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February 16, 2005
Same sex marriage
I'm very jealous of people who can find a soul mate; someone they'd like to publicly announce their love for and intention to live with for the rest of their life. Whether they be a man and woman, man and man or woman and woman, it thrills me that they've got someone to love. Having said that, I am very uncomfortable with the idea of same sex marriage. Not against the union, just the co-opting of the term 'marriage' to mean something other than one man and one woman in a union. Why can't there be another term? We can adjust the laws (and, no doubt, the Charter of Rights) to include the new term. Why take a word which has traditional, strongly held ideas already attached to it? I suspect because they want the same feelings attached to their new union as is normally attached to a traditional marriage. If that's true, that's not good enough. Why glom on to that history and distort it? Or, why not choose the word 'puppy' then, or 'spaghetti'; they both create warm feelings too. It would be better to come up with a new term and build up its own meaning.
Posted by John at 06:05 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
February 14, 2005
Memories of long ago
My dad sent me this picture. First thought was, how cool is it to have a father that can handle a scanner? Second thought was, who are most of these guys? I recognized two people right away -- three if you count me -- but most of the rest are nothing more than vague half remembered ghosts. My dad included a list of who he thought they were and he did much better than I could ever have done. (Dad has always been amazing at remembering things.)
What a well dressed, well coiffed group of kids we were. No one is wearing just a tshirt and jeans. Obviously, there was some motherly influence involved in that.
Two of the kids in this picture have died, one (Garrett) seems to be missing, I saw one (Henry) of them last summer at a reunion. One of the others (Kenny) I spoke to at some church event maybe 5 years ago on a visit to BC. I have no idea what became of the others. Garrett, Henry and I went all the way from grade 1 through highschool together.
I'm not sure how many parties we had there in the rec room. I remember one occasion, maybe this one, where I was constantly whining about something and off crying because I didn't get my way. I don't remember the circumstances; perhaps I was losing at the games that I should be winning at *my* party. What a whiner. Suck it up, sheesh. I'm sure my parents were very happy to have the event over.
This (if it really was that occasion) is one of those times that I wish I could go back and relive. I wonder what ripples of changes would radiate out if I could have acted a little more mature at that one party?
Posted by John at 10:57 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
February 08, 2005
Microsoft Irony
OK, MSN IM being down isn't surprising. Sooner or later it comes back online and the world continues. Just for fun today I clicked on the Help link, which according to the dialog is supposed to show me a Status page. This is what I got when I clicked the link. If they can't even keep their *own* servers running properly how are we supposed to trust them with ours?
Posted by John at 02:04 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
February 02, 2005
It is done
As much as we agree it was the Right Thing To Do, breaking up still hurts like the dickens. We could have easily let this linger for months yet before calling it off. We were getting some of our needs met by being together; we had companionship, we had someone to talk to and have romantic evenings with, we had someone to share experiences with. But, ultimately, we were vastly different people looking for different things. We have very different personalities; where I am laid back and liking (nay, needing) quiet time, she is very go go go and liking to fill every minute. Hers is a busy life with very few gaps. She was looking for someone to move in and blend into a pseudo-nuclear family unit. I need time to myself. I enjoyed spending evenings with her and her kids, but then I liked to go home to my quiet apartment with the buzzing fish tank.
At the end of the day, there was a great liking between us but not enough commonality to make it last. We've parted friendly and I hope once we get over the hurt a bit we can come back together as friends.
Posted by John at 11:42 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack