Friday, December 11, 2009

Frost Bites

Today as I was arriving at my parents and getting myself and all my junk and the 3 dogs outta the van to come inside, while I was juggling everything it occured to me how "northern" I was. On a day like today (where I am finding myself broke and looking for some other source of extra income) I got up at 7, had breakfast, showered, actually took the time to put a little product in my hair and blow dry it (usually it just gets the towel and air dry with a comb ran through it), got dressed. THEN, to the dogs delight (I'm not sure how they know but they do) I tucked my pants into my socks and started getting bundled up for the -23 (with the windchill) frostiness that was waiting for us outside. The four of us (me and 3 dogs) headed outside to finish clearing/shovelling the driveway. Well I shovelled and they played, chased and did dog things...an hour later I had finished what I had failed to complete the day before the driveway and kennel were ready for the next storm!?!?! I went back into the house to let the forth dog, a dalmatian that I'm fostering out for a pee, he hates the cold, thus the reason he stayed inside, then I gathered my junk I was taking to my parents started and loaded my van, then put the dalmatian in his kennel with a few of his favorite toys and some treats and got the other 3 crazy dogs in the van and came to my parents, and like I said as I was juggling all my things walking into the house, it occured to me that I would much rather be bundled up looking similar to the michelin tire mascot, than to be in shorts and a tank top, barefoot in flipflops sweating with every step I take cuz its too hot and muggy too enjoy the "sunnier" weather. I parenthised sunnier cuz today the sun is quite bright and its rather quite sunny out. The point of my story, give me warm boots, a snowsuit, warm knit mittens a toque and a scarf through me outdoors in the frozen tundra around me and I'll be much happier/content than spending a day in the blistering heat and mugginess sipping beer or frozen drinks.

Later Dayz!

Wednesday, December 9, 2009

a new view

I haven’t blogged in a long time, but I find when I’m at home I get distracted or find I could be spending time being my lazy self..haha.

Anyway a couple things to report on…I am leaving on an adventure soon. Myself, parents and grandma are headed to the middle east to Qatar, which is a tiny peninsula country off of Saudia Arabia. We are going to visit my dad’s brother and his wife, my uncle works for an oil company and has been working outta the office in Doha, Qatar for the past 3 years. Qatar is a tiny country probably about the size of New Brunswick, maybe a little smaller, they are mainly a Muslim country and surrounded by desert and water. My aunt has a fun week planned for us in hopes to “make up” for all the Christmas’ they’ve missed with us, which is pretty much every Christmas since I was born! (they usually spend it with my aunts family and my grandparents would sometime go there) It should be a great adventure. My only hopes are that my dad and grandma don’t drive me too insane on the travelling there and back and that we don’t have any snow storms to delay our flights. Visiting a muslim country has also brought on a few slight difficulties in packing as you have to dress modestly, meaning the shoulders to the knees have to be covered. And to look in my closet mainly only have heavy sweaters to cover the shoulders…but I looked and moved things around and finally found a couple light shirts I can wear over tank tops (I have to also wear the tanks cuz I can’t show too much cleavage either!) Pants well I mainly only wear pants so I was ok to cover the knees. Look for TONES of pictures when I get back, as I’m pretty broke and wont be buying much over there, mind you our money is worth 3 times as much there!

Like I mentioned I’m broke! I’ve applied for a couple over jobs but who knows I hope one of them will see all the skills I have to offer and hook me up with a job that pays well!

The last part is going to be about the Christmas holiday itself, and before I begin I just want to say my intent is not to offend any devout Christian followers that may be reading, but to maybe offer a different view of the “holiday”. This all began as I was bored and surfing the web reading different blogs. And I came across quite a few that made comments about the “meaning” of Christmas has become too material and its all about giving and receiving the best gifts. (as a result of my trip overseas our family isn’t doing gifts, or rather we’re doing gifts on a extremely scaled back way, I just had to get something for my brother, his gf and my cousin/sorta sister and between the 3 of them I spent no more than 60bucks!) Anyway…and some of these bloggers proclaimed that they are Christians and will celebrate Christmas with family and friends and going to their churches to celebrate the birth of Jesus. I’ve mentioned before that I don’t intend to offend anyone and that myself I don’t care if you are Christian, jewish, muslim or whatever, I consider myself not necessarily a non-believer but I like to question the core beliefs of any religion to see if there’s any possible way that theses “stories” could actually be true or have some truth to them. My beef with Christmas is that it’s not really Jesus’ birthday, they figure he was actually born in September sometime. We celebrate his “birth” in December because in 350, Pope Julius I declared that Christ’s birth would be celebrated on December 25, to make the transition to this “new” religion easier on the pagans who had their own traditions and festivals during this time of year which most centred around the winter solstice. So in my opinion Pope Julius decided that the higher road to Christianity would be to take the easier road and convince the pagans that they wouldn’t really be loosing any of their feasts or parties by switching to Christianity. I think that’s a bit of a cop-out, because if Christianity is all its cracked up to be wouldn’t have the people eventually discovered this for themselves and left their pagan rituals for the “better” way?! Perhaps because of this trickery from Pope Julius, is just now catching up with us, perhaps the pagans had it right all along, with their multi-gods, and festivals to celebrate the earth itself, which perhaps we should have continued doing maybe we wouldn’t be in such a state of environmental crisis with global warming and pollution?! Perhaps the majority of us are actually true pagans at heart and just enjoy the company of family and friends and all the festivities and celebration that this time of year has to offer. Again I didn’t tend to offend anyone, just to maybe question their beliefs and dig deeper to see where other religions are all about, to have an open mind about everything and anything,

Later Dayz!