Its over, I'm done, I'm not doing it anymore.  From this second forward I am no longer afraid of snakes!  I have stated myself cured!  (Except, I'm shaking right now)

 

It finally happened.  I knew it would.  I had my first nightmare in my new apartment.  Now this may sounds childish, but these nightmares are more like night terrors, complete with screaming, thrashing and jumping.  Up till now I've always had a parent or a roommate to snap me out of them, this time I didn't.  So I've decided it was so horrible that I'm not going to be afraid of you-know-whats anymore!  I'm not letting that happen to me again!  I'm getting over it!

 

The trouble is that I'm not just afraid that snakes are present, I'm afraid that they are conspiring against me.  The reason why I can't even look at a picture is because when I walk away from the picture "ideas" start coming into my head.  I start to think that they are everywhere; an inescapable fright.  They are in the grocery store, in my closest, waiting to drop from the sky.  This is where the problem lies, this is what I have to fix.  And I'm going to!

 

Update:  I tried to put a picture of a snake on this entry to prove that I could at least take some small step forward.  I got as far as googling snake images, and then they popped up and I couldn't do it anymore.  I'm pathetic, but if you know me you will realize this was a huge step in itself.  I'm patting myself on my back as I'm trying to slow my heart rate. 

....by blogging.  After such a lovely weekend spending time with old friends, new friends and my hanging around and just watching TV friends you can't really blame me for not wanting to get down to work and officially start my week.  I'll let the weekend linger a bit with a blog.  The trouble is I don't have much to blog about.  Things are all going so smoothly.  And things that are on the plus/minus side are not blogable.  So here is another random thoughts blog.  (i.e. things that would be blog worthy if they were more than one sentence)

 

Today our research group is going for a bonding event.  Pho!  A long time back I wrote a tribute to Pho, but when something is this good you have to pay tribute more than once.   I woke up this morning wondering what on earth I was going to eat for lunch.  [I had breakfast planned; left over pastries from last night.  Healthy diet, pah!]  But when I remembered that we are going to a new Pho shop I let out an audible groan of appreciation.  But not only are we going for Pho, but we are going for "new" Pho.  New Pho is a tricky and excited thing.  Each pho shop makes pho different.  Saltier, sweeter beefier...its all in the broth.  Add to that the way they serve it, bean sprouts on the side or in your bowl, mint leave or hot peppers, there are a thousand variations.  Everyone one has their current favourite Pho shop (Adrian and I still fight over whether Pho 88 or Pho 99 rules in the Missisauga region), so when visiting a new shop there are two things that can happen.  Its better or not.  No being just as good, no being equal.  With Pho, it doesn't exist.  Not to say that any Pho is bad, that would be impossible, its just once you've gone up that extra level there is no going back.  Kinda like the way you can't go back past the left edge of the screen in old school Mario Bros.  (That used to piss me off, I'd always miss the pipe I wanted)  But either way, you still get a bowl of Pho soup, so its a win-win situation.  So I'm off for a hot bowl of Pho, with 2 turns of Hoisin sauce and 1.75 turns of chilli sauce, oh yeah, its an art!  

 

Mmmmmm.....

Its 6 pm, I'm in my office,  I'm tired, my stomach is in knots from stress and if I look see one more ='#REF I might lose it entirely.  Today was a bad day.  It started off well, I was in a good mood.  I had an AMAZING day yesterday!  By 6 o'clock I had a broomball championship under my belt and I made it home for a lovely dinner.  But this morning was a totally different story, ballpark, planet on the colder side of the universe.  It started when I realized, for the 4th time, that I had made an error in my model solution for this weeks marking.  When I went to see the prof for corrections he miraculously produced a model solution of his own.  Its one thing to do work for the sake of practice, but I've taken the course before and don't need to take it again.   [I feel for the undergrads, at least I have the sense to use a computer, most of them did it by hand, oh you crazy kids]  And to make my life more difficult I've decided to go home to TO this weekend and miss two days of work.  I'm not sure what I will do there.  Read tech papers?  At least there will be food and good company.  I guess its not all bad then.  I'm going to quit griping, bust all those ='#REF, go home, pack and, if I have time, calibrate my oven.  So lets end on a good note, here are some pics of the  winning broomball team.  That is me in net looking bored cause we dominate so much...

We are the champions of engineering girls broomball!  Final score 3-0!  Booyah achieved!

For anyone who doesn't know, broomball is a game played on ice similar to hockey.  There are no skates and the sticks have a funny broom shaped end to them.  Now onto the good stuff...

 

The graduate girls of chem eng take this game very seriously and tomorrow are the finals.  You can taste the desire for the top spot in the halls.  We want the win bad.  We even have fans, you can't let the fans down.  So tomorrow, in a flurry of sticks, snow and ice, we are going to win the championship or die trying.  I'm usually not so competitive, but after losing last years final in a bought stupidity I want to win!  This is totally out of character for me so I'll sign off by saying that even if we don't, the season was great fun and I've played the best I ever have at any sport.  I still want the win so bad it sends shivers down my back, but at least I know I've done my best.

My brother came up to MTL along with my Dad this weekend.  He didn't come to visit me as much as he came to visit Mt Tremblant.  I took the opportunity to try my hand at snowboarding, figuring that Adrian could give me a few pointers.  We got to there early, the gondola ride up was amazing.   Adrian had his reservations about me and snowboarding.  On the way up, I kept telling him, "I'm tougher than you think, don't worry, I'll figure it out"  The top of the mountain was astounding.  It was like a frozen alien planet.  The sun was shining and the wind was quiet.  Beautiful!  The good ended there.  I should have figured it out when I couldn't even get the board on properly.  I finally stood up and promptly fell.  This was the theme for the day.  I fell backward, I fell forward, I fell on my hands, my knees, my elbows, my face.  At least the constant variety of falling lead to even bruising.  I'm stiff all over in an even blanket of muscle ache.  Now I know that snowboarding for the first time is supposed to be all tumbles, but this was a new level of pathetic.  The only thing that kept me getting up again was that the board said "ninja" near the bindings.  Everytime I fell, I read ninja and thought "Ninja's wouldn't give up!"  But this morning when I gave the board back, I realized it said "nina" not ninja.  I felt a bit deflated. 

Highlights: I was stuck on a flat and a nice English man said "Oi, take the end of my pole, I'll give you a push."  I grabbed the pole and all I managed was to fall over again, twice.  Or when the youngster, tearing up the slopes while I was flat on my back, replied to 3 and a half when asked his age.  Or in a fit of exasperation I lay down on the snow after a fall with too much vigor and cracked the back of my head.  Something, up until that brief moment of stupidity, I had avoided all day.  Oh well, I gave it my best and I've decided to stick to the skis.  And the gondola ride down was nice, mostly cause it took me back to terra firma and my car.

But that was only Sunday, Saturday was a really great day too, in case anyone wanted to know.....

I played a trick yesterday.  I never play tricks.  I think of tricks to play, but I never get the nerve to actually use them.  (Now before we get censored, I mean pranks you sick minded people)  My favourite thought trick was to replace a child being pulled absentmindedly by their father with a sack of potatoes.  The father's face would have been priceless, but not worth the jail time.  But yesterday I was in a sneaky mood.  My friend gave me his binder to hold while he made a quick trip to the bathroom.  While he was indisposed I spied a band's flyer and on it, in big type letters, was the title of their latest album, "Get ready to die!".  I don't know what came over me, it was like the angel on my shoulder was in a meeting with the big Guy and my shoulder devil was looking for a raise.  I grabbed the flyer, ripped off all useful info leaving only "Get ready to die!", signed it "-Love Christa" , drew a devil with a tail, threw it in my friends binder and tried not to giggle on the way to class.  His face was priceless, and no jail time.  And as if one trick wasn't enough, this morning, on the piece of pipe I have in my office (and by the way I really need to clean my office) I wrote "The Persuader" in big letters. 

 

Along with the time I ran a smear campaign against the frosh candiates in my high school with a ficticious canidate of my own, I now have a trick count of 3!

I know its pretty pathetic to describe your dreams on a blog, but the dream I had last night was so unreal and vivid that I have been reliving it all morning.  I'm also trying to figure out if it was yesterday's excesive broomball adreneline or the 10 pieces of licorice I ate that gave me the weird dreams.  I want to be able to repeat the magic formula and have more kickass dreams like this one.

 

Dream Synopsis:

 

I'm a kick ass ninja. (in plain clothes, in fact)  I have a ninja side kick.  We are sitting, having a ninja lunch on a japanese style tiled roof when, out of the blue, we are attacked by a whole ninja clan who we apparently pissed off and want to kill us.  We start running from japanese roof top to japanese roof top making insane spiderman style leaps and tiles are flying everywhere.  Then we end up in an open field and are surronded by the enemy clan.  This is where the dream starts to rock!  I ask "What are we going to do?" and ninja sidekick says, "Fight!"  So the two of us take on 50 other ninja and clean house!  I'm landing roundhouse kicks, uppercut punches and crazy combos.  It was amazing!  When we have destroyed the other clan and start eating our lunch again my alarm goes off.

 

Awesome ninja dream, but now I feel exhausted.

Ahhhh....  I am starting to feel whole again.  That consumerism really did fill the void.  Not in me, but, physically, in my apartment.  The space that was meant to be filled by a bed is now, quiet nicely, filled.  And my dresser is covering the void in the corner.  (That void was troublesome too, constantly sucking my breathing air and occasional visitors into its ultimate nothingness.)  After staring in utter disbelief at exactly how much furniture can to do to make an apartment with gray linoleum floors look like a home instead of a jail cell, I decided to call it a night and fill the space in my bed meant for me!  And to end this blog with what I started....ahhhhh......

What do you do when you are feeling down?  What do you do when you feel like you life is missing something? 

 

YOU BUY STUFF!!!

 

Normally, this statement would make me cringe but this weekend it really fit.  I finally got around to buying myself a bed.  It was delivered today! I'm going to sleep on it tonite!  Whohoo!!!  I love my new apartment.  But only during the waking hours.  When I'm asleep, its hell.  Up till now I have been sleeping on my couch, ouch!  The worst part is that the thing is tilted for a comfortable sitting position but in the prone position it tips you into the crease.  This is only amplified when stumbling home from MTL bar adventures.  The room is already spinning and now your bed is trying swallow you whole, make the hurting stop!

 

But now, I have a bed!  And not only a bed, but a bed spread!  I'm in 7th heaven.  Now if I have an off day, instead of thinking how sad it is that I don't have a place to put my clothes and I sleep on my couch, I can say "I have a bed and am getting my dresser soon and if I didn't have them, at least I have a couch and don't have to sleep on the floor" 

 

(never forget to be thankful for what you do have, but it doesn't hurt to be excited about new things too)