Mom (An M I never thought I'd blog about)

It has come to my attention that my mom has found my blog.

Hi mom!

My mom is a really awesome person. She is smart, she is articulate, and she makes really good cookies... occasionally for people's birthdays... sometimes they're oatmeal chocolate chip... hint hint...

Last week she had Oprah on TV. It was bugging me (as that show is wont to do), so:

Me: I'm changing this.
Mom: Don't you care about what these people have gone through?
Me: Hell no.
Mom: Ok just checking.

Fair enough, no problem, I put on something better.

Then, about half an hour later we were watching the news. There was a story about these two people who had just moved into their first place, an apartment-type place. Prior to that, the two of them were homeless, spending cold nights in recycle bins. Basically one of those hard luck stories reminiscent of Oprah. I turn to my mom:

Me: Look at those poor people.
Mom: What are they complaining about? Those recycle bins looked pretty comfortable.

I loved the irony.

I'm also convinced my mom has watched a few too many design TV shows; the clean lines, bright colours, and opening sun roof must have gotten to her.

As well, I had gotten through the level 1 guilt trip -- the "I don't really care if you do it, I'm just making sure you're sure you want to do so because my indifference will otherwise prevail" level. [It's much less difficult than level three "that is like a nail in my coffin" level or the bonus "I actually do care but I don't want you to think I care so I'm making it seem like a guilt trip to get my way" level.]

So in summary, my mom is lots of awesome, watches weird TV shows, and is not nearly as big on the guilt trips as this post might suggest.

Have a good day at work!

In other news, I'm more than half done exams. I definitely did well on the defamation section of my torts exam. It wasn't even about bananas or conspiracies.

Edited to add: I love playoff hockey, but how do two teams blow three point leads within an hour or so of each other? Now back to cheering for 7s over 2s.

Mind-numbing. Yet another familiar M

I have started to measure success in number of pages done relative to number of pages remaining.

But it doesn't matter, because I have a ticket to an Oilers home game!

M is also for morbidity

Antifreeze.

It's a useful fluid.

It can:

• act as a coolant to keep cars running,
• solve the problem of ~10,000 cats and dogs that weren't treated to the Price is Right special (it might even be a cure for the show's host), and
• reduce the number of people standing around the water cooler...
  because they would rather be drinking what looks like a very yummy drink. That makes everything much less morbid, right? Especially since I did not make an allusion to Jonestown (bonus points to anyone that helped mix the no name brand kool-aid for the SU elections).

Antifreeze may also have been the inspiration for the poison awareness week banner in this picture. This banner, which was hanging over a main street in Halifax three years ago, reads: Children act fast... so do Poisons.

I'm not sure why poison awareness requires a week. It seems to me that people should either always beware of poison, or it should be a one day awareness thing. My suggestion would be November 18 (bonus points if you get the reference), or if the concern is poison being a contributing factor but not the cause of death then December 16-17 or July 3 (yet more bonus points for trivia-l knowledge).

Today's post is brought to you be the letter M

So while "diligently studying" I came across an interesting statistic: the top 5 winning goalies in the NHL have short first names that start with the letter M (Miikka, Marty, Martin, Martin, and Manny).

Maybe Roloson should change his name to Mwayne for the playoffs. (yay! we made the playoffs.)

As well, on a tangentially related thought, the word morals starts with an M. This week I discovered that I have a moral. It keeps my feeling company.

Schadenfreude, however, does not start with an M. Oh well. Serves the Canucks right, anyway.

Paper or plastic?

2 days, 2 restaurants, 2 meals that had a piece of plastic in them. Ick.

As my grandma would say "There's something odd going on in the beanery industry."

In other news, Disneyland/LA pictures and debate pictures are posted.

While you were in class

This weekend, I was at the US BP Debate Championships near LA. It was an amazing trip.

Erin and I got in late Thursday night, had free wine and went to sleep. The alarm went off at 6:15 Friday morning, and I was intending to press snooze, but Erin was sitting awake in her bed drinking coffee in the dark. The second I woke up she nearly jumped out of bed: "I woke up at 5 am because I just couldn't sleep I was too excited, so I showered and I made coffee and DISNEYLAND!!!!!!!!!!" Clearly, I wasn't given 5 more minutes, but it was worth it.

We spent nearly 17 hours in Disneyland, and it was amazing. The rides, the fireworks, the fact that a mom actually told her kid "crying isn't allowed in Disneyland."

Jones met up with us part way through the day and we quickly discovered that he doesn't like roller coasters. And then as the rides were about to close, we went on Splash Mountain and Jones got soaked (served him right since Erin and I had gotten drenched on the Grizzly Bear Run the 4 times we went on it, while Jones didn't), then we had ice cream.

The debate tournament itself was tons of fun. Most of the topics (and the debates) were interesting, Ashish and I did really well, and now I am the owner of a tacky trophy that reads "US Universities Debate Championships 2006." As well, some of the most memorable debate rounds ever, but not necessarily for the right reason.

Even thought the hotel (and I use the term loosely) we were staying at wasn't all that nice, we had room parties both Saturday and Sunday night. The evenings were fantastic and included a human pyramid, a rock-paper-scissor competition, and dancing karaoke.

Then on Monday, Erin and I got to drive around LA a bit until our flight. It felt nice to be lunching on Sunset strip, driving down Rodeo Drive, using valet parking for the first time ever, visiting the 3 story Tiffany's & Co., seeing the Avenue of the Stars, and coming to appreciate LA drivers instead of being in LRW.

Pictures and the page of quotes to come shortly.