Ow. Made it. Port fountain postponed until my 40th. Other libations may happen sooner, like this evening. Apparently my bike is a heavy, steel framed beast and you're not supposed to ride the whole time in 4th - had no idea. Ow.

The Green Living show was at once a shopping fest, an infomercial, a networking opportunity and a gleeful, albeit lurching at times, step in the right direction. Some booths were green, others were trying and some hadn't quite got the right memo. I still couldn't fact the Burts Bee's booth (their new owner, Clorox, was also there) but made some new friends with another cosmetic line (need more research, but so far so wow) and was happy to see/smell/almost bite Lush. Fell in love with a bike (oooo so pretty), a chair (red cork, felt like soft leather) and a pair of boots (made out of hemp, car and bicycle tires, recycled plastic, cork and coconuts). Was endeared by companies who apologized up front for non-recycled paper ("there was a miscommunication with our printer, and we felt it was better to use them than not"), readily available green bins and biodegradable everything. Most things that bug me about trade shows were absent. Some of the things I've always wanted but didn't even know how to name were there. Will be going back next year with more time and some cash, but for now I've got about 70 new products and suppliers to research and see if they're everything they say.

Down the hall though, Elle magazine had their own trade show. Same building, same day. While waiting for company I watched row on row of cookie cutter housewives with their paper, single use Elle bags in hand, pink clothed mini-consumers at their sides walking back to the parking lot. Some kids heads turned in curiosity's as they passed the Green show though, hearing the cheers and drumming inside (the kids area had ongoing story telling and large puppets from the look of it), peered at the happy teen agers giving out saplings. There was a longing on the little faces that I don't think will fade. It was a strange and hopeful parade.

I'm pretty much bitching to anyone who will listen right now, and the husband is asleep so hello. TTC is on strike as of now. On a year where the heat wakes me up in April, when we've had much earlier smog warnings than previous years, when there's a lot going on in the city for people to get to the one service that keeps the city greener has walked off the job. I don't disagree that their jobs are challenging and unpredictable. I don't disagree that they, like all other workers, deserve raises from time to time. However, whenever they strike I remember back when I was a home support worker and got to my clients via TTC. Home support workers don't make enough for cabs, don't often have cars, and are often booked far from their homes in order to make a living. Home support workers take the bus - and clients rely on the companionship, cooking, cleaning and personal care provided by them. Today there are elderly and vulnerable and palliative people across the city alone and a little more vulnerable than they needed to be. That? Is wrong.

Personally I fee like a little bit of a jerk right now because as much as I know there are single moms who can't get to their less than understanding jobs, family outings canceled and maybe even people alone who shouldn't be, I'm mostly annoyed for myself today. I'm aware of the other stuff but oddly more bothered by my own inconvenience, which makes me a bit of a tool. I've got a volunteer shift at the Green Living Show. It's far. I don't have cash for cabs, I don't drive. I also haven't ridden a bike in 17 years and as someone made up of an embarrassing lot of flubberly goo (although 7lbs less than three weeks ago, go me!) who's a big spaz and able to hurt herself with common household objects previously thought harmless - I am not at all really ready for this. I'm going to try to stay out of large amounts of traffic (hard to do on a day when everyone is forced to drive) and...well, try. I have a lock. I have a helmet. I have a hope in hell that without a tune up the new untried used bike will hold, it was gifted by a trustworthy looking yoga instructor from craigslist. (thank you Emma!) Hopefully I will be in some sort of useful shape when I get there, hopefully I will make it back in one piece (wedding tomorrow, kind of important) and hopefully the TTC will a) get what they want and b) be deemed an essential service and rendered unable to hold a city hostage again.

Right, this is it. If I get hit by a car or something I leave everything to the fabulous husband, request that Lt. Ripley be cared for and three kegs and a port fountain at the funeral. If I make it...we'll have a port fountain anyway for my next birthday party, because that sounds very nice. Must not drink and ride, must not drink and ride...will very likely be drinking tonight.

Each wedding season I vow to really try not to take up so much space in peoples photo's. And then there's the champagne and the cake and....who am I kidding, the port...and I've just kept going up and up and up like a crazy Californian in a lawn chair, you know? Even though diabetes is rampant in my family, even though heart disease and stroke I can Dad (quintuple bypass) and Mom (series of minis) respectively - it's not that I'm not stubborn, I'm just not stubborn to my benefit.

Recently we've been looking hard at dietary choices over here, partly because weight loss and fitness is the only thing that seems to make Fabulous Husband feel better, partly because I'd like to celebrate 40 with my own knees, and partly because we suspect that there's a wheat allergy afoot. It's got us cooking real food. Which is easier to control the portions of. Which, in combination with a new found love of rowing, is peeling off some pounds. Hurah.

Another thing has been incorporated into my own diabolical plan to get down to one ass by the end of the Mayan calendar: The Daily Plate
It's really helping. I enter what I eat and do and it does the part with math to help me see how I'm doing - am I meeting daily nutritional needs, am I working out enough, how many calories really is that chocolate bar, and so on. You can keep things totally private or, if you want to join up with friends I'm there as cookietheviking. And I know not all of my friends get along so here's the fun part: you can register as any user name you want. Just tell me so I'll accept the friend invitation, k? It's like facebook with a point, in some ways. Best part? Free. There's more features for higher memberships and it's all kinds of awesome, but for the basics it's free. Anywho, I'm down five lbs in 1.5 weeks and thought it was worth mentioning.

Last year was the 50th anniversary of the Canadian Arts Council and I took part. I created various pieces of art, acquired an instrument (and know a couple of notes on it), learned to edit film and wrote some. Not enough to make me 100% happy, but enough that I gave serious consideration to what I viewed as art and work, and the Council sent me a T-Shirt which was the total cherry on the cake. (mmmm. cake.)

Today I got a Facebook protest about an exhibit in Nicaragua last August where a street animal was allegedly starved to death in front of a crowd to a) draw attention to the plight of street animals and /or b) commemorate a burglar who'd been killed/eaten by guard dogs. It could be real, it could be part of an elaborate PR campaign on behalf of the artist. More info here:
http://blog.seattlepi.nwsource.com/art/archives/134292.asp
and here:
http://arts.guardian.co.uk/art/news/story/0,,2269320,00.html

Lets assume the part where the dog was hungry, and used in this exhibit are true. There's two issues for me, here. Art makes people think, feel, gets a reaction. If someone just places something they didn't make themselves (pylon, broom, can of hairspray - whatever) in your path that forces a reaction, never mind if that reaction was necessary or important, are they an artist? They're facilitating a reaction, but not creating anything in this case, remember. Does putting something in your way in a gallery make it more artful? Nope, don't think so. (But I also don't think God gets better reception if you pray in church as opposed to your bathtub.) So there's the one issue, I just don't think it's very creative or a credit to art.

The second thing is - it's a fucking starving dog. A living, breathing, suffering thing. What the fuck? Is it okay to deny an AIDS patient their medication and put them, against their will, in a glass box on Bay street to slowly die in order to better draw attention to suffering in Africa? Fuck no. Yes, you can argue in favor of it. You can argue in favor of anything, but that flavor of narcissistic hubris masquerading as logic is how crazy shit happens all the time. War, genocide, vivisection, all manor of horrors. It's "only" a dog, whether it died or not, but to me it's the thin edge of the wedge - not art.

And that is my opinion on this matter. Good evening to you.