So they say
(Whoever they are)
That we should
(Whoever is meant by we)
Do what it is that we do
(Whatever that might happen to be)
At the appointed time
(Keep your eyes on the clock)
For those who are watching
(And who exactly is watching them?)
And so I wonder
(And who am I again?)
Why that might be
(Why indeed)
But I try not to dwell on it
(Like one might in a house or cabin)
And instead
(As there are always many alternatives)
Go about my business
(Which is none of yours)
And bide my time
(Tick tock!)

Moon's to the south
Vines in my mouth
Growing to sky
Like money can't buy
Giving away
All the seeds of the day
To keep time at bay
And be swept from the fray
Many things calling
And yet I stand stalling
Constantly walling
Keep spirits from falling
Through dark of night I hunger for the dawn
And with it signs of gently moving on

Hello all

A quick entry, even though I really should be in bed, because I know
that if I don't do one before the end of me "weekend", then it'll
probably wait another week. I actually had an entry started a week or
two ago (can't remember precisely) but then I got this strange and
extremely intense sinus pain thing that put me abruptly and completely
out of commission for the rest of that evening, and distracted me for
the rest of the week. Then non-posting inertia kicked back in, and,
well...

So here we are halfway through January already. It's been up and down
temperature-wise here lately (+18C a few days ago, -25C yesterday), and
tonight it's hovering just below freezing and we're being blanketed
with fluffy snow. As the year gets underway, I'm pretty well settled
into my job. Most of the aches and pains are gone, my efficiency rating
has been climbing quite satisfactorily (and thus the performance-related incentive bonuses on my cheques
are starting to climb pleasantly too).  Been getting back to some
too-long-put-off tasks around the house -- some painting and stuff,
putting up some hooks so we actually have a place to hang coats, buying
a doormat... So the place continues to become more to our liking.

Okeedokee, a few pictures now and then it's off to bed:

First picture is of the visit mentioned in my last post. This is Crista
and I with our previously-online-only friends Sue and Paul, who came up
from Washington state for a visit. Lovely people, and we should be
getting to see them again this weekend, when they're coming up here
with another member of our room at Soulseek, this one from Mexico (he's
on business in Toronto).

Next we have a shot from the wonderful New Year's party we attended.
It's the first time we've ever gone out for New Year's. It was a house
party run by one of the women who attends the music sessions I go to.
We were the youngest people there by a decade at least, and the average
age was about double ours, and we had a great time. There were a dozen
guitars, some violins, a banjo, an accordeon, whistles and drums, even a great big
standup bass. Music and great potluck food and nice people -- a very
enjoyable evening.

And finally, we have a shot of our little furry friends the guinea pigs. They're
sitting on the beautiful quilted cushion mentioned in the last entry
and made by Paul and Sue of the top picture. That's Flurry, the gray
and white one on the left (you may remember her as my birthday
present). She's young and hyper and always flinging wood chips all over
the floor. The brown one is Sweetie, the cranky, fat boss-lady piggle.
She's quite elderly now (almost 8 years old), but still holds her own
very well.

And that's that. I could keep writing and writing, but I owe it to my
co-workers to protect their safety tomorrow by trying to get at least a
couple of hours' sleep. Hope you're all well and happy. Again, I'll
announce my intention to update again before too long, and time will
tell whether I can stick to that hope.

Take care
-J-

Hi everyone.

Happy 4th Xangaversary to me!!!

I apologize for going so long without posting. The past few weeks have
really flown by. Ever since I got that job, it's pretty much been the
main focus of my life. Getting up at 4am has been a real test, as has
going to bed at 9 or 10 in the evening (and, if you do the math, I
should really be going to bed even earlier than that). But my
long-suffering wife has been going way above and beyond the call of
duty by getting up with me in the morning, getting me a good breakfast
and packing me a lunch. The woman's an angel.

I won't bore you with too many details about the job itself. Suffice it
to say that it's hard work but not too bad. Physically, it's quite
demanding, and I lift an average of 30,000 pounds in the run of an
8-hour shift. It's also very constant. Everything is timed down to the
second, with computerized averages used to tell you how much time an
order should take to fill, factoring in things like distance, number of
items and their size/weight, and even the specific vehicle you're using
that day (they periodically run them all through time tests). Based on
how well you do relative to how long the system says you should, you
receive an efficiency rating. The required rating is 92.5, and you're
given 8 weeks after the training to get there. It's been 3 weeks, and
I'm already above that, so I figure I'm doing okay. It's been sort of a
trial by fire, since I was hired right before the busiest time of the
year. There's been lots of overtime available, and I worked 56 hours
last week. I admit that I was getting kind of burned out after 9 days
in a row. I was off today, and I'll be off again Friday and Saturday. I
was busting my butt because they've said that the hours are going to be
cut back in January, and that's a problem. I'll probably have to take
some days at that concrete job I've mentioned before. But oh well.
Cross that bridge when we come to it.

Other than work, there hasn't really been a whole lot going on. There
have been a few highlights. One was a wonderful, if brief, visit from
some previously online-only friends. They're a wonderful couple from
Washington State who I've been chatting with on Soulseek for about a
year-and-a-half. They drove up to Niagara Falls with friends, and
decided to make a sidetrip up here to see us. We had a wonderful time,
chatting and laughing and drinking tea. They were our very first guests
here in this apartment. They even brought all sorts of gifts with them
-- tzatziki and baba ganoush, kimchi, various articles of clothing, and
even an absolutely gorgeous hand-quilted cushion, which has taken up
residence on my computer chair (thus getting much use). As well, they
brought along a hammered dulcimer which sits here in the living room on
long-term loan, waiting for me to finish the arduous task of tuning it
(it has 68 strings!). It's a wonderful instrument, and I can't wait to
start integrating it into my recordings. All in all it was a great
visit, and I really look forward to seeing them again at some point.

Let's see. What else? Well, we've acquired a few new material
possessions -- a new tv, which was a gift from Crista's parents. If you
remember, our old one was so dark that you could only watch it at night
with the lights off, and even then you could only watch bright
programs. We also bought ourselves a dvd player at a Boxing Day sale.
It's kind of a frivolous purchase, but for $19.99 we figured what the
heck. I'm happy, since the library has a great collection of foreign
movies, but they're almost all on dvd...

Hmm. What else? The furnace got sick on
the coldest day of  the winter so far (about -20c), so our house
was very very chilly.... Anyhow, there's a lot more I'd like to say, but it's really late by my
new schedule so I really have to get to bed. Looking at the current
page here, I notice that it has entries going all the way back to
September (at least until I submit this one). I really need to get on
the ball. I'll try my best to update more frequently. I also want to
post more pictures. I was going to get one of those cheap-ass keychain
digitals, but the store downtown that had them doesn't any more, and
the film that's currently in the camera won't be ready to develop for a
while.

So... That's that for now. Thanks for dropping by. Thanks for your part
in making these last 4 years here at Xanga a wonderful and varied
experience for me. I really do appreciate your visits and comments
here, and love reading what you have to write on your own sites as
well. Sleep well, and I'll see you soon.

Take care
-J-

Say hello to the newest order picker at Loblaw's Cambridge distribution centre.

Yep, I got the job. I got up early to go to the interview before work.
He asked a bunch of questions and gave me a little quiz paper (some
basic math, a dyslexia screener, and some spatial stuff). We talked
about why I might want this job, etc... So now I'm both happy and
scared. I'm happy that the job hunting is over, and that we're going to
be able to start reversing this downward financial spiral (though I'm
still only going to be making a couple hundred dollars a month above our
basic bills).

I'm scared for a couple of reasons, and they're related. They have to
do with the timing of the shift. Turns out that day shift (on which I
will be) is 6am-2pm. My loyal readers will no doubt have noticed that I
am a distinctly nocturnal person. I like being up at night, and I find
it really really really difficult to go to bed any time before 1am. But
now I'll have to get up between 4 and 4:30 every morning. That scares
me. The other problem is that the buses don't run that early, so I have
no way of getting to work. It's a 25-minute drive from here, so not at
all walkable. I would have to leave at midnight. For the time being, my
mother-in-law (who must be bucking for a sainthood or something) has
agreed to get up at that ungodly hour and drive me, until I can find a
carpool or something.

Anyhow, I'm beat, so I'm off to bed. Only one more day at my current
job, since this new one starts Monday! I'm going to miss a lot of
things about this job I have now, but the change is necessary. Thanks
for your kind wishes. I know that some of you wish better than this for
me, but I think this is an unavoidable step along the road to better.
We'll see if I can survive without having to beg to be transferred to
the afternoon shift

Take care
-J-

Hi folks

My stomach is kind of clenched up. I have a job interview tomorrow
morning at 8am. It's not exactly my dream job, but it would be steady,
and pay quite a bit better than my current job. Right now, stability
and financial advancement are two of the biggest criteria I'm going by.
My wife and I, as you know if you've been reading here for a while,
have been in a financial bind for some time now, due to various
factors. I like my current job, but it won't even cover our basic
bills, let alone feed my nasty little habits like music (I haven't
bought a CD in almost a year). So in order to get us moving again, I'm
really hoping to get this job.

I talked to the guy over the phone today. I was recommended to him by
someone who works there already (who, in turn, knows my father in law),
so I had a little bit of a foot in the door. My resume really doesn't
speak well for me with this kind of work, since I come off looking like
an intellectual pansy. Managers don't understand why I might want their
job, and think if they hire me that I'll just hate it and leave. But in
person, I do pretty well, so hopefully this one will work out. The only
catch is that they may not have day shifts available, and for various
reasons I just can't take a night shift, even though I'm a pretty
nocturnal kind of guy. Another disadvantage is that you have to be
available to work weekends. I know that's not at all unusual in the
working world, but I've kind of gotten spoiled these past couple of
years. But anyhow...

So, wish me luck with that tomorrow. The last fact-to-face job
interview I had was over 2 years ago, and before that not since
auditions back in university. I'm sure it'll go fine. The situation is
odd, since I'm afraid of not getting the job, and a bit afraid of
getting it. It means locking myself into something for a fairly long
haul. I keep having to remind myself that although at the moment I have
a lot of freedom with regards to my job (I can just leave whenever I
want and go visit my family, for example), that freedom is negated by
our lack of funds. If I get this job, chances are I can't take any
vacation time within at least the first 6 months. But realistically, I
can't do anything in the next 6 months anyway.

Ayhow, I've been working out an entry for days, and this aint it.
However, that other stuff I was going to write about doesn't really seem
to fit, tacked onto the end of all this job-related bellyaching. So
I'll just leave it as it is for now, and write again in a few days. By
that time, I'll know whether or not I've got the job. Cross your
fingers.

Take care
-Justin-

Happy November, everyone.

Hard to believe that the year has come to this already. Sky's dark not long
after 5pm, Halloween's been and gone... A couple of weeks ago, my wife and I
noticed that a house up the street already has their Christmas tree up
in their living room. People seem to want everything to happen sooner
and sooner. I have the feeling that if I went into a clothing store, I
would probably find it full of spring fashions.

Life here goes on, as it has a way of doing. I'm trying to find a new
job, and job hunting is not one of my favourite things. Give me
whiskers on kittens any day. Because of our various financial
conundrums, I find myself dwelling on the idea of money most of the
time, which I find distinctly uninspiring. I've never been one for whom
the acquisition of money was an end in itself, so to be thinking about
it all the time is actually rather amusing in an annoying way -- now I
know what it feels like to be a hardcore capitalist.

A few developments since I last wrote:

- My wonderful parents celebrated their 33rd wedding anniversay. I'm
very grateful to them for providing me with an example of a devoted,
long-lasting marriage, and all the hard work and difficulties go into
making such a thing possible. I love them to pieces and miss them very
much.

-Progress on the apartment continues to be made. All the cable wires
are finally hidden in the walls and the coverplates installed. Looks
nice. Slowly getting through the little bit of plastering that needs
finishing and then we'll finally be able to finish the painting of the
walls (the bottom 6 inches on one wall each in the bedroom and living
room aren't painted, since we had to remove and put back the big
baseboard moldings to hide the cable wires behind). We also bought an
excellent paint scraper which finally gives us an effective weapon to
begin removing all the &%^#% smudges of paint from the wooden
moldings (the people who previously painted the house must either have
painted the whole place in 20 minutes or hired chimps to do the job).
We've got some of our paintings put up, and a bunch of the photographs,
and it makes a big difference. When the framing is finished in a day or
two on the latest house at work, I'll be using the scrap to build a new
cabinet for the kitchen -- 2'x4' countertop for the microwave and small
appliances, and some desperately-needed cupboard space below. Currently
-- and I'm dead serious here -- the kitchen has 4 feet total of counter
space, 2 on either side of the sink.

-I've added yet another webpage of my musical endeavours, this one devoted to covers. The page is HERE,
and currently contains an Amelia Curran song I recorded a couple of
years ago, as well as a Leonard Cohen song from a few weeks ago. I
think both turned out quite well, and I would love to hear what you
folks think. There may be a Dylan tune added later this week if I can
find a free moment to do the recording. For the uninitiated, I'll
quickly point out that you can also listen to music from Ticklish Brother (my folk-comedy duo) as well as some of my instrumentals and traditional songs. For those of you who have been subjected to these links many times before, my humble apologies

And so it goes. I have the feeling that there were other things I was
planning to showhorn into this entry, but I've left it a little too
long and now I'm too sleepy I'll let you all get back to your busy days, and I'll get back to the last little bit of mine. Thanks for
reading.

Take care
-J-

Well howdy do, folks!

Very special thanks to those of you who stick with me even when I push
the limits of
number-of-negative-posts-in-a-row-that-one-can-make-without-alienating-one's-readership.
The situation with the loans people, while still not resolved, is at
least not quite as critical as it was when you last heard from me. I've
arranged to pay them back the amount owing and bring my account up to
date before dire consequences arrive, so now all I need to do is figure
out where on earth I'm going to get that money between now and the new
deadline. But oh well. enough words along those lines. Now, as
promised, some focus on the more positive aspects of my recent life. Be
warned -- lots of pictures and tons of words follow:

I finally got my film developed. It had been in my camera since
January, so the pictures cover quite a long time range. I'll share a
few with you, not necessarily in chronological order. First, there's my
birthday, which was a few weeks ago.  On my birthday, I got to go
and see John Renbourn and Jacqui McShee perform. John is one of the
world's top acoustic guitar players, and Jacqui is a superb vocalist.
They were both founding members of a group called The Pentangle back in
the 60s. I grew up listening to Pentangle albums as well as John's solo
stuff, so these are some of what one might term my musical idols. Byron 
and I got to see John Renbourn perform when we were in England back in
2000, and I was very much looking forward to this birthday show. It didn't
disappoint. It was held in a tiny little music store in Guelph, so
there were only about 40 of us there and tickest were sold out many
months ago. Thankfully, I managed to acquire two extras
through a mixture of persistence and patheticness It was a
wonderful show, marred only by the fact that it didn't go on forever.
Afterward, they were very approachable, willing to chat with me, sign
something and pose for pictures. All in all it was a wonderful evening
indeed.

Here they are in performance. Note the wonderfully atmospheric setting.

Me with John Renbourn.

Me with Jacqui McShee. Not nearly as flattering as it should be, since
it was taken outside and my flash seems to dream of being an atom bomb
when it grows up.

So that was my birthday proper. But there was more fun yet to come,
since the night after was a wonderful dinner of lasagna and caesar
salad and french bread, prepared by my lovely wife. Very tasty indeed.
It was followed by a 10lb nanaimo bar (seriously). Among the gifts
was what we like to refer to as a "scroll-saw gift". You see, years ago
my wife's father gave her and her mother a scroll saw for Christmas,
and ever since then, we use the term "scroll-saw gift" to refer to a
gift one gives to someone else but which is actually for oneself So I received the
guinea pig my wife had been bugging me to buy for several weeks. It's
very cute and still unnamed.

So here's me, wearing rather a dopey grin, holding the new guinea pig.
Note the 10lb nanaimo bar. The blender was a gift for our 3rd
anniversary, which happens to be the day before my birthday. I lucked
out and bought my wife a piece of jewelery she actually likes -- a
lovely little jade butterfly on a silver chain.

Okeedokee, let's see. What else shall I mention? Hmm. Well, maybe a few more pictures.

Here's one of the baby beavers I mentioned way back in the spring. Cute little things on land, and even cuter in the water.

A shot of one of my jobsites, but several months ago. All those
incomplete houses are now inhabited, and they just laid the sod the
other day, so everything looks quite civilized now. These days, we're
working in a different city, and only come back to this site for repair
work.

Another piece of good news is that I finally mailed a package to my
family. I've been trying to mail this package to them for over a
year-and-a-half, so it really is good that it's done. They called us up
for the opening, so we got to hear all their reactions. It was lovely.
It turns out that we somehow never sent them a single solitary thing
while we were in Korea, which really is quite appalling. Since I
discovered this after the mailing of the package, I've put together
another much smaller supplemental package which is going out to them
right after the long weekend. I miss my family. It's now been over 2
years since I've seen them, and no sign yet that I'm going to be able
to visit any time soon. But oh well. It'll happen when it happens.

Well, this entry is already extremely long, so I'd probably better not
write anything else. There are other things I'd like to talk about,
like the progress on the apartment or
the second job I've been working occasionally, but those will wait
until another day. I'll leave you with one of the most recent additions
to my collection of pictures of funny signs. This sign is a few
minutes' walk from where my inlaws live. They've repaired it since, but
it brightened many a morning walk to the bus stop for me.

Take care
-Justin-

Two weeks ago, I was going to write a long post, mostly bitching about
our poverty and my fluctuating hours and yadda yadda yadda. The same
kind of griping I seem to do a little too often for my liking. But when
your attention and focus are largely taken up with a certain matter, it
can be difficult to write about anything else.

As the days went by, I restrained myself from writing such a post,
since I've always preferred to keep bitching the exception rather than
the rule here. The mundane details of my financial state, while they
may seem pressing to me, are no different from what most other people
experience from day to day as well, and I don't want it to seem that I
think my trials and tribulations are really serious in the grand scheme
of things. They're important to me, but they're not the end of the
world.

So as the days continued to progress, I started having other ideas for
a post, having to do with how my birthday went, some new work I've been
doing, and the fact that I'm expecting a roll of film back from the
developers soon. Nice, cheerful stuff which can be written about with a
little flare and can be tied to greater issues and stuff. I was happy
that I was putting my stress behind me (well, only in terms of a blog
entry, but it's a start...).

The other night, I let off a little bit of steam caused by stress I've
been carrying around for a year or so. I was doing some meditating on a
few lines from the writings of my religion, a passage which starts out:
"Be generous in prosperity and thankful in adversity". I had spent a
while thinking about being generous in prosperity, and had moved on to
pondering being thankful in adversity. The angle I was working on was
that however down I am now, my problems are infinitely less than they
were this time last year. The forced perspective shift helped lift my
spirits a little more.

However...

Tonight, I called the student loan people to apply to have my payments
put on hold for a while. Turns out that some changes were made earlier
this year which resulted in them messing up the automatic withdrawl of
the payments on one of my loans. As a result, the payments stopped
coming out of my account. That was 6 months ago tomorrow. At 6 months,
the debt gets turned over to a collection agency. So... The best case
scenario is that the payment I agreed on the phone to send today will
get processed and all will be hunky dory. A more likely scenario is
that at least the overdue amount and possibly the
entire loan amount may be turned over to a collection agency, resulting
in all sorts of unpleasantness and years of bad credit.

And so, here I am, bitching, despite my valiant attempts to do
otherwise. Sometimes the more things change, the more they stay the
same. Obviously whatever I've been supposed to learn from this
prolonged round of adversity still hasn't sunk into my head, so a fresh
heap has been tossed into the fan so that I can have another chance to
draw some appropriate conclusions. I will keep trying to make sense of
it all, though I'll have to take some time out tomorrow to make a whole
bunch of phone calls trying deperately to make sure that they accept my
payment and not sell my debt to Legbreakers Debt Collection Inc.

Okeedokee. Writing that has given me a teeny little bit of catharsis,
though not enough, I fear, that I'll be able to get to sleep. Sorry for
inflicting my problems on you, dear readers. I promise I'll rally soon,
post some birthday pictures and talk about the package I'm getting
ready to send to my family. If you feel like taking time out of your
lives to send some prayers or good vibes our way, it would certainly be
appreciated. Maybe that's the new angle on thankfulness that I should
be exploring...

Take care
-J-

UPDATE: 10am and some phone calls later, it looks as if disaster may
have ben averted (knock on wood). Don't want to fully relax until
everything's fixed, but thanks to an excellent customer service rep
named Curtis, I'm feeling much easier in my mind. Anyhow, off to work.

And, hot on the heels of yesterday's anniversary:

Happy birthday to me.
Happy birthday to me.
Happy birthday dear meeeeeee.
Happy birthday to me.

Take care
-J-