Tolerable, I suppose...

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What the....strike?

So, Canada is not the US of A. I'm figuring this out day by day, bit by bit. However, this latest piece of information that goes into this ongoing list of differences has me confused and slightly concerned. My university went on strike this morning. Apparently there are unions that cover different employees on campus - one of which covers the teaching assistants, graduate assistants, and contract faculty. And apparently, they have been underpaid - at least they believe they have been. Erego, a strike has commenced and almost all of the university's courses have been cancelled for the duration of the strike. Except for mine. Yup, the graduate business school courses are still running, but since there are picket lines, they have the right to detain you for up to ten minutes. This is going to be interesting. Thankfully, the times I usually drive off campus are outside their picket line hours, so we should be okay. But still - universities can go on strike? More than 50,000 students can have their classes canceled? Doesn't this seem counterintuitive for the an educational institution to cancel the educating part of their operations? Gee whiz.

Dream Come True...Sort of.

Way back when I was blogging somewhat consistently (yes, there was a time.....), I mentioned that my one dream in life was to be Elphaba in a Broadway production of "Wicked." This Halloween, that partially happened. The Elphaba part, that is. I got the hat, the green skin, the glasses, the whole black ensemble....it was great! A little slimy, and definitely goopy going on, but it was fun to look in the mirror and not recognize myself. And while getting the green off was a pain in the most extreme way and I couldn't touch anything without leaving my greenie mark, I had a blast. This only made my dream to be Elphaba on Broadway even more....salient. And real. *insert cackle here* Happy Halloween to All! (I'm the one in the green.....if you needed some help there. Also featured is my friend Aryana as the Scarecrow, and Karina as Audrey Hepburn)

Marco......Hey Marco....Are you there, Marco...it's me, your blog!

Okay, so. It's October. I hope that is not a surprise for most of you, but it was for me. Especially when I now look at the calendar and realize that October will soon be November. And when I look out the window and see white puffy bits falling in a blustery fashion to the ground. What in the heckfire happened to the fall? And more to the point, what in the heckfire happened to the blogger responsible for this sadly neglected , pobre blog? Well, to be brief, I was consumed by paper. Yes, paper. Paper ate me. And it ate me whole! Many times over! How can paper eat me, you might wonder...well, for those of you who don't know, I'm now a Toronto-ian, and part of a marketing PhD program. I've learned a number of valuable lessons and experienced a variety of side-effects of being part of this new intellectual clan. I want to share them with you, just in case one of you gentle readers is considering returning to school in the higher education system. So now I present to you, in no particular order, the top ten knowledge nuggats I've learned since being in a PhD program:
(1) You are now an enemy to the environment because you are always printing off 20 page articles in large quantities, so any and all efforts to go "Green" are futile. Sorry, friend.
(2) You will be the proud owner of 4 pairs of glasses because you will go blind at an exponential rate.
(3) The highlight of your days are your five minute snack break (frozen blueberries, blackberries and raspberries - yum!) and you realize you have come full circle to your pre-school self, where the day is divided into sections by the much needed and desired snack breaks. Suddenly you will feel very young again. And very old. This will cause a headache. Take 2 IBProfen with your snack and forge ahead with the homework, because time is up!
(4) You now understand and can use in a somewhat intelligent fashion the words ontology, epistemology, axiology, phenomenology, existentialism...and you feel special. You then realize how few people there are in the world who care that you know and use those words on a regular basis. Suddenly you feel alone. So very alone.
(5) Exercise and legitimate free time are things of the past. Instead, you are constantly plagued with thoughts of things you SHOULD be doing, and those thoughts trump the things you'd RATHER be doing.
(6) PhD programs train you to be critical of other PhD professor's written work that has been published in high-quality, much-respected journals. Your illusions of these professor's greatness is dashed and you feel like you can be equals in the field once you graduate. Then you realize as soon as you publish, others will do the exact same thing to you. Say hello to the joys of peer review.
(7) You start having wild fantasies about the Matrix being real, so that you can jump down the rabbit hole, wake up to the "real" world, and have a somewhat questionable needle apparatus plugged into you and download all the books sitting on your bookshelf. The concept of skimming is suddenly a lifesaver. As is the 4 month check-out policy for the library.
(8) You get used to having a mind-numbing headache everynight, to the point where if you don't have it, you start to wonder if something is wrong and you need to do more reading before bed.
(9) You get excited when you only have to read an article twice to understand more or less what the authors are talking about. Small victories are suddenly precious and rare.
(10) Your life becomes a marathon - physically, emotionally, mentally. Estimated time of completing the marathon? Four years, eight months, five days, three hours, seven minutes. *sigh* And that doesn't seem like enough time.

So, there you have it, blogging world. Life is never easy, and with a new phase beginning, there are always growing pains. It's been a rough couple of months, and to be perfectly honest, blogging hasn't been the highest priority, nor has it been something that I've wanted to do. Sometimes you just need a bit of time before you start opening up about experiences you are having. Hopefully I'll be able to squeeze more blog time in the next while so I can keep y'all posted. But, I'm tired of making empty promises to my blog, so I can only promise to try. And try I will. Cheerio!

Bursting the Eardrums

So, I have a confession to make. I went to the American Idol Live concert tonight at the 'E' Center. WOW. I have never seen so many blonde itty-bitty-teenie-boppers in my life! And yes, those girls have got some lung power. An hour and a half after we left the arena, my ears are still ringing. It was incredible the amount of deafening noise 10,000 underaged tweeners can make. The best part was that they were so predictably unpredictable. At the mere mention of David Archuleta (affectionately known as Archie to the Idolers), or seeing his face for .024 seconds on a video clip, and they all went into synchronized screaming. I kid not - you couldn't hear the 100,000 amps blasted the drum beat over the amount of ear-splitting noise that the audience created. I imagine it's hard to maintain a healthy perspective on life when you have 10,000 girls ready to marry you...when they...and you....become of age.

All in all, it was an enjoyable evening. I wish I could have heard the music a bit better, but I enjoyed it for the most part. Michael Johns, Brooke White, and Archie were my fav's, just because you could hear what they were singing. David Cook was David Cook. As he was singing and strutting his manly guitar slinging strut up there, all I could think of was that Idol finally picked someone who was just plain "cool" as the winner. Kelly Clarkson, Reuben, Fantasia, Carrie, Taylor, Jordin........and David. Yeah. He stands out in the coolness factor.

Now the question that needs to be answered: "Were I ten years younger, would I have been part of the screaming set wearing my "David would vote for ME" t-shirt? I hope I know the answer to that!

It's Official! I can be Canadian....well. Sort of.

I've been waiting to get my temporary student visa information back from the Canadian Consulate in Seattle. Incredibly nice chaps, let me tell you. They took my $125 non-refundable Canadian funds bank draft, my forty-two official forms, bank statements, my passport, and letter from York saying that I was indeed accepted to study at the university, and what did I get in return? A happy little envelope with my passport, a receipt for said $125 non-refundable Canadian funds bank draft, and a letter that says at the very top in big, bold, capital letters, and I quote: "YOU MUST SHOW THIS LETTER TO A CANADA CUSTOMS OFFICIAL WHEN YOU FIRST ARRIVE IN CANADA." Ha. "Welcome to the country" I suppose is the sub-text in very very small, minute print. :) But this is exciting because.....yes. I can go. They will let me in to their country and call me one of their temporary own. Next step is getting Pepper Jane to come with me! (That would be my 2004 Ford Escape) As it turns out, they didn't do anything to my passport, but I do get the opportunity to become close friends with an Immigration officer at the border. Hopefully they'll crack a joke with me, because in tense situations, I tend to go just a smidge quippy. I think that could be an interesting day before me.

Life Experience

So I've been MIA for a while. And yes, that's an overstatement. But such is life, and such has been my life, so let's all shake hands, do the hokey pokey, turn ourselves around, and get this blog going again. Whoa. Dejavu. This must have happened before in my previous blogging life!

Very quickly to give the general update: I'm moving to Toronto in a little over a month to start my PhD program. Yes, that's Toronto, Canada. I shall be Canadian in a few short weeks. And hopefully my car will become Canadian with me (who knew it would almost be harder to import my car than myself???). So I'm in the middle of the preparation tempest. And by tempest, I mean chaos that generally resembles a cyclone in my room. Every day I'm feeling the heebies because I did the exact same thing when I went on my mission. It's not fun trying to pack your life up into a few small boxes that will fit in the cheapest U-Haul trailer and coming to terms with the fact that your Love-sac and rocking chair probably won't make the cut. *sniff sniff* But, the saving grace? My Kitchen-Aid will! Long-live my cookie dough fettish!

I went for a hike yesterday with my aunt and my mother. I loved getting up in the mountains, very quickly becoming dusty and a little sweaty, and hiking amongst the chirping, peppy birds and gorgeously blooming wild flowers. I might have to go again, and soon - and I recommend all go and become one with nature at least once this week! It quiets the soul in a way that the hustle and bustle of suburban life cannot. While on the hike, my aunt asked us a question: "If you could have any experience in the world, what would it be?" After the automatic responses of family, kids, career (which, don't get me wrong - go team on those!) ran through my mind, I was like...HMM. What would I do? My mom answered a kayaking trip for a week. I would totally go with her, kayak blisters and all. My aunt answered climbing K2. I probably wouldn't do that. Going up a mountain just doesn't appeal to me. It's great to accomplish something and look down on the creations of the world, but....if my life can potentially be in peril, I probably won't attempt it. So, she can do that with her hubby. I'll look at their pictures after.

My answer that came to the surface after weeding through those first ones? I would Love, LOVE, love, LOve, loVE to play the part of Elphaba on the West End in London. My answer cracked me up, because quite honestly, I had never thought about it before, but when I said it outloud, I knew it was true. I would adore being able to be part of a play, with a British accent, an adorable co-star who can serenade me until the cows stop mooing, and having the ability to sing my heart out and have it appreciated by others. And in London? Yeah. Well. Let's just say I've found my true love in life. Add that to the fact that I absolutely am enchanted with "Wicked" and the part of Elphaba in particular, and it's a done deal for my dream experience.

I asked my aunt what our answers revealed about us. My auntie said my mom's showed that she wanted to be away from the world and at peace. 'Tis true, because when you're on the water, it's just you. My aunt's showed that she loves and challenge and pushing herself to her limits and seeing those accomplishments. Mine? That I want fame and recognition. Haha. Maybe it's true, but I'd like to think that my dream experience shows how I love the arts and appreciate the opportunity to immerse one's self in the telling of a story. Plus, I'm a spazz. And I like London. Hello. That's a given. And a British accent? I do it without thinking as it is! So, fame and recognition aside, I would love to be able to excel at something artistic and be able to express it. Maybe the applause wouldn't be so bad either............

So what would your dream experience be? And what does that show about you? Just a fun thought to start the week off! Cheerio!