Wednesday, June 29, 2005

pablo shore meets the hebrew hammer


This is a picture of my gramma Jean Mildred McDermott when she was young and gorgeous. I wish I oculd do my hair like that! Beneath is a photo of Erin, myself, Ariel and Amanda after the funeral. We are the four grand-daughters of Jean and this is us trying on her dresses. I got to keep the one I am wearing in this photo! Wahoo! She wore it to her son Michael's wedding in Kelowna in 1977.

Okay I cannot ressist this juxtaposition! The first pic I took as I left Victoria on Friday evening - so this is the geography of the west coast - the place I want to continue living!! The place I cannot seem to find gainful employment in! Okay now scroll down and check out the next pic - I took this Saturday morning as the plane was approaching Pearson International in Toronto (MALTON!!). Ugly bullshit industrial CRAP!! But...lots of jobs and career opportunities! I wonder why?!?! heh heh.... no jobs in paradise....but jobs in the economic powerhouse of Canada....sigh..........


nice SMOG at 6:30 am eh?

c'mon you great lakes politicians - get your shit together and clean up the region!!! Lake Ontario has been too polluted to swim in for a quarter century or more - what the fuck is that?!

Friday, June 24, 2005


Gramma Jean! My loving gramma passed away in her sleep last night. I'm coming home!


Christmas 1988 (That's me with the dog Macho - inspiration for Abbey!)

Monday, June 20, 2005

Solstice!


coffee mate + alcohol = caulking?!?!

yeah, that's the inside of my purse/bag/whatever...last weekend in Vancouver I took a little travel tupperware thing of coffee mate which inevitably spilled into my bag and of course I did not clean it up 'cause I am an idiot. Then I go out Friday night and put bottles of open booze in my purse to take to the Parks Canada offices. Fast forward 72 hours and you find me looking for coins to buy cat food and finding the crazyest mess in the bag.


strawberries from my garden! Last year my 10 strawberry plants gave me ONE ripened berry! This year I am getting a handful or two a day and they taste SO GOOD!! I just wish I had a dozen raspberry bushes as well...


summer time for veggie caffeine heads!

yeah. when my coffee is cold I add soy milk. This drink is divine to sip on all day long when it is warm!


Summer time for dog!

It blows my mind that animals do not drink coffee or tea, but I suppose this is super refreshing for a hot bitch. The only catch is the water is too salty to slurp up!


Abbey being weird. I love her.



orchids!

I have started running again and have just reverted back to my old runners (the ones with holes in the soles! hahah! when I run through fields I can feel blades of grass pushing up into my feet!) and am sad because I think the new running shoes I bought suck ass and make my body ache. I really like feeling healthier and being able to run for a half hour straight. At least my body is being looked after. My mind on the other hand is not very fulfilled these days. I realize I don't have that great a social life and that I am profoundly confused as to how to fit into this world without being a full-time student. I mean, I really love the relief of not having essays and presentations due all the time, but the lack of paycheques is getting to me. I should maybe try to get a temp gig as a legal secretary for a bit and save up money to go volunteer overseas. I don't think I will ever get a well-paying international gig unless I put my neck on the line and go do some weird shit with my own time and money. It boggles my brain how I will pull off such a plan with all the loans that need paying back.

So I am confused. Should I pursue a PhD. in some critical theory/liberal arts/philosophy type thing and be a stoner academic who can interact with tons of cool students and publish a variety of academic bullshit throughout life? OR should I dive deeper into public health and good governance and become some expert on HIV/AIDS in developing nations? I figure I could go do my master of laws in bioethics at McGill University and arm myself with crazy skills to work for NGOs or the UN and spend my career zooming around the world and trying to prevent the spread of shitty shit?

Quite the fork in the road, I'd say. In the meantime, I really wish I could summon the energy, inspiration and confidence to do some journalistic projects on my own. I really think I would make a great reporter/journalist and am just lacking the A-type personality to make it happen.

Tomorrow is the summer solstice and -maybe?- the full moon. Pretty cool cosmological deal! I will go with some buddies I have down to the beach for good food and drinks and conversation. Yay solstice!

And what is with humans jumping or running over bonfires? In Turkey, I have learned, there is a Persian/Kurdish tradition for the spring Equinox called Newroz where they jump over fires. And in the UK they apparently do this for the Summer Solstice? What is with our species? Or with North America for that matter (for not having such a custom)? The only time I have seen people get up to this running-over-fire business was at an outdoor party in Southern Ontario in the mid-90s where crazy ass bikers were doing it. That was also the night I witnessed the worst brawl in my life. AND, this party went down within a few days of Jerry Garcia's death. McDonald's service stations on the side of the Trans-Canada highway are hilarious on LSD in the middle of the night. Another lesson from that party - don't pick up empties the next day if burly men with dried blood on their faces are doing the same thing and seem to be pissy about you stealing "their" cans and bottles.

Hahaha...Freak Fest...I wish I had pics to post from THAT event!

Saturday, June 18, 2005


sea anemone clones!

Today I was nursing a partial hangover so I just walked around with abbey and took pictures and listened to music on my IPod that I hate.

Sea anemones reproduce through cloning themselves....when you see a group of them together, they are all clones as they secrete mucous to identify themselves and when an "alien" anemone comes near them, they all attack it to death.

viscious little fucks.


proof that i was a chubnawati.

That is me with my sis erin on the left in 1989 in Prince Edward Island - Canada's smallest province which is off the East coast. We are at some miniature world - any idea what that building is that we are posing in front of? I have no clue - but it does look American.



my first shot of jaggermeister....

did not send me too far over the moon. i went and danced to shit music at a stupid club and was harassed by american navy personnel. they'd have had a better chance if they were in uniform!!! hah hah hah!!!

still no jobs. i am getting spooked.

Wednesday, June 15, 2005


Today I chilled with my new pal - the baby jellyfish!

Abbey likes the material for my new dress.

Spock guest-stars with his old pal on T.J. Hooker!

Wednesday, June 08, 2005





Tuesday, June 07, 2005

got in from vancouver this morning....realized i have not taken the ferry in almost a year....weather was great except for the memorial it was pouring (very fitting, but we were not able to be at the beach)...saw lots of friends, met loads of people i had heard about for years...his mother did not shed one tear and wore a beautiful white dress...navy officers did the "last post" on the trumpet...songs, tears, laughter, drinks, photos, memories, hugs...woke up today and got to the airport late but found my mom and grandma...another great ferry ride...more coffee...back to victoria and a clean appartment...went jogging with hair dye in and plastic over my scalp...ate minestrone and drank tea...mom streaked my hair...i pussied out of bangs...ladies are asleep after waking up in toronto...waiting to hear from donna at the mint...early morning tomorrow - pick up graduation regalia and sit tired, without coffee for a few hours...then champagne reception at the law faculty...will post pictures soon as i have a digital camera for the week that works....IPod is dead again...and what precisely is Canada's justification for migrant workers??

Wednesday, June 01, 2005

מייגן

...still in suspended animation....the only phonecalls are not from potential employers but from visa people and bank people wondering why my payments are not being made....

this city, i swear, has the best soil and climate for growing stuff! no wonder it is "the city of gardens" (or so i think?) stuff just GROWS like nuts! when i used to weed the garden, i would add the excess greens to the compost bin, but the bin just is not big enough! too much foliage! we have seperate piles for the crazy leafy bush bits. i love the overgrowth because it allows me to steal gorgeous flowers from people's gardens guilt-free when i am out on my walks in the middle of the night. right now i have a vase full of the sexiest snapdragons! i would show you all, but my nikon digital camera sucks my ass and is being a jerk! argh! i love to document and cannot! the PAIN!

so i slept from 7-10 am today and am quite tired. i ran over 30 minutes straight which is equivalent to about 5 km so i am proud of my increasing physical abilities. i was a fat kid and always felt shitty about my body, so it is totally phenomenal that at the age of 26 i am getting strong and fit! i have maintained a good weight since eliminating animal products from my diet (for ethical reasons, the health benefits were a bonus) but my muscles have never been too hot to trot. actually, this running is probably great for my poor hamstring and assorted leg/thigh muscles - since breaking my hip 10 years ago i get a lot of pain from those muscles (they got sliced into a few times for surgery!) also, my mother, the wonderful psychiatric nurse, told me about how some newspaper says that if you run 5 days a week, you will never be depressed again. i should have started jogging ages ago! heh heh...

so yeah - i am tired and strange. i am drinking some "harvest pear" cider, listening to "daft punk vs. michael jackson" by god knows who, and planning on making some hummus with split peas to eat with some tortillas that i want to make from scratch out of corn meal. we'll see how productive i get. i never drink alone and quite a cheap drunk. this could be funny.

donna just came in and told me she vomitted "all tomato crap" while bicycling..."like when i was a kid and throwing up alphagetties...i thought about how gross it was, which made me regurgitate even more!" if any locals want to know where the remnants are, she says "go to Swan Lake!"...hear that, rodents??

alright....i typed a lot more than i had planned on so thanks for sticking with me if you are still reading this. as a reward, i offer to you one of my favourite west-coast plants, the monkey puzzle tree (well, it is native to Chile and Argentina, but I never saw one til I moved to the left coast).