I wish you two the best in your married life. May all your lawns be green and your rooves be unleaky. May the potholes be shallow and the sun shine on all your anniversaries. Love you two, and I hope The Day was amazing. *hugs*

is more than enough...

so says BT, though part of me wanted to scoff, what does he know. But then I got to thinking: it's kind of true - but the thing is, you have to feel loved for it to work.

Common complaint among couples: that they take each other for granted. We get lazy. Forget to show our partner that we really do care about them. Like getting sidetracked with potential, it's so easy to fall into a routine and literally forget that it's important to tell the other person you love them. To do little things that remind the other that you're thinking about them, like being somewhere when you say you're going to be. It could be as mundane as remembering to take the garbage out when you promised to do so. To put the coffee on before you leave for work, do fix dinner before the other comes home. Hell, maybe even take an interest in your partner's hobby or interests so that they know you care about what they're passionate about. (Like reading something they wrote and having an opinion about it rather than just saying 'that's great honey, I'll read it later' and going back to whatever you were doing and never actually going back to it. Great way to devalue something your partner cherishes. Ok, that wasn't bitter.... >.>)

*sigh*

Even if you love the other person to death, it means nothing if you don't show your appreciation for that person. Without this, you could work your ass off and still end up unhappy. So. It's not that simple, but simple nonetheless. So simple it's easy to forget how...

listening to: Holly McNarland - In the Air Tonight

You kick them open but
I know you..."

Funny how the edges blur.... Mr Gabriel was on to something I think. I like that line: 'you kick them open but I know you' like the person he's speaking about is the type to act before they think. Like: here's a great opportunity, let's go! before they find out that the person offering the opportunity's a con, the deal's too good to be true, or there's really no water in the pool. A go getter who has little in the way of foresight. Or *sigh* Someone who falls in love with the potential in another person rather than with who they are. So easy. So dangerous a trap to slip into.

gawd... can we say "introspective" today? Fuck. Been thinking about the nature of love. The myth of the 'friend with benefits' and the 'soulmate'. Well... perhaps I shouldn't dismiss them as myths outright, but the tendency is definately there. Esp the former for the simple fact that people get emotionally involved regardless of their intentions. Soulmate? I classify that one as a myth for the simple fact that I've never met a pair of soulmates. They must exist - kind of like the chimaera or the unicorn.

Anyway, am I alone in thinking that you can love someone even though they drive you crazy? I mustn't be. I see you all around me! Lol. I think it's possible to love someone and to not love their actions or habits. I think that you can love someone and not be in love with that person. Man... we should make up new freaking words for all this crap. We use the same word everyhing when it's not the same thing at all. I love my mother, I love J I love Nomes and Lindsie... you know the drill. I think I'm thinking about this because I was thinking about marriage (all you people getting married! and divorced!) and how people make it work.

Because the ones that do, really work at it and they must do it because they love their partner. What I want to know is how one decides. How do you know that this person is the one that's worth putting all this time and effort into? Is simply loving them enough when you can love a person and not their actions? I see people getting married now, and wonder if they have the iron will it takes to last the 40-odd years my great-aunt and uncle did and how on earth did they manage 40 years? And how much of that was simply because they accepted that marriage was forever whether they liked it or not? I wish you newlyweds all the best, I really do. I just hope that marriage isn't supposed to be the 'fix' for anything because it's really just a continuation of what you have now - that there really is work involved.

Too much of my hopeless romantic self fighting with my jaded cynic self here. I'd like to think that romance was something you could base a life on (which of course, it terribly facile) or more realistically, something that could be added to a work-forged relationship.

Anyway. I ramble. I don't expect this to make sense to you so I may edit later when I've slept on it.

Sweet dreams.

I was playing with my Greece pictures again today and I am amazed at how beautiful and sparse this country is. I want so badly to go back. This is Thera, on Santorini, which is really the rim of a volcano. The grapes they grow here are trained to grow in "baskets" to help protect the fruit from the wind. The volcanic soil is so rich that it produces the most amazing wine. Somewhere I have a picture of those baskets, because there were some next to our hotel. *sigh* Someday I will go back.

I feel like it was an exceptionally long day today. Probably all in my head because I was out of work at the usual time. I think I can attribute the feeling to the fact that I'm learning new paperwork this week and this am was devoted to working with that while I was fighting a migraine.

Fucking migraine. It was one of the foggy-eye ones, so that I could only see out of the right-most portion of my left eye, which made it pretty much useless. Squinting at numbers when I only have a half-assed idea what I'm doing does not make for a relaxing time. Oh well.

On the upside: we have groceries.

I've also written some poetry, which is lovely, considering that I've not done much in that ballpark for the last.... two months. TWO. FREAKING. MONTHS. My head's been too full of new crap from work and resentment that I've not had the urge to even string more than six words together. Which is probably to blame for my recent penchant for titling my blog entries with song lyrics.

Tuesday I went to a movie with Lady J from work. We saw An Inconvenient Truth. It made me angry, which I'm sure was it's intention. I recommend this documentary for the value of it's message, if nothing else. It's important to look after our planet after all.

I tried to talk to J about it afterwards, but he couldn't let me finish a sentence without having an opinion and we ended up having an argument about ice. When a single ice cube in a glass of water melts, the "tide line" doesn't rise. BUT if you have a whole bunch of ice cubes all piled up so there's one that's not floating in the water, when it melts, the water level will rise. I was trying to exlain how this applied to polar ice caps because I wanted to say something about water levels - don't recall my exact point right now, because we never got past the ice cube argument. Ice in the water, when it melts, doesn't raise sea level in a serious way. Ice that's sitting on a landmass will when it melts. No? I think so. J was trying to convince me that the water level'd rise no matter which ice was melting when that really wasn't the point at all. Such a stupid argument, and so freaking typical these days. Rrrr. Don't know why we can't have a normal conversation these days.

AAaaand good news: J has a new job! He starts Monday! Whoo!

listening to: Portishead - Hell is Around the Corner

Little E had an interesting customer today:

"200 US will give you back 218.37 canadian."
"That doesn't seem right, what was the rate again?"
"1.1056"
"Then I should get more back."
"There is a small flat fee of $2.75, which comes off the total."
"But that's still not right,"
"$200 US times 1.1056 equals $221.12 canadian, minus 2.75 equals 218.37" says Little E, going through the reciept and writing the equation out on a piece of paper. passing both to the customer who squints at it.
"That still doesn't seem right. Do you have a calculator?"
"Sure," Little E says and slides one out to the customer, who does the equation and, of course gets the same answer. She stares at the numbers for a moment and then looks at Little E with something like suspicion.
"Is this a Canadian calculator?"

I've been watching the news and reading articles in the paper and Maclean's since those are really all there are at work between the billion things I have to do, or am learning to do. My brain is full of crap: HezbollahIsraelPalistinianJerusalemJudaismIslamChristianityHolylandbombingsairstrike
canadiansoldierskilledandpeoplecantunderstandwhyhellotherearebombsgoingoffbecausepeople
cantagreeonbordersororororNatoUNUsaAfghanistanBushAlQaedaBinLadinwaronterroromg
healthcareeducationplanespecialappearancestatisticstheaveragechimpWankwankwank....

Funny how people have been fighting over that little bit of land for night over 2000 years now. Enough already! I propose a solution: Kick every last bloody one of them out. If everyone wants it, no one should have it. Build a wall around it and set up churches and temples and whatnot in different quarters, away from the sacred places, where everyone would be allowed to go for pilgrimages and prayer. As for who ran the place, you'd have to start with someone neutral, but eventually there could be built up a permanent religious community (either seperate or together), of the various religions who hold the place in high esteem, who would take over keeping of the place. No weapons would be allowed in and security would be tight, but until it could be accepted as neutral and truly sacred territory, then that would just have to be the way it was. [Ok, so lightly hare-brained and idealist - maybe even a little utopian, but hey, it would definately straighten a few things out over there, don't you think? If a people can regard the same place as sacred, why on earth shouldn't they treat it that way?]

As for Bush and his shenanigans.... put it this way, I think the USA's next president should be a grandmother - one of those matriarchal types who brooks no arguments from her brood. (I can picture her, broad hips and a face full of lines from laughter and hard times - a shrewd eye and a no-nonsense attitude. Give her the podium and a rolling pin to shake at people and the States'd be set.) Stick her in charge for a few years and tell me she won't have everything sorted out. Bush has been concentrating so hard on his 'war on terror' that he's neglected his home front. Badly. He should butt out of Afghanistan and whereever else he's got his nose and take care of things at home. The US may be a "superpower" but that doesn't give Bush the right to dick around like he has been.

Seriously, can't people just take a step back and realise how stupid all this crap is? There are more important things to look after: our kids for one. How about our future as a race? What are a few bombs tossed about over a stupid border going to do? Will our decendants care when there's not enough fertile land to feed us all? I don't think so.

So put the nukes and other toys away and play nice.

Fuckers.

"How far do I have to drive to see a Moose?"


"Can I get some Euros please? That is what you use around here, isn't it?"
"No, actually we use Canadian dollars."
"But I thought you were part of the commonwealth, right?"
(Yeah, the commonwealth not the European Union)


"Hey, what's the big idea?"
"Excuse me, sir?"
"I can't spend these here! Why'd you sell them to me?" he asks shoving British Pounds into the slot.


"How far to the tunnel to Vancouver?"
"You mean the ferry?"
"No, the tunnel!"
"We don't have a tunnel."
"Yes you do! I was on it the last time I was here!"
(This woman was so hysterical that we were almost convinced that there was a tunnel we didn't know about. I think the may have mistaken the dark interior of the car deck for a tunnel - but then that just opens up more questions, doesn't it?)


"I went to the atm and it gave me this stuff, what is this?"
"Canadian dollars."
"Why did it give me that when I asked for American?"
"Because you're in canada. We really only have one legal tender here Ma'am -"
"I want American, this stuff is crap!"
(I'm still not quite sure how she thought she specified which currency she wanted - I know I've never seen that option at an atm.)


"I gave you fifty dollars, how come I get less in American?"
"Because the US Dollar is worth more than the Canadian..."
"But how come I get less?"


"You mean you deal with more than just one kind of money? That fucking blows my mind man!"



"It's pretty warm here, huh? Is this normal?"
(What were you expecting? Sled dogs and igloos?)


"Can I get some Columbian money?"
"I'm sorry, I don't have any on hand, but I could order some for you if you'd like to pay a deposit - "
"You don't have any? What the hell do you use here then?"

*twitch*