2000-07-02 - 11:48

Skipping out on Canada Day again

[Written July 1, but posted on July 2]

Okay, so I missed out on my second chance at doing Canada Day properly in the nation's capital. That's okay, though. Last year, I took some time off around Canada Day and took a much-needed trip to PEI. This year, I spent a little time at work and then decided to chill out at home.

Jaclyn moved in here last night. She has two weeks between when she had to move out of her last apartment and when she can move into the townhouse that she and Colin will be sharing, so she's crashing with us. It's cool having her around; a little additional pleasant company can't hurt. Speaking of which, Jaclyn brought her friend Angela over last night. She was nice . . . the worst Tetris player I've ever seen, but nice. (Heheh. Actually, she got better.) Angela was also the first person I've heard besides me who uses the phrase "now we're cookin' with gas." (I stole it from Conan O'Brien; but that's neither here nor there.) It was a nice summer night with some friends over for supper . . . can't complain.

This morning, I slept in as much as I felt that I could get away with, and then went to work for four hours with Bis. Our paper is coming along very well. There are still a couple of sections to add; but the plan is to put in a few more hours tomorrow and produce a complete cover-to-cover document that only needs a little proofreading and refinement. If so, I'll take it home with me, make my corrections, and pass it off to Bis to finish, while I take off Monday to Wednesday. If all goes well and the paper is accepted, I'll be off to Infocom next year in Alaska. That would be a blast. We'll have to wait until Hallowe'en until we find out if it is accepted; but I'm optimistic, since I feel that we have a novel idea and we've developed and explained it well.

It's going to be great to finish off the project. Tuesday is the big Up In Smoke concert in Toronto. Colin won't be able to make it, so I'm not sure who'll be joining Aaron, Sophie, and me. I offered the other ticket to Mandeep today; but he plans on working right up to the deadline on a paper of his own that he's submitting to Infocom. We'll see how it shakes down.

Speaking of Sophie, she was over tonight, which was cool. I hadn't seen her in a little while. Unfortunately, so were two of my, umm, not favourite people in the world, so when I got home from work and saw who was over, I went upstairs and avoided people for a while. I dunno. I don't want to be immature about things, and the boys are free to invite over whomever they like; I'm just not keen on hanging out, that's all. As always, though, it was no big deal. I will say that I don't think it was Aaron's place to offer the spare concert ticket to who he did, especially since I paid for it, so right now, it's still mine. I guess that he just didn't realize it would be a problem, though.

Some of the crew went downtown tonight and you'd think that downtown Ottawa would be the place to be on Canada Day. I wasn't psyched on heading out, though, so I just chilled out at the place with Colin and Jaclyn. We ended up in one of our infrequent philosophical conversations about drugs, society, religion, death . . . great fun. I always like to hear other people's philosophies of life.

The drug argument was a good one. My stance on drugs has evolved over the last several years; and now I call myself a straight edge libertarian. I'm straight edge in that I personally won't touch drugs or alcohol; but I'm libertarian because I don't believe that it is the government's place to dictate my choice of what to put into my own body. At the very least, I have trouble with the idea that alcohol is legal, while marijuana is not. I've built that opinion over the years, partially by noticing how many people I know who I get along with worse when they're drinking and contrasting that observation with how people seem after smoking a joint.

Anyway, I think that I'll leave the drug rant as the subject for another entry. I put more effort into debating the point with Colin tonight; but I don't feel like explaining it all here. Suffice it to say that I had fun with that one, to say nothing of the religious debate that followed.

So, not the expected Canada Day here in Ottawa (maybe next year), but still a fun time. A few more solid hours at work tomorrow and things will be good.

J.