...and i just can't hide it

Lots of excitement today.

Anything related to the performing arts will always assume the biggest place in my heart. Yes, I am happy where I am, and with what I am doing, but when an opportunity arises so strangely and serendipitously, and a friend is so encouraging, I can't turn it down.

cleaning out the attic

Alright alright. It's not that I've had nothing to say, rather that thoughts and ideas have been collecting in my mind like pieces of discarded clothing in a messy room. Or maybe the mess of my room has been too distracting. Hmmm. In no particular order, here's what has been on ma mind.

- Concordia's new gym is huge, clean and glorious. The best part for me is passing the colour-changing wall on the way down the escalator down to the gym.

- In consumer news, high-end fitting rooms will soon be getting a high-tech twist. Soon clothing shoppers will be able to stand in front of fitting room "magic mirrors" and see items of clothing projected onto their bodies via this new screen. They can then email, IM or text images of their favourite items to friends for feedback. Talk about hyper consumption. The Montreal Gazette, to which I have recently subscribed, discusses the increasing speed of fashion consumption.

- Lucky Charms are not magically delicious without milk. They're just plain terrible.

- I've finally come to agree that Grey's Anatomy is a good show. I would love to write a book, show, or play about the idiosyncrasies of my program here at Concordia. It would be a good way of telling all the stories I don't feel I can share online. Ah, the beauty of character names.

- Charest, Dion and Harper have all stood up to ignorant French presidential candidate Segolene Royal who, having never set foot in Quebec, felt she was in a position to proclaim her support for the "liberation" of Quebec. From the Gazette:

"The problem with her declaration is that we are free," Dion said. "We have been free longer than the French because we had responsible government while they were still in the midst of debating empires and revolutions.

Asked if a statement like Royal's can harm federalism in Canada, Dion said: "It hampers her own credibility. We do not interfere in the affairs of a friend country. We do not wish for the dismantling of a friend country. Canada does not wish for the dismantling of France. France certainly does not wish for the dismantling of Canada."

Take that, wannabe FLQ

- I have finally found the solution for my skin. After searching for years for a product that could treat my combination skin properly, I have discovered Lush's Sweet Japanese Girl. It is amazing, and all of the user reviews are true. It exfoliates, unclogs pores, and moisturizes. I kid you not.

Other than that, I want to wish Kate the best of luck in Kumasi, Ghana, where she will join Gill for an adventure, a retreat, and a fabulous opportunity.

"The road of life twists and turns and no two directions are ever the same. Yet our lessons come from the journey, not the destination"
-Don Williams Jr.

"Haraka haraka, hamna baraka" (To move too quickly is to miss the blessing)
-East African proverb

snow storms

I've never watched a blizzard from this high up. While watching snowflakes from a house, you only see the flakes as they reach their resting place on the ground. 15 floors up, it's a riot of wind currents, swirls of snow, torrents of downfall, west and eastern winds tossing the flakes to and fro. The north wind comes down over Mont Royal, carrying more snow towards our apartment in great big gusts. And I've got nowhere to go. Monday is my day off, and class was cancelled tonight. I feel like a kid on the best of snow days. It was just me in the apartment with chores, homework, great big mugs of tea, and a wild storm to watch.

Lately I keep finding myself sounding like a voiceover on the beginning of a tv drama. Hope nobody minds.

Today I decided to follow up on my earlier commitment to go to a friendly neighbourhood clairvoyant. This lady practiced psychometry, or token-object reading (she does the reading by holding a personal object in order to "connect to" her client's energy). We spoke behind indigo silk curtains. The only light was the late afternoon sun streaming in through a small, dusty window frame.

It was intense, to say the least. She told me my reading was one of the most positive ones she's ever given. A dream come true, for most people she said. "I wish this reading was for me." But I wasn't as pleased as she might expect me to be. Every person's dream doesn't necessarily hold the same appeal for me. There was talk of more schooling, gardening, dinner parties, ritzy neighbourhoods, blonde children who will take ballet classes, and things I haven't really been working towards, at least not yet. First of all, I always fancied myself a bohemian, not a socialite. Second of all, I don't want to know about my future kids and retirement hobbies! I want exciting, near-future stuff!

She told me I have the mind of a 35-year-old. Be that as it may (or isn't), I don't want to know about my 35-year-old self. I want to know about now, and what's on the near horizon. Her answer?

School, school and more school.

Great.

If this is to be the case, it looks like you, my faithful readers, are in for a few more years of me talking about books. I imagine you are thrilled, or are removing me from your links list immediately. And I was really hoping she'd give me descriptions of safaris from Cairo to Cape Town, or llama riding in Macchu Picchu. Nope, books it is, apparently.

Don't worry, I'm not taking this all to heart. I've always enjoyed going to psychics as a way of waking up all the lazy parts of me, the ones that are getting stuck in ruts, and into routines, and out of fresh ideas. When someone gives you an idea of a possible future, sometimes it just gets you thinking along a different line, or opens you up to paths and patterns you might not have thought of otherwise. I'm not destined to be a wealthy housewife, but her suggesting I might be is just enough to motivate me to carve another fate.

I really think that futures and possibilities blow around us like wind currents. They are invisible, yet always there. Snow makes wind patterns visible to the eye. A reading makes different possibilities visible to our hearts, and we decide which ones we like, which ones feel right, which ones to follow. But they can also blow right through our fingers if we don't make up our minds.

If you want the details of the reading, let me know. They were pretty interesting, actually.

Also, today's recipe: Blackberry Salad
- baby spinach
- ripe blackberries
- soft goat cheese
(chopped red peppers and pecans optional)
-balsamic vinaigrette

yum :)

alarm

This morning, someone's bad fashion sense raised a hell of a lot of commotion around here. When a security guard spotted a young man dressed in full camo, and carrying a long, black bag heading into Concordia's Loyola Campus (my campus), he called in the Montreal police. The swat team arrived, and a lockdown was put in place. I had just left work at this time (I thought I had to work this morning, but was mistaken). After Brian's mom called to ask what was going on, I turned on the news and was taken aback by footage of the swat team surrounding the peripheries of the buildings.

After the lockdown, the entire campus was evacuated, and classes cancelled. Soon after, police broke into the locker in which the suspicious bag had been placed. What they found was a poor guy's martial arts equipment. He had just returned from karate lessons, and was attending one of his courses. A false alarm.

This guy's choice of military-esque attire had raised alarm, perhaps bringing back haunting visions of Dawson College shooter Kimveer Gill in his black leather trench. In all the early reports of the Dawson shooting, emphasis was placed on Gill's subversive style of dress. In this case, army fabric seemed to be interpreted as a way of identifying a potential shooter. A sign of the times?

To be fair, I've known many guys who love shooting beer cans with BB guns, who also have had a penchant for camoflauge clothing. I would never assume, however, that pulling on a camo t-shirt or cargo pants means these people would be hell-bent on shooting someone.

Once it was black trenchcoats thought to clothe the disturbed among us. For now, military buffs best leave their favourite clothes at home. What will it be next, Star Wars paraphenalia? Non-conformists (and Star Wars geeks) everywhere, beware. You could be the next potential threats.

Given the nasty bad luck Montreal (and especially Concordia) has had with shootings, I guess concern, and these kinds of responses are warranted.

But still, I feel for the poor guy and his nunchucks.

in the dead of winter

The trees and grass look particularly gray and melancholy...and confused, here in the city. They look awkward too, as though someone caught them naked, without their seasonal blanket of snow. I feel bad for the landscape.

In other news, my camera has gone in for surgery. Some glitch with the CCD chip or something like that has caused ugly horizontal lines to scar all my photos. Canon is fixing it for free, though, along with my old camera that I thought was beyond hope. If your camera screws up, do not take it into the store where you bought it! They will only tell you it needs to be sent in, and will give a base repair price of over $150 so you will buy a new camera. Both Black's and Canon are notorious for this, so don't be fooled. It has happened to me twice, but never again! Instead, send an angry yet articulate email to the manufacturer, refusing to pay for something that appears to have essentially self-destructed.

Needless to say, I won't be able to take as many photos as I would like to over the next while, which may make this site seem a little lacklustre. But fear not, I promise to be back in technicolour as soon as my camera is brought back to life. In the meantime, my dear roommate was kind enough to lend me his new camera today...

Despite the desolate weather conditions, Montreal is looking good: the streets are full of impossibly fashionable people (except for our 'hood, which in case I've failed to mention, is full of weirdos), stores are full of winter sales, the sweet smell of wood oven-baked bagels is wafting in the air, and the bus is waiting to take me back to school tomorrow. Back to the books it is then.

a year in review & a year in preview

I suddenly felt like a spoiled fool when, after silently lamenting the lack of change in my life, I realized that this year has been so saturated with change that I'm now brattily bored if things don't move for a few days! Good god I have trouble staying still. I have decided it's okay to stop rolling; I can be a sitting stone, and gather moss with my paitience.

I've been steering clear of the computer for some time now, and taking a break from all forms of work. Seeing how school is on the near horizon, it's time to get the old act together.

2006 was, for me, a year of change both wonderful and heartbreaking:

Last moments of student journalism and student theatre at Western. Hours upon hours applying for MA programs. Moving out of the student ghetto, and saying goodbye to my housemates. Graduation, a degree in hand, and the beginnings of another. Canadian travels: Banff and the continental divide in Alberta, a month of french immersion in northern Quebec. International travel: trekking through the UK, Ireland and parts of Western Europe with a certain lad and Amy's backpack. A death in the family, a friend's wedding on the horizon. Moving to Montreal. Moving in with my boyfriend. Falling in love with a city. Making it through first semester with pretty decent marks. Friends scattering across the globe: Washington, Florida, Ghana, Toronto, Tanzania, Ottawa, Japan. And coming home for the holidays...

Almost every aspect of 2006 required a lot of planning. I think I'm going to take a different approach to this year. For the first time in my life, I am consciously deciding not to plan. I'm just going to work, love, take lots of risks and see where I end up.

I went to the hair salon a few days ago, with no plan at all. My stylist up here is a brassy gal with a great imagination, and I gave her free reign with my locks. A lot of chopping, and a pile of hair on the floor later, I now have a voluminous cut called the "starshine halo". It's definitely bold, with layers as long as 10 inches, and as short as 3. It's risky, but I love it, and feel like a new lady.

Here's to the unexpected!