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Well, I am officially graduated! Having a nice lie in this morning before I do paperwork all day. Gotta apply to the BCTF for my license but also for a job as a sub with the district, especially since Derrick is gone most of the week and wants me to sub: Good money!

I still can't believe it's over, to be honest. I kind of felt like this day would never come.

Well, I am officially graduated! Having a nice lie in this morning before I do paperwork all day. Gotta apply to the BCTF for my license but also for a job as a sub with the district, especially since Derrick is gone most of the week and wants me to sub: Good money!

I still can't believe it's over, to be honest. I kind of felt like this day would never come.

Declan and I are headed out today to get snowtires, check up on my engagement ring we left to get repaired, and then off to the SPCA to find ourselves a new cat! I'm hoping to find a young-ish cat that is sweet-tempered and very snuggly, and will share the bed with us. I'm ready to welcome a new cat into my life, and love it as much as I loved Molly. Hopefully we will find the right one, today.

It doesn't interest me if there is one God
or many gods.
I want to know if you belong or feel
abandoned.
If you know despair or can see it in others.
I want to know
if you are prepared to live in the world
with its harsh need
to change you. If you can look back
with firm eyes
saying this is where I stand. I want to know
if you know
how to melt into that fierce heat of living
falling toward
the centre of your longing. I want to know
if you are willing
to live, day by day, with the consequence of love
and the bitter
unwanted passion of your sure defeat.

I have been told, in that fierce embrace, even
the gods speak of God.

The other day Alison called my laugh a "chortle".

From the crazy, crazy man who put this together:

This is dedicated to all fans of Queen and hey let's not forget about Mike Myers and Dana Carvey of Wayne's World. No effects or sampling was used. What you see is what you hear (does that even make sense?)

Atari 800XL was used for the lead piano/organ sound
Texas Instruments TI-99/4a as lead guitar
8 Inch Floppy Disk as Bass
3.5 inch Harddrive as the gong
HP ScanJet 3C was used for all vocals. Please note I had to record the HP scanner 4 seperate [sic] times for each voice. I tried to buy 4 HP scanners but for some reason sellers on E-Bay expect you to pay $80-$100, I got mine for $30.

I keep hearing parts of the song are out of tune. Keep in mind the scanner and floppy drive are not musical instruments. These are mechanical devices whose motors tend to drift and can cause some notes to be out of tune.

Clouded Sky

The moon hangs on a clouded sky.
I am surprised that I live.
Anxiously and with great care, death looks for us
and those it finds are all terribly white.


Sometimes a year looks back and howls
then drops to its knees.
Autumn is too much for me. It waits again
and winter waits with its dull pain.


The forest bleeds. The hours bleed.
Time spins overhead
and the wind scrawls
big dark numbers on the snow.


But I am still here
and I know why and why the air feels heavy -
a warm silence full of tiny noises circles me
just as it was before my birth.


I stop at the foot of a tree,
Its leaves cry with anger.
A branch reaches down. Is it strangling me?
I am not a coward. I am not weak, I am


tired. And silent. And the branch
is also mute and afraid as it enters my hair.
I should forget it, but I
forget nothing.


Clouds pour across the moon. Anger
leaves a poisonous dark-green bruise on the sky.
I roll myself a cigarette,
slowly, carefully. I live.

Jun 8 1940






The Terrifying Angel

The terrifying angel is invisible and silent
inside me, he doesn't scream today.
But then I hear a slight noise,
no louder than a grasshopper's jump.
I look around you and don't find anything.
It's him. But he's cautious now. He's getting ready.
Save me, Oh you who love me, love me bravely.
He hides when you're here. But as soon as you leave
he's back. He rises from the bottom of the soul,
screaming. And screaming he accuses me.
This insanity works inside me like poison.
He doesn't sleep much, lives both in and outside of me,
and when the moon is out, and in the white darkness,
he runs through the meadow in whistling sandals.
He searches my mother's grave an wakes her up.
"Was it worth it?" "Was it worth it?"
He whispers to her about rebellion, about giving in.
"You gave birth to him and he dies of it!"
Looking at me, sometimes he tears off
the pages of the calendar too soon.
"How long" and "where to"
depend on him forever now. Last night
his words fell into my heart
the way stones fall into water,
forming rings, wobbling, and spinning.
I was just going to bed, you were already asleep.
I stood there naked when he came in
and started to argue with me quietly.
There was a weird smell, his
breath chilled my ear. "Go ahead!"
He urged. "Skin shouldn't cover you.
You're raw meat and bare nerves.
Tear it off! After all, bragging about skin
is like bragging about prison,
it's crazy.
That thing all over you is only an illusion.
Here, here's the knife.
It doesn't hurt. It only takes a second, there's only a hiss!"

And the knife woke up on the table and flashed.

Aug 4 1943

1) What Author Do You Own The Most Books By?
KA Applegate. I own all but a handful of the "Animorphs" series. SHUT UP, YOU DON'T KNOW ME.

2) What Book Do You Own The Most Copies Of?
Probably "Outlander": I think I have 3 copies of that.

3) What Fictional Character Are You Secretly In Love With?
Secretly? Not sure. Not so secretly? Jamie Fraser, fo sho. And Septimus Warren Smith. (How's that for a juxtaposition?)

4) What Book Have You Read More Than Any Other?
"Outlander". I probably read it 2-3 times a year. It's the book I read when I need to thoroughly escape the world.

5) What Was Your Favorite Book When You Were 10-Years-Old?
"The Giver" or "Number the Stars" by Lois Lowry. I was a huuuge Lois Lowry fan. Well, I still am. =P

6) What Is The Worst Book You've Read In The Past Year?
I never finish bad books. Right now, I'd have to say, the Hannah Howell romance "Highland Bride" which was literally so awful that even the fact that it was about a Highlander couldn't force me to read it. I got to the part where the heroine was talking about how ashamed she was of her "huge milky breasts and tiny waist" and put it down. Which is really too bad, because Howell is super prolific and I am always on the prowl for series. Right now I'm also reading "Fallen Skies" by Phillipa Gregory, which is about the love between an innocent flapper and a shell-shocked soldier, which should be right up my alley, but honestly all of the characters are so unsympathetic I can't even tolerate it. I read that the protagonist, the shell-shocked soldier that the back cover leads me to believe I'm supposed to pity, is actually an abusive, manipulative fuckwit. Not exactly the tale of redemption I was hoping for, and I don't know if I really want to read something miserable just for misery's sake.

7) What Is The Best Book You've Read In The Past Year?
"Never Let Me Go" by Kazuo Ishiguro, although I actually first read it a couple of years ago. It's seriously fucking fantastic. I bawled forever at the end.

8) If You Could Tell Everyone You Know To Read One Book, What Would It Be?
I couldn't even say that, because I know very different people and thus would make very different suggestions. "Never Let Me Go" is magnificent, but I'd probably hawk "Outlander" because it's pretty multi-faceted.

9) What Is The Most Difficult Book You've Ever Read?
Challenging intellectually, or emotionally, or just damn hard to get through? Intellectually, probably anything by Virginia Woolf. Emotionally, "The Handmaid's Tale" by Margaret Atwood: I read it in a marathon read over two days, and then couldn't sleep afterwards. Damn hard to get through, "Lord of the Rings". BOOOOOO-RING.

10) Do You Prefer The French Or The Russians?
Can't say I'd be able to distinguish (hangs head)

11) Shakespeare, Milton Or Chaucer?
Shakespeare's a great go-to guy for plays (especially his tragedies because I am secretly forever a teenage girl), but Chaucer has a GREAT sense of humour.

12) Austen Or Eliot?
Eliot, I guess. I'm not going to try and pretend to be a big fan or anything.

13) What Is The Biggest Or Most Embarrassing Gap In Your Reading?
Like shibaiko, definitely the 19th century, which is made even more embarrassing by the fact that Victorian England was kind of my focus for History.

14) What Is Your Favorite Novel?
I can't even answer that, man. Different novels for different reasons.

15) Play?
AGH. "The Ecstasy of Rita Joe". Not exactly a tough pick, seeing as I'm not really all that much of a theatre buff. But that shit was great on paper: not sure how I'd like it performed, if it's followed literally.

16) Poem?
Still "Sunflower Sutra" by Ginsberg.

17) Essay?
Not my area.

18) Short Story?
OOOOH shit: Eden Robinson. "Queen of the North". Blood and guts in that one, man.

19) Non-Fiction?
I'm really looking forward to getting my hands on "A Pint of Plain" by Bill Barich, all about the evolution and commodification of Irish pub culture. (drooling sounds)

20) Graphic Novel?
I'd love to use "V for Vendetta" as a teaching tool, but I honestly prefer the movie esthetically. I think novel and movie interact in a really interesting way though.

21) Science Fiction?
"Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep". . . but NOT BLADERUNNER. Oh, and "Oryx and Crake"

22) Who Is Your Favorite Writer?
I dunno, I like books, not really authors. I like Diana Gabaldon alot, but at this point in the "Outlander" series I think she's starting to suffer from Anne Rice syndrome, but without the ego. But the "Lord John" books have gotten progressively stronger. (The latest one was fucking fantastic, okay).

23) Who Is The Most Overrated Writer Alive Today?
All of the authors I really hate aren't really "overrated", they just have disproportionate popularity to their talent: Dan Brown and Stephanie Meyer, to beat a dead horse.

24) What Are You Reading Right Now?
"Fallen Skies" by Gregory, and "The Serpent's Tale" by Ariana Franklin.

25) Best Memoir?
Can't say I have ever (or will ever) read one.

26) Best History?
Like, in general? Shit, IDK, I read alot of that shit. "The Jacobite Song" was pretty rockin', but that's not really popular history. I'm really trying to get a hold of Niall Ferguson's book on WWI, which Rob praised endlessly and it seems to have a delicious anti-British thesis which you KNOW I am all over haha.

27) Best Mystery Or Noir?
I don't know if they count, but I like Ariana Franklin's medieval mysteries, and Diana Gabaldon's pseudo-fantasy mysteries with Lord John, although I like those more for the human element of the character than for the actual mystery component (which I can take or leave).

Declan is home for the evening so I am making:

http://elise.com/recipes/archives/000457roast_beef.php
http://www.elise.com/recipes/archives/007348yorkshire_pudding.php
http://www.elise.com/recipes/archives/001823turnip_and_potato_patties.php?Layout=Printer

PS I love this website

OK, my Vancouver peeps.

I'm arriving at Vancouver airport in the afternoon on May 3rd. Is there anyone with a car willing to take pity on me and pick me up at the airport and drive me and my suitcases up to SFU on that day? I will buy you dinner for your effort.

I won't have a ton of stuff (obv) but enough that it would be unpleasant to have to take transit across the city.



PS Everybody else at SFU. . . have you gotten your summer UPASS yet?

Remember how I was saying they have craaaazy Subway ads over in Ireland? Well here are a bunch!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QbimauSj0TY

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ljzjqnoOnlg&feature=PlayList&p=846A22E9D3BB5C7A&playnext=1&playnext_from=PL&index=6

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f9TJUweTNa0&feature=PlayList&p=846A22E9D3BB5C7A&index=8

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ymFbkowmOcE&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1c-ZeKt0u4Q&feature=related

OMG THE LAST ONE. COCKNEY ONION MISSING A TOOTH!!!!

The Moment

Walking the three tiers in first light, out
here so my two-year-old son won’t wake the house,
I watch him pull and strip ragweed, chicory, yarrow,
so many other weeds and wildflowers
I don’t know the names for, him saying Big, and Mine,
and Joshua—words, words, words. Then
it is the moment, that split-second
when he takes my hand, gives it a tug,
and I feel his entire body-weight, his whole
heart-weight, pulling me toward
the gleaming flowers and weeds he loves.
That moment which is eternal and is gone in a second,
when he yanks me out of myself like some sleeper
from his dead-dream sleep into the blues and whites
and yellows I must bend down to see clearly, into
the faultless flesh of his soft hands, his new brown eyes,
the miracle of him, and of the earth itself,
where he lives among the glitterings, and takes me.

~ Len Roberts

- Socials 11 powerpoint: Canada in the 1930s
- Socials 11 lesson plan
- History 12 powerpoint: Battles of the Pacific Theatre
- History 12 lesson plan
- sign up for classes tomorrow evening
- apply for rez for the summer
- do laundry
- put away laundry
- organize daybook
- tidy up diningroom