"If I could go to the Harrow Fair"

The visit home this time was the best one that I’ve had in a while. We drove down this time, and it made all the difference. We could acutally do stuff this time. It was pouring like crazy during the drive down. The wipers acted up a couple times and we had to adjust them, but we made good time despite the rain. On Tuesday we drove to Devonshire Mall so we could get Arrested Development season three from HMV. It’s been a long time since I was in that mall. It’s feels completely different every time I’m in there.

Wednesday we went with my brother to Colisanti’s, wandered around looking at everything, and played mini golf. Then we went to Leamington to Canadian Tire to get new wipers for the car, and wandered around in Wal-Mart for the hell of it.

The rest of the week was spent periodically at the Fair. That’s the benefit of the weekend passes. Thursday we got in free at first since everything wasn’t quite set up and no one was manning the gates. It was very frustrating. I’ve never went on the Thursday before, and having to wait for all the stuff to be judged was making me impatient. I don’t really know what to say about the Fair, since I’ve been going as long as I can remember. There’s lots of animals and food and events. I saw a lot of people I knew, but ignored most of them. I was only concerned with finding my friends. I learned a long time ago that I don’t care for the majority of people in town. They are nosy and worry too much about what I’m up to, when that doesn’t really concern them.

The other benefit for having the car was that we could pick up Leya and Chaz and bring them to the Fair with us on Friday. I helped Chaz get the new books sorted out at the bookstore so they could be entered into the system faster. He had to stay a couple hours later and get picked up after though since his mom was sick. It was a little annoying because she was at work anyway, nagging at him the whole time, but she made him stay and enter stuff anyway even when she knew we were all waiting. I’ve met Chaz’s mom before though, she’s usually really awesome. She’s forgiven because she was sick.

I got to see Meggie and Corinna and Robbie, which was awesome and a lot of fun. Though I feel stupid because I keep losing Meg’s cell number.

My mom is making a surprise wedding present for my uncle. I spent most of my spare time all week making her a pattern for that, and getting it started so she can finish it on time. I hope he likes it.

Overall the week was great. Dean didn’t like having to drive all the way there though. Next time I guess we’ll take the train.

A Brief Respite

School is done for the summer and I’m really glad. I’ve got two of my marks back already, one of which I’m kinda disappointed with. The religion class was an A as expected, so nothing to worry about there. Now I’m just waiting on accounting. That could go either way. Yes, I used to have everything memorized and could crank out journal entries and financial statements like nobody’s business, but it’s been three years and I did not put nearly enough work into it this summer. Ah well, it’s done.

I need to be working on my grad application this month, because I want to have it sent out before class starts. It’s freaking me out big-time. I have no clue what to put into a statement of intent. I’ve got lots of advice for what NOT to put in, but that’s not very helpful. Methinks it’s time to start making appointments with the advisors and getting some good advice for a change. I need to get transcripts from the registrar’s office this week, and see if the people that have offered letters of recommendation still want to give them to me. Lots to do.

My computer got sent in again so they could replace the touchpad. I’m glad it wasn’t the motherboard for a change, but I’m also a little paranoid since the warranty runs out on Tuesday and if it comes back with anything broke I’m stuck with it. Something encouraging: One more month until I get the new laptop!

I’m spending today sitting around the house playing with the cat and working on cross-stitch. It seems lazy considering I have important school stuff to do, but I can’t do any of that until Monday anyway so I may as well enjoy one non-school weekend this year.

I know a secret and its really cool. I’d tell but there is a slim chance that my sister will read this and tell my mom and spoil it. So it has to wait until the word is out.

Now that I’ve got your attention, I’m off to find the Futurama DVDs so I have something to watch while working on the Peacock.

"That's too much, Bob!"

My first two exams are on Saturday, and as usual I’d rather be procrastinating than studying. Surprisingly I did study today for a good three-four hours on campus. The couches in the Concourse started putting my ass to sleep though so I gave up. The good news is I set everything up so I can easily finish my notes for the religion course tomorrow, then have Thursday and Friday to prepare the answers to the essay questions on the philosophy exam.

Then I have all of next week to re-learn basic accounting. For something that I loved, it’s not really all that appealing anymore. I’ve changed.

Considering I am so bloody sick of school right now, I’m surprised that I haven’t quite given up on it. It’s close though. I don’t feel into it anymore. I kinda wish that I could risk applying for September for grad school, so that for once I can have a summer to myself without having to worry about school. I should feel better after having a month off. It’s just been non-stop school for the last 10 months and it’s getting to be too much.

What do people do to de-stress and get school out of their system?

To London We Have Gone

We went to London last weekend so I could tour Western and learn where things are both at school and in the city. I apologise for needing a week to recover, but finals are next week and things have been busy.

I like London and Western’s campus. It’s nowhere near as big as people make it out to be. If I get to live in the graduate student residences like I want, it will take me the same amount of time to get to class as it does now.

We arrived on Thursday night and wandered around downtown a bit. I was having fun being lost, Dean not so much. We weren’t very far from Richmond Street though, so I figured we couldn’t get too lost. We found our way back just in time to get the bus to the school, since we were staying in their Bed and Breakfast for the weekend.

It was a little weird, since they were using the apartment-style Elgin Hall, but were renting out the rooms in singles. There was an older couple staying in the other two rooms, but I only saw them a couple times the whole weekend so I have no clue why they were in London. They were sticking around for a while anyway, since they had a lot of food and stuff in the fridge and dishes and pans and such.

We had a campus tour on Friday morning, which was also a lot of fun. We got up early and wandered, and eventually found the Observatory where the tours start. They let us leave early since we didn’t really need to see the undergrad residences (seeing as were were living in one already), so we went to the North Campus building so I could bug the department secretary about the graduate applications and see if they knew if the electives I want will be offered.

I weirded them out asking so many questions almost a year in advance, but some of the electives are offered once every two years, and I wanted to know if the philosophy class shows up more often than that since they are offering it in January. I don’t get any electives until next September, but knowing if that class gets offered more often would have helped. I couldn’t find anything out about that one. Apparently only one person teaches it, so it’s up to that person if they want to teach it in a given term. I guess I’ll just have to suck up a lot my first term and see if they’ll offer it again. The other two electives I want are offered pretty much every-other term, so I’m good for them.

After I was done being a nuisance, we hopped on the bus across town to go to the Mandarin for lunch. Mandarin is my new favourite food place, since they had pretty much everything and it was buffet. Yummy! A lot of people seem to think that way though, since it was standing-room only waiting for seats, even with a reservation. We were early though or we probably wouldn’t have had to wait that long.

One of the classrooms turns into a movie theatre at night and has really cheap movies, so Friday night we went and saw X-men again. I really like that movie. It was better the second time around. The other movie playing was The Lake House. Icky. We were going to see it on Saturday since it was hot and we didn’t want to be out fighting the bugs at night, but we went back to the apartment and bummed around instead.

We spent Saturday playing on the busses some more, checking out the malls to see where I should get groceries and such. The mall nearest campus is nice, I really like it. There is a better, larger one across town, but it’s only better if you want to shop for clothes so I don’t really care. It’s the same reason I never shop at Fairview, when Conestoga has all the stuff I need. So I’ll probably never go in there again, unless I need to switch busses there. There’s another mall on the west side of town. We took the bus there but didn’t go in, there didn’t seem to be much there. The place looked pretty run-down and not as popular as the other two places.

The busses are weird in London, because they don’t have terminals and just rely on transfers between the main busses when you’re downtown. It’s a little tricky figuring out which stops are the ones that will switch to the bus you need, but once that’s figured out it’s all good.

I found the craft store downtown. It was a lot closer to Richmond St. than I’d thought, but it’s easy to get to, and I can walk to it from school when I’m not in the mood for the bus since there’s a path along the river a block away from the store. They’ve got lots of really nice sock yarn, and the hand-painted Koigu that I have to get shipped here. It means rather than buying a bunch of the sock yarns I like, I’ll be saving up for a few of the nicer shades of Koigu instead. It’s probably better that way, since I learned from buying all that stuff from Knitpicks. You can only look at one self-patterning yarn for so long, even if you have it in like 12 different colours.

I didn’t go in the store since the owner was out on a break, instead we took the path back to school. It was a little too hot for walking that much, but for most of it there was a lot of shade. It was only the part near campus that moves away from the river that had a lot of sun.

We left very early Sunday morning even though we were originally going to stay all day, because check-out was at noon and we didn’t want to carry all our stuff around for 7 hours straight. We’d pretty much seen where stuff was at that point anyway. Like most places, it would take more than a weekend to find the more personal places. I feel good about the city and the school and am looking forward to being there.

It’s going to be plenty lonely at first, but I’m sure there will be lots of visiting going on since London is pretty easy to get to for both Dean and my parents. So I’ll see them more than I do now, but I won’t get to see Dean as much.

It’s strange, but I kinda like the idea of setting out somewhere new again. When I moved here I stayed on campus or within a few blocks of it for the entire first year, and I had no clue where anything else was or that there were so many neat places around the area. Now that I’m used to living on my own I’ll get out and about more, and can make the most of my time in London.

Thanks go to Tudor and Laura for the pointers on places to go and things to do. Sorry for asking you on such short notice. Though we didn’t get to do everything we found where a lot of the stuff is and will be checking it out on future visits.

Butterflies…just not the fun and pretty kind

I’m feeling all anxious now. The applications for my grad school program have been updated to include a May start date, so I need to come up with a statement of intent and letters of recommendation ASAP, and get that submitted. I knew it would happen soon, I just never expected this soon. At least the OSAP is easy, since it’s the same application I just filled out for September I won’t need to bug my parents for info this time. I think I’m going add that to the lists of things for me to do in August, since I’ve got essays and finals to get through right now.
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On the personal front, I spent all day yesterday on the phone with my mom because Bones has finally gone and hit rock bottom. He was in some pretty bad shape, crying and unable to walk, lots of shaking, not really in control of his body. He made my aunt call because he’s done and wants to come home and get better. This I couldn’t be more happy about, because it’s been killing me these last few years seeing what he’s been doing to himself. I’m anxious for him, because I watched my mom go through this and I know how hard not drinking will be. Not to mention the withdrawals. That’s going to be fun. On the other hand though, I know my mom. This is it. He gets one chance and he better make it last. If he starts drinking again now, anything at all, that’s it. She won’t have sympathy if he doesn’t stick with it.

For now, he’s moved back in and is being baby-sat to make sure he’s okay. He’s been hanging out at the Legion for months, and apparently they’ve been giving him (and anyone else that wants it) as much alcohol as they can afford no matter how drunk they are or whether it may be unhealthy. My mom went in there to find out how much he drank, and they said two and a half pitchers. To top it all off, when he couldn’t sleep after that my stupid aunt gave him some of her sleeping pills. I’m very pissed off at her right now for that. How stupid can you get?! I swear, she’s trying to kill him. She’s still meddling and not being very helpful. She won’t give his keys back, so he can get the rest of his stuff, and she keeps calling the rest of my aunts and uncles and trying to make them come down. I’m glad I’m here and not at home, because I really want to flip out on her. Her blatant disregard for her family just drives me up a wall. I don’t understand it. I love Bones so much, I can’t see how she would be dumb enough to give her brother an assortment of pills when he very probably has alcohol poisoning.

I got to talk to him on the phone for a bit yesterday. I told him about our attempt at boating on the river and got a few laughs out of him. He still sounded really slurred and a bit out of it, but definitely much improved from what he must have been like the night before. I’m proud of him for wanting to get better, but I’m worried that he’s not doing it for the right reasons. He keeps saying he can’t take care of anyone, but I don’t think he realizes that he needs to want this for himself, and not for his mooching siblings/mother. They can take care of their goddamn selves for a change.

Ouch!

I keep getting these weird sharp pains in random places lately. A few times last week it was in my arms, today it’s right where my right leg meets my butt. And unlike last week, it just won’t quit. I’m just sitting here and not doing anything, though it was happening before when I was working in the library.

I guess I should make an appointment with Health Services.