Happy Canada Day!

In an attempt to get this blog going again, I am going to attempt to write a little something every day in July. I assume that most of it won't be very clever. But people who are really writers talk about discipline and habits and stuff like that, so maybe it will help.

There are a few things I am thinking about this morning.

1) Today is Canada Day. I like Canada. I also like Canadians. I also like to say that Canadians are from Canadia. And actually, I met the most air-headed Canadian I've ever known last week. She really seemed more like a Southern Californian. It was weird.

2) I worked as stage manager for a huge women's conference last week. It was exhausting. I worked, mostly non-stop, from about 7:00 am till about 12:30 pm for 6 days. When I got home, I slept for 18 hours, from about midnight till almost 6 pm the next day. Every day since then I've had to come home and take a nap in the afternoon before I could finish my work. People have asked me if I'd do it again. I certainly feel willing, but I'm pretty sure now that four years from now (when the event will happen again), my body will not be capable of that.

3) I was musing this morning about whether the number of people who use pictures of their kids or themselves with other people as their facebook profile is a sign of our social nature as human beings or a creepy unwillingness to recognize that children are not an extension of yourself. I find it annoying, myself, because it makes it harder to figure out who someone is. There are plenty of other places to post pictures. Then again, that's the only one a lot of people look at. And maybe there is something sweet about displaying that you're not yourself alone. Because we're not, right?

4) I am still having stage manager dreams. They have combined themselves with the projects I'm back at work on now that I'm home. Last night when I woke up and went to the little room, I realized I had been recently concerned about which side of the stage someone was exiting on. This was also sort of mixed in with which side of the bed I was getting up on. It probably made sense when I was asleep.

5) I got to have my most direct contact with the oil mess yesterday. A young man had come here from Hattiesburg, MS, because he'd been told he could get oil clean-up work here that provided room and board. It didn't work out, and he needed to get home, but had no money. I worked with the Baptists and the Episcopalians and we got him a train ticket home. There is a local organization that had trained people to help with clean up. When they got down there, they were just assigned to do things like pass out water. Within a week or so, they were all let go. My suspicion is that BP or whomever found out that it was a hell-raising community organization that had sent them (as opposed to a regular temp agency) and didn't want the risk of employing people equipped to be whistle-blowers. Corporations suck.