Well, they've all gone off to Alberta. Except the dogs. I've made coffee, and am settling down to my violence paper, which is due on Thursday. Ack. I went to Victoria last weekend for AVP, so no writing got done, but it was a good workshop. One of the men had gone up for a faint hope hearing and he told us all about it. He was unsuccessful in gaining early parole, but he felt that the experience was good for all involved. At the end of the two week hearing, the family of the woman he killed came up and hugged him and cried and told him they were sorry he had to stay in prison...

Can't sleep. My right hand has gone past the non-working stage into the swelling up stage. As usual when it's acting up I spent the day throwing money at people. Everything is of course exacerbated by the fact that it's damn hot. But the Globe and Mail printed my letter, so right now I don't care. I'll just stay up all night and surf...

woohoo -- my name in print

Dear kate,
Here is your horoscope
for Tuesday, June 22:

The universe steps in and bails you out. The rest of the month suddenly looks much better. Now you can concentrate on better things, like having some summer fun.

Ok, I'm still waiting. Get on with it, universe. As in, any time right about now would be good, for the bailing out. Cindy, one of my three employees, has broken her foot so I ended up at work today on my day off...

In my email inbox: "cough syrup ruffians". What do they do, scream themselves hoarse?

I enjoyed this today, on how prisoners can now vote.

And it's Sunday. Rachel wants to go see the Garfield movie. She's a big fan. All the high tech stuff in today's world, and she loves the scruffy books I had when I was a kid. Most of them are missing covers, but she's got them all in her room and she's always coming to quote me something.

Whatever happens, from hereon in, one thing will remain the same. Madonna will always be ten years older than me...

I handed in the drug policy paper. Now it's violence. Thank-you to all who sent me ideas, I appreciate it.

I feel a bit better, mentally. I seem to have managed to get the delusions/obsessions under control. Or they're controlling me and I've become comfortable with it, it's hard to know which.

When Reagan died, I was standing at work watching the news coverage on the tvs at the Telus store, and one of my customers, a man who drives his wife to work at one of the stores in the mall, came up. We had the following conversation.

Customer: So, Reagan's still dead.
Me: Still dead?
Customer: Yup, I've always said he died in that assassination attempt, and they replaced him with an actor.
Me: There's a name for that sort of theory, you know. Impostor something-or-other. It goes along with thinking that people have been replaced by aliens.
Customer: I can't talk about that with you. You're probably an alien. Why did they raise the prices on the lottery?
Me: I don't know. It's a conspiracy.
Customer: Damn aliens, they're everywhere.

I don't know why, but "tigger is gay" on this list made me laugh quite a lot. I know, I'm procrastinating.

Here we go. Summer has arrived, it seems, kids are playing with water balloons and my garden's growing nicely. Trying a different kind of lettuce this year, a red variety, and green beans instead of yellow. Had a couple of good weeks of rain.

Almost finished the harm reduction paper, it just needs a concluding paragraph. Which is good, because it's due tomorrow. Then I've got two more for this term. One on violence and one on euthanasia. I'm supposed to discuss whether I think society is more violent than it was in the 1950's. Not sure why they picked that decade, but oh well. If anyone has any thoughts, please share them with me...

green. what do you think?

my dog

like I need more dogs. M's boss (the poster child for financial mismanagement) has left his dog here while he's in Calgary. It's a cute dog but my own are nervous, and it's pretty much walltowall dog this weekend. they all seem to be shedding.

I'm procrastinating, as usual, the harm reduction paper needs about 500 more words. luckily I still have plenty to say, which is amazing considering I didn't think I cared very much. but harm reduction seems nicely realistic.

The cemetery plot people have disappeared.

things are getting a bit weird here. in case you haven't noticed. I'm obsessing about outkast and my concentration is shot. I'm contemplating giving up all my worldly possessions and becoming a bag lady. I have a nice bag, that M brought me back from a conference he went to recently, and I've been filling it with stuff.

kate is
kate is available for instant download
kate is not your average super model
kate is the rock of the division
kate is actively involved in other organisations
kate is nevertheless considered beautiful by many
kate is a
from googlism

"We are, each of us, finite beings in a universe which, so far as we can know, is infinite. Whether the universe had a beginning and an end we are not sure - but we are certain we had a beginning and we all know we will have an end. There is a limit to the time during which we can learn things - and there are far too many things to learn for any of us ever to be sure we are an authority except - at best - in small and limited ways."

from here

mighty fine only got you somewhere half the time / and the other half either got you / cussed out or coming up short (outkast!)

some woman came and set up a table across from me at the mall today to sell cemetery plots. it's a sign. I really am dead.

Rachel's going to Brownie camp this weekend. She's trying to persuade me to let her take a very large and very dirty white (well, grey and gritty) stuffed rabbit as her pillow. I'm holding out. I notice, however, that she's tried to stuff Bunny into her luggage...

I HATE my job. I spend a fair bit of time at work fantasizing my resignation letter. I also find myself looking in the obituaries for my most dreaded customers' names to see if they've died of apoplexy brought on by terminal stupidity. The lottery is making me despise humankind. I want to be a hermit.

I'm fighting a delusion, at the moment. I keep having these moments where I'm suddenly convinced that I'm actually dead, and that that explains a lot of things. Probably just stress. Or, maybe I am dead. That would explain the lottery : I'm in hell.

My future bonsai trees are still alive! Miraculously, I have not killed them.

I thoroughly hate selling lottery tickets. Things have gotten ugly over the last few weeks, with the ticket checkers not working and also the price going up yesterday, I have been sworn at rather more than I like. Today a sweet little old lady told me I could "kiss her butt" when I told her that the 6/49 had gone up to two dollars a ticket. I had no idea how to respond to that, so I just stood there and stared at her...