Blessed by the Potato

So we’re moving first thing in the morning to our new [rental] house! Almost everything has been packed, and it’s been an intense process, but it’s amazing how much is left. 3 computers and a network to dismantle, the TV and its jumble of wires, plus all the dishes and cutlery. Doesn’t sound like much, but since the movers come at 9 am and it’s pushing 11 pm now this could get interesting. And that’s not even counting all the cleaning to be done (plus removing curtains and picture holders) which we plan to come back on Monday for.

Oddly enough, my Green Party lawn sign was stolen/removed less than 24 hours after I put it up on my new lawn. My landlord did visit that day, so it’s possible she took it, but if she did she didn’t mention anything about it. A bunch of others have gone missing in the neighbourhood, so something fishy may be afoot.

Anyhow, the site will go down for a bit during the move, but I hope to be back up late Monday night, or possibly as late as Tuesday evening.

Today I spent my evening at the Poacher’s Arms to meet some of the other Green Party supporters in London. It was a pretty quiet night, and most of the people there were those who had already become members of the party and/or were volunteering with the campaign. It was a fairly last-minute deal and I only heard about it last night myself. It made for a friendly, intimate atmosphere though. I thought it was going to be more like a rally, but instead I got to chat with a lot of supporters for the Green party, many of whom came from all over Canada (well, the GTA for the most part) to help out in this very special by-election.

Elizabeth May was unfortunately delayed because of a fundraising dinner (for non-political charities). Everyone was really dragging and tired after a long day of campaigning, so there was a huge upswing when she finally arrived, and then a quick exodus as everyone trudged off to bed. There were just a few of us left at the end of the night, and we shared a plate of nachos with Elizabeth and chatted. I can tell you that she’s a bright, caring person who’s absolutely full of energy, and I think she’d get my vote no matter her party affiliation. When she arrived the musician played “Paved Paradise (and put up a parking lot)”, the unofficial theme song of the Greens.

Turns out I’m not much of a conversationalist (who would have known?) so I mostly let the other people do the talking. We talked about life out East, what the door-to-door canvassing part of the campaign is like, politics in Ottawa (particularly Garth Turner), and getting out the student vote. There was very little talk about the campaign platform, I think largely because everyone who was there pretty much agreed on the generalities so there wasn’t any call for debate. I know I read through the platform and couldn’t think of any questions to ask even when I tried.

All-in-all a decent night of politicking, and I feel much more comfortable recommending Elizabeth May and the greens after meeting them.

Here’s a link to Garth Turner’s page where he has a video chat with Elizabeth May (this was back in October when he was still a Conservative MP). Look for the October 17th video, about halfway down the page.

Also, apologies for the site outage on Saturday: it was a combination failure with my domain host and the server box under my desk. This was a scheduled maintenance, but I didn’t get the email until it had already started (partly my fault for only checking that account every 2-3 days, and partly theirs for only giving like 20 hours notice of the outage).

Yes, after nearly letting the 5-year testing window pass by for a second time, Wayfare finally took the test and got her G license. I want to talk more about the grand adventure, but today is the anniversary of ressurecting my site in blog format, so I was trying to think of something to write about that. However, both were trumped by the fact that I’m crazy sick right now and hopped up on expired Nyquil. As cool as it might be to try to stay up and write more, I’m just going to bed.

I know not many of you are checking the site at all anymore, and it has been far too long since I updated. I’ve been very busy of late, and been having a lot of trouble with writer’s block at work that seems to be tranferring to the website as well. Things have been crazy busy there: in addition to all the work for my crazy project, I’m also teaching a class this term (!) which is incredibly demanding. I’m responsible for everything, from planning the syllabus to creating the assignments, delivering the lectures to booking the rooms… and this is a brand-new course, too, so I don’t even have a textbook or anything to use as a guide. The damnedest thing about it is that my first class is today, and I still have no idea if I’m getting paid for this, or if I was suckered into volunteering. It’s a lot of work, so I really hope I’m getting paid, but on the other hand, my new contract prohibits me from moonlighting (on the gripping hand, volunteering would likely count as moonlighting too, if I really wanted to get out of it). I’m stuck, of course, because I want to teach: I think it’s a vital part of getting a PhD, and it’s a real shame sometimes that there aren’t more teaching opportunities around in this department (especially less demanding ones).

So, I’ve had two posts “half-written” (in actuality, it’s far fewer than half the words, but I’ve put some of my thoughts down in point-form so I don’t lose them) for over a week now, and I had hoped to get them up on the weekend. Since they’re not up I don’t want to make any more promises about when they will appear, but will try to return to a frequent updating schedule soon.

In other news, I made some very good-looking cinnamon rolls last week and remembered to take a picture of them, so hopefully I’ll get that off the camera soon and up on the recipes page.

Finally, curling season is upon us again, and I hope to get into at least two leagues this year. It’s a bit of a shame that UWO is taking out its curling ice: it’s putting a lot of pressure on the other clubs in London, and means that a lot of students who found it pricey last year won’t get to play at all, since it was actually really cheap ($75 at UWO last year for 1 game/week; London Curling Club is $170 base + ~$40/league night for students, $420+ for regular members). I’m planning on joining the London Curling Club, and hope to play at least twice a week. One thing I’m not really looking forward to is that they heavily segregate the men’s & women’s sections. There are only two mixed leagues, and I can’t make one of them. It doesn’t really matter, but I found I preferred playing in mixed leagues in the past: they tend to be a lot less competitive, and the presence of women helps keep the banter cleaner. Of course, this will be a proper curling club rather than a university one, so those probably don’t apply… Finally, I don’t know if I told the story of varcity curling here from last year. Basically, I was interested in trying out for the varcity curling league here at UWO last year. I checked the webpage, found the time & location for the information meeting, and went. It was on a Thursday night in the worst rain we’d had in years. I don’t know why I insisted on going, but I went. My shoes were soaked through before I even got to the bridge. At that point I just gave up and enjoyed being soaked right through. When I got to the room, there were 4 other prospective curlers waiting… and waiting. We waited, soaking wet, for about a half hour, and no one showed up. No one came with a message to say the coach was stuck in the rain, or that the team was full. After a half hour, we just started drifting away to go home. I could have emailed or called the coach after I got home, but I wasn’t too interested in working with someone who’d skip an important first meeting like that, and I was a little leery of the whole varcity idea anyway (I was hoping the information meeting would tell me something, such as how much of a time commitment it was). At the end, I was soaked right through my jacket, through my shirt, pants, and even underwear. I was wet. I couldn’t wear my shoes for 2 days.

So tonight was the information meeting for this year’s varcity curling team. I figured I was still somewhat interested and wanted more information, so I marked the day on my calendar. As was fated, it rained today, quite a bit at that. I decided I wasn’t going to be a sucker twice, so I drove up to campus to see if it would be worthwhile. I don’t know if it was the rain or what, but campus was absolutely packed (and this was at 7 pm), and there wasn’t a single parking space near where I was going — even the pay lots were full. There were, of course, spots in the more outlying lots, but most of those are not much closer than walking from my place, and I wasn’t about to do that again. I’m still thinking about emailing for details: being on a varcity team looks good for scholarship applications (I think), and while I have no idea what the commitment is like for the practice schedule, I know that there are only ~8 games in the competitive season, held over 2/3 weekends in January/February, that third weekend only taking place if we win — not too shabby at all in terms of demands on my time.

Well, I’m up at the cottage for the long weekend, along with Millie, my parents dog (they’re off to PEI). To keep the dog smell out of my car, I took my mom’s truck, and wow is it ever a different experience to drive that thing. To say the engine roared to life when we first pulled on the highway and got up to speed is completely wrong: it didn’t even purr. The engine yawned, as though saying “yeah, no problem; wake me when you need me.”

Loading the trunk was no problem, but closing it was a little rough as the door was pretty high up when fully opened. Not a problem, as there was a bright red button to press that made the trunk close all on its own. The headlights had harnessed the power of twin suns (I was worried the whole way up that the fusion containment might fail), and illuminated the tops of trees a long distance down the road. It seemed everything in it was tweaked and powered to a ridiculous degree: the 3-zone A/C, the stereo faceplate that flipped up to insert a CD, the no fewer than 8 buttons on the steering wheel (2 of which I still can’t figure out — Wayfare won’t let me press them in case they’re for the ejection seats or to deploy the heat seeking missiles, and with this truck, we can’t be sure they aren’t on there); even the windshield wipers have a funny little shimmy to them to get rid of that little triangle of unwiped area at the centre-bottom of the windshield. I find it difficult to imagine wanting a car where the engineers seemed to sit around and dare each other to find new and creative ways to make something needlessly powered, automated, hidden, button-activated, remote-activated, or covered in leather. That said, it was nice being up high — though I wouldn’t need to be if everyone else wasn’t driving an SUV.

The weather is gorgeous up here after the giant storm cleared the air of the heat and humidity that haunted the region last week (thankfully, I couldn’t make it then :). It also knocked down a tree and a half into our yard, and a rather large tree at that, but it isn’t on the cottage, deck, or driveway, so I’m not too concerned (certainly not concerned enough to actually try using the chainsaw… I’ve seen Evil Dead).

Millie is a bulldog (I’ll try to get a picture after I get access to a camera). She looks kinda sad and kinda tough, but is in actuality the suckiest dog ever. She mopes and whines if I leave the room, and won’t go to sleep unless I come tuck her in. For the first day here she wouldn’t even go eat unless I came with her to the laundry room (where her food is), and she won’t go pee unless I come at least halfway down the lawn with her. She’s one step away from needing a glass of water and a peek in the closet for monsters…

There have been a lot of long weekend fireworks set off out here, and it isn’t even the free day yet (Sunday/Monday). I know that it’s a pretty big tradition across Canada to have Victoria Day and Canada Day fireworks, but apparently no one else has heard of Simcoe Day (August Long Weekend) fireworks except the people who happen to live on the lake here.

My IP has been changing a fair bit with Rogers, so the site has been becoming inaccessable at times. I decided a while ago to just go ahead and get some real hosting, since I don’t think I’m going to stop updating in the next year or so (and hope you will continue to read…), but I just haven’t gotten around to actually doing anything about it yet. I will soon, and hopefully at that point everything will settle down and there won’t be any more outages.

Right now, I’m using dial-up to get on, and SWEET HOLY POTATO IN THE BLACK EARTH BELOW is it ever slow! I thought I remembered dial-up, I used to use it all the time. Back then it was a 28.8, too, and now I’m connected at 46.6, and I can barely use it to check my email. I was expecting images and the like to take a while to load, perhaps some extra lag for text pages, but this is ridiculous. I’m looking at almost a minute just to get to a site, after it times out two or three times. Have I been spoiled by cable? Is dial-up always this bad, or are the phone connections particularly troublesome after all that storm activity this week? I doubt it’s due to conjestion, since it’s the wee hours of the morning in cottage country…