Category Archives: Diary

Wiktory!

My first ever seminar taught at CEGEP went terrifically well. I was blessed with forty attentive Champlain College students who made eye contact, smiled, and asked questions, some of whom even thanked me personally afterwards. I always forget how young CEGEP students are; they’re almost half my age (let’s not dwell on that for too long, shall we?).

The problem, of course, is trying to narrow down one’s sphere of knowledge to an hour and ten minutes of lecture. What do you leave in? What do you abandon? What concepts are important? How can you explain them simply enough that they will understand, but in enough detail that the depth of the concept isn’t lost? Do you have to present X other concepts first in order to make the final concept understandable?

I know I gave them a lot of information, but they all kept up with me. I mixed my personal experiences and choices in with technical stuff so that they’d have a balance of the two. All in all, I think I managed to prove to them that yes, there are still people out there who live their lives inspired by the same beliefs and principles held by the ancient Celts, which was the point of my guest lecture.

I’d love to do it again. Heck, I’d love to teach a full-semester course on alternative spirituality. I hope they enjoyed it as much as I did.

Scattershot

Yesterday night was:

– The first thunder/lightning storm of the year. Cool. Very, very cool. (Except when the power cut out for a second or two while my husband was watching the ongoing election coverage. Bad moment.)

– A turning point in Quebec politics as the Liberal party was voted in by a severe majority. Let’s see: my in-laws’ house just increased in value by $20,000; industry will begin to revive; investors will return. My one regret: we don’t own property ourselves. Ah well.

– The last meeting of the Monday night class that I co-teach. There will be plenty of student meetings throughout the summer, and activities planned, but this was really the end of a serious commitment for everyone. Now I devote myself to my Saturday morning class, and the scattered lectures and workshops I will be teaching in the near future, such as the guest lecture I’m giving on modern Celtic Pagan worship at Champlain College this Thursday. I’ve spoken with the teacher, who sounds like a great guy, and I’m looking forward to it. I was a bit at sea about what exactly to focus on — he teaches a humanities class of mythology — but we worked out a basic hour of personal experience talk regarding how I worship, what I do, what I believe in, and so forth. It’s a great opportunity, and promises to be quite the experience.

On Shopping For Clothing That Fits

For years I have purchased clothing based on an extremely outdated pragmatism. Buy them a bit big, then you can grow into them.

This was fine when I was a kid, when I was a teenager. As a teen and in my early twenties I was also much more comfortable wearing clothes that disguised my body slightly – call it a confidence thing if you like. Now that I’m pushing thirty-two, though, buying clothes that don’t fit just doesn’t work as well for me. (MLG’s constant voluntary assurance that I’m a babe helps a lot, too.) I have long legs and a short torso, as well, so shopping for clothes means that 98% of the time, they won’t fit me properly anyway. And since I (unintentionally) lost weight recently, all the clothes that were loose on me are now ridiculously baggy.

When I was looking for something to wear earlier this week, I snapped and saw red. Not a single pair of jeans fits me properly around the waist, which means they sag everywhere else, too. Damn it, it’s spring, and I want to look good. I want to feel like I look good, and jeans that are several sizes too big just don’t cut it.

So after work yesterday I took the metro up to Namur to check out the Le Chateau outlet, where they usually have decent clothing at decent prices.

Well, apart from the truly horrendous music, all their pants were thirty dollars or more. The music eventually chased me out with a headache, so I decided to walk along Jean-Talon to the Village des Valeurs instead. Who knows – maybe there will be something not-so-bad there, I thought, or maybe I’ll pull off an amazing find.

Door number two it was. The prize?

I came out with two very sexy pairs of Levis jeans in perfect condition. And they cost me less than twenty dollars total. If I told you what size they are, you’d lynch me, so suffice it to say that they’re about three sizes smaller than the jeans I’ve been wearing for the past four or five years.

Damn, I look good. And I’m thrifty, to boot.

Service Industry People Who Help And Hinder

It had to happen. I should have known.

Today is the day that my husband’s health benefits plan kicks in. Three months of employment (and paying into the plan of course) and congratulations, you now only have to pay a 20% deductible for prescription drugs and other fun stuff.

I’ve been holding on to a recent prescription slip for a week or so, waiting for this day. So after three hours of work at the computer this morning (aren’t I good?) I put on my coat and off I went to the pharmacy, to fill my first month of prescription, hurrah!

I handed in the slip, along with my shiny new benefits card, and hung around waiting for my name to be called. Now, if the truth must be told, I was a bit nervous. I’ve had problems with benefit cards before. What if they didn’t flip the switch or unflag the account or whatever it is that they do at the health insurance office? What if there’s some kind of problem? No, no, I said to myself; stop creating things to worry about. You checked online yesterday, and everything was fine. Plus your husband verified with Human Resources at work to make sure everything would be operational as of April 8.

Well, the pharmacist called me over and said, “Your claim has been refused.”

Heart plummets into stomach. I knew it, I knew it, I knew it.

“Why?”

“They say you’re not listed under this policy.”

Sigh.

“We checked this yesterday. I’m on the plan.”

She must have seen me gritting my teeth, because she said, “Well, we’ll try again.” She called the insurance people and talked to them for about five minutes before they discovered together that I’m the second person listed on the plan (duh – my husband is the first), so they had to type in a 02 somewhere instead of a 01. (I’d like to take this moment to point out that the 02 is plainly printed on my card. I know, because I looked when she gave it back to me.)

At this point I stopped listening as relief washed over me. Everything was going to be fine. I’d get my prescription and go home.

Except it wasn’t fine. The pharmacist came back to me and said, “The insurance people tried to run the claim through while I was on the phone, but the network went down, so we can’t do it right now. Can you come back later?”

Heck, why not. I’m having so much fun here that I can’t wait to come back for more.

“I’ll call you when their system is back up and we’ve completed the claim,” she said. “I’ll let you know the moment it’s ready.”

“Why not,” I said, “I’m in the neighbourhood tonight anyway.”

Then I took the bus to another pharmacy to pick up a parcel, and got flak from a supercilious postal worker because my slip said I could pick up my parcel after one o’clock, and it was twelve forty-five. (How was I supposed to know what time it was? I don’t wear a watch, and there wasn’t a clock anywhere around. All I knew was that I had left home a long time ago and spent much too long in a pharmacy in west NDG before trekking into Westmount for this damned parcel.)

He’d look much more attractive as a rock. Or a hatstand. He had that kind of personality.

It seems to be that kind of day. I can take great comfort in the three hours of work I did this morning, though. Yep. Something to be proud of.

Too Much To Expect?

There was a knock on my door yesterday morning at about eleven-thirty. I opened it to find a young woman with a dog standing in the hall.

“Hi,” she said with a smile. “I used to live in this apartment. I don’t suppose you have any mail for me?”

Now, we moved in thirty-eight days ago. The apartment was empty for a month before that for renovations.

“Er, no,” I said. “We’ve been writing `Return to Sender – Moved- No Forwarding Address’ on them all.”

“Did you get any mail today?”

“Well, I’ll put some shoes on and I’ll check,” I said. We went downstairs, and sure enough, there was a GST cheque for her in my mailbox.

“Oh, great!” she said. “Listen, if you get any more of may mail, can you just give it to Dale in apartment one? I’ll stop by for it every once in a while. I’ll be changing my address soon, I promise.”

Thirty-eight days, plus a month. Now, I don’t know about you, but when I move, I use that handy-dandy mail forwarding service which the Post Office provides for a nominal fee. The previous tenant’s mail that we have rejected included several government forms, parcel pick-up slips, school documentation marked `Time-Sensitive’, and personal letters.

I so do not understand people like this. Call me crazy, but I see it as my responsibility to ensure that I still receive my mail, to let the various organisations and offices know that I’ve moved. My husband says that some people don’t want their mail to follow them, that it’s an easy way out of responsibility for them. Granted, there have been times I’ve changed my phone number and deliberately not given certain people my new number, but that’s a slightly different matter.

I just don’t get it.

Almost Home

I’ve been going through an avoid-the-phone phase, but today all three times when the phone rang, I picked it up. I managed to have an hour-long chat with Elim, and another hour-long chat with t! later on, and in between I spoke to my husband for a total of seven minutes. And then, tonight, my oldest friend came over for tea and a chat about art, which sort of evolved into a general talk about life and love and dreams. It’s been a good day.

The only vaguely bad thing so far has been my discovery that I cannot burn ten-inch tapers on the lower shelf of our new mantel. At least, not until they’ve been reduced to seven-inch tapers by being burned somewhere else first. I’ve covered the smell of barely-scorched paint by burning frankincense resin. Otherwise, the candles look lovely in front of the huge mirror (which I had to polish again today – how do so many fingerprints end up on it?), which reflects the candleflames beautifully, creating a lovely glow in the living room.

I spent today unpacking the fragile things I own, like my irreplaceable signed Royal Doulton Coalport figures, our masks, and the tiny also-irreplaceable collectibles passed on to me throughout my life. We now have things hanging on the walls of the bedroom, so it doesn’t feel so sterile any more, which is a relief. We’re almost there; it’s almost home.