Andre is in the House

Ok, so it's been a while since there has been a man in the house. I must say, I am enjoying it.

My memory of having a man in the house is that they are a lot of work... there is a lot of following them around and picking up things that seem to fall out of their hands, there is much ignoring of annoying habits and poor table manners, and there's much general need for patience and tolerance. All of this is true with Andre... but, I'd forgotten some of the very, very nice things about having a man in the house.

Today we spent the day doing diy projects requiring him to climb on tippy ladders and nail things at high altitude without killing himself. His patience with this, despite requiring 4 trips to the hardware store (which he actually seemed to enjoy) was impressive.

As I'm writing this, Andre is in the kitchen making homemade leek soup for us.

He also seems to be making some kind of a fish dish with mushroom sauce, and, as he's from Nova Scotia, I'm sure it will be delicious.

I guess I wasn't really sure about how it would work out with Andre here. He and I are so different. He is a French poet-musician with no apparent self-consciousness... and I'm, uh, not. But it seems to work. He has interesting political opinions, a cute french accent, and can carry very heavy items without complaining. Andre is from my hometown in Nova Scotia... he's very much 'de la region', yet he's also very different from most of the people we know. Many of the people who know him regard him as eccentric. I guess he is. What I enjoy most about him is that he is calm. I also love that he's musical. Yesterday we spent part of the day at the lake near my house. We talked and laughed and he played harmonica*, and it felt just about right.

* Every woman should date a harmonica player at least once in her life.

A serious misuse of msn

The following message could not be delivered when sent as I was offline at the time. Got it this morning:

Hi Colleen. Just a quick note to tell you that your Aunt Tony died yesterday. Will talk to you soon, Mom

Ok, I know that email, and especially msn is informal. But people, that is pretty fucking informal.

Here's one I'm thinking of sending:

Hi Mom. Got mugged in Amsterdam on the weekend. Chat soon, Colleen.

Bloody hell.

Deleriously Tired

Could.
Not.
Sleep.

Last night was one of those horrible nights where, by 2:30am I started imagining the race between me falling asleep and my alarm going off at 6:30. I think sleep probably won, but not by much.

There is a low-level vibration in my new apartment. It was all that I could hear last night. All night. It's like a mechanical humming that I can feel.

And when it keep me awake, it makes me angry. Anger, it turns out, is not a sleep inducer.

I tried masking music, calling a friend in time zone 9 hours away, meditating, burning insence, and using ear plugs. Putting in earplugs had the incredibly counterintentional effect of filtering out all other noise except my heartbeat and the low-level humming -- which sounded REALLY loud.

When I told my landlord about this a few days ago, he said he would try to do something about it and then raised his hands up near his head, thumbs pointing to his temple, in what I refer to as "the Cariboo". He said he 'could not promise anything'.

Well my friend, we're about to make resolving this situation our new hobby.

Spent the Day in Antwerp
(for work)

Diamond capitol of the world
Home to one of the most fanatical right-wing racist political parties since these guys.

I went from bar to bar
Silent observer to conversation after conversation
Spoken in Flemish
About, I guess, life.
Isn't that what all conversations are about?

Random things learned or realized today:

• People don't have to share a language with someone to communicate sadness. They do this by trying to hide it from you.
• When your friend from abroad tells you what time his train gets into your city, pay more attention to this information, especially when he doesn't have a mobile phone.
• Never volunteer to participate in a mailbox migration pilot and then don't bother to read the email explaining how to back up your data
• I am too old to even want to understand what the hell is the deal with Cassie and OpAphid. This knowledge makes me feel old.
• I could never be a beer sales rep. No way.

Told you it was random.

Andre arrives tomorrow (time?????). He's bringing the following shopping list:

• 4 rocks from Church Point beach. Stackable.
• A jar of clams (authors note: in Nova Scotia we call them cohocks... but I could be spelling this wrong because urbandictionary.com gives the definition as 'penis'. Which it's not.)
• Frozen potato puree
• Salted chives that someone's Grandma prepared (because only someone's Grandma does this properly these days)
• Tin of pumpkin pie filling

Yep, you guessed it -- we're making Rapure Acadian! (or Rappie Pie) and pumpkin pie for dessert.

(and yes, those of you who clicked through... that is 22 cups of broth. That's how someone's Grandma makes it. Andre and I? Probably 8 cups)

What? Oh, the rocks?
Those are for my sandbox.
:-)

Normandy

This weekend, my friend Marwa and I went to Normandy.

The trip was a strange combination of things not going quite right, magical moments, and truly disgusting French food.

I picked Marwa up at 9:00 and we set off on the 3 hour trip... which took almost 7 hours because of the Belgian traffic jam we drove into. Thankfully we had a 12-cd changer and a lot to talk about.

So,... I've been meaning to post some pics of men peeing in public as this is a much loved Belgian passtime... sitting in traffic for a few hours gave me many opportunities to snap some riveting pics on this subject. Here's just one of them (hmmm.... so many to choose from):

After a very long drive, we arrived in Dieppe and parked at the beach. I was really impressed by the landscape. This is a picture of Marwa on the beach in Dieppe.

It is impossible not to imagine what it must have been like during the war... facing those cliffs, the rocky shore, the waves... The tributes and memorials to the Canadian contribution was really touching. This , located at the Canadian War Museum, is one of the most beautiful.

We walked around for a few hours, enjoying the town and the sights... we saw bag-pipers, lovely shops and bistros, and memorials. The people we interacted with were an interesting mix of sterotypically rude French waiters -- such as the woman who, after 20 minutes of waiting to be served at an outdoor cafe, came to our table and told us to take our feet off of the crappy plastic chairs and then walked away without taking our order. Baffled, we chalked this up to the lack of a scooping law in France. Dog shit on the ground is plentiful, and perhaps she hadn't seen that we were taking care not to rest our shoes (which had no dog poo on them, btw) on the chairs. Anyway, she failed to return, so we left for another pub to have a couple of drinks and discuss where we were going to stay that night.

The next person we interacted with was a stereotypically lovely and light Parisian woman who patiently tried to give me directions to her bed & breakfast in French. She assurred me that my French was very good (it's not) and told us that she would hold our room while we tried to find her.

That night we found the bed & breakfast which turned out to be a lovely converted farmhouse from the 18th century. This is a picture taken in front of it by the man who works in the restaurant. Neither Marway nor I are sure why it was important for him to send us home with a picture of his dog's asshole, but we assumed it has something to do with subtle French humour.

The 2nd day, after a completely lovely French breakfast consisting of nothing but carbs, we set off for the sea road. The first amazing thing we found was an incredible little store, tucked in the woods as though owned by faeries. Marwa and I went completely mad over the clothes as they were all unique and very inexpensive.

We stopped later in another town (must remember to ask Marwa to remind me of the name). When we walked into a restaurant for lunch, the most amazing thing happened... the handsome waiter asked me immediately to play Scrabble with him for money (you might remember that the personal ad I placed mentioned my passion for scrabble). I agreed to play and he asked how much we should bet. I asked him, in French, if we would play in French or English. He said English. I asked if I would be playing against him. He said that, yes, I would be playing against him, but that he would have some help. I looked over and saw his dog and asked if the dog would be helping him. He laughed and said yes. I considered this for a moment and said that the dog looked rather smart, so I would only bet him 5Euros and that I wanted a 20 point lead.

You might imagine that this led to a playful, lovely interaction. But it didn't. He left us for a moment and Marwa and I discussed what we would eat. The plate of the day, I thought I overheard him say in French to some children, was fish. I told Marwa that the special was fish and would she please order it if he came to take our order while I went to the car to get my wallet.

When I came back, she had ordered and was drinking local cider and everthing was going really well. And then our meal came. And it wasn't fish. It was, in fact, a grotesque looking black oozing sausage.

Marwa, who is a vegetarian, could not have looked more revolted.

I told her not to worry and called the waitress over and explained that Marwa is a vegetarian and that we had mistakenly understood that the plate of the day was fish. The waitress snatched up the plate and said that we would have to pay for it anyway and then thrust the menu at Marwa. Wondering whether I should try to eat it or order something different as well, I asked her what kind of meat it was. She said she would ask the cook and spun on her heel and marched off toward the kitchen. I stuck my fork into the sausage which oozed out a vile-looking blackish red goo. Marwa and I looked at each other in disbelief.

The waitress returned and told me in French what it was. I said I didn't understand. She said in English "blood". Certain I had misunderstood her, I said "I'm sorry? What kind of meat is this"?

"It" she said haughtily "is blood".

I could not mask my disgust at this and pushed the plate for her to take away and asked for a 2nd menu.

Here is a picture from the Internet of what was on the plate of the day. Blood sausage... To imagine what our lunch actually looked like, you are going to have to use your imagination and add lumps of congealed something-or-other and a gooey, gelatious, bloody sauce to the image below. There. Yes. That's what our lunch looked like.

Wikipedia has this to say about blood sausage:

blood sausage or blood pudding is a sausage made by cooking animal blood with fat or other filler until it is thick enough to congeal when cooled.

Now, doesn't that sound absolutely scrummy?

Marwa and I both ordered egg and cheese crepes.

Noone got to play scrabble and noone lived happily ever after with a charming French scrabble-playing waiter.

The End.

Stick out your tongue and say "Ahhhh... I don't think so"

So there's this rule in Belgium that says that when you get sick and you need to stay home from work, you need a note from your Doctor. Yes, that's right. Re-read it again if you didn't quite register it the first time: "you need. a note. from. your doctor".

Today I took my first sick day in a year. I made an appointment with a Doctor who turned out to be, well, pretty damned cute. We sat in his office, he asked me what was wrong. I said I was sick.

"Yes" he said.

"I have a cold" I said holding my breath and wondering if he would kick me out of his office as would be the case in Canada. In Canada' s overburdened healthcare system, if you dared to show up at the Doctor (if you are lucky enough to have a Doctor, which you probably don't) describing cold symptoms, you run the risk of being diagnosed with an anti-social sociopathic disorder.

"What", he asked "are your symptoms"?

"Uh...", I said, amazed that he hadn't even flinched and starting to wonder if he was perhaps an imbecile, "cooooold symptoms".

"Yes" he said, waiting.

Feeling kind of stupid, I proceeded to describe classic cold symptoms... "stuffy nose, itchy eyes, sore throat, coughing, fever and aches".

He waited for me to go on as though I was actually saying something interesting.

"Listen". I said, cutting to the chase, "I didn't go to work today. I don't want to go tomorrow. I need you to write me a note".

"I will listen to your lungs" he said, "please come into the exam room".

Curious and fascinated at this bizarre attention to common cold symptoms, I followed him past the room divider.

"Please take off your shirt" he said. "You can put it on that chair".

Thinking he MUST mean the sweater I was wearing I took it off and sat on the exam table.

He turned around, looked at me with a little frown and said "and your shirt please".

"My shirt"? I said. "Why do I need to take off my shirt"?

"So that I can hear your lungs".

"I don't think I need to take off my shirt for that" I said.

"Yes" he said gesturing with his stethoscope, "I can't hear otherwise"

There was a flurry of thought bubbles over my head... variously they read:

.oO (Pervert! Run! He's a Pervert!.... )
.oO (...anal retentive Doctors, I have a fucking cold for Christ sake)
.oO (...ohmygod! what bra am I wearing today?)
.oO (this is what I get for seeing a male Doctor)

... and finally, the thought bubble that won out:

.oO (Colleen, take your damned shirt off, you need the note, you're wearing your pretty white lace bra, and this is the cutest Doctor you've ever seen... what the FUCK are you hesitating for... maybe he's a pervert! A totally hot, perverted Doctor who wants to see your bra!).

I took off my shirt, sucked in my stomach and sat on the table.

He brought up his stethoscope and listened to my breathing. I breathed in deeply, jutting out my breasts.

"Please cough" he requested.

.oO (Pervert) I thought, coughing daintily.

"Good" he said and started to feel around my glands "please tell me if this hurts"

Quite the opposite, I noticed, but said nothing.

"Does this hurt"? he asked with one hand on my neck and the other on my bare back.

"No" I said "It feels really good".
.oO (oh shit, I cannot believe I said that out loud).

"Ok, we're done". He said.

A trifle disappointed that I was the only apparent pervert in the room, I put my shirt on and we moved back into his office area.

"You have an upper resipiratory viral infection" he said.

"You mean a cold" I said

"It's an infection of your upper respiratory system which is why you are so congested and achy", he responded.

"So, I have a cold". I repeated.

After the slightest pause he said "Yes" and started explaining cold symptomology to me in terms that made it sound a hair's breath away from some exotic rainforest disease. "I am prescribing you two days at home from work".

Exsqueeze me???

"Great" I said, watching him fill out the little get-out-of-work-free card.

He handed me the "prescription" to stay in bed, watch movies and surf the internet, and then he charged me 20Euros, which I happily paid.

If you are wondering what happens in Belgium if you are too sick to go to the Doctor to get a note for work... {wait for it...} they will come to your house. Yes, you read that correctly. The Doctor. will come. To. Your. House.

Crazy.

But one thing I know for sure. Next time, I have a cold, this cute Doctor is definitely coming to my house.

This one time... at band camp...

I have dorked out. It's official.

I have joined {wait for it...} the Church Choir.

I haven't been part of a Church choir since I was 10. This is a long, long ago time. I haven't been part of a Church choir since I believed in Church. And Santa. And that I would have a husband and kids and a normal family life. A long time ago.

This week I showed up for choir practice, they shoved a mic in my hand, I got up on stage and belted out evangelical songs I've never heard before. It was a lot like lo-tech karoake... no electronic follow-the-bouncing-ball... just a mic, a hymn book, a hope and a prayer.

Not sure what I'm doing... need some time to sort it all out.

In other news... this weekend I'm off to Normandy with my friend Marwa. We had planned to go to the south of France with a group of cave divers, but that got all political and some of them were like "erm, I don't know if we want them to sleep in the attic with us. Make them go away". (craaaaazy, wot), so we were like 'fuck you girlfriend, thanks for the canal tour' (my new favorite dis). So I'm now picking up Marwa tomorrow at 8:30 (9:00 in Newfoundland) and we're going to Normandy and will stay in a (decidedly non-atticky) B&B. Should be fun.

In ooooother news... my friend Andre is coming to visit next week. Andre is, um, an interesting topic. Not sure how much I want to say about this (although I did mention him in an earlier entry). I am glad he's coming... it will be nice to have company... but I am a bit nervous about his visit.

Yah. A bit.

Amsterdamsal in Distress

I'm just getting home from a really shitty day at work, so I'm not quiiiite sure how this is going to come off... we'll see, I guess.

I haven't been online for a few days, so thank you to all the people who sent an email wondering why. Here's why: I went to Amsterdam. It turns out that it takes a few days to get home from Amsterdam.

My friend Jackie from Canada was in Europe on business and we arranged to meet up. The first possible meeting point had been Santiago, Spain, but convoluted and expensive plane tickets turned out to be a significant blocker, so last Saturday I found myself on the morning train to Amsterdam. Or, I should say "trains". 4 of them. 4 hours of them. Anyway, I arrived unscathed, went to the WC in the Central Station as is my arriving-in-Amsterdam ritual to pay my 50cents to use the craaaazy bathroom (1 entrance, men walk to the left, women to the right) and interact with the craaaazy bathroom attendant. Ok, he's probably not crazy, crazy, but it seems at least a little nutty to be a 50year old male bathroom attendant whose value added service is to stroll around the loo telling the women how beautiful they are. I'm just saying.

Once out of central station I managed to find my friend who was waiting for me in Dam Square with her Canadian cousin and 2 Canadian colleagues from Ottawa. Introductions made, Jackie offered me the option to join she and her cousin on a bike tour or join her 2 colleagues on a canal tour. Jackie also explained that it was Pam's first trip out of Canada. After dismissing a small fantasy wherein I suddenly glanced over their shoulders, and exclaimed "hey, look! isn't that Celine Dion"! and then ran, with a Flintstones running-on-air sound effect, in the other direction, I opted for the latter option and set off with Pam & Abbey (affectionately "Paminabby") on a canal tour. A touristy weekend it was gonna be -- I was determined to revel in it.

The tour turned out to be great... with the exception that our particular canal tour coincided with a big rowing race. Suddenly our glass-topped tour boat found itself in 3rd place in the race, completely blocking the 4-place rowing team from going anywhere. It was pretty embarrasing... I really could have done without the canal lined spectators pointing at us and yelling. That aside, I enjoyed the tour more than I expected I might.

As for Jackie, I suspect that she and Nancy had jumped at a chance to be on their own for a while. So rather than meeting us afterward at Madam Toussaud's as planned, we got a message that their 1-hour bike tour was, in fact, 3 hours and that we should do the museum without them. Unh hunh. Anyway, MT's was a-ma-zing... I will post pics here once I download them from my camera... I have some good shots posing with wax-Bono and wax-Bush... uh, I mean wax-GeorgeW.

When we regrouped, we went for a couple of beers and then to a terrific funky little restaurant. We had a few glasses of wine and the conversation got really silly and became about Pam stealing an antique bread plate from the restaurant they had eaten at the night earlier. She explained that she had had too much to drink and, in a moment of poor judgment, shoved the bread plate down her pants and hobbled out with it.

Honestly, and not to sound all self-righteous, but I hate stuff like that. I think people who steal anything have poor moral character. Anyway, stealing. Bad.

So we left the restaurant on a quest to find the Amsterdam Hard Rock Cafe so that Pam could buy proof of having visited the Amsterdam Hard Rock Cafe (I did say she was from Ottawa). It was a fairly long walk and we turned a corner onto a quet canal road where a man jumped at us and started angrily demanding 'paper money'. He, for whatever reason, had singled Nancy out of our crowd and focused most of his attention on her... not sure why, but I suspect things would have turned out much differently (better for him, worse for us) had he targetted, say, Pam. Anyway, he got in Nancy's face and started demanding paper money and told us we better not run because he wouldn't catch us all but he'd catch one of us and that one would be in big trouble. He said if we ran that he would catch one of us and rape them. He looked at each of us wildly and unzipped his jacket, indicating that he had a weapon. He made the sign for 'gun' with his fingers.

So I jumped in between he and Nancy and with my calmest 'fuck with me, I'll fuck with you' attitude voice, I said 'listen asshole. You're not raping anyone. But you are getting fucked', and then I kicked him in the testicles so hard he was still wrything on the ground when we looked back at him from across the canal.

Or at least, that's what happened in my post-incident fantasy version.

What actually did happen was like a slowmotion segment of Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom... the survival instinct kicked in and we each took off running in different directions. We were each like 'Fuck you girlfriends, thanks for the canal tour'. I'm pretty sure, as I made the decision to run, that somewhere in my brain stem I registered that Jackie needed a knee operation and that Pam didn't look like much of a runner and I've been running a bit lately and might have a reasonable chance... but it wasn't even like thinking. It was more of a feeling. And it felt like I was going to be harmed. I wasn't sticking around to see what 'harmed' feels like.

None of us did.

As I said, luckily he zoned in on Nancy. Nancy, despite being timid looking, is a fierce warrior Goddess who has travelled extensively, is a lawyer, and is not completely unfamiliar with agressive, dangerous people. She moved away from him steadily, but not abruptly until she was at the top of the street in a busier area and then ran. The best thing about being accosted by Junkies is that they give up interest easily. Nancy, I guess, was too much trouble and by the time he caught up with her, the rest of us were too far away.

I would like to have been able to report that I heroically stuck up for us, but I didn't. Maybe it was because I had just met these women. Maybe it's because I'm hard wired to respond to certain environmental stimuli in certain evolutionarily adaptive ways. Maybe it's because I'm a coward. Maybe it was the right thing to do in that situation and if we'd done something different, it would have had a worse outcome. Don't know. But my unscientific self leaves a lot of room for the probability that it was Pam's fault. Or rather, it was caused by something Pam attracted to herself and the rest of us were just along for the ride.

See, I wonder, by shoving the antique bread plate down her pants, if Pam karmically activated the series of events that would lead her to being mugged. Perhaps this happened so that she would see in this thief a karmic mirror of herself and learn a lesson she needs to learn about stealing.

If so, I hope she learns this lesson.

And I hope that she got a big-ass splinter.

Morning Runs

Lying in bed making promises...
"sleep a little longer, you'll go for a run tomorrow. A really long one".

Throw back the covers and throw on some jogging clothes
THERE's my jogging bra -- yay! I knew I'd find it in this mess some day!

Squeeze a couple of oranges and make a mental note to clean up the counter
uh, Later
Walk outside, earphones in place
breathe in, hit 'play' and start running with Bob Marley
Ya mon. Every little thing is gonna be all right

Thoughts float in and I let them flow through without hanging on to any of them...
I wonder if I'll stop running "to stretch" or if I'll make it all the way around today without stopping.
Doesn't matter.
It's cool this morning, perfect for a run.
Breathe, breathe, breathe.
The lake is pretty, taking on the colors of the early morning -- blue, grey and glassy
Smile at the 3 people I jog past. One of them smiles back and I see this as a sign that this might be a good day.
Coming up to the castle I wonder if the valet I almost smashed into the other day will be in the same spot or if he's learned something about standing in the middle of a running path before sunrise.
No, not there.
Dip into the little woods and breathe, breathe, breathe
It's easy to breathe with all these trees... and it's a bit downhill
I'm going to make it all the way around. I'm almost back and besides it's time for:
SALT and PEPPA! Kick it up a knotch and run with a smile, do a little jogging skip step
Out of the woods and over the stone bridge, up the treelined street and to my apartment for a yoga stretch.

Mornings are great...
I'm late for work again.

Looking for a Good Man, Nanoo-Nanoo

Lately life has been a little, well, lonely here in Belgium.

Against my better judgment, I posted an ad on a website whose audience is mostly expatriats. Faced with a white page and not knowing anything about writing a proper personal ad, I began the process of write-review-delete-curse-rewrite-review-curse-delete, repeat... And then I realized a simple truth. We're all responsible for asking for what we want to receive. And so I posted the following ad:

I'm looking for a really great guy.

I'm interested in meeting someone I can be proud to be with -- you are sincere, honest, have self respect and a balance of self confidence and humility and you expect no less from your partner.

If this ad doesn't apply to you, please don't respond to it... but maybe you have a friend who everyone agrees is a great guy. Please give him my email address. He's the man I want to meet.

Please tell him I'm 39, pretty, funny, non-competitive (except when playing Scrabble), and that when we're together he'll smile a lot and he'll know that he has got a really great woman.

Ok, I know, I know, that last sentence sucks a bit and it's weird to call yourself pretty, but I threw those in anyway.

Given the responses I've received, it's clear that my ad superefficiently screens out all of the really great guys. It's a real toss up, but I think that this was my favorite response:

In first instance, let me tell you that I am 40, 187 cm high, 90 kg, Dark blond hair and green eyes. I do like to have a serious chat from time to time, but also a good laugh is more than welcome. So, I am looking to meet someone to have fun with.... no strings attached... just have good times with a soulmate....

Hmmmm... as much as I'd really like to invest in having no-strings-attached chats with my soulmate, I think I'll pass. Did you even read my ad?

A close contender for most depressing response was this:

I'm looking for real relationship if you like lets chat " would like to see your
pic as well thank you.

Oh, by the way, Ork called. Mork's pissed and wants his suspenders back.

7-Year Old Me

If I had a chance to speak to the 7 year old me, I would tell her...

• Use moisturizer. Everyday.
• In highschool, you'll befriend a girl named Cheryl who will betray you. It feels important, but it's not. Don't let it ruin grade 10.
• Bad dreams are gifts... they come to you when you need a strong message and help you know when changes are necessary. Listen to them.
• Your father already approves of you... stop trying to earn his approval
• Run -- you don't run funny, no matter what that little shit in grade 4 said
• Gary Fagan, Danny Clarke or Mounir Karram were guys worth holding onto
• Daymond Klutz, James McKay, Jon Fraser, Cam Emmons, and Jamie Aguay are guys you can learn life lessons from, but it's better if you just run in the other direction
• Date Sandy H, Tom C, Mike T, and Belal -- but don't fall in love with them
• Never re-date an ex. You parted for good reasons.
• When you are offered that job in Belgium with a big multinational conglomorate, say 'yes' but do not ship your furniture over because it makes leaving too difficult
• Math is important for your life. Don't drop it. You'll need math courage for grad school.
• Your mother is your best friend. Treat her like she is. Every moment.
• Pay attention every time you wash a brandy glass... you are going to slice your hand open if you don't
• Invest in a little company called Microsoft

I was going to add "when the choice comes up to either spend the summer tripping around Europe with Jill or go to graduate school -- choose Europe"... but it would probably have changed too much of the good stuff in my life. Then again, it sure would be nice to know what would have come to pass...

And that's the way you all become the Brady Bunch

Today I went to Church.
Church is great for a lot of reasons... not only is it the only place you can go to for less than 10bucks, but everyone is super nice to you, and you feel for an hour or so that you could really be part of something. And there is free coffee.

Being in a group of 'Believers' is an interesting experience. Being the new person is particularly interesting. It's a lot like how I remember being the new kid in class used to feel like -- everyone is a little curious about you, some of the nicer people see it as their responsibility to make sure you feel welcome and to introduce you around. You get invited to attend stuff that they need new members for. The Christians get to feel like they are 'doing the Lord's work' in recruiting you... it's win-win.

There's this story line in Fight Club... stop me if I've mentioned this before, it's one of my favorite movies... where Jack (played by Edward Norton) starts compulsively attending support groups -- AIDs, testicular cancer -- even though there is nothing really wrong with him (uuuunless you count lonliness, inability to experience emotions normally, and multiple personality disorder). He attends these groups so that he can physically and emotionally connect with people and cry. To get comfort. This is, basically, why I attend Church. I go when I'm lonely in my life. Like today.

Technically, I'm a non-believer. I'm spirtual, but it's mostly private and I don't go in for the whole "praise the Lord, Alleleulah (can't even spell it), and Jesus Saves" stuff. In fact, I'm sceptical pretty much whenever more than a dozen people get together for anything. Unless it's a shoe sale or a yoga class. I did a science degree and, I admit it, I feel intellectually superior to the faithful when that faith requires putting aside pretty basic scientific facts... like evolution.

But part of me gets something out of being with true believers -- people who can joyfully and unabashedly sing out loud about how great God is and how much they love and praise Him. People who hold their hands in the air and with smiling faces, sing about God as the Mountain, God as the Light, God as the one thing we can all count on and who will never let us down. I mean, I don't believe it -- God has let me down a whole bunch of times -- but I like the feeling of being with people who hold these beliefs just the same. I guess if you can refuse to believe in the fossil record, it's not that much of a stretch to believe that everything God does is for a reason.

Today the sermon -- spoken by a very ernest pastor (short hair, blue pants, slightly effeminate lilt in his voice) -- was about families. According to this pastor, the family is God's creation. His design. After all, as the pastor helpfully pointed out, God created everything, so he created the family. He used the Brady Bunch as an example of a family with good Christian values. I guess he's not aware that the guy who played the dad was a closet homosexual, and that the kids who played the oldest brother and sister were shagging each other between scene takes. Or maybe he does and it doesn't matter because, like the Brady Bunch, it's about looking like you stand for something more than actually standing for it. See what I mean? Sceptical and cynical.

Oh, and he shared that when he came to Belgium from St. Paul Minneapolis last year (the Pastor, that is, not God), his 18 year old daughter felt a bit abandoned... but, according to the Pastor, she ultimtely realized that "these were lies from Satan". Is it just me, or is that just a little creepy?

Anyway, this has gone into a bit of a ramble, so I should stop here for now. Basically it comes down to this: I need to figure out how to have a 'religious experience' without all the religion. Any suggestions?

Super Dry

This morning, Saturday, I woke up at 6:00. In some ways I think this is good -- I'm establishing new habits for myself, one of which is getting up early and going for a run. Nothing serious, just 3K and then a bit of a yoga stretch. In some ways, it really sucks... I'm a sleeper-inner by nature and preference.

So, yesterday my new washer and dryer were delivered and I did my very first load of laundry. Skipping to the punchline, my formerly white clothes are now all grey.

Belgian washer/dryers are different than Canadian models. And when I say 'different', I mean 'unbelievably frustrating'. There are the obvious language difference -- all the settings are in Dutch and French, so you have to be careful not to put detergent in the fabric softener, uh, thing. But the biggest difference is that, once you put your clothes in the machine, you give up control of your laundry to the machine. An example: The door locks. The pamphlet, that I was frantically reading to figure out how to get the door open 30 seconds after pressing 'start', helpfully explained that this is is for my safety. My new washer has a glass door (which is great because I don't have tv) so after loading in all my white clothes and selecting 90degree water (remember kids, water boils at 100degrees) I was able to see that my new black underwear (or what is now my new grey underwear) had gotten mixed in with my whites. For the next 2 hours -- because that is how long laundry takes in this country -- I watched helplessly as my underwear frolicked in the surf with my towels, socks and office blouses.

And even once the cycle is finished, the machine is hesitant to relinquish control. The door has a safety feature and will not open for a few minutes after your load is done. Pulling on the handle repeatedly will not help, yelling at the machine doesn't help, and neither does pleading. Because the washing machine knows what is best. And it wants you to be safe.

And it's not just the washers. Belgian dryers are also control freaks. You have an option of selecting 'super dry', 'dry', or 'not really dry' (not really sure why/when I might be tempted to select this, but ok)... there is no option for just starting the dryer for some period of time and stopping it whenever you feel like. Instead, the dryer decides how long your clothes get to dry for. The dryer will stop when it has determined that your clothes are dry enough. And if you do not agree, the dryer, which is smarter than you, cannot be tricked into offering up additional dryness. It simply refuses to dry things more than it feels it should. This is probably also for my safety. My French isn't that good, so I may have to reread the manual more slowly to figure out wtf this is about.

But for now, I'm going to take my jogging pants -- the ones with the formerly-white reflective strip that is now new-panty grey -- and hope that cars can still see me. You might want to put that in your safety manual, Electrolux!

Rainy Day People.

Just got in from a rainy-morning run around the lake... making coffee, listening to Jack Johnston... stretching...

I am in my new place. It's candlelit and cozy... this is because I like it like this and also because Belgians take their light fixtures with them when they move so I have electricity but no lights except for the kitchen stovefan. I have highspeed internet... but Belgians install modems in garages, so my connection is hit and miss. Jack Johnston is nice though. Jack Johnston never lets me down. And coffee is always very dependable due largely to the integral relationship it has with gravity.

Work is deeply unsatisfying.

But it turns out that work is supposed to suck for those of us who are doing it. For minions it's a verb. It's only a noun for those who own the means of production. Were Carl Marx alive today, the battlecry would be 'Workers of the world unite! You have nothing to lose, but your homes, your vacation in St. Kitts, and any hope for a comfortable future!". Unfortunately Carl isn't alive... but it seems that Groucho, Chico, Gummo, and Harpo are... I'm pretty sure I work with them.

Thanksgiving will be slightly delayed this year on account of the fact that when Belgians move they take their ovens with them. I haven't had time to buy one. Tragically it turns out that IKEA sells ovens, so the recent trend of transforming my home into an IKEA dollhouse continues. It's not bad, but I could do without all the assembly, leftover bits of wood and hardware, and the Euro-Yuppies who keep barging in and looking through my bathroom.

There is also the slight issue with the fact that turkeys are extinct in Europe. Here they call Turkeys 'chickens'. They are exactly like Canadian turkeys except they are smaller, jucier, and they are not turkeys.

All your money are belong to us

Weird things I saw today in Belgium:

• A bus driver stopped his bus on the highway, got out and took a leak next to the bus/highway.
• Outdoor public urinal next to the canal... pretty sure the drain works on the principle of "dilution is the solution to pollution".

Today I got mail.

It's not that I'm against mail -- when I'm in Canada, I really like mail -- there are just two things about Belgian mail that cause me to really hate it:

1. I can't read it because it's always in Dutch and
2. Even though I can't read it, the one thing I know for certain is that mail always wants money from me

This is the babblefish translation of the mail I got today:

please the chargeable amount to deposit into account # in the name of KBC insurance, with as communication you find a transfer form. If to the policy a proof of insurance belongs, we you provide this as soon as we have received the payment.

This makes me not want to check my mail.

Ever.