From My Friend Joanne

"but kristal met and married someone in a year. your whole life could be completely different in a year. i like that thought. but if you could first move to bc and then meet someone, so we could share a place for a year first, that would be super."

We Are Fragile Creatures

It's interesting to me to stop and take a look at the way people look at relationships and deal with relationships and start relationships and end relationships and keep muddling through hoping-oh-hoping so hard that somehow in the end things will get better and everything will be okay.

I'm not an expert and far from it, but I do find there much to be learned from the lives of others.

Recently Seen

Jodi:
Have you seen "Napoleon Dynamite" yet?

Michelle:
If I had a nickel for every time someone had asked me that, I’d be filthy rich.


I, Robot
Supersize Me
Butterfly Effect
Bridget Jones Diary 2
The Prince & Me
Wimbledon
The United States of Leland
Brokedown Palace
Perfect Score
The Perfect Murder

Funny Thing

Many copious apologies for:

a) The extreme lack of posting.

b) The extreme ugliness of this half-finished template.

Someday I shall have time for the endless pointless posts and the few good ones I once did. I think I would like to make more time for them. I miss it.

Now for a piece of information you can store away in your brain somewhere and pull back up when you're 92 at the old folks' home... there's a coffee cup in my office's kitchenette with the name "Larry" on it. This I find most humourous because... well, because no one name Larry works here.

Have a great weekend.

21

Happy (early) Birthday Carly!

Have a great weekend.

:)

Wish List




I really want this CD.

Here (and There)

Sorry for the lack of posting, and even more sorry-ness for the hideousness of the uncompleted colour change that will result with the posting of this entry. I was in the middle of a template re-do last Friday and have not yet been able to complete it. One day though… and hopefully soon, I’ll get it taken care of!

Things have been extremely busy for me at work this past week and a half, hopefully things will calm down later this week or early next. Today I’ve taken a couple of mini-breaks though because I’m starting to wear down and can’t just keep going going going. I was able to get a few emails written, which was a real accomplishment as I haven’t written anything of substance in a few weeks.

Good news, my car, a.k.a. Hot Rod, is doing okay… I had it towed to a transmission specialist from the regular mechanics that it was at over Christmas, and somewhere en-route whatever wasn’t working got joggled into place and it is working again. It’s gone 220km so far since then, so I’m hoping it keeps going for a lot longer. Unfortunately, the transmission mechanic was not able to figure out what was wrong with it either, so nothing has been fixed and whatever joggled back into place could joggle back out of place again. (side note: Apparently “joggle” is a real word. I thought I was inventing it but I wasn’t, however, I did invent a new definition. I think you know what I mean.)

Saturday I took Hot Rod for an oil change, so that was pretty exciting, it was my car’s first since I’ve owned it. I also spent $18 at the dollar store. Who spends $18 at a dollar store?!?!? I got some cool stuff though, it’s amazing what you can find there. But, even more amazing, is the weird stuff that people will buy.

Okay, I’ve gotta run. Have a great day.

Recent Searches

"Shag Carpet Rakes", I'm the #6 search result! I don't know if you can actually still buy shag carpet rakes or not. They're scary, however, they are good for scratching your back.

"wear to buy curling shoes in moose jaw", this is the #4 result, even with the bad grammar! I went curling in Moose Jaw once last year. In elementary school we used to always get a day off of school to go and curl for a day, it was great.

"Heather Day" Oregon, Mikao's World is #2. I have never had a Heather Day in Oregon, only in Saskatchewan. There are were a plethora of Heathers in my life.

Plain and simple, just Michelle, I'm #6 on Yahoo.

MIKAO perfume. I didn't know there was such a thing. But apparently I'm #2. If you find a bottle, let me know. I'd love some.

"How to knit mitts". I like how I'm the only result for this query, and the quote given says "I haven't got a clue how to knit mitts." This is now no longer true, I knitted mitts like crazy for Christmas presents all of December. If you want to know how, drop me an email and I'll tell you how to.

sleepover movie had this cellphones where did they buy them from. I haven't got a clue. I don't own a cellphone. I think cellphones are most often obnoxious.


nauseous and nerves. My solution is to just go ahead and barf. There's not much I can do about it.

So This is 2005

I have been so incredibly busy at work, it's nuts.

This is seriously all I have time to write.

See You Next Year

My car wouldn’t drive anywhere December 22nd... it's still in the process of getting checked out. Yesterday Hot Rod took a trip to the transmission specialist, and hopefully some time next week I should know whether or not it is indeed a transmission problem, and whether or not it’s too costly to fix. I’m really really really hoping it’s not a huge problem and is fixable, otherwise I shall be without a car for a good period of time until I can somehow save up to get another one. Sometimes life is rough.

Another year’s Christmas is over (yet, the Christmas season goes on… isn’t December 30th too late to be playing Christmas songs on the radio???) I didn’t go home this year, and for the first time, I wasn’t with my parents or any of my siblings Christmas Day. I spent my holidays with some relatives a couple of hours away from here, after many many hours on the bus. I was hoping to never have to take the bus ever again, but somehow these things end up biting you in the butt and you get stuck and have to do something you really really don’t want to.

I was to be in Chicago for New Year’s, but unfortunately with Hot Rod’s heart attack, I lost my ride to Toronto to meet friends for the drive down, and also any disposable income I may have had will now be going towards vehicular costs rather than pleasure trips, so alas, I am at work today instead of in the Windy City, and I’ll be here in Ontario for New Year’s Eve instead.

2004 has been an interesting year... full of many many good things, many changes, and many things I did not expect. It’s interesting to look back and see where life’s road has taken us.

Here’s to 2005. I’ll talk to you next year.

New Reads

Lysha, Legacy of Christ
Rob Pringle, Randomnicity
Rob Martinson II, Rob's Whirled
Jeannette, My Spiritual Quest
Abel, Finding the Center
Carle, The Life and Times of the Girl Next Door
Annie, Let's Get Talking
Becky, The Dementedness of Me

Good Thing!


I got this written on the back of an evelope with a card from my sister today.

Foods That Are Sometimes Absolutely Delicious and At Other Times Are Absolutely Revolting

1. Hot dogs
2. Peanut Butter and Jam
3. Jell-O
4. Kraft Dinner
5. Coleslaw
6. Pizza Pops
7. Chili
8. Mushroom Soup
9. Roast Beef
10. Mr. Noodles
11. Radishes
12. Rice
13. Mushrooms
14. Hamburgers
15. Bananas
16. Salmon
17. Meatballs
18. Stew
19. Sausages
20. Milk
21. Lobster
22. Canned little corn
23. Beans
24. Clam Chowder
25. Orange Juice

Coolest Dudette



Written by our friend Mike, my friend Nat sent me this picture from camp this past summer.

It makes me chuckle.

Homesteading




"Men like my father cannot die. They are with me still -- real in memory as they were in flesh, loving and beloved forever. How green was my valley then."
- Roddy McDowell, as Huw Morgan in "How Green Was My Valley," Twentieth Century Fox, 1941

My great-grandfather took this photograph. The back of it reads simply, “Longbout at the gate & two 4 yr old Mares in 1916.” It’s part of what I think is a beautiful series of photos he took when he and his wife were homesteading in a little non-descript Saskatchewan town. The photographs depict endless grass-less prairie, with my great-grandmother and their neighbours in dusty clothing, a few animals, sod and clapboard buildings, reflecting the harshness and disparity of settling an unyielding and barren land. Some of the photos remind me much of Dorothea Lange's Migrant Mother

I particularly love this photo in the series, not only because of the beauty of the horses, the faded and fuzzy spots of focus, the background that simply is Saskatchewan, and the sheer motion that is in the running chicken, but because of what it represents. From my Gramma I have learned of the love my great-grandfather had for his horses, they were always one thing that he was proud of. These horses would have been their most valuable possession.

My great-grandparents moved from Ontario to Saskatchewan to start a new life and create a place that could be called home. But from what I understand from my Gramma, they only stayed there a year. They returned to Ontario for a couple of years, and then later moved to Manitoba and started out once again. That time, they succeeded, and lived the majority of the rest of their lives there.

Unfortunately, my great-grandfather is a man I never got to meet, he died six months before I was born, at age eighty-eight. He was a man of courage and determination, love, and a gentle spirit. He was orphaned at a young age, lost his younger and only brother not too long after, and had to quit school after the third grade in order to work. When my grandfather died, he spent the next year teaching my Gramma to farm, in a time when women were never the breadwinners. When he died, my Gramma says she lost her best friend. She missed his daily phone conversations when he would call and say “So how are things in the country today?”

Web Publishing

It has been interesting, these past 2 years, blogging thoughts and observations and funny things and quotes and hopes and dreams and daily occurances and the like. What is blogging? What is a blog? What is it's purpose? What is okay to blog? What is not okay to blog?

My thoughts on these subjects have changed since I first started web-publishing, and they continue to change. My style has change. People I know and don't know have read what I've written. I've somehow gained an audience.

Some come to read daily, some come weekly, some stop by every once in awhile, some come once and never return.

Some surf in off comments I've left elsewhere, from links from other blogs, from articles on other websites, and many from search engines far and wide.

Sometimes I wonder if I should get rid of my archives. They're past thoughts after all, they were from the time. But sometimes that is exactly what I love about blogging, it's a glimpse into someone's life at a certain time. It's a memory, but unlike memories, isn't quite so fleeting.

A blog is like a journal. With that, it's a personal look into the persona of a specific person, and often, even the inner self. People change, their writing changes. Their writing, however, reflects who they were at that specific time in their life. As does their memory.

Today I got a request from someone from my past to remove their name from my blog. They were upset and stated that I did not have their permission to use their name in any form let alone on the internet.

Sometimes I wonder if I should start from scratch again. I always thought it was odd when people did that on their blogs. But if something hurts, it shouldn't be on the internet, especially on my site, because that is not what I want to do.

I'm sorry.

I Should Put This On My Resume

This blog is the #2 result on Google for "nice people in world."

(Just in case you were wondering, the aforementioned "nice people" are listed under "Sites to See" on my sidebar).

Icey

Welcome to a little Christmas season re-design. I love cranberry and green.

I am back at work this morning after 5 days (and no weekend off) at our national staff conference. We listened to speakers and generally froze or were too hot (no inbetween at such things). We stayed at a conference centre but it was really much like a hotel, minus the swimming pool. The meals were good, but it seemed often like all we did was eat. We had breakfast and lunch and supper and a snack before supper and a snack before bed. I don't think I need to eat again for awhile, I can live off the fat stores I have accumulated from a week away.

The roads are slick and icey and slippery and other words that describe hazardous driving, one of the camp vehicles met an unfortunate end on Saturday when it met a rockface. The driver and passenger were fine, the car however has gone on and we had a moment of silence to remember it. As for my little red hotrod, I'm hoping that it makes it through the winter. Actually, I'm hoping it makes it through a lot more than just the winter, but we'll take things one step at a time. Tonight's drive home for instance, our goal is to get there without slipping off the road!

Untitled

On the weekend I bought an antique dresser (or chest of drawers, or whatever you would call it in your dialect of English), for a really good price at a neat shop downtown. It’s super cool, but it was a silly thing to buy since I’m still sleeping on the floor. Really I should be saving money and sometime next year I can buy a bed. But, hey, at least my clothes now have a place to rest their heads at night, and I really have unpacked my suitcase from the summer. I’m doing a snowflake theme in my room, someday I’ll be done getting it all organized and I’ll take a picture and post it. What’s more Mikao than snowflakes? ;)

Friday night I went with my roommate Natasha to the local Santa Claus Parade. I’ve never heard of a Santa Claus Parade before that I can recall, other than maybe on tv, but around here every town has got one. I enjoyed the part where the people running alongside with the floats hand out candy to the children and the adults who are smart enough to stick out their hands. And this parade was hi-tech enough to hand out bags and then you could just hold out your bag and the candy-hander-outers would just drop candy in and more often than not would not look up to check the age of the bag holder. Ah, chuckle chuckle.

Sunday I spent the day crafting it up working on this year’s special edition Christmas card. They are turning out quite nicely if I do say so myself. Last year I made three different kinds, but this year I’m just making one kind and everyone is getting that kind. If I do not have your mailing address and you would like one, please email me at dialog (at) briercrest.com.

Yesterday I finished knitting my first-ever mitten. How great is that? I’ve always wanted to know how to knit mittens and now I finally can! Horrah. It’s much faster to knit up a pair of mitts than it is to knit a scarf, so this will come in very handy for gifts, I would think that I could probably finish a pair in two evenings of watching a couple of hours of television and knitting at the same time.

Tomorrow I’ll be leaving for a five-day national conference with the parent organization of the camp I work for, should be interesting. It will be nice to meet new people, but I wish it didn’t cut into the weekend. Later in the year I’ll get those days back, but by Monday or Tuesday next week I’ll be exhausted.

Horizontal World

Today I just confirmed my Christmas vacation days... how great is that? I am just at this moment planning to visit some relatives at Christmas who live a couple of hours from here as it's too expensive for me to travel the 3577 km (or 2222 miles for those who like to think in miles!) home to my parents. But it should be nice to see my relatives, I haven't been able to visit them for two and a half years.

Next week we at work are all heading out for a national five-day conference on Wednesday, one that is put on every three years by the parent organization of our camp and everyone from across Canada comes. Well, everyone who works full-time for the organization. It's all expenses paid too... which of course would be REALLY GREAT if we were going SOMEWHERE COOL like Vancouver or Banff or, gosh, even Winnipeg... but nope. We only have to travel an hour to get there.

Many have expressed the fact that they do not especially want to go. I, on the other hand, happen to like conferences, they're usually pretty fun I find. And, something I am particularly excited about is the fact that I get to sleep on a real bed. I've been sleeping on a hard-as-a-rock vinyl-covered cot-sized mattress borrowed from camp as I cannot afford a bed. Sleeping on a real bed will be living in the lap of luxury. I can't wait!

:)