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| Au revior, xanga. I just can't handle the "relevant" google ads on the side bar of my blog anymore. I thought it was great when they finally got rid of the banner ads at the top of the page, but I noticed that now the google ads search for ads that are "relevant" to anything that I've written about. So I end up with ads for the end of the world or chocolate peanut butter on the sidebar. As a would-be anti-consumerist (if I didn't just like so much stuff) I don't appreciate being party to these ads. I wonder if I write a couple of sentences about random things like calendars, gym equipment, and flower seed catalogues, if those ads will show up. We'll test it out and see...
My new blog is http://andreaheinrichs.blogspot.com/
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| "The older I get, the faster time goes. And the faster time goes, the older I get. Faster."
I finally understand this phenomenon. When I was fifteen, every year of my life was equivalent to one-fifteenth of my life. When I reach thirty years old, every year of my life will be one thirtieth of my life. That means that at age thirty, every year I've lived will be proportionately half as long as when I was fifteen. Imagine a pie divided into fifteen pieces, and then another pie divided into thirty pieces. The pieces in the pie divided into thirty sections are a lot smaller than the other pie. By the time you get to ninety, the pieces of pie will be paper-thin. Or maybe it will just be mush if you try to cut it that many times.
Maybe everybody else already understood this, but it's a new theory to me. Of course everyone is probably too busy facebooking to read this nugget. There are a few peculiarities I've noticed within the realm of facebook:
1. It's odd that somebody whom I have not seen, spoken to, or otherwise communicated with in nine years would request to be my [facebook] friend and then not respond to any subsequent communication. I have to say that it is pleasantly flattering when a person requests [facebook] friendship. Not the ego-boosting, blushing sort of flattery, but rather like a subtle compliment. I too have sought out people on facebook with whom I have not connected in many years. Sometimes I think about friendships that have evaporated over many years, and I wish that I hadn't let them go. Contacting somebody on facebook rather than tracking him or her down in a phone book removes some of the creepy stalker factor. Anybody on facebook must realize that reconnecting is one of the purposes for the existence of facebook. So when somebody requests [facebook] friendship, but doesn't respond to a simple hi, how are you, how's life going? message in return, it makes me wonder why. What is the point of requesting to list me as a friend on your page when we have had no communication in the past nine years, and there is evidently no intention to communicate now? Am I a trophy friend (j/k)? A filler friend to push the number up to 250 friends? A piece of nostalgia to sit (silently) on the [facebook] shelf? A reserve friend in case the other 249 turn against you? A friend requested out of a sense of obligation? It's only happened a few times, but it's curious nonetheless. Maybe they just forgot to write back. It happens.
2. Have you noticed that Facebook changed the options when somebody requests to be your friend? What used to say "Reject" now says "Ignore." I had somebody sitting in the waiting area for weeks, waiting for me to say "Reject" or "Accept." I was hesitant to accept, the situation being that I had not seen the person in over a decade, and that I couldn’t recall ever actually speaking to the person. But I couldn’t bring myself to click "Reject" either. After the option switched to "Ignore," it took me all of two seconds to depress the mouse button. It's somehow easier to click "Ignore" rather than "Reject," but they have the same result. And they have the same result in real life, too. Ignoring and rejecting are the best of friends. Ignoring is rejecting's passive aggressive cousin. Is there a happy medium? Perhaps accepting despite hesitations?
3. It's jarring when somebody removes you from his or her friend list. It's so official-like. I realized that this had happened when I went from 89 friends to 88. I felt kind of sad until I realized after perusing my friend list a number of times that I had no idea who had removed himself or herself from my list.
In other news, meet my new friend. Mmmmm...
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| “Jesus did many other things as well. If every one of them were written down, I suppose that even the whole world would not have room for the books that would be written.” John 21:25
This verse is at once hilarious and exasperating. Hilarious because it is such an understatement that “Jesus did many other things as well.” How do you record a person’s life in 21 short chapters, especially the life of Jesus? Exasperating because I wish there was more written.
The other story that has been on my mind lately is Noah’s flood, for obvious reasons. Well, maybe it isn’t so obvious for those of you who are not gathering sandbags and moving all of your photo albums to higher ground. It appears that our home is on the Chilliwack flood plain. I’m hoping that all the warnings are more hype than sober reality, but all the same I’m trying to be prepared.
It reminds me of a story that my mom told me, which I had all but forgotten until she recounted the sad little tale. When I was about two or three, and my older sister, Marcia was four or five, it started to rain heavily. Quite heavily, evidently. My mom was out shopping, and my Dad was next door at Grandma & Grandad’s house for a few minutes to borrow some tools. Having been taught the story of Noah’s flood in our Bible story book, we were sure the rain was a sign of an ensuing flood. We decked ourselves out in our rain capes, gumboots, and carried our little chairs and umbrellas out to the end of the driveway and sat there. I think we probably forgot that Dad had gone next door, or else we figured that it would get washed away first because it was much lower on the hill than our house. So we sat at the highest altitude we could find, at the roadside, sobbing as we waited for Mom to come home. Or maybe we were waiting for an ark. I’m not sure, but one of our parents did come rescue us, and the great flood of ’83 never happened.
Well, I’m all grown up now and apparently it won’t help to sit at the end of the driveway and cry about flooding. I’ve got canned food, a nifty flashlight that can charge my laptop, and a bulletproof vest for the folks who are paranoid about the “flat-landers” looting their properties once they are evacuated. Seriously. I suppose a potential disaster brings out the best and the worst in people!
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| Tim Hortons: Canadian icon or menace to the community? It is not an
uncommon sight to see upwards of thirteen vehicles snaking around the
establishment in the drive-through line-up. Incident number one found me
unable to turn left at a busy intersection because the lineup had extended
out of the parking lot, down the street, and the bumper of the last car in
line was inched out into the intersection. Incident number two (which has
actually happened several times) found me tooting my horn, begging to be let
out of my parking space at the mall. The queue had stretched across the Tim
Horton’s lot and was boxing in the unsuspecting parked cars in the mall
parking lot. Incident number three is less dramatic: I thought about all
the air pollution these vehicles are pumping out while idling in line for
fifteen minutes. So I thought about getting a sandwich board and writing
something pithy about the harm people are causing to the environment, and
walk up and down the lineup. Of course I’ll never do that, but it’s amusing
to think about.
A few weeks ago I took a two-day course at the Justice Institute called
“Asserting Yourself in Conflict Situations.” I must have internalized the
teachings already because I had a dream a few nights ago that I was using
all my new assertive skills on somebody who had randomly stuck their tongue
in my ear. It was so lucid and disturbing. I’ve used the skills in real
life too, starting the day after the course when I turned down an invitation
to sing in a quartet at church. It’s regrettable the course didn’t teach me
how to stifle laughter at said request. People should know that becoming a
pastor’s wife doesn’t magically transform you into a singer. But it’s nice
to be asked.
I watched bits of "The Passion" this Easter. I've never seen it before because of the purpoted gore. I tend to have nightmares about things like that, so I'm better off not seeing it. At least that's what I've told myself for the past few years. I've seen other graphic movies, but somehow seeing the crucifixion is too jarring. Easter is such a paradox: so beautiful and yet so awful.
I was visited by two Jehovah's Witnesses on Easter weekend: two girls probably five years my junior. It brought back memories of visiting a Kingdom Hall with two classmates in grade ten when we did a unit of study on world religions. We wanted to question the man we were interviewing about the way in which ex-JW's are shunned when they leave the religion. My friend in tended to say "Do you excommunicate people if they leave the religion?" but what she actually said was "Do you dismember people if they leave the religion?"
That's all for now. Here are some eggs that I made during this easter egg season.    | | |
| Ode to the Library.
When you were small, did your parents ever get a new fridge or other large appliance, and give you an amazing cardboard box out of which you could create anything your little mind could imagine? Mine did. And I made a library. I sat inside with all my books, and cut a hole in the box so that people (my sisters) could stroll by and borrow books from my library. Well, actually, I tried to make them pay to rent my books ( 75 cents a day or $2.00 a month), but that's a different story.
I currently have 33 items checked out of the library, and I also have my library card number memorized. Yes, I am a library glutton and geek. But how can you not be? I love the interweb as much as the next person, but there's something intangible to reading information from a book. My topics of choice at the moment: houseplant propogation (I can't afford to keep buying houseplants the way I kill them), the history of Langley (for a lil' family tree research - wow, I really am a geek), non-toxic housecleaning, crocheting (so far, they haven't quite lived up to their claims of being "hip" crocheting books), and recipe books. Surprisingly, only one or two novels amongst the 33 items.
My library of choice is the Fraser Valley Regional Library. It's actually a network of libraries between Port Coquitlam and Hope that are all interconnected. When I tell people that I borrow movies from the library instead of renting them, they usually assume that I'm watching Nova science movies or National Film Board cartoons. But the library actually has about 3,000 movies in its database. All of the new releases are just in constant circulation, so you won't see them sitting on the shelves in the library. You have to search for the movies in the database (type in "feature films") and then request the movie that you want. You choose your pickup location, and then you'll get an email to tell you it has arrived. Then you can enjoy your new release for two or three weeks at no charge. The trick is to get your name on the reserve list for new titles as soon as they come out. Otherwise, you will be number 253 on the list and you'll be watching it a year from now. At the end of the month, go to Library Catalogue -> Featured Lists, and it will give you categories of all the new items added to the library in the past month. If they don't have a book or movie or cd that you would like, you can request it and they really do listen to requests.
I hope you have enjoyed this little ode. Now I'll have even more people to compete with at the end of the month...
http://www.fvrl.bc.ca/ | | |
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