My back lawn of overgrownness....(Picspam!)

Just finished the front lawn and decided to go down the back to see how bad the backyard is.

And it's bad. I don't think this weed-wacker will be enough...anyone have a chainsaw/bushsaw they could lend me? o_O;

Stairs (far left diagonal thingy) are concealed by weeds/wildflower. That rather random pine tree is a pine tree I got from those "PLANT A PINE TREE IN YOUR BACKYARD" people in Elementary.

Uhm, our flowerbed is usually somewhere under this mass of weed and wildflower between the two posts. Yeah

And the other stairs parallel to the one pictured (the one I standing on to take the photos) has a broken step and no side raillings so you could fall over and hurt yourself badly if you weren't careful.


Err--- That angled shiny black stick/handle thing is/was our lawnmower. Dad told me it was junk and didn't work though. And that chair was left here by the people who used to live here. Flowerbed used to be about 2ft back from the chair...maybe more.






View from near the top of the staircase near the front gate to the back gate of the yard. (Top left---the balcony/porch)







So I have this, my tons of laundry, my packing and my cleaning of the house to do before I move. This should be...interesting?

Aside from the scary psychocity of the household from day-to-day, diploma marks came and they were worse than what I was hoping for:

Social 30: 60%
Applied Math 30: 65%
English 30-1: 72%

Got 60s on all the written parts. Including math, which I thought I would at least get above 80%. (and the multiple choice at least a 75%)

Anyhow, Social mark dropped 8%, Math mark went up 1% and English thankfully soared 15% and I passed it. But I suppose since the marks go from lowest to highest, that killed any enthuiasm. Final average for the year is 75%---the highest I've gotten since Gr 7 and all I needed to maintain was an average above 70% for the UofO.

Today I bought those World Cup sweatpants from Sportchek. Though the colours spell FRANCE it says on the tag it's England's. (The last time I ever saw the England squad in navy was...never?) The actual France one I suppose is the white-red-royal blue one I saw but the material's white and rather...er--fails to prevent see-throughness and the French squad trains in navy-red-white trackpants all the time so meh. If I have to, I'll look for an embroidered iron-on patch of the coq d'or and a gold star and iron them onto the pant leg if I have to. =P

Does anyone have a weed-cutter-type apparatus to lend to me?

So, I was going to take out the garbage today but then I looked from the balcony at our backyard.

It's a jungle of wildroses, weeds, weeds, weeds, some wildroses and did I mention weeds?

Very tall, overgrown weeds/wildroses. Roughly....3-4ft tall. Yes, my backyard is that overgrown. My dad is unwilling to buy a weed-cutter (because no lawn mower could tackle our backyard) and the one we had, was lent to one of my dad's friends whom he doesn't remember (as has our spare bed and our brandnew vacuum.). Our front lawn is in danger of going into that same state.

SO, does anyone have one of those weedcutter-type thingys? (The ones the city lawnmower gangs have) If so, would you mind lending it to me for a weekend? I know when I leave, my dad won't mow the lawn nor will he hire anyone so...better to leave him a way to the back alley to dump the garbage than to not.

If you don't that's fine, I'll go buy one at Canadian Tire it's just, it'll be a waste of my money because I'll only be using it for two weeks before it gets lent out to someone and forgotten (like our spare bed and our new vacuum and old weed-cutter apparatus) And no, my dad's not willing to buy one any time soon.

EDIT Oh there's grass. It's there it's just...overgrown. And there's thorny-type weeds too =X

EDIT 2 (11:58PM) Haha...I have been saved! :D *worships Liz*

Dad's home. He just came home, took a shower and left for somewhere. No he didn't call in advance to say he was coming (though he had his cellphone with him the whole time), no I doubt he was trying to surprise me by returning home. Moi là, j'en ai marre...

I think I'll return to starting my laundry.

You know, I want someone to go up to my dad and tell him I'm not the perfect daughter because I've already spent half my life telling him I'm not. I mean, what're the chances that when I find a note reading: Hi Amlaké, I have gone to the hospital - Dad I'll immidiately think: 'Shit, I need to go to the hospital right away!'. 90% of the time I'll be panicking and trying to reach my brother and then have him phone the hospital.

So the next logical step would be to call the hospital. Okay, I've done that. Then this morning I talked to dad. What happened? I was accused of telling the doctors and the nurses that I didn't know anything that he had left and blah blah blah (I've only talked with one nurse) then I got yelled at on the phone that I was being lazy and not coming (Hell, I was considering going to today but not anymore after this) and that most families just run to the hospital when stuff happens like this and don't phone the hospital to find out the details before coming.

We spent 20mins yelling at each other on the phone.

As well, I was rather bluntly told that I don't need to know the truth about anything and that only my brother (...BC I guess) can know. Which I suppose is why he lied to my brother's mum about why he was in the hospital yesterday. (She was calling on behalf of my brother because late last night he had to deal with a worksite emergency).

Actually, I got yelled at about alerting my brother his wife and his mum too earlier. My justification (as I tried unsuccessfully) was that they're family. That reason didn't sail so smoothly. So in one sentence, I've been accused of not being the ideal daughter.


I think I'll attempt to clean this house now.

Hm.

Perhaps the wrong way to deal with things like this but whatever, it's what I've done to keep my mind elsewhere. Watched the 2hr Interview/documentary of Zizou Comme dans un rêve. Probably the best biographies I've seen in ages. If I can find the Hergé/Tintin doc/bio Tintin et moi I'll be happier.

Anyway, my dad is in the hospital again for the first time in 7 months. Pretty much going to leave it at that as I know if I go into details this'll spawn for ages. I've just been occupying my mind with Comme dans un rêve and listening to Believer and Rosa several times over and that's been keeping me from loosing it. Might watch Due South later if I feel like it. Pis, je dois téléphoner des personnes itou ça.

I know Kelci linked this but GO WATCH!

Whoo embeded video.

So Roberto Carlos is purely special in this (The 'Lift the cup and pass it on' line) and almost most of the French '98/02 squad is there. Look, Djokaeff (frontmost guy at 'Come together undivided'), Sagnol being...Sagnol, Vieira, Zizou, Deschamps, Blanc, a profile shot of Desailly, Dugarry's in it , Barthez, Wiltord (or Makélélé) and Sylvestre and I think that's it.

Djembe Djembe boogie-ing amused me and I think Henry's speaking in...West Indian-style French or, Créole rather. (I was thinking Patois but that's more English-sounding than French)

NOTE: The Petit seen in this is Emmanuel Petit who played for France and was well-known for that ponytail of his (Deschamps had a mullet in '98..) not the Portugese one.

Song is Live for Love United by Youssou N'Dour and Pascal Obispo...which shocks me because woah, Pascal sings really well in English. (There's another LOVE UNITED video with footballers called Y a pas un homme (qui soit né pour ça) by Pascal Obispo (feat. Calogero, F. Pagny) and in the video since I suspect it was filmed right around the time Zizou announced his return, there's shots of people holding newspapers at first which read with headlines showing the French people's skepticism on whether Les Bleus would qualify then later people are reading papers which read 'IL EST DE RETOUR!' or 'IL REVIENT!' for Zizou. Saw it on TV5, haven't been able to find it. There's even people sporting those LOVE UNITED shirts. Speaking of Pascal, he made a tribute song to Rosa Parks called Rosa which is a really nice song)

EDIT Found Rosa http://www.dailymotion.com/relevance/search/Pascal%20Obispo/video/x82y3_Pascal-Obispo-Rosa
(The Black tulips serving the White Lilies serve as powerful yet...disturbing symbolism...wow.)
And Y'a pas un homme
http://www.dailymotion.com/relevance/search/Pascal%20Obispo/video/x5b1g_Ya-pas-un-homme-qui-soit

Post #170

Not a happy one but anyhow, in today's exciting news, my dad is mad at me again. What for? For being unemployed again. Oh and for eating cold cereal for breakfast because apparently it's a crime to eat yummy cold cereal for breakfast.

It looks like I'll need to put off most of my packing until I can secure a job before all hell breaks loose. I mean, it's been unusually peaceful in this house during the last month and it feels like there's some hell wanting to seriously break loose sooner or later. Hmm.

PS. Diploma marks got mailed out today. So within the next few days we should be getting the results in the mail.

Oh and I got a 'New Student' guide from Concordia even though I never replied the to admission thing.

And then I realized 'Hey....I was supposed to return the letter from Concordia saying that 'No' I didn't want to attend....' and I am addressing an enveloppe as I type. Well, hello thar brain...good to know you're still functioning.

I guess it's a bit saddening that I'm rejecting this particular offer of admission because this was the first University that replied to me and I remember when I found out I was uncontrollably happy to the point where I got a little crazy with joy and nearly cartwheeled around the house. *sigh* I suppose I should consider this one of the two major life lessons I've learned within this year. *shrugs*

Well I suppose I should go out but uh-- there's a cut (deep, but not very) under my foot where I usually apply pressure for standing/walking. Earlier today I went down to mail my Transcript request and pick up bus tickets and I limped all the way to Mac's and back. =(

Stampede work is over.

But now I must plan out the order of things from now until whenever it is in August I'll be leaving. It's a long list too that's been floating about my head that I'd like to rédige.

But first, fun stories from my job as a helper/server at the Concession stand (Outriders) in the Infield! Most of these involve our stockboys Rob, Matt, Ben and Jeremy who regularly hung out with us after Rodeo was done for the evening. Many, many laughs. Including a Who could look like a homeless person best contest between Ben and Jeremy plus an entertaining story from Matt about his adventures on the C-Train at 3am rolling a baseball in the car that would come to back to him and how he got a bruise on his arm as a result of landing on said baseball (after he didn't realize that the train was stopping)

Oh and the first job I had on day 1 of work, (wednesday), was as a beer-pourer/filler for the vendors on the 5th level of the Grandstand. God. Worst job on Earth.

I'm stuck in a tiny corner with another guy (there were 3 of us) and we're pouring beer (that ended up foamy on many occaisions...) into jugs to use so we can pour the cups in the vendors' trays. Simple-ish job. Problem being that

1. I'm in a dinky little corner pouring beer that's getting on the floor sometimes
2. Said dinky little corner is poorly lit (florescent lights or something that made my eyes really red because the side we were in, the lights didn't come or something so my eyes were funny)
3. Our vendors are all competitive. They spend most of the time trying to outsell each other. Problem is that they sometimes had no patience with us and most of the time forgot to tip us.
4. After work, a bunch of guys were stealing the beer as we poured it out and kept sneaking a bunch away. Didn't create for a amicable situation when our Supervisor for the night came out and told us to throw out the beer before they took anymore. (One of the guys was like 'If he didn't have hearing aids I'd beat the #$%@ out of him')
5. While I was pouring beer, one of my co-workers told me 'If I say "I love you" don't take it as anything bad okay? *insert scary smile here*' or something. I was pretty much disturbed.
6. My feet. Alright, I have flat feet, my endurance with walking for long periods of time is 3-5 hrs or more. Standing in one spot for long periods of time not moving said feet (or legs) and putting weight on my knees and my ankles more, greatly reduces this to 3hrs max. I was working 11-12hrs.
   
7. Poor working conditions.

When I asked for a transfer, I was lucky this guy James was willing to switch. The concession stand area was HUGE compared to where I was before. I mean my legs hurt a bit but I had easier breaks and the flow of customers was easy (We had 15mins breaks and supper breaks but after Intermission the flow of customers stops so we sit outside and chat and eat and then get back in incase a customer or two came in then have nothing from 4 until 6:30 and we'd sit, some would take their supper breaks and after the evening rush, more sitting around ouside chatting and such.)

And yesterday on my to work, I talked with a nice lady about transit systems (the whole 'Geez, Calgary's Transit is so not keeping up with the expansion' type discussion) and she told me of her travels as an English teacher in Japan, and I told her how I would like to go to Japan someday and she suggested I could do English-teaching. I'm pretty tempted to do something like that in the future.

Worst customers we had...one British fellow who was all 'I didn't come to the Stampede just to wait for my beer' while other beer drinkers who had ordered were waiting patiently and another guy...oh yeah one American guy who couldn't count our money or something and said 'Don't get mad at me, I'm American' as an excuse. Nat, second cashier, wasn't exactly pleased and as I got him his stuff he was all 'Oh you're a very nice person, very nice. You're doing an excellent job.' to me. Oh and there's another American-tourists story; two corporates in the Infield suites likely(?) or who should've been, came up to us and asked for 20 beer and 4 coolers during Intermission (when our lineups are LOOONG) for the two of them and their fellow American corporates and one of them was really whiny and all 'But this is for a corporate function of ours so we need the drinks' every few minutes. (I'm confused why they didn't wave down one of our vendors who have between 12-24 beer and then just got the 4 coolers from us instead. Anyway!

The Aussie and most of the Canadian customers we had were more patient (and more intelligent in some respects in that they understood the situation) and kinder than the Americans or the Brits. (Well, we had one Brit who was nice but that was it)

Oh and I did try a tiny bit of a cooler that had been poured out by accident/customer wanted a different flavor and Nat let me try a bit of it but since it had been sitting in the fridge/cooler for a while i think most of the fruitiness had risen to the top (it was strawberry-pineapple which was very sweet) so I tasted the fruitiness first and then a bit of the vodka and frowned because the vodka tasted like Benadryl elixir.

Oh! I had 3 Supervisors, the vendors' cashier, plus one of the ushers (the big security-types who wore black) ask how old I was while they visited because all of them suspected I was younger than 18. I guess though, wearing a bright yellow t-shirt 1 or 2 sizes too big makes you look several years younger. Or something.

Usually I get the opposite (which I told them). So far the oldest I've gotten is the range of 40-50yrs old because one guy at a debate tournament asked if I had come to film my son or daughter. I must be special.

Time to make a lunch of sorts, put Zidane y va marquer on repeat, watch all 3 broadcasts of Journal de France 2 de 20h I taped last week and see if one has Zizou's interview from Canal + where he explains and apologizes.

I am the employed =O

I shall be working at the Stampede starting tomorrow doing beer pouring/serving in the Grandstand. So I shall smell like beer at the end of the day. Should prove to be exciting. (My hours are rather longish too but I'll live. 8,25$/hr 11:30-5pm + 1hr break then 6pm-closing. Hm)

EDIT (11:23PM Jul 13) I've switched to the Infield as a helper in one of the Concession stands. The working conditions as a beer pourer were terrible. One of my co-workers scared me by what he said at times and yaargh. Conditions? My workspace is HUGE compared to the dinky little corner I was in, tips are less but whatever I don't care, one of my co-workers used to go to ABE (and we kind of know each other) and my supervisor is nice, we all work as a big team and it's awesome. My hours are still like before-ish but it's easier. Most of the time from 4-5pm we're sitting outside our stand jabbering because no one's in the Grandstand. My feet still hurt at the end of the night but it's not as bad as it was in the beer-pouring-dinky-little-corner-poorly-lit area because we have some slowing down in pace all the time and such (and it gets crazy but it's manageable.) I wish I had better orthotics (Or those 220$ Mephesto shoes...those had arch support that made me :D but they're so expensive!)
And yes, the space in the Concession stand is HUGE. HUGE compared to the tiny dinky area I was working in at the Main for beer pouring. Also, the job made me hate beer 200000x more.
End EDIT

Ha ha! No riots Mike, sorry! :-P (Though, I still need to apply elsewhere for post-Stampede work)

Regards to the World Cup, I have a seperate post I've been working on since Sunday (because i had too much to say it's been edited and blah) that I'll try and finish by tonight because Zizou's going to tell the public on Canal + (Canal Plus) (Availible in Quebec and France and Europe...) about what was said tomorrow evening so I'll watch le Journal France 2 or something tomorrow/tape it along with Sportsworld and the Journal Belge the next day.

Okay, so I have found the old Phantom of the Opera cassette that belonged to mum that I listened to almost everyday as a kid. This version is with the original Canadian cast (Colm Wilkinson and Rebecca Caine). All I have to find now is the tiny lyric/40-pg booklet. I know where it is, but I think it's already been moved somewhere else. If I could even make time to locate the Phantom of the Opera book that mum got when she saw it (late-80s I think...), as well as the keychain, that'd be cool too.

Also, I found an old recording of this French kids thing called Imagine et Moi which was the series my French teacher used for developping our French back in Pre-Kindergarten during the morning (Morning was English with a short French class thing in between where we went to another room and were taught French then the afternoon was all French). If I can find the book that came with it, I'll be even happier.

I feel like doing an 8 page rant about this but I won't. Instead I'll sum it up briefly:


I hate, let me repeat, I hate this stupid financial drama that I've been dealing with for the last year. I hate it. I hate the 'conspiracies', I hate the supposed 'backstabbing'. In all due honesty, I have quite honestly had enough of all of this.


In other news, I'm going out to Market Mall in a bit to find myself a pair of Merrell sandals for my arches.

France - Portugal

:'D

EDIT (8:22PM)
So the best right-back , Willy Sagnol, is incredibly funny. At the end he was like asking Barthez 'On va à la finale?!' and he was so shocked. Zizou and Barthez are going to end their careers on the best note ever. Thuram was incredible and made sure he and his defenders were working. (Paris was INSANE and Montreal was INSANE. Calgary? What mass of thousands French fans?) To note to Portugal, no final but there is the 3rd place match. I have to say I was mostly unimpressed with C. Ronaldo. Not his skill, but the fact he went down way too easily on many occaisions that it got to the point where I think the ref was like 'Stop diving or I'll seriously card one of you'. I mean not to say that the Portugese have been the only guilty party this tournament but it just got to be incredibly annoying from all the diving Ronaldo and some players were doing during this match alone. The Uruguayan ref looked annoyed as hell. (Sorry Kelci)

Interesting was the call that gave France the PK and the point. People were debating that it wasn't. Well, it wasn't a 'woah blatantly' obvious take down but it was a classic textbook penalty. If your foot makes contact with another player and you bring them down, the ref sees it, (and from where he was, it would look like--though it looked like a little tap-- like that Henry was brought down) the ref has to call a penalty kick. I'll admit, Henry over-exaggerated the fall on the way then but the call was correct. If it was a call against France in the same circumstance, I'd say this very thing too.

In the end, the only two players I had respect for in the end from Portugal were Figo and Ricardo. Two incredible players.

Barthez seriously nearly gave me a heart-attack with the one deflection he did where the ball went incredibly high into the air and Figo nearly got it in. That was pretty bad goalkeeping. I hate to say. It was a case of split-second mind change. I guess he wanted to save it by catching it but at the last minute decided to deflect it wildly.

If you guys watch Sportscentre on TSN tonight, they have their Top Ten which is "The Ten Most Dramatic Moments in World Cup History". It's made of classic football awesomeness. I have seriously developped a love for classic soccer footage. I think it's because the camerwork then was so nice. Also, it seems that France beat Portugal the same method at Euro 2000 in the semis. The Penalty kick? From Zizou himself. Who did they meet and beat in the final? Italy.


Now begins my hunt for a France jersey in Calgary. Daily chronicles to follow.

Having some sense of coherency later....

I am listening to La Marseillaise on repeat. :D

Though, it has to be one of the bloodiest, most violent (though for the times...it kind of had to) anthems on Earth, I still kind of like it.

Hey, I said coherency not sanity. :-P

France v Brazil!! ='D

*insert much incoherency here*

Tralalalala~~! France won! France won! Ouiii! Allez les Bleus! Oh the moves Zizou was doing, it was like the real Zizou was back. Oh my goodness!

So happy, soooo happy! They're off to the Semis after beaten Brazil, former World champs, and Zizou and Barthez are probably about to have the best end to their international careers ever. Wow. Fantastic. Amazing.

Damn, I love France. Henry's goal was so pretty! And stupid Ronaldo, diving is dumb don't do it. Whee! Les Bleus are off to the Semis! Tralalalalalalalaaaaa
*END incoherency*

Snap my dad is in total shock. He's been a Brazil supporter for nearly 30+ yrs.
PS, CNN you fail at doing soccer/sports related reports of any kind. You are commiting genocide on the art of football highlighting in the news.

*Dances about the house happily*

Dear family friends and friends alike and telecom sellers and people dialing wrong numbers

Never, I repeat, never ever phone me while I am trying to watch a World Cup match. Neverrrrr.


Neverrrrrr!


(Okay, well, I admit the guy who called was looking for my dad and the other person got a wrong number but still---!)


Neverrrr!

Things I wish I could do with the house this summer but can't

• If my dad got around to going over to this Ethiopian friends' house and picking up our vacuum clearner he lent them back in April, I could vacuum our carpets
• If my dad could remember whom he last lent our lawn mower to two years ago (1 and a half) I could mow our overgrown backyard's grass. (Seriously, it's a mess. It makes me want to cry. Plus, there's probably a trillion mosquitoes in it now. ---there's two LARGE ant hills already. I think dad put ant-killer pastilles (only word I can think of for them) on the hills but I think the ants aren't dead---I'd have to be dunked in bug spray and in long sleeves)
• If my dad remembered which of the Ethiopian girls has our spare folding bed (Ikea-type too), well....I suppose if we had any guests they could sleep on something other than the sofa
  
• If our mop wasn't half destroyed (how it ended up that way escapes me...) I could even mop the kitchen floor

I just don't think my dad should lend our things to his friends anymore if he's just going to forget about them...*desperately wants to clean the house right now* But because I still have to pay the property tax that I thought my dad told me my last cheque was going towards, I'll have no money this month (to replace the mower)except for the transit rebate which I think I'm giving part of to dad. And since my dad took so long (4 months) to call his tax lady, I don't think I'll be able to get my 400$ rebate. Unless someone can tell me where to find the T4s from 2004?

As has been the case every Canada Day since we moved here in '97, I am relegated to staying at home doing nothing.

Time to occupy myself with World Cup soccer. Allez les Bleus!