What's new you ask?
I've finished my course and am now a Sei Tai Practitioner. I even have a handful of repeat clients already. I'm thoroughly enjoying my job. Now I just need to save a whole lot of money to get a car. The van has finally died we think. She died and wouldn't start for either Raistlan or myself last Wednesday. Yes she decided to die on us on the 5th floor of a parking garage. ha ha ha... she truly is a bitch through and through... no tow truck wants to or can get into a parking structure that's only got 2m clearance.
Luckily mom came to at first get it towed to a wreckage yard but she was able to get the van to start and some how - probably through sheer luck - was able to drive it to my house.
And that's where it's sat for the last week. In my driveway.
So been calling some car places and if we can manage to save up about 570$ we can get a car that's actually got a warranty on it ;) lol
I've been painting both wood and ceramics for a couple of christmas presents - family christmas is coming soon. So I decided homemade-ish type of presents.
So for the first time in probably about 6 years maybe a little less I've finally got a real pair of winter boots. Took Keenan to go get his boots and got some for me too. Almost look like his but unfortunately they didn't have the spiderman boots in my size. So I had to get a couple sizes bigger with no cartoon super heroes. But hey... at least I finally have boots and don't need to completely wreck my running shoes. Yay Winter Boots!
Raistlan walks in from the pharmacy trip he took and says too me Dr Blank is dead. My initial reaction was "What?!?" - this is the doctor that was shooting Raistlan in the head with some sort of nerve blocking local for his migraines. Raistlan had just a couple weeks ago told the doctor that he wouldn't be coming back because the nerve blocks were only lasting a couple of days. Then bam yesterday he walks in a tells me that he was in a car accident over the weekend and died at the hospital. Crazy.
I haven't dyed my hair in ages, so I'm pretty much back to my yucky mousey brownish dirty blondish colour. Add on top of that I've literally just (as in a few moments ago) cut it as well. Told Raistlan on the phone afterwards and he was thinking that I had cut it really short. But I didn't. I had mentioned the other day that I was thinking of cutting it to just below my earlobes to him and thats what he thought I did. *shrugs* Gimme a couple of days maybe I will yet.
He told me that he'd go around telling people that I cut my hair because I was pregnant... since that does seem to be a trend with pregnant women.
Then again we have been seriously talking about that as well.
Anyway off to make dinner...
*waves*
Tuesday, November 27, 2007
Saturday, November 17, 2007
Canada
A British newspaper salutes Canada. It is funny how it took someone in
England to put it into words...
Sunday Telegraph Article from today's UK wires:
Salute to a brave and modest nation - Kevin Myers,
The Sunday Telegraph
LONDON
Until the deaths of Canadian soldiers killed in Afghanistan, probably
almost no one outside their home country had been aware that Canadian
troops are deployed in the region. And as always, Canada will bury its
dead, just as the rest of the world, as always, will forget its
sacrifice, just as it always forgets nearly everything Canada ever
does.
It seems that Canada's historic mission is to come to the selfless aid
both of its friends and of complete strangers, and then, once the
crisis
is over, to be well and truly ignored.
Canada is the perpetual wallflower that stands on the edge of the hall,
waiting for someone to come and ask her for a dance.
A fire breaks out, she risks life and limb to rescue her fellow
dance-goers, and suffers serious injuries.
But when the hall is repaired and the dancing resumes, there is Canada,
the wallflower still, while those she once helped
glamorously cavort across the floor, blithely neglecting her yet again.
That is the price Canada pays for sharing the North American continent
with the United States, and for being a selfless friend of Britain in
two global conflicts. For much of the 20th century, Canada was torn in
two different directions... it seemed to be a part of the old world,
yet
had an address in the new one, and that divided identity ensured that
it
never fully got the gratitude it deserved. Yet its purely voluntary
contribution to the cause of freedom in two world wars was perhaps the
greatest of any democracy.
Almost 10% of Canada's entire population of seven million people served
in the armed forces during the First World War, and nearly 60,000 died.
The great Allied victories of 1918 were spearheaded by Canadian troops,
perhaps the most capable soldiers in the entire British order of
battle.
Canada was repaid for its enormous sacrifice by downright neglect, its
unique contribution to victory being absorbed into the popular memory
as
somehow or other the work of the 'British'.
The Second World War provided a re-run. The Canadian navy began the war
with a half dozen vessels, and ended up policing nearly half of the
Atlantic against U-boat attacks. More than 120 Canadian warships
participated in the Normandy landings, during which 15,000 Canadian
soldiers went ashore on D-Day alone. Canada finished the war with the
third largest navy and the fourth largest air force in the world.
The world thanked Canada with the same sublime indifference as it had
the previous time.
Canadian participation in the war was acknowledged in film only if it
was necessary to give an American actor a part in a
campaign in which the United States had clearly not participated... a
touching scrupulousness which, of course, Hollywood has since
abandoned,
as it has no notion of a separate Canadian identity.
So it is a general rule that actors and filmmakers arriving in
Hollywood
keep their nationality... unless, that is, they are Canadian. Thus Mary
Pickford, Walter Huston, Donald Sutherland, Michael J. Fox, William
Shatner, Norman Jewison, David Cronenberg, Alex Trebek, Art Linkletter
and Dan Aykroyd have, in the popular perception, become American, and
Christopher Plummer, British.
It is as if, in the very act of becoming famous a Canadian ceases to be
Canadian, unless she is Margaret Atwood, who is as unshakably Canadian
as a moose, or Celine Dion, for whom Canada has proved quite unable to
find any takers.
Moreover, Canada is every bit as querulously alert to the achievements
of its sons and daughters as the rest of the world is completely
unaware
o them. The Canadians proudly say of themselves, and are unheard by
anyone else, that 1% of the world's population has provided 10% of the
world's peacekeeping forces. Canadian soldiers in the past half century
have been the greatest peacekeepers on Earth...in 39 missions on UN
mandates, and six on non-UN peacekeeping duties, from Vietnam to East
Timor, from Sinai to Bosnia.
Yet the only foreign engagement that has entered the popular on
Canadian
imagination was the sorry affair in Somalia, in which out-of-control
paratroopers murdered two Somali infiltrators. Their regiment was then
disbanded in disgrace, a uniquely Canadian act of self-abasement for
which, naturally, the Canadians received no international credit.
So who today in the United States knows about the stoic and selfless
friendship its northern neighbour has given it in Afghanistan?
Rather like Cyrano de Bergerac, Canada repeatedly does honourable
things
for honourable motives, but instead of being thanked for it, it remains
something of a figure of fun. It is the Canadian way, for which
Canadians should be proud, yet such honour comes at a high cost. This
past year more grieving Canadian families knew that cost all too
tragically well.
England to put it into words...
Sunday Telegraph Article from today's UK wires:
Salute to a brave and modest nation - Kevin Myers,
The Sunday Telegraph
LONDON
Until the deaths of Canadian soldiers killed in Afghanistan, probably
almost no one outside their home country had been aware that Canadian
troops are deployed in the region. And as always, Canada will bury its
dead, just as the rest of the world, as always, will forget its
sacrifice, just as it always forgets nearly everything Canada ever
does.
It seems that Canada's historic mission is to come to the selfless aid
both of its friends and of complete strangers, and then, once the
crisis
is over, to be well and truly ignored.
Canada is the perpetual wallflower that stands on the edge of the hall,
waiting for someone to come and ask her for a dance.
A fire breaks out, she risks life and limb to rescue her fellow
dance-goers, and suffers serious injuries.
But when the hall is repaired and the dancing resumes, there is Canada,
the wallflower still, while those she once helped
glamorously cavort across the floor, blithely neglecting her yet again.
That is the price Canada pays for sharing the North American continent
with the United States, and for being a selfless friend of Britain in
two global conflicts. For much of the 20th century, Canada was torn in
two different directions... it seemed to be a part of the old world,
yet
had an address in the new one, and that divided identity ensured that
it
never fully got the gratitude it deserved. Yet its purely voluntary
contribution to the cause of freedom in two world wars was perhaps the
greatest of any democracy.
Almost 10% of Canada's entire population of seven million people served
in the armed forces during the First World War, and nearly 60,000 died.
The great Allied victories of 1918 were spearheaded by Canadian troops,
perhaps the most capable soldiers in the entire British order of
battle.
Canada was repaid for its enormous sacrifice by downright neglect, its
unique contribution to victory being absorbed into the popular memory
as
somehow or other the work of the 'British'.
The Second World War provided a re-run. The Canadian navy began the war
with a half dozen vessels, and ended up policing nearly half of the
Atlantic against U-boat attacks. More than 120 Canadian warships
participated in the Normandy landings, during which 15,000 Canadian
soldiers went ashore on D-Day alone. Canada finished the war with the
third largest navy and the fourth largest air force in the world.
The world thanked Canada with the same sublime indifference as it had
the previous time.
Canadian participation in the war was acknowledged in film only if it
was necessary to give an American actor a part in a
campaign in which the United States had clearly not participated... a
touching scrupulousness which, of course, Hollywood has since
abandoned,
as it has no notion of a separate Canadian identity.
So it is a general rule that actors and filmmakers arriving in
Hollywood
keep their nationality... unless, that is, they are Canadian. Thus Mary
Pickford, Walter Huston, Donald Sutherland, Michael J. Fox, William
Shatner, Norman Jewison, David Cronenberg, Alex Trebek, Art Linkletter
and Dan Aykroyd have, in the popular perception, become American, and
Christopher Plummer, British.
It is as if, in the very act of becoming famous a Canadian ceases to be
Canadian, unless she is Margaret Atwood, who is as unshakably Canadian
as a moose, or Celine Dion, for whom Canada has proved quite unable to
find any takers.
Moreover, Canada is every bit as querulously alert to the achievements
of its sons and daughters as the rest of the world is completely
unaware
o them. The Canadians proudly say of themselves, and are unheard by
anyone else, that 1% of the world's population has provided 10% of the
world's peacekeeping forces. Canadian soldiers in the past half century
have been the greatest peacekeepers on Earth...in 39 missions on UN
mandates, and six on non-UN peacekeeping duties, from Vietnam to East
Timor, from Sinai to Bosnia.
Yet the only foreign engagement that has entered the popular on
Canadian
imagination was the sorry affair in Somalia, in which out-of-control
paratroopers murdered two Somali infiltrators. Their regiment was then
disbanded in disgrace, a uniquely Canadian act of self-abasement for
which, naturally, the Canadians received no international credit.
So who today in the United States knows about the stoic and selfless
friendship its northern neighbour has given it in Afghanistan?
Rather like Cyrano de Bergerac, Canada repeatedly does honourable
things
for honourable motives, but instead of being thanked for it, it remains
something of a figure of fun. It is the Canadian way, for which
Canadians should be proud, yet such honour comes at a high cost. This
past year more grieving Canadian families knew that cost all too
tragically well.
Sunday, November 04, 2007
Sacrifice
sac·ri·fice 
[sak-ruh-fahys] Pronunciation Key - Show IPA Pronunciation noun, verb, -ficed, -fic·ing.
[sak-ruh-fahys] Pronunciation Key - Show IPA Pronunciation noun, verb, -ficed, -fic·ing. –noun
–verb (used with object)
–verb (used without object)
| 1. | the offering of animal, plant, or human life or of some material possession to a deity, as in propitiation or homage. |
| 2. | the person, animal, or thing so offered. |
| 3. | the surrender or destruction of something prized or desirable for the sake of something considered as having a higher or more pressing claim. |
| 4. | the thing so surrendered or devoted. |
| 5. | a loss incurred in selling something below its value. |
| 6. | Also called sacrifice bunt, sacrifice hit. Baseball. a bunt made when there are fewer than two players out, not resulting in a double play, that advances the base runner nearest home without an error being committed if there is an attempt to put the runner out, and that results in either the batter's being put out at first base, reaching first on an error made in the attempt for the put-out, or being safe because of an attempt to put out another runner. |
| 7. | to make a sacrifice or offering of. |
| 8. | to surrender or give up, or permit injury or disadvantage to, for the sake of something else. |
| 9. | to dispose of (goods, property, etc.) regardless of profit. |
| 10. | Baseball. to cause the advance of (a base runner) by a sacrifice. |
| 11. | Baseball. to make a sacrifice: He sacrificed with two on and none out. |
| 12. | to offer or make a sacrifice. |
