Well. Here we are again.

I want to buy a monastery.

Neat, huh?

Miguel has been building bookcases, (as seen here - and another similar one on the facing wall) ready for when our books arrive. We've been told there's another barge coming on Wednesday, so maybe our stuff will be on that one. I've also been begging bits of plants from people, and I'm growing some pineapple tops. They look very tropical. The piano stool that the dieffenbachia is standing on came from the metal dump. I love the metal dump. Too bad I didn't find a piano to go with it.

It's not so tropical outside... It has been snowing steadily, the last two weeks, and the land is now all covered. It's been about -3 mostly, which means that when the sun shines it melts the top layer of the snow and then refreezes it, so it's slow going around town. I fell on the ice yesterday, bringing Rachel back from the dentist. Miguel has been slithering a bit in the new truck, trying to get used to it. I sold the old truck while he was in Edmonton, just recently.

It is Ember Days, and I've been fasting. I love fasting. This time I've been doing it the Anglican way - with bread, fruit, and tea. In other words, banana for breakfast, slice of bread and slice of mango for lunch and supper, and lots of tea. It's called dry fasting, but it doesn't mean you don't drink anything, - you just don't eat anything hot or or particularly interesting. Although the multigrain bread is beginning to taste like the best thing I've ever shoved in my mouth. I feel nice and light, and my thought processes have slowed. Also I have lots of energy. I accomplished a lot this weekend, even though I spent most of Saturday morning in a semi-conscious state on the couch in the living room. I wasn't hungry, and yet I couldn't fall into a full sleep, and my thoughts were long and deep. I thought a lot about my parents, and I thought a lot about the readings I was going to do today in church. It's supposed to be conducive to prayer, and for some reason I feel as if that might be true, because my concentration is good and I feel happier when my stomach's not always trying to digest something difficult.

Truly I still don't think I'm a religious person. I enjoy, when it's my turn, standing up in front of the congregation and giving my stream-of-consciousness talks, just like I used to do with the Alternatives to Violence Project - I love looking for thought-provoking things to read out loud in front of everyone. I don't write my 'sermon' out and then read it, I try to think of the points I want to make and then I just talk to the people in the audience. I'm especially interested in the reactions of those I don't know very well, I find it interesting, what they take away from what I've said.

In other parts of my life, headquarters has sent out dire emails warning all of us that we are not to discuss our work lives on the internet. I'm becoming increasingly leery of having anything online, and so I probably won't ever talk about my work again. Which is a shame because it's by far the funniest things that happen to me. Oh well. When Ed and Delia come up here to visit me, I'll tell them stories until they die laughing.

You're a Wooly Mammoth!

A little heavy and a lot shaggy, you move a little slower than the
world around you. You definitely wish global warming would go away, and maybe even
reverse itself a bit. You like long walks on the ice floe, and could even get stuck
there without minding too much. Your favorite Sesame Street character is
Snuffleupagus. Beware of tar pits... although you really didn't need to be told that,
did you?


Take the Animal Quiz
at the Blue Pyramid.

That is just too funny!!!!!!!!!!!!!! We were just arguing yesterday with Kirsten's boyfriend about how it's hard to believe in global warming when it's minus 60 and your eyelashes are frozen together. I do like walking on the ice floes, and since Miguel and Ian are currently putting linoleum in the porch, my ground floor is full of tar.

We had Vikings last week. We made the Globe and Mail. Again.

Have I mentioned recently how much I love living here?

I know, I'm delinquent here. It's been court, the last week or so, and that means that I not only have the usual things to do at work but we also have remand guests in the cellblock and the Crown attorneys hang out at our office.

Court only comes to town about every two and a half months or so. The cycle of my work is very tied to the demands of court, and I find it takes all my energy for about two weeks beforehand and a week or so afterwards. The weekend before court is never really a weekend. It's just two more work days.

My dad is recovering. Slowly, but he sounds more like himself on the phone. My friend who went on the lam is still, as far as I know, at large. Ian's home from camp and it's wonderful to have him home. He had a great time and has come back very confident - he got top cadet in his platoon!

It's eleven thirty. It's the end of Miguel's 40th birthday. I got him a pig mug and some jellybeans and Kirsten baked him a cake, and Rachel gave him the 7th season of Seinfeld. We convinced him to go to Karen's for coffee after dinner, and our friends all dropped in casually and bugged him. One gave him a tape measure.

She explained it like this: although her husband is very handy and does a lot of work around the house, he always blames her and the kids when he can't find his tape measure. You rotten kids are always taking my stuff and losing it, how am I expected to get anything done around here, etc, etc. So last weekend when he cleaned out his workshop and found, in various places, no less than nine tape measures, my friend claims this as a moral victory of sorts. If the children had taken them they would be under beds or out in the driveway, not in the workshop. So the tape measure for Miguel was a symbolic gift, of sorts...

One of my friends from the prison I worked at in BC is 'on the run' tonight. I want a happy ending for this, but I don't know.

So many things don't count, up here. When I go somewhere else I remember.

We don't have cell phones. When I leave the house, no-one can find me unless they're willing to drive around and look for me.

Maclean's magazine sent me an email today offering to give me a chance to win a free car. There are no cars here. There are lots of old trucks, and some new trucks, but unless you count my friend Bella Rose's purple Jeep, there are no cars. The Dodge Neon that Maclean's is dangling would be completely useless here. I can barely get our big old black truck out of the driveway in the winter. A Dodge Neon would probably sit under a snowdrift for ten months of the year.

Unless you remember to go to the store after work and before seven o'clock, no food can be purchased. Except junk food from the game hall, if you don't mind braving the army of small children who hang there. And sometimes when you do remember to go to the store, the thing you were thinking you'd have for dinner is unavailable. David was here and he drinks Coke, but there wasn't any in town that week. We're used to this but I think he was pretty surprised. Like, if there's no Coke don't you just go to another store. Mmm. good thought.

We see movie trailers on tv and commercials for fast food, but we have no movie theater, no MacDonald's, no Taco Bell, no nothing but a pizza kiosk that generally shuts down around 5 pm, or earlier if they're bored. Our Friday night entertainment is usually sitting at my friend Patti's on her couch, or on her deck if it's not too too cold, eating her crab dip and talking. Sometimes we play Trivial Pursuit or argue with Peter (he's an atheist lawyer) about theology or justice. My friends all help with various things around town, Beavers and Cubs and the Education Authority (like a school board only not so much board) and we curl so we're together a lot in one capacity or another. If someone's building something, others come to help. We dog-sit and guinea-pig-sit. My father in law thinks we might be a commune. I think I could handle that.

Yeah, this is Kirsten and David at the beach in July. It's the Arctic. What can I say. (but don't they look cute?)

It has been busy here. Kirsten's friend is visiting from Ohio and it's been wonderful to have him here. Work is busy but they're mad at me at the moment because I took three days off this week to spend with them. Well, except one guy, who told me I should have taken the whole ten days off, and the rest of them be damned. But I did finish every scrap of work I had last week, and I've been in every evening to tidy up, and I'll be back tomorrow so hopefully they'll get over it.

We went out to the cabin last weekend, and stayed out there with Kirsten and David. We've been fishing a lot, and yesterday we went to the beach (in raincoats, mitts, hats...) and made a fire and had a picnic. Some muskox were running about in the distance, so David can say he saw some, but really they were just brown moving blobs.

My dad is recovering from his surgery, slowly, he's been at home since the weekend but is having home nursing as he still is feeling crappy and retaining fluid. He is probably not going to need a permanent pacemaker. My mum is talking about not going back to work in September, but staying home to look after him, but he doesn't want that.

My heart goes out to those who are struggling today. You know who you are.

Today while I was sitting with someone who took it into their head to run naked through the streets, I heard this song on the radio. It seemed apropos, somehow. REM, The Great Beyond:

I'm pushing an elephant up the stairs
I'm tossing up punch lines that were never there
Over my shoulder a piano falls
Crashing to the ground
I'm breaking through
I'm bending spoons
I'm keeping flowers in full bloom
I'm looking for answers from the great beyond

Headed for Alberta on Friday. Gonna go drop Rachel in Ponoka so she can go to horse-and-bible camp. And fetch Kirsten's boyfriend, who is arriving from Ohio to visit us.

Dad's operation went long, he had some bleeding and they left the breathing tube in overnight, but they took it out today and he's talking to my mum and my brother Roy in the cardiac ICU. I've been trying to keep my little brother, Graeme in Australia feeling connected to the whole process - he's so far away.

Thanks for all the prayers...

Mum called today, called me at work which freaked me out, Dad's surgery has been moved to this Thursday. Which is also his 70th birthday.

things I did not do today (but have been meaning to do for a while).

clean the bathroom.
empty the dishwasher
pull the little piece of cardboard out from where it's stuck under the dishwasher
peel the stickers off the kitchen floor
buy juice (this one I wish I had done. oh well. settled for beer.)

I also didn't want to wash the floor in the kitchen, because the puppy seems so close to the ground that I thought it'd get sick from the Mr. Clean.
The dishwasher will still be there in the morning. Ditto the bathroom, the cardboard, the stickers.
Instead I sat and read Kirsten the Chuck Norris facts. (There is no such thing as global warming. Chuck Norris was cold so he turned up the sun.)

Things I Did Today.

Slept in. - didn't wake up until 20 minutes before I'm supposed to be at work, and I managed to take a shower and let both dogs out. Arrived at work on time. With wet hair.

Sneezed on other people's keyboards. - One of the police databases accidentally got removed from my computer. I called the central help desk and they helpfully suggested that a tech should "stop in". Yeah. After his coffee break 5000 kms away. I'll leave the door open.

Watched the folk in cells inbetween everything else I was doing. - the weather is nice and nobody wants to work.

Fetched my foodmail from the airport - I love foodmail. Today we got nectarines and asparagus and dragonfruit yogurt tubes. And chocolate milk. which I hate, but it makes Kirsten happy.

Somehow, during the course of my day, I managed to get a piece of pineapple lodged in my nose. It took a long time to snuff it out. I did this in the bathroom, for those of you who are wondering.

I share this with you because maybe it will make you say, hey, my day wasn't so bad, I don't have a cold like Kate's, I don't have to work while the rest of my family goes on a fishing trip, I don't have to puppy-sit (and I know it's gonna whine allllll night) and there is currently no fruit in my nasal cavity.

And as a note to Ed, when the man who fits the bill you describe walks into my life, he will probably be completely disgusted to find me trying to extricate something from my nose, and will run as fast as he can.

My dad's having his heart valve surgery on July the 11th. I'm scared... and I think he is too.

Kiviaq is staying with Kirsten and me. Kirsten now needs new socks. Kiviaq's owners have gone fishing with Miguel.

She's a very cute puppy. Her mom is part wolf. Rachel had (it's a long story) actually picked her out to be our puppy, but. It didn't quite work that way. But it's good to spend time with her anyway.

I'm a bit slow in the updating...

(which is like slow on the uptake but quieter.)

Took all my kids and one of Patti's out to the cabin this last weekend, it was windy but it was very cosy to be out there. Miguel was in Vancouver. We barbecued, swept up flies, played cards and bickered amicably, lots of fun. There is a converted woodstove that now burns oil like a furnace, and Ian helped me start it. When it warmed up, we made raisin scones in the oven for a midnight snack.

Work is good. Busy. Lots to do these days. And I have a summer cold that is a real pain. Now that we finally have summer.

Kirsten and I are going to be by ourselves the next couple of days, Rachel, Miguel, and Ian are going to Ferguson Lake fishing with some other families. Kirsten's puppy-sitting. I'll take pictures, because the puppy's awfully cute.

I'm tired tonight. this evening as I was walking home from Patti's, a little kid who looked to be about six shouted something at me. I turned and said, "what?" He repeated himself - "fucking white". I grinned at him and said, "thank you" but I walked a bit faster. Kids in this town spend a lot of time throwing rocks at things, and some of them have really good aim. I've taken calls at work from grownups who are outraged to find themselves the target of rock barrages as they go to the store.

Someone who failed a learner driver's test today said something about 'stupid' under his breath that I suspect was directed at me. I ignored him.

But I found that this evening with the little kid, I had some anger rise up inside me. I watched it for a while with interest. Would I go smack a little kid? I don't think so. But the urge was definitely there. But what I want to know is why? I'm an adult. This is a kid that doesn't know me. I should add that the kids who do know me, from work or Cubs, always greet me happily by name, some of them even run across the road to give me hugs. And once or twice kids I know have stopped kids I don't know from shouting slurs at me.

Does racism mean anything really, coming from a six year old who doesn't know me at all? Why is my response immediate anger?

"Do your little bit of good where you are; it's those little bits of good put together that overwhelm the world." -- Archbishop Desmond Tutu

Rachel and Kirsten and I did the church service today. Lots of fun. The texts were cool ones, Jesus and Elijah raising the dead, and we talked about zombies and waffles.

(Incidentally, Kirsten complained that I had left her out of the first sentence. I told her that's the reason Joeby's the only one who is allowed to read over my shoulder. Now she's leafing through my IPod...)

There is a minister coming. The week after next. So I probably won't do the service again. I'm not really an organized religion kind of person. I've really enjoyed our little experiment in Quakerish church. It's been very inspiring to listen to everyone's thoughts on our readings and our lives together. Most of us who go to the church are linked in other ways, as friends and co-workers, and it feels good to go on Sunday morning and think about our connectedness. I think I will really miss it if it gets to be different when the minister comes.