Ice sculptures and polar bears

Guess what happens when 8 inches of snow is followed by a light rain? Uh huh. Everything outside is encased in ice. Branches, leaves, fences, cars...all coated with about a 1/2 inch of ice. It's beautiful, but just ever so slightly inconvenient.

I had to chisel the car out before I could drive it. I almost couldn't tell which car was mine out there, they all just looked like humps of snow. When I finally got the car back from Canadian Tire last night, our neighbors were gathered around one of their minivans trying to hack it out of the ice.

On the plus side, we no longer need to worry about the polar bears. There's plenty of snow and ice in Montreal, and they can live on the roofs of cars - little ice floes with meals inside.

We have snow!

There's about 8 inches worth of Christmas cheer, sitting on the trees outside. I've got to go get snow tires by the 15th, so I'm waiting for the Canadian Tire to open with my fingers crossed that they aren't sold out of the right size. I shouldn't have left it so late, but what with spending a crapload of money getting the Honda to pass the out of province inspection, I've had to wait for funds to replenish.

I spent the night painting and listening to power ballads on my ipod. Oh, and I 'Rick rolled' Gord while he was playing hockey. Who knew I had such terrible taste in music that I would have Rick Astley on my ipod? And why did I bring that up?

There have been some great comments on the giveaway post, and there's still time to get your name in for a free print....friends & family, you can enter too. Unless you've all abandoned us out here in the cold. I know we're not coming home for Christmas, but isn't that a bit harsh?

I also have to mail Christmas cards today and drop off a bag for the food bank. One of the grocery stores here sent around paper bags to be filled for the food bank, and they were going to come pick them up on Saturday, but I think they forgot our block. I was pleased to see that at least 1/2 the people on our street had bags out, though. I remember the apartment building we lived in back in Calgary put a box in the lobby for food bank donations, and you could tell people had just cleaned out their cupboards of the stuff they were never going to eat. I think the box sat there for a month with a lonely can of saurkraut and a box of noodles before it was taken away. I don't want to point fingers and say nyah, nyah, people are nicer in Montreal....but. Nyah nyah.

(that goes for us too - I didn't add anything to the lonely box either. I was 'too busy' or some such nonsense.)

Giveaway

I'm having a giveaway! All you need to do to enter is go to my etsy shop and leave a comment on my blog about which photo you like best. Make sure to leave an email address so I can contact you, and on Friday, I'll pick a winner and send you whichever print you chose. The giveaway is open to every one, doesn't matter what country you're in. :)

The last bit of politics for a while

Gord and I went to the pro-coalition rally in Montreal on Saturday (I don't think there was a pro-government one going on in Quebec, but I didn't look) and these are the best signs.

I'm not saying I agree - Harper clearly doesn't have the ability to choke people with his mind, because there would be no one left alive if he could silence all who displease him.

And now Gord and I have put ourselves on a strict no politics diet for a couple days. It's driving us crazy and we're going to get ulcers long before Jan. 26th. So we're concentrating on Christmas.

We spent some time today manufacturing gifts for our families. That's right, weep into your Monday morning coffee, family. It's all handmade, with love and thrift. Because we care enough to make your gift by hand? Because we're poor? Get used to it. Gord's a jazz musician and I'm "self-employed". Just be happy we aren't sleeping on your couch, eating your food and promising to look for work just as soon as this rerun of Family Guy is over. Isn't that the best gift of all?

I'm in a Treasury :)

Click here to check out the lovely Canadian themed treasury by TMCPhoto. She's a photographer from North Vancouver and has some beautiful shots of the northern lights. It makes me a little homesick, even though I lived in Calgary for the last 9 years and only saw the northern lights when I was at my parents place. As convenient as it is, as nice as it is to get pizza or chinese food delivered, I don't think I'm ever going to be a city person at heart. When I think about buying a home, it's always in the country somewhere.

Besides, if we live in the city, I don't think we can get a goat. And if you have a goat, they can mow the lawn and fertilize it at the same time. How could you refuse such cuteness when it's also so useful?


Right now we have cats, and they're good for nothing except destroying our furniture and stinking up the place, and we still (usually) love them.

Arg

I get that Michaelle Jean didn't have a lot of options, but January 26th? Seriously? Harper will have pulled battlebots out of his ass and annihilated Dion by that time, unless he's cannibalized by his own party first. And half the jobs in every province but Alberta will have disappeared.

Granted, we can all move to Alberta, work at the Burger King in Fort Mac, live in a cozy cardboard box for the holidays and choke on the irony of reenacting the Christmas Story - the disenfranchised poor, reduced to begging and treated like animals.

Merry Christmas to you too, Parliament.

Advice for breakfast?

"No one likes to be told to grow up. It's insulting. But these are always the answers. They will always be the answers. The only answers. There will never be any other answers. Grow up. Behave responsibly. Fight for your rights. Take care of yourself and each other. Be proud of yourself ...

"You know, it isn't meant to be easy, life. I don't know why it isn't meant to be easy, but it just isn't, so we might as well get used to it and try to find things that give us a certain sense of pride. We must create ourselves as something we can live with."

- Larry Kramer

I think I need to read that every day when I wake up, just as a reminder. And then every hour or so. A couple times before bed. Maybe get it tattooed on my arm so I have to read it whenever I reach for anything.

How can I not love a man who got banned from his local grocery store? How awesome is that? I tend to idolize people who radiate conviction, in the hope that it's contagious.

It'll be settled soon, right?

I was mentioned on another bog today, for the first time ever! Wendy at The Rugged Moose had some lovely comments, and she brought up a great point when she said:

"I think politics is like sex and religion. I usually only talk about those topics to people that I know extremely well, since they are able to put it into the context of who I am as a person - the topic doesn't define me."

It's true, in real life I tend to avoid all mention of politics unless I'm talking to Gord or my brother because I know we pretty much agree on everything, and when we don't, we care about each other too much to let it come between us. I sure as hell don't want to lose a friend over politics, and so I avoid it altogether because I don't want to fight with anyone.

But then, isn't that the problem? We assume that if someone's politics are different than ours that we can't possibly have common ground, especially in countries where there are only 2 strong political parties. Everything becomes polarized into right/wrong, good/bad, black/white. And you end up thinking, well, I'm a good person and I vote Orange. That must mean that anyone who votes for Purple thinks the exact opposite of me, and they must be wrong/stupid/naive/bad people.

The truth is usually somewhere in between, and instead of thinking in terms of black and white, or even shades of grey, shouldn't we admit we live in a complicated world with a thousand shades of many colors, and no one is ever going to be right all the time. That is mostly why I support the idea of a coalition, because it means there is no single person steering the country according to their predjudice. And I admit I'm completely predjudiced against him, but I honestly don't see Stephen Harper trying to bring people together. He's got a clear vision of what he thinks Canada should be and he doesn't seem interested in other points of view.

And I don't care what anyone's politics are, we're all just choosing the path we think is most likely to keep our basic needs met. If you think a political party is a threat to your ability supply food, clothing & shelter to your family of course you can't vote for them, or see eye to eye with anyone who does. What a sad, sorry state for our politicians - there's not one of them that a clear majority of us look at and trust. We really are in a bad habit of choosing the lesser of 2 evils when we vote. So here's my real Christmas wish - I want a politican who offers real hope and inspiration to my country.

Do you think Obama can manage 2 countries?

Attention Albertans!

Please buy your cocaine from a trusted drug dealer. Some unscrupulous person or persons operating in the province have laced the drug with a dangerous substance. Shocking, I know. Cause otherwise cocaine use is safe as houses.
I know you'll all appreciate the warning, especially this part:

"The province has issued a cocaine warning after several people who used the drug became sick."

Not "hey, don't use cocaine at all, you bloody idiots.", just a friendly reminder that illegal drugs aren't quite as safe as a sealed bottle of Tylenol from the pharmacy, you know, in case you FORGOT.

It reminds me of the day our biology teacher told our class that if we smoked, we were more likely to die. Not "more likely to die of smoking related illnesses like lung cancer", just 'more likely to die'. As though we were all immortal once, but for that first puff of cigarette smoke. Now that I think about it, I've never smoked. Snaps for living forever. :)

Voila!

My first attempt at watercolors. The photo is a bit blurry, sorry. It's a bit, uh, angrier than I intended, but what counts is that I finished it. That's a first since....high school art class? Back when I only finished/handed things in because I had to pass the course.

I have a tendency to start a project, become horrified at how it looks nothing like what I intended, and either destroy or bury it. The difference here is that I didn't have a plan when I started the painting, just kept adding a layer of color, then frisket, then color...etc. And also, I got fed up with my inability to finish anything and just sucked it up and kept going. It was like the training montage in a sports movie.

I think the satisfaction of finishing it more than makes up for the lacklustre product. Now, if I can only get as addicted to that as I am to potato chips....

In other news, unless someone gets a papercut, there's a very bloodless coup in the making. The one thing I don't understand is that people in the news and on the streets are saying that Harper was elected by 70% of the population. It's been a whole 6 weeks, so I guess it's easy to forget that the last election had the lowest voter turn out in decades, and that only 59% of us bothered to vote. Of that, the Conservatives got 38% of the popular vote. Even my wonky math can't make that out ot be 70% of Canadians. And they're talking like Harper has only been PM for 6 weeks, golly gee, give the man a chance. HELLO, he's been in office since 2006. He had a chance, he's done nothing good, he gives me the fucking willies (look in his eyes and tell me you don't get a little creeped out) - I'm looking forward to a change.