all roads lead to Jamaica Until I'm back in my own environment, here is one more video to entertain you. If you can't see it below, it can be found on the vimeo site here.


Ryan Project 3 from Stacey Ryan on Vimeo.  | ¶ 8:42 p.m.

  deck the halls and give a cheer for all the things that Christmas is each year
Ryan family Christmas from Stacey Ryan on Vimeo.  | ¶ 1:13 p.m.

  Merry Christmas from Ottawa I'm leaving tomorrow for Calgary, so it was my last chance tonight to see the lights on Parliament hill before all the snow melts; they're forecasting rain and ten degrees for Sunday. It's still pretty chilly out there tonight, though!

I saw some footage of Stephen Harper landing in Calgary yesterday - there was a dude saluting him as he got off the plane. I'll be expecting the same type of reception...



Oh, and good news! I got B- and B+ on the two courses I was worried about after last weekend's poor showing on both exams. I'm smarter than I knew! Also, last night's exam in Research Methods was pretty easy, so I'm crossing my fingers for an A. Yay, me.  | ¶ 11:38 p.m.

  kumbaya, my lord Oh my. I better watch out.

In 1989 the Vatican issued a document saying the practice of Eastern traditions like yoga "can degenerate into a cult of the body," warning Catholics against mistaking yoga's "pleasing sensations" for "spiritual well-being." It was signed by then Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger--now Pope Benedict XVI.

From the article Stretching for Jesus on the Time Magazine site.  | ¶ 11:36 a.m.

  you can't stop my happiness, 'cause I like the way I am Awesome collection of observations from Michael J. Fox.

That’s one of the things the illness has given me: It’s a degree of death. There’s a certain amount of loss, and whenever you have a loss, it’s a step toward death. So if you can accept loss, you can accept the fact that there’s gonna be the big loss. Once you can accept that, you can accept anything. So then I think, Well, given that that’s the case, let’s tip myself a break. Let’s tip everybody a break.

My happiness grows in direct proportion to my acceptance, and in inverse proportion to my expectations.

Acceptance is the key to everything.

Which isn’t to say that I’m resigned to it, or that I’ve given up on it, or that I don’t think I have any effect on the outcome of it. It’s just that, as a reality, I get it.

Who gives a shit how it looks? It doesn’t matter. I look like what I look like.

(Via kottke.)  | ¶ 10:53 a.m.

  if I squeeze my grapes, and I drink my wine
The other day Devin remarked that January will likely "be a debt repayment month" for him. I agreed this was a good idea, and observed that that is probably a common theme in the Western world. And just to be funny (or something), I announced that I think January will be a "travel-around-the-world" month for me. Because I have no idea what I'll be doing or where I'll be living so this sounds about as likely as anything. I'll just throw on a backpack and get hitchhiking. Only he reminded me that even to backpack around the world, you can't just stand on the side of the airport tarmac with your thumb out and get a lift off the continent. Well, I never..!

But for now I'm sorta busy this week studying for my last exam on Thursday. I figure I should perform decently on at least one of my finals. Eep.

We got some wicked snow this week; I like it, but the too-cold wind isn't for me. This Ottawa place is a windy town. I'm mostly staying inside huddled over my books or doing some lengthy yoga sessions (yoga champ!), and counting down to my flight out on Saturday. It will be nice to visit Calgary again, with its warm winds.  | ¶ 11:58 p.m.

  spring time feelings in the middle of December I was inspired this week. My brother asked me once whether I was keeping all the random video clips I've taken of family stuff (i.e. his kids) over the years. I considered making a compilation DVD of all the clips, but then it hit me - why not try to learn iMovie, which apparently isn't that difficult, and make a fun compilation that the whole family will enjoy? It took two solid afternoons of sorting through clips and editing out the sections I wanted to use, and I had the genius idea to use a song from "High School Musical" that the kids are apparently pretty crazy about these days. So, a quick review of Wikipedia to determine the best song to use, and a few minutes watching iMovie tutorials, and I was all set.

When it's your own family, some of the cheesiness doesn't seem so bad, but if you're not a Ryan, this might not interest you terribly. I had a blast making it - it was pretty easy and just made me giggle. Especially sticking in little clips of Jamie eating - he'll love that...(!)

You know what this means? I need a Mac - they don't make iMovie for Windows!


Ryan family collage from Stacey Ryan on Vimeo.  | ¶ 9:07 p.m.

  to be all that we can be Regardless of who did what wrong, I always find myself feeling sorry for any old folks that find themselves in a position of defending wrongdoings of their past. Both Mulroney and Schreiber are rather weathered old men, and I feel bad for them and their families for having to endure this obviously stressful event.

I guess this is a lesson for people in general. If you do things in life that are going to make you worry for years to come about whether they will come back to haunt you, it is probably best either not to do them or deal with them as honestly and quickly as possible when they rear their heads later, and just deal with the consequences. Things get pretty messy when you compound your past misdeeds with complicated stories trying to justify these actions.

This committee hearing has some pretty intense moments, with the members mostly being respectful and deferential to Mr. Mulroney, but they do get testy when he gets evasive and off-point, which he is quite adept at doing, I must say. He and Schreiber are some slippery characters.

Mulroney is confusing things, I think, by sometimes answering questions posed to him by reading back some of Schreiber's sworn testimony from his appearance either in front of this committee or in other court settings. He's using Schreiber's words in these instances to confirm a point. But then he turns around and generally asserts that Schreiber is not to be trusted because he has contradicted his own sworn testimony. So on the one hand Schreiber is a lying guy, but on the other, here's his answer to your question. It's a muddled way to respond to questions.

This concludes your live-blogging update of the Mulroney testimony.  | ¶ 12:28 p.m.

  would we get that old-time feeling I feel like I've been in a bit of a sleep-deprived haze for too many days, and compounding the off-balanced feeling is the nagging sense that my two exams did not go very well. It isn't supposed to be like this.

This morning I fell asleep in front of the television just before CBC Newsworld started showing the Ethics Committee hearings yet again. I was drifting in and out of awareness so my dreams and the TV voices were combining into some crazy world where Karlheinz Schreiber used to live in my apartment and somebody saying he should have done the repairs that Mulroney told him to back then. Huh?

After I watched the coverage, I did some baking. Last week after I made my kale and bean soup I had extra white navy beans to use up. When I searched the internet for bean recipes, I stumbled on this unusual one for chocolate chip cookies. So it was a bit of an experiment making them, and they turned out okay for the most part, but the commenters who said that they were rather bland were correct. I'm not sure if they'll all get eaten - a little too boring. But heck, they've got beans in them!

It was interesting to watch the excerpts from Question Period today where the debate on the Chalk River Nuclear Plant / radio isotopes fiasco got pretty heated. I guess Harper wants to force the plant to start back up before the regulator thinks they should. I get confused when he makes everything into a partisan issue, though, and wanted him to back up his statements about the "liberal-appointed watchdog". Apparently he got some external advice indicating the reactor isn't as dangerous as the regulators think...? As Devin pointed out, these regulators aren't supposed to be political - their job is to be removed from politics, isn't it?  | ¶ 11:57 p.m.

  rock me gently? You know that new commercial, I think it's for the Jeep Liberty, where the guy is driving through a forest singing a song, and these animals keep coming in the sunroof and singing along with him?

Yeah, I don't get it.  | ¶ 4:41 p.m.

  I cannot help but hear his voice Well, I might have proven that I'm not an idiot by federal government standards, but I don't think my other exam went so well yesterday. I didn't sleep much the night before, kinda doing some cramming for that accounting exam in the morning, and by the time it was time to write, I was almost too tired to focus. In the afternoon, when I went to write my "general competence" test, I was even having trouble with some simple math questions! I really hope everything works out alright.

This studying-for-exams nonsense is reminding me that I'm done with school, as in, can't raise my motivation to the appropriate level for optimal learning. Please, oh please, can I just get a job in January. I've been applying like crazy, with the government mostly, since they're the big employer in this town, but the process is so slow (they told us yesterday that our idiot-test results would only be available in February) and the potential necessity of speaking French looms over me.

Did I mention I've become somewhat anti-French from living here..? I just don't get how a language group that represents less than twenty-five percent of the population gets to dominate civil service jobs. Devin told me that at an employee event he went to a while ago (he works for a pretty big branch of the government), something like sixty percent of the attendees indicated that French was their first language. We learned in my Political History class last year that a Quebec politician long ago got frustrated that Quebecers couldn't work for their own federal government because of the language barrier, but I feel like we've gone too far in the other direction. I wrote a test at the Justice Department recently and felt like I'd wandered into some deep French territory. Everyone around me was French, and most of the people in the room were taking the test in French, but pas moi - you're allowed to take your testing in the language of your choice. Almost all of the jobs I apply for indicate at least a minimal level of bilingual-ness as a required element. And yeah, I've already scored C and B (these are higher than 'A') on reading and writing, but it's the speaking assessment I'm worried about. I suspect I'm not quite at the often-required B-level.

For now I've got a couple more school exams to get through. I'm writing Provincial Politics tomorrow night. Time to get rested up.  | ¶ 11:33 p.m.

  one of these things is not like the other It looks like froo's cats have a new playmate. Who's your friend, kittens?
  | ¶ 12:46 a.m.

  gimme gimme more, gimme more Some things I did this week:

• For the jobs I keep applying for at the federal government, I keep getting invited to write tests to prove I'm not an idiot. Last weekend, the test was even called "idiot detection" - okay, not really, but "general competence" is about the same thing, don't you think? You can test your own competence on their website here.
  
  But something went wrong on the way - I couldn't find the test location. They keep holding these at theUniversity of Ottawa campus, so I had my trusty map all printed and knew where to go. But there was nobody there - no signs, no line-ups, nothing on any of the four floors that I checked. It turned out that I had been told the wrong building, so it wasn't a measure of my incompetence that I couldn't find the thing. Argh.


• I made a new soup. For a while I've been meaning to purchase and find a way to prepare kale that would be reasonably enjoyable. You always read about what an amazing food kale is, health-wise, so I thought I should try it. Well, it's a big leafy green thing, and most of the recipes I found were for hearty soups, so that's what I made. Bean and kale soup! It's super-healthy and pretty yummy, I have to say. I'm glad it turned out so well, 'cause the prep time was a bit crazy. I didn't use canned beans - soaked 'em overnight and cooked them for a couple hours; also, chopped kale for what seemed like a long time.


• I endured the obnoxious, overly-loud and piercing shriek of the fire alarm in our apartment building. Seriously, I get that it has to be loud, but this thing would cause hearing damage if you stuck around - maybe that's the secondary strategy, to force you out in order to save your hearing, not to protect yourself from fire. In apartment buildings like this, it's typically a false alarm or practice drill anyway.
  
  My poor, poor kitties, though. They had followed me to the kitchen to request dinner and when that thing went off in the next room, they couldn't move their little paws fast enough to get safely under my bed. The floor mats strewn about the kitchen were evidence of their panic. I really didn't want to put them through the further stress of being yanked out, shoved into a carrying device and lugged outside, so I just closed the bedroom door and we left them inside. I wasn't too worried about it being an actual emergency, and at that point I was just angry about the stupid alarm making my eardrums bleed with the unnecessary blaring.


• I finished writing and submitted my term paper for Provincial Politics about Ralph Klein. I handed it in a bit late, but my prof was understanding about it.

I'm studying now. I have an Accounting exam tomorrow and Provincial Politics on Monday. Oh, and I've re-scheduled my idiot test, so if I can find the damn thing, I'll also be writing that this weekend.  | ¶ 1:54 p.m.

  everybody's telling me I'm over my head I haven't really tuned into American politics much for a while, but I have just stumbled upon George W. Bush giving a press conference this morning, and oh my god the man is still as dumb as a box of rocks.

Also, it is SO obvious that he is getting fed his information through an earpiece. He's a terrible improviser, too, and barely manages to cobble together sentences that even make sense. The topic of the event is the newly released report by the intelligence agencies in the US which concludes that Iran halted its nuclear program in 2003, and no evidence can be found that they continue to pursue the development of nuclear weapons, despite the ongoing program of uranium enrichment. You can see Shrub look down and to the side as he tries to focus on what he's hearing and then attempts to turn it into something that ever-so-slightly resembles the English language.

"My opinion hasn't changed. If the Iranian regime could hide their covert nu-cu-lar program before, well, they could do it again." How this man has bumbled his way through governing Merca for so long is in itself mind-blowing.  | ¶ 10:27 a.m.

  in the end close is all there is I do quite a bit of yoga these days. At first I just did beginner video routines - the people at Gaiam have put together some good basic videos over the years, so I've learned quite a bit. My latest thing is to try out yoga podcasts, and I've been pleasantly surprised with a couple of these. My favourite right now is the series by YogaDownload.com. I discovered them on iTunes, in the podcast directory. If you're interested in checking it out, I think it's better to obtain the files through iTunes, because it appears that you can't download them for free from the site - you have to purchase them.

The tricky part about assembling an audio-only yoga podcast (or any instructional file, I would imagine), is giving sufficient detail in the verbal instruction. I've been a little frustrated with some other podcasts that seem to be merely recordings of class instruction, where the teacher responds to the class instead of focussing on clarity in directing listeners, it seems. YogaDownload is incredibly precise in its routines and it makes it much more enjoyable to practice.

That's not to say that I don't sometimes pause the podcast and do a quick search for images of poses. I've done a lot of standing poses, so "pigeon" was new to me (that's the one you see here). The Yoga Journal website is excellent for pose instruction, I've discovered. It gets even trickier when instructors use only the Sanskrit for some of the poses. You gotta know what "Chaturanga Dandasana" is to complete your sun salutations! Namaste, eh.  | ¶ 11:42 p.m.