PRC finally arrives...

Alors, the complication of having a job that necessarily requires interaction with young "vulnerable" folks means to have to get a police record check. Unfortunately, these are only valid for about 6 months after they check the records for you, and then if you're still not hired during that time it isn't so valid no more and you'll have to get yet another one.

Fortunately, my pricey 60$ Montreal PRC and 25$ Quebec City PRC back in 2006 were eventually used to procure a job in Waterloo, so those paid themselves back. The new unfortunate circumstance is that I wanted to volunteer in the local Ottawa schools to tutor mathematics under a volunteer agency (so that I can meet school principals and make connections to get into the occasional teachers list, so that I can finally get HIRED by the school board), so I needed yet another PRC from whoever.

The good news is that Ottawa police will do it for free provided you give them a letter from the volunteer agency. Done. The bad news is that I asked for it back in March, and it arrived in JUNE. Woo! Let's go tutor those kids now! >:( (In fact, it was completed in May and somehow they managed to not deliver it for yet another month.)

I feel like every single step I'm trying to take to get into the education system here is thwarted by another bureaucratic blockade that is determined to squeeze out whoever isn't favoured by nepotism and/or the virtue of being Catholic. (Did you know that to work in the catholic school board as a full time, part time, or occasional teacher, you have to be catholic? Analogous to requiring someone who cooks French food has to be French.)

Alberta Allows Right to Ignorance

Seriously messed up.

I can understand that parents and guardians want to protect their kids from hate speech, abuse, crime, disease, and other kinds of horrible things... but surely you can't protect them from information? As much as our society values knowledge and critical thinking, for some reason when it comes to just informing them on things that they will not be able to avoid when they grow up (if they grow up), there is a huge uproar over the rights of the parents to shield their children from being possibly corrupted, because they found out that blow jobs aren't a form of abstinence or that creationism isn't a science.

I can't even imagine how the hell anyone can even want to be a biology or ethics teacher like this. I always thought that teaching and education were important to everyone - yet when this kind of thing happens, even when the government backs the right for people to stay ignorant, it leaves me flabbergasted.

Also, CBC is a cesspool of idiot comments.

A Wedding, a Newspaper, and a Plumber

Wedding planning part 2
I tentatively have a meeting room at the Holiday Inn Select, next to the metro station in Chinatown. Hence, the reception and the ceremony are merely stone throws away from each other. However, I still don't have any idea what to do for the officiant since everyone we asked said, "Uh... let me be plan B, ok?"

I just want to point out that not everyone can be plan B. ;)

Moral of the story: people are reluctant to do anything that sounds bureaucratic. :(

The National Post
Since my last post, my feelings for this paper have swelled and grown to the fanaticism that permeates the entire paper like the conservatism dripping from the editorials and letter writers. And Financial Post is the most illuminating thing ever.

Just kidding, I still hate the paper. In fact, I had the following conversation with Jorghnassen yesterday:

Ms C: God I hate this paper. I want my money back.
Jorghnassen: But this is a free subscription.
Ms C: I feel sorry for the trees that were sacrificed for this atrocity.
Jorghnassen: So wait, you want to cancel a free subscription?
Ms C: I'd call them just to do that if I didn't have something to do during the day. I'd imagine that they'd try to argue with me to keep accepting their free offer, but if they realized how crappy their paper was, they'd be paying me to take it.

Anyway, moral of the story: don't accept just any free shit.

Plumber
When you buy a house for the first time, you're a clueless homeowner. Nevermind what your background is (except maybe if you built your house with your own two hands and no help whatsoever, like your friend the invisible unicorn), you're obviously going to have things go wrong with your house in the first few years of owning it, and you're not going to have any idea how to fix some of them.

Which is why when the faucet in the kitchen suddenly stopped working last night, Jorgh called the plumber this morning. Super nice guy with lots of experience, I suppose. I watched him take apart the faucet and fiddle with a bunch of things; then he concluded that the spout was blocked and told me he'd go find a supplier with his workplace to replace the spout.

When he left, I proceeded to take apart the faucet and fiddle with a bunch of things; then I poked the blockage, and suddenly the spout worked again.

The plumber returned from his search for the part without luck. He told me that the faucet was only available at one supplier in Ottawa for $1000, while the part itself was $250 and would have to be on order. However, since I had unblocked the thing myself (which I had told him over the phone earlier) he didn't think we'd have to get a new part. Then I got the bill. $_____$

Moral of the story: hire a professional once for a very expensive lesson on how to fix your shit.

The National Post

A few weeks ago, I signed up for a freebie from Redflagdeals.com: a 90-day subscription to the National Post. Actually, the freebie seems to turn up often, and every time I attempted to sign up for it, they never seem to find my house.

Last week, there was an automated phone call that reminded me that I signed up for this thing (which by then I had totally forgotten due to not remembering what I do a few minutes after I do them). After chatting like a confused old lady with the service representative, I was told that it comes from Monday to Saturday until the 90 days are up.

Anyway, the whole point of the National Post being given away is because no one gets their news from "dead tree" media anymore, so they're hoping that you would get used to accepting their newspaper long enough that you'll want to pay for it over the longer term.

However, as soon as I received the paper for the first time last Tuesday, I immediately saw a problem:

It sucks. Itsucksitsucksitsucksitsucks it SUCKS.

A newspaper that has a decidedly conservative view is already unreadable to me. It's difficult to take any articles seriously when there's a definite slant to reporting (after a week, I can probably point out a dozen articles); as a critical thinker, it's enough to make my head asplode.

However, discussions on the editorial and letters pages are infuriating; besides editors driving a wedge between Canadians with "western" and "eastern" values, it's the delayed discussion between letter writers (by several weeks sometimes), that in the age of high speed internet, I'd rather read flame wars in real time between people who actually read the news in not the National Post.

It's not a very large paper; national papers need an extremely wide daily circulation and making a hundred pages an issue isn't really cost effective. So what could this paper publish daily that would ensure affluent people would buy it? Financial Post. Half of the paper is composed of a thick blah about numbers that are already outdated by the time they send the pages out to print. And I don't care.

So now that I've killed several trees, I can save you all money by telling you that it's easier, saner, and less headache-inducing to read the news on the internet. However, I admit sometimes it is nice to be able to pick up a physical newspaper and read, but don't pick the National Post.

Welcome, Transit New Year

Admittedly, the new year has been so for nearly two weeks, but I digress.

Media has already discussed the turn of the new year to be one that is full of hope (Obamarama) but at the same time full of crap (bomb-ba-bomb-bombs). Jason Jones as Baby New Year puts it best: "The Gaza thing - it's like being born with herpes!" (Not that I think babies born with herpes is funny...)

So here's the Ottawa hopeful new year news, besides the ending of the month+ long bus strike: Kettle Island Bridge.

Here's the Ottawa crapful new year news: Kettle Island Bridge.

You're asking, "What's this non-existent bridge, and why would I care about it?" Well, if you never intend to visit Ottawa, then you wouldn't - so you can just turn off your computer and bask in your city's lack of any transit problems. You have no transit problems? Wow.

***

As far as I know, Ottawa's downtown has always been a complicated stew of pedestrians, cars, and 18-wheelers playing Who Wants to Be A Pancake? (Hint - pedestrians win that one more than 18-wheelers.) This insanity is probably due to a huge bureaucratic mess called Everybody's Fault But My Own.

In any sane city, one would want to make a highway system to have heavy trucks bypass busy pedestrian areas, allow express buses to speedily transport workers from the quiet suburbia to downtown cores, and promote public transit and carpooling by reserving lanes on the road.

But of course, Ottawa has no sane people in it (see: bus strike, prorogue, 2008). So Ottawa is left with a downtown full of trucks and buses wrestling for room in an already congested pancake-filled Rideau/Montreal/King Edward/Elgin/Laurier/Everywhere Else.

Unfortunately, none of these things could be fixed in Ottawa because everyone from the borough councillors to the federal government have to be involved in the decision processes.

The current addressable issue is that the highway to Ottawa ends slightly outside of the core, and the rest of the roads to cross over to Gatineau run through downtown. Quebec and Ontario once had an agreement to build a highway on their respective sides that would be joined by a bridge, so people could go straight across, bypassing the mess. Quebec built their side (Aut-50), and the bridge was built. Guess who didn't build their side?

There are only a few bridges between Gatineau and Ottawa, and they all lead downtown. So the Kettle Island Bridge was proposed (cheapest, most convenient, fricking closer to home), and a whole lot of people were happy (especially this blogger), and probably ready to set it up.

Of course, people would be inconvenienced from having a few acres of land repatriated, some increase of traffic and noise to affected areas, blah blah blah. "Build it in another area - not in my backyard!1!!one!" Then a different set of people would protest with the same complaints.

Fight fight fight!

Anyway, the point is that most levels of government decided on this site after many, many, many years of studies, but some people at the local level don't want it there. However, if all the levels of government can't agree, then the plan will be scrapped and everyone will probably have to start all over again with another site. By the time another plan can be developed, more pancakes would line the streets of downtown Ottawa.

Daily Show mentions

After a week of waiting for some comedic commentary from our favourite show, POLITICKS finally appears on the Daily Show. :)

Pet Peeves

Sticky things
Paying money for things that I can do myself for much less
The tablet mouse (just the mouse)
Garbage bins without lids
Traffic jams with Jorghnassen in the car (sorry)
Clothes that show how lumpy I am in all the wrong places
A story without a point
Anything above 27C
Students who think half a page of scribbles counts for points
Running out of hard drive space / memory / everything
Shopping alone
Shopping with someone who doesn't want to go shopping
Waterloo
POLITICKS

The Craigslist Conversation

Chance encounter at the park?

Reply to: cbear45@yahoo.com
Date: 2008-07-19, 11:19PM EST


I saw you walking your dog at the park today wearing a pink fuzzy sweater and a grey skirt. I wanted to talk to you but your dog kept barking at me and you hurried away before I could get your number. Let's meet again without interruptions. :)


**

re: Chance encounter at the park?

Reply to: spot667@hotmail.com
Date: 2008-07-20, 9:31AM EST


You weren't wearing any pants, you sick freak.


**

re: re: Chance encounter at the park?

Reply to: cbear45@yahoocom
Date: 2008-07-20, 9:45AM EST


Just the fact you wrote back shows that you do want to see me again! Same place, same time?

Nostalgia for Stupid TV

I'm not one to write about nostalgia often. That's Jorgh's brother's thing. However, once in a while it will happen - as it will happen to all people I'm sure - that I get bitten by a memory of something that happened in the past. And then it never goes away until I tell Jorghnassen about it until he gets sick of hearing it, or it just eats me up inside until I forget about it a week later. Then it comes back to me again.

None of my memories from the past that torture me are ever pleasant. I do have some good memories, like falling into the rivière du moulin up to my neck (oh wait that's not that good but whatever), getting to see the Rockies and the Atlantic ocean, and making childhood friends whom I am in constant fear of them finding me. But much of the things I remember are either mundane or horrible things I'd rather not remember.

This entry, however, is not exactly horrible but completely inexplicable: some classic sitcom TV shows between the 80s and 90s.

***

Everyone knows of the "reedeeculus" Perfect Strangers, Family Matters, and Full House successes (and consequent successes/downfalls/scandals of the Olsen twins but that's an aside). My family would watch television every evening together for their wholesome, slapstick and childish antics that would unite the entire generation of American and Canadian families in that era forever.

There's also the older Small Wonder that more and more people have gained memory of, lost under the sea of Facts of Life, Growing Pains, Family Ties, and Cosby Show episodes. (Now why would Bill Cosby's show be called "The Cosby Show" but have a character named Huxtable, (same occurance for all his other shows) is also completely inexplicable.)

However, few people remember the really, really stupid shows that would only last a few episodes or a few seasons. I mean really stupid. I'm not talking about shows that were found to be retarded, like how they made a Little Muppet Monsters short that came after the Muppet Babies cartoon. Or other idiotic cartoons made just to sell toys (millions of examples come to mind).

This one is really stupid.

When ABC's TGIF shows became huge successes, the network counted on the stable, popular and long running shows like Full House and Family Matters to boost ratings on newer shows they'd slip in during the two hour block. This particular show was called Going Places.



I can't even begin to explain what this show is about. I couldn't tell you even when I was 10 or 11 watching it to begin with. If you watch the intro you'd think the show was about two young couples having wacky adventures in Hollywood and living it up on boats or something.

Let's just assume that that's the case. I'm ashamed enough about this show... because for some inexplicable reason, when I was 10 or 11, I was crazy about it. The song, the characters, their house, their jobs, the idiotic jokes (that I don't remember), EVERYTHING.

And I can't even tell you what the show is about because I don't remember a damned thing about it.

What I do remember, and this will probably haunt me forever (and I will probably regret putting this out in the open), is that I was so nuts about this show that I wrote a story about it. I wrote a fanfic about a terrible sitcom in the 90s before the internet became mainstream. I even remember the title: Going Climbing (maybe because their living it up Hollywood style wasn't enough that they had to get out of Hollywood to have anything else outlandish happen). It was probably about the four main characters going mountain climbing. I especially remember showing the rough pages to my friend in school, and his response was, "You really like that show, huh?"

However, I think I recall vaguely how I felt when the show was cancelled after a year. Devastated? Crushed? Somewhat relieved? It was probably the reason I wrote that fan-fiction. I must have chucked it out a few years later, but I would have liked to see exactly what I wrote and why I was so obsessed with that show.

haha oh god the fallout

After I posted the bacon monstrosity here, I decided it would be a fantastic idea to present it to the SA forums. (It was mainly due to an SA member that I did post it in the first place.)

Boy did it go well. I got a small number of positive or constructive responses, but the vast majority decided to go for the Internet Goon responses. I'll let you see a sample:

- Maybe because of the description that I wrote the "maïs en crème" part, he didn't get it.


- Oh Horatia, you card. ;)


- The discussion moved to weird places.

Then I wrote a rebuttal to all the people who seemed to become culinary experts over an internet recipe of a "bacon pie" that not one of them had made before.

- He probably ate at that buffet too.


- LOLZ


- This one was cute. I wrote "C is for clogged arteries."


- He didn't get it.


- Good luck.


- I feel sorry for all you vegetarian quiche lovers.

At least it was all worth it in the end:

- He laughed his ass off. ;)

EDIT: Haha I forgot to check SASS.

EDIT 2: AND it's on Forum Friday's Monday.

Hey, do you like bacon? And do you like pie?

This is BACON PIE.


Ingredients

• 1 lb listeria bacon


• 3 potatoes or so


• 1 onion


• some mushrooms


• sour cream


• spices... well, use your imagination.

Method

1. Slice up your vegetables. I used a mandolin that would be much more useful if it could only stay sharp for more than a few vegetables. (Gonna have to get a real knife sharpener, not just that cheapo-sticko thing.)




2. Lay the bacon from the center to the edge of the cooking thingy. Here I used a glass casserole bowl with lid, but later you'll see that it was probably a bad idea. The original recipe said to put it in an oven-safe frying pan.




3. Place your sliced stuff in the middle. This might have been too much actually.




4. Add some sour cream and various herbs and spices. I forgot to mix them in with the vegetables before that, so don't do what I did. Also, random green stuff.




5. Bring the hanging edges of the bacon together. Now you have a bacon package. Do not eat!



6. Cover it, stick in oven at 400 F, and bake long enough for the potatoes to be probably cooked. Like an hour, maybe.




7. Oh crap, the bacon pie exploded.




8. Well, that's okay. Just flip it over and put it back in for another 10 minutes, without the cover... and you might want to drain it. The bacon underneath wasn't finished cooking anyway. :(




9. Your bacon pie is browned. Time to get it ready! :D




10. Here, we present to the gourmands and discriminating tongues, the finest in contemporary cuisine - a serving of red potatoes, onions, and champignons wrapped in crisped salted pork belly, with a side of crème de blé d'inde. A profound fruity rouge, Rasteau, from the Côtes du Rhône villages (2005) pairs nicely with any provincial meals.

What the hell - this is the first time I made this dish and I didn't know what I was doing. I only did it because of a suggestion from my cap'n Crooks (from PP).

Chialer et Riposter

I'm not comfortable enough to write a blog post completely en français, but at least I can read...

Anyway, two quebecois websites I was recently referred to (by Google, from lack of any warm bodies to ask in the vicinity of 200km) during my quest to right a stupid mistake by stupid B&M:

riposte.ca - I found a whole bunch of people pissed at every single furniture store in existence in and around Montreal (at least), rightly for stupid things they did (or didn't do). Ah, if only it were possible to band together and turn them upside-down by the nostrils...

chialons.com - I saw that segment on Infoman recently on this site. I have no idea what it's about yet.

la Verandrye

A few of you have already come to visit our house. Good for you! Then you will know that the intersection from our street that goes out to the larger road (la Verendrye) is a pain to turn left (westbound) on to return to the highway, or to go anywhere for that matter.

To the left when you turn, there is a downward curved slope (towards the left) and an annoying hedge, juuuuuust high enough to piss you off, that makes the west side hard to tell when cars are jetting up the road at 110 km/h in a 70 zone.

To the right is a large fence and hedge that is too high to see anything coming that way, and the inclined curved slope (towards the right) also keeps anyone wanting to turn onto the westbound lanes to take it easy and turn in a safe, sane manner.

The grocery stores, commercial buildings, and everything else is to the left. (In the previous post, I mentioned that the Rav4 is in the body shop - one of the repairs is to the left turn signal, which made this turn even worse over the last week.)

The city of Gatineau decided that this intersection - with its crazy curves and slopes and idiotic lack of street light or any signs - is too stupid to exist, and will instead continue the divider down la Verandrye so that:

1. drivers will be forced to turn right from our street


2. drivers will be forced to turn southbound on rue Main* (which will be the topic of another post)


3. drivers cannot go straight


4. drivers on the main road can continue to careen 110 km/h up or down the slope like morons.

This is bothersome because that intersection seemed to have been developed just for the purpose of pissing people off. I would have preferred a standard lights intersection with crossroad and signs indicating stop lights ahead. One of the things Jorgh had mentioned when he was convincing me to buy the house (without seeing it) is this intersection, where he hoped the same thing would happen.

However, the green sheet delivered to our front door last week from the city indicates otherwise. (It's a nice FY to welcome us to the city.) Today, the city delivered another sheet stating there would be a "consultation" next week at city hall, hoping to "answer our concerns" about the change.

Let's hope the answer to our concerns is "my bad, we dum."

The dying throes of the Cheap Lamp Made in China

#@$% it, I'm tired of everything around me breaking.

The dying throes of the GPS Unit

I have the video of the exact moment the GPS unit's switch broke. That was the time that I gave the keynote speech for graduation. At the end of the speech, I played a song (if you still don't know what it is, you fail HARD) with an mp3 accompaniment playing on the GPS unit. The unit is notoriously hard to turn on and off because the face of the switch is like a floating pancake with a toothpick under it, and the electronic component of the switch is like a ROCK. The toothpick has to push the rock hard enough not to break.

Well, right at that last time I turned off the accompaniment to the song, the rock got unseated from its circuit board, and now no pressing of the pancake will ever turn it on unless someone managed to resolder the stupid thing.

It also turns out that nobody in Canada will service this thing, and the only way that this gift from Jorgh's father (through credit card rewards) can be fixed is if we exchange it at the point-of-sale. Which would be great if there were a point-of-sale. Nobody sells this unit.

Once my batteries have finished charging, I will show you what miracles have (temporarily) revived the GPS unit, and you can decide whether it should be used like this from now on or not.

The dying throes of the Breadmaker

Another stupid thing that happened just last night was that one of the two paddles of the breadmaker decided to not want to turn anymore. I know, you're wondering, "How does an appliance decide it doesn't want to work for you anymore?" It's simple - appliances are designed to not give a flying fork about humans. They are programmed by their masters (inhuman human beings) to flip you the birdie when the time is right: while you are using them.

Anyway, I withheld taking it apart today to see what is wrong until I can find out if I can get this thing serviced.

OH YEAH!!! :D:D:D:D

I finally finished marking everything in the gigantic backlog, and it only took ... uh... more time than it should have. But it's done!!!

Jorghnassen's coming back from Ottawa tomorrow evening. He's been on the search for a condo/house, and it seems there are a few choices he's about to make his grand decision upon. :o OK, not yet, because I haven't seen any of them. Personally, I have no idea what to look for except I don't want to be pressured into overpaying for something that isn't worth it. I mean it's not like a mediocre meal at a restaurant - I can't just grin and bear it while people are sucking the money from your wallet (and weird things are happening to your intestine). Anyway we'll see. It's a bit too early to say there's any decision there yet.

I'll have more to say tomorrow after giving the KEYNOTE SPEECH at the graduation tomorrow that nobody told me I was going to be giving until last Friday. Well, you'll have to wait and see if I manage to get anyone to film it. Then we'll all point and laugh at my mediocre speaking skills. Point and laugh. Point. And. Laugh.

I giiiiiive uuuuuuuppppppp :(

Another one of those tax-related worries. For part of the year last year, I mentioned that I was considered self-employed or I was supposed to get some business number otherwise. I didn't register a number and now my taxes are a million times more complicated, including filling out another separate form for a reason absolutely escaping me.

I spent the weekend with Jorgh ripping our hair out over these forms, and tomorrow we're heading to H&R Block and hope to GOD that someone out there will do this for us.

Telus Tells Us That Customers are Dumb and Should be Taken Advantage Of

Today's rant is not so angry and not full of rageahol, but it would have been ... about half an hour ago. I forgot by one day about topping up my cell with the Pay and Talk thing through Telus, and I was in for a mean surprise when I filled it this morning just before driving off to work in the Rav4. The account balance was zero, no thanks to my stupid memory, and the rate was now nearly doubled from 25c/min (ridiculous anyway) to a terrificly gouging 40c/min.

I was absolutely livid all day, but I didn't have time to rage at any service reps until I got home a while ago. I spent the whole day rehearsing in my head all the irate customer phrases that I always read about, where people make seriously silly or amusingly irritating demands to the service people.

I, myself, have never done any sort of negotiations (read: angry raving) in that sense, since I'm such a square that I follow the laws and regulations and other ridiculously arbitrary rules imposed by some faceless authority.

But after reading a few articles in the last few weeks about negotiations, creating opportunities, or just punching your way through a crowd (which I have had to do more recently like through Oxford Street, without the punching), I felt ready to give them the most convincing ANGRY IGNORANT LADY CUSTOMER conversation. The following dialog is an embellished paraphrasing.

Me: I just topped my account this morning with this card, and I want to know why my rate has changed.
Rep: You let your account go to zero. The rate goes up when you recharge. That's how it is.
Me: Wait, so you're telling me that since I missed recharging by one day, I can't get my rate back down?
Rep: You'll have to buy a 50 dollar top up card.
Me: I don't want to do that, that's ridiculous!
Rep: Sorry, that's how it is.

I'm not one to back down anymore, especially being so mad at stupid things lately. Like having to deal with my kids running around the computer class this afternoon clamoring at their classmates' computer components, going "This is not your own! OUR OWN!" (I'm so evil.)

Me: Well, I find this completely ridiculous. I try my best to top up every month, and this one time I miss the expiration by one day and I get this? I want to get my rate back!
Rep: Well we can change that just this one time.
Me: Yeah, you do that.

***ROCKIN'***

OK, well... I don't think this deserves a *rockin'* since I actually negotiated away the remaining balance that I did have, but it was much better to get my rate back by sacrificing the little balance I had, than to pay 50 dollars for another card that I was never going to use up anyway. (You'd have to look at the Telus Pay Per Talk plans to understand more how this works.)

LOST >:(

That's it, I'm not watching it anymore. >:(