The First Snowfall

Image via Wikipedia

Woke up this morning and saw the white carpet of snow outside.  I feel like this should be mentioned, esp. in Montreal.  Had a lot to do today and I did not get a chance to have my traditional hike up Mt Royal with a camera and hiking boots.  Instead, I ended up getting my guitar checked out and restrung, running in a local park, and napping while my laundry tumbled.

So, winter is here.  I know that this is nothing special, but I always wonder about what the new year will bring and what I will fail to do in the next twelve months.  Best thing is going back to see the family and getting away from the gorillas that I share space with for most of the year.

Now, time to think of gifts...

Money, Money, Money...

I knew there was someone to blame for my being broke:
http://ca.finance.yahoo.com/banking-budgeting/article/moneysense/107/why-youre-poorer-than-your-parents

Thou Shalt Not Condom...

I should say that this is a good sign.  The Pope, meaning the Catholic Church, has decided that there are cases where condoms are useful.  Not for anything fun, of course.  Only in special cases, like blocking the transmission of disease and other cases. 

So, I guess the Church is growing up.  I guess I should be happy that they have accepted a certain piece of technology that many Catholics now accept anyway.  I guess that this makes things all right.  Right?

Forget it.

I did not think that I could hold this particular Pope in contempt any deeper than the contempt I have now.  I never thought that the Catholic Church could be even more pathetic.  How many lives have been ruined because the Church held to primitive beliefs about reproduction and sexuality? How many people died because of the transmission of diseases that took their lives?  How can anyone in the Vatican look at themselves in the mirror without feeling shame?

It is too little far too late...

A Loss in the Family

I have just heard that a dear friend of my family and the entire Dominican community of my hometown has lost a long battle against cancer.  I had known her my entire life and I cannot believe that she is gone. 

I have included this picture from Dominica because it reminds me of peace and calm.  I think that I will have to think of this place for a long time...
Peace...

An Epiphany...of sorts...

I just had a very busy week (nothing new there) and discovered that the apartment I thought would be mine is now promised to someone else that the landlord now has a crush on (more of the same?).  I opened a cabinet and my favorite mug fell out and shattered.  I dropped off a card at a mailbox and stepped in a huge unseen puddle; I marked papers for my students and realized that they like to repeat all of the mistakes I have pointed out; and I am about to do another assessment for another school for very little pay and no promise that things will work out and they will actually be able to do the tests.

A silver lining: I have found an old notebook with an outline for a long narrative based on an incident from my past (with a lot of fiction involved).  And that is a goal: finishing that thing and getting it published.  I am sick of leaving so much unfinished work around on my flash drives and notes.

Sounds like something worth a few more blog entries...

The Contestant

This is an important day for me.  No, not the day after Diabetic Shock Day (appropriately called the Day of the Dead).  It is the deadline for the CBC Literary Awards.  And I may actually avoid writing and rewriting another story to send into the void

Yes, I have stopped doing a lot of things that have caused me harm, and literary contests where I have to pay for the privilege of being rejected and then read all the other so-called better writers in magazines and journals that I am now subscribed to because of my entry fee is a long and damaging relationship that I can do without.  I still write - cannot give up the vice now - but I want to be caught out as an unacknowledged talent who made it past the slush pile of an editor's desk.

So, time to do some serious rethinking about who I want to write for and how I want to be recognized.