It's beginning to sound a lot like Xmas

Last night I spent an obscene amount of hours (2hrs) in the Wal Mart in the ghetto (east end). We went there because it is the most direct route by transit. I quickly realized that I need a secure bubble within which to move around London (aka car)....It's a scary place sometimes. So we bought a bunch of shit for people and ourselves that neither we nor they need. We attempted to avoid near collisions with carts full of children and cheap toys. We proceeded to the check out where the constant *BEEP* of the check out...(multiplied by about 10 as there were 10 check outs open) signified the victory of big box north america. The constant *BEEP* in my opinion, is the sad reality that is the sound of Xmas (and has been for many years with increasing vulgarity). Let the consumer orgy begin.....

We're here!

We've moved to London and we've unpacked almost all our boxes. Things are slowly coming together in the apartment and the festive bush is out of the box and decorated. Otherwise, things are slow. Work is the same old stuff everyday. I heard today that there were 5 candidates chosen to be interviewed for 2 positions. Obviously I wasn't one of them. Neither were the other new Librarians here currently not working as librarians. I was told that they have been applying elsewhere because they are tired of sitting around here not being librarians. I don't blame them but I purposely came here in an attempt to move my way up....hopefully that is soon (as in the next 6 months). There are more positions that need to be filled so we'll see.

We still don't have a car and London sucks without a car so I'll keep being annoyed at transit and anti-social for who knows how long. I am looking foward to my big break from work. I work until noon on the 22nd and then I'm not back until Jan 2. The university does have its perks....librarian or not.

I initially posted so I could rant about all the people getting their panties in a knot because once again there is an "attack" on Christmas. I was going to go on about how christ cannot be forced upon everyone who recognizes december as a festive month but it's alomost 6pm and I'm running out of steam......

later

Moving

This weekend Myles and I move from Toronto back to London. This past month has gone by pretty fast and has held a lot of changes. Firstly, my new job...which may be my "old" job in the new year if I get a new position (still at the University of course). Secondly, we found Gogi a new home. He bit Myles again so we decided that we just couldn't keep a dog that bites. He is now living in Mississauga....probably not even remembering his old life.

Now a new apartment...yay! I can't wait to live with my hubby again!

Assisting

So I am now in London and started work today. Things went pretty well. I was informed that I had impressed many people with a perfect interview score....hence my new employment. I was pretty surprised and now I am worried I'll disappoint!

Anyway - we don't have our apartment yet....We will definitely have it December 1st...but hopefully a little sooner so my hubby can join me here.

Till then...I will be checking out books like a maniac....er...a lot.

Woo Hoo!

I was offered and have accepted the Library Assitant job with the University of Western Ontario. I start November 6th....off to buy a bunch of turtle necks to hide the ink!

Balance

I haven't posted in a while because unseen forces have been trying to make up for all the good things that have happened in the past 6 months by giving me some crap to deal with.

My temporary contract with the library ended....which I obviously knew would. In an effort to be able to apply for upcoming postings and not be locked out for 6 months (long story) I took a position as a page. You know the job that highschool students do shelving books....it pays very little and I'm lucky if I get 10 hours a week. Needless to say the job sucks....but it lets me apply for Librarian jobs that are posted internally.

I've only been a page for two weeks and was hoping to get my old job as a librarian back as the job was posted this week...yes the job I just vacated was posted a week after my retreat (another long story). Then I find an email today saying the posting has been withdrawn. Nice!

I then found out that I can't get EI because I was not unemployed for 7 days....I went immediately from 21 hrs/week at $29.87/hr to 10 hrs/week at $8.75/hr and I can't get any EI. Nice!

In an attempt to balance out all this crap, I have an interview tomorrow at UWO in London...also a temp gig...but full time.

And in an effort to refresh my memory about Library of Congress Classification I found that The Bible is classified under the letters BS.....Nice!

Plans

Due to some recent flowing of creative juices and no satisfying outlet...coupled with my impending employment drought.....I have picked up a book on writing mystery fiction. I've always loved reading mysteries...and I'm not talking true crime (I do enjoy that too) but more like witty sleuths and parlor murders. When I was young I read Nancy Drew books all the time.

So, in my imagined literary success I see myself writing teen mysteries...with a sort of hipper Nancy-ish sleuth character. However, today at dinner (I'm at work) I went to the nearest Wendy's and because it was 4pm and because school is now back in and apparently no one eats at home from September to June, there were about 800 teens in Wendy's.

At first I thought....aw crap this is going to be annoying. Instead it was mostly interesting and frightening. Maybe it was frightening because I just saw Idiocracy yesterday and I'm sure most of these teens are going to end up like the people in 2505. But anyway, I couldn't understand most of what these kids were saying - it was English but it was like they spoke another language that's all hyphenated and melded together. All the females were bossing around and slapping around the males who were trying to pretend it wasn't happening. They were in huge groups and were checking their cell phones every two seconds. Then I started to worry that maybe I can't succeed at writing something for this group of people. I mean, what the hell would they want to read about? Can they read words longer than 5 letters? Can they sit still long enough to read a book longer than 5 sentences? What sort of mystery do they find interesting? Would my book be like this?....."OMG! Someone has totally like hijacked ur wireless service and all ur TM's are going nowhere....I must find out who this is!"

Maybe that's the biggest crisis they can handle. Who knows but I'm not giving up hope that some literate teens exist out there who don't just care about TM's and IM's and the next designer handbag.

And.....

The movie is entertaining and scathing but not a brilliant satire by any means. I give it a 3.5/5 in terms of entertainability and originality. Definitely worth seeing but it doesn't satisfy like Office Space.

If you only see one movie this year......

See Idiocracy. Why? Because Fox Studios doesn't want you to see it! Have you even heard about this movie? Have you seen a trailer? NO because a trailer doesn't exist.

Read more here on why Mike Judge's new movie is being sabotaged.

"finally releasing it Friday, September 1, in a piddling seven cities — Austin, Dallas, Houston, Atlanta, Chicago, Los Angeles and Toronto — with no plans to open it wider. Not even New York will get to see the latest from the Austin creator of "Office Space" and television's "Beavis and Butt-head" and "King of the Hill."

I'm going to see it today - and I hope that any of you who can get to it will also see it....because if it gets enough people in the theater then it may be realeased to a wider audience. DO IT!

Change of plans....yet again.....

Korea has been put on the backburner for now in the hopes that I land another librarian gig somewhere. Since I am on a temporary contract at TPL I cannot renew and once the contract is up then I am locked out for 6 months (it's in the collective agreement yo!) So I've been applying all over....we'll see.

In other news....um...I guess there isn't other news. Got some weddings to go to. The doggie is less of a jerk and more like a good pet.

Off to clean the apartment....good thing it's so damn small.

Boredom leads to....

Writing with Zombies

The Devil You Know

So Myles and I are making plans to go back to Korea. We had interviews with a new English Village built outside of Seoul. Like anything else in Korea, it sounded really good on paper but further digging has unveiled the ugly truth. We've found postings on ESL boards from people who have seen the camp and who have worked at the first camp (Paju is the second camp - the one we were thinking of heading to). The things we've feared seem to have become a reality. Things such as....who looks after the kids in the dorms when they stay overnight?...the teachers of course. How much freedom do you really have when you're living where you work? Not much because the camp is in the sticks and the shuttles to take you to the city only go out at scheduled times.....all other times you are held hostage in the village. There are more issues but, needless to say we've decided that isn't for us. Which brings me to the "Devil you know" being ELC in Ulsan. This is the chain of schools we worked at before in Ulsan South Korea. So after all our complaining about our past experience we are about to go and do it again. Why would we be so crazy? To tell you the truth we miss aspects of it.....and we had fun there that can't be had here. We won't get paid as much if we go back there (not at much as the English Village that is) but we will get paid more than we did last year. So we wait to see what's offered....and off to Korea in 8 weeks....possibly....probably.

Apocalypse Now

“A severe drought, said to be the worst in a century in the south of England, became more evident as temperatures hit a July record of 36.3 degrees last week.”


“…The administration of President George W. Bush is obviously allowing Israel -- with U.S.-supplied weapons -- to continue its onslaught.”

“Ethiopia has vowed to "crush" the Somali Islamic courts, a day after the courts threatened a holy war against Addis Ababa.”

Unusually strong monsoon rains have also pummelled Japan and the Korean peninsula as well in recent days, triggering floods and landslide that have killed around 145 people over the past 10 days or so.

Israel bombarded Lebanon for a 12th day and took its first Hezbollah prisoners yesterday as a top UN official called its actions "disproportionate" and a violation of international humanitarian law amid intensive diplomatic efforts to resolve the crisis.

Satellite photographs of what appears to be a nuclear reactor under construction in Pakistan are the latest evidence that President George Bush's foreign policy is fuelling a nuclear arms race in south Asia.

New Blythe

My birthday is tomorrow but my present arrived early from Japan and had the contents of the box written on the outside so there wasn't really any point in waiting to open it. Myles got me Night Flower. She is a new Blythe released late June. She is beautiful and unique. I am not taking her out of the box for now. It's a difficult feat let me tell you.

In an ideal world...

I would have one of these

Axis of Ignorance

So...the United States is not saying anything about the current battle between Lebanon and Israel.....not surprising really. They have always supported Israel and besides...They are fighting the global war on terrorism right? HA!

Anyway - This current development spells bad news.....for everyone.

In another development, a senior Israeli intelligence official said Iranian troops helped Hezbollah fire a missile that damaged an Israeli naval ship off the Lebanese coast Friday night.

The BBC has an excellent news article on this topic

1 year

I just realized that this blog has been going on for 1 year. Cool.
One year ago I was in a very different place (literally and figuratively)

30 is just a number

In a week I will be 28 years old. That is ok with me because I've still got two years of my twenties to linger in. However, my husband just turned 30 and he didn't seem too happy about it (if you've read his blog then that's an understatement). I'm not sure how I will react but if this list is any indication then I may already be there....then I suppose the transition will go unnoticed.

You know you're turning 30 when...

1.You find that suddenly the world's full of cute babies that you simply must stop and coo at.

2.You love nothing better than a night in, watching interior design and cooking programs

3.You have absolutely no clue what's no.1 in the charts

4.You are obsessed with property

5.You say things that sound horribly like things your parents would say

6.You get more excited about a roast on Sunday than a night out clubbing

7.You stop dreaming of becoming a professional baseball player and start dreaming of having a son who might

8.You become powerless to resist the lure of self-assembly furniture

9.You always have enough milk

From the book Turning 30: How to Get the Life You Really Want

"not a threat to the United States"

So North Korea launches 7 missles and the US says...."meh, not a big deal. I mean...it's annoying but whatever". So what we learn here kids is that unless your enemy has something you want; you really need not bother wasting your energy to defeat him/her (even for the sake of the world in general).

Even though North Korea is launching missiles, (hello! they are flying through the sky!) Iraq is much more of a threat because there was suspicion of weapons of mass destruction....and then none were found....BUT they're still "evil". What a joke. No wonder North Korea is letting them fly....might as well.

And while the US is disarming the world - they are building their own weapons of mass destruction at record speed. And they wonder why North Korea doesn't get it.

Verbal Visions

I was walking along Queen St. West today and heard what I think has to be the most creative reason for a guy to be begging on the street. As I was approaching a group of three disheveled bums one of them said "hello pretty lady could you spare some change for my half retarded sister here (nods in the direction of a crumpled pile of camouflage clothing and dreds) to buy some estrogen, she's already growing a beard" I could not ascertain the validity of the reason as I could not see the face of the person he nodded towards. Anyway, I didn't give him any change. But kudos for his originality. I had just finished spending nearly $200 on stuff that I and no one else really needs. I'm sure I will suffer the wrath of karmic retribution for today’s disregard for the needs of people less fortunate than I am.

I just heard the strangest analogy for a soccer game. The British commentator said that the game was like a cappuccino - all steamy and frothy on top but you have to get down there quite a ways to find anything of substance (I'm paraphrasing but that is very nearly his exact words) I love the British!

Big Brother

These articles are all true and all very scary (yet not altogether surprising)

Court orders the Internet tapped


Library Chief Criticized for Requiring Subpoena
sudnshok writes "Hasbrouck Heights (NJ) Library Director Michele Reutty is under fire for refusing to give police library circulation records without a subpoena. Her lawyer explained, 'Reutty did the right thing... At no time did Michele Reutty say to any police officer or anybody else that she would not give the information if it was properly requested.' However, borough labor lawyer Ellen Horn, who also represented the library trustees, said Reutty was 'more interested in protecting' her library than helping the police. 'It was an absolute misjudgment of the seriousness of the matter,' Horn said."


U.S. Secretly Tapping Bank Databases
The Washington Post and New York Times are reporting on a Bush administration initiative that has tapped into a vast global database of confidential financial transactions for nearly five years. Relying on a presidential emergency declaration made under the International Emergency Economic Powers, the administration has been surveilling the data from the SWIFT database, which links about 7,800 banks and brokerages and handles billions of transactions a year. From the article: Together with a hundredfold expansion of the FBI's use of "national security letters" to obtain communications and banking records, the secret NSA and Treasury programs have built unprecedented government databases of private transactions, most of them involving people who prove irrelevant to terrorism investigators.


Watergate Echoes in NSA Courtroom

The 5 lb Bully

Our puppy is a stubborn bully! He is nearly impossible to discipline because he just doesn't care if he's doing something we don't like or approve of and he's super pushy! Puppy or not - he just doesn't care what we say or do, he thinks he's the boss. We will be consulting a behaviour specialist in the coming weeks to see if this little beast is worth "de-bullying" The above pic is not of him - but if he could wear a permanent expression, that would be it.

The Imbecile Strikes Again

That imbecile's name is George W Bush. He has announced his profoundly ignorant idea to change the American constitution so homosexual couples cannot marry. Would someone please put this halfwit lunatic out of his misery!

Par-tay

Today we are officially "those pet people". We are heading to a doggie birthday party with Gogi. This will be his first party....and probably last dog party as I don't know that many people who throw these things.

In other news, things are going well at work. The library is an interesting place to work. Between the farting guy and the many students who want me to do their projects there's always something or someone to keep me amused and/or annoyed.

The wedding celebration in the Soo was last weekend. We are heading to my parents place next weekend for the "garden party" in celebration of our elopement. The parental figures have come around it seems and gotten over the trauma of exclusion they claim to have been victim to. Being unconventional is harder than it may seem.

The city in the summer is so nice! Maybe soon I won't have to work every Saturday and my new husband and I can enjoy the city together.

We have a puppy!

We picked up the puppy Sunday morning in Peterborough. After a couple sleepless nights and stressful days I think he is settling in. Today I left him alone for the first time for about 2 hours and when I came home I wasn't greeted by yelps and barks. Tonight we take him to the vet for a check up.

In other news...I no longer work at the vet clinic. I am training for another department at the library so I will be getting extra hours there - Yay$$$$

I was downtown today at Bay and Bloor and passed Kenny Hotz on the street. Cool huh?!?! - If you don't know who Kenny Hotz is then you've been missing out on some quality programming! Kenny Vs. Spenny is primo!

We're getting a puppy!!

Yay! So...I've given my notice at the Vet clinic because I am supposed to be getting more hours at the library and want to be available for those hours. Ironically, just as I leave the vet clinic we will be getting a puppy. We are getting a shih tzu (just like gogi - our pup in Korea) He is still too young so we won't be getting him until the first week or so of May (no exact date yet). There is a pic of him HERE. His name is Dash at the moment but we will be changing it.

More blogging to follow when I'm not working 6 days a week and can take a moment to think

Sick Day

Today I called in sick. I spent the day trying to springboard back to health by staying in bed until 2pm and then playing computer games the rest of the time. Good times.

I start my librarian job Thursday. I'm hoping it goes well and it's something I will like to be doing for a long time....if there is such a thing.

Anywho, here's to sick days!

I'm Married!

Last Saturday Myles and I "tied the knot" at Toronto City Hall. We had a few friends present and made it official. Yay! Thanks to those who came. We're going to celebrate with our families in the coming weeks.

Me in 50 years......

Image from Natalie Dee

Inked

Finally got the pics from my tattoo session onto the computer and now here. After three hours of pain - I've got lovely new ink! Thanks to the wonderfully creative John Austin!

Librarian at last

So.....last Wednesday I had my interview with the Toronto Public Library. It was a general interview for no specific position. I thought it went really well and they told me I would hear from them if I had scored well on my interview and when a position came up. They warned me that it could take a while for them to contact me.

The next day I got a call to interview for a position at the North York Central library. It was for a part time temporary position. 17.5 hrs a week for 4 months.

Yesterday I went for the interview and left it feeling like I had bombed. HOWEVER - today I got a call and was offered the job!

So....in less than a week I am now a Librarian. Let the stress of new employment begin!

Interview pass or fail

I am taking time this weekend to prepare for my interview Wednesday with Toronto Public Library. I am fortunate enough to have a friend who works for them and has given me some sample questions that he has encountered. I have had a couple Library interviews so I am familiar with some of the questions.

I'm usually not nervous about interviews because they are really just an exercise in theory and how you respond to hypothetical situations and really only determine whether or not you can "interview" well and doesn't necessarily mean you will "work" well. I had one interview with a library last year that was essentially a personality test and didn't even bother to ask any questions pertaining to the job itself - that would have been the second (in person) interview but I was living in South Korea so I never made it that far.

Last month I had to interview people for receptionist positions at my current job and even though they seemed good at being interviewed they have turned out to suck at the job itself.


I think I'm pretty good at spouting theory - so we'll see if I pass or fail.

If I fail, there's always Korea!

Natural Balance

so even though my job has been more frustrating than fulfilling; today I think the chaos and stress and general feeling of discontent found its balance in two ways. First - a nameless thorn in my side (co-worker) was fired this morning. I haven't blogged about her because there is just too much to say but without going into details.....I didn't feel bad about her being fired because I'm sure she never felt bad when she just didn't show up for work.

Second, I got a call from the Toronto Public Library for an interview. This second thing could end up more of a headache than anything else but I'm definitely going for an interview. The reason I say it could be a headache is because I will have to go Part time at my current job and all hell could break loose - also the location of the branch I could possibly work at could be an insanely inconvenient commute. I don't have the details yet nor the position....so who knows......

Maybe my GIGANTIC debt will pay off! Maybe I'll be a librarian afterall. Here's hoping for the best.

Sick day life

Called in sick today. I'm pretty much just sick of being over-worked, sick of not working in my field, sick of dealing with a public that couldn't care less, sick of January. Good news is that January is over next week and we should have two new receptionists to pick up the slack in a week or so - so I guess things are looking up.

This receptionist position has made me rethink a public library career. I'd just be dealing with the public in the same way - more $$ sure but is it worth it?

I think I just want to be in room with a computer and a telephone doing research and admin stuff...no phone calls....no drop ins....no front desk crap.

Ah well - such is life.

"you can't afford to miss a day, call in sick you'd better stay that way"

VOTE

You're irresponsible if you don't.

Crappy Irony

So...I'm two days in at my receptionist job. Things seem to be going well but the full-time receptionist who is training me is leaving next week.....then I expect all hell to break loose (these are not unfounded expectations)and let me say I'm not looking forward to it and am applying to library jobs in anticipation.

So.....today I get an email....for a library position.....IN LONDON! Sheesh.....I move to Toronto less than one week ago and now London wants me......ah well - hopefully that just means that I'll have no problem getting a library gig here.

The New Digs

We have finally (mostly) got the apartment together. After 3 days of assembling IKEA furniture we've got a cozy place to call home. Here are some pics.