A whole new town with a whole new way

I am here! Here I am! Montreal and all! The last 2-3 weeks have been wild and writing about them will be wilder still... brief recap: My life (or at least two thirds of it) was crammed into a Budget van and hauled 9,000 miles (approx. value) to Montreal by convoy two weeks ago, whereupon my dear sister and brother-in-law shoved/pushed/pulled/cursed/breathed deeply/shoved some more to get everything in here, and my mom cleaned, and I spun around like a loose tornado and eventually bought some beer (from the grocery store!!!). The four of us returned to London that Sunday night, I said my terribly and beautifully emotional goodbyes to the city of my lost innocence, then Derek and I headed back to the M-town with Tycho and the remaining third of my life crammed into his parents' Honda Accord.
The whole thing left a layer of cat hair in his car and a layer of candy wrappers on my apartment floor ... we saw some city, ate some cheese, drank some wine, tried like hell to get sick of each other enough to make the inevitable parting less of a gut-punch, but it didn't work. Romy didn't make it to town until this week but D's friend Sarah, a long-time Montrealite, came over for a while to toast my digs and officiate the first Avenue Gascon partyfest! Derek, Sarah and I were quite responsible and stuck to herbal tea and scones, but Tycho wasn't to be stopped... he drank some deadly concoction of raspberry vodka and powerade and ended up staggering around on the big chair and spouting incoherent half-french kittybabble before falling off his feet in a complete stupor:

Montreal is going to be rough on him if he's not careful.

Derek left Sunday night then on Monday Ian, Ingrid, and Linnea (aka the Dundalk non-bloodline chapter of Megan's family) stayed the night in Montreal on their way back from a CD recording session on the east coast! I hung out with those three rock stars for the evening - we ate great food, saw great (if enigmatic) outdoor cinema, I didn't lose my wallet, and Linnea and I danced through the streets (see picture, top).

Since then I've been stuck in my head ... in my head and in Concordian line-ups. Tomorrow is day one of orientation and I just realized that I have no idea what happens after that... I don't even know when classes begin, or what my first class even is, or wether I should try and get another year out of my old, battered, duct-taped, stickered clipboard, or finally splurge for a new one. It's not the price that's the problem, but nostalgia! That clipboard kicked off my first day of my first year at Western, and has been with me since. I realize, though, that I might have a wee problem with giving up useless/ugly/broken things because of nostalgia. Example: my pencil box. Tin, colourful, from the Body Shop circa 1993. It's entirely bashed in on the top, is held together with a hair elastic, and smells like thirteen years of decaying crayons, but I love it so much! I can still sort of make out the words that Sharon Edwards wrote along the side in white-out while we waited in the wings of Grey Highlands' makeshift stage during a performance of Cocktails at Pam's in grade eleven... and I can still scratch (even if I can't sniff) that scratch-and-sniff French Fry sticker that Jessica Hill gave me sometime in grade nine or ten... and I can still run my fingers over the dents that Brad Crawford made in it during the shuffle of chairs and desks as everyone in our Grade 8 Mr. Samson class sat down after the morning national anthem. Also I remember a whole series of times when said pencil box (remember: tin) has crashed to floor from various desks/backpacks/loose fists at the most inopportune moments. Tomorrow when it's my turn to recite a list of past publications I'll accidentally-on-purpose send my pencil tin flying to the floor and the crash will make everyone forget whose turn it was. Huzzah! Suddenly I feel much more relaxed.

Verdict: the clipboard stays.
Out into the world tomorrow!
I have a new M-town phone number now, so let me know if you want it but don't have it!