My Cruel but Lovely Mistress

Montreal is a wonderful city full of surprises. When I awoke to see the streets and sidewalks had been replaced by undisturbed whiteness and snow clung to every branch and windowsill, I was struck by the magic of Montreal's winter wonderland. With a warmed heart and a twinkle in my eye, I admired the near perfect scene from my window. Of course, eventually I had to leave the house, and expecting the worst, I bundled myself up in many layers and wrapped a scarf around my face. When at last I opened the door to the outside after waddling down the stairs, I was pleasantly surprised yet again my the relative warmth and stillness of the air.

Walking to the bus stop proved to be a bit of a challenge. While the city was beyond lovely in its pristine frozen state and the air did not immediately freeze my skin, the sidewalks were atrociously unfit for pedestrians. As I slipped and slid around on the ice, walking in the strange way a person only walks when on ice, I would straighten up whenever it seemed I was about to hit a solid piece of concrete. Unfortunately, I hit black ice more than once. Fortunately, I managed to avoid at least six possible concussions and three broken bones by flailing my arms and bending my knees in a ridiculous manner. I couldn't help but chuckle at the double edged blade that is Montreal. First, Mme Montreal gives me the gift of the most beautiful winter scenery. Then, after she has lured me out of my safe and cozy abode, she tries to kill me.

Once on the bus, I felt a bit safer, although the magical snow had naturally slowed public transportation.

Oh Montreal! How I will miss you in all your cruel beauty!

Crokinole - The Movie!

For those of you that don't know what Crokinole is, I don't know whether to pity or envy you. I'll provide you with the bare bones basics: It is a (Canadian, I believe) board game where you flick little discs on a wooden polygon in order to gain points and make your opponant lose points. There exists such a thing as the World Championship for Crokinole, and two cousins have made a documentary about this event. I MUST HAVE A COPY OF THIS DOCUMENTARY.

The Crokinole website boasts the existence of the dvd, and even offers to sell it to me...At least until I scroll down the page and it tells me that for a mere 25.95 I can have the DVD but Sorry, the DVD is out of stock. Also, it seems there are no plans to produce the movie in the near future. Or ever, for that matter.

You see my dilemna.

My fantabulous boyfriend likes crokinole very much. So much so, in fact, that at some points over the summer, I became jealous of the polygonal board. Needless to say, he attempted to buy this documentary, but failed. In the past (especially recently), this boyfriend of mine has gone above and beyond my expectations for birthday, christmas, and anniversary gifts, both monetarily and thoughtfully. I must somehow find a copy (probably used) of this for him for Christmas.

If you or someone you know knows where to get Crokinole the Movie, please point me in the right direction.

In other news, we have bought, put up, and decorated our little Christmas tree. It is beautiful with its twinkling dollarama lights, batman and musical instrument ornaments, a paper chain, and a tinfoil star as a tree topper. The cats have not yet tried to eat, climb, or kill it, which both surprises and delights me.

Procrastination

Instead of studying and working on my paper as I should be, I am reminded of the time spent last summer on the dock at the lake with my friends. During this time, we played a lot of mad libs, which is a registered trademark, you should know. I decided, and I'm sure I won't regret this decision later, that it would be a good use of my time to play variations of this game online. It seems, however, that I have hit a new low this afternoon, as I have now attempted to make my own "mad:)glibs". Because I am a big nerd, mine is based on one of the songs from the musical "My Fair Lady".

Unfortunately, I cannot for the life of me make it work on this page. hmmm.... Too bad. I assure you it was good, too.

The picture is of Oliver, a past foster cat of the Animal Rescue Network. Luckily he has found a permanent home. For all those in Montreal, I would encourage you to look into fostering through the ARN. Also, if you are looking to adopt a pet, visit the ARN or even the SPCA before going to a pet store. These animals are wonderful, affectionate, and in need of a good permanent home or at least some human interaction and love.

Hey Hey Hey! Goodbye!

As this week hits hump day, I am already feeling a little bit at the end of my rope. Two Monday schedules in a row. Last day of class due Monday. Paper due Tuesday. Take home exam handed out Tuesday night, due Thursday. Exam Thursday morning. Meeting with prof about paper that I haven't started yet on Friday. On top of all of this, my poor computer is sick. My friend who works with the computer task force assures me it isn't my fault. Apparantly sometimes the backlight or something on laptops just stops working. Since I know nothing about it, I believe everything he tells me. He could tell me that little technology monkeys got into my hard drive discus progenerator and that this could've been prevented if I had just spent 3 mintues a day telling my computer what I love about it while repeatedly pressing control alt 9 tab. Luckily the computer itself is ok. I did have to go out and find a monitor though to plug it into. Poor baby. It really only had to hold on another three weeks.

To top it all off, windows media player and my ipod keep playing "na na na na goodbye". It popped up on shuffle at the bus stop this morning, on the computer before lunch, and just a minute ago while I was thinking about how I am going to make it look like I've been working on my theory paper for a week. Oh good. Now it is playing "Everyone Else Has Had More Sex Than Me". I love music, but it seems to just want to rub salt in the wounds today. Boo, windows media player shuffle! BOO!

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.

From Beneath the Rubble, A Ray of Hope!

I'm sitting in my room with a bag of doritos and a massive pile of books pertaining to music theory which I have percariously balanced in two "stacks". Between the Doritos and the closest pile of books is an entire stack of notecards with words related to Italian renaissance art and architecture. These are somewhat balanced on an orange marker and a note pad with a friend's email address on it. The view of that is slightly blocked by the cord from my webcam which is balanced on a mug with a smiling, ice-skating gingerbread man. Surprisingly, it is the webcam that bother me most in this situation. I set it up last night to talk to my boyfriend, but I was too lazy to put it away before bed. In fact, I am too lazy to put it away now. I regret to inform the world that I live in a pile of my own filth! Well, maybe less filth and more general disorder and untidiness, but you get the idea.

I won't even begin to describe what my floor looks like. Just take the image of the desk and multiply it by about....oh, I don't know! What's a reasonable number?.....46 billion and 32.

Lucky for me, I will be quitting this diseaster area and heading out west for the upcoming Canadian Thanksgiving. My curly-headed roommate's parents have invited me out to celebrate with them in Ontario, and I am more than delighted to go. I am ecstatic! These people are warm, kind, funny, hospitable, and wonderful cooks. Needless to say, I wish I were leaving now.

Of course, I cannot neglect to say that in the States it is Columbus Day....in some states anyway. Do the states that don't recognize Columbus Day have to go to work on Monday, then?