snow day excitement

everyone loves a snow day

i got a snow day today! that means there was 15 cm of snow overnight on the mountain and they decided it was too dangerous to drive up there, so they cancelled all classes and i spent today romping in the snow with miriam instead of in my office fending off students who want me to write their first papers for them. huzzah for that!

it's very beautiful and not too cold (top of 4), and the snow was nicely packable for snow ball fights and snow ball juggling. not that i'm obsessed.


i am still completely lacking in self-direction, but have taken up pen and ink drawing again and reading EKS for fun, and i've organised a potluck for the weekend, so i'm enjoying my free time again. (also have become a whizz at suduko and watched more episodes of "sex in the city" than i care to admit to.) long phone calls with cassandra, vta, itchy and nimmersatt have helped tremendously in inspiring me to get out of the house. if only the sidewalks weren't so damn slippery. . .

self portrait as activity

biker


juggler

hat tricks

it's overcast and cold outside, threatening snow. we've had a week of brilliant sunshine and intense coldness, which was a fabulous interlude in this long winter. i've spent a lot of time on my bike, riding down white frost-covered streets with my scarf up over my nose. i also rode for the first time with snow on the ground - not on the road, but next to it, which made me feel hardcore without actually being dangerous.

i went to a juggling club meeting, which consisted of a bunch of people in a big empty room all practising their tricks. i got to borrow some balls and clubs (can still juggle three clubs! it's been more than a year, so i was worried) and also learnt a bunch of hat tricks from a professional juggler there. the hat was like a slightly over sized bowler, thick and heavy, and i learnt various ways of flipping it on and off my head, up and down my arms and twirling it round my hands and through the air. it was not hard to learn, and very satisfying to do, especially in the reflection of the windows.

a couple of friends and i spent half an hour in the pool one night too, doing flips and dives and underwater tea parties and pretending to drown and being saved. that was all sorts of fun.

i'm feeling very fit and energized, and a bit sore. on on!

when it was snowing

here's a short vid i made before i left. snow is pretty.

where's my wrist tape?

ah! the connection is holding!

here's what i did since i last wrote. i rode along the bike paths to false creek and around it to granville island. these were the sorts of views along the way:


aren't my mountains looking beautiful?

all the construction is due to the skytrain line they've been building for eleventy billion years (businesses along the line are closing down from lack of business and trying to sue the city - very complicated).

then i saw a circa show at granville island - it was totally kickarse. circa is a brisbane group and they're here as part of a fringe festivally thing. they did two free shows today and i got into the second one after much lining up (hard to read in line when your fingers are all cold and tingly) and it was so much fun! the show was called "46 circus acts in 45 minutes" and it looked a bit like this, except more pared back:

there was juggling and lots of tumbling and balancing and some static aerials and some slapstick and manipulation and some audience participation, and the four performers were *built* and had great accents. oh, i miss circus. i love the mix of skill and strength with humour and playfullness, and theatre and narrative mixed with physical tricks. i did find this show was missing the politics of groups like the women's circus and circus oz. cirque de soleil is in town soon, but tickets cost several hundred dollars. i might try and catch circa again instead.

maybe i will take up juggling again now i have free time.

then i rode home back along false creek and it was stunningly beautiful:


(photo stolen from the interwebs - my camera sucks at night shots)

now i am eating curry. yum.

mine! MIIIIIIINE!

we have the inty connection from hell, so i haven't posted although i've tried! ziggy and i are looking into buying our very own connection but it's uber$$$ and neither of us are flush atm. i plan to go to a cafe with wireless sometime soon so i can upload some photos. are y'all busting to see about our trip?

i'm job hunting, or fielding my options, which is okay in a boring kind of way. i think tutoring or working at the VPL is my best bet at this pint. i might be having some sort of minor identity crisis. in the last two days i've:

cleaned the bathroom
polished my shoes
done bike maintenance
cooked lots
washed my woollies
done my mending
cleaned the stove
done the dishes sixteen million times

ziggy says she's quite happy if i stay in my crisis for a while longer. . .

winifred's birthday this weekend, so many parties and much beer. miriam and i also went to a two year old party, which, instead of beer, had peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and a giant cardboard castle to decorate. it ended with the birthday boy having a tantrum and being put to bed: the perfect ending for a toddler party.

now i am going to hop on my bike and run away to the circus again. it's sunny! must enjoy the sunny!

tufted puffins turn my crank

hey, guess what? i've finished my phd apps. whew! now the waiting game begins. . .

in march or so offers (or rejections) start to arrive, and then i try and bargain more funding out of each institution and then make a decision on where to go. in the meantime i keep trying to figure out where i want to spend the next five or so years of my life, and what i want to be when i grow up, and that kind of stuff. if any of youse have any opinions on these matters do drop me a line. (or if you want to know exactly where i have applied, which i don't want to put on the open interwebs).

just got back from a lightening trip to the island with miriam, which was very pleasant. lots of beaches and lunches with all her friends there. victoria is very beautiful. i also got to make a lightening visit to the royal bc museum, which was ace. my favourite bit was the woolly mammoth. or maybe the fossils. or maybe the sea lion skeleton. or the fossil replicas you could touch!

i had a slight wigout in the museum at one point, cos it was just before closing so there was nobody else around, and i was wandering through this replica forest area, which was really cool. you could identify all the trees, and the (stuffed) animals around them, and it was all quiet apart from canned animal noises, and recordings of lightening - i could hear sea lions roaring behind me somewhere - and it was low lighting and low ceilings, and then there was a stuffed cougar hiding in one of the displays, and a grizzly bear washing some food and they're kinda scary looking and then this huge BZZZT! THE MUSEUM WILL BE CLOSING IN FIFTEEN MINUTES! came out of a speaker just above my head and i leapt three feet in the air.


now i'm in soggy vancouver, also very beautiful. miriam and i rode downtown at about 7pm yesterday, and all the city lights laid out below us, with the snowy mountains behind, were stunning. riding in below-freezing temps surprisingly freeing.

i'm supposed to be working on a cv and a list of places to haul it round to, but have no motivation. stupid poverty. maybe i'll start watching the five seasons of angel ziggy just brought home. . .

breathe in

today is the first time since i got back that i feel i've had time to draw breath, so here i am. i've only got one phd app to go, and the only bit of that i need to do lots of work on is currently off with a prof getting vigorously edited, so there's nothing for me to do right now. therefore loud music, inty and doing all the thousands of dishes ziggy and i left after our impromptu potluck last tuesday.

had a very nice time catching up with my peeps, getting all the gossip and exchanging travel stories. i'm still a little jetlagged, but i slept in til 9.30 today, which is heartening! on thursday i had my first classes - fifteen students in a room that seats eleven - and they went pretty well. we just did getting to know you stuff, and i made them journal on what they want to get out of the course. i suspect almost all of them are there to satisfy a prereq, and i refuse to teach thirty two teenagers who don't have any motivation to be in class. oh yes, i forgot to explain - i'm not teaching the medieval class anymore, which is a bummer. there was low enrolment, so they had to cancel some tutorials, and i got reshuffled to a first year class instead. i'm pretty sad about not getting to teach medieval, and having to deal with first years again (will this be on the exam?), but i really like being able to pay my rent and eat, so i'm happy enough. i'm sure the course will turn out to be fun anyway.

layla went home, so we've been able to unbarricade the house. that's her up the top - cute, no? oh, i got to see chicory last night! we bonded.

i really don't have much news, actually. any questions from the studio audience?

i'm baaaaack

oh, blog, blog me do
you know i blog you
i'll always be true
so pleeeeeeeease blog me do!

i'm back in canada, teaching and doing phd apps, the usual chaos, plus jetlag. it's nice to be back, though, and have more than two pairs of pants to wear. there's snow everywhere on the hill, and it's raining lightly on the drive.

there was a little pile of packages waiting for me when i got home, thankyou very much, cassandra and vta! there was also a surprise ferret in the kitchen - ziggy is ferret sitting for a friend of her mothers. i'm quite fond of the little thing, though it's a bit moody.