Ceridwen’s Cauldron

It’s a little odd being a Pagan on a Christian holiday. Mostly because I keep forgetting that it’s a holiday and trying to get in touch with people that I know perfectly well aren’t in town this weekend. I call, leave a message, hang up the phone and think “Oh. Right. Easter Sunday. Of COURSE they’re not home.”

I don’t have any family near where I’m living, and most of my friends, even my Pagan friends, are off visiting their relatives. Because, as we all know, these days holidays are less about religious celebration than they are about friends and family. Which is, I think, as it should be. Still, it makes me feel a little lonley, a little left out of the loop.

As for me, I celebrated Ostara with some friends on the spring equinox. We had a nice evening with an egg hunt, and munched on some chocolate. But now a week and a half later I feel like I’m missing something.

I wonder if people who do their taxes early feel the same way when their procrastinating friends are at home crunching numbers and there’s no one around to go out to a movie, or have a coffee. Or do they simply feel smugly superior?

Perhaps I should do my taxes this weekend. Then I’d know.

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Now, being on strike sucks. But I must admit it does have some pretty neat side effects.

The best side effect is that I get to spend a lot of time talking to co-workers that I didn’t have time to get to know all that well in the context of a working day. Today, for example, I had a very long and interesting chat with one of the guys from the newsroom. This particular man worked for 8 months as a performance bartender in Australia. You know the guys who can throw the bottle in the air, flip the glass around, catch the ice and pour the drink? That’s what he did. He spent 2 hours telling me about how he learned, and the places he worked. Including 5 months in an upscale strip club, where men would eventually bring their wives to watch the bartenders, while they watched the dancers.

This conversation came after I spent a round around the building talking to one of the women, who also works in the newsroom, about difficult life decisions like advantages and disadvantages of raising your children in Metropolitain Montreal.

And on Monday, another fellow picketer and I discovered that the back of our building is about 2 miles longer than the front. There is no particular reason why this should be so, but we walked it while picketing and I tell you it is not the same size. Hell, I don’t even think it’s the same dimension back there.

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You know, life seems just super when you’re listening to Great Big Sea. The world is just a better place for a while.

I’ve discovered that there are holes in the soles of the boots I bought for the winter. I got these boots in December. There is no way there should be holes in them already. But because of this I wound up with wet feet all this morning on the picket lines. Yuck. It’s a grey day, I’m perpetually tired since I’ve been walking the picket lines, we had a 12-hour union meeting yesterday that had absolutely no effect on anything. I don’t know how long this strike is going to last, but some of the people I’m talking to are thinking months. Not weeks. Months. That’s disheartening. It’s even more disheartening when your feet are cold and wet.

But I sit down at my computer, fire some GBS in the CD player (not their most recent album, but one of their older ones, Turn) and everything is suddenly okay again. I’m warm, I’m dry, and the world is a beautiful place again. The strike won’t last, and in the meantime I’m catching up on my reading.

On the reading list: Another Caroline Stevermer book called Sorcery and Cecilia. It’s written in the form of letters between two friends in the spring and summer of 1817. It’s co-written by Patricia C. Wrede. I’m enjoying it, and I like the letter-writing style.

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You wouldn’t think it, but 4 hours of walking the picket lines is as exhausting, if not more so, than 8 hours of my regular job. Plus my wrist and shoulder hurt from holding up a picket sign.

And, of course, it’s still winter outside (in terms of temperature, though technically it’s very early spring) so it didn’t even occur to me that I might require sunblock. My cheeks and nose are now sunburned red. Not badly, so it doesn’t hurt much, but I look like I’m blushing.

There’s another union meeting tomorrow morning. Hopefully there’ll be a new and better offer on the table from management for us to vote on.

Wish me luck.

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So I was looking at Dave’s dream house plans. This, of course, inspired me to go look at dream house plans of my own.

Now, my idea of a house is a log cabin house. Like the ones I found on this site. Oooooh…so cozy.

All I have to do is convince Scott that a log home is the way to go. I’ve a sneaking suspicion he remains skeptical.

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So I’m sitting at home, rather than at a computer editing radio pieces like I should be doing because, yes, the strike has happened and we’re out for 24 hours.

This will, in all likelihood, be followed by our union being locked out for an indefinite period. But let’s not borrow trouble, hmm?

I have always been fascinated by stories of the Oracle at Delphi, the ancient Greek propetess who would be consulted on any issues of the day, and was said to prophecy with the voice of Apollo.

(The Oracles were incidentally also called Sybils, and some day I may post another story about that name, but not today.)

Anyway, while surfing around this morning, I found this article on the potential cause of the visions. Very interesting stuff. Almost makes me want to go to Delphi and check it out.

On the reading list: I’m working my way through Caroline Stevermer’s When the King Comes Home. I read another book of hers called A College of Magics that I really enjoyed, so Autumn ordered this one in for me (it’s nice to have friends who work in bookshops). It’s a fantasy, told from a woman’s perspective, about an artist’s apprentice. It’s actually set in the real world, early 20th centry, but in a fictional city called Aravis. College of Magics focussed on the magic system of this same world, but there is no magic appearing in this book as of yet. Which is intriguing, but not at all disappointing. It’s a thin paperback, or relatively thin, in these days of 800-page Robert Jordan books, but I don’t think that’s a bad thing. I just have to keep myself from rushing right through it. When I’m reading a book I enjoy, it’s really hard not to devour it.

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Well…things are starting to heat up around the old office. Strike is the topic of the day, as you can well imagine. Whether we should or not (even though we don’t have a choice now), how long all of this is going to take, and where we’re going to find work once we’re out.

The fact that we’re going out seems to be a foregone conclusion. I keep trying to think positive. “It’s not decided yet,” I say, and “I think this will still get resolved.” I even once said “I don’t think it’s going to happen. I think there’ll be a last minute deal or something.”

Whenever I say any of these things, everyone looks at me as if I’ve just dropped in from Mars. One person even laughed at me. In a very condescending fashion. (It must be stated, for the record, that this person is not that much older than me.)

Maybe I should make a concerted effort to get a really annoying song stuck in my head. Then I’d at least be able to think about something else for a change.

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It’s been a rough couple of days in Ceri’s brain.

On Saturday, we had a union meeting. It was an all day, long, boring meeting. But several important things were decided at it. The first was to reject the offer that management had given to us as “Final”. The second was a vote for strikes of up to 24 hours.

I’ve been stressed about this since Saturday night. It was an overwhelming union vote. I don’t know, though, if we’ve done the right thing. I probably won’t know until all of this is over.

Today, management has announced that it can lock us out as of Thursday at 12:01.

People are telling me not to get stressed, that whatever happens, happens, etc. But I can’t take it all that impersonally. I have a sense of dread following me around.

Meanwhile it’s snowing beautifully outside and I take no joy in it. One of my baby quilts was handed over at a shower yesterday to all-around admiration (and I got to hold a 10-day-old little boy) and I still feel flat. And St. Patrick’s Day came and went without me having any real desire to put on kelly green and dance a jig.

Damn. Just…damn.

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I try to make it a habit not to apologize for things that I’m not truly sorry for. As such, I refuse to apologize for not updating my blog much this week.

I do have a life, you know. I’ve been out almost every night this week doing stuff. Or in my house doing stuff, which is almost equally important.

Plus, it’s hard to come up with something that I think people would be interested in hearing.

Today, I’ve been thinking a lot about St. Patrick’s day. This is on my brian mostly because the radio station I’m working at is holding 2 remote shows (’remote’ is radiospeak for the shows where we leave our studios and broadcast live from somewhere else) at an Irish pub. So there’s been a lot of that St. Paddy’s day spirit floating around the office. And by spirit I’m talking about the ethereal feeling aspect, not the liquor kind of spirits you may have heard of. We’ve kept those at the pub.

I mean, never mind that today isn’t really St. Patrick’s Day. It’s 2 days before. But this is something that we do every year, so whether or not the 17th falls on a Weekday, the remotes must be done.

I must confess, I don’t really understand the point of St. Patrick’s Day. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I’ll probably mark the occasion by drinking a cider or two. And yes, I understand that this is supposed to be part of Our Irish Heritage.

But it isn’t really. It’s about pretending to be Irish, whatever Irish means. Some seem to think drinking green beer and listening to tinwhistle makes them Irish. Which it doesn’t, any more than wearing a kilt and playing the bagpipes makes me Scottish.

St. Patrick’s day is about drinking. And being out with our friends. And an excuse to have a parade. And wearing green because, hey, it’s what we do. Why can’t we do that any other part of the year? Why do we have to crowd into bars on this particular weekend?

Do we really need an excuse that badly?

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So apparently William Shatner now has a blog.

Content includes:

Hi. This. Is. William. Shatner. Welcome to. My. Blog. I’m . Glad you’ve. Stopped. By. Spock! SPOOOOOOOOOCK.

Well, no, not really. But it would be more fun that way.

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