I’m about to leave to go to the concert thingy ma bobber. …I dont start till 9:30, and I have a ride. …King came over with a ton of people… I don’t plan on bringing my camera with me for the rest of the night…So these are the only pictures of my New Year that you’ll see… But I’ve already got a phone number, (geez louise…) and King figured my first BC new year was the perfect time for me to have my first go at BC pot.

To call or not to call? … Its a big "no call" considering its one of King’s closest friends… he was just a little drunk… heh

Just for the record - it’s exactly like Ontario pot (hey mom - you told me to, remember!) so I’m not quite sure why everyone goes all bananas over "BC Pot" back home… Maybe I’ll be able to tell the different in 20 minutes.

And that’s it for me as I take off looking like some sort of cheap hooker! But hey - thats what they told me to dress like for this little bartending gig. …The look and the job don’t really fit me… but whatever, lots of money = lots of continuing to pay rent.

Have a good night everyone!

I want this book.

I haven’t actually decided what to do as a year end post. …I was going to do the top 10 environmental stories of the year, but that just didn’t appeal to me. So then I thought about doing what I’d want to see next year in the environmental feild, but that will probably just depress me.

(However, one of the oldest newspapers around is going completely digital! and I think that’s really great. I see no reason why newspapers can’t cut their production way down and do more online stuff. …I understand that not everyone has a computer, so you just print way less… I would also like to see more developments in sustainable energy and environmentally friendly cars… this year was pretty good in the car department, but not really in sustainable energy sources.)

Then there is always the good old post stocked full of pictures of family and friends from the year celebrating all the celebrations… but I’m not really in a chipper enough mood to get into that. And of course New Year Resolutions… which I’ll probably do, at least 5 of. …And there is always New Year Resolutions for other people that I could do too - but I think that goes a little bit beyond my taste. I do have a lot of arguments with people I’d like to bridge up - at least 4 that I can think of off the top of my head. …1 involves me being a horrible god mother… But why oh WHY would you pick ME to be a god mother!!?! Anyway - I’m stuck.

Fact of the matter is - I wouldn’t be dissapointed if tomorrow just… Didn’t end. The New Year holds a lot of scary things for me. A lot of big decisions, and a lot of life altering things. I could just be reasonable and stay in Victoria finishing my Ba and continuing on into grad school as planned … but the fact of the matter is, I really don’t want to. Everyone knows my plans change with my mood, but hey… whatever - here’s the plan for next year:

Starting in January with my new semester I plan on going part-time at school. I’ll be taking 3 super easy courses, that hopefully don’t have final essays or take home exams… because I’m lazy like that. I’ll keep my radio job and pick up a few hours there. I’ll also get another job, hopefully at a call centre or a factory that will give me some crazy shift like 11 pm - 3 am, since all my classes start at 2:30 pm, and I actually don’t have any Tuesday and Friday. The fault in that plan is that I’ve never actually seen a factory in Victoria that didn’t involve fish…

After next semester, if I have a call centre job, or at job that pays really well I would stay in Victoria for the summer and work my little bum off right up until November. If I don’t get a decent job here, I’ll fly back to Ontario and get a job at a factory or a call centre there and hopefully have free rent. … After all this, I will hopefully have saved up a bit of cash… and by a bit, I mean a lot. …So then I can go somewhere. Where, i won’t say… that’s my little secret. But it will be fantastic, and I’ll be there until 2008. Or, I’ll work until early 2008 and then take off. Something along those lines. It really depends on the finacial situation.

Now… I am well aware that the chances of all this happening are very slim. …I will probably have 18 more ideas and 10 more plans that I claim are concrete. I know. I am indecisive, and thats an understatement. …Shut up.

As for my new year resolutions… I guess I can give it a try…

1. …this is harder than I thought. …To actually come up with something that I would keep? Or is the point of a new year resolution to mock the fact that you’re actually going to break it by March - in which case I can make 50.

I guess I could attempt to stop swearing so much for my mom. I’ve been more aware of it lately, and have taken "fuck" out of a few posts that it even seemed appropriate it "Its never appropriate, it makes you sound common"… ‘k mom, sorry.

2. Stay in touch with my sister more often. …Twice this year her and I had big realizations that sisters can be friends and that we get along - but we never end up calling each other again for months.

We’re actually better now, we talk on MSN for a few hours a couple nights a week. I guess I should try and stay in touch with people in general more often - but I don’t really care about a lot of them as much as my sister.

But Helene, Cassie, and the Mississauga girls I should definitely make a harder attempt for. And its so easy to do this - its not like I don’t already spend 3 hours a day face booking - and usually that’s just being a creeper.. Instead I should write to my friends. But I think I’m up to like 370-something friends on facebook - so that could get a little time consuming.

Oh - I should also get to know my landlord better … hes so anxious to know me, I should let him. I think he’d have a lot of good advice and stuff for me.

3. Go on a diet. Start eating. I don’t really eat. I actually didn’t realize that until Alon was here and he kept telling me that we hadn’t eaten for so many hours… I don’t even notice.

So really, I should start making an attempt to eat… And eat healthy, aka not chocolate ice cream, but again - depressing week. Gimme a break. I’ll also make an honest attempt at going to the gym with Ashley. I think I told her about 80 times last semester that I would go with her but I still haven’t even bought the pass yet. I think her and I have like 3 classes together next semester - so she’ll have more ways to hold me to it.

4. Stop. Shopping.

5. Hike more. I’m in BC - I might as well take advantage of that. I think Ashley and I made some unoffical plans to go on a hike the weekend she gets back, so the 12 - 14. That’ll be fun… Maybe we can get Carl Domes to come! (PS - Has anyone ever heard of a Hot Carl? Without googling? and I promise - you’ll be highly dissapointed if you DO google. Mom - please. don’t.)

Stokes’ article on the strangest environmental moments of 2006 had me laughing my behind off.

Christian Coalition Calls Out Bush On Global Warming.
The true irony is that there was ever a division in the public mind
between Christian values and conservation. In April, 86 evangelical
leaders signed
a letter hoping to remedy that. It criticized Bush for his inaction on
global warming and gave rise to a new green movement among Christians
in which church groups recycle and plant trees.

Michael Crichton Wins "Excellence In Journalism" Award. That’s right — Crichton’s anti-enviro fantasy thriller State Of Fear won
him the highly coveted award for journalistic excellence from … the
Society Of Petroleum Geologists. I only include this because I’m bitter
I lost the award with my "Interview With Jesus And Uncle Sam About Why
It’s Our Spiritual And Patriotic Duty To Use Lots Of Petroleum."

Some of the things listed in the aritcle made me slap my forehead thinking "WTF are we doing to ourselves?!" Honestly… There’s a problem when people who live in freezing cold weather are buying air conditioners… And personally, I’m still trying to figure out what was worse… Al Gore’s movie or The Day After Tomorrow. Yeah, Gore did a swell job at giving some scientific facts to global warming and making it more public - but it was boring as all hell and the biography shit in the middle of it all just ruined it!

Not to mention, anyone who knows the basic first year stuff on global warming shouldn’t have bothered going. …It was like sitting through grade 12 environmental studies all over again, only with an almost former president of the USA. And as for the Day After Tomorrow - geez. Don’t even get me started! …That just made global warming look like a joke. … Well, 2007 is another year.

I hate those little spinning number things that people put on their websites… "the cost of the Iraq war" "number of people dead to date" …Shut up. But this article, about the opportunity cost of the war, is actually really good - and something I think I’ve been waiting to read for quite some time now.

Amongst my favorites, the obvious…

Global warming: When the possibility of invading Iraq surfaced
in 2001, senior Bush administration officials hadn’t thought much about
global warming, except to wonder whether it was caused by human
activity or by sunspots. Today, the world’s scientists and many
national leaders worry that the world has passed the point of no return
on global warming. If it has, then human damage to the ecosphere will
cause more major cities to flood and make the planet significantly less
conducive to human habitation — all over the lifetime of a child now
in kindergarten. British Prime Minister Tony Blair keeps trying to
convince President Bush of the magnitude of the problem, but in every
session between the two leaders Iraq squeezes out the time to discuss
the pending planetary disaster.

And my second favorite (and perhaps less obvious)…

Arms control freeze: Once atop several administrations’
national security agendas, international arms control has received
little White House attention since the Bush administration decided
early on to walk away from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. National
security adviser Stephen J. Hadley has extensive government experience
working on arms control and he began to focus on this turf in early
2001, when he was number two at the National Security Council. But
after 9/11, Hadley has had little opportunity to advance international
efforts to control biological weapons, nuclear testing and
proliferation, or the threat of nuclear or radioactive terrorist
weapons. For a long time, the White House outsourced dealing with
Iran’s nuclear weapons to the Europeans, just as the onus of stopping
North Korea’s nuclear development was placed on Asian nations. The
sustained senior-level attention that is needed to stop two nuclear
weapons programs at the same time has simply not been available –
because of Iraq.

I wish I would have wrote that article. Its like when you hear a song, and you say "I could have written that" or "I could have done better"… Yeah… but you didn’t, so shut up and enjoy it.

And while you’re enjoying Washington Post war articles, here is another fairly interesting one.