A little while ago, Isaac asked me, “Mom, what is destiny?”  Isaac has a habit of asking questions I can’t answer.  I tried to explain it to him, I even looked it up.  I ended up telling him that it’s something that’s going to happen, no matter what you do.  To which he replied “Like I’m going to have to go to school tomorrow?”  When I said that wasn’t quite it, he said he didn’t get it.  I told him that it was pretty hard to explain to a six year old, and that he would get it when he’s older.  Surprisingly, that seemed to satisfy him.

Some people, for example, my mother, believe strongly that everything that happens is pre-destined.  I have a hard time with that philosophy, because it means that essentially we have no free will.  Our choices are meaningless.  I don’t know that I can believe that.  I do believe that certain things happen for a reason though.  Big things.  I believe that significant people in our lives come into our lives for a reason.  There’s something we need to learn from them.  I believe the universe will give you the opportunity to learn a lesson over and over again if you fail to learn it the first time.

Maybe I need to believe that to get by.  To understand why my friend’s daughter would get leukemia, or why another friend would lose her husband in such a random way, or why my marriage had to end.  It’s hard to believe, or accept, that there’s no meaning to such things.

The other day at dinner, my kids asked me when was the happiest day of my life.  I said I had two — the days they were born.  That one was easy.  And then they asked me what the saddest day was.  I told them the day that their dad and I decided not to be married anymore.  It’s the first thing that came into my mind, which I think means it’s probably true.  I still think that sometimes I haven’t mourned that loss enough.  It’s devastating, to lose something you thought would be forever.  To know that your children will not have the life you wanted for them.  It’s so profoundly sad that sometimes love really just isn’t enough.

I’m just about to leave to pick up KnobCreek and head to Chicago, and am trying to pass the time by checking out the Bluesfest website to see if there are enough acts I want to see to make it worth my while to shell out the approximately $200 for a festival pass.  This is a big decision for me, because I hate having to get downtown and find parking, never mind the babysitting and what not.  So there would have to be some pretty compelling talent.  There usually is at Bluesfest though.

I’m honestly not sure that the Bluesfest website could be any slower.  Seriously, it barely moves. The thing is sponsored by Cisco, who you would think would know a little something about IP and maybe be able to put together a website that works.  Apparently not so much.

From what the website has shown me so far, we have the Brian Setzer orchestra, which could be a good time, Styx, which might be worth seeing just to see Gowan as their front man, KISS, Our Lady Peace, Stone Temple Pilots, and Bluesfest classics, Blue Rodeo.  That’s only some of the acts on one of the stages.  The sucky website won’t let me see anything else.  I’m pretty much giving up on it now.  If anyone out there has a Bluesfest schedule, pass it my way will ya?

Speaking of music and the like, lately I’ve been listening to Me First and the Gimme Gimmes.  They are a band that exclusively does rocking/punk sort of covers of older songs.  They have a great deal of John Denver, Billy Joel and Elton John in their repertoire.  It’s awesome jogging music.  Almost impossible to go slow while listening to the Gimmes.  And their little changes to the songs they cover make me laugh.  Take, for example, Annie’s Song, by John Denver.  It’s the one that goes “You fill up my senses, like a night in the forest”.  You have to be of a certain vintage to have heard this song perhaps.  Anyway, look it up.  Listen to the original.  Then listen to the Gimmes version.  Right in the middle they insert their own little verse:

You pay my expenses

I lay down beside you

I let you get on me

I laugh at your jokes

It kills me.  Check out their clever little changes to Only the Good Die Young by Billy Joel.  That one is left as an exercise to the reader.

Throughout my life, I have been attracted to, married, dated and/or had significant relationships with men who are musically inclined.  Kind of stereotypical if I think about it.  I am not a groupie.

No where in that time has anyone ever written a song for me.  It’s something I wish someone would do.  I don’t suppose that it’s something a person can be pressured into.  I imagine you have to be inspired to write a song for, or about someone.  It’s perhaps not the same thing as writing for or about someone.  I can pretty much do that on demand — witness wedding speeches and eulogies.

Instead of feeling sorry for myself over my inability to inspire people to write songs, I will acknowledge the good that is already in my life and remind myself that one time, someone did seek out a song that reflected how he felt about me.  So, in a way, I had a song.

I’ll also quote some song lyrics, because I really don’t do enough of that anymore.  From Weak in the Knees, by Serena Ryder.  Because it’s the type of song I’d likely write.

Would you mind if I walked over and I kissed your face,
In front of all of your friends.
Would you mind if I got drunk and said,
I wanna take you home to bed,
Oh would you change your mind?

I’m weak in the knees for you,
But I’ll stand if you want me to.
My legs are strong, and I’ll move on,
But honey I’m weak, in the knees, for you

I’m feeling out of sorts again, so I figure I’ll try to write myself back into sorts.  It’s worth a try anyway.  I leave for Chicago on Wednesday (part of my job is training other people on Scrum, which accounts for much of the travel I do).  Last week’s outing to Mississauga was the most difficult yet.  Not horrible, or anything, but challenging.  I suppose that’s good, as it keeps us from getting complacent.  I did encounter yet another annoying type of toilet paper holder though.  This one is not so huge, but manages to protect you completely from getting any sort of grip on it.  So when the toilet paper joins forces with the tape, you can only get a few fingers into the vault, and are reduced to using a couple of fingers to madly spin the toilet paper in the hopes that the increased airflow will make the end of the roll fly up enough for you to grab on to it.   Very annoying.  KnobCreek and I managed to have a nice dinner out in good old Mississauga (stinky cabs aside – one which smelled “like my shorts when I bend down to untie my shoes after exercising” according to KnobCreek, and the other of good old fashioned fart), and I even partook of the Knob Creek myself.  The drink, not the guy.  Anyway … Chicago this week and then I’m actually home for two whole weeks before heading off to Orlando.  The good news about Orlando is that I’m mixing a mini-vacation in with the training (which I’m receiving this time).  After that it will be a packing frenzy.  I might have to have a packing party to get it all done.  Pizza and beer on me everyone.

Speaking of packing, when we were out at the new place on the weekend to measure, we noticed that one of the living room window screens was lying on the floor and had several rips in it, and that a few of the floor vent covers had been removed.  Strange, since the house is vacant and has been for quite some time.  The real estate agent is looking in to it.

I must share with you all the amazing meals I had today.  At lunch time, I was otherwise occupied and when I finally had time to get food, found that I had only a minute to spare before the start of my afternoon meetings.  So I had two bags of M&Ms.  That’s not the best of it though.  For dinner tonight, I was cooking hamburgers for the kids.  I didn’t feel like eating one myself, but I was quite interested in the cheese that was melting off their burgers into the pan.  So I took a handful of grated cheese, fried it in the pan and ate it for dinner.  Dinner of champions, that.  I have been craving cheese though, ever since Shane told me about his ride out to get poutine yesterday.  That had me reminiscing about the time I, inspired by pictures Kim posted on Facebook, made bacon poutine.  No folks, it’s not what you think.  Bacon instead of fries.  I don’t know if anything could be unhealthier.  It probably contains all the fat and salt a person needs for an entire lifetime.  The handful of fried cheese isn’t sticking with me though.  I’m over the cheese craving, but I think I’ll need to find something else to eat if I want to be able to sleep tonight.

Well, I guess I’m feeling slightly more sorted.  I might find some food and go to bed early tonight.

I don’t know if I’ve mentioned it previously, but I’m moving again.  This will be my fourth move in eight years, and I’m hoping to stay put for a while this time.  Just like everything else in my life, I find myself frequently dissatisfied with the places I live, and need to exchange them shortly after I move in.  However, I like to believe that I leave them in a better state than I found them.

I was a military brat, and lived in five different cities and nine different houses before settling in Ottawa.  When we move, my own kids will have lived in four different houses, plus the two they’ve lived in with their dad.  My daughter just turned eight this week, so she’s averaging a new house every two years.  I can’t believe my daughter is eight by the way.  I’m not sure exactly where that time went, but it’s kind of scary to realize that when that many years pass again she’ll be able to drive.

Anyway, the new place is a single home, much bigger than our current townhouse, with a big yard.  It’s just a few steps away from the kids’ school, in one of the older neighbourhoods in Kanata.  I’m looking forward to having trees again, even though it means raking.  The house was built in 1965, and though much of the major needed renovations (roof, eavestroughs, windows, furnace) have been done, there is much more to be done.  High on the list is a fairly major kitchen renovation.  When we went to look at the house before I made an offer, my daughter told me, “Mom, this house doesn’t have a dishwasher.  We can’t buy it.”  Indeed, the house doesn’t have a dishwasher.  And in the current kitchen configuration, it’s difficult to see where one would go.  So, I plan on ripping out the wall between the kitchen and dining room and expanding.  I find I have no need for a formal dining room, and certainly no need to have two places to eat (there’s an eating area at the other end of the kitchen which will become either a place for the kids to do homework, or part of the family room).

Besides that, there’s a fair sized list of things that need doing, including painting the whole house, laying a new floor in the family room, replacing the garage doors, installing central air, re-finishing the basement and renovating the sunroom, to name just a few.  But, it’s certainly liveable as is, and I look forward to making in to what I want it to be.  A few pictures follow.

The front yard.

The kitchen, with a good view of the wall which is going be ripped out.

A few different views of the backyard.  The grass doesn’t look nearly as good now, but that’s okay, since we’re likely to put a patio in anyway.

Here I am in Chicago.  I love the idea of flying west before going east, but it was actually the fastest way to get home.  So Chicago is famous for Oprah, and … being Windy?  I’ll actually be here for work in a couple of weeks, so I’ll get to see something other than the airport.  I’ve flown through a couple of times, and have to say I’ve had nothing but good experiences in the O’Hare airport so far, so let’s hope that continues.  So far, so good, since I didn’t have to change terminals or anything.

As soon as I got off the plane at gate C19, I could smell popcorn.  I love popcorn, so had to find the source and ended up with an 80z bag of cheddar popcorn from “Nuts on Clark”.  8oz is a lot of popcorn (no I didn’t eat it all) and my fingers are orange.  It’s pretty good popcorn.  Certainly better than the Combos thingys from Pittsburgh, which are going in the garbage.  I then decided I needed a double chocolate chip frappacino from Starbucks, which is not as good as a skinny chocolate chiller from Second Cup.  I forgot to tell them to hold the whipped cream.  I hate whipped cream on drinks.  It gets stuck in the straw and prevents me from actually drinking. 

I need to go to the bathroom, but there is a very long line of teenagers waiting to use it.  I will try again later.

It turns out that Us Magazine was a good choice because it took me exactly as long as the flight from Pittsburgh to read it cover to cover.  I learned a few things:

1. Lindsay Lohan is really stupid.
2. I have no idea who the majority of people in the magazine are, or what they are famous for.
3. Somebody took a picture of Paul McCartney with his fly down.
4. Jennifer Aniston’s friends want her to settled down and get married, but apparently she’s an insufferably high maintenance.  In that case I think she belongs with John Mayer, who’s pretty insufferable if you ask me.  I can’t stand his version of Free Fallin’.
5. Famous people wear weird clothes.
6. Some random mark on the back of Katie Holmes neck is worthy of pictures and an article in a magazine.  I should send them pictures of my mangled bellybutton.
7. The dumbasses at Us can’t tell the difference between an iPhone and a BlackBerry Storm.
8. I am really behind the times because although I’ve heard of Twitter, I have no idea what it actually is, and I’m not sure if I want to know.
9. Madonna is not getting to adopt another orphan from Malawi and is really pissed about it.
10. Those Biggest Loser people lost a whackload of weight and I hope they keep it off.

They’re making some kind of announcement about the flight that I can’t hear over all the other announcements, so I’ll have to go see what’s going on.

The course I was in ended an hour earlier than expected, so I headed to the airport.  I’ve successfully killed a bunch of time buying Webkinz for the kids, talking to the kids on the phone, and taking pictures of the Mr. Rogers Neighborhood display.  Did you know that Pittsburgh was Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood?  Are you old enough to know who Mr. Rogers is?

Then I obtained airport snacks:  Zesty Salsa Tortilla Combos, which is something I would never, ever, think about eating at home, Diet Coke, and of course, Rolaids.  Snacks, a BlackBerry and an internet connection — I’m good for several hours now.

Usually, I can’t resist the almost overwhelming urge to buy books in airports, but today, I instead bought a copy of Us Magazine, thinking that maybe it would give me blog fodder.

Us Magazine offers Lindsay Lohan “I Am So Alone”, Trista and Ryan Baby Girl!, Biggest Loser — 107 pounds in 6 months and Leanne Rimes – The Affair  Backfires.

I care about none of this, except maybe the Biggest Loser lady, but anybody who lost 107 pounds in 6 months seems doomed to re-gain twice as much in about the same amount of time.  I don’t want to be negative or anything, but seriously, that’s insane.

I opened to a random page and guess what?  A review of new diet books and a picture of Ashlee Simpson (who is famous for something apparently but I have no idea what) and a little blurb about how she lost 25 pounds by working with some trainer.  The books include one by Biggest Loser trainer Jillian Michaels, who seems like a real bitch, from what I’ve seen of the show.

Another random opening gets me to something much more interesting.  An ad for a show called “The Cougar”.  One older woman, twenty younger men.  There’s an idea I can get behind.  It starts April 15th at 10pm, on TVLand, which is of course a channel I don’t get.  Bummer.

It’s now time to visit the facilities and see how heavily protected the toilet paper is, followed by smashing the speaker that is constantly telling people to “please watch your step” on the moving walkway.

Oh, here are some pictures of the Mr. Rogers thingy in the airport.

It’s been a while since I’ve had anything to say about toilets, which is clearly too long.

I have to tell you all how much I hate the monstrous toilet paper holders that are installed in public toilet stalls.  Why is it necessary to secure the toilet paper in such a way?  Is public toilet paper theft such a problem that we need vaults to protect the stuff?  I mean, seriously, these are monstrous contraptions with locks.  Tell me, honestly, who would want the second rate toilet paper that is used in public toilets anyway? The stuff either balls up and leaves residue behind, leaves you with toilet paper burn on the arse, or results in serious poke through when you wipe.  Who would want to steal that?

However, my hatred for this contraptions is a little more specific than that.  Let me explain:

1. Most public toilet stalls are only marginally larger than my ass.  Now this could invite all kinds of comments about the size of my ass, but one thing I can say with confidence is that my ass is not large.  So when you’ve got an area that already barely fits my ass, and then you install a monster toilet paper holder right at ass level, directly beside the actual throne, you’re taking up real estate that most people need.  It’s bad enough that I can’t get into most of these stalls without doing some kind of dance manoeuver that involves incrementally adjusting the angle of the door and potentially climbing up on the toilet itself before closing the door.  I really don’t need an additional space restriction.
2. Every now and then, in fact, more often than one would expect, the toilet paper seems to join league with other materials that come off a roll, like say, packing tape.  You know when you have the roll of tape and you forget to fold over the end, so it all sticks to itself and you can no longer find the end of the tape?  Or even if you can find the end of the tape, you can’t seem to pry it off and make the tape actually come off the roll again?  So you decide to solve this problem by attacking the tape with scissors or a knife to cut a “new” end.  Which of course only solves the problem until you get to the “old” end that you couldn’t previously pry up where the tape pulls off the roll, leaving you with the same problem you had in the first place.  Anyway, it seems to me that the toilet paper in the vault often decides to support its tape brethren by behaving in the same way.  This necessitates sticking your arm up the opening in the vault to try to find the end of the toilet paper and make it come off the roll again.  So there you are, sitting on the throne, arm stuck in this stupid toilet paper holder up to the elbow, spinning the roll madly to no avail.  Not typically having a knife or scissors in the toilet with me, I then result to shredding the toilet paper wildly with my fingers, just hoping I can get the equivalent of a square.  That of course leads to …
3. Getting my arm all scratched up by the “teeth” or whatever it is they put on the opening of this stupid thing that is supposed to aid in the cutting of the toilet paper off the roll.  With the quality of paper that they put in these things, I wouldn’t have thought that a hack saw blade would be required to get some of it off the roll.

It’s bad enough that we have to use public toilets at all, what with the stench of other people’s business, the pee on the seat, people who don’t flush, and stupid hand dryers instead of paper towels.  Should we really have to put up with unnecessary toilet paper protection as well?

Maybe I’ll just start bringing my own with me.

I’ve been walking from my hotel to class and back again every day.  It’s about a 1 km walk down a pretty main street — Forbes Ave. in Pittsburgh.  Today, the entire 1 km stretch, and then some (as far as I could see) is filled with police cars, taking up at least 3 of the 4 lanes.  The police officers have arrived from everywhere.  It looks like every police officer from all of Pennsylvania has parked his or her car on Forbes Ave.  Apparently officers from other cities are here as well.

They’ve come to attend the memorial service for three Pittsburgh police officers who were killed on Saturday morning.

Just an unbelieveable thing to see.

Having been surviving on a diet of mostly junk food for the last few days, I decided I would make an effort to eat “real” food tonight.  This being a university area, there’s not all that much real food to be had, in terms of sit-down restaurants where you order food from a menu and they bring it to your table.  The hotel restaurant doesn’t look all that impressive.

So, I went to Five Guys.  This is apparently a famous burger place.  I’m not a huge hamburger lover, but I enjoy one every now and then, and since the place is famous and all, I figured I’d give it a shot.  I ordered the “Little Bacon Cheeseburger” with pickles, tomatoes, fried mushrooms, mayo and BBQ sauce.  The guy asked me if I wanted fries, and I figured why not.

So, a few minutes later everything was ready and I took it back to the hotel.  Now, I don’t know what a regular sized burger looks like, but I’m sure glad I went with the little one, because my God!  The little one was huge.  And the fries — like an extra large Tim Horton’s coffee cup filled to completely overflowing with homemade fries.  In fact, there were so many fries that they took up not only the entire volume of the cup, but all the remaining empty space in the bag.  I don’t think I ate even a quarter of the fries.

So, the burger was quite good actually, comparable to what you’d get at The Works in Ottawa, only in about one-tenth of the time and for about half of the price.  I do wish I had gotten onions on it though, since I’m not going to be breathing on anyone but myself tonight while I try to finish up my course homework.

Now that the burger has had some time to settle, and I’m faced with actually having to do my homework, I have the almost irresistable urge to head back over to the gas station and get chocolate.  Maybe the guy will bless my evening too.