Not Toronto, exactly, but close enough. Yeji and I are moving to Mississauga.
We're busy packing right now, but I just realized I'll need to set up a time before we go for the internet company to reclaim their cable modem. That means I'll be disconnected reasonably soon and had better make the announcement now.
I've griped and complained before but I'll spare you the details. My big concerns with Halifax were longterm employability and the despair I was feeling over the obvious population decline which will continue to occur. I was also starting to dread the demise of print media as a whole, also. More layoffs had occurred over the last month and cut backs have been steady all over.
There was also the three-year-old nagging disappointment that after returning from Korea, I never fully reintegrated into Halifax. I used to walk the streets, dwell in the coffee shops and know half the faces I'd pass by. Not now. The streets always seem empty and I never picked up a new hang out. My old friends span the globe, but only one or two remain in the city, all of us too busy to ever get together.
So I opted to solve it all if I could -- but it took a while. My resume is fine for the business I am in, but I wanted to make the leap to new media, away from the death rattling print publishing world. I also decided to set my sights on the Big Smoke. It's the centre of English-language media in this country and the least likely to have to worry about population decline. It's big, vibrant and a perfect place to strike out after one's fortune. The problem, was that they don't often take notice of someone applying from outside their area, much less Nova Scotia.
I got lucky on Victoria Day, of all days, and someone who liked my qualifications opted to field me a phone call. The matter was made even stranger by my wife having a premonition of the call in a dream the night before. My interviewer and I decided to meet face-to-face so I was off to buy a new suit and a plane ticket west. I made my trip on Thursday, flying out in the wee hours of the morning and returning home just before midnight. All went well and I was offered the job.
I even managed to find an apartment ten minutes away. People say Toronto is "so expensive" to live in. Poppycock. Of all my price comparisons, the commute was the only thing I could see that would cost me more (and at that, the price per litre of gas in Ontario is still five to ten cents cheaper than here.) By finding a place so close, I figure I will save money on gas. Furthermore, most apartments in Toronto include utilities, whereas Nova Scotia places seldom seem to do now. Perhaps it's because, again, utilities are cheaper in Toronto. A quick search informed me NS Power is at around nine cents per kWh and increasing, while the area I am moving to in Mississauga is billed around six cents per kWh. At the end of the day, I'm paying about a hundred bucks more per month but it's for a two-bedroom facing a park, while here in Haltown we only have a tiny junior one-bedroom. I'm sadly giving up indoor parking, but we're gaining a swimming pool, sauna, exercise room and tennis courts.
I may still find some time to post a few more briefs here. Even when I lose my current internet, there's still my work computer, and internet at my folks' place. We'll be staying there a few nights starting this weekend, however, by Wednesday I expect to be heading west and racing to get moved in to the new place before Friday the 13th.
Most relieving to my blogging however, is that I can finally semi-retire this version of Latenight and now fully concentrate on the mainpage. I don't think I will split the site into a Latenight: Mississauga (never say never) but I'd rather get back to one regular destination for posts and the top-level blog is the place for that. Expect it to become more busy once we're settled in our new home. For the first time in a while, I'm also eager to dust off the ol' camera again and get some fresh photos to send up.
Quincy's on Quinpool (formerly Hogie's Steakhouse)
So. It's been a while since my last post. If you were waiting for the results, Ellen Page didn't win. Sorry. We're still proud.
I've got a few days off work this week. Deadlines are a bit fewer and farther between since we cancelled one of our publications and frankly, I just needed a break from work. I have some side projects to catch up on and now's a good time. It figures that I'd blog something first, despite not even posting in over a month.
Today's a day to stay in. I did, having been tired from a short business trip yesterday. We watched the blizzard come down in tiny, vicious little sheets. Looked nasty.
The above photo is from a previous storm. I'm just clearing out my archives a bit. I have to admit that I've lost the passion to go out and take a tonne of new city shots here. I'm hoping that a change in locale will spur me to commence a new set of photos... with luck it'll be by spring.
I suppose now is a good time to proclaim a minor milestone from yesterday: my second month smoke-free. It's been two months since I last had a cigarette although I snuck a couple of puffs on some old cigars late a couple of evenings. Oddly enough, they didn't kick my cravings back in though. I suppose they may not have as many addictive chemicals (I'm assuming more than nicotine is in factory cigarettes, here, but don't ask me to quote a scientific study) and I sure didn't get much of a drag off them.
What I did notice was that I was sneezing more. My nose also seemed to feel numb also, for some reason. It's getting back to normal now, but for weeks I just felt strange about the face. I'm also getting more active with cooking. I can taste food more so it inspires me to be more adventurous in the kitchen.
No word yet on financial savings, though. I bought the guitar after all. On top of that, I'm spending slightly more on groceries to support my cooking and the car recently decided it needed new brakes and rotars.
Once those are paid off, I expect to be nicely in the black, fiscally, and in the pink, pulmonarily.
I can't quite say what it is, but my usual cynicism has been in remission lately. In fact, when people approach me with concerns or troubles, I am absolutely giddy in my response to them to cheer the Hell up.
It could be a side effect from that laser non-smoking treatment I underwent. I had gone back for a second dose of anti-anxiety and depression zapping. I still wasn't convinced it worked entirely though. Sure, I'm still not smoking after more than two weeks but I continue to experience cravings. Someone suggested it could be as simple as all the extra oxygen reaching my brain.
Oh well. La la la.
In an extremely rare manifestation, one of the outlets for my positivity is economic. I'm terrible at numbers. I had book keeping. Quitting smoking has left me with some extra bucks in my pocket though, and that's good. The dollar's success in achieving parity with the greenback today is cause for celebration amongst us consumers. I've also been reading some inspirational literature of late, Jack Batten's book from 1972: "Honest Ed's Story: The Crazy Rags to Riches Story of Ed Mirvish" which I'd dug off my personal stacks back home in New Brunswick, when we visited over Labour Day weekend. Ed Mirvish passed away less than a month after we visited Toronto on our honeymoon and I wish we'd actually stopped in to the store. We drove past but were rushing on our way to get to nearby Koreatown for lunch.
The book is a great read about Ed's wheeling, dealing and retailing in post-war Toronto. I was so inspired that I did some impulse buying at Chapters today too. I picked up a guide to Canadian small businesses and the Dummy's guide to buying and selling real estate. With all that money I'm saving as a non-smoker, maybe I can spin it into some gold, myself.
I'm not exercising yet, so don't think I've lost all my marbles. I have, however, seemingly quit smoking.
I actually tried out a kind of therapeutic approach, in the form of something akin to laser acupuncture. The idea was that it was supposed to eliminate cravings and then you use large amounts of Vitamin C to flush the remaining nicotine out of your body. Well, I can't say it got rid of all the cravings as advertised (Wednesday night was tough) but perhaps it's reduced them. Essentially, I'm going cold turkey under semi-supervision (they called to check up on me yesterday.)
That's my big news since Wednesday -- my last smoke being at 11:30 that morning. I followed it up by shaving my beard and getting a virtual brushcut at the hair salon. It just feels like time to make some changes.
And yes, I suppose the exercise is coming. It's time to dig out the Gazelle and maybe resurrect my Fat Tuesday feature.
We just got back from a trip home, to Miramichi, for the Labour Day weekend. It's the first time that I can remember having a sunny drive home in quite some time. We did a bit of visiting (more Yeji, this time, than I) and even got a trip in on my dad's sailboat which we took for an evening ride on the river, last night.
And as much as I hate to keep adding on projects to my to do list -- with the inescapable fear that none of them will get done because I spread myself too thin -- I've been coaxed into a non-fiction book idea. One of my coworkers has egged me on to write a bit on the Eastern Cougar. I'll post more on Mysteries soon, but it looks like I'll have a couple of advertisements placed in one of our publications, seeking personal accounts of seeing cougars in the Maritimes. (That's one of the benefits of working for a publishing company.)
While I was home, I met with my buddy Colin (he was Best Man at our wedding.) He's had several experiences. He photographed cougar prints in the snow last winter, has an audio recording from the early nineties (which I've now got in digital format and will post on Mysteries soon) and he witnessed a cougar in broad daylight a year or two before that. The beast had jumped across in front of him while he was out hunting. It was tawny and he saw everything down to the black tip on the tail.
I've inadvertantly been hoarding some information on cougars and other mysterious cats for a while, with no conscious purpose. I guess this would be the time. As I said, I'm running it through Mysteries, but if you've spotted one of these animals yourself, don't hesitate to send me a line at bigcat@mysteries.ca with the basic info on place, date, etc. It sure seems that the number of sightings have been going up and up and up. Even my dad and his friend saw a grey cougar on the Plaster Rock highway, last year in March, while returning from a trip to Toronto.
I had better get cracking and posting more photos; I'm starting to build up a backlog. The inconvenient part, however, is that most of my backlog is from parts other than Nova Scotia or Halifax. Nonetheless, I hope you all enjoy the shots.
We just got back from Prince Edward Island, where we had stayed overnight visiting a friend in Summerside. The weather was poor by the time we arrived, but we drove up to Cavendish anyway and while the exterior shots of Green Gables are hardly tourism pamphlet material, the inside shots looked extra gloomy and the photos I took at Cavendish beach have some lovely grey clouds and breakers against the red sand.
I'll try to post them soon enough. First, however, I figure I still have two or three installments of honeymoon photos to put up.
I'm not planning to give up blogging. Let me say that, first. However, I've got some changes in store for this website and am trying to decide what the best future for it would be. Lately, as you may surmise, I've been keeping an eye on various career paths and my place in life upon them. Something standing out in my mind is my online portfolio, so to speak. I'm wondering if I could not better use my internet real estate by taking it to another level.
Recently, I made some changed to my personal website that would allow it to serve as an online display of my work with writing samples, a slide show of my favourite photos, and information on my cartoon collection. I'd like to market myself better. The ironic part is that I'm using the internet to showcase all of my skills other than my internet ones. I've been blogging for over six years but my blogs tend to be oriented more toward the personal than the professional. I've tried being more rigid with my material but when I was endeavouring toward daily updates, there's just no time to research a lot of neutral, more worldly subject matter. The posts invariably reverted to personal passages on my breakfast, the weather or what I was watching on T.V. Some of you like this, I suppose, but I'm starting to think it's a bit of a waste for a good domain like this one.
I am a professional journalist. I really should be presenting more thoughtful and polished work. If I could do that, I'd have a viable internet property that could be included with my professional portfolio. It's becoming more apparent to me that I should set that as a goal. Jobs in my field don't tend to pay a lot. Prospective publishers can also fill them with a lot of willing candidates who might be inexperienced and mediocre at best, but they're plentiful and work cheap. The best can be assured jobs (at least until they burn out) but one needs to aim to present themselves more capably to be considered as such.
What I'm thinking, is to convert the top level of Latenight.ca to a kind of news magazine. Whether I keep the blog format is still up in the air. It's sure easy to update that way, but may not be the end result that I am looking for. This blog, in its current form, will then migrate to a "halifax" subdomain level. I'll still update as I usually do, but you'll have to adjust your bookmarks. There'd be a new entry page to serve as a portal to my blogs (Miramichi and Korea, included) but the main page would be strictly professional stories along the "latenight" theme. Each piece would stand alone and quite possibly, I'd be marketing them as freelance articles on the side.
I've thought about bogus news, similar to the Onion. I've also thought about doing my bit to fill the void left by the departure of the Weekly World News. All of that would be fun, but maybe it wouldn't accomplish what I'm hoping to achieve. At the end of the day, though short of resources, time and likely audience, I'd like Latenight to be a more legitimate media site or portal. Thoughts?
I wanted to link to the video above, so I'll drop a quick post on here. We went out with a friend of ours, Michael Conway, better known as "Ukulele Mike" to the buffet at the Casino. Afterwards, I've been introducing him to YouTube and you can click on the video to see the results. It's a medley of Canadian classics, the "Hockey Night in Canada" theme and the theme to "Definition". In another video, you can also listen to his rendition of "Lullabye of Birdland" -- and yes, those are our old 1960s-era yellow-gold drapes. We made both videos here at the homestead.
For anyone interested in picking up a copy of Michael's CD, check out his page at CDBaby.
Well... I'm 33 years old today. Same age Jesus was when he died, right? Hmmph. What have I been doing with my life?
Work has slowed down, not just due to poor computers but we also have a deadline-free week upon us. I had been thinking to spend more time down at the Tall Ships bur Friday afternoon was all I managed. I skipped seeing the parade of sail today. Part of that is a bit of apathy. The other part, more legitimate, is that the ships didn't seem all that big this time around. It was hard to get a shot as the hulls were below the dockline, or below the heads of visitors. I'll take another gander to see if I got any good pictures but nothing jumped out when I first imported them from my camera.
I did buy myself a tall ship birthday treat though. Superstore sells wooden models of several ships and I picked up the Bluenose one today. With the thought of other horizons, it'd make a nice souvenir of Nova Scotia for the mantlepiece.
Along those lines, I've finally updated IanRoss.ca, although it's quite simple. Next to do is gather some old writing samples to put on it.
Whether it's been by phone, email, or instant messenger, we've gotten quite a few pieces of news this week, all at once. It feels like everybody is moving or making big changes. Yeji's best friend in Toronto just signed a lease for a new place (technically she's moving all the bigger news is that she's staying- in Canada that is.) One of my best buds from home is catching a flight to Yellowknife tomorrow. That'll make three people I know up there. Another old friend just got his papers through and is heading to basic training next month, after signing up for the Air Force.
Not content with all that, both he and the Toronto friend have tickets booked for trips to Korea before they settle into their new spots on earth. Yeji has even more friends making moves although they're mostly doing it to start new jobs, one is going to England, however. And, in mirror occurrences, my old pal in England sent a note to say he'd be arriving here in Nova Scotia for six weeks, sometime before the end of the month.
Whew.
Of course, the backdrop for all of this is what's been on our minds lately, too. I'm still in a discovery phase but I'm getting a good idea of what it would cost for us to join the crowd. Did you know that we could get a two-bedroom in Toronto for what we're paying in rent here, now? There are a lot of little things I'm finding that shatter the idea that the cost of living is cheaper here in the Maritimes. The only thing that's cheaper are the wages, not the costs of basic goods. The only category where Hogtown looses out is in the automotive department. The gas consumption. The traffic. The commutes. Not to mention the annoyances of driving busier, unfamiliar streets.
It's stil front and centre in our ideas right now. Yeji's still a permanent temp, which makes her job vulnerable at any time, even though she's been there over a year. I'm having a lot of frustrations myself, especially with computer equipment that is so insanely archaic that I never know if I'll be able to put the next issue together. We've just about lost several since I got back and there's no plan to solve the problem. My computer was sent away to head office. Rather than upgrade it, they stripped even more software off it and sent it back. It's to the point that I might as well do everything in courier font (since all the other fonts return errors), or ask for the boards to be set back up and just plan to go back to PMTing everything. Anyone that's been in the industry a little while knows that old method.
I love my coworkers and I love my job, but I feel like I can't do it with the equipment I'm given. Besides salary, that's going to be the nail in the coffin.
The wedding festivities have been completed and I can proudly say that I'm now sporting my new wedding ring, as is Yeji. Everything went very smoothly and our honeymoon-turned-family-trip was a great load of fun. We put over 5100km on the rental van and saw Quebec City, Ottawa, Toronto, and Niagara Falls.
Today it was back to work for me. Yeji's heading back to work tomorrow. Over the next little while, I'll try to post some more wedding photos. I may even break them up over Latenight Miramichi and Latenight Korea, just to keep the loading times more manageable. There's even a strong temptation to set up a Latenight Toronto, but I'll get into that another time. In the meantime, stay tuned and once we've sorted through the 1200 or so pictures we now have (with more to come) we'll choose the best ones and I'll get them up online. (For the record, the above picture's not the official wedding photo so far as we've chosen one yet. We might even select one of us in hanbok as those turned out great too. You'll have to wait and see. *grin*)
Much appreciation to everyone who sent well wishes and who helped put the wedding together so that we could get hitched without a hitch. It was fabulous.
I've got a couple of minutes to add in a post while I wait for a couple loads of laundry to finish. We're making the final preparations to hit the road tomorrow, heading toward New Brunswick and our wedding on Saturday.
It's also a pretty crowded house at the moment and I've been back and forth to the airport a number of times this week. We picked up one friend (Kim), who was flying in from Yellowknife and dropped her off in the city (she's not a houseguest) but then turned around and picked up Yeji's folks. Last night, we also picked up her best friend. The apartment's full and so will be the rental van tomorrow as we start our journey.
All in all, this past week has been filled with lots of Korean food, some sight seeing, and a whole pile of last minute chores.
Everything is wedding, wedding, wedding now... and nationsimming... and more wedding. We're almost ready now, having gotten flowers ordered last weekend when we went up to New Brunswick, most of the decorations made, and now just shopping for last minute things. We lazed about today though, and took a break. We had Chinese food from Jean's for supper and mostly kept indoors, even though the weather was nice and summery warm. I'm tempted to take an evening walk later, just to get out of the house.
My biggest distraction, otherwise, has been nationsimming. Everyday I swear I'll spend less time but it moves quite quickly. You spend a lot of time negotiating treaties and writing them up in UN-speak for signatures. My latest is an academic and cultural exchange, setting up univesity endowments for North African countries in seventeen countries (I play Libya), who all must agree to and sign the document (waiting on the Netherlands and Syria, now.) The moderators (called avatars there) are pretty swamped though and action freezes have slowed a lot of the activity down. It's a poorly kept secret that we're going to invade Chad, on account of a situation with the refugees from Darfur in that country, but with action quotas being filled up and the queue unprocessed, it'll have to wait. I've submitted orders of battle and mission orders for other operations, but I still have that treaty to ratify.
It's a bit of a trick to play on your mind though. We roleplay based on the goals and habits of our chosen nations so there's a great degree of realism to the game. So much that it often emulates real life, but with just a subtle shift that then confuses me when I read the real news. It's hard to keep the two timelines straight. Nonetheless, it neat to see things develop independantly but similarly. One good example is a recent spat I had with Djibouti over a United Nations Security Council seat. Each year, half of the non-permanent seats come up for vote and one must go to an Arab nation. That seat also switches between Africa and the Middle East. In 2008, it's in Africa so I noticed all the Western powers voting as a block for Djibouti (and Kenya for Africa's regular seat.) As an anti-western/anti-colonialist striving to be a more active African power, I, as Muammar Gaddhafi, roleplayed quite the feud with Djibouti over this. Now I see in the news that it's actually happening, with Mauritania taking the place of Djibouti in real life.
I have to say, I've learned alot about Libya because of this and about Gaddhafi also. I really want to visit there someday. In the meantime, I'll just sit back and read the Green Book and plot the overthrough of the regime in N'Djamena.
All the thinking lately about the tapping into the publishing job market in Toronto has made me look at a few side alleys down the main avenues. I've started putting a photography portfolio together to go with some of my other work. I've also turned my mind back to cartooning, which I have been woefully ignoring for some time now. I don't know how soon that will change. My desktop just stopped recognizing its USB ports and I can no longer buy ink cartridges for my three-year-old expensive five-in-one printer/scanner.
But I also came across the above story tonight on how newspapers are shedding editorial cartoonists. I think we're pretty lucky here in Halifax. I've not seen work from any other market that stands up to the quality of editorial cartooning we have here with Bruce MacKinnon at the Chronicle Herald and Michael DeAdder at the Daily News. Perhaps the only other Canadian cartoonist at that talented level would be Theo Moudakis at the Toronto Star, who was recruited from this market also. (DeAdder replaced him at the Daily News.)
Still, it's a tough gig to get a break in. It takes a long time to do a single decent cartoon. If you have a full time job doing it, then it can be done. If you are syndicated and have dozens of potential buyers, it'd also be worth the while. However, to do up a tonne of fresh cartoons on spec is big leap of faith.
Perhaps, after the wedding I'll start doing up a few for fun, once again. My collection is pretty much devoted to a single geographic region so it's not something I'll be taking with me through life, save for examples of technical ability. I'd like to build up a portfolio of national and internation toons, which I wasn't permitted to do when I was being published in New Brunswick.
But it's less than a month until the wedding and that doesn't give me the luxury of time to start new projects. I also realize now how small the apartment here is. The next one has to be a two-bedroom, even if it requires us moving further from whichever downtown we're settled by. The house-hunting isn't written off yet, but if we do move west, it would probably be in our best interest to learn the lay of the land before shelling out for a mortgage.
Of course, I'm obliged to remind you that we could still stick it out in Halifax. It's not adventure we seek so much as a bit more in the paycheque and more potential for longer term growth in our careers. I'm not making much more than when I started and inflation means that I actually lose spending power the longer I stay there. Yeji is working 9-5, five days a week, for a major Canadian company, but she's still classed as a temp so that the company where she works can avoid paying for benefits and sick days. If it's a one-way street, we're stuck too close to the curb here.
Sorry readers, you just can't win. When I was posting everyday, I became well aware that one ends up filling space with a lot of needless text. I know that I can do that easily and sometimes thoughtlessly. One of the most memorable comments I received on a paper in university, in a class called Narrative in the Cinema, was when the prof wrote, "You have an amazing ability to generate text." Yes, I can be verbose, though you wouldn't know it lately.
The other side of the coin is just as bad however. When you write intermittently and the bulk of your topics are allowed to stray toward the personal, one tends to write when they're depressed, seeking to complain, or looking to pick fights. I'm not much of a fighter but I do like to complain. Having to put a voice to what makes me unhappy is the first step in finding conclusions to overcome whatever it is that's getting me down, and it's good to get those thoughts down in writing.
In a sense, this blog therapy has replaced the old fashioned method of talking to people in person for many more than just myself. You put voice to your concerns and pet peeves and then throw it out. At the same time, you convince yourself that nobody reads it anyway, so you're actually doing the world a favour by leaving your antagonizings somewhere obscure and not bringing it with you into your personal relationships. Mind you, those relationships are fewer and farther between.
But some of our relationships of yore are being revisited by jumping on the Facebook bandwagon. Facebook has gotten an awful lot of attention in Canada of late. So much that the media are even mentioning it in stories about online harassment and threats, in the same vein that MySpace became undeservedly villainized. Society, as the delusional collective of Philistines that the media takes us for, needs to accept that the computer doesn't sollicit these negative uses on its own.
The bile and venom originate with people and while I agree that the anonymity of the internet, and ease of use, and demographics, et al. help to weight online mutterings toward the negative aspects, it still starts with the honest feelings of flesh and blood humans. Even if a person is feeling grumpy one day out of seven, and that's likely the day he or she posts something online about "how it's going", the emotions are real for that moment.
I got pretty excited over Facebook. It's uncharacteristically merry. With all these long lost faces popping up in far-flung corners of the country and planet, why not find out what life's really like on the other side?
Facebook is not primarily a blogging tool and it's not anonymous. Overall, and on the surface, it's actually one of the most positive places I've visited on the net. There's a great degree of superficiality in the happiness but overall, the various components that go together to make a profile are those that breed positivity while the negative personal rants aren't part of the make up. There is some bitching over some of the wall-to-wall messages, and that's what got some folks into the press for threatening behaviour this past week, but people still seem so in awe over meeting long lost friends that the discourse is polite and cheery.
Then I spent some time in more lengthy message sending to check in on how folks were really doing. Especially, I was speaking with people that hadn't kept much of an online presence before and so I hadn't heard their grumblings and grouchings. My conclusion: they're also unhappy, maybe even moreso, and that's true for people everywhere.
In considering relocation, I had asked myself where people seem happiest. I need some kind of weathervane. Once upon a time, when I was making my decision to go to either Korea or Japan to teach English, I felt it out by looking at friends who had gone overseas. The ones that went to Japan stayed a year and came home. Those that went to Korea just stayed. This was in 2000, before tanks and girls, before nuclear testing, and before restaurants started banning foreigners.
I've been attempting, through Facebook, and the good old fashioned telephone too, to do similar research and gauge where people were feeling the most content. I find, I'm coming up blank. Everyone has a tale of woe to tell and no one is living the lives they'd hoped for. In Vancouver, you pay a king's ransom to live in a box. In Toronto, the city's going bankrupt and it's leading to cutbacks and a lot of the employment practices we've seen here. Despite the English teaching business in Korea going strong, times are tough there, too, and though economic downturns usually translate to increased desire to pick up skills like speaking English, it's inevitable that the teaching trade will suffer when people's money runs out.
I had speculated that IRL, people are a lot happier and just not posting it. Afterall, if you're having a good time, the last thing you need is to put a halt to everything and say, "Oops, I need to make my blog post." Maybe that was too optimistic of me. Maybe people that don't post a presence online do so not because they're off having real life fun, but just have a lack of motivation to reach out or participate altogether. Maybe bloggers and online journalists are in the better boat, because they are at least communicating and often, like me, experience a bit of guilt if it all spills out gloomy.
So now I've dispelled my old belief that people are happier offline, or where the grass is allegedly greener on the other side. I think I had best just concentrate on what makes me happy in my life and apply to wherever we end up, whatever we do, or say. There is no Heaven, but at least purgatory has high-speed internet and cheaper pizza delivery.
I'm not sure what's going on with spring. We've got green grass throughout the city but I'm not noticing any buds on the trees around our apartment. The Halifax scenery still looks very bare. I assume it'll just rush up on us though. Time is really flying by and I'm sorry for the scant blog posts. I just haven't been out taking too many photos (the above shot is an old archived picture.)
We were out again this weekend looking for wedding decorations. We found suitable vases for the table settings and picked up some other odds and ends. We're still shopping for the last few items on the list though. Most of the family invites were sent out. I am still tracking down some addresses on a couple more though, which I need to get in the post asap. It's a very small affair and we've taken travel concerns into the equation, so if you haven't gotten an invite and live somewhat distant, that could be part of it. A lot of days we were just tempted to grab a judge, get him to sign off on the deal, and then go for fish 'n' chips.
We're looking much more forward to the trip though, for more reasons than just the recreation and relaxation. We're hoping it turns into an informative recce at the same time, that might open some more possibilities.
It's gone from taking a break to almost forgetting about the blog. I figured it's time to report back in though. It's been an steadily busy weekend and start to the week.
Friday night and Saturday we took in out marriage preparation course. The course is sponsored by all the southend protestant churches (not including Anglicans, though) and is hosted by various ministers and laypeople of the same. Much of it was based around a Myers-Briggs personality test and the discussion of different people types and how they work together in a marriage. They also spoke on conflict resolution, spirituality, and family origins.
I'm not the type to really give up a lot of myself emotionally. My blog can be personal at times but I don't find I really get too deep into my own psyche here. Unfortunately, I'm the say way offline too, however this course gave us some decent talking points and we've saved the notes for times when we need to have some of those "talks".
After the course on Saturday, I met up with Brian who was down from PEI and some other friends for pool at Dooly's up on Spring Garden. We played a couple of games, dropped the others off at their home, then hiked down to the waterfront for a coffee at Perks. He stayed the night with us and experienced some of my cooking the next day. *Insert ominous laugh*
After he left, I still didn't slow down. I plunged right into some editing work that I needed to get done before today and it kept me up long past midnight. Today, I ended up doing two publications instead of one. We'd pushed the print date on last week's ahead to today so I had to proof it. Usually that's a quick job but we've changed format from a ponytab to a minitab and with that, all the graphics, fonts, and layouts have changed too. Lots of room for error. On top of that, as soon as I was done, I had to finish off another to go to press tomorrow. I'll be proofing it in the morning.
Tonight is a bit quieter though. I'm doing dishes and working my way through Season 3 of Deadwood.
Still no resolution to that last preponderance that I posted. I did notice a couple of news items over the last week that have stayed in my mind, regarding the potential destinations of Toronto or Korea however. It turns out that Toronto is on the verge of bankruptcy, not a good sign. On the otherhand, Korea is still basking in the miniskirt craze for yet another fashion season. The Chosun Ilbo reports that the average skirt length this fall will be a modest 23 cm, or in their words, "the span of a large hand." For those keeping score, you know where I am adding the points.
It hit 23 degrees today and the first of the grass is turning green. That's nice for a change in moods but the first part of my day today just sucked. Things just weren't coming together and people were just swarming me with problem after problem. I had zero patience too. Finally, it came down that we were postponing the issue anyway so I breathed a sigh of relief and the rest of the day went much better.
I saw the proofs for our wedding invitations today. I'm hoping to have them within a week or so. I picked up some groceries after work, am doing laundry, and thinking about watching a korean movie or two that I've downloaded. Something about the day made me sentimental for Korea. I actually started looking at options for studying there should we ever go back. Guess I'll have to brush up on my Korean first, though.
I swore I wasn't going to think past the wedding until after the wedding, but things have a way of coming up in discussion and reflection. I've been thinking lately that we're at a three-pronged fork in the road. No matter what, something needs to shake up the status quo.
We could stay in Halifax but it's going to require some augmentation to income. We've been looking at houses but realistically, even the ones we can get a mortgage on aren't satisfactory to both of us. I really don't anticipate finding one when the houses that match the minimum requirements to make us both happy are double the price that we can afford. An increase in take-home pay would therefore be required but that would either necessitate a change in industries or doing a lot of freelance work, and for personal reasons, I don't feel I could bury myself in extra jobs when I'm at home.
It's also worth noting that after being back here for almost a couple of years, we almost never go out to meet people; my old friends are tucked away somewhere or they've left, and meeting new people just hasn't happened. We don't even have anyone we're close enough to that could stop in and feed the cat if we went away for the weekend.
The second option is to go to Toronto. I could stay in the same line of work and have more options to jockey myself into higher paying jobs. But T.O. doesn't really excite me, nor do I have any realy personal attachment to it. I have family there however. Cost of living is a concern and Toronto is supposed to be higher, but searches on the internet are making me suspect it's actualy getting higher in Halifax in many ways. Rent and real estate are still more expensive in Toronto, though by less and less all the time, while basic purchases like groceries seem to be slightly cheaper owing to the larger market area and logistical benefit of servicing a larger community. Still, I don't fancy two-hour commutes and gas isn't getting cheaper no matter where you go.
The third choice is Korea. The downside is that it's a matter of retracing our tracks and we'd be giving up on many aspects of living in Canada that we like, however it's the only place we've been where we had money in our pocket at the end of the month. I sure never have had it here. Think you're saving a bit and there'll be another bill in the mailbox, or the car will break down or something will develop that will soak up the excess. Teaching English never felt like a longterm career but then again, it's been the only way to make savings and those are going to come in handy for finally purchasing a house or retiring some day. Going back to Korea with an F-2 visa would allow for a great deal more stability than my old E-2 did and alow for more income options. Yeji's work experience would be more valued there than it is here also, so she'd be making a lot more.
It was brilliant and warm today but another storm is forecast for tonight and tomorrow. It seems we might get more snow this month than we got all winter. I'll just post this pic tonight. I'm tempted to skip a few nights. I suppose that I do have things to say but these days I just feel a bit more private. I'm not keen to speculate and postulate so openly. There are a few elements of disatisfaction I need to address. Work has slowed down for a bit now, as we have a couple of weeks between deadlines. While I really feel I need the break, to take it makes me feel guilty of being unproductive while it also frees up my mind to dwell on future plans.
Another short post since I've been doing some online reading tonight and haven't quite finished. I ran into an old friend a couple weeks ago and it reminded me that I hadn't sat down to go through some writings he's started -- a first draft of a novel set in Halifax. It's set in present day but written in the mood, style, and flavour of the old pagan crowd that used to haunt the coffee shops, library lawn and Point Pleasant Park of yore. It's called the "Wyvern Street Irregulars" and I'm starting to really enjoy it actually. The first part lunges into an alternate subculture immediately and stretches you a bit until you settle in. However, while Mark's not necessarily renowned for his verbal coherence among the uninitiated, his writing of ritual and symbolism within this work is remaining fluid and focused. By the second or third chapter, you realize that you're digesting a tonne of information on magickal workings and neo-pagan/wiccan traditions. The story is incomplete so far, but he's offered it up for critiques over a few mailing lists. I'll link to it here now, too.
It's been quiet here tonight. Shut the television off after the news. There's nothing there for me. I'm sick of dead bodies and I'm sick of entertainment news. Instead, I finally finished of Hunter S. Thompson's "The Rum Diary" and now I am working on a devious little project in my lab that I've already tested out on Brian, but will be unveiling once it's completed and perfected. Say no more.
The storm hit but it looks like we timed things just right. We left Halifax by 9:30am and got to Miramichi by 1:40pm. We encountered rain at Kouchibouguac but no snow yet. We made it to Service NB, got the marriage license and were out by 2:30pm. It had just started to change into snow and huge flakes were coming down as we returned to my folks place, parked the car, and stayed put.
Now we're just relaxing at home. My parents are hosting a cat named Ozzy right now and Napster's been introduced. They're chasing each other up and down the stairs.
Just tidying up the apartment tonight. We're heading to New Brunswick tomorrow in a mad dash to get there before the predicted major snowstorm hits, and arrive in time to get a marriage license from the government office. If it weren't the only chance we're going to get to apply for it, I'd not take to the roads. It'll be messy. However, since we can only go on a regular work day and we need to get it from the province in which we plan to marry, that means tomorrow. We've both taken the extra day off work to go with the long weekend for this purpose.
It should also be a good chance to finalize things like the invitation list and honeymoon itinerary. We'll also start taking a few things up now, since the car will be packed in June when we head up with Yeji's folks and the cat too. Yeji will take her dress up this trip and I just picked up my tux today, too, so it's already in the car.
We also landed our M.C. for the reception, as of tonight. My cousin, who now lives in Moncton, will be hosting the gala. He's got one of the clearest voices around (we used to do public speaking contests together in 4-H years ago.) His sense of humour is suitably wry and engaging. It'll be fun watching him get his Miramichi accent around the Korean names and places that will be inevitably peppering introductions.
Now we're just short a couple of ushers, however the list of people who we can be assured of attending, and who are under fifty years old, isn't a long one.
I don't know what it was but I've seen a lot of people switching on to Facebook over the last couple of weeks. In the week or so that I've been a member my friends list, admittedly meager, has matched that for my MySpace page, and that's without including links to some of the bands I know or any celebrities as is the common case with MySpace.
For the record, I've only added two celebrities to my page there and both are entertainers that I have met and spoken to. When Weird Al played Halifax a few years back, I had a backstage pass and even got a photo of the two of us together... so I added him. I also met Kreskin when he did a show in Halifax.
For some reason, no matter where I go, I tend to be one of the ones picked for audience participation. It could be as simple as a comic heckling me, or I could be called all the way onstage as I was at Nanta in Seoul.
In the case of Kreskin, he selected a dozen audience members by throwing playing cards into the stands at the Rebecca Cohn, where we saw him. Sure enough, a card curved directly into my lap and I ended up not just onstage, but I was one of the two audience members chosen to go backstage with Kreskin. Our task was to ensure he was not looking while the other ten traversed the theatre to hide his "paycheque". Using his powers of mentalism, he found it easily. They hid it inside the cast of a man with a broken leg, toward the back of the theatre. Impressive as that was, I was just impressed with Kreskin's attitude while backstage. He was having a good time and eagerly asked us our opinions of how the audience was liking the show. He was 100% focused on making it the best performance we could all hope for -- and he did.
I also have to give kudos to Weird Al. He wasn't so spritely after the show, but looked completely drained and was still drenched in sweat from the performance. He was another entertainer who gave absolutely every ounce of physical and mental commitment to the show. Me, I was damn happy to see it. I had every one of his cassettes up until that point and, back in the eighties as a junior high school kid, it was one of his songs that I performed in my first lip-synching contest. I did "One More Minute" which remains one of my favourites.
So... after that long-winded discourse on my brushes with fame. I'm hoping that any old friends who are reading this will check out my page on Facebook and add me to theirs.
Working on a story tonight. Long weekends mean changes to deadlines and with people going on extra holidays, everything is compressed. No energy to blog. I just bottomed out a few minutes ago.
Tree along South Park. This year's leaves will be out soon.
I'd almost consider today productive. I did a few chores around the house but mostly, I got something dont that I've been meaning to do for quite a while. I backed up my photo archives onto DVD. In total, I burned about 10 Gigs of photos. They're still on my laptop but I'm planning to transfer them over to my desktop and clear them off of here. I still dig into them regularly for work, but the extra disk space will compensate for the inconvenience of having to dig through the disks/other computer.
On another upside, I've got a new 2 Gig flash card for my camera too. I wanted it for the wedding and honeymoon but circumstances saw me getting it this past week. Time to get out and use it now, though. I'm in need of some fresh photo runs once spring is fully in gear. A friend called today and said the buds are out on trees in Yarmouth, so I expect I'll be seeing the first leaves here in Halifax soon, too.
I wasn't planning to go out tonight; these days I seldom do. But an old friend had messaged me out of the blue last week and mentioned that he takes in the open mic nights at the One World Cafe on Agricola Street each Wednesday. Now I filed that away for maybe sometime when the weather is warmer and I felt more active, but I got a phone call to run an errand and since I'm a sucker for irony, I decided that something wanted me to get out of the house. I ran the errand and then stopped in. It's good to meet up with old familiar faces.
The open mic was a good treat too. There was some spoken word, a fellow playing some jazzy numbers on a Fender Strat, and a couple of guys beat boxing. That's just something I don't remember at all from my old days in the coffee houses.
It still felt a bit odd -- maybe not unrelated to the non smoking atmosphere that wasn't ever the case back then. I used to spend hours upon hours in the downtown coffee shops but now I'm almost completely removed from that scene. I miss those days a lot but there never seems to be the time and I never seem to have the energy. Not knowing as many people as I used to also discourages me. It used to be that I'd know have the people in any given cafe whereas now everyone's a stranger unles I'm meeting them via invitation.
Perhaps taking in the open mic more often might be a good way to get back in some old familiar grooves and balance out my routine.
With Rome's completion I thought I'd post this photo. I didn't have a lot of classical architectural pics kicking around at the moment so this will have to do. I always thought the Prince's Lodge looked a bit like the Oracle at Delphi, or something like that. The building is situated along the Bedford Highway, near Mount Saint Vincent University. It was named after the Duke of Kent, who stayed their with his mistress, Julie St. Laurent, having been offered to him by Governor Wentworth (the property, not the girl.)
I have a little bit of family history tied into it, too. The original owner of the property was a man by the name of John Lawrence. He actually stayed on for a number of years after, in a cabin called Friar Lawrence's Cell (Shakespeare references are rife in relation to this building.) I don't know if there is a connection between John Lawrence and Julie St. Laurent (with a modified surname) or possibly a connection with a former governor before Wentworth, that being Charles Lawrence, famous for his part in the Acadian expulsion with the assistance of General Jeffrey Amherst. It's come down through family researchers however, that John Lawrence's daughter, Anna, married my great great great great great grandfather, Edmund Ross, of Northeast Margaree. So, that makes me a direct blood descendant of the first owner of this historic Halifax site. Cool, eh?
This was another shot taken on my trip to the south shore. I kind of like it. I've got a few marine-oriented pictures lined up so I apologize if they feel a bit stale. I haven't had a lotof evenings out to replenish my usual night time urban shots. Let me know what pictures you readers like best though, and I'll try to accomodate. For people outside Halifax, the bulk of my visitors it seems, feel free to post a comment if you'd like me to track down any landmarks or special requests. The weather is getting milder so I'll be looking forward to spending a bit more time outside as spring settles in.
Seems that Sunday went fast. I slept through a lot of it, staying up late last night to watch "The Good Shepherd". This evening has been largely occupied with trying to get laundry done on a busy laundry night. While I wait my final load, I'm trying to find a few minutes to play guitar so I'm going to sign off here.
Rounding out some of the major purchasing preparations for the wedding, this weekend we hit up jewellery stores for the rings. We found them tonight at the same place I'd got Yeji's original engagement/promise ring. The main ring is now a bigger diamond, in a princess cut. Her band is also studded with a row of diamonds, while mines is just a simple band with no decoration. All are in white gold. Yeji also found her shoes. Now the list of things to get is starting to become a lot shorter. We'll have to get the invite list settled within the next couple of weeks.
That's it for tonight's post. I'm trying to fit in some time to play the Sims 2: Seasons.
I took Yeji up to sign the documents for her tax return tonight. Since she's the one in the money now, she treated me to supper. Driving past Zorba the Greek's on the Bedford Highway, we confirmed that it's closed now, after many years of good food. It's a shame because I really liked that restaurant.
So we drove back downtown and all over Spring Garden and the surrounding streets, looking for a spot to park but to no avail. We thought we'd go to Anatolia's for Turkish. Instead, we zipped up to Quinpool and went to the Athens Restaurant for Greek. We both had the lamb chops. It'd been years since I was there. I ordered my lamb medium rare but I couldn't help still thinking it was a bit undercooked. It was alright though, tastewise. There's a newer Greek restaurant just a few doors down which I think we will try out next time.
All in all, with so much switching back and forth from Greek to Turkish to Greek, I felt like a Cypriot.
Today was a bit cold with the wind but the sun was awful nice. I got to spend much of this first day or spring out of the office. I had a couple of photos to get and a story to work on, so I left around lunch, popping back in midafternoon, and then out again.
I also took the day to get a few other things done. I booked doctor's appointments for both of us. No worries. There's nothing wrong but we don't yet have a family doctor here, so it'd be good idea to get one before something serious ever happened. I set up appointments although the earliest I could get was a couple of weeks away. Better than I had expected. I'll have to cancel mine though, as I just realized it conflicts with a time I'll be out of town.
After my work was done, I also got in to have our taxes done. Talk about disappointment. Yeji gets a fair bit back but once you subtract the fees from mine, I'm left with enough to cover one dinner at the Dragon Buffet King and not much else. I had hoped for more. I was thinking of taking some courses on some recent interests of mine and I also hoped to bank a bit for the future. No dice.
At least it's done though. It'll keep the government off our backs for another year.
I was a bit happy today. Getting my tux taken care of over the weekend has still left me feeling rather dapper, and content in knowing that I'll be rather presentable at the wedding. Nonetheless, with a new week's workload, it's felt like a long day and much of that energy was depleted. I missed the live coverage of today's federal budget as I had to shop for groceries, and now I'm in the middle of laundry. I'm just hoping I can get it done up and still have time to watch either Rome or BSG before bed.
The snow's pretty much gone. The temperature warmed up to nine degrees and the winds blew it all away. If there are a few drifts or snowbanks left, tonight is bound to take care of them. There's a heavy rain warning in effect now, with expectations of 20-30mm. Should get all those St. Pat's Day revellers good and wet on their way home. You can hear them on the streets and the downtown was clogged with crowds around the more Celtic of watering holes.
We accomplished something towards the wedding tonight. We went to Bayers Lake and stopped into Moores, where I bought my tuxedo. I could have rented one but it'll be nice to have my own. I'll be wearing more than just at the wedding (lodge for instance) and as I've said before, this is our year to settled and become more established so it's a good time to buy one that will serve me for years to come. I opted for a simple two-button jacket, with suspenders, black tie and cummerbund, and black/silver button covers and cufflinks. but am looking at maybe renting a lavender tie and vest for the wedding since our chosen colours are lavender and silver and Yeji'd like me to incorporate them somewhere. I also got a pair of shoes to have specially for the wedding. I love my normal dress shoes -- they're steel-toed if you can believe it -- but the shoes I got tonight are the more appropriate patent leather and will be safely tucked away until June.
After that, it was off for a close-cropped haircut at Walmart (best deal in town) and Chinese/Thai food for supper at Jade Garden in Bedford.
I shouldn't have mentioned the possibility of a St. Patrick's Day storm. Sure enough, I woke up this morning and a Weather Warning was in effect. Now tonight there is blowing snow although it's supposed to be 9 degrees here tomorrow and that will change it to rain. Either way, it's been a nice night to stay in. I spent most of it watching comedy shows on the CBC for a change, something I should do more often. I usually have my television permanently fixed to ATV (the local CTV affiliate) but am starting a part time boycott. I like CSI and Law and Order but it's too much. Each weeknight it's the same: finish supper, watch Jeopardy, and then the rest of the night's airings are all murder, rape, and more murder. The program directors must be psychopaths. I've had enough for now, thank you.
It'll be bedtime soon for me and I haven't saved much time for a posting. My laptop was appropriated for much of the evening and I spent the time on the phone and catching up on last night's episodes of my two main TV shows: Battlestar Galactica and Rome. There are only a couple more episodes of each before their seasons end. I haven't heard if BSG is confirmed for another season, but sadly, I know that Rome is not.
I'm sure going to miss that one. I can already sense the inevitable final battle coming up. (Spoilers to follow, if you haven't seen Episode 20: "A Necessary Fiction" yet... ) Titus Pullo is left in Rome, to command the Aventine Collegiate and remain near Octavian, while Vorenus packs up and heads to Egypt with Mark Antony. Since history dictates that the two leaders will face off at Actium, one can assume that the two friends will be pitted against each other by fate also, as the series winds down. Bloody great scrap at the end of this episode though. If you haven't watched this series, you're missing out on some rare television fare.
The weekend is over and I can't point to too many exciting exploits. I guess we were thinking with our stomachs. We went for groceries last night and completely filled up the larder, but we also went out for dinner to Henry House. I had the Scotch Pies and Yeji had the Calf's liver. As a testament to how South Barrington is developing, it was actually our third choice. We first stopped in to Gingergrass, which used to be Kinh-do, but they were hosting a birthday party and the restaurant was full up and closed off. The owners of Kinh-do just sold not long ago to a Thai family who, while keeping Vietnamese food on the menu are also adding Thai specialties. We then went across the street to Talay Thai but it was also packed solid. So, it was off to Henry House which was next in line and we managed to snag the last available table upstairs.
It's a sure bet that South Barrington will be one of the next areas to develop into a posh restaurant district. Also in the area is Bearly's House of Blues & Ribs and the Taj Mahal, around the corner on South. Papa Mario's even opened up a pizzaria down there, too. However, just around the corner from Gingergrass, (on Morris) a few old storefronts are being renovated into what is starting to look like a real nice place. I'll have to keep my eyes open to see how they take shape.
Now, if we didn't get our fill of British cuisine last night, today was a dry run for St. Patrick's Day, coming up next week. Yeji had a desire for corned beef and cabbage so I ended up filling the stew pot today with what tasted, if I may admit, delicious. The last time I made it, I drained the beef a bit too much so most of the saltiness was gone, but today's was just right.
Hope you all changed your clocks last night. Time for me to hit the hay and recapture that lost hour if I can.
It's been a cold day. Not much to report from home tonight and the cat's asleep on top of me so I can't manage to type so well anyway. I'll post this picture and slip offline.
One piece of local news today is that the North End Pub burnt down. It had been in business for about fifty years and was quite the local fixture. The blaze was detected around two p.m. and when I drove up Barrington after five, a few streets east of the site, the fire was still smoldering and smoke had filled the air even down to there. I expect architects have already started plans to build condos in the spot.
The above photo was taken last weekend as I tested out my 12X zoom on the moon over Peggy's cove. The resolution you see is exactly what my camera shot. I only cropped it and didn't otherwise modify it. No tripod either -- just the image stabilization. I got the tripod for Christmas but have yet to make good use of it. I figure I'll save it for night shots, later on when the weather is warmer and I spend more evenings out and about.
Now that I look at the picture again, I wish I had gone out to try a shot of the eclipse.
Staying in tonight. We're getting hammered by that same fierce storm that ripped through Eastern Canada, which is west of us, I guess, and... nevermind.
At least it held off until after the end of the workday or else there could have been much more trouble on the roads, however Yeji was working late tonight and it was in full swing when she walked home.
The above picture, for those not in the know, was from a previous storm. I don't feel like going out with the camera tonight. I'll stay nice and warm inside here, hanging out with the cat, and on the computer.
Not too much to report tonight and I'd rather give my fingers a rest from typing. I made omelets for supper with my usual cornucopia of hot peppers, and now my fingers are burning. Yeeouch.
Good omelets though.
My cold has pretty much run its course. Yeji has it now, which is why I wanted to cook up something spicy. Nothing beats a cold like hot peppers and onions.
I also finished up a web project I'd been working on over the last little while, a template for a blog from New Brunswick that I read often: Spink About It. He's unveiled it on his site as of tonight. It seems there are a few little kinks here and there, but it should polish up fine. If you don't already read his excellent blog, why not have a gander now.
Halifax Robert L. Stanfield International Airport.
I'm going to venture an earlier-than-normal post tonight. Mostly I just want to chill out for a while.
I took this quick picture of the airport this afternoon when I dropped off our company to catch her flight. Since Friday, I've put more than 1000 km on the car and I'm looking forward to taking a break tonight. My cold is still lagging on though I suspect it's nearing its end. I finished my current work earlier than normal today, and despite losing a day to the trade show. I have a bit of webwork promised which I am going to hammer away on tonight, but other than that, it's time to unwind.
I'll try to return to some more meatier posts tomorrow, and also work through some of the new photos I've taken but not resized for blog posting yet.
and the 
