Great Grammie Passes

Earlier today, on December 27th, 2014, my great grandmother passed away at 100 years of age. As far as I've heard, she passed peacefully in her sleep. She woke earlier in the day, requested a meal of her granddaughter, whom she was living with, ate, and decided to take a nap. She fell asleep holding her granddaughter's hand, spoke in her sleep to her father, and passed. She is the last of the third generation before me.

I hear it's not uncommon for someone to pass after Christmas. They find the strength to live long enough to attend that ceremony that our society puts in such high regard.

The last time I saw her was between when I finished Ways2Work and started Katimavik, at a family reunion. I don't remember the exact date, but that would put me between nineteen and twenty years of age, so six-five years ago. Since then, I'd spoken to her over the phone.

Christmas

Christmas was good. It was the first year I think we've ever had where none of us in Guelph were flat broke, so it came out at a more even exchange than usual. Among other things, I got a new chromatic harmonica. I haven't had one since Air Canada lost my luggage in Katimavik. A little messing around and I can still play "Frere Jacques" and "When the Saints go Marching In" and my blues riff was recognizable.

We had a pretty dreary green Christmas. Grass is growing outside.

I met up with an old friend from high school. I think I had my first "old man" talk. He mentioned something about being around college kids, and it's like... I'm still a college kid, eh? Living in student housing and the whole bit. He pointed out that if we'd started aging when we'd graduated high school, then we'd be in grade two. And I'm one of the few in the old gang who isn't in a committed relationship. Bah.

Got all my grades back and it all turned out okay. I think I've taken an upward swing since last semester. Looks like I perform better under pressure.

Did I mention that a little while ago, my bank changed my credit card to a different type without notifying me? and that it made my new card not work? Well, they ordered me a new one and sent it to my branch in Kitchener so that I can't pick it up.

And my smart phone stopped working. I don't have any outstanding fees, and I spoke someone on the issue. She said that my service is active, I don't have any fees, and my network is fine. But my phone says "No service. Emergency call only", it won't let me text, and it won't let me search for connections.

So I have a credit card and smart phone that I can't use. Should have been content with my debit card and pay-as-you-go flip phone.

B12

Near the beginning of this Christmas vacation, I started getting dizzy spells. This has never been an issue with me before, so I did a lot of speculation. I thought it might be from the drastic shift from sleep deprivation, I thought it might be from difference in air pressure due to Guelph being a dried-up lakebed, I thought it might be from harsh weather changes etc. Then I remembered that I had cut meat mostly out of my diet for a number of months this past year. I decided I wouldn't purchase meat or prepare it at home, but that I could eat it if it was offered to me or I was ordering something. I had a bit of a better knowledge of how to balance myself nutritionally since my last attempt to go vegetarian, and I wasn't going all the way anyway.

But I remembered that from the last time I got my blood tested, I am vitamin D and B12 deficient. D is almost always low for Canadians, but B12 was unique to me, and I found out that you get B12 from meat. I loved meat at the time, so the B12 deficiency was in spite of my carnivorous behaviours. Cutting meat might have been a tipping point.

Then I heard that the B nutrients get used when dealing with anxiety, and I'm so bad for that. So I'm eating meat again and feeling healthier than I have in months. I hate eating meat though. Bah.

My worst dizzy spells were in grocery stores. I went to Food Basics today and felt nauseous when recalling the last time I'd been there. I think it was mostly from the lighting. Grocery stores are so bright, and the Food Basics near where we live is really bad for that. I remember the Food Basics near where we used to live had really classy lighting. Like, it used chandeliers. So uncharacteristic for such a low-brow grocery.

You know what I think is foolish about Food Basics? They have that policy of putting a chain up between unstaffed registers, and they have their exit doors past the register area, as if they don't trust the bar code system to stop people from stealing. Zehrs, which is a more expensive grocery, has a shared enter/exit section, and it doesn't bother with chains. If someone were to steal, I'd imagine it would be from Zehrs, so the mistrusting attitude of Food Basics seems inappropriate.

I visited 2ndChance a while back and got to catch up with my old employment counselors.

Back in Guelph

My brother got to visit my place in Kitchener last week. He even got to meet some of the people at my placement. He was really impressed by how many people in Kitchener I know.

I'm back in Guelph as of a few days ago.  It's a weird feeling, as a major appeal of being here is in how few people know me. Even though this is the place I grew up.

I'm feeling pretty out of it. I'm going to need most of this vacation just to recover from that last school crunch. I did have sort of a cool-down week where I just had to do placement and work shifts, but I really need at least a week where I just don't have to think about anything.

New Phone

Even though I have a new cell phone, I've still been using my flip because it's pay-as-you-go and my new phone is on a plan. Might as well use the minutes I paid for on my old phone. Slowly revealing my phone to people. As of now, eight people have my new number.

My new phone has a game called Piano Keys. It's a reflex game where rows of piano keys scroll down the screen and you have to tap the black ones but not the white. The keys scroll faster and faster until you lose.

So my friends would see me texting on my flip and playing on my smart phone. I'm like "My flip is for calling and texting, and my Android is for Piano Keys".

There are a few things about the flip I miss. The durability, for one. With this smart phone, the screen is always exposed, unlike the flip where it is covered in a protective shell when not in use, and since it has a touch screen, I feel like it's not just more vulnerable, but also more valuable than the flip's. Makes me nervous.The phone itself is also wafer-thin, which makes me anxious about it's durability.

Also, the battery. The difference is that I need to charge my flip once a week, and my smart phone once a day.

But the smart phone is far superior to the flip for texting. No more pressing a button six times to get one letter. No more writing half a message only to receive an annoyed text from whoever is waiting for it, forcing me to choose between saving my message and checking the one I received, or guessing at it and finishing my text there. No more having to delete texts. No more seeing messages piled haphazardly on top of one another.

And I have a camera that actually works.

I was using the pay-as-you-go enough that there really wasn't a financial reason to stick with it, especially at the sacrifice of so much functionality.

But I gotta say. Smart phones have always seemed like toys to me. Even though whenever I whipped out my flip people would say "Oh, it reminds me of the phone I used in high school!" implying the juvenile nature of a flip, I honestly have to say that when I see a guy in a suit with a smart phone, something just does not sit well with me. It's because with a flip, what do you do with it? Talk and text. It's a phone. It serves its function as a phone. What differentiates a smart phone? A lot of bells and whistles that make it more enjoyable.

That being said, I'm so clumsy with my new phone. When my roommate worked it over, using voice recognition, making words pop out, strange effects appearing as he touched it etc. my mind was blown. His use of it was in a completely different category. He capped it off saying "And that's why people don't use flip phones!" I think a few people took  offense when I said "Smart phones are like toys. I can't respect a guy in a suit playing with a toy."

Apparently it's a really good phone. I got it for free with the cheapest plan I could get with my provider.  But I get a lot of compliments and lots of people want to play with it and help me get it set up.

The last Respect Campaign event of the semester was the De-Stress event, and boy did I need it. It was like a celebration for all the volunteers who worked with us throughout the semester. We had food, announced the Leaders of the Month, we handed out pins for events, and we had karaoke. One girl that I have a competitive relationship with talked me into singing a duet with her of "Anything you can do I can do better".

This Thursday all the WALES staff are going to a Christmas celebration and they need relief staff. Guess who they hired? That's right, I'm going to be running the organization and getting paid for it. They also pulled a couple other people who did summer program with me. The team is back together again! Make way for the new generation!

Spice Rack

Last weekend, I helped a friend's sister move. Shewas tryingto get rid of a bunchof stuff, whichmeant I made major gain. I took home a garbage bag full of pots and pans, a serving tray, and a strainer.

The most prized catch, however, was the spice rack.

It's a set of glass bottles in a pair of shelves built to fit. There are metal engravings labeling which spice goes in what. A metal engraving is on each, shaped as whichever plant the bottled spice is supposed to grow from.

I had every spice to fit the rack, except Rosemary, Tarragan, and Coriander.

My roommate put garlic powder in the Coriander bottle.I confronted him on it, and he said that I "use garlic powder all the time" and that I "don't even know what Coriander is".

Whatever. I'm not discouraged.

Me and my friend were making pasta. Real simple stuff. Noodles and store-made sauce, you know? But we decided to crack out the spices. It was pointed out that we had spices now, and I had to remind that we always had the spices. They just weren'tin a lovely rack. We were excited to usethe rack, not the spices.

Tarragon is expensive, yeah? I bought that stuff purely for show.

And while we're at it, I bought a new phone. Here is my first upgrade, side-by-side: