Here we go again...

It's probably for the best that I don't in fact own a BB gun with which to shoot stupid people in the ass when they annoy me. I'd run out of Ammo at a time like this.

By now, only dead Canadians don't know that the Liberals have been brought down by the Opposition non-confidence motion, and us Non-dead Canadians are being forced back to the polls, where we will undoubtedly return another Minority Government, barring some miracle or distaster, depending on your point of view. It was doomed to happen of course, but what pisses me off the most is that it's happening now. I'll now have to spend my holidays working on a campaign.

Look, it's absolutely no secret that I abhor the 3 stooges, Jackie, Stevie and Paulie. I've been saying it since 2003. Time to bloody well clean house, get rid of these three freaks and install leaders who don't invoke revulsion in the Canadian Electorate. Gilles can stay, he may be anti-Canada, but he's an astute, intelligent man, and he's a far better choice to lead the BQ then some of the others I've read about. But I've always distrusted Paul Martin, I think Stephen Harper is the spawn of evil, and the Opportunist Jack Layton has some serious credibility issues in terms of professional ethics.

So I propose that Canadians write in to vote for their favourite candidates. And if you want to see Canada's first verbal bitchslap delivered in Parliament, Vote for Fancy C. Poitras.

Insomnia much?

It's about 3:45 am now, and I' ve been awake for about an hour now. I'm sick with a nasty little cold, I haven't slept well in like, weeks, and I'm grumpy as all hell.

I'm not sure what woke me up, but I think I started generating lists in my head along the lines of the software I use at work, categorizing those in the lives of Mary Queen of Scots and Queen Elizabeth I. Which got my mind going on the idea of religions, and specifically, I got drafting a letter in my head to the Catholic Archdiosese in the NWT in regards to returning some old and perfectly useless sacramental certificates. When I tried to think of soothing music in my head to put me to sleep, I started thinking about how I desparately want to sign Rod and I up for tango lessons, which brought me to sketching out a rough idea of a personally-chereographed dance in my head, which finally brought me to the movie "Loverboy" (1989) starring Patrick Dempsey, which compelled me to get out of bed and come online to see if I was the only looney who would put it on their Amazon.ca wishlist.

And hell, since I was online, might as well complain to the whole world of like, 6 people who still read this blog that MY BRAIN WON'T LET ME SLEEP! And people wonder why I have trouble sleeping through the nights anymore. It's because once that stupid lump of gray matter in my head starts firing on all cylinders, I'm stuck in waking mode when I ought to be in sleep mode. Especially now when I'm sick and should be resting. I left work at lunch on Friday because I was sick, and now I find myself unable to get the necessary rest I need to return to work Monday Morning in better condition. Which means I lose money because I haven't yet reached the 6 month end of probation, at which time I start earning sick days. Can anyone tell me in what universe it makes sense that I can receive full medical/dental/life insurance benefits from my employer a full 3 months before I can receive sick days? Seriously...I'm already receiving health benefits to assist me in times of illness, but I can't take a paid sick day before January 25th?

FUCK! Enough already stupid brain! Let me sleep!

Sleeping Beauty she ain't folks.

Lately, I haven't been sleeping well. Day after day of night after night, and for a solid week now, I've been draggy, grouchy, generally pissy, and I swear that I may have even dozed off at work the other morning. My patterns are shifting I guess. Time was that I'd pretty well sleep through October and November as much as possible, but with an 8 am start Mondays through Fridays, I'm losing precious sleep to balance out my levels o' sanity.

I've seen a few things that are truly blogworthy over the past week, but I've been too dazed and confused to even start. There was an article about a Vatican official arguing against Intelligent Design on the Science curriculums; there's the now-oncoming Federal Elections being shoved down my throat by pissy Party Leaders; there's a Supreme Court ruling in favour of the Mikisew Cree First Nation that's drawn much in the way of racist and irresponsible comments to upset me; there's big shopping adventures; and so on. But I'll be damned, these days I've been as useless as nipples on Ken dolls, and haven't had the energy some days to even wait the 5 minutes it takes to fully boot up the damn laptop. So you've been spared many witty/possibly mediocre rants in favour of this...an apologistic nothing.

My life's been in limbo since our return from Vancouver. So many questions, so little time to search for answers. And my attention span has hit it's peak. Gawd, I'm boring even myself. I'm going to read and hopefully get a better night's rest, but don't hold your breath on that one folks. Apparently there's no rest for the wicked, and I must've been awful bad somewhere along the way.

Well, I'll be buggered!

Paul Martin does own a pair!

http://news.yahoo.com/s/cpress/20051118/ca_pr_on_wo/apec_martin_bush

Okay, so they aren't the biggest pair at the table, but I always thought Paul was a eunich. That our leader would actually do something to get on the bad side of the (sadly) "Most Powerful Man in the World" is enough to make me reconsider my eunich theory in earnest.

How the hell could I not?!!?!?

http://www.zap2it.com/index/features/1,1146,98620,FF.html

This piece is so special and pithy, it's worthy of my notice and then some. Read and thoroughly enjoy the vivid imagery and acerbic wit. It's a wonderfully cynical attack on the madness of Tom's alien symbiant or spirit or whatever it is those scientologists believe in and fail to adequately explain to everyone else.

Go forth and read my pretties.

Well, at least the views were nice...

We're on the road folks. Right now, we're in a rainy Vancouver and loving the fact that the only snow around is on Mountain tops, the grass is still very green, and it's +8 instead of -8.

We left Edmonton around 5 pm on Wednesday and drove 9 torturously slow hours through the dark, windy, rainy, snowy mountains to get to Kamloops where we bedded down for the night. I drove us as far as Jasper, but halfway between Edson and Hinton, we ran into heavy winds, making for a super fun time of keeping our itty bitty Toyota Echo on the road. Then of course, there's the worry of animals on the road. I'm extra-paranoid about that one since the afternoon receptionist at work was recently in a deer/vehicle accident which totalled both the deer and her van, and that was only on the outskirts of Edmonton. There are far more critters in Jasper National Park to worry about. Believe me, if we had anything larger then a squirrel at 90 km/h in our Echo, the animal would WIN.

Rod took over in Jasper, and first had to carefully navigate that fun mountain pass. After that, we were forced to detour through the backwoods of BC for a while because of an accident on the highway, which was vaguely reminiscent of a bad 70's suspense horror flick..."Honey, if some psychopathic killer jumps out at us on this backwoods road and tears us to little bits, I'm never speaking to you again." Though I'm sure that from Rod's perspective, if he'd given it much more thought then "eh, detour", he would've been more likely to see it as akin to an opening scene for an X-files episode..."Scully, how else do you explain the complete disappearance of two healthy, well-adjusted adults? I'm telling you, the aliens forced the detour to abduct those people for some evil purpose!" /end scene.

Anyways, we bedded down in Kamloops at the Days Inn, and just 8 short hours later, we were up and on the road again. The wind kept up it's little cat-and-mouse game with our car, and brought it's friends Rain, Fog, and Snow to join in the fun. When I'm not driving, I'm not in control, which is bad, so I ended up yelling at Rod a lot about going too fast for the road conditions. I'm generally acknowledged to be the worst, most careless drive in our circle of friends, but even I wouldn't go flying down a wet, foggy, curvy, precariously placed mountain road filled with large trucks at 130 kph, thank you very much Mr. Chudyk. It has nothing to do with sounding like your mother, you jerk, and everything to do with actually wanting to live. Jerk.

Anyways, we got into Vancouver, and I went over to the SFU Harbour campus to enquire into the Master's Program I'm considering applying for. The news was not favourable. It's a fairly new program, so it's size is limited, and because of this, it's insane-O competitive to get into, so looks like my "Almost a B" grades ain't going to cut it. Then I asked about funding, and well, I might as well just sell a kidney to get the money. (Seriously, anyone need a good working kidney? I can let you have one of Rod's for $15,000. What? You didn't actually expect I'd sell one of mine, did you? C'mon! I mean, if I have to sell one of my own, I'll be too ill to start school on time! Think people, it's a planning issue! Besides, I'll hang on to my premium kidneys until it's time for us to buy a house or something.) There's not much in the way of bursaries, scholarships, etc. So this trip was super educational. I've learned that I'm too poor and lazy for Grad School, but I've got this nagging need to be something better then I am currently, supplemented by a nagging compulsion to always be right, so who better to bitchslap the world into implementing common sense International Health policies. so, what to do.

Well, today, Rememberance Day, we'll solemnly remember how fortunate we are that others in this world fought and died in terrible to preserve my right to bitch and complain; we'll go shopping; and we'll pig out on expensive gourmet room service breakfasts.

We leave tomorrow sometime, in anticipation of being back in Edmonton in the evening, though maybe this time we'll take the TransCanada to Lake Louise and go north from there instead. Wouldn't want to tempt fate again with another detour through BC's backroads..."Honey, that psychopathic alien wants to abduct us and tear us to shreds for your kidney, I'm sooooo mad at you now."