elections – Imaginary Sunshine

An open letter to (some) Canadians

Michelle — Tue, 03 May 2011 03:32:44 +0000

Dear Canadians,

You disappoint me on so many levels.

The first government to be found in contempt of Parliament. The first prime minister to do so much stupid things. And while they haven’t finished counting up all the ballots, everyone is projecting a majority Conservative government. He-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named did so much stupid things to embarrass the country on the world stage. A huge waster of government funds. His campaign promises were only promised for when the country is no longer in the red (and what year will that be?).

Every single time he opens his mouth, he talks about how great it would be with a majority Conservative government and how the Conservatives will not use their majority to push the issue of abortion. Really? You expect the person who has cut millions in funds for women health, women rights and advocacy to not push the issue of abortion? You expect him to listen to Canadians and what Canadians want when he’s busy pushing his party’s concerns through if they have the majority of seats and can do whatever they damn well please?

I trust him about as far as I can throw him.

Sincerely,
Me

I get it, I’m young.

Michelle — Sun, 24 Apr 2011 02:17:59 +0000

I went to the advanced polls today – actual election day is May 2nd, but I had time today so I went do the place that was listed on the back of my election. All I did was walk up to the table and handed my elector’s card and photo id to the person in charge of the table and this charming exchange occurred (H for him, M for Michelle/me):

H: You’re a YOUNG person. What are you doing here?
M: … Exercising my democratic right to vote…?
H: *checks my birth date on my driver’s license* But you’re YOUNG!
M: … Can I get a ballot or not?

He finally hands me the ballot and then asks if I’ve ever voted before. I resist the urge to glare at him or curse, just politely say that yes I have voted before, get my ballot, mark it and then fold it up and shove it into the box.

Can’t stop what you can’t control

Michelle — Thu, 14 May 2009 03:29:42 +0000

Ahhh, work’s been so exciting lately. I spend a lot of time scanning in documents. One. At. A. Time. And I can’t use the photocopier to scan them all in quickly because of the fact that there’s different sizes of pages, different weights of paper (so the photocopier will probably pick up more than one of the thinner sheets at a time, plus there’s stains and rips and tears and water damage and that’d just jam the photocopier some more. So… Scanning in documents one at a time. While attempting to do other things. Like making awesome tables, taking photographs of things that I’m not all too familiar with and attempting to explain them… It’s great fun, really. I swear the only thing that’s keeping me sane right now is that people talk to me and I have music in my cubicle (hello, headphones!). I think if I didn’t have either, I’d just fall asleep right at my desk.

In other news, yesterday was the provincial election for British Columbia (… where I live). It was from 8am-8pm for Pacific time and I believe 9am-9pm for people closer to the Rockies? Yay for two time zones! But yeah, so after work I went to a local school and voted in a little cardboard booth in a gymnasium. The election affected both provincial government and future voting practices. The BC Liberals won their third majority government in a row (with Gordon Campbell as the premier again – I wonder how many hospitals will get closed in the next four years this time around?) and the people of BC voted against STV (the new election practices). I was disppointed in the way that the campaigning was held. NDP spent all of their time bashing the Liberals and little time highlighting their platform. Liberals… I’m not quite sure what they were doing most of the time. Green was a non-entity and failed have a single person elected (… not very surprised though). So yes, nothing changed… And… Yeah. So if you knew nothing about the BC provincial elections, now you know and you can bring something up at the dinner table and sound very informed.

And in reference to my last entry… Yes, something did happen. Yes, I was incredibly vague and didn’t actually hint at it. So far, there hasn’t been a whole lot of people that I’ve mentioned it to. And I would prefer not to talk about it. (… I know, me, I talk about everything, but not this. So almost everything.) But… everything is going to be okay, I think. So not to worry!

Oh, and to end off with something that pisses me off. My dad’s currently no working. He has access to a car while everyone else (my mom, my sister and myself) are at work. He doesn’t do a whole lot around the house. He doesn’t do the dishes, the laundry, the vacuuming, anything. All the grocery shopping gets done on the weekends. And I guess last weekend, there wasn’t a whole lot of vegetables that got bought. So today, for dinner, my dad cooked (as per usual, so I guess he does that…) and there was a huge dish of meat (chicken, for those curious) and… well, there were bell peppers that were sliced up. Two bell peppers. For… dinner for four plus it’s supposed to be enough for vegetables for three lunches tomorrow (my mom, my sister and myself). I mean, I love bell peppers… But two isn’t enough for what amounts to seven portions when my dad picks up the plate and pushes half of it into his bowl. It’s not like he’s incapable of driving, he can (although he did get into that accident that results in the car I drive being really sore on my eyes…). And it’s not like we can’t afford buying fresh vegetables. I wonder what we’re going to do tomorrow… I bet he’ll open a can of vegetable soup and call it a day.

So cheers! How was your Wednesday?

The week’s almost over… right?

Michelle — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 06:13:31 +0000

The way the American election works rather confuses me. Seriously, they vote for everything at the same time it seems. The President, the Governors, the Senate, assorted acts and laws and whatnot. And for those rejoicing over Obama’s win over McCain, you’re all forgetting something. Obama had 52,658,842 votes. McCain? 48,653,717. Sure, that seems like a huge difference (off by about 4 million votes) but I like statistics. That’s a hell of a lot of people who voted for the one with the donkey and a lot of people who voted for the one with the elephant (Can someone tell me why they use an elephant and a donkey? Is there some kind of cultural significance? Because I may not be a zoologist, but I’m pretty sure elephants aren’t native to the United States.).

Anyways, enough with the election talk. I had enough of that shocked down my throat (erm, into my ears) with listening to any of the podcasts that I regularly listen to and hearing people who usually offer wonderfully witty but sage advice telling me to go and vote right this very instant. I’m sorry? I’m Canadian? I don’t vote in the US presidential election because I don’t hold a dual citizenship? I feel like they’re expecting me to apologize for being born on this side of the border. But I digress. So onto more interesting things!

I finished the chapter 11 questions for my Family Studies class tonight. It was all about adolescents and the changes that teens go through (also talked about STDs – in depth about chlamydia, suicide, depression, pregnancy, alcohol, drug use and eating disorders). Always fascinating, I know. For instance, did you know that girls are more depressed than boys? However, boys have a higher suicide rate than girls but girls have a higher rate of attempted suicide than boys (they use less-effective suicide methods).

I have also actually been able to log into the NaNoWriMo forums without having to wait for 10 minutes per page. I’m excited. This means I can actually update my word count (holding steady at 18,069 words since this afternoon as I haven’t worked on it since getting home) without having to wait five minutes only for it to pop up telling me that the server is busy. Yes, I realize that the server is busy – that’s why it’s taking so long to get anywhere! I’m hoping that I’ll be able to find the room that was reserved for the write-ins in the building tomorrow – I had issues attempting to find it on Monday. I’m potentially geographically challenged? It’s also a rather hidden room so I don’t know. We’ll see!

Just… stop.

Michelle — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 21:16:42 +0000

I can’t wait until a week from now when people will hopefully stop talking about the US Election. I’m sorry, it’s great that the US is getting a new president and either way it’ll be some historical event. But I’m just sick and tired of hearing about it and reading about it. It’s taken over Twitter, blog entries, Canadian news websites, generally non-politics driven blogs, Canadian newspapers and Facebook. I don’t even remember CBC having this much coverage for the Canadian federal election, and that should have been more important for the Canadian Broadcasting Company than the American election seems to be.

No matter what way the election goes, I’ll just be glad when I won’t be looking at my RSS feeds and seeing ‘Did you vote?’, ‘I voted!’ and ‘Obama 2008!’ for blog entry titles.

And the winner is…

Michelle — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 05:07:33 +0000

Gilles Duceppe said during the English Debate for the Canadian Federal Elections: Well, I know I am not going to be Prime Minister. Three of you are not going to be Prime Minister either, but not all of you know it yet.

He was astoundly correct in this matter. And as it has been now three hours since the polls have closed and the ballots are still being counted. It is highly likely that there will be another minority Conservative government. And after all the talk that all the other parties had about voting ABC (Anything But Conservative), I would sincerely hope that they will all be working together. Well, everyone except for the Green Party – who hasn’t won a single seat, at the time of writing.

And congratulations to the two independant winners – I’m sure you’ll do your constituents proud.

So apparently Wow doesn’t trump girlfriend, but sleep does trump the boyfriend.

Michelle — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 21:59:35 +0000

So… As you can see from my Twitter feed over on the side (or not, depending on when you’re reading this), Clay offered to drive out to see me last night. He didn’t realize it was 11pm when he suggested this (and I reminded him that it was no longer a long weekend and we had responsibilities… Like lectures. And work.) But it was a nice thought to have. Obviously no other nights this week work either, so he’s going to see about getting out of work on Saturday to come out and see me. Hopefully he can, fingers crossed! He’s started playing WoW (he asked if I was disappointed in him for it, I said that I was) so last night this conversation occurred before I logged off.

C: So… I’m going to go play a game.
M: Which one?
C: WoW. Most likely.
M: WoW > Michelle?
C: Of course not.
M: Uh huh.
C: But Michelle needs to go sleep because she has school tomorrow.
M: I suppose I should.
C: Good night…?
M: Good night.

I finally (finally, finally, finally, finally, finally) have cPanel access again (it’s a somewhat short story as to why I didn’t have access to it, I just don’t feel like retelling it). So I promptly downloaded mysql backups of both Enthuiast (the most important since I haven’t backed that up since August!) and WordPress (also important, but then I do weekly backups non-mysql WordPress files – so I’m not about to lose over 400 entries anytime soon, thank goodness). So after doing the backups, I shot an email off to the hosting company in hopes that I’ll be able to transfer soon (I’m currently being hosted as an add-on domain on a friend’s shared hosting package, I’m wanting to get my own since I want more manuverability in terms of adding another domain onto it as well as having more control – because I am that much of a control freak, thanks).

I have three midterms this week (Wednesday: English lit, Friday: psychology and biology) so if I don’t blog like 7 times a day, that’s why. Three cheers for writing exams on things that I actually have somewhat of an interest in!! (Well, I only really have an interest in English lit, since that’s a purely elective course for me, and biology, which is not a purely elective course. But that’s okay. Intro psychology does have its uses… Like the fact that it’s 6 credits and has no lab.)

And if you’re a Canadian citizen and you’re currently in Canada (and even if you’re not, you can vote by special ballot)… Go and vote. Now. Go, go, go, go, go. I’ll be watching the special tonight on CBC about the elections. Here’s to all the political party leaders at least winning the seat in their own riding (and good luck to Elizabeth May in her attempt to take the very popular Peter McKay’s seat in Nova Scotia. Because she’s going to need it.).

Being… happy

Michelle — Sun, 05 Oct 2008 04:11:10 +0000

Things that happened today that made me happy/proud-of-self/pleased:

Had a conversation with Clay and told him everything that I was having problems with (however, the entire conversation took place from 1am to 3:30am-ish, so I’m not sure how coherent I really was).
I took advantage of the advanced polling for the Canadian federal election and I voted for the first time ever. When I first walked in, I thought that there were only 4 candidates running in my riding – but there are actually 6 (two of them just never called, posted up signs or were mentioned in any of the local papers).
I stood up to my father when he accused me of doing something (“You never remember things that you need to be responsible for, how can we ever let you live by yourself?”). It was over the fact that I forgot my prescription sheet on the kitchen table. Umm… Wrong! It was originally clipped up, and it wasn’t there when I went to get it and he was holding it and then put it down next to my mom’s purse. Since he moved it, he should be responsible for remembering to take it out of the house. I told him in a very calm (but according to my sister, slightly menacing) voice that it was his responsibility and he just stared at me for a moment with wide eyes.
My sister and I were talking about ‘having children’ again today (my father brought it up during lunch – thanks dad!). And I mentioned jokingly about how the only way I’ll get pregnant is if condoms, spermicidal jelly and birth control pills fail on me all at the same time. She told me that she can see me having kids one day, but only in the event that I choose to have a child because I’m “much too responsible” to have an “accident”, to have a child because everyone else is having one or to consider having a child without seriously planning for it and being financially and emotionally stable. And as she was telling me all of this, I realized that she was right. I plan everything as extensively as I can. But it’s rather nice to have someone verbally recognize this. “Besides, Michelle. Whatever you end up doing, you’ll be great at it and you’ll come out on top – you always do.”
I received a text message today form the boyfriend (and after the conversation very early this morning before I went to sleep, we’re still together – gasp?). He’s out with his best friend today and he sent a text message that did manage to make me smile. However, still not happy with him. But where’s what it said (edited to make the spelling and grammar correct as to not make you want to gouge your eyes out with a red pen): Hey sweetheart, just wanted you to know that I was thinking about you. A nice gesture, but I sent the following back: Nice to know, but talk is cheap.

Now my question(s) for you all of you is: When was the last time someone unexpectedly praised you? Who was it? What was it about? What did they say?