Reasons why I am not opposed to the Minto towers:

1. I like living in this neighbourhood, and I want to buy a condo when I have the money. Therefore more condos in this neighbourhood = good thing.
2. This is a transit hub. It is good urban planning to focus development around transit hubs.
3. For me, what makes this neighbourhood a neighbourhood is the fact that it is highly developed and not just a collection of houses. I feel safe on the streets because there are always people walking around, at all hours of the day and night. More residents will only make it better.

People always give Paul Martin credit for getting rid of the federal deficit, but I wonder how much of that he actually did?

It is possible that Mr. Martin sat up all night with a calculator and did it all himself, but it's also possible that he just walked into a room full of accountants and said "Okay people, we need to get rid of this deficit", and then read the results in the House. It's possible that he came up with this "let's reduce the deficit!" idea all by himself, but it's also possible that he was simply told that that's his job for the moment.

Since they're always having "cabinet shuffles", I find it hard to believe that all cabinet ministers are necessarily specialists in the areas in which they are ministers. There can't be THAT many rennaissance men and women! And yet the ministers always seem to get all the credit.

There's this whole thing in the Globe and Mail, starting in Facts & Arguments and spilling over into Letters to the Editor, where women are angsting (or their husbands are angsting on their behalf) about the first time they were ever called Ma'am.

The first time I was ever called Ma'am was when I was 15. Get over yourselves!

Seriously though, I like Ma'am better than Miss. Miss gets carded, and gets her perfectly legal ID over-scrutinized because her hairstyle and makeup have changed slightly since she turned 16. Miss gets followed around by store employees who think she's going to steal something, and then they swoop in for the kill when she has the audacity to pick out a greeting card and carry it with her as she purchases some wrapping paper instead of promptly taking it to the cash register, because Miss OBVIOUSLY wouldn't have enough money for anything more than a simple greeting card. Miss is denied apartments unless her parents sign for her, because the fact that Miss is currently a student means she's OBVIOUSLY going to blow all her money and not make rent. Being Miss is not fun.

Ma'am, on the other hand, is treated with basic adult respect. No one questions her right to browse as she pleases, conduct business transactions, and if someone does card her the pretense is that they are terribly sorry, but Ma'am surely understands that there these bothersome card under 30 laws and we do have to go through certain motions and yes this all looks in order.

Perhaps the true sign of age is not being called Ma'am, but rather forgetting how unpleasant it is to be Miss.

I just read this article that said that pulling up your socks, fixing your hair, and touching your neck and arms are all signs of flirting.

Those are also all my nervous tics! GAH! After working curing my more unpleasant nervous tics like squeezing my zits and fiddling with my necklace (broke a LOT of necklaces), I though I was left with more respectable nervous tics, but it turns out I'm left with signs of flirting!

Attention world: I AM NOT flirting with you! At all! Ever!

From the Cool Ideas that would be Impossible to Implement file:

Let's have no sex industry in Toronto. We won't outlaw it, we'll just be too cool for it and stop using the existing sex industry until there's no demand. Then when tourists come looking for the sex industry, our collective pretense is that WE don't need a sex industry because WE can get laid whenever we want without paying for it. "So what do I do now?" says the tourist, aghast and agog. We briefly look at them like they're stupid, and then, as though it's the most obvious thing in the world, say "Go seduce someone, of course!" We'll become internationally known as the city that's Too Cool for Stripclubs.

Attention world: If you ever need to send a document to a translator, make sure it's written in complete sentences. If it isn't written in complete sentences, make the person who wrote it originally rewrite it in complete sentences.

This has been a public service announcement.

I now have an LJ Nothing there yet though.

Nyquil made me sleep for seven hours, wake up to go pee, and then sleep for another five hours. Which almost completely cured my cold, but made me late for work. All that's left is a headache - I feel like my head is going to fall off! I'm pondering going to bed early, but the second half of that documentary on string theory is on tonight and I've been looking forward to it, and I don't have a VCR so I can't just tape it.

Adventures in drugs!

DayQuil is interesting. It blasts almost all the symptoms (although my right nostril persisted a bit) and leaves the part of my brain that I need for my work at about 90% of its normal function (which is more than I'd have with this cold uncontrolled) but it sends most of the rest of my brain floating off somewhere. The positive side is that the part of my brain that usually whines about being bored while I'm working was contentedly floating around in happyland, but the negative side is that the part of my brain that allows me to quickly identify what language a person is speaking to me in was also off in happyland. So while I was surprisingly productive for having such a brutal code, whenever someone talked to me I'd just stare at them stupidly.

I took Tylenol Cold&Flu Night last night because it usually gets me to sleep quickly. I think it did get me to sleep, but I'm pretty sure that I was lying in bed asleep dreaming that I was lying in bed awake, tossing and turning, unable to fall asleep. I think it was a dream because in th dream I decided to get out of bed and pay my phone bill, and IRL I haven't received my phone bill for the month yet and I would never pay a phone bill on the 3rd anyway. Then I dreamed that the camp from M*A*S*H was set up in the little park near my parents' house (it's basically a playground, smaller than a soccer field) and I was trying to sneak off with Radar (who was up to my armpit) to go make out somewhere, but we kept being interrupted by nurses with gift certificates.

This morning I noticed that the Tylenol I took last night had expired. Maybe that's why I had such funky dreams. But I got some nice new NyQuil to take tonight, and my plan is to take it at 7:30 so I'll get plenty of sleep, which hopefully means I'll end up taking it by 8:30.

Blerg, still sick. No infection I don't think, but one mother of a cold just out of nowhere. I think I've mastered drugging it into submission though, so I should be able to go to work tomorrow. Reminds me of high school. A perpetual cold for almost the entire year. Five days a week, getting through the week by staring at the weekends. Fantasizing about sleep. So far work hasn't been quite that bad, but I'll confirm or deny that once I've managed work with a cold.

It occured to me in the shower this morning that I want to do grad school for all the wrong reasons. It also occured to me that it would be more responsible put grad school off until I've managed to save up enough money for a down payment on a condo. Then it occured to me that maybe that's just an excuse. Now it occurs to me that maybe it would be better to logic this out when I'm in full control of my faculties.

Feeling better today. It's amazing what two nights of As Much Sleep As You Want will do! I know I have an ear/throat infection though, but it seems to be going away by itself (these things sometimes do if I tough them out). So I won't be accomplishing anything wonderful today, I'll just be staying home and taking care of me, but hopefully I'll get over this without having to go on antibiotics. Antibiotics really fuck me up.

Why I don't like living alone:

I'm home sick today. I really want to watch a movie. But I don't have any movies, so I'll have to go get one myself.

I'm also going to run out of juice soon, and I'll have to go get that myself too.

Okay, here's the plan: If they can't audit the outgoing government before the election, if they find non-transparent accounting in the post-election audit, the outgoing party has to pay a fine. The fine should be significant enough to be punitive and the amount of the fine should be geared towards the dollar amount of the accounting deception.

I have a Sylvania microwave. After seven months, it suddenly stopped heating one day. However, it was still under warranty, so Canadian Tire was willing to exchange it for a new one.

I know this is of no concern to anyone reading this, I'm just putting it in the public domain for people who happen to be googling to learn about the quality and performance of Sylvania microwaves.

WARNING: Gator is changing its name! Constant vigilance!

I was watching this really cool documentary on string theory. I didn't understand string theory when they taught it to us in OAC, but I understood what was going on in this doc and I haven't had any further physics training since (and that was five years ago) so they could explain things well. It turns out that I can believe in photons under string theory (I can't believe in them under quantum or general relativity), but I'm not sure if I can actually believe in string theory as it stands now. It's a lot more plausible to me with 11 dimensions than with 10 though. Ten is far too neat for a theory of everything.

Yeah, the article and the work it's reviewing are both stupid and over simplistic. But I can't help but wonder what they'd think about me. I'm 22 and childless. I don't ever want to have children. I don't want to advance too far in my career. I don't want to be in management at any point, never mind be an executive. I don't want to add more stress to my life to earn six figures when I can easily get by on less than half of that. I don't want to have to think about my work out side of 9-5 M-F. I feel no need to change the world myself, although I will spend time pressuring my elected representatives to do so. And when I die only those who knew me personally might remember me.

Analyse that!

I am so depressed. I so have SAD! I wanted to blog about a couple of articles I read, but I'm just too grumpy to go find them. I wanted to buy coffee and a flashlight, but I was feeling too antisocial to carry out the transactions. I need to write my grandmother a thank-you note, but I can't summon the appropriate enthusiasm for three lines of profuse thanks. I had my spaghetti, I had my Harry Potter fic, and the grumpiness hasn't gone away! It's only 6:30 but it feels so much later. All I want is for it to be light out when I leave work! I could really use some good phone time, but there's no one around to call right now.

Whenever I see a car commercial, it makes me wonder how bad a new car could possibly be. They all talk about how great they handle and stuff, but do new cars ever handle badly? I know that some last longer than others and some have better safety ratings than others, but is there any difference when they are brand new?