And everything will work out fine.

Scene: Fiveish years ago, Chris and I sitting on the couch (which, I think you should all know, was fished out a dumpster by my then-roommate Tyler) in my old apartment on Donald street (represent!) watching the first season of the hit TV series 24, discussing how we would never live to see the day that an African-American would become the President of the United States of America.

Scene: Two nights ago, our living room, watching Barack Obama’s acceptance speech on the CBC, Halloween candy wrappers on my coffee table, pug in my lap, jaw dropped, e-mail in my inbox from Chris saying “PRESIDENT PALMER!”.

As a Canadian, I feel very conflicted about American politics and the interest it garners in the Great White North. In a time where voter apathy is at an all-time high in Canada, it kind of kills me to see so many people who were very apathetic just a little less than a month ago about our own election be so excited about the American election. Sure, I won’t deny that Tuesday night was a momentous and inspiring occasion and should have been watched by all, but if you’re going to get so enthralled about politics, why not do it in your own country? You know, where you actually get a chance to have your say and where the decisions made actually directly have an impact on your life. I’m not saying that Barack Obama being elected President will not affect anyone but Americans – I’m sure it will have a positive worldwide effect, but I just can’t wrap my head around the fact that 15% of Canadians would rather vote in the U.S. election than in our own, I mean… really?

I guess what we need in Canada is an agent of change and a charismatic leader who can inspire us all. We need a “celebrity” candidate to flick on disinterested voters’ democracy switch (mine is broken and can’t be turned off – ask Chris!). We need a Trudeau (well I know we actually have one, but he still needs some work) or even, to a certain extent, another Chrétien (he wasn’t much to look at, but you have to admit he really was interesting, well, I guess anyone is interesting compared to the current android residing at 24 Sussex). We need someone to come in and shake things up and make Canadian politics interesting again for everyone. Of course those of us who find Canadian politics super interesting already will probably explode of political nerdery overload if this happens, but it’s a sacrifice I’m wiling to make in the name of Canadian democracy.

Any ideas on who should be the Canadian Obama? All that comes to mind right now for me is Tom Green, which is so, so, very wrong on so many levels.

I’m pretty sure you don’t have to be a pug expert to know that pugs are, well, how do I say… Not the most, erm, athletic dogs? When I first got Abby and researched all there is to know about pugs, I quickly learned that they do not swim, they sink. Most people actually recommend life jackets for pugs. Every other dog I had ever owned or been around didn’t particularly like water so I just figured my pug wouldn’t either so I wouldn’t need to get a a stupid dog life jacket or anything, no biggie, right? Wrong. Abby loves to swim, and you know what? She’s actually pretty darn good at it! Now keep in mind that I said good, not graceful, not skilled, just good.

And now, as promised, video proof of Abby’s water frolickings last month at the Erwins’ cottage in Muskoka.

Well there you have it folks, a swimming pug. *shakes head*

My fellow Canucks, on this fine election day, I hope that you are as excited as I am about exercising your privilege to vote, and if you’re not, shame on you (really – I don’t kid when it comes to democracy!). Here are a few reasons why I think you should be excited and proud about voting today, in no particular order:

- You actually live in a country with a stable form of government in which you can have your say. And to the people who feel that democracy isn’t fair in Canada and that none of the parties represent your views, I say spoil your ballot. Sure, Elections Canada will tell you it’s illegal and that they discourage it, but if enough people are dissatisfied and do the same as you, I can tell you it won’t be long before the results of the elections are called into question and the way in which we elect our Members of Parliament is revisited.
- If you’re a woman, you owe your privilege to vote to the suffragettes.
- Voting is sexy.
- By voting you make sure that the government is not elected solely by senior citizens, who always vote in frighteningly high numbers. They even get dressed up to vote (I plan on voting in jogging pants tonight)!
- I will think less of you if you don’t vote (seriously… aren’t you like, totally concerned about what I think of you?). Where are all of your WWVT bracelets (What would Véronique think)?
- The act of voting itself is pretty darn exciting (ok maybe I’m alone on this one). I mean, you get to visit your local church basement/community center and line up with a little piece of paper, maybe finally talk to that neighbour you’ve been stalking for over two years.

- 3 words and an acronym: CBC election night coverage.
- 3 words and an acronym again: Peter Mansbridge in HD.
- If you don’t vote, you can’t complain about the government. Four years (well, it technically should be four years) without complaining about the government in power? That’s a long time… think about it! I won’t even let you complain about how loud John Baird is!
- Get some exercise! For the Debbie Downers who will tell me that traffic accidents are always higher on election days, I say walk to your polling station and get some exercise!

Well as much as I wish I could, I can’t make you go vote today. But please do? Merci!

Amidst all of this electoral hoopla, I just wanted to take a minute out of my busy lunch hour yogurt eating and lolcat browsing schedule to write about something which never ceases to baffle me: the varying meanings and connotations people on different degrees of the political spectrum attribute to words such as liberal and conservative. Please note that for the purpose of this blog entry, we are strictly speaking small-l liberal and small-c conservative.

For starters, some very basic definitions, brought to you by dictionary.com.
liberal: favourable to progress or reform
conservative: disposed to preserve existing conditions, institutions, etc., or to restore traditional ones, and to limit change

Now to me, a democratic socialist and owner of shirts such as this one, it’s not very hard to pick out which one of these two concepts is “right” and which one is “wrong”. I mean… seriously? Limiting change? Restoring tradition? Who in their right (pun very much intended) mind would ever want to be attributed the label “conservative”? To me the term carries so many negative connotations it’s almost like the equivalent of being called a caveman.

I’ve been called a conservative once in my life and I remember the moment vividly to this day. When I was in first year university, I worked at La Vie en Rose, a lingerie boutique in the Rideau Centre. One weekday afternoon I was working alone with my manager and she asked me to dress up one of our mannequin busts with some new merchandise we had just received. As it was my first time doing this (I didn’t work there for very long), I was really careful in selecting the garments and making sure the size was just right. When I was done my manager came over to check on my work. As we were standing there admiring the lacy bra on the fake plastic bust I immediately blurted out “Oh no, we can see nipples! I’ll get a chiffon robe to cover it up!” (don’t ask – the plastic busts had nipple shapes), to which she replied “God, you’re so conservative, just let it be!”. Now I’m a person who’s pretty hard to insult or offend, but I was immediately so insulted when she called me a conservative. I wished I could have taken back my words so much. To this day I still beat myself up over the fact that my retail job manager five years ago thought I was a prude. Geez.

So the other day Chris and I were in the car and I told him how I couldn’t fathom anyone not being insulted if they were called a conservative. He then pointed out the fact that the opposite is true for people who are actually conservative. I had never really thought of that, because to me, being left-leaning is not a conscious decision, it’s a matter of knowing with every fibre of my being that what I believe in is simply right (well, left). But thinking about it, I guess I can easily imagine Lowell Green turning into The Hulk at even the simple idea of being called a liberal.

Ah well, to each his own.

I feel severely behind in all my Web-related endeavours. So here is a quick update of what I’ve been up to.

- Camping in New Hampshire
- Cottaging in Muskoka
- Watching the pug swim in Muskoka Lake (videos to follow!)
- Knitting
- Eating horribly
- Trying to figure out why the pug is getting so much grey hair
- Not cooking and baking enough
- Obsessing over how behind I am on updating my Flickr account
- Yoga
- (Often followed by Bridgehead)
- Trying to convince Chris to embrace all of my offbeat wedding ideas (Pez dispenser wedding favours!)
- Avoiding the Plant Recreation Centre pool out of laziness (and a slight paranoia of foot fungus)
- Watching frackin’ Battlestar Galactica
- Ignoring Facebook
- Getting my bike wheel stolen
- Listening to CAKE (the band)
- Clenching my teeth all the time (which leads to getting headaches all the time)
- Trying to find a job in the Maritimes (hire me?)
- Cursing my right ankle (and, by extension my accumulating love handles)
- Letting things get to me too easily
- Trying desperately to consolidate and clean up my three personal e-mail accounts
- Not getting nearly enough sleep
- And since yesterday: nerding it up election style

If you’re a resident of Ottawa that’s never lived or spent any considerable amount of time in Centretown, you’re probably not familiar with its pet culture. Let me sum it up this way: I have a theory that there are actually more dogs and cats in Centretown than there are people. You’re probably more likely to refer to that couple who lives down the street as “Elvis the pug’s mom and dad” than you are to actually know their names if you’re also a pet owner yourself. The dog park is like that corner pub (but for your dog), where everybody knows your dog’s name and you can go and let poochie unwind after a long day in the office. If you ask me, Centertown is a pretty awesome place to live for people and pets alike.

There’s this man that everyone in Centretown who owns a dog knows. He can always be found either at the park, walking to the Arboretum or stopped somewhere chatting someone up along with his trusty dog. He always carries with him what seems to be an infinite amount of dog treats, which makes him quite popular with the pooches (well, with my gluttonous pug anyway). Last Spring he found out his dog had Lymphoma. Over the summer, the dog got skinnier and skinnier and seemed to be slowing down every time we saw her. This morning I saw him walking alone and I immediately knew what it meant because that dog never left his side.

He told me his dog died Friday morning, and as he was talking to me and hiding tears with his sunglasses, I felt like such a knob because I clearly did not know what to say. I thought about the usual losing a pet is so hard and losing a pet is like losing a member of your family (which, thinking back on it, I think I did say to him), but those are just words and clearly they don’t apply to his situation. As far as I’m able to tell, that dog was this man’s family. I’m absolutely serious when I say that that man loved that dog way more than a lot of people in our society love their spouses. His life revolved around her and now he finds himself with long days to fill without his trusty, ever-loving and ever-present companion. He told me this morning that looking back on it, he probably should have tried to have some activities that did not revolve around his dog in the last 12 years because now he finds himself piecing his life back together and having to deal with himself after spending every waking moment for the last 12 years caring for his dog. But I bet if he had to do it over he wouldn’t do anything differently.

Once the pain of his loss eases I hope he realizes just how awesome of a life his dog had and can look back on their lives together and remember the good days (which I’m sure she had up until that Friday morning). I can say with certainty that his dog probably had the best life any dog ever had. This man spent every waking moment of his day with that dog for the duration of her life. How many people can say that about the people in their family or their children?

I feel rotten because I didn’t know what do say or do around him this morning and now it’s really bothering me. I didn’t want to ask too many questions but also didn’t want him to feel like I didn’t care, because I really do. I feel that pet loss is in many cases comparable to losing a family member for some people, and I’m sure it was the case for this man. A pet is a companion who loves you unconditionally, with whom you never fight, who’s always around to lick your toes to crack you up when you’re feeling down and who’s dependent on you to care for them everyday. That can leave a big hole in a daily routine. I just hope he can dig himself out of that hole and possibly find another puppy to make his life complete someday.

Such rotten news to start off the week.

So you all remember the pothole of death incident, right? Well as it turns out, I still have some stiffness and pain in my right ankle over two months later, which prohibits me to run or dance, so I decided to go and get it checked out by a Sports Medicine Doctor this week.

Turns out said doctor thinks that I have some sort of impaction happening in the joint where my tibia meets my foot (how’s that, for layman’s terms? – I am pretty much as layman as you can get when it comes to medicine). Anyways, to make a long story short, I got some x-rays done yesterday and the doctor informed me takes about six months to heal in normal circumstances. So no running or dancing for me until roughly December or January. Pooh.

Ever since I came back from Argentina in early July, I’ve been going to a few sessions of Hatha Yoga per week at Rama Lotus Yoga, which I’ve found to be accommodating to my ankle handicap, and have been walking to work as per my usual routine. But I find that I really miss running and dancing and that I feel really lazy going about my week without my three 5K runs and my hour and a half of Grand-Jetté-to-Earth-Wind-and-Fire-for-eight-minutes-jazz-dance fun. The Sports Medicine doctor recommended swimming yesterday, and I think I’ll give it a shot, but I find that swimming requires a lot more overall effort than running.

Swimming: Walk/bike/drive to pool, get changed, take off makeup, swim, shower, dry off, get dressed, reapply makeup, try to do something with hair, come back home by chosen means of transportation (may also include the occasional five-minute-headbanging-to-get-water-out-of-my-ears session).
Running: Put on running clothes, run, change into normal clothes again. Voilà.

But I guess I will suck it up for the sake of physical activity for a few months. I also really like swimming so I’m sure I’ll enjoy it once I get into the swing of things. Or maybe I’ll just sue Larry O’Brien, aka Lex Luther for his shoddy pot-hole-filling-budget-managing-abilities and get liposuction with the settlement money. We’ll see.

It seems like everyone and their mom has a blog these days. Well now it even seems that some people are blogging from beyond the grave. I just discovered through the CBC that “Beginning Aug. 9, the diaries of George Orwell will run online, one entry a day, 70 years to the day after the author [...] wrote them.” How cool is that? The Socialist in me (which pretty much consists of my entire being) is beaming with joy. You can read George Orwell until 2012 by checking out The Orwell Diaries.

On the topic of blogs, I’d like to build up my blogroll. I read certain blogs, but am always looking for more to add to my list. In the past I’ve found that some of the best blogs I’ve found were suggestions from friends and cowrokers. So, tell me which blogs you read!

Well let’s just say yesterday morning, I had to leave the Facebook group “I’m not engaged, pregnant, or buying a condo” and I’m not pregnant (whew) or buying a condo. Yup, that’s right, Chris and I got engaged on Saturday! Here’s the lowdown of the event, FAQ style.

Christopher and Véronique’s engagement, the Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

1. Oh wow, you guys are engaged! How did this happen?

Yes, we totally are! Chris and I got engaged on Saturday July 12 2008. It happened something like this: Chris came home from work around 6:30 and we decided to go out for supper somewhere around Centretown because it was such a nice night out. We ended up eating on the patio at Pancho Villa, had a nice meal and came back home. It was quite early so we decided to go see a movie, but we had about an hour to kill. We were just hanging out at home, Chris went upstairs and I was just checking my e-mail and fiddling on my laptop at the kitchen table when all of a sudden he came up behind me and handed me a ring box, got down on one knee and asked me to be his wife. I of course said “yes” (well, after a few “are you serious?”s). Yup, that’s about it, it was nice!

2. Awww!

Yes, so I hear!

3. Was it a surprise? Or was it sort of planned?

It was a total surprise! I mean, Chris and I had talked about getting married and we knew we would at some point in our lives, but wow I totally was not expecting anything anytime soon and had no clue that he had any of this planned. It was a lovely surprise!

4. Have you set a date? Where will this be happening? We clearly need details!

Well seeing as I had no clue I was getting married a mere 2 days ago, we don’t have many details yet. We definitely do not have a date, let alone a year. It will for sure be happening in New Brunswick, probably in Miramichi (where Chris is from). The only guarantee I have so far is that it will be a good time. Yes?

5. The ring! Tell us all about it!

Ah, yes! The ring is simply amazing. Chris knew what I liked in terms of rings as I had showed him a few in stores and we had looked at some Web sites together, but boy did he ever go out of his way… He actually went and got a ring created for me at Howard Jewellers based on various ring design elements that I liked. The result is simply gorgeous! It’s a 14 K thick white gold tension-set ring with a 0.5 K princess-cut diamond. I love it and it couldn’t be any more perfect!

6. Clearly, we are only here for pictures of the bling. Where are they?

Here you go!

Special thanks goes out to Val for the post-yoga class photoshoot at Bridgehead tonight!

7. Alright well. I think that was all of our questions. How can we stay up-to-date on your wedding?

Chris really knows me and he pleased the nerd in me by registering www.chrisandvero.com, which I will be turning into a wedding Web site in the next few months. So stay tuned for more details!

…. Yay!!

Yes, I’m back. I can’t decide whether to write detailed entries for each day of my trip of just sum it up in one long-ass blog entry, so for now this is all you get.

I’m alive, my trip went wonderfully, I didn’t get robbed or harassed, my Patagonian trip mates were wonderful, I ate like a pig (as one should do whilst on holidays), I took an impromptu trip to Iguaçu (northern Argentina) with Gen, I got super good weather and my pictures and videos are slowly coming online on my Flickr account.

As wonderful as it all was, I’m still glad to be home with my man and my pug, being the creature of habit that I am. Three weeks was the perfect amount of time to unwind, get a bit adventurous and miss home.

I will probably write some more detailed summaries of the various legs of my trip (I almost wrote legs of my race – stupid Amazing Race) and backdate them sometime in the next few weeks, but I’ll write a post linking to them so you don’t miss out on them. For the moment, I leave you with this picture of one of the amazing sights that I saw in Patagonia.