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Warning: I am just writing down my thoughts as they come to me. There may be comments that cause offence. 06/19/2002 Yesterday was a good day... A couple of weeks ago the municipal council decided to give up on the blue box program (recycling), in spite of opposition from many people. It seemed like it was hopeless to try and get it started again, but 2 of the councillors called for a revisit to the issue (or whatever it's officially called) and so there was another meeting which Joseph and I went to yesterday. Council chambers were packed, (not that there's that much room anyway...) and each councillor took a turn to speak. Some of them were well spoken, 1 of them made little sense to me, and one of them just droned on about all these reasons to stop the program while leaving out what I saw as relevant information that was good about the program. (This was just my admittedly biased opinion about the speakers - others may disagree.) I noticed that none of the opposing speakers mentioned Burnaby when they mentioned other communities that had troubles with their recycling program.. Burnaby has one of the best recycling programs in Canada. (I'm so proud of the city I grew up in.. It's even has the riding of Svend Robinson in it, one of the coolest politicians that I know!) Anyway, at the end of it they voted again, 5 for reinstating it and 2 against. I was so pleased - I really didn't expect it to start again so fast. In case you can't tell, I'm rather passionate about recycling. I was quite irritated to learn that while the glass gets picked up for recycling here, it just ends up getting sent to the dump anyway. I guess there is a good reason to return bottles for deposit after all. (A quick note about recycling... please please recycle! Even just 1 piece of paper, 1 tin can, 1 glass juice bottle that you take the time to recycle, will make a difference.) After the meeting we went to dinner at White Spot and to our surprise they actually had some new interesting food there! A yummy ceaser salad with wild smoked salmon and artichoke hearts, and a baked spinach, feta cheese and sun dried tomato dip with tortilla chips... Mmm! And then we had the black and white chocolate mousse cake for dessert, but they gave us the last 2 slices for the price of the 1 slice that we ordered. Apparently the girl was new and didn't know how big the slices were supposed to be. Man was it ever big.. we could barely bike home afterwards, luckily it was all downhill from there! And today, this is the launch of the words section on my site, I know there isn't too much yet but the stuff I have has been here for months and I like the index page so much that I'm putting it up as it is and I'll put up more later. Oh, and while looking at Burnaby's website I noticed for the first time that the Trans Canada Trail goes about 10 blocks from where I grew up! And I never knew. Wow. Of course it looks like it was constructed long after I moved away.. But there you go. And it was so neat seeing the map of Deer Lake - I used to take all sorts of classes there, all sorts of dance, theatre, sculpture, singing, etc. 06/20/2002 Joseph and I were at a restaurant the other day, and at the end of the meal I was about to pay using Interac (bank card). I was given the option of including a tip, so I said yes, and the girl taking my order asked how big of one I wanted to give (she had to enter it in on her end). The meal cost 25.65 and I wanted to make it an even 30 so I told her that. She hesitated and sorta asked how much that would make the tip be because "she wasn't smart". However, by adding in our heads she and Joseph came up with the answer, 4.35, at the same time, with me deciding that they were right just a second later. Since I believe that both Joseph and I are "smart", this makes me think that maybe this girl was "smart" as well... It disturbs me that she would say something like that. I happened to overhear her say the same thing during our meal as well, talking to someone else, so it wasn't just an isolated incident. In the course of 45 to 60 minutes, she claimed twice that she wasn't smart. But she seemed quite intelligent to me! I wonder what happened to make her have this opinion of herself. And even if she really does think she's smart and only claims that she isn't, I think that after saying it over and over again she'll start believing it. Is this a female thing? Girls are not supposed to be physically strong or intelligent, just to be thin and blonde? Perhaps it stems from cruel teasing, or from the fact that she doesn't learn well in the public school system? I don't know. Maybe I'm reading too much into this, but it's been annoying me ever since Tuesday. Girls, (and boys too) please please believe that you are smart! Everyone is intelligant, everyone has something that they're particularly good at. It may not be math or science or law, but personally I don't believe that you have to be excellent at logical types of thinking to be smart. <sigh> Alright, I guess that's enough about that for now. Write to me if you want. I watered the garden an hour or so ago - the peas are growing nicely, we should have our first crop in a week or so! And the little tiny apples and pears and plums are so cute - plums should be ready soonishly. And the blackberries are blooming like crazy, and the lettuce is looking good.. Soon it'll be time to plant the cucumbers. Found a great site (thanks Joseph) - ascii pr0n! Man, ascii artists are geniuses. Amazing what they can do... Trying out Dreamweaver MX, so far there doesn't seem to be too much of a difference except that you can switch back and forth between the "design view" and the actual code much easier. I'm sure there's more then that though. Time for Babylon 5? 06/23/2002 My legs hurt. Yesterday we climbed a mammoth - that is, we climbed halfway up what we call Mammoth Mountain - I'm not sure if it has another name, but it looks kinda like a mammoth. There's not real trail up the mountain, at least to where we want to go. We had to go up a rockslide at one point, which is not something I really enjoy! I also greatly dislike bugs - we were using a natural bug spray which seems to keep away the mosquitos but there were still tons of bugs that seemed to want to hang around my head.. flying up my nose, in my ears, getting caught in my hair.. <sigh> However, the view of a small part of Desolation Sound, once we got up high enough to see anything, was incredible! Well worth the trip. While watering the garden today I saw that the peas are growing like crazy, each time I look it seems like there are twice as many pods. And the fennel is starting to come up, and the lettuce looks great. Gardening is really an amazing thing to do.. To see the plants just coming out of the ground to when they're actually ready to harvest. I think I'm getting addicted. And I think that this is a good thing. If more people gardened, I think we'd all benifit.
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