Today is pretty decent. Learned about government workings and how to handle secret documents. Mmmm...secret documents...

After we let out for the day I went down to the water and read for a couple of hours. Made decent progress reading, and saw boats and ducks and red-winged blackbirds and some beautiful doggies and watched a seagull try to eat a giant piece of green pepper. No bunnies today though :(

Ate some leftover Four Seasons pizza (eggplant, asparagus, mozzarella, feta, onion, red pepper, garlic, no sauce. Nummy!), now I'm enjoying wine and Monty Python, and then I have some kind of chocolate cake or brownie to enjoy later. If I get tired within the next two hours, it will be a perfectly satisfactory day.

I also heard that it takes people 6 months to get used to a new full-time schedule. That's quite a relief for me - I've never been able to adjust to full-time before, but that's because I've never been on this kind of schedule for more then 4 months. So I won't be wandering around in a daze for the rest of my life.

I'm nervous about tomorrow, but I can't write why here.

I just noticed that the ads at the top of my blog seem to be co-ordinating with the content of my blog. I never noticed this before because I have Webwasher at home, but it's excellent work. Good work Google! (At least I think they're Google-served ads). The next paragraph is just a random attempt to see if I can influence the ads.

Enlarge your penis! Penis penis penis! How can I enlarge my penis? I wish my penis were bigger! Penis penis penis!

I went for a walk by the water today. I was walking around this isolated little path, all alone, and I saw this little bunny hopping along. It was tiny and brown with perky ears and a fluffy white tail. I haven't seen a wild bunny in years, so I got all excited and said "Oooh, hello bunny!" I sat down to watch the bunny hop around a bit, all happy like a little kid, and then when it hopped away under a bush I said "Bye bye bunny!" Then I stood up and saw there was a guy suntanning nearby looking at me like I'm psycho. (I saw like 4 more bunnies in that area too! I'm going back there to sit in the sun and read and watch bunnies!)

I watched LOTR yesterday and today, and it's one of those movies that you can just look at, regardless of plot. Of course, it's a decent epic too. I don't think any of the actors involved are sexy, but it's surprising how many of the characters are sexy. Aragorn is sexy, even though he has facial hair and I don't like facial hair. Frodo is sexy even though he has disgusting feet. Legolas is sexy, even though he's blond and I don't find blonds attractive. I didn't find any of the characters in the book sexy, I don't find the actors sexy, but somehow in the production of this movie they got a group of very sexy characters together. Not late-night fantasy sexy, but the kind of sexy you just look at and go "Mmmmmm"

Now I've exceeded my monthly quota of the word sexy and lost the respect of my readership.

Damn I'm hungry! I thought i had all kinds of food this morning, but now it feels like I have nothing. I guess I'll have to sacrifice a microdinner (I found them! They did have them at the depanneur, but they were at the bottom of one of those freezers that opens from the top, next to the ice cream). I bought quite a bit of food, but I go through it fast because it's not worth it to buy staple foods. For example, I'm currently craving pickles, but it wouldn't be worth it to buy a whole jar since i'm leaving on Friday.
I'd order a pizza, but I don't feel like waiting.

So it's instant micro food now. Tomorrow I go to the depanneur and buy eggs and a small quantity of bread, perhaps hamburger buns. I think I'll splurge on something like peanut butter even though I'll never use it up, and perhaps on a pizza tomorrow night to eat in front of the Simpsons with some wine. (Wine is more expensive here, and the selection is completely different!)

I found a good lunch place where you can get practically anything, so I'll be taking advantage of my comp and indulging in salad bar + something else for lunch every day. Then Subway for an after-work snack and cook or reheat something for dinner. I'm paying for everything in cash here (I usually debit grocery purchases) so it does hurt a bit to see my wallet empty so quickly, but I have to remind myself that I'm just spending my comp. Hopefully it will hurt less when I get my first paycheque.

I'm surprised how shabby this neighbourhood is. It's all small, crumbly, older houses, and any stores and such are in houses, not in their own buildings. When you get near the big shiny government buildings, there are food courts full of every type of fast food, small chain clothing stores selling generic business-casual clothes, and a street life full of tiny bistros and cafes, but this looks like it's all for the government employees. On the weekends, it's a ghost town near the government buildings, and even in the neighbourhood there aren't many people walking around. I'd thought that a neighbourhood so close to the government buildings would become somewhat yuppified, but that hasn't happened yet (I don't know how long the gov't buildings have been here). What I see here is poverty. Not student poverty. Not "young professionals living with a roommate in a tiny apartment in a gritty neighbourhood because of housing costs" poverty. Not gang war poverty. Not new immigrant poverty (surprisingly, most of the low-level service jobs here are not filled by immigrants, but rather by locals of all ages who look like they've been here a while). It looks like the poverty of the uneducated, although my French is not good enough to confirm this. It looks like a shabby neighbourhood of those who, despite probably being fluently bilingual, never completed enough education to work in the big shiny government buildings and live wherever the local yuppies live. It's the kind of poverty that has always scared me the most, because I've always interpreted my main marketable skill as bilingualism. So why can I earn a living doing what I do and these other people can't? I can't answer that question.

Of course, I might be wrong about the whole thing. This is just my interpretation of what I see, and I don't know enough about the local politics and culture to read this correctly.

I must confuse the cleaning people. When they come into my suite, they see that I've been reading the Globe and Mail, watching RDI, drinking wine, wearing office clothes, working on a computer. Then they see three stuffed animals on the bed.

I just saw this horrible commercial! A little boy pulls all the stuffing out of his stuffed aminals and sticks them on the ends of some golf clubs. It's supposed to be cute and funny, but it's horrible! Think of the poor stuffed aminals!

The closed Parliament for the summer today. Looks like same-sex marriage won't be delegalized before Sept 15. Although it looks like politics are on our side, it is all too marginal. So the mission for the summer is to convince our Liberal representatives that public opinion is in favour of same-sex marriage

To take a tangent from the current discussion:

1. Do you wear shoes in your own home?
2. Do you prefer visitors to your home to remove their shoes?
3. When you go to someone else's home, do you prefer to wear your shoes?

I don't wear shoes at home, because that's the way I was raised. However, since I now live alone, I might walk a few steps into the apartment wearing shoes since there are no parents around to yell at me for stepping off the front mat.

I prefer people to remove their shoes, unless they are men who aren't wearing socks because man feet are icky. But if they don't remove their shoes, I'll just shut up and vacuum when they leave.

When I'm in someone else's home, I tend to remove my shoes automatically because, again, that's how I was raised. But in the summer, when I like to wear a skirt and sandals, I prefer not to remove my shoes because I hate being barefoot in other people's houses. If it's a situation where I know I will have to remove my shoes in a house in the summer, rather than being able to innocently wander in while still wearing them, I angst about how I can include socks in my outfit, get into the house in my shoes, or avoid the event.

You?

4:30. They finally say "Merci, bon weekend." Grab my jacket and purse, and leave the room and head to the elevators as quickly as I can without looking like I'm bolting. Drop in at Subway for a sandwich to take home with me. Button my coat, open my umbrella, and walk into the pouring rain. Drop in at the depanneur. Find, in the very back corner, a few cans of soup, one of which is vegetarian. Back to hotel, go upstairs, collect Globe and Mail and La Presse. Drop purse, set umbrella to dry, take off boots, hang up wet coat. Hang up "Do not disturb" sign on the door, lock deadbolt and chain. Turn off alarm clock. Turn on TV to my normal RDI background noise. Fire up computer. Turn on phones. Put on soup. Take off makeup and apply zit cream and moisturizer while taking in all communication that has occured since last night. Soup simmers gently in background. I have TV, internet, DVDs, books, more than enough food for the evening and a depanneur across the street, and no obligations for the next 64 hours.

Bliss.

I guess an advantage to a full-time schedule is that it makes weekends so much more special.

I know I promised daily blogging, but I have nothing to say today.

Woke up, went in to training, learned about the documentation services available in the morning, had lunch with the girls (it's hard to get vegetarian pizza without olives around here. Also, it's strange to hear the people who say "au fur et au mesure" also say "le lunch"), worked on computer "training" in the afternoon, got some take-out fries, went home to the hotel, ate fries, talked to my mommy, intook various forms of media, talked to mi cielito, had a glass of wine, now I'm blogging this, then I'm going to do some homework type reading and go to sleep.

I guess I should clarify what my sociolinguistic research a few days back was all about. My mother says housecoat. I absorbed the word bathrobe from various media, so I assumed housecoat was a one-off. Then I heard it said by someone my age and got all confused, so I was thinking maybe it was a geographical thing. But further empirical research suggests that's it's a generational thing - the older generations call it a housecoat, and my generation either inherits the word housecoat from their parents or absorbs the (I assume American) word bathrobe from media (which, I think, at that age is children's books). And thanks to the people who suggested dressing gown, because I never realized that that's what a dressing gown is. I always associated it with some kind of old-fashioned garment, but now I can honestly say I own a dressing gown.

Why didn't our newly legal same-sex marriage make Fark? Why didn't it make Salon's news wire? I know it isn't finalized yet, but same-sex marriage is currently legal in North America, people!

My thoughts (seriously) upon hearing what Michael Lishner does for a living: "I'm surprised he came out as a crown attorney."

The question currently being debated: "Does consenting to sex mean consenting to parenthood?"

My opinion: Ideally, a het couple who doesn't want kids should fully communicate and adhere to their birth control standards. They should also decide in advance what they would do in case of pregnancy. If the couple does not agree ahead of time what to do in case of pregnancy, the male partner will have to accept that the woman has the veto. After all, any parental rights he can claim she also has, but it's also her body.

Some guy just said that we're getting to the point where we need a pre-sexual agreement. Why is that a bad thing?

I wish I had a camera, because there are two things I want to take a picture of. The first is my suite, so I can show everyone how cool it is, and keep a record of what the couch looks like (because I like the couch and I might want to acquire one like that). The second is the front page of today's Globe and Mail. Even though I don't agree with the phrasing, it's a beautiful thing.

Things I wonder from watching RDI:

- How come in provincial legislatures the MPPs can address each other directly, but in the House of Commons they have to address the Speaker?
- What's up with Giant Moving Day in Montreal? I understand the concept of everyone's leases expiring at once, but do they all get kicked out when their leases expire? I always thought you can just sign your lease for another year! Does this mean I have to find a new home in February?

People use the "au fur et au mesure" construction A LOT around here! I'm glad I learned it in 3rd year, or I would be totally lost! I always thought it was too formal to use verbally, but I hear it at least twice a day.

My face is not used to wearing makeup. I hardly used it during all of May, and now when I get home I can't wait to take my makeup off. So why do I wear it? Because I don't feel professional with a bare face. Perhaps I don't look completely professional in makeup (my "design" is still rather youngish, and probably gives the impression of lack of self-confidence), but I need to believe that my zits are covered and the darkness around my eyes is hidden, or I feel like everyone sees me as being the nervous insecure nine-year-old I feel like.

I must look like an anglophone. More often than not, when I approach the person behind the counter without saying a word, they greet me in English. I haven't been here long enough for people to recognize me as an anglo, I'm not wearing a nametag, and I'm going for "professional yet nondescript" with my clothing and accessories, none of which have visible brand names. I take these English greetings as a gift, (after taking care to make sure I don't have anything on me that identifies me with my professional affiliation), but so as not to come across as the Ugly Ontarian I affect a vaguely Eastern European accent. I do this in slow and precise English, to which I systematically add phonetic features of German, Russian and Polish. Worst case I'm taken as an Ugly Ontarian, which I am. Best case I'm taken as a random allophone who is using the official language of her choice (in which she seems to be fluent).

You have to cross the road differently in this neighbourhood. The cars don't seem to think they need to let pedestrians cross. They aren't disgustingly aggressive as in some European cities, but at a 4-way stop it doesn't seem to occur to them to let the pedestrians go first. In my neighbourhood, pedestrians seem to have right-of-way at intersections on back streets. But then my neighbourhood has enough of a street life on the main streets that people are always running across the street, and cars on the main streets expect pedestrians to dart out at any time. No one goes to the intersections to cross Yonge Street, they just wait a couple of minutes at the curb until there's a break in traffic, or until a few other people have accumulated near them at the curb, and then just run across. This behaviour translates to the back streets, where everyone assumes the cars at the stop signs will let the pedestrians across. But in the neighbourhood where I am now, one main street is a sort of cross-town expressway that doesn't have its own street life, another contains big government buildings that empty at 5 and leave the streets abandoned. The back streets contain random slightly shabby-looking houses (picture the type of house that you could find both in the north end of Hamilton and in a formerly propserous Newfoundland fishing village). There are buses, but this is the terminus of the routes, and they seem to serve only the government buildings. So even crossing tiny streets just block from bus routes, you still can't assume that the cars will expect they have to yield.

Mad props to the Ontario Court of Appeal! (I hope that's the proper name, I'm following the news in French and working without terminology banks).

And a reminder to our federal Liberal representatives that their actions on this issue over the next few days will win or lose my vote.

Here's a mission for Torontonians who find themselves travelling:

1. Acquire a SARS mask.
2. Put it in your purse.
3. When someone says "OMG, you're from Toronto, do you have SARS, LOLOLOLOL?", say "No, but I have a spare mask if you're worried." and offer them the mask.