Adventures in Christmas trees

Although my Dad will be mortified ("You don't decorate for Christmas before December!"), a group of festivity-minded folk helped me decorate my aparment last Friday night. Now my little tree is up and glittering (and occasionally assaulted by my cat), cutsie little snowmen and angels grin from shelves and walls, and Frank Sinatra & Bing Crosby croon holiday medlies in the evenings... and I traipse about in the afternoons with no jacket. Methinks the weather matcheth not the season. Only 24 more sleeps 'til I fly home for the holidays ~ and hopefully some snow. But not when my plane is trying to land. Or take off. Or when I'm driving. Or if I have to shovel it. If I could have my way, we would have light little fluffy flurries from now until December 24th, at which point, once we're all snuggled together at home, there would be a massive blizzard that would coat the world with white until January 2nd, at which point everything would melt away and spring would arrive. If I ever build a climate-controlled bio-dome, that'll be the weather forcast for the holiday seaon. I hope you're enjoying the weather, and the Advent season wherever you may be.

Adventures in Nuclear Waste

Earlier this month, South Korea chose the historic city of Kyoungju to provide a home for a proposed nuclear waste dumpsite. While there are many things that worry me about this dumpsite, two things stick out in my mind.

1) My university students don't seem to care. I asked one of my classes what they thought about it. One student said she was happy that the dumpsite will be built in Kyoungju, because she is from another town that was in the running. My other 8 students all said they didn't really care one way or the other. Hmmmm.

2) Commerce-Industry-Energy Minister, Lee Hee-beom, said "By minimizing preparing procedures, the government will finish the building before the end of 2008." Why on earth would you minimize preparation procedures while building a nuclear dumpsite!?!? On the bright side, I don't really believe that it will be completed by 2008. The subway in Daejeon was supposed to be up and running for the World Cup (2002) and I still have to take the bus when I'm there. Even so, call me paranoid, but I really don't think that one should be skimping on preparation when it comes to building a nuclear facility. Again I say, "Hmmmm...."

Perhaps it's time to consider moving back to the other side of the globe.

Adventures in Cartoon Land

When I was a little girl, I was convinced I could draw a door on the back of my TV and enter my favourite cartoon, Battle of the Planets. One day, Mom found me poking around behind the TV with a pencil in my hand and shooed me away. I never got the chance to fight the intergallactic menace - Zoltar. Now that I'm all grown up, I realize I can't fit into my TV ~ but I'm sure I would have been able to when my body was smaller ~ if my plot hadn't been foiled. I'm not bitter.

I got thinking about that little snippet of my early years today, and came to the conclusion that even if we don't have a super-portal from the real world to cartoon land, I think that those who inhabit cartoon land actually do have a super-portal. My theory is based on 3 things: 1) Roger Rabbit. 2) The Simpson's episode where Homer gets stuck in a vortex and winds up in the real world. 3) As I walked out of the Student Union store today, I took a deep breath of fresh~ish Autumn air and surveyed my surroundings. The trees were a bright yellow, the sky was a clear blue, students were milling about as students do...and a large, fuzzy, white duck with a big yellow beak was walking by carrying a briefcase. No word of a lie. Not only was this "duck" strolling down the street, nobody else seemed to notice! I love this campus.

So there you have it. Even though I was never able to get to cartoon-land myself, I'm now content to wait for cartoon-land to come to me.