I haven't read her CV so I can't tell you this authoritatively, but it does occur to me that leader of the Conservative party might be the first job that Belinda Stronach has ever had to go through an application process for.

I left work at the usual time today, and when I came out of the subway it was still what you could rightfully call light out! YAY!!!!!!!

Also, because this is the first day of the year of the monkey, we should get to call it Monkey Day. Happy Monkey Day everyone!

The problem with the Vandendool is that Harmony contains many rules, but this book doesn't prioritize them. So I know you're supposed to raise the leading note to the tonic, I know you're supposed to move the soprano voice in the opposite direction of the bass voice, and I know you're supposed to move each note to the nearest neighbour. But in some examples you can't do all three. So which is most important? Perhaps this is why they don't recommend doing the Conservatory exams without a teacher.

I had a bizarre dream. I can't remember much of it, and what I can remember is just too bizarre to explain, but this is normal for my dreams. The weird part was that in the dream we kept doing retakes of various scenes, as though we were shooting a movie. And I really can't tell if it was a lucid dream and I was making us do retakes because I thought I could do better, or if there was a director off somewhere making us do retakes.

Good day today. Did yoga this morning and I was more flexible than usual (which still doesn't meet the basic human standard of "flexible", but it was a bit better than normal). Lots of good stretching and my joints kept cracking and popping while I was stretching, which I'm sure sounds gross but feels SO GOOD!

Actually got out of the house at 8:35 instead of my usual 8:45, so I was actually on time for work. I would have been early if I hadn't had to wait seven minutes for a subway. Seven minutes! During morning rush hour! (For those who don't understand what I'm bitching about, trains are supposed to be every 1-2 minutes during rush hour, so it isn't a giant inconvenience but it is a 300% delay which makes for very crowded trains).

Work went by quickly and was very interesting, although it wasn't anything I can discuss here. I had a yummy lunch and found out that feta oregano dressing does in fact go with tzatziki. (Anyone know of any other dressings or sauces that go with tzatziki) Did some errands after work (Shopper's, dollar store, LCBO - didn't get carded YAY!) and still got home by 6.

Had a PMS sandwich for dinner and now I'm full, which is good. Did some Harmony while eating dinner. Yes, I've finally started studying Harmony instead of just talking about it. Unfortunately the RCM Theory Syllabus didn't specify exactly which books go with which levels, so I went to the RCM store and looked in the Harmony section. I couldn't tell which ones were for Intro, so I got the Vandendool "Basics of Harmony - a comprehensive introduction to harmony" because I'd heard of Vandendool and it had the words "basics" and "introduction" in the title. Turns out I should have read the preface more closely - it's for Grade 3. But that doesn't matter, various levels tend to reprise each other a bit and I've had no problem doing this so far with only a Grade 2 Rudiments background. I really enjoy Harmony - it uses the opposite part of my brain of what my job does, and it's like a puzzle: Make the notes fit together and still follow all these rules. When I get to Counterpoint (which should take a couple of years) maybe I'll buy a keyboard - just a small one, four octaves or so - so I can enjoy the fruits of my labour. Counterpoint is sexy! Don't know how my neighbours will feel about it though.

So it was a very nice productive day. Now I'm going to curl up with a book and a cup of tea and relaxinate.

Fun fact: When I was a small child, I knew there was a TV show called Golden Girls, but I had never seen it and didn't know what it was about. So in my head, a Golden Girl had to be a female action hero, like Wonder Woman or She-Ra. Then when I finally saw Golden Girls, I was sitting there wondering when it was going to get interesting.

I had some leftover shampagne, so I bought orange juice so I could make mimosas.

Then I had some leftover orange juice, so I bought peach schnapps so I could make fuzzy navels.

Then I had some leftover peach schnapps, so today I bought orange vodka so I could make fruity fuzzy martinis.

Anyone have ideas for good drinks involving orange vodka and not too many other ingredients?

What's up with the idea that if you don't worship a deity, then by default you either worship science or money/materialism? Or the broader concept that if a person isn't spiritual they must be materialistic? Are the concepts of:...

a) not worshipping anything at all,
b) being neither spiritual nor materialistic, or
c) being both spiritual and materialistic,

...really so difficult to wrap a brain around?

The PMS sandwich:

2 slices of bread
An appropriate amount of nice salty cheese
A sliced hard-boiled egg
Twice the appropriate amount of pickles
Mustard to taste

Instructions: Toast bread, put ingredients together in the normal sandwich way

What's up with the people who object to photo radar on the grounds that "They didn't mention it in their campaign platform"?

No, this issue was not mentioned in their campaign platform one way or the other. It wasn't brought up at all by any of the parties, probably because it wasn't in the public mind then. If it had been in the public mind at the time, voters and media would have asked candidates about it.

So why does this bother people so much? Don't they realize that you can't fit every issue in the world into a campaign platform? What do they expect the government to do when an issue comes up that wasn't an issue at the time of the campaign? Just ignore it until the next election, when they can put it in a campaign platform?

On TV there's a protest about the proposed French ban on headscarves. I didn't catch where the protest is, but it's very cold there, and everyone is all bundled up against the cold. Because they're all bundled up, it is very difficult to tell whether the protesters are wearing headscarves or not.

My personal learning plan:

1. Self-study music theory, starting with Introductory Harmony, until September. Continue after Sept. if desired
2. If I find a Polish class by Sept., study Polish. If not, start intermediate Spanish at U of T school of continuous learning.
3. After achieving enough fluency to make me happy in Polish or Spanish as the case may be, time to consider grad school again.

According to today's Social Studies: (third item down)

Recently, a 33-year-old man in Leeds, England, had heart-bypass surgery, during which part of a large leg vein had to be removed to replace a blocked artery in his chest. Before the operation, reports The Independent on Sunday, he had a tattoo on his leg which read "I love women." After his leg incision was sewed up, the tattoo read "I love men."

Picture a jar full of milky liquid.

Now picture a glass of milk.

Except of a slight colour similarity, your milky liquid doesn't like a thing like milk, does it?

You know how you can't overfeed goldfish because they'll eat all available food and then explode and die? However do they survive in the wild?

Tales from the bathroom:

There are two stalls in our bathroom at worked: one standard and one handicapped. The toilet in the standard stall works normally. The toilet in the handicapped stall flushes funny. When you flush, the water rises perilously close to the brim before going down normally. Now I always use the standard stall unless it's occupied, both out of politeness and because the toilet flushes better. But it seems whenever I have to use the handicapped stall, the, um, errand for which I'm using the toilet ends up being messier and more unpleasant to look at. So when I flush and it starts rising perilously close to the top, the contents of this toilet are hardly ever clear water and a single piece of toilet paper, it's always a colourful, graphic and odourous assortment of various bodily by-products. So as the water level rises, I always have images of this mess spilling over onto the floor and I'm tempted to flee without washing my hand in order to preserve my shoes, if not my dignity. Of course it never overflows, but it's enough to make one panic slightly every time.

Tales from the subway:

When I'm sitting in a double or triple seat and someone comes along and sits in the seat next to me, I find I tend to shift my body so I'm more centred within my own personal space and impinging on the personal space of those around me as little as possible. However, I've noticed that even when I'm already optimally centred in my own seat, I still tend to lift myself slightly out of the seat and then settle back in my original position, so as to give the impression that I'm making sure I'm out of their way as much as possible. Anyone else do this?

I was a very good girl today. I did all the items on my neglected to-do list from yesterday, except buy drinking glasses because the dollar store had no normal (or oversized) wineglasses and no plain glass tumblers. Fairweather has no work-appropriate pants with pockets, but I did find a pair for $30 at another store. They gap a tiny bit in the back, but the gappy part leans towards my body instead of sticking out in the air, so they're better than the pants I'm wearing right now (that's what I get for shopping at the Gap!). I'm not saying where I got them because I might want a second pair if I decide I don't hate them too much and they don't have much in my size.

So I just realized why only Fran could answer my psych question (unless someone else has answered in the interim) and why I could hardly find anything on the internet: the disorder in question was from DSM-III, which they stopped using in 1994! But I found this very interesting website which describes DSM-IV in lay terms, with enough caveats to keep me from diagnosing myself with absolutely everything!

If I were a tragic hero, my fatal flaw would be that I hate taking out my recycling. I try to recycle like a good girl, but I have to take it downstairs and outside and throw it in these big dumpsters. And it's cold and windy and I'm just getting over strep and my winter coat is too nice to be wearing when hanging around dumpsters. So my recycle box (which is really the box my microwave came in) is full with a week's worth of newspapers piled over the top of the box. I'm probably going to end up throwing a week's worth of papers in the garbage just to get rid of them. If I had a fireplace I'd make a fire and be done with it. (Aside: in my dream home, there would be a fireplace in the bathroom. Of course, in my dream home, the fireplace would be gas or something so it would turn on with the push of a button, and I wouldn't be able to burn newspapers in it.)

I just looked out the window and it looks foggy. Can it get foggy in the winter? Maybe it's a fine light snow, but I can't see any flacons de neige even with my glasses on. Very odd.

So my to-do list today:

1. Take out recycling and vacuum.
2. Do laundry.
3. Mend 2 shirts.
4. Get started on Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix to conclude my straight-through read of all the Harry Potters that I began when I first came down with strep, so that when my library books come in I can read those.

Things that I put on today's to-do list yesterday, that I've since mentally crossed off because I'm simply not going to get there:

1. Go to the bank and cash my GST cheque.
2. Go to Fairweather's and try on every single pair of black pants with pockets in the store.
3. Go to the dollar store to replace the drinking glasses I keep breaking by piling too much stuff in my dish drainer.
4. Go groceries.

I'm going to try to push those things over to tomorrow, although since I'm still aiming for an 8 pm weekday bedtime for the next few days to make sure I don't relapse into sickness, I don't know how well that's going to work.

But really I don't want to do any of this stuff. I just want to sit here in my bathrobe playing computer games until it gets dark and then change back into my jammies.

Perhaps my fatal flaw should be sloth...

I ordered every book on Salon's Best Books of 2003 list from the library. Going to forceably force myself to diversify my reading. I'm far too comfy re-reading Harry Potter and other books that I know I like.

And because it's midnight and I promised myself I'd go to bed early this weekend, goodnight.

Ponderance of the moment: are there gay male gynaecologists?