merry christmas

I hope everyone loved their Christmas as much as I loved mine!

one idea

Well, here's one idea for 2008: I really want to start blogging more. I have at least three or four blog post ideas a day, and rarely get around to doing anything about them. How do people have time to post once a day, or more?? I would at least like to start posting consistently a couple times a week. That sounds manageable...maybe I should make it a goal and give it a try.

Resolution #1: blog at least twice a week (to start. I was going to say three times and then I chickened out at the last moment. Goals are great and everything, but I'd rather start small and work my way up).

a burrito

So, it's almost 2008, and I've been thinking about my life. This happens every December, as I realize that time is passing and a new year is incredibly close to beginning. I usually get reflective about the past year, and then I think about the year to come and what it will bring with it. Except this year I don't know what to think about 2008. Every other year there's been at least one major event that I knew was going to happen. Last year, it was knowing that one way or another we were going to move out of Suburbia. The year before that it was me graduating college and getting married. The year before that it was...well, I can't remember, but I think you get the point.

Anyway, this time around I have no idea about the new year. As of right now, I, personally, have nothing planned. I am very excited for other people. Joel is starting a new job on January 1st (head graphic designer for a brand new newspaper...hurray!!) Christopher is hoping to live in an ecovillage in England for three months (I am so envious I might as well be green) Aaron is starting college in September, and I am, well, still here. And have no other plans.

I'm pretty psyched about this unusual event (or lack thereof). I need to start thinking about what I want to do, since, at least for the next little while, it doesn't look like I'll be moving or starting a new job or going anywhere or anything like that. Perhaps this is my big chance to do something cool and spectacular, to really buckle down and focus on something like I haven't done since college. I need a goal, a project, a proverbial Everest to climb! And right now I don't have a lot of ideas.

Perhaps I'll give this some thought and come back when I have something more specific in mind. There are a lot of possibilities here...to paraphrase Weird Al, I feel like the world is my burrito!

a bright idea

So, a couple days ago my mom and I were talking about the environment, and my mom mentioned that she had read somewhere that compact fluorescent bulbs can't be thrown away with regular trash because they contain mercury. I don't know whether that's common knowledge or not, but I had never heard that before. I was also kind of surprised because CFL bulbs are usually touted as a major step towards being truly green, and "change your light bulbs" is always in at least the top five of all those "Ten Things You Can do to Save the Environment" lists. If people are just dumping their used CFL bulbs in the trash, and the bulbs contain mercury, then they really aren't being so green at all.

Anyway, I bring this up because today I did some research. Both General Electric Lighting and Tree Hugger confirmed that yes, CFL bulbs do contain mercury and should not be thrown out with regular garbage. There are a variety of recycling programs that are popping up throughout North America, and both sites referred to Lamp Recycle as a good source to find out where you can take your used bulbs. I didn't find that site particularly helpful (there were only four Canadian locations listed) but I was interested to discover that Ikea takes back used CFL bulbs.

GE Lighting says that each bulb only contains a tiny amount of mercury, and no mercury is released while they are in use and if they are disposed of properly. Both GE and Tree Hugger say that while the whole mercury thing isn't ideal, it's still better to use CFL bulbs over incandescent bulbs because the CFLs are just so much more efficient. They also both note that most of the mercury polluting the air and water comes from giant coal plants that are generating electricity. Therefore, the less electricity you use, the less mercury that gets spewed into the environment. And as long as you dispose your CFL bulbs properly, mercury pollution shouldn't be too much of a concern on that front.

So there you go. I found enough information to convince myself that compact fluorescents are probably still the best option, short of living without lights altogether (it's 4:30 p.m. right now and it's already dark here...living without lights doesn't feel very appealing). It does go to show, however, that more information is needed than simply telling people "Switch your bulbs." When you're doing things to solve a problem, you need to make sure you're not just making another problem (that's my whole beef with ethanol, but that's a different topic for a different time). Anyway, if anyone knows anything else about good lighting options, let me know...

a story from the vinyl cafe

So, I was not planning on writing here today at all because I have about a hundred other things I'm supposed to be doing, but I can't let this moment pass. So here I am.

Yesterday, my Mom and I went to see Stuart Mclean live for the Vinyl Cafe Christmas concert. For those of you who don't know, Stuart Mclean is a radio show host for CBC Radio. He has (in my mind) kept alive the dying tradition of radio storytelling with stories of his characters Dave and Morley. Combined with musical guests and the "story exchange" submitted by listeners, the Vinyl Cafe is entertaining, engaging and fun in a totally unique way. Many of the Vinyl Cafe stories have been published into anthologies (which is actually how I discovered them) and are truly worth reading. These stories have had me laughing out loud in my work lunchroom, on city buses, in my living room, etc. etc. I love the Vinyl Cafe, and so I was giddy when I heard Stuart Mclean was on tour with the live show. I was even more giddy when I discovered he was performing nearby and that my Mom and I scored second-row tickets!

The show was last night. It was so much fun. Stuart Mclean is an amazing storyteller. He had the whole auditorium laughing. The musical guests were amazing. He told two new stories that I had never heard before, and one old favourite.

After a story and a musical set, he was talking to the audience and asked if anyone had a student loan. I looked behind me at the audience. The theatre was packed, but not a single person had their hand up. Mr. Mclean said, "Really, no one has a student loan? Someone here must have a student loan. Anyone?" I glanced around, and then raised my hand. He saw me right away. "Okay, we've got one!" he said. "Do you have a loan?" he asked me. I nodded. He asked me my name. He said, "Okay, Alison, come on up here, then." I was so floored I couldn't move for a second. I looked at my mom, who smiled at me, and then I walked up onto the stage and stood next to Stuart Mclean(!!!!). He asked me what school I went to. He said I looked too young to be in college (I didn't get into the fact that I actually graduated last year) and then he gave me a CD/DVD of one of the night's musical guests, Danny Michel. He talked to the audience some more and found a couple of young kids, so he got me to walk through the audience and pass out CDs to both of them. Then he found the oldest person in the audience (a 91-year-old woman) and got me to hand out a CD to her, too. It was so exciting. After that was the intermission, but I couldn't wipe the smile off my face for the rest of the night.

It was such a great night. I had so much fun, so excuse me while I let the excitement get the best me: I LOVE THE VINYL CAFE!!!

let it snow!

I woke up on Wednesday morning to this view out my window:


I don't particularly like being cold, and I don't particularly like wading/stomping/tripping through snow, and I don't particularly like how winters here can last up to five months, but I LOVE the first real snow fall of the season. It's just way too beautiful not to love it, and, while I don't go running outside for a day of snow angels and snowmen anymore, it's still just so exciting in a deep-down fundamental kind of way that I was actually happy to get out of bed and walk to work in this idyllic postcard-version of winter time.

eight days and counting...

We are eight days away from Buy Nothing Day. I just wanted to get the word out now so there is still plenty of time to cancel any shopping spree plans that were in the works for that day. Make the world a better place!!! Buy nothing on November 23 (bonus points if you keep it up all holiday season...)

road trippin'

Joel and I just got home from a week-long roadtrip to Florida and back. Our actual destination was Disney World, which I know is totally hypocritical considering I won't even buy breakfast cereal from corporate giants...but I had never been to Disney World before, and the kid-part of me really, really wanted to go. I have no excuses or reasonings other than that. All I will say about it is this: despite wanting to go, I was still sceptical as to how great a giant fake world spattered with animated characters brought to life could possibly be. Well, it turns out it is so much fun. I loved how everything went so all out to make you feel like you were walking through Mickey Mouse's house and were exploring the Swiss Family Robinson's treehouse and were witnessing a pirate fight. Everything was so creative and imaginative and cool. I loved it. I'm having a hard time right now remembering why I hated Disney before this, sneaky corporate masterminds that they are. I am sure that this is all a part of their plan to take over the world. Whoever would have thought an over-the-top theme park was the way to do it?


It's been a long time since I was in the U.S. at all, and I've never been as far south as Georgia and Florida. Some things were really different than they are here in Canada. For one, there were a lot of breakfast places, like Ihop and the Waffle House. The further south we went, the more Waffle Houses we noticed. Joel and I thought this was funny since Waffle House doesn't even exist in Canada, but we counted 31 between Macon, Georgia and Orlando, Florida alone, along i75. At one point, we could see three Waffle Houses at the same time. They were close enough geographically that you could literally have stood at any one of the Waffle Houses and seen the other two. On the way home, we counted 37 along i95, between Orlando and somewhere maybe in North Carolina or Virginia. The further north we got, the fewer there were until they seemed to just disappear. Oh well. It was an interesting car trip game during the tedious 26-hour drive home.

I also thought it was harder to find vegetarian options at restaurants. We ordered pizza one night in Georgia and the only veggies they had were black olives, mushrooms, green pepper and hot peppers. Maybe it was just the restaurants we stopped at, but a lot of the time the only vegetarian options I could find were either salads (with no bacon bits, please) or - yes - waffles. There were always waffles.

People seemed really nice everywhere we went, albeit a little misinformed about Canada. One lady in Georgia asked us what airport we flew to. Joel said, "We actually drove here." The woman looked at us like we had gone mad. She said, "You drove here? You can do that? I thought you had to take a boat or something!" We thought she was joking, but she was serious. That was just kind of the way it was, though. In Canada, America is always so prominent and obvious and there. In the U.S. Canada seemed non-existant.

But you see, this is why road tripping is great - the whole process becomes a part of the trip, and you not only get to experience the destination (i.e. a big theme park), you get to discover how you get there and the very country that can create and support such a thing (i.e. the mighty USA). The week went too fast. A part of me is happy to be home. The other part of me wonders what I'll do the next time I have a craving for waffles without a Waffle House around the corner...

a green christmas

By that, of course, I mean a holiday season filled with environmental consciousness and sustainable practices. Now that is the kind of holiday season I can actually feel myself looking forward to.

Now, I know that it is only the middle of October, and usually I get all worked up when people start hyping up Christmas two months early, but this year I actually need to start thinking about it now. Joel and my brothers and I have made a pact to do Christmas differently this year, so it's going to take some extra time, but in a good way. We are having a corporate- and commercial-free Christmas. HURRAY! That means the whole thing is going to be as Do-It-Yourself as possible (gifts, decorations, food, etc). We can still buy some things, since realistically you'd need to start making stuff in June to get it all done by Christmas (we came up with this idea in September, so we were too late for that). The deal, though, is that anything store-bought needs to be either made by local craftspeople or be fair trade products by international craftspeople (i.e. stuff from Ten Thousand Villages counts) or support positive change in the world (like the CD Instant Karma, for example).

I am excited about this, which is a joyous feeling in itself, because to be perfectly honest I haven't really looked forward to Christmas or even liked Christmas since 2002. My grandmother was the Christmas Spirit embodied in a physical form. Every year she and my grandfather came to visit us at Christmas. She made Christmas cookies and put them in Christmas tins. She brought more gifts than Santa could shake a stick at, and they were always wrapped like they had appeared in the holiday edition of Martha Stewart Living. She scouted stores and bakeries for the best fruitcake. She loved sitting at the dining room table with my brothers and I as we all made new tree ornaments and other Christmas crafts. My grandmother was Christmas, so when she passed away in the fall of 2003, it felt like Christmas passed away with her. We've tried to revive some of the traditions, but it hasn't been the same. We've tried to create new traditions, but nothing has really stuck. Christmas started to get depressing.

To make matters worse, I was working at a mall in the holiday season of 2003. I had to listen to Christmas music all day every day. Holiday shoppers yelled at me. I watched as they yelled at each other. People spent hundreds of dollars at my store alone, and always asked for gift reciepts so the things could be returned. Sure enough, the first week of January, everything came back. The mall was so busy, and people were so stressed and frazzled and mean, and everybody spent so much money on stuff that it turned out no one wanted anyway, that I actually wanted to stop celebrating Christmas all together. In fact, it occured to me that celebrating Christmas in this out-of-controll consumeristic way went against everything I even believed in. It was bad for the spirit, it was bad for the world. The only thing it was doing at all was putting money in the pockets of big corporate businessmen, and seeing as it was their marketing teams that turned Christmas into the spend-fest it had become, they were the last people in the world I wanted to be financially supporting. I turned into the Grinch. I hated Christmas, and every year I told myself that I wouldn't go into a mall after November 1st, but every year I ended up feeling like I had no choice. So, I would go into the mall and become stressed and frazzled and spend too much money, and then I would be bitter because I had caved and gone against my principles.

Last year, when Joel and Christopher and I were living in the soul-sucking wasteland of Suburbia, we started some traditions that actually turned into a lot of holiday fun, like a homemade gingerbread house, homemade egg nog, and old-fashioned popcorn-string tree garlands. This year is like an extention of all that! I already have some ideas for gifts (which I would post, except my brothers are probably the most faithful readers of my blog, and I don't want to let out any secrects...) The exciting thing is that none of my gift ideas require going to a mall at all. They do force me to be creative and resourceful, though (imagine, Christmas gifts that will bring out my good side!) I think we're finally finding a way to return Christmas to it's old ideals: giving, not getting, time with loved ones instead of just shopping for them, peace on earth and good will to men and all that other stuff that lives on only in Christmas music.

I can't believe this...it's October and I'm excited for Christmas. I feel like I'm five years old again!

my first-ever blog fashion show

Check it out!

and

yes, it is me kicking mass-produced corporate ass with my one of a kind hand knit socks. And because Penny is also very socially conscientious and wanted to get in on the don't-buy-what-you-can-make-yourself movement, I made her a little something as well (she couldn't quite do it herself, do to a lack of opposable thumbs - an important aspect of knitting). Everywhere we go, the other dogs stop and stare, and I know they're thinking, "Maybe I should stand up for something, too."

I am pretty happy with both projects...this was the first pair of socks I've ever made and they turned out well. They didn't take very long to make, either, which is always a big bonus (sitting on a Disney movie set for three days really helped in the "time to knit" department, but that's a story for another moment). I am, however, particularly pleased with the collar because it's the first knitting project I designed myself. It turned out awesome. Penny and I both feel that it brings out her natural flair for style. It also kicks off something I've really wanted to do for a long time: design and create my own clothes and accessories, for myself and others, people and animals alike.

My friends, we have entered a new era.

in the good old days...

Is it possible to feel sentimental for a time you were never a part of? I have been contemplating that question since this past summer when I went to a "dinner and entertainment" night at the arts school. It was wonderful. The entertainment was musician David Archibald and he was performing songs from the summer of 1967. There were a number of people in the audience who were obviously around for the summer of 1967 and were up dancing and singing along with all the songs. I, too, was already familiar with most of the songs, but seeing them performed, and seeing the audience, and feeling the energy and atmosphere and passion created by those particular songs made me wish it was 1967 again, except this time around I would be there too.

I don't know where I'm going with this, exactly...it's just something I've been thinking about lately. It leaves me feeling like I missed out on something, like somehow there were more people willing to stand for something or wanting to make a difference then than there are now. I feel like music and art came together as a voice where they now are too often products of a money-hungry industry. I feel like young people wanted to be a revolution, where they are now too often worried about just getting a half-decent job. And then I wonder if my perception isn't just a little skewed because people often look back on their youth with rose-coloured glasses, and that's how I have learned about the 60's and 70's - through the eyes of parents and others who "were there," and I pick up on their sentimentalism. That might be true, and yet there aren't legions of people proclaiming that all they need is love, anymore, and I guess that's where I start getting bummed out, because I wish there still were or, more than that, I wish there was again. Perhaps I am confusing sentimentalism with a desire for things to be different, and 1967's Summer of Love is the closest thing history offers as an example of how I wish things were now. I don't know, I don't know. I do know that there are a lot of things about society and politics and mainstream culture and lifestyles that could really benefit from a revolution right now. I'm 22. It's my generation that could make a difference right now, that could create another voice to add to the echoes of the hippies and the beats and all the dreamers and questioners of the past, so at the very least our children will hear our music and say, "We need to keep making this difference."

After all, the world doesn't belong to a single generation, it belongs to all of us. And wouldn't that be so much better than being 50 and looking back on this decade of my youth and sighing sentimentally, "Those were the days - we really stuck to the textbook and lived exactly the way society wanted us to."

BLEH!!!

a quarter-life crisis

I feel myself getting discouraged. Again. Worse, perhaps, is that I feel discouraged about being discouraged because Joel and I just moved into our own place again, which I've been looking forward to for months. I was seeing this as my opportunity to start some new things, to create a lifestyle that allows for the time to write and do my own thing and work on my own projects and essentially follow my dreams. We've been here for a week and I haven't done anything yet. I have sat down multiple times to start writing a new story or drawing a new picture and my whole being freezes up and nothing happens. It's frustrating, but not new. I have had this problem before. I have also only been here a week, so I admit that it's a little premature to jump the gun and say I am incapable of accomplishing anything. So while all this is annoying, it is not in fact the problem.

The reason I am really discouraged is because I just got a job promotion. This is discouraging because I never actually wanted a job to begin with. I want to be a starving artist. I used to be a preschool teacher and I quit that job so I could be a starving artist. Then one month Joel and I were desperately strapped for money (which, granted, is what happens to starving artists). Joel already works full time. So I said, "Well, maybe I could work one day a week somewhere." I very quickly got a job as a childcare provider at a parent/child program, one day a week. Good. Some extra money, and I still had four weekdays to myself. Hurray.

Well, then my employer asked if I could provide childcare at another program on Fridays. "Okay," I said, because it's only for a few hours and the Friday group is much different than the other group, so the job is genuinely fun. Life went on, until a couple weeks ago when my employer promoted me to child programming coordinator and gave me another day of work. Now I work three days a week and my job actually has more responsibilities than simply showing up each day. I am so frustrated. This is not what I wanted, and yet I ended up here why? Because as much as I don't like it, it's easier to do this than trust myself with something else? Because I can't say "no" to people? Because for some reason I decided to take Early Childhood Education in college, so now everyone in the country knows me as an Early Childhood Educator and I cannot for the life of me figure out how to send out the message: "No, I don't want to do this work anymore, I want to be a writer," which, incidentally is what I have ALWAYS wanted to do, since I was seven years old, even while I was in college learning how to be an Early Childhood Educator. This is so frustrating. Taking Early Childhood Education in college was the worst decision I ever made, because now it follows me around everywhere I go, getting in the way of other, more interesting opportunities. No one thinks I'm a writer. People are suprised when they find out I enjoy art, let alone create it. Instead, everyone looks at me and thinks, "Look, there's an Early Childhood Educator. I should ask her to look after my kids." I don't want people to think that anymore. I don't want people to see me that way anymore. And yet, because people do know I'm an ECE, I only encounter ECE opportunities. And, because I do need to make some money, I feel forced into taking those ECE opportunities because nothing ever happens in any other way. And because I start working so much as an ECE, I have less time to pursue other things, and then I become more and more of an ECE and less and less of a writer. This is like cracking an addiction to cocaine. It's discouraging.

So, instead of starting my new life at my new apartment by writing a novel, I have become a child programming coordinator.

Good thing I still have Mondays and Tuesdays off to complain about it on my blog.

i'm back

After one week short of a year, I am back. This is exciting. The month of September always makes me want to start something new, or in this case renew something I unfortunately gave up after too short a time. Here's to another beginning!