I got my papers back for my enviro chem and psych classes. A’s on both. Not too shabby at all. Since I’m way behind in my readings I think I’m spending most of this evening reviewing the chapters from my psych class. I find it easier to process than the enviro chem materials and, since some of it is familiar from past classes, easier to remember once read. If I’m going to dig through homework assignments late in the evening then this is the class to do it in.

One thing that has me very confused is my grades in the bi-weekly assignments in the psych class. While the paper was returned with a significant amount of really helpful feedback, the grades assigned to the assignments came with no such commentary. The grades themselves weren’t horrible – a respectable A- on both – but I’m not sure where I might have gone wrong in the assignment or if I missed the boat on any of the salient points. Guess this means I have to send an email to the prof requesting feedback this week.

Setting my usual whining about school aside for the moment I’m having ohmygawd i can’t believe i can’t connect 24/7 major minor issues with my Internet connection of late. After 3 years of no difficulties with my wireless DSL connection, we’ve started to have some really annoying connection drops this week. I’m having to reset my modem multiple times a day to get the connection back. When it’s working it works beautifully. When it drops I growl and say horrible things that make the puppies’ ears burn. If you exclude the Internet portion of our network, the rest of it is working fine. I’m beginning to suspect that the issue might be with the phone line… it will soon be time to harass technical support and get them to fix the issue NOW!

I’ve made it through the day – side illness that I don’t feel like sharing details about and all. It’s now later in the evening and – after spending a chunk of my afternoon reading blog after blog discussing the current BC Human Rights Tribunal events relating to Mark Steyn and McLean’s – I’ve yet to see anything on the local or national news that mentions these events. Sure, Andrew Coyne is liveblogging the “trial” on the MCLEAN’S web site and a tonne of other bloggers have taken up the torch, but it strikes me as incredibly lazy for any journalist or newscaster to turn a blind eye to this story.

UPPERDATE 03/06/08: Apparently a few people have picked up on the events and are starting to include them in the day’s news reports. Still, it’s a startingly small number of reports considering the size of the country. Check them soon as I don’t know how long they’ll be available online. National Post. The Province. CBC. Vancouver Sun. Canadian Press (CP). The CP article was in this morning’s Sun here in Edmonton.

Last night we dismissed our plans to view a movie after being invited across the alley to a BBQ.  Since so many were arriving, we brought our BBQ over to help handle the giant mass of food to be cooked.  Our neighbour’s son’s fiancee was celebrating her birthday so we had a few new faces in the mix.  Early on in the evening, the boys pulled down the tailgate on a truck parked in the driveway to add extra seating.  Drew, Amanda and Ryan had plates of food on their laps and had been sitting on the back of the tailgate for a while when there was a loud banging sound.  There they were, flat on their asses on the concrete with the tailgate at their backs.  The chains holding the tailgate to the back of the truck had separated.  Amanda had a look of deep shock across her face while Ryan was nearly rolling on the ground in tears – laughing of course.  Drew, true to his natural reaction, took one look down at his plate of food in his lap, picked up a chicken kabob and continued to eat as if nothing had happened.  None of the three of them are overly large indivduals and I’d be shocked if their combined weight reached 600lbs.  Apparently that was enough to break the tailgate however.

Between bouts of loud laughter the others in the area kept asking if everyone was alright.  Thankfully, aside from a few bruised egos, everyone was fine.

Later, Les brought out a screaming monkey to throw around the yard.  It’s a stuffed monkey with elastic arms and a small electronic device in the chest that “screams” when the monkey is sent flying.  The boys proved they had rotten aim – usually off by a mile when trying to send it from one to the others.  Then Mariah got her hands on it.  Years ago she was a champion marksman and has competed at the national level.  While her fiancee jokingly told her to “aim for the head” she let loose a monkey flying at 3-5x the speed of anything the boys had previously managed.  Drew, in what we assume was an attempt to catch it, deflected the monkey off his wrist and into his eye.  Within minutes he was developing quite a shiner!

A few hours later while he was cleaning up the BBQ grills, Drew dropped the cover on his hand and jammed his thumb.  ‘Twas a night of bruises and abuse for a guy who’d barely had anything to drink.  I think I may be able to relinquish my standing clutz title to him.  If nothing else, we have some great stories to tell on Monday morning.

It’s the weekend so I’m supposed to be sitting in the basement – oft denoted by the appearance of the pretty black & grey blog theme – and working away at my homework assignments and readings for classes. I just can’t seem to motivate myself to do so today. I’m sure it has something to do with the box of books from Chapter’s arriving yesterday. My nightstand now includes the new Anita Blake novel (Laurell K Hamilton’s Blood Noir) and Kevin Patterson’s Outside The Wire. I’m going to have to toss up a few coins to determine which one to read first. All I know for certain is that both of them appear to trump reading the DND Environmental Assessment Manual or Forsyth’s Group Dynamics. I’ll get back to my homework tomorrow but for today I fully intend to sit down with a non-school related book and enjoy. Later this evening I see a trip to the theatre and a movie in our future. w00t!

Whatever the weekend brings you I hope you have a wonderful day today.

“Rules” and backstory – with much stealing from Mimi’s original post.

The Peace Globe project began in the fall of 2006 with a simple post from one blog, Mimi Writes. The post ignited a flame in the blogosphere. The flame became a passion. The passion became a movement. It amazingly traveled from blog to blog to blog across the globe. Bloggers wrote passionate articles on what peace means to them, along with the promise of three Latin words scribbled on a globe – Dona Nobis Pacem (Grant Us Peace) – branded with the integrity of their names or blog names. It was positively inspiring to watch. And it began to happen all over the world – from Singapore to China to Afghanistan to Brooklyn.

It was simple. And powerful.

In less than two weeks bloggers from all across the globe will blog for peace. We will speak with one voice. One subject. One day.

Won’t you join us on June 4, 2008?

How To Get Your Peace Globe In 4 easy steps!

1. Access the link above.

2. Choose one of the four Peace Globe designs. Right CLICK and SAVE in JPG format.

3. Sign the globe using Paint, Photoshop or a similar graphics tool. Decorate the globe anyway you wish. You can even include the name of your blog. Click here for hundreds of inspiring examples from previous BlogBlasts.

4. Return the peace globe to me via email ~ mimiwrites2005 at yahoo.com – Let me know your blog’s name and url by leaving a comment here and signing the Mr. Linky. Your submission will be numbered and dated in the official gallery . Your globe and post will be listed on the Official BlogBlast For Peace website and The Peace Globe Posts page.

Here’s the most important part.
5. On June 4, 2008 DISPLAY YOUR GLOBE IN A POST. Title your post “Dona Nobis Pacem”. This is important. The goal is for all blog post titles to say the same thing on the same day. Write about peace that day or simply fly your globe. Click here for examples of peace globe posts from previous BlogBlasts.

If you’d like to help spread the word add this button to your site.