You never know what is enough unless you know what is more than enough.

February 26, 2004

Well. This is a surprise. I am now debt-free... at least in official circles. Literally speaking, I am indeed still in the hole, but as far as the banks are concerned, I'm not. I wonder what this will do to my credit rating?

I suppose some sort of explanation is in order. After informing my folks that I had finally paid off my first loan - a feeling somewhat akin to losing your first tooth - they graciously offered to foot me the dough for the federal loan. I do have to pay it back, of course, but now I am free from having to pay any interest on the principal as well as from having to make regular payments. I mean, I am in the black. It's a most unusual feeling; I've basically been under the bank's thumb since I was 18.

I know there are those of you out there who will be more than willing to point out that I have really only chosen another thumb to be under - that of my parents - but I reckon most will agree that the latter is far superior to the former. Chances are Mom and Dad aren't going to repossess everything I own, simply because that would mean I'd have to move back in with them... self-defeating, really.

So what am I to do with this new-found financial freedom? We're not talking wads of cash here, but a few extra bills a month is a nice change. Granted, there's been a certain amount of celebratory activities the last couple of days, but I reckon I should at least try to be responsible for a change. Although I'm thinking a few new duds might be nice... nay, necessary - I'm currently the poster-boy for worn-out clothing.

February 20, 2004

Goddamnit. I've been trying to sit down and pound something out her for the past week. I don't for the life of me know why it is so hard to scrape together a few minutes to work on this - it seems I either have to stick around after work, or else leave my house and affairs in total disarray. It just doesn't make sense. I was sure I was wasting countless hours... ergo why not get the website going again? Must be some kind of temporal miscalculation.

Tuesday was a red-letter day. I got home from work on Monday night to find a bank statement in my mailbox - big deal, right? Well, this particular bank statement had one of my two student loan payments as $27.17, significantly lower than it should have been. And no, you don't need to know what it was, so don't ask. I phoned the bank on Tuesday morning: I've paid off one of my loans! Happiness and jubilation! After six years, I finally get the Provincial monkey off my back, leaving me only the Federal monkey to lug around. Working towards a debt-free life... that's what I'm talkin' about.

Wednesday kind of sucked. The last few weeks I've been putting together a contract to teach a group of post-doctorate students and interns over at St. Paul's Hospital - which would have been a fabulous opportunity to learn all sorts of relatively useless medical jargon, doncha know. I received an email from my friend (working as the Education Coordinator at the research centre) telling me that the financial department had decided to nix the project and go with another school. Lame. So much for my commission, not to mention my expanded vocabulary. Guess I'll have to come up with another scheme.

Now it's Friday, and all I want is a beer - which I can't have. I'm sitting for my sister's makeup FX exam tomorrow and I've been told that any alcohol in my system will prevent the adhesives from adhering properly. *Sigh*. Particularly frustrating is the fact that today's school activity was a wine-tasting seminar - everyone's walking around the school drinking the leftover bottles of wine and pointing out that I can't have any.

And people call me an alcoholic. Wonder why that might be?

Oh, I almost forgot - the site statistics tell me that we have a new most popular keyword used to find my site. The top (and only three):

1. "what else can go wrong poem" - 87.3%
2. "bishamonten - god of war and warriors" - 12.6%
3. "buddhist protector tattoo"- 0.1%

So there you have it... I don't know if these folks are particularly pleased when they find my site, but traffic is traffic. I'm still trying to figure out how the number one got to be number one, because when I type that phrase into search engines, I get everything but my page. Go figure.

February 10, 2004

You know, I could have sworn that my intention was to update this site more frequently than on a weekly basis. I'm also pretty sure that the original intent was to update twice or even thrice weekly - so what is going on? Is it more of that which led to the lengthy hibernation period suffered through over the last couple of years? Am I too busy? Overly distracted, or just simply lazy? Granted, my daily existence does not offer much in the way of exciting anecdotes to tell, but am I not capable of relating even the most mundane of events in an edifying manner?

Mayhap I am merely making mountains out of molehills - all alliteration aside, I suspect I am guilty of focusing on the idea of writing rather than on the act itself. Or, more simply, I think myself out of putting pen to paper (or fingertip to key, as the case may be) and often conjure up all kinds of excuses and alternatives to sitting down and dredging through my thoughts for subjects to discuss. Please note that I feel that these substitutions are (mostly) worthwhile endeavours, although it must be said that a significant amount of time is spent watching hockey and drinking beer.

I wouldn't want to jeopardize my status as a Canadian, after all.

Well, regardless of what the situation might be, know that I am aware of the decidedly-less-than-prolific outpouring of thought and creativity in my life, and am taking steps to correct this. Steps like this. Steps that - to my mind - contribute to the validation of my existence through simple experience. I somehow managed to forget that new music makes new words... at least in my head.

I've been staring at the screen for the last 10 minutes wondering how to follow that sentence. I hate it when my train of thought leaves me sitting at the station.

February 2, 2004

Although I go to great pains to set myself apart from the general populace, I freely admit: most mornings my first thought is the standard woeful realization of my imminent arrival at the workplace. This morning, however, I awoke to a decidedly more pleasant communique from my cerebellum; a question rather than a thought: "Why is it that when dates are reported, we use the Latin anno domini (A.D.) for the Common Era, and the English before Christ (B.C.) for older dates? Shouldn't it be the other way around?"

This is a fair question, to be sure, but as an English teacher (of sorts - no derogatory emails, please), I feel it expedient to note that 'logical' is a word not often used to describe the English vernacular. Come to think of it, I don't think anyone would apply that term to our wanton application of grammatical regulation to the language at all. Any tongue so replete with inconsistencies and exceptions to the rule and so rife with redundancy pretty much begs the question of whether any thought went into its development at all. Which in this case, is a question best answered with two simple words:

Well, no.

Now I'm sure there are proponents and devotees of the Queen's English aplenty out there, and to you I offer a piece of literature in support of this argument:

'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogroves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

"Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!"

He took his vorpal sword in hand:
Long time the manxsome foe he sought -
So rested he by the Tumtum tree,
And stood a while in thought.

And, as in uffish thought he stood,
The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
And burbled as it came!

One, two! One, two! And through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went glaumphing back.

"And, hast thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!"
He chortled in his joy.

'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogroves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

- Lewis Carroll, Jabberwocky

But I digress. In search of an answer to my question, I figured a good place to start would be the dictionary. Unfortunately, the dictionary only provided the English translation for A.D. ("In the Year of Our Lord") and the suggested use of before common/Christian era (B.C.E.) and common/Christian era (C.E.) for those opposed to the reference to Christ - which, truthfully speaking, was somewhat unsatisfying. Happily, I did also uncover the abbreviation V.E., or vulgar era, which can be used interchangeably with C.E.; so the dictionary wasn't a complete waste of time. Subsequent digging online provided me with the little gem 'A.U.C', ab urbe condita or "since the founding of Rome". However, before you start dating your cheques with dates like '02/02/2758 AUC', you should be forewarned that not even the Romans were exactly sure when the city was founded, with 1 C.E. being equal to 753-755 A.U.C..

I suppose this would also be a good place to mention that the date of Christ's birth is also rather questionable, although most scholars agree he was likely born a few years before 1 A.D./C.E.. This fact is generally blamed on the scholar Dionysius Exiguus, who was assigned the tasks of preparing calculations for the dates of Easter and establishing a date for the birth of Christ. Apparently the date he came up with, December 25th, 753 A.U.C., was disputed right from the get-go - which is not altogether unsurprising, as he was born some 600 years after the date in question.

As fascinating as all of this might be, it still does not provide me with an answer. I'm going to eschew the idea that this is purely an arbitrary decision (for the time being, anyway) and pursue the matter a while longer. At the moment, however, I am going to bed.