I get startled by my happiness at times. Today, I was shocked by how excited I was about the return of a dear friend from Montreal. As I was dialing her Sarnia number, I hopped around my living room, and when I found out she was home, I leapt with an arm raised. (I was holding the phone; I only had one arm to raise. Pointless to be so excited if the excitement impedes my ability to enjoy what I'm excited about.) I was startled by this past weekend when ArtWalk happened in Sarnia, which may be the first weekend in a while that I was completely content. If you're on Front St check out the purple Jack-in-a-Pulpit on the old Saks building; I painted it; Kathleen painted the green one. It was really amazing to be painting surrounded by buskers after making a grand for the Canadian Diabetes Association, where I'm working as an Administrative Support Assistant. ASA is StudentEmploymentCentrespeak for Office Gofer. On Saturday, we had a yard sale to raise funds, which went fantastically, after which I went downtown. It's great being a swinger for the NPOs. Today my boss said that she was taking Friday off (probably) and that I could "goof off" because no one was there to watch after me. I like to earn my wages, but it was really cool that my boss let me know that if I want to take it easy on Friday she understands.

On Saturday, Kathleen and I held a little fundraiser for a fair-trade, organic coffee co-operative in Mexico called UCIRI (www.uciri.org). It was an open mic poetry and music night at Alternate Grounds, the fair-trade, organic coffee shop on Front street, where the owners offered to donate a portion of proceeds to UCIRI. We ended up raising $100 for UCIRI, which is pretty stellar considering that Alternate Grounds fills to capacity at about 25 people. It actually went so well that we're thinking about holding another one in July. (I'll let you know, don't worry. :)) Kathleen even read some of her works, which are quite good.

I'm also anticipating a chill Canada Day, with friends coming over to watch the parade and a sick party to go to at night. (Friday may have to be a quiet day. :S)

I don't know when things started going so well, but I sure am enjoying it now. If it ends, that's alright, because now I'm not going to mug it with doubt. I have no reason to not be happy. What reason would I have?

With this post, I am 48 posts away from 500 posts. That's a hella-lotta posts. I'm a blogging machine! ("um, alysia, i think your recent lack of blogs would say that blog machine is broken." "Oh, shut up, voices, you only know what I know, and I don't know shit, so you don't know shit. Oh, Sliggidy Slam, Just a moment while I check you into the Burn Ward! *vigorous head shakes of victory")