Now I am generally less frustrated and in a better mood before the party(-ies). I have also been invited to see my old friend Sarah from Quebec this Sunday with Rachel :) and I am very happy to do so. Life is like a buttercup (la la la la la)...

After struggling with some more css crap today, I realize how very hard it is to make a nice looking layout for a webpage. I mean, there are so many good examples of good uses for css, and so many good examples of bad-assed crap css. I like to stare at these pages and go, "Why meeeeee?????" *bawling eyes out*

Jorgh finally agreed to let me finish making his web site for the McGill math graduates page by supplying me with actual information, instead of making things up like I was doing. Unfortunately, I have to redo the layout because I had no idea what to put in the first place. And then Vito wanted to pay me to redo his page, but he already has a decent looking simple thing he put together with Composer.

I'll figure out how to do Jorgh's page before attempting to do Vito's.

Hell, I'll figure out how to fix my own before doing anything else.

The Bad Thoughts Cometh in My Head

I am invited to two parties this weekend: Friday - one surprise party for a friend of my girlfriends, Billy, and Saturday - one pseudo-surprise/abduction party for Jordi.

I was first very upset that both were on the same day, but then I spoke with Jesse, who is organizing the abduction party, and he determined his would be better held on the next day.

EDIT: I want to apologize and remove the next few paragraphs from viewing.


Frustrations!

People say that when there's something on your mind, you should tell your friends or talk about it somewhere. Since this is something I cannot tell my friends because of its sensitive and critical nature, I wanted to write it down to make sense of these thoughts. I talked to Jorgh the other night about these things...

Such evil thoughts!

And he still did not come with the new lease. #@$%!

I changed the template so that I could experiment with the CSS. (It's a given template right now.)

I feel terrible that I have such awful thoughts yesterday. Jorgh had to stay awake all night (morning?) listening to me whine and complain for a good while. If only I had a magic wand...

The Landlord

Most people have a fairly favourable relationship with their landlords. Actually, half the people I know have had terrible things happen with their landlords. Mostly having to do with their grubbiness or lethargy or whatnot. Anyway, I have a more or less decent landlord, whom I have known for at least two years going on three. So what sorts of things could I talk about, if I have a decent one?

It's rather funny the way rent goes in Montreal. You pay at the beginning of the month. Technically, the guy's supposed to come and collect it or get someone to. But with these buildings, including the one that my sister lives in down the street, he's too damn lazy to collect it in person. Instead, I have to drop it off down the street into the concierge's mailbox. But excluding the odd number of times we paid a little late, by a few weeks, we've been more or less punctual. By a few days.

The landlord came by earlier this week to collect the rent this month from new neighbours in our buildings in person, mostly because he wanted to make sure everything was alright with the building. We naturally said we wouldn't pay until we got our new lease in print form, which he had promised us since Lil V sent in all the papers to put herself on the lease. Within an hour, the concierge was in our appartment with the forms. Funny, how it took a few months and a witholding of money to get anyone to pay attention to us.

So today, the landlord came by to pick up the rent. No lease yet. Nope. But I did tell him about the flooding last night, partly due to a toilet that Jorgh... ah, nevermind. Let's just say it was really gross.

That's probably the highlight of the day today so far. Big pu's supposed to come by to have a sushi picnic later, but I haven't heard from him yet. I hate the waiting game.

News Flash!

- in regards to the last sentence on my last post

I regret to report that bringing people physically back to life is impossible by any means.

On the other hand, building a memory shrine or whatnot is not impossible.

When I get back to Quebec, I suppose that is what I'll try to do. Unless I'm blubbering every five minutes. Which I may do as well.

Riverside Regional

Now funny enough, I was born in Chicoutimi. I was raised in Chicoutimi until the age of almost 13. Thus, my language of function should be English, logically speaking. And I'm right.(Right.)

The Saguenay-Lac-St-Jean region is world reknown for its isolated French community. Of all the places in Quebec, this region must have one of the densest french-speaking populations. So, strangely enough, I ended up learning and functioning in English. You can thank TV and schooling in English for that fact.

At the time, Riverside Regional schools were known as two separate schools, Saguenay Valley (Elementary/High) School, and St Patrick (etc.) School. The latter was a catholic school, and the former was a protestant school, both built for the English speaking managerials who came to the region to establish the fantastical Alcan plant in Arvida. I went to SVES, and attended SVHS for a year before moving to Quebec City. My sister had graduated from the same school, and headed off to Toronto for a few months, but that's another story.

Anyway, my sister is a brilliant writer, with biting wit and terrifying critique, yet her words brim with candor and I have yet to see anything she writes as being poorly crafted. (Even a biting email or a hasty note.) So naturally, the english teacher at SVHS who taught her for many years admired her works, and encouraged her talents. I, being the younger sibling at the school, would thus be duly known as the younger sister...

Ah, yes, to be known again as the "younger sister" of an infamous student. I think I didn't mind missing that for the rest of my high school years.

Anyway, after my sister's year graduated, our school was in need of a new principal. Principals in this region for an english school changed as frequently as the seasons, and the school needed someone stable, which is something it hadn't had in a long time. After much prompting from the staff and whining from the students, this english teacher became the new principal.

For some strange reason, I didn't register if he recognized the name on my resume, or even recognized who my family was after speaking to him on the phone after some time, in that strange afternoon when I was coincidentally at home in Quebec. Funny. After humbly reporting that I could not accept a position to teach at RRHS at the requested time (namely by September), a surprising reply made me quite pleased with myself for a good, long while. Normally, a job candidate would be told that the company would keep you in mind, indeed? Well, the principal told me to keep them in mind, while applying to teaching jobs in the near future. (And the last bit about how many teachers were retiring over the next few years was not surprising to me, after all this talk at McGill about how there would most likely be a teacher shortage over the next few years for the same reason.)

Anyway, just to say that I feel quite certain about the myriad of opportunities which lie before me in the next few years.

Now, why the bloody crap can't I find a job this summer???

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Just for the amusement of seeing if anyone would come across my weblog and recognize me or remember me, I will list a bunch of people I knew from SVS, with their websites and/or only reference online brought to you by Google (you gotta love that Google). If you want to contact my siblings or myself, just drop me a line. Don't forget to fix the [at].

• G Hernandez, with his brother I Hernandez's last known location, and his youngest brother K Hernandez, of whom my brother was quite fond of reuniting with.


• V T Luu, whom my sister is better known to, who also has a brother VT Luu.


• Mr KAP Arseneault, whom I have not heard from in nearly 8 years


• L Li, who I believe was last known working at Chapters in Montreal, although every time I go there I never seem to find her

Heck. the last person I heard from this school was N Delisle, and that's because he jumped ship to QHS back in 95 and we went to the same cegep afterwards as well.

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On another note, I feel so fulfilled... I finished the Man of His Word series! (TA DA!!!) With the magic of internet, nothing is impossible...

Well, so far no job. But I did strangely get an offer last week while I was in Quebec from Riverside Regional ... previously known as Saguenay Valley High School. I'll post more about this later. Jorgh wants me to go to school now...