Geographically-challenged

Heh, just got an e-mail from a woman in Atlanta who is coming to Montreal at the end of June and was wondering if I knew about any places where she'd be able to see some performances. Makes me shake my head, it does.

Haiku the fourth

They have disappeared -
where have all the haikus gone?
Here's me writing one.

A nice gift this week

As some of you may know, I have been participating in an 8-week course for women with self-esteem issues. This week one of the activities was to fold over the top of a piece of paper, write your name on the flap, and underneath the flap write something positive that you had learned about yourself since beginning the course. Then we passed our papers around the circle and each person wrote something positive that they had learned about that person since the group began. When we were done writing our messages we put our own paper away and couldn't read it until later. It was like a gift. Here is what these women had to say about me:

• I find you a very friendly and outgoing person.
• You see the lighter side of life.
• You exude a quiet confidence.
• Lorianne, I appreciated the confidence you have & your willingness to share it.
• You have a great future because of your way of meeting challenges.
• I appreciate how comfortable and accepting you are of yourself.
• I get such a sense of confidence from you, I admire that.
• Lorianne, you have such a positive outlook on life. You seem to be very ambitious and I am sure that you will succeed in all that you do.
• I appreciate your smile and warmth.

Confidence seems to be so prominent on this list. It feels a little strange. I don't really feel entirely confident. However, I do know that I feel very strongly about not wanting to be held back by fear. And that's about as far as I can think on that, right now.

Future plans

So, over the past week or so I've been considering where I'd like to end up when I'm finished school. I really like Saskatoon, but I think I would really benefit from getting away to somewhere new. I'd like to find somewhere with an active, supportive belly dance community. From the e-mail lists I'm on I'd have to say that Ottawa appears to have that sort of spirit to it. Mayhaps I'll end up there someday...

It's official

I know I've said it to some people, but I'd just like to officially say that I have the best friends I've ever had in my life. I've been having so much fun when we've gotten together lately. It's so great to know that I can say anything about how I feel, and to know that I am completely supported. And it's also so wonderful how we're looking out for each other. Thanks everyone!

I knew it! And errata.

Yesterday at a pool party I mentioned about how some dogs had been trained to sniff out cancer. The crowd was skeptical. I offer as proof this article from the British Journal of Medicine: Olfactory detection of human bladder cancer by dogs: proof of principle study

However, I did misremember another fact. Hunter S. Thompson is not going to be shot into space. His ashes are merely to be shot out of a cannon.

Original tasteless joke of the day

Recently in the news it was reported that some users of anti-impotence drugs were becoming blind. I can't help but also think back to the reported controversy that some men were getting prescriptions against the desires of their wives. So if a man had taken this medication and had to take care of the issue himself, so to speak, that could indeed be proof towards the belief that you'll go blind if you masturbate.

Images from the past

I'm going to experiment here with putting in some pictures. I first tried posting them directly into my blog from Photobucket, but they just came out overwhelmingly huge. These are pictures from the wedding of my friends Athena and Dudley. They got married on the Thanksgiving long weekend last year. Let me know if the links don't work.

Here is a picture of Athena and Dudley. I believe they are officially married at this point.

And here's a lovely picture of Athena, sitting and listening to someone.

And the first dance . . . Athena's sister Larissa designed and made the dress.

Here's a look at the dress from behind.

Here's a picture of the guests dancing. If you look in the background there are a bunch of people line dancing. They did that practically all night! It was great to see people enjoying themselves so much.

Athena hired dancers from my group (formerly hers as well) to perform at the wedding. Here you can see Jen teaching the guests some American Tribal style belly dance moves.

And here's a picture of me, Athena, Rani, and Caroline.


Hope you enjoyed these pics!

Suckage

Well the long weekend is here and my favourite band is in town . . . and all my friends are out of town. Not a lot of fun. I think this will be a movie weekend. Today I've already seen three movies - The Barbarian Invasions, Punch Drunk Love, and the new Star Wars movie (to which I give a hearty - ooh!). My plan for tomorrow is to also watch three movies - the Lord of the Rings trilogy (extended versions, of course).

On Monday I think I'd like to do a little hiking, maybe go find a pretty, quiet place to do some reading. And I should sew myself a bag too. One of the straps from one of my favourite bags self-destructed on Friday. I'd been meaning to use it for a pattern to make another bag - bought the fabric in April or March.

With everyone gone I'm feeling a little lonely. Guess I'm sort of looking forward to the long weekend being over. Bleh, I don't want to feel like this! Must need more friends or something . . .

The big life change

So, even though I'm getting older it seems like there are still some big life changes happening. Most recently, last weekend I bought a purse. Now for most women this probably is not a big deal, but I've never been much of a slave to fashion. I did have dress purses for special occasions, but a day-to-day purse was just something I never felt was truly necessary for me. And it seemed like most things I needed to carry around would fit in my pockets. These days, however, pockets are just so inadequate. I have a wallet, keys, glasses case, day planner, cell phone, and a water bottle to carry around most of the time. Really it was the glasses case that pushed me into buying a purse. And I got the glasses because of mild nearsightedness and astigmatism. So really this whole purse issue is due to the aging process. Maybe it's also a way of bringing some stability into my life. Most people my age are starting families or buying houses. Me, I bought a purse.

Holy Crap!

Okay it has been stupidly long since I've written anything. The last couple weeks have been quite busy:

• reformatted my computer in an attempt to force it to function better. It does not like me anymore. I've just grown to accept that.
• organized all my dance papers. Yay! That's been a few years coming. And now all my big groups of paper are officially organized! Woohoo!
• started back at my research job. The main study I'm working on looks at attitudes toward tertiary rehabilitation and how it affects treatment outcomes, etc. I'm also working on a little research project that will compare a few different visual perception tests that are used in driving evaluations of people with neurological impairments. And we're also looking at doing a case study. All very interesting stuff, but it's a fair amount of work done staring at a computer.
• still doing fitness consulting. I've been a trainer for 5-6 different people and it's been fun trying to schedule it with everything else that I'm doing.
• Monday night I drummed for a group of fire dancers at Rendez-vous Canada, a huge tourism conference. Most of the fire dancers also dance in my group, but one of them is a guy I went to school with. He was the first guy I ever kissed, too. It was neat though: it was the first time we'd performed together since grade 8 grad when we sang a duet. All in all a very fun evening that provided me with a cheque with a number that was bigger than I expected. Gotta love it!

It seems like everyone I know has been stupidly busy the last couple weeks, too. Last Friday a bunch of us went out bowling and had a really fun time. It was awesome! Nothing fun planned for this weekend, though. It could still happen, but will require a little more effort!

Well, ta for now!

Haiku the Third

I am so horny,
and I cannot stop eating
. . . must be P.M.S.

Haiku the Second

I bought some cookies.
The were nice, and sweet to eat.
I'll have more later.

A Tuesday night

Well, continuing with the theme of much of the last week (Monday being somewhat of an exception), today was another day when I had trouble motivating myself to get much done. Well, maybe that's being a little hard on myself. I burned a couple CDs, made an appointment to see a new family doctor to replace mine who is retiring, did a fitness assessment, went to school and talked to a couple profs, picked up my yearbook, stopped by to see my 'new' boss John (who wasn't there - damn spur of the moment idea), then went home and watched TV and had a quick nap.

After supper I went to dancing. I hadn't been there the previous two Tuesdays, but it seems like many people weren't there then either. In tribal we prepared for a performance at Zena's wedding next month, then we worked on the new shamadan choreography that Evelyn's teaching. Then a group of us went to Maguire's after to spend our last Tuesday night with Brandi before she moves to Edmonton. It was nice to chat about stuff and remember performances past. I'll sure miss her. She was always fun to hang out with, and could be counted on to want to hang out! Waaaah!

Anyway, should go to bed now. Have to take the car in for a checkup early (for me) tomorrow. Ta!

And so it continues . . .

Yay! I've gotten part of the monkey off my back! I've had a pile of papers developing that I've been meaning to organize for the last 3 years or so . . . and just on health and fitness topics. Today was the day I organized them! They went from being a messy pile in my cupboard to hanging nicely in folders in my hanging file container. Woohoo! Someday I could see organizing them further, but for now it's just awesome to have the counter space back.

This means now that I have only a stack of dance-related papers yet to organize. It's amazing all the paper crap I've organized in the last few months. It will feel so good to have that all under control...

I've also been organizing things on my computer. Last month I went through all my bookmarks and all my files and deleted things that were irrelevent or no longer worked. That was another job that hadn't been done in a couple years. I'm starting to feel like I'm getting up to date with my life. Yay! Happy Day!