Parlez-Vous Français?

Remember back when I said I was going to take a conversational French class? Well, today I started it, and although we had a couple of bumps, I think dear old French teacher and I are going to get along fine.

First, let me describe my entrance to the class, because it was, well, unceremonious. I knew this place was far out in boonieville, so I took a cab. My problem was I ended up taking the cab later than I should have, so I arrived late for class. This was not the way I wanted to start off. The last thing I want to do is arrive in class late, because being late sucks, and it tends to send the teacher into unnecessary fits because she has no time to breathe and process this whole blink thing that seems to be so hard to do before class starts. But, sucks to be me, that’s what happened.

I walked into the building with the cab-driver because he was all cute and wanted to make sure I got where I was going. I asked the lady at the front desk where the French class was and she said “Hear that photocopier? That’s your teacher photocopying stuff. Go find her, she’ll show you where class is.”

So off I went with a big grin, wondering how this meet and greet was going to go. The poor woman just about died. “You’re in my class? I was not warned!” she sputtered in French. I reminded her that I spoke to her in the winter, and since I’d already missed too much, I came to this class. She breathed, calmed herself, and muttered something about not being prepared. I told her to relax and we’ll learn as we go. AT least I tried to say that. What came out was a lot of sputtering, breathing, sighing, frustrated attempts to find the words. This, boys and girls, is why I’m in this damn class.

After she showed me to a chair, and everyone ooed at the sight of my four-legged birthday beast of a Trixter, she told me how many students there were. It’s a pretty cute class, I think there are only 5 of us. I thought she said there were five others, but when I think back, I cannot remember any more than four people besides me.

Just as I was starting to settle, in charged the sleepy woman I talked about before. She was convinced that I had not paid. I told her I had, and I told her who I had spoken to. The French teacher looked at her and said “It’s ok, we’re going to give it a try.” Damn right we are, I paid the fee. Were they going to escort me out if the teacher said she didn’t want to teach me?

It’s really weird when you’re trying to skip quickly between English and French and you’re out of practice. Once you start trying to speak French, it’s hard to stop on a dime and go back to English. As soon as sleepy introduced herself, I turned around and started speaking French to her and then went “Oops sorry, you probably don’t speak French.” It’s also really hard to give English commands to Trixie while talking French. It’s a brain-twister!

I think I’m putting the teacher at ease though. I already showed her my good memory and the fact that I can speak French, it’s just rusty and dusty. I felt bad for the poor guy beside me though. We did an exercise where the teacher read an article to us and then We teamed up and we had to answer questions. He had to read stuff to me so we could work together, and I kept answering the questions before he could find the answer. The teacher was surprised I think. I attempted to tell her that learning to listen well was a necessity, because sometimes in school, the teacher would make up exercises on the fly and I wouldn’t have a copy. I think I succeeded in conveying that message. God my French sucks. I can speak simple sentences, but as soon as the message gets complicated, my mind fills with thoughts and I can’t sift through them to find the French words.

It’s going to be a neat experience. This lady’s first language is French, so she doesn’t have all the English words at her disposal that we do. So, sometimes she can’t just give us the English equivalent for a French word. She has to explain it in other ways. Or, it can go the other way. She asked us if a certain word was masculine or feminine. Someone wanted to know what that word was and asked if it meant string. The teacher said “What is string?” Would you believe that’s hard to explain? I couldn’t think of how to explain it! I kept thinking of draw-strings in your pants, but that’s not accurate. Then I thought of cords, but I didn’t want her to think electrical cords. Then I thought about things pulled by strings, but my French is so bad, I was afraid she’d think the thing being pulled by the string was the string. Aa language! How complicated it is!

I was so nervous going in. I didn’t know where I would fall on the spectrum of French-speaking ability. I fall in a pretty good spot. There is one guy who’s totally whooping my ass who also went to the Summer Language Bursary Program that I went to in 2001, only he went more recently and it shows. And there are others who have great vocabulary, but…ils ont une tray mo vez ak sont. Hopefully someone will get that. That was my attempt to phonetically spell what their accent sounded like if they said they had a bad accent in French. Anyway, I’m right smack in the middle, so I can relax and I’m not going to be laughed at by a mass of folk far superior to me in the French department.

One thing that I found to be slightly chuckle-worthy was the discovery that one of the students must wear hearing aids, and she was sitting furthest from the teacher! Now, wouldn’t hearing difficulties be a bigger impediment to a conversational French class than blindness? Just a thought. And why isn’t she sitting closest so she can hear best?

I think things are going to go well. The teacher says she’s going to email me the sheets she hands out. We’ll see if she actually does it. I’ve found someone who’s willing to drive me to class so I don’t have to pay 20 bucks a shot in cab fare, so rockin’. the teacher was actually kind of cool about this. I asked if there was anyone who lived in my area of town who wouldn’t mind meeting me somewhere and we could come together. A guy agreed to drive me, and the teacher said, “Do you trust him?” That’s a fair question. I think I do. He seems like a nice guy, and if anything goes wrong, he’s sort of screwed because I can get his whole name from the teacher, not like I’d have to, but you know what I’m saying. He’s not very anonymous.

So, hopefully by the end of the course, I’ll be able to speak French a hell of a lot better than I can right now. No matter what the outcome, it should be a fun ride.

Either Phones Are Getting Worse, Or I’m A Chronic Mumbler.

This has happened to me twice now. I ordered two different things from the states from two different companies, and I ordered them both over the phone. In both cases, when I said Guelph, they wrote down “Guelth!” I even spelled it, and they still thought my p was a t! Do I mumble that much? Both times, I got the shipping notice, saw the error, and had to call and fix it.

Ok, note to self: When ordering by phone from the states, say “P as in papa!” Leave nothing to the imagination!

Happy Birthday Dear Trixie And Company

Happy birthday to Tacoma, Tad, Talbot, Tarragon, Theda, Titan, Trooper, and of course, Trixie! It looks like, next to Trooper, Trixie got the best name of the bunch. In case you’re wondering, those are the dogs that make up Trixie’s whole litter. They were born April 9, 2005.

Hopefully this birthday will be a lot better than last years. She spent the morning of her second birthday trying to guide me when I was in bad knee pain, and then she spent the afternoon in the dorm while I was taken to urgent care and I got that crazy brace.

It’s raining right now. Hopefully that will change. I wanted to take her to a big park nearby and let her have a romp. We’ll see.

I never thought I’d be wishing my dog a happy birthday, I thought they’d never know the difference between their birthday and another day. But here I am. It’s funny what you’ll do when you get attached to your dog. I realize this has more significance for me than her, but oh well. Happy birthday, Trixter!

Matters Of The Heart

That’s just creepy. First we had the guy turned on to housework by a donated kidney from a woman. Now we have a guy who received a heart in a transplant surgery killing himself in the same way as the transplant donor did. Oh, and he married the donor’s widow too. It really makes you wonder how much stuff is governed by the brain, or if other organs have something to do with it.

Trixie Chit Chat

I think it’s time for another episode of let’s googoo and gaga about Trixie. They’re so much fun.

I’ve never written about her giant burps she lets out after eating. Some of them sound like they came out of a person! I was home for Christmas and she burped and mom looked around to see where dad or my brother came from. Now that’s a big dog burp.

If you put Trixie on a leash and walked her around Guelph, she would probably show you everywhere I go. She always makes me look like such a lush if I take her into this funky little mall we have downtown. She heads straight for the liquor store! We’ve been there before, but we’ve also been to the chocolate store, the pharmacy, the Radio Shack, er, The Source, *whatever*, the cafe, but what does she book it for? The booze! Man alive you’d think I was there all the time! She’s developing quite the memory for people we know, and their cars. She recognizes cabs, friends’ cars, buses, it’s amazing.

She’s also capable of amazing leaps of deductive reasoning. Steve’s sister came to pick us up, and I took Trixie to go pee. She watched Steve and his sister get in the car, and when it pulled up next to where she was going pee, she decided that they must be waiting for us, so she wasn’t going to poop. Silly girl.

Sometimes those leaps of reasoning are wrong, but I at least know where her mind is at so I don’t feel like her mistakes are dangerous. I was standing at a corner, and a woman in an idling car at an intersection said I could go ahead. I repeated it back to her to be sure, and we started off. Because we’d had a conversation, Trixie thought maybe I wanted to get in her car! Woops! I told her not today, and she continued on. But hey, I could see where she’d get that idea.

I knew snow would give her troubles, but I never thought she would treat mud as an obstacle to be avoided like the plague. But she did! She would stop dead and show me the mud like “No no. Don’t make us walk through that horrible stuff. No no nooo!” Silly Princess Trixie. But at least the mud is getting to be less prevalent. I love spring. Right now, I can walk outside without even a coat. This is perfect. If only it was like this all year.

I took Trixie out for a flexi on Sunday, and I forgot how much I enjoy them in the spring. I can run behind her without tripping over snow and ice! It’s just plain fun! I love watching her brain work. I think she figured out that underneath the snow, the same grass was there all along. She was sniffing at some little bits of snow and saw there was grass under there. I could have been dreaming, but I think something clicked in her lab head. She was having so much fun, even more than she had in the winter.

We were having so much fun that we, um, flexied a little too far. Trixie was romping and sniffing, sniffing and romping, when suddenly I noticed that I couldn’t hear the corner’s audible signal anymore! Woops! We were around the corner and travelling up the other street. We were safely on the inner grass, but woops! Trixie suddenly realized we were on foreign territory, because she stopped dead and started looking left and right. I eventually figured out where I was, and we made our way back, but that’s when you know you’re having fun!

I forgot how much of a perma-wag Trix gets going. She had it last year when we came home, and with the change in the weather, it made her less waggy. Now, it’s back! It’s so fun to watch! My puppy enjoys this weather as much as I do.

One thing she hasn’t done yet with this weather is do that flop and snort routine when we come home from walking somewhere. She still flops and snorts in the morning, but there’s no post-route flop snort, or sprint. Now, she just walks around the room really fast. I think she’s happy, but I really enjoyed the post-route flop snort! I hope it comes back.

That big heavy bone I got last year when I came home finally died a month or so ago. It wasn’t intimidating in the least anymore! It had just gotten very pointy at each end. Oh dear. But Autumn, my room-mate from guide dog school if you don’t remember, sent her another one and it arrived today! Heehee! Trixie just about grabbed it and ran off!

AS an aside, Autumn’s dog is having some troubles and is getting looked at by GDB vets. Let’s hope the results of tests are good. I don’t think the troubles are really serious, but they’re serious enough to get her a trip back to GDB for tests.

Wanna know something else scary? The roll of bags that I bought when I got Babs, and still had when Trixie came home, is still kickin’! It has a wabble to it now, but it is very much alive and has many many bags to go. When it finally dies, that’ll be a scary day. Yea Market Fresh roll of produce bags. You rock my world.

Next week, I take Trixie for her annual checkup! Yeah! Again, that feels special to me. That’s something I never got to do with Babs. Hopefully all the news is glowing and good. I’m going to start her on Revolution to prevent nasty parasites from biting her, because I’ve heard nothing but good things about it. Hopefully it’s easy to apply.

Oh, Steve’s little brother has competition for Trixie’s affections here in Guelph. She has fallen head over heels for The guy who came over to watch Mania with us on Sunday. My god! I don’t know what it is, but she just can’t get enough of him.

I have some thoughts that keep circling about Babs after I wrote that final journal entry. First, man did that dog get a lot of ear infections! Lord! I think she had 3 in the time I had her! Yeah, that’s what happens when you don’t get trained to clean her ears. Lab ears are prone to infections! Trixie has had 2 infections during our time together, both of which were caused when her ears would get licked by other dogs, and the alcohol-free baby wipes I was using just weren’t doing the trick. Now that I have the wipes from the vet, we’ve been ear infection free!

And man did Babs have relieving issues. I’m sure anyone who read my final Trixie training entry would have gotten to the part where I talked about how Trixie had already pooped and peed several times here in her new relieving zone and would have been like “What’s the big deal, she’s pooped and peed a few times in her new home. Woopdy friggin doo.” But if they knew Babs, they would understand. Whenever Babs was in a new place, she would not go. She wouldn’t poop, wouldn’t poop, wouldn’t poop. and then she exploded. I was lucky she held it until we got to the park.

Visiting people was a ball of fun. Barb, do you remember how many rainy evening trips we made out to your lawn hoping she would just poop already? She wouldn’t poop until the last day I was there! And then she pooped a few times unexpectedly. I remember your dad saying “don’t worry about relieving her, she already busied herself in the backyard.” Uh, um, oops.

And Babs wasn’t too good at letting me know when she had to go in an emergency. Trixie figured out that I cannot see, so if she needs to go in one heck of a hurry, she should come over to me and wack her nose into my leg or my hand. Then when I would get up, she would walk to the door. Yup, that’s straightforward, to the point, and effective! What was Babs’s I gotta go signal. She would sniff my coat! No sir, that would not get my attention. I was just lucky mom was still there when she did that.

And let me say again that I was a fool with Babs. I would think nothing of taking her down completely new routes a couple of days after coming home, expecting her to just know what to do, even if I didn’t. Ooo there were some really really dumb crossings I did where I didn’t line up right, and I just thought she’d fix it. Oh boy no she didn’t, and we had to be rescued! It was bad, bad times. Soon Babs learned that I hadn’t a clue, and started exploiting that, dragging me towards food and anything else she could scavenge. Oh the lessons I had to learn. Sure, you can go on new routes eventually, but that comes with time. AT first, you have to do the tried and true so that you know you can trust her and she knows what you expect. Then you can go exploring.

I think that’s about it for another episode. I’m sure I’ll be back sooner than later. Tomorrow is The Trixter’s birthday, and next Tuesday, we will have been home one year. What a year. What a learning process.

Smile! You’re On Useless Camera!

A new study on the effectiveness of security cameras in San Francisco has come to the obvious conclusion that, no, the things do not in fact work. The only thing accomplished by the spying is that some of the crime that used to take place in camera range now takes place a few hundred feet away, out of range of the cameras. Even funnier is that this mostly applies to murders, while rates of various types of theft were largely unchanged.

But leave it to politicians to come up with a reason why we not only need the existing cameras, but should go ahead and install a few more.

San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom says that in spite of the report, the cameras are a good idea because even though they don’t really do shit, they, wait for it, make people feel safer.

“When I put the first cameras in, I said, ‘This may only move people around the corner,’ ” he said. “But the community there said, ‘We don’t care, we want our alleyway back.’ No one’s actually had a camera up that they wanted torn down in the community.”

Ug.

With leadership like this, is it any wonder why the
story
also notes that the city is facing one of the largest budget deficits its had in a number of years?

Reworking Errors

I thought I’d try and explain something that I’m sure looks weird if you saw it and didn’t know what the hell was going on. Have you ever seen a guide dog team cross the same street a few times? Have you wondered why in hell they just keep going back and forth over the same street? Your first thought might be that the person is lost. That might be the case, or they could be reworking an error, and that’s what I want to explain.

When a guide dog makes a mistake, it’s not a good idea to gloss over it and just keep going on your merry way. If you do that, the dog may think that what they just did is perfectly fine, and they can feel free to do it again. If at all possible, you should stop, go back, and make sure that whatever they just did, they don’t do again, and they do the right thing. This is called reworking an error. So, if you get smacked into a pole, you should bring the dog back, show the pole to them, and get them to walk past it again and not hit it. If you hit it again, you go back and do it again. When you walk past it without meeting it with a ker smack, you praise your dog!

The same is true of a street crossing. If you cross the street and come up on the other side in a weird spot and not where you should come up, you need to turn around, find the corner, cross over to the side where you just came from, and cross it again until you come up where you should. Does that make sense?

to the person who doesn’t know what we’re doing, it must look completely ridiculous, especially when I’m choosing to cross a very busy street repeatedly. People must think I have a death wish.

The other day, Trixie had a very confused day. I think it was because the snow had melted, and she was trying to avoid phantom snowbanks. It was kind of funny. One of the side-effects of this was she kept crossing this one street crookedly. We would come up far to the left of the curb, standing in some grass.

Somebody saw me crossing and crossing and crossing. She kept asking me where I was trying to go. Try as I might, I could not explain the concept of reworking to her. Every time I tried, she would cut me off with “Yeah, but where are you trying to go?” At this point, the destination is irrelevant. I’m just trying to get across this street straight! She was the one I asked to stand in the same spot so I could cross, turn around, and cross again and know we were on the right track. Her response was to wish me luck and take off.

So the next time you see a guide dog team crossing the same street over and over, feel free to ask the person if they need help. If the person says no, ask if they’re reworking a crossing, and you just might make someone’s day because you’re one of very few people who get it!

Yup, I guess I’m A Horrible Blind Person

A couple of stories I heard recently made me so thankful that I live in the generation I do, even though I complain about the stupidness and all that. If I was older, oh my. I don’t think I would have survived as a blind person. If I did, I would have been miserable.

The first story I heard just about made me want to cry. It was all about this blind high school student years ago who was preparing an essay. Now, this was before the computer. So, to present this essay to a teacher, she had to type it out on a typewriter, and typewriters didn’t talk. There was no such thing. Ok, right there, I would have been fucked. First off, as I’m writing, I’m constantly changing my mind about how the sentence should be structured. Ok, I guess I’d write my first copy out in braille, but even that method didn’t make for easy changes of course. It wasn’t like a computer where you could just cut out and paste. You would have to scratch out the unwanted letters and either go on from there or write over them and try to not make a total mess. Second, I make a zillion typos, some of them see the light of day before being quickly fixed. In that sentence alone, I fixed five typos. There. I fixed another! And another! Ok, my point is made, and my typing accuracy revealed. If I had to start over again every time I made a typo, well…the typewriter would learn to fly.

But that’s not the part of the story that truly made me cry. This girl was merrily typing her essay and got it all done. Pulling the last page from the typewriter, she asked if it looked good. The person replied, “The ribbon was out of ink.”

*faint*.

Luckily, she had brailled it first, but oh my god! I’m a terminal procrastinator, and if that were me, I probably would have been five minutes from class, finishing up, all proud of myself, and then discovering that I was completely out of time and out of luck.

I’ve already whined about the abacus. Let’s go through another exercise in elementary school torture that my braille teacher tried to tell me was the way of the future. It was called, and lots of blinks will shudder while others laugh at the shuddering blinks, the slate and stylus!

For all of those who don’t know, this is how it works. In case you don’t know this, the braille cell, or the thing from which all braille symbols are derived, has six dots. The formation of the cell is two columns wide, three rows deep. Down the left column are dots 1, 2, 3, and down the right are dots 4, 5, 6. Just so we’re clear, 1 is directly across from four, 2 from 5, and 3 from 6. If I knew of a place where I could import a graphic of a braile cell, I would, but I don’t, mainly because I wouldn’t know how good the quality of the graphic was. But all of this crap becomes important.

So, the slate…ug! It was a portable way to braille. That, I will give it. It was a set of two long pieces of metal held together by a hinge. The top piece had four rows of braille cell-shaped holes all the way down it. At the inner edge and the outer edge on the bottom piece, there were two sets of picks that you would spear your braille paper on. Again, I wish I had a picture of a slate so you wouldn’t have to go on my crappy description. Ah hell, here’s a picture. picture of a slate from Independent Living Aids, hopefully the right one

Basically, you would open the slate up so the top piece was laying with the holes facing down so the picks and the bottom piece were fully exposed. You would take your braille paper, line the top up with the top of the bottom piece, spear it on the picks, then grab the top piece and flip it and slam it over the paper so that the cell-shaped holes were now facing up and ready for you to start work. This slam would, in theory, fully hold the paper in place so you could then work away without fear that it would slide. Mwa ha ha ha ha. IT is a fine theory.

So anyway, now let’s explain the holes. These holes, my friends, represent the braille cell, only backwards. This is because you are punching through to the other side of the paper with the stylus, creating the dots on the other side. So now, 4, 5, and 6 are on the left, and 1, 2, and 3 are on the right. Aren’t you grinning with joy? So now you have to do all your letters backwards.

And to make things even more enjoyable, you have to punch a letter out dot by friggin dot! Maybe it’s time to step back a bit. When you’re brailling using a Perkins Brailler, or a braille typewriter as some call them, the device has six keys and a space bar. When you want to type a letter, you hit all the keys for the dots required for that letter at once. Then the letter is done. If you are doing it on the slate, you have to punch it dot by dot. So let’s take a q for example. It consists of dots 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5. I had to punch every dot, and punching a dot involves driving a stylus through relatively thick paper, because normal paper just doesn’t survive the abuses of being poked until it’s full of dots and holes.

Now let’s get into the stylus for a second. This shithead of an implement was very small and very round, perfect for getting lost at the bottom of a napsack or rolling when you set it down or dropped it, and the slate had no mechanism of attaching the stylus to it when you were done using it. That’s just great for a blink. Let’s give him something that’s perfect for rolling in all directions whenever it comes in contact with, oh, any surface. Also, the tip was easy to break if it went to the bottom of a napsack full of heavy braille books, or if you pushed on it with a little too much force while trying to drive it through the paper. Just dandy.

Then there’s the art of trying to make sure that your stylus is in the correct spot in the cell-shaped hole to make the right dot. If you want a dot 2, but you’re too low, you may get a dot 3. If you’re too high, it’s a dot 1. And, since you’re punching through the paper, you can’t check your work. And god forbid you get distracted! Oh, you can put your stylus in the hole where you left off, but what if it gets bumped? And, what if you forget which letter you just made? Gaaa!

If you successfully made four lines of braille with the slate, some extra fun began. You would open the thing up, top piece laying holes face down and paper exposed, and you would remove the paper from the picks. There are two picks on each side, one at the top of the slate and one at the bottom. You would move the paper up so the holes where you had speared it with the bottom picks were lined up with the top picks. You would drive those picks into the paper, and make new holes with the bottom picks. This, in theory, made sure you didn’t braille over previously brailled spots. Mwa ha ha ha, beautiful theory. Then you would re-slam, and start anew. “Where was I at?” I would think, trying to remember the last thing I wrote before going through this exercise. “Hmmm…”

Sometimes, while moving it up, the holes would disintegrate or the paper would rip, or you’d line it up wrong, thus brailling over your previously brailled text. At this point, you just want to scream. Add to this that you’re often in class, so you’re trying to move quickly to keep up with the class, but you keep slipping, and jabbing, and your hand cramps up. They tell you to get good, because this is how you will take notes in university. Double Gaaa!

If this had been a few years earlier, my teacher would have been right, and to every blind person who got through school and still uses the slate, I give you a medal. I also give a medal to a girl who is learning braile, and *chose* to compose a note to me via slate, which made me think of this. But I was saved by technology. Enter portable but expensive specialty technology that allowed me to make quick, effective notes when I was at school without using that goddamn slate.

Maybe, if I had been born earlier and had no Braille ‘n Speak or other funky technology, I would look at this post and call me a whiny bitch. But good lord I consider myself infinitely lucky that I never had to take feverish class notes at university with that horrible slate. I never got good at it, and if I tried to write with the slate now, I would probably only produce jibberish. I’m so happy I never had to typewriter type an essay either. I always had a computer, whether it be an Apple 2E, or a dos computer, or a windows 98 beast, or this pile of crap that is my xp beast, but it’s an xp beast nonetheless. To all those people who had to type with a typewriter and take notes with a slate, you are made of stronger stuff than I. You have more determination than I ever will. If I had to do that, I’d be howling at the moon by now.

Dream Whip

I had two really weird dreams last night. They’re not disturbing, they’re just…weird and I thought somebody would get a chuckle out of them.

My first one was just too bizarre. It was like I was living in an evil parallel universe. I was talking to Steve in my dream about everyday things. I was talking about how I wanted to learn doggy first-aid, and how I really hoped it came together with this one lady who is going to call me soon in real life. I was talking about booking the party room. Then Steve pipes up with “Oh yeah, Carin, there’s a big sign up outside the party room that says no dogs are allowed. I don’t think you could book the party room.”

I respond with “Why not? Trixie is a service dog, and it’s the law, and this is in my building. They’ve been fine with her up to now.”

Steve, in completely non-Steve fashion, says “Oh I don’t think they care about service dogs or the law. They won’t have any dogs!”

Of course, I’m stubborn. I said “then I’ll talk to them about what issue they’re having. If it’s a dog hair issue, I’ll bring a big blanket and Trixie can lay on that.” Steve immediately gets all stammery and stuttery, saying “Oh, I don’t think we have any extra blankets. What blanket would you use?” I laugh at him and tell him I’ll use the old Babs blanket. Hell, I’ll bring one of her beds down if I have to.

Then Steve just sits down and says “Well, good luck with that. Our super doesn’t speak good enough English to understand.”

What the? That is so not Steve. He’d be right behind me, telling me to try and talk to our super, but if that doesn’t work, to call the rental agent or the head office. Why would I dream that he was dead set against me doing this course or booking the party room?

The other dream was simply demented. I was sitting in this room that looked sort of like a kitchen and sort of like the meeting rooms at the place in Kitchener where I did some work. It had a fridge full of drinks and snacks, and everyone around me had laptops. I have no idea what I was doing there, but there I was, without any laptop or anything to work with. I was just sitting there looking like a dope.

Everyone around me was from GDB, even though I don’t know a single one of them. They were either from the Alumni Association or they were instructors, and they were all busily typing and planning, talking about how much travelling they had to do for either follow-up visits to clients or alumni association engagements. The whole time, I kept meaning to ask if there was a schedule set up to know when the stuff would start happening at the GDB alumni reunion that I’m going to in September in Portland, but I was too intimidated to ask.

All I know is we kept having pop and milk and eating stuff, and then we started eating a dessert. Just then, mom appeared out of nowhere asking for the recipe and said we needed to go home and eat this dessert with Grandma because she’s lonely and she would like this.

What is that? Is that a conglomaration of everything I’m thinking about? GDB stuff, grandma who’s been struggling with health issues for a while, and doggy first-aid, and…drinks and food? Where does that fit in? Why were we eating so much dessert? And what’s with the creation of an anti-Steve?

I was just thinking the other day about how I haven’t had a bloggable dream in a while. Well, I guess I’ve had a couple now, all in one night!

I Smell Paranoia

Wow, we’re really getting paranoid. Because a kid drew on his shirt and then sniffed where he’d just drawn, the school principal assumed he was huffing marker fumes and suspended him. He didn’t even explain to the kid why he was worried, and the kid was left quite confused.

That principal must have come from a tough school to assume the kid was getting high. I mean, I know kids are getting weirder and doing things at younger ages, but that’s wacked. And since when would a suspension stop a kid who was really doing drugs from doing them? that just leaves them with more time to get into more trouble.