Cool graffiti on the fringes of campus. I took a walk down before French class to photograph it, and then a run back so as not to be late for French class.

The Ganja

"Recent work on people who give up a heavy marijuana habit seems to show that they suffer anxiety and loss of appetite." This according to the Economist. So, gosh: not being chemically mellow means anxiety (hey, I'd be anxious if my friend Horace the Elephant disappeared), and the disappearance of the munchies counts as loss of appetite? Tell me why we pay researchers money, again.

Slam Dunk

I just realized that our men's basketball team hasn't lost a game in three years. Holy. Pretty unbelievable, eh? When that streak ends, there will be wailing and weeping. Anyway, coming back to ME, I have no idea what's wrong with this site lately. I posted a word quiz that I took and since then everything's been all messed up.

Song du jour: "Every Day I Love You Less and Less", by the Kaiser Chiefs. This song is devoted to whatever is ailing my blog template.

Formatting Blues

Baaaah, I have no idea what that word quiz did to my blog, but it's all brokeny now and none of the margins are where they used to be. Maybe another post will fix it? Let's hope.

Spring, Sweet Spring

Spring, as my choir song says, is the year's pleasant king. I'm psyched because it's nice out and I get to wear a skirt and paint my toenails. In fact, I am doing the former and have just finished doing the latter. Joy! Today's public affairs lecture (Keynesian economics and associated thought systems) was interesting, but the lecture theatre was devilishly hot. We had our break and I nearly didn't come back in. Katherine commented to Emily, "she's like our puppy. We could just open the doors, and let her run, and run, and run!" I laughed and continued running up and down the stairs. It's amazing how good a little sunshine feels. "It's been a long, cold, lonely winter. It feels like years since it's been clear."

This weekend was good. Friday night I went to Jacob's for Saint Patrick's Day festivities -- we sat and watched Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy with Steph. Steve and two of his friends were around for a short while, but had other parties to go to (or had to go home, I don't know) and left after a little while.

This is from the same night as Emily's photo, below. Rocky Horror Picture Show and then out for dessert at Zak's diner. Here we see me and Yuna waiting for the bus in the Rideau Centre McDonald's (it was cold outside).

Emily's photo debut on my blog! She's got rhythm, that girl. Katherine looks on in horror.

"REALLY Lebanese Food: Home of the Garlic King!" This was just too good to throw out without memorializing. Wearin' a chef's hat with a crown over it? Audacious fashion choices, Your Pungent Majesty!

Hunting Season

The hunt is on for an apartment. Last night Katherine and I went to see our first one, which was quite good for practice in seeing apartments but which we would not take were it the last apartment in town. It's in a pretty nice neighbourhood, but each floor has a different base smell, and each tenant's room had its own patina of smell over the base. The paint was peeling, the floors were basically wooden slats, and there were broken-down spare mattresses standing in the stairwell. What's worse, it wasn't even really an apartment, it was a rooming-house. You can't call something an apartment unless it is a self-contained unit with a space approximating, I don't know, a living and dining room. What this lady wanted was a way to rent out three crappy, overpriced rooms for the trouble of one. Anyway, long story short, I feel sorry for the guys who agreed to live there and pay extortionate rent for a dire little series of rooms. Phew. Rant over.

Anyway, other than the apartment hunt, life is pretty quiet. I have plenty of schoolwork to keep me busy. Sunday I went snowboarding, I've watched some good movies with friends, and this weekend I met a second Jessica and Katherine and a second Mike B. One of those meaningful coincidence things -- I should get the Existential Detective Agency from I Heart Huckabees on it. Actually, I should have them come work for me because Lily Tomlin is priceless in that role and it would be beyond cool to meet her.

In other news, I'll be going away to Toronto for Easter (hooray!) to stay at Katherine's house and eat her food and make her show me around the city. And then that week, Chris, Colleen, Aine, and Niamh plan on coming up to see Ottawa. I cannot think of an uglier time than early April to come see Ottawa, but there's always lots to do, whatever the season. So it should be fun despite being unscenic. Nancy left a very nifty guidebook called Secret Ottawa, and I'm sure that when I have class they can just adventure on their own. They are good at adventuring, besides being tons of fun to have around. I don't have any exams until April 14, so I'm not too worried about the few days of studying I'll miss.

I suppose I should go do some of that "plenty of schoolwork" now. Bah!

You know this boogie is for real

Once more, apologies for my slacking in the blog department. I haven't been particularly busy, it's just that nothing all that special has happened. I'm currently in the throes of finding an apartment for next year. Tomorrow Katherine and I go to look at our first one. We think it's in a dodgy part of town, but I can't remember exactly where the dodgy part of town starts and ends. In any case, if it is in some kind of crazy gangland where your bike will get stolen if you leave it unlocked for three seconds, we just won't take the apartment!

This weekend was fun, if not especially productive. My poli sci essay is all handed in, so I kind of took a mental vacation. I'm happy to report that my snowboarding skills have taken leave of me completely, and I have never landed so few of the jumps I attempted. Although I did land flat on my back like an overturned cucaracha several times. Anyway, I went with Mike B. and his friend Mike B. (I am not joking) and it was a lovely Sunday. Next Sunday I plan to go to church with Natalie, as an experiment. She's Mormon, and I'm not planning on converting but it sounds like an interesting afternoon, so I'll tag along. She says her congregation isn't mad for the evangelism anyway. I have no fears of any fundie craziness, because Natalie herself is far from being a fundie crazy. In fact, she is a lovely girl, and has a good, tolerant head on her shoulders. And you can tell her mother I said so.

Also great fun this weekend was Friday night, when I met the other Jessica and Katherine, who are Emily's friends from Hamilton. They came up for the weekend and went out to see a production of Fame, during which time Emily, Katherine, Yuna, and I watched Rocky Horror and then had a dance party of extreme hotness. We have the moves, what can I say!

Today's public affairs lecture was kind of tedious, because we're getting into the development of concepts we already covered in econ, but Professor Carmichael managed to save it with a great story. He told us about the spooky, dark, creepy basement computer lab at the school where he did his grad work. He was down there a lot with his punch-card computer program (for 'twas back in the day) but didn't like being there alone because there was always this disheveled man with a toque and an umbrella, muttering by himself among reams of computer paper. Years later, Carmichael was shocked to see a photo in the paper and recognize the scary computer lab man. Upon recognizing him, he read that this man had received the Nobel Prize for mathematics and was, in fact, John Nash. Whoa. Anyway, I thought it was cool. But now I have to leave behind Professor Carmichael's story-telling prowess and go to French class. (As an aside, Carmichael has been known to go off on two-minute rants about how awful Scotland is. "Scotland has the worst brand of Christianity in the world! Presbyterianism is... Calvinism without the fun! And the food is dreadful." It's grand.)

Goings-On

What a lollyblogging kind of week. I haven't updated because nothing terribly exciting has happened -- political science essay past due, cross-country and choir practices, another NAC performance (actually, that was terribly exciting!) and miscellaneous other fun. The Keener Squad and Notl went out to the Bayou on Friday night and had some tasteful fun. Line dancing, anyone? And life continues as per usual. I got my midterms back and have no complaints about my marks. Not all that much to update about. Tonight was nice, though. I went running with Jacob and then to his house for "people food". After an inordinately large dinner and some wine-tasting with his mum, I went back to the dorm.

Now to kick this little head cold. Rarr!

Coolosity

Today I got to sing with my choir at the National Arts Centre, with the NAC Orchestra, and it ruled all. I mean, I wasn't good or anything, but at least I got to impersonate a loon and wear a kicky white puff-sleeved blouse with velcro fastenings, paired with a red dress with a sash. And it was for the children, so it was worth it.

Four Strong Winds

They blew me back to Alberta, eh? Prepare for a long blah blah blah about all the things I did, for it was truly a great little reading week. What kind of reading? None, really. I managed to get to the U of A law library for a day or so (Laura, it really is awesome! So peaceful...). Other than that, it was pure fun. A few days of snowboarding at Sunshine and Lake Louise with the family was a great mini-vacation. We didn't get ourselves moving very quickly in the mornings, but it was most lovely to be on the hill again. I crashed into approximately 1 043 trees but didn't hit anyone. Mum and Dad took a lesson and raved about it afterwards -- their instructor, a Scottish "nice young man" named Tom, apparently really knew what he was doing and helped greatly. We did some of my favourite slopes at Sunshine, as well as some new ones. Our day at Lake Louise was not quite as fabulous, on account of the icier slopes and lack of fresh snow, but still fun. Mum and Dad are antsy for Elise to pick skiing or snowboarding so she can buy equipment and we can stop messing around with rentals. I don't know which she wants to do, but it's probably a difficult choice because it locks you into one or the other. Anyway, we were in the mountains from Saturday to Tuesday. We had some good meals, we tired ourselves out skiing, and we watched movies on TV because we were way too zonked after a day on the slopes to do anything else.

Then it was back to the Park for several days of mild debauchery. Wednesday night I slept over at Tawnie's, which was le fabulous. We watched several episodes of Oz and were immature. We almost got run over as we wandered the streets in search of candy, and Tawnie mocked me for shrieking. Feh to you, Miss Toonie! Feh! You would totally have shrieked if... you had... shrieked. Yes.

The next day, Thursday, I went to the University to make Mum drive me home (she did, because she loves me and wanted to go home early anyway). We got a haircut -- really, a haircut because mine looks exactly like hers, only with bangs. Then I went to the mall to drop off resumes and visit with Tom, who is still "working" at the hobby shop. When I got there he was playing Risk with his boss and the boss's daughter, the fourth player having already lost and skulked off. Tom is smart enough to lose when playing Risk with the boss. However, he really needs to get permission to do homework or read or something on the job, because the games he has evolved to pass the time are just way too intricate. "OK, so you line the little wooden knobs up like this, in a triangle, and then you flick them. Now the last one in line has to go between the other two, and the object of doing this is to get it to the other side of the counter." He took his break and we had a nice talk in the food court. He was full of the news: Jesus Paul has a girlfriend, which Tom deems "cute". Our graduating class also has its first out-of-wedlock child on the way. Go us? I won't say who the proud parents are, mostly because I don't even know whether it's just a rumour and also because it would be impolite. Additionally, there is a chance that it will drive people crazy not to know. And I am evil. Anyway, I papered the mall with applications for summer jobs and also had a very pleasant chat with Tom. So Thursday was good.

Friday I hiked over to the University library with Mum to do the aforementioned reading and checking out of books for my poli sci essay. Hopefully it will be useful. And I had a lunch date with my mother and her friend Margaret, which was fun. It's always good to hear the faculty's point of view on such things as undergrad misbehaviour, to prevent future missteps. In this particular case, the moral of the story they were discussing was: If your prof's mother has just died, then don't be an arse -- don't ask her about your midterm marks as she's heading out the door to go to the airport. Honestly, some people. Anyway, a pleasant afternoon at home, and then the lovely Heather came over for dinner and a chat. Whee! She is really a most excellent person, that Heather. After that (I know this is an encyclopedic blah blah blah of my life's chronology but that's just too bad for you) it was time for a night out at the theatre with the fambly. Metamorphoses is sort of amalgam of Greek myths. It's a little on the bewildering and uneven side, with no clear narrative structure, but there were some bits of it that were just stellar (Phaeton: "And it was, like, chaos, right?"). Pretty cool. And there was an actual pool in the stage, which they used all the time in the staging and which was kind of nifty, so I can't complain loudly because that part was cool!

Saturday was delightful -- I did my first-ever tax returns with Dad. We discovered, to our mutual delight I'm sure, that the gummint owes me $2.11. I plan to put it away for my retirement when I get my cheque. Whee! And then it was more resume distribution. I have applied at eight places. Oy. And then Katie, Colleen, and Lori came over for dinner. It was awesome. After dinner we sat in my room and laughed hysterically for an hour and a half, just as it should be. I showed them the Llama Song and Colleen got all fascinated-like. Katie shocked us all by showing up with short brown hair and glasses (who is this person? we thought). She looks fabulous, though. Brown hair suits her, and is after all more her natural colour. After that dinner, it was over to the Lockaus' to await Laura. Like Katie, she had been in Vancouver all week, and her flight was delayed because of fog. But she got back safe about 11:30, and we said hi and had some birthday cake for her long-past birthday. She seems to have had a good time in Van City, and brought back the remains of a White Spot kid's meal: a cardboard pirate ship. Way too cool. Actually, that reminds me of a woman I saw on the bus to the University, reading a book entitled Pirates of Desire: A Personalized Romance Novel starring Deborah and Curtis. Seeing this, I proceeded to choke myself stifling laughter. And I was all alone so nobody else saw the weird, weird badness. Anyway, that's about all I did. Thank heavens the break wasn't longer because then I would be here until I died, writing this blog post. If you, dear reader, have survived this long, I commend you for your endurance and patience. Fin.

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I'm going home tomorrow!!!!

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And my econ midterm did not totally suck. So I am in a very positive frame of mind just now. At lunch with Katherine and Jacob today, it struck me once again how I always manage to construct at least two totally different groups of friends everywhere I go. So I guess we don't change that much, really. Anyway, call me if y'all are in town! And remember, after March 3, the Jessica Hotel is open for business, because school looks a lot less crazy. Tours of Ottawa's finest bakeries and tchotchke shoppes available upon request.