Random Ramblings

Two major events of import yesterday:

First, lunch at Massey. Yes, I dragged Marc out to my old UofT stomping grounds to have lunch with some of my friends. Most of them have since moved out of Massey and don't spend much time there anymore, but I was able to marshall them together for lunch. And a mightily fine lunch it was, too: lots of laughter and catching up, and I thoroughly enjoyed myself. I also gave Marc the 25-cent tour, and he rubbed the wart on the statue of Robertson Davies, so all is well.

Afterwards, we went to the One of a Kind Show -- a huge exhibition of artisans. I think we were there for over six hours. We had to be: there were a thousand exhibitioners. In the end, my aunts bought tons of stuff (much of it quite lovely, too). Marc and I didn't buy much -- mostly presents for our friends. HOWEVER, I did find an absolutely awesome shirt: red, tight, and sexy in an elegant way. I had to have it. Unfortunately, it was slightly outside the budget I'd set for myself. Fortunately, my aunts see "budget" as more a guideline than a strict rule, so my Aunt Ricki bought it for me. Thank you, Aunt Ricki! For posterity, there's a picture of me wearing it behind the cut. (It's not the best picture, but it's a very nice shirt. *grin*)

( Click to see me in a sexy red shirt )

It took us about an hour to get back to my Aunt's place because of a huge amount of traffic (we're theorizing there was a hockey game letting out). When we did, we broke out some soup, cheese, baguette, wine, and fruit, and just generally conversed for several hours. I wound up going to bed around 12:45, and Marc joined me at some point after that. And now, once more, it is morning. Time to start moving.

My day was great until the last hour or so. To top it off, I came home to find a message in my email saying that a friend of mine from Massey (another Junior Fellow) died suddenly of a massive heart attack yesterday. I'm not entirely certain how to react to this.

I think I should go to sleep before anything else happens tonight.

Tonight, I found an envelope slipped under my door. It was addresed to me, but the sender was anonymous. As I opened it, I found two $10 gift certificates to Famous Players. I have absolutely no idea who sent it, or why. The only thing I can think of is that someone really liked all the holidays I've been posting on my door, or something. Because I don't know anyone in this building other than Jane, my floor's don, and she's not the type to leave anonymous gifts.

In other news, today I:
- wrote up the game summary for yesterday night (see last entry)
- wrote the PhD Latin exam and did very poorly
- had fun at the CMS pub outing
- read to page 282 of Game of Thrones
- was introduced to Gregg's Ice Cream (yes, I've been in Toronto since September and have never gone)
- got many confirmations for my going-away party on Friday night. (If you're reading this, you're invited!)
- watched an episode of B5: Wheel of Fire, the 4th-to-last episode of the series

All in all, a very good day. Tomorrow I'm going to get my new bras, pants (they needed to be shortened), and shoes. Possibly I will have tea at the Red Tea Box afterwards. At 6, there's a free cooking class here at Chestnut. Finally, at 8, there's going to be a dessert night at Massey, full of Dufflet pastries goodness.

So there you go. I'm enjoying myself immensely, and I wish the best of luck of everyone who's still not done the semester. Good luck, people writing the German exam! And g'night, everyone!

In answer to the question in the subject line: not at all, except perhaps that they were both things that played a role in my life today.

Three things to report:

( 1. paper writing progress, 2. Massey seder, 3. Babylon 5 )

And now it's almost midnight, and I should start thinking about sleep. Tomorrow I'm coming home on the 5 pm train and arriving around 9:30. I will be in for one day, heading back out to Toronto Saturday evening. Why, you ask? My grandpa is being bar mitzvahed! Yes, it's true! He never had one, so he's having one now. I figure, how often does one's grandfather get bar-mitzvahed? There no way I'm going to miss this! So... train tomorrow night, another train Saturday night. The things I do at end of semester time...

Anyway, g'night all.

Okay, so I've got Loch Lomond stuck in my head. Otherwise, it's been a great day.

The day began by some much-needed productivity: 7 pages of my paper (making 17.5 overall, yay!) and a load of laundry. Thence onwards to Latin, wherein I found the passage to be mostly pretty straightforward, despite being a #3 (confirmation on how well I did coming Tuesday). From there, I took the lovely faulxbourdon out for hot chocolate to attempt to make up for the horrible twists Fortune has played on her over the last day. From there, I went to the library to start researching paper #3, whose abstract was due yesterday. ("I love deadlines. I love the wooshing sound they make as the fly by." -- Douglas Adams) Six dollars later, I've got 120 pages to read and perhaps the glimmerings of an actual paper topic.

Thence, onwards to Massey, where I read 20 of the 120 pages, had very tasty food at the Fellows' Guady (the last High Table of the year), got to see the new Don of Hall get dunked in the Massey pond, and did an hour and a half of English country dancing.

Yup, all in all, a very successful day. The plan for tomorrow: finish writing paper #1, read much of the 100 pages remaining for paper #3, do some Latin, spend time with my brother. G'night all!

Yes, despite the massive workload I'd set for myself today, I was actually quite productive. Of the list I posted last night, I proritized 7 things as the most important, and managed to do 6 of them. This involved about two hours of Latin, and article-gathering and note-taking for about a half-dozen articles. All told, I'm pleased.

Tonight was also Tea Hut at Massey (ie: a talent show). Also fun, and my piece was received well, especially by its subject. For thsoe curious, I'll post it here.

( Song: The Star of Ontdaatje Hall )

And that's it for tonight, folks. It's my bedtime and thus I go to bed. Tomorrow I'm playing D&D and then probably heading over the House of Cheese for tasty food. Yum! G'night all!

( Massey's year-end poker tournament )

( And in more boring news... )

So. 9:18 pm and still much to be done tonight. I'm on MSN, so feel free to bug me. For everyone else, g'night.

Edited, 9:40 pm: And now it appears a bunch of important changes I made to my notes for Tuesday's presentation have disappeared. I am very, very annoyed.

Once I got moving, today was actually a wonderful day. I got some schoolwork done, sucessfully translated Latin in class, and spoke with some level of confidence in my other class. But the real fun started afterwards.

( Click here for the rest, in which I find a new hero and help unlock the mysteries of the cosmos )

So that was today. Tomorrow I've got class until 2, then I'm meeting with two profs. I need to decide whether to go to B5 tomorrow night or to skip it in order to do work. I'll make that decision depending on how I'm feeling tomorrow afternoon. For now, I'm going to take it easy and relax.

I leave you with one final thought: why is it that blogs don't factor in significantly in CSI-type shows? You'd think that, given how many people have blogs and what they tend to put in them, that blogs would have shown up as key pieces of evidence for some of these crime-buster / evidence-collector shows by now. And yet I've never seen one where a blog has even been mentioned offhand. Theories, anyone?

G'night all.

Today was a really good day, for once. I managed to wake up on time (again, for once), and get some work done in the morning. I actually got so much work done that I spent part of the morning checking out a costume rental store. Some of the stuff is crap, some of it is excellent... most of it is expensive. Still, nice to know about. I also made the dangerous discovery that there is a Booster Juice within a five minute walk of Chestnut. So tasty, but so overpriced! Hopefully I'll be able to resist temptation.

This afternoon I had a presentation for Music class. It went decently, I think. It was kind of hard to read the reaction from the prof. I got a paper back as well: I did decently on that also. The grade wasn't as good as I would have liked for a midterm, but it was okay. (B+)

Afterwards was dinner at Massey, a French table. I can still speak French, apparently. Though I suspect that once I get back to Montreal, I'm going to try to find a French class so that I can improve my French to the point where I can teach at francophone cegeps. It'll be a challenge, but I'm up for it.

Then, because I was tired from Latin, I started picking out my favourite quotes from B5 season four. They're in my next post. Until tomorrow, then, g'night all!