...ahem...so, hello. Remember me? I use to blog here but have gotten so far behind in everything I have to do that of course my poor blog was forgotten. It was on my to-do list. There was A LOT on my to-do list. It was so intimidating, and I thought I'd found some help in the form of lovely little productivity blogs like Ririan Project, Productivity 501 and Lifehacker. Unfortunately, the lovely "top 10 blah to blah" tips didn't help me but instead I ended up with "Read my RSS feeds" hovering on my to-do list (as I currently write I have a tab open advising me that I have 1000+ feed articles to read (gulp!). So the to-do list has been retired and is now reincarnated in my new "Stress List". It isn't just a list of what I have to do, but of all the things I'm stressing over having not done. Using the categorization technique I learned in my time management class back at ole Usyd, I have developed four categories and corresponding ink colour:

• Crimson "I'm always in the Red" ink designates urgent actions that are financially dependent i.e. paying very overdue bills.
  
• "Terrifying" Torquoise ink designates urgent actions that are energy and time rather than financially dependent i.e. building a new website for the Archaeological Society I am now volunteering with.
• "Procrastinating" Purple ink designates non-urgent actions that are financially dependent, i.e. taking driving lessons so I can get back on the road after eight years.
  
• "Hopelessly-forgetten" Hot Pink ink designates non-urgent actions that are time and energy dependent, i.e. tidying up my paperwork.
  

So lets see if this new "I'm stressed and I'm not going to pretend I'm on top of it" list works any better. At least I can now scratch "post to your blog" off my list.

Purple Moon. I like the name :)

So to catch up, thanks for all the well wishes. I am certainly behind in my blogs, email, and flickr. So we are now comfortably ensconced in our new tiny apartment in the sky. Both Jaime and I are feeling much happier about our surroundings. My health has improved and almost all the effects of the allergy have departed. We still need to get some new bookshelves to unpack all our books and cds, but at least we are now feeling we are in a place we can finally unpack that stuff.

Other good news: civic workers strike is almost over! By almost, I mean that 2 out of 3 of the unions have settled. So garbage collection is starting again, and most importantly for us, the community centres will reopen meaning the gym, swimming pools, ice rinks and dance classes - hooray. The librarians are still on strike and I wish them the best with their negotiations as their key issue is wage equity for a female-dominated industry.

We have managed to see a plethora of great films: 3:10 to Yuma, Eastern Promises, and Elizabeth: the Golden Age. Though somehow I have yet again missed the entire Vancouver Film Festival.

I have volunteered as the Membership Secretary for the Archaeology Society of British Columbia. Not sure what exactly I've gotten myself into, but I'm hoping to help them discover a little thing called the 21st Century.

So October is for me again my month of renewal and rebirth. It is the end of one year and the beginning of another. This week we have Jaime's birthday celebrations, and then the week after that, a week of Halloween events including the wonderful "Parade of Lost Souls".

Thanks for the positive thoughts everyone - it must be working.

Also, it's nice to see the new faces on crackbook :)

The internet has recently served me up not one, but two lovely little morsels. And coincidentally, both involve the wonderful Stephen Fry. First off, I was delighted to see that Stephen Fry has started a blog. A very gifted writer, his blessays (blog essays, as he calls them) on such things as the iphone and the nature of fame are fabulous reads. It is my new favourite blog.

Secondarily, while channel surfing the other day, we came across this lovely little children's show called Pocoyo. Made in Spain using a C.G.I. style that mimics claymation, the show tells lovely little tales of Pocoyo ("little me"), a mischievous but delightful little boy that reminds me so much of our good friends' gorgeous son Dante. I am rarely impressed by children's television, but I haven't seen anything as good as this since the likes of Sesame Street or Pingu. And who narrates the English version of the afore mentioned Pocoyo?: Stephen Fry! I could listen to that voice all day. And thanks to youtube, I have been able to watch many episodes of Pocoyo. Ones like this:

Sorry for the absence. Our move did not work out so well. The new place we moved into turns out to be an absolute dump, so after some scrambling we will be moving again on Monday. We shall be renting an apartment in the same building as mum. Its nice as its on the 20th floor across from the beach, but it means moving out of the community we like and into downtown, which isn't ideal. Still, we couldn't stay here.

To top it off, I have been offline due to a severe allergic reaction. The doctors think it was to antibiotics, seventeen days after I started taking it. So I once again found myself in the hospital, where I was literally in the waiting room from hell. Imagine a poorly-lit, smelly waiting room. Populate it with an angry junkie, a homeless man, a concussed bike-courier, a man with the worlds stinkiest, ugliest fungal-infected toe nails, and me and my long-suffering husband. The TV was stuck high out of reach with no remote-control, so I could not turn off the back-to-back episodes of Dog the Bounty Hunter, followed by Criss Angel. My feet and hands swelling up like balloons and paralysis in my legs. Fun, fun, fun. Follow by five days of steroids and antihistamines. Now I am learning the pain of Prednisone withdrawal.

However, I am hoping things are on the upswing and next week I will find myself in a new home and in less pain.

followed this link off another blog. Found out just how nerdy I am. I'm the Nerd Queen apparently. At least my dork score was lowest.

Today is Abby & Pete's wedding over in England, and I was supposed to be there as Maid of Honour. Instead I'm packing up house and getting ready to move in two hours to less nice but less expensive apartment. I had so hoped and planned to be there for Abby. Its so disappointing to have a goal you work to toward and not achieve. So much seemed to conspire against us this past year; trouble with steady work, massive health issues, and work visa problems, but I still held out hope we would make it to Europe. I guess it will have to be next year now.

Abby will walk down the aisle in ten minutes. Have the best day Abby & Pete - I'm there with you in spirit.

Yes, Jaime did indeed get his work visa for Canada again. It was a nerve-wracking drive over the border and back, but it's a huge relief now. We've got one year and two weeks to get his permanent residency sorted. Jaime goes back to his worker bee status on Tuesday!

So tomorrow we are driving down to the border with the states, taking Jaime across, and hoping that when we cross back into Canada that they'll issue him a new work visa. If they do, he'll be working in the next few days. If they don't, Jaime will not be allowed back into Canada at all and he will have to go back to Oz. Its a tough decision to make. All his paperwork is in order, so they SHOULD issues the visa, but immigration can do whatever they like, so they can choose to screw us. And then I would spend the next six months alone while Jaime waited in Sydney for his Permanent Residency to come up. Wish us luck!

But the real question is: Do I try to sleep tonight with all this weighing on my fragile mind, or do I stay up for the Lunar eclipse at 3:00-4:00am?

And then just like that, I realised I like the White Stripes.

Sorry for no posts in a while. Its panic stations here with Jai out of work, us about to be homeless because of the lack of reasonable-priced accommodation (Damn You Olympics!) and to top it off, Dad, Sam and the step-mother staying with us.

Anyway, for those of you waiting for replies to your email, I promise to get to them soon.

But in the meantime, take a moment to grieve for the Yangtze River Dolphin.

Sorry I haven't posted in a while: my new job is a closed network, so no interweb at work. Great for my productivity, but bad for keeping up with my blogging, rss etc...

The good news is that my new job is great. The team is made up of really good people, my work environment is fabulous and I'm learning a lot. The bad news is that the day I started, Jaime found out that the extension on his work visa has been denied. So as of Monday, he's not allowed to work, and had lost his job (you know, the one he loves and gets loads of positive feedback etc...). As it was total bureaucratic snafu, he can reapply and should get his visa back in a month or two, and his work will likely take him back then. But in the meantime, we are living on my now very poor salary. Why can't I just have a little time without major stress in my life.

So no going to England for Abby and Pete's wedding :( which is so disappointing.

We have to move out of our apartment and likely move back into mum's one-bedroom apartment again.

Jaime gets paid out all his holiday pay, but obviously can't actually go on a holiday.

Plans for holidays are put on hold again.

Plans for studying are on hold again.

Plans for kids are on hold again.

I'm beginning to wonder if our life will ever get off hold. Can't we have a time period without massive stress for just a little while?

The Chernobyl Legacy by Paul Fusco could be one of the most moving and deeply disturbing photoessays I have ever seen. I must admit that with all the problems of global warming, I did for just one second start to ponder the rhetoric of politicians like John Howard putting forth nuclear energy as the solution to the world's energy crisis. But how can anyone even think of building reactors after viewing the horrific, widespread, and longterm consequences of just one reactor meltdown. The fact that Australia, which can't even get a 19th century invention like trains to run without accidents, is even considering it boggles the mind. There has just got be better options than this.

I remember when as a child I first came to understand what nuclear bombs and reactors were. I was eleven years old and it terrified me. I began to have "mushroom cloud" nightmares and would become paralyzed by fear of nuclear war. At age 13 I saw the news reports about Chernobyl, but did not come to realise the true consequences until many years later. In the nineties, with the easing of the cold war, the dismantling of apartheid, and increase of global awareness, I had a genuine feeling that the world moving to a better place and further from the threat of nuclear radiation. But now the world is entering scary territory. Politicians are putting nuclear energy back on the table, and people are eating it. Where is the outrage? Where is the fight against this? Is it because people in the 60s and 70s weren't worried about losing power for their iphone that they were in the streets about this? I would rather raise children in a world with no electricity (humans managed without for 4.6 million years) than to see these abominations on the earth.

Here is the Link : Make sure to listen with the sound on as the commentary is vital.
(warning: this has some pretty disturbing images).

Now that I'm getting comfortable with Ookpik the dslr camera, I am giving HDR photography a whirl. In a nutshell, it's taking the same shot at normal, over and under exposures and then combining them into one photo. This gives it a greater depth and all areas of the photo are exposed properly. It can look over-done, but properly created images are stunning. Anyway, here is my first HDR (created using photomatix; I used the free version, hence the watermarks):

Now after all the shit weather our recent and not so recent guests have had to endure, it's nice to see the sun. Makes one happy and let's one see the local mountains, trees flowers etc... But this is kinda of crazy. To all the folk who don't believe it gets hot in Vancouver, I give you this weeks weather forecast:

Yes, that's a 33, 34 and 35 coming up this week. I had to double check I hadn't inadvertently checked Sydney's weather. In the interior of BC the forecast is for 38 and 39.

Still, it's a good week for it. I have a week off before I start my new job and I'm pretty much slacking off, so it's nice to have some good slacking off weather.

So I joined the David Suzuki Foundation's Nature Challenge. Its only a small thing, and certainly nothing "off the grid", but it's small steps. Most of which of I'm already doing. But they say" Word of mouth is our most powerful tool", so here I am promoting a it. Looking at the Challenge, I can assess how I am doing a reducing climate change:

1. Reduce home energy use by 10%.

• I am working on only having lights on when I need them. I'm also reducing the amount of time I spend on my computer (I quit WOW).

2. Choose an energy efficient home and appliances.

• As an apartment in a concrete building, our insulation is pretty good. But our appliances are appalling. The fridge is a giant old beast that runs noisily all the time, and the drier does not vent very well and is incredibly inefficient. Unfortunately, as tenants, these are not our appliances, and as these appliances are technically still working, we cannot get them replaced. I have countered this by hanging as many things to dry as possible, and by running the fridge on low, keeping the fidgee-part relatively empty and the freezee-part very full (this is the way fridge work efficiently).
  

3. Replace dangerous pesticides with alternatives.

• I don't have a garden *sigh*. My house plants are basically bug free.

4. Eat meat-free meals one day a week.

• We've been trying to go farther with this anyway. While I doubt I will ever be able to go completely meat free, I am trying to make it the exception rather than the rule. I already go meat-free several days a week, so I'm doing well with this one.

5. Buy locally grown and produced food.

• I've become a lot more conscious of this issue, and I am going to try to pay more attention to this when shopping. Luckily we've got a lot of good markets near us with lots of healthy, local produce. This will be harder in the winter though, as a lot of Canada's produce is imported.

6. Choose a fuel-efficient vehicle.

• I don't have a car. My feet aren't very efficient, but at least they don't pollute.

7. Walk, bike, carpool or take transit.

• I've been public-transiting for decades. At the moment I have to catch three buses to work, which isn't much fun. But in my new job it will be one express-bus ride. I miss walking to work though, like I did at Sydney Uni.
  

8. Choose a home close to work or school.

• Well I just chose a work that's closer to my home so "hooray". For a lot of people this isn't a viable option. But the long commutes some people make these days are nuts.
  

9. Support car-free alternatives.

• Well, I already do. but I'm thinking of buying a bicycle. It will be uphill to work, but then downhill home :)

10. Learn more and share with family and friends.

• I think that's what I'm doing at the moment.
  

I have just been hired as a Research Assistant to the Laboratory of Archaeology at UBC. Its so exciting. I was really starting to get despondent about the career part of my life. While the job is not great paying, and is only for six-months, that is huge in archaeological terms. I will be doing what I love. My student loans have justified themselves. I'm almost too excited to talk. all I can say is that THE MILKY BARS ARE ON ME!!!!

After Guy and Anna winged their way home to Oz, the Vancouver experience continued for Leon. We were lucky enough to be treated to Leon DJing at the local goth/industrial club, Sanctuary. It was great, he went off. A longer review, including video can be found on Metal Monkey. Jaime also showed Leon the Vancouver Aquarium, and how to severely damage your liver with alcohol in Seattle.

I been having a go lately at consciously changing my thoughts towards more positive things, but it's not easy. I have had the (dis)advantage of a substantial education and labour under a terrible addiction: Information. As much as I know that reading the news, surfing the net or watching tv will only give me more information to deal with, I cannot help myself. This has led me to a terrible state of anxiety over choice.

Those who watch the Sopranos* might find AJ's behaviour of the last season annoying, but I sympathise very much with the "everything's going hell so why bother" mindset. I mean, how can a few fluoro bulbs and catching the bus to work compete against China opening a new coal power plant every week?! Buying eggs almost sent me into palpations the other day. I could find eggs from happy chickens that got to run around in green fields, and I could find eggs from chickens that weren't fed other chickens. But do you think I could find eggs from frolicking chickens that didn't have to eat other chickens? NO! So I had the agonising choice of condoning battery hen farms or risking mad-chicken disease some day**.

And buying a coffee?! Paper cups from dying trees, Styrofoam poisons the earth and our bodies. Are the beans fair-trade? Was the soil organic? Does the cafe treat it's employees fairly? Is it owned by some terrible multinational corporation that sells cigarettes, arms and Celine Dion albums? These are demons I wrangle with for every choice of my adult life.

But I am rallying my thoughts for a full-frontal assault on despair. It's not easy, my brain has had a mind of its own for far to long, and my ability to control thoughts is weak. But I will be training up the neurons. To this end, I am announcing a new series to my blog: Why I like being human.

Next time on Shanathalas: "Why I Like Being Human Part 1: Music".

*Having seen the last episode I can't decide whether I absolutely hate it or if it was absolutely brilliant.

** I chose the Free-Range; I hope the happy little chook thinks of me when my brain goes to mush!

We've been blessed with many visitors from the homeland lately. First up, Guy & Anna stopped by Vancouver for five days on their way home from their ten week trip round the world. It's been so great to see them. Even though the weather was crap, there was still plenty to see and do (and eat). We were able to show them the Vancouver Aquarium, the Museum of Anthropology and to take in The Taming of the Shrew at Bard on the Beach.

We even managed a Vancouver gathering of "Guys Urban Gaming Society", with locals Rena and Elwood joining Guy, Anna, Leon, Jaime and myself for a rousing evening of boardgames, witty banter and much drinking. Just like old times.

Alas, all good things must come to an end, and yesterday Guy and Anna flew home to Oz, misplacing June 11th somewhere in their travels. Thanks for visiting guys; I'm missing you already.

But stayed tuned for the further adventures of Leon in Vancouver...