enfinblue's Bluey (credit to Fifi for the nickname!) Diaryland Diary

"I am seeking, I am striving, I am in it with all my heart." -Vinc3nt V@n Gogh

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Thank you so much for your kind comments! Yes, video store guys are not the best sources of information at the end of a long grumpiness-inducing day!

I know it's quite unbelievable that I have spent an entire 16 hours offline. But it's true!

Last night whilst I was reading some online gossip I believe, the picture on my monitor just shriveled up and died and my monitor shut down. It was quite amusing.

I didn't know what to do with myself last night. ;)

C. convinced me that the issue with my tower is actually an electrical thing and not a hard drive problem, so in fact I ended up not buying a new computer today. A new monitor, however, is sitting on top of my computer table. It's lovely. (And thanks, still, t, for sharing the contact for the laptop - a purchase may still be made. Many thanks.)

I hadn't realized how old and HUGE my old monitor was, until C and I were walking back from the store and I was carrying my own package. C. reminded me of how we had had to get a taxi to carry home the old monitor in 2000. :)

So now I have the issue of trying to find a group who will recycle the monitor - the only thing that bothers me about the cycle of getting new/replacement technology.

Sometimes not having a vehicle is a real pain. I don't see myself carrying the monitor anywhere on my bicycle. I'm coordinated but not enough for that.

And as for the men...MY goodness I do apologize to you lovely women for being so sadly self-pitying and easily convinced of foolish stereotypes of men.

I need a little bit of patience, and frankly I think that the problem is actually that I do not put out a friendly enough vibe with men when I am out in public, wandering around the office, etc. I'm so used to putting my head down and being serious and shy and not wanting to embarrass myself that I believe that I am sending the completely wrong message about me to the males of this world.

I realized this in part because as I tripped into the wine store from the video store last night (notice the sequence), MOWING down on a giant, icing covered cookie that I had just bought at my favourite little bakery (immediately after leaving the video store - again, notice the sequence of events :)), I had an illuminating experience. I nearly bumped into a very handsome man in a lovely wool overcoat and scarf who had just bought a bottle of wine, perhaps for a party. I had basically tripped over the threshold of the store, with one hand holding the cookie bag and the other stuffing a big chunk of cookie into my mouth, with crumbs rolling down my jacket. Realizing all of this I gave one of my big, sheepish grins to the man and to the wine store guy. They both looked at me with warmth and amusement and I noticed that the guy looked back at me as he left the store, paused, and then walked out. I don't know if he was going to say something further, but there was a good feeling that passed between us.

Dan is always telling me - pretty much every day - to smile, as he says that I have a great smile. People always tell me this, and I think it might actually be true. I'm not a pretty woman but when I smile it is genuine and I've noticed that people seem pleased by it. I should smile all the time. I do try to smile as I walk around, but by the end of the day my brow is often furrowed and my smile wiped away. And the critical part is that I rarely direct my smile at men. I feel shy to do this as I was always taught to not be flirtatious. I think this is the problem! Really, I do. If my eye catches that of a man looking at me in the concourse at work my face always freezes and I look away. I am intentionally giving the wrong signals.

And what is the worst hting that will happen if I smile at a man? He will loook away or not smile back if he is not interested in engaging with me. SO what?!

So I have life completely figured out.

The End.

OK. On to more important projects. I have decided to set out a bunch of projects to complete this weekend, and none of them involve men. The first is to finally write a letter back to the World V!sion child whom I am sponsoring.

I've avoided writing to her as I'm more than a little bit uncomfortable with the artificial relationship that we have. I don't want to feel in any way that I am lording over someone, dictating how they should live, simply because I am stupidly blessed with money and opportunity and she is not. (And believe you me the proseletyzing thing is a source of great discomfort to me, even though I agree fully with the basic principles of love and generosity.)

She lives with her mother and three siblings. Her father died. They do not have electricity. She is 10 years old and has just started school for the very first time in her life. She lives on a farm in Ethiopia.

I'm kind of excited about the fact that she is in school. When I started to sponsor her she was not in school, and the woman told me that it was because she was helping her widowed mother in the home with her three younger siblings.

THe last note that I got from the project said that she has a good report card and passed the national exams into grade 2. And it states that her favourite things are dancing, bread and studying the local language.

All I hope is that she is happy and that she is enjoying school. The note said that she would like to have a note to hear about my local surroundings, about me, and maybe some post cards.

I hope that all of this is true. I hope that these are not htings forced into the letters by the officials promoting the correspondence.

I'm thinking a lot about these things, these days. I think it is important that I go to these places myself to see what is actually happening there. I started to apply last year to World T3ach and then stopped myself. But I think that next year I will volunteer on a library project and go to a country in Africa to work hands-on for a period of time. There seem to be opportunities for people to set up computers or catalogues and to show people how to use them. There also are opportunities to teach math, which I have done before and will be doing again this year here in Ottawa. And I should be able to get a leave from work, so why not? I think it would give me a greater sense of purpose and reduce the time spent feeling sorry that I "do not have a man with whom to have problems." (There is a song about this, believe it or not. :))

I need to make lists of things that I will do, not just think about doing things in that loosey-goosey way that comes quite naturally to me. I seem to do better with lists, as writing things down crystallizes them into a commitment of sorts. I need more commitment.

Sigh.

Well, that's my meandering.

I should watch my movie. Everyone is out of town, A is with his mother...C. is trying to do work on the thesis that will not complete itself. (I am really worrrying about C. not finishing his PhD after all of this.. which would be horrible. But I can't force him to do work and every effort that I make in this direction is naturally unsuccessful. I've learned the hard way to accept people rather than to try to cajole them into doing what I think they should do.)

What do I know about anything?

Not much. :)

Incidentally, I would be very grateful to any one of you who might have a recommendation for a good facial moisturizer for dry skin. I am using a rather expensive one right now and although I like it I would like to buy something substantially cheaper if I can find something nice and not overly perfumed. Any thoughts/suggestions??

OK. I'm going to choose something from my library stack and READ. And maybe finish that paper that I am writing with the B ell S data. (Really, bless those Americans at the B ell S. The economist wrote back to me yesterday saying that it would be no problem for her to answer any questions that I might have about their labour force projections. (I'm analysing theirs relative to ours at the moment.) Really, it's quite amazing. Good luck getting similar openness and assistance from a Canadian institution...This is something that I have always been awed by in the American system: the openness. There is so much to be said for collecting data in order to openly promote its use.

This is an aside that I'm sure I've mentioned before at least in passing, but the most interesting thing for me in a comparison of the Canadian and American statistical systems involves the collection of data about religious affiliation. In Canada you have to jump through 800,000 hoops to actually get access to proper, useable files of microdata; in the U.S. you can fairly easily get access to data. In Canada on the other hand we have detailed information about all national and ethnic affiliations as well religious affiliation in pretty much all data sets with purposes to which this information would be relevant. In the US religion is naturally excluded from the questioning. It can't be asked in the census, for example. This causes problems for economic historians, for example, and therefore limits greatly the kinds of research that can be done in some areas of labour enquiry. It's interesting - the barriers come from completely different sources in the two countries but each cause their own -sometimes severe - difficulties. The interesting thing in looking at labour force projections is that the racial dimension is up front and centre in theirs; it is completely ignored in ours. I'm working on something related to this but I should keep quiet on that. :) Anyhow. That's it. That's the end of my rambles.

Oh! Another quick question. Do you think it would be appropriate for me to send something like pencil crayons to Africa? I know that that sounds weird but when I was a little girl I loved to have pencil crayons for drawing and writing. Hmmm...

5:13 p.m. - 2007-11-10

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