Bon Cop, Hot Cop

Saw Bon Cop Bad Cop tonight, which was excessively funny (though also excessively violent)... the funny-ness was enhanced by the company I had: several giggly quebeckers, and a couple of equally giggly Ontario farm girls. Favourite scene: I can only whittle it down to two... one is Rick Mercer playing a Don Cherry-esque hockey commentator, who eventually knuckles Patrick Huard in the most comical fight scene I've ever watched... the second is Colm Feore doing an impression of the I'm-high-and-pretending-not-to-be shtick. And there is something surreal about seeing a hard-core high-budget action movie with a blatantly Montreal (or Toronto) setting! And, some news: no one can make the Anglophone-speaking-French thing look as classy as Colm Feore (to whom I feel like I have a personal connection, if only because I think a fleck of his spit once landed on me in Stratford).

Of course, the whole movie was destined to be good because it followed a preview starring Clive Owen, which needless to say put me in a happy mood!

In other news, I think I'm getting over the cursed Bug of the Metro now... I'm down to only one box of kleenex a day! heh... but seriously... I was réfléchiring a bit (I am starting to think in french words! and there is no satisfying translation for "réfléchir"! I will go with... reflecting)... so I was reflecting a bit... and it seems to me that something or other in my immune system goes haywire at every jarring new life situation I go through. Example: when I went to Riviere-du-Loup for a French course, I somehow lost my voice to VIA and spent the first week whispering to people! When I started my undergrad, I got strep throat! When I went to Humber for the writing course, my eye got all infected! And now this! I think it's some sort of built-in mechanism for finding out, right from the beginning, who my real friends are going to be. It's some kind of evolutionary sidestep of the whole fake-social problem. Weed out the superficial ones right away, recognize the ones who are going to truly be sickness-or-health with you. So really, all of this blech-ing just means that I'm hyper-evolved! Unfortunately it also means that I feel ready for bed by about 7pm each day, so this has been a long one for me. Tomorrow I volunteered to bake brownies for a coffee talk that's happening at school, then there's a soirée (supposedly with faculty, though we'll see) which apparently begins right after the coffee talk (which, itself, begins at 1pm). I don't know how a) I will be able to afford such festivities and b) I will be able to stay awake for such festivities, but I have faith. After all, I'm hyper-evolved!

Out in the rain, and happy because of it (plus appendix, for Sara)

Welllll even though it rained buckets on Saturday in the old M-Town, the day itself was glorious - I met up with Pauline and two other exchange students who were travelling with her (one girl from Nice in France, another from Sweden) and together the four of us prowled the city, alternately getting soaked in the street and then drying off in cafés. My little wee umbrella that I bought in Montreal last winter with Jen turned out to be not too wee for two heads (see above)... and when the weather became too much, Montreal delivered us a warm & dry respite in the guise of underground shopping. There was a lot of Rouenening (a new verb that we coined, meaning "to talk fondly and/or wistfully of Rouen"), and a lot of slipping in and out of various languages, and a lot of giggling. It was sad to see her go at the end. Maybe one day I will be like Margaret Laurence with a "cottage abroad," only instead of England my cottage will be in Normandy, and I will eat crepes and hang out with Pauline all day long and Tycho can sun himself in the vineyard.

In the "only in Montreal" category: Friday was "car free" day in several Canadian cities, but apparently Montreal is the only city to actually shut down their entire downtown core to traffic... every street is suddenly packed with pedestrians... I actually got to walk to school along the middle of Rue Ste. Cathérine, which could never happen on a normal day. It was such a weird feeling! The whole thing felt like a fairground... you can't tell from this picture but in many areas the city had these giant carpets of grass unrolled to cover the street, with park benches and potted trees (and even a mobile mini-putt course) added for atmosphere. It was so strange just being downtown without the roar of traffic and the pain of waiting for lights to change. I wish they did this every day! It would make getting to school so much easier! Everyone seemed so happy, and the best bit was that the people who would normally be honking and speeding past each other on a regular day were stopping to say hello, stopping to play mini golf, and stopping to chill out on a bench in the middle of the Ste. C/de Maisonneuve intersection! It was a lesson in humanity as well as in environmental smarts!

So now, it being Sunday evening, I've finally finished marking the first round of papers from my darling young minds! Unfortunately, while still darling, they are not very good writers, for the most part. Ben (my co-conspirator... I mean... TA) posits that TAs are notorious for being the hardest markers of all, and now I believe him. I often caught myself furiously marking up a student's paper as a sort of long-awaited revenge for all those times in my undergrad when I saw my peers (and, admittedly, myself) getting away with things that should rightly have been slashed with big, red, premanent-marker X's. One student wrote a very good analysis of a Seamus Heaney poem, but his/her (to be deliberately vague, in case my kids find this blog) (which would be bad anyway, since I keep calling them "kids") .. anyway, his/her paper was watered down with cautionary "I think"s and "I wonder if"s and "I suppose that"s... I ended up writing a rant in my comments about how finally these kids have a chance to actually be one of the bossy, pretentious literary critics they are forced to read in their theory books, and they should not give up such a chance so easily with their cautious qualifiers and apologies! I hope I didn't come on too strongly. I remember feeling like I had to temper every argument with such trap doors, in case I turned out to be wrong and in need of a quick escape. Not any more! Now I am ready to make bold and [potenitally wrong] statements without a look back! And soon my students will be, too. (of course, now I will get the next round of papers and have to caution them against making broad and presumptuous generalizations... maybe by the third paper they'll get it right).

I celebrated being done the marking by opening some wine and eating some bacon. May not seem like much, but I'm trying to postpone grocery shopping, and bacon is one the few "celebratory" kinds of food that I had on hand. It made me think of Jen's dream, but unfortunately I didn't have a tuckey, duck, OR chicken to complete the equation. Tonight: going to Blizzarts with some fellow writerly types. Apparently some people are planning on doing some readings, but I'm skeptical. This place sounds more dance-dance than read-read. I've heard that the bartenders at this place pour with a "generous tip to the bottle" so I'm quietly thankful that I have no class until the afternoon tomorrow. I'm leaving Tycho to keep the bed warm until I get back.

Speaking of the handsome T-dot... I took a break halfway through the marking process to attempt going for a walk with him. It was a beautiful day: supremely warm, supremely gusty. There was this hot-air-vent wind blowing like crazy down our alley, and while it felt good to me, Tycho had a different opinion... I think it had to do with his relatively low body mass... the wind was so strong that as soon as we made it down from the stoop and onto the pavement, he was nearly swept away! It's a good thing I had him on a leash! Picture a Tycho-shaped kite blowing and bumbling high in the breeze and you will basically have the picture! He was not pleased. He puffed himself up - I can only assume that he hoped the wind could be intimidated into leaving him alone, but unfortunately this only crippled his aerodynamics and made him even more of a TFO (Tycho Flying Object)!!! Needless to say we came back inside before long so that he could monitor the activities of the alley from the safety, wind-free window (see below).

Must go and prepare for what lies ahead! Please direct all enquiries to Tycho for the rest of the evening!

Appendix to this post (several hours later) with special attention:

back from the bar now and I would like to say... HAPPY BIRThDAY TO MISS SARA J. CLARKE!

i hope someone (*ahem*scott*ahem*) will give her the appropriate birthday spankings. anything that happens after said spankings is not appropriate at all.

I hope you have had an awesome day... you are so special, and I miss you immeasureably! Come to Montreal!!! If I was rich, that would be my present to you, ma fille. for now I will eat some nutella in your name and just wish you were here.

Tycho vs. Bat: Round Two!

This week I stopped by the downtown Dollarama to root out some treats for my little man at home... last time we played with his soldiers, neither of us took the initiative to collect them all up off the floor again, and as a result there was a mini massacre happening all week as I kept stepping on them and snapping off their legs. Feeling guilty about this, I thought I'd pick up another bag of 200 little green army guys for T... but I found something BETTER! It being Halloween, and Tycho being a bat superhunter, I bought him a bag of little plastic bats, and one giant mother of a bat! You should have seen him... it was like "I let you get away once, I will not let you get away again!" We tied a string abou the big bat and had a great time running like mad through the apartment together. Tycho hasn't lost any of his bat-hunting skills, that's for sure... but I still get a little explosion in my guts whenever I glimpse the bat out of the corner of my eye... shudder...




There was also another Tycho-related big event the other day, which I won't describe in detail because reliving it is almost as bad as living through it the first time. It involved a door left slightly ajar, a rogue kitty wandering up the fire escape by himself, and a frantic Megan. Thanks to my anonymous neighbour who observed my panic and called out to me: "Ton chat! Il est la-bas!" and we both looked, and there, three floors above my own stoop, a little orange head was sticking out between the railings, cool as a cucumber. I have never felt so relieved and so mad before in my life! Little goon!


This is a weekend of small possibilities... small possibility of a semi-surprise visit from a long/lost, small possibility of finishing my first written-in-montreal prose piece, small possibility of finishing my first round of marking, small possibility of drinking more raspberry beer... and very BIG possibility of seeing Pauline and reminiscing about the good ol' Rouen days!

This is the Rue D'Horloge in Rouen, where we would walk each day en route to the Lycée for school... it's so strange to think that it keeps on existing long after I've left. Such is the ego-centricity of humanity, I guess. Other places fall under this category of default non-existence when I'm not in them: Paris, London (ON), Dundalk, etc. Which reminds me of a funny story: I was at a poetry reading the other day and one of the poets was a Cape Bretoner, and she told this [apparently true] story about a young British couple who were on holiday, and they thought they had bought a plane ticket to Sydney, the Autralia version, but they had actually bought a train ticket to Sydney, the Nova Scotia version... there's a poem about it now, by Anita Lehay, and it's incredibly good... I was going to post an excerpt but somehow that feels wrong. I don't know how I'd feel if I googled my own name and found people blogging excerpts of my writing. Ask me to hear the poem and I will read it to you!

I'm sure this doesn't help

Tycho woke up from his evening nap today, blinked at me for a second or two, then opened his mouth in a full out screech which, when deciphered, sounded something like "I WANT BREAD PUDDING!"


So what did I do?


I've been missing some very significant pieces of London a lot, with no remedy except the sweet, sweet tummy-balm of comfort food.

Revelation: there is nothing (nothing!) like bread pudding made with fresh-from-the-boulangerie two-day-old baguette. I think I have inherited the "procrastibake" technique from Jen. Yesterday I made cookies, and now this! Here's the good news, though: Tycho and I have been going for joint walks, and having a lot of fun. Tycho puts everything he's got into those walks... he enjoys them for all they're worth.... flips around on the pavement, eats the grass, does the nose-rub cat thing on every railing of every stoop, pounces on every bug... I've learned a lot about "living in the moment" from Tycho and his super-enjoyment of our outdoor adventures. Because he moves at such a slow pace (half an hour usually gets us about twenty feet down the alley, then twenty feet back up) I bring a book with me and split my time between readng and cooing. It's a system that works pretty well for us both - UNTIL a person walks by. Tycho is so funny: a car could rumble by so close to Tycho that his fur gets greased and he won't even move an inch, but if a person ever so much as steps into view somewhere in the alley, Tycho poofs up like a blowfish and is all hiss and vinegar. And if that person pauses to offer a complement? Forget about it! Tycho looks for some eyeballs to scratch out. Or else he heads for the relative safety of our own stoop, especially if he realizes we are the full twenty feet away. Who knew that such a little cat could have such a pull on a leash! It's like having a dog! I've thought about bringing T with me to the park, but his apparent terror/rage of/for any other human being he sees in the great outdoors makes me think again...

Oh well. I'm still having that once-a-week dream about Tycho disappearing, so I have no problem with keeping him as close to the apartment as possible. It's a different scenario in every dream (last week I was fleeing some sort of war zone, and tried to double back from Tycho, but got disoriented... I think that was partly because of reading the Michael Crummey POW novel so recently). Little T! I will never let you go!

In other news, I have officially seen the entire series of Six Feet Under. Thanks to Derek's free long distance and my successfully repressed hatred of DVDO, we managed to coordinate well enough to watch the final episode of the series by proxy, and it was sooooo good. That show is some amazing. Apparently they are coming out with a boxed set of all five seasons that will look like a grave with grass growing on it. I just can't believe it's over... no more episodes... and what a series finale....... it felt like I was watching my own life, except much more tragically and cinematically and musically impressive. I want to start all over from the beginning and watch it again, now that I know how it all turns out. Is this how addiction starts? "Hello, my name is Megan, and I have a problem with HBO drama..."

This week: tutorial tomorrow (it took some hard thinking, but I found a way to relate timbits to Foucault!), then meeting with the conference planning team I'm on (Englishy types: watch for a call for papers from Concordia soon!) then a weekend of trying not to think about all the fun that's happening in Toronto without me (Mom/Bronwyn/Adam's race, D's conference). Fortunately I have a tres fantastique distraction lined up: my friend Pauline of Rouen, as in the Rouen-north-of-Paris where I went on an exchange a few years ago, is doing part of her school in Windsor right now, and is coming to see Montreal this weekend! This means great things... this means happy reunions... this means reminiscing... this means seeing Montreal through someone else's eyes.... this means actually speaking French for a significant period of time. Oh la la!

Oh la bed... I'm so tired right now... it just hit me.

One more thing... I happened to notice that someone from Newfoundland has been spending a couple of minutes here and there on Live Wire... maybe it's Joel Hynes! If yes... welcome, Joel! Shelagh was right - Down the the Dirt was fabulous. I remember I bought it a year-ish ago because I read in the Globe that it was being released in certain cities on a trial run, so I felt like helping boost the sales numbers, even just by one. I promise that when your next book shows up, I'll read it, too... and if you ever need a house sitter or something in Newfoundland, just say the word. I think I was meant to live on the east coast... just haven't made it that far yet.

Tycho vs. Ventian Blinds

(alternative title: some relief/distraction from an upsetting day in Montreal)

(Pictures by Megan. Captions by Tycho.)

A happy day for Tycho:

(no blinds)


An unhappy day for Tycho:

(many blinds)


But I am Tycho! I am incredibly clever (and handsome)! I am the boss of the blinds! Thusly, I stick my head through:


Retreat!


Uh-oh! Head too big (because of incredibly clever brains)!

Aha! Success.

The end!
By Tycho.
(and MEgan).

Hijacked from Padma's blog

My cousin Milan (on the right) gets his first kiss.

It's like one of those cutsey black&white posters of the little boy and little girl kissing, and the girl is holding a red rose... only this one is realistic!

Oh Milan, what will you say about this when you're both sixteen and she's dating the football star while you toil with the school band? (unless, of course, you are the football star - our famiy has many firsts and you could be one of them!)

Fiona, I know where you're coming from.

This Saturday's Globe and Mail book section did a special report on brand spankin new kidlit for the fall, and guess which book got the most points (from me, anyway) for cuteness and relevancy! "Tales from Parc la Fontaine," by Roslyn Schwartz! Guess what, kids? Megan lives at Parc la Fontaine! Or, at least, verrrrry near to it. I think Tycho has licked his lips at the very budgie who is featured in one of the stories. This book will need to belong to me in the very near future! (The real category should be "For babies & preschoolers & megans")

On another literary note: one day I will be interviewed by Shelagh Rogers about my writing. I want to say that one day I will also be her close personal friend, invited to her dinner parties and Saturday morning power walks and telephone dish sessions, but I need to set realistic goals before I can set meganistic goals. Anyway - I have loved Shelagh Rogers (along with the late-great Peter Gzowski) and everything about her since I was a wee tot, and this morning I heard her interviewing Joel Hynes. I read his book a few months ago. Let me tell you: if Shelagh wants to talk to Joel, then she will definitely want to talk to me.

MontREAL FUN

SOOOO I spent this morning getting ready for my next tutorial group (hereafter known as the "Kermit Conference," thanks to our official mascot and Concordia's habit of calling tutorials "conferences," as though anything half official happens in them)... I made up an official list of poetic term "which ever student of the Kermit Conference should know." I'm a bit concerned about what they go home and tell their friends about me, but more just glad I have a chance to do with them what I will! And I will do plenty! They seem a willing group ... I had some of them performing interpretive dances of the poems we're studying... when I suggested they do said dances, I meant it as a joke (more or less), but before I knew it they were doing pirouettes and violent tap sequences while their classmates read "Leda and the Swan." I resisted the urge to say, "Dance, monkey, dance!" (but only barely). They are good kids. Together we will learn like there's no tomorrow!

Anyway... after busting my brains to get the next Kermit Conference ready, I headed for the hills... or, at least, the Montreal version of the hills, aka the mountain. I set out on an exploring mission to see what's what in my neighbourhood (so far I've really only explored Parc La Fountain around here, figured it was finally time to go above and beyond). It was a good day to go out walking, not only because of the snapping-clear weather, but because there was some sort of big marathon happening along Rue Rachel, so the street was closed to traffic and people were just strolling along, watching the runners (B & A: your next marathon should be in Montreal!!!). I zig-zagged through the Plateau in the vague direction of the mountain, which I sort of thought was a long way off, when all of a sudden, that's where I was! Special news announcement: Parc Mont Royal is crazy on a Sunday afternoon! First there was the huge drum circle and its associated ragamuffin crew of dreadlocked dancers and loungers... then the elaborate medieval-esque jousting tournament, whose joint ridiculousness and incredible, contagious enthusiasm drew me over there... and then the trails and trails and trails of forest hiking! It's like a vast wilderness in the middle of the city!

Speaking of vast wildernesses... in the last couple of days, Tycho and I have resurrected the old habit of going out for walks together, avec leash. He can only handle going up and down the alley so far, which is fine with me. When we're out there he acts as if he has never seen sunlight before in his life, running from one patch of the light to the next, rolling around in the gravel to soak it all in, purring like a maniac. Eating lots of grass. Lots of grass. I hope he is not like Meg, our old dog, who would suffer an unmentionable bout of digestive disruption after chowing down on outdoor greens. BUT I was in a pet store today during my adventures, and found out from the friendly pet store people (I think that was their official name) that eating grass can help cats digest other nasty things in their guts, like cat hair (and I hate to think what else). Of course, I ended up buying a tray of "cat grass" for T, so all of the FPSP's talk could have been a ruse to get an obviously gullible cat owner to buy something from their store. We'll see. It's just that I can tell how much Tycho enjoys being outside, and I feel badly that the other 99% of his life is spent running from window to window in this little apartment, so maybe some grass could give him a little variety in his day.

That's all! I started this blog as a list - "Things I Learned In Parc Mont Royal," but alas, my wits are not as sharp tonight as such a list would require, so this is what you get, folkettes. Oh yes, and this: Friday night's potluck party was a huge, cake-filled, wine-induced good time, and and I am thickens closer to feeling settled in this strange place. Also this weekend: I read Michael Crummey's The Wreckage. Part of the reading happened while sitting among the drum circle crew this afternoon, and it was quite the jarring reality check to be reading a very intense narrative about a Japanese POW with a massive drum-beat soundtrack in the background. Now that The Wreckage is over for me, I have that just-read-a-book-in-two-days lonely feeling... as though the people in the book became my friends, and now that the book is over, they've all ditched me... I feel used by literature... time for a Harlequin, so I can use literature right back!

WAIT, DON'T GO!
I need to do some shout-outs first:
1. Happy birthday to Mark, whos turns... uh... a very certain age tomorrow! (yes, Sept 11th!)
2. Happy thesis defending to Jen, who steps up to the podium on Tuesday!
3. Happy TAing to Derek, who begins his top-secret o25 Blackmore assignment this week! (and booo to him for not having a blog I can link to... I will use this very Derek-ish link instead!)
4. Happy running to my Waterloo Crew (mom, sis & bro-law), who are exactly two weeks away from running the Scotiabank Toronto Waterfront Marathon!

Ceci n'est pas un chat

Welllll today I submitted my first short story for the perusal and hopeful approval of my fellow Concordian prose writers! This is the ultimate test. What will they say? Will they twirl invisible mustaches and hum and hah and remark on the weather? Will they parade me on their shoulders? Will they invite me to their dinner parties? Oh wait - they already have invited me to their dinner parties! Or, at least one. Tomorrow night. It's a potluck which is a bit of an added pressure, but nothing I can't handle. Little bit of egg whites, little bit of sugar, and you've got people eating right out of your hand (or, at the very least, your bundt pan).
Bronwyn says dinner parties are verrrry "grad school" so I'm relieved to know that I'm toeing the right line. The party is in Mile End which I found out (AFTER moving, of course) is the new "Plateau" (Plateau being my current supposedly uber-trendy neighbourhood). Today in the Concordia newspaper there was a debate between a Mile Ender and a Verdunian (Verdun: another on-the-rise studentish cool neighbourhood). Apparently people living in the Plateau are called "platard hipsters" and have opinions which really matter to people in the other neighbourhoods! That's me! I've never lived in a neighbourhood with a name before. Unless you count the Zoo as a neighbourhood (which you should, since it has a population bigger than Dundalk).

ALSO, though many may not know this, today was a historical day in Montreal. At around 2:30 pm, on the third floor of the Webster Library in Concordia's aptly-named Library Building, three brand-spanking new MA creative writing students (who were each, it should be noted, also brand spanking new Montrealeans) ran into each other quite unexpectedly but with abounding relief and happiness. Never did any of them believe the day would come when familiar faces would start appearing in the crowds! Never, they thought, would they find themselves laughing so easily and comfortably with friends in the midst of such sprawling strangeness in this enormous city! This small group paused a moment to welcome the change of feeling that this random encounter granted them; a sort of joyful peace settled over the small group, who agreed to celebrate the historical moment with a beer at the earliest opportunity.

Tycho is jealous. He, too, wants to have a beer with some new friends. Your time will come, Tycho! Hang on, little tomato!*


(*inspirational phrase courtesy of my aunt helen)

Tycho's sleepytime acrobatics

Some things you do for money, and some you do for love

And heaven knows I'm not going to Concordia for the money...

Yesterday I taught my first tutorial section! It was all thrown at me at the last minute because the other guy working for my prof had a conflict yesterday, so we switched (which means free beer for me!). It was obvious that one of us was going to be mad at the other for getting stuck with the "deadbeats," but that's not me, because my shiny new tutorial group is fabulous! They were there for their first class on their first day of university. Hopefully that means they will remember me for years to come in a Dead Poet's kind of way. I didn't make them stand on their desks or recite Whitman, but I did assign us a mascot (Kermit the Frog) and we have a group cheer in the works. That way whenever someone from our tutorial section (Section of Awesome) contributes in the actual class lecture, the rest of us can sound the cheer. It might be distracting for the prof but he did tell me to do whatever I want in the name of learning and participation. I have twenty-six young'uns to mould in my image and it all started off soooo well... I played the Megan-original poetry game with them and they were all eager and enthusiastic, and I even know some of their names already, and I had them fill out a questionnaire to give back to me about their likes/dislikes/favourite things/hated things etc and some of them gave hilarious answers, and they seem like a cool bunch of munch(kins). There is even one girl who quoted Mystery Science Theatre 3000 as one of her favourite shows! A+.

Today: first writing workshop of the year. I'm more excited than nervous, which I hope is a good sign and not just a blind spot in my emotional landscape. As a reward for a day well taught yesterday, I took Mom's/Jen's advice and saw Little Miss Sunshine, which was as good as they say! The guy sitting in front of me hated it and told me so as we were leaving but I didn't let him ruin my Sufjan-Steve Carell-feel-good high which got me all the way home to Gascon with a big smile. Also every time I see the teaser (different from the trailer) for Marie Antoinette I feel such a weird mixed feeling of intrigue and haunting... something about the way the whole trailer is silent except for that song (is the The Cure?) makes it so strange and effective. It also really makes me want to see it, so I guess it works! (And that big shot Chateau Versailles? I've been there!!!)

Tycho just dipped his paw in my oatmeal. Is it still safe to eat?

"Do you like crazy sea monkeys?"

If I didn't have Montreal, I expect I'd be verrrrrry jealous of Ben right now, because he is going to Tawain soon to make pots of money and hang out with munchkins all day:

http://www.hess.com.tw/events/candid_kindy/

I think I've found my OSAP repayment plan!

Eureka!

I think I've got it!

First day of tutorial:
I'll pick four short sections from four relatively well-known poems. I'll get enough index cards for each student to have one, and on each index card will be printed one line from one of the four poems... they'll need to mingle in order to find the other people with different lines from the same poem, then arrange themselves so that they can read their poem out loud in the right order. I won't know who they are by the end, but I have a questionnaire for them to fill out to that end. And hopefully this will help get them talking about poetry!!!!

Feeling so much better now... off to find some of my favourite poems... thank you, Blackmore, for making me buy all of those index cards when I was taking MIT 025, and thank you, Adams, for making me buy a poetry anthology in ENG 204. I just found both in my closet and thus inspiration struck! Now I can't wait for Thursday. Even Tycho is excited because now we can both relax!

Montreal, meet Megan...

I did some mean exploring yesterday! I walked downtown, which was a good geography lesson, and went first to the Just for Laughs Museum, which is currently hosting the World Press Photo exhibit - it was so intense, and I kind of want to go back. Too much, really, to take in and process all at once. Seeing all of those incredible photos (which were pretty evenly-and grimly-divided between photos from the earthquake in Pakistan, the flooding in New Orleans, and various wars and famines) made me miss MIT, especially Blackmore's classes, and makes me jealous of Derek and Presto, who essentially get to take 025 over again as Blackmore's TAs. It's hard to know what to say in the face of those pictures but I wish I had had someone with me nonetheless to relieve some of the intensity. I sort of stumbled into the street after that and wandered over to McGill, saw their bookstore, and felt homesick for my own beloved UWO bookstore which is facing the rush right now. After that I spent some time in the Musée des Beaux-Arts, which is hosting an exhibit on contemporary Canadian photography and film, and that was quite the contrast to the World Press Photo exhibit - it was sort of friendlier, in a way, though no less confrontational. That museum is great because a lot of the exhibits are free, and it's near Concordia! I could see spending a lot of time there.

The best part of yesterday: thanks to metro passes, picnic lunches, and free exhibits, the whole day on cost me $5! The World Press Photo exhibit is going to be in Toronto in October, and I would highly recommend seeing it. I like thinking about how this exhibit is going to be shown all over the world, and one of its stops is within walking distance of my apartment! Finally, I live at a hub.

Now we're getting those rainy couple of days that you London types already had, and I find myself doing strange things that I never would have thought of doing except under these exceptional circumstances - things like actually washing my "hand wash only" sweaters by hand. They are currently drying on my table. Tycho has been extra clingy this morning which feels somehow reassuring. I'm at my desk right now and he's sitting in the little compartment underneath that's meant to hold a computer tower, and every now and then he taps me on the leg, claws sheathed, as though to say, "don't forget I'm here! And don't accidentally kick me in the nose!" (this last thing has happened once or twice before, I'm afraid). Lots to do, though, like have a look at the readings for my tutorial. I've got this slow-cooking fear in my stomach about school that I'm trying like hell to face down. There are about 15,000 things I'm worried about, though, so it's slow going. The comforting thing is that once I'm done with this (what I decide to include in "this" is always in question), nothing will every be this type of scary again. Go go gadget brain cells!

I want to think of something fun to do with my students at our first tutorial meeting on Thursday. I've got some run-of-the-mill ice breakers as fall-back options, but I always sort of dreaded being put through those summer camp-type activities in my own undergrad, so I want to think of something else... suggestions?

Holy, I just remembered (again) that I'm not an undergrad anymore. This requires some nutella and maybe even the fetal position for a while.

Tycho's "Mug Shots"

Concordia: the C is for Cool!

Well, dear friends and spy-bots, I made it. I am sitting in my bright orange bedroom, wearing my pajamas (fluffy pink pants and a threadless T), and, at last check, I am fully in tact and lucid after a very successful Concordia TA orientation yesterday. You may think that the fact that I'm in my pajamas at 10pm on Friday night in Montreal might be evidence that orientation was not such a success after all, but you would just be silly! I am taking time to regroup after the stressfest/boozefest of Thursday. I went, I met, I conquered - and I left them wanting more! That is the trick to social prowess (and to a decent night's sleep - though this factor is easily and welcomingly dismissed under the right circumstances) (I realize that welcomingly isn't a word, but neither is technoculture, yet it's printed on my UWO degree!). The whole day was a bit exhausting, but it got me reasonably excited about being a TA, and very much excited about being a grad student in general! We got doughnuts, name tags, and very animated speeches by some very animated professors who tried to describe to us what we're in for. It seemed to me that most of the grad students there were returning MA students who hijacked the orientation day in order to reunite with each other after a summer apart, but that made it even more fun! Montreal people are niiiiice.... seriously nice... here are a few of the many things that I did yesterday:

1. Ate a (free) doughnut!

2. Met a fellow student who spent his summer as the manager at a slaughterhouse near Guelph. Over lunch I told him that my memories of slaughterhouses involve going with my Dad to the abattoir and being given a fudgesicle while I waited for the hogs to get unloaded. Now fudgesicles are forever tied to squealing slaughter in my mind. The guy, Andrew, listening to my story with the ears of a slaughterhouse manager, had a conniption fit at the thought of a farmer bringing his tiny kid with him to deliver the pigs. The other people at the table had connpition fits because they were eating a pork stir-fries.

3. Found out that my MA creative writing thesis needs to be about four times as long and about ten million times as good as my undergrad creative writing thesis.

4. Met the prof I'm TAing for, who is fabulous, and who bought me a beer at the pub and told me not to work too hard. He's only been in Montreal for a year so we bonded over our mutual feeling of displacement... and our mutual love of television melodramas. (him: Buffy, me: Six Feet Under)

5. Got bored during the library info session (think: MIT 026 in two hours or less) and accidentally made myself sick'n'dizzy from spinning on my office chair... no one noticed that I nearly toppled. At least, I think no one noticed.

Today I hung out at Parc La Fontaine, which was soooooo nice. I was there from late afternoon to late evening, the perfect time of day, and I found a great spot to spread my blanket near the fountain, under the trees. That park is so amazing... the whole time you could hear bongo drums and guitars, little kids laughing, dogs playing together, and everywhere you looked people were spread out in the grass, reading and talking and eating. It was total paradise, especially because everyone else seemed to think it was a sort of paradise, too. No one was in a hurry, no one was closed off to the world, no one minded the music. It was sort of like Jamaica ... but less scorching hot. (disclaimer: I have never been to Jamaica and do not claim to have any real idea of what it's really like there)

Anyway, time for tea and reading. Tycho is on patrol in the apartment. The bedroom and kitchen windows face out onto the alley behind my building, and every now and then a tough-looking alley cat saunters past. Tycho knows this and has been scampering between the bedroom and the kitchen for the last couple of hours, pressing his head against the window and breathing heavily whenever he spots a cat. Seriously, he does this sort of snorting-puffing thing with his nose, and his fur spikes up like mad. I feel bad for the alley cats because some of them stop and look up at Tycho and I in the window, and I feel like they are looking at us with envy. I have visions of the Little Match Girl, starving and freezing cold on Christmas Eve and peering into the windows of jolly families gathering around their feasts. I know that these cats aren't freezing cold, and they don't even look starving, but still, I hope they have a Megan to go home to who squeezes them and gives them toys!