Look ^^^ up there …

A new PAGE has been added to the blog. It is a presentation by Matthew Vines on the Bible and Homosexuality. I wish I could post video on this blog, but I can’t, so you are in for a good LONG read !!!

If you click on the page and scroll down to the bottom, you can directly go to his You Tube account and watch the video, which last a little more than an hour.

It is very sad – if you go to the video and read some of the vitriolic comments that have been left on this video, the theology is sound and has been proven by researchers in the field of scripture and theology. Some people are purely ignorant and stupid. You’s think that in today’s world – people could be so vitriolic.

It is all about acceptance…

For many years I contended with one writing that was written by a Pastor who I have known for many years. But Matthew, on the other hand, has spent the better part of 2 years researching this topic and his presentation is rock solid.

But it is well worth the hour you should take to listen to a young man who Loves God and Loves Jesus and speaks from his heart about the six passages from the Bible that many Christians use to demonize and perpetuate hatred and condemnation.

He has studied Hebrew, Greek and Latin and in depth covers all the scriptures and explains the history, context and meaning of biblical history.

Take some time to participate. Show him some love,

Because in the end :

Being different is no crime. Being gay is not a sin. And for a gay person to desire and pursue love and marriage and family is no more selfish or sinful than when a straight person desires and pursues the very same things. The Song of Songs tells us that King Solomon’s wedding day was “the day his heart rejoiced.”

To deny to a small minority of people, not just a wedding day, but a lifetime of love and commitment and family is to inflict on them a devastating level of hurt and anguish. There is nothing in the Bible that indicates that Christians are called to perpetuate that kind of pain in other people’s lives rather than work to alleviate it, especially when the problem is so easy to fix. All it takes is acceptance.

The Bible is not opposed to the acceptance of gay Christians, or to the possibility of loving relationships for them. And if you are uncomfortable with the idea of two men or two women in love, if you are dead-set against that idea, then I am asking you to try to see things differently for my sake, even if it makes you uncomfortable.

I’m asking you to ask yourself this: How deeply do you care about your family? How deeply do you love your spouse? And how tenaciously would you fight for them if they were ever in danger or in harm’s way? That is how deeply you should care, and that is how tenaciously you should fight, for the very same things for my life, because they matter just as much to me.

Gay people should be a treasured part of our families and our communities, and the truly Christian response to them is acceptance, support, and love. Thank you, and thank you to everyone for coming tonight.

YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/user/VinesMatthew
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/matthew.vines
Twitter: http://twitter.com/#!/VinesMatthew

Courtesy: JackAnthony

This photo would be more appropriate if there were train tracks near here, and there are, not far off but one doesn’t really go walking on the tracks because they are busy all day long.

*** *** *** ***

There have been marches every night here in the city. The cops are getting creative with their “Kettling” of the crowds, and though other police forces in other cities have been cited for using this drastic tactic, Montreal police are fearing for their lives on a nightly basis.

Hundreds were arrested last night after a Kettling, and even innocent passersby have been getting caught up in the dragnet. We are told that talks will resume and that they really need to reach consensus, and they need to do it now.

The Grand Prix is starting to suffer as groups have begun to cancel their appearances here because they fear for their lives and the well being of the cars and those who would be coming.

Festival season is just days away now and students are holding the city hostage and the Premier is shuffling his cabinet in the attempt to bring fresh eyes and ideas into the mix to try and end this conflict with students.

The protests have morphed into what is called Casseroling. People sit on their balconies and on street corners banging pots and pans in civil disobedience to voice their displeasure with Bill 78.

Social media is firing all these protests in our city, and even though I support the students, something has to give and it better give soon.

We don’t venture out into the neighborhood very often and we sure as shit don’t travel to the East end or the village because that is where all the nightly troubles start. Marchers are fucking with the city by marching up and down streets Against traffic which creates nightmares for pedestrians and drivers and buses.

They marched against traffic down Ste. Catherine’s Street earlier today which stopped traffic for hours while cops drove behind them the wrong way all the way to Westmount.

I don’t see an end in sight and this needs to end because if it doesn’t the summer tourism season will be heavily affected and the city will loose big because tourism is a huge draw during the summer with the Grand Prix, The Fireworks Festival, the Jazz Fest, Just for Laughs, and on and on …

If students are marching in the streets blocking traffic, fucking with the Metro, blocking bridges and streets en masse, how are we supposed to go on with our lives – it’s not only the tourists who are loosing, it is Montrealer’s just as well.

We will keep you posted …

*** *** *** ***

It has been a quiet couple of days. I had lunch with my mentor yesterday and we chatted about a great many things. Lots of ideas are on the table but nothing looks really good at the moment. I’ve been told by more than one sober person that I should wait to see what presents itself and not to rush to do anything big just yet. I’ve been making a list of “Things to do or Things I would like to do.”

And all these things involve other people and all of those people are out living their lives and doing their jobs and ministering to their folks. How do you go about asking someone to devote some time to you when it seems that their plates are full already? Time is precious and I don’t want to waste someones time or be a burden on them or their community.

All my EBAY items for sale will end tomorrow. Which means I will have to cart those boxes downstairs for pricing and shipping again. I contacted all the bidders to get some information from them and I am waiting on them to respond. It’s all about timing right now.

I was sitting on the balcony earlier today and the sun was shining and dark clouds closed in from the South Shore and it poured down rain just before I was getting ready to head out for a meeting. And glad that I arrived when I did to see arching over the sky from one end of the sky to the other was a huge bright and beautiful rainbow – I took photos of it with my phone. It was the first time in recent memory that I have seen a rainbow that big in the sky.

Not a bad photo !!!  Courtesy of Android HTC Hero.

The speaker at tonight’s meeting talked about God, and his conscious contact and how God had moved in his life. All the stories are somewhat the same. We came, we drank, we couldn’t stop things get ugly and only finding God as a result of working the steps, does one finally get sober.

A friend of mine asks the questions …

How much recovery is enough?  My answer to this question is another question…. how much is there?

Our man has been part of the program for more than 25 years. But he dabbled, drank and drugged in sobriety. So how much is enough? I don’t think we ever get “enough” but we have to come each day and fill our cups with living water, hope and serenity. It isn’t enough to stop drinking – but a constant daily necessity of getting what we need as we need it.

It was a good meeting. Here is today’s reflection…

Happy, Joyous, and Free

We are sure God wants us to be happy, joyous, and free. We cannot subscribe to the belief that this life is a vale of tears, though it once was just that for many of us. But it is clear that we made our own misery. God didn’t do it. Avoid then, the deliberate manufacture of misery, but if trouble comes, cheerfully capitalize it as an opportunity to demonstrate His omnipotence.

Alcoholics Anonymous P.133

No matter how bad it gets (Grasshopper) there is always a solution. It may take some time – but we will find the solution. Just don’t drink. One day at a time.

That’s all for tonight.

Courtesy: Philmphoto

Daily Kos – Online Article Listing

The TroubadourFollow for Writing by David Harris Gershon

Originally posted to Writing by David Harris Gershon on Tue May 22, 2012 at 06:40 PM PDT.

Also republished by Canadian Kossacks.

Massive crowds engulfed downtown Montreal this afternoon, marking the 100th day of student strikes and protests sparked (in part) by Quebec’s plan to raise tuition by 82 percent on May 22.

While estimates ranged wildly – from 100,000 to 500,000 in the streets – the number is less significant than the civil disobediencethat has thrust Montreal into the global revolution spotlight.

Authorities in Quebec, trying to counter the protests that have raged for over two months, passed “emergency” legislation last Friday that suspended the winter semester and effectively made protesting illegal. (The legislation, or Bill 78, stipulates that groups of 50 or more gathering must submit itineraries to the authorities in advance or be deemed illegal.)

Students and citizens in Montreal responded to the draconian legislation by streaming into the streets and defying Bill 78 in record numbers today. While the protests have been led by the significant student population in Montreal, the protests today contained cross-sections of the population.

Noting one of the more visible and noisy marches of the day, which was gatherings of both the young and old banging on pots and pans, Steve Faguy of The Gazette Tweeted the following:

I’ve covered quite a few protests. Never have I seen one that so resembled an actual popular uprising.

And writer Kris Holt had this to say regarding the emergent popular uprising:

Those on my street banging pots and pans are middle-aged or older. Much more than students now.

It seems that the legislature’s attempts to quell protesting in Montreal has had the opposite effect, as many today streamed into the streets specifically to defy the anti-protesting emergency legislation.

As one of the student leaders, Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois, stated today:

“We want to make the point that there are tens of thousands of citizens who are against this law who think that protesting without asking for a permit is a fundamental right,” he said, walking side-by-side with other protesters behind a large purple banner.“If the government wants to apply its law, it will have a lot of work to do. That is part of the objective of the protest today, to underline the fact that this law is absurd and inapplicable.”

Absurd indeed – and that absurdity seems to have awakened popular support for the students’ plight, support that has increased dramatically in recent weeks.

The global revolution has officially arrived in Canada. And with student strikes and protests set for the summer, and with more of Montreal’s citizenry falling behind the students, it’s a revolution that may not be ending anytime soon.

Iran, Tunisia, Egypt, Spain, Greece, Israel, New York City, Montreal…

…we are witnessing an historic global uprising, as peoples across the globe continue to rise up in numbers and demand their political rights, demand social justice, demand economic fairness.

It’s a struggle that is not just essential, but fundamentally human.

Courtesy: ChicagoTheatreBeat – A Separate Peace …

“WE” The First Word of the First Step …

It rained today. And amid all that rain, tens of thousands of people defied provincial law to march on the city once again today, and I hear through the grapevine that a march will happen again tonight marking the 100th day of the student uprising. And the plight of students here in Montreal has gone global, with support coming from far and wide around the world and on tv.

On Saturday night on SNL Arcade Fire wore the “Red Squares” on their shirts in support of the Quebec movement. If the authorities (read: Government) thought that Bill 78 was going to stop the marches -

they were terribly WRONG !!!

They not only thought wrong, they threw more fuel on the fire. We will see where the march tonight.

It was a dreary, blustery day today. And it doesn’t rain for very long, but comes in intervals and we got a good downpour just before the meeting started.

But the day began with me carting two huge boot boxes down the the post office to get weighed and rated for shipment come Friday when my auctions end, and it was raining this morning on and off. Then I had to cart them back upstairs, what a pain in the ass.

I knew that thousands of people were gathering at 2 pm this afternoon, and I was afraid that the marchers would get to our end of the city before I got out of the house, One doesn’t want to get held hostage by marchers in the street. I got out of the house early, just to avoid getting caught up in the throng.

On the way out, I checked the mail, as usual, and stopped at the bulletin board to read the announcements and I was pleasantly surprised to see a baby announcement from our building manager. Now I see her every day, sitting behind her desk, but I haven’t seen her stand up in a while, so I stopped in the office to congratulate her and she was not only pregnant, she was VERY pregnant. And I missed it all this while. So she is off for a year’s maternity leave starting in a couple of weeks. We’ve lived here more than ten years now, and it will be joyous to welcome a new baby to the building.

Set up was a breeze and it rained so you never know how many people are going to come to the meeting in the rain … If it rains, people don’t show up, If it is -20c out, people don’t show up, and If it is 40c outside, people don’t show up …

That’s the facts about our meeting. Depending on the way the wind blows, people either come or they don’t. We sat 40 folks tonight. One of our young men was in the chair for the first time so he went with the Daily Reflections. And today’s reflection was all about the word “WE.”

Stuck in my disease – it was always about me. But not really about me. Living with HIV put me in a very specific hole in life. After your friends and family ditch you, what do you have left, Yourself…

I was living alone. I had very few friends. Nobody knew the misery I was sitting in for so long. And nobody would know, because I kept it to myself. There was nobody there to notice that I existed. Nobody to point out the hole I was in, lest they get in the hole with me. I drank in a big, loud, dark, room with hundreds of other people – and I was alone …

It was by the grace of God and the persistence of a young man named Troy, who came into my life at the right moment, when I was ready to hear the message and the invitation to come back. I prayed for those words to be spoken, I asked God for those words to come, and they did.

I went to one meeting to see Troy get his year cake. Nobody noticed me. Queers in recovery can be as clueless as they are in the bar. So I waited for the next meeting at 10 that night, and a woman came up to me and greeted me and asked me to join them all in the meeting. Fonda took me by the hand and welcomed me into that meeting.

I was no longer alone …

I never took another drink. I was lucky to be in that “we” group. We went to dinner, We went to the beach, We went to meal after meal after meal together. We did things together every night and I was never alone again. And that is the spirit that carried me to Montreal some months later.

And ten years and some months later I am still part of that “WE” effort.

It was a good night, and the skies are clearing up, the temperature went down drastically, when we came outside the hall after the meeting it was very blustery and cool. Great sleeping weather. The helicopters are buzzing our neighborhood which means marchers are getting close.

Hopefully – nobody gets hurt we’ll see …

Goodnight from Montreal.

Courtesy: Masternservant

They say that every so often you should open a blank page and try to write something cohesive. So here is my blank page and a photo to go with it.

Are these guys playing B-Ball, and the game has been paused while they sit there on the court all relaxing and chilling? There are spectators in the stands but the MTV shirts could be a giveaway that they are not really ball players. What are they looking at and what is that grin all about on the boy in the white trunks?

I like this photo. Sometimes you find a photo that kind of speaks to you and you re-post it. I try to find photos that you could tell a story about or figure out what is going on in the photo.

*** *** *** ***

The skies are clear over the city and it has been a quiet week so far. I haven’t dine much this week. We usually follow the same routine every day, we get up, fart around online, watch some tv and then hit the sack for a mid afternoon nap before hitting round two of farting around online and watching more tv.

The only channel we watch these days is MSNBC. It is all politics all day every day and into the night. There are hits of other shows that are interspersed in our daily routine like Community and 30 Rock.

Right now Mick Jagger is singing live on SNL which is a Saturday night ritual in our house. It is the season finale tonight and it is speculated that a few of the cast members will be leaving the show after tonight’s episode.

The summer television season will begin soon and that means So You Think You Can Dance and Big Brother …  We don’t really watch any other live reality type tv shows. Although CBS does own the market on reality tv.

*** *** *** ***

What else can I write about?

I had a really interesting dream the other day during one of my naps. It involved a good friend of mine and another friend whom I am acquainted with from the blog sphere. It was one of those naughty but nice dreams that went on for a long time.

I kept trying to hold onto it as long as I could when I realized that I was in the middle of a lucid dream. I have to say that it was pretty vivid and I carried it out of the dream and into waking hours. It is not usual that I can carry a dream out into waking. I usually forget them right after I wake up.

Let’s just say that if I ever get to meet Ruff face to face, we will have a lot to talk about. It must be that the zip up combat boots I bought from him must be enchanted with some kind of sex spell. They are infused with the memories of many leather oriented events while he owned them, and that energy must be pouring out of them into my feet.

It has been a great week for EBAY. All of the items I put up on the site sold and two pairs of motorcycle boots I put up are bid on and will sell come the end of next week. So I am poised to make a fair amount of change from this purge from my closet.

Speaking of purging my closet, this spring we are cleaning house in the hopes that in a few months we will be making the big move up in the city. Which means that all those old clothes that we haven’t worn in more than a year can go to Renaissance. Renaissance is an organization that collects used good from the community and turns them around in reintegrating folks into the community and the workplace. So all the goods you donate go to people who can use them right away.

I have to clear out the balcony of boxes of crap that we haven’t touched since we put them out on the balcony. Living in a high rise building, there really isn’t a place to throw away trash, except what goes down the trash dump. Each floor has a trash drop that goes into a main drop in the basement. There are several recycling dumpsters in the basement so we will be inundating them with old shit that we no longer need or want. This will all pay off when we move because we won’t be moving all that shit.

What are you doing for your community? And what changes are you going to make at home to free up the clutter in your life and try to simplify things. I am reading a book called “The Way is Made by Walking” written by Arthur Paul Boers, he is a Mennonite minister here in Canada.

It is all about his journey to France and Spain to walk 500 miles from St. Jean Pied du Port in France to Santiago de Compostela in Spain. This is one of many pilgrimage journeys people from all over the world walk every year. There are a few pilgrimage points like Iona and Lindesfarne, the Holy Land and Rome.

From the European continent you can step out your front door in your respective town or village and find a “Flecha”  and start your journey all the way to Compostela. People from all over Europe have walked from their respective countries to Spain over weeks, months and years. Several times a year a group from Montreal makes the journey. I attended one of those meetings at Concordia a few years ago, but I never followed up on it.

I think the one pilgrimage that I am going to make this year is to Cape Town South Africa. I am really looking forwards to going on this trip and also in what I will find and learn when I get there. My host is a world traveler himself and I will finally get to sit down with him and listen to some of his stories that we have only chatted about via email.

Pilgrimage is about transformation. And I am trying, ever so slowly to begin transforming our lives in new ways in preparation for our next step on our life path.

It is nearing the 1 a.m hour and I think I will close this blank page and say goodnight, I think I’ve purged enough thought for tonight.

Goodnight from Montreal.

Courtesy: Noneedtoaskmyname

The Premier and the legislature in Quebec City tabled a new law, Bill 78. The debate lasted all night Thursday night and into Friday evening. And because of the Liberal Majority, the bill passed and became law.

• The school year has been shut down, in opt for a return in August to give protesters time to relax and regroup and calm down.
• There is a ban on numbers of protesters that can gather to protest (sounds like Professor Umbridge is running things in Quebec City).
• Student groups larger than 50 people are banned ( A very Snape move)
• Here in Montreal, masks have been outlawed for all protestors.
• Steep fines will be imposed on students who protest($1,000 to $5,000 for individuals), and even steeper fines upwards of $125,000 for student unions who support such protests or protestors.
• This is all set to allow student access to class and to keep protestors from blocking or picketing campuses and classrooms.

This is all supposed to STOP the nightly protest marches. Well, that did not go over very well here in Montreal tonight as Tens of Thousands of students marched in the streets once again tonight, tossing bottles, rocks and Molotov cocktails at police which deemed the protest illegal.

A group of protestors marched from our end of town through the core to the east end of the city with at least twenty cop cars following them from behind.

With the summer festival season upon us the first big week up first is the Grand Prix of Montreal. This multi- million dollar event will bring much needed tourism and money to the city come the beginning of June, and all we need is some nasty marchers to disrupt the party from within.

These nightly marches are steeped in more than just protests against tuition being raised over the next five years and I don’t begin to know all the facets of all of what is going on. But all this violence needs to be stopped.

Montrealer’s want their city back. Over the last 14 weeks, one never knows where one can go safely because of nightly marches from one end of the city to another. And because of the violent aspect of these demonstrations, the downtown core has been hit very hard and it is time for us to take back our streets once and for all.

All this blocking of schools, stoppage of traffic, blocking of tunnels, bridges and the metro system, we have all had enough. If these kids keep it up, they are going to pay in huge ways after tonight. It has been said by some on television that these kids are not fully thinking through their actions, because once you get arrested and it goes on your record, the rest of your life is fucked.

They say that this has been the darkest day in Quebec in recent memory, when the government passed draconian laws to stop the protestors and bring order to the city. Student groups and as well, groups in the National Assembly are up in arms and students vow to break the law until they end the new law legally or the government concedes to the wishes and negotiations of student groups.

It does not bode well for Montreal. But it remains to be seen just how much force will be meted out for protestors come the weekend. 14 weeks of protests have not abated in any way and today’s law passage has only fired up the base into furious responses. Students are mad as hell, and they aren’t going to take what the Premier has set down for them.

So it will be a battle of wills here – may the best man win.

This also does not bode well for the Premier with a looming election coming not far off into the future. Charest may have dealt his death blow to the province of Quebec in Bill 78 to cull the protests at their heart, but he may loose big when the next election is called. Students vote and tonight they made their voices clear, they will remember tonight come the next election.

*** *** *** ***

Nothing else exciting is going on here. I hit St. Matthias last night and it was an ok meeting, but I zoned out halfway through the speaker. Another old timer, gone slipping story. They are coming a dime a dozen lately.

I got all my grades for the semester and I aced all my finals. I also aced my final paper on Colony Collapse Syndrome for Geography and it got a great review. So the grades are in, I am finished for the term. No more writing papers or going to class… YAY !!!

It is the weekend. We’ll see what happens and if we partake in weekend events in the city. Say a prayer for us, we sure need it right now.

Goodnight from Montreal.

Courtesy: AcceptanceQuotes.net

It has been a very long day. And tonight it rained. It was an on again, off again rainy day. But overall it was a good day for being out and about.

I had a 6:15 a.m. first call this morning to drop labs at the hospital. I hate having to go through general population to do labs. I don’t know what happened, it was said that the clinic funding was cut so they took away our phlebotomist from the clinic forcing us to go through the main lab lounge and wait in line behind bunches of people, when we used to have front line access to a lab ourselves.

So grasshopper picked me up and dropped me off up the hill around a quarter to seven and I got up to the lounge and took my number. I was number 43.  I guess they roll over counting from the day before because the wall counter was stopped at 14. I waited for almost an hour. UGH !!! I got in and did the drop and was finished by 8:10. And grasshopper picked my up after the morning meeting.

I got home and sat around on the computer for a little while, and then went back to bed around 9, and I slept all day until I had to get up to get ready to go.

It was grey all day so I packed the small umbrella and set off for the church. I was there early enough so that the girls could come and read – it was a quiet couple of hours till the meeting started.

We had a lot of new faces. And we sat 53 folks, and the topic came from As Bill Sees It, Freedom Through Acceptance.

They say in sobriety that when we get sober, it is through a series of never ending acceptances. The first acceptance we must make is that we are powerless over alcohol and that our lives had become unmanageable. My sponsor says that the first three steps are acceptance steps. I can’t – He can – I think I’ll let Him …

We heard a lot of powerlessness, and talk about the Serenity Prayer … We say that prayer at every meeting and throughout our lives to God to grant us the serenity to Accept the things I cannot change, The courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.

It’s all about acceptance. I cannot change people, places and things. The only thing I can change is me. And for some, when we begin to change for the better, people out there on the outside, have no clue. And that poses a problem to them that they just don’t get, we are changing and for some that is troublesome.

I go back to my first meeting. And how powerless I was. there was no denial that I had a problem and that the only solution was in the rooms. And I accepted the help that was offered. Through fellowship and meetings with other like minded folks help me to accept where I was and helped me to get where I was going.

The Big Book talks about “Acceptance is the Key to all my Problems.”

I hear newbies talk about letting go and acceptance like that is the last thing they want to relinquish because if they let go and accept where they are that they might miss something in themselves. I knew a man who used to come to our meeting and he was holding on so hard that his knuckles would be white every time he sat down in his chair, and it was like that until he decided to stop coming to the meeting, because he was never going to say the words like letting go and accepting. There could not possibly be a god however religious a man he was, and he was… but I digress…

When I walked into my now home group almost 11 years ago, I accepted that they knew what was good for me and it was not an easy road because I was caught up in expectations, and that held up the work for a good number of months until God deleted my entire expectations list.

That group cared for me, loved me, and provided me with everything that I needed and still does to this day, but back in the day, the women of the group went out of their way to make sure I had everything that I needed. And I accepted that help without argument. And I am forever grateful for that help.

I built my life around my meetings.

Some people think that they can build their meetings around their lives, and in time, that proves to be tough. If you are gonna do it, do it all the way. The big thing we stress at our group is to find a home group, join and get active. We give freely of what we have so while it is good, come and get it …

It was a good meeting. We had two cakes. A member of the group took her 1 year cake – This was a blessing because we have seen this member grow over the last year and become a really great woman of the group. The second cake was a ten year cake to a man that came to our group just for his cake. And we were happy to have him and his partner, and his friends.

The room was packed. There was lots of cake and conversation.

Another day has passed. Thanks for your time.

Good night.

Today begins the rest of your life…

I moved to Montreal in the Spring of 2002. It was Ash Wednesday, and the next chapter of my life had yet to be written. I had just opened the book to the first page and settled in for the ride.

I had found a place to live, and a doctor to treat me and I was learning how to get around the city. It took about two weeks to get used to this big bright new city. I can tell you that Montreal has an energy that I had never experienced before, different from the big city that I came from and totally unique.

I found an aftercare office that I attached myself to in that first year of sobriety. And they gave me a counselor that was providential and she helped me a great deal. She listened to me, gave me counsel, got me ready for the Winter when it came time and set me up for success.

Over that year she worked with me on simple goals and kept me on the straight and narrow when it came to recovery. And on my first sober anniversary she was there when I took my first year chip, and then she asked me this question:

“Now that you have been sober for a year, what are you going to do for You?”

It was a valid question, and I really did not have an answer for her. So I went home that night and thought about it and came back with this reply: That I wanted to go back to school and earn a degree in something. I applied to Concordia University and got in. What started out as a major in Psychology, quickly turned into a degree in Religion, that was an auspicious choice for it set me up to meet the man who would change my life in many ways. That man became my academic adviser for the department and my mentor and years later, one of the best friends I have ever had.

I started my university career in 2003. And over the next seven years I would complete that Religion degree and move on to Pastoral Ministry. Where I would earn the second degree in Pastoral Ministry. I was in my early 40′s now and the next step on the road would be a Masters in Theology. Which I miserably failed at. By early 2011, I had used up all my university credit hours available to me.

I was sitting in the financial aide office one afternoon and my friend Judy said that I had not used up my CGep credits yet, as I did not grow up in Montreal, I could use those Cgep credits to do some more studying. So over the last 2 years I have taken the odd class here and there. I took some Philosophy, History, Sociology, Psychology and a couple of French classes which after two sessions I decided to end that run.

And now today on May 14th, 2012 I have completed all the work necessary to complete the 2011-2012 academic year.

And now I am in the zone of transition. This is where you ask me “what are you going to do with the rest of your life?”

I don’t have an answer for that yet.

Tomorrow I have to drop labs for my doctor and then my usual Tuesday routine. I am going to take it one day at a time.

I got a response from Kyle the other night about my running and he gave me some advice to begin with, so I will be looking into that over the next couple of weeks. Another runner friend of mine is still out of the country till the end of the month so I am going to wait for him to come home before I do anything in this area.

I have to sit down and talk with my mentor and see what he has on the table for me to do next. It was not long ago that he suggested to me that I seek the holy orders. And that thought has been resting in the back of my mind since he suggested it. I don’t know if that is for me, but maybe he will have something for me to chew on, then next time we see each other.

My friend Jorge invited me to come to Cape Town South Africa for a visit and I am seriously giving that some thought, but before I can do that hubby needs to be gainfully employed. That next transition in home life hasn’t taken place yet so I can’t bank on that just yet.

I have a few things here that I can spend more time on like working with Grasshopper a bit closer. Since my schedule is changing I might make a change in my meeting routine. The morning meeting is every day instead of going at night, but in addition to the night meetings.

Hubby is getting ancy with me being here in the house all day long. He says I need to get out and do stuff. And I quite agree. So we’ll see …

This also gives me more time to spend writing. Word Press has given us all a shot at turning our blogs into books, and I think I may do that in the coming year, I just have to rework and edit a little closely some of the stuff I have written here.

So today begins the rest of my life … What should I do with it ???

Comment and suggestions are always welcome …

I guess that is all I have to say at the moment. Stick around and see where this goes. Thanks for your time.

Cheerio.

Courtesy: Flickr BillyPazionis

The sun is shining still at this hour. it was a beautiful day today. It was a little iffy earlier today, but the sun won out.

The week passed by quietly. We got to St. Matthias on Thursday night and Friday night I opted to stay home. The choice of television has been crappy at best. That makes staying at home boring. We have this huge cable system and all these channels and all they play is crap !!! Repeats of shoes that have been on over and over again. oh well…

It has been a quiet weekend. However I got out of the house earlier today to do some supermarket and Zeller’s safari. I needed some sox because I have been charging though all the sox I have in my chest of drawers. So it was off to Zeller’s to do some shopping. They did not have any of the ones I wanted so I settled on a Sportek 12 pack. As I tooled around the men’s wear section there were a few things that I would have liked to buy, but I have a budget this month, until my payments from Ebay hit the bank, I can’t spend outside my budget.

On the way back I stopped off at Provigo for a little supermarket safari. I didn’t need much because hubby shopped the other day for dinner stuff and I bought an assorted bunch of munchy foods the other day. Hubby has found that IGA is the better supermarket when it comes to fresh meats so he has been going to Alexis Nihon for groceries which is a couple blocks up the street from home.

I came home and we farted around for a little bit and decided to take an afternoon nap. Which was very fruitful. Now it is after 7, and I missed a meeting because hubby got up before me and I had had time, but I wanted to go back to sleep to finish the dream I was having, and that went very well.

So that has been the weekend at a glance …

Tomorrow is my last class /exam in Psychology. It is also my very LAST class in my educational career. Tomorrow night I will officially end my educational career. I’ve done all my studies and hopefully I will do well on the exam. I have to look over my notes and re-read a chapter or two tonight.

It’s all good.