Dispatches from a happy Hullian

[cross-posted to concordia_u]


Hi, I'm Eric Hortop, and I might be your candidate in the GSA elections... voting is tomorrow through Thursday at http://gsa.concordia.ca/www/elections/

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I am officially adding David Emerson to my Peter Mackay club.

Went up to Ottawa by train with rottenfruit this weekend. We had a bunch of plans, and although we didn't manage to skate the (closed due to warm weather) canal or see the (no longer free) National Gallery permanent collection, she recorded three new (to recording) songs with some help from me (clapping and singing along on one of the tracks, and and constructive [I hope] lay criticism), we saw hallelujah, ate some food, chatted and got Christmas gifts straightened out, played a couple of games of travel Scrabble and visited her parents and Tasha the cat. The visit felt really short, and wasn't quite what we were counting on, but I'm happy we went.

Work and school are insane. They would've been anyway, but the trip did cut into my panicking time. So I'll panic more efficiently. Starting by dumping my current state out on LJ :-P

( Pretty close quiz result for one side of me, I think. )

Had a pleasant evening with one of my high school friends (outside of LJSpace), talked politics, religion, work, the future, grey hairs, gossip... I'm glad I met up with him, and it's been a while since I've sat down with just him and talked. He's mellowed a bunch since high school, I enjoyed myself more than I thought I would, even.

I smell like smoke now, though. I can't wait 'til all cafés and bars become smoke-free in the spring.

Oh, randomly: Go on the CBC had Peter Mackay on as a guest this morning, and I was really disappointed that they didn't humiliate him any. Really. I'm this close to writing a letter demanding they stop making him look good (for those of you who don't know, I dislike Peter Mackay with almost the intensity that dzuunmod likes Pierre Pettigrew).

Not to condone theo-totalitarian lawmaking or anything, but if you're going to do it, you may as well pick on your victims a little better:

Gerald Allan throws out the bathwater with the baby

1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open the book to page 23.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the whole sentence in your journal along with these instructions.

Politicians and government officials blamed the contractors for the escalating costs.

–Bourrie, Mark. Canada’s Parliament Buildings. Toronto: Hounslow, 1996.

The above sentence refers to an 1860 boondoggle that became our present Parliament Hill. Plus ça change...

Yay for Felix Salmon!

you are lightgoldenrodyellow #FAFAD2

Your dominant hues are red and green, so you’re definately not afraid to get in and stir things up. You have no time for most people’s concerns, you’d rather analyze with your head than be held back by some random “gut feeling”. Your saturation level is very low - you have better things to do than jump headfirst into every little project. You make sure your actions are going to really accomplish something before you start because you hate wasting energy making everyone else think you’re working. Your outlook on life is bright. You see good things in situations where others may not be able to, and it frustrates you to see them get down on everything.

the spacefem.com html color quiz

In other news, the STCUM maintenance workers’ slogans of negociation = peace seem to have been in bad faith... news reports on CBC radio are indicating that members stand accused of crippling the system (again) by cutting power to garage doors in protest to “arrogance” on the part of the provincial government. Other unions are up to other tricks, but for a union the city supposedly made peace with, the maintenance workers are making outsourcing look like a first-rate option right now. I understand a fear of becoming like Harris Ontario, but I think decomissioning a few largely symbolic measures of the PQ government and trying to make provincial spending balanced deserves a chance.

Open the maintenance bay doors, HAL... we know how this one ends. Strike up the band and get them to play “bicycle built for two”.