1. The weather was fabulous.
2. The lovely deep pink and teale sari of the woman walking in front of me.
3. The fifty pigeons eating seeds that an old Asian man had spread in a circular trail. He looked quite pleased with himself. Pigeon art!
4. I had an interview today. It was okay.
5. I slept all night! My body did not decide that we were waking up at 5am, like it is so fond of doing when I am stressed out! (See: early morning awakening insomnia)
6. The menu tonight: Mom's Chili Beans, but with TVP instead of meat, and Cucumber Yogurt Salad
7. Delightful chicken recipe we tried the other night: Parmesan Chicken. It's one of those recipes that are impossible not to sample before serving.

Next Tuesday, my Mom and I are heading out east to visit some family. This will help Christopher and I to keep our new-found "we only see each other every other week" routine going. You see, he went to Curaçao for a week. A week later, I went to BC for a week. A week later, he went to Dublin and London for a week. He just got back, and now I'm going to Nova Scotia next week. Fate is conspiring to make it impossible for us to get sick of each other!

Anyways, this will be a good trip. My mom grew up in Nova Scotia, and I haven't been back for a while. We have some relatives and friends out there who we can stay with, and the airfare is relatively cheap ($550 for two return tickets, not bad). I'll get to play in the Bay of Fundy, which means that I will have touched both oceans in the span of a month! Also, we're renting a car, which means that I get to drive. I haven't driven in a long time. You see, back when I lived in rural Ontario, far outside the bounds of the subway, I drove my parents' car and pickup truck fairly regularly. And then one day, during the first snowfall that year, I took a corner too fast and ended up spinning out, going through a ditch, hitting a friend's fence, and breaking the front axle. With my youngest sister in the car. We were fine though, just a minor case of whiplash and a major case of "holy shit I just totalled the car!!!!" Then, a few years later (during which my driving was fine!), I was driving the truck and I pulled into an intersection too early and got hit by a car.

So, my parents took me off the insurance and bought my sister a car, lest we put a third accident on their insurance and send their rates skyrocketing. Never let Melissa say I never did anything for her!

I haven't driven much since then. And I don't need to at all in my day-to-day life here in downtown Toronto, so it's not that big a deal. It's easy to live without a vehicle here. I've walked everywhere I've needed to go this summer, using the TTC pretty rarely. But I do miss driving. I miss driving my Dad's old Dodge Ram pickup truck, an old beast of a truck with a button on the floor that you had to press with your left foot to turn the high-beams on and off. I don't miss the passenger side door, which would fly open if you turned left too fast, but I do miss driving that truck. Chris always stares at me in horror when I say that, but really... Can't a girl reminisce about driving a beat-up pickup truck down dirt roads on a beautiful summer afternoon?

This morning, I was cleaning my room out in preparation for my little move on Friday. I'm moving from the biggest bedroom in our apartment to the smallest one because of some weirdness in my sublet agreement, so I've been needing to get rid of a lot of things or move them over into storage. I've been pondering what to do with my Christian books and CDs for a long while. Do I try to sell them? Do people buy things like DC Talk's Free At Last album anymore? Pick It Up by Hokus Pick? Has anyone in the used bookstores heard of Steve Bell? Keith Green? Steve Taylor? All Star United? The Insyderz? Rich Mullins? LaRue? I would guess not.

But then it came to me. I live a few doors down from a Baptist church. Churches have libraries. Churches take donations. Churches will take my religious clutter free of charge!

It was a bit of an adventure. I haven't set foot in a church in a few years. The sign said that the service started at 10, so I wandered down around noon hoping that things would be wrapping up. As I drew near to the building, I could hear hymns being sung. This was a good sign, since I assumed (rightly) that this was the post-sermon song to close the service.

When I stepped into the stairwell adjunct to the main sanctuary, an Usher came over and asked me what I needed, told me they didn't have a library, and went back to the Head Usher to inform him of my purpose. The Head Usher told me that they were in the midst of making a library but it wasn't done yet, and I should talk to one of the deacons or the pastor. All the while, the service is going on and we're talking quietly through the closing prayers. After the service, the pastor came to the door to shake hands with people as they left, and I told him I would wait until a more convenient time. People shook my hand and greeted me as they walked by, assuming that I was another congregant, and I played along.

Eventually, the pastor went and got the woman who is in charge of the library, and she took me downstairs, admired all of my books and CDs and thanked me profusely, taking my name and address so she can send me a thank-you card. She even hugged me before I left!

So, there you go. I've shaken more hands today than in the last few years, I got a hug from a stranger, I'm getting a thank-you card from a church, my collection of un-used stuff is a lot smaller, and my "how long has it been since I last set foot in a church" counter has been set back to zero.

Next step: donate clothes and random things to the Scott Mission. It's so much closer than the Goodwill donation centre.

I was going through my music today because my hard drive is filling up, and I got to my collection of Caedmon's Call songs. I'm always torn about what to do with them. On one hand, they're full of theology that I no longer participate in. On the other hand, they're pretty and the harmonies are FUN. One song, This World, had some lyrics that jumped out at me since many of the blogs (Jo, Caleb, Julie) that I read have been raising this issue lately:

This world is making me drunk on the spirits of fear.
So when he says who will go, I am nowhere near.

And the least of these look like criminals to me
So I leave Christ on the street

It's alluding to this statement by Jesus about the final judgement:

Matthew 25:34-40
"Then the King will say to those on his right, 'Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.'

"Then the righteous will answer him, 'Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?'

"The King will reply, 'I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.'"

He goes on to judge those who didn't help other people in need, and to say that in refusing to help other people, they refused to help him, and will be judged accordingly.

I went out for drinks last night with a friend and his girlfriend who was visiting from France, and she was marvelling at how many crazy people we have wandering our streets and that we have so many commercials asking for money for the Make a Wish Foundation. She said that it was strange to her that we would donate money to send kids to Disneyworld, something that will not help to heal their diseases at all, while completely ignoring so many desperate adults. She wondered how a civilized society could abandon so many people, saying that at least this isn't the Middle Ages anymore — at least we don't burn them.

I was reading this thread about what a nuisance the local beggars are on the Toronto LiveJournal community board, and I was surprised how unified the emotion was. Everyone was anti-beggar, everyone saw them as a problem, not people to be helped. They see beggars as lazy people who are trying to take our hard-earned money undeservedly, especially since we already pay taxes, so they should be using public services and not cluttering our sidewalks. Examples:

"I am of the opinion if you are ablebodied and of sound mind, you should be able to work and provide for yourself."
"The last time someone approached me, I yelled at them to get a job. I support many of the sentiments posted here: I work hard for my money. I subscribe to the "you-make-your-bed-you-lie-in-it" theory. People ALWAYS have a choice."
"you know what i've noticed? NO ONE even says please anymore. they just ask for money as if its sole purpose is to be handed out willy nilly to people who are apparently above working a shitty grocery store job (or something similar), like the rest of us have when we've had no money or real work experience."

You SHOULD be able to work and provide for yourself, but the reality is that the lower class in Canada has it hard. Most of the new jobs that are created are temporary, part-time, and minimum wage. A single person making minimum wage in Toronto spends 90% of their money on rent. Imagine trying to survive on that with kids? Hell, try to get a job without an address. Try to get an apartment without an income. It's a vicious cycle. Campaign 2000 has tons of information on child poverty in Canada. One Canadian child in six lives below the poverty line, and that line is low. In Toronto, it's one child in three.

The stress of having homeless people begging me for money as I walk home is nowhere near the stress of living on the streets and needing to beg hostile strangers for the money for your daily food, the stress of trying to get a meagre amount of welfare when you have no fixed address, the stress of trying to survive life in a shelter.

And I am no better. I don't give people money. I say that it's because I don't really have much money, that I would rather give money to the shelters, but I don't do that either and I seem to have enough money to go to plays and to go out for drinks, to buy cute shirts that are on sale, clothes that I certainly don't need. And 'the least of these' often does look like a threat to me when I'm walking home late at night. I gave out a couple of bottles of water when it was really hot out this summer, but that's just a drop in the bucket. I try to look them in the eye and say "sorry" rather than pretending they're just part of the pavement. I don't feel like that's enough though. This problem seems overwhelming and sometimes I try to forget about it because it's easier than facing such a hard truth.

Mashuga is a fotolog that profiles homeless people in New York City, with portraits and stories. It's a good read when you need to remember again that these are real people with families and pasts and stories.

Over the years, I have tried to gently school my father in the appreciation of good music. I've made him countless mix CDs with music that I like and hope he won't despise, and this afternoon, I think we reached a breakthrough. He was telling me about listening to Sounds Like Canada this morning when Jian Ghomeshi interviewed Amy Millan, who has sung for Stars and Broken Social Scene and now has her own solo album, Honey From The Tombs. And he really liked her, she whom I've been in love with since seeing Stars in concert almost two years ago!

Dad: Wait, are we reaching a new stage here?
HA: What, the stage where we like the same bands?
Dad: Yeah! I think we've reached a breakthrough, Hannie!
HA: I know! You've finally become cool!

Combining that with the fact that my father also finally connected the dots between the Jian Ghomeshi on Sounds Like Canada and the Jian Ghomeshi in Moxy Früvous, I think we've reached a whole new level. If you would like to congratulate my father on his newfound good taste in music, feel free to email me and I'll pass it along. :)

Ha! In French, crochet means 'hook'. This lends itself to many lame jokes, my favourite being "hookers do it with chains." Chain stitches, you perverts!

Linda's gone on maternity leave at last, and her baby is ready to get outta there. I know, I've seen it trying to push its way out of her belly! It's rather entertaining. Anyways, we got together yesterday to do some crocheting for the baby, and I made some non-scratch mittens and a baby toque, which Linda was happy to model for me. :)

Tonight there's a whole troupe of us going to see A Comedy of Errors performed by CanStage in High Park. We're going to make a picnic out of it, and there are rumours of guacamole, hummus, salad, some random wine from Kathy AND port wine, as well as cookies and cheese and baguette and all sorts of wonderful things. I've never read A Comedy of Errors, but I've heard that this year's performance is quite funny. Kathy and I have managed to go the last two or three summers and they always prove to be entertaining.

I think this is Calvin's look for "Why are you sitting there flashing that red light at me? You could be FEEDING me, silly human!"

Christopher's gone on a business trip to the UK, and despite all his best efforts, Dune didn't manage to go with him:


Super-Good Smoothie of the Day:
- 1 banana
- some milk
- 2 scoops butterscotch ripple icecream
- cinnamon

I realised something the other day about the prospect of moving in with Christopher, and it's rather exciting. The whole place will be ours! Well, duh, right? Yeah, but I've been living with various people for six years and the whole place has NEVER been all mine. I've never been allowed to do big things to the kitchen or living room, because it's not my space, it's common space, and it's best if it doesn't really belong to anyone. Or, at the very least, if I want to make changes, I have to make sure they work with up to four other people's decorating preferences. I'll be happy to have moved past that stage of my life. :)

There's an alley just south of Queen Street West that runs all the way from Spadina and Bathurst where graffiti is not only allowed, but encouraged. They had a graffiti festival a few weeks ago, so a lot of artists came in and put new art up, and I got some shots of it today. Graffiti always makes me feel my white-girl middle-class heritage keenly, but I can't help but be amazed by it, especially when confronted by works like these.

Yeah, that was always my answer to that question when I was little. Always a smart-aleck, always indecisive.

I took most of the summer off, or at least with very part-time hours doing jobs that I could do from home, just to give myself a break from school and try to think about what I want to do next. Now that I've gotten back from Janice's wedding, I've hit the point in the year when I'm supposed to be aggressively looking for employment. Right now, I'm looking for administration-related jobs, some in educational institutions, some in goverment, some in random places advertised on job agency websites.

It's strange, because as much as I liked school and kicked ass at it (summa cum laude, woot!), I'm not sure how well it prepared me for the work world. It seems like cover letters are the hardest things in the world to write. I can write an analysis of verb movement in Old English, but you want me to convince you in under a page that you're going to like me and I'm going to rock at your job? That's a tall order. I'm looking at ads for jobs like being a Financial Aid Officer, and thinking, 'Man, I could totally do that! But how to convince someone of that with my zero financial aid experience and my linguistics degree?' I'm sure I'll think of a way to pull all my related experience and skills together into something convincing, but it's a daunting job.

And is this what I want to do? Well, of course, the question is what do you LOVE? I love:
- the Grange Park
- teasing Christopher
- crocheting, DIY stuff
- ranting about feminism
- poking holes in theology
- finding that one thing that makes a person's face light up when they talk about it
- Spider Solitaire, Mancala, Speed Scrabble
- constructing a tasty salad

And so on. I would like to have a job that had something to do with social justice, women's rights, access to birth control and/or sex education, anti-poverty groups, environmental issues (e.g. re-introducing the "reduce, re-use" part!) etc., but I'm not sure how to get into those things without either a degree in Social Work or Urban Planning or Nursing of some kind. Surely those organizations need good administrators too? I'm going to have to do some hard research in the next few weeks.

I can do research. I can catch the small details while keeping the big picture in mind. I learn quick. I work hard. I just need to learn to ferret out the good jobs and how to write a kick-ass cover letter.

So, I'm moving in with Chris in January! He will be my 19th, and perhaps final, housemate. I haven't ever lived with a boy before, despite my many many roommates, and I certainly haven't ever done the moving-in-together thing before. We've been thinking and talking a lot about What This Means, and I'm getting to re-evaluate my post-Christian thoughts on relationships YET AGAIN.

The former relationship scheme went a little like this: In an ideal world, you meet someone and fall in love and God reveals that you are to be with this person, because he (always he!) is The One God Planned For You, you hold hands and don't stray into sexual goings-on (or want to, because that would be Satan!) and eventually get married and have a super-big religious wedding complete with praise & worship songs, a sermon, and admonitions that you only love each other because God enables you to, and the only good marriages are the ones based on Christianity (we heard this wedding sermon last fall!), and then you pray and THEN commence living together, doing (or learning about) the sex, having babies, and all that. And it's perfect, of course, because Jesus picked the guy out for you.

Uh, yeah, I don't think like that anymore. To further complicate matters, I've never been one of those girls who was planning her wedding since she became aware that weddings existed. When I was in bible college and the swarm of girls buzzing around the bridal magazines in the hallway (ALL OF THEM SINGLE!) inquired as to what kind of dress I wanted, it always reinforced my hatred of the place rather than inspiring me to go over and say, "Ooh, that one, with the frills!" I'm just not that girl. I still don't get excited about such things. I walk past bridal stores downtown and look at the dresses and think "eek, not me, not me!!" I mean, if I get into that dress...

There's this big theory out there right now about gender called Performativity. Basically, it says that gender is a thing that you DO, not a thing that you ARE, and there's a billion ways to do it. You could be masculine in the big ol' construction worker way, or the high-powered businessman way, or the sysadmin geek way (<3!), or the indie rock ironic way, and they're all performances of your version of Masculine. I can be feminine in the J-Lo wedding-planner way, or the librarian way, or the secretary way, or the butch lesbian way, or the rugby-player way, or the sassy bartender way, or the goth chick way, or the grandma who's always got fresh cookies way, or the soccer mom way...

So, if I get into that dress, I'm afraid that I'll be performing a role that I don't fit into, a role that I don't identify with. I could do other things, I could change the dress like Janice did, or I could find a style more like mine, whatever. But I still feel this apprehension around the whole wedding idea that's a mix of this feeling that it's "not me" and a lot of leftover religious connotations on the whole day.

So, basically, I'm moving in with a boy, something I never thought I'd do, and I'm not really so keen on the whole wedding idea. Marriage, moreso, wedding, less so. This all adds up to a picture that is pretty different from the one that I grew up with, and I'm still sorting out what it means and what I want things to mean. I've got a few questions, questions like:

- If we're living together and having sex and the relationship is good and we have the long-term monogamous commitment thing going on... what exactly is the point of getting married? Getting married used to mean starting all (or most of) that, so what would getting married do?
- Why do people seem to think that it's necessary to get married before having kids? Is it because of legal protections? If so, what are they? Is it because of the long-term commitment angle? What's stopping you from having that already?
- Do we still go by "boyfriend/girlfriend", the same terms used for 14 year olds who are 'dating'?
- How to best handle money as a couple?
- How to make sure that our introvert needs for alone-time are still met when living together in a 1-bedroom place? Conversely, how to make sure that I still have a social life, if I have no girl roommates and no more school?
- What could possibly make Chris hate laundry enough that he's willing to do the dishes forever, in exchange for never having to touch a washer again? And how sweet is that?! The best deals are the ones where we both TOTALLY feel that we've won. :)

I haven't gotten to go through many of the photos yet, having just gotten back yesterday, but here's a few. The wedding was gorgeous, the weather was perfect, Janice looked stunning, and nothing went wrong. Well, there was a small fire... one of the anti-mosquito candles somehow caught one of the baskets of favours on fire, but it was quickly noticed and put out and nothing else was harmed! And my stomach flu was vanquished before the big day, so all was well!

I didn't get to take many photos really, because I was the maid of honour, and it would be crass to be up there taking photos. Really though, they'll have tons of photos, because the entire audience was armed with cameras — it was like being followed around by the paparazzi or something! Anyways, I lent my (Chris's) camera to Janice's future sister-in-law, so I do have some evidence of the goings-on. :)

Soon I will be back to text-blogging, my friends. There will still be photos, but there will not be JUST photos. I promise.

So, I've been stuck in bed all day with a stomach flu, probably picked up from my five hour flight in a small enclosed space with a lot of people and their germs. Two days to the wedding, and I better be feeling better by then! Also, there is terrorism afoot and security measures have gone crazy, so I will need some luck getting my liquids/gels home with me without checking my luggage. I only have two bags, so I like to bring them as carry-on, but I don't feel having things like deodorant, make-up, mousse, sunscreen, etc., taken away from me by security. Welcome to the culture of fear, where simple toiletries can't come on board, lest they be explosives in disguise! Boo on that.

Okay, some photos, some taken at low tide:

Dice Wars is way too addictive. Damn you, Metafilter, for introducing me to such games!

It is way too easy to make fun of Metro when this is his idea of posing nicely:


But look at his non-racist toes!


I'm trying to write a speech/toast for Janice's wedding. It's hard! It's her wedding, it can't be too silly or too long or too short or... blah! I have about half of it down, but I love her so much, I want it to be PERFECT.

I don't think I'll be able to post from their house, and my flight leaves tonight, but I'll be back sometime after the 14th!

So, it's like 38 degrees here in Toronto this week, and I had the audacity to be out walking at noon. It is hot and muggy and I am currently sitting on the floor in front of the fan. Agnes and I were walking in the market today and this Jamaican dude came and talked to us and started holding her hand and telling her he wanted to "cool her down" by making love to her. She protested on the grounds that a) that would not cool her down, and b) her boyfriend might not be too keen on the idea.

My male readers, delicate flowers that you are, may feel free to skip this paragraph. So, about 6 months ago, I got a menstrual cup (more info), and I have to say that it is making this heat just a little more bearable. To have to deal with heavy blood flow on a day like today would be just insanely uncomfortable, but thanks to the cup, everything stays nicely inside. The cup certainly makes the whole thing a lot cleaner and you don't get that weird seeping feeling. It's actually made me a lot less uncomfortable with my period in general. You have to figure out how that whole area works to be able to use a cup, since you have to be able to insert it and make sure that it's sitting right and 'pops open' and such. So, now I can confidently say that YES, you can reach your cervix, it will not bite. And since the cup collects menstrual material instead of absorbing it, when you take it out, you can look at it, and it's actually very different than I imagined. I envisioned very liquidy blood, but it's closer to the consistency of phlegm, and it's really bright, quite a beautiful colour of red, actually. Plus, there's zero chances of Toxic Shock Syndrome, it's only about $45, and you only have to buy it once. Thumbs up!

I leave on Saturday for Nanaimo, BC, on Vancouver Island, for a week, for Janice's wedding. This will be my second time being a bridesmaid. One more and I will be cursed, doomed to never be a bride, oh nooooo! Every bridal college alumni's nightmare! Anyways, yeah, my best friend is getting married in under 2 weeks. We really are that old, aren't we? I have to make a speech! It'll be the first non-religious wedding that I'll have ever been to, so that'll be interesting. It's going to be quite non-traditional — she's wearing a green dress, it'll be outside in the evening, no meal at the reception, the ceremony itself will be about half an hour, etc. I'll be sure to take lots of pictures and make a full report when I return!