Sententiae Draconis

"If you don't know where you're going, any road will take you there." - Lewis Carroll

I checked in with the archaeology job again. Apparently they still haven't finalized things with their clients up north, which means that they still don't know if they can hire additional people for the field season. My contact seemed frustrated by this - but not frustrated at me. She again encouraged me to keep in touch.

But things are too close to the wire. I'll be homeless on the 31st. I can't stay here.

So I've bought my plane ticket to Newfoundland. I'll be heading that way on the 30th.

In theory I know that this hasn't changed my situation at all. I could still get this job and head to Calgary and actually get to use my degree for once. If everything turns out well than this will just be a visit with my brother that I really need.

But it's really hard not to feel discouraged.

Plus, I'm in the midst of packing and moving. It's hard not to feel discouraged at this point. On the one hand: Why do I have so much stuff? On the other hand: All my worldly possessions fit into roughly 17 boxes/bags (including the duffles I'm taking on the plane).

SHE SAID AT THE END OF THE INTERVIEW THAT THEY WILL PROBABLY BRING ME ON!!!!!

They're still in the process of hiring people, but they'll give me a call in a couple of weeks to confirm (or deny).

I may start as early as April! Depending on contracts with clients going through and the weather and other weird logistical things.

She sounded really nice!

She was mostly talking about working up North, which I think is where I'd want to go anyway!

She also mentioned that because I have a Masters degree that it's possible that I could stay on with them and be trained for becoming a permit holder! (In order to dig in Alberta each team has to be led by someone who has a permit to do archaeology in the province, each province has different regulations about who can hold a permit. It's like my brother needing his mate's ticket in order to work as a mate on the boats.)

Continue thinking good thoughts please! I really want this job!

THIS SHOW GUYS! THIS SHOW! I CRIED REAL TEARS BECAUSE OF THIS SHOW!

I just can't. What they do to me! The characters! The acknowledging of past hurts. The men crying because things are too much and they are still tough as nails! Spike! Jules being tiny and badass! Ed! GREG!

AHHHHHHH!

Why does that have to be the end?

Holy Shit guys! I've got a phone interview with an archaeology firm on Tuesday! They're hiring field archaeologists and their season starts up at the end of January!

Think good thoughts for me please!

Somehow I managed to sleep in until about noon today despite waking up enough to turn off my alarm at 08:30. (No, I don't have to get up at any specific time these days - unemployed - but I've been trying to have reasonable awake hours instead of sleeping all day and not being able to get to sleep at night.)

Then I made myself a to do list and I actually managed to do most of the things on it!

Including calling a recruiting agency that places people in office jobs! Admittedly I had to leave a message on the person's voice mail, which is hopefully not as awkward as I fear. But I actually called them! I hate phones! This is an accomplishment!

I also tried to edit my CV to make all of the officey-type things I've done more obvious. None of my jobs have been office jobs, strictly speaking. But I've done a lot of data entry and forms and shit as well as filing, emailing people, and I'm not sure what taking notes in class is if not dictation. Also when I worked front desk I was responsible for all incoming calls to the university after the receptionist went home (there is no need to mention that the university was only 1000 students - or that I didn't get more than one or two desk shifts a week).

I also went grocery shopping (it never ends). And picked up some bus tickets. Did the dishes and I just started my laundry.

Tonight I'm going to see Seven Psychopaths with A and K and that should be fun. I'm going to try to not get any over-priced concessions.

My puck bruise is looking pretty damn impressive. It's sort of yellowy-greeny red in the middle and purpley-dark blue around the edges and I'm pretty sure it's actually bigger than a puck at this point which is pretty cool. Doesn't hurt as much as it used to either - which is good.

Now I think I'm going to read some fic to make me feel better.

And good news! I thought my kindle had died yesterday because it wouldn't respond to anything, including trying to restart it. But it turned out that it just needed to sit and think about what it'd done for a while. Because I restarted it today and it seems fine now. It even remembers where I was in my various ebooks (aka downloaded fic).

Through various discussions about TV with my roommate I've been convincing her that she needs to watch Farscape. It didn't take much persuasion really, but she's only watching things that don't require any concentration while she's finishing up her thesis etc. So I've been just thinking about how great Farscape is without being able to share her new joy with the show.

So instead I've been re-watching it myself. I started while I was organizing my shit at my mother's place because she's got a set of the DVDs (my Mum is awesome) so I was half-watching episodes while I was packing everything (I've seen enough of Farscape before that I don't need that much concentration to watch it. And now that I'm home it's great for watching while I'm doing the wedding socks knitting.

How the Frell is this show so good? Some slightly incoherent thoughts:

- Whenever I watch it I weep for how good the female characters are. I mean everyone talks about Aeryn (and rightly so - because Aeryn is amazing), but Zhaan! And Chiana! And even Jool. All of them are complex, interesting, (sometimes annoying) fully fledged characters. And unlike most shows it's clear that they were not solely created to fill the "minority" quota, or brought in to be the other half of a relationship.

- I actually LOVE Crichton and Aeryn's relationship. This so rarely happens for me with canon relationships. I think it has to do with the above point. Crichton and Aeryn are Fully Themselves. Both of them exist fully outside of their relationship. Their relationship is wonderful and very satisfying because it's not the main point of either of their storylines or their lives. And it's beautiful.

- People come and go from Moya all the time - and it rarely coincides with the beginning and ending of a season. Which means that all of the many times when people almost (or actually) die mean something. There's always that danger - maybe they will actually die this time and they won't come back!

- Also I can totally believe how Crichton ended up being so embroiled in interstellar politics, even though he's just a random human no one's ever heard of.

- And I love the names of the episodes - especially the two- and three-parters which have a title for the whole set and then each episode has it's own. Example: from season 2 "Liars, Guns and Money Part I: A Not So Simple Plan", "Part II: With Friends Like These...", "Part III: Plan B". I'm also fond of the puns - "Home on the Remains" - and the pop culture references (which only Crichton would get) - "A Clockwork Nebari".

- And because I just watched it: ( Spoilers for season 3 Infinite Possibilities Part I: Daedalus Demands and Part II: Icarus Abides )

It's sad and it's wonderful. And I love it, even though mostly I prefer escapist happy shows, because it has all the feelings and makes me have all the feelings in such a good way that feels so real.

God I love this show.

Things that Are Good:
- I have finished my Roman Comp
- My Greek Comp is tomorrow so soon the stress will be over
- THE CANUCKS WON LAST NIGHT! (no sweep for you Kings!)
- Daniel Sedin is back from his concussion! (Never leave DANIEL!!!!)
- Twin powers activated last night!
- Tim Horton's
- Hockey hugs.
- This:

It gave me chills. (Although the beginning is kinda weird.)
- Plans for drunkenness tomorrow night. (G told me to drink 4-7 more beers than was appropriate. I try to listen to her as often as I can. *grin*)
- Eddie Lack, Swedish goaltender for the Canucks' farm team, makes Swedish Meatballs while wearing a t-shirt jersey for one of his teammates, an apron with the team logo on it, and an enormous chef's hat. (cue Swedish Chef jokes. Also the toothpick Swedish Flag is clearly the most important part!) *Swedish Bias* *Defensive Bias*
- Cat!Canucks in the Cup (by azirae)

It's a good thing that I can identify all but one of them right? - ADORABLE!

Things that Are Not So Good:
- My Greek Comp is tomorrow. I hates it.
- While I know that I did well on my Roman Comp, I need to get a B+ to pass. I'm confident that I got at least a B, but that might not be good enough. :s - normally I'm pretty chill post exams, because I know what doing fine feels like, but the bar is different for these ones, so my insides are churning.
- There are simultaneously not enough and too many things on the internet for procrastination.
- Canucks must do that another three times if we're going to continue our season.

WHY?

Didn't I mention that hockey was my stress relief during this hard time in my academic career? Have I treated you poorly?

On a personal level the Kings are currently up 3-0 in their series with my beloved Canucks (only 4 teams have ever come back from a 3-game deficit to win a seven game series *sobs*). And it's not even that we've been playing particularly poorly (unlike the Penguins). Yes there were mistakes and some bad plays - but that is normal. What isn't normal is that after a whole season where the Kings only won games by virtue of Jonathan Quick being a truly spectacular goaltender, they've figured out how to score. :(

(And when I say "spectacular" and "the Kings don't score" I mean it. I think they have the highest number of 1-0 and 2-1 games in the league. And also there was at least one, maybe two, games where they lost even though Quick had a shutout. How does that happen you say? Shoot out goals don't count against the goaltender's shutout. That's right. Even when their goaltender was a brick wall the Kings couldn't score in the regular season. This has changed. *sobs*)

Honestly the Kings have been a good team all season, and if they'd actually been able to score there is no way they would've been 8th seed, and we wouldn't have played them in the first round.

I'm currently longing for the alternate reality where we played the sharks in the first. We can beat them. (of course I was sure we could beat the Kings too. *sobs*)

But to add insult to injury the whole playoffs seem to be going to hell in a handbasket. Most of the teams haven't played game three yet and I've already seen at least five headshots. No wait, six. Which is something that the league has been fighting to get out of the game all season (and before, but this year it was a campaign). Some of these I'm sure will result in suspensions, some of them already have. But for some reason when Shea Weber (Nashville) grabbed Henrik Zetterberg's (Detroit) head in both hands and shoved it into the glass after the game had ended and after Nashville had won he only got a $2500 fine. Admittedly this is the largest fine they can give without handing out a suspension - but holy fuck batman? What do you need to do to get suspensions these days?

It makes me want to throw up a little. I mean, I still love hockey. But that's not hockey. There's playing close to the edge (which is fun to watch because it's physical and good), and then there's that.

Also I watched the Flyers-Pens game yesterday. Everyone was expecting this series to be a bloodbath because the two teams hate each other. But I don't think anyone was expecting it to go like this. There were 113 penalty minutes in the game. That's almost two full games worth of penalties. 78 of them came in the first period alone. Both Clouturier and Giroux (who each scored 3 goals in Game 2 - that's right their were TWO hattricks in game 2) were the recipients of elbows to the head. Clouturier had to leave the game (I have no idea if he's alright). Claude Giroux (lead scorer of the Flyers) got into a fight with Sidney Crosby (whom you might have heard of)! And to top it all off the scores were ridiculous. The Flyers are now up 3-0 in the series. Game 1 was 4-3, game 2 was 8-5, and game 3 was 8-4. The total number of goals in game 2 alone is the same number of goals that have been scored in the entire Canucks-Kings series. Both the defence and the goaltending on both sides of the ice have been super crap.

This is not hockey - it's organized chaos on ice.

So what the fuck?

The only light of goodness so far was that the Canadian Women managed to eke out an overtime win at the worlds to get the Gold Medal! Beating an American team that wolloped us 9-2 in the round robin. So let's focus on that.





These are from the Olympics, but I don't CARE!

And here's some perspective from Flyers Goaltender Ilya Bryzgalov:


"The Universe is so huMANgous big! ... just be happy. Don't worry be happy."

Bryz: Never Change. You are not the best goaltender, but you are probably the most interesting one.

Today is my very last presentation of all of Grad School.

I think I'm even fairly well prepared for it.

Wish me luck!

In other news statistics haven't failed me yet: I got my sixth Roll Up the Rim to Win coffee from Timmy's this morning - and I've won a coffee! I'm now 1 and 5 which is exactly the same as the promised 1 in 6 chances to win.

I feel this is an auspicious omen for the day.

I managed to get to campus by 10 am on a Sunday.

That's enough of an accomplishment for today right?

# reasons why this paper isn't finished yet.