The Ecstasy and the Agony

Ecstasy: The new Harry Potter movie is out soon! And Corpse Bride has received a favourable review from my critic of choice, Boopsie. Also, The West Wing's season premiere last night rebroke old ground by not, you know, sucking. Mike has started watching Season 3 of my DVDs and said to me in law today, "What are you doing?" "Eliminating genocide. What are you doing?" "Eliminating the penny. I'll come back." Such a great scene. And our collection of Eddie Izzard DVDs has grown to four. So happy days, in the media arena at least! This has been Entertainment Tonight.

Agony: At the age of eighteen, I am teething again. Yes, that's right, both wisdom teeth on the right side of my mouth have decided on one great push on the Eastern front. I am not impressed.

Have just had a sort of tedious weekend; yesterday I did not venture further than Emily's apartment down the hall. Emily is deathly ill, by the way, which kind of sucks. She's been wandering about for the past few days in pajamas, looking stuffed-up but cosy. Today the remnants of Rita have come north to rain on us. Katherine is happy because it is fall weather and she gets to wear her sweaters. So that's a bright spot. Also, Grandma called, which was very nice. I quite miss talking to most of the relatives, because they only ever call the mother ship in Al Birda. Over and out!

Voulez-vous rendre gloire a Dieu avec moi?

A nice, quiet weekend and a reasonably peaceable Monday. Jacob and I organized (I use the word loosely, bear in mind who we're talking about) a cross-country meeting. We have races on Thursday and Saturday, and I may or may not survive them.

Sunday I did an interesting thing, more or less by accident: I went to French Mass. Give this to the Quebecois: they are speedy we were in and out in forty-five minutes, the homily having been about two minutes long. And everyone lined up for Communion in the most hysterically French way. Instead of doing the usual thing, where every row stands up when there is space in the aisle for it, and proceeding in an orderly manner up to the altar server, and then back down the other aisle. Instead, the congregation elected to all stand up and move into the aisles at once, get Communion, and wheel around to come back the exact same way they had come, squeezing between the pews and the line of people waiting for their Communion. Ridonkulous! I have told Mum, Dad, and Boopsie this whole story and now I am telling it here, because it seemed so hyperbolically French. "Surely nobody really does things like this!" I said to myself in amused consternation.

Trala. I love my international law class but am not amused with the textbook, which is terrifically dense. The professor seems to be a hippie type, who refers to the US President as "George" and accuses him and his friends of throwing the entire discipline of international law into crisis. I think we will get along well. He also did not think me a silly twit for making an enquiry about proper Latin spelling. Just so you know, ius and jus mean the same thing. And, shout out to Becca, "if you don't care about Latin orthography, then I don't care about you." Hee!

Silence, Honk-Inciters!

Well, there are people twenty-four storeys down on the corner of the big intersection who are waving some kind of "Honk To Validate ___" poster and people are honking at them. Then they scream. Were I in any way interested in sports I would probably know what they are honking and screaming about, but as it is I have no idea what's going on aside from that whatever is going on it is clearly audible from twenty-four storeys up. Not a good way to start a glorious Friday.

I say "glorious" because it has finally cooled off a bit. It was in the low thirties off and on for several weeks and I was not amused. But now fall is coming in, the trees are changing, and I can wear pants instead of my lightest linen skirt. All is well. School is starting up in earnest, too. I have readings and notes and big case studies for law. I am already scared of that last one, though my poli sci essay looks like "the sweetest deal known to man" (to quote Mulroney, what a megalomaniac he is). It's five pages to my case study's twelve. We'll see how those turn out.

This is a nice point in the year because there isn't so much work that you can't cope. You can still take a few hours to do something nice, so last night I did. After our co-op information session, Katherine and I went downtown and wandered around for a bit, stopping for pizza and to lust after beautiful paper at her favourite paper store. We found ourselves saying things like "ooh, a vermilion vellum envelope, that's what you want! Or maybe the Italian parchment, that feels gorgeous... Eee! Look at these Christmas placecards!" Then it was on to the National Gallery for a few hours. It's free for students on Thursday evenings, so why not? I am very much into the Renaissance stuff, and Katherine likes abstract and modern pieces. Those I can take or leave, though I do like a good Magritte -- I find those reproductions of famous portraits where he turns the sitters into coffins grimly amusing.

It's been a pretty good week. On the weekend, I went to a BPAPMers-only party (several people brought their non-BPAPM friends, so Notl, a journalism major, didn't feel alone after all). The next night there was a housewarming party at Notl, Joni, Devin, and Diana's. It was also to celebrate Diana's tanned return from Portugal, where she had been visiting family. I saw all of the 10th Glen people, which was mostly nice, with a few exceptions (old, angst-filled love triangles make for awkward party-going even for those not implicated). I helped Jacob put up posters for cross-country, and I ran into a few people from 3rd Dundas last year. Kemi is in my Monday night poli sci class, which is great because she's great and I was worried I wouldn't see her this year. In slightly less happy-sparkly news, my law course looks like lots and lots of work. The first week, he gave us the Peace of Westphalia to read in addition to several chapters from our incredibly dense textbook. And this was a fairly light week.

Unlike last weekend's festivities, I anticipate a quiet couple of days. I'll probably be home most of the time, just hanging out and obsessively watching our growing collection of Eddie Izzard comedy routines and reading for law. So if you miss me, then give me a call. I will be happy to hear from you. As it is, I'm planning on calling a few of the kids from home.

For those interested, I know what I want for a Christmas, birthday, or "aren't you fabulous" present: the new Corb Lund album Hair In My Eyes Like a Highland Steer. Yes, shocking, Jessica is asking for country music. But it's so darn catchy! It's this week's CKUA album of the week. I asked for it at a small record store and the guy said "uh, we don't have it, but he's on the cover of Excite this week." So I guess Corb is hitting the big time, if by "the big time" we mean the cover of a free weekly entertainment paper.

One last thing: I Harth Darth is fantastically hilarious, and I haven't linked to it before, so here it is. Elise found it a number of weeks ago, and I've been reading it with glee. Bye, all!

Poster Sale Day is always a good day.

A Sigh of Contentment

The worst things going on with me are, at the moment, blisters. Thursday I wore adorable purple pumps for the first day of class, without knee-highs, and then went rock-climbing with Jacob the next day. My heels are very mad at me. The rest of me (but not my heels) is very happy today. I've had only one class so far, public affairs. The professor seems nice, though you can't really get to know someone in 45 minutes of orientation-style lecture. It looks like an interesting class this year; we get to look at lots of American policy including (hominahominahomina) the decision to go to war in Iraq and the response to Hurricane Katrina. This sets my little heart to pounding, as well you can imagine. This week sees my class:party ratio at 1:2, soon to become 1:3: There's one tonight at Notl, Joni, Devon and Diana's townhouse, to welcome Diana back from Portugal. There was also one last night, at which we didn't stay very long. It was a B.PAPM party but was not terrifyingly buttoned-down, as one would imagine such a party to be given that we are, after all, the future deputy ministers of Canada.

Today I am having a good day: Katherine and I had our Saturday outing for groceries at the By Ward Market downtown, where we got a free extra cucumber from one stall, and Bank Street, where we got an Arabic lesson from the baklava shop guy. So charming are we. And I did laundry, which doesn't seem like such a chore because the apartment complex's laundry machines are infinite times better than the res ones. Actually, I must go take my stuff out of the dryer now, so I hope I will talk to you all soon! And for those of you-all starting a new year of school, I hope it goes swimmingly.

Five hundred twenty-five thousand six hundred minutes

525,600 minutes, 525,000 moments so dear. 525,600 minutes How do you measure, measure a year? In daylights, in sunsets, in midnights, in cups of coffee. In inches, in miles, in laughter, in strife. In 525,600 minutes - how do you measure a year in the life? What a long, strange trip this is. It is getting easier, but we were all wounded. If there is one bit of good that happened a year ago today, it was that we really realized that the most valuable things we own are not things, but friends. Today Katherine and I went out to the Market and walked around in the rain. We went to St. Patrick's and I said a quick prayer, and we looked at shoes and vegetables and smelled perfume and lived in the world.