uncharted waters

Wednesday, November 30, 2005

*purr*

Four months and 10 days later, I am finally back home. Thoughts to follow, once I have settled back in.

In the meantime, please excuse me while I collapse from hauling so much crap cross-country.

Liberated at 11:43 p.m.

Friday, November 25, 2005

Road trip!

I started with a conference in London...actually pretty interesting, despite the impending snowsquall. Picked up RoadTripBuddy and headed back to G-Town at about 1:00 am in full-on snowsquall, and almost died more times that I care to count.

On Friday, we hit the road from G-Town to Niagara Falls. Again, the snowsquall threatened to kill us, but after 2 hours we finally drove out of it. We arrived in Niagara Falls in the afternoon, checked into the hotel...and headed straight to Mall #1.

Saturday consisted of more...shopping (*surprise*!). RoadTripBuddy and I crossed into New York, and hit up Mall #2. After many, many hours of Mall #2...we drove all the way to Buffalo for Mall #3 (isn't Buy Nothing Day around now? Umm...whoops?). We ended up crossing back over the border around 10 pm or so, having spent a wonderful half hour in Customs so I could give them $10...way to use your time efficiently, Customs folks!

Remembering that we were at Niagara Falls, Sunday morning was spent admiring the Falls. Sunday afternoon, we sped gleefully back to Toronto, and promptly lost the car at Mall #4, causing RoadTripBuddy to almost miss the 10:45 pm flight out of Pearson.

Monday and Tuesday were spent in Toronto, working hard, lounging in fancy hotels, and schmoozing to the extreme. Tough life, I know...

I had no idea that I'd be so excited to be...home? Is that what I'm calling G-Town these days?

Requisite weekend documentation:

Before the shopping started:

After Mall #1:

After Mall #2:

After Mall #3 (remember...it's not all mine!):

The required pictures of the Falls:

Liberated at 6:43 p.m.

Tuesday, November 22, 2005

Aaaaand....go!

Attended a conference in London. You know you're in trouble when the afternoon session begins with "and now we're going to talk about everyone's favourite topic...property assessment!"
Drove through my first 'snow squall'...when the locals drive the highways at 50 km/h, you do the same
Currently wrapped in a down comforter, looking at the Toronto sky line, and sitting next to my recently decimated room service tray. *purrrr*
Spent way too much money in Buffalo/Niagara/random tacky outlet malls
Went from staying at the Rodeway Inn on Sunday night to the Intercontinental on Monday night...for the record, I prefer Option B.
Haven't been home in almost a week and have officially hit my traveling limit. Too bad I'll be spending a lot of time in Pearson for quite a while to come.
I have to pack up all of my G-Town supplies, and then get back to Edmonton and pack some more. Good times. Or something.
Home in eight days!!!!!! Wheeeee!!!

And yes, I'm well aware that random bullet points does not a blogpost make. Unfortunately, this'll have to do until I get to spend some good quality time with my little pbook.

Liberated at 6:59 a.m.

Wednesday, November 16, 2005

A disaster in the making

In the last 48 hours, it seems that I have consumed nothing but:

Copious amounts of red wine
A bag of Skor Bites
More cans of Coke than I care to count

My body, while certainly not happy with me, better shape the hell up because in less than 8 hours I need to hit the highway (hoping that the blizzard has stopped) and pretend that I'm coherent.

Now, let me just say...I know the obvious answer here is for me to eat something with some nutritional value. But, being that I'm leaving in 13 days (four of which I will be out of town), I absolutely refuse to go grocery shopping. Not that I'm stubborn. No. Not me.

Liberated at 8:56 p.m.

Sunday, November 13, 2005

Ah, the good old days...

With the countdown on in my return to Edmonton, I've been thinking a lot of about what I miss. At the top of my list is...

Going for pho. Often
Actually being able to *see* my friends
The ability to buy longans
My fishies...*sniffle*
Not having to drive 1.5 hours to see a movie
My office, and the people in it
SUB
MSN conversations going something like this:

Me: I'm bored.
Some fabulous person on my MSN list: Me too.
Me: We should fix that.
SFPONMMSNL: Let's go [to a movie/out for lunch/out for dinner/shopping/etc.]

My washer and dryer
Knowing that there is always somewhere to go, even at 3:00 am
Being able to run to the grocery store in my old Kokanee hoodie and a baseball hat, and not running into someone I know
Going *anywhere*, for that matter, and not running into someone I know
Lunchtime shopping
Hack movie nights at the cheapies
Knowing that there are at least 3 fish stores within a half hour's drive

T-minus 401 hours!

Liberated at 5:17 p.m.

Thursday, November 10, 2005

Obsession = over. Sort of.

Anyone who has talked to me at all in the past month will know that I've been on a scarily obsessive hunt for a new place to live.

As of 7:58 pm tonight, I am pleased to announce that my days of frantically scanning rental websites are over. Awesome apartment = mine!

I have found a great place back 'home', not far from campus and only a short walk from my old home of Newton Place. It meets all of my set-out requirements of:

rent within my budget
shiny, pretty newness
good location and easy to get to work
a decent size
*and* an added bonus of not having to move on New Year's Day, which is always exciting.

Admittedly, the first thing that I did after I heard that I got the apartment was go back through all of those rental sites just to...uhh...make sure that a better apartment didn't magically appear in the time that it took for my email to make its way from my computer to the landlord's.

So far, so good.

Liberated at 8:14 p.m.

Saturday, November 05, 2005

Randomness:

I have eaten nothing but popsicles today
There strong burning smell coming from the apartment next to me (I'm hoping it's not a "Doctor! I smell burnt toast!" moment)
I have already started packing up for the move back to Edmonton. Because I'm awesome.
I have an apparently inexplicable inability to use iDVD for anything worth while
Happy Guy Fawkes Day!!!
I'm actually excited that I only to pay around $1900 in car insurance when I get back (I paid around $600/year back home)
I misplaced my blackberry yesterday and almost had a panic attack. This is concerning.
I have been on the roadway too much lately (further augmented by another trip to Toronto this week)
Oktoberfish? Amazing.
The Kitchener-Waterloo phonebook biting me so I could have the pleasure of creating a short documentary entitled "The evolution of a blood blister on uncharted's left index finger"? Not amazing.
Grocery shopping here in G-town is actually quite a pleasure compared to the Edmonton elbows-out version. I'm not looking forward to those 20 minute lines at the check-out.
I have nothing of substance to say. In case you hadn't already noticed.

Liberated at 2:40 p.m.

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