Would You Like To Know More?

YOU

That is so provincial

ME

But I like provincial

YOU

You can't even see a decent opera here.

ME

Yeah. That is a problem.

****************************************

I had my palm read yesterday by a girl at school who is interested in that sort of thing. She was taken aback by the depth, quantity and complicated patterns of my palms. She said I was an old soul, that I have been around for a long time, but that I am also fundamentally unable to get onboard %100 with anything. She also said my I have two heart lines that run parallel but very close to one another, suggestive of my deep but, let's say plentiful?, loves.

I have also been thinking a lot about where I want to live and what I want to do (which my palm reader said will always be a hard decision for me). Things are so good with The Russian that I can't help thinking of the future and how we can manage to be in the same one. Can I really find a reasonably well paying job that I will like, that I will be good at, here in Montreal? I hope so. Sometimes I think that I would have been happier if I had been born a few generations ago. I was processing a box in a fonds I am working on at the Gay Archives, and there were these mock-ups of pamphlets and publications and I thought, I am really more of a cut and paste girl, then someone who has to learn Illustrator or InDesign. But meanwhile, I really want to be able to learn web design and EAD coding because I think online archives and online finding aids are the only way to keep archives relevant.

Bby and I went to Bofinger for pulled pork and bbq chicken last night. Dang, that place is tasty. Bby was so cute: the counterperson asks for your name to keep track of your order, and she replied "I'm Adele, what's your name?" and he said "Steve. I rarely get asked that." I think he was pretty touched.

I'm going to take it easy tonight. Have Valentine's Breakfast (heart shaped eggs!) at Bby's with the Russian and P tomorrow morning, then chillin with la Armenian, and I have had a busy week. The Russian is making dinner, and I just want to have a bath, and read, maybe watch a movie. Though not anything like The Scarlet Empress, which seemed like a farce to me.



Oh, and tried this recipe for the ACA bakesale: Bacon and Chocolate Chip Cookies. It was a hit!

What is the difference between a goal and an objective?

THE ROBOT

But I don't need your goofy 3-D glasses! I'm a robot!

CINEMA EMPLOYEE

It's policy. Management requires it.

THE ROBOT

Let me see your manager, then.

CINEMA EMPLOYEE

I'm sorry, Sir, the managers are in a strategic planning meeting for the next three days.

************************************

So I'm going to Chicago onthe 21st. With The Russian (which ma belle ptite Armenienne told me is how she and Jessica Rabbit referred to him as well). I think it is going to be fun. But also stressful. He seems to have planned every moment of our time, which includes a lot of dinners with people I don't know but who when I google them, turn up a lot of hits. This automatically intimidates me, which is silly, but sometimes I am silly. I am also more of a lone wolf kind of traveler. I like to visit places, not people. Unless I am going to visit people. We also have to sleep on a couch at his friend's apartment which he shares with his girlfriend, so no privacy or alone time for the whole 5 days. But...lots of great art, lots of interesting architecture, the zoo, and we are traveling together! Pretty damn couple-y.

We have also been talking a lot about moving in together, which seems bananas to me. But, like anything, the more I talk about it, the closer and more tangible it becomes. It would be crazy, though. I will just be back form Spain, out of school for the first time in 20 years, looking for job, nowhere to live, and broke, broke, broke. In an economic crisis. Not really the context I imagined when I imagined moving in with someone. Play it, bass playa.

In any case, I should be working on a paper which is due tomorrow and which was the inspiration for the scene above. I have to provide an organization with a strategic plan with goals and objectives which I then translate into operational plans. I am kind of unsure what that means, exactly, but it is depressing to think that I am required to do this. That feeling of not quite getting the question happened to me yesterday when I was writing an online exam for an archivist job at Library and Archives Canada:

Question 1. (Knowledge of the general trends of the evolution of Canadian society). Former Dominion Archivist, Sir Arthur Doughty wrote that "Of all our national assets, Archives are the most precious; they are the gift of one generation to another and the extent of our care of them marks the extent of our civilization."Write a short essay which examines one general theme that you know well in the evolution of Canadian society and explain how your understanding of that theme has been influenced by the preservation of archival records.

What? What is a general theme in the evolution of Canadian society? I stared at the screen for quite some time, wrote the second essay question and stared some more. The Russian, over g-chat, suggested multiculturalism, so I went with it, but...

We'll see.

The Russian also forwarded me this today:

Thursday Report

YOU

I want to go to the zoo.

ME

I see. Are you watching porn?

YOU

I love you. And yes.

*************************************

Although I usually make these little scenes up, this one up here is f'real. Except for the 'and yes' part. The Russian was in actual fact reading Stranger in a Strange Land. It's strange (haha), I lent him that book because I remember liking it so much, but he talks about these parts, and I don't remember any of them. I wonder if your brain just refuses to keep everything after a while. Or you have to train it with new things to take advantage of the unused space. Like, if you make art, you have to start learning bookkeeping, or your brains will atrophy.

It's been a long time since I posted. Mostly because I have been pretty happy, and if there ain't no drama, what the hell is there to write about. But then I thought, that is not the way it should be, and also, boys aren't the be all, end all of everything, I have other things to talk about, don't I? Yet, I think I have to scratch that, because I have had some anxiety laden events whack me over the last couple of weeks, but I don't feel anxious about them. I feel more anxious about not having any money and finding a job when I graduate than anything else.

I had breakfast with my mom yesterday and I voiced some of my insecurities, of which I have many and new ones seem to be cropping up all the time, about my abilities and qualifications. I have this feeling that I am not really all that bad at anything, but I am not really great at anything, and more importantly, not passionate about anything the way I would like to be. That scares me. But I can't let those feeling paralyze me, or sap me either.

I have been seeing the pretty Armenian I spoke of in an earlier post, and I like her very much. So far, this has not affected the Russian and I, even though I keep on asking him, is it ok? does this make you feel strange? how do you feel now? His responses are always encouraging and sometimes kind of gross. We ran into her on the metro the other day and had a pleasantly tension filled ride, the three of us. I like her mobile mouth.

What else? The Russian and I went to the opera last weekend, saw Verdi's Macbeth, was very difficult for me to stay awake. Not because I don't like opera (though I don't like it all that much), but because it was really horrible, all around. Went to a lecture given by John Ralston Saul on Tuesday. I thought he was smarmy, brimming with rhetoric and not much else, but then...I like what he had to say about the value of orality, it is an interesting problem to consider, especially form an archival point of view, which is so reliant on the record. It is difficult to imagine a memory of a voice, or the phenomenon of a voice speaking to open ears listening having more value then the court stenographer's record of it, and yet it should, I think. And inserting this idea into our legal system, for example? What a shift. Also, I should probably have read his books.

Bebito and I had dinner tonight, we have not seen each other in a while. Was overwhelmed by love when she came into the lounge at school. And I think that is a nice place to end off, yes? Yes. And maybe this: