8.31.2005,10:04
should things really have been different, or do you just wish they had been?
I woke up with a headache this morning, to the sound of a cement mixer in the alley. That was all it took to derail my plans to go to yoga this morning. I've been feeling just sort of under the weather -- okay enough during the day but sick when I try to eat dinner and headachey in the morning. I tried to tell Cam I thought maybe I was sick, but he asked how stressed out I am about going back to school and he's probably right. I did have my first "first day of school" nightmare of the season last night. I kept wandering the ed building trying to find my classes and I'd think I was in the right place and sit down, but nothing going on would make ANY sense to me. Eventually the "prof" (they all looked like Wonka characters or something) would ask if anyone was confused, and say that if they were, then they were probably in the wrong room. They'd then give horribly incomprehensible directions to the room where the confused people were probably supposed to be, and I'd leave and try to follow their directions. Repeat as necessary.

It's just that I don't think I can actually keep 9 different courses distinct in my mind, I haven't gotten any of my shelves/desk organized yet, can't afford any of my books for about two more weeks, and feel crappy. I also have to go to future shop and enter into an epic honour battle over the future of my printer.

I'd rather be: on some lonely beach
music: the cement truck. I kid you not.
 
posted by sasha
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8.27.2005,14:37

think of how young and carefree we used to be Posted by Picasa
 
posted by sasha
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8.23.2005,09:55
Progress only exists relative to a fixed point in time. Time resists having any fixed points by staying in constant motion.
In some ways this is a week of goodbyes: lots of friends who graduated with me in the spring are now headed off to all sorts of places for more school, work, travel, and so on. Dalhousie, University of Calgary, Ottawa, Boston, Oxford, Berkeley, London, Istanbul, Senegal, all these places are lucky because of the Vancouverites they will be receiving soon.

I had lunch yesterday with two friends who are leaving this week for law school, one to Ottawa and the other to Calgary. It was surprisingly sweet. These were guys I'd only befriended in my final undergraduate year, and far more likely to get into a heated debate than any sort of sappy sentimentality, and yet we all maybe showed our soft sides a bit. We're all headed off to tackle new things this year, and all feeling a bit insecure about it, a bit afraid of what tomorrow will bring, and of not being able to meet it's challenges. I'm not usually one to admit when I'm feeling afraid or unsure (it scares the people around me) but in this case it was something we all had in common, and it was nice to get to let my guard down a bit. We parted with three or four hugs goodbye, countless assurances that "we're all smart enough, we can handle this" and so on, and one quickly quipped "Years from now we'll all laugh at this" which might have been the only thing that kept a tear from escaping. It's a scary prospect that. Did I make the right choice? Will I be good at this? Successful? Happy?

And most of my week will be goodbye like this, but I sure am glad to be seeing everyone before they leave. And tonight I'm having coffee with Milan, who doesn't leave for another month, so there. Also, I'm making a point of enjoying my last weeks of freedom before I get worked to the bone for the next year. Our downstairs neighbour took us to la casa gelato last night and I had a scoop each of german chocolate cake and maple walnut. mmmgluttony.

Headed up to campus someday soon, for the final pre-school round of paperwork and book selling. According to their website, I've got about $120 worth of books to sell to the bookstore, but those guys are such bastards, they only take the good stuff. Boring crap from British and Irish lit class or old French text? No. Old sucky computer science book? We don't know what you're talking about. But Tom King, Fred Wah, and Classics in Political Philosophy? Sure. Bloody evil bloodsucking monsters. I hate selling books, especially good ones. I really love my books, and I wish I could keep them all, but if I can't more afford to replace them in the future than I can to keep them now, then I'll have bigger concerns than being forced to badly paraphrase Tom's turtle story anyways.
 
posted by sasha
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8.22.2005,09:52

It's cloudy and I'm thinking about going back to school. I'm not sure I'm ready for the future just yet. Posted by Picasa
 
posted by sasha
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8.20.2005,11:44
dorthy was right
there really is no place like home. i'm so glad to be back, though it is taking me some time to recover. my entire family is manic and there are so many hundreds of kilometres of road between here and alberta that it feels like a wonder i made it back at all. i could use a week in a sensory deprivation tank.

current state: system overload
 
posted by sasha
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8.09.2005,17:38
first 20 words
okay, anyone want something to do while I'm gone? So maybe I'm putting off finishing packing until I come up with a magical way to fit everything into my bag... shhh. The idea is I give you the first 20 or so words of one of the books I've pulled off my shelf semi-randomly (avoiding the excessively obscure) snd you come up with the book. Sounds simple, right? And you wouldn't google them, now would you? Traditional research is, of course, acceptible.
  1. In the shade of the house, in the sunshine on the river bank by the boats, in the shade of (bonus words: the sallow wood and the fig tree,)
  2. All this happened , more or less. The war parts, anyway, are pretty much true. One guy I knew really was shot in...
  3. One minute it was Ohio winter, with doors closed, windows locked, the panes blind with frost, icicles fringing every roof,
  4. O for a muse of fire, that would ascend the brightest heaven of invention; a kingdom for a stage, princes to act,
  5. Back in the late 1970s, when I was fifteen years old, I spent every penny I then had in the bank to fly across the continent in a 747 jet to Brandon, Manitoba
  6. In the week before their departure to Arrakis, when all the final scurrying about had reached a nearly unbearable frenzy, an old crone - Vanessa gets credit for this one: Dune, Frank Herbert
  7. The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel. "It's not like I'm using," Case heard someone say,
    - and this one, Neuromancer, William Gibson
  8. The hottest day of summer so far was drawing to a close and a drowsy silence lay over the large, square houses - Kat knows her Potter! Harry Potter and the Order of the Pheonix, JK Rowling
  9. This time there would be no witnesses. This time there was just the dead earth, a rumble of thunder, and the onset of that interminable light drizzle... - Milan recognizes the brilliance that is Douglas Adam's Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency
  10. This book is about an important - perhaps the most important - global political development of the late twentieth century: the transition... (yes, okay, that is the preface, so?)
 
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,10:09
ciao!
Today I pack, tomorrow I head for the hills. Okay, mountians I suppose. Then hills. We have two days to get from here to Wetaskiwin, Alberta, and I plan to throw myself in as many lakes as possible twix the two. I'll post again when I have a strand of wheat between my front teeth. Not really though.

P.S. Finished new Potter book yesterday. Bitterly disappointed with ending. Favorite character killed by other favorite character, plus the sadening realization that snot-nosed Potter is the true test of evil, and anyone who's not sufficiently nice to him must therefore be evil after all. pfft.
 
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8.05.2005,11:15
summer stories
It's been so hot lately, and I've been so un-mobile. Trips from the house have been a few blocks only, or in a car. My doctor called yesterday to tell me that the radiologist found the crack in my toe bone. Not that I was surprised, I knew it was there all along. Since I'm not really doing much though, interesting news shall have to be dredged up from the past and the future.

In the future department, next Wednesday my mom, 3 sisters and I will load into our cute little saturn and head to Alberta. We're going to my grandma's house, a couple hours south of Edmonton, near a scary little town called Wetaskawin, to attend the funeral of my great Aunt Irene. We had originally planned to go out and have a birthday celebration for my Grandma's 70th, but thing don't always turn out that way, now do they. I should be back by around the 18th.

In news from the past, that nasty grammar course that I lost so much sleep over has rewarded me with a final mark of 96, which is preposterous.

I just have this sense: so much left to do, so little summer left. In September, the madness (9 courses at once!!) begins.
 
posted by sasha
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