Either my current mental age is 9 years old, or my mental age has been 22 ever since I was 9 years old. Since the age of 9 I have developed various skills, ranging from effectively communicating complex technical concepts to clothing and grooming a female body that fits no template, I have not grown mentally or emotionally in any way whatsoever. Either I was very precocious, or it's surprising I can get on in the adult world. Or maybe both

Why I love living alone: right now my bathtub is full of various items of clothing hanging up to dry. And no one is going to complain about them!

I have become One of Those People Who Don't Vote. In the upcoming municipal election, I will not be voting for a city councillor to represent my ward.

Why? Well, in my ward, there are two candidates for city councillor: the incumbent and a challenger. The incumbent has a website on which he sets out his platform. None of his platform issues are of any particular concern to me, and he has stated no position on issues that I care about. I honestly don't care either way whether the actions in his platform get done or not. It doesn't affect my life at all. I have only been living in this ward for six months, so I have yet to see the results of the incumbent's work.

The challenger does not have a website. She is ungooglable. I have not yet received any literature from her campaign, so she is a completely unknown quantity.

I obviously can't vote for the challenger because I know nothing about her, and the fact that the incumbent is the incumbent and has a website is not enough to make him earn my vote. The incumbent has done nothing to make me actively vote against him. and the challenger is so unlikely to win that I have no reason to go to the effort to find out if I should be voting against her.

Therefore, I am leaving the decision up to the rest of my ward. If my ward has reason to hate the incumbent, the challenger will win. If they have no problems with the incumbent's work, he will win. Those who have been here longer than I can decide.

And you know what? Even though I'm not voting for a city councillor, I still might complain about the work of whomever wins! I don't know the challenger's platform, and none of the issues in the incumbent's platform affect me. After the election when an issue that does affect me comes up, I will promptly contact my councillor and let them know what I think. If they act contrary to what I think, I will complain.

If anyone out there thinks that I still don't have the right to complain because I'm not voting, I would really like to know what you'd do in my position.

PS: I am voting for mayor, I do have opinions on the mayoral candidates.

I've been thinking about financial planning lately (what an exciting person I am!) and it occurs to me that the current financial planning industry might not be prepared for my future situation.

Taking into consideration my retirement date as per my pension plan and the longetivity of my ancestors, it is not unreasonable to assume that my retirement will be 50 years long. I have a pension that, initially, will be able to provide quite a comfortable annual income, but this is not adjusted for inflation. If inflation over the next 50 years works out like inflation over the last 50 years (a broad assumption, but I don't know how to predict economic trends), on the day I die my pension will be providing me with the equivalent of $5,000 per year. Of course, I need to save up some money myself, and over 30 years of work it should be easy to save up a nest egg which, if prudently invested, will be able to return enough interest on which to live in a year, but again I doubt I can save up enough to stand up to 50 years of inflation. I won't be getting any inheritance because my parents will have a similarly long retirement so I must assume they will spend all their money, and even if I do end up with an inheritance I will be retired for at least 20 years before that comes to pass. This also means that I might be caring for elderly parents in my retirement. I realize that this is what OAS is for, to keep older people from sinking into poverty like this, but we can't assume that all our social safety nets will be able to survive the baby boomers.

I certainly hope the financial planner people figure out a workaround sometime within the next 30 years!

This is a survey:

Suppose you decide to go sit down in the stall of a public bathroom for reasons other than to use the facilities (ie. to cry, hide, freak out, squeeze your zits, pick your nose, read secret documents, sleep, or otherwise decompress). Do you take down your pants before sitting on the toilet?

Just found a silverfish. I was walking towards the bedroom (for reasons which I now forget) without my glasses on, when I looked at the wall and saw a shadow. "Strange", I thought to myself, "There isn't usually a shadow there." Then the shadow started walking along the wall. I screamed, and by the way it moved I could tell that it heard me. I always find it weird that they can hear. Then I found my glasses and was relieved to see that it was only a silverfish. I don't like them, but they don't freak me out nearly as much as some other unspeakable things. Now my apartment smells of raid, which is gross. And because they're attracted to humidity, I'm now hesitant do various laundry stuff in the bathroom, which I would have to do to prepare the clothes I was planning to wear to work tomorrow. Luckily tomorrow is Friday and I can wear jeans. Well, technically I can wear jeans any time because officially there is no dress code, but the building we're in has an unspoken dress code, and anyway if I wear jeans I'm more likely to be mistaken for a student and I hate when that happens.

Time to vacuum up the corpse! SENTENCE!

So my mommy came here and exchanged my microwave for me and now I have a functional microwave. And she brought me the scarf that my grandmother made for me and it's so perfect! It's big and warm and perfect! The style is inspired by Harry Potter, but it's red, black, and charcoal to match my winter clothes and no one else in the world has a scarf exactly like it! I'm so happy! I'll post a pic if I can convince my barbie digital camera to do it justice.

I'm so glad tomorrow's Friday though. I spent 2.5 days so far this week doing urgent work and that is so mentally exhausting. Blah. Time for a nice cup of tea, or perhaps hot chocolate now that I have a micro

For some reason I can't sleep, but for some reason I'm not bothered by this. Even though intellectually I know how gross I'm going to feel tomorrow, I just don't care, I'm contentedly awake.

This might be why the Canadian dollar is doing so well lately. This is also why I don't trust any politicians who say that they can have any effect upon the economy.

My microwave doesn't work. I think the universe hates me :(

Much better day today! Mi cielito brought me wine and pizza so we had a yummy dinner, and tomorrow he's going to buy a small stash of wine for me to tide me over until I get this ID thing sorted out. YAY!

I'm pondering just getting a driver's licence, but I don't have my little book and I can't remember how many of the questions on the test involve numbers. I certainly know the rules of the road, but I don't necessarily remember how many metres away from a fire hydrant you have to park.

Also, today I saw a dog that was walking itself! It was wearing a leash and carrying the leash in its mouth! So cute!

I go to the LCBO to pick up some wine, and they card me. So I show my health card as usual, and they say they can't take it. Apparently they aren't supposed to be able to see me health card number. Never mind that I'm fully aware of the implications of someone seeing my health card number and have deemed it an acceptable risk, they can't accept that. So not only did they not sell me my wine - that would have been okay - but they give me an application for the LCBO id and then ESCORT ME OUT OF THE STORE! Like a fucking criminal! I'm 22 years old - I know that's young enough to get carded, but it is old enough to by some wine and they don't have to treat me like a fucking criminal for trying to conduct a perfectly normal legal business transaction just because they don't like my ID!

And to make matters worse, for an LCBO ID you need a passport photo and a fucking certified cheque or money order and a fucking GUARANTOR, like for a passport or a lost birth certificate! I don't have any guarantors in Toronto because I've only lived here as a student and I've always gone to clinics and stuff so I don't have a doctor. I'd have to go to my parents' and find someone there who could be a guarantor and I have no idea where to get a passport photo from and I'd need to take at a day off work to get all this together - it's just as much trouble as getting a passport or as the time my wallet was stolen and I had to replace EVERYTHING!

And now I need a drink even more!

Just heard on the radio that in France there's a tobacconists strike. That doesn't sound like a good idea from the tobacconists perspective. After a few days of cigarettes being unavailable, everyone's addictions will be broken and no one will need cigarettes any more.

It sounds strange, but living here makes me feel more in touch with the past. Maybe it's the lack of cars in my life. There are cars everywhere of course, but I get around by walking and taking trains. Maybe it's because I actually cook on a daily basis. Maybe it's because I'm more in tune with the weather, being able to see every cold or warm front come in and feel the winds batter the windows of 14th storey west-facing apartment. Maybe it's because I do a lot of shopping from small local merchants who are getting to recognize my face and buying habits, creating a small-town feeling in two blocks of the longest street in the world. Strange to be having this feeling as I spend my days with the internet at my fingertips, but there you go.

Now, for your amusement, my weekday morning routine in nouns only:

Alarm, pill, vitamin, toilet, toothbrush, water, aerobics, yoga, water, shower, razor, nailpolish, tweezers, toner, zit cream, moisturizer, coffee, newspaper, fruit, bagel, egg, news, makeup, hairbrush, toilet, toothbrush, clothes, thermostat, water bottle, purse, boots, scarf, jacket, mittens, keys, elevator, sidewalk, subway.

This is an experiment:

I want an LJ code

Now that I've posted that, let's see how long it takes before someone gives me an LJ code

why why why why why why why why why why why WHY WHY WHY????????

Unspeakable. Simply unspeakable. The fact that these people exist make me want to never leave the house again. I know they're half a world away, but they EXIST! I pause, move empty glass bottles and sprayers full of bleaches or pesticides into strategic locations around the apartment. Someone breaks in, they're getting chemically blinded and shards of glass lodged in their face.

I think what scares me the most is that they are motivated by anger and hatred and somehow can get an erection in this situation.

So the other day I was sitting on the subway on the way home, daydreaming and enjoying a bottle of Pepsi Twist, when this random guy sitting near me asks me "Do you have a sister?"

For a moment I don't realize he's talking to me. You see, I do have a sister, but she and I look absolutely nothing alike, so it would be weird for a stranger to be asking me about my sister.

So I suddenly realize he might be talking to me. I look over and see this 40-something guy with a mullet. "Did you just ask me if I have a sister?" I asked him, terribly confused. "Yeah," he said, "It's not often you see a woman drinking regular pop instead of diet." I was too flummoxed to do my usual cold deadly cut, so I babbled something about how my sister doesn't drink pop and got off at the next station.

Last night I had a dream where I was vomiting up copious quantities of animal fat. Then this morning I went to the bathroom and it was obvious that I had accidently eaten something with meat in it. That's the last time I get "vegetarian" soup from that place!

A while ago I had a theory that words like Al-Qaeda and Iqaluit are spelled with Q and no U to make the words look more foreign. Perhaps, I hypothesized, this was a subtle racism on the part of the transliteraters.

Today I was reading Terminology Update, and it turns out that many Canadian Aboriginal peoples chose to spell their names and words in a more exotic way. Most of us know that MicMac is now spelled Mi'kmaq (and the pronunciation has changed, but I can't explain it here). Now the Nanaimo have changed their name to Xne Nal Mewx, and there are at least three more similarly exotic changes that have recently taken place but I didn't write them down. Interesting