Snow

November 26 the snow starting falling and by mid-morning was piling up. I went out for groceries it being a short walk to the Oak Bay Village. Everything was open and there was even hopes the lighting celebrations would still happen. These were cancelled by noon or so.

Today, November 27, the city is basically closed! This snow has shut Victoria down. In other places I've lived I would still be going to work and everything would still be running.

I must admit that the University of Victoria was slow on announcing it was closed. Considering bus service was cancelled before UVic closed, and I would have been standing at the stop, I would have missed both announcements. Which makes me think about a better way of getting information. Maybe I need to start carrying my little portable radio again.

Interesting....no one called me on the emergency listing we recently updated. Good thing I phoned Rena to tell her to stay home. Bettina, my other team member, had a day off so I didn't need to notify her about not going to work.

Maybe this will be another event to realize our contact list needs to be used!

Tuesday is suppose to be worse!

Oh, and nice weather for Gillian to return to after a long stay in Hawaii!

John's arm

On November 20, a week ago, John was cycling home when he hit a bump and wiped out. He had the good sense to use his cell phone to call his own ambulance. At first he thought his arm was broken, then dislocated and finally the verdict was the shoulder was broken. He's in a sling, off work and taking one day at a time.

I'm just glad it wasn't worse!

Everyone has been great to John and I. I really appreciate all the offers to help and just asking me how it is going.

5 more to go & counting...

November 16, November 20, November 23, Novemer 27 and November 30....that will be the end of Anthropology 312, Medical Anthropology. I can't believe it! I'm reading Chapter 4 of In the Bush the take home study text. I have one final assignment to be given to me which will be due at the end of November. My exam is December 15 at 2pm. A Friday and a booked vacation day! Think I might exchange that with an EDO instead.

I'm chipping away at my degree but I've a long long way to go. Even if I am now classified as a second year student. The Career Development Fund will only cover one course a year. Which means I have to take my course either from September to December or January to April or in Summer Session. I still think it is a bit odd that the education institution I work at doesn't cover more courses for the development of their support staff. Think about it, a post secondary institution that promotes higher education, yet only covers one course per year. Oh I can take multiple free workshops put on by HR or the cheaper courses, but I don't have an option to take more courses.

Hopefully this will change. Afterall isn't having employees who are also students the best form of promotion for the university?

Sub-zero not a temperature but a clothing size

I cheered Milan's fashion catwalk when in a radical move it decided to ban drastically thin models from its catwalks. Imagine a 20 something model wearing clothes that a 7 year old child could wear. Think about Hollywood's pressure on stars to be super thin. I recently saw a comparison of photos of Demi Moore in a magazine; Demi in the 1980s and Demi today. It was proof of how a healthy young woman can starve herself thin. Dove has a wonderful video on their site in support of their self esteem campaign for young women. It shows a model, pretty girl, and then we get to view the transformation she goes through until her photograph is plastered on a billboard. Photo enhancement in magazines, on billboards and in the media is big business. There should be a disclaimer: the people you see in these photographs are real people who have been enhanced to perfection.

And then I discover that the hourglass figure is the shape used for most of women's clothing. Only 8% of women are a true hourglass, and although Marilyn Monroe and Sophia Loren fell into this shape, Marilyn had to work hard to keep it. Most women are either an apple, spoon/pear or rectangle. Designers don't cut clothes for these shapes and haven't in 50 years!! There is a push on in the fashion industry to change, to start designing and cutting clothes for the top 3 shapes. I await this change and I will applaud it!! Maybe I will finally be able to find skirts and pants that fit my waist without gapping because I have to buy pants/skirts to fit over my hips but which end up being too big in the waist.

This week, I read with horror that there is a new size! Often when shopping sales, I find a plentiful supply of size 0s which haven't sold. Shouldn't this be telling someone that size 0 people aren't plentiful and that there is a mutitude of leftover clothing! Now subzero has been introduced into the UK size 00! Maybe the UK is trying to sell adult clothing to seven year olds?? Who in the world is size 00, other than those terribly sad photos of starving children in Africa? Is this what we are asking our young woment to aim for?

Sure there is an obesity problem in North American, but asking people to starve themselves thin isn't the answer to this problem nor is it a healthy body image to promote.

And then there are skinny jeans at the Gap using Audrey Hepburn as the model. Audrey who was one of the worst eaters, and who like a lot of stars at the time was on a strict diet to maintain her shape.