I'm made of atoms, you're made of atoms, and we're all in this together.

I had a good St. Ratford weekend.

I arrived in good time on Friday evening (no train delays hurrah!) and hung out with my parents. I needed to run some errands at Shopper's, so I made a run there and splurged on some books. I got a fast read for myself - "The Girl's Guide to Homelessness" by Brianna Karp, and a book for my dad - "Life" by Keith Richards. Buying my dad a book at the beginning of a visit was a bad idea; I kept making fun of him for always having his nose stuck in it and joked "well, this was worth the train ride!" whenever he was ignoring me for Keith.

I slept in on Saturday morning and waited for my friend Teresa (Go9) to pick me up to go to Sandee's (Go9) baby shower. At one point, my mom saw a car parked on the road outside my house and told me that my ride was here. I thought it was strange that it was a car; I was pretty sure that Teresa was driving a van these days. However, I could see a carseat in the back so I thought maybe it was her. I couldn't made out the driver. Anyway, I got really close to the car before I realized it was not her. The driver was so absorbed on whatever was on her Blackberry that she didn't notice a complete stranger almost opened the door and got into her car...

A few minutes later Teresa arrived in her van (I was right). Since she was driving, I was in charge of directions. I had it all mapped out on my phone, and told Teresa what direction to take. "Don't you take highway 19?" Teresa asked. "Ummm, I think that's what her aunt said, but the phone says to take this street. However, there's a lot of turning in these directions, so maybe it works out the same?"

Anyway, so we took highway 19 and drove for awhile. We were chatting and catching up so we weren't really paying attention to where we were going. I asked Teresa if she'd ever been to Ingersoll, and she said "yah, for a drama festival in high school once." I think this made me pay less attention to the fact we were going in the complete opposite direction of where we were supposed to be going.

I'm not sure when we figured it out, but it turned out that Teresa was calling the town Listowel, "Ingersoll", so we were going the right direction in her mind, but not in reality. Now, someone could have been paying attention to the GPS on her phone, but she was too busy chatting.

So, we ended up having to turn around and backtrack completely. However, the extra part of the trip gave us time to reminisce about other times we'd gotten lost together. Moral of the story though - always trust the phone.

We made it to the shower late, but it was really nice to have time to visit with Sandee and her husband Jason, both of whom I hadn't seen in forever. And their little baby girl is super cute too! I had a good time, and before we knew it, Teresa and I were back in the car, but we made it back to St. Ratford with no major detours.

The rest of Saturday was pretty lazy. I spent a lot of time reading my book. In fact, I stayed up quite late finishing it. It was an all right read, but I liked the fact that it was based up on the story of a blogger, and I like reading stuff about bloggers, obviously. It was a pretty fast read, which was what I needed. I haven't finished a book in a long time.

I also stayed up late watching the movie "The Machinist" with my mom. It's the one that Christian Bale lost all that weight for. It was okay; it's one of those twisted mystery type movies that leaves you saying "WTF" a lot, but at least it made sense in the end.

On Sunday, I went to the gym and also hit the pitiful Stratford mall for some shopping. Prom is this Friday, and I felt like I needed a new dressy outfit, instead of recycling something I'd worn before. Luckily, the mall had a Le Chateau, which I find is pretty good option for nice clothes. I got a pretty new black skirt (with a white and red design) and red top, and also a new pair of open-toe black wedges. I will definitely need to get a pedicure (red!) before prom, that's for sure.

The rest of the evening I spent chilling with my 'rents and then it was time to catch the late train. It was nice be able to spend my whole weekend, more or less, in Stratford, but the late train kills me. It is supposed to leave Stratford at 9 pm, and get to Toronto at about 11 pm. However, last night it got to Stratford more than half an hour late, and kept losing time along the way. I didn't get back home 'til 12:30 pm which made for a rough morning today.

All in all I had a good weekend though. I was happy to get a lot of rest. I'm still not 100% after that blasted cold I got last weekend, but I'm getting close to it. Also, it was nice spending a lot of time with my family, and getting to see some friends too. And, it was great actually reading a whole book in a weekend. That's such a treat.

Oh! And there are some changes in Stratford: my usual wifi coffee shop, which was a huge hangout for me and friends in our late teens and early twenties, has closed! I'm shocked. It seemed to always be busy! I feel it's a bit of history gone down.

Also, Stratford has been resisting getting a Walmart for years and years and years, but it seems like one is going to go in, but it will be a smaller one. Sigh. I liked being from a Walmart-less town.

This week's going to be a busy one for me, but I am committed to some pampering. As I said, it's prom on Friday and I must get my hair cut and my nails done before that! Now that I have a new outfit and shoes, I must complete the look.

Hope you all have great weeks!

Wind at my side; songs that I want to sing.

Wow, this has been a long week for a short week. I'm sure you know what I mean.

This weekend I'm headed off to Stratford for a belated Mother's Day/birthday celebration with my mom. Mother's Day this year was too ridiculously close to Easter to go home. The next weekend was my mom's birthday but I had my run so I couldn't visit. Then I accidentally booked my Billy Elliott tickets on the long weekend so I couldn't go home then. I prefer heading home on long weekends, but since I made that booking error, I will pay for that mistake with the late Sunday night train back to Toronto followed by a school day.

Anyway, my mom's super cool with the delayed celebration. I mean, it's not like I ignored her. Flowers were sent and phone-calls were made. And I've got her a good present to boot and I'll buy her whatever she wants for dinner this weekend.

In addition, I'll be able to make my friend Sandee's baby shower on Saturday, so that's a bonus. I'll get to meet her baby too.

And hopefully I'll get some relaxing time in too.

We're down to three teaching weeks of school now. The month of June is insanely busy but the end is in sight.

I'm also finding it hard to find time to see some friends. For example, I've barely seen or talked to my dear friend Mathew since I've been back from Barcelona. We were supposed to go out last week, but our plans were for the same day that I had to call in sick, so they were postponed 'til today, but then his basement started to leak so he had to cancel. Hopefully our third try (next Sunday?) will be the charm.

Hopefully this summer will give me the chance to reconnect with people and myself.

Happy weekend!

I'm on the edge.

To add injury to insult, I had a dentist appointment today. I'm on the mend, but I'm still sniffly and sick-sounding and all around pathetic. Anyway, I had to get a filling done, and it was a particularly nasty one, so I had to get a double-dose of freezing done so it wouldn't hurt quite so much. (Note: DO NOT procrastinate going to the dentist for years at a time. You will pay. If you are in that situation, take care of it ASAP or else you could turn into a creature similar to that I will continue to describe in this post.)

Anyway, I left the dentist's office with a "no more fillings!" hurrah and a half frozen mouth. The trickiest thing I find about a half frozen mouth is the temptation to chew mindlessly on your tongue/inner cheek. In fact, it can be quite satisfying. However, I discovered that you should not under any circumstances give into that temptation the first time I ever had my mouth frozen as a kid. I chewed at it, and I was in lots of pain later. (Has anyone else ever done this?)

So yah, I'm walking to the grocery store with a stuffy/runny nose, and concentrating as hard as possible on not accidentally or purposefully chewing on my half-frozen mouth. I had to be careful not to walk into people or traffic too. I also realized that it could be really easy to accidentally drool out the side of my mouth as well, so there was added focus to that problem as well.

When I'm checking out at the grocery store, the clerk asked me if I needed a bag. At this point, I realize that I can't talk very well. I actually had already placed my reusable bag by my groceries, so I'm frantically gesturing towards that, because she doesn't seem to understand the polite "I brought my own bag" that I'm trying to say through my frozen mouth. She gets the idea, and I sneeze loudly. Awesome. Then she asks me how I'm going to pay, and when she doesn't understand how I say "debit" (maybe I sounded like I was trying to ribbit?), I yet again have to wave my card in her face while fighting back a sneeze attack. I want to explain that I've just come from the dentist, but seeing that she couldn't understand my other simple communication attempts, I realized it was futile.

Moral of the story: run errands before you get your mouth frozen. However, being that yesterday was a holiday and everything was closed, and I stayed close to my bed all weekend, it was tough.

Anyway, my mouth is now unfrozen, and I'm slightly less stuffy, I think?

All right, now I have a confession to make: I may have accidentally on purpose acquired the new Lady GaGa album. Yah, see, I like cheesy to music to listen to at the gym, and I figured that her new album would fit the bill.

I like it. Eeep. I wish I was healthy enough to actually take it to the gym (soon, I should be well enough to exercise by Thursday). However, it made for good listening during my earlier walk of monumental focus as described above.

Even worse, the song I like best is Yoü and I. Yes, I even like it despite its unnecessary umlaut. And I like it despite the fact that it was produced by Shania Twain's ex-husband, who I'm not a fan of, since I'm fan of Shania's autobiography. Anyway, I'm feeling a bit of conflict over this enjoyment, but life is suprising, right?

Right.

Hopefully my next post will less monstrous.

Breathe, just breathe.

After feeling super yucky on Tuesday night, and taking Wednesday off of work as a result. I was feeling pretty fine on Thursday. I had the energy to go to the gym after work and then head to the school play after that. I got home late, blogged, and then went to bed, and then I noticed my throat was itchy. Then it got sore. Then very uncomfortable. Oh, crap.

I felt yucky on Friday but made it through the day, made it home, and then slept 'til I had to go back to school to help sell concessions at the play. All the concessions kids were like: "Miss, you sound really sick." It was yucky.

On Saturday, I pulled myself out of my sickbed to go see Billy Elliott, which I've had tickets for for a long time. It was really great. I even managed to go for lunch first.

I can't remember what happened on the rest of Saturday or Sunday for that matter. There was sleeping, that's for sure. I think I watched some stuff on TV, but I can't really remember what.

Today, I felt a bit better and had lunch plans with my friend Elaine and decided to go instead of cancelling. It was fun.

Anyway, I feel that this long weekend was almost a complete washout for me. I didn't get very many of the chores nor schoolwork that I wanted to get done either. Sigh. Oh well, they will still be there when I'm better, right?

Right. Happy back to work everyone.

p.s. I've been feeling a little bit like Eeyore lately; all complainy and the like. I think I'll have to do some positive blogging to make myself feel better and soon.

I think this is it. It's a hit.

I'm tired but pretty happy.

My grade tens, who are my favourite class this semester, were concerned that I was away. It was really sweet. I love those guys. I wore my new outfit to work today. I got compliments from many people on my new red sweater. A former student said "oh Miss, you look so pretty in red." Maybe I should wear it more often.

I saw a lot of former students tonight because it was the school play. This was the performance I chose to watch. My great friend Fea puts so much work into the play and it freakin' amazes me every year. I try to help as much as I can, but since I do a lot of other stuff around the school, she usually just gives me an easy job like concessions.

She completely outdid herself this year. I think it was definitely my favourite of all her plays. It was a twisted version of a bunch of fairy tales, and was simply hilarious. It was a perfect choice for the student body. I loved seeing all of the kids up there; so many of them I've taught or worked with on various extracurriculars. It's so nice to see them shine and I always get a little bit emotional on play night.

There are some days that I get a little bit frustrated at work, and I can even feel a little bit burnt out too. However, days like the school play alleviate that and remind me why I'm a teacher. Even though the play's not my project, it reminds me of how lucky I am to be in a nice little community such as my school.

But I'm still happy that it's a long weekend.

Well you can be so kind sometimes. And you can be unkind sometimes.

I didn't get to wear my new work outfit today.

I start feeling very poorly and uncomfy last night, and couldn't sleep as result. (I think poor Jason thought he might have given me food poisoning, but it was something completely unrelated. Dinner was very tasty and it was so good to have leftovers around so I didn't have to worry about food today!) Past midnight, I realized that I should go see a doctor. I sat there thinking "hmm, I could go in and teach my morning classes, see if I can get an appt in the afternoon and leave early, or just go to a walk-in clinic after school." Then thankfully, a voice of reason appeared in my head and told me that it would make way more logical sense to call in sick and take care of myself. What good would I do attempting to teach after a sleepless night?

I spent the hours between 1 am and 2 am creating and e-mailing in some lesson plans, postponing evening social plans, and such. I think I got a little bit of sleep in between 3 am and 4 am and for a bit of the morning. As soon as 9 am hit, I called my doctor to see if I could get an appointment, but she was unavailable until Friday, so I decided to go to the walk-in clinic down the street from me. I was pretty lucky and didn't have to wait for hours. I got a prescription for my malady, and spent my afternoon sleeping.

I feel much better this evening and expect a good night's sleep. I am glad that I took care of myself instead of worrying about work and trying to do too much at once. I always feel so guilty about calling in sick, but seriously, my health comes first. I've dragged myself in sick before only to make myself more sick, so I'm glad I was more proactive this time.

Anyway, new work outfit will get worn tomorrow. And, it'll get a long day since I gotta be in very early to write a test since I don't feel like doing so tonight.

p.s. Sitting in a chair while reading and waiting to see a doctor at the clinic reminded me of the good old days of jury duty. Thankfully it was only a 1.5 hour wait as opposed to a whole day's wait like jury duty was.

p.p.s I love this new Sloan song "Unkind". I dedicate it to my body for getting sick, and to the weather for being crappy. There was a bit of sunshine this afternoon, but now it's violently pouring rain out.

The Needle Has Landed.

I am so tired of this rainy wet cold dreary drab yucky spring. I've never felt myself so (dis)affected by the weather as I have this year.

After a super busy day at school, I stopped by the little mall near my house to get a bottle of wine for dinner tonight. I thought that I should get a local wine to be environmentally friendly, but I am craving travel, and when one is stuck working, why not get an exotic wine? I was going to get a French wine (of course), but then saw a bottle of Wolf Blass Shiraz on sale, and remembered that I'd visited that winery in Adelaide, Australia way back in the summer of 2005. Wow, that was a long time ago. Here are some pictures. Looking through that file of pictures makes me feel like I was a completely different person back then.

After I bought the wine, I saw a red short-sleeved cardigan in the window of Smart Set. I decided to go in and look for it and found it on sale and also scored a new black pair of dress pants on sale and a white tank top to go underneath. New outfit for tomorrow for the win.

As I was walking home in the rain, I had my iPod on shuffle. I kept flipping through the tracks because nothing fit my mood until "The Needle Has Landed" by Neko Case came on. Even though that song is a little sad, it totally made me feel really good. I like Neko Case a lot.

Oh, now Jason's here to cook me dinner and help me drink my wine. I'll leave you with a picture of the Sydney Opera House since I was going through my Australia pictures. I didn't notice the guys who photobombed my shot in the thumbnail. Yeesh. I think my photo-taking skills have gotten better since 2005.

p.s. Check out that blue sky!!! I could go for some of that!

(Hey!) No cars go.

Despite the rain and the cold temperatures (it's apparently May, you know), my 5K run went quite well. It was really fun! I loved running around Queen's Park, then down University Ave to King St. and back up to the finish line at Queen's Park. I enjoyed being able to ignore traffic lights, and I chuckled a bit to myself to see traffic stuck on cross streets. I think it's kind of funny, because usually the motorized vehicle is king of the street, but it's nice when the streets are taken over by pedestrians.

I also enjoyed the community spirit of the whole thing. It was fun to have people cheering you on as you went by, and I really enjoyed the guy handing out Gatorade at the 3K mark. He was like "You can do it Christy! Only 2K left!" (My name was on my bib.) At that point I thought there was much more left, so that was welcome news.

My time was comparable to my training times on the treadmill at the gym, which was good news. I thought the outdoors, the cold, and the rain would make me slower. When I got home, I promptly signed myself up for the Scotiabank Waterfront 5K in October. I think with about 5 more months training, I'll be able to improve on my time. I'm already looking forward to it!

Anyway, so I've been lazing around at home for the rest of the day. I watched "Vicky Cristina Barcelona" this afternoon. I have to admit that I kept dozing off during it, but I liked the Barcelona part of the movie. The scenery brought back great memories. However, I thought the movie's story was rather meh; I didn't care about nor like the characters, so whatever. I don't think I like Woody Allen movies.

This week at work is going to be INSANELY busy. I look forward to its end already. Happy Monday everyone, and thanks for all of your encouragement and kind words on my pre-run post.

I'm ready so don't stop.

With the recent Blogger shutdown and life's typical insanities, I've not been able to blog in a few days. It's been my longest hiatus for eons. Anyway, a quiet Saturday night doing laundry gives me a chance to catch up on blogging.

On Thursday night I was summoned to a friend's house for emergency wine. I like when helping my friends involves me drinking red wine. Win win!

On Friday night, Jason and I went out to dinner to my favourite neighbourhood Mexican restaurant where I ate my usual dish of taquitos and got a little bit drunk on sangria. Then, we went to see Bridesmaids which is a *great* movie. Seriously, go see it, all of you. I laughed so hard during the movie. It's such a great movie about friendship, and even though it's about female friendship, guys will enjoy it too. It's kind of silly that male buddy movies are supposed to appeal to everyone, but oh, if a movie is about female friendship, then it must be a chick flick, right? Well, I hope that Bridesmaids breaks down that barrier. In "Bossypants" Tina Fey writes a lot about how female comedic actresses face a lot of sexism - i.e. it's assumed that a sketch/show/movie with too many women in it won't be very funny. Anyway, I think Bridesmaids proves Tina Fey's point that women can carry comedy just as well as men. Also, there was one part especially that made me think of my pal Claire. Claire - you gotta see this movie!

Tomorrow is a rather exciting day for me - I'm actually signed up to run the 5K portion of the Toronto marathon. I've been doing a lot of running (albeit on a treadmill) since January, and I've definitely improved my speed, stamina, etc., but tomorrow's 5K could be more of a run/walk (but with more running). I find running outside way harder than running on my comfy treadmill at the gym with a TV in front and no wind, so my outside time will be slower than my indoor time. I wanted to practice more outdoors than I did, but this year's spring weather was so crappy, that I was so much happier on the treadmill.

Speaking of crappy weather, tomorrow's weather looks yucky, so I hope to still enjoy the experience. I'm really looking forward to being able to run on streets that are closed off to traffic. It's a nice part of Toronto where my run will happen, so I'm looking forward to the scenery.

I'm proud that I'm at least trying this 5K (there is a part of me that kind of still doesn't even want to do it). I've always been super un-athletic. I found gym class quite traumatizing as a child/teenager. I was always picked last, got hit by baseballs, missed catches, came in last in races, tripped over hockey sticks, missed baskets, and so on and so forth. All this lead to me being so self-conscious about anything athletic. After all, there was nothing else that I failed at. I don't think it helped that my schools' attitudes to phys ed were archaic: the teachers weren't particularly inspirational, the classes were co-ed, and they allowed kids to pick teams. Luckily, I can see that the phys ed teachers at my school are pretty awesome (they are my friends after all), and the class aren't co-ed, so I like to think gym class wouldn't have been as hellish if I'd been in my school.

However, I'm at the point in my life where I realize fitness is important and I've been doing my best over the past few years to get over my self-consciousness. I've been on a dragonboat team, done yoga, got a personal trainer for a bit, tried to go to the gym as much as I can (this year's been good; last year sucked), bought a bike, and now I'm trying my best at running (although I gave running a good run back in 2007; I'd run all the time in the cemetery).

Anyway, I'm thinking that this will be my first go at a 5K and I'll do another in the fall to see improvement.

All right, I need to get my sleep now. This will be hard 'cuz I'd really rather be watching SNL!

I don't need you and brand new Benz or your bougie friends.

Today was one of those days where my nerves seemed to be a little frayed. Nothing especially bad happened today, but it was one of those days where I went home feeling yucky and overwhelmed.

Off-topic rant - Pencil quality these days SUCKS! Seriously. I have to buy a lot of pencils in my game, and all brands eff-ing suck. They will not sharpen, even with a good quality electric sharpener, and it's seriously going to be the death of me. Those pencil companies are scamming us all, and something's gotta be done. I don't want big pencil to win this game. This lack of quality product is unacceptable.

Despite my yucky mood, I did pick up Sloan's new album (!!) and found some YouTube gold that made me happy.

1) Ben Folds' cover of Kesha's Sleazy.

2) Pomplamoose's cover of the Angry Birds theme.

In summary - YouTube = yay! Poor quality pencils = boo!

p.s. This is post #900 on this blog.

The coffee could use more cream.

This weekend was pretty low-key but a really good type of low-key, and I daresay I needed it. This past week at work seemed pretty long.

On Friday night, I met up with a former colleague, but for-always friend, for dinner. At some point this year I resolved to make more time for friends who I don't see very often, and I would give myself a C+ on this resolution. (C+ means I'm very close to be satisfactory, but need to work a little bit harder.) Anyway, dinner was lots of fun, and catching up is always good for the soul.

On Saturday morning, Jason and I were on a mission: we were going to get weekend passes to this year's Hillside Music Festival in Guelph. It's a three-day indie/folk music festival at a conservation area. There is one place to buy passes in Toronto: Soundscapes on College St at 10:00 am. There are also passes online, but apparently they sell out really fast so the online option is a gamble. Anyway, Jason got there at 7:30 am, and was kind enough to let me sleep for another hour (I got there at 8:30 am). The line was pretty long. Here'a picture of what was ahead of us (photography credit goes to Jason). The store itself is around the corner and one door over from the BMO.

Apparently the people who were first in line had been there since 1:30 am! Crazy. It was a nice morning for sitting outside though. I brought Starbucks on my way over, and even managed to get some reading done. We got our passes thankfully. According to the dude who counted everyone in line, we got passes 204 and 205 out of a total of 250 available. The only negative part of the endeavour was the people behind us in line were really really annoying. They provided a lot of stupid inane conversation. I hope we don't see them again at the festival.

I'm looking forward to seeing Dan Mangan, Memphis, Hannah Georgas, Kevin Drew & The Beauties, Old Man Luedecke, and Serena Ryder & The Beauties the most, but I'm sure I'll discover some new artists during the festival. In fact, just looking at the list, I like the name Common Grackle, so maybe I should check out that band.

After we got our passes, we walked down College and went for a nice brunch and spent the rest of the afternoon wandering around Kensington Markert and down to Queen West. I got excited because I found a health food store in Kensington that sells my favourite flavour of baked potato chips that I thought were only available in the US. Score.

Today we spent the day wandering around my 'hood. We went for sushi followed by my first post-Lent gelato (I gave up all ice cream). In fact, I'm pretty sure it was my first gelato of 2011 at my favourite neighbourhood gelato place. I got coconut and chocolate/orange as my flavours. They had all of my favourites so it was a pretty tough decision. Here's a picture of part of the selection (again, courtesy of Jason... I have the same instagram app, but I'm often too lazy to take pictures. I really should do so more often.)

I've done a lot of reading this Sunday. After I published my last blog post, I noticed that the Shania Twain biography was on sale at Indigo, so I splurged. It's been a really good read so far. Man, she had a pretty tough life. Wigsf - if you think she just married a producer and got famous, her story is WAY more than that. She's not famous 'cuz she had money and got her voice auto-tuned like some Kardashian or whatever. I'd recommend the book to those of you who expressed interest on my last post.

In fact, I am going to continue ignoring my housework and schoolwork and keep on reading it this evening.

Hope you all have really nice weeks! Don't forget that Tuesday is Double Cross day! (Yes, I'm totally treating the day that I will buy the new Sloan album as a holiday of sorts because it's more fun that way.)

The Answer Was You.

Luckily today was a really lovely day to chase away the post-election blues. It was sunny, and I bought some new laceless black Chucks to wear as my lazy slip-on shoes this summer. They'll be good for biking.

Time for a random post.

1) Sloan's new album, The Double Cross, is coming out in about a week. I am excited for it. My plan is to actually walk to Soundscapes after work to buy a physical copy of the album. Today I got tickets for their June 22nd show at the Mod Club. The new album is streaming here for the next week. I've been cheating and listening to it. I LOVE the second song "The Answer Was You". It's a Jay song. Jay songs are my favourite.

2) I have no attention span for staying with a book these days. I've been starting them, but abandoning them. I feel that my attention span for anything is at an all-time low. However, I'm intrigued to read the Shania Twain autobiography of all things. It's been all over the TV at the gym, and it sounds like it could be a good story, and probably doesn't take much of an attention span to get through.

3) Today I dug out an old notebook which contained the following:

a) A list of all the books I read in the year 2006. I read 35 books that year. I am so not on that pace with my gnat-like attention span.

b) Directions to the houses of two friends. Neither friend lives at that location any longer.

c) A made-up math problem that I solved. Some people doodle. I make up math problems. Sigh.

4) I rarely really want to see a movie, but I really want to see the movie "Bridesmaids". It looks funny.

5) I don't have any set travel plans for the summer yet. This is not like me.

6) Last week, I gave my biology class a quiz on the nervous and endocrine systems. Two kids walked in late, so I handed them their quizzes. Fifteen minutes passed. I notice one kid holding up his paper, and on the back was a page of lens diagrams. I had mistakenly given the late-comers my grade 10 quiz on lenses. They sat there for fifteen minutes with the wrong quiz and puzzled through it and did not say a thing. I started to laugh, as did the rest of the class, for a good five minutes. I marked what they had completed of the wrong quiz. I added whatever they got right, by sheer dumb luck, on the wrong quiz to their proper quiz to make-up for the emotional distress that they had caused themselves for being late.

But seriously, why is it that teenagers will question everything, until something actually comes along that they should question?

7) Jay has come up with another winning song in "Green Gardens, Cold Montreal". It's beautiful. (I'm streaming The Double Cross as I write this.)

8) I've been going to bed really early lately. For me, that means before midnight. I think my age is catching up to me and I don't like it.

9) I'm pretty psyched that it's almost the weekend.

Happy Thursday folks!

Kent Brockman was right.

He's said it before, and he'll say it again: democracy simply doesn't work.

Seriously, Canada, seriously?? We used to be the cool kids. Now we're going to be the dinosaurs who don't do anything about climate change, and I fear what's going to happen to our healthcare system.

And now we're stuck in this mess for four to five years.

I need a strong drink.

But you could never kiss a Tory boy without wanting to cut off your tongue again.*

Canadians go to the polls tomorrow to vote in #elxn41, as it's called on Twitter.

A record number of voters have turned out for the advance polls which hopefully means that overall, Canadians will be voting more than they did in the last federal election (59% - for shame!).

I am cautiously optimistic that this election will be Stephen Harper's last one.

It seems like his chances at a majority government are fading fast. Jack Layton and the NDP have had huge gains in popularity during this election, and hopefully that will translate to a huge increase in seats in the House of Commons.

Good.

I have had enough of this Prime Minister and his disrespect for the democratic process. The Conservative government was the first government ever in history to be found in contempt of Parliament. He won't even take questions from the public that aren't pre-screened, and if a journalist asks a follow-up, the question will be drowned out by his supporters. YUCK.

And then there is his policy. I can't stand when he goes on and on about how Canada has done so well through the economic crisis thanks to he and his party. Hmmm, however it was his predecessors, from another party no less, who put in place the policy that allowed Canada to make it out of the recession A-OK.

And I won't even mention his environmental policy, or lack thereof. And his support for private, oops, sorry I mean "alternative" healthcare? That's not a road that Canada should go down. We should be proud of our universal healthcare system and work on improving it.

Anyway, so I don't like Mr. Harper or his party at all. They will likely form the next government, but if Harper wins his third minority, I'm sure Tory knives will be pointed in his direction.

As I said, I hope that tomorrow's election will be Harper's last. I really hope that the polls are right and that the NDP will have a strong showing. I would love to vote for Layton, but I'm in a party vs. person conundrum. In my riding, the NDP are running a 23 year old, and the Liberal incumbent is experienced and pretty awesome. Since it's her name I have to put my X beside, I will be voting for her. I really respect this woman, and I believe she is a shoo-in, and I'd like my vote to make sure that the Cons don't sneak into my riding. Which they won't.

I hope my optimism proves to be right tomorrow. Happy voting day to all of you, even if you are going to vote for Harper... I have to give every one who supports democracy my well-wishes. However, if you don't vote, a giant thumbs down. But I know all my peeps are smart and will vote.

*My title comes from a line from the Los Campesinos! song "The Sea is a Good Place to Think of the Future". I've always liked the line.

p.s To my non-Canadian bloggers, keep your fingers crossed for us!