Good news!
While Downtown T.O. burns to the ground, there was a small victory in my hometown on Friday. Syncrude was found guilty for the deaths of 1,600 ducks that took a dip in one of their tailings ponds! Now, the company could face $800,000 in fines (chump change for any oil conglomerate) OR 6 months in prison for company executives.
Personally, I think the second option sounds fairly attractive!
Sunday, June 27, 2010
Tuesday, June 22, 2010
Dunzo!
I'm finally finished the first book I've read for fun in like, 5 years! That's probably one of the lamest things I've ever said, but sadly, it's the truth. I've had this issue in university where I feel useless if I'm not constantly doing something productive. So, the only books I've attempted to read talk about good city-building and why our planet is going down the tubes. Surprisingly, these aren't the most entertaining topics. Whenever I let myself have any "me" time alone, I'm so tired of doing all this work that I always decide to watch reruns of Intervention or wine taste or do any sort of activity that gradually turns my brain into silly putty.
Since I started studying for my GRE, I kinda realized: how am I ever going to do well in grad school, or even enjoy it, when I hate reading? I decided I needed to started reading for fun again! It couldn't be that bad? Then, while at the U of A a few weeks ago, I was drawn to this Lionel Shriver novel on their clearance rack called We Need to Talk About Kevin. Without reading the book jacket, I impulsively decided to buy it.
It's probably the best decision I've made in a long time! The book is about this mother writing letters to her estranged husband about their son, who killed 10 people at his high school. It's pretty grim, but really says a lot about parenthood and how we treat our young people. In the last couple of days, I've put off my summer school assignment just so I could finish reading the final 100 pages, which were AMAZING!!! After celebrating this great accomplishment (yeah, I pretty much read at a grade 6 level...) I couldn't stop thinking about the book and Wiki'ed it during a lull at work. If things didn't get any better, they're turning it into a movie now! Finally, I get to be the one who relishes in telling people that "the book was just so much better than the movie." I can't wait!!
Since I started studying for my GRE, I kinda realized: how am I ever going to do well in grad school, or even enjoy it, when I hate reading? I decided I needed to started reading for fun again! It couldn't be that bad? Then, while at the U of A a few weeks ago, I was drawn to this Lionel Shriver novel on their clearance rack called We Need to Talk About Kevin. Without reading the book jacket, I impulsively decided to buy it.
It's probably the best decision I've made in a long time! The book is about this mother writing letters to her estranged husband about their son, who killed 10 people at his high school. It's pretty grim, but really says a lot about parenthood and how we treat our young people. In the last couple of days, I've put off my summer school assignment just so I could finish reading the final 100 pages, which were AMAZING!!! After celebrating this great accomplishment (yeah, I pretty much read at a grade 6 level...) I couldn't stop thinking about the book and Wiki'ed it during a lull at work. If things didn't get any better, they're turning it into a movie now! Finally, I get to be the one who relishes in telling people that "the book was just so much better than the movie." I can't wait!!
Like, ohmygosh?! I totally pictured Tilda Swinton as Eva Katchadourian....
Sunday, June 20, 2010
Weekending
These past couple days have been busy, busy. I spent Thursday and Friday doing water quality testing at Camrose's landfill. Wow, was that an educational experience. The engineer I was working with told me, "I wish everyone could visit a landfill at least once." There's a lot of truth to that. I found old couches in amazing condition, recyclable electronics and water bottles, the environmentalist's new enemy du jour, littered all over the landfill's most recent cell, which is the engineer's euphemism for "pile of garbage."
On my way back home, I decided to make a detour through the city of Camrose (on company time) for one particular reason: I really needed to see Augustana Campus. You see, I have this weird bourgeois complex where I'm constantly second-guessing my choice of schools. Back in high school, I applied to Augustana, a tiny satellite campus of the University of Alberta. I actually got rejected by them, which is probably one of the only times I've been rejected from anything in my entire life. Anyways, I was pleased to discover that the campus was super dull, and super small. And Camrose is one of those cities that are great places to die: packed full of old people and businesses that cater to old people.
I got a much-needed break this weekend and skipped out of town this weekend to camp at Pembina River. I got to hike around and catch some sun, and hang out with my friend's Frat, which is half made up of people from my high school, so it was an awesome chance to do some serious catching up!
Pembina River <3
Tuesday, June 15, 2010
Word of the Day
From UrbanDictionary:
WALMART
A store where you can buy a shot gun, ammunition, a ski mask, a baseball bat, a meat cleaver and a chainsaw, but you can't buy a CD that has a "Parental Advisory" sticker.
WALMART
A store where you can buy a shot gun, ammunition, a ski mask, a baseball bat, a meat cleaver and a chainsaw, but you can't buy a CD that has a "Parental Advisory" sticker.
Shit in Gear, Part 2
Now that my trip is done and my job is growing monotonous, my summer is slowly starting to settle down. I genuinely miss running around all the time and being super busy, so I've decided I need a creative outlet to keep me entertained for the rest of the summer. My original plan was to become an advocate for more affordable transit, but my Mom thinks that would be a "bad career move."
Seeing as I'm not a novelist, that pretty much limits me to Scrapbooking. Yes, I've decided to make a scrapbook. But, I'm not just making your average everyday scrapbook for a trip to Calgary or my first baby (*shudders*), I've decided to make a scrapbook for the first 20 years of my life! I'm obsessed with self-reflection and self-improvement, or any other motivational word with the prefix "self," and I figured that this would be a fun way to put my self-love into action!
On top of that, I sorta made a mini-to do list for the rest of the summer:
1) Finish my GRE for Dummies.
2) Save $10,000 (this one's gonna be a bitch...I may have to start blow-counting again)
3) Lose 2 pounds.
4) Go to Vegas!!!!!!!!11
5) Plan a trip to NYC for September! This one is my favourite! I originally wanted to slip off for a week to wash oil off of shorebirds on the Mississippi Delta, but figured it wouldn't be as glamourous as I had imagined, so I've decided that I'm going to treat myself to a mini-vacation in the Big Apple before school starts. Originally, I had to stay home because of other commitments and miss Frosh Week, but now I have the whole week to myself! So I figured, why not spend some of that $10,000 I saved? =)
And finally, 6) Find lodging in Brisbane (that's what Australian people call housing ;) )
Seeing as I'm not a novelist, that pretty much limits me to Scrapbooking. Yes, I've decided to make a scrapbook. But, I'm not just making your average everyday scrapbook for a trip to Calgary or my first baby (*shudders*), I've decided to make a scrapbook for the first 20 years of my life! I'm obsessed with self-reflection and self-improvement, or any other motivational word with the prefix "self," and I figured that this would be a fun way to put my self-love into action!
On top of that, I sorta made a mini-to do list for the rest of the summer:
1) Finish my GRE for Dummies.
2) Save $10,000 (this one's gonna be a bitch...I may have to start blow-counting again)
3) Lose 2 pounds.
4) Go to Vegas!!!!!!!!11
5) Plan a trip to NYC for September! This one is my favourite! I originally wanted to slip off for a week to wash oil off of shorebirds on the Mississippi Delta, but figured it wouldn't be as glamourous as I had imagined, so I've decided that I'm going to treat myself to a mini-vacation in the Big Apple before school starts. Originally, I had to stay home because of other commitments and miss Frosh Week, but now I have the whole week to myself! So I figured, why not spend some of that $10,000 I saved? =)
And finally, 6) Find lodging in Brisbane (that's what Australian people call housing ;) )
Monday, June 14, 2010
Friday, June 11, 2010
Moolah Moolah Moolah
At the local 7-Eleven....
Marc: Hi, can I get this slurpee and one of those lotto tickets that are really big right now?
7-Eleven Girl: You mean Lotto Max?
Marc: Sure!
7-Eleven Girl: Do you want the Extra?
Marc: What?
7-Eleven Girl: It's like a second chance of winning for an extra dollar?
Marc: Umm...noo...
I am officially a 60-year old lotto fiend....
Thursday, June 10, 2010
Tuesday, June 8, 2010
Late Registration
Ugh, its that time of year again....enrollment appointments. Am I that lame to make a huge deal over enrolling for classes?
Simply put, I haven't had the best of luck registering in classes: I've take twice as many first-year courses as I'm allowed to (meaning at least one extra term), I always fight to get into a 6th course only to drop it after the first week of classes and, most importantly, I have this obsession with scheduling days off. I actually haven't had a 5-day week of classes since high school. This awesome setup has come at a cost though. Rather than taking classes that I'm genuinely interested in or might benefit me in my career, I've taken exciting courses like The Fundamentals of Drawing (alright kids, lets draw some more naked 50-year olds), Freight Planning (trucks or trains?), Stormwater Management (there's too much shit in our water), and my personal favourite, Social Psychology in Everyday Life (too much for words...whoever said the Arts were easy never sat through one of these lectures).
My intense scheduling, along with my waffling over specializations, minors and other buzz-words to add to my diploma, I've managed to screw up all the hard work my advisor put into making me a simple plan to finish my degree in 3 years. On top of that, I'm going to Brisbane for school this year (ch'yeaaa)! Probably the only downside to Australia is that school there is really lax. They take 4-courses a term and mostly have 3-year degrees, meaning most of courses I'm taking only transfer over as first or second-year courses, which I definitely have more than enough of.
Yesterday, I was telling a project engineer about my colourful year at school and he asked me the question I absolutely loathe hearing: "When are you gonna be finished?" He then began to glare wildly when I told him that I wasn't really sure when I'd be graduating. Oh sorry, I didn't realize there was suddenly a stigma attached to enjoying my youth...
In reality, it makes me restless to not know when I'll be finished my undergrad, to not be able to make plans or try to envision where I'll be in two years. But I'm trying to keep it all in perspective. I have the rest of my life to slave away at a 9-to-5, what difference does one year make?
Simply put, I haven't had the best of luck registering in classes: I've take twice as many first-year courses as I'm allowed to (meaning at least one extra term), I always fight to get into a 6th course only to drop it after the first week of classes and, most importantly, I have this obsession with scheduling days off. I actually haven't had a 5-day week of classes since high school. This awesome setup has come at a cost though. Rather than taking classes that I'm genuinely interested in or might benefit me in my career, I've taken exciting courses like The Fundamentals of Drawing (alright kids, lets draw some more naked 50-year olds), Freight Planning (trucks or trains?), Stormwater Management (there's too much shit in our water), and my personal favourite, Social Psychology in Everyday Life (too much for words...whoever said the Arts were easy never sat through one of these lectures).
My intense scheduling, along with my waffling over specializations, minors and other buzz-words to add to my diploma, I've managed to screw up all the hard work my advisor put into making me a simple plan to finish my degree in 3 years. On top of that, I'm going to Brisbane for school this year (ch'yeaaa)! Probably the only downside to Australia is that school there is really lax. They take 4-courses a term and mostly have 3-year degrees, meaning most of courses I'm taking only transfer over as first or second-year courses, which I definitely have more than enough of.
Yesterday, I was telling a project engineer about my colourful year at school and he asked me the question I absolutely loathe hearing: "When are you gonna be finished?" He then began to glare wildly when I told him that I wasn't really sure when I'd be graduating. Oh sorry, I didn't realize there was suddenly a stigma attached to enjoying my youth...
In reality, it makes me restless to not know when I'll be finished my undergrad, to not be able to make plans or try to envision where I'll be in two years. But I'm trying to keep it all in perspective. I have the rest of my life to slave away at a 9-to-5, what difference does one year make?
__________________________________
P.S: Random pet peeve-- I hate when I decide to spend my lunch break lurking blogs and the only ones I come across are about Catholic families or new babies.
Friday, June 4, 2010
TGIF
It's Friday! Only 8 more hours of work until I'm unleashed from my tiny cubicle. I'm definitely looking forward to getting out of the city this weekend and getting shit-faced on an empty beach up North. Meanwhile, my parents are going to some Alberta PC Party "Lobster Boil Fundraiser" tonight. I told them not to bother going, seeing as they'll probably be the only people there. My Mom looked confused and said, "Of course there's gonna be other people, who doesn't like lobster?"
My summer is starting to pan out into something not-so-shitty. I found out yesterday that one of my closest friends at school will be joining me for drunken shenanigans in Las Vegas in August, which brings the total number of people in my wolfpack to 7! On top of that, I found out that I will most likely be volunteering at the Edmonton Folk Music Festival, which means free tickets to Ben Harper, Van Morrison, Dala, Colin Hay and tons of other bands! Finally, I actually had no clue that Eclipse, the next Twilight movie, is actually coming out in a month! IN IMAX!!!!!111 I know I probably sound like the biggest tool right now, but Twilight is actually my biggest guilty pleasure. I think I watched the first movie at least a dozen times. If you haven't seen the movies or read the books, just watch the first 15 minutes of Twilight. It plays with your emotions and insecurities and you'll seriously be hooked.
Can you say midnight screening with a theatre full of 12-year olds?
If you're bored and need a good laugh, I strongly suggest you check out Hyperbole and a Half and their "Sneaky Hate Spiral." It's probably one of the funniest things I've read all week.
Thursday, June 3, 2010
Mac Attack
On Monday, my boss randomly surprised with an overnight business trip....
....to Fort McMurray.
Seriously though, my company operates in Europe, the U.S., and Asia, and I get to travel to the exotic oilsands city.
Fort Mac is in the Athabasca River valley, which is actually a really beautiful area. Its too bad that they've reworked or destroyed most of it to get at the most dirty form of oil on Earth. On top of that, the whole Wood Buffalo region is a vegan's worst nightmare. In a sprawly city of 100,000, the only places we could eat at were McDonald's, Burger King, or Tim Horton's. Oh, and it was Camp Day, so Tim Horton's was just out of the question...
Before leaving, the biologist I was working with decided to show me the Syncrude Mildred Lake operation, one of the biggest in the region. I even got to see the infamous tailings ponds that were responsible for killing all those ducks! Those things are the size of lakes. Someone might actually think they look kinda cool if they didn't know they were full of toxic chemical effluent.
I would have just loved to go kayaking on this.
Otherwise, my week has been oh so lame. Work has been awful and it still feels like January outside. However, I'm getting a much needed break from the cesspool that is St. Albert this weekend and heading up to my friend's cabin. Weeooo!
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