Keri really wants me to. For the environment, you know
Chief: couldn't you just get some special bulbs?
Chief: why do you need to get all new lamps?
froo: LAND, I said!
Chief: oh.

I love cooking breakfast. That was my favourite part job when I worked as a cook: juggling eggs-over-easy and panfries and too many slices of toast. There's something incredibly satisfying about having a big food order come together on time. Or ten small ones in a row. And managing your food prep supplies. And recovering from small mistakes (like breaking a yolk). Or creating a masterpiece "pan scrambler" at home, complete with fresh peppers and three kinds of cheese.

And so I talk about opening my own restaurant someday. I just see these funky breakfast diners opening everywhere and think I could do something similar. I have ideas about how I'd include coffee in the price of breakfast. And how there would be high ceilings and a bit of a barn feel. Lately it's been the organic / local food movement that has caught my eye.

Today I had lunch at this little place that, judging by its outward appearance, turned out to be a surprisingly great discovery. Devin and I, ever the tourists in our own city, were wandering around downtown looking for somewhere to eat after my interview this morning. I'd noticed Cafe Supreme before but never felt the urge to go in. Today we were impatient to eat so we gave it a shot. I was already commenting on the coziness of the decor before I bit into my chicken salad panini. That sandwich came with a choice of two side salads, so I chose pasta and spinach. The whole meal was incredibly tasty.

It made me think that I should get started on the planning for my little place. I think it will take a fair amount of research on my part to even come up with a business plan and determine where to get supplies. But maybe once froo buys some lamps she can invest in some cows and pigs to satisfy the local component of the food supplies. It's important to have a well-lit environment, don't you know.  | ¶ 10:56 p.m.

  I never did believe in anything I couldn't hold between my fingers I am reading "The Soul's Code: In Search of Character and Calling" by James Hillman. Rather, I'm re-reading many years after I first delved into it. It is spiritual, perhaps to be understood more in terms of myth, and probably wouldn't be appreciated by those who don't believe in the soul, or a spiritual plane. I don't think that when we die, we cease to be aware, or to exist in some other form.

The basis for the book is something he calls the "acorn theory", in which the soul, or "daimon" already knows what it has come to the world to do, and has actually pre-selected the circumstances it is born into, including parents, time, and place. Actually this isn't a unique proposal to Hillman; Plato's "Myth of Er" discusses the same idea, in which a soul, before re-birth into the physical plane, must drink something that makes him "forget" his existence before birth. Hillman says the daimon does not forget, and stays with us on our journey through life, compelling us to make certain decisions so that we fulfill our purpose.

Hillman thus proposes a new idea of "growing down" - i.e. to plant roots, to fill the shoes we were intended for - rather than growing "up", throughout our lives, as we struggle to meet the challenges the soul has set for us before we knew ourselves. I enjoy his unique perspective on familiar topics, such as this one:

"...if there is an archetypal sense of loneliness accompanying us from the beginning, then to be alive is also to feel lonely. Loneliness comes and goes apart from the measures we take. It does not depend on being literally alone, for pangs of loneliness can strike in the midst of friends, in bed with a lover, at the microphone before a cheering crowd. When feelings of loneliness are seen as archetypal, they become necessary; they are no longer harbingers of sin, of dread, or of wrong. We can accept the strange autonomy of the feeling and free loneliness from identification with literal isolation. Nor is loneliness mainly unpleasant once it received its archetypal background.

When we look - or, rather, feel - closely into the sense of loneliness we find it is composed of several elements: nostalgia, sadness, silence, and a yearning imagination for "something else" not here, not now. For these elements and images to show, we first have to focus on them rather than on remedies for being left literally alone. Desperation grows worse when we seek ways out of despair.

Loneliness presents the emotions of exile; the soul has not been able to fully grow down, and is wanting to return. To where? We do not know, for that place the myths and cosmologies say is gone from memory. But the imaginative yearning and the sadness attest to an exile from what the soul cannot express except as loneliness. All it can recall is a nostalgia of feeling and an imagination of yearning. And a condition of want beyond personal needs."

  | ¶ 5:12 p.m.

  the uniform don't make you brave There is something interesting going on in US politics tonight. I think it's fascinating that in many democracies of the world, one of the tactics used by politicians is the the threat of non-stop talking. I'm not extremely well-versed in American political tactics, but I understand that it is used to avoid voting on a bill until the party pushing for it agrees to change it. The Americans call it a "filibuster" - and often it's merely the threat of filibuster that forces the other side to back down. Wikipedia offers this insight:

"Under Senate rules, debate generally need not be relevant to the topic under discussion, and there have been cases in which a Senator has undertaken part of a speech by reading from a telephone directory. Strom Thurmond set a record in 1957 by filibustering the Civil Rights Act of 1957 for 24 hours and 18 minutes.

Preparations for a filibuster can be very elaborate. Sometimes cots are brought into the hallways or cloakrooms for senators to sleep on. According to Newsweek, "They used to call it 'taking to the diaper,' a phrase that referred to the preparation undertaken by a prudent senator before an extended filibuster. Strom Thurmond visited a steam room before his filibuster in order to dehydrate himself so he could drink without urinating. An aide stood by in the cloakroom with a pail in case of emergency."

Jebus.

So tonight it is the Republican party that is embarking on prolonged "debate" in order to avoid voting on a bill already passed by the House of Representatives which outlines specific withdrawal deadlines for Iraq. Of course, Shrub doesn't want this to pass (he's not done spreading freedom or something), so his party is taking action on his behalf. It's 11:30 pm and I'm watching the CSPAN live stream - yep, they're still talking. Fuuug.  | ¶ 11:32 p.m.

  chase the rainbows in my mind

Dear Calgary,

If you're all done with my summer, can I have it back now?

Thanks.
Ottawa

  | ¶ 10:35 a.m.

  bring on them cowboys and their pickup lines If you've never been to the Calgary Stampede, here's a little taste of the insanity. Nashville North is the country music lounge / bar / tent set up on the Stampede grounds. I have never stood in line for SIX hours. Eek.

  | ¶ 9:12 a.m.

  you've stood in the roar, you've tasted the snow Main ingredient in Beijing street buns: cardboard

BEIJING -- Chopped cardboard, softened with an industrial chemical and flavored with fatty pork and powdered seasoning, is a main ingredient in batches of steamed buns sold in one Beijing neighborhood, state television said.

Mm, that's just lovely. You gotta wonder what's going on over there, what with the poisoned pet food business and all that. Because we still import a ton of stuff from them, and some of it is stuff we EAT. I read somewhere recently that we actually import a lot of our organic produce from China. How can we be sure of the safety of these products, I wonder?  | ¶ 9:54 a.m.

  the promise of this new world would be mine Since YouTube has already killed yesterday's videos, let's try another one today. Wow, Michael Moore is pissed in this clip. He's really giving Wolf the business. Go, Mike!

  | ¶ 9:35 a.m.

  just can't take my mind off of you It's times like these that YouTube comes in handy. David Gray live in London? Yep. Oh, and just to make things interesting, let's have him share the stage with Damien Rice. I couldn't pick which clip to share, so here are both. Awesome.

Damien Rice doing Blower's Daughter (with David Gray's help):


David Gray doing Babylon (with Damien Rice's help):
  | ¶ 8:38 a.m.

  the only thing that keeps me wishing on a wishing star If this turns out to be valid, it seems pretty sad to me.

Researcher sees link between vitamin D and autism

"The evidence for such a link is circumstantial, and autism experts describe the hypothesis as speculative. But Dr. Cannell, founder of the Vitamin D Council, a non-profit advocacy group, says autism rates have skyrocketed in lockstep with medical advice given to the public since the late 1980s to avoid all exposure to bright sunshine."

  | ¶ 10:54 a.m.

  what'll I do when you're so far away This guy knows me. I have a diagnosis. Another excerpt from Your Own Worst Enemy:

Some SLHPPs ("self-limiting high-performing persons") continue to remain unwilling to leave behind the loose structure, comforting familiarity, and open-endedness of the journeys of discovery of the postcollege period. They stay rootless and uncommitted, gliding from one adventure to another, continuing an extended time-out, and considering next steps, while keeping the pressure low and avoiding seriousness.

Frequent moves become part of this way of life, and SLHPPs set up their lives to accommodate them. For example, a much greater number of my project participants give a post office box, instead of a home address, as their mailing address than any other group in my psychotherapy practice combined. A PO box saves the hassle of completing post office change-of-address forms. Project participants have confided that while packing the boxes for the latest move, they fantasize about doing the next move differently or better.

You may have moved from place to place, apartment to apartment, city to city, or coast to coast trying possibilities on for size. Some moves may have been stopgaps, some may have been made on a whim without adequate reflection, while others may have been the fallout of other decisions. In the beginning the advantages of a new situation loom in the foreground, appearing to solve the drawbacks of the old situation with the freshness of a new start.

Uh-huh.  | ¶ 10:22 p.m.

  I guess that we were both right about a thing or two I live in a government town. That means that the biggest employer is the federal government. I'm beginning to understand what this means and how they work. I have a whole French language rant brewing in my head regarding the bilingual component of most jobs, but I'll save that for another day. This post is dedicated to some of the nonsense that a person goes through to be hired by the federal government.

I have applied for numerous clerical / admin positions over the past several months. My name has made it through the initial stages of the "competition" in three cases. What that means is that you get invited to write a "test" first. My first experience with this was pretty amusing. They asked questions like, "You have the following eight tasks to complete. Please tell us what order you would do them in and give reasons for your choices". And seriously, man, we're talking about administrative tasks like distributing mail and checking office supplies. It was almost comical. I have to say that I wrote some beautiful essays that day, though. I was rushing to get to work on time and was feeling surprisingly wordy. So when they asked me to discuss why I was passionate about office administration, boy did I give them some poetry. Seriously, I believe I threw out phrases such as "the unsung heroes of offices everywhere". Hilarious, truly.

I have done two more "tests" since then, and they were both equally un-challenging. "Please demonstrate that your brain is intact". I left the last one almost angry. Anyway, it is what it is.

So, before you read the following chat excerpt, here is my disclaimer. In my circle of friends, the word "gay" is used mostly to mean "dumb" or "silly". It is not intended to be disrespectful and I don't think it's "low-brow", as one of my brothers once decided it was. Oh, and it might help if you understand some French. We were practising.

Chief: oh good news
interview for that last gay test I wrote
(for the job, I mean)
froo: that's some progress
Chief: meaning I passed the gay test
froo: a test for gay people?
Chief: basically
froo: i don't think they can do that
if you're not gay enough, no job?
Chief: no, it's more to rule out gay
froo: oh, too gay = no job
Chief: minimum levels of gay
I wonder if they'll try to sneak in some french speaking!
froo: practice!
Chief: J'aime faire la bicyclette
froo: je n'aime pas laver la vaisselle
Chief: est-ce que je peux emprunter ton gay test?
froo: vous n'etes pas gay assez pour ce job
Chief: vous etes trop gay pour emprunter mon aspirateur
froo: j'aime faire la gay bicyclette  | ¶ 9:41 p.m.

  tell me something, tell me something I don't already know I went to the library last night and came home with a stack of books. Most of them are for my philosophy class, but I got a few for personal interest, too. So I've already started reading "Your Own Worst Enemy: Breaking the Habit of Adult Underachievement" (is that what I have?). In the introduction he's giving an overview of the "dumbing-down" of society in general and I found this part particularly interesting:

Standards and test scores for our public schools lag behind not only other nations but behind where they used to be. Psychologists were alarmed, for example, when a revised form of the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI), a test often used in hospital settings to diagnose serious mental illness, was released in 1998. The old version, from 1948, required patients with a sixth-grade-level reading comprehension; and the new version required an eighth-grade reading level. The ensuing controversy about the higher reading level was diffused only when the revision task force announced that the two versions actually require identical reading abilities, since what was considered sixth-grade level in 1948 is now considered eighth-grade level.

  | ¶ 12:35 p.m.

  looking back through time you know it's clear that I've been blind I always give nicknames to my cat. Salsa has had so many variations on her name (or terms unrelated to her name even) that I couldn't remember them all. For instance, the "cutest cat in the West", which became "the cutest cat in Quebec" a couple years ago. Since she's such a little beggar, she was often called "Squawky Johnson", or "Squawker, Texas Ranger".

Well, since Silky has arrived on the scene, she also gets to have random nicknames. Devin calls her "Silk Factor" or "the Silk Phenomenon". I kinda like the Johnson theme so I've been calling her Silky Johnson. But I hear that that's perverted. Meh.

It turns out that Silky is a beggar too - she's a bit on the heavy side, so we try to control her food portions, but she's always talking about how much it hurts, that we don't understand how hungry she is, etcetera. She does have an awfully cute begging meow that's hard to resist. But she knows we mean business so she eventually stops looking so frantic and relaxes into a "ready" position in case anybody heads anywhere near the kitchen. She'll show you where the food is, don't you know.

Last night she must have given up and didn't follow me when I was actually planning to feed her a bedtime snack, so I had to yell, "JOHNSON! Come on, time to eat!"  | ¶ 11:19 a.m.

  you learn as you go that nothing heals like time Ottawa police probe triple slaying in luxury condo

I didn't do it. Yeah, I was in the neighbourhood. Yeah, we drank beers that night and some events are fuzzy. But I swear, I just got off the bus - after a hug from the friendly dude on the seat beside me; transit becomes one big party late at night, I swear - and I walked past that building and didn't stop. I remember thinking how peaceful the night seemed, there around 3:00 AM.

The police aren't saying what time the murders took place, so who knows what was going on at the point, but the whole thing seems pretty crazy. That building is right at the Hurdman station where Devin and I get on and off the bus when we're travelling from home to downtown and vice versa. The building, as they've been saying, does appear to be pretty secure, though, with locked gates at all the entrances.

Devin was out for a walk on Saturday evening and saw quite the police and media presence outside the gates of the complex, and they had the area marked off with police tape even yesterday. When I biked by this morning, it looked like they'd finally completed their investigation at the scene, 'cause the police vehicles and tape were removed, but it doesn't sound like they have many answers. Nobody asked me yet, but I didn't see nuthin'.  | ¶ 12:17 p.m.