Pre Season Jitters

Well, today is the day.  It has been 97 days since Boston won the cup.  It has been 97 days since the riots in Vancouver.  It is nearly 100 days later, and I am still emotional at the thought of starting another season of hockey.  Can I put my heart through this again?  I don't think I really have a choice.  I could try to ignore it, but the passion of the fans in this city, this lower mainland, it's off the charts!  I would not be able to ignore it entirely even if I wanted to.  I could boycott the radio and television and that wouldn't even help.  As the season progresses people jump on the band wagon by the thousands and eventually the shear magnitude of the masses of fans makes it impossible to ignore.  

So here we are.  September 20th, 2011.  Our emotions have had the summer off, but for those of us who are really into it, we didn't take the summer off.  No, we waited until the earliest possible date when it would not be deemed insane or foolish to don our Canucks Jerseys and hit the streets in our blue and green.  We listened to the radio and watched the TV for any coverage of the young stars prospect camp.  We checked the Vancouver Canucks website often to read of any news, and to watch entertaining videos of our beloved team.  We took to Twitter and Facebook and followed the progress of our team as they prepared to wow us yet again in what is now the current NHL season.  

After a summer of tragic losses that far outweighed the loss of the Cup itself we join together, players and fans alike.  We don our blue and green.  We hit the ice and take to the streets.  We come together as one team with a new hope in our hearts.  A hope for things yet to come. 

It may only be pre season, but anyone who knows anything at all knows that this is where the magic begins.  Hitting the ice tonight in two different games in two different cities, our new and improved Vancouver Canucks face off against their closest North West Division rivals, the Calgary Flames, hoping to return the favour for the double whammy they got served at the beginning of last pre season.  Good luck boys!  We've got your backs.  Make us proud.

Here's to the memory of those lost.

Here's to a new season.

Thanks for "listening."

Mindless Existence of the Night

I would like to dedicate this post and the rest of the posts today to a good friend of mine.  As it is now officially September 15th, it is his birthday, and he is old again.  Happy Birthday.  You are a wonderfully creative person and such a great friend.  I appreciate you more than you know.  You are full of potential and the world better WATCH OUT once you graduate, cuz you are gonna go FAR!  Have a great day, and remember that even though you are a twin, there is no one in the world quite like you.  Happy Birthday :D 

I can get very bored very easily.  When I have nowhere to go, and nothing to do, can’t sleep, all my friends and family are asleep because it is the middle of the night, my apartment is clean, I am done baking cupcakes and I can’t rearrange my furniture because it will wake up the neighbours, I turn to the internet.  This normally only happens when I can’t sleep.  It is not like I sit around on the internet playing games and watching videos when I could be doing other more important things… or rather, other actually important things. 

I find that there are many times when I despise the fact that I have to continue on existing in spite of the lack of anything going on in my life.  I feel almost impatient for life to happen.  When I can’t sleep at night, which is very often, I really hate that I have to wait around for the rest of the world to wake up before I can do anything productive with myself.  My existence feels meaningless in those hours, so I tend to do things that are equally meaningless and mindless.  Prime example: playing computer games like Solitare or Mahjong.  I don’t really have to think to play these games.  I just play them, and then realize that hours have gone by and it is almost time for the rest of the world to wake up / time for me to get on with living.  Occasionally I feel the need to use my brain a little bit more so I play games like Bookworm, Sky Island – a game which I found on the internet.  It is actually really neat.  It is a 2D animation game, similar to games on the Original NES.  The cool part is that as you are going along, you can click and drag the mouse across the screen to change your perspective, 90 degrees at a time (not up and down though.)  When your perspective is changed, you find that you can reach other areas and objects that you couldn’t reach before.  Click here to play!

There are also times at night when I can’t sleep, I am not into the mindless games thing, but I also don’t want to actually DO anything.  This is when I usually turn to YouTube.  I don’t even remember how I found this guy, but I came across a channel called the Philip DeFranco Show.  It is a guy named Philip DefFanco (aka sxephil) who takes various news stories from that day and talks about them.  I believe he is either the same age as me, or a year older, so when he talks about all this stuff that most young people would find boring and pointless, it gets us interested!  I am glad that I can still loop myself into the term “young people.”  You’re only as old as you feel right?  Haha!

Have you ever noticed how you start talking or acting like people when you hang out with them too much?  Well, I have noticed that I have recently started talking like Philip Defranco.  At first I was a bit embarrassed because I have never actually hung out with the guy, but then I realized that nobody I know will care because they don’t know who he is anyway.  Now that I have said this, all like, 12 of you will know who he is if you click on any of the links to his stuff.  So, if you notice me talking like sxephil, I apologize … sort of… but not really, cuz it pretty much just makes me sound more interesting.  Now if only I could sprout some adorable dimples from watching too much PDS... that would be something!

Here are some links to some of the works/sites of the amazing Philip DeFranco:

Stuff Phil Likes YouTube Channel

The Philip DeFranco Show (PDS)

Follow @PhillyD on Twitter!

Please be advised, he is awesome and doesn’t really care what people think, so If you are sensitive to swearing, you may want to avoid some of his stuff… or keep your hand over the mute button just in case, or toughen up a bit (one of those three.)  Haha, ya… that might get some interesting reactions from the Christian crowd.  Oops!  Oh well, PhillyD is awesome, and he is doing this world a great service by causing young people to actually give a hoot (notice the lack of swearing…) about world events.

Thanks for all you do, PhillyD, and for your adorable dimples.  I’m proud to know you… or… know of you.

Thanks for "listening."

Gray Clouds Above. Sweet Life Below.

Fall can be so depressing!  As far as I can remember, fall/winter is actually the time of year when most students drop out of school or commit suicide.  The reason for this is the weather.  Sunshine really does make us happy.  In Canada we have a severe lack of sunshine for about eight months of the year at least, and as such, we have a lack of natural vitamin D which aids in ridding off depression.  

Even though I sometimes despise the LOOK of the fall and how it is so monochromatic with its gloomy gray overtones, I love the feel of fall.  There is just something in the air.  First of all, it is refreshing to feel a nice cool autumn day after experiencing intense heat waves all summer.   Not only that, but in the first week or so there is an excited feeling in the air as all the kids rush back to class.  Each new school year or new semester brings hope of something new, or for some, hope that this year will be better than the last.  Granted, this feeling only lasts for about a week or two as students get into their routines and see that summer is really over now, and they won’t get another break until December.  

As someone who no longer goes to school, I neither feel the excitement or the doldrums associated with the back to school season.  As someone who works the night shift, I rarely even experience the effect of school zones being back in effect when I drive.  

There are other things that I do like about the fall though.  As someone who lives in Canada and is under the cover of cloud for the vast majority of my life, I have to look past the dark clouds and see the good that comes along with fall.  Here are some things that I love about the fall:

• I am pretty sure I don’t even need to mention it, but Hockey is back!!!! I am going to watch the Canucks Training Camp  at Rogers Arena this weekend.  I am fairly excited as this is the first chance this season for me to wear my Canucks jersey without getting weird looks from people.  For a city that loves their team so much, you think people would be a little bit more open to a girl wearing a Canucks hat or Jersey in the off season.  Come on people!  Show our boys some LOVE!

• I love when the ground gets covered in fallen leaves.  When I was younger, my friend and I used to collect bags and bags of leaves for her mom’s amazing Halloween display at their house.  All of the other houses in the neighbourhood would be decorated weeks in advance, but she did hers the day of.  She always had something new, so the anticipation was high.  We felt so important to have the job of collecting leaves to put all around the yard.  We would take a few garbage bags each and walk up the hill to our school.  We corralled the leaves into nice big piles to put into the bags, but we never put them in the bags right away.  We would pile them conveniently at the bottom of this one retaining wall, and then we would stand on top of the wall and fall down into them.  Whenever I walk through crisp fallen leaves I think of those days.

• After the heat of summer, the autumn air is so wonderfully fresh and clear.  It makes me feel like I have a new set of lungs.  Every breath revitalizes my whole body.

• Call me crazy, but I love the rain.  It may have something to do with having been raised in the lower mainland, but whatever the reason, I don’t care.  The rain falls down and purifies everything.  After a hard rainfall, the trees and fields are ripe with natural aromas, and the skies are clear from horizon to horizon.  It’s wonderful to behold.  Walking in the rain is one of my favourite ways to get things off my mind.  Sometimes when I have something weighing on my heart, I just wish that it would start pouring rain so that I could go outside and just be immersed in the rainfall and let it wash all my worries away.

Even though those dark dreary clouds can be depressing, life isn’t always as bad as it seems.  Sometimes all it takes it for us to take our eyes off the dark clouds and look around at the world we live in, teeming with life all four (two if you live in Canada) seasons of the year.

Thanks for "listening."

Heartcahe all over the World

I have not done a lot of writing lately because I have been bored, tired, and most of what I have witnessed is just so conventional that everyone already knows about it and I would just be restating what most of us have already heard.  That being said, here is what I have thought of what has gone on in our world lately:

The 10 Year Memorial of the 9/11 Attacks:

I have always been very sceptical about the whole idea that jets were hijacked and flown into the buildings.  It is possible, of couse, but it is also insane.  I find it much more believable that the American government at that time (BUSH) was evil and corrupt and didn’t care about his constituents as much as he cared about money.  I am not going to get into this any more than that.  I am just saying, both ideas are possible.  It could have been terrorists, or maybe BUSH is the Terrorists. Who knows, who cares.  The part that really got to me is that regardless of who did this or why, thousands of innocent people died.  People lost their mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, aunts, uncles, grandparents, grandchildren, cousins, friends, lovers.  I was driving on my way to see a friend, and I was in a great mood.  About 6 minutes before arriving, I heard a clip on the radio that was a compilation of audio recordings from the day of the attacks.  At first I was thinking “I have heard this before.”  But then it kept on going.  The clip was about 5 minutes in length and by the end of it my good mood was shattered and I had tears in my eyes as I drove.  What got to me was hearing the reactions of people on the streets as they witnessed people jumping from the burning buildings, and the voice of a woman recounting the phone call she got from her husband who was on one of the flights that was hijacked.  I can’t even begin to describe the agony I felt on behalf of these men and women.  It breaks my heart.  That kind of thing never goes away.  It never leaves a person’s memory, and we should be praying for the family and friends who are left behind much more often than once a year on the “anniversary” of the deaths of their loved ones.

The AMBER ALERT for Kienan Hebert:

When I first heard about this, my heart went out to this boy’s parents.  I have no children of my own, but I have friends with young children, and if something were to happen to one of them I know how terribly broken up I would be and I am not even the parent.  I think our entire province, and perhaps our entire country was in a state of subdued anxiety until Kienan was returned home to his family.  It makes me sick to know that his abductor broke into his bedroom at night and took him without even being noticed until morning.  This is nothing against the parents at all, but simply against the fact that such evil people exist in our world.  It makes such anger rise up in me.  I am a gentle, loving person, but I feel like I completely understand God’s wrath when I hear about situations like this.  I want nothing more than to see the evil people of the world suffer.  However, it is not my place to judge this man, or the man in Denmark who shot up that camp of children.  The only solace I have is in knowing that these deeds WILL be paid for in this life or the next.

Deaths in the hockey world:

Earlier this year as the Canucks were in round 4 of the Staley Cup Playoffs, my friends and I were downtown watching one of the games.  During the intermission I was saying to one of my friends how I thought it was kind of amazing how there are SO many plane crashes every year, and yet sports teams still choose to fly their entire teams together on the same flight when they travel from place to place.  Of course, it does make sense to have the whole team together so that they can build up their team spirit as they train, travel and play together.  My point was that someday, the odds are that one of those planes will go down and an entire team would be lost.  I said that it would be horrible if it was at the end of the season and a team was in the finals as our beloved Canucks were at the time, and they were to be entirely wiped out.  I wondered then what would happen.  Would the other team be declared the winner?  About a week ago those few thoughts seemed suddenly foolish.  Now that the Russian KHL Lokomotiv Yaroslav team has been completely wiped out, such questions regarding the timing of their deaths, or who would be declared the winner become irrelevant and even offensive.  Of course I had only been speculating on something that had never happened.  The human mind is a curious place.  That being said, the only thing that was going through my mind was how the sports commentators were talking about this being a horrible loss for the hockey world.  SERIOUSLY?  These men were not born hockey players.  They were born humans, and they died humans.  Humans with families and friends who now miss them dearly every day.  Yes, they were all well known world-wide for their athletic ability, but athletes can be replaced.  Eventually, another team will be made up.  Rick Rypien and Derek Boogaard have already been replaced on their teams by other young hockey stars.  Their lives though, those can never be replaced.  Their children will never be able to replace the feeling of their dad tucking them in at night, or wiping the tears from their eyes when they are sad or scared.  These men are just like all of the other people in this world who have died in plan crashes.  They are special people in the eyes of their families.  Though these men were well known athletes, their value is the same as all of the other men and women who died in airplanes and car crashes over the years.  Though the others may go nameless, merely as numbers on a sheet of statistics, their souls are all remembered by God and by their families.

Well, those are my thoughts on all of the depressing things that have gone on in our world recently.  

Thanks for "listening."

Bored Expression

For any of you who have missed having something “interesting” to read, I apologize for my lack of word flow lately.  I have been doing a lot of self reflecting lately, and when I do this I typically do not do a whole lot of writing.  One thing I have noticed about myself is that I have a sort of bulimic personality.  I know that sounds horrible and hilarious all at once, (at least it does to me) but what I mean is that I go through phases (like a bulimic person… eating, not eating etc.)  Those phases become very important to me, and then all of a sudden I lose interest and I stop whatever I have been doing and don’t pick it up again for a while.  Writing is one of those things, as you can now tell.  There are others for me as well, such as eating candy or getting ice caps from Tim hortons, sleeping, exercising, painting, or baking cupcakes.  There are not many interests in my life that do not come in phases for me.  

This is not to say that I do not like those things while I am not engaging in them, I just don’t feel as passionate about them,  I don’t feel motivated to do them or I don’t feel the need for them in my life.  Some of these things can be seen as addictions in the sense that I have an addictive personality.  I find something interesting and then I get right into it and don’t really look back. . . until I lose interest.  Most people with addictive personalities would quickly find something else to fill the void, but I am not like that.  I go through long drought like periods of boredom.  Fatigue seems to take over my entire being, and I feel like I have returned to a state of adolescent apathy. 

One thing that worries me is that when I get really into something, I am hesitant to identify myself as being proficient at that thing.  For instance, I have done a LOT of writing in my life, and I have even written a book.  Even still, I don’t like to call myself a writer because it puts pressure on me to always be into writing.  I clearly am not always into it, as I go through ups and downs with the amount of content flowing through my brain.  I love to dance, but I don’t want to identify myself with being a dancer, because then people will expect me to come with them to clubs and bars etc to go dancing.  It isn’t like that for me.  I have to be in the mood.  I also love to paint, but I only paint what comes to me.  I don’t want to call myself a painter, because then people will expect that I can look at an object and then portray it visually through painting.  I love singing, and I sing ALL the time in my car.  I have written some of my own songs, and I have done karaoke a few times in my day.  I only like to sing when I will not be judged, when I am confident that I will not screw up, or when I am sure that nobody can hear me.  I may have a great voice, but I find it difficult to sing on command.  Singing is an expressive media for me.  It is not a performance piece.  All of the things that I have mentioned, I use them to express myself, not to show off any sort of talent or ability.  If I feel it, I do it, and if I don’t then I don’t want people to expect me to perform just because they know I can do it.  

I don’t know what all of that means about me as a person.  Does it make me broken?  I don’t know.  Does it make me boring?  I don’t care.  We as human beings are complex creatures in an ever changing world.  How any one of us is expected to keep up with the times, or stay fashioned to a specific mould, I do not know.  I would much rather be naturally me and express myself in various forms that are not at all harmful to anyone around me.

Back to the topic of being bored, I find myself to be very back and forth, as I mentioned.  I feel like our world has gotten so busy that it is next to impossible for any of us to slow down and relax to the point where the relaxation takes long term effect on our souls.  The reasons: technology, the pursuit of wealth and status, the need to do everything instantaneously, and avoid anything that may be a nuisance.  

Birth control comes in various forms, some of which make it so that a woman’s period doesn’t come for 3 months, when it should normally come every month.  This is a perfect example of how technology helps us to avoid annoying parts of life.  We want to be able to do everything faster and with less effort.  What ever happened to good work ethic?  This generation walking around with nearly everything that they want at the touch of a button is going to be hard pressed to survive when some huge disaster hits and all technology and services are rendered useless.  We are SUPPOSED to have issues and challenges in our lives!  When we overcome challenges we look back and realize how far we have climbed, and how strong we are.  When harder challenges come our way, we look ahead and see the mountain we face, so we turn around and consider going back to easier times.  That’s when we see all the mountains we have already climbed.  We remember how big those mountains seemed when we were still at the bottom, just like now with this new life challenge.  If we are wise we will also remember how little those mountains seemed once we were standing on top of them.  Without the little struggles in life, we will never build up the muscles to get over the big obstacles.  

Some people say that if we have the mind to create it, then we are obviously supposed to use it – we have the right to use it.  I have to disagree.  My reasoning comes from how we were originally made.  The best example is the gestational period of a human baby.  It takes over nine months for that baby to grow and form all of its intricate parts before it comes into this world.  If a baby is born prematurely, there will undoubtedly be developmental issues.  Similarly, if we always get whatever we want whenever we want it without having to work for it, and be patient for it, then when we have this great thing put into our lap, we are going to be like weak little premature infants who are completely incapable of surviving on their own.  If we always get whatever we want whenever we want it, it is likely that the timing will be off, we will be too immature and irresponsible and when those big mountains come, we will have no idea how to get over them.

Thanks for "listening."

K.I.S.S.

Sometimes I go through “dry spells” in terms of my writing.  It is not that I have nothing going through my mind.  It is actually quite the opposite.  I have all sorts of things that I am pondering and considering, but I also have some important things that I have been doing, namely, getting some “me time.”

In my “me time” I like to do quiet things.  Take naps, cuddle with my cats, work on my fish tank, go to the fish store and look at all the amazing creatures, sit and stare at my fish tank, paint things to put on my walls at home, bake and decorate food to bring to people, cuddle with little kids, play with kids and let my imagination go free like it hasn’t done in over a decade, print out my book and bring copies of it to people to read, wade out into the ocean as far as I can and feel the sand between my toes as the waves flow softly around me. 

All of these are rather quiet things.  Out of that whole list, the only thing that really requires me to utter even one word is when I play with little kids.  This is a totally different kind of speech though.  It is imaginative, creative and free of any inhibitions.  There is no judgment.  I can be as crazy of maniacal as I want, and the more I am, the more the kids love it.  I don’t get funny looks, but instead, I get giggles and hugs.

Another thing that everything on that list has in common is simplicity.  These are all things that I can do for relatively cheap or for free.  They activate things within me that are at the crux of who I am.  They are activities which have been going on for centuries: creating art, engaging in nature, making food, feeding people, bringing people gifts.  These are all simple things that stand the test of time.  They don’t go out of style.  They don’t get old or “uncool.”  They have always been around, and they will be around for as long as this world is any place worth indwelling. 

I am reminded of an acronym that my dad taught me when I was younger: K.I.S.S. which stands for “Keep It Simple, Stupid!”  In other words. “Slow down and stop trying to overdo everything!”  Some things don’t need to be added to, and the more we add to them, the worse they become.  They get heavy and burdened, full of pointless additions that just add weight and make for more work.

In my opinion, the things that matter in life are the things that everyone has access to.  We all have access to people, nature, God and ourselves.  If we would all just cut out all the other unnecessary things in our lives, our world would be so wonderful.  Right now, I am just going to focus on the first two.

People consist of our families, or friends, and even strangers whom we have never met before.  We ALL have the same basic things in common. 

Nature consists of everything in this world that is not made by man – plants, animals, mountains, deserts, rivers, lakes oceans and the sky.  Out of this come other things that we need, like food, shelter and clothing.  Those things should also be kept simple.  They shouldn’t be so over processed.  If we got rid of all the crazy things in our world, we would be able to get back to basics where everyone had their own land that they worked, and we could all provide for ourselves and our families.  Some may think that we have come so far since then, given the lifestyles of some of the affluent, rich people in our world.  The only thing with that is that along with the rich getting richer, the poor are getting poorer.  The divided between us is growing larger and larger all the time, separating us from one of the basic rights that we should all have – access to other human beings.  The rich and the poor are both isolated, just in different ways. 

*** The following are broad stereotypes that do not include every person in either category ***

The rich have no need for anyone because of their wealth, so they live solitary lives void of any meaningful human interaction.  The poor have no outwardly redeeming qualities, making their presence undesirable to the rest of the world.  They too are left void of meaningful human interaction.  What a blessed thing it is to be neither rich nor poor.  It is a blessed state which is becoming rarer for every day that the divide between rich and poor becomes more and more vast. 

The only way that I can see to reverse this process is for everyone to get back to basics.  I just don’t see it ever happening though, and here’s why:  What rich person would give up his riches, or what person would take a poor man under his wing, asking nothing in return?  The poor receive their help, yes, but it is primarily by way of government assistance.  This is a cold interaction, leaving the poor feeling like they are a waste of space, because they are often treated as such by people in government-run programs.  What we need is for people to give their hearts and their financial support to the poor of our world.  To do one or the other is great, but the most powerful combination, in my opinion, would be if the rich of the world would open up their cheque books, and then tap into their humanity and get their hands “dirty” by physically and emotionally reaching out to the less fortunate. 

Thanks for "listening."

For you, Cam :)

I have two friends from high school that I never really hung out with while we went to school together.  One is David, and the other is Cameron (they both follow my blog, how awesome!)  Cameron is the person who won a little contest so I let him have his prize, which was to pick a topic of his choice for me to write about in this blog.  He wanted me to discuss the deaths of Rick Rypien and another young NHL player, but since I already talked about Rick Rypien and Jack Layton, I asked him if he had anything else in mind.  He couldn’t think of anything, so he said “ME!”  I laughed a bit to myself, and to his surprise, I agreed.

As I said, Cameron is one of my friends whom I met in high school.  After leaving high school, I was dating a certain person, and this certain person happened to be a distant relative of Cam. We found this out because I went with my boyfriend to join his family for Christmas, which was being held at his cousin’s place.  Cameron also went with his own family for Christmas to HIS cousin’s place.  Now, my then boyfriend and Cameron were not at all related, they just had a common cousin.  I don’t know exactly how it went in this particular situation, but pretty much what it would look like is this:

One of my then boyfriend’s parents’ siblings would have to have been married to one of Cameron’s parent’s siblings.  That couple had a child, making it the cousin of both Cameron and of my then boyfriend.  At any rate, I had not seen Cameron in about two years, and I had never really interacted much with him when I had seen him before.  Seeing him here, now was a bit weird. 

A few years later, I ended up running into Cameron yet again.  This time, we both ended up going to the same Bible college.  To add to this, we both were commuter students, driving from the same city, for classes that started at the same time in the morning.  When we first “ran into” each other, it was on the high way on our way to school.  I saw him pass me, and then I passed him.  He kept following me all the way off the highway and down the main road, and then into the parking lot for the school.  I was a bit weirded out by this until he also followed me to the main building, books in hand – which was when I realized that he was a student as well.  (Of course he was… duh!)

At this point, Cameron and I had run into each other a few times over the years, leading us both to believe somewhere deep down that we were destined to be friends.  One day, a Canucks game day, Cameron and I both showed up for class wearing Canucks jerseys.  After this, we had an endless supply of things to talk about.  It has been a few years since then, but Cameron has been one of my most faithful hockey friends.  I have a few friends whom I consider to be my “hockey friends” and this is because our friendship is based around one thing: our love for hockey, more specifically the Vancouver Canucks.  Our friendships tend to be rather seasonal.  Cameron, however, is different.  I know this because it is summer, and I have actually had contact with him.  We went for lunch a couple weeks ago and we had things to talk about other than hockey, although we did talk about how the off season seems to be taking its jolly time this year (even though it is one of the shortest off seasons in Canuck history.) 

I guess what I am trying to say out of this is that you never know where your friends might come from.  In high school, we didn’t interact at all other than the occasional casual hello in the hallways.  Now, I would consider Cameron to be a good friend of mine.  We may not see each other very often, and we may come together for the very obvious reason of hockey, but there is more to it.  We trust each other, and there is a loyalty there that goes beyond the hockey season and into deeper matters of the soul.  Sorry if this sounds all gushy.  I just love my friends, and this is an opportunity for me to brag about how awesome one of them is.  Cameron, you rock.  Thank you for being my friend even when there are no hockey games on for us to talk about :P  In the words of Paul Rudd, “I love you, man!” 

Thanks for "listening."

I'm a writer!!! (woohoo)

Today I feel like a true writer.  I have been at home ALL day working on finishing touches for my book.  This is not even a draft that is going to an editor or a publisher.  It is just so that I can get it out into the world to see what people think of it.  At any rate, I have been working on this for a long time, and today I am wearing grubby clothes, I am unshowered, my hair is a mess, I didn’t brush my teeth until my Dad showed up at my place to pick up a copy of the book, I have barely eaten anything all day, and I have a bit of a headache and a sore back from sitting at my computer all day working on this, my baby.  This is where the idea of a “starving artist” comes from, I am sure.  Not only have I invested time and money into this, but I have gotten no money from it yet, and I have spent so much time on it that I neglect to remember that I need to eat to stay alive.  Oops.

That is just my own personal physical state.  You should see my apartment.  There are papers all over the floor in different piles: a pile for title pages, a pile for each copy of book, a pile for pages I need to reprint because I hole punched the wrong side, a pile for pages covered in random characters that the printer spewed out while it was possessed by some evil spirit, and of course a pile for recycling (almost as big as the piles for the copies of the books.)

I can hardly believe it took this long, but I have been printing books out for a few hours now, and only now does my cat decide that she wants to help.  *Insert images of YouTube cats here*

Money makes the world go round … or something like that.

Every day on the way home from work I listen to the News Radio in my car.  I hear news on all sorts of things from around the world, but one thing that stood out to me this week was the financial section.  It was talking about how much the United States is in debt.  It got me thinking (of course it did… that’s what I do) about money and numbers. 

The concept of money is a man made thing.  It was all started by the banks which were the store houses for people’s gold.  In order to make it easier for people to spend their gold, the banks came up with the idea of issuing notes, stating a certain value in gold.  If a person wanted to use some of their gold, he or she would go to the bank, ask for a specific amount and then they would be given a ticket with a value on it.  If they wanted to physically take their gold out of the bank, they could take these tickets or bills to the bank and hand them over in return for physical gold. 

Sound familiar?  To me, it sounds a lot like how we put our money into the bank and then we spend it electronically using a debit card.  It is essentially the same idea, only now we are able to spend money that does not even exist.  This means that money is being virtually created but does not really exist at all.  The only reason the American government is in such great debt is because they have given virtual money to their constituents, via credit cards and lines of credit.  People liked the idea of having all of this money at their disposal and not having to earn it, or pay it back immediately.  The people then went spend crazy and started spending virtual money that they would never be able to repay.  How could the government be so stupid?  I always figured you had have at least a grade three education to be a politician, but maybe things are different in America.  Who knows?

The next place my mind went was the different currencies in the world.  First I thought of Japan and their Yen.  As of today, each US dollar is worth roughly 76 Yen.  As of January 23, 2011, the country with the lowest exchange rate compared with the US Dollar is Somalia, coming in at a conversion of 1 US Dollar for every 33,300 Somali Shillings!  If we were to take only the domestic debt of the United States ($14.34 trillion) and convert it from American Dollars to Somali Shillings we would get a number like this: 23,474,580,000,000,000.00 I am pretty sure that the word “kajillion” would come into play here.  Is that even a word?  Who knows?  That is the point.  There is so much money in the world that we have to make up new words just to accurately portray such a large number.

I googled it!  Kajillion is a word, and it is in reference to “fictitious, infinite numbers.”  Moreover, $23,340,580,000,000,000.00 is called “Twenty three quadrillion, three hundred forty trillion, five hundred eighty billion dollars.” ... just in case you were wondering.  I found a chart that gives the proper names for all of the proceeding numbers after quadrillion.  Click HERE to see it.  You know your nerdy side wants to!

The next place my mind went was here:  How many people in the world are starving?  How many people in the world do not have access to health care or clean water?  How many people in the world do not have a home or a bed?  More importantly, if there is SO much money in the world, why is it that there are so many people who are going without the basic necessities of life?

Now, we all know that the government is crazy, maybe even corrupt, (please hold your comments until the end) and each country of our wonderful world has its own government that likes to be “crazy and corrupt” in its own specific way.  Therefore, there is pretty much no possible way for me alone to make a world wide change in the way the governments deal with their debt, their resources and the basic needs of their people.  That being said, there is a way that we can help.  In fact, there are many ways.  We will likely not be able to get all of the powers that be to see the world with one mind, but we can sure do something about helping our fellow human beings and meeting their physical needs.

There will be more to come on this topic later.  

Thanks for "listening."

Count Your Blessings

Earlier this week, I was having a very bad day.  I was hormonal to the point where I felt like I was about to burst into tears all day, but I had no idea why I felt so sad.  I was supposed to go see my family to celebrate my brother’s birthday with him, so he called me up to confirm where we were meeting and when.  His call couldn’t have come at a better time.  I had just gotten home from running all over town doing errands, and I was ready to head upstairs to my apartment and fall into a heap on my couch and cry.  

My brother could tell right away that I was in a horrible mood, so he asked me what was going on, and I shared what was on my heart.  One of the more practical things that I mentioned was that I work long hours and I don’t have much time to sleep in between shifts.  When I come home, I am so very tired, but I don’t have a bed to sleep in.  I sleep on my couch, and have been doing so for the last 5 months.  Needless to say, my body is often in a lot of pain due to not having proper support for my back in the few hours a night I actually get to sleep.  

This is when I was really ready to burst into tears.  I was tired, hormonal, sad, overwhelmed, worried and just plain old worn out.  Then he said something that got my attention.  He asked “Have you thanked God for your couch?”  He was completely serious, and right away I had an attitude check.  Even though I had reason to complain, I still needed to put things in perspective and realize how much worse my situation could be.  I could have no bed AND no couch, but God has blessed me with a couch to sleep on at night.  This is more than many people in the world have.  I have a roof over my head, and I have food in my cupboard, even if it is just canned food and pasta.  

Now that a few days have gone by, my hormones have calmed down, and I have had some time to think, I have realized how very blessed I am.  I just started thinking of a song that my friend’s mom used to sing all the time.  It is a little bit repetitive, but it does a good job of getting the point across.  Here are the words:

"Count your blessings.
Name them one by one.
Count your blessings.
See what God has done.
Count your blessings.
Name them one by one.
Count your many blessings.
See what God has done."

I was challenged by this idea.  How often do I actually stop and list all of the blessings the God has bestowed on me?  Even if you do not believe in God, I challenge you to look at your life, your world, and start counting the things with which you have been blessed.  It really helps to put things into perspective when we feel like the world is falling apart all around us.

Thanks for "listening."

LOVE!

It doesn’t matter who you are, what you have been through, or what you have been told.  You are here for a reason, and you matter.  Old or young, rich or poor, fat or skinny, male or female, genius or disabled, athletic or clumsy, shy or outgoing – your life IS significant.

Everyone could use a little more love.  I don’t mean the kind of love that you see in the movies, where everything goes down with its own perfectly timed sound track.  I mean the personalized kind.  The little things and the big things.  From strangers and from loved ones.  There are so many people in our world who are hurting more than we all realize.  I believe what they need is to be recognized, not necessarily for anything that they have done, but just for the fact that they exist!  This shouldn’t happen just once a year on a person’s birthday (I personally find my birthday to be depressing, because it is the one day a  year when people are supposed to acknowledge the fact that I was born, and yet people forget) but rather, it should happen regularly and spontaneously.  People need to be loved on Tuesday mornings – quite possibly the least significant time of the week.  They need to be shown in practical ways that they would be missed if they were gone.

Because of all this need for love, I have decided to live my life with one purpose: to love as many people as possible.  This may mean sacrifice on my part, but that is so much more than okay.  I would rather lose a little sleep or have less money in my bank account than know that there is someone out there who needs me for whom I have just not made the time.  It could be anyone – friend, family, the cashier at the grocery store, the guy who pumps your gas, or the teenager who babysits your kids.  They all need love, no matter how happy they may seem.  

A lot of times there are people who will test our patience.  They may be needy, or just plain annoying.  I can almost promise you that those people are starved for love.  They need love more than anyone.  The same goes for the rich people of the world.  It is so easy to think that just because someone has “everything” that all is well with their soul.  It could very well be the farthest thing from the truth.  Possessions don’t equal happiness and they never have.  I personally would trade everything I had just to find that one person who would love me unconditionally.  It doesn’t have to be a man.  It doesn't have to be romantic.  It could be anyone.  Sometimes life can be so very lonely.  Work, sleep, eat, repeat.  It’s in our nature as human beings to NEED connection with other people.  It’s how we were made, and our society is basically turning us all against our human nature.  Sure, we may be playing to our natural instincts to succeed and procreate etc, but honestly, what is the point of “success” if you have nobody to share it with who really loves you for who you are?  That being said, if you are lonely, please don’t go and jump off a bridge.  As sad as it is, sometimes it’s the lonely ones, the ones in need of love who have to take a step out.  It may be the hardest thing you do, to step out and ask someone to care for you, but you may be surprised how many people will reach back.  It’s a moment of epiphany when you realize that people actually do care.  Not only that, but you may find that when you step out and ask for love you may be able to help someone else in return.  We humans need to stick together, for goodness sake!  Why do you think there are so many of us in the first place?  Do you really think it is so that we can just go about our own little lives, living apart from any real, meaningful interactions?  Somehow, I doubt it.

Thanks for "listening."

Put it all together, and have you got ?!?

Some people who don’t know me very well have said that I am a negative person.  I have to disagree with this.  First of all, I have depression, so when I am negative, it is not fair to say that it is an overall description of who I am as a person.  Secondly, I consider myself to be a very realistic person with a very active imagination.

For example, when I see something that can be potentially unsafe, my mind starts to think “worst case scenario” but not in the way you might think.  I do not panic and run away, I simply observe my surroundings and think of ways that I could deal with things if an accident were to occur.  The key to being able to deal with all sorts of situations is to have information about all sorts of things. 

When I drive along the road to and from work I see a lot of trucks and big rigs.  Most of these trucks are not carrying anything extra special, but there are some that transport dangerous goods.  In order to keep people informed, a system has been set in place.   In this system any vehicle that transports dangerous goods has to clearly display the identification numbers of the substance they are carrying.  Each dangerous material is assigned a four-digit number according to its chemical properties and what effects it would have if it were spilled etc.  I am familiar with some of these numbers, such as …… for gasoline, and ………….. for diesel, but there are some numbers that I have seen which I did not recognize at all.

I started to wonder what was in all these trucks, and more specifically, what would happen if two of these trucks were to collide into each other, expelling their contents into traffic.  I know this sounds crazy, but anything CAN happen.  As a First Aid Attendant, I always want to be prepared to help anyone in any situation that requires medical attention, so I decided that it would be good for me to know some of these ID numbers and what sorts of procedures I would need to do to help anyone who is exposed to them.

I took a few days in a row and wrote down the ID numbers for all of the dangerous goods transports trucks that I saw on the road between my home and work.  I was surprised to see some things.  Given the tendency of the public to overreact, I think it is very prudent of our government NOT to display the names of the dangerous goods on the trucks.

Here are some of the ID numbers I came across:
Class 2 = Oxidizing material (burns when combined with oxygen)
1789 = Hydrochloric Acid (corrosive, burns)
1202 = Gasoline, petroleum, oil. (Flammable, accelerant)
3257 = Hot asphalt (burns)
2582 = Liquid Ferric Chloride (corrosive)
Oxygen (no number is designated) in conjunction with oxidizing materials … FIRE!

When I saw these, I pictured a few things: chemical burns, and lots of fire which is only made more intense with the addition of oxidizing materials, oxygen and accelerants.

Check HERE for a full list of all of the dangerous goods and their associated numbers.

I know this may seem a bit random in comparison to some of my other posts, but never the less, 

Thanks for "listening."

Did you know that "Canuck" means Canadian?

As most of you know, I am a Canucks fan.   Even though this year boasts one of the shortest off seasons in Canucks history, it seems like the countdown until the start of next season is taking forever.  I follow @VanCanucks on Twitter, and they have a countdown which they display every once in a while.  Just when I stopped thinking about hockey, and felt like I was getting on with my life and doing normal things, I saw a post marking the progress of the countdown.  “70 days!”  and then “60 days!” and this week, “50 days!” Oh my goodness, people!  Stop rubbing it IN!  I know I have to wait for hockey, but do you really have to make it so obvious how long I have to wait?  It is like standing in line at the grocery store with only ONE cashier and having someone track my progress over the PA system:  “Only 70 people in front of you…. Only 60 people in front of you…. Only 50 people in front of you!”  Okay, Yes, 50 is a whole 20 less than 70, but it is still 50!  It’s just too much, and I feel like the countdown until the new season shouldn’t start until it is at least at a point where I can manage waiting with the same amount of people in front of me in line at the grocery store.  So, like, one day before maybe?

Alright, crazy ranting aside, this week has been a sad week for Canucks fans and Canadians alike.  Just this past Monday, the leader of Canada’s New Democratic Party (NDP) Jack Layton, passed away.  He had been struggling with cancer for quite some time and recently stepped down from his position as a political leader  Before doing so, he said that when he came back, things were going to be better than ever.  This gave us all hope that he would indeed come back, and fight off his cancer just like he did last time.  However, he did not come back.  He joined the ever growing list of people who have lost their lives to the disease of cancer. 

Another person who joined the world of tragic statistics is our beloved Canuck Rick Rypien.  Rick was only 27 years old at the time of his death, but he had gone through many ups and downs in his personal life, having struggled from depression.  What I need to mention here is that depression can be just as serious a disease as cancer.  A lot of times, people with depression are considered to be something less than the rest of us (and I can’t even loop myself in with “the rest of us” because I too struggle with depression.) It is really not fair for people with depression to be overlooked as a person who is "just faking" sickness.  Nor  is it acceptable for anyone to avoid seeking treatment for the simple fear that they will be ridiculed.  There is NO shame in having depression, just as there is no shame in having cancer.  Both are unfortunate diseases from which many people suffer. 

Back to Rick Rypien.  I know that when people die, a lot of people say things like “He was the best”_____." or "He was my favourite _____,” but Rick Rypien honestly was one of my favourite defensemen of all time.  He had grit like no other, and he made hockey exciting to watch, even when our team was losing! It didn’t matter what the score was, if Rick was on the ice, we were winning.  Nobody wanted to oppose him, and rightly so.  I am proud to have him as a part of the history of my home team.  He will be forever remembered.

I have come across various things online paying tribute to both of these amazing men, but these two videos were my favourites.

Click HERE to watch a tribute to Rick Rypien.

Click HERE to see a clip of Jack Layton the way that the world will remember him.

Thanks for "listening."

Have you played today?

This may be one of the shortest posts I ever write, but it is possibly one of THE most important topics.

As a busy adult with a more than full time job, a home to keep up, family to attend to, friends to visit and errands to run, I rarely find time to slow down and REALLY enjoy life - no strings attached.  Today I got an opportunity to do just that.  I went to the beach with some of my extended family and got to play with my little cousins (ages five and two.)  We had a lot of fun digging in the sand, splashing in the water and petting every dog within a 50 foot radius of our play area.  As I was digging in the sand I thought of something that I heard a long time ago.  It seemed silly to me back then, perhaps because I wasn't as busy, but here it is:

Have you played today?

This is important for two reasons

1. Playing does wonders for your mental and physical health.
2. Any child that gets to play with you will be better off for having spent valuable, and likely rare, unadulterated, uninhibited play time with a responsible adult. Children and adults alike need this.

That's all.  Now, go play already!!!!  

Thanks for "listening."

Controversies and Paradoxes

By definition, a controversy is simply a “prolonged public dispute.”

A paradox, by definition, is something that “seems self contradictory.”

Here, I would like to discuss one topic from column A: Controversy, and one topic from column B: Paradox.

Let’s start with the paradox.  We all know that our world is becoming increasingly populated, so much so that the word “overpopulation” has been floating around for years now in regards to our own human race.  It makes me think of how every once in a while a certain species of animal is considered to have gone into a state of overpopulation.  When this happens, hunters are given what is called “open season” to hunt as many of this species of animal as the desire.  This is not done to wipe out the species entirely, but to reduce the numbers enough to maintain a balance within nature as a whole.  Here is where things get messy: have you ever stopped to think of our own species in this sense?  Human beings have vastly over populated this planet in comparison to other large mammals.  It is scary to think about, but what would happen if human beings just kept on procreating until we ran out of resources?  Perhaps what is currently going on in Africa is an example of what will happen in the rest of the world years into the future.  Famine and starvation will end up taking over because the land which we use to grow our food will be needed to house our species.  Not only that, but the animals that we depend on for food will have less and less land to live on (and less food to eat) so we will eventually run out of “natural” sources of meat.  Perhaps cannibalism will take a rise.  Maybe it will all end in extreme malnutrition and starvation.

As much as I know I sound like a crazy person talking about such things as cannibalism, mass starvation and death, it is where the world WILL end up eventually if we keep growing in numbers as we are now.  With the influx of cures to diseases, and the exponential increase of births, our worldwide birthrate is far outweighing our death rate.  Perhaps this sounds morbid, I don’t really care.  Here’s where things get paradoxical:  In order for humanity to survive as a species, people have to keep on dying.  Diseases can’t all be cured.  People have to actually die of natural causes, otherwise we will all end up dying of unnatural and unnecessary causes like starvation.  Our culture seems to have this mentality that we deserve to live forever.  Honestly, what makes us any different from other generations?  Why was it okay for so many people to die of plagues and famine decades ago, but now it is an abomination?  Death is a natural part of the circle of life, and in order for life as a whole to continue, lives must come to an end.  We all have a natural instinct to survive, but are we in a culture that is so incredibly self centered that we would put the immediate survival of self before the long term  survival of humanity? 

Now, I must apologize if this has offended anyone.  It is not my purpose to make people angry, or to belittle the loss of human life.  Human life is very valuable, and I have lost many people who are still very near and dear to my heart.  However, I know that life is fleeting.  We are each but a vapour that is here today and gone tomorrow.  We are NOT meant to live forever on this Earth.  I know how selfish I am.  I know that it is in my nature to want to survive and to think that I deserve to live.  The truth is, I will die some day, just like everyone else.  I don’t deserve to live forever.  I have done nothing to deserve such.  Even the greats of this world do not deserve to live forever, as is evidenced by their very deaths.  We are all but small parts of an exceedingly large web of life.  There needs to be balance.  What bothers me is that I know that I am not able to do anything about it on my own.  All I can do is call others to be more aware of the LIFE that surrounds them.  Not just their own life, but the lives of other species that inhabit this planet.  Humans are not the only creatures of value.  All life has value, and all life is needed in order to achieve balance.

Alright, that was a bit heavy.  (Not that this next topic is any lighter.)  On the topic of life, I would like to take this time to delve into a topic that is considered to be highly controversial.  It has been controversial for a very long time in our culture, and it remains a controversy even in my own mind.

As a disclaimer, I must say now that I DO value all life, human and otherwise. 

Having been raised in a Christian home with typical Christian morals, I have been brought up around the idea that abortion is wrong. Period.  End of story.  In the last ten or so years I have really been grappling with this.  In high school, I did an essay supporting the cause against abortion.  Now that I look back on it, all I really said was that all human life has value and that we should not be the ones who have the right to take it away.  For all intensive purposes, let us just assume that from the moment of conception, a human life has started.  Whether that is true or not is highly debatable and no actual proof can be given to support either side.  So, let’s not argue that.  What I want to talk about today is the difference between being “Pro Life” and “Pro Choice”. 

When I think about it, I really must be Pro Choice, because if I were put in certain situations, I would opt to have an abortion.  Here is where you can all drop your jaws in disgust.  Here is where you can continue reading.  As I said, I put an extreme amount of value on human life, so please for the love of God and all things Holy, don’t try to call me a heretic.  If I were to find myself in a situation of an unwanted pregnancy, I would go through with the birth, and then give the child up for adoption, UNLESS I was in one of the following situations: Sickness, Rape.  These are two situations where I would opt to have an abortion.

First off is the issue of sickness.  If I was to be pregnant and my doctor told me that I was too sick to carry a child full term, I would have to abort.  It is very important for a child to be carried as close to full term as possible so that it can reach full stages of development.  I would not want to go through with a pregnancy that would result in an underdeveloped child.  This is not to say that I would not love that child, but it is to say that if the child would be in extreme amounts of pain and only live a very short time, I would rather put it out of its misery sooner than later.  Another thing that a doctor could say is, “If you carry this child full term, your body will not be able to handle it and you will die.”  This is where I would have to put my own life first.  Not only that, but how incredibly horrible would it be to bring a child into the world only for it to have no mother? I would also end up leaving the child’s father (likely to be a man with whom I am love) in mourning over the loss of my life, and left to raise a child on his own.  I could never bring myself to do that.

Second is the issue of rape.  There are two reasons why I would get an abortion of I was raped.  First off, if I was pregnant for any other reason, it would have been because of a choice that I made myself.  If I were to become pregnant after being raped, it would be only fair for me to make a choice to have an abortion after I had my choice to NOT get pregnant taken from me.  Secondly, if I were to become pregnant from being raped, the absolute last thing I would want to do is raise that man’s child.  I am sorry if that makes me a horrible person, but there is just NO way that I could do it.  I think it makes sense that if a rapist fathers a child that his predatory ways will be ingrained on his child’s DNA.  Of course, it is possible that my genes would win out, but how would I ever know?  I would be living in constant fear that my own child would take after its rapist father.  Like I said, I would not be able to handle that.  You may be thinking that I could always give the child up for adoption.  My thought on that is, if a couple is seeking to adopt a child, would it really be fair for them to have to raise the child of a rapist?  I know this sounds absolutely horrible because it is only a child after all.  But that rapist was “only a child” at one point, and then he turned into a monster.  Even if I didn’t have to raise it myself, why would I willingly bring another monster into the world?  I can't expect anyone else to do something that I am not willing to do myself.

On that note, I need to mention one more time how much I value life.  I love animals and all of creation so very much.  Beyond that, I love PEOPLE more than anything.  I may be an introvert, but I sincerely love people so much it hurts sometimes, especially the little ones.  There is not a child in the world that I would not love if it needed to be cared for.  Given all the information that I have on the topic, abortion would be an absolute last resort for me, and only if it was in one of those two situations.  Even though I have lost a lot of people in my life, and I can barely stand the thought of losing anyone else, I know that eventually, everyone is going to die.  We can't all live forever.  If we did, it would essentially kill us all simply due to a lack of resources.  

Even though I have some mixed feelings about some things, I still love life very much.  I know I sound like a broken record, and I am sorry!  I just feel frustrated sometimes with our culture and how people seem to not recognize how their actions affect the world and the people around them.  There are things that we can all do to counteract the “wrongs” that society has done.  Instead of being wasteful we can conserve as much as possible, and as we were all taught in school, “reduce, reuse and recycle.”   It really doesn’t take that much effort at all to be mindful of the world around us, and when we do so, we effect not only ourselves now, but the future generations of people and animals that will live on this Earth.  The other major thing that society does wrong is being so selfish.  People think that they can just go out and take things that are not theirs to take.  Rape is a prime, (although, extreme) example of this.  I strongly believe that if we were to raise our children in a manner that teaches them to respect the rights of others, and to be giving and respectful rather than selfish, there would be a LOT less rape and abuse in the world.

I know this has been paradoxical and controversial, so please feel free to leave your comments.  I am open to criticism on this one; just don’t call me names, please.  The only reason I wrote about this at all is because it has been on my mind for a long time, and I just had to get it out.  This blog is called Day today musings of a restless mind.  Now you know how restless my mind can really get.  It’s not just all random thoughts on what I see from day to day.  It goes much deeper.  I do try to spread these “rough” topics out a bit, so as to not overwhelm anyone, or come across as overly intense.

Sincerely

Thanks for "listening."

You never know what you might find

Yesterday I met a man who calls himself a “binner”.  I assume this is a nicer way of saying “dumpster diver”.  He was a very nice man, and made good conversation.  He told me that he got hooked on it years ago when he went into a dumpster and found $700.  I laughed and told him that I would have been hooked too. 

He doesn’t have a "regular job", but he has chosen to do this to make a living and to help out other people.  That may sound odd, but just listen to this.  He says that every once in a while he will pass a bin and get the feeling that he should “check that bin right now” as he said.  Then, when he goes in to take a look, he finds all sorts of things.  All of his friends and family know that he does this, and they will occasionally mention something specific that they need or want.  Almost every time, he finds those very things unopened, unused and unsoiled the very same day.  He told me, “If there’s anything you need, all you have to do is ask, and chances are I will find it.”  I chuckled to myself and said “I really could use a new car!”  He then looked at me and said with a laugh, “Well, I could find you a car, but it will likely not be new, and I am pretty sure it wouldn’t be IN the bin, but just beside it.”

Today, just in the one buggy that he had with him, (he collects several a day just in the small area of town he frequents) he had found a few bags of unopened toys and unused clothing.  None of these things were dirty as one might expect them to be after being pulled from a dumpster.  They were all clean and smelled fine (yes I checked).  In fact, he gave me a brand new, name brand hoodie that still had the tags on it ($69.99).  All I have to do with it now is take it home and throw it in the wash before I use it, just like anything I would buy from a second hand store. 

I was really surprised, and my previous misconception about “dumpster divers” was thrown out the window.  It just goes to show that things and people aren’t always as they seem.

Thanks for "listening."

Shopping is not my thing

I am not your average girl.  I don’t really enjoy shopping.  I find it very tedious, mostly because I get an idea in my mind of what I want and I usually don't end up finding anything like it.  Sometimes I get lucky and I find something that is “close enough” to what I want.  Very rarely though, I find that golden nugget - the rare find.  I tend to stick with what I know works.  For example, when I go to Subway, I order the same thing almost every time.  It’s the same when I order pizza.  My mind doesn’t see Subway or Pizza as an array of options, because I have already selected which option is the best and that is what I associate with the restaurant as a whole.  I like to keep it simple.

Alright, back to shopping.  Over the years I have gone through many many many products that just don’t quite cut it.  However, I have also found some things that I consider to be true gems.  Because I love you all so much, I am going to give you a list of some of these products so that you too can know (without the hassle of years of searching) which things REALLY work.  These are all what I would consider gender neutral products.  Are you excited?  I know I am!!! Okay, enough of the girly excitement.  Here's the goods:

 

Exfoliating Skin Towel

This little baby is amazing!  One thing I love is a good back scratch.  When I shower, I always wish that I had something to really give my back a good scratch, so I used to scratch it myself as best I could, and would come out of the shower with red marks all over me, making it look like I just got attacked by some animal.  It was effective (sort of) but it produced a very unattractive result.  With this exfoliating towel, I just put some soap on it, lather it up, hold it behind my back and rub away (as if I was drying off with a normal towel).  It is absolutely heavenly.  So heavenly, that I use it on my whole body.  I tried it on my face last week and it buffed my skin until it was baby bottom smooth.

 

 Sneaker Balls!!!

I am pretty sure I was first introduced to these via late night infomercial.  I was not convinced.  After a few years of working in steel toed boots for 10 + hours a day, my boots were starting to stink up my front closet and all the jackets etc hanging above the shoe rack.  I went to a shoe store and found two products for removing foot stink from shoes.  One was a spray, and the other was a pack of these little yellow happy face balls that smell like fresh laundry.  Of course, I went with the happy faces, and I have not regretted my choice for a second.  I don’t have to take the time to spray each shoe.  All I have to do is take off my boots after work, throw the sneaker balls in and by morning they smell fresh.  Not to mention, my front closet smells much more appealing than it did in its previous state.

 Head and Shoulders Refresh. 

This is a shampoo and conditioner combination that has natural menthol added to it.  My goodness it is such a nice feeling.  Not only can I get away with just washing my hair (not using additional conditioner) but my entire scalp feels tingly and cool.  The fresh feeling lasts even after I have rinsed my hair and gotten out of the shower.  I know there is a bit of a stigma that goes along with Head and Shoulders.  I used to get made fun of when I was in middle school because I used Head and Shoulders.  I thought this was odd, because wouldn’t it be much worse to be walking around with flakes in my hair?  Either way, nobody should be ashamed of having dandruff.  It’s just dry skin.  I get dry skin all the time.  In fact, I pretty much have to douse myself with lotion after every shower I take because my skin is that stupidly dry.  That being said, if it is socially acceptable to use lotion to give moisture to the skin, then why can’t we all just admit our humanity and our need for Head and Shoulders Refresh Shampoo plus conditioner, and give our scalps the moisture they deserve?  Alright, I’m getting a bit carried away.  But seriously, your scalp is skin too.  Moisturize people!

Again, this has been another odd topic, but....

Thanks for "listening."

Inspired

I always think of things to write when I am not able to actually physically write anything down.  That, and I think of things before I fall asleep.  I always hope that I will remember them when I wake up, but I never do.  I swear I would be a published author by now if I actually wrote down everything that I want to write down.

Here are some more little factoids about me that you may or may not already know:

I have a habit of putting my sunglasses on upside-down.  I don’t always notice.

I have given mouth to mouth to a hamster that was in respiratory distress.  It didn’t work.

I always stand during the American and Canadian national anthems for hockey games etc, even if they are just on TV.

I like to pay with exact change.  When I can’t, I use the biggest possible bill so that I can get back as much change as possible, so as to be able to pay with exact change in the future.

I am a sort of "closet fan" of Justin Bieber.  In my dreams, he and I are friends and we hang out and talk etc.  It really sucks when I wake up and realize that he doesn’t even know I exist.  The more dreams he is in, the more it sucks knowing that he doesn’t know I exist, and the more determined I am to become famous someday so that I can maybe meet him and talk to him.  It’s not an obsession.   I just really want to have a conversation with the guy.  I feel the same way about Trevor Linden, minus the dreams :P  For the record, NO I do not have a crush on either of these people.  I am just inspired by them as human beings, and I would sincerely like to meet them both in the future and not just like “Hey can you sign my shirt” and then never see them again.  They are the kind of people who use their fame and their success for good.  They are both making the world a better place, and that is something that I want to do with my life.  I want to publish my book, have it sold to tonnes of people, then have people want to talk to me about it.  I don’t really want to be famous in the conventional sense, like having fans etc.  I just want people to know who I am so that I can have some influence and be able to get my message out to the world more easily :)

Some famous people who inspire me:

Justin Bieber
Trevor Linden
Mother Teresa
Terry Fox

Maybe you can let me know how inspires you?

Thanks for "listening."