Mine was SO merry. Hope yours was too.

You probably won't see me for a while because I'll be playing with my new GameCube. (Santa Claus is a sexy sexy man). I've always felt that Nintendo made the best games. I love Mario and all his cute mushroom friends. And yet, I've always said that I would buy playstation just to get Karaoke Revolution. But guess what??? They make it for GameCube now! I can have all my childish cartoon games and eat cake too! (And play karaoke revolution). I ordered it on Amazon.ca (which is a big deal because I was an Amazon virgin) and they're saying it's going to take all the way until January 5th to get it to me. GAH! But I want to sing now!

Anyway, like I said I'll be playing GameCube all the day (we also have like a hundred and three new DVDs to watch). Except Saturdays. Saturdays I'm going to acting class! That's right, I'm sure this will lead to movie-stardom. Thanks Mom and Dad.

Hey guess what? My darling husband just found out that EBgames has karaoke revolution so I can go pick it up right away. Screw Amazon!

Voting based on looks...My thoughts on the leadership debate.

Yesterday was the leadership debate (for those of you who are not Canadian, we are having an election right now to pick a Prime Minister). While the candidates rarely say anything new during these debates, it does provide an excellent opportunity to seize them all up and decide who looks the most Primeministerial and who's a dork (though sometimes that's the same thing). There were four master debaters. For those who missed the show, here's my take (in alphabetical order so as not to show favoritism):

Gilles Duceppe (Bloc Quebecois): Gilles looks like a vampire. He should be Prime Minister of Transylvania. He was wearing a gangster pin stripe suit which made me suspect ties to the quebecois Mafia, and he had a nice silver tie.




Stephen Harper (Conservative Party): Steve looks like what would happen if a Ken Doll turned forty. This is because his hair is all glued in place and he generally looks plastic. I wasn't crazy about his tie (which had tiny black polka dots) but his tie, shirt, and the little kerchieff thing in his pocket were all of this silky blue material and nicely matchy matchy. He gets the prize for most coordinated candidate.



Jack Layton (New Democratic Party): Jack seems like a nice guy. He looks like somebody's Dad. If we were voting for who should be the country's Daddy, I would pick him. He wore a plain black suit with a plain red tie, just like an ordinary Dad might wear to work.



Paul Martin (Liberal Party): Out of the four Paul definitely looks the most Primeministerial, which makes sense because he is, in fact, Prime Minister. His tie was red, like Jack's, but much fancier. I think he had the best tie; I'll probably vote Liberal.




Just as a side note, The Green Party was sending out a petition AGAIN that they should be included in the debate and AGAIN they weren't on. I'm hoping next election we'll get to see what kind of tie the Green leader would wear (a green tie made of eco-friendly materials, recycled cow dung or some such, no doubt).

Things I do with my day.

I was waiting for something interesting to happen so I could write a compelling blog entry. Clearly this will never happen. Instead, I though I'd provide you with a more-or-less comprehensive list of how I spend my days.

• Writing my book. I'm officially on chapter seven but I do have a bunch of stuff written after that. It's a story set on an alien planet where women hold pretty much all the jobs and have two husbands, one for cooking and cleaning, and the other for nursing and raising the babies. They need three men to reproduce (of course) so when they want a child they go and mate with a random third guy. My main character is a kind of lizard man with breasts who is nursing a child that is all weird looking because that random third guy was human! He gets all kinds of flack from the community and goes through troubling times because of this. I know you guys are all itching to steal my idea now, but try to control your urges.
• Playing Cactus Bruce , which I downloaded off yahoo. This is a highly realistic game where this pirate cactus uses a giant metal claw to catch monkeys and bananas and shoot them at bricks. I used up the trial period and now have "an extended trial period of 5 minutes per execution." Luckily five minutes is enough time to pass one level.
• Thinking about school work (for my classes at Ryerson). I spend a lot more time thinking about school work than actually doing it, but since most of the work involves writing the thinking really is part of the process. I can even do the thinking while playing Cactus Bruce.
• Washing dishes. This is hard work (especially in our apartment where we let them pile up to the ceiling and we only have one puny sink). It makes me hungry so after I wash I usually have a snack, creating more dishes and starting the cycle all over again.
• Blogging. As those who frequent this site have no doubt realized, some weeks I do more of this than others.
• Redoing my résumé. I fiddle around with this alot. Change a word here. Embellish there. Afterwards I almost always seriously consider applying somewhere. Whether I do or not it makes me feel as if I'm having a productive job search.
• Playing with pigs. I think they hate me. I make too many sudden movements and they freak out. I feed them carrots (which they love) but they still behave as if I'm a terrifying beast. When I pick them up they try to escape by hiding in my hair.
• Watching cop shows. I do this in the evening after dinner. My favourites are CSI, Law & Order, Law & Order SVU, Cold Case and CSI Miami (pretty much in that order). Luckily most of these are on 24-hours a day. If none of these are on and I really want to watch something I might stoop to something terrible like Missing or Crossing Jorden, but those ones don't have nearly enough grit and gore. How those shows stay on the air but Enterprise gets cancelled is beyond me.
• Making dinner. If I'm feeling really ambitious this can take all afternoon and involve looking up a recipe, walking to the store to buy any ingredients we don't have, dicing, dashing, simmering, sautéeing, and all manor of other cooking terms that I have to guess at the meaning of.

Um, I guess I like ears.

So I went to the career centre to discuss the results of my assessments. Assessment in this case being another word for a whole bunch of silly tests which the employment councelor assures me are highly accurate. According to the aptitudes test I'm good at everything, which I'm pretty sure isn't true. I'm not sure how adding and multiplying fractions and defining vocabulary words could possibly be a good prediction of my potential to be a dancer, for example.

The next tests had to do with my motivation and passion for doing things. This has always been my problem. While I can pretty much do anything I feel like, I really don't feel like doing much of anything most of the time. Supposedly the results of these tests are compared against the results of people who are successful in certain careers. Based on this the trusty dusty computer came up with a bunch of careers that I might enjoy. My top three are (insert pause for dramatic effect):

Technical Writer
Audiologist
Librarian

It was the audiologist that baffled me. Technical writer? Okay, I like writing. Librarian? Okay, I like books. Audiologist? Whadda? My interest in the human ear is casual at best. I looked up all three careers and found that they were all interesting enough (I suppose if they wouldn't interest me they wouldn't have shown up on the test), but all had some degree of ickiness.

Here are the pros and cons.

Technical Writer:
Pros

• I like to write.
• I get to work by myself a lot.
• I get to learn stuff.

Cons

• It's mostly freelance so I'd have to sell myself all the time.
• I'd most likely be writing boring instruction manuals.
• Probably harder to get into for someone with nil technical background.

Audiologist

Pros

• I like tinkering with gadgets and hearing aids are gadgets.
• As far as body parts go ears are fairly interesting.
• I wouldn't have to take my work home with me.
• More jobs will open up because all the baby boomers are getting old and deaf

Cons

• I'd have to go back to school for 2 or 3 years to get a degree in it.
• I'd spend a lot of time dealing with crotchety old people.

Librarian

Pros

• I like books.
• I could learn a lot of new things while helping people look up stuff

Cons

• I would have to go to school for another couple years to get a masters.
• I'd spend a lot of time dealing with people.

So there you have it. My career problems are all but solved. All I have to do is pick one of these and go to school for a billion more years. I don't necessarily have a problem with that, but my bank account might.