The goodness in you

I was feeling pretty bummed tonight about the state of the world and the dreadful things people do to eachother and the earth. This anger and frustration and despair was built on a couple of things from the past few days - reading about Dubai and the slavery and eco-suicide it's built upon; reading various news articles on murders and assaults and the unwillingness of the US, Canadian and Australian governments to commit to any real climate change initiatives; seeing people in my office building chucking stuff into the dumpster that could have been reused or at the very least recycled... etc. etc.

After ranting at Rem and Anne for a good while each, I have been trying to take their advice and focus on the people out there who are doing good things and trying their best. Happily, I seem to know several of them!

My Gram is one such person. She makes dozens of quilts each year out of fabric she gets from places like the thrift shop and the roll ends at the fabric shops. Since I started volunteering at the Reuse Centre, I've been getting her bags of fabric from there, too. As a result, she's been delivering bags of finished quilts to me every time I see her. Usually I take the quilts directly to a women's shelter or an inner city charity, but I figured I'd try something different this time. And that's where I discovered a bunch more people willing to pitch in for good works.

I "auctioned" the quilts off for donations to women's shelters or homelessness charities and have had 12 of the 14 quilts claimed by 9 generous people. Big thanks go out to Keith, Janel, Anne, Mi, Allison, Betty-Anne, Jenn, Micah and Sophie for their generous donations. They've chosen to support the Bissell Centre, the Youth Emergency Shelter, the Women's Transitional House in Vernon, Habitat for Humanity in Guelph, Margaret Savage Women's Shelter in Cold Lake, Operation Friendship, WIN House (Edmonton Women's Shelter) and the Nyarut Village Development Project through SaveaVillage.ca.

Thanks not only for helping out these wonderful organizations, but also for helping to build my faith in humanity, folks!

Absurdly pleasing

Your results:
You are Deanna Troi

Deanna Troi 75% James T. Kirk (Captain) 60% Jean-Luc Picard 50% Geordi LaForge 45% Chekov 40% Spock 40% Will Riker 40% Uhura 35% Beverly Crusher 35% Leonard McCoy (Bones) 30% Mr. Scott 25% Worf 20% Mr. Sulu 15% Data 15% An Expendable Character (Redshirt) 10%

You are a caring and loving individual. You understand people's emotions and you are able to comfort and counsel them.

Click here to take the Star Trek Personality Quiz

Bicycles and Whims

Being as it's the start of another trip around the sun, there has been some talk of late of the things we accomplished in the last year. Somehow all my thoughts have turned back to bikes. Last year was the first year I actually biked all through an Edmonton winter - big thanks go to Mal for showing me joys of studded tires. We also biked out to Pigeon Lake again, with Sophie this time; and did a short jaunt out to Beaumont with her which included a portage over a mudbog. June saw us ride half of Nova Scotia, and in August I actually succumbed to the dictates of my ego and signed up to ride the Icefields Parkway with the group Rem was putting together. It all turned out to be lots of fun, though I have to admit that the Icefields trip (Jasper to Banff via two mountain passes, for those not in the know) would have been somewhat smoother had I owned waterproof gloves and sleeping pills. Next time! (Will there be a next time? Perhaps.)

So given that my head is apparently stuck in bikeland, perhaps it's not quite so stunning that I bought a new bike, completely on a whim, today. Christopher's bike shop, Velocity, was having a huge 2-day sale to clear out old stock. We went down to check it out with Sophie and discovered that they had a couple of Jamis Auroras at nearly 50% off. This is the same touring bike both Rem and Sophie have and love. It's a steel frame, so heavier than my current bike, Bouncing Betty, but also better at damping vibrations. It's also got drop bars, which I have thus far resisted getting, but which offer more hand positions. Both those features ought to mean that I have fewer problems with my hands and wrists on long rides. I've had some trouble with that in the past and have no desire to give myself nerve damage: it takes all the fun out of a tour!

So here's hoping that when I finally get to take her out some sunny spring day, I'll like my new bike even better than Betty. Just a few more months...

The picture: most of the crew at the top of the Sunwapta Pass. Chris is taking the photo and Lana the driver is already waiting for us at Parker Ridge. Holy cow was the descent from this point fun! The brown & white bike in front of Rem is also the same model that I just got.

Poetry Night

My friend Matt has become a Lutheran minister at a church downtown. Though I hadn't seen him in oh, 5 years, we've emailed back and forth now and again and generally kept in touch. So when he told me he was starting a sort of discussion group that looked at various forms of media and art as fodder for a search for truth I was definitely intrigued, despite my usual avoidance of things chruch related. Tonight was the first time I could go - I think it's only the second meeting, and it was a terrific time. There was Matt, his friend from high school, two septugenarian parishoners, 4 poems, and me.

So much fun! We read through two John Donne poems and two Margaret Atwood ones and did our best to unpack and interpret them and just see where the discussions took us. It was like being in English class again except with no essays to be written! I am vastly looking forward to the next evening but have to wait until October.

I'm Melllllting...

It's +31 C outside. It is approximately 900 degrees warmer in my office. The A/C apparently conked out on the weekend and they haven't got it running yet. With a fairly sealed building where people haven't enough sense to close the (admittedly poor) shades on the many windows, this has resulted in an impressive greenhouse effect. It's actually cooled off some since I arrived this morning, but perhaps that's merely since I stopped moving.

I've stripped off my last remaining article of clothing not required for decency's sake: my sandals. Unfortunately, this means when I stubbed my toe this afternoon, they had even less protection than usual. (Yes, I do this a lot.) I don't think I actually broke it, but I wouldn't rule out a sprain at this point: it really hurts and doesn't want to bend.

What a good first day back at work!

Costumes!

Erik decided we needed more opportunities to play dress-up. His theme? Literary characters. Somehow my picture of Cameron as Macbeth disappeared. Be assured he cut a fine figure in his kilt.

Fear Factor

I am a worrier. (You're shocked, I know. I hide it so well.) Though I wouldn't describe any of my fears as serious enough to merit the title of phobia, there are a lot of things that niggle at me. As a result I'm really big on safety - wearing helmets, crossing at the lights, turning pot handles in, not speeding, staying well back from cliff edges... you name it. All these safety precautions let me feel fairly comfortable in my daily life and even let me do things like biking in traffic which others consider too risky. But despite lots of safety precautions, there are still things that freak the bejeebers out of me.

On Monday, I ventured forth to try a couple of them anyways.

The first was wall climbing. Rem took this up back in December and he and our friend Chris have been scaling the walls at Vertically Inclined on a weekly basis ever since. They're pretty good at it, and yes, there are lots of safety features. For one thing, the floor is padded. For another, you're strapped into a harness connected to nice strong ropes with braking mechanisms. So despite climbing 40 feet into the air, even with no skills at all, you're pretty well going to be okay.

With all this in mind, I was still nervy, and looking down from half-way up the wall was initially stomach-churning. I did manage 4 climbs, though, and even made it all the way up a (very easy) route to ring the victory bell. By the end, losing my footing and falling wasn't even traumatic 'cause, hey, I could just dangle in the air.

And yeah, I think I'll go back again, now and then. It was fun. And, it's very good for the arm muscles.

Part two of my Fear Factor day was less fun but more socially redeeming. I've been trying to work up the guts to give blood for about 8 years. I hate needles. I had LOTS of them for dental work when I was a kid and they made a big impression.

Still, I figure I should give blood. I'm part of a relatively small group of people who don't have any medical reason NOT to, and I'd sure like there to be blood for me someday if I get shmucked riding in traffic. Veteran donors Erik and Lana have been talking about dragging me to the clinic for months, and finally Erik succeeded. I actually beat him there, and figured I'd better get going through the process before I chickened out and left. Fortunately, he showed up in time to distract me during the actual draining, which was very welcome. I'm not sure I'm ever going to have the nerves to do it without a cheer team.

It wasn't terribly painful, probably a little better than I expected, really, and I didn't pass out or throw up or anything nasty. I was pretty zonked, though, and my arm got rather bruised and swollen. I've got a picture -- I'll have to post it.

I did learn one or two things from my Fear Factor Day:

1) Drink lots of water in the days preceding a donation so the nurses can actually find your veins.

2) Don't go donate blood after doing new arm exercises unless you're really into compounding your pain.

3) Don't bike to the blood donor clinic as you're not likely to want to bike home again.

4) They serve donors yummy Cookies By George.

So who wants to drag me next time?

Pictures: with and without the flash. Neither shows how purple they are, though...