How you know you are dating a Canadian hockey fan

You read the Sports section in Will Ferguson's, How to Be a Canadian" and you can spot a few inaccuracies and mutter to yourself that the chapter needs some serious updating.

My thoughts excactly

Tea

Have lost track of how much tea and coffee I've had today. Oh well. Time for another pot!

The first cup moistens my lips and throat. The second cup breaks my loneliness. The third cup searches my barren entrail but to find therein some thousand volumes of odd ideographs. The fourth cup raises a slight perspiration - all the wrongs of life pass out through my pores. At the fifth cup I am purified. The sixth cup calls me to the realms of the immortals. The seventh cup - ah, but I could take no more! I only feel the breath of the cool wind that raises in my sleeves. Where is Elysium? Let me ride on this sweet breeze and waft away thither. ~Lu Tung, "Tea-Drinking"


People who lose patience with repeated blogs about the same subject (i.e: tea), should probably unsubscribe from this blog as I have no intention on stopping.

There's a saying that goes "People who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones." Okay. How about "Nobody should throw stones." That's crappy behavior. My policy is: "No stone throwing regardless of housing situation." Don't do it. There is one exception though. If you're trapped in a glass house, and you have a stone, then throw it. What are you, an idiot? So maybe it's "Only people in glass houses should throw stones, provided they are trapped in the house with a stone." It's a little longer, but yeah.
- Demetri Martin (whoever that is)

Cafesito

Q's Legacy would be the perfect companion to the perfect latte but then what would I read for my bedtime story?

te

If you are cold, tea will warm you. If you are too heated, it will cool you. If you are depressed, it will cheer you. If you are excited, it will calm you. ~Gladstone, 1865

Lament of an Insecure Blogger

Why oh why won’t Scott
Comment on my blog?
Does he like it not?
And compare it to a frog?

Maybe a blog I just can’t write
I should stick to flying a kite.
I know this poem is pretty bad
I hope my poet won’t get mad.

It’s almost a new morn.
And still I feel forlorn.
Oh Scott, if you like cheese
Won’t you read it, pretty please?

Oh I know why
No need to cry
He just doesn’t have the time
To waste on a silly rhyme

My blogging isn’t cool
And doesn’t help in school
He is there when I take pics
Seeing them gives him no kicks

Maybe someday I’ll create
Something he’ll appreciate
And on my blog he’ll post
Luna, I like you the most!

Know it All

One of my favorite books of the last few months is called The Know-It-All by A.J.Jacobs. In this, Jacobs attempts to read the entire Encyclopedia Britannica in one year. The Britannica's 44 million words span 33,000 pages in 32 volumes.

Jacobs interweaves the more interesting tidbits from the EB with anecdotes about thoughts on the articles , his life in this year, his pursuit of knowledge which includes auditioning for trivia game shows, tracking down many other sources of extreme intelligence.

It reminds me of high school. I would always try to get the back row by the bookcases and the semi-complete collection of encyclopedia (in true TCK-school fashion, the set was a hand me down and was missing d, g, j, one of the s's, and the y). Whenever class would get boring, I'd sneak one of the volumes into my lap (not an easy feat considering their size) and lose myself in articles about pencils, the Indian Mutiny, Nicola Tesla, or Suriname. I raced through many a grammar worksheet or geometry problem in order to have time to dip into an article on a country or person I'd never heard about. Today, my math abilities are very sad but my love of trivia remains.

After an awkward hug

Scott: "I tried to hug you but you got in the way".

Christina Perri - Arms (Official Lyric Video)

When Rebecca Comes to Town

Highlights:

1. Mexican food


2. Piano Bar


3. Ft. Langley


4. Sushi


5. Tea at Traceycakes


6. White Rock



Not pictures: Indian buffet and the many coffees and teas we had.

Gracious: it seems our entire trip (or at least, any memorable moments) were circa food, drink and post food-drink revelries.

Before and After

Before:


After five hours of cleaning: (including all drawers, shelves, closet, and some packing, sorting and dumping)

Lunch

Goat feta and aguacate salad with parmesan and garlic salmon, cafe con leche made with Costa Rican 1984 coffee, and Blackadder

14/25

I really have got to catch up with Scott. He's only got 6 or 7 left!

The idea of the book club was that each of the five members put in 5 books they would like to read. Then, we all read all 25. In reading other people's wish list, we are exposed to a variety of genres and types that we would not normally have read.

So far, my choices have not proved popular. However, the most hated book so far seems to be Catch 22 :) At least my poor choices have been easy to read.


Matt's Five:

✓ (1) Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
✓ (2) To Kill A Mockingbird - Harper Lee
(3) Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
(4) The Godfather - Mario Puzo
✓ (5) Where the Wild Things Are - Maurice Sendak

Mike's Five:
✓ (1) Snow Crash - Neal Stephenson
✓ (2) Enders Game - Orson Scott Card
(3) The Call of Cthulhu - H.P. Lovecraft
(4) A Clockwork Orange - Anthony Burgess
(5) Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? - Philip K. Dick

Erica's five:
✓ (1) East of Eden (by John Steinbeck)
✓ (2) The Andromeda Strain (by Michael Crichton)
✓ (3) Peter Pan (by J.M. Barrie--should be around 48 pages)
(4) Midnights Children (by Salman Rushdie)
✓ (5) The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy (by Douglas Adams)

Yolanda's five:
✓ (1) Day after Night - Anita Diamant
✓ (2) The Fountainhead - Ayn Rand
(3) The Colour of Magic - Terry Pratchett
(4) The Hunt for Red October - Tom Clancy
(5) The Hundred-Foot Journey - Richard Morais

Scott's five:
✓ (1) Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
✓ (2) The Pillars of the Earth - Ken Follett
✓ (3) Contact - Carl Sagan
(4) The Power of One - Bryce Courtenay
(5) Watchers - Dean Koontz

First pics with my cute new purple camera.
My new morning ritual: Northwest Breakfast tea (found in Pike's Place Market in Seattle), breakfast quesadilla and I Love Lucy.

Of Muses, Freud, and Other Pretentious Topics

Inspiration is a funny thing.

Inspiration has traditionally been attributed to the spiritual or supernatural realm.
- The ancient Greeks believed that Inspiration came from the muses and the gods, Apollo and Dionysus.
- Ancient Norse also believe that inspiration came from the gods.
- In ancient Hebrew poetics, inspiration is a also divine matter.
- Romantic Poets attributed inspiration to “divine or mystical winds”.
- Marxist theory sees inspiration as an “expression of friction between economic base and economic superstructural positions”
- Freud attributed it to the inner psyche; Jung to racial memory
- Modern psychology relegates it as an entirely internal process.
- In Christianity, inspiration is a gift of the Holy Spirit.


Regardless of your beliefs, it is clear that source of inspiration remains a rather intangible concept. While most definitions of inspiration allude to an artistic expression, I think we can be inspired beyond that. Or perhaps, anything that leads to deed or word is an artistic expression.

In England, Erica and I encountered an amusing form of “artistic expression”. On the beach of a lovely Cornish town, also home to an art school, three students were, well, doing something. One was curled up in a child’s pose, I forget what the second was doing but the third was rolling around (fully clothed) in the sand, twisting his body this way and that. It looked a bit like horizontal dancing.

I’m not sure where his inspiration came from but I highly doubt it was from a very spiritual source: unless is was the Muse of Comedy because it certainly kept us in giggles the rest of the day. (Equally plausible could be that the source was the Muse of Tragedy.


When I think of inspiration, I think of that feeling of being alive and being thrilled to be alive. Of feeling connected to the world and wanting to show a reciprocal connection. Obviously we all have different ways of expressing inspiration but I think we also garner inspiration from different sources depending on our personality.

I’ve discussed this with a few friends. One gets inspiration from being around people, more specifically from relationships (Ironically, she is not an extrovert). Scott is lucky enough to draw inspiration internally: his thoughts and imagination provide the fuel his inspiration needs (maybe he’ll disagree with this but that’s what it seems like to me). Some people seem to be inspired (or uninspired) by the weather. I think I’ve got enough SAD to understand this.

I think my inspiration is more experiential: I’m inspired by experiences and my surroundings. It sounds shallow and i would much rather find it internally or in relationships. But it’s when I’m experiencing something new that I find myself feeling that “spark” within myself. And new experiences are easy to come by when you are traveling: and in that, I believe, lies the allure of traveling: that feeling of being alive and having a role in this world.

This is why I can fill a whole journal in one trip and then go a year without a single entry.
This is probably also why I feel so flat and boring when I spend a long stretch of time in a suburb. It’s probably not so much the fact that I am in a suburb as the fact that nothing ever changes and opportunities for unique experiences are limited.

So I’m curious: where do YOU think your inspiration comes from?

To Do

There seems to be widespread concern that I will be bored now that I am jobless and fully intend to remain so for at least two months. However, what most people don't realize is that I seem to be incapable of remaining motionless. Not working will merely give me time to do tackle my long to-do list that has been on hold.
Not necessarily in order (and with a few things ommitted for privacy sake: I know no one reads this blog..but still...)

- Catch up to Scott on the book club list (or rather, not be so rebellious and read what I am suppose to read instead of Anne of Windy Poplars for the fourth time!)
- Run. Or rather, attempt to learn how to.
- Eat my words for all the times I mocked runners (I might be safe until I get up early to run...then I will have a banquet of words in front of me)
- Fiddle with actual cooking and baking
- Correction: fiddle with HEALTHY cooking and baking (try to limit the cream cheese)
- Fix car mirror (and figure out what else is wrong with the darn thing)
- Find cool funky 50's bridesmaid dress (black with white piping in case anyone runs across something like it)
- Catch up to my correspondence (a la Edith Wharton)
- Drink loads of tea
- Write lots and lots of lists to keep me feeling motivated (first day out of work, and i already have four written, including this one)
- Apply for JET