shout out

I would like to take a moment to shout out to a fellow (totally awesome) Canadian. His name is Chuck Hughes and he is a chef (excuse me, cook) in Montreal. I have yet to eat at his restaurant but I LOVE his show. His cooking style seems to be the getting back to basics, unpretentious (with a few suprising twists) style that is just so in today. You don't have to dress up to eat there but you know you're going to be fed something pretty special. On top of that, the guy is totally smokin'. If you haven't heard of him I emplore you, check out his show, you won't be sorry.

Sometimes I don't even know what to do

I could really use some advice. Rarely do I have a problem with shit friends. I'm pretty selective with my friendships, if acquaintances don't become friends I drop them. As a result I'm close with my friends, value them and try to go the extra mile. It pisses me off when I don't get the same. I spent two months of summer hanging out with a girl I'll call Y every week. (More frequently then I see some older friends) I brought her to my club on Toronto Island, taught her how to cook stuff and we hung out with her friends and generally had fun. After she visited her bf in Cali for a week I haven't heard from her since aside for a quick phone call and a couple of fbook messages, just saying she was busy. So yeah its kind of the cranky bit of my general excitement about school, hot TAs, clubs, newspaper articles to write etc. I would let it go I think... but she has my favourite bronzer and its like the insult to injury. How would you solve this?

I'm sorry...

I fail... It's kind of hard to maintain this right now because of the way I feel when I come home from class. I feel tired, drained, frustrated, anxious and nervous. There's a lot riding on this year. It's my opportunity to make up for my screw-ups of first year and second year. On top of that I have the added stresses of paying off a ridiculous credit card debt, eating healthy and just making sure that I take good care of myself. I try to see my friends as regularly as possible and my family provides eternal comfort to me, but that doesn't take away from the fact that this is my make it or break it year.

My course-load is obscene but I'm excited to be in the process of wrapping it all up and getting out into the real world. I'm lifeguarding, working for my professor, trying to do pilates, yoga or swim every day and trying desperately hard not to get too bummed out about the weather. Most of September has been beautiful, which is certainly what we deserve after such a crummy summer but not today. Today is a hot chocolate and a good novel kind of day, not a 9:30 tutorial and a 2:30 lecture followed by a 7pm pilates class kind of day.

Just to add to my irritability, my dear friend (so I thought) who I spent most of June and July hanging out with is now too busy to even see me for coffee. I haven't seen her for two months and I now suspect that the reason for this is that she doesn't want to give me back the bronzer I lent her... People! It's enough to make you a miser.

Things will get better though. The sun will come out, the leaves will turn. I'll get to wear my chunky sweaters and knee high leather boots. It will be the season of soups and pies and stews. Thanksgiving is coming up in another couple of weeks. Followed by Halloween (inicidentally one of my least favourite holidays) a dreary month and a half, then the first snowfall, the hustle-bustle of Christmas shopping. A friendly family baking rivalry, Christmas decoration overkill and 4 or 5 Christmas cds on rotation. I can hardly wait.

the bird

Two days ago, a house finch smashed into our window. I yelled downstairs to my dad that this one was still alive so he came up and picked it up off our deck as it fluttered weakly. He cupped it in his hands then gave it to me since he had work to do but he didn't want it to die. "If you keep it in a warm dark place" (he meant my hands) "until it's ready to fly away, it'll probably live." I didn't really have anything pressing to do so I cupped my hands under his and he carefully slid his big hands out from underneath those teeny claws. I put one hand over it and I sat down on a deck chair holding this warm little scrap of life carefully in my hands, sheltering it from the world. I could feel it shivering and shaking, still in shock. I could feel its tiny beak against the tip of one of my fingers as it panted. I could feel its unbelievably soft little body producing an amazing amount of heat as I sat outside on that perfectly still morning while the sun shone and other birds sang and flitted through our garden. Finally, after a good ten minutes of this strange situation, the bird began to flutter and beat its wings wildly. Bemusedly, I opened my hands and watched it fly away, grateful that I got to hold that one little bird.

Incidentally, birds play a special role in my family. It is a love and a fascination that my father has always tried to share with us. He loves his little song birds, his thrushes, his downy woodpeckers and his hawks and ospreys and such. This is not the first time that I've saved a bird for him, nor will it be the last. I suspect that in imparting this love and admiration for his (excuse me) feathery friends, he has also imparted his deep respect for nature and his sense of stewardship towards the environment.

"you keep biting heads off of gummy bears and screaming 'euthanized'"

I've been gone for a while, and I loved it. No offense folks. But no internet, no newspapers, the occasional One Tree Hill episode plus lots of good thick novels is about as close as you come to paradise you know. It was wonderful too, to find out who my real friends were. The people who called me and who didn't ignore my conspicuous absence from the technological world. I felt overcome several times, to write, be it on this site or in my plethora of notebooks but I just couldn't bring myself to do it without my computer.

Plus, I'm a little apprehensive. I want to know whether or not I should even bother anymore. Do I have anything really and truly worth contributing the blogosphere? It doesn't always feel like I do I must confess. Some people have the most interesting struggles, lives, loves and observations. Besides that what do I have to offer aside from my own anxieties, cynicism and a certain love of life that this blogging adventure has helped me cultivate.

Reading other people's blogs has made me realize how far I have to go and how much I have to appreciate. My break made me realize that in some ways this whole blog thing is overrated. But it lets me write, ramble and rant, and occasionally, when I'm very lucky, get some feedback.

There's more of what's been going on to follow.

sorry I've been gone

It's been so long... I feel terribly guilty. A few things have kept me tied up, school, my new job... the Twilight series. Ok I'm pretty embarrassed about the last one. I;m sorry that I abandoned you guys for twilight. Twilight is kind of liek a certain kind of candy that I love once I start I just can't stop. The writing was awful, the couple was absolutely nauseating... (I really think she picked the wrong guy) but once you start, how do you stop right?

Everything slipped up while I was reading those books. I worked half-heartedly, I couldn't bring myself to exercise or do the laundry, I didn't want to see my friends until I was finished. I tend to avoid books like that because I don't want to be sucked in. I've avoided anything gossip girl, though I did read shopaholic and the devil wears prada. It feels so good to be bad.

Part of the intriguing part for me is the fact that, I almost feel like I could right one. A certain degree of believability is required for these books coupled with some humour and and a few anecdote type stories.

But I also have to wonder, hopefully without sounding too pretentious, whether or not these people feel bad writing their flaky stories, with no meaning except to entertain. There are thousands of books writen and published every year, but how many of them will go down in history or be remembered as works of importance and influence. They're probably more widely read than any great literary achievement, but does that mean that they will be what is remembered as opposed to what has been acclaimed?

It's interesting isn't it? To speculate on what aspects of our culture will survive. Will we be remembered by Kanye music and gossip girl (or Harry Potter for that matter) or will it be the so called geniuses who survive?

it looks like I'm working less then 30 hours this summer

a 30 hour work week! I'm so friggin excited. So what should I do with my time? I couldnt find any classes I wanted to take. I want to volunteer, take new gym classes... you know, all that jazz.