Montreal is on Fire

So Montreal is on fire. As I am one of the luckiest people on earth, the fire is located down the street from me. This makes the entire apartment smell like a bonfire. I personally have not ventured outside today, but one roommate went downtown and another down the street to the dep, and they both assure me that the streets near our house are crawling with police officer and firefighters. On top of all this, it has been raining the entire day. The news, while focusing on the fire in California rather than the one down the street, has informed me that even downtown is covered in ashes. This probably means that our neighborhood is going to be disgusting tomorrow. Hopefully no one was hurt in the fire, and all the law enforement officer working on it succeeded and emerged unscathed. I'm sure CTV will tell me all about it in the morning.

The reason I did not venture outside today is not because of the fire or the rain, but more because I stayed up a good part of the night to fix my computer and play a game of online scrabble with my boyfriend. I slept in rather late, and then had to devote the rest of the day to working on my Sociolinguistics project on gender neutral job titles. While today has been tedious and I really don't have much to show for it, I still feel pretty good about yesterday. Yesterday, I holed up in the Ferrier building and wrote all seven pages of my rough draft about the Royal Cemetery of Ur. For some reason, the prof wants this paper 1 1/2 spaced instead of double spaced, which means I had to write even more. Boo to that, but Yay to having a rough draft done. Now, even if I sleep for the next 5 days, I can still hand SOMETHING in. Granted, I pretty much ignore one of the questions on the paper topic in my rough draft, but the rest of it is fairly well written for a rough draft, so I think it could earn a gentlman's C.

Don't worry. I'm going to try to edit it to improve my chances....and my grade.

In other news, Yahoo News has informed me that thanks to a ringtone that sings "condom, condom, condom", condom sales in India have risen. Yay! The campaign also included tv and radio commercials, and managed to reach 150 million men. I guess this is epecially important because many of the migrant workers frequent sex worker and are willing to pay extra so as not to have to use a condom. This is bad, and why India started their condom campaign. According to India's Aids Control Body, the sales of condoms have increased by about 85 million in the last 6 months. Yay for safe sex!

I need to work on my Sociolinguistics paper now so that my roommate and I can watch the BBC adaptation of "Persuasion".

Brief Catch-Up

My goodness have I been negligent in keeping this up! I blame it partially on my laziness, by business, and the fact that I forgot the password for a little bit.

Things that have happend since a million years ago include, but are not limited to:

1. My boyfriend, currently residing half a continent away, came to visit me for six days. We watched movies, went out to eat, visited friends, etc. My little brother also came up for the weekend and we all went bowling with my straight-haired roommate. It was quilles, which I guess is called duckpins in New England. To be really specific, it was called "petite quille". The balls are all really little and slippery. It must be said that I can hold my own at this sport...or at least I have been able to the whole two times I've participated in my life. Naturally, we all went out on this adventure on the other side of the island and visited Little Italy on a day where the torrential rainfall left us wet for days. Well, maybe not days, but we had to dry all of our clothes. The hours spent inside were not enough to dry us off. Mon chum and I also had a little joint celebration since his visit was almost right between our two birthdays. This is how I acquired my super cool orange ipod.

2. Obama won the election on my straight-haired roommate's birthday. She had received a divine dream where God told her to bake an Obama cake so that Obama could win. Not a religious person, she took this very seriously, and we all enjoyed delicious Obama and Sub-Obama cake while watching the election coverage on Fox news, the only American station we could manage to get sound and some picture on with our rabbit ears. The 3 crazy Canadian channels we get were not covering the election! How dare they not fully cover something that doesn't really have to do with their government! Amazingly, even when Obama was up something like 167-89, Fox news still managed to spin it, making us all believe McCain was in the lead. I'm just impressed.

3. Mr. Claws and Pistache have been fighting less, but when they do fight (i.e. Mr. Claws attacks Pistache who tries to run and hide or curl up in a ball), it seems to be more severe than before.

4. We went through something like 5 bags of candy on Halloween, each containing 70-90 pieces of chocolate. We went crazy and bought the nut-free good stuff, assuming we would get to eat the left overs. Unfortunately, we ran out! Some popular costumes amongst the youngsters included princess, Indiana Jones, Lion, and Giraffe. In fact, I think they had a lion and giraffe costume sale. Amongst the older trick or treaters, no costume seemed to be the way to go, which I think is just cheap. If you are 16 years old, and you want some candy, at least put some effort into it.

5. My curly-haired roommate and her family graciously put up with me for Canadian Thanksgiving, inviting me to their home outside of Toronto. The meal was fabulous, the company wonderful and warm, and the visit to Toronto exciting. I finally went up in the CN tower. The picture included is one I took from the top. I even tip-toed over the glass floor, although I prefered the outside caged in part to that.

All in all, I've just been busy with midterms and working on my final papers, due at the end of this month. For my sociolinguistics paper, I've been reading a bunch of drivel about Non-Sexist Language and its many pitfalls but why we need to use it anyway. Hopefully I'll be able to use these hours and hours of readings I've done somehow in my final paper. I just wanted to study the use of gender-neutral job titles, but now I am stuck reading all this and my prof thinks I am a crazy radical feminist. I am crazy and a feminist, but I don't think all of those words should be applied all at once to me.