Love the ladies in your life!

Happy International Women's Day! What a wonderful thing... I thought it would be fitting for me to blog about some interesting IWD facts and how I spent my day.

In case you didn't know, International Women's Day first began in 1911 in Germany, meaning this year is the 101st IWD. In some countries, such as Russia, it's a statutory holiday. How amazing would that be if Canada followed suit? Unfortunately that probably won't happen, as the UN ranks Canada low on the list of countries in regard to gender equality. You're probably surprised, huh? There is a lot I could go into around that topic, like how women in Canada still make 71 cents for every dollar a man with the same job would make. I don't want to focus on the negatives right now, but it is important for both women and men to understand that we have come a long way on the road to gender equality, but there is still a long stretch ahead.

All that being said, let me now tell you how I spent my IWD. This morning I attended an International Women's Day Luncheon put on by the Pictou County Women's Centre. I went early to help set up and take money for tickets, and then had a lunch while some local amateur actresses portrayed four women from Pictou County who have made important impacts on our community over the last 150 years. This included women from the African-Canadian and First Nations communties. The really great thing was that two of the actresses were actually portraying women they were related to - one was an aunt and the other was a great-grandmother. Very interesting and a fun way to learn some local history.

After the luncheon I got to work at Sobeys for the evening (lame, as usual), and although it was maybe not my ideal way to spend the rest of the afternoon/evening on such a beautiful day, I was happy to wish all my female coworkers a Happy International Women's Day. Next year I'm going to do something bigger for IWD though... I won't be working at Sobeys, but I think I will plan something to continue to raise awareness.

Often I find that when I mention women's rights or wish women a Happy IWD, it's taken almost as a joke or something equally as unimportant. I wish this wasn't so. Be proud, get informed, and don't take your rights for granted. You deserve more. Every day is International Men's Day.

So when I say Happy International Women's Day, I mean it! Celebrate the women in your life, everyday.

Who wants to hear about my cat?!

So once again, I'm trying a new blog design. I think it's looking more or less okay for now. My technological ability is fairly limited so unfortunately none of my blog visitors will be treated to any fancy-shmancy layouts or gadgets here. My one concern is this font I'm using for my posts. I feel like it looks far more serious than anything I'll actually ever be saying.

I have been pondering ways to spice up my blog a lot lately. Probably the best way to start would be to actually write posts on more than a monthly basis... I hear that really helps bring in the crowds.

I've been considering whether I'd be able to pull off a "themed" sort of a blog, but that poses a couple of problems. First, I have to come up with a theme. That would involve me knowing a fair amount about a certain topic, or having a hobby I can showcase on here. That really narrows down my list of options. Let's see... I could write about my cat, who I spend quite a bit of time with but doesn't really do much that anyone other than me, my boyfriend, and my mom would be interested in hearing about. Then there's women's rights, but I don't know what kind of an audience that would bring in, and my current readers (AKA my family and friends) already get stuck listening to me preach about that topic quite a bit in real life. So that leaves... books. I know a lot of books and I spend a lot of time reading. But there's still the problem of my thinking of things I can write about related to that topic. It's bad enough that I can't think of things to write about for my hodge-podge of a blog that I'm running right now. Looks like maybe a theme wouldn't work out so well for me. The title of the post alone will probably mean I only get 5 hits on this post tops.

You know what I should probably write about? Crop shirts. I did a post about them a while ago and it's still the number one google search that brings people to my blog. Those poor suckers. They are probably some young fashionistas looking for some stylish crop t-shirts online and instead their search brings them to my blog post where I basically rip up the whole idea of the things.

Well, looks like I'll have to ponder this some more and try to ramp up the interest level of my little blog somehow. Maybe I should just write about my daily life and hope that people actually find it more entertaining than it actually is. That's what everyone does on Facebook, at least.

Love Letters to Squirt

My cousin Yvonne has a contest going on her blog right now called Love Letters to Squirt! For those of you who don't know who Squirt is, he is Yvonne's senior citizen puppy.

So, Willow and I got to talking and we decided that a video was probably the best way to go for this contest. After a few bad attempts over a span of two days, we pulled something together.

As usual, Facebook was being a jerk and wouldn't let me upload the video on there, so my next best alternative was to blog it! Here we goooo!

And then I said...

So I was trying to be a good little blogger and I wrote up a post a few days ago, but I never got around to actually posting it. It's going to have to wait for yet another day now because today I have something else to write about.

I probably shouldn't. I'm sure it's not mature and it might even be a little petty considering the fact that the other person it involves probably won't read this. And if she does, well that's good too. Maybe it'll save me some trouble in the future. Anyway...

For anyone who doesn't know, I'm currently taking some courses at the local NSCC that I need as prerequisites for the BScN degree program that I want to go into next year. The courses are going well and my marks are excellent. The problem, you see, is some of my classmates in these courses. Actually, that's too general. It's more like just one person. The way these courses work is that the teachers don't really lecture or teach in front of the class, everyone learns mostly from the book and you work at your own pace independently, completing assignments and tests as you go.

I go to class to try to get as much work done as possible in that amount of time. This girl apparently goes to catch her friend up on everything that is going on in her life. Oh yeah, and it also appears to be her texting time, cause she does that basically non-stop. Everyone has to hear about her  boyfriend, all the drama of her daily life, the program she's sure she's getting into next year (I really want to break it to her that she doesn't have a chance of getting in because her marks suck and the program takes a very small number of people... none of which she seems to realize), family stuff, tv shows, food, anything and everything that pops into her "typical eighteen year old" mind. Then we have to listen to her complain about how she needs to get more work done, and she doesn't like trying to do schoolwork at home, etc etc. One time she tried to tell me that she thought the boyfriend killed Amber Kirwan because she heard he has ADHD and people with ADHD don't feel guilt. She got a little lesson on the difference between people with ADHD and psychopaths from me that day.

I've been trying to be passive since September. I have tried changing seats to be further away from her. I even bring earphones and listen to music. Nothing drowns her out. It drives everyone nuts, but no one ever says anything. Well, today something inside of me must have snapped. I was sick and tired of her coming to class and distracting everyone with her pointless nonsense. So, at one point I ripped out my headphones and said something along the lines of "Why do you two even come to class? You talk way too much all the time. It's every fucking day."

She her response was "Ok...", and then they started passing the cell phone back and forth so I can only assume they were talking about me. But you know what? I don't care. It was so nice and quiet for the rest of class! It was great. We'll see how the rest of the week goes. I suspect old ways will creep back in and I'll have to say something again. I'm hoping I'm wrong though and that she'll actually be more considerate from now on.

Anyway, that is my story from today. What's the lesson everyone should take from this? Shut up or ship out!