It's in quotes, so it must be true

Here are some random quotes about friendship which experience has taught me are vewy twue...


"A sense of duty is useful in work, but offensive in personal relations. People wish to be liked, not be endured with patient resignation." Bertrand Russell

"Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born." Anaïs Nin

"Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another: "What! You, too? Thought I was the only one." CS Lewis

"There is nothing we like to see so much as the gleam of pleasure in a person's eye when he feels that we have sympathized with him, understood him. At these moments something fine and spiritual passes between two friends. These are the moments worth living." Don Marquis

"[W]e all need friends with whom we can speak of our deepest concerns, and who do not fear to speak the truth in love to us." Margaret Guenther

"Alone, all alone
Nobody, but nobody
Can make it out here alone." Maya Angelou

"I have no trouble with my enemies. But my goddam friends,...they are the ones that keep me walking the floor nights." Oscar Levant

"Depth of friendship does not depend on length of acquaintance." Rabindranath Tagore

"It is one of the blessings of old friends that you can afford to be stupid with them." Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Friendship should be surrounded with ceremonies and respects, and not crushed into corners. Friendship requires more time than poor busy men can usually command." Emerson

"We are all travelers in the wilderness of this world, and the best we can find in our travels is an honest friend." Robert Louis Stevenson

"The most I can do for my friend is simply to be his friend. I have no wealth to bestow on him. If he knows that I am happy in loving him, he will want no other reward. Is not friendship divine in this?" Thoreau

"Always set high value on spontaneous kindness. He whose inclination prompts him to cultivate your friendship of his own accord will love you more than one whom you have been at pains to attach to you." Samuel Johnson

"Keep your solitude. The day, if it ever comes, when you are given true affection there will be no opposition between interior solitude and friendship, quite the reverse." Simone Weil

"The blessing it is to have a friend to whom one can speak fearlessly on any subject; with whom one's deepest as well as one's most foolish thoughts come out simply and safely. Oh, the comfort — the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person — having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words, but pouring them all right out, just as they are, chaff and grain together; certain that a faithful hand will take and sift them, keep what is worth keeping, and then with the breath of kindness blow the rest away." Dinah Craik

"A friend knows the song in my heart and sings it to me when my memory fails." Donna Roberts

"You can make more friends in two months by becoming interested in other people than you can in two years of trying to get other people interested in you." Dale Carnegie

"Friends help you move. Real friends help you move bodies." Dave Attell (Okay I haven't experienced that one in full, I'm just guessing it's true.)

Some older friends...

Some newer friends...

Friend Roll Call

So now that I've been out of school for months, and have caught up with family, and have caught up with myself, and have caught up with my husband and cats... I've slowly got to catch up with friends.

I've seen Mae and Midnightstreet and that little circle of friends. I've seen Mr Gilbs. I've been in facebook and email contact with Yea Aulde High School Best Friend (though we've both been too lazy to follow through on a face to face meeting.) I've been in email contact with my childhood best friend, and my old church best friend. (An older lady I once knew told me she keeps one friend from each period of her life. I thought it was great advice, and try my best.)

I fired off a little facebook email to an old work acquaintance, Amanda, to see what's new with her. And I randomly send comments to random other facebook folk I know, to keep the wheels greased. There's been radio silence from Friend Paul and his girlfriend since they moved south to do the next degree... better send an email there... hold on. Okay I'm back.

I haven't seen Rrrraquel since the winter, but she's been busy--I've had some email contact at least. Will be time to see her soon. I just emailed my Late High School Best Friend, Cide (or Super Banana), cause it's definitely been over a year since I've seen her. And I've emailed an old work-and-book-sales buddy (my book enabler) because I haven't seen her since her wedding.

Have I missed anyone. Oh! My American friends! I have fairly regular e-relationships with KR, JB and CCB.

And now that I'm back at work more, I'm seeing all my work buddies.

I haven't had the sort of friendship where I go out with someone regularly in years, I must say. I think I went out with Mae and Gilby the most, but then school happened, and then Mae left school and moved further out, and Gilby moved even further. I only saw Pablo and Delyriam regularly--and in this last year, Pablo. I tend to fill my life with sooo many hobbies and interests that I can easily hobbit-hole for long periods of time, but I think school was also giving me an artificial sense of an effortless social life. I knew so many interesting and funny people, and because we were in Poli Sci, the interesting and stimulating conversations just dropped from the sky like Shakespeare's Mercy. Not to mention seminars, which were essentially 3 hour long conversations.

So now there's no school, so I can't fake it. While I can hobbit-hole away, I know myself... I know I need to push myself into some actual sit-down conversations. I'd invite people over if I didn't have a cat who gets into pee-mode when the moon is in the right phase, and runs around like a Peeing Bandit. Maybe if I stick a couple chairs and a mini fridge in the foyer of the apartment...

Interestingly, this season of House will I guess be exploring the idea of friendship a bit, as Wilson has finally ended his rather poisonous relationship with House. And now House has to figure out if finding another doctor who pays for his food, likes Monster Trucks, and has a conscience is enough to replace Wilson. Or he could just keep paying the private eye to listen to him.

not so lol

"Motorists who send text messages while driving are "significantly more impaired" than those who drive drunk, even at the minimum legal limit for alcohol, according to a British study.

The study showed that drivers' reaction times deteriorated by 35 per cent and they saw a 91 per cent decrease in steering ability.

Similar studies of drunk driving, by comparison, showed that reaction times fell by a mere 12 per cent.

...The study comes on the heels of reports that texting was to blame when a commuter train slammed head-on into a freight train in Los Angles two weeks ago, killing 25 people.

Officials believe the engineer on the commuter train was texting at the time." (CBC)

Any pedestrian can tell you this. People on cell phones never see you at a crosswalk until the last second. I'm so glad Quebec outlawed using handheld phones while driving, which I assume includes texting.

Mark Jenkins' installation art - love it!

More here.

more articles... and my white-bread restaurant

Today I'm catching up on my news reading, hence my newsie posts. I'm now reading the comments for an article on health inspection of restaurants.

Fernando and I often eat at Scores, a very run-of-the-mill family restaurant. (I hesitate to call it a white-bread restaurant though. The croutons are multi-ethnic.) It is certainly not a *foodie* sort of a place. But I like it because (a) there are few interesting restaurants along our bus routes; (b) we just go for the salad bar, so it's inexpensive; (c) it's relatively healthy, versus much of the processed crapitude in low-mid-expense restaurants; (d) it's clean, including the bathrooms; and (e) the service is uniformly excellent.

I think the last two points are probably connected to how safe the food is. You can only have that level of cheerful and efficient service (every single time we go, from every single staff member) if there's good management; and where there's good management, there will probably be food-safety. Ditto with the bathrooms, as confirmed by this guy who commented on the article I just read: "Ps if the washrooms are clean and scrubbed and well stocked, chances are the kitchen will not kill you. Just my experience as a chef of 25 years."

a little humour

This is just randomly amusing.

Olympic swim superman dude, Michael Phelps, eats 12 000 calories a day. Which just shows, you know, that we could all be eating as much crap as we want if only we'd be willing to exercise all the rest of our waking hours. -->The closest I came to this was when my jaw was wired shut after an operation and I had to eat through a straw. I would end each day with a chocolate milkshake to bring up my calorie count. Sweeet.

Anyway, this is a funny article of a food critic trying to keep up with Phelps. It greatly resembles my own life.

*

No one would ever confuse me with an Olympic athlete. I was picked last in softball and the last time I was competitive about anything, it was apathy (remember being in your 20s?).

...

So I head to nearest body of water. ... It's adult swim time and the grown-ups are swimming laps. An old man swims width-wise across the pool. It's not clear if he's crazy or just a jerk. ... I swim a lap. This pool must be much larger than an Olympic pool because I get tired very quickly. Having achieved a small victory with my lap I go out on a high note, at the peak of my performance ability.

...

Any serious athlete is up before dawn to train. I rise at 4 a.m., stretch, walk to the bathroom, urinate, and head back to bed.

...

I receive a devastating piece of news. "A lap is generally there and back," says Zach Weston, professor of kinesiology at Wilfrid Laurier University. "A length is just there."

Cutting off my citrus supply route!

All the cookbooks I own use fresh-this and fresh-that, such as fresh lemon juice. I still stick to my bottles because it's easier to have on hand, and to take out just the amount I need etc. But when I ran out of lemon juice this summer and tried to buy more, Maxi was always out--though I was able to buy fresh lemons.

Sure enough, there has been a Lemon Shortage! How alarming! How shocking! Surely a harbinger of worse things to come! And now I've been forced to become one of those Fresh Lemon Cooking people. Hmph!