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

for the past two days I’ve been basically stuck inside my apartment on sick leave because every time I try to walk somewhere or do something, I get tired. wednesday after work I tried to do some grocery shopping… man… I could barely keep walking. I ended up dozing off with my head stuck in some nuts (individual plastic tubs of nuts in the bulk food section). just about the only thing I can do is lie down on my couch/bed/futon and snooze and think about how tired I am. good thing there’s a phone and internet service nearby or I’d be bored out of my head. I guess I could watch movies, too. There’s that three-hour-long “Jesus” movie that someone loaned to me and that I still haven’t watched. I dunno. I think I’d have to be in a rather particular mood to watch that one.

anyway. this isn’t “normal” tiredness, would you agree? I mean, after a day of sitting upright in front of a computer at work, I get home and bam - no energy whatsoever. motionless 65-kg lump.

Hadi (muh bro) will be going to Halifax next week (read about it on Tamara’s website). He was in Saskatoon last week. Damn that’s cool. It must be nice working for the National Gallery. You get to go all over Canada in planes and stay in nice hotels. Zea (Hadi and Tamara’s daughter) is around thirteen months old now and is saying things - disconnected things, but definitely things. Apparently she likes to sit on Hadi when he gets home. hehehe. Ayyam-i-Há is coming up (in a month!)… perhaps a nifty gift for a nifty niece is in order. Giving gifts is fun. Especially when nobody’s in the malls because the Christmas season was months ago.

I’m getting tired (grrrr) so I’ll see you all around. everything is just upside down and sideways… whatever this malady is, I hope it’s gonna go away. hopefully it’s some combination of stress, weather, cold, and fairy dust. anyway. let’s be positive and optimistic. sunshine and lollipops. blue flowers. TUBS OF ICE CREAM HO HO HO

bonjour les amis. je suis en visite à Victo pour l’avant-midi, chez les Girard. Ça fait un ti bout que je ne suis pas allé leur rendre visite alors c’est le fun… on a joué du Tock Cochon hier soir (Tock, mais avec des règles de cochon). Constance a gagnée une fois et Maximillien (le neveu à Benoit et Constance), lui, a gagné une fois. Avant ça on a soupé ensemble avec Aurélien, Diane (la soeur à Benoit) et Max. C’était un très bon souper. Ensuite on a eu la chance de parler des cercles d’étude Ruhi. Il se pourrait qu’on commence un nouveau cours du Livre 1 de Ruhi à Victo… c’est positif ça, et j’espère que ça se réalise. ça fera de l’activité de plus à Victo et ça fera de quoi à occuper la communauté bahá’í… puis en plus ça permettra à des nouvelles communautés de connaître c’est quoi les cercles d’étude et comment ça marche.

C’est passionnant en tout cas, ce qui se passe dans le groupement au niveau des cercles d’étude… ils se multiplient! si tout va bien on pourrait avoir trois cercles d’étude en cours ce printemps, à Victoriaville seulement. C’est le fun ça :)

Bon bref ça promet d’être une journée mouvementée. On part vers midi pour aller à Drummondville pour la réunion de réflexion (qui se tient à 13h dans une épicerie… ha ha ha… salle gratuite)… en tout cas il y aura des bonnes nouvelles à partager je crois… et puis après ça on retourne chez soi pour se relaxer et se réchauffer - ce soir il y aura une réunion téléphonique du 3cj pour avancer sur le plan de la prochaine conférence des jeunes bahá’ís (dans le coin de Montréal). Vous savez que la prochaine conférence des jeunes sera plutôt en français qu’en anglais? et puis elle sera plus petite que les autres conférences de Montréal, plus ciblée envers les jeunes du Québec. Enfin il y a beaucoup de choses qui vont changer, c’est justement pourquoi le 3cj a une tâche si importante devant elle.

AHHHH YÉ FRETTE IL FAIT FROID BRRR bon je vais me vêtir plus chaudement, y fè frette icitte :P salut les amis

wow it feels good to do spinal stretches. everyone should do them. everyone should stretch their spine. you may have no idea how bent up your spine gets when you sit in the same position all day (ie: sitting in your car, sitting in front of a computer, sitting eating your lunch, more sitting in front of your computer, more sitting in your car…) ahhh it just feels good to TWIST it and MANGLE it a bit now and then.

unfortunately there’s no news. it’s still snowing. I’m still stressed because it’s snowing and because I drive home at 60 km/h through said snow. :P I want sunshine in the evenings, NOW. hmm… rather presumptuous to demand sunshine like that, isn’t it? as if I owned the world? just watch… God’s gonna buy me a one way ticket to the Sahara desert… and hey, I’ll have to be happy because obviously if I end up in the middle of the Sahara desert, it’s because I needed it.

here’s a ray of sunshine: i dropped in to the public pool this evening — no no, I didn’t literally drop into it, I mean I went to visit the pool — and hey, apparently there’s no membership fee or anything, as long as you live in Drummondville you can just pop in (during appointed hours), pay a humble entry fee, and swim. yay! municipal taxes at work. FUN. I like it. I live right next to the pool. I will go soak my head tomorrow. that will help me de-stress. yay!

more rays of sunshine: I made a commitment to start hosting a devotional meeting. I got sick of waiting for the right opportunity. I need prayers dammit, I need devotional meetings STAT. so yo, off we go, and we’ll see how it goes. it should be a nice way to meet people too. It’s going to be a devotional meeting with “Tests and Difficulties” as a running theme. People will be able to come and just share a little space with other people, pray, ask for prayers for themselves or for others, and be solaced and refreshed. and if the Universal House of Justice says that this is the thing to do, well, it’s gonna work, no matter what. just gotta be patient.

more sunshine: bedtime. good night.

I talked with the institute coordinator for the province of Quebec tonight. we ran down what sort of study circles have been going on in the past three months. she was really excited to hear that there has been so much activity in our cluster - what with an intensive course in Ruhi book 3 going on right now in Victoriaville, and two Book 2 circles already finished, and a non-intensive Book 3 circle in the works. That really is good. I’m glad to have been a part of it, and grateful. Every now and then I need to remind myself (or be reminded) that the stuff I’m involved in is not just peanuts. It’s very important work, hard work yes, but very important work that’s highly regarded and appreciated. No matter what happens from this moment on, I know of a certainty that my time out here has not been wasted. Now, on a personal note, all I really need is to figure out a way to serve better — adapt my service to the natural conditions of my life — so that I don’t end up getting severely injured, going insane or killing myself from overwork.

Let’s go to bed now, and dream thoughtful, restful, and useful dreams.

I’m alive.

I’m tired.

I’m confused.

and dammit I don’t know where I’m going which is endlessly frustrating.

oh well, I have a month to figure it out.

once again - any spare prayers, send ‘em my way.

peace

hey space cadets

I’m getting ready to return home to drummondville. I called my insurance company guy and (surprise!) he said that my car is a write-off. oh, that’s nice. oh well. to be honest, I don’t think I’m going to get another car after this. I’ve just had it up to here with all the mess that comes with owning a car - the monthly payments alone eat up like a third of my paycheck. so they’re gonna tow away the little green echo - sad :( and I took photos of it just after the accident, too - maybe i’ll post them up here once I get the film developed. that’ll be nice and morbid.

so anyway, the bel-air insurance guy told me that he would work out the details of transferring the lease from toyota to me (sort of a you-broke-it-you-bought-it deal). dad and I are driving up tomorrow and on our way we’ll stop over in st-hyacinthe (where the car’s holed up) to visit the car rental place. The Hertz guy is real nice. we’ll be able to figure out something so that I can keep the car as long as possible (so I can finish my contract!

I’m not very sad at all. I’m just a little serious. this is going to change my lifestyle - and maybe that’s just what I needed.

hey, I just realized today that I’m a contract worker and I can negotiate my hours. so I called into work this morning, told them I had the flu, and asked if I could skip this week and come in next week. they said sure. woo! aaaahhh THAT’S nice. that’s something I’ll miss if/when I get a salaried job. well, there are things like flex-benefits, but… well, I’m not well schooled in such arcane matters. you know, a lot of things are beyond me at this point in my life - legal issues are perhaps the most beyond. I hate legal stuff. I guess I’m the sort of person who likes to see everything settled out of court. Anyway, I digress. Man, I haven’t gotten halfway into my first paragraph and already I’m digressing. This flu must have really messed up my head. I noticed that I was making a lot more typoes yesterday than is usual for me. I was pretty out of it. Hey, I just got a flashback from that movie, you know, “Total Recall”, the one where Arnold Governor of California bums around on Mars and gets messed up by robots and his eyes bug out and all that. I don’t know why. Oh my goodness, I think I’m crazy. No, wait a sec, I think I’m still just out of it. damn flu.

so anyway, I decided to cancel my train ticket and stay in ottawa for a bit, at least until I begin to think straight and until I can breathe properly. I still have a pretty offensive chest cough. It’s all grumbly and stuff. Heh. Medical terms are another set of things that are beyond me.

so, if you’re calling me in drummondville, and you’re wondering why you keep getting my answering machine, it means that you have to call my parents’ number instead. if you want it, email me (or get on MSN messenger).

word to your brethren.

got the flu :P

had a fever of around 102 yesterday, dizziness, just generally messed up. it’s gone down today. phlegmy chest cough, runny nose, congestion, headaches. damn flu. grrrr. arrgghh. grumble grumble. oh well. at least I didn’t catch Ebola, or flesh-eating disease, or AIDS. There’s always a sunny side to life isn’t there?

anyway, I’m gonna be preparing myself to go back home tomorrow. I’ll be taking Monday off at work to continue recuperating. I did some banking today. I think I should be okay to handle the fallout from the accident - I just hope there’s no legal wrangling owing to the fact that the car was leased. I checked my messages tonight, and my insurance company called on christmas eve (!) to tell me the inspector had passed to see my car (!!!), and that the car is repairable (woohoo). great! now I get to take advantage of the services of Mr. Hertz in St-Hyacinthe - the guy who has connections at the Toyota dealership. yum yum.

I get the feeling I’m going to look back at all this and laugh. This has been the most out-of-control vacation I’ve ever had. It starts out with a car accident, ends with a flu, and each day I have no clue what I’m going to be doing. I think it’s done me some good. I mean, even when things are almost totally out of my control, everything still turns out all right. Thanks, God.

cough cough cough cough cough. sniffle. sigh.