If February were a blog post...

Almost half-way through February.  It's starting to sag though, the positive attitude.

Frozen branch near Terminal Beach, 2011

February is very difficult in Canada.  January, you have had Christmas vacation and a bit of a rest and you are just getting started with the real snow and the cold.  There's a sense of settling in for a spell of it, the winter projects kick in, the NHL gets interesting, and when it's fit to go out, there's sledding, and skating, and ski-joring or ski-ing or whatever it is you do to stay one step away from catatonic.

Also, there's still February - April to get through, so you don't want to over-think anything.

The end of January is a bit of a milestone though!  Cheers you right up for a minute.

And February is a short month.  The positive attitude gets a surge.  In the second week of February, the days stretch perceptibly at each end, so I am now driving to and from work in the dawn/ dusk, as opposed to the pitch black of January.  I can see the ice and snow on the road.  I feel less scared.  The cold makes for some pretty spectacular dawns.

Easy, peasy...

So here's the thing.

Round about the tenth of the month, you remember that February is not a short month.

In fact it is not a month at all.

February is in fact the moment in time when the long-suffering son-in-law of the meanest, coldest-assed, tightest-fisted, mascara-dripping bitch who ever produced a spoilt blonde turns away from the nagging to stoke the fire, but instead picks up the poker and hefts it.

If February was a scene in a movie it would be the Tommy Lee Jones soliliquy at the end of no Country for Lost Men.

If February was a book, it would be written by Franz Kafka.

If February was a song, Joy Division would have recorded it.

February is when the light is so harsh that every line on your face, every grey hair on your head is screaming 'LOOK AT ME EVRYONE, LOOKAT MEEEE'.

February is when the Caribbean music on your iTunes makes you cry instead of dance.

February is when your body has had enough of minus 28 and just wants to sleep all day and eat all night.  But you have to haul it to and from an office with forced air heating that makes your skin crawl.

I was on the phone with a federal colleague the other day, and I couldn't find my words in a week of not being able to find my words (not good in a week with an interview) and I said 'I'm sorry, i can't find my words, I have February Brain' and she said "THAT'S EXACTLY WhAT IT IS!!!!!!!!!!! I haVe it Too"

And that's the real problem.  We all have it at the same time, so life is a little grumpy right now.

Thankfully the Canada Games are on now, so the kids are off school for two weeks.  The disgustingly positive people have all gotten extra days off to volunteer.  The disgustingly selfish people are taking advantage of cheap trips to the Caribbean.

And the rest of us....

Hopefully there will be enough people gone out of the office that we can all hide in our offices, watch people having revolutions in countries where you can actually stand on the street for more than five minutes at a time.... and ignore each other in peace for the rest of the month.

Nearly only five weeks to the Equinox.
Eight weeks to the fishing season!!

Stay warm everyone.

A Neck like a Jockey's B****x

As they would say at home.

GM has I mean.

General Motors, I'm talking about.

Or Government Motors as they call it now.

Here's their ad about the fact that they had to get a multi-billion dollar bailout from the taxpayers of the USA and Canada. I'm posting this mainly for the European readership - we have this advertisement inflicted on us approximately every twelve minutes if we are sad enough to be watching cable television.

The similarities with the all-American Budweiser beer commercials are obvious - they even have the thundering hooves of the American Mustang (which is a competing brand, no??) ... I wonder do they know they shoot mustangs nowadays.

Nice to see they're spending my money on getting down to business.... We're not going out of business, we're getting down to business.

Oh you are, are you? WTF were you doing up to now?

See, see, we have a photo of a solar panel in our ad, that means our cars don't use gas.

They just sold the Hummer brand to a Chinese company.

Roll on the resource wars...

http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2009/06/02/new-gm-ad-breaks-online/

This ad makes me so mad I could spit. And its ubiquitousness means that it is being hard-wired into people who make their cultural decisions from televisual images..... which appears to be most people these days.

Terrifying manipulation of the people using their own money.

Can't we ban this stuff?

I mean, we ban drugs?

This is worse.

Nevermind what I felt about Nevermind

One of the problems with writing a personal blog is that you generally aren't near a computer when you are having slightly better than shallow thoughts. And I do my thinking in the car, or when I can't sleep, which makes even scribbling things down on a piece of paper difficult.

So, even when I have managed to figure something out, by the time I get round to blogging about it, I've usually forgotten what it was.

Which is a roundabout way of saying I don't know if this post is going anywhere.

But it's the journey, boys and girls...

We were in the car on Sunday, driving through the radio wasteland that is the Annapolis Valley, so I put on Nevermind and we listened to it for the first time in a long time.

I think Nevermind is the only album I own whose opening track brings me right back to the moment I heard it for the first time.

WHOOOOOOOOOOOOOSH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

It is November 1991. I am in my room in the GMB in Trinity. A friend up from Galway is raving about his newest tape. Accent Monkey is here and other people are coming and going as usual and we play it and it is fantastic so we play it six more times and then the girl upstairs (the one who has the enormously loud orgasms with someone called T-aaa-dddhhh--gggg-hhhh!!!!! twice a week) bangs on the floor so we stop.

Then the movie Singles came out a few months later. Set in Seattle, home of Nirvana, it made the twenty-something struggle to fit into the world of work and bills and adulthood hopelessly romantic, and we all thought we'd like to be Seattle grunge slacker green creatives who live in way cool co-op apartments and drink Starbucks coffee.

Well, I did.

While trying to find an adequate definition of the word 'slacker', I found this post from what could be described as a very early blog. It's called Barefoot Jim's Flat. Like Barefoot Jim, I've never considered the word slacker as describing someone who is 'workshy', unlike him I've always seen it as being in some way 'responsibility shy'.

It's hard to believe all that angst and hope and trepidation was swirling around my head nearly eighteen years ago.

It's also hard to believe I ever aspired to drinking Starbucks coffee, but there you go...

It's even harder to believe I'm still getting away with being a slacker. Even though it's not a word I can say outside my head anymore, and I had to move to Atlantic Canada (Capital of the Slacker Universe) to haul my ass back onto the slacker waggon train...

...because slacker's a dirty word these days...

Why, I don't know.

Look at the end result of all the running around and huffing and puffing and wheeling and dealing we did between 1996 - 2008.

What did we achieve that we could not have achieved in a more sustainable way and at a slightly slower pace?

I hope I never get taken in like that again.

I want to grow old and be a slacker Walmart greeter.

Goddamn Mercury... you devil you....

We have a joke in the office. The joke is Queenie knows about astrology, and when weird planetary alignments occur, she warns everyone in the office.

And they all laugh at the weird Irish woman in the office.

And then it all goes Peter Tong because the SHIT IS REAL!

It's kinda like a weird grown-up-lady version of telling zombie stories in the tent with just a flashlight at summer camp.

Before you go for that last trip to the toilet pits....

So, last week, I let the Office LayDeez know... mercury is going retrograde again.

Three times a year.

Six weeks a time.

Plus the turbulence four days fore and aft.

That's a lotta days a year.

Retrograde Mercury's like a poltergeist - cars, computers, electronics, contracts, job offers, all that kind of necessary shit... it all goes pear-shaped. Zzzzzzzzzzzzzz....psssssssssst... stuff breaks down, blows out, messes up... things you think are legally nailed suddenly take off and fly through the atmosphere.

You just avoid avoid avoid.

I've been pretty good at avoiding it, but the Universe has been gunning for me for a while as I have been floating like a butterfly and stinging like a bee for far too long.

Today the little bastard got me.

Queenie had a day off.

Queenie's Day Off.
By Queenie.

5.40am. Get up. Shower. Put work clothes on.

6.10am. Drive Himself to work because Albert the Station Wagon is at the doctor with a potentially extremely expensive light on and a desire to stall constantly.

6.20am. Get to Himself's work 30 minutes early because Himself hates to be late.

Sit in carpark because it's raining and I still love him too much to make him stand in the rain despite the fact that I could still be in bed asleep.

6.47am. Leave carpark and drive 275km to Antigonish. Notice there are no other cars on the road because it's the Friday of a bank holiday weekend and everyone else is winding down, Nova Scotia-style.

9.18am. Get to Antigonish one hour early for meeting. Drive around Antigonish looking for nice alternative Fair Trade-type cafe for breakfast.

9.55am. Give up and order Tim Horton's Bacon Breakfast sandwich with no cheese.

10.05am. Eat THBBs with cheese.

10.06am. Gag on cheese.

10.10am. Try to pull out of Antigonish Main St. onto Hwy 104 at weird Yield Junction where speed limit is supposed to be 70kmh.

I have to paste this, because I can't write it again:

I've just come off my favourite highway - the 104 highway of death - and some cnut in a tandem truck just veered over and put me out of my lane, and put me ahead of the path of an suv doing about 150 so I just put my foot down and closed my eyes and said goodbye to you all.

After a moment the suv started beeping like crazy so I reckon I got ahead of him and woke him up.

O joyous life!!

That is the third time this has happened to me on this stretch of road.

Anyways..... I have a mad adrenalin rush on now!!!!!!! Jibber jibber jibber.......

1030am. Facilitate meeting between ten engineering types who have no intention of ever fucking agreeing about anything.

Get them to agree on what they disagree on. Facilitation 101.

11.59am. The weekend starts!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

12.01am. The car won't start.

Thirty minutes, three sets of cable, and a conclave of engineers later, the car starts, but I have to drive to Halifax without stopping to strengthen the battery and I only have half a tank of gas.

3.38pm. Glide into the Ultramar on Victoria Rd. on fumes, fill the car, pee (oh bliss), get a coffee, get a water, get a bar of chocolate, pay $80 for the lot, start the car again.

3.39pm. It starts!!!!!!!!!!!

And I would remind you boys and girls, that I am alive at this point, having nearly died earlier.

4.00pm. Pick up Himself at work where I left him in the rain nine hours earlier. Albert the Station Waggon needs a new fuel pump. $1200. Minimum. Plus $300 for the spark plugs.

Goddamn Mercury... you devil you.. you got me this time.....

But I'm ALIVE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Happy Victoria Day everyone... it's not about her, it's about VICTORY!!!!!!!!!!!!

Generation Loser has a great soundtrack thanks to Buck 65

Seeing the beauty in small things is what this blog is supposed to be about.

It's quite difficult to do that at the moment, because the world and the weather keeps dumpin' a load on us all, don't they.

But as I am up at the crack of dawn this morning, due to the not-so-small snoring sounds that were emanating from the body in the bed beside me, I thought maybe I'd catch up on some of the small things that are keeping me going through this long winter and recession.

1. CBC Radio 2 Drive, with Rich Terfry (aka Buck 65).
Those of you who know me will know I am a Buck 65 fan anyways. I feel we are psychically connected (but not in a scary, over-enthusiastic way of course) because Buck 65 played Whelans in Dublin the night before I left Ireland for Canada. And then I ended up living in his home province.

Anyways, after spending time in Paris and New York, and just a few months after his amazing collaboration with Symphony Nova Scotia (take one hour out of your day this weekend to listen to this concert - you will not be sorry), Mr. Terfry abandoned the Maritimes again, moved to Toronto, but thankfully, was snatched up by the CBC for its relaunch of its Radio 2. The Drive show goes out 3 - 6pm every weekday.

So it's like he's here in a way.

It's a good show.

You don't want to get out of the car... yes, the show is that good.

The howls of outrage from the baby boomers who wanted wall to wall classical are drowned out every day by the best of Canadian singer-songwriters, roots, and urban (whatever that is).

Drive focuses on Canadian music naturally, but plays international stuff too (actually, Buck plays Irish artist, Damian Rice a lot... I keep meaning to email the show to tell him to check out good Irish artists) and there's a little sub-genre of south american pop and reggae and dub going on there too.

The best part of the show - apart from the music and Rich Terfry's rich-voiced ramblings about whatever - is the live sessions he hosts. Tune in here for the back calendar.

There, now I've done a 'nice thing in Queenie's world', there's a rant that's been building for a bit....

I was reading Macleans magazine the other day and they had one of those moan, whinge, complain, horror articles (well they had many, but I'm going to talk about one in particular) that was all about 'Generation Loser: the generation that will be poorer than its parents'.

It featured a nice, unfortunate, Ontario-based couple in their thirties, who had done the usual thing - arsed through college and their twenties, then 'gotten lucky' working for an auto-parts company for $33 an hour, then gotten even luckier in meeting each other. They bought a house and started a baby, before suddenly getting their pink slips.

Now he's making $11 an hour doing something menial, she's at home with the baby, and they don't know how they will survive THE FUTURE.

According to Macleans, they are typical of a generation that are losers BECAUSE WE ARE THE FIRST TO END UP POORER THAN OUR PARENTS.

A number of things struck me about the article.

Firstly, to go from a household income of $1ook plus, to one of under $25k two months before you have your first child is friggin' scary enough, without having Macleans come in to do a feature on what a pair of losers you are. Even if Macleans is using that term to describe an entire generation and not just you two.

Secondly, our parents did well overall, yes, but their high end manufacturing jobs and conspicuous consumption has damaged the planet, and..... as far as I can make out, they have mostly all just lost their pensions in the stock market (as well as ours) ....

....so I'm kind of at a loss about why we are the losers.

Are we losers because we are the first generation not going to be able to do the same as our parents because it's unsustainable?

Because we could maybe wait a few more years and get judged on our overall performance.

Oh, that's right, Macleans being a paper-based media organization, it will probably have folded by then. ;-)

Thirdly... what is this shit about 'the first generation'?

There have been thousands of generations. I'm sure there are earlier generations that lost more of their best and brightest to the sabre-toothed tiger than their parents, or got whipped into a worse chain gang building some more insane necropolis than their parents, or had to pay more rent to the local squire than their parents, or didn't last as long in some hellish part of the Imperial bureaucracy, or WHATEVER.

It annoys me intensely that economic commentators only look back as far as the development of the Model T factory line, and generational commentators only look back as far as the development of the American middle classes when they purport to examine historical trends.

It narrows the potential for insight so much.

The simple fact remains that under the current model of economic development (i.e. the growth model), if we were all (as a generation) to 'do better' than our parent's generation, the natural world would collapse under the strain.

So we can't.

I'm sure some of us will.

But most of us won't.

People who build a future on a job making car parts in Upper Canada certainly won't, unless they change life direction rapid.

Our parents did the best they could with the decades they got, and they got some of it right and some of it wrong and we will be the same.

I wish we could all accept, internalise and celebrate this concept and move on with it.

Then instead of wringing our hands about what a loser generation we are, we could redefine progress and get ourselves out of this mess.

After that wish, I wish I could find some economic commentators who are looking at the slowdown in sustainability terms (feel free to post links).

And if I got the full complement of wishes, I wish Macleans et al would find and publish numbers that measure the benefits of sustaining and repairing what we already have, rather than droning on with the shock horror statistics measuring cataclysmic drops in the creation of mountains of poisonous plastic and chrome.

As JD Irving, the Tree Growing People would say in their ads that pretend they give a shit about nature 'that's my what if!'

Most hilarious economic meltdown occurance of the week

What: The world's stock markets plunging yet again, after hearing that the Chinese government wouldn't spend billions on a stimulus package to make things better.

Why: Did the running dogs of capitalism actually think that the Chinese government was going to save them?

Your turn to intern

From this morning's Guardian:

This year's graduates face the toughest battle in a generation for jobs, with tens of thousands facing unemployment, according to evidence documenting the impact of the economic downturn.

Ministers are so concerned that they are drawing up a rescue package to help the class of 2009 find a job or get new skills when they graduate this summer. The proposals, from the universities secretary John Denham's office, will target the 18-24 age group amid fears that a generation of young people will be scarred by recession. They include an internship scheme where students would work at a reduced wage to gain experience. Four firms - including Barclays and Microsoft - have agreed to take part in the scheme, which is being called the National Internship Scheme.

Denham told the Guardian: "This year there will be a large number of graduates - the children of the babyboomers - and we are keen to make sure that they get as good a chance as we can give them to get jobs and build good careers. We will not leave them to fend for themselves.

He says: "We don't want these spells of unemployment to get long. A spell of unemployment is bad when young, and the longer it is, the worse it is. We want to do everything to prevent it becoming long-term unemployment."

Evidence of the extent of the downturn in graduate recruitment uncovered by the Guardian includes:

• Major companies have narrowed their search for graduates to five elite universities as they cut recruitment numbers.
• The organisers of the annual graduate recruitment "milk round" say jobs in finance and retail are drying up. Even where companies are recruiting, vacancies will not necessarily last until summer as the economic slump worsens.
• The management consultancy KPMG, seen as a recruitment barometer, says its 600 graduate entry jobs are nearly all taken months ahead of schedule as students scramble for the top jobs.

First of all, don't panic, it'll be fine.

Back in the day, when I were a young one, whiling away my days in the Free Palestinian Liberation Cafe drinking god-awful organic coffee from Chiapas, the milk round dried up regularly. I still managed to get a free weekend in England (I think it was with Lloyds Bank) where I had a very nice time and failed miserably to get a job in finance because I didn't have the killer instinct they needed for retail banking.

Imagine if I hadda gotten that job. I'd be an unemployed branch manager by now probably.

More importantly, I'd be miserable.

When we left university, we had a two stop trip.

Stop one. Out the college, turn right, down to Tara St. dole office to sign on.

Every Thursday morning you had to go down to get your money - £59.63 if I remember rightly, and yeah it was a pain because you had to queue for an hour, but you met everyone you knew there and spent the time figuring out where to meet up that night.

Stop two. Continue down Tara St. to the quays, turn left, then left again onto D'Olier St. to the FAS office. Ask the nice man in the FAS office if you could get on a FAS scheme.

A FAS scheme was/ is like a National Intern Program, except the government paid you to work for a theatre or a charity, or a hospice or a school, or a community radio station, something in the public sphere that needed help and had no money. It differs from the new National Intern Program in that it didn't subsidize labour for a multinational that should be paying proper wages. And unlike the new NIP, if you needed to change your hours, or make your point strongly, or try new things, you were allowed. I have a feeling you'll have to work very hard in the NIP to be one of the interns that gets kept on.

On a FAS scheme everyone worked about 20 hours a week. Lots of important social capital got made and spent. There was a lot of sitting around chatting and learning about other people's lives and dreams. A lot of bad coffee was drunk. I sat in a Portakabin in Coolock for a few months and dreamed up a community arts festival. A friend of mine ran a radio station. Another friend of mine managed a domestic abuse shelter.

The other twenty hours a week, you lived your life. You made art, or wrote, or helped run a magazine, or a theatre collective and of course you had some class of a nixer job so you could eat meat a couple of times a week.

You went to the cinema during the day.

Eventually, the world turned, the economy got better, all those compatriots of mine who had studied real subjects, like computer engineering, got the multinationals interested in Ireland, and we all landed in the real world. Started making a little money.

A little money.

That's the thing. The wages will be lower now. You'll have to work your way up to the big bucks for a few years.

Life's a bitch to random generations.
This recession business happened to us.
It's happening to you.
It didn't happen to the one in between.
But, far worse things happened to previous generations.

And the fair trade coffee is at least drinkable nowadays.

You'll be the better generation for it.

And we should spare a thought for those Palestinian 18 - 24 year olds who have no future to look forward to, only the bitter harvest of what's being sown today.

Red carpet: six

6. Ireland is at the end of the cycle, and Nova Scotia is at the beginnning of the cycle.

So there is something amazing that we could create together if we just sat down for an hour and talked about it.

I have to find a way to say this without saying the name of a place that they can't drive to.

Roll out the red carpet: five

Well, why should I do all the thinking?

What do you think?

Therein lies the question.

The workin' man here doesn't want us because he's just at the point where there's such a need for increased productivity that maybe, just maybe, the bossman might consider giving him a proper raise....

.... and there's the payment on the satellite radio in the truck...

... and the truck payment of course...

... and the Golf...

... and the four wheeler...

... and the new kitchen...

... and the fishing camp...

... that means the Home Depot card...

... and the Canadian Tire...

... and the PC card...

Why is there not an NDP card or a Liberal card?

Anyways, I think us immigrants are going to find ourselves in the midst of the battle for the hearts and minds of the workers.

I am happy to sit it out. It might prove interesting enough to be congratulated for surviving it.

I sure as hell aren't going to invite my friends over any more though.

And I'm not voting for more health spending.

Back to the red carpet.

4. Maybe you should treat your own workers well.

Then they'd tell other people to come here.

That's how it works by the way.

Rolling out the Red Carpet

This shall be my theme this weekend.

Yes, I have decided to have a theme.

Maybe that would force me to blog through guilt.

The pr company that my recent boss recently absconded to with all the knowledge of the Justice portfolio and gas regulation and other things (damned knowledge workers and their portable brains) is asking people how Nova Scotian businesses should roll out the red carpet for immigrants.

I thought I should come up with a few ideas.

I shall be mulling it over the weekend.

Here's a couple of starters.

1. Pay us properly.

2. No? In lieu of that, gissa chance at getting the jammy jobs. Why should they all go to well-connected locals with funny college rings on their fingers?

3. No? In lieu of that, don't promote Nova Scotia for its quality of life and then work us to death.

Queenie goes off to tidy up, eat, open a bottle of wine for to continue mulling.

The right to reside in the tree

So Canada Post never bothered to get my passport signed for in the Immigration Office in New York. Consequently while they were 'looking for it urgently', it stayed there for a while, got its shiny new PRC stamp in it and found its way back to me today.

Via Canada Post of course.

I waved it at Himself (well the note from the postman saying 'while you were out...' anyways) and said, now, I'm in. Finally. Does that mean I get to live in the Tree House? Previous readers of this blog will know that the Tree House is where the big boys get to hang out. Girls don't often get to hang in the Tree House. Well this one doesn't anyways.

No, Himself said. You just get to live in the tree.

Himself was not being defeatist. It's just Himself has been dealing with an extended period of Queenie asking to be let into the Tree House at work and the boys saying no and Queenie coming home in tears, and claiming she's going home to Ireland so he'd better sort out the CD collection. Or wanting to move to South America, or Alberta, immediately!, before he's even had his supper, so he's pretty much defined his position on all things boreal-based and habitationally-inclined for the moment and is having none of the boys ever again.

Even if it does mean voting for the Greens.

Well, how the hell am I going to get into the Tree House now, I asked Him.

Cut the tree down, he suggested.

I love the fact that Himself is an anarchist by instinct.

Anyways, I feel a bit better now. It was pretty hard to say goodbye to the Queen Parents and the neighbours in the same week, and then to lose the boss, and then get a new boss without any pretext of a competition, and have Canada Post not give a shit about my passport and nobody care about the fact that I need a pension and to get my teeth seen to, and to see good friends not let into the Tree House either. Etc.

But you can't keep a good lumberjack down, can you.

Sometimes the weekends take longer than you have

Himself and Queenie were both sick today.

Terrible.

Couldn't go to work.

Either of us.

Happily we are all better now after a sleep and a lie around all day, so we'll be back at the coalface tomorrow.

Don't know what could have possibly caused it.

Honest.

Maybe the shrimp we had last night. I'm always a bit queasy when I have shrimp. But I thought barbequed would be okay.

Probably the shrimp.

Not the weekend at all.

Nosirree bob.

Nor the twelve weekends preceeding that catching up on us.

Some days, you just need a day to get your head and your body and your ability to face the hell that is being employed by the man (in Nova Scotia) all back into alignment after a bad week.

Call it a mental health day or whatever. Some days it is physically and mentally impossible to face work.

In exciting building news, Peter the Lover is back ensconced in the apartment upstairs with the new neighbour from hell, and NO I DID NOT read the letter - what kind of a wench do you all think I am?

But it must have been a good letter, as it is all back to normal upstairs.

Hurray.

Not.

However, apart from being woken at 2.30am last night by the NNFH moving the furniture or something around, it's been quiet so far.

We spent the weekend in Londonderry.

Londonderry, Nova Scotia.

With Himself's cousin and his family. Great time had by all as is normal on our annual trip to Londonderry.

Every time we go we say - we must do this more often. And then we never do of course.

Anyway, washed those work blues right out of my hair.

And then when we got back the Melwood gang had a bonfire with BBQ shrimp AND sparklers. All finished by eleven pm too.

So I'm all set to go back and face into another few weeks of the TreeHouse Gang.

Sigh.

The things we have to do to pay the rent.

Friday at last

And I shouldn't really be blogging, I should be packing. We are travelling down to the island this weekend. So although I have packed the food, there only being one crappy shop on said island, I also have to pack all the cleaning products. For to clean the house. Which has not been opened in six months.

There will be a lot of spiders I'm thinking.

And we'll have to rehook the water up.

And start a fire to wake up the spiders.

And Lady Moonbeam arrived with the full moon last night.

Never mind.

Later tonight we will be sitting on the deck looking out over the village and past it to the sea, and the moon will be huge and sitting directly in front of us, accompanied by all the stars.

And there might even be a whale or two!!

So it will be worth the packing and the four hour drive. And the cleaning.

I had an action-packed day yesterday. Firstly I had my immigration medical. I got all the paperwork ready and was waiting at the bus stop for the one bus that would bring me to the clinic when I realised I didn't have the form. Ran back to the apartment. Not there. Damn damn, left it at work. Called a taxi to drive me to work, wait for me to get forms, and drive me to the clinic. The taxi driver could sense my stress. Was I late for work? I explained. Turns out he was an Iranian Kurd, a refugee, who translated for other refugees at the clinic. The international brotherhood of Canadian immigrants kicked in and by the time he got me to the clinic (in time) I was no longer stressed and we had had a great chat about Kurdistan. I won the prize for passenger who knew most about Kurdistan.

Not a difficult prize to win in Nova Scotia, where the only place everyone (thinks they) know about is Scotland.

So I had my weight, height, sight, hearing, blood pressure, urinalysis and blood work done at the clinic, along with a lot of questions about my lifestyle that I didn't answer completely truthfully, but who does! Then it was off to the hospital for my chest x-ray. The whole thing was over in ninety minutes.

Out-patient queue chaos rules Nova Scotia, my ass!!

Then it was back to work for the rest of the day.

Sigh.

There is a growing contempt and lack of respect for staff in our workplace that is really starting to bug me. It stems from some recent appointments; a combination of the personalities involved and their interaction with other senior managers. To be truthful, I don't care who's in charge of the treehouse; so long as my contribution to the workplace is respected, and simple phrases like please and thank you and how is your day going remain the currency of the place.

The reason I don't care is because politics is a collaborative process and so there are no superstars (well, maybe the leader, but certainly not staff superstars). Unfortunately, self-indulgent macho bullshit appears to be gaining a foothold.

In the spirit of everything I've ever done in my life before and everything I will ever do in the future, and with the power invested in me by Lady Moonbeam (ie a grinding backache and consequent foul temper) I called it yesterday and told the ringleader he was to stop being a prick.

He didn't bat an eyelid before he said he was what he was and he wasn't going to change.

He is what he is all right. But I am not having it.

Nosirreebob.

It might be okay to pull this crap in the provincial backwaters of the world, but some of the rest of us have worked in places where this type of thing is not acceptable any more. And I for one am going to drag this workplace into the late twentieth century if it kills me.

In the full knowledge that it probably will kill me.

I just need a plan.

A plan, anyone?

In the absence of a plan as to how to put an end to it at the moment, though, I am going to invoke the spirits of the Stoics, as outlined in Farmer Brown's blog.

Cross-posting rocks, doesn't it!

Back to originals.

I had two dreams last night about people in Ireland.

In the first dream, Polly came to stay with me and Himself in our apartment in Toronto. And threatened to leave because Himself was so messy and she was sick of sharing a room with him because he insisted on walking around naked all the time.

????????????????

I think I was sleeping on the couch. I can't remember why.

In the second dream, Eileen and Stevo came to visit us here, just for a day, and I couldn't get any time off work. So I drew up a tour of Halifax for them to do with Himself but he wouldn't do it because he knew he'd get lost. So I had to explain it to him over and over again and then I missed work anyway. And Eileen was annoyed because I had ruined her holiday.

Thoughts, anyone?

Ammonite left a comment on my blog that reminded me that I am talking too much about the teenager. She didn't say that, but it did remind me.

Of course you just blog about what's in your brain.

Also, there is a lot of stuff going on in my brain that I can't blog about for privacy reasons of one sort or another.

Some day, maybe.

But I won't blog about the teenager today. Particularly as I have my first ever Parent Teacher meeting tonight, so I shall hold off and tell you all about how much fun that was some other time.

I'll moan about work instead!!

Hurrah, says everyone.

I always have an up and down relationship with work. I am one of those people who feels that if I am to spend eight hours a day in an office with some people moving paper around, then it should be meaningful and fulfilling. There should be efficient communication, and consultation, and a certain level of consensus about the day/week/month ahead.

Unfortunately, life's not like that, is it.
Also unfortunately, I used to teach people how to do that in a previous life.

So I'm probably more fussy than most.

But Jesus on a bike carrying Mary on the crossbar, is it too much to ask that someone walk down the corridor and have a conversation with me about work? Why do I have to get endless emails that obviously took four or five minutes to type, when a little trot down the corridor would do. Plus there would be eye contact, and body language, and all that non-verbal communication that helps to prevent conflict, because you understand where the sentiments of the communication are coming from.

And respond accordingly.

And shoot the shit a bit too. Thereby imparting important information on what's going on really.

WHICH IS THE MOST IMPORTANT ELEMENT OF MANAGING KNOWLEDGE WORKERS IN A KNOWLEDGE INDUSTRY.

Unlike cold, impersonal emails. Which cause my hackles to rise and my back to go up and all that other non-verbal stuff that results in a snotty response. Or none at all.

I am blessed in work that there are a lot of good people in the office, who are great individuals, who share life's ups and downs and make the day go by a lot faster. I am also blessed that I have a 'board of directors' as diverse and colourful as the Nova Scotian weather, but who are not there all the time, thereby ensuring we never get tired of them.

But I find the fact that certain people, who live just down the hall, who would prefer to send me twenty emails a day rather than spend five minutes talking to me, profoundly depressing and demeaning. Is my company so bad? Am I so boring? Do I drone on and on and on about stuff?

It means that there is no sense at management level regarding what's going on in my private life. Unless I say something. And then of course I am ASKING FOR HELP and there has to be an intervention and more emails. When really I just need a pat on the arm and a 'don't worry, it'll be fine'.

And of course it also means that there is none of that in the other direction. Which is also important.

And the overall outcome is that the staff either join together in feeling crap about the situation or snipe at each other. Which is what happened yesterday.

I hate being an annoying bad-tempered bitch in work.

But when that's your experience, it is inevitable that there will come a certain stage at which you stop feeling undervalued and start feeling bolshie.

Faffing around with some good ole Kentucky boys

That's what I did in work today.

Gosh, Queenie's job is so laid back and interesting, I hear you all say.

I wisht.

Electricity generation Fuel Adjustment Mechanisms. That involve Fuel Adjustment Factors. Which is where the faffing part comes in.

With some consultants from Kentucky. One of whom sounded just like Jim Rockford from the Rockford Files.

And a load of lawyers in black suits. And some environmentalists. Who were the people not wearing the suits.

For five hours.

Environmentalists don't get to bill for the hours they spend at these sessions.

And neither does Queenie.

Sigh.

Anyways, off to Cape Breton tomorrow for a little spin around the offshore industry.

I always wanted to drive from the top of Cape Breton back to Halifax via Stellarton at one in the morning in February.

The last time I did this trip with this driver we nearly died and I got the worst flu of my life.

So those of you who believe in that kind of stuff, pray for me.

And those of you who know with whom I am travelling, stop laughing.

See you all Saturday!

Maybe...

Interviews and blue bins - the cycle of life

Early Saturday morning, pot of Just Us! jungle blend coffee scenting the apartment, sunshine streaming in the window, no snow ploughs this morning hence silence on the street, blog.

Perfection.

Himself is up and out already, gone to a job interview. Those of you who follow this blog will know that Himself has been assiduously trawling websites and personal contacts in search of a job these past few weeks. He actually got one this week, but the wages were so low it would have cost us money to send him there every day, so he graciously declined.

I'd imagine it is very difficult being a red-blooded, hunter-gatherer type male whose girlfriend is currently paying the bills. But I don't think it should be so difficult that you'd work beneath your ability and worth to get out from under it.

It was a bit stressful for Himself I think, turning down a job that was THERE FOR THE TAKING. So I twisted his arm a little, because I wanted to take the stress out of the decision for him. And the relief when it was done was visible.

Anyways, in the way of things here in Nova Scotia (and everywhere else I'd imagine), I arrived home from one of the shittest days in work ever, in a state of pure despair at life, to find him happily wading through a sheaf of interview offers.

Six in one day.

Yes six.

Has anyone ever in the history of the world been offered six job interviews in the space of three hours? Apart from David Beckham when he announced he didn't like living in Manchester anymore?

I have concluded that the second Friday in February must be 'get off my arse and call some applicants about an interview for that job I've been paid to advertise for the last month' day here in Nova Scotia.

Himself is all tail up now, as one would be when one goes from 'worried whether there's something WRONG with you' to 'in huge demand because there's a labour crisis in the province' in the space of twenty four hours.

Also, the ONE is one of them, the ONE being a good job that Himself would like, that pays well and offers the kind of supervisory responsibility of which he is more than capable.

So whatever kind of juju you use for these things, lash some of it on us for the next week please.

Because whatever about getting a job, getting the ONE is the icing on the cake.

And we like iced cakes in this house.

I made two chocolate cakes, with added chocolate and melted dark Lindt chocolate spooned on top with a sprinkling of ground almonds, the other night and they are both gone.

I don't know what surprised me more. The fact that I made two cakes. Or the fact that they were so nice they lasted thirty six hours.

I shouldn't be surprised they were nice I suppose. The Queen Mother makes a mean chocolate cake and taught me well.

I suppose I was surprised they were popular.

Although some of the people living in this house LOVE chocolate.

Also I brought one of them in to work yesterday, as I knew it was going to be one of the shittest days in work ever, so I thought my colleagues should have something nice to get them through the day.

I. Am. Getting. So. Effing. Domesticated. It. Is. Effing. Scary.

The reason work was so shittest day ever was because we had to clear out the library and the filing room in order for the renovators to move in and re-arrange the space.

Think twenty years of random dumping of file boxes. Think dust hippos. Think paper cuts. Think hours and hours of standing at the recycle bin ripping off plastic binder spirals. Think endless hours of removing steel filing clips. Think of doing all this in a tiny room with your colleagues.

Normally I wouldn't really mind this kind of thing, it being an excuse to not do any real work. But Lady Moonbeam is in town this week, so think all of the above with a grinding pain in my lower back and abdomen and a complete absence of any sense of humour.

The Chief of Staff understood the signals emanating from Queenie well enough to order pizza for lunch.

I like the way he is starting to adapt to my way of doing things!!

Our leader and a couple of our MLAs had turned up just before lunch and stayed to chat. Not for the pizza. God No. Intellectual conversation was the hook there. Definitely.

So we all had pepperoni slices and Sprite and chocolate cake and talked about This is Spinal Tap for thirty minutes.

I must say I do like working for a political leader who is happy to sit with his dusty, grungy team who are a bit stinky after a hard morning at the recycle bin, and shout 'this one goes all the way up to eleven' and correct their interpretation of the lyrics of Stonehenge when his mouth is not full of pizza and chocolate cake.

I can't imagine Rodney MacDonald doing that.

Then I had to go back to the recycle bin for another four hours. Which was devastating.

Himself has just called to say he got the job he interviewed for twenty minutes ago, which we had agreed is the NEXT BEST to the ONE, the interview for which is Tuesday. So we're set now either way.

HOORRRAAYYYY!!

Of course, this means he'll be earning more than me again now...

I kinda liked being the top cat!

Breathtaking insouciance

I hope I'm using this word in the right context.

Today I sat and watched a presentation from a senior manager in a company that specialises in building systems for fighter jets. He showed a picture of Albert Einstein while talking about 'not knowing the things you don't know', which is of course Rummyspeak. Then he gave us all a lecture on the importance of ethics in business.

I didn't know whether to laugh or cry. So I just went back to the office and ate sweets all afternoon and wrote questions on the Nova Scotian economy (which according to this morning's seminar is going down the tubes fast).

And then it snowed.

Thank you for today Baby Jesus. I'll not forget this one in a hurry.

Modern day Clampetts

I had to meet with some oil people again yesterday. I keep having to meet with oil people who are over from Alberta politically schmoozing, as I am the researcher with responsiblity for stuff like that.

Because of what the oil industry in general is doing to the prairies, I am usually very cross with them and manifest my anger by looking over the top of my glasses at them and locking stares, which is becoming a more effective put down strategy as I get older.

Unfortunately they are almost always slightly modified cowboys, who act like they just happened upon enormous oil patches and the accompanying business wheeling and dealing, and they don't wear thousand dollar suits or smoke big cigars, or have Crackberries like other people who just think they are important, and consequently they are very charming in a completely non-schmoozy way, with strange body language and a hatred of having to suck up to politicians that's palpable. It's so funny and endearing I have to keep poking my guard to make sure it stays up.

Sometimes my job is very difficult!

Do headless android chickens run in electric circles?

I am starting to forget things. I don't know if it is my age, or if I am too mithered with work and other things to focus properly. I am a bit worried about it, as what I do is very much dependent on remembering a gazillion little things and multi-tasking them all the time.

But work is getting out of control. Today, the bus was late and slow so I spent most of the time reading the Halifax Regional Economic Development plan while getting into work. I got a good chunk of it read and hoped to have it finished by eleven. Since getting into work though, I have been interrupted so many times I gave up. I have had to deal with: school sidewalks, or lack thereof, adult literacy, energy efficiency in public buildings, the alcohol and gaming authority, trade union recognition in the food sector, violence in the workplace, workers compensation and wind energy. I have had to take calls, visits from lobbyists, journalists, members of the public, politicians, civil servants and colleagues.

I am now eating my lunch and writing this on my lunchbreak which I never get, because I am too tired in the evening to blog.

After lunch, I will try to get back to HRM economic development. Then after that, I have reading/ policy work to do on: gambling and young people, the Nova Scotia oil and gas industry, energy demand side management strategies, comparative Canadian labour relations legislation, elementary education policy in rural areas, pensions, the economic implications of trade liberalisation with east Asia (I kid you not), chronic pain in women workers (I assume my tendonitis is included in that), after which time my inbox will be full and it will all start over again.

My work outputs range from verbal briefings to written briefings, to meeting positions, to letters, to legislation, to parliamentary questions, to press releases, to spreadsheets.

My outcomes... well as with most knowledge workers I don't have any. Cos they're kinda hard to measure. But I'm sure I'm doing a great job. The key thing is to always know the answer to the question that you're being asked or to know how to get the answer in ten seconds.

Is everyone's job like this nowadays? Or is it just my sector? I think I am getting too old for this. Would someone like to give me a job where I don't have to multi-task so much all the time?
Where I could sit around and think about stuff for just a minute or two?

This blog's gone Beta

So I was talking to one of my uber-techie friends tonight by the miracle of Google Chat, and I said the blog was going Beta and he asked what that meant.

As if Queenie would effing know!!

What it boils down to is lots and lots of new gadgets to play with on the blog and the introduction of tags, which I have wanted for ever and ever, but could not figure out the HTML for, despite several patient coaching sessions from friends who have more time than sense. (in terms of dealing with my facility with HTML).

But now I get to label my posts.

Those of you who know me know that I LOVE to label things.

I should have been a Victorian botanist.

So that's a job for all the boring afternoons in the office when I should be reading some mind-numbingly boring energy sector report on effing wind turbines or solar panels or demand side management or some other yaaawwwwwn (I mean why don't they just do what the Germans did and build the effing things and clean up the air) subject. Instead of just sitting there reading the yawnathing, I can sit there and half read it and glance longingly over at the computer.

And dream of tags.

Summer's over.

Blog's gone Beta.

Back in a mo'.