Goofy dream again last night. I was wandering around the U of Calgary campus, it was all dark and scary, but filled with the hustle and bustle of a normal class change. I was travelling with a group of about eight or ten acquaintances, and although I couldn't place them, name-wise, I seem to think they were from my early teenage years. I could have stayed in bed for another two hours - extremely addictive, this dreamscape stuff.

Don't expect to make any sense of this post, I can't either.

I sometimes feel that I am drowning in administration. I don't make anything, fix anything or do anything that the customers of my company can see.

Being management sucks sometimes. Especially when you go home from work and your kids ask you, "What did you do today?" and you say, "I managed."

"So, what are you going to do about it?"

Amazing how that phrase works as well with my coworkers as it does with my kids. It's all about taking ownership and responsibility for the things that happen to you and your life. There is very, very little that happens to you that isn't your fault, ultimately. Aside from the out-of-the-blue, brick-falling-on-you-from-nowhere kind of stuff, everything that you do is your fault.

As I was walking my daughter up to school this morning (which is usually a pleasant experience) she was complaining about how I had (by not waking her up in time) *made* her late for school. She wasn't in the right frame of mind for a lesson about this at the time, but I'm going to talk to her about it tonight. I think this is a very important life-long lesson. Think about it.

Don't like your boss or coworker? Shoulda taken a different job. Or you could quit. Right now.

Don't like that you can't quit? Shouldn't have had those kids. Or bought that house. Or signed that long-term lease.

See what I mean? Everything is your fault.

On the flip side of responsibility is empowerment. You have the power to change that which you complain about. If you are seriously don't like that which you complain about, take the necessary steps to alter, support, shift, undo or revise those dependancies which keep you from fixing the broken stuff in your life. If you aren't willing to do that, at least quit your lame-assed whining.

Take it from a reformed whiner.

McMonkey and I were comparing notes about our day. We were chronologically going over what happened to each of us, and through this process I realized that she and I have to go to the bathroom (and not just a quick visit) at roughly the same time in the morning - about 10:30. This makes perfect sense - we both eat breakfast at the same time. What stood out in my mind was that she said that it was always recess time at school when she had to go. Does that mean that those many years of schooling have conditioned our bodies (well, mine at least) to need to go and take a dump at about half past ten? Or was the school system made to break at the average person's morning sit-down time?

Is EVERYBODY on the eighth floor in that damn Flash class? Jane, Mr. G., The Voice, ... they're all talking about it. Must be a life-changing experience.

Look at that, it's way too late. I'm going to bed now. Well, not right now, but soon.

... and what is with all the guys (and yes, so far they've just just been males) at my office with severe hardware hard-ons over the new Apple equipment? Get over it guys, it's just a laptop. It'll be obsolete in a year.

Back from a nice ski/hot tub vacation, and the poinsetta (on my desk at work) that Solveig gave me is still alive. Hoo ha, I'm good. Part of my vacation included re-watching Scent of a Woman with Al Pacino. Damn, he did a fine job in that picture.

I've asked a friend at work to add a link to my blog, and Now I feel a bit limited in what I want to share. I'm not sure if self-censor is a good thing or a bad thing ... it seems to be a way of life with me. This Blog was meant to be a record of signifigant events and thoughts that came to me throughout the course of my days. Some of those events are shitty things that happen at work. Now, I find myself wondering who might be reading them. Did I start this blog as an exhibitionistic display, or as a convenience for me to record a diary at a place where I find myself quite often - in front of a monitor and keyboard? Jury's still out on that one. If it's the latter, I may just ask Mr. G. to pull my link.

Speaking of Mr. G., I have a neighbor (who also goes by the handle of Mr. G.) who has to be the sweetest old man I have ever met. He is kind to the kids, has never spoken a cross word to me or even implied my family has done anything to perturb him, is a spiritual and tolerant (there's two that don't always go together) fella, and whom is always ready to help out, like the evening we almost blew up our house with a gas leak - he offered to have us stay in his downstairs guest room ("the kids are grown and long gone, see?"). I know I'm a Machiavellian when I ask, what kind of skeletons has this guy got in *his* closet?

My kids continue to amaze me. They are both into reading - sometimes to the detrement of their innocence. The family was out for a drive to do some errands. We all (except Brianna, my eight-year-old daughter) went into a store on Saturday to return some tile samples (home renovations, you know). When we came back to the car, I saw that Brianna had grabbed the newspaper and was reading an article titled, "Girl Abused, Murdered by Parents." The article described how the young girl had been forced to sleep (naked and bound) in a cold bathtub, made to eat dogfood and table scraps, until she finally died of complications resulting from hypothermia. Of course, questions ensued from that article. the "why, daddy" questions are hard to answer when you don't know the answers yourself.

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On a happier, note, the basement renovations are another step closer to being done. The finishing guys (doors, trim, baseboards, cabinets and bookshelves) have worked their magic - and what magic it is! My cool secret closet worked exactly as I'd hoped - if you're around our house, ask for a demo. We are now waiting for the painters, the finishing hardware and then the flooring guys. I'll be soooooo happy when this project is done. It's taking for-bloody-ever! Right now, my computer (and only the most essential of it's peripherals) is sharing a room with my youngest daughter, her Barbies, her cut-out craft projects and pencil crayons, indiscernable sharp plastic bits that seem to have no other purpose than to get under my sock feet as I pad into her room while she sleeps (like she's doing right now). Once the basement (and therefore, my office) is finished, she can have some much-needed space back, and I can have my privacy.

Today was a work day, but I wasn't. I was enjoying non-existent lift lines at Sunshine Village. I've booked a few days off to ski, hot tub and play with the kids.

Here's a bit of Taoist philosophy that's served me well lately:

Learn to take energy that is directed at you (in a less than helpful way) and step slightly to one side. Don't move totally out of the way, just enough to let your personal gravity pull on it a bit, channeling it in a more beneficial direction. The energy and efforts of a person with conviction can do great things.

I had an interesting dream last night. I was travelling in some spanish-speaking, developing country with my mom and my daughters, and as we were travelling through a market district of a large city, we came across a small hole-in-the-wall restuarant. At the back of the restuarant was a gypsy/fortune-teller type woman with a telephone and a table. As we were walking through the restaurant, the woman motioned to my mom to come and talk on the telephone. My mom recognized the voice as her dead father (my grandfather). After some conversation with the gypsy woman, we determined that you could call anyone on the phone, alive or dead, and ask them seven questions. I woke up before I had a chance to get to the phone.

Who would you call, and what would you ask them?

Three days into my New Years resolution of "an active half hour (or more) a day", and I'm still at it. And smiling.

Tonight we meet with Contractor Man and see how long its going to tak him to finish our basement! I am so eager to get an office/playpen/sanctuary, I could jus' burst. Over Christmas I went out and bought IMAX (the home version) at a Boxing Day sale and as soon as the downstairs space is ready, it's going down there. The idea is to make the basement very kid-friendly, so kids will want to be at our place, as opposed to wandering the streets like packs of rabid dogs.