Demystification Guru

Just because we don't understand something, doesn't mean it isn't understandable.

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Location: Ottawa, Ontario, Canada

Monday, March 31, 2008

080331

I just noticed that I have over 8000 hits on my sewing blog for March. I think that's a new record.

It's snowing freely and with fat flakes right now [at 7:30 am]. This will change to rain as the temperature rises, although they are calling for freezing rain in the middle. I'll take my YakTrax to school so I don't kill myself on the way home.

After work, I think I'd better sit and finish Lovelock's The Revenge of Gaia. I got it at the library and it's due on April 12. He makes a convincing argument for climate change and how it's related to the ppm of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and how this relates to oceans and algae among other things. There's also a really interesting aside about why we excrete nitrogen in pee instead of by exhaling. And I'm only at chapter two. I think I will be convinced shortly. But then what? I know, I know, I have to read the reports from the IPCC.

More from the new and improved writing at Environment Canada:

"An active early spring weather pattern will continue to send a conveyor belt of moist air towards the lower Great Lakes region. ... The air mass will be quite unstable so the odd rumble of thunder cannot be ruled out. "

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Sunday, March 30, 2008

080330

There was a recent "article" at The Onion about someone who sent out so many emails chronicling the minutia of his life that he was considered a modern day Proust. I kind of feel like that guy. I do write a lot each day, but it is all emails, mostly to this odd little chat group to which I belong and to my long-suffering husband. And it's also interesting (to me at least) that I have been thinking about reading Proust, even though I haven't cracked page one of volume one. But I enjoy reading about Proust, which I do vicariously through a blog called Orange Crate Art, written by an English professor somewhere in Indiana.

Much has happened in the last little while, not the least of which was that I turned 50 and didn't even mark that milestone with a blog post. I have concluded that I must begin blogging about the minutia of my life in a Proust-meets-the-Onion sort of way.

Today, I wrote the CanFitPro Personal trainer Specialist exam. I gave myself the course as a 50th birthday present. I don't know if I am going to become a personal trainer but I have been going to the gym lately and noticing a lot of women older than I am who could probably relate more to a personal trainer closer to their own age. Plus, I have been watching my parents age (gracefully, I may say) and they do love to quote (was it Bette Davis?) someone who said "getting old ain't for sissies". I figure I have about 30 years before I allow myself to qualify as "old" and I am going to start preparing for it now. Although I am a member of the GoodLife Gym and I really enjoy its group exercise classes, I don't think I would want to sign on there as a trainer in its stable. Because "stable" sort of says it all for me. If I do become a trainer, it will be on my terms. I want to be able to choose the people with whom I work and it's not the money that is important to me.

Anyway - first I have to pass the exam. I don't know when I'll hear how I did. If I passed (I'm pretty sure I did), then I have to take a CPR certification course and then I have to do the practical exam, which I know I will pass. And then we shall see. In the meantime, I continue to teach part time, which ends at the end of April. Peter and I are going to Europe in May for the first time ever together. And when we get back, I want to renovate the upstairs of the house, including putting in a whole new bathroom. So I think I'm busy until July at any rate.

There. That's a good start. Now I just have to do this every day.

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