Ms. Downie, why you gotta be so lo-down?

They also call me Ms. Lo-Downie. That's my personal fav.

Things are going along here in Alabama. I spent the morning of my one full day off calling all the Canadian institutions to which I owe a great deal of money.

I've made a quasi-decision. Quasi in that it may change without notice, but I think I've decided that it just doesn't make sense to take on more debt in buying a car. It's more of a realization than a decision, but the decision part is that I need to focus on getting rid of some monstrous debt back home so that when I go back I'll have some more freedom than I would if I didn't do something about the debt. I've spent too much money, and I need to pay some bills. So that's what I'll do.

The problem is getting my money from here to there. Given that it took me two hours to get in touch with who I needed to I believe that this will be a tricky feat. Canadian banking system is an apple, America is an orange. And neither the twain shall meet. At least not without miles of paper work and lot's more money.

I dyed my hair. It had been awhile and I have a few gray hairs poking out (it's the job, I swear), so I bought a box and went at it. I'm now a medium brunette, it's kind of on the dark side, but I'm growing to like it. I think I'd like to get a tattoo as well. Just for the heck of it. But I hear that hurts more than dying one's hair.

I want to vote in the election. I called around today to figure out how to do that, which was no simple feat. I called the Huntsville city hall to find out if there was a Canadian consulate here, but the lady didn't even know what a consulate was... She sent me to the local passport place, who sent me to immigration, who sent me to international services, who looked it up on google and told me that the nearest consulate was in Alabama.

So I won't be voting this time around. Though with any luck there'll be another election in a few months and I'll be able to get the paper work done on time!

I don't believe I'll be staying in this country too much longer. At six months I'll evaluate whether or not I'll be staying a year, but one can only work in crisis mode for so long. I'd love to be a part of the solution that fixes the program I currently work for, but regardless, even if it does run perfectly, it's not effective in causing real change. So I'm aiming to move on to bigger and better things. I think I'd like to move up north (as in New York? no dear Texan co-worker as in the Arctic), I think I'd like to be a teacher maybe, I'd like to go back to school... I'd like to do a bunch of things...

Focus man! Focus!

Gotta jet. Peace out.