Oprah's wrong

Today Stacey blogged about how she disagreed with Oprah when Oprah said that she didn't believe in luck. I completely agree with Stacey. It made me think of an episode of 30 days that I had seen a few months ago. 30 days is a show by Morgan Spurlock, the guy who made the documentary Super Size Me, which is based on a similar premise as his documentary. He takes a person out of their regular environment for 30 days in order for them to experience something new and different and possibly to change their point of view. The episode that Stacey's blog post reminded me of was the one where Morgan and his fiancee (now wife) Alex live on minimum wage (5.15$/hr) for 30 days. It basically showed that the american dream is dead. That even if you work hard, you might not become rich or even make enough to pay your medical bills. How does this connect to Oprah? Well by saying she doesn't believe in luck she's either saying that it was all hard work that got her where she is today or that it was some divine intervention or some combination of the two. So she's either implying that those who aren't able to improve their position in life don't work hard enough or god hates them.

Ironically it was only about a month ago that she had Morgan Spurlock on her show to talk about the minimum wage episode of 30 days.


Aside: I am such a miser. I tried the minimum wage calculator on the 30 days website (go to The Challenge and it's listed there). I can live on minimum wage with my current expenses.

Adventures South of the Border

Tom and I headed down to Newport, Vermont yesterday. Tom had some banking he needed to do and so we decided to tie this in with lunch at Wendy's and a trip to Dollar Tree. I really like Dollar Tree. It's one of those real dollar stores like Dollarama where everything is a dollar or less. The last time we went I found Michael Moore's book "Dude, Where's my Country?" for a dollar. This time I picked up two books that I would not have bought if they weren't a dollar; Leadership by Rudy Giuliani and I Am the Central Park Jogger by Trish Meili. I also bought Pez and Bubble Gum lip balm, Gobstoppers, mousse, floss and popsicles.

After Dollar Tree I wanted to check out the shoes they had in the store next to Dollar Tree. I ended up buying a pair. Tom warned me that since we had been in the States for less than a day and I had spent more than 25$ that I would probably have to pay duty. When we got to customs they had us park and go inside. He asked me for my driver's license and when I told him that I didn't have one, he asked how I drove there without a license. I guess he wasn't really thinking because Tom was standing right beside me. What he really wanted was anything that had my address, which I didn't have. Anyway all the fuss involved in paying duty distracted the customs officers from something they seemed to be obsessed with; the fact that Tom lives in Quebec but has a Vermont license plate. These custom agents seem to have a problem putting two and two together (I don't have a drivers license so therefore I must be the one driving and there is no reasonable explanation as to why Tom lives in Quebec but has VT plates). It also distracted them from asking Tom why he was still living in North Hatley. This is something he's allowed to do until his student visa is up but they have been bitchy about him being in Canada during the summer before and they acted like they didn't believe that Bishop's offered courses in Computer Science in the summer (which they do and he was taking one of them). We regular drive away from Canada customs making fun of the customs agents.

We'll be making another trip to Vermont on Sunday to have lunch with Tom's parents for their anniversary. Who knows what the customs agents will accuse of us of next time.

Update

Tom and I are currently in a holding pattern in North Hatley. We are waiting either for his immigration paper work to come in or for my semester to start. Our days currently consist of just hanging around the house and relaxing. I've been walking pretty much everyday and Tom joins me from time to time. I've also been spending far too much time watching Scott's Dawson's Creek DVDs. Luckily (or unluckily) he only has two seasons of it right now so soon I'll have to find something else to watch. I've also been preparing for my first semester with no courses. This will also be the first time in my life that I've ever had school in the summer (not counting the two summers when I participated in the summer language bursary program at University of Montreal and UQAM; those were more fun than schoolwork). In preparation of the start of the semester, I have been reviewing my notes on representation theory of finite groups.

I think it confuses people when

they ask me "Anglais ou Francais?" and I answer "Anglais".

Back to Blogging

On April 28th, the day after my exams were done, it occurred to me that I should blog more. This was because I had more time on my hands since I'm between semesters and also I noticed that Stacey had taken my off her blog roll. I asked Tom how long it would be before my blog would be back up and he said he wasn't sure. It was time to bring back my temporary blog. So I will be blogging here until further notice and more often.

On April 30th, I visited my parents with my sister, my aunt and uncle for my mother's birthday which was the following day. At one point in the afternoon my sister, my aunt, my uncle and I were outside talking. My mother comes out of the house with a paper Eddie Bauer bag and shows us what was inside. It was our almost 20 year old cat, Jen. At that point my uncle yells at my mother "Connie!" (which didn't scare the cat at all since she is pretty much deaf). My mother asked "What?" and my uncle replied "Don't let the cat out of the bag!".

This must break some kind of rule in television...

During the last few minutes of Prison Break tonight, they played the music from the title sequence of House. So during the most dramatic moments of Prison Break so far this season (they are about to break out), all I could think was that "Yay, House is on tomorrow".