doberman pizza. a baha'i (bahai, bahá'í) blog.

hahahahahayecch. what a nice way to wake up in the morning, with some wacked-out indigestion/runs. sad. I probably ate something that didn’t agree with me — maybe the ice cream. It’s funny; sometimes ice cream messes me up, and sometimes it doesn’t. It depends on the kind, the amount I take, and probably a few more variables like the astrological configuration of the sky and atmospheric pressure and Barbara Streisand’s telephone prefix and the atomic weight of Brian Boitano and so on. So I often overlook my lactose pills cos I just think, oh well, I’ll take the chance. And then I take the chance and get smacked. Sigh.

Well, there’s one good thing going on this morning: we’ve got snow! lots of it, falling slowly and quietly from the heavens, laying a big fuzzy white blanket on the city. I like snow. A lot. Even when I have to drive through it. There was a pretty strong snowstorm yesterday, with really high winds.

I found out that my fish are ‘platys’. I saw their cousins at the pet shop across from Jessika’s place, and then looked it up on the Internet. Platy is the common name for the species Xiphophorus maculatus. They’re orange, with little black spots on their tailfins. I have three of them, and I call them Huey, Dewey, and Louie. I sometimes forget which is which. I know I decided that Huey was the big one, because of the comic book character “Baby Huey” who happens to be really big. Then the other two are kind of similar in size so I just kinda guess. It’s funny to hear francophones try to pronounce their names, especially Huey.

Anyway, I gotta go. I’m meeting Catherine (the one from Sherbrooke, not my sister) at the Tim Horton’s and we’re going on down to Montreal for a meeting of the 3CJ. Damn I love that committee. Is it normal to enjoy service this much? I love it. We just get along so famously. I love the 3CJ to pieces!

hello again. today is scheduled as a rainy day across the area, from Sherbrooke to Trois-Rivières. No rain yet. We’ll see. I’m hungry, so I’m not gonna blog for long, but I wanted to share some nice news with you all. I was pleasantly surprised to get a visit from Karine, one of the people I worked alongside at the SADC Arthabaska-Érable. She told me that the same project I worked on last winter was supposed to come back up for grabs this winter, and that I’m the first choice for the job, given that I have the experience and that I did an excellent job last time(well now!). So if the project does indeed get funding, I might just be able to start working in Victoriaville right after I come back from vacation. Wouldn’t THAT be sweet. I should get more news about it come December 11th. I’ll be thinking about it in the meantime. Man, it’s looking like it’s going to be impossible for me NOT to find a job around here.

Meanwhile, I dove back into a familiar area today — code maintenance. I’m taking apart the Visual Basic code that runs a little homegrown report-creation interface, to see what makes it tick. Ahhh, it feels good. It’s like coming home, taking off your shoes and socks, and dipping your feet in the little stream that runs through the town you grew up in.

Money. $$$

hey WHAT

today I did so much stuff it’s stupendous! I:

got snow tires put on

installed deer whistles

chilled with some mormons

organized my pantry

did dishes

took a walk

gave my upstairs neighbour some jams I made

prayed

read the Bahá’í Writings

sent some email

practiced my lines for tomorrow (shhh)

now I just gotta get ready for said day tomorrow. Gotta get going at around 7:30!

hmm, I just looked up stuff on the Internet about those deer whistle things and it looks as if they may be “LARGELY INEFFECTIVE” oh well. so I blew eight bucks. but at least if a deer hits me, NO ONE CAN SAY I DIDN’T TRY.

I hope to see a whole bunch of you people tomorrow in Victoriaville :)

hey, my boss just got back to me again and told me that, depending on how much work there is to be done and how much of a mess the databases are in, I might even have enough work to go until the Christmas holidays. YEAH! That means I might be able to work up til the 19th of December, and then GO ON HOOOOOLIDAAAAAAAAYYYYY YAYAYAYAYAYAYAYAYAYA

oh and BTW, I ended up tossing out that killer sauce yesterday. It just smelled too funky. I ate the spaghetti with butter and salt & pepper (which is actually quite good). All hail common sense!

everything, well, most everything went swimmingly today with the big auld deadline today. The package is stamped, I got a receipt with a 20 NOV 2003 stamp on it, and it’s on its way to Industy Canada in Ottawa now. What building is 300 Slater? I forget. Is it the one with the funky glass elevators that you can see from the street?

yadda yadda. I got leave to go home early today (as a reward for sending out such a nice document?) so I’m happy. I did some grocery shopping, read a bit, and now I’m on the Internet woohoo.

ANYWAY, I asked my boss about what I’m supposed to do next, and she told me that my job is subsidized until December 5th. woohoo! two more weeks of work! she also told me that I would probably be doing some Access programming, creating nice reports and debugging and so on. WOO HOO HOO HOO :D :D :D What a great birthday present… work (and get paid) up till Friday and then party on Sunday. And she also said that they might think about bringing me back for a week or two after the holidays. Fun! I guess that goes to show you that hard work (even if you think it’s, ahem, imperfect) is rewarded.

right now I’m cooking spaghetti and the spaghetti sauce seemed to be a little old — not moldy, but old and a little funky. I used it anyway, but I’m watering it down and boiling it up just in case. This is the stupid stuff you can do when you’re a bachelor cooking for yourself. You can play dice with your digestive tract. Sorry, Mom. I hope tomorrow’s entry won’t be titled “unpleasant news” with links to articles about dysentery. I spelled that right on the first try.

hey ladies and gentlemints. the world is somewhat back to normal today. aaargh that salad I made for lunch was kind of wierd. I’m not sure it’s sitting as well as it could. or maybe it’s just because I have a cough. oh well, whatever. as long as I don’t start puking.

my contract is wrapping up! the big old deadline is tomorrow, and so far it doesn’t look too much like there’s any encroaching disaster. all the same, I still feel stressed. There’s a lot of things I don’t know. I admire the people here at the SADC; they really seem to be quite seasoned, even-tempered, and dynamic. They adapt easily to all the quirks and random wierdness that comes up during their projects. I admire that. I want to reflect that quality. I assume it comes with experience and encouragement. I hope so.

Man I really need a steady job, a long-term one, one that’ll use my skills to the utmost. Sure, maybe I needed to try things out and play the field, in order to get myself focused — or perhaps to snap out of an adolescent stupor. But now, well, I need to really learn how this work thing works. I need to grab the job market by the horns and ride it, learn how it moves, how not to get gored, and maybe even how to get somewhere useful. I always hesitated about some of the programming jobs in my area because I wasn’t sure I wanted to work in a factory environment, or I didn’t want to work on boring or useless things. But now I’ve come to believe that any experience will be useful as long as it helps me develop my skills. Dammit I need to develop myself. If I want to be able to properly change the world, I gotta change myself, and that means developing valuable skills and qualities that make me a well-qualified and attractive worker.

AHHH I SOUND LIKE AN ANT

Do you think I’d make a good teacher? send me a comment to encourage me.

hello. I’m back home and just thought I would blog a bit. Last weekend was really great, I got to hang around with the gang of Bahá’í youth from Sherbrooke. Now there’s a group with a lot of potential. They are really unified, full of love, and willing to serve.

lately I’ve been thinking about love. no, not romantic or sexual love or any other kind of love in particular. I mean the force that binds the universe together. I mean the reason God created humanity. I mean the love that’s a fact of life, not a dirty word. what was I thinking about love? I was thinking about how much of it I have within me.

I’m not really sure what I can say about the subject. And that’s ok. I don’t really need to say anything or figure anything out. All I wanted to share is that I was thinking about love. that’s a good sign. as I grew up I was very closed in on myself and not very communicative. I let a lot of hatred and resentment develop within me. ‘Abdu’l-Bahá says that we should destroy thoughts of hatred with more powerful thoughts of love. I think that’s a good idea. Hence the thoughts about love. it feels good to be following the advice of a Divine Physician.

Things are beginning to wrap up at work. the next few days will most probably involve a whole heck of a lot of rushing. I think I can deal with that, and live. And when it’s all over, I’ll be happier than a strawberry shortcake.

please pray for me. it helps.

hey folks

leaving in a minute but wanted to share that everything is going alright, or more or less alright anyway :) work is turning out a little less stressful than I expected because there are a lot of people around and we are sharing the work. I haven’t caught any awful diseases. I am well fed. I got some good sleep last night and I’m happy. I have been reading the Writings morning and evening and it has been doing me lots of good. right now I’m off to Sherbrooke with a salad (WITHOUT LEAFY VEGETABLES!) for a youth pot luck. tomorrow there is a 3cj meeting in Montreal and a friend who is on the committee is driving up there with me from Sherbrooke. to top it all off, ruhi 2 in drummondville on sun nite. the weather looks alright, the roads are clear, so it should be all right. I’ll make sure to drive safely.

peace

I had a nice chat with Dave this evening. It’s been a while since we touched base and it was good to spend some time talking with him. I love having friends… even if they’re sea monsters named Sigmund. Anyway, I wanted to keep all of you friends (and potential friends) out there up to date on what’s going on in my vicinity. A lot of stuff is up. At the last 19-day Feast (Power), the Drummondville Baha’is got together and decided to plan out the next two months of get-togethers and events. That’s good. Over here, we have periods where we plan things at the last minute… not really convenient and can cause undue stress. So we changed that. And what’s more, someone had the brilliant idea to write up a bulletin with a list of events, so that, even if someone misses Feast, they still know what’s going on in the community. Genius! Progress, too. I like it.

Work is at a critical stage right now: on Monday, we meet with representatives of the companies who submitted proposals for our high-speed internet project. It’s getting really interesting. I think I’m even starting to get a hang of the politics involved… now THAT’s scary. What I find really interesting is learning about all the technologies involved in telecommunications: DSL, Cable modem, 802.11 wireless access, the list goes on. I should have learned all of this in my telecommunications class in university, but… argh… I don’t know. All I remember is that the book was thick, full of acronyms and boring diagrams. I mean, I learned stuff, but I was so glad just to be over with that course because it was so boring. Now I’m actually learning how these technologies get implemented, how they get put to use, and all the real-life quirks involved in working with them.

Um… what else… oh yeah, this week I visited two reserves, Wolinak and Odanak, one day after the other. It was different, to say the least. I wrote a whole bunch of stuff about it just now, but my computer crashed and I lost all my work, so you’ll just have to wait. yo.

Anyway right now, I’m waiting for some friends to come over so we can practice a MAJOR THEATRICAL PRODUCTION… so take care and I’ll write to you later.

Inshallah.