The Great Mango Tree of Life
Monday, June 30, 2003
Question: Am I ever going to post on the weekend?
Answer: Probably not, since I seem to have aquired a life! I'm so proud of myself. haha. Anyway, didn't post this weekend 'cause I was partying! Happy B-day Phia. Glad you liked your stuff. Don't worry, I'm not going to post a list of what you got for your b-day. *wink*
It was a great party. Typically eclectic, since it included all ages and everything from swing dancing to SpeedNurtz (Phi, you really need to learn Nurtz!) to 99 -- and pictures of guys wearing bras. Gotta get me copies of those. I partied from 6:30 into the wee hours... ok, ok, from 6:30 until my mommy came to pick me up. *sigh* Well, it's not my fault they had to drive to Ottawa in the morning and wanted to go to bed early and no one else was driving my way. It was still fun.
Yesterday included a surprise visit from my commerce buddy, who's leaving for exchange in Australia in a few weeks. We dropped in at Second Cup for tea and cake (how civilized) and then took a stroll in High Park. Stood on a bridge in front of a tiny waterfall and watched the ducks and the chipmunks and so on. Almost avoided getting rained on, so that was pretty great. Upon returning home, I played Neverwinter Knights until 1pm, and ordered pizza with my brother (since we forgot to cook dinner -- but hey, I'm almost done Chapter 2 with my cleric!).
Now for the sad news... no plans for Canada day. The family's all in Ottawa, and my friends are all doing things in other cities. Guess it's back to Neverwinter for me. *sigh* Maybe it'll rain and I won't feel bad for missing the fireworks.
Wednesday, June 25, 2003
Argh! She's checking my work again. "I was just checking over some... umm... stuff... and I noticed that you didn't do X." Uh, yeah, I didn't do X because I was told by my boss not to do X, not to mention it's a huge waste of time, you control freak!! Oh well. The good news is, she's leaving for her vacation on Friday, and I won't see her again for a month. (The bad news is, when she comes back she'll probably check everything I did while she was away.)
Good things that happened today: I went to court by myself and didn't screw anything up. I even looked somewhat organized, which is new for me.
Ack, she's here again! "I'm probably being a pain but..." Yes. Yes you are being a pain. Now go away and let me do my complaining... I mean work.
Back to the list of good things: umm, let's see... the weather is GORGEOUS. Ok, so you have to ignore the heat advisory and the humidity advisory and the smog advisory. But other than that it's perfect -- especially since I spend the hottest part of the day in my airconditioned office. Besides, mangos grow in hot climates. *grin* Oh, and I bought a new Palm (see yesterday's post). It's not super-up-to-date, but it's cheap and it does everything I want (including several games I have been dying to try out). New toys are always good.
Focus on the good things if you want to have a good day. So, since good things happened, I guess I'm having a fairly decent day after all. Here's hoping everyone else is, too.
Tuesday, June 24, 2003
*phew* Time for a break. Talk about a busy day, I had a huge job to get through, and I planned on it taking all day, and then my boss dropped by and asked me to fix a word template for her that was so messed up that it took half the morning, so I have been rushing ever since. Ever notice how once you start rushing you can't stop? That's how I ended up finishing most of my work by 3pm, and now I have 1 hour 45 mins to draw a bunch of lines on a piece of paper and highlight important things on another piece of paper, and then I'm done for the day.
So instead of doing that (which, believe me, is as boring as it sounds), I'm going to celebrate the fact that I am getting a new Palm. Now, sadly, this new Palm isn't exactly a "new" Palm, in that I'm NOT getting the latest version by any stretch of the imagination, but still, it'll be better than my current one. Besides which, it's always fun walking into a store and asking to see all their latest toys and then discuss the merits of each for a few hours and then buy the cheapest thing they have -- oh the faces of the poor store clerks when I get through shopping! *evil grin*
I also have six new books to read... ok five. I read one last night. Ok, so four and a half. Can I help it that I can never put new books down, and also can't resist picking them up? The good news is I have three more in transit and another 3 on hold which should be coming in fairly soon (I'm too cheap to buy books. The library is my friend.). And if I still run out, there's always Neverwinter to keep me occupied. Oh, yeah, and my LSATs. Supposed to be studying. I'll do it tomorrow. Maybe. *sigh*
Monday, June 23, 2003
This is going to have to be a short post. (I'm actually doing work today, surprise surprise!) At any rate, for those of you who wonder, I did cut my hair quite short. I'm enjoying it so far, and comments have been favourable. Thanks for all the input for those of you who gave advice.
The true excitement for the weekend was my parent's 25th wedding anniversary suprise party, which I have been planning for over a month now. Details will take too long to type out, so I'll have to save that for a later post, but suffice it to say the parents were surprised, the guests appeared to have a good time, and things generally went well. I'm not even broke yet!
So, back to work for me. Hopefully tomorrow will be a slower day, so that I can get some good blogging and GW-posting done.
Friday, June 20, 2003
I'm sure by now everyone has heard of the Harry Potter mix-up. Something about books being sold before the release date and a reviewer releasing the plot of the book early. Thanks to all these problems, the words "Harry" and "Potter" can no longer be spoken in my office. We had to organize an emergency injunction hearing (that means a hearing at which a lawyer requests an order of a judge to stop someone from doing something) last night at 7pm!! Talk about exciting: last minute judge, no staff, no one knowing what the results are or who has them, judge flying out today... All these things have lead to more big-name, important-people hanging out in my office and calling my office and faxing my office than I even knew existed. So, for those of you planning on reading Harry Potter as soon as it comes out, try not to display them on the subways or streets near the central courts. Seeing court staff go postal is not a pretty sight.
News in Brief: We watched Taming of the Shrew last night, with John Cleese in it, who is phenomenal. A big thank you goes out to Thea's mom, for letting us kidnap her so often. Plans are set for this weekend, including a hair-cut for me -- general consensus on that is that guys like long hair and girls think I should cut it short. Am still open to further suggestions until 12 tonight. And my biggest news for the week: I bought shoes!!!
Thursday, June 19, 2003
Connie, you are my God. For those who don't know her, Connie Moss is my God. She is also the person who works in the QSB office, and I think she now holds rights to my firstborn, because she solved all my QCard problems and kept me from jumping out the window. QCard, by the way, is evil. It wouldn't let me book half of the courses I need to take next year.
My sympathies to everyone else who has suffered due to the invention of this diabolical program. If you want to know more about the diabolical invention known by the deceptively friendly name of QCard, check out Eva's post on the subject.
Well, I was planning on ranting about pre-registration today, and how impossible it is to find info about courses, and how terrible the scheduling is, and how the pre-registration was delayed for four days, making the whole process even more stressful. The problem is, I can't even complain about how horrible this process is, because I can't pre-register at all.
Anyone recognize this:
"Additional logon requests cannot be accepted as the maximum number of QCARD users has been reached. Please try again in a few minutes. Note: peak demand is experienced during the morning hours; we recommend accessing QCARD during the afternoon hours."
Well DUH! Everyone has to get in first, or they won't get the courses they want. Like me, who has such a bad schedule that I have no choice. If I don't take these courses, I can't take any other ones because they don't fit my schedule, and I won't be able to graduate. So I should try in the afternoon, huh? Not that that will cause a problem at all, since I WORK during the day. But, no, I'll just tell the judges that they don't have their material because I was pre-registering for courses all day. Refresh refresh refresh refresh refresh refresh refresh refresh.
As if no one could anticipate that this was going to happen, considering there are 2500 ArtSci, EngSci and Commerce students trying to register for their most important courses in half the time they were supposed to have, preferrably before all the 3rd, 2nd, and 1st years (of which there are legion) nose in and register ahead of us. I recommend following the example of such tv shows as American Idol, which allows alternate methods of choosing options, like text messaging. Or, hey, why don't we all fax in our courses? At least then we'd be standing next to the fax machine all day and our bosses might THINK we were working.
Refresh refresh refresh refresh refresh refresh refresh ...
Wednesday, June 18, 2003
Grrr... if Janice checks my work, or "shows me how to do something I may not know how to do" (even though I have been doing this job for four summers and I wrote the bloody procedures manual myself) one more time I am going to scream. And that will get me fired, which is not a good thing, since I need the money for school. If anyone has advice on how I am going to deal with being treated like an imbecile for the next week and a half, I could really use the help. Either that, or do you know where I can get a good deal on a straightjacket? I think I'm going to be needing one. *sigh*
Monday, June 16, 2003
So, it's back to the old grind, aka The Creation of the Procedures Manual. Talk about detail work, try writing a manual for government workers: Save by clicking on the Save button (insert picture of Save button, because otherwise they complain that they don't know what the Save button looks like). Click "Yes" (when it asks you "Do you wish to save?" because they couldn't figure that out by themselves) and so on. On the bright side, I get left entirely to myself, which means plenty of web-surfing breaks and all the snacks I want. Also plenty of conversations about mice and mice-who-take-over-the-world and Agatha Christie plays.
Which brings me to the Agatha Christie play I watched for the fourth time last Friday. If you are in T-Dot and haven't seen it, you have to go. Look up "Mousetrap" in the phone book or call 411. It's superfantabulouslyamazing.
Other news in brief: Apparently I eat alot of chocolate. I got to see the Matrix: Reloaded on Saturday and it is very good as long as you haven't over-hyped yourself, which I tried very hard not to do. Can't wait to see the next one! Happy Father's Day to my dad ('cause I forgot to say it yesterday 'cause of the concert -- but I guess he can consider the concert to be his father's day present for the moment). And the most important news of all... I GOT PAID!!! *breathes sigh of relief and pays terribly overdue credit card bills*
Wednesday, June 11, 2003
Time for a weekend update (it has taken me this long just to recover from all the fun). Let's see... Friday night was rehearsal, which sounds like work, but with friends as strange as mine everything is completely nutty, and I met Liz who, unfortunately for her, fits right into the group.
Saturday morning was an early morning, which is NEVER fun, but we were getting up for a good cause. We started singing at 10 and went pretty much straight through to 1:30pm, with a short break for lunch. Turns out I was spelling myself, playing violin/cello duets in between sets of songs. We even got MONEY for singing... but we had to donate it all, since we're not licensed for busking. However, the best part of the Fayre was the record sale. As a group, we now collectively own all of the Sesame Street records, including such favourite hits as "Trash" and "C is for cookie."
After that we went out for Vietnamese food at this great little place, which I would name here but I forgot to look at the name above the door. We ate sprimp rolls, and a friend of mine had plam noolde soup. We were going to try the fresh spueezed orange juice, but decided to save our money for something with splices of lemom. I swear I laughed so hard I nearly blew nooldes out my nose.
Sat night we went out again as a group to see Stupidity. For all you GW fans out there, you should have gone just for the previews! My favourite was the commercial for Silent Fire-alarms -- guaranteed never to annoy you with beeping or any other alarming kind of sound. My friend Bubbles preferred the preview of Kung Fu Jesus.
Sunday was less fun and more work, but at least it was good work. I went to an evensong concert to see my brother sing, and then we had rehearsal for a concert happening next Sunday at another church... which we got locked in and ended up setting off the security alarms. So that was fun, too. In a kind of not fun way. At any rate, I am now back at work, with no voice and good memories. Next week I'm back at my regular job, and so it goes "and so it goes, and you're the only one who knows."
Friday, June 06, 2003
I was going to write something to catch everyone up on my news of the past week and so on, considering I haven't posted since Monday. However, between this morning at 9am and now I have discovered something of far greater importance to write about.
I have been logging in publically-released endorsements of appeals of various tribunal decisions made in the last month. Out of 20 of these decisions, 3 were appeals made by persons in professions such as medical professionals who have lost their licenses to carry out their businesses due to sexual misconduct with patients. The appeals were all on the basis of the "unconstitutionality" of the decisions, since the rules set by the licensing board prohibit medical professionals from having sexual relationships with patients due to the inherent lack of a balance of power between doctors and patients, which the professionals in question state was not the case. In other words, their arguments were that their patients consented, so it wasn't wrong. 3 out of 20 appeals in one month! The sheer frequency of these events (considering these are not unfounded accusations, nor do they even include the number of cases in which professionals were found to have acted in this manner and did not appeal the revocation of their licenses) makes me sick. What is happening to society, that persons found to be committing such terribly wrong acts believe that the public will find their actions not only acceptable, but justified, to the extent that they are willing to fight the decisions of disciplinary committees in a public forum, right up to the Supreme Court level? It is time someone important stood up and said that it is not your constitutional right to sexually assault another person, and that sexual assault does include all situations where you are in a position of power over another person. Finally, it is time to say that a person who has abused their power of another person does not have the constitutional right to continue to be in a position where they are in power over others. This needs to end.
Monday, June 02, 2003
How do you make a mango fly? Give her a new job at the higher courts. Ok, ok, so it's only for two weeks, but this is the absolute best experience of my life since four summers ago, when I had my first courtroom experience. Admittedly, I'm not actually in court these days, but since I know I will be going back in July, that doesn't bother me in the least. Meanwhile, I am learning all sorts of new procedural rules, and I finally know how appeals get heard.
More excitment today -- I was on the subway reading someone elses paper (yes, I am that annoying person who looks over your shoulder while you're minding your own business reading the paper that you bought yourself) and I saw an article on the Canadian Airlines dispute, which is of some concern to my family at the moment, since my sister is trying to fly in on Canadian Air in a few days. This particular article was about how the "Judge's plain speaking saved Air Canada" and the judge is one that I worked with for two months last summer. He really is a nice guy, but now he's also a famous guy, which makes me important by association. No, seriously, it's not the fame. It's just knowing that I really do have a part in the kind of things that are affecting real people on a daily basis. So when I'm in the office and we hear that X needs a really good settling judge on short notice for something super-important, and we assign Justice Winkler to it, then we have helped people all over Canada (and even outside, in the case of my sister). So there're my warm fuzzy feelings for the day. I can't wait for tomorrow. I love my job!!
