in which i discuss swarming seagulls, the sunday that wasn't sunday and sarcastic 'things i love' lists (coming soon: Piety and the Neo-Calvinist Tradition)
waking this morning:
/begin memory
open eyes dark room alarm alarm alarm
slam clock
silence silence silence
8:40 why is it 8:40 am what class do i have what day is it
it is sunday
church must go to church drive car pool responsibility
except not sunday, it is another cloudy day
/end memory
that's right... it has now been a full 12 days since I have seen the sun. nearly got a chance yesterday, there was a definite bright spot where the sun was behind the clouds... bright enough that i could see a distinct shadow. but today, fog. and seagulls. i'm not up on biology or whatever enough to know how seagulls direct themselves but i'm guessing they orient themselves using the sun. have fun with that suckas... they were definitely flying in circles in the field behind aug hall. either that or they were planning to attack the dorms a la The Birds... oh what a scary movie that was... there were so many seagulls... i was panicking let me tell you
but yes it has been nearly two weeks since i have seen my good friend mr. sun. and it makes me sad, or should i say S.A.D. oh seasonal affective disorder, you bring so much depression into my life.
but do you know what makes me happy? p.h. #8:
Lord, our Lord, your glorious name
all your wondrous works proclaim;
in the heavens with radiant signs
evermore your glory shines.
How great your name!
Lord, our Lord, in all the earth, how great your name!
Yours the name of matchless worth, excellent in all the earth.
How great your name!
Who are we that we should share
in your love and tender care--
raised to an exalted height,
crowned with honour in your sight!
How great your name!...
Oh how i love the grey book... and playing hymns & psalms from it with Kimber playing descant on violin and tal screaming uncontrollably in the background... oh sunday afternoons, except not sunday it is another cloudy day
Right. Number three on the list: the matter of the things I love list... so Jo wrote a list but it's a little bit sarcastic (quite surprising really) and Kimber the anti-sarcasm police responded here and apparently now i'm required to respond (don't ask me why i am never told anything apparently i'm invisible.)
so the list items themselves are Jo's and the comments are Kimber's and the bolded stuff is mine:
1. the LCBO: the LCBO Brampton was one of the most interesting trips of the week, therefore it should be on the real list of favorite things, not the sarcastic list. Here is the reason why:
Number one: it was interesting to look at all the colorful bottles. Timmy found a neat ale Bottle for gayle.
Hmm, no comment... except, I hope gayle is happy with that bottle cuz the beer inside it was SUPER GROSS. I drank it all for you gayle and also cuz i was too dutch to pour it out like Jehan wanted me to... also i'm guessing the ground would reject the nasty beer much like water rejects witches... right moving on then...
Number two: there is an interesting story of what happened in front of the LCBO and i don't mean the time when we decided to make the letters while taking pictures, causing undue suspicion. I mean the time when thug number one dropped a five dollar bill and Claire yelled "hey buddy, you dropped your money!" however, he did not hear her. Therefore, i yelled back "excuse me sir, i think you dropped somehting" doubtless, calling a thug sir would cause anyone to look wondering what in the world is up. Then claire walked over to the thug to give him the money. however, she gave it to thug #2 who was not with thug #1. Thug 2 decides to take the money anyways as thug one stands watching as thug 2 walks into the LCBO without giving the money back. We should have just kept the money.
Do you know how hard it is to make a 'B' with your body for a prolonged time (cuz certain parties were taking too long with the camera... i'm looking at you Katie)...
2. mist: I also believe that this should be on the true list of favorite things. here are some more reasons:
#1: it hides the smog
#2: it has a unique smell...i think it is the smell of hamilton actually.
#3: it keeps us from getting sunburn
I have to say mist is one of my favourite things. Except for when it's misty for FIVE FRIGGIN DAYS. OK ENOUGH ALREADY GOD WE'RE AWARE THAT YOU CAN MAKE MIST AND IT'S REALLY REALLY COOL NOW STOP IT. please.
3. kimber's wall decorations. I actually enjoy my wall decorations, you should too
--They are colorful. many pictures of national parks and nature scenes.
--they hide the white walls
--If you use your imagination, they match my sheets. as in, nothing actually matches brightly colored tie-dye, and nothing matches my massive collage of pictures, so therefore they are in the same category and therefore match
--they used up 2 containers of poster putty. *eh-hem* sticky tack.
--you are a part of these decorations. by that i mean that you are in a number of pictures
--you are just jealous that you are not named after a gun, and therefore cannot hang cool pictures that say "Jo. Get it right the first time" or "Jo. The choice of [Canada's] best"
Well it's okay now that you've cleaned your room. but as you are aware (because you were there), messy room + unmade bed with tie-dye sheets + massive collage on one wall + semi random nature posters = timmy whimpering in fetal position.
4. springy. no couch has ever made me feel so comfortable.
I would like to justify having springy in our living room: there is no other place for it and it gives us more room to sit. yes, i sometimes use it. and it's better than springy the first.
sorry kimber you lose this one. mr springy has a spring the size of my fist in his back and when i sit on dear springy that fist goes right through my back resulting in day-long pain. NOT FUN.
5. hair dye. i ignored you for years, and now you make so very happy and blonde in some spots: you have to admit. Amanda's hair was interesting and added excitement to redeemer life. as for you hair, i think it looks good. it makes it brighter. really.
I'm on both sides here... on one hand i dyed my hair all through high school and it was always reasonably cool... on the other hand i have black hair now and it looks better. And I've seen some sketchy dye jobs recently... amanda's being one. I don't think i'd classify that under 'interesting' so much as the 'train wreck' or 'things not to ask some guy to do for you when you've had a lot to drink'. and thinking about other things that might fit under that category... it's definitely time to move on... ouch
6. dirty bathrooms: They are now clean and the month isn't even over.
yeah when i'd rather go home to my guys dorm to use the washroom... there is a problem. on an unrelated note... the seagulls are back... there are seriously at least 40 or 50 and they're right outside the window, swooping and disappearing into the sunday fog oh wait it is not sunday it is another cloudy day
7. Ontario reform churches: what other churches have great organs and sing such great hymns from the gray psalter hymnal (definitely forgot the p in psalter the first time)
what is this ontario reform you speak of? i assume you mean the crc... oh how i love the crc (that wasn't sarcastic by the way... i really do love the crc)
8. philosophy papers: they may be better than history papers that have to be written....again.
agreed. I don't mind philosophy papers... but then i like philosophy a lot.
9. manual transmission vehicles: they are much easier to speed up with. all the race car drivers have them. It does present a problem, however, when you speed up too fast too often and tehrefore wear down your back tire, but that never happens.
i really really want to learn manual. but i never have. so i can't really comment
10. you tell me: oh i will. yea we sure told her.
ok well i'm off for now. have a good sunday. or if you're dutch reformed, SONTAG (must be capitalized for maximum DUTCH effect). speaking of, i wonder if blogging is allowed OP SONTAG. i guess it's not really labour if you're not following grammatical/punctuation rules eh?...
remember the time i was happy to be out of the g dot r? o yeah i remember why now... this city is death. especially since my friend R. and his family (also known as the only GR friends who have not already fled this city) are at Mackinac Island for the weekend.
so here i sit at home, mom is at work, J. is in his room talking on the phone to his girlfriend whom he just saw half an hour ago. i've already gone through the whole awkward thingy where I'm sitting at the computer listening to music and grandma comes and talks to me for a long long time. i'm so great at interjecting appropriate commentage where necessary without actually paying attention to the content of the other person's verbiage. people think i'm a great listener but really i just have lots of practice tuning you out
oh yeah and speaking of music: apparently our home computer committed suicide and was resurrected by J. (that's J. josh not J. jesus by the way) -- ie, all the music is gone. fortunately i used my gmail account to mail a song from one person's computer to another and i still had it.
so i have been listening to i would walk five thousand miles for the last half hour
over and over
and over
T.D: i think i am going to sympathize with your boredom tomorrow. at least i have the option of going outside.
please someone instant message me before i put catnip under my eyelids so my cat will claw my eyes out
(that is the new and updated version of wanting to stick forks in your eyes)
oh yeah and in the continuing saga of timmy trying to get the mythical GST return... foiled again. apparently another requirement is that total purchases must be over 200 dollars to receive GST returns (this is in addition to the requirement that each individual receipt must be over fifty dollars). i had three receipts totalling one hundred sixty dollars. fortunately K., whom i was driving back with, had her receipt for textbooks which itself was over two hundred dollars, so combined we met the limit.
fortunately, I mean, except that the tax return lady wanted to see the books. she couldn't give us the money until she saw the goods. uh huh. well my receipt was for toothpaste, soap and pants so DO YOU WANT MY PANTS MISS TAX RETURN LADY HERE ARE MY PANTS TAKE MY PANTS JUST GIVE ME MY TAX MONEY BACK
i am a sad demented individual. and it is the canadian federal government that has done this to me. with help from the work-study department of a certain medium-sized christian university in a small, disturbingly homogenized suburb of a large, disturbingly gross city in what can only be described as the greatest province in all of the western half of central canada.
oh did i forget to tell you? let me just say that if they try to sneak a letter in my box at noon on a friday before a long weekend telling me to change the sign that afternoon... i will get angry. and i've already gotten angry once this semester. i don't know what will happen if i get angry again. maybe i will get seven feet tall and turn green. that would be cool.
oh the things i would do if i were seven feet tall. i would reach the shelves above our fridge without having to climb on the counter. if i were wearing a long sleeved shirt people would mistake me for dutch from behind. i would finally be taller than the eighth graders / grade eighters at my church.
hmm... there was one more thing i wanted to talk about... oh yeah, i wanted to say thank you. Yeah i realize it isn't american thanksgiving, it's columbus day weekend here. but thank you anyway.
Thank you to my friends for making life cool. Thank you to my dorm-mates (both sets) for also making life cool. Thank you to my family, cuz you've put up with me for nineteen long years and have only gone slightly batty because of it. Thank you to Redeemer school because I love you a lot. Thank you to God because without you, the rest of it wouldn't mean anything.
i hope people don't think i'm an angry violent depressed person just cuz i rant on my blog. ranting is so much fun. and really i get screwed over so much that i'm used to it. i take a perverse pleasure in seeing just how many things can go wrong in one day. you'd be surprised.
oh yeah and to my dorm-mates... i confess, i was the one who knocked down the sign that was hanging in our door today. i definitely walked into it while walking out of the house for the last time. it was pretty scary too cuz all of a sudden there was a loud noise and something attacking my forehead. i was glad that no one was around to watch me make a fool of myself. but thanks to this blog most everyone i know plus any and all random internet people can make fun of me. in my defense, whose bright idea was it to jam a sign in the doorframe? i'm not sure but i blame A.N. of course, everything is his fault. and by A.N. I mean the irony-deficient guy, not my room-mate the vibemaster.
this stream of consciousness rant/story has been brought to you by the numbers 13, 201 and 301 and the letter μ.
if michael moore is used as supporting evidence for anything in my american history class ever again i am going to do a lot more than cough and walk out of the room.
i have a lot of respect for the guy as a person who is passionate about his vision for our country and as one of the greatest film-makers of our time. right up there with leni riefensthal. but i'm pretty sure that taking every thought captive for Christ and extending His rule over all areas of life is incompatible with claiming that bowling for columbine proves that white americans are paranoid.
it's pretty rich for a canadian to call americans elitist. i love canada a lot but populist is not one of its defining attributes.
[this blog may be deleted when i cool down. i don't get angry very often and i usually regret what i've said or written later]
Hmm... long time no blog. Yeah well talk to my greek prof about that since he has us working our butts off... at this point, the syllabus says we're supposed to be in lesson five and we just started lesson eight... yikes. why can't history profs ever go through material this fast?
So my friend Tal and I have wanted to go see this movie Shaun of the Dead for a long time (well like a week), so yesterday we decided we'd call around and see what time matinee showings were... guess what, the city of hamilton does not believe in matinees during the week. so we decided to go to the theatre in brampton by Tal's house... that's right, we drove fifty miles to a movie. it was great times especially trying to buy candy to smuggle into the theatre and realizing all we had was debit, walking out of the theatre only to witness the arrest of some guy (oh, brampton...), being stalked briefly by a road-raged driver (we cleverly drove into the costco parking lot) and nearly being killed by the semi truck driver behind me who apparently thought i was out of the lane we were sharing at the time.
DEAR SEMI DRIVER: I WAS STILL IN THE SAME LANE AS YOU. YOU NEARLY RAN MY CAR OVER. IT WAS NOT APPRECIATED.
Oh yeah and there was the time I accidentally stayed on the QEW instead of getting onto the 403... as a result we were nearly lost forever in the vast urban wilderness that is the east end of hamilton. fortunately we finally found a road up the Niagara Escarpment... it could've been gruesome if not for my mad navigational skillz.
So yeah. It's been a good month. It's good to be back in the A-dot.