La Grande Jatte

Where to begin? The last two weeks have been pretty crazy. Work has been fine, but the real fun is that I've been criss-crossing Eastern Canada (it is so "Eastern", just give up on the "Central" thing already) in search of fun and adventure. I have successfully located both of these things in Toronto, Ottawa, and Montreal. Thus, I present a tale of three weekends.

Mom visited me the first weekend. She got in on Friday night, and we watched some movies and bought some maps. We explored Westboro, which I had not visited in years, and had adventures on public transit. We talked about all kinds of stuff. We also ate delicious calzones with Katherine. Atonement is wonderful and I recommend you all see it. It was a nice quiet weekend, actually - Mom has seen most of the touristy Ottawa stuff, so we didn't do Parliament or anything.

I visited Colleen on the second weekend; a convoy of three cars set out from Ottawa, and we mustered up in the rest stop past Brockville and had a chatty lunch. It had been a long time since I had clapped eyes on Emily, and she and Graham had a rather entertaining conversation about the impending U.S. elections. A few hours later, I was at Colleen's. We spent a lot of time wandering around - we failed utterly to find Kensington Market, but spent a good hour and a half searching around only a few blocks away from it. Nevertheless, we ate at a very sweet little brunch place and had some good talks. Colleen has a pretty ideal situation in Toronto - three nice roommates and an adorable house in a good location.

Monday was the "real" reason we went down: the Spice Girls were in town. Colleen and I showed up at the Air Canada Centre and met Leslie, Emily, Becky, and Katherine for a satisfying and rockin' evening of Girl Power. I can recommend it wholeheartedly, although the recommendation is irrelevant for anyone who doesn't have tickets already, because the Girls are cancelling the last leg of their tour. Sad. Anyway, it was everything we'd hoped it would be: the singing sounded great, and the costumes and dancing were fantastic. Even their solo bits were good. I was most pleased.

Matt visited me on the third weekend, although actually that weekend began on Wednesday. We had a thoroughly great time. Wednesday was a bit of a slow start, featuring laundry, groceries, and a nap. Things picked up after that, though - a night out at Quinn's with Jacob, Mike, and Claude. The latter two talked about SCUBA diving with Matt, while Jacob and I looked on in a confused manner. Then Jacob explained the U.S. electoral system, and we got even more confused.

Thursday we walked around various landmarks downtown and watched Question Period (the highlight of which, for me, was a Conservative member demanding that the Liberals deliver leadership - like, I thought that's what you didn't want them to do anymore?). We went out for a nice Italian dinner before proceeding to campus. Once at school, we invaded Rosina's privacy; she had fallen asleep on her computer but we barged in and woke her up, because we are cruel like that. She told us more stories of elderly people offering her inappropriate sums of money during her work in the geriatrics ward. Eventually we left her alone in order to go dancing at Oliver's with some B.PAPMers, at Tamara's invitation. Ollie's started out unpromisingly empty, but filled up and turned out to be pretty good fun! Matt brought the Alberta: he two-stepped.

Friday we took the Greyhound to Montreal, and Montreal was good to us, delivering a darling creperie, a pretty walk through McGill and up Mont-Royal, and a historical sound-and-light show at the Basilique Notre-Dame. This was not as weird as it sounds, and was followed by dinner at a cosy brew-pub called Les 3 Brasseurs and a quick march for the 10 p.m. bus. It was a pretty busy eight hours, since we only stepped off the bus at 2:30. Understandably, we both spent much of the bus ride back fast asleep. In related news, did you know that if you slump over excessively in a bus seat to go to sleep, your stomach can go numb? Well, it can.

Saturday was similarly full of adventure. The choir had a gig at Rideau Hall, so we trucked on down. Afterwards, all of the altos were like, "there was some guy in the front row who kept kind of... looking at us." And I was like, "yeah, that one's mine." And then I told Matt and then I laughed at him a little. Further enjoyment at Matt's expense was had when the Habs lost their game in a tragic way. 6-1: just sad. It was still fun to go watch the Good Ol' Hockey Game, though!

Sunday is... today! Matt went back to Edmonton, which pretty much sucks. I've been making meatloaf-esque lentil loaves to console myself. So far this strategy is ineffective, mostly because I low-balled the breadcrumbs and suspect that I have made two pans of hot lentil mush with cheese on top. Tasty?

Dear readers, I congratulate you on reaching the end of yet another Marathon Post of Life Events. I hope you are not bored; I certainly haven't been. A la prochaine!