What a terrible secret

The other day I was listening to the morning radio show that irks me so much, and they had a guest on who speaks at these seminars entitled "The Secret". Apparently it's a part of Tony Robbins' "The Power Within" series. (By the way - I always confuse Tony Robbins with that Tony Little (?) who does the exercise machine commercials.) Again, I am only commenting on the bit I heard, so if I've mischaracterized something, let it go. :)

The guest was talking about how everything in the world, from you, to your steering wheel, to the tree on the street, to the mug on my desk, is made up of the same stuff - energy. I'm not much of a scientist, so I won't comment on the oddness of this "fact". He said that there are laws of attraction such that if you focus on the negative, you will attract negative energies. For example, if on your report card you saw 7 A's and 1 D, and you lamented, "Why oh why hast thou bestowed upon me a D", you would only attract further bad marks on your next report card. Whereas, if you focused on the A's and thought about how you could get more A's, you would then attract more A's. He also said that this applies to people too, you will only attract negative people if you are filled with negative energy.

You probably won't be surprised when I tell you that many of the speakers for the upcoming seminar wrote such books as "Chicken Soup for the ___'s Soul" and have job titles like "Life Coach".

I can't think of a more ridiculous explanation for the bad things that happen in life than this. Negative energy? You must be kidding me. It's an odd world where we reach out to these "spiritual" explanations rather than reaching for the Creator of all things.

Weekend ramblings

Judging by my sitemeter stats, I'm not the only one who heard "under my arm Beretta" in Rihanna's new song. I feel slightly vindicated!

It's the long weekend and I'm kind of bored. Went for dim sum today with my mom and the hubby... yummy. Then we went shopping, but didn't buy anything... which is probably typical. It would be nice to have somewhere to go, but then again, we don't have money to be throwing away on vacations. Every once in a while, an unexpected house expense will turn up that probably has priority over vacation money.

You know, before I moved out, I had a vague idea of house expenses but having to actually pay them certainly made that idea more specific. For example, I didn't really realize that you have to pay the city for your water, your sewers, and your right to leave garbage on your curb. I mean in my mind, I just thought this was all wrapped up in property taxes. But it is not. And property taxes! The city does nothing to help increase the value of our house, yet they continue to charge us more every year. The city does seem happy to decrease the value of our house. Case in point - the builders needed access to some water main or whatever that is under our lawn, so the city dug up our lawn. Instead of laying sod, they just sprinkled grass seed willy-nilly and told us that it will all grow back. We now have an ugly, patchy green-brown lawn despite frequent watering. Plus, our gardener has to mow around it. I'm not sure that the city is permitted to just dig up your property without bringing it back to its pre-digging state. But I am too lazy to look into all of the by-laws and such. Stupid city :(

I'll hug an entire forest if I have to

On the weekend, we took a rather big step in our lives ... we became environmentalists. Nope, that's not accurate. Actually, we took a tiny step toward environmentalism. Hubs sold his beloved Jeep, the one he has had since before meeting me, his first new, not-a-beater car. Alas, the fuel prices these days are beyond ridiculous and it was time for a change. It was truly the end of an era, saying goodbye to the Jeep that has been in both our lives for so long (although - obviously it meant more to him than to me, I can't even drive standard) I mean - how will we get up a snowy hill in the winter? How will I dry my hair in the summer if I can't take the top down? How will we confuse gas station attendants without a key to the gas tank?

Well, as it turns out, another car is just around the corner for us. We're gonna be getting a hybrid! I'm soooooo excited. I'll probably drive it once or twice a week which will definitely reduce my visits to Petro-Canada, far too frequent these days.

This reminds me of a funny story. Recently we were at Petro-Canada at one of the full-serve stations. The gas jockey stuck the nozzle into the gas tank and pressed the ... trigger? He then let go and just as he was about to walk away, the nozzle spat out of the gas tank, and gas sprayed everywhere, including on the gas jockey. Luckily he caught it before it continued to spray and I wondered if we would get charged for that extra gas. (We did.) (It wasn't that much.) The best part is that the guy came up to the window and said to hubby, "Sorry...for... some gas." My gosh - we were killing ourselves laughing. Good response to spraying gas. Sorry for some gas!!

Working for the weekend ... I mean on the weekend

It's disheartening to be working on a day where I would normally be relaxing and yes, possibly even taking a nap. Alas, such is the fate of a lackey like me. I had to buy myself a coffee and some food to keep myself awake and alert... so I headed over to Starbucks for a chocolate croissant, only to find that they didn't have any. I chose a marble coffee cake instead, which advertises itself as Reduced-Fat. I do like the regular coffee cake at Starbucks but I have always found it a smidge on the large side. (By the way - it wasn't until I was out of high school that I realized "coffee cake" doesn't have coffee in it.) Anyway this reduced fat version is good and all, but as I peered at it through the case, I realized that it is half the size of the regular coffee cake. And fat content? You guessed it - about half. Is that what we are calling reduced fat now, just serving a smaller portion (and charging about the same as the full size cake)... Are we so easily deceived nowadays? (Please note - I would have bought the regular cake but they didn't have that either.) (My Starbucks lacks.)

Let's hope I can get out of here soon. So stressed!