Even though it feels cheesy

A few months ago, my counselor gave me an assignment.  I'd just told her about how I keep having to remind myself that my dissertation and my PhD are the beginning and not the end of my career: this isn't the end result of a life's work, but a first effort that just needs to be finished.  It doesn't have to be ground-breaking; it just has to be completed. 

So, after I said something along the lines of "I really should post that message on my wall above my desk, because I keep forgetting," my counselor suggested that I do just that.  She gave me an assignment: write down some affirmations and reminders and post them where I can see them when I work.

I got excited about doing that until I got home and started worrying that it seemed cheesy to do that.  My desk faces a big poster!  Where am I supposed to put a bunch of affirmations?  Won't that seem especially cheesy to any houseguests who stay in our office?

And so I procrastinated from doing that.  And procrastinated from booking my next counseling appointment.  I got a lot of work done during that time, but after I finished my last of my research, I found myself stuck.  And procrastinating a lot.

And so here I am in January, trying to get myself back on track, and trying not to feel guilty about how unproductive December was.  I've done a bit of writing in this current chapter, but it's hard getting past all the negative self-talk.  I think that the fact that I was also procrastinating from a task that I knew I ought to do didn't help.  And then this morning, as I was trying to figure out how to organize my bedroom, I noticed that I have this little photo holder stand that was taking up too much room on my dresser.  The pictures in the stand were several years old, and while I was trying to figure out what to do with it, I realised that this could be a good place to put my little affirmations, instead of finding places on my wall. 

I've written up four so far.  For a while, I wasn't even sure what to write (other than the first statement I'd made to my counselor), and so I went through my blog for some inspiration.  This post from mid-2007 gave me a lot of ideas. 

So far, this is what I have:
- I love my research
- My dissertation just needs to be finished, not perfect or ground-breaking.  I am capable of doing this.
- I am going to finish.
- I can't measure my self-worth by external validation.

So.  I'm allowing myself to be a little bit cheesy, with the hope that this will help.  Because I really want to get this writing finished.

Things are looking up

1. So, you know how we were looking to find a new home for our church, after we lost our last place?  As of next month, we'll be meeting in the multipurpose room of a private school.  The place is nicer, better suited to our group (read: wheelchair-accessible), and cheaper.  What?! It's fantastic and on the waterfront, and I'm ridiculously excited about this.  Seriously, it was the first place I emailed, and I can hardly believe that it worked out so well and quickly.

2. Today, we took our car in to the shop, and it looked like we were probably going to have to replace the alternator on the car. Crazy things were starting to go wrong, and yesterday it was really stressful to drive the car.  Instead of one big thing, it turned out to be a few small things (loose belt, blown fuse, and a loose gas cap), which meant that it didn't cost much money to fix, and we already have the car back.  I can breathe again. 

3. We managed to make a supper tonight that was completely from scratch: grilled leg of lamb (marinated Greek-style), pita bread with baba ghanoush, and a spinach salad with blackberry vinaigrette.  Since we were stuck at home without the car today, Chris and I decided to have some fun with cooking, and worked together to make our own pitas. (And now that I know how easy, cheap and healthy it is to make my own salad dressing? Why didn't anyone tell me this before?)  I am far too pleased with myself now. 

The nice bits of my day

1. Brand new lemons --> lots of hot water with honey and lemon. 
2. I took an honest-to-goodness sick day today.   I stayed in my pyjamas until Chris came home and didn't feel guilty about it at all.  And watched a lot of the Food Network. 
3. I spent the whole day thinking "I wish someone would show up with a pulled pork sandwich. I think I'd feel stronger if I had some meat." And then Chris got home, heard that I was craving barbeque, and picked up pulled pork and brisket from a place downtown.  And that made me feel much better. 
4. I thought I was supposed to be starting preparations for the staff end-of-the-year party for Chris's work, and then he called to say that he was wrong and the party is on Monday.  Not only do I get to do nothing today, but there's no pressure to do anything tomorrow now either.  Bliss.
5. Chris is done all his prep and marking for the year. Now it's just supervising one more exam, awards day, and grad.
6. A book I ordered from England (for the dissertation) arrived in the mail, while all the delivery estimates thought that it would arrive after we left. 
7. Dissertations being available online in pdf form: I love living in the future.  No ordering, no waiting.  (Dr. Supervisor discovered that someone wrote a really relevant-to-my-research dissertation and defended it last year.)

Far from lonely

I've been home alone for the last half of this week, as Chris is the teacher chaperon for the high school seniors' camping trip.  When I first found out that I'd be here by myself from Wednesday until Sunday, I thought I was going to get lonely: I've been such a home body/hermit these days that usually Chris is the only person I see all day.  And so I made a few plans with people.

It's now so funny that I thought I was going to be lonely: I've been more social this week than I've been in a long time.  The non-stop people started as soon as I left the house on Wednesday morning: when I went to the chiropractor, I ran into three different friends (two of whom where the only other two people at the chiropractor's office).  Then, when I got hom, my Mom's cousin Cheryl called me (she's in town for the week) and I ended up spending the afternoon with her.  Then yesterday, the women from church and I had a Girls' Night (someone else's husband is away this week, and we thought that it would be nice to take this as an opportunity to get together) and I stayed out way too late.  Tonight, Cheryl's coming to stay here and then tomorrow we're going to do some sight-seeing, after which Ky and I are going to have a sleep-over (to celebrate the fact that she passed her quals!!, because she's going to Ukraine next week, and because I need a ride to church on Sunday).  In the midst of that all, I've been spending all my time trying to finish That Chapter That Won't Die (tm Styleygeek).

In short, today was the first time I had a chance to wash any dishes since Monday or Tuesday.  I've been so busy.  And, because I didn't have to go anywhere today (even though I had to get the spare room ready for Cheryl, and wash that pile of I Didn't Know We Owned That Many Dishes) I worked all day on That Chapter, starting as soon as I woke up this morning.  I made crazy amounts of progress today, but also managed to take care of myself and get housework done.  I even did some research outside in the sun and took a break to make lemonade from scratch! 

I think Chris is going to be surprised when he comes home on Sunday and finds that the house is clean and I'm all peopled-out.  He'll be especially amazed if I have this chapter close to done by the time he gets back. 

Just the kind of day I needed

It's sunny and warm outside, and I went walking on campus with a friend.  The sun shone and we walked through the university's flower garden.

And then I went to the library and found a really helpful book, that uses the same basic framework I'm using in my dissertation. (This initially panicked me, when I discovered that he is even drawing from the same theorists as I am, and I went momentarily to the "Oh no, am I just rehashing someone else's work unwittingly?" place, but he only looked at newspapers and at a different time period, and so I've decided that this is wonderfully helpful rather than scary.)

And then I came home to two packages in the mail, both of which contained cards for me: one from a blog pal whom I'm helping with a secret mission, and one from my friend Gillian in England, who sent me a necklace from her trip to Italy. 

And then I made some Earl Grey tea and sat in a sunbeam.

Emerging from the haze

I'm finally coming out of the haze from Sunday's Worst Migraine of My Life, which continued into Monday's Pounding Headache and Maybe Do I Have An Ear Infection? (Conclusion: no. It was just a headache. Apparently triggered by the weather, my allergies and a need to go to the chiropractor. All of those have now been remedied, thankfully). A few happy things have been helping make it all better:

• Bronwyn is in town and came over to visit us last night! Chris even got to show off his robot.
• I made pulled pork for supper, and the recipe I tried this time worked fantastically.* (Cooking successes always cheer me up.) And it was cheap, because pork's a reasonable price (thanks to people mistakenly thinking that eating pork causes Swine Flu). I'm still dreaming about those sandwiches. I'm going to do that again soon.
  
• I got a phone call this morning from my friend's hilarious four year old. Celeste particularly wanted to talk with me about her wish to have macaroni for lunch (and informed me that it is "tasty" with ham and peas). We also discussed how I am, in fact, not trapped inside the phone, but am at my house that is far away from her. Preschoolers are crazy.
  
• I'm well enough to go to my yoga class this afternoon, which also means that I'll be leaving the house soon.
  

* I promised a few people that I'd share the pulled pork recipe. I took it from The Joy of Cooking, but it's in my own words and with the adaptations that I did:
Take a pork shoulder/butt roast and cover it with a dry rub (mine used 1/4 c each of brown sugar and chili powder, a whole bunch of paprika, a few tablespoons of cumin, about a tablespoon each of chipotle pepper and red pepper flakes, and then a bunch of salt and pepper) and wrap it all up in a couple of sheets of foil. Refrigerate it for anywhere between one and 24 hours (I did it for an hour and a half).

Take a dutch oven (or other pot that can go from stove to oven and can be covered by either a lid or heavy foil) and brown the roast in a tablespoon of oil. Cover with the lid or foil and put it in the oven at 325F for 3-3 1/2 hours. (This is for a 4lb roast. Mine was only 2lb, and I pulled it a little before 3 hours.) Shred the pork with forks, mixing it with the pan juices, and add barbecue sauce. (I made my own barbecue sauce starting from long strips of sauteed onions, and using a decent amount of vinegar, but I don't even know if I could accurately recount everything I put in the sauce.)

Serve on kaiser buns.

Five small reflections on my week

These could have five small blog posts, but I kept procrastinating. And so you get them all at once.

One

We took the KitchenAid mixer to the repair guy today. We pulled up to a 1950s-or-earlier house, and went up to the little door under the carport. And I mean "little": it was probably only about five feet tall and we had to crouch to get into the shop; the door had a laminated sign, stuck on with thumbtacks. We were greeted by a grey-haired man and ushered into a low-ceilinged shop full of tools and little boxes with hand-written labels that said things like "ball bearings". The repair man (who calls himself "Tom," but is called "Tommy" by everyone I've met) was straightforward and helpful, and said that he'd phone first if it turned out to be an expensive part that needed replacing.

As we walked to the car, Chris said, "He was the friendliest of the hobbits." And then said that he would love to have a shop like that (albeit with higher ceilings).

Two

I went to a Christian-graduate-student small group this week, and there I met a fellow PhD student from my department, whom I'd never met before. And he's in his second year. Everyone was all, "Oh well of course you both probably know each other, considering the fact that you share an office..." I've heard his name before, and he knows a few of my friends, but I've somehow gone for a year and a half without meeting one of our PhDs. I should probably show up on campus a little more often.

(It was really funny, because we were all talking about how easy it is to become completely isolated on campus, and how most of us have only met people in our own department since we've moved here. But apparently I haven't even met everyone who shares my office!)

Three

I find myself fascinated by the Microsoft OneNote website, and all the information about the newest version of Office being released this year. I seriously love that program; I spend more time using it than I do Word, because it works as if I had a stack of notebooks for my research and my comps reading notes, but also all my recipes and notes-to-self, but searchable and not a complete mess (as my life was when I was relying on physical notebooks).

I find it strange that I am rhapsodizing about a Microsoft product, while all my friends and family seem to be going full-out Apple. (I was amused when I found a Lifehacker review saying the same thing, but in more detail.)

Four

I went a little overboard on the "but if we buy four it's cheaper!" school of grocery shopping today. Does anyone have a good recipe that calls for chickpeas? (Other than hummus? I already have a good one of those.) I find myself with five cans of chickpeas. And so very many cans of whole tomatoes.

Five

I went to a talk given by a huge name in my field (seriously: he changed everything). It's nice to find out that someone who is your hero is also a nice person. (I also found out from a friend that another Big Name has a "prickly" personality, and this I find funny.)

It was also good to take off the "Writing My Dissertation" cardigan and put on my "Going to a Conference" blazer, and think of myself as a little bit ambitious for a while. (And stop mentally putting the word "just" in front of my description of my research.)

I can do this!

On the weekend, I heard back from my supervisor saying that he liked the bit of writing I sent him, and with a few bits of suggestions for revision. I said that it shouldn't take me long (but that I wasn't going to do it on the weekend), and so I could have it back to him early this week.

I was a little scared of saying that, because of how I sabotage myself with deadlines. It's like I suddenly get writer's block, and all this anxiety about my progress in this program rises up, and what if I can't do this on time? What if I don't know what I'm doing with this dissertation? And it takes me an extra week on top of what I say it should.

But I worked so that this wouldn't happen this time. I made a plan of attack: print off the piece, and then get set up somewhere where I would edit someone else's work. Go through thoroughly like I'm helping out a friend and having ideas for how they can clarify their arguments. I did that on Monday. (Plus a little bit of the computer work, but when I got stuck, I realised that it was late in the afternoon and time for me to stop working anyway.)

And then today, I just made the changes in the document, which resulted in me finding even more that I could clarify. I even had ideas for something that I should add to the introduction.

And then I emailed it to Dr. Supervisor, before 1pm today.

Before 1pm on Tuesday = "early this week." I did it! I can just push through and get this writing done.

I feel proud of myself. (Especially because today I also discovered that we've managed our monthly budget really well, partly thanks to all the cooking from scratch we've been doing, and there's money left over to pay for the repair to my mixer.)

I told Ky, and she told me that I should make a note of today, to remind myself that I can do this. I'm not a big screw-up. I am capable.

Good idea of the day

I've been moving a little slowly this week, because I've been getting back into a routine of waking up at the same time as Chris and then going for an early-morning walk. We decided to take this morning off from the walking, because I was such a zombie yesterday, and because I woke up this morning with a headache. I let myself sleep until I woke up, but then I found myself even more dopey than usual, because I didn't have any structure to my day. My morning was a bit of a waste.

But then I noticed how nice it was outside. The sun is shining and the temperature has gone over 11C (about 52F) at my house. And I ate a quick lunch, grabbed my lawn chair and my laptop, and got set up to work in the backyard. I'm sure I look crazy out here: I refused to wear a jacket, but I'm wearing the knitted hat that Ky made me (because my hair is wet), and I have my big sweater wrapped around me. (Okay, I'm starting to get a little cold, now that I've been out here for more than an hour.)

And it worked. I've just finished editing and formatting some writing to send to my supervisor. Nothing like getting some fresh air and sitting in a sunbeam to knock the cobwebs out of my head.

Peaceful

This hasn't been the most peaceful week. Some of it is my own fault: on Sunday afternoon I had way too much caffeine (made a "chai nog" latte that involved both a double-shot of espresso and some very strong chai) and was zooming around for the next twenty-four hours. At my friend Andrea's Hanukkah party I was talking at triple speed the whole time, and then I only managed a few hours of sleep that night. I was even feeling buzzy for part of Monday. I'm apparently a bit of a lightweight when it comes to caffeine.

(On the positive side, after Chris fell asleep on Sunday night, I got a crazy amount of dissertation work done. Like, I reorganized my chapters and then wrote a few pages of introduction.)

Some of this less-than-peaceful week is outside of my control. There are some big issues that we're trying to figure out, and even at the best of times it's easy for my anxiety to take over.

But tonight I choose to be peaceful. I've deliberately taken a little more time doing everything. We had a couple of good friends over and I made a good and filling meal. Supper was a little late because I took a walk to my cheese shop. While we were waiting for the meat to be done cooking, we all drank big mugs of gen mai cha tea. Now that they're gone, I'm listening to Glen Hansard and sitting by the Christmas tree. (Not that Glen Hansard is particularly Christmassy.)

Sometimes it takes some work to slow down. But I'm glad that I did.

Transitions

I have this delusion that I'm the sort of person who adapts well to new situations. I don't know where I got this idea. I ended up discussing this yesterday first with my counselor and then with my group that I call "Yoga for Depressed People," because somehow the theme of everything today was "Transitions and How Maryanne Struggles With Them." Okay, my yoga instructor missed that last six words when she announced the theme for the day.

On the small scale, I've struggled with the transition from working at the university on microfilm to working at home on my computer. I thought it would be an easy transition, because it's a return to my old routine. However, I guess it doesn't work like that when I've adjusted to another routine for so long. It's not an automatic thing where I fall back into the old patterns. I need to figure out what works and treat it like I'm setting up a new routine entirely, using the methods that worked well last time, instead of expecting that this is going to be an automatic thing.

On the larger scale, I feel like I'm entering into an entire phase of transition in my life. On Tuesday I turn 29, that year of transition between my twenties and my thirties. It's really hitting me how much I have to embrace the approach of my 30s, rather than stare in the mirror and wonder who that unfamiliar person is. (In my head, I'm 23. It's still confusing to me to find clothes that fit and look right on me, because I used to be able to grab them off the rack without trying them on.)

At the same time, as I get deeper into my dissertation, I start to face the fact that I'm working my way toward being finished being a student, after twelve years of university. Regardless of how long it takes for me to finish, this dissertation is the last thing before I graduate and have to enter Grown Up Life, where I earn money, (hopefully) don't live in a basement suite, and don't sleep in all the time. The further I get through this dissertation, the closer I get to the next part, where we move away from here and start a family.

And this is the funny thing: I look forward to my 30s. I look forward to being finished, and not paying tuition, and moving closer to home, and everything else that Being Finally Finished and Growing Up entails. But change always scares me a little, as does the realisation that I'm entering into a phase where I'm preparing for all that change. In yoga yesterday, we worked on paying attention to that space between breaths, on the transition from one physical position to the other, working on doing those things well and mindfully. And that's what I need to do with my life: instead of dragging my feet about the next phase, I need to stop and appreciate where I am now, and prepare myself for what comes next.

It turns out

...that while having an open mic at a wedding is a bad idea, it can be a really good thing at a funeral. It all started off when one of Alec's sons did the eulogy and said he looked forward to everyone's stories, because his father moved all the way out here and they didn't see him very often after that. Most of the program was for people to volunteer stories, and they did that: funny, sweet and sad. No one glossed over the fact that Alec was a quirky, strange man. There were tears, but there was also a lot of laughter and nods of recognition. The service late, but it didn't feel long.

We invited some of the younger types to come to our house for pizza and games. As we pulled up to our house, we realised that there was a big crowd at the end of our street. Then we saw a motorcade start to go by on the street that meets up with ours. Chris, my friend Rebecca and I got out of our cars just in time to see the runner with the Olympic Torch go by.*

What a good day. Alec would have been pleased, although troubled by how much everyone was talking about him.

* For all of my studying of the map, I had no idea it was going to be a block from our house.

Pro/Con

First the con: the first day of watching all that microfilmed newspaper scroll past me made me feel motion-sick. (I think it also didn't help that I'd eaten some really heavy food before I started.)

Then the pro: I got to send my supervisor an email today, telling him that the first set of microfilm arrived, that I spent a few hours getting through most of the first roll today, and that I'm doing well and am making progress. That feels good.


Okay, two more good things, associated with the First Day of Microfilm:
1.) Just as I was starting to feel apprehensive about dealing with this pile of microfilm, I got an email from Inter-Library Loans telling me that they'd already renewed the film for me, and I have it for a full month. Dude: a full month. Does that ever help.

2.) For some reason, I went there expecting the newspapers to be printed in old-timey German typeface (where I still can't tell when it's supposed to be an f and when it's an s most times), and it turned out that I was mistaken: regular old Latin alphabet, and I could read everything easily. Hooray! (I have encountered some usage of the Fraktur script, but so far it looks like the big newspapers had long since discarded it by 1929.)

A bouquet of freshly-sharpened pencils

Last night, I tried to write a post about coming to terms with the end of summer. I entitled it "Summer Gone" (referencing David Macfarlane's melancholy novel that takes place over several Labour Day weekends), and wrote about how it was the last night before Chris went back to teaching, about how I had to shut the windows because of all the rain, and return to wearing socks.

I ended up deleting the post because writing it made me feel more melancholy than I already was. I was tired (having just cleaned the whole house in anticipation of the busyness of Chris's first week of school), and wasn't forming words clearly.

But then this morning I sent Chris off to his first day of school, said goodbye to Ky as she left for her conference in London, and took the bus to the university. I'd been hoping that, seeing as it was the last day before classes began, it would be a little less crazy on campus today than it will be tomorrow. I somehow forgot about orientation, and the president's barbeque, and the hoards of first-year students who don't yet know that they don't need to spend every waking hour on campus. I walked by hundreds (possibly thousands) of students, lined up all the way across the campus green, behind two small tables of free hotdogs and hamburgers. I ran into several friends, including one who just moved here from Saskatchewan to get her MA here. I met people from my department as they milled around smiling and wearing brightly-coloured name tags.

I went to the department office and received a copy of the brand new journal that our grad students put together. I went to Health Services and joke with my nurse about the crazy first-year kids that have filled the campus today, questioning whether the free hamburger was ever worth a more-than-an-hour wait in a line.

And I got a ton of work accomplished. Even though the school calendar doesn't have any effect on my work schedule,* there's something about the cooler air and the bustling crowds that inspires me to make real progress and to cross even the intimidating parts off of my to-do list.

As I bussed home, I found myself smiling. I was actually looking forward to my necessary trip back to campus on Thursday.



* I sometimes have little patience for the "When are you starting again in the fall?" line of questioning I continually get. Because you must be taking classes if you're going to school, right? (I mostly get these questions from the same people, over and over.)

Pleasant Evening Ahead

When Christopher got home this afternoon, tired after a long week of putting together exam reviews, he had a very specific request for the evening: that we invite ourselves over to Ky's house (so that she doesn't have to leave behind her currently-Wookiee-haired puppy) (also so that we can play with the aforementioned Wookiee-haired puppy), taking with us Stock Ticker, Clue, and a bucket of chicken. She's cool with this plan, and we're also going to make Christopher watch the season finale of 30 Rock and the parts of this season's So You Think You Can Dance that feature the Kasprzak brothers, because we think he'll like them. (This is the part of the year where we always get Chris watching SYTYCD, in spite of himself.)

I might be the biggest dork ever, but this is the best Friday evening outing I can imagine.

Relief

The German professor was much, much more lenient with me than I could have ever expected.

We sat down and had a conversation in German about what I study and what I'm going to do in Germany. He started off with easy stuff (asking me my name and such) and then gradually worked toward more complicated conversation, repeating or explaining himself whenever I didn't quite know what he meant. And I didn't do perfectly, sometimes garbling my sentence structure or forgetting words, but I managed to answer his questions.

And then, when he got to the form, where he had to evaluate me on a scale of "a" (fluent) to "e" (extreme difficulty understanding anything), I was inwardly praying "Please don't give me any 'e's. I'd be happy with 'd'." And he gave me "c" on both understanding and speaking (that means I can handle more than just basic sentences!) and then when he got to the writing and reading part he said, "You took the reading course? Well that means you'd have an easier time with reading than with speaking. And do you find that it's easier to write than to speak?" I confirmed that I had an easier time writing, because then I had a chance to stop and think of case endings and word choice. And so he gave me "b" on both of those. Which is huge. He just told them I'm a step below fluency, on both writing and reading (which are the important ones, when you're researching). I don't think I deserve it, but that's going to be really helpful for my application.

(And then he recommended that they pay for me to get a couple months of a German course once I'm in Berlin! He said that it won't hinder my application any, and would make my transition to Germany easier. That would be very helpful.)

That means I just might have a solid application to send. I'm going to start breathing again.

Pros and Cons

Con: I was awaken this morning by the sound of chainsaws. Many, many chainsaws.

Pro: My landlady felt really bad that they kept missing us when we were home and hadn't had a chance to warn us about the chainsaws, and so she gave me a bunch of chocolate!

Con: The chainsaws are here to cut down some of the trees in my backyard, and to trim back and trim down the rest of them, meaning that soon it won't look so much like a forest out my window. Also, the trees will no longer hide the ugly shed as much. So, the view out my window will really be changing.

Pro: This is all so that we get more sunlight! The trees are so tall that they block our sunlight for most of the day. Already, since they started this morning, I've been able to shut off the lights in the living room and kitchen, and they're not even half-way done yet. Also, the tree-trimming will make the giant clothesline usable again. So, shorter and thinner trees = brighter apartment, and we'll all be using less energy.

I'm going to try to think of the pros as I live with the sound of chainsaws for the next few days.

Bringing Back the Saturday Morning Blogging

Soon I'll get to work. I can't decide whether I'll write or practice German first. But this moment is so nice I thought I'd blog it.

I'm sitting under the SAD lamp for a few minutes as I let the brown sugar syrup cool a bit. I made pancakes, which I've covered and am keeping warm in the oven.

Chris is in the office, working on report card marking right now. We have all the radios in the house playing Radio 2 Morning, which I'd never tried on the weekend before. (I don't particularly like the weekday version, hosted by Tom Allen. His banter tends toward the inane and I tend to get frustrated with the songs he plays. But Molly Johnson hosting on the weekend? Perfection.) Ten more minutes and then it'll be Stuart McLean.

Pancakes and CBC radio. Even though we both have a lot of work to do today, it still feels like Saturday.

The election is over.

It feels good to say that. Whatever happened last night, it's all over and we can move forward. We have another Conservative minority government, and I've decided that (instead of dwelling on how sad I was for Stéphane Dion last night) I'm going to reflect on the election in an Accentuate the Positive list:

• At least we don't have a Conservative majority; they can't push through whatever they want, but need the help of the other parties. I find minority governments to be really interesting and creative times, particularly if all the parties are willing to co-operate and compromise. (So, political parties of Canada? How about you do that this time around? Work together? I'm particularly looking at the ruling party when I say that, because regardless of all their complaining about the deadlock in Ottawa, they were the primary ones not playing along.)
  
• I'm glad the election's over now. I don't think I could handle another week of electioneering, especially since I'm living in a region considered to be a "swing vote" or something; we've been inundated with signs, calls, rallies, and party leaders. If I saw another road side/constantly-crossing-the-road-while-carrying-blue-signs rally that was slowing down rush hour traffic, I was going to throw something.* But it's over now. Early this morning, I watched volunteers take down all those blue signs for the Conservative candidate running in our area.
  
• And, regardless of what else happened, my riding stayed NDP. And Ariann and Derek's riding stayed Liberal, even though it was a nail-biter (their PM won by only 68 votes!). I'd been really worried about my riding, because the Conservative candidate's campaigning was so visible and rush-hour-traffic-stopping. But my MP re-won the riding handily.
• CBC's coverage was lovely. Well, they could've deployed Rex Murphy and Rick Mercer more than they did, but their coverage was good and even-handed (both politically and regionally), and I loved their live-updating interactive map on their website. I could keep it open while I worked on other stuff on my computer and check periodically to see what colour the ridings had turned.
• Last night, I'd been just looking at the Edmonton map (on a map of Alberta that was solid blue with Conservatives), when Lynnie's riding suddenly turned orange! And stayed that colour! Seriously: Lyn's only lived there for a few months and she's already socialisted the place up. That little dot of orange made me happy.
  

* I find it ironic that the candidates that were running on a platform of "reduce rush-hour congestion!" were campaigning in a manner that increased rush-hour congestion.

From the "this world is really small" department

So. I think we've finalized a place for Ariann and Derek. It's not far from the school, and it's fantastic. Breathtaking views of the harbour on one side, and backing on to a regional park with forest on the other. We'd heard about the place from the school's kindergarten teacher; the couple who owns the place are friends of hers from church.

I was talking with the owners and happened to mention that Ariann and Derek were moving out with my cousin Ky. At which point Susan immediately supplied Ky's last name. It turns out that Ariann and Derek will be renting from the sister of this person, a good friend of Ky, Lyn and Bronwyn's family. This couple had been planning on having Ky out for a visit once she moved here, because they love that family so much.

My world is far too small.