tired of traveling with my family. I know that it's only for a short time and that on monday I'll be on my way to Ottawa and other parts east but it is very draining to sit around and be surrounded by the petty and uttterly meaningless bickering that my mom and brother engage in so much. Also I dread the family gathering stuff which will no doubt take place all week since we are here for my cousin Marissa's wedding. I do look forward to seeing Marissa and her soon to be husband Peter and I look forward to seeing my cousin Crystal and to maybe spending some time with an old friend from high school who moved out here a few years ago but over all I really dislike Oilberta. The spectacle which is the Calgary Stampede my "culturally conservative" and frustratingly "Fraser Institute-libertarian" relatives all make me feel very out of place here and I dread sitting at dinner with relatives who make glib jokes about me going down to South America to join the Shining Path gurerillas or other random and hurtful things.

I go on at length about the importance of forgiveness yet I find it quite hard to forgive this place and it's people. I have a lot of dusty old hatreds linked to this city and to my childhood that are due for some serious re-examination and trashing.

I do look forward to one thing though I look forward to climbing onto the roof of the elementary school where I did grades 1-4.

When I lived here and when I came home to visit from boarding school that roof was my only real sanctuary. I'd sit up there and smoke cigarettes or read sci-fi novels and smoke pot. Once in a while I'd take a friend up there and we's throw pieces of tar and rocks off of the roof and talk about sniping cars with bb guns (I wasn't a very nice kid). But that roof has a lot of me up there and the view from the top of the Gym takes the piss out of anything else in this dirty old town.

(I am probably being too hard on the family members I just described as right wing maniacs in the veign of Stephen Harper or Ralph Klien. I know that they are only doing what they do and believing what they believe because for what ever reasons it feels right to them and even if I have no love for their beliefs I have respect for their right to have them and for their convictions towards them. I would love to be able to talk seriously with some of my uncles and possibly broaden both of our outlooks but I always feel like I have to be on my guard because they are either trying to "act like the man" or attempting to get a rise out of me. anyway I'm ranting and I have better things to do with my time... like make the online edition of the Radical.)