I'm so tired for some reason. I thought I had slept enough, but my eyes are exhausted right now. I'm still having trouble adjusting to 2-day weekends (I had 3 day weekends for most of uni). I could seriously fall asleep right now, but it's only 6:30 and it's totally sunny out, so that wouldn't be a good idea. I'm working on Harry Potter, but it isn't sucking me in as much as the other books are. When I'm reading it I get transported into the world of Hogwart's, of course, but I can also put it down quite easily.

I think I'll blame this on PMS. I ate a whole jar of Bic Sandwich Saver pickles in two days. That sounds like a sign of PMS, doesn't it?

I find it interesting that people define US citizens as "rich" because of their per capita GDP. As some of you know, in high school we travelled around the states a lot for our band tours, and we always stayed in the homes of our American counterparts. During these trips, I noticed that more Americans in what is probably defined as the middle class have to worry about money. I wouldn't quite define this as poverty, although they certainly weren't well-off. They were in a situation where if they wanted something, they had to do some quick math in their heads first. If disaster struck, they could be ruined. And these were all people who were settled enough that they had a house and a family - they weren't immigrants, they weren't students, they were what I would define as grownups.

That's not to say there aren't people in the rest of the world in this position, but I find it occurs more rarely in Canada and in Europe. There is certainly poverty, especially among immigrants, but when you look at second-generation (or even first-and-a-half generation) or higher families who are settled enough to have started having kids, more of these households can afford to make impulse purchases, and can absorb an unexpected disaster (not that an unexpected disaster wouldn't affect them financially, but they wouldn't be ruined and they could recover).

A lot of this probably has to do with social programs - if I got pregnant or got cancer, I probably wouldn't have to pay a cent to get the medical facet of the problem dealt with. Perhaps, when trying to calculate a country's per-citizen wealth, they should somehow incorporate the social services to which citizens have access instead of straight GDP.

Apparently a man in Arkansas awoke from a 19 year coma (I don't have a link - it was mentioned as fact on Fark in a link to a photoshop contest).

This raises the question of whether they have a time limit for letting keeping people in comas alive. I mean, this guy was taking up a hospital bed for 19 years! Are people in comas on life support, or are they just there, alive but unconscious. Does their hair grow?

They stopped making my bra in cotton! GAH!

Meanwhile the street festival is bringing out the rednecks, and carrying home $50 worth of groceries when it's 33 with a humidex of 37 is not a good idea.

I vote we get rid of the idea that a visible panty line is a fashion faux pas. First of all, you shouldn't be looking anyway, and secondly, who cares? Visible bra straps are perfectly acceptable, and a panty line is certainly less of a big deal

Two unrelated things:

1. I got the TV home all by myself with one of those carts you use to move boxes! And I only had to be rescued once!

2. The Globe and Mail has a huge-ass student discount on subscriptions. If you're a student and you're thinking "I'd like to subscribe to the Globe and Mail when I grow up and get a job", subscribe just before you finish school while you still have full-time student status. It's over 50% cheaper that way.

I need bungee cords! (The kind for strapping things together, not the kind for bungee jumping). Someone out there must know where bungee cords come from! Please, where do I buy bungee cords?

Do you qualify to immigrate to Canada?

I took this test, and I got 76 points. You need 75 points to qualify. If I hadn't gotten a professional certificate along with my university degree, I wouldn't have qualified. Good thing I was born into citizenship!

I should learn how to read braille. Then I could read, and I'd have something to amuse me, when my eyes are tired and the rest of me isn't. Listening to music or the radio isn't enough to amuse be on its own, so when my eyes are tired I get grumpy and bored.

Today I was in the supers' apartment for 15 minutes to sort out some paperwork, and I got an allergic reaction to their cat and smoke. Just from being there for 15 minutes! GAH! So my eyes have been unhappy all day.

Otherwise, decent day. Enjoyed my day off, did some laundry and got some cleaning done, how exciting. It's July 1 and I don't have my metropass yet and my Toronto Star wasn't delivered today, so I'll have to make some phone calls tomorrow. Ick, phone calls. Maybe if my work tomorrow is as easy as my work yesterday was, I'll finish my work early and can make the phone calls from the office guilt-free.

Cool thing of the day: Jimmy is giving me a couch! How cool is that?

Now that I think about it, I think the TV could easily be moved on the cart by 2 people. It's 2 blocks, 1 or 2 street crossings, both of them on side streets. There would be one instance of lifting (getting the TV onto the cart), and then it's just a matter of not letting it fall off the cart (which was, in fact, designed to hold a TV although not to transport one) and looking really silly while walking around. Anyone up for an adventure sometime within the next few days?

So my TV arrived at 12:13 today. No one was home at 12:13, so it will be at the post office tomorrow after 1:30 pm.

So unless someone can hook me up with a car and a person who can lift half of a 20" TV, I'll have to pay exorbitant amounts to some taxi driver. Or go to futureshop and convince their delivery guy to take a free 4 block round trip. Or, I suppose, wheel my TV cart down to the post office, but that seems rather silly.

How long does it take to stop talking like a teenager? I still pepper my speech with "like" and say "that sucks" even when I'm at work. I don't want to talk like this because I want to be taken seriously as a professional, but I can't help it. I wonder if these speech patterns will be permanent - maybe in a decade or so they will be taken as a demographic marker. But I'm not in contact with anyone who is in their late 20s or early 30s who spoke like a teenager when they were a teenager, so I can't do empirical research

I reach for a clip to put back a strand of hair that falls into my eyes, and the clip is red and sparkly. I look around for a clipboard and it has 4 years' worth of graffiti on it. As must as I try to pull off this grownup thing, my possessions betray me. And when I think I have it all under control, I refer to grownups in the third person.

Can't sleep. I'm glad Tuesday is a holiday. I'd be majorly stressing if tomorrow was the first day of a full week, but instead it's a little blip followed by a day off.

:(

There was once this website where you type in your city, and it generates a sort of doll that's appropriately dressed for the current weather in your city. Does anyone know what I'm talking about and know the URL or what it might be called? I wanted to see what kind of doll it would generate when it was 42 degrees here, but I couldn't find the site!

It was a normal looking summer evening, but an ominous blue-grey cloud was looming on the horizon. I saw this cloud, and decided to stay in instead of running to the grocery store. A few moments later it started to rain. As the rain fell, visibility was reduced by about 50%. The wind picked up, and the rain started falling even harder, mixed in with the occasional hail. Now I could only see one block from my 14th storey window. Suddenly a huge violent gust blows straight towards me. I slam the window closed as it throws hundreds of hail stones against my walls and windows. I can't even see the edge of my balcony, and I wonder if I'm in the middle of a tornado or something. Then this blast of hail passes, the rain stops, and the sun comes back out. The only evidence left is the puddles on the ground and the water dripping down the side of the building. The whole thing took less than 15 minutes, and if I had entered the grocery store right before it started I wouldn't even have known what had happened.

I hope no one at Pride got hurt by all the hail!

I have 1.5 cups of leftover hollandaise sauce. WTF can I do with 1.5 cups of hollandaise sauce?

White wines are meant to be drunk chilled. Red wines are meant to be drunk at room temperature. Why don't they invent whites that taste better at room temperature and reds that taste better chilled?

I saw yet another ad where they discussed campaign fundraising in the US as though whoever raises the most money automatically wins. Can someone explain to me why this is so important? I mean, I do realize that election campaigns are expensive. I do realize that you need money for all the travelling around that is involved. But these articles were talking about fundraising as though the voters automatically vote for whoever raises the most money. This doesn't make much sense to me. If a reasonable campaign can be run for $10 million, could $100 million really earn more votes? I always thought the candidates had plenty of forums to air their platforms that are of little to no cost to the candidate - websites, televised debates, media interviews, etc. What could an extra $100 million possibly buy that would make world media declare that this person is obviously going to win BECAUSE he has an extra $100 million? Bribes?

I have no problem with putting a clause in the same-sex marriage legislation that will allow religious institutions not to perform same-sex marriages if they don't want to. But it would be so much classier not to mention the genders or sexual orientations of the happy couple when legislating this. Instead of specifying that this is intended specifically for the case of same-sex marriage, they should put a more broadly-worded clause that a religious institution does not have to marry a couple if they feel that performing this particular marriage would not conform to the moral or community standards of their religion. Yes, this does allow the religious institutions to not perform marriage for a myriad of other reasons, but there are always civil marriages, and why would you want to be married by a religious institution that doesn't support your marriage anyway?