Wedding Planning - nobody's counting

Just to give you an idea what I have been doing so far. Expect something else even bigger later! (When I'm done vectorizing it, that is.)



Bonus: Here's my idiot time wasting drawing:

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.

A Conversation with the Afterlife

It's been nearly six years since my dad passed away. I often have dreams where he appears as he was when I was younger - sometimes even in his twenties or thirties, when only photos could have showed me how he looked. Nevertheless, my belief when he died is that he exists in an afterlife, where neither God nor Devil nor Buddha exists. It would be where people's souls exist on a plane different from ours, and we could communicate with them somehow, in mystic or an indirect manner. He was not a believer of any sort of religion as far as I knew, and this belief in a non-denominational afterlife comforted me when I woke up in tears from seeing him in dreams after his death.

Once I fell asleep and dreamt I could talk to him. In life, we could not speak directly as his English comprehension was not complete and my Cantonese comprehension is laughable; but to my knowledge, we were able to speak freely with complete understanding. An exchange could happen:

Me: Dad!
Dad: How have you been?
Me: Pas pire. You?
Dad: It's good. Nothing to complain about.
Me: ...
[Awkward silence.]
Me: So... did you hear about that Hockey Night in Canada theme controversy?
Dad: I heard. >:(

Wedding Planning - Part 1 of a gazillion

Date:Saturday, 15 August 2009
Place:Montreal

Completed checklist

• Reception: Kam Fung, full 10 courses of awesome

That's it.

To do

• Everything else

Possible Venue Locations for the Ceremony

• Holiday Inn Select - downtown Montreal, has a lot of rooms for meetings and closest to Kam Fung


• McGill University - some bookable rooms like the swank Faculty Club and Thompson Hall, but I'm sure we're all looking forward to a meaningful ceremony in the deep dungeons of the Burnside Basement, eh? BONUS: Alumni rates?


• Parc Mont-Royal - the Smith House has a room that is rentable with up to 120 people


• Montreal Museum of Fine Arts - as far as I know from the web site, the only room that is available at possible times is the members' lounge at the Jean-Noël Desmarais Pavilion


• Jardin Botanique de Montreal - expensive as #@$!

Who Gets to Marry Us?

• A judge


• Clerks and Deputy Clerks


• A mayor


• Certain councillors


• Certain notaries


• Absolutely anyone else you want (as long as they're old enough and not in jail)

MMOArrPG

My Portrait

On Health, Transit, and Sustenance

Since returning from Montreal for Chinese New Year at the end of January, I eventually had another day of supply teaching. Then the next day I developed the flu. And boy was that terrible. I suspect that one of the kids (or all of them, who knows where their grubby hands might have been) had been working on making their teacher sick, and seeing that their regular teacher was not present decided that this was the next best thing.

What made it worse was that in the next morning I had to shovel the nicely packed layers (more than 2) of snow that accumulated on our parking lot, way beyond the level that the contractor had said he'd remove, and the two feet of snow that the street plow generously piled just at the end of the driveway. This was the same morning I was supposed to get to the school again to supply teach that day, and I received an angry call that morning that confirmed my suspicion that I would probably never supply teach there again. And then I got sick.

I did contemplate just driving over the snow (as I have done with the Rav4 going to the Waterloo school), but after removing enough to inch the car through the passage I realized it would have resulted in yet another trip to the garage, and a separate trip to the hospital.

Anyway, I spent two weeks with a fever, then a cough and congestion, and now just a cough. On the positive side, I did have scheduled an interview at another school, when that school (the one with the interview) called the day before and asked me to work at the same time. (They suggested working around the interview so I agreed.) It turns out that the principal was sick, so I was briefed by the vp instead, during the one break in the day that I had. I also managed to expose six different groups of kids with the flu virus, so the cycle of revenge is complete.

***

The Ottawa transit strike is over, so Donnah is now back in her rented room and not stewing in the flu germs in our house. However, it turns out that the city of Ottawa did not "save" $3 million a week that the buses ran on, but lost money from offering free rides to entice people to trust the bus company again. Many people predict that because the bus strike allowed many commuters to make rideshare opportunities (and people met their neighbours who work in the same buildings), the bus company may lose lots of permanent riderships and have to cut back on expenses like, say, the bus drivers. (Oh, but weren't they striking to get better working conditions? Not if there's no business and money for it, buttheads.)

As a follow-up to the previous post, the NCC is now proposing an even bigger waste of money for the interprovincial bridge. Besides the one proposal that their own contractor told them would be the best choice, they are spending an additional 5 million dollars and even longer to make assessments. Ultimately, they will still choose Kettle Island because it will still be the cheapest and least environmentally impacting choice, and then everyone living in the affected region will poop their pants in agony while everyone else will poop their pants from the stupidity.

***

Horse meat burritos, and an overly-buttery, flour-less chocolate cake. Happy Valentine's Day!