Skirting the Mundane

Copperhead Road is playing on the radio. Oh happy day! I love Saturdays. Katherine and I have taken up going downtown to the farmers' market for local produce, planning our dinner menu for the coming week, and cleaning the apartment on Saturdays. It is deeply boring to the inexperienced eye, but we love it. Today I was also supposed to rise early and go on a run in the Gatineau Hills, but alas! I did not wake up to harass Jacob out of bed and post-pub-crawl stupor to drive the half-hour to the race. This is particularly bad as we are the "organizers" of the team. But there are a few people who showed up to the meeting who have that cross-country glint in their eye and are probably more than willing to step up where we fall down. Instead of racing, I went trail running in the big greenbelt of parks. It was probably only around 5km, but it was very nice. I challenged myself to do a fahrtlich run on the way out, which is when you sprint for a little while and then die for a little while in painful alternation. I have no sprinting capabilities at all, but I did manage a slight variation in speed, which was good. The air is cool and it is starting to feel like fall.



Something weird happened on the bus downtown today; Chris (of the Chris Episode of last January) got on the bus at the stop after ours and sat and talked with us the whole way. He was actually quite sociable, for Chris. This is odd, particularly coming a few weeks after the housewarming party at Devin, Notl, Joni, and Diana's where he didn't talk with either of us at all. Hmm. Anyway, he was going to get a haircut. Good luck with that, sir.

This year is much different than last year. It sort of goes without saying that it would be, but everything is much different. School seems further away. I'm not obsessing about it quite as much as I did last year. This is probably bad for my grades, but I figure that as long as I'm reading about politics and development and stuff in my spare time, it can only help my schoolwork. Right? School is still being deceptively little work. I dread having to actually start working on shit; I know the day is coming soon. But for now, I am having a peaceful evening with my international law textbook. Later, Emily may come over. She is diseased at the moment, poor thing, but we must finish watching our Eddie Izzard DVD. The Izzard collection has grown to four DVDs, for anyone interested, and they are all totally fab. Sigh. He is my favourite British transvestite comedian.

Also for anyone interested, there have been a few Emo Boy sightings, mostly at a bus station we all seem to go to. The Jeremy has only been seen by himself, once at the bus station and twice on campus, but Scraggo and the Poser have been seen together at the bus station several times. Katherine and I then tried to picture them grocery shopping and dissolved into fits of giggles. Nothing like little stoner emo boys going: "Do we need yogourt? Oh, I don't know." "Guys, we need waffles and ice cream. I ate them all last night." "I wanted those for breakfast, you know, man. With fresh berries on top? You bastard." "Haha, we could buy an eggplant and make a bong."

Nathanael hasn't called me all week. Hum.

YES, that is correct, I now have a gigantic Middle-Earth poster above my desk. I have only to look upward for inspiration.

The view from the top! You can see the Ottawa River in the distance, and the rest is all Quebec.

Here is a portion of the Big Scary Rappell. The overhang was quite fun -- you got to walk along the ceiling of it if you let yourself down at the right speed!

These photos are all from my super-awesome rock-climbing trip Friday with Jacob. He will tell you that I was a nervous wreck for part of the trip (specifically, the moments right before you rappell off a 25-metre rock face...) but he is lying, lying! I was perfectly calm and collected and not at all pasty. Anyway, this is on the 5.7-difficulty climb that we did. The rock was really cool: it was slab, and it had all these little pits, hollows, cracks, and crystals that made a perfectly smooth-looking rock face climbable. Very neat.

Hey, all. I'm going out to Mal-Wart to get my contacts in a minute, but just thought I'd chime in first on the tragedy in the American South. Part of that tragedy is that the whole administration is just such a fantastic horse's arse. I'm watching the briefing from Monday at the White House, and Scott McLellan is all "Hey, guys, let's not play the BLAME GAME, like, we're busy trying to look after people!" as though he's going to dash off, roll up his sleeves, and start handing out water from a Red Cross station and the press is just wasting his time with their stupid questions. I mean, how dare you ask about why the richest people in the country are in line for a huge tax cut when I'm just about to throw on my waders and get in a boat to help people? The whole rescue effort was bungled for the first, vital few days. The President didn't seem at all interested, as the head of government and head of state, in the fact that his fellow citizens were dying of dehydration, random violence, heatstroke, and dysentery. Any other human being would have been in there making sure the efforts were co-ordinated and effective, and knocking heads together if they weren't. Bush has been lethally languid through this whole affair. It's like he's living in a dream; he didn't even end his vacation until three days after the hurricane hit. I don't care if it's supposedly FEMA's fault for not getting its ass in gear. I want to know why the military resources available weren't immediately mobilized, and why people were forced to use their own boats for rescue rather than having adequate aid from government groups. I want to know why the reaction was so sluggish. The President doesn't seem so concerned, and his spokesman is saying that these issues will be addressed "later" even though he's standing there now, supposedly available to answer questions. FEMA is a federal agency, and therefore under his purview, non? And even if it's not under his immediate authority, why is it being run by a guy who was in charge of horse shows before he was made the number two and then the number one in the agency, for no reason other than pure cronyism?

OH HELL YES!!! Some reporter named Terry has just said "It sounds, Scott, as if the line that you're giving us is that don't want to answer questions of accountability because of all the busy work going on..." [defensive interruption by McLellan to the effect that any thought of accountability or "the blame game" prevents the administration from remaining focused on this major catastrophe] "there are people in Louisiana and Mississippi who are doing that job very well. Your job is to answer the questions." Thank you, Terry. I think Terry is, like me, so sick of this administration he could vomit. And now Scott is referring to someone's query about dysentery as a "broad question". Oh, fuck you, Scott.

This is totally inappropriate given the situation, but: I kind of love that Cuba has offered aid. Fidel so sassy.

Most of this rant's viewpoints come, in some way, from This is Not Over, which has a very interesting discussion going on in its comments sections, and from a New York Times editorial by Paul Krugman, here. Just use my account, screen name "carletongal", password "whatif". I know most of y'all readers aren't American or big on public policy, but I am both and I am getting my rage on over here.

Ahoy, all! I apologize deeply for my lollybloggery. It's really quite inexcusable: here I am, with my desk all assembled and my Internet hooked up, and I haven't posted here in weeks, despite having no school to go to until Thursday.

Life has been relatively pleasant of late, despite the one-year anniversary. I am never sure how it is OK to talk about it... it's difficult to come out and say in big capital letters The Accident That They Were In, and it feels like cheating just to say "since it happened". Even though, really, everyone who knows what I mean knows what I mean.

Anyway, apartment-dwelling is going relatively well. We have acquired greenery in the form of three small pots of herbs (basil, parsley, cilantro) and are now busily killing it off. Jessica and Katherine, destroyers of plant life! We have also had an impromptu Ramones dance party prompted by extreme boredom. I have worked out how to turn my bed into a divan during the day with strategic rearrangement of pillows and quilt. I am in desperate need of some more posters, though, because all I have to look at above my desk is my Big White Wall. Ooh, Polyfilla'd holes: riveting.

Cooking for yourself is strange. Katherine made egg-o-muffins for breakfast this morning, kindly consenting to put my freaky veggie bacon on one of them. We were sitting around eating when it occurred to me to wonder: what are we having for dinner? I asked if she had any ideas, and she said, "My God! I don't know... it never ends!" And it's true: we have to figure this stuff out every day now, no matter how tired we are or how busy. I think this is going to mean we eat a lot of cheese and salad.

Earlier today I sent an e-mail to my MP, begging for volunteering leads. Hopefully he will do better than our Deputy PM. I wrote to her office last year, enclosing a resume and all the appropriate things, and never got a reply. I've met the woman twice and was careful to introduce myself. Anyway, I expect better of my MP. He seems a bit of an arse, frankly, but he doesn't really have anything else to do, does he? Not minister of anything, not chair of any committees I am aware of... Nope. Nothing to do but talk to me. And, hey, I'm from his constituency. It's a brotherhood thing.

And now to go add up my expenditures of the past weeks. A never-ending carousel of joy, that is my life.