These were actually seen on church billboards:

1. Don't let worry kill you -- let the church help.
2. Thursday night - Potluck supper. Prayer and medication to follow.
3. There are some questions that can't be answered by Google.
4. Remember in prayer the many who are sick of our church and community.
5. For those of you who have children and don't know it, we have a nursery downstairs.
6. The rosebud on the alter this morning is to announce the birth of David Alan Belzer, the sin of Rev. and Mrs. Julius Belzer.
7. This afternoon there will be a meeting in the South and North ends of the church. Children will be baptized at both ends.
8. Tuesday at 4:00 PM there will be an ice cream social. All ladies giving milk will please come early.
9. Wednesday the ladies liturgy will meet. Mrs. Johnson will sing "Put me in my little bed" accompanied by the pastor.
10. Thursday at 5:00 PM there will be a meeting of the Little Mothers Club. All ladies wishing to be "Little Mothers" will meet with the Pastor in his study.
11. This being Easter Sunday, we will ask Mrs. Lewis to come foreward and lay an egg on the alter.
12. The service will close with "Little Drops of Water." One of the ladies will start quietly and the rest of the congregation will join in.
13. Next Sunday a special collection will be taken to defray the cost of the new carpet. All those wishing to do something on the new carpet will come foreward and do so.
14. The ladies of the church have cast off clothing of every kind. They can be seen in the church basement Saturday.
15. A bean supper will be held on Tuesday evening in the church hall. Music will follow.
16. At the evening service tonight, the sermon topic will be "What is Hell?" Come early and listen to our choir practice.

Eric Lamaze, aboard his fantastic horse HICKSTEAD win individual show jumping gold at the 2008 Olympics in Hong Kong.

What a ride!

Hickstead is possibly the best jumper I've ever seen, and that horse took Lamaze from a suicidal cocaine addict to Olympic champion in the past 4 years.

Hickstead, this day is yours. I hope you get lots and lots of carrots until you're too fat to jump again. ;)

And congratulations again for Team Canada winning silver with great rides from Mac Cone on Ole (unfortunately injured), Jill Henselwood on Special Ed, and Ian Millar on In Style.

It was just so glorious hearing the Canadian anthem today, at midnight in Hong Kong. Lamaze was crying and I almost was too.

I shall post my review of the new musical Wicked, which I saw at the NAC yesterday (it was opening night).

Review, with very mild spoilers ( Read more... )

I wonder if this map will work here. It makes it so that every visitor creates a dot on the world map from where they're from. Allegedly.

You are now marked on my visitor map!



Create your own visitor map!

I had a very weird and vivid dream last night about scorpions. I was at a cottage or something with a bunch of friends, I can't remember whom, and we found a scorpion under the mattress of one of the bunks. It was a strange, purplish burgundy colour (about the colour of my icon), with large pincers and a fairly thin tail. I assured my friends that although I had no idea what species it was (the colour baffled me), that heavy pincers and a thin tail indicated a non-deadly species.

Then of course, like an idiot, I pick it up to put it outside. It promptly stings me in the hand. The pain is terrible, so I drop it, and it skitters out the door (mission accomplished, I guess, despite the sting). My friends tell me I should call an ambulance. But instead, I insist that the doctors won't be able to do anything for me if they don't know what kind of scorpion it is. I go on the internet, wasting valuable minutes, and try to find out. After too much searching, my hand throbbing, I find out that it is not, indeed, a relative of the usual non-dangerous Emperor or House scorpions, despite its size and the pincers/tail, but it is a rare and deadly southeast Asian one of the "Scorpigo" species (lol).

Then once I realise it's lethal, I start to die. I should have kept myself oblivious, then I probably would have been fine. I am rushed to the ambulance, where a paramedic gives me a prick with another scorpion sting to counteract the first one (???) The shot of pain wakes me up.

Strangely enough, I was in no pain when I woke up. Usually when I dream about pain, it's because I'm twisted in a weird position, or my finger's gotten caught, or I have a headache or something. This one was purely psychological.

Constitutional 'zam done!!! That was a big triple bar liverpool (triple bar jump with water under it to scare the horse). But scariness aside, like a regular triple bar, although it's requires stretch and athleticism it's not that bad to clear in the end.

Now I have started my Economics course. We began with a three-hour class on immigration economics. It was great - this is going to be a good class.




Here is the Constitutional 'zam jump (but this one doesn't have the water. Notice also how the jump is actually about 5 and a half feet tall, which is not an Olympic sized jump like the ones I'm doing now! (This is an undergrad sized jump)

Maybe I'm carrying this metaphor too far, but it makes me happy!

Enjoy spring, everyone!

With 'zams right on the way (the first Thursday, the second Monday, and the third next Wednesday), I am tremulous with fear and excitement that the term is almost over. It will also mean I will no longer have any excuse to neglect my Masters Research. But I think, for the time being, 100% finals are an adequate excuse. Please let me not flunk Constitutional!

In the course of my 'zam studying, I have formulated several life lessons that I should live by, but never do.

1. "I'll just do it later" quickly turns into "I should have done that earlier."

2. Never start a good fanfic just before a 'zam.

3. Never watch the first episode of a TV series before a 'zam.

4. Never begin reading a good book before a 'zam. (yes, I did all three)

5. Work on 'zam studying in chronological order. If you work on the one that isn't for another week, you will rapidly approach the one that's this week and realise that you don't know the material, even if you can recall the other material perfectly.

6. Never rely on someone else's study notes. Sometimes they're just dead wrong, and other times they just confuse you into a panicked stupor.

7. Don't worry too much about marks.

8. Particularly if you aren't actually willing to put in the work required to get them.

9. Don't let other people's stress get to you.

10. Study in study groups, but end the meeting quickly when the discussion gets off topic or stressful.

11. When people tell you you should still be eating and exercising during 'zam studying, don't go overboard to comply.

12. Don't waste your time posting on livejournal.

13. Cut your losses. If you don't have time, don't punish yourself for not having started studying earlier, or not having studied all through term.

14. Particularly if this behaviour is not going to change next term, and you know it.

15. Remember that a law student who gets a C is still a lawyer, and a med student who gets a C is still a doctor.

16. Try not to think about how scary that is for potential clients and patients.

17. Particularly when you know how badly someone has to do to get a C in law school or med school.

18. Remember that the professors are not trying to trick you on 'zams.

19. They are just trying to put something obvious in front of your face and laugh as you fail to recognise it because of your obtuseness.

20. What was that one about wasting time posting on livejournal?

Just got out of a meeting. Things are going pretty well, minus the law exams and all the crud I have to do by the first of May.

And as I prepare for my last day of classes tomorrow, and my subsequent trip to Ottawa, I have found myself marinated in introspection.

Let me thus describe the year in metaphor.

This year has been the first round of my Olympic Showjumping career (hence the icon). I have finished the Grand Prix of Undergrad, and took the CN International Cup. But now I am competing against some of the best in the world. And competition is stiff.

September was the initial, straightforward verticals and the long, deceptively lazy gallops in between. The course designers intended the seemingly endless expanse of turf between jumps to lull riders into a false sense of security and to make their horses disorganised and distracted. It worked well on us and set the tone for the rest of the course.

October, there were several routes along course that were presented to me. Some were a continuation of the long gallops, others were more strewn with jumps but would allow me tighter turns required to come in under the time allowed. I chose the latter. The jumps still seemed small enough for my horse to handle even if he came in at an angle because he wasn't paying much attention.

November, my first real challenges. After a long expanse of turf, a large horizontal water jump loomed before me. For the first time, we had to push hard. We galloped flat out and cleared the jump. But woe is me, those tricky course designers had stuck a double combination immediately afterwards. We came in too flat, I rode erratically through, and a rail came down. My horse became jittery and upset.

December, the course began in earnest. Several large oxers in rapid succession that I had to stretch to clear. Several rails rattled. Gathering my horse up and taking his wild panic in hand, I prepared for the huge triple bar that stood between myself and the halfway point. My horse got distracted, and started weaving right at the foot of the jump. We took off too late, and his front feet brought the first of the three rails down. By a miracle, we cleared the rest. Then we had to do an immediate rollback, for the designers cruelly put another large oxer right next to it, and then finished off this part of the course with another rollback to a high but straightforward vertical. The knockdown had gotten my horse's attention, and we cleared those two. Or at least I thought we had, but by January we realised that the final vertical I had rubbed had come down as well.

The end of December and the beginning of January was another long gallop, this time free of obstacles. I recovered my horse's focus and strength as much as I could. I tried to learn from my former mistakes and ride him up to the forehand, rounding out the canter for more controlled and athletic jumping. It did not come easily. I was not really ready when the first obstacles hit.

January held a bunch of smaller preparatory verticals, as well as a few tricky narrow ones and some up and downhill work. Nothing my horse could not handle. We cleared it and felt pretty good about ourselves. We were on our game.

February, disaster struck. I had gathered my horse up and focused him for a seemingly endless line of jumps, and then we lost balance on the turf, and he stumbled. A muscle in his leg was bruised and sore, but I had to ride on. The ride was ragged. We took the long route to the line, wasting precious seconds in the round, ones we would later regret.

March, we arrived. The line was worse than we thought. An enormous Liverpool triple combination. Up one, a rail rubbed. Up two, the oxer, cleared. Up three, the big vertical, cleared. My horse practically fell flat on his face into the middle of March. His leg was throbbing and swollen. He cantered unevenly with his limp. Luckily, the course designers had put in another gallop to distract him, but it served to stretch out the cramping muscle. By the end of March, it was feeling better. That was a good thing, as at the very end of March, a double combination approached. Up one, the biggest oxer yet, a tragic knockdown. Up two, a large vertical, cleared beautifully.

April, a couple more short verticals. But the worst line of all is yet to come. A triple combination is approaching, the Olympic version of the Devil's Dyke. I am currently up on the Derby hill, allowing my horse to pick his way down before entering the Dyke. I can see it from here. It consists of a Stone Wall, the kind that is taller than the horse's head, a dip in the earth with a dry-ditch oxer over top of it (just to get the horse off balance), and then another large triple bar. These are the hardest jumps of all, placed in rapid succession.

Then I get to pound to the finish, hopefully under the time allowed.

I am carrying 16 faults. I cannot win nor even get a medal this Olympic round with that, but if I keep it to that and come in under the time allowed, I may place in the top 10 or 15. And who knows, others who are sitting pretty at 4 and 8 faults may knock down more rails before the end. After all, no one is riding a clear round.

Language mania.

My Mandarin tutor is sceptical that I've learned anything this year. So she is giving me a test in a couple of weeks. Hopefully, I will have some time to study before that happens, or I will embarrass myself. There's a little disjoint between what I have learned:
- basic conversation questions (like what country are you from?)
- language words (like noun, verb, adjective, exercise)
- essential verbs (like to be, to study, to have, to go, to know)
- animals (horse, dog, cat, fish, cow, pig, etc.)
- food words (like meal, rice, vegetables, dinner, breakfast)
- nature words (like water, fire, ground, mountain)
- pronouns (like I, you, he, she, it, they)
- some basic adjectives (big, small, tall, good, bad, beautiful)
- directions and relative words (up, down, left, right, north, south, east, west)

And what I'm supposed to know:
- parts of the body
- clothing
- weather
- sentence structure (simple subject-verb-object, interrogative, past tense)
- school words
- banking words
- four character expressions

So we'll see how it goes. I also learned to my horror that most PhD programs in History require me to be competent in German and complete a German reading test. So I'm spending some spare time learning German from a "Learning to Read German for PhD Students" book. It's not that hard, but hard enough to be annoying. I like speaking it a whole lot more than reading it because I get to show off my mastery of ridiculously guttural vowels and harsh consonants. And now, thanks to my tapes, I can tell the difference between a north and a south German accent! (helps when I'm talking to my friend in Economics from Baden-Wurttemburg)

And all of you who know French, I would highly recommend Italian. Probably the easiest language I've ever encountered. I dug up my book and CDs on "Teach Yourself Italian" and am already reading fairly complicated paragraphs. (not quite newspaper article, but can you blame me after 3 days?). Oh, and it goes without saying I recommend Spanish, but then I had a 4 month class on that.

Anybody have any tips for self-teaching languages?

Hello everyone!

So the start of a new term, and finally the Christmas decorations have come down in my apartment. The weather is balmy for January (football in T-shirts in the green field is what I played this Saturday). I am busy as all get out, and quite disciplined for once. We have our moot (mock trial) on February 9th, and as the appellant my factum is due first on the 25th of January. I have forced myself to work a little bit on it every day, and it is shaping up nicely. Thankfully, it's a construction claims case, and I've had 5 years' experience in construction claims!

Sadly, I've been staying up super late because I was bitten by the philosophy bug and have been writing a book on my philosophy every night after finishing my strict regimen of eating healthy, working hard, keeping in touch with people, and exercising. Written in stream-of-consciousness style, it'll probably never see the light of day.

I am heading to Toronto on Thursday for my second Public Administration conference, and am staying the weekend with my amazingly fun friend kusanivy. We will be watching glorious Dark Crystal and David Bowie in tight pants in Labyrinth. Can't wait!

Did I mention I took up Swing dancing? It's a lot of fun. I'm doing Lindy Hop. The weirdest part is, there are actually guys in the club - who actually want to dance. A few are there to pick up girls, but you win some, you lose some, and I'm an Ice Queen (for reasons explained in a previous post) so nobody's tried yet. Swing has made me motivated to keep dancing on my own at home (you don't need a partner to swing, although it's better if you do), and thus exercising every day! But I'm so sore from football I don't know if I'll make it tonight.

And I had a dream last night...( Read more... )

So, it's been a good first week. I already feel like I've been back for three months. Oh, and a very nice friend of mine gave me a toy airplane as a present. He said he was sorry he couldn't get a MiG-29 (my icon, and my favourite plane), so he got me a Ju87 instead. He said that if I could ignore the fact that it was made in a different country, for a different purpose, in a different war, it would almost be like I were getting a MiG-29. I thought that was funny. Lucky for him, I like Ju87's too.