Did anyone else use urban75, the English raver/anarchist site? I used to chat there when I was in high school (literally, when I was in the school computer lab and was supposed to be building sites in HTML and DreamWeaver) and the older punks found it adorable that my username was canadian_punx (it was 2001, I regret nothing). I'm still Facebook friends with someone I met there.

I other favourite haunt was Yahoo! groups/pages. I remember when Rob and Gabe and Tyler from Midtown would comment on their group. And the time someone put together a scrapbook for Adam from Taking Back Sunday when he broke his collarbone.

FEEEEEEELINGS.

The Resident Evil films are some of my favourite bad movies and I can only hope you'll watch and review them all.

Oh my god, how did I forget...

The job where the weekly production meeting was the owner's opportunity to verbally abuse his wife (my other boss) and where sticking it out for one year would get you pretty much any job in my hometown because the owner is so notoriously awful. (I didn't cash in hard enough on this one but I did enjoy giving my notice the day the boss left for a 4-week vacation and having his "You're really screwing me over" comments roll off my back.

The job where my boss made me fill in all my time sheets for the summer then told me she expected me to work an extra hour/day that I would not be paid for.

The job where white teens were allowed to take on semi-management roles but staff of colour were not allowed to cash out tills at the end of their shift.

The job where a child physically assaulted and choked other children but was kept in camp because "his mother needs childcare" and he'd been kicked out of every other camp and my boss running the camp was his mom's BFF.

The job where the boss' son was "assistant" front of house manager and hit on/harassed the customers, the staff, the delivery people and anyone he could get near, with complete impunity.

The job where my department head yelled at a mostly-women admin team to "stop bitching" in an employee survey response meeting (specifically held to address employee concerns).

The job where a colleague used the n-word toward a black colleague and the person who reported it to HR was reprimanded for "causing drama".

The job where my boss found me sobbing under the weight of my work (which should be done by three people and previously had been) and told me to "smile more" and "lie if [I] have to" when colleagues ask how I am rather than admit to them that I'm overwhelmed.

The job where my supervisor told me my job was "smiles and coffee" but had no plan to mitigate the other responsibilities that distracted me from smiling and making coffee.

Too many of those are my current job or a different position with my current employer.

I wouldn't suddenly want a yard or buy a house or think kids are a good idea for me. I wouldn't get interested in precious gems and metals and other jewels. I wouldn't want expensive shoes or designer bags.

Wait, is there a Good Wife colouring book?!

This reminds me of reading "Late Nights On Air" five-ish years ago while I was living in Ottawa. The book is set in Yellowknife and I had to stop reading it on my lunch breaks because Elizabeth Hay's descriptions of Old Town were so vivid and accurate that it brought me to tears. Even though I never lived in Yellowknife and the book was set in the 70's, it conjured up memories of friends and times I was missing desperately.

Another connection to home in books is "Fort Simmer" in Richard Van Camp's novels and stories. It's based on our hometown of Fort Smith, NWT and I remember re-reading The Lesser Blessed recently and remembering from his descriptions the high school gym, before the renovations.

eta: I feel like Canadians don't often get to connect home to real places outside of L.M. Mongomery's PEI and Margaret Atwood's descriptions of Toronto. Or maybe it just feels like that.

Thank you for saying it. I'm all out of words after this.

This speaks to me. I'm going to the Tim Hortons downstairs for breakfast.

(that wasn't meant to rub it in, but to be a Timmy Ho's solidarity breakfast)

Also: The House. This one in Calgary's Kensington Market threw me for a while.