Hark The Herald Festive Things

This Christmas was a good one. What follows is a massive regurgitation of events and meetings because I have been running around like mad seeing friends. I finally got to attend Ingrid and Les' carol singing party, after three years' absence because of bad exam schedules. My nuclear family went to The Nutcracker and I fell in love all over again with the music from the Arabian dance. A very nice boy I'm getting to know crocheted me a scarf - this elicits different reactions in Easterners and Westerners, weirdly enough.

It was a very big trip for sportiness; I was entirely justified in lugging my massive chock-full bag of gear across the country, because I used every last item. Waking up at 3:00 a.m. to catch the Magic Bus gave me a chance to put in a great day of snowboarding with Matt at Lake Louise. One of my fondest memories of this day is the fall I took in an area just below an avalanche zone, and my subsequent decision to shout "FUCK" at the top of my lungs from underneath the snow. Fortunately there were no casualties. Katie took an afternoon to give me and Keith the ski instructor treatment; I am now semi-competent on snowblades. I also went skating twice, once with Matt (again, nobody died despite our decision to use the roped-off pond) and once with Becca, Diane, and Becca's newly-arrived Kiwi, whose name is Alex. Laura looked on and watched the New Canadian Moments as Diane and I taught a Caribbean man to tie his skates properly while his two kids dangled happily from other skaters' arms. Becca coached Alex through his third-ever skating expedition. Fun fact: in New Zealand, ski hills are called "ski fields", despite the unpromising horizontality that term implies.

Further athletic pursuits were undertaken when Katie's family let us look after their puppy over their three-day ski holiday. Gromit is a two-year-old Labradoodle and a ball of energy. He was in extremely good spirits the whole time and reminded us how much fun it is to have a dog. However, they're also a lot of work and impossible to tire out, so I don't know whether a new puppy is in the cards for the Alberta gang this year!

There were less health-oriented festivities as well. Earlyish in December, Mike had a joint birthday party with a few of our high school classmates. Attending that was actually a little weird for me because it was full of people I hadn't seen in years, to most of whom I had never been particularly close. Becca, Laura, Diane, Matt, and the gang went out dancing one night to celebrate Epic: Respect The Ave IV. Super-good times, though bittersweet for me because Matt was going to Mexico on a family vacation the next day. In related news, Mexico is totes boring and not nearly as much fun as I am. Right? Oh, and I hung out at Tom and Paul's a bit too - the New Year's party I dropped in on at their friend Lindsay's place held a high concentration of nice, funny people I hadn't met before, so hopefully our paths will cross again. Tom introduced me to the film Monkey Shines. Watch it if you wish to be instilled with an abiding fear of capuchins and genetic modification.

Colleen and I got to see each other too, hooray. She, Katie, and Keith went out with my family for an early birthday dinner for me. Katie and Colleen also rolled around on my last day in town to have mahumbah. And I met Tawnie for lunch, which was super because I hadn't seen her in a while.

Retail therapy was high on the list of things to do, so now I have some excellent additions to my wardrobe for starting work tomorrow. Scary but exciting.

Finally, it seems that everyone in the universe is getting engaged, which is really freaky but also kind of heartwarming. I hope you have enjoyed this crazed melange of half-digested thoughts. If not, suck it up.