IT BURNS! The goggles, they do nothing!
At least, I would assume goggles would do nothing if I wore them, which I don't. They're not really much of a defense against allergies, which it seems that I'm suffering through now. My symptoms are nothing major - it's not like I'll be incapacitated if I don't take my meds or anything - but they are significant enough to be irritating. Specifically the itchy eyes. I can deal with sneezing and having my nose be a solid mass of mucous, but the fact that it feels like scratching the inside of my eyeballs would help just gets to me. Fortunately, following the credo of Better Living Through Chemistry, I have drugs that help.

So there hasn't been that much activity here recently, which is probably a result of my not having that much to say in recent days. In fact, one of the only things of note is that it's over. I was at my aunt's for dinner last night, and I had ribs. They were very good ribs, but they were ribs nonetheless, and as such my brief stint with vegetarianism is also over. Grand tally? 30 days, which is basically a month and since a month was my goal, I deem the experiment to be a success.

What were my results you say? Well, I can't give anything quantitative (which would give my old biology teacher fits) so I'll just do my usual pouring of thoughts on to the screen. In the first, there's nothing really wrong with wanting to only eat vegetables. I didn't really find that I missed meat, and it was definitely easier to cook vegan dishes, since I didn't have to worry in the slightest about whether or not my food was undercooked. In the second, I did get the impression that it was cheaper, since for an equal amount of money spent on meat versus vegetables, I could get at least twice the meals out of the veggies. When I did eat out, I ended up spending much less on food than I did before. In the third, I didn't notice any real health differences, but I wasn't on this diet long enough to notice any real change from not having as many proteins. I suspect that were I to continue it for longer, the lack of real protein would probably become apparant.

So to summarize, vegetarianism is not a bad thing. However, I would not want to adopt it as a lifestyle without know what I was doing. My net reaction therefore, somewhat predictably, is that of neutrality/apathy.

Moving right along, the vote is coming. At least in my country. I am as of yet undecided as to who I am voting for, but thanks to a particularly inspiring speech by a friend, I am not going to give in to apathy. Prior to then, I wasn't initally going to vote, partly due to laziness, partly due to a couple of facts. One, I didn't support any of the parties running. I still don't. Two, I didn't particularly support the system in general. I still think it's broken, but I have come to the conclusion that like it or not, this is the system we have, and it's not changing anytime soon. However, and this is where said speech came in, I have found that I dislike one party in particular much more than I dislike the others, and if my voting helps that the Tories don't make into power, then that's what I'll do. I can also at least have a decent retort ready when I bitch about the government and someone tries to throw the "if you didn't vote, you can't complain" argument in my face. My decision now rests on whether to vote for the Grits or the New Democrats. On the one hand, I could throw my support for the reign of the Liberals that we all know and love. On the other, the NDP has some good points on their platform that I like, but I distrust Layton. I will have to try and give the matter some pondering.

And now, back to work, I suppose.
  ¶ 3:32 p.m.