Yes, I am THAT lame.

moar funny pictures

Fruitcake!!!

It's that time of year again! I am eating my second slice of my mom's famous fruitcake, and it is wonderful. Luckily, it is one of the few foods that Mark doesn't like & won't eat, so I get all of it to myself, hahaha.

I am working like crazy lately, missing out on all sorts of fun stuff but making the much needed $$$ for the holidays, and the much needed lattes for stressed out holiday shoppers. I promise that in January I will also get a job that uses the years of education I've put into my head.

We had some more awesome couchsurfers here last week - Emily and Hannah from Washington. They were loads of fun, more so for Mark who got to hang with them and create all sorts of inside jokes - me, I was working, boo.

Currently, I'm looking forward to next Friday, which is a very special lady's very special birthday, and also the day that I leave for skiing with Mark's family. See, it's ok for me to do that because very special lady is going out to the movies that night, and doesn't want me home. I still feel guilty. I have good plans and ideas though!!!

Caption me.

Courtesty of Megan's awesomely long update - my favourite photo of Mark and I! What were we looking at?!

Thursday Grab Bag

Last night Mark and I headed out to Whitby for a belated birthday dinner. I gathered up my mom, dad, and grandparents, and we had some pretty wicked sushi. Ok, Dad, Mark and I had sushi, while everyone else opted for food that is cooked. It was really nice, and made me appreciate what a great family I have. I feel so loved and valued, and genuinely enjoy everyone's company. WARM FUZZY FEELINGS ABOUND.

Mark and I came back into the city this morning - he's at school and I've been having a pretty great day in the apartment. I did laundry, read the newish New Yorker, had myself a white chocolate mocha (mmmmm), a surprise call from my favourite Londoner - a dude who is renowned for his bad phone habits but has been making a habit of proving us all wrong over the last few months. Also, I checked out the gym that is a mere 2 minutes from my apartment. I think I will join, fingers are crossed for membership assistance. I've also checked out a bunch of job postings. My heart is currently not in it, for fear of landing some sort of mediocre position that will ruin my chances of attending the annual family-in-law ski Christmas. I'm still hoping for non-mediocre positions though.

I found a new internet radio player, Iceberg Radio, and the Canadian Indie station has been consistently awesome for the 30 minutes that I've been listening to it. They're currently playing the We're Marching On song that was in my head for 2 months this summer while I traveled. Speaking of traveling, I've not stayed true to my promise of posting pics. Here are some random ones:

KITTY!

I am still sick, but ALMOST not sick anymore. I've spent a lot of the past week just lounging around the apartment, and this little gal has been an endless source of entertainment and company:

I caught Kurt's cold.

I know I've been neglecting this space lately. It's not that I've been busy or anything, I've just been not in a very bloggy sort of mood. Lots of good stuff has (have? has.) been happening lately, like... getting engaged. That's probably why I've not been blogging - it feels so weird to write that on the internet. Mark and I are really, really happy! We haven't put much thought into planning yet, except for a rough 'next-fall' idea for the date.

I've also been thinking about the whole 'engagement' process. My current ring is from a No Frills vending machine (the first one was from Dominion, but it broke and was quickly replaced). I really love the sentiment of these rings - its very sweet and surprisingly personal. I'm not sure that I want to replace it with a 'real' ring though - I've always pictured myself as just a wedding band girl, no big shiny thing on my finger (also surprising, normally I am transfixed by shiny things whenever I walk past them). I also don't want poor Mark to feel like he needs to spend a small fortune on so that I can feel like I'm fitting in with expectations. I would much rather have that money put aside for something that will benefit US - like a house account or something like that. I guess my mind is pretty made up and this is all myself coaxing myself into bucking tradition.

In other fantabulous news, Rafael is finally here from Cuba!! After a year and a half, Sharon's Canadian family is complete! IT was so great to see Rafa again - the last time I saw him was their wedding, and I had never dreamed that it would take this long for him to get here. He and Sharon seemed so happy together, very much like an old (well, half-old HAHA) married couple. I can't wait for double dates and being there as Rafa experiences so many new things :)

Birthday shoutouts go to Megan, who is not nearly as old as I am, but still supercool. Mark and Kurt and I spent a whirlwind 24 hours with her and Derek in Mtl last weekend - good times were had despite we three Torontonians wimping out at midnight and leaving the Montrealers out partying till 4am. I think we made up for it on Sunday on our wonderful croissant-fuelled walk through Parc LaFontaine with its multitude of cute dogs.

AMBUSH!!!!:


Kurt has to sit by himself because he is a smoker:


There is a puppy nearby!


Heading home, with energy!

FINE

Since somebody *cough*sharon*cough* has been hassling me about my lack of posts, here we go. In my defense, I've been too busy talking to people in real life to put stuff on the internet, and most of the stuff I want to talk about is not the stuff I want to be stumbled upon here.

Some things:

The Welcome Home Warming party that Mark planned was great. There was lots of fun, and great people, and vodka ahoy. Some of us were the worse for wear the next day, but some croissants in Trinity-Bellwoods made our stomachs happy anyways. All of our couches have been broken in by sleepover guests and I got to spend some good times with Paula who came all the way from Windsor for the night! It was great having her, Maggie, Sharon and John (all of my London 'girls') here for the night.

Now, I'm getting ready for a potluck. I'm thinking brownies and maybe something else...

I'm getting really excited for Sharon, who may have a husband in her house by this time next week. WOOOO!

Also: Atrish is coming to visit! YAY!!! I have to think of super fun things to do this weekend, hopefully involving Halloween parties and sushi. I made myself a hooded cape yesterday - I just have to decide whether to be red riding hood, zombie red riding hood (I know, it's stupid), or some yet to be determined superhero.

Speaking of making things, you may have noticed the quantity of housewifey things I've been up to. I'm unemployed, and starting to worry about it a bit. BUT I have an interview lined up for Monday, and hopefully some other prospects as well. Wish me luck!

And she's back!

Wow. For the first time in almost four months, my feet are on Canadian soil. It really feels surreal - I can't believe that my travels, for the moment, are over. I've missed Canada, my friends, my family, for so long. It's good to be home, but I know I'm going to miss the freedom of my travels. But, now its time to find myself a job, pay off the bills, and settle into life in one place.

Tomorrow, I get to see Mark for the first time in more than two months. I'm unbelievably excited - it's impossible to sit around home but equally impossible to focus on a task for long enough to get it done. Mark has found us a new apartment and I get to move in tomorrow. Little Italy, here I come! Today, I'm procrastinating from packing, but hopefully I'll manage to at least bundle together a coherent collection of clothes - I can worry about the rest later.

I'll post a trip update later, for now here's a random image from my day: I went to Chapters to pick up a New Yorker (yay! the one Western luxury that I've missed!) and glancing out into the mall, I saw a grown man (grey hair and all) riding a mechanical giraffe, with a soother in his mouth. Way to go Oshawa, you just got weirder.

OMG I am DONE

A quick update before I head out to dinner: I have officially completed my program with Unite for Sight, and I have also just submitted applications for school next year. That is nuts. Also, I finished the applications 3 days early, unheard of for me! I am all kinds of happy right now.

I will post some thoughts on my experiences here in the near future - for now, I am going to be too busy enjoying my last 5 days in Ghana. I'm planning on traveling with some friends to a place called Beyin tomorrow - it is supposed to be a beautiful beach ton on the West part of Ghana's coast. From there, we're going to travel to Nzulezu, a village nearby built on stilts above the water. I'm excited!

I should be back in Accra by Tuesday night, and then I'll finish my preparations for leaving. And now, have a look at my Thursday:

-leave here at 01:00
-arrive airport b/t 01:30 and 02:00
-fly from Accra to Morocco at 05:15
-Arrive Morocco around 09:00
-Fly Morocco to Brussels around 14:00
-Arrive Brussels around 18:30
-Catch bus from Brussels to London (?) at 21:00
-Meet my cousin first thing Friday morning.

THAT IS NOT A FUN DAY.

But then, I get to see people who know me! And love me! And I get to hang out in England and Wales for a week with my mom. THAT IS FUN.

Akwaaba (you are welcome)

Well, I've officially been here for four weeks! I'm having a fantastic time, and am so happy that I came here. This past week and a half has been our busiest yet, hence the delay in sending the email. Our work handing out flyers around Accra has paid off, because we're seeing about double the typical number of patients at our local screening centre. Outreaches have been especially busy, with the minimum number of patients still above 100, and the max at well over 150. We were very lucky this week to have two professionals with us. One is Dr. Lotfi Merabet, an optometrist/professor at Harvard Medical School - he's here to help out with outreaches as well as to teach our ophthalmic nurses whatever he can. Oddly enough, before going into optometry, he did a PhD in vision research in the same lab as Claudine (for those who don't know Claudine, she's a post-doc at York and a very brilliant/wonderful person)! One of the other new additions to the group is Roberta, a young doctor from Italy. Having more than one person doing the actual checkups is helping things run more smoothly. I saw the monthly report for August yesterday - over the month (I was part of the program for the second half of August), we saw almost 1500 people over the course of about 20 outreaches. 150 of those people were referred for surgery.

My most interesting day was probably last monday, when Maureen and I went with Margaret (a nurse from the Crystal Eye Clinic) to the Liberian refugee camp in Buduburam. Buduburam is home to approximately 46 000 refugees who fled from Liberia during the civil war. Most of them lost their homes and family, and likely will stay in Ghana for the rest of their lives rather than go home to try and start their lives from the beginning again. There is a full-time screening program there that is run by local volunteers, and once every two weeks Margaret spends a day at the camp to see the patients who need medicine or possibly referrals for surgery. The camp was extremely well-run and efficient. We saw well over 100 patients, with Margaret diagnosing, referring and prescribing at an average of 2.5 minutes per patient! Everybody was friendly, and it was a very positive experience.

Aside from work, we did manage to have some fun this week too. We visited the Wli waterfalls on Sunday, and it was probably the most beautiful place that I've ever seen. I waded through the water and got within about 5 metres of the falls. Apparently, you can stand right under them during the dry season, but since we've had a lot of rain, they were a bit too 'watery' to do that during our visit. Standing so close to the waterfall made me feel like I was at a spa - the wind and water coming off them felt like an intense body scrub, something I desperately needed after spending 4 weeks in the smoke and dust of Accra. On our drive back from the falls, we stopped at the monkey sanctuary and saw some monkeys. We brought bananas with us, and the monkeys peeled and ate them right out of our hands! That was a very good day.

Accra Week Two!

I've had a very busy, and very good second week in Accra. I feel like I'm settling into my life here a little bit more - feeling more comfortable with my clinic and outreach duties, making new friends and getting more confident with exploring my surroundings. As with last week, my favourite part of the program is outreach. We did a few more local outreaches this week, seeing about 70 - 100 patients each time. I also completed my training, so I'm now able to dispense medicines and feel like I'm really helping our patients.

The most significant part of the last week was our overnight outreach. While Accra has a lot of need for eye care, regions outside of the greater Accra area are in even greater need. For this reason, a three night trip was planned to take us to New Edubiase, which is about 4 hours Northwest from Accra. We left Sunday afternoon and had a pretty relaxed night - got dinner and then went back to our hotel (The 'Holliday Inn' , haha) where we killed some giant spiders (they were really, really scary) and went to bed. Other than the spiders, the place was really nice! Our two outreaches went really well - on the first day, we met the local chief and then went to a village where we saw just over 100 patients, referring 19 of them for cataract surgery. The second (and final) day was really busy - we saw more than 200 patients over 9.5 hours, referring 30 of them for surgery. That was also my first day actually dispensing medications, and it went very smoothly. It was interesting thinking that the number of patients sent for surgery just from that one day of outreach would have used up all of the money we each raise for Unite for Sight - at the time it felt like a lot of money but I'm sure that the demand for surgery extends far beyond the money we bring in. We ended up staying in New Edubiase again that night rather than drive back in the dark to Accra (we were all too tired anyways). It's likely that we'll be going back there again next month, a trip that I'm looking forward to very much.

The rest of the week has been relatively low-key. On Thursday I went to a market to hand out some flyers advertising the Unite for Sight eye camp (and picked up some cool souvenirs to bring home). We had an outreach today that was pretty successful, and we'll be going on outreach again tomorrow. Aside from work, we've got some fun plans for the weekend - we're going to a beach tomorrow night, and hopefully we'll be doing a day trip to a canopy walk and a former slave castle on Sunday! While Accra isn't the sort of place to do 'sight-seeing,' its really interesting and after all of the sight-seeing in Europe, it feels like a really unique and lively place. Accra itself is huge, and the landscape surrounding it is very dry and barren, but as you drive outside of it for any distance the land changes and you see remnants of the rainforests that used to cover the area. I'm hoping that sometime in the next month we may get a Saturday off so that we can do a weekend trip to some other coastal places that are supposed to be really nice.

And on a completely unrelated note, I managed to get a care package from my parents! I've been pretty close to running out of a few necessities (contact lens solution etc) thanks to some bottles opening in my checked luggage. Mom and dad came to the rescue, and with my boxes of fancy granola bars, twizzlers, cookies (although apparently mom thinks that I need a diet, she gave me oreo 'thinsations,' with only 100 cal per pack and none of that great oreo taste!) I'm now the envy of the other volunteers. I also have some tea and a flashlight c/o my awesome neighbors Don and Colleen who arranged the shipping :) Thanks so much guys!

Hi again

It's turned out to be quite a slow Saturday in Accra. We were up bright and early and ready by 7:45 to head out, but as sometimes happens, the driver was late to pick us up. I used the bonus time to: go to the bank (all by myself! go me!), do my laundry (by hand, go me!) and make my first hot chocolate (from Belgium, yumm. And the hot chocolate wasn't all by myself, I offered Atrish, my food soulmate, a sip, and he had three, but it's ok since he shares his spicy food with me). Finally, we headed to the outreach, only to find out that it hadn't been publicized at all and thus there were only 4 patients. Packing stuff up at noon, we headed back to the guesthouse where I am taking full advantage of the lack of power outages and internet outages to write this down.

Tomorrow we're headed off to parts unknown to do a three-day outreach. I'm a little bit apprehensive about where we'll be staying, what we'll be eating and that sort of thing, but I'm trying to not worry and just be excited. I'm really enjoying hanging out with the other volunteers, so really, this will be just like a road trip with friends where instead of just getting somewhere and drinking, we will get somewhere and be useful and helpful and make people not blind before we drink our box of $1.25 wine. Did I mention that we found wine, 1 litre, for 1.25? It's really bad. BUT: 1.25.

Also, I had a dream last night where I got married. I had on a really pretty lace dress, and I took a limo to the ceremony, and the next thing I knew I was waking up the next morning at home and telling people I couldn't remember what happened after I got out of the limo and nobody believed that I'd forgotten my own wedding so soon.

I'm feeling a little bit silly today, can you tell?

PS: OGC hahaha.

In Africa!!

First things first: Congratulations to Sharon, Rafa and Talon!!! I am so happy for you guys! I can't wait to come home and have a celebratory mojito with you.

Ok, long time no update!!!

I'm not sure that I'll get much better at updating, but I wanted to let everyone know that I'm finally here! And also, Tai, the package I sent to you got returned to my home, so if you want, you can email me a new address :)

AFRICA!

I arrived here on Tuesday morning at 3am. After a little airport mix-up that left me hanging out by the taxi stand until 6:30, I finally was picked up and made it to the guest house that I'm staying at by 7ish. I pretty much slept the whole first day!

The next day was my first day working with Unite for Sight, and man do they ever throw you right in there! I went with some other volunteers to a village called Choechoe where we were running an outreach program. I went with another volunteer to set up the visual acuity tests, and after a few patients I'd gotten the hang of it. The only difficult part is that there is often a language barrier. We have translators, but they've been known to wander off at times! The day wasn't too busy (so i was told) - we only saw about 50 patients.

Thursday wasn't quite as good - I went with the other new volunteer (my roomate) to the Eye Clinic to watch surgeries. Well, it was pretty much just like the last time I watched surgeries, except it was after a questionable lunch and followed by a bumpy ride home. I went to sleep for the rest of the night. I think I am definitely going to lose all of the weight that I packed on in Europe.

Yesterday was uneventful, except that I ate a bit and wasn't sick :)

Today, however, was awesome. We had another outreach, and ended up seeing 140 patients. I did registration all day, which means that I did a basic interview with each patient to find out what their major eye complaint was. There was a bit of a lull in the middle of the day so I played frisbee with the kids that were hanging around - so much fun!

Now I think I'm going to have myself a shower. And by shower, I mean fill buckets of water and dump them over my head.

Wien!

Sorry for the random writing style of this email, I only have a few mins before dinner!

Vienna (Wien) Day 1!
Arrived early in the morning after an interesting sleep on a night train. Vienna has a lot of free/near-free bikes that we signed up to use. Our couchsurfing host Martin (who, btw, is very nice) took us on a short bike tour of the the ring, or first district. When it started to rain too much, we ducked into buildings (had a great juice in the cafe of a museum). One of the buildings we went to was the Austrian parliament, where we ended up getting a 20 min video history of vienna/austria. Went out for a good, cheap meal, and then back to Martin's where we watched "The Third Man" for another taste of viennese history.

Day 2!
Mark and I had a fantastic time today. We got up pretty early and walked around the main district. We visited two museums: the Leopold, and the Secession. The Leopold was fantastic, they had a great exhibit of Kolo Moser's works, and a few other really great artists. We also went to Cafe Central, which is a very famous old coffeehouse (Wien has a great coffeehouse tradition, it's the perfect city for me!!) and had some great coffees and shared a piece of their signature cake (this was breakfast #2, after breakfast #1: gelato). We then walked to see the famous (and old) Ferris wheel from the movie 'the third man,' and then it was back to Martin's for an amazingly refreshing shower. We're just getting ready to go out for sushi now - hooray!!

Guten Tag!

Hi from Berlin!

This is by far them most beautiful city that we've seen so far, which is saying a lot. Mark and I rented some bikes today and biked around the city (and for a few hours, joined a free bike tour that gave us so much info). There are so many incredible places here. Despite biking around for about 7 hours, I feel like we've only had the most cursory tour of the city. Tomottow we're hopefully going to see more places in more detail.

It's a bit incredible to be in a city that has been around for such a long time, but feels completely new. Even the buildings that look really old are new - most had to be rebuilt after the war. Also, it hasn't even been 20 years since the fall of the Berlin wall (of which we've seen many fragments), and you can feel the rebirth that is still occurring. The weather was fantastic today, but is supposed to be a bit rainy tomorrow so we will likely hit up some museums, and our favourite cafe. We'll be here until Monday night, when we catch our first overnight train (we splurged for the couchettes rather than the upright seats) to Vienna. I've found us a place to stay (couchsurfing again!!) and I'm very excited!

Dzien Dobry!

Wow - loads of internet access here in Slupsk!! I'm trying to upload some photos now, if it works then I'll share them here or post a link :)

As with pretty much every trip that I go on, I leave updating until I've done so much that it's overwhelming to think of putting it all down. I think that the last time I wrote, I was in Krakow. Since then, Mark and I have been to Zakopane (in the South of Poland), on a farm near Wroclaw (aka Breslau) - with massive food poisoning from an ill-conceived idea to eat kebab from the basement of a train station, in Gdansk and many surrounding areas, and now in Slupsk.

Gdansk was really, really nice - mostly because Mark's family there was amazing. We spent almost the entire week with his cousin Bozena's daughter Weronika, who was our faithful guide and co-mischief-maker. We managed to see (I think) everyone on Mark's dad's side there, which was no small feat. A lot of time was spent on the coast of the Baltic Sea - testing the water, swimming a little, a lot of walking, and some amber-hunting (I found some!!) We also toured around the Stare Miastro (old town) where we snuck onto the roof of the famous 'Golden Gate' and had a beautiful, exclusive view of Gdansk's most famous street.

As for family, wow. We spent one day with Mark's cousin Ella's family, where we got to celebrate the double birthday of her son and daughter. While we were there we also went to see Stuthoff concentration camp, which was just a few minutes away. We spent a day on Mark's uncle Stachu's (sp?) farm, where we picked raspberries (Maliny) and cherries (Wisnie) that I turned into a crisp for the aunt and uncle that we stayed with. Bozena and family took Mark and I to see Malbork - a famous castle about two hours from Gdansk that dates back to the 1200s. It had been destroyed completely during the war, but was restored in the following years. I'm feling a bit of old, beautiful building overload, but I'm going to soldier on because I know I have many, many more to see! After the castle, we went to a rented cabin on a lake, where we swam, kayaked and grilled kielbasa to our hearts content. Mark's aunt and uncle were wonderful - I will probably be full until Africa from all of the amazing food that his aunt made for us. Most of it was made from fruits and veggies from their garden and the farm! They also gave us some wonderful gifts - to Mark, a ring, and to me, an ambernecklace. I was blown away. And completely rivalling Rafa's grandmother for 'most adorable woman ever' was Makr's babcja Kowgier. From when she held my hand the whole way home from the train station the first day that we met, to the goobye hug today, I felt nothing but love from her. Awww... I miss her so much already!! It was so sad to leave them today, but we were looking forward to meeting Mark's mom's side of the family which made it a bit easier.

Slupsk, whie a bit more low-key, has been so nice. We've sat and talked (as best as we can with Mark's pretty good Polish, and my terrible Polish), ate, and went to their garden. They are so nice and I'm really looking forward to spending this week with them. Tomorrow, Mark and I are going to go to a beach, and possibly again on Wednesday. After a lot of rain during the first week in Gdansk, the weather has turned absolutely beautiful.

Ok, so if all goes well, I'll put up some pictures tomorrow. I'm off to bed now, and I'm sorry if there are too many spelling/grammar mistakes. I think the Polish spell check won't be of much use and I'm too tired to proofread :)

Love,Jen

In Poland!

I can'tbelievethat I'm finally here! Mark and I flew out of Toronto sunday evening and after spending 3 great days in Glasgow, we'vemade it to Krakow. We met up withour couchsurfing host, Craig, in Glasgow on Monday morning. After dropping off our bags athis flat (after noo sleep on the plane) we wandered around the city until he finished work. We went to a few beautiful parks, ate some fish and chips, and Igot us lost on theway back to the flat - actually ending up back at the fish and chips shop an HOUR after we'd left it. On Tuesday we wanered around the city again, visiting the Botanic garden and having a great vegan lunch (Mark had Vegan haggis!!). That night, we went outwith Craig and his friends to a great back alley vodka bar, and later to the student pub for some dancing. After the pub, we had some true Scottish street meat: the Scooby Snack. It's a bun enclosing a potato scone, hamburger patty, a sausage patty, cheese, and a fried egg. Toronto need them - they're truly the perfect afterbar food! Needless to say, we had a good sleep-in on Wednesday (yesterday) morning and then Craig took us up to Loch Lomond for some countryside. To thank him for everything, Mark and I took him out for Indiam buffet, and then he dropped us at the train station so that we could get out to the airport, where we spent a very uncomfortable night. Poland has been great so far, but there'll be more on that later :)

For Bookish People

I just got an email from McSweeney's, which is my favourite publisher due to it's consistently awesome releases (their Quarterly, The Believer magazine, as well as some swell books). Apparently they're having some tough times due to losing about 130K when their distributor folded:

"As you may know, it's been tough going for many independent publishers, McSweeney's included, since our distributor filed for bankruptcy last December 29. We lost about $130,000 -- actual earnings that were simply erased. Due to the intricacies of the settlement, the real hurt didn't hit right away, but it's hitting now. Like most small publishers, our business is basically a break-even proposition in the best of times, so there's really no way to absorb a loss that big."

I don't usually get advertisey, but I seriously love this publisher and a) think more poeple should know about them, and b) would be sad if they went under. Anyway, since it's summer, and most people like to get summer reads, maybe you'll order them from McSweeney's? I highly recommend The Children's Hospital by Chris Adrian (except that it appears to be out of stock so maybe you're interested in The Secret Language of Sleep instead?) and Mark highly recommends What is the What by Dave Eggers.

PS - I'm done Chemistry! Physics ho!

Quick Update

(my mom - queen of the sale, on her throne :)

Our garage sale was a fantastic success!! Between people dropping off donations, and selling our junk, I managed to (I think) meet my base fundraising amount! Everything else is gravy (and by gravy, I mean cataract surgeries - don't serve them with turkey). I had a great time talking to people all day, which meant that not too much studying was done, so I've been cramming like crazy to make up for it. I think I'm in pretty good shape - I should finish up with Inorganic Chem tonight, which only leaves me with Physics to cover. Then, I'll hopefully have a day for review and practice tests.

I also happened to win an awesome contest hosted by an awesome music blog!! Hooray!! Tomorrow (eep! I'd better do a ton of physics before then) night I'm going to check out Pela (not, as I originally thought, Pele). To win, I had to make the best musical suggestion that Connor hadn't already covered. I knew if I suggested Basia Bulat, I'd be a shoe-in, and I was right. So thanks should go out to Basia and Co. for making such incredible music. At least its going to be not too long of a night... I think I'm only interested in seeing Pela due to the actual headlining band destroying my ears when I tried to listen to them.

PS - both Pele and Pela are great and deserve a good listen (as does Basia)!!

PPS - In other music-y news, YMG, I've finished your cd and hopefully will hit up a post office tomorrow!

Interaction with inanimates.

Last weekend was the sort of weekend that I'd love to save up for times when my plate is empty. It was so full of wonderfulness that I even stopped worrying about studying for hours at a time! Seriously, why can't I save it? Why did it have to be right then? Oh well, at least it's pushed me into full-on panic and get stuff done mode!

By weekend, I mean weekend starting Thursday, which technically was my last day at York. I got a significant chuck of paper written (still have some brainstorming to do about the discussion, but that'll have to wait till post-exam), and was picked up by Mark in for our super-special anniversary dinner spectacular. Foregoing our typical fancy restaurant, we headed to a pretty sweet chinese supermarket where we split up and secretly gathered ingredients for our designated parts of the meal (me: appetizer, dessert, mark: main). We then headed back to his place and cooked in relative secrecy, and then feasted. Like crazy.

Course one (I really wish that I'd taken pictures): I made yaki nasu, which is one of our favourite things to eat when we go out for Japanese. I found the recipe through a google search, but it led me to a wonderful foodie blog, which I've added to my list of daily reads. It was sooo good, and will probably become one of my staples.

Mark's Mains: This is where it got crazy. Mark made a different dish for each of our four years together. And he made full portions of each. 1) Sesame-five spice grouper steaks. 2) Soy-ginger Mushrooms. 3) Asian pears poached in white wine. 4) Most delicious chicken that I've ever tasted. All of them were damn good, and we had a TON of leftovers.

After dinner we were getting kind of sleepy (like after thanksgiving, but worse) so we had some coffee and waited a while before dessert. I'd made a Shortbread-Blackberry pie (also inspired by tea&cookies), to try and recreate the magic of our BC trip. And then we basically exploded.

Happy 4 years, us.



Friday was mostly uneventful, except for the lovely lunch I had with, and courtesy of, Olivera. I'm going to miss working with her - I've honestly been so lucky in my lab to be surrounded by such warm, caring and intelligent people.

Saturday is when things really picked up: I dragged myself out of bed bright and early (ok, 9, it's still early for me) and made it into Toronto an hour and a half later. I met up with Paula at the ROM around 11am, joining the already-massive line to reserve tickets for the opening of the new addition. After an hour and a bit stationary, and another 45 minutes inching towards the front (past David Suzuki!!), we scored tickets for 2:30. In the morning. And then, we walked down to Travel Cuts and picked up my Brussels-->Accra ticket (by way of CASABLANCA).

OK now I am getting excited:



We finally headed over to Sharon's for some backyard relaxing (and guacamole eating). It was so good to just relax and hang out with Sharon and Paula, along with a few other characters who showed up along the way. We got ready without hurry, and at around 10 headed downtown to meet up with Maggie and possibly join a group of old friends from Western who were out for a pub crawl. I'm getting a bit overwhelmed thinking about recounting everything else that happened that night, so I think that I'll just link to Paula's post about it. And upload some pictures. And go to bed. Mmmhmm.









PS - going to be after the museum? 6:30 am. Paula and Sharon made it till about 3, but Mark and I wandered around until five, and then walked our way back to Sharon's. It was amazing - right before we left (maybe 4:30 am?) we headed down to the lowest floor, where there was an exhibit of Japanese art. It was probably the nicest exhibit in the museum, but aside from the security guard, we were the only ones in the room for the longest time. It was surreal and I loved every minute of it.

It's raining me, watch out!

I really can't wait until I am on a plane and everything that needs to be done in the next three weeks is either done or I've at least moved past worrying about it. I am starting to feel like a little ball of stress, and its showing. My hair is falling out! And I'm falling over! Damn. Don't pity me though, I'm starting to feel a little bit more in control of my to-do list, and I'm not going to let any of it fall to pieces.

And speaking of falling, I watched my first surgeries the other day. For part two of my eye training, I watched my ophthalmologist perform 4 cataract surgeries. My two major impressions: 1) Oh wow it is so amazing that we can do this! Your lens got cloudy? No problem! We will just suction it out and insert a new one and by the way, you also won't need to wear glasses anymore because it fixes that problem too!; and, 2) There is no way to wrap your brain around the idea that suctioning out part of the eye can be a good thing, therefore, it conks out on ya.

I was watching (through a high-res microscope no less!) the first surgery, thinking about how absolutely amazing it was, when I started to feel funny. So I went to go sit down. And then when I started to get up, I realized that I wasn't on the chair like I thought I was... I was right out on the floor. Beside the surgery-in-progress. I had absolutely no recollection of not being on the chair, just of things being a bit woozy. Yikes. The other ones that I watched went a lot better (for me - for the patients all of the surgeries went extremely well). It really is incredible.

Also, I'm officially done at York. I still have more things to do there, and they'll get done, but at least for the next few weeks I can focus on studying and getting other stuff done that I've neglected for far too long! Tomorrow, I study, and see Paula, Maggie and Sharon all in one place, and see the opening of the new ROM crystal. Amazing!

PS the other faint was more of a close call - I had a funny reaction to a needle and went all woozy on the nurse. Buck up, body!

Thank yous!

Damn... sorry for not posting for such a long time. Excuses: I'm finishing my paper, studying for the MCAT, and trying to sort out many things for the big trip. All of it is giving me stressy tummy aches and an acne'd forehead.

My main reason for posting now and not just forgetting about it until things calm down a bit (like, October) is that I want to express how floored I am by the generosity of my friends. Firstly, to Yellow Mustard Girl and to Phronk: you are amazing. While I've never met either of you in person, I enjoy your writings immensely and am quite convinced that you are super-cool people.

Megan: man, you rule. I've not been able to get you on the phone yet... but when I do, oh boy, there will be many squeals of gratitude and I promise that if I ever get to plan a blind date for Bryan Webb and Derek doesn't mind, I will hook you up.!

Seriously, you people are great.

PS: I shadowed an ophthalmologist this week, and learned how to use an ophthalmoscope to check for cataracts and corneal ulcers. Super cool!

PPS: Mark has a new blog! YAY! You should read it!

The Sales Pitch

Not sure if I've mentioned it here or not... but... I'M GOING TO AFRICA!!!! After hanging out in Poland with Mark's family (we're heading over there on June 24th! Flights are booked!) I'll be going to Accra (the capital of Ghana) for 7 weeks! I've volunteered with Unite for Sight, an international non-governmental organization that aims to cure blindness and provide eye care to people who wouldn't otherwise be able to afford it. I'm going to be conducting visual screening tests, and getting glasses for people who need them, or referring people for (free!) eye surgery if they need it. I'm so excited - after spending three years at the Centre for Vision Research, I'm finally going to be able to put the knowledge into action.

Ok, now this is the part where I ask for your help. I've committed to fundraising at least $1400. This is in addition to paying for my accommodations and airfare - that part has already come out of my pocket. The money is going directly to Unite for Sight and will pay for eye surgeries (mostly cataract surgery). Each surgery costs $50, so I (WE???) will be restoring vision to at least 28 people! I would be so grateful if you would be able to help me out, even if its just a couple dollars or what you would normally spend on a coffee! I promise that I, and definitely the people who have their vision restored, will be endlessly grateful to you.

I've created a fundraising page that you can check out. It allows paypal donations, and also has the address for sending cheques if you'd prefer to donate that way. I can also forward any cheques to Unite for Sight directly.

Click HERE to sponsor me!

Any fundraising ideas would also be greatly appreciated :) Let me know if you have any questions!

Flume Tunas.

I just got back from a great weekend in Lake Placid with Mark, Ryan, Matt, Jenny and Jen. We stayed in an awesome little cabin and did an amazingly huge hike. It was stunningly beautiful and I can't wait to go back there, or somewhere like there. The weekend made me want to go live somewhere beside a river on a mountain.

We're going to Europe!

I guess it's hard to top a post about experiencing near zero-gravity.

The last week has been insanely busy, what with moving out of the love apartment (including the house-cooling party), visits from Paula and Megan, hoboing around Toronto, travelling to/from Whitby, working, and going to shows (two today, and Casiotone for the Painfully Alone on Friday). Also, Mark and I booked out tickets to Europe!! We'll be flying into Glasgow (so exciting!) spending a few days there, and then heading to Krakow where our Polish adventure will begin. Maybe we will come back from our trip cultured and polished?

(yes I know that was a terrible joke)

Things deserving more detail: Leaving the love apartment. We had a really great last weekend there - the housecooling was a lot of fun and I really enjoyed the camping feel of the last few nights. By the end, all that remained were candles, records, and blankets, and the simplicity was beautiful. On Monday, I cleaned that place SO well, partly because I loved living there and partly because I really liked the supers and didn't want to leave them with a lot of work. Taking a last look before closing the door on that space was pretty sad, but Mark took me out for a lovely sushi dinner and reconvinced me that our trip will make it all worthwhile.

Megan-visit! Megan came with me to Whitby for my first night back at home to make the transition a little bit easier. We met up in Toronto and had some Vegetarian Haven with Bronwyn and Maya (Bronwyn's friend/roomate) and then walked down to the Go Train and took it back home. It was awesome to have some good girl talk, sleepover styles. We made some strawberry rhubarb crumble pie, and went and picked up crazy Mark so that he wouldn't have to walk 10K to my house.

Hopefully, I'll write a bit more this week and post some pictures. Now, Mark and I are headed downtown for some Mount Eerie and some PB&J (that would be Peter Bjorn & John).

Edited to add:

Fun with Sharon: We had dinner a bunch of times and painted our nails in the sun on her porch and had wonderful chats AND THEN SHE DITCHED ME TWO HOURS BEFORE THE PETER BJORN AND JOHN SHOW and I had to sell her ticket. But seriously, we've had fun.

I'm a survivor.

Well, I've successfully made it through my first set of mini-gravity flights!! I've been in Ottawa for the past 4 days, subjecting myself to crazy tests all for the love of science (and, the love of doing cool things involving big planes).

Our plane, the Falcon 20:



Day one of flying was absolutely terrible - I was so sick on each of my two flights, and I had absolutely no idea why ANYONE would want to do this sort of thing:



This is our plane, doing its thing:



Basically, we do that rollercoaster part between 3 and 5 times in a row, loop back, and do another 3-5. And by rollercoaster, I mean a rollercoaster that rises and falls 10000 feet. This is only fun when its perfectly smooth, which on Monday, it wasn't. We finished flying Monday in the early afternoon. I felt sick until about 10pm, managing to consume about 12 grapes, a pickle, and a ginger ale over the course of the day. I dreaded going to sleep, because I knew I'd be waking up to another day of flying.

On Tuesday, Rebecca had the BEST idea ever: Gravol. I took half of one about an hour before the flight, and OH MY GOD it was so much fun. I got to sit in the jump seat between the pilots for take-off, listening to the going over the pre-flight checklist and chatting away calmly.



Jump-seat Mona-Lisa:


We did ten parabolas (two sets of five in a row) and I loved every minute. It was such a rush to look out the window and see sky... then ground... then ground rushing up to meet you... and then the rise up to sky again. So cool.

We celebrated the good day with some Keg, some sauna & mojitos, and some pie. I was afraid that maybe we celebrated too much, and prematurely, but today was also wonderful. During my flight today, I decided to take a parabola off from data collection and just enjoy it. So, I watched the earth shift in ways that its not supposed to shift when you're looking out of a plane window. In the mini-G phase (1/6th Earth gravity - about what you'd feel on the moon), I tossed my (empty! yay!) sick-bag up in the air and watched it hover. I floated off my seat a bit. During the 2G (twice Earth's gravity) phase, Jeff took an amazing video of dropping a piece of foam - it fell like a stone! Its funny - nobody will ever lose or gain weight as quickly or as effectively as they do during these flights. Over the course of a minute, I fluctuated between weighing about 20 pounds up to 260 pounds!! At 260 pounds, I did NOT feel like moving.

Aside from the flying, we did a lot of other fun things. We spent a lot of time out eating (from fantastic thai to one of Ottawa's three kosher 'restaurants' - actually a cafeteria in a fitness club) and drinking. Phil, Mike and I spent a ton of time in the hot tub and sauna. After the flights yesterday, we went and explored a decrepit plane on NRC grounds - apparently they're using it for materials research and examining how its body and wiring deteriorate.

NOT our plane:


Trying not to fall:


And after we wrapped up today, we headed into downtown Ottawa to see the parliament buildings. We brought the frisbee along, so we spent about 45 minutes tossing it around and I got to feel spring grass under my bare feet.




The whole trip was wonderful, and I would so do every bit of it over again (but, always with gravol for the flying bits).

The Vomit Comet

A quick update:
I am currently in Ottawa, participating in an experiment that most people think is completely crazy. I'm starting to think they're right. Right. So, there is research group that is located near the lab that I'm in, and they do a lot of vision research involving the vestibular system. Right now, they're trying to figure out hw we knoe that 'up' is up. To do this, they're trying to screw with our system, and take away normal cues to 'up.' First, they took away our visual cues: we're looking at a scene through a circular window and are unable to see anything else on the periphery. Then they rotate that scene. The whole time, you're making responses to images presented on the screen, and these responses are based on your perception of where 'up' is. Then, the clevel jerks decided that gravity probably influences this a great deal, so they decided to get rid of that (that = gravity).

Which brings us to the present: I am sitting in Ottawa, and today I have flown (twice) in an experimental airplane, and I have experienced near-weightlessness. The plane does these giant parabolas (like s' on their sides, and stretched out a bit) and when you come over the top of the curve, you get a bit of weightlessness, and almost no gravity. At the bottom, you get about 2x the normal gravity. That part SUCKs. This type of research plane is known as the vomit comet for a reason. Today,I think that I had a net total of four grapes (gross total was about a half bagel, 100 ml apple juice, and 16 grapes). But, it will be a cool story to tell the grandkids. I've completed two flights, and they're hoping to get six done in total. I've been told that they'll be able to get enough data out of three flights, so I'm hopefully only going to be doing one or two more (and hopefully tomorro.w's will be better than today's). Wish me luck!

Here is me on the plane:



It's not all bad, we did get to go to the big apple:

Somebody is trusting me with a hammer.

Tomorrow I'm going to be building a house in Scarborough with Habitat for Humanity. I'm kinda excited about this, it's definitely going to be an experience! I'm going to try really hard to not drop anything on myself ;) Anyways, I wasn't planning on talking about it on here, but a phone call changed my mind. I was asking my nana if she wanted to sponsor me, and as always, there were some hilarious results.

Some background: As a child, I was never allowed to carry my suitcase when I was traveling with my grandparents. My protesting that I was perfectly capable of carrying a suitcase led to this quote that is now entrenched in historical infamy: Put that down, you'll hurt your INNARDS. My innards. This quote has been tossed around in my family ever since! So, tonight on the phone, when my nana found out that yes, I would be building the house myself (not just fundraising), I promised her that I wouldn't hurt my innards. I then heard the rest of the story: according to nana, I have some sort of great aunt who allegedly hurt her innards by lifting something, and ended up with a tilted uterus. According to wikipedia, this is an actual condition (but, a condition that affects 20-30% of women). I promised that I would try not to tilt my uterus.

I'll wrap this up with the second gem from the call. My nana, still incredulous that I would be building something (me, who has TWO toolboxes, and uses them), asked me if I had ever nailed anything in my life.

I had to pretend to be rude and say that I was laughing at something on tv.

I love my nana.

*

Awww, Kurt Vonnegut passed away. It's been a while since I read any of his books, so I can't recall any quotes off the top of my head other than *. Here's a good one that I stumbled across today, from God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater:

“Hello, babies. Welcome to Earth. It’s hot in the summer and cold in the
winter. It’s round and wet and crowded. At the outside, babies, you’ve got
about a hundred years here. There’s only one rule that I know of, babies —
‘God damn it, you’ve got to be kind.’”

Thanks for all of the wonderful words.

!!!

There are some exciting things going on in my life right now, and duly, I am excited. I've finally found a volunteer program that makes my heart race with how perfect it is for me. I have travel plans. I have new books. I'm officially working part-time. I've been to the new Whitby Hooters (with old Whitby friends).

First things first: Unite for Sight. It's an international NGO that aims to provide vision health care to people in developing countries - and I've just spent the past 3 years learning about & working in the field of vision health. They have so many choices for placements - the ones I'm considering are in Chennai, India, and in Accra, Ghana. Amazing. I'm really excited about this - I have my letters of recommendation lined up and will be applying either tonight or tomorrow.

Another bonus with the program is the flexibility - they have a ton of different dates to choose from, so it will be really easy to work in my volunteering plans with other travel plans. Mark and I are almost certainly going to head over to Poland sometime mid- to late June, and spend as much time as possible getting to know his family. The family side of our relationship is currently unbalanced - he's met absolutely everyone who shares some significant portion of my DNA, and I've only met his immediate family. I can't wait to see grandparents and aunts and uncles and cousins.

Books: I now have a complete collection of Salinger novels. I'd read Catcher in the Rye years ago, but was recently re-convinced (Kurt tried once before, it didn't work) by Jaime to read Franny and Zooey. I plodded through it, and was won over a few pages before the end, and left with a feeling of love for absolutely every person in the world. It takes a good book to do that. Now, I'm starting on Raise High the Roofbeams, Carpenters.

Other: 1st weekday off is tomorrow: studying will be done. In a week and a half, I'm headed off to Ottawa to do some micro-g experiments, hopefully studying will be done there, too, but it will be dicey as my travel companions are some of CVR's funniest people. Hooters was great - we (4 girls: me, Kathleen, Andrea, and Molly; 1 guy: Anthony)had a fun time with our bouncy server who made plenty sure to only pay attention to Anthony. I guess it is the one place where you can't really complain about that kind of service ;)

According to my stat counter, I have a repeat visitor from the metro toronto police. That's odd. Hi there police people, I promise that I'm not doing anything illegal. I hope you find my lame stories interesting. Also, thanks for keeping me safe in my city, and please be mean to drivers who endanger people on bikes.

Welcome to April, sucker.

I was dog-sitting again over the weekend, which was ok, and nice for the most part. I was pretty blue yesterday about having nobody around to prank for April Fools - I could have put toothpaste or something in the dog's food but she wouldn't have gotten the joke. I complained about it to Adam, and then told him that the CN tower fell down (birds! Thousands of them! They all flew into it at once! They're ok!). I'm pretty sure that he neither believed me nor thought that it was a very funny attempt.

Later in the day (after noon! technically, April fool's was OVER), I was talking to Sharon in hopes of arranging a meet-up to see us some Ninja Turtles, when she dropped the bomb: She's pregnant, going to have a little bro or sis for Talon - likely sometime around Talon's birthday. I didn't believe her at first, but then got convinced and v. excited! raced downstairs to find her cell number, called her, and got laughed at for falling for it. Jerk. Though, I am kinda happy that I got pranked - I don't like it when perfectly good fun things get passed over.

Woo! Spring is here! Mark and I have taken advantage of the nice weather gracing Toronto for the past few days by getting our defrosting asses outside (see how I kinda made a pun about frozen assets there? and it doesn't even make sense, because we have no assets frozen, or even available to freeze - HA). Monday was nice enough that we walked home from College and Yonge, running into some old friends and seeing how happy people were to be out of winter. The reason we were downtown in the first place was to see Children of Men - an amazing movie about a dystopian future. The whole thing was beautifully shot, and believable. I loved it and am still piecing bits of it together in my mind. I think it actually came ut on video this week - it's definitely a must-see.

Yesterday, we headed out to a park and played some frisbee. I'm hoping to do a lot of that this summer.... I want to set up some sort of drop in frisbee thing that's just for fun and really unstructured. Good idea?

H'okay, that's enough for now. It's time to get back to analyzing frustrating data, wrapping my head around bootstrapping, and other fun stats stuff.

Hola!

¡Hola amigos del Sharon! Aquí están las fotos de su boda.

HAHAHAHA

Seriously, LOL.

Pot Kettle Black

I guess before I get on anyone's (*cough* Megan *cough* Sharon even though you're in Cuba) case about not blogging recently, I should at least get one post in myself this week. I haven't felt like writing much lately, mostly because I'm franticly trying to find some meaning from the data I've gathered over the past year and am getting slightly despondent over the fact that I may not be able to write a compelling story about it. Such is research, I guess.

On the upside of things, I had a reconnection with one of my favourite people from high school this week. Through the all-popular facebook, I started catching up with Smitha. We'd been pretty close friends in grade nine & ten, and ended up drifting apart a bit by the end. Well, needless to say, we both ended up on facebook and found that we still have so many similar interests, and on Wednesday night I met up with her to chat over coffee and then later check out Basia's show with Sarah.

I had a really amazing time, and I must say that as much as I love Mark (and I love him to bits!!) it is so nice to have amazing girl (and other) friends in my life with whom I can go out and have a ton of fun and feel comfortable being a bit silly with. I am constantly amazed at the accomplishments of my friends (grad schools, publications, conferences, amazing jobs, putting out cds etc) and feel lucky to be close to so many talented people.

Also: today is my dad's birthday (happy birthday!) and Im going home for the celebratory dinner and then to dogsit while the parents take off to barbados. I'm only slightly jealous.

A Terrible Grace

Anyone familiar with my building at York knows of the tunnel. This is an important tunnel - it connects us to the building housing the Tim Hortons, oh, and a library. A miracle of modern construction, the tunnel (built about 5 years ago) floods with water every time it rains. While coming back from Timmy's this morning, large coffee in hand, I was trying to maneuver around the folks given the task of mopping up the water, and ended up slipping in the massive puddle that I didn't quite step over in my pretty new shoes. I ended up doing the splits (I'm not wearing something split-friendly today), BUT not only did I not fall, I didn't even spill my coffee. My clumsy years have finally paid off! I can not not fall! And I can do it all with a terrible grace. Unfortunately, this also means that I don't get to sue York for damages and retire at 25.

Give me my hour back.

(will you let me keep the sunshine?)

I really, really love my friends. I've seen/talked to/heard from so many over the past few days that I'm almost feeling full of friends (a hard feeling to reach). Friday was spent with some unexpected wine, and newer friends. I somehow managed to convince people (me + wine interaction, I think) to come down to Lee's Palace to see Rock Plaza Central for an evening of robot horse rock, and it was amazing. People are fun (7 years of psychology summed up right there folks!).

I headed out to Whitby on Saturday, with a brand new batch of chocolate-ginger-grapefruit cupcakes and headed up to Mike's party with a whole bunch of old friends for some bonfires and milestone celebrating. I'm starting to feel fairly unaccomplished, like the letters following my name pale somewhat in comparison to the tangible accomplishments of my friends, who are getting good jobs, buying houses and starting families. I just hope that somehow it will be worth it, that I won't be just another Simpsons joke.




Other good things: Mark and I found some great cds at Deja Vu - Sunset Rubdown, Pele, and a find by Mark that I'll likely never remember the name of, but is good nonetheless. We took Indy to the Lake for some running around and stepping in mud. I tried skipping stones, with little luck! Mark took some really nice photos in celebration of the first really nice day of the year, and hopefully I can post those soon. Last night we got back to Toronto, and had dinner with Sharon and 24 with Maggie. A good weekend all around, and even though I'm tired for this week, I only have to make it through 3 more days before the next one :)

International Women's Day

To all of you ladies out there, happy day!

VAGINA

Three high school girls were suspended last week for saying the word vagina during a reading from The Vagina Monologues at a literary night. Apparently, the girls had been asked to not say vagina, and disobeyed the order.

OMG kids in the audience might have heard the word vagina!

GASP!

Next thing you know, people will realize that IT IS A BODY PART. Vagina is not a swear word, it's not inappropriate. Do people really want their kids to grow up not knowing proper terms for body parts? Should 15 year old girls go the doctor and call it a hoo-ha?

I wondered if this was a sign of the fall of feminism, but then realized that a real sign would be people ignoring things like this. Shame on the principal of that school, and thank you to those girls for disobeying a ridiculous order and for believing in your convictions enough to do so.

Dentists and Taxes

I've realized that I'm not very good with those things. THIS IS ABOUT TO CHANGE! I have already (!!!) completed my 2006 taxes, almost 2 months before the deadline! Tonight, I will do my 2005 taxes and be all up to date. No more will I be ms. late taxes. And tomorrow, I'm going to my surprise (I booked 9 months ago... my memory span has been approx. 1 week lately) dentist appointment, even though I no longer have coverage. Hooray for responsibility. Also, I purged my personal files last night and found my long lost twi... birth certificate. This is a bold new page in my life - to celebrate, I'll make myself a heart-healthy dinner and go to bed early.

This is the type of blog post that happens when you only have a Monday and a Tuesday to write about.

In Wednesday news, I've spent quite a bit of time staring at the beautiful world map hanging in the office. I've getting drooly and my heart rate rises every time I think about the possibilities for next year. I can't wait to see a little bit more of the world and experience other cultures. Does anyone know of good (reputable) aid organizations that focus on health or women?

Another weekend has been added to my list of good weekends. Unfortunately, there was no Paula sighting (does this mean 6 more weeks of winter? I hope not.), but fun was had at Sharon's party anyways. We played headbands (I refuse to spell it the silly, copyrighted way), and I had a tremendously difficult time guessing who I was. According to Talon, I was a boy, and there was a shark and a tank in the picture. My name started with C, and ended with a. Yup, Cuba. Apparently, pictures of people trump names of countries for deciding between "who, what and where."

On Saturday, Mark and I lazed around all morning, and then spent the afternoon at Starbucks with coffee and reading materials (the New Yorker anniversary edition was AWESOME, I'm so glad that I caved in and bought it). I've decided that I officially love David Sedaris, and I wish somebody would introduce me in the way that he introduces his characters. To cap off a lovely day, we went to the Bloor to see Volver, which was wonderful and very, very beautifully shot.

Yesterday, Mark and I made cupcakes (chocolate ginger with grapefruit frosting - yum!) and headed down to Kensington to meet up with Ryan, Jenny, Jen and Matt for some sushi, and later some movies at Ryan & Jenny's place where we ate the aforementioned cupcakes.

And best of all, today I got my purring ball of fur back - thanks mom!!!

A question.

I've just realized that I have no idea where I'm going to be this time next year. In all likelihood, I'll be somewhere in the GTA, but that really isn't a given. I hope that I'll either be somewhere doing some good, or just returned from doing some good - but really, who knows?

Where do you think YOU will be this time next year? What changes/experiences are you hoping to have between now and then? I'm curious.

Bon temps à Montréal

Mark, Jaime and I have returned not much the worse for wear from our mini-trip to Montreal. This one was slightly less whirl-windy than usual, the result of taking it easy and doing whatever rather than planning for every minute. We stayed in with M's homemade brownies and generously-poured 'drunks' and had a great night talking and peer-pressuring M into facebook.

Saturday was a beautiful day, and we took advantage of the mild (only -5!) weather and walked around the Plateau, listening to the church bells (they ring every hour, on the hour, for an hour!) and trying all sorts of delicious things readily found in the Mont. Seriously though, Mark had a BOWL of gourmet, organic, single plantation, 70% cocoa hot chocolate. Realizing that hot chocolate should be consumed in association with going skating, we headed to Parc Lafontaine and talked ourselves into spending $14 on skate rentals (way better than a movie!) and strutted our stuff around the ice for a while.

Last year:


This year:



Feeling good after our little bit of exercise, we headed back to M's place, grabbed a Jaime and a Dave, and ate some more brownies pre-dinner. Yum. We headed out to L'academie with Erin, Sebastien, Elodie and Dawson, and splurged on deliciousness, followed by more deliciousness at Rockaberries (mmmm... I'm really glad that I made mark get that crumble!). I may have eaten a bit too well - upon getting to the bar, I promptly fell into a state of barley awake.

Sunday morning included a sleep-in, some poutine for Mark, and a duct-tape wallet, and only semi-sad departure (see you in a month and a half, M!). Hooray for road trips :)

New shoes!

I can't wait for warm weather to be here. I will bike around in skirts and cute shoes all day long.

Thursday side of the street

Today has me thinking that I should completely redo my schedule and not work before noon. My Thursday night class has allowed me to start at noon rather than 9am, and I have had the BEST day. I woke up easily, before my alarm. I puttered around the apartment and hung out with Annie. I picked up my new jeans from the tailors, and was not rushed or late on my way to York. At work, I've been motivated, and productive (well, not RIGHT this moment) and feeling perkier and clear-headed than I've felt in weeks. Hooray!

Also, great things have been happening today. I was flipping through my Eye weekly on the bus and came across this picture, accompanied by a full-page article:



That guy there on the left? That's Michael. I met him through Mark, since they are and have been in many bands together. He is hilarious, and that photo made me laugh out loud on the bus.

A couple of minutes later, I *just* missed a call. When I checked my messages, there was a very urgent one from John. He was frantic, saying that it was of utmost importance that I called him back immediately. So, without even bothering to search for my long distance calling card, I called him. And asked whose house was on fire. Apparently, there was no real emergency, he just wanted me to call him back that day so he made it *sound* urgent (note to us - this may solve the all-too-common problem of trying to get in touch with him, just leave messages sounding like you're hanging off the side of a cliff and he's the only one who can save you).

His question: what is Sharon's new contact information?! "I can't find her number and I NEED to call her because it's almost her birthday!!!" I laughed at him and told him that he's going to run into problems if he uses facebook to manage his life. I reminded him that her birthday happened right before we went to Cuba, therefore, is in May. All because Sharon listed some random day in February as her birthday.

Lol.

In other news re: goodness, Mark and I watched Broken Flowers and Saved! last night. While he favors the former,and I the latter, they were both really good and worthy of watching. Saved was absolutely hilarious, and made me like The Macauley again. We managed to watch both of them in one night even though my Yorkdale stop turned into 2.5 hours rather than 0.5 hours. I scored though, using my Bay gift card to get some sweet tops, a skirt and a pair of jeans on really good sales, and I got the cutest ever black leather flats. I want to go back and get them in gold. I need to post pics so that everyone can agree that they are the cutest.

To top off a great week: I had the Best. Sammich. EVER. It was on dark rye from Kensington, and was topped with brie, tomatoes, avocados, and a slice of prosciutto. MMMMMMMM. In unrelated news, I'm getting fat.

Happy Valentine's Day!

I hope that everyone finds the Mark to their Jenny!

Plans for today include eating yummy cookies packed into my lunch, and kid-watching. Not in a creepy way... in a helping out with homework and bribing with boardgames sort of way. Mark and I may find some time to watch movies and cuddle. It's going to be an experience.

Much love to you all :)

Here goes.

At the moment, I'm killing some time on campus waiting for my night class (back in class! yeah!) and I figured there was no sense attempting to be productive. Also, my mom thinks I should blog more. Here goes.

Mark and I went to Edo again last night with some of his friends as a winterlicious thing. Now that w'lish is almost over, I'm feeling a bit bad because I didn't end up going with the people I'd originally planned on dining with. Jaime & Sharon: Next time! Edo was really great (again) - they really go the extra mile, and every course is consistently great. I'm SO glad we switched out reservation from the restaurant with crappy reviews. I know that winterlicious is supposed to be an event allowing people to try fancy restaurants on the cheap, but really - very few of my friends would normally even consider paying $25-35 for dinner, and wouldn't consider those prices to be cheap. And looking at my account balance, I shouldn't be paying that much for dinner either. However, I think when I am in the mood to pay those prices, I'll be going back to Edo. Yum.

Superbowl weekend was really good - turkey chili was consumed (and washed down with too much rum for my head to handle) and I paid attention to only about 5 mins of the game, as usual. Sharon's house is looking really good these days. I can't wait for housewarming fun!! (Housewarming fun x2! Ryan and Jenny are also warming up their awesome new place TOMORROW!)

Also: you know you're in Forest Hill when you walk past treehouses with Satellite dishes.