One of my favorite poems

Had this strange desire to track down this poem - I was thinking about it this past weekend out in Banff and Jasper while chatting with Kim, so I scoured the net and lo and behold, have found it. I can only hope this is how I can see the world and experience all that people have to offer - I am just not a "small talk" person - that just doesn't matter.

Without further hesitation, "The Invitation"

It doesn’t interest me what you do for a living.
I want to know what you ache for,
And if you dare to dream
Of meeting your heart’s longing.

It doesn’t interest me how old you are.
I want to know if you will risk
Looking like a fool for love,
For your dreams, for the adventure
of being alive.

It doesn’t interest me what planets
are squaring your moon.
I want to know if you have touched
The center of your own sorrow
If you have been opened by life’s betrayals or
Have become shriveled and closed
From fear of further pain.

I want to know if you can sit with pain,
Mine or your own
Without moving to hide it
Or fade it or fix it.

I want to know if you can be with joy,
Mine or your own,
If you can dance with wildness
And let the ecstasy fill you
To the tips of your fingers and toes
Without cautioning us
To be careful, to be realistic, or to remember
The limitations of being human.

It doesn’t interest me if the story
You tell me is true,
I want to know if you can disappoint another
To be true to yourself,
If you can bear the accusation of betrayal
And not betray your own soul.
I want to know if you can be faithful
And therefore be trustworthy.

I want to know if you can see beauty
Even when it is not pretty every day,
And if you can source your life from God’s presence.

I want to know if you can live with failure,
Yours and mine,
And still stand at the edge of the lake
And shout to the silver
Of the full moon, “YES!!”

It doesn’t interest me how much money you have.
I want to know if you can get up
After the night of grief and despair,
Weary and bruised to the bone, and
Do what needs to be done for the children.

It doesn’t interest me who you are,
How you come to be here.
I want to know if you will stand
In the center of fire with me
And not shrink back.

It doesn’t interest me where or what
Or with whom you have studied.
I want to know what sustains you
From the inside
When all else falls away.

I want to know if you can be alone with yourself,
And if you can truly like
The company you keep
In the empty moments.

Oriah Mountain Dreamer

Entertainment book coupons and bittorrent

Just an email I sent out to my fellow residents, in case anyone else is looking for this info!

Hey Gang,

Amrita just asked me for the entertainment book coupons, so I thought I'd send it out to everybody - totally forgot about it earlier!


http://www.entertainment.com/saversguide/sbc/splash?nextUrl=%2Fsaversguide%2Fsbc



all you have to do is put in any email and password, then your address, and you get 4 free coupons a month. If you need more, just use another junk address - I'm almost certain this works (I had Chris test it before for me - it's set up automatically on my computer).

Enjoy and save - and if you're looking for more deals, the two best sites for hunting are:
www.pricenetwork.ca
www.redflagdeals.ca

both are essentially the same, and people gather deals and coupons to share.

BITTORRENT

Oh, and for those that were asking about downloading tv shows and bittorrent.

On windows, download a little program (less than 1 mb) called utorrent

www.utorrent.com

On Mac, the tiny program is called transmission:

http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/27916

once you've got that, there are tons of bittorrent sites. To see almost all at once, got to

www.torrentscan.com

I also find using www.thepiratebay.org for downloading divx movies - just go to top 100, and under video there's a tab called movies. Anything that's encoded by AXXO is always great quality. To actually watch them, you may need a codec from www.divx.com - it's a program that lets windows interpret these files properly.

For me, i get my tv shows from www.tvtorrents.com it's really well organized, it has a list of all the shows, and which episodes are up, etc. If you get hooked on bittorrent, and want an invite, let me know - I can give you some free "credits". Basically, you have to upload as much as you download so that you're sharing nicely.

On average, 30 min tv shows are 175 mb, hour shows are 350 mb, movies are 700 mb. there are no commercials, and most look great on all monitors, as they are usually taken from high definition broadcasts. Lately, with more space and speed, higher resolution shows can take double to triple the space, but do look nicer on bigger screens. You'll need a newer computer to run them properly.

Two last things. I always recommend getting an external hard drive, both to hold the shows and to back up your computers - I know most of you don't, but a word to the wise, how much time would it take to collect all your documents and get your computer working the way it is now if you lost it or if it broke down? On a mac, it's eaasy - I can give you a program called superduper!, you click a button, and you're backed up. On a PC most external harddrives have software that helps with that. The most reliable deal for an external harddrive is from Costco - the maxtor onetouch III 300 gb for about 185 before taxes - well worth the investment (I have two ;-)

OK, that's it for now. If you need more bittorrent detail, check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BitTorrent

Cheerio,

Nicholas

P.S. - pics can be found on calgarypeds2006.zoto.com

Check to see if you're tone deaf!

Hey, this is pretty neat - as you can see, I'm not world class, but see how you do!