I'm Full Of Questions Because I Don't Have Any Answers

The second time I got my own spot on the internet, I named my little space "Widgetyish". I had learned about widgets in my Grade 11 Marketing class and thought it ingenious to have a term that just meant "a thing". I figured that I was very thing-like, hence my desire to be widget-y-ish.

The first time I had my own webpage, it was just named after me, BeautifulMeadow, because that's vaguely what my name means in Old English...or something.

When I started this blog, way back in November 2002, I named it "The Dreamery" as if it were going to be a place where I could sit and spin my dreams like thread, or weave ribbons of them and braid them into my hair. The colour scheme was a mauve-ish-pink with orange and white accents.

It's strange to think of those places online that are now gone because one of the most common, re-occuring fears that I have regarding my blog is what I would do if I were to ever lose it. I wonder, What if Blogger one day got overloaded and the whole system just crashed? What if all of the Internets imploded violently, suddenly, without warning? Will I cry and lament my now-forgotten past, wishing that I had saved it all into Word documents? Will I just frown and sigh, move on, and keep writing my present?

It feels strange to me now, to meet someone who doesn't already know something about me or won't soon learn about it by reading this little corner of the web. I've known, and know, a couple of people who fell in love with my blog long before they fell in like with me. That thought often leaves me wondering if my online self is anything like my offline self and if they were one and the same, would losing one component mean something detrimental for the other?

I'm talking/thinking/typing a lot of whack because it's late at night/early in the morning and I've had a mentally and emotionally charged evening. My thoughts now are mainly: What does the past matter? If you're interested in someone's future, how could you not be interested in their past? That being said, how much should something as trivial as being arrested when you were 14 matter in a long term relationship when you're 22, or older?

I've got a sordid past of my own, much of which is fully accessible to the curious public right here, so I can't really stop people from reading and knowing it, but the parts I can hide...will I? Should I? What becomes irrelevant and when? Am I just waiting for amnesia to set in so everything just falls into a black hole and I never have to deal with it again?

Again, whack.

This post that started with the brief history of my web-spaces was supposed to go on in a more eloquent fashion, but it's past 1am and I'm supposed to be reading about transnationalism and refugees, and I can't really remember what my point was anymore. Something about things long gone, the past, the present and future....

I forget. Does that matter?
1:29 am

Monday, November 20, 2006

Status Report

Hallelujah! I've got internet access at home after just three weeks of waiting! Thanks for the discount Bell - you suck oh so much and we think we deserve more than $70 off for having to deal with your incompetence. To celebrate the occasion, I've decided to be in a good mood and NOT WHINE while I'm here with you lovely Internet folk.

My bank account is currently sitting at $207! w00t! I can eat now!

Saturday saw me at two group meetings to prep for presentations this week, a hip-hop dance contest, a dinner party, the opera, at a movie store, and then receiving my first Christmas gift of the season. I'm now the proud owner of this glass teapot.

Events number three and five are a testament to my diverse tastes in everything, I experienced full enjoyment of both the hip-hop show and the opera.

I have to admit that I generally don't listen to hip-hop music unless I'm getting ready for a night at a club with friends or if I'm actually at a club, dancing away. I don't know anything about hip-hop, although I've learned a bit in my Youth class this term. Anyway, I LOVED this show. It was mainly a dance contest, but there was a beatbox group there and they blew me away.

As a quick side note, I want to clarify my use of the word "Fuck". I typically don't swear - I went through a phase in Grade 7 when I said "Shit" all the time, but then I figured out that swearing was crass and unnecessary, so I stopped it all together. Now that I'm a bit older and wiser, I know that there are certain circumstances in which swearing is most appropriate. For example:

- when you're screwed: I'm fucking screwed.
- when something hurts: That fucking hurts!
- when something is awesome: That was FUCKING awesome!

So, believe me when I say that Sick Sound Syndrome was fucking awesome and they blew my fucking head away. When/if you listen to the tracks on their site, it's hard to tell that they're actually beatboxing because it sounds very electronic, but I swear on my first-born that the noises that make up these songs actually come out of these men's throats. They can sound like a bass drum, or like a record scratching, or like a synthesizer, or all at the same time - WHILE RAPPING - it's crazy and unbelievable and makes me wish I had an Adam's apple just so I could learn to do that. And then there were breakdancers and oh my fucking goodness, they were cool too. I do think that I might like hip-hop culture more than the opera.

Things I Love:

- roomster/family breakfasts
- The Motorcycle Diaries
- loose leaf tea
- music
- my MacBook
- the strange, cool people of this world

You can thank me for this later. Talk about an awesome way to celebrate the first day of winter. Is anyone not surprised at the fact that they're from San Fransico?

12:55 am

Wednesday, November 15, 2006

Fingers Crossed

Don't you love it when you do all this planning for months and then none of it matters anymore and so you start fresh and think, Oh! New Beginnings!, but then everything goes whack and you're back to where you started: with nothing?

Yeah, I love that too.

So, a little while ago, I realized that I was running out of money. So I got a job, applied for my OSAP funding, I took on more Ambassador hours and tours, and worked four times a week at the tea cart. After I did all the paperwork for my provincial financial assitance I thought, Yay! I'll have money again! Alas. School and work were starting to kill me, so yesterday, I told my boss that I quit. Cool. I'll just live off the $2,300 that the government was going to loan me. I found out today that because I did the application so late and because I'm not registered as a student for next term*, I'm not eligible for finanical aid. Great. So, I just quit my job YESTERDAY and now the OSAP people are taking their money back and I'm left to live off $100 until...whenever. I have no idea.

* Which brings me to another thought: I'm not registered as a student next term. Not at my school, not at another school (yet), not anywhere. I've never really been academically homeless before. I mean, I'm not that irresponsible; there is an application form in the postal system somewhere out there to ensure that I will eventually be registered, but once that little envelope leaves the country, I can't track it. My future is going to be floating somewhere over the Ocean and I hope to goodness that all this works out.

7:54 pm

Tuesday, November 14, 2006

Can I Have My Cereal In Bed, Naked And With My Eyes Closed?

I really need a jacket with sleeves and shoes that I can wear with socks. This whole I-can-defy-norms-and-don-my-autumn-wear-in-the-winter thing isn't jiving so well with me and my immune system anymore.

My two weeks of sudden academic death has slowly morphed into three weeks of slow, painful academic dying. AND, I still don't have internet at my house which makes this whole process all that much more excruciating. I'm currently thefting internet from someone else's wireless connection. Mmm...sin.

I had a late supper last night just before 11pm: bread and brie, baked salmon steak, a yummy vegetable combination, couscous and half a glass of red wine. I get the leftovers for lunch today, with a banana and an orange if I'd like. I'm also eyeing the package of chocolate instrument cookies; I ate the violin and trumpet ones a couple of nights ago.* School may hate me, but life is so very good to me right now.

I should leave for work in ten minutes (I sent my boss an email last night informing him that I've made the decision to quit) and enjoy my third last shift watching people look at loose leaf tea but never really buy any of it. Oh little tea cart, I will miss you.


* Pratik, I totally thought of you as I was eating these - it was a symphony in my mouth! Oh, AND the orchestra here is playing Mozart's Reqiuem at their next concert! Ahh! Too much joy!

9:31 am

Tuesday, November 07, 2006

I Don't Want To Talk About It

Actually, yes, I do.

Being in a pissy mood on a Tuesday morning is a bad way to start the day. I started yesterday with a big family breakfast - omelettes, hash browns, toast, bagels with two kinds of cream cheese, cantaloupe, orange juice - with two of my favourite people and gorgeous weather. It's raining now and it had better stop in an hour because I'd rather skip my class than bike to school without any rain gear. We're talking wet jeans and smeared mascara here people, and that's never good.

I just got off the phone with Rogers: The Wireless, Internet, Telephone Company From Hell. Who in the world guarantees one working phone jack and makes you pay for the rest of them to be repaired when it's clear that you've done nothing to cut off your own phone service? To that I say: The fuck? Oh yes, if course I wanted to get a new phone number in the middle of the semester, of course I gave myself a "dial tone issue", of course I went and knocked out all the jacks in my apartment because it's so obvious that I hate using the phone despite the fact that it's my only means of communication right now because WE DON'T HAVE INTERNET EITHER.

I've also been dealing with a crap wireless connection all day (something is majorly wrong when I can't even get Google to load) and it's just such perfect timing because it's not like I have two seminar presentations this week, one next week and a paper due on Tuesday. Oh, and Library? How about you stop recalling all the books that I need for my papers because without the internet and without your resources, all I've got left to do is pull crap from my ass and smear it all over the paper that I'm not using with my printer (because my printer doesn't work with my new MacBook), hand it in and call it a day.

See also: Yesterday in the computer lab on campus when the network crashed and not only did I lose the course notes I had just finished typing up, I also lost the form I had been filling out for the last half hour which is a major factor in determining the first half of 2007 for me.

I hate technology, but I can't imagine living without it either.

11:32 am

Saturday, November 04, 2006

Not Having Internet At Home Stinks

My blog turned four years old yesterday. Mayhaps I'll have more to say about it later.

4:12 pm