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Almost two weeks since New Years has past.

Okay, actually just a little over a week.  But that’s how slow the past nine days has been, it’s actually felt like two weeks.  In autumn, there seems to always be some urgency, something to anticipate, something to expect with wonder and awe.  It actually begins once the school year starts in September.  There’s Thanksgiving for us Canadians in October, followed closely by Halloween.  For the adventurous, there’s also Talk Like A Pirate Day in September.  November rolls around and for the extremely adventurous, the entire month is one long attempt to get in 50,000 words or more.  Of course, let’s not forget things like Remembrance Day, or even Thanksgiving for those south of the border.  Then comes December, and like a switch the talk is all about decorations, carols and shopping.  Mostly focusing on ‘have you finished yours yet’.  Then the big day hits, Christmas Day arrives, sandwiched neatly between Christmas Eve and Boxing Day.  The celebrations seem to die down but not entirely as there’s a New Year to celebrate in there as well.

Maybe it’s time we started recognizing and learning the cultures of others.  Not for appropriation, but just something to break up doldrums of this time of year.  After all, we’re currently in the midst of the Ukrainian Christmas season.  Ukrainian Christmas was just yesterday, after all, and Ukrainian New Years isn’t that far away.

I remember the first time I was exposed to Ukrainian Christmas.  I lived in Yorkton, Saskatchewan, which was part of the Parkland Region and held a high concentration of Ukrainians that stretched from Yorkton, Melville and Invermay all the way east into Manitoba to what is known as the Canadian Ukrainian capital.  People in that region take pride in their Ukrainian heritage, though, it should be dubbed Saskrainian, due to the fact many of these people are second and third generation living in Saskatchewan.  Still, I remember the first time working at CJGX Radio in Yorkton, on Ukrainian Christmas day, and trying to go shopping and finding everything but convenience stores closed.  For those who celebrate this time of year, it’s probably a wonderful time.  But for someone like me, I was bored stiff and left without milk, peanut butter and cigarettes.  Though, I did learn for the next year, and made certain to stock up appropriately.

Around here, where I live now, there’s not really much of a celebration that sort of breaks things up.  No mid winter festival to talk about.  We have a hockey team, but I doubt they’ll make it to the playoffs, or rather deep into the playoffs this year.  Sure there’s things like the February long weekend, which I personally think is a government plot in Canada to sell more beer.  Honestly.  Canadians don’t need a long weekend to go out and buy beer.  We even have Valentine’s Day, which is rather dull and quite lonely for some of us, myself included in that.  Yes, there’s a trade show in March and Easter long weekend as well, but by the time those two events hit, the thing we’ve been trying to get past, the thing we’ve been living through, is soon gone.

Winter can sometimes be the hardest time of year.

It’s freakin’ hot!

Rather, it’s freaking hot outside.  At present, it’s a tolerable 25 Celsius (granted, the humidex pushes it to 29).  For those that are unfamiliar with metric, that totals up to 77 Fahrenheit, with a humidex reading of 85.  So, still relatively tolerable, but we’re supposed to get higher.  Right now, as I type this in the cool confines of my office, it’s great.  Step outside, however, and it feels like a wall of really moist, hot air.  You become wet in seconds.

I’m not a social justice blogger.

I’ve had a few people ask me about that and what my views are on different subjects and I really have to say, I am not a social justice blogger.  There are way more people on tumblr or on wordpress or on livejournal or any other blogging site that do an infinitely superior job keeping up to date on issues that affect everyone.  Me, I’m just the guy who reblogs stuff and has an opinion.  But most importantly, I’m also still learning about a lot of stuff.  I remain quiet most of the time because I don’t know what it’s like to be an Afrcian American woman, a woman in general, trans*, gay, lesbian, disabled, or any number of other things that affect people a great deal.  I merely read what they say, and go from there.  If I have an opinion, I try very hard to actually formulate an intelligent opinion.  So I’ll research about a topic and learn as much as I can.  What I do know about social justice blogging is that there are a greater number of people who do it way better than I do.  And I’m pretty sure a lot of those people will say that they aren’t even that good.

A lazy day means installing a new OS on the office computer.

For years (since 2007 in fact) we’ve had iMac computers in the office.  And a couple of years ago we had started to get messages from different software that we couldn’t update to current version because our OS was the wrong version.  Finally, we decided to get Snow Leopard.  But the thing I really hate about this situation is that we have been begging our head office for new machines for three years.  But each time we get told no.  I truly believe it’s because we’re one of the smallest newspapers in the company.  But it still irks me that we have to file such things and then get told that it would be a frivolous expense.  Dude, seriously, if we didn’t have computers, then there’d be no newspaper.  So therefore it is not a frivolous expense.

A lazy day may also mean some writing.

Maybe.  I’m not sure right now, because I have new ideas bouncing around in my head (stop it brain, stop it!).  I do want to get more done on Rocket Fox (not only want, but need to), plus work a bit more on the rewrite of Black Mask and Pale Rider.  And then this morning the words “Dragons of N’ftara” for some reason came into my head.  Don’t ask, my brain does weird things like that and just makes up words.  So thanks brain, now I have another world to craft, societies to make, and characters to design.  This on the heels of Rocket Fox which has already had a huge amount of world building.

I can understand the differences between summer and winter.

I really can, but it still is something that I weigh the pros and cons about.  I know that in winter if I get cold I can just put on more clothes, and in summer I can’t walk around naked (well, I probably could, but no one wants to see that now, do they?).  But I also like summer better for one big reason.  The days are longer.  The sun is up here at 4 in the morning.  I’ve lived in places where it was up at 3.  And in the evening, the sun doesn’t go down until 10 or 10:30.  Again, in some of those places I’ve lived, the sun was setting at 11 at night.  That’s just freakin’ awesome!  Compare that to winter, when it’s still dark at 8 in the morning (or 9 depending upon the locale).  Or it sets at 4:30 or earlier.  It’s one of the biggest reasons why I hate winter, because I have to deal with a heavy feeling for a good number of months.  It’s called SADs, and it really hits me hard sometimes.