After the Clouds, the Sun

I'm baaack!
Sometime last week Blogger freaked out when I tried to post a new post and then ended up eating the rest of my blog. The Blogger staff have just put it back online but couldn't save my template so I had to go searching for the last time I saved my template which turned out to be Dec. 24th, 2005.
If there's anything I've learned here it's that I should have backed up the template a lot more often, but anyways, currently you'll see a throwback to the old template (which is still quite nice I think), until I can put in the time to start changing colours and photos and whatever else all over again.

This week's a bit busy... the parentals are away, the cats are going insane and damn it, it takes me 40 minutes to water all the flower beds and flower pots every evening. I really don't think gardening is something I'll get into until I'm in my 50s. I do enough digging around as it is without having to care for the stuff you shove into the ground.

Today is K.'s labour inducement so I guess sometime in the next 48 hours she will have a baby son or daughter. Last summer at this time she was laughing at how she was the last holdout amongst her colleagues to have kids and she had won a bet because of that. Well, I guess things change more quickly than you think they are going to, because kidlet #1 is well on its way. I hope the best for her and her husband and that she gets all the drugs she wants in L&D.

Anyway, I am going to get outta here for now, but I just wanted to let you all know that I was trying to figure this blog issue out and it seems resolved except for some of the reworking I have to do.
I'll post again soon... real soon. Keep fit and have fun.

Test

This is a test post to see if anything actually posts to my blog now. It's been messed up since June 12th! Blogger, please help save my dying blog here. It needs a rescue...

1781 is the new 1820

Ok, so we found a coin today that had the date 1781 but turns out to probably have been a counterfeit from c. 1820. Weird...
Anyways... I'll elaborate more on the Dave Matthews concert when I get some time, and when Blogger fixes my damn blog.

Suspicion

Suspicion, haunting the streets of time
Suspicion, boy they really got us this time
Suspicion, shame on the things we did
Suspicion, get used to it kid
~Ryan Adams ~ "Suspicion"~

Grim reality. I have been tossing and turning at night for months because I know the "salary" at my job* doesn't really sustain a living, let alone any really serious loan repayment or school savings. If I didn't live with my parents I'd be out on the street somewhere, or working at some sort of part time job at a grocery store or Shopper's Drug Mart, which at this point kind of looks desirable for the reasonably high starting wages and the employee discounts.
Why would I choose to live this way? Because this job is a way to get to the means of what I love doing. I spent a lot of time being unhappy before I found something I loved, but I can't deny that in a way this situation is killing me, or at least my spirit.
There is no way I will be able to pay for school in September without again receiving massive loans from the bank or my parents or winning the lottery. I am so stressed out about this, I think I might be feeling 10 years older than I am, maybe even 20 years.
So I've got some student debt on me right now, who doesn't really? But the question is, can I sustain monthly interest payments while away at school presumably not really working in the traditional sense because I will be 'working' per se at schoolwork?
I just don't know that I can do this... but on the other hand I just don't know that I can't do this. Do I have the courage to get really tied in tight with the bank or my parents or to get this degree and then never get a tenure track position or a decently paid job in order to pay back the massive loads of money I've spent?
I'm scared and I don't know much about anything right now. I'm just freaked right out and stuck in this Catch-22. One thing is for sure, if I get that PhD I can't settle in at the job I am currently doing right now. It's too poorly paid and frankly doesn't leave much time for a second job because it's quite exhausting and consumes your life.
Speaking of which, do I even get to have a personal life outside of academia and loan repayment?
So here's a revelation I've been holding at bay: Holy fuck, I'm 25, wasting my life away with two useless degrees, about to embark on a third. Perhaps I should have gone to law school.

Oh and on a final note, I'd like to thank the officials at customs for being assholes last night. I had a great time in lockdown being berated. You definitely should have seized my car for the undervalued underwear I declared. Oh and one more thing, you are mathematically challenged since you didn't total my receipts correctly, therefore charging me too much fucking tax.

*I highlight said job because I am technically not classified as a full time employee even though I have dedicated the past year to the company and a summer before that.

Life is hard, then you nap.

You know it's summer when I don't post as often because I'm not near a computer for 95% of my day. I am so relieved about that AND I look healthy because I have a tan. Speaking of which, I don't try for the tan, but sometimes I am negligent with the sunblock. It's hard to want to put on more sunblock when you're sweaty and have a nice film of dirt on you... the cream just makes it all mucky and moves it around on your skin.
My new favourite sunblock is Spectra by Coppertone. It's pricey but it works (because of its zinc content?) and I only have to put it on once a day and it doesn't feel greasy on my face or anywhere else. That's my checklist for a successful sunblock. It's also on sale at Shopper's right now for $12.99 so you should stock up on it.

Last Sunday, I completed that insane Gardiner/DVP route for the Becel Ride for Heart although I have to admit that I skipped out on my last turn from Bloor up to York Mills so I only completed the 50k route rather than 75k. My friend and I lost each other immediately as I experienced a slight difficulty with changing gears at the beginning. It was enough to carry her far far away and we never met up again during the ride until we finished at the end. She consequently met up with other people she knew and kept the pace for 75k. Personally my body was hurting by 35k and I just wanted to sail back into the CNE grounds with as little pain as possible. Then we reluctantly got on our bikes again to get to Union Station so we could take the TTC home. The TTC was so pleasant on a Sunday morning, if only it could be that way all the time.
Now that my butt has stopped hurting from last weekend, I resolve that I should take my bike out more often this summer since I paid for it to be tuned up before the Ride -- I should at least get my money's worth out of that.

Work is the same... looks like we really will have our to-do list full for this season with some really interesting projects nonetheless. Some of which I bet won't get started until September, just when I have to leave. Almost makes me want to stay, but then again, I want school. One thing is for sure, if I wanted a life in CRM, I wouldn't be paying for a PhD.

I keep dreaming of Vancouver lately, not sure if it's because it has now been over a year since I've seen the place or that I seem to miss it more with the passing months. How ironic.
UBC called me today for my first alumnus financial hit up since graduation last May. It came from another grad student who tried to convince me to donate to an endowment fund for UGF's given out by the Faculty of Graduate Studies. When that didn't work out to his liking, he tried to entice me with the Faculty of Arts angle. All I could say to him was that I currently have killer monthly interest payments to make on my line of credit which negates any feelings of gratitude (or other appropriate emotions) regarding donating my money to UBC, especially since I was never the recipient of any financial aid from that institution.
And it's also a particularly bad time since I will now be paying through the nose for education from Mother England.
I told him that I would consider it on my own time, that I knew the necessary ways and means of donating money if I felt inclined to (because I am sure the easiest thing to find on the UBC website is where to make monetary donations), and maybe in 5 years time I would be in more of a financial position to want to donate. However, I failed to mention that I may never be in the psychological state of mind to want to donate to UBC. They'll figure it out for themselves.

Oh and today mark's what could have been Kidney Stone '06 (as it was in '04 and '05) but so far I've avoided that painful event. Here's to keeping hydrated and away from the morphine drip! Cheers!

The More Things Change...

When you think about how much can change (or not change) in a year, it's a bit crazy, but when a lot of stuff happens in just a week or two, your perception of reality gets a little mixed up.
For instance, regarding people I know, K. & A. got married on the Victoria Day weekend -- a wedding I wanted to be at, but couldn't afford to get to. Boo me! The photos look like the party of the year.
Of course, I mentioned that Cassie graduated, and now as of Wednesday, Jen R. had her baby! And of course one of my ex-field directors, K. is going to have her baby in just three weeks.
I feel like I should write something cheesy now, like the opening lines of the "Days of Our Lives" theme or "As the World Turns", but I won't. However, because I've mentioned it, I'll leave that up to you to hum to yourself.

Stop for Pedestrians

It's been an eventful week to say the least, starting with the unexpected TTC wildcat strike on Monday, which sadly didn't prevent me from getting to work. It was kind of amusing to watch people look totally confounded when they tried unsuccessfully to walk at the locked electronic doors into the station at Don Mills.
I guess it also totally sucked for those people who walked to work because it was the start of 3 of the hottest days I've felt since last summer, and when I mean hot I mean that on Wednesday we heard on the radio that with the humidex the high was 44C -- isn't that like 111F? -- it was just ridiculous, especially for May. It really makes you wonder what July is going to be like.
Perhaps those people who arrived at work in rumpled suits won't be declaring how much they love the hot weather after they got to sweat their asses off just to make it into work. It's not like they're hanging about outside all day in it. I have to say that one of the most annoying things is hearing people praise the hot weather. Sure it's nice to have hot weather when you can escape from it all day and you get small doses of it, but it's not fun to work in it and suffer the effects of smogiliciousness in Toronto. And people get bloody cranky! The ideal temperature is around 23 and that's just the way it is. If people want super hot, they should live in the Caribbean.
Anyways, it was a miserable time but my crew was sent out to a site in Bronte (right on the lake!) that is quite interesting because the historic building on the property is in the midst of controversy before the OMB. The developer wants to move it, but that would totally diminish it's historical context. It was once a stagecoach inn on the lakeshore highway between Toronto and Hamilton and probably beyond. I have to say that the fate of this building doesn't seem very good, because the Ontario Municipal Board is development happy and in their opinion, to have this plot of land on the lake overlooking a yacht club is just too precious to not be developed for profit.
Archaeologically speaking, there is one of the richest midden deposits we've come across in the last few years, over 1000 artifacts in a 1m square test pit! We also explored inside the house which is totally creepy and derelict -- apparently there were tenants living here until a few months ago which was appalling to us considering the condition of some of the rooms.
There were creepy things like mannequin pieces and a dentist chair in the attic and an old clown marionette in the basement. There was also a second storey room that could not be accessed through a door on that floor, but rather through a hole in the ceiling from the first floor with a ladder built onto the wall. What the fuck is up with that? This house could have seriously been a setting for a horror movie.
Before we actually arrived on Monday, Andrew went into the house after the developer's lacky had come by and unlocked it for us, and he heard footsteps above him... yet no one exited the house because the only unlocked door was the one he was standing by. All the windows and doors have been boarded and bolted shut. That alone added an air of creepiness to the entire place.
By far the best thing about this site was how many locals came up to us to show us old pictures and tell us old stories about the house. At one point, one woman who had lived in the house as a child came by to tell us about it. Until a few years ago it had been in her family's possession since the 1850s.
I feel like I talked so much to these people between Monday and Wednesday that I could write extensively on what I've heard, but that's not my job. I just hope these people are able to save their building in a manner that does the historical record some justice. It's not like extant stagecoach inns are common in the area anymore.