More training. With real people this time. Made a few mistakes, but overall it went pretty well. I'm happy that I will be working alone again, and it doesn't look like anyone will object if I bring my books and study a bit... Papers are snowballing right now, one due on Wednesday but I've been trying hard to get it done early as there's another one due on the 21st and then 4 more before the end of November. Then finals. The end of my first term!

If my little brother happens to be reading this, all I can say is the bed better be damn comfy if you paid that much for it...

The kids are jumping down the stairs onto a large beanbag their gramma gave them yesterday. I threatened to take them to the kid pound earlier and put them up for adoption, when I was trying to work on my paper and they kept coming and bouncing around and making silly noises. The topic was the competing meanings of the word "possession" in a parental child abduction case, and I was beginning to think that I should just write "oh, to hell with it, just let the father have them, you silly woman"....

So. An innocuous little piece of news, the Queen dropping the puck at the hockey game on Sunday night.

Well. I had to go to lottery training in Richmond on Monday morning 8:30 am, and the logistics of trying to get from Horseshoe Bay to Richmond in 25 minutes after taking the first ferry in the morning weren't good so I decided to stay overnight in Vancouver. Picked a hotel, went to check in. Funny thing, though, it said it was close to the Greyhound station and it most positively wasn't. Quite a little hike, in fact. Across the bridge and everything.

I checked in and ate supper, and then went to watch tv. The hockey game finished, and some lunatic with a set of bagpipes started skirling and wailing in the parking lot outside GM Place, and I swear he knew maybe two songs, one of them that Scotch Porridge Oats thing and the other I can't place but I know I've heard it before. I looked out the window but I couldn't really see anything, and damn if the guy didn't keep playing those same two songs over and over until almost midnight.

When quiet seemed to be restored, or at least as much as it ever is in downtown Vancouver, I went to bed but I couldn't really sleep. So I lay and watched the headlights make patterns on the ceiling for a while, and I think I finally drifted off. Must've been about 1 am or so, the fire alarm went off. Just like when I used to live in residence at the UofA, that incessant ring. I got out of bed and wandered around a bit, wishing it would stop, but it didn't. So I put my pants on and stuck my head out into the hallway. An assortment of really big men were also poking their heads out of all the other doorways. Hockey players? Maybe. I wouldn't know. So we milled around for a bit, wondering what to do, and eventually one of them said, "stairs, maybe?" and we all started down. When my feet hit the concrete, I realized that I'd forgotten my shoes and my wallet. If we ended up outside all night, it'd be not much fun....

We didn't, though, they turned it off eventually, and the firetrucks came, loudly singing in the night and I think it was about 2:30 I got back to sleep again. Things were further complicated in the morning by the fact that the alarm clock given in the room didn't work, and I had to take a hugely expensive cab to Richmond....

today I'm doing Charter of Rights and its interpretation by the courts. (the reasonableness yardstick. It's reasonable for a person to be patted down before boarding an airplane. It's not reasonable for the police to do a body cavity search on a routine traffic stop. Get out of the car, honey.)

I also went downtown and conducted most of my business, and asked Serra if she'd like to come and work with me again. So all is underway.

The dogs are drinking my coffee.

woohoo. fell asleep reading about CSIS today... then the dogs started barking at the mailman. they're good for keeping me studying, if it looks like I haven't moved in a while they'll sometimes come and gratuitously lick my face. Ya still alive? Good.

The phone calls have commenced for my new venture. I love this phase... more than anything, I think, the gearing up of a new business. Last time, with the coffee shop, I was frightened too, wondering if I could pull it off by myself (literally alone, and I lived in a campground for three weeks, slept in my car until the house was vacated by the last owners) but this time I know I can, and there shouldn't be any surprises. Business licence, phone, insurance, bank account, gonna do all that tomorrow. I didn't realize until today that I missed all that. The details. About a month ago, I was downtown and saw one of my old customers, and he said, "what are you going to do next?" and I mumbled something non-committal and he said, "You'll be running something else, pretty soon, I bet."

hey, look, puppies!

So. I got the job with the lottery corp. Very cool. Now I can quit whining about being out of work. I start on the 23rd, which gives me three weeks to put as much of these correspondence courses in as possible. so what am I doing? eating chocolate and surfing the net... also the police organization I volunteered for called me back today, so all in all pretty good. and my little brother in Australia called too. He's seen koala bears. He's moving to Melbourne. (are these facts related? maybe. he seems quite worried that koala bears may choose to drop on him and rip all his skin off. he's heard that's what they do...)

the second job interview was kinda strange. Young man wants: accounting / web design / content management / complete knowledge of aromatherapy / phone answering / e-mail processing / graphic design / bottling of product / shipping... part-time, 12 dollars an hour. What this tells me is that he's too cheap to pay an accountant or a web-designer, or to hire someone full time and / or take the time to train anyone. He asked me if I knew anything about aromatherapy, and I said I had sold products at the candle shop but that was as far as my knowledge went. He was pretty serious, and I don't think he appreciated the fact that I was relaxed... When I was leaving he said he thought he would have to do more interviews, which I took to mean that since it was 5pm Friday he had done interviews all day and hadn't found anyone with the skill set required... I can do the web stuff, although not to a professional standard, and I can do the accounting, which is what he advertised for.

But then when I got home there was a message on my machine to call the last set of folks I left a resume with, so either the odds are getting better, or people are getting desperate.

Eventually... something will click. Also I guess I'm not desperate yet myself, as I've been picking up a few days at the candle shop. I thought the interview with the lottery folks went well, but I think I'll just wait and see what happens.

today I went downtown to mail a paper, and stopped in to visit Randall, who told me on Wednesday when I was working at the candle shop that he had a new cash register that his momma-in-law had given him, and that she had programmed it for her winery (wish my mominlaw had a winery!) and so when he tried to ring up hair products (he's a hairdresser) he ended up with Merlots and Chardonnays. so I reprogrammed it for him, so it adds tax and doesn't do anything alcoholic, and he was so grateful he gave me a bag of hair products, including some radical stuff that makes my hair (naturally I washed it when I got home) have these amazing highlights and be all smooth and straight. I always wondered why salons charged so much for their stuff, now I know. cos it actually works. Kirsten when she got home headed straight for the shower too, she's got a mop of frizzy hair and despairs some mornings.

Then I went to the first job interview, with my nice new hair, and it was fun. I guess cos I don't care whether they give it to me at this point... so I was relaxed. They are going to say yes or no by Wednesday. One more interview today, but I don't have to leave for it right yet.

termpaper count this week: three down, two to go. for monday. and it's nasty to be up so late and have to drink decaf. last night my dad was here and I had a cup of tea with him at 9:30, then I couldn't sleep. And now tomorrow I have TWO job interviews (serves me right for complaining that I send out resumes and no-one calls...) the second one is with an aromatherapy company that sells stuff on the net, might be a bit of fun.

I have a job interview on Friday, but not for the sausage-selling job, one with the lottery corporation. In ambivalent news, M has gone back to work for the poster child for financial mis-management.

I'm revising papers today, got one back, a preliminary assignment that doesn't count for anything but I didn't like the mark I would've got if it had counted for something... if you see what I mean. I knew after I sent it off that I'd used a glaringly wrong fact, I misunderstood something I read and then quoted it, duh. When the teacher phoned me to introduce himself I told him that I'd sent the paper off and then wished I hadn't. too late, of course. So I'm vowing to check all my facts scrupulously...

the tragically hip... a good time was had by all... especially those of us in the orchestra seats :) much much more than in the show I saw in GM Place it was apparent that not only does Gordon Downie work seamlessly with the band, he also controls the audience. He did an amazing thing with the last verse of At The Hundredth Meridian, sang the first few verses really straight through with most of the crowd singing along, then improvised for a while in the middle, kept sounding like he was going to do the last verse but didn't. (If I die of vanity, promise me, promise me, they bury me someplace I don't want to be, you'll dig me up and transport me, unceremoniously, away from the swollen city breeze, the garbage bag trees, whispers of disease and the acts of enormity, and lower me slowly and sadly and properly, get Ry Cooder to sing my eulogy...) Somehow when he started finally singing the last verse, he was going too fast, daring the audience to keep up, and then when he got to the last word, he stopped short, "sing my..." and the crowd was left to shout "eulogy" without him. Like a massive performance art pun... At times, and I've noticed this before, at the other show I managed to see and on the live album, he changes words, but not just names of towns, all sorts of words and the combinations are surprising. If the audience is singing along and getting out of hand, he starts speeding up and slowing down, or just repeating the same word over and over, so they can't keep up and are forced to just let him get on with it. It's like you're not just seeing a concert, there's a communication thing going on. Everyone's there for the music, everyone's in the music, part of Gord's little world for a while. It's a strange world, too. He lies on the floor, he makes awkward gestures and faces, he dances in ways that invite comparison (like... Mr. Rogers watching pornography, but that's ok) I could see a lot more, and the sound was clearer, with it being in the theatre, and while it wasn't quite as loud as the arena, it was still well worth the money. At GM Place I had my back against a cement wall and I stood on my chair, but the echo from the wall was right in my ear and I was deaf for a week. I woke up this morning with the tail-end of Grace, too reverberating in my head and a killer nicotine withdrawal from all the smoke, and had to fight the urge to smoke all day, but I don't mind. And despite all predictions to the contrary, I didn't get mugged or even so much as looked at sideways walking around Vancouver at 1 in the morning to get back to Mum and Dad's.

And I went to SFU and there were some grownups there, and I'm going to get a nice lot of credit for all the first-year type courses I took in my first degree, so real soon I'll be able to take 300/400 level courses. All in all a pretty productive day. Spent the afternoon in the SFU library, looking up stuff, which was fun too.

I'll be back on Saturday. behave yourselves...

what the previous link goes to show, in Canadian terms, is that we passed a Charter of Rights in 1982 and are therefore 20 years ahead of Europe... and a good hundred years behind the US, but still...

interesting reading, maybe. or maybe I'm just reading toooo much law and should be put to sleep humanely and buried in a tuna can. if I had a nickel for everyone who's said to me in the last month (since I've been babbling about legal stuff) "you should be a lawyer"... I'd be able to afford law school :)

from the "this is where I came in" file: Dorfy the dwarf hamster has succumbed to the enormous growth on his stomach and needs to be buried today. I've wrapped him up all nice in a tuna can with electrical tape, and Kirsten says he looks like he'd be good for hockey. No respect for the dead...

I told Ian I was applying for a job selling sausages, and he said, "I don't want my mom to be a meat jockey".

I'm off to Vancouver today, tomorrow I have to go to the library at SFU, see an advisor (oh yay) and the Tragically Hip.

my old wrist brace finally gave up the ghost, hit London Drugs for a new brace, makes my arm feel better but still no typing with my left hand... compromise is type with right and work left shift key with left thumb as hand lies happily beside keyboard. Can't put the papers off any more, gonna be a long day... also, still no job... good afternoon, would you like to hire a one-handed typist?

today, in my mystery ailment, I can't use my left hand... typing's slow, needless to say. and I have papers to write...

164. 5:44 Isn't Nine Minutes After Anything
this was on a list of things said in casual conversation that sound like country song titles, and then I looked at the time, and hey, it's almost 5:44. I don't know if this means anything. Except of course that I've lost the page I was looking at, so I can't send anyone there to look...

first day of Brownies, today. The suspense is killing the smallest member of the family

So last night, after being in the library with constitutional law, I went and found Sunnie, and we went for beer. I do this very rarely, I think I've had maybe six beers since... Christmas... We drank in the pub for a while, then I missed my bus, and then we went to get food.
Tomorrow I have to go out and do some real looking for a job. I was waiting until the kids were back in school. The lazy way, sending out resumes, just isn't working right now. I asked around yesterday and heard of a few places that might be looking without advertising, so I'm gonna go see them tomorrow. Wish me luck...

tonight, it's judicial review. And a paper on same. I'm reading the Supreme Court's website. Needs a few muppets to liven it up.