Winnipeg - The bad bus driver capital of the free world

I can't believe how many bad bus drivers there are on the roads in Winnipeg. I don't just mean ones who drive too fast, or turn corners on two wheels, but those who drive dangerously. Several times this last week I have been on the bus when they have pulled away from a bus stop, after an elderly person has got on the bus, without caring whether that elderly person has grasped a hand rail even! Let alone given them the chance to sit down safely. One time a lady actually fell into the lap of a man sitting behind the driver because the bus veered around a parked car immediately after setting off. Then there was the driver who was going so fast down Taylor, and hit a pot hole, that the lady sitting next to me was bounced out of the seat and almost fell to the floor! I thought the bus was going to break in half. The driver then proceeded to shake his head, as if someone else was at fault! He also went round the corner onto Pembina on two wheels, and very nearly rear ended a small car just around the corner that was stopped for the lights. Now I know that they are struggling for drivers in the city, they are always advertsing for new drivers, but do we as tax and fare paying passengers have to put up with their dangerous driving?

Further to that, there seems to be an increase of miserable SOB's driving the buses too. Last week I got on the 29 to go in to work and the usual driver was absent. Never mind, I still greeted the driver with a friendly smile and a "good morning". He didn't even acknowledge me, he wasn't even looking in my direction. So when I got off I wished him a jolly day saying "*d0* enjoy your afternoon". Well this week he was driving the bus again, so when I got on I said "Morning Harry." He turned to look at me. Clearly his name isn't Harry, but I thought someone as happy as that simply *has* to be called Harry! LOL Needless to say he didn't acknowledge me again. I did see our usual driver on a different route the other day, so I am wondering if he was promoted, I will have to ask, hopefully I will see someone other than Harry to ask.

Then again, I got on the 95 on Friday and the driver was about as friendly as can be, so I guess it is just unlucky to get a bad driver.

Happy to be living away from this!

There is a kid (13 years old) in Florida who has been told by the courts that she is too young to make the decision to have an abortion! She is in care in the State, and the Child Protective Services Department went to court to prevent her from having the abortion. ACLU is on the case, but I have to ask the question, how did this child end up pregnant? I mean I know what she did, but how come she wasn't better educated about pregnancy, and where were the CPS when she was running around getting into trouble? The story is available on the BBC at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/4500245.stm Now I realise that it might be a sweeping over generalisation to say that kids in care aren't really cared for, but we read more and more about how kids in care are not properly looked after. And it was the Florida CPS that "lost" that girl a few years ago. I am also reminded of a case in California (I think it was) where a 14 year old girl got pregnant and her parents refused her consent to have an abortion, then just a few months after the baby was born the girl was arrested for child endangerment, because the baby was found cold and hungry in a crib on its own. The parents had left that 15 year old to deal with the baby on her own after having made her have the child! Her life is ruined because of their narrow mindedness. That will probably happen to this kid in Florida too, if she even allowed to keep the baby! And isn't that worse? Turning her into some kind of incubator for another couple. She isn't emotionally mature enough to make the decision to have an abortion and yet she is emotionally mature enough to have a baby, and care for it? Give me a break. And that doesn't even take into account the physical dangers of her having a baby at such a young age. This kid will be scarred for life as a result of the stupidity of Florida state law. The Governor should intervene! Oh wait, he is a Bush, NO CHANCE! I will be interested to see if he even has comments on this, after his disastorous meddling in the Terry Shaivo case. I am just glad that I am living away from that place now. A state where they make a law and then just when everyone has settled into a new way of thinking, they retract the law. Look at the gay couples being allowed to adopt children as one example! They pass a law saying that gay couples can adopt, and then a few years later retract the law. So making all those gay couples who adopted kids in the meantime, criminals! I guess they didn't prosecute the couples, we would have heard about it, Rosie is after all a resident in Florida, but this is just one demonstration about how screwed up the whole issue of human rights is in the USA, especially in red states like Florida.

I just hope that when the ball drops, they don't all try to immigrate to Canada.

Terri Schiavo

For some time now this case has bothered me. It bothered my in several ways. Mainly because it is my belief that Terri was treated in a way that should be considered inhumane. Imagine the scenario, a woman is discovered locked in a room, shackled to the bed, starving and thirsty, her husband has deprived her of food and water for 13 days. What do you think would happen to the husband? Of course he would be locked up in prison for all kinds of different offenses, not least abuse! What happens when that room is a hospital bed and the husband is the doctor? Nothing. Nothing! Ok, that is one scenario. Look at it another way, a dog is discovered, starving and thirsty. The owner is prosecuted! Another way? Ok, a dog is injured in an accident and is to all intents and purposes dead although it can still move its eyes and whimper. Does the vet recommend that the owner put the dog on life support? No of course not! The vet kindly suggests it would be the best thing to put the poor dog out of its misery. So when it happens to a person, do the doctors suggest that the person be put out of their misery? Oh no! That wouldn't be fair! Let the poor person live on, struggling to communicate their wish to die for fifteen years! Fifteen years!!!! How *dare* her parents over rule the agreement that Terri made with her faithful and loving husband? And why the hell did the PTB allow for this case to drag on so long? If it wasn't bad enough that this was going on, for it then to become National News, International News, turns it in to some kind of freak show for the world to stare at. It horrifies me that something like this happened. Scares me that if I was in an accident which resulted in a persistent vegetative state that the agreement that I have made with my partner could be over ruled by my mother. Well I know that wouldn't happen, but in theory it could!

Then today I read a brilliant article by a BBC correspondant who lives in the US, that has given me hope that something good has come out of this horrendous case.

The URL is http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/tv_and_radio/4415595.stm

This is one of the paragraphs from that article "They were emotionally blackmailed but refused to budge, were told that their deepest held religious beliefs should push them in one direction, but thought for themselves and thought differently." The article goes on to say "If you can convince the courts that you are legally in the right, then no politician, even the president himself in his pyjamas and on his high horse, can stop you.
Michael Schiavo, Terri Schiavo's much vilified husband, did convince the courts.
He believed that his wife would want to die and they agreed.
It is a lesson the Republican party, which has allowed itself to become very closely allied with the religious right, will reflect on in the months ahead.
Already moderate Republicans are talking openly of re-capturing their party from the social conservatives.
It is possible at least that the high watermark of social conservatism has been reached. Its limit set by the will of a silent liberal majority.
The founding fathers must be watching from their heavenly perches and wondering at the power of the constitution they created. "

I sincerely hope that America learns from this lesson and that the religious zealots of that country have a looser grip. There is too much integration of church and state, it is one of the reasons I left America. If you do not believe in God you are still expected to pledge your allegiance to him, and that God can be any God I realise, but what if you are like me, a Pagan who believes not in a single deity, but in the ruling of nature over all things? No matter how fervently religious you are, you have no right to force your beliefs on me, and yet American's don't seem to even realise that that is what is happening to them. Now with this Terri Schaivo case, perhaps they are beginning to wake up to the fact that GWB is intent on making everything run to his own rule book, and that book is the Bible, interpreted by him (someone who can't even pronounce nuclear).

As an endnote, dying of thirst is one of the worst ways to die, drinking water is one of the major instinct for humans, and to deprive someone of water until they die is cruelty in its worst form. It is one of the reasons why the water torture is the most effective form of torture. Terri Schiavo should have been allowed to die a painless and dignified death once the decision was made that she wanted to die.

Don't mess with me

Why is it that people resort to being rude and abusive when they know they are losing an argument? Recently I had a discussion, via email, with someone who, in my humble opinion, wasn't doing his job properly and it was affecting me. That is something that I hate with a passion. I couldn't care less if you don't do your job properly, unless it affects me, in which case I will go out of my way to make sure that people know that you aren't doing your job properly! So anyway. This guy wasn't doing his job, which is to keep a website up to date. I had sent him some updated information to be changed on the site back at the beginning of February. It didn't get done, so two weeks later, enough time I felt, I resent the information. Oh and at the time I cc'd someone else to let her know that I had sent the updated information. The site still wasn't updated. So two weeks later I wrote to offer my assistance in keeping the site up to date. No response. So then I talked to the lady I had cc'd, to ask if there was anyway to get the information updated other than emailing this one guy. The guy in question was there at that meeting (as were 150 other people) and came over to talk to the other lady, so she introduced us and he was all friendly at the time. To cut a long story short, he wrote to me asking if I knew how to make a searchable database that could be put on the site. I said no, but if he wanted to work on that while I kept the current pages up to date I was happy to help. He wrote back and said that I Couldn't be of any help. Ok fine, but please update my information! He wrote back, cc'ing a whole bunch of other people who (to my knowledge) had no idea what was going on and basically said "who the hell do you think you are?" to which I replied with my official titles for the organisation to let him know that I did hold office. Well that let the cat out of the bag in no uncertain terms. So I hope that the jerk realises that he shouldn't mess with me! I will not be referred to in such derogatory terms by anyone, and the fact that he included an audience when he chose to "put me in my place" was a big mistake.

Now four other people, whom he cc'd, have come forward to say that they too are fed up of the information not being updated in a timely manner, so he has lucked out in thinking that he will get support from others for his position. HA HA! He has also been telling people that it takes hours to update the pages, so I just wrote to one lady telling her that I am a professional web designer and that I *know* how long it takes. People who are not good at what they are doing take hours to do things, and people who are too lazy to do it quickly, tell people that it takes hours, but those of us who are good at what we do, and do things in a timely manner, know damned well that it would take less than one hour to updated information that shows up on 5 different web pages in the site. If it even took an hour. It would of course depend on the program that you use to make the pages. But if you *are* using a program the process should be even quicker! I personally use notepad and write the code from scratch, which might seem more laborious, but it makes the pages simpler (by design) and easier to update in the future.

For the future, I will continue to complain about people who don't do their jobs thereby affecting the way I do my job, because I feel that I shouldn't suffer because of the inadequacy of other people! In a way I am kind of hoping that he resigns in a petulant fit. Because I would happily take over the site, I would make a much better job of keeping it up to date, and without boasting (my nana doesn't like people who boast), I know I would make a better design for the site too.

So there dickhead! :D

Well that makes sense

So Brad and Jen split up over politics. That makes more sense than any of the other stuff that was suggested to have caused their breakup. But now I am in a quandry. You see I kind of like Jen, but now I hear that she is a dyed in the wool republican who thinks GW is great I have to change my opinion of her. Although how any woman with more than two brain cells, especially one who wants a career of her own AND kids, can think that GW is great is beyond me. Does she know that his goal is to have all women back at home, looking after the kids and cooking and cleaning for her man? The idea of her even wanting a career is so alien to GW's idea of a good wife that it makes me wonder what she has been reading and listening to for the last 5 years. In addition to that, so Brad wants to go into politics? Well if he feels strongly about that he should be allowed to, and if he wants to be a democratic politician then she should support that. After all, if Laura Bush can be a democrat when her husband is a republican president, then why the hell can't Jen stand by Brad? I think there is more to this than meets the eye, and I still think that Angelina Jolie had nothing to do with it other than perhaps to encourage Brad to run for politics. But I guess we will find out in time.

But all of this begs another question, what about Courtney Cox-Arquette? She and Jen were supposed to be such great mates, so I wonder if she is another republican. Not that her politics matter, except that I would love to know how someone can put aside such atrocties as those GW is doing against women and think he is a wonderful person. It is a quandry all right.

Bunty the Klepto

So it appears that our cute little foster dog is a kleptomaniac. The first day she was here she "stole" a sock in the night, well that was ok, we found it rather amusing. Then she started to disappear with slippers, and then shoes! Fortunately she only puts them on the sofa, or other area she is sleeping in, like the cushion on the floor next to the desk. She doesn't chew them, she just takes them. With glee. We have now worked out how to tell when she has stolen something, the pace of her footsteps is a good indicator. And also if she goes quiet, then runs somewhere, you know she has some ill gotten gain in her mouth. Last night she raided the Winter warmer box, the one with the hats, gloves and scarfs in. She took one of my gloves first off, it was put back. Then she went for one of K's hats. That was put back and the box put up out of her reach. Then she went off in a sulk and came back with a shoe. Oh well. We don't mind. She doesn't chew anything, just takes it to her nest on the sofa.

She is such a wonderful little dog. So well behaved, she comes when called, she asks to go out, and she sits and gets down when told to. She doesn't pull on the leash unless she is trying to run faster than I can keep up with (LOL), and will always wait for me to catch up. She even takes her pills without question! Mind you I think part of that might be the liver biscuit that she knows she will get as a result of taking the pill. She likes to be with us, wherever we are in the house, and has got used to moving from place to place with us. I really hope that no one wants to adopt her, because we would really miss having her around.

In the meantime, we have to learn to keep our socks and slippers off the floor if we don't want to have to search the sofa cushions for them.

Puppy!!

So we got our doggie! We rescued her from doggie death row. They brought her up from Est Virginia, where she was to be gassed, a horrible horrible way to euthanise animals, especially dogs because it takes about 15 minutes, and is very painful! But she was saved from that, and is happy to be with us. She is an older beagle mix, they said about 6 years old but I think she is more like 8 years old, see what you think from the pics. She had a mammary tumour removed from her left side sometime at the end of last year, it was huge. I mean enormous, like about the size of a football! Now she has two more smaller tumours forming on her mamary gland, in addition to that she is having trouble with her lungs, wheezing and hacking. She probably has mets to the lungs. But that is ok, we are giving her a nice home to live in, loads of loving and attention, which she adores! If she could she would happily be petted all day long! But she isn't a nusiance, once she realises that you aren't going to pet her all day she goes back to her bed. Which is on the sofa, all snuggled up on a pillow. She isn't eating too well, but I made her some liver biscuits and she is probably holding out for those, and we just bought her some marrow bones to chew on too. She loves pigs ears, and will munch down a cheese flavoured beggin' strip with speed, so she isn't unable to eat, just waiting for the good stuff! LOL She is pretty cheeky too, yesterday she stole a sock, and today she stole one of my slippers! But she knows what she is allowed to keep and what she isn't, and doesn't mind when we take things away from her again. And she has her own toys to play with, which she does from time to time.

At the moment she is off having a bath, getting her ears cleaned out and her nails clipped, so that she is all lovely for the weekend. Not that anything special is happening this weekend, but all the same.

So we are very happy to have her with us. We just wish we knew what her name is! She doesnt really seem to answer to anything, but I have been calling her Missy, which K hates, so we will have to come up with something else. But for now we are having fun.

What is in a Name?

I know someone who has the most pretentious name you can possibly imagine and I have to wonder how he got it. What were his parents thinking? Naming him after one of the most well known bodies in the romance fiction world has to be some kind of joke. Surely? What did this poor guy go through as a kid? I knew kids, when I was at school, who were teased mercilessly by others because they had weird names, and not even as weird as Fifi-Trixabelle, Peaches, or Apple! Names that were unusual like the girl who was named Georgette, was teased for having a boys name! So what would kids say to someone who was named Fabio? Mind you, do kids know who Fabio is? Possibly not. This Fabio is nothing like "the" Fabio either, he is short, skinny with dark hair and glasses. But I wonder what having the name Fabio has done for him. If he even thinks about it that way, which he probably doesn't. But he is young enough that he could have been named for "the" Fabio. The rest of his name is what makes it pretentious, not the Fabio bit, but I won't list it all here. He goes by his full name too, he will introduce himself to people by his full name. Most people I know, don't even know I *have* a second name, let alone any more than that! But good old Fabio will reel off his names at the drop of a hat. Perhaps to make himself more memorable. Which is another thing I don't understand. Why do people crave to be remembered? I met someone on Thursday evening who was quite upset that I didn't remember her name, even though I had met her at a conference where there had been about 200 other people, and we weren't officially introduced! She had got my name off my badge, and I expect she thought that I would have got her name of her badge. But if I did notice her name, she was not memorable enough for me to remember her.

Is that bad? Am I so wrapped up in my own self importance that other people are meaningless to me? Perhaps Fabio is right, by introducing himself by his full name he makes people remember him, and that is the way to go. Hmm, there's a thought for a Saturday morning. Time for the Archers.

Hilary Duff

So I just saw Hilary Duff on the Oprah show, I had never read anything about her before and I don't know what I was really expecting, but I was amazed at how normal she was! The fact that her mother still grounds her amazes me! But I guess that is the difference between Mrs Duff and Mrs Spears. I wondered if she would actually make friends with the girl she met, they are close in age, and Hilary Duff really seemed to like the other girl. Unlike Gwen Stefani, who I thought was kind of arrogant in the way that she dealt with that fan meeting her. Sure the woman got a weekend in LA on GS, but she only met her for about 20 minutes in total! Then again I guess she did at least get a nice dress and a new hair cut out of it.

It always makes me laugh the way that Oprah gets star struck, and so do her guests! Enrique Inglasias was nervous because he was sitting next to her! LOL. Oh well, I guess we are all normal underneath it all.

Almost Spring!

It feels like Spring, it has been quite warm the last few days, and the snow is beginning to melt. I will miss the snow, I kind of like the quiet and whiteness of it. But once it has all gone, and the streets are cleaned up, and the sun is shining, I know that I will not be thinking about the snow.

Belinda and Samantha are both well, Samantha came out for nuts yesterday and stole the cranberries that we had left out for Belinda but she didn't eat. We got rabbit pellets for her instead, she likes those a lot.

Not much else is happening, so today I baked a cake. I haven't made a cake in years, so I have no idea what it will turn out like, I followed a recipe from Delia Smith, so it should be ok, we will see.

Be good and be happy.

Now I feel REALLY old!

Some skinny little child on the bus stood up to let me have her seat! How old did *that* make me feel? And then to add insult to injury she proceeded to talk to her friend about some old movie from back in the days of black and white that she had seen at the film club at Uni. It was Cabaret! Cabaret? Black and white? I don't think so!!!! So I turned around to tell her that it wasn't in B&W and she asked me if I had seen it when it originally came out, and was all wide eyed! Like "Oh my god you must be REALLY OLD!!!!!!" Bloody hell! And I was feeling quite good too as it was a nice day and the sky was blue and I was feeling healthy and alive! And now I feel old and wrinkly and as if I should be drawing my pension! Damn :-(

When did I get so old?

One day I was 23 and the next I am over 40! When did that happen? I feel old today, I guess that is why I am thinking about it. Most of the time I don't. Partly because I am so tired, I am exhausted if I am honest, but yet I can't sleep at night. I go to bed and can't get to sleep, then when I do fall asleep I wake up a few short hours later. Then I lie awake for about an hour or sometimes more, until I doze off again. But I don't seem to sleep for the 7 or 8 hours that I need. Unbroken sleep. So I am tired. I am also feeling physically tired, probably because I am not doing anything, just sitting here in front of the computer playing bejeweled, checking email and surfing the net. I don't get much if any exercise, other then running up and down the basement stairs to do laundry. But I can't afford the gym, and it is too cold to get exercise outside. But why do I wake up feeling exhausted? And why do I go to bed feeling like I have been run down by a truck every night? You know that, all-over-body tired feeling? I suppose I will get fit again once I can get to the gym, and for now will just have to get used to being too tired to be bothered to do anything. Until I get to go to work again, which fingers crossed will be soon.

Poor Belinda

Last night we were watching Belinda the bunny eat the food that we had put out for her, when we saw that she was having trouble maintaining her balance. I wondered if she had damaged her back legs, as she seemed to have trouble moving and appeared to be rolling over as she moved around. Then we wondered if she had broken her back, because she was having trouble even staying sitting to eat the food we had put out. When she was finished eating she wasn't even able to get up over the edge of the snow around the tree where she was eating, and eventually sort of slid and rolled her way down under the deck. Poor Belinda, we were decidedly worried. But of course, wild rabbits don't live long and she has been around for about 2 years now, making her elderly in the wild rabbit world. The other night K had startled her when putting out the food and Belinda had sort of jumped sideways landing on her side in the snow and then stayed there while K put out the food, and we wondered if she had twisted something, or perhaps dislocated her knee or something like that. But then today we saw her bounding off along the fence down the side of the garden, so we know that she is ok. She certainly looks in better condition than she did last night, which is a relief. I am thinking that she might have hurt herself, but is bgetting better now, and K thinks that she might have trapped one of her front legs when she tried to jump over the Frost fencing into the next door yard the other day when she was startled by one of us leaving the house. So poor old Belinda is in a bit of a bad way, but hopefully will get better soon. And yes we know that we are making her dependent on us for food, but that is ok, we will always feed her until she is with us no longer.

Libary Books

Why is it that when I find a book I want to read, the library near here doesn't have it on the shelf? I have to request it be brought in from another library. What is also interesting to me is that all the "intellectual" books are at the St. Boniface library, which is in the French Quarter. I am not saying I am surprised that the French quarter has the good books, more that other areas of town don't have academic books. There are several university campuses in town, and St. Boniface is only one of those, not even the largest! Then again I expect that the Universities all have their own libraries, and the books that intellectuals want to read are kept there. So I guess the French Quarter has the highest proportion of academics living there.

So I will request the book I Want to read, and then wait for it to come in. In the meantime I Will walk up to the library here and pick up the other three books that I recently requested. Which will at least mean we will have something to do on Sunday, other than read the back of the cornflakes packet.

Feeling useless

There isn't a more ueseless feeling than knowing that the one that you love is in deep deep pain and there is nothing you can do about it. In this instance there really is nothing that I can do, because I don't understand. I don't know what it is like to have kids, and so I don't know what it feels like when you feel that you are unable to help that child when they need help. So I just have to feel useless. It is not a new feeling for me, but it is one that I really don't enjoy. I hate confrontation, I hate the fear of an argument yet to be had, I fear the torment of uncertainty of security. I can blame that on my parents, because they treated me badly during my childhood. They argued, yelling and screaming at each other in the middle of the night, and then behaving as if nothing had happened the next day. I recall vividly the terror of waking up in the middle of the night hearing the yelling, and not knowing what had caused it. The yelling soon spilled over into the daytime too, and my father would yell and scream about something at the drop of a hat. It was so unpredictable, that even if you tried to predict the screaming, you would live in fear of it happening. To the extent that it eventually became easier to precipitate the anger outburst just to get it over with. So now I have a fear of confrontation, of being yelled at by someone, of having to deal with someone who is so upset that they can't even express themselves properly. Even if that upset is not anger but hurt, and emotional distress. I guess I am just selfish in that I can't cope with the emotional turmoil of the effects that a disturbed childhood have had on a young adult. Someone who doesn't accept that they have a problem and so won't get the professional help they so desperately need, but instead take it out on a defenceless parent. Someone who will suffer the pain three times as much because guilt for causing the distress in another is carried alongside the pain of not being able to help a child, as well as the pain of their own suffering during an abusive relationship. So what does a person sitting on the outside of this do? Give space, obviously wanted by the person who shut themselves in the bedroom without speaking, give time, and give love. But it is not easy.

Just another day

It is just another day in the long, seemingly interminable wait for immigration to do their job. It seems that we may have to wait another 6 months for the paperwork to come through, and I am wondering if I will be able to secure a proper job at the end of it. I mean how long will an employer wait? If only there was some way of knowing where we were in the queue. Like, we just issued a card to number 56789 and you are number 67890. Then at least we would know that we were getting closer. As it is we can only sit and wait watching the snow and feeding the bunny and squirrel.

Talking of which, Belinda, yes the bunny finally got a name, has finally cottoned on to the fact that we are leaving food out for her. We bought some pellets, so that Samantha wouldn't keep stealing her food, and last night she sat munching her way through them happily. Of course we haven't seen Samantha in days, but it has been snowing. I think for 3 days now we have had snow. Not continuously, but just sort of gently. I guess we should be grateful that it is only -15 out there today (celcius), over the weekend it was in the mid to late 30's below, with a windchill that made it impossible to go out. So -15 is positively balmy LOL! Oh well. But I am still enjoying the snow, contrary to popular opinion. Many of my friends thought that I would have cabin fever by now, but I still love to look out of the back window and enjoy the view.

I was reminded of how priviledged we are to live here. An elderly woman was talking about how the state should not dictate to us what we can and can't eat, and for some reason I was filled with the joy of living in Winnipeg. I love the place, I love our house and of course I love my lady. So we will continue to wait for immigration, because in the long run the wait will be worth it.

Almost a waste of life

A friend just emailed me to say that she was finally taking a vacation. I have known her for about 4 years now, and this will be the first time that she has taken a vacation away from DC where she lives, in all that time. She will be out of town for the inauguration. Which is something that most people I know who live in DC will be doing. I will just digress for a moment here to tell you what she said. Apparently they will be closing down DC for half a day before, the whole day of, and half a day after the inauguration itself. They will be maintaining massive security throughout that time, and anyone coming in to the District for the ceremony will be comprehensively searched. All at the expense of the District, which is apparently so poor that it can't currently even keep its own hospital open. I have no doubt that the people who live in DC will not get to hear about the protests that occur during that time, about the near riots, and riots that occur, and the extent of the objection of the populace to the inauguration of Dubbya once again. I know this because I lived in the District for the last inauguration, and we heard nothing of the riots, public dissent and protests that occurred in the town that day. I didn't know about it until K told me what she had seen on TV down in Florida. But then we didn't hear of the opressive tactics of the State Troopers as the prevented the African American population of Florida from voting. Anyway, back to my friend.

She asked me to be proud of her for finally taking a vacation. In my heart I can't help but be worried for her. She is older than me, still owes on her student loans, still lives in fear of her parents' disapproval, and still wonders when her knight in shining armour will come and save her from her dreary life. She sits alone in her life, thinking about what could be, not realising that her life is passing her by. That the longer she sits thinking about doing something, the less likely it is that she will ever get to do it. She and her sister have already planned their old age, they will live in a duplex together, close enough for regular contact without living together. In a woman in her early 40's who is intelligent, beautiful (when she lets herself be) and good fun to be around (when she lets herself be) I find this upsetting. That someone with her level of intelligence can let their life just pass them by in this way is distressing, and of great concern to me. Why don't I do something to help her? I tried. I was a close friend, physically and emotionally, for 3 years, in which time I tried to get her to come out of her self imposed isolation. It worked as long as I pushed her, but if I didn't push her she didn't bother to experience her life as she lived it.

I would love for her to be brave and just pick up and move away somewhere without any plans. To perhaps go to San Francisco for a couple of months, to experience how life can be lived when it is enjoyed by the person living it. But I know she never will. As long as I have known her she has been talking about getting a new job, and yet she is still there, in the same job, with unbelievable pressure and stress, and I know now that she will never leave it until she is forced to. In the meantime I will tell her that I am pleased that she has finally used the air ticket that she bought last summer, and will take time off work. That I hope that she has a good time, that she rests, recuperates, and that she goes back to the District with a renewed approach to life. But I know that she won't, that within days of being back at work she will be just as stressed and just as reclusive as she was before she went away.

I would say that hers is almost a wasted life, except that she has two wonderful nieces, whom she loves dearly and whom love her to death. For them her life is not a waste. But sadly for her it is.

Brad and Jen

I have to say that I was really quite upset that Brad and Jen had split. Not because I know them personally, but because I had thought that they made a lovely couple, and he seemed to love her and she him. But of course, when it is presented on a platter there isn't a man in the world who will try a sample. If the rumours are true then Brad did more than sample, and I find that very disappointing. Why would a man feel the need to sleep with a slut like Angelina when he has a wife like Jennifer waiting for him to come home?

If anyone can explain to me why men have to cheat on their wives like this I would love to know. It seems that no matter how devoted the man is to a woman, and no matter how devoted she is to him, he still feels the need to have sex with someone else when it is offered for the taking.

I have heard about that book "He's just not in to you", I haven't read it, but I have read that some men feel that it unfairly paints them all with the same brush. I was wondering if that was true. Until I heard about Brad and Jen! And now I am afraid I have to assume that all men are the same. My step-daughter is struggling to understand men, she is 20 and trying to find a man with whom she can have a caring relationship, but all they want is sex. When she says no it is too soon, they ignore her and treat her like cat shit on their shoe. Yes she is intelligent, beautiful, and well cultured. What is wrong with men?

Isn't it time we changed society to make unfaithful men a thing of the past? How can we do this? By changing the way that men who screw around are treated. Change society's thinking so that men who screw around are as reviled as women who screw around. See how they deal with being called a slut, a whore, and banished to the sidelines of society because of their sexual urges. Hmm, a bit like they way that society treats homosexuals!

But of course the men would still think it was great for some stud to have spread his seed around 1000 women, so even if slutty men were banished to an island, someone would still think they were gods. In the meantime women have to put up with second best. Not even second best really, they have to put up with men the way they are.

There is of course an alternative explanation for Brad and Jen, that he wanted kids and she didn't. Well here is an idea Brad, how about *you* quit working and stay home to look after the kids while Jen goes on with her movie career? How about you adopt? There must be a million kids needing to be adopted, so adopt one, let Jen carry on working the way men do, and perhaps you can resolve the issues that have wrecked your life together. Either way I side with Jen on this one.

Asking Questions

At some point you have to ask a question. No matter what you are doing, where you are going, or who you are, you have to ask a question. It is the way that you ask the question that matters. Take the other day for example. I was asked the question "what do you know about that?". Well the way it was asked was "that the hell do *you* know about that?". So of course my hackles went straight up, and I replied in a very hostile way. The questioner looked surprised, and then backed down saying "do you need any help?". What he had meant was "do you need me to answer any questions?". But that isn't what he said, and so he lost me, lost my sale, and probably lost me to the store, until such time as I forget that it was that store that I was insulted in, and go back there again. Retrospectively I feel a little sorry for the guy, he was only doing what he was told to do. That being to engage me in conversation about the product, in this case digital cameras, that I was interested in. Had he asked me if I needed help I would have told him that I already own a digicam and was only browsing while I waited for my partner to finish looking at whatever it was that she was looking at. So here is my question for the day. Who thought that an aggressively worded question was the way to open the discussion witha customer over a product that they are interested in? The answer will never be known, but I am willing to be that it was probably an American, someone who had never actually sold anything, let alone worked on a shop floor, let alone dealt with customers. Probably a young, late 20's early 30's, man who had gone straight from college to a lower management position without needing to work his way there by being good at his job. I might be biased, ok I admit that I am biased. I am where I am because I worked damned hard to get here, yet there are children working in positions of influence in society, who got the jobs that they are in simply by passing a few exams. But I digress. Back to my original point. Everyday you have to ask questions. So next time you are about to open your mouth and exercise your vocal cords, think a little bit about how you phrase the question, and then the tone or voice, and intimation that you put into the words, before you vocalise them. Then think about where I am. Passed so many exams that I know hold the highest educational award that is possible on this planet. Yet I am still waiting to hear whether or not I can live in this country, with my partner of 6 years. While I wait I am wasting time surfing the net looking for news articles to interest me, I build furniture, and I watch the squirrel eating the peanuts that I put out for her every morning. Now, ask yourself these questions. Is this a waste of education? Is there something else that I can be doing? Is there something else that I can do to make things move along a little faster? Are there questions that I *should* have asked?

I want to get a dog, it isn't fair that I can't have a dog. But we can't afford one. I would really like to have a little friendly dog running around the house, cuddling up on the sofa, barking at the neighbours. But we will have to wait. We have to wait for everything and it is getting very tedious. Recently I bought a pill box, one of those weekly things with a slot for every day, because I had been forgetting to take my meds. It is very good, I never forget, but it is like a reminder of passing time! It is like that bottle of marbles that did the rounds. Where some idiot worked out that if he lived to be 84 he had about 1000 more Saturdays left, so he bought 1000 marbles and put them in a jar, then every Saturday he took one out, to remind him of how little time he had left! Talk about depressing! I mean sure, when there are still 998 marbles in the jar, but what about when it is less than half full? It would depress the hell out of me, and the stress of wondering when I was going to die would probably do me in! Well sure enough the guy lives longer than 84 and when his jar of marbles ran out he started putting them back in again, and the jar was filling up nicely, in the story I heard anyway. But honestly, what a dumb thing to do eh? But here I am, with my little pill box, ticking off the days in much the same way. Today is Wednesday, so the box is half empty again, another reminder of another empty week. Still waiting to hear from Immigration, still waiting to know whether K and I will be able to continue living together in our nice little home, in this beautiful city. Or if we will have to relocate to the YUK, live in a one room bedsit hell hole, working in a pub to put food on the table and hating every minute while we wait for our appeal to be heard in Canada. We wouldn't be able to have a dog there for sure! Mind you if we did have a dog we would get welfare for it in the YUK, that would be one thing, hmmmm now there's an idea!