The YouTube playlist has got to be the greatest result from the invention of the Internet. Online banking is pretty great too, but can it play 123 videos of classical music, one after the other? Classical music may be the only thing that can calm me down without stressing me out that I'm not stressed over the things I should be stressed about. If that made sense to you, brava!

The Profile
My apologies for the more-random-than-usual entry I made a couple of weeks ago. I can't ever remember to whom I said what. If you're heard all this before, or have already pieced together whatever it was I was trying to say, skip this.

One of my seemingly never ending assignments for writing class was to profile a member of the Toronto Arts Council. Long story short, I emailed him the profile when I finished writing it and was too chicken to read his reply. I would say I've reach a new pathetic low (or high?) but it feels like I've been at this level for a while, haha.

My teacher liked my profile though. She started off her 16-line comment with words like "interesting" and "well written" but the rest of it was where I could improve. When I incorporated her changes, which took a long time because I had to restructure the entire thing, she said it was excellent! That's the best comment I've ever gotten from her! My new, excellent profile also came back with more suggestions for improvement on it but my goal was this class was a strong positive comment from her and I got it.

Giller Light
For those who don't know (and if Prime Minister Stephen Harper is correct, average Canadian don't know or care), the Giller Prize is Canada's highest literary honour.

In October, a 2008 graduate from the program, who now works a Random House, came to speak to our class. She talked about the program, internships and looking for publishing jobs. But she was also there to talk about volunteering for the Giller Light Bash, of which she is the Volunteer Coordinator. Most of my class, including myself, signed up to volunteer.

The GLB is basically a before/during/after-party for the Giller Prize Gala. It started as a house party but now, it's an industry shmooze-fest. Volunteering for GLB was like volunteering for any other event — you're doing jobs they haven't invented robots to do yet.

We were asked to arrive at 5:00 pm sharp for orientation, which started at 6:00 and then only lasted for about 7 minutes. But everyone was really nice; there was no vegetarian pizza and most of my class is vegetarian so they went out and bought some! After orientation, they thanked us volunteers profusely and actually clapped for us. Awww.

I was distributing cheesies (that's what they called it) from 7:00-8:30, then pizza from 9:30-10:30. For the cheesies, we made paper cones and then filled them with President's Choice white cheddar popcorn or honey mustard pretzels. When the guests started to arrive. the cheesies volunteers were suppose to going around the room, handing them out. Did I mention that GLB hired professional servers who were distributing hors d'œuvres like sweet potatoes fries in shot glasses with tangy dressing, mac and cheese balls, mini hamburgers, and fish and chips which consisted of a small piece of beer batted fish on a salt and vinegar chip? Or that we had over 20 bags for the popcorn and pretzels?!

It was so hard approaching people with the stupid food cones. Most people were in groups, having conversations and even when you said "excuse me," they would ignore you. When I could get people's attention, they looked like I was some crazy person who had walked up to them on the street and asked if they wanted to buy my baby.

By the time 8:30 rolled around, we had only "finished" 5 bags and made a complete mess of our area. But I had given up long before 8:30 and was having a drink while munching on a mini hamburger (I ended up dropping the last bit of meat on the floor. Good thing it was dark in there eh?) The servers took such good care of us. My friends who were stuck in coat check all night told me the servers would come over and give them food and non-alcoholic drinks. Volunteers weren't suppose to eat or drink during their shift but I don't think any of us observed that rule.

When the pizza came, we shoved all the popcorn and pretzel bags underneath the table (which is where we shoved all the popcorn that had fallen on the floor...) to make room for the 15 boxes of party-size pizza. There was a rush for the pizza but somehow we only managed to empty 2 boxes by 10:30. Actually, I remember the servers took a few boxes to cut up the pizza into strips and distribute. How can we compete?

All the leftover food really frustrated me. If this was the first time they had held GLB, I could understand the gross miscalculation of food, but it isn't, so I don't. I really hope, probably in vain, that they did something with all that food besides throwing it away. The organizers already hired professional servers which gave their guests an abundant amount of delicious food; they didn't need to spend hundreds more on popcorn, pretzels, and pizza.

But all in all, the bash was fun, if only because there were others who were as frustrated as me. As I said, everyone was really nice except if you tried to offer them popcorn or pretzels. The venue was Berkeley Church, which was a fabulous mix of classic and modern architecture. And I know tea light candles are so 2002 but I really love them. There were candles on the tables but they were also suspended in the air above the main area. 'Twas quite magical.

My fellow Bond fan in the publishing program was also volunteering that night and when she heard that I had never had a martini, she made it her mission to get me one. I don't like to drink around people I don't know well but what can I say, I'm a sucker for alcoholic peer pressure. The drink of the night was the Doris-tini, named after Doris Giller, and contained vodka, cranberry juice, sprite, lime juice was garnished with cranberries and mint (My dad: That's just a cosmo, Laura! / Me: No it's not, it had mint leaves!) I only drank half of it and gave the rest to my friend, which was the compromise we struck up.


Why don't people like talking to me
My feature story (yes, again for writing class) is going terriblly. Why do people have emails and phones if they're going to use them? BAH!

I decided to do my story on the religious institutions of the Danforth, the area near my school. I was going to focus on a Catholic church, Jewish community group (no synagogues ), and a Muslim masjid. Yay Abrahamic children! I thought, for once, my weirdness is going to work for me, because all the students have to do a story based on something in the Danforth. Obviously, there were a few repeated ideas (which our teacher told us to "work out") but no one wanted to anything remotely related to my topic. AND I thought for sure I would find someone to talk to at the church/group/masjid because 99% of their job involves talking to people and there's always someone there.

I watch too many American movies where the troubled protagonist walks in the church in the middle of the night and has a heart-to-heart with the pastor, don't I?

It's been a week and I haven't gotten very far. I've sent numerous emails, phone calls, in-person visits to all three places and all I've gotten is a phone interview with the Rabbi of the Jewish community group. The Rabbi was really nice but she lives in California and flies here every couple of weeks. Luckily, my mom never uses her cell phone so it has tons of minutes on it and I could call California no problem, but since the Rabbi lives in, and operates from, California, she couldn't tell me much about the relationship the group had to the Danforth, which is the entire focus of my story. She told the co-chairs of the group, who live in Toronto, are out of town so they won't be getting to my messages for a while.

The parish secretary told me the Father did get my email and he is going to respond but he's out of town until Monday, so why don't I try calling then? I asked if I could just interview her but she had a deer-in-headlights look (totally understandable as some people hate being on record for anything) and said the Father has to do it. I asked her if she had any brochures or pamphlets or anything I could use and she went to the back and got some for me so yay!

The gentleman at the masjid said the president also got my email and asked if I could call later that day when he came in. I did and I kept getting the answering machine. I've called 6 times since, at various times of the day, and gotten the machine each time. I'm aware of the prayer times and don't call during them, but still nothing. The only good thing about all this was that during the encounter, he said As-Salaam Alaikum and I responded with (what I hoped was) Wa-Alaikum As-Salaam. That was really, really cool.

This has been really stressing me out and, unfortunately, I've been taking it out on my friends and family. Maybe God is telling me—a pagan who wants to eventually become canonized—to stay the hell away from his children. Yeah, that sort of makes sense.

Something else who isn't responding to my messages to Webcom. I had a field trip to the printing plant (the day after the Giller Light Bash; that was fun) and really liked it. I asked one of the employees who gave us a presentation about Webcom if I could intern or volunteer and she told me to call the head of customer service. That was a week and a half ago. I left a message on her voice mail and written her an email but no reply to either. My book production teacher, who organized the trip, is telling me to wait a few more days before I contact her again but at this point I think I'm going to have to burn my phone number into the company's front lawn for anyone to call/email me back.

Strike a Pose
Along with the BAH!-inducing feature story, exams are just around the corner and I was in need of store-bought happiness. I went out and brought the November issue of Men's Vogue. Daniel is the cover story and it's great finally seeing headlines that aren't "Craig, Daniel Craig". Woot! Though I won't be able to read it until I see QoS, the pictures sure are, to borrow a phrase from Rafia, fieeeeeerce!

. 4 penguin buddies