Life after Guelph - Who Knew?

All cooped up and nothing to do

2009-05-25T10:57:00.002-04:00

I haven't written for a while, a few weeks now probably. The only important thing that's happened in the last couple of weeks is that I didn't get hired back at my firm, but since I'm pretty sure I sent an email to absolutely everyone who might care at all (although I'm sure I managed to miss a few people when I was clicking off who to put in the 'bcc' address box, as always) then I didn't really feel the need to post the info too. Not cause I didn't feel like writing about it, just cause I'm lazy!

So yeah, I didn't get hired back. Not really too upset about it at all. Obviously would have been nice to have a job, and I really like (at least most) of the people in the department I would have been working in if I had been hired back. But I also really, really, REALLY want to go back to Toronto. I didn't think I would miss it that much, and I figured I could always go back to Toronto on weekends if I needed to. And I do have family in Ottawa who I love. But I never see them - they have their little babies and families and lives, not that I've put in the effort either, being ridiculously lazy on weekends! I think it's just a matter of being in different points of life at different times, makes it difficult. And I do have friends that I have made here, like people I am articling with. But none of those friendships are the same as the friendships I have with people from law school or undergrad. And I miss those friendships. I miss my sister. I miss having Adam's family around, because we hang out with his brothers and their significant others a lot and that's a lot of fun, like family and friends combined. And I miss a lot of things about the city - more and better restaurants (including more with good all-day breakfast!), more and better concerts, ease of access to getting around the city (who knew I would miss having a subway system so much, considering I've spent only about 6-8 months of my entire life having one, the rest of the time it's been buses if anything). Ottawa is nicer in the summer, but much more miserable in the winter (especially without the PATH underground system!). Basically Ottawa is a very beautiful, nice, relaxed city, great for a lot of people and I've enjoyed it for the year, but turns out it's not for me.

The downside of not being hired back is that it's a lot more difficult now to feel motivated. Especially since, as I think I mentioned before, the summer students are now here as of 2 weeks ago. Which means that all the work goes to them, which is great except that I am now really, really, really, REALLY bored. I have nothing to do. This is made a little bit better by the fact that I can get away with coming in at 9:30 and leaving at 4:30, but still that means I have to sit at my desk during those hours and come up with something to do (hence, this post and the crazy babbling I'm doing - sorry about that to anyone actually still reading this post!).

Went to Adam's cottage last weekend for the May 24, just the two of us and his brother Jack, plus Jack's 2 large dogs and my cat Spice. Spice spent some time outdoors for the first time since I've had her (apart from her going missing in downtown Toronto for a week last summer, after escaping through a broken window). She liked it, although she didn't go too far and only would spend about max 10 minutes outside at a time. She also continues to get along relatively well with the dogs, although she definitely does NOT like it when the boy dog decides that he needs to lick her all over. I can't tell if he's trying to show affection (he does lick people, too), or if he's trying to figure out if she's a tasty treat. Either way, Spice definitely lets him know it's not cool, and he's fairly terrified of her when she gets all bitchy, so that works out.

OH I TOTALLY FORGOT SOMETHING AWESOME!!!!!! I got to go to another Leonard Cohen concert last week! How could I frigging forget that??!! Yeah, my sister and I had gotten tickets for our dad for his birthday, but of course he decided he didn't want to go. I had originally said I couldn't go along, because it was in the middle of the week and I didn't want to spend the money to fly/drive there and back from Ottawa, and I didn't want to have to take too much time off. But the week before I'd realised that I had the Monday off anyway (the concert was on Tuesday), and that I could get a ride back to Toronto with Jack or with Adam (if Adam decided to go to Toronto as well after the cottage, instead of heading back to Ottawa), and then I would only have to take 2 days off and only pay one way on public transportation. So I went, and it was awesome. Not as good as the one I went to last year, only because it was a larger forum so less intimate-feeling, but still absolutely amazing. Definitely Leonard is my favourite musician/musical artist/songwriter of all time - the man has so much talent it's insane!

After we went back to Toronto, I left on Wednesday on the train, because Adam needed to stay and meet with some profs to get reference letters and stuff. And for some reason there wasn't a single train on Wednesday that had checked baggage (I had been sure there was always at least one a day), so I couldn't take Spice back to Ottawa with me (pets have to go in carriers in checked baggage cars only). So Adam and Spice are still in Toronto, and probably will be until at least Wednesday. Which means I am very, very lonely. :( But I did have a relaxing weekend this past weekend, and I watched some movies that Adam wouldn't want to watch with me, so that was all right. I also bought the first season of True Blood - if you have not seen it, find a way to watch it somehow, it's freaking amazing (and redonculously sexy!). The second season starts June 14th on HBO, so get caught up on the first before then!

So now we're all caught up. I only have 3 more weeks of work. How awesome is that????!!!!

Update on the job front:

2009-04-30T10:28:00.002-04:00

There IS no update. What a surprise. While the firm insists that it is because they still haven't made the decision, suspicions among students are high that they're actually just worried that our activity level will decrease exponentially once we know that we are definitely not hired (rather than being just 99% sure). They could be right. But with the summer students coming in soon anyway, not really sure why it would matter - it's not like we're going to stop doing work altogether! It's getting very frustrating, I would REALLY like to know where I'm going to be living in 2 months' time, but since the only thing I can do is keep on keeping on, I guess... that's what I'll do!

On a more positive note, Adam and Spice are really getting along well now. In fact, yesterday she climbed into his lap for a cuddle, without even being enticed by treats! This makes me verrrrrrrrrry happy!

Also, I ordered my robes for my Call to the Bar last week (I decided to buy on the off-chance that at some point I might actually get a law practice job). They should be in sometime in the next couple of weeks. It's definitely the most I've ever spent on an 'outfit', especially considering it's probably going to be hella unflattering, but the law profession seems to be big on this whole 'tradition' thing so I guess I'm along for the ride. Right now I'm just looking forward to a summer of UNemployment... at least I'll get a lot of reading done! :D

The times, they are a-changin'

2009-04-14T15:49:00.002-04:00

I changed my display name for this post - for the first time since I started this sucker, I am no longer 'Dirty'. I know there are going to be people who still call me that, and I'm cool with it, but I realised that I no longer identify myself as 'Dirty' (the name, I never identified myself as 'dirty' the adjective!) so I might as well change up the name.

I also changed the template, thought this looks a little nicer (and more mature? lol) than the old one.

I had an absolutely great Easter/Passover weekend. Thursday night Adam and I went into Toronto for his family's seder, at his grandma's place. It was really nice to see everyone, although I have to confess that I don't super love most of the traditional seder dishes (um, gifelte fish? really? And matzo ball soup, no thanks!). But it was a good family dinner, as usual, at least in terms of company.

Friday Adam and I spent with Adam's cousin and his girlfriend, and Adam's two brothers and their significant others, and Adam's little niece. I think she finally likes me! She's only two and a few months, and in the past she's basically been indifferent towards me, particularly since she ADORES Adam and pays attention to him all the time if he's there. But on Friday I got to really spend some time with her, and we played, and it was lots of fun. So hopefully next time she'll actually remember me, and like me! :)

We had brought Spice with us for the weekend, because she travels so well in her carrier and it's way better for her than leaving her alone for the weekend with a sitter who's only there twice a day, or bringing her to a 'kennel'-type place which she just hates. On Friday when Adam's one brother and his fiancee came over, they brought their two dogs (one rottweiler x Belgian shepherd, and one rottweiler x american staffordshire terries - in other words, VERY big dogs!). I was worried that Spice would be terrified and wouldn't do well, so I initially had her in the basement with a baby gate preventing her from coming upstairs. But at one point I came around the corner, and she and Tia (one of the dogs) were rubbing noses. So I decided to give it a chance, and let her out. There was a little bit of hissing and swiping, mostly when the dogs' curiousity got the better of them and they got a bit too close (especially because the one had this fascination with licking Spice all over), but other than that they all got along pretty well - much better than I had expected! At the end of the night, we were all sitting in the living room watching a movie, with Spice curled up on the couch and the two dogs curled up on the floor in front of us. This makes me really, really happy, since I am much less worried now about what might happen when Adam and I get a dog - as long as we get one that's fairly chill, I'm not really worried anymore about it getting along with Spice, which is awesome.

Saturday and Sunday we just hung out and relaxed, Adam got to hang out with some of his friends which was good since he hardly ever gets to see them anymore. I realise now that I really, really want to move back to Toronto. I still hope that I get hired back here because I do still like the firm and the people and I do like Ottawa, but I miss Toronto and wouldn't mind at all moving back there either. I guess the firm will be making the decision for me, really!

Anyway, Adam and I drove back Monday (I love that my firm gave us both Friday and Monday off - yay for working in 'government town'!). And now I'm back at work, and ready for another 4-day week. ;)

Isn't that always the way?!

2009-04-02T11:40:00.002-04:00

I was crazy sick the past 3 days. Not like anything serious, but one of the worst colds that I have ever had. It was unpleasant. What made it even more unpleasant than it otherwise would have been was the fact that I had to work. I could not call in sick, because I had a big, intense research project due on Tuesday, that I pretty much had to be at work to work on because I needed to be able to consult with the lawyer I was working for, and of course they won't let students have access to work email or other work software or anything at home. So instead of staying at home and resting and quarantining myself, I went into work each day and probably infected everyone around me - sorry fellow lackeys! I got the memo done (at 8 last night, about 5 hours after it was expected, and a day after it was actually originally supposed to be done). And that's over, which is great. What's also unfortunate about the situation is that the research was actually interesting, and I like working for this lawyer, so if I hadn't been sick it would have been interesting and challenging. Instead, it kind of ended up just being the bane of my existence.

The only thing that made being sick for the last (side note: at first I totally wrote 'law' instead of 'last' just there - I hate that I instinctively write law!) few days is that I had Adam to take care of me. Despite the fact that he HATES being around sick people and will avoid potential germ transfer at any cost, he was really nice and sweet and took care of me very well. And didn't even refuse to sleep in the same bed as me (probably only because we only have one bed, but still, the couch is a futon!). He bought me soup and made it for me, and brought me drinks and made me tea, and was generally pretty much the best boyfriend ever. I know I'm totally bragging here, but I'm still getting used to having someone around to really take care of me, after living on my own (I know I had roommates, but that's still not exactly the same thing) for the last 7 and a half years. It makes it a lot easier that my mum is 8 hours away, that's for sure!

Before my sicky mcsickyness, I had a fantastic weekend in Toronto with my mum, step-dad and sister. I flew in Thursday night on Porter Airlines, which is a completely amazing experience which I would highly recommend to anyone, because we had a concert that night at 8: Fleetwood Mac!!! We got it for Mikey, my step-dad, for Christmas, and the best part that it was with Stevie Nicks, which of course made it extra awesome. The show was incredible - that band is so ridiculously talented - and since they didn't have a new album to promote, they just played their favourite songs (which of course were often also their most popular ones), and that made it a lot of fun to just be able to enjoy all those songs I grew up listening to and loving. Mikey even got to his feet for one of the encore songs and was clapping along, which is very expressive for him! :D

Friday I spent with my mum, while my sister was at work and my step-dad went to a Home & Outdoor Show with my aunt (his sister). My mum and I cruised around my sister's neighbourhood (Queen and Dufferin, lots of cute little trendy shops), handed out some brochures for my the Art Escape weekend that my mum and her friends have organized (this is their 3rd or 4th, I believe - they really have created something quite impressive), and bought some nice wooden knitting needles for me as I have volunteered with a local charity (Bullies In Need - for rescued 'pitbull' type dogs) to knit some blankets to line doggy crates for the rescued puppies.

Friday night we had a nice family dinner at my sister's place, and spent the night just sitting around, talking, visiting, and making very funny videos and photos of us on my sister's Apple photoshop program - good times all around!

Saturday was spent at the ROM, looking at the dinosaur exhibit which is finally back up and running (located in the crystal), and the Book of the Dead exhibit that they are currently displaying. We then went grocery shopping (and to Wal-Mart for some cheap yarn and kitty toys for my cat and my sister's cat!) because my sister had invited our step-cousins and step-aunt over to her place for dinner, as well as one of our cousins (on my mom's side) who is living in Toronto. Then we went back to my sister's place and cooked supper and prepared for guests. The dinner was excellent, and the desserts that were brought by my step-aunt, step-cousin and cousin were sooooooooo yummy. And it was nice to sit around and visit with everyone, in my sister's beautiful and very trendy downtown house/apartment. My step-aunt and step-cousins left just before Earth Hour began, as they had to get back to Markham. My cousin and her boyfriend stayed with us for Earth Hour. I LOVE Earth Hour. It is so nice to sit around by candlelight and talk and visit and not be distracted by all those electronics. Don't get me wrong, I love love love electronics, but sometimes it really is nice to just enjoy each other without anything else. I definitely agree with Nuju on this one!

Sunday morning the parents left very early, and my sister and I hung out and watched some tv online (sshhhh... I am a bad IP law student!). We then met up with Janice for a couple of hours of shopping at the Eaton Centre (we had planned to hit up Queen Street but it was rainy and miserable, so that plan fell by the wayside). I bought some cute shirts at GAP, and got to hang out with Janice which was awesome. Then I headed up to Lawrence and Bathurst area to get a ride back to Ottawa with my friend and fellow articling student, which was WAY more fun and relaxing than having to take the train back! (I didn't want to fly because there weren't any cheap flights left for Sunday evening, surprise surprise!).

So it was a fantastic weekend, and I was so glad that I got to spend all that time with my family. And Adam and Spice got to spend some quality time together, they had a bit of a major incident (yes, Spice did poop on the carpet and Adam had to clean it up and then clean her up - he gave her a shower!), but I think that it might have actually been good for the two of them. She does sit on the couch beside him now, although a lot of the time she still acts afraid of him. I thinks he respects him now, though, and realises that she does have to obey him, which is very important. So things are looking somewhat up, and hopefully will continue to get better.

Well, now we're all updated, and you're in the know of my incredibly exciting life. Until my next fascinating entry!

Fear of the unknown, it will get you every time

2009-03-20T10:55:00.002-04:00

My biggest reason for not wanting to leave my beloved IP (Intellectual Property) department for the Advocacy department was, I will confess, a fear of the unknown. I went into the IP department at the beginning of my articles aware that I knew nothing, really, about the practice of law, but confident at least that I had a sufficient background in intellectual property law, such that no huge new concepts would be leaping out at me. And I was pretty much right. Obviously there are always little issues within any law to learn about, but I had the background down. So nothing was scary and new and foreign. After 7 months in that department, I knew where to look for information and sources. Searching took very little time, generally, unless there was so obscure issue that hadn't really been decided yet.

However, a move to the Advocacy department was a completely different concept. First of all, unlike the IP department which (obviously) deals with one area of law, IP, the Advocacy department deals with any other litigation which may occur in the context of a large firm. Any area of law can potentially involve litigation, pretty much, and having focused so entirely on IP in law school as well as in my first several months of articling, I had pretty much forgotten about any other area of law, if I had known anything about any other area of begin with. On top of that, I didn't even know how to search Ontario law, as all IP law (or at least the vast majority of law relevant to IP) is federal.

So far, in my first week of Advocacy, I have dealt with an employment issue, a criminal issue, a government suit issue, and a small claims court/accounting issue (I have to confess I particularly enjoyed that one, as it involved a lot of math!). None of these are necessarily areas in which I could see myself practicing for the rest of my life (although let's be honest, I'm not going to practice anything for the rest of my life - akademia here I come, once my loans are paid off!), but they are enjoyable. It's interesting to do something entirely new and foreign, and a nice (albeit scary) challenge. I'm definitely using my brain much more in this department, if only because I have to figure out entirely new areas of law (not because IP is less challenging than any other area!). I miss the IP department, I miss the people, and I miss being constantly surrounded by science and scientists every day. But I will go back to that (with any luck - anyone hiring?). In the meantime, I am woman enough to admit that I was wrong, that I am enjoying my 'Advocacy' time, and that even employment law can be interesting.

On another note, also in relation to fear, my cat is now so scared of Adam when he disciplines her (note: 'disciplining' her means clapping hands and saying 'no' very firmly when she does something bad, like hissing and swiping at him when he walks by her to go to the bathroom - it does not mean the use of force whatsoever), that she is apparently pooping on-the-spot when she does get in trouble. She's only done it once so far, but that is one time too many, especially since Adam was the one who had to clean it up since I was at work. Since I think I can be fairly certain that he's not secretly abusing her while I'm at work, that means she's getting more and more scared of him for no reason, and I am at my wit's end. Luckily yesterday she pooped in the small area of tile in the entrance hallway, and not on the carpet, but what am I going to do if she starts going on the carpet? It's not reasonable for Adam to not be able to discipline her, because if she does something like jumping up on the counter or playing with wires, which she is fully aware she's not allowed to do, and he doesn't discipline her, then she'll start to think she can get away those things. But apparently, if he does discpline her, she'll crap her pants - literally.

Am seriously considering making an appointment with the local Humane Society to give her up. I hate the idea of having her live in one of those little cages, essentially abandoning her. But if she's so scared of Adam that she's pooping in fear, can it really be any worse to have her away from him and hopefully, potentially in a home where she is not living in permanent fear?

Admitting defeat

2009-03-10T15:26:00.002-04:00

Well looky here, two blogs in one week. Either I have a really interesting life, or I don't have much to do at work at the moment. Take your pick. ;)

Actually, the reason that I'm writing this entry is to vent about something that's really been bothering me: my cat. I'm sure there are people out there who know that a few months ago I tried to find a new home for my cat, Spice, because she was having some behaviour problems that I just wasn't dealing with well (and, frankly, neither was she!). It got better, somewhat, but now it's gotten much, much worse.

The only downside (seriously, the only one!) to having Adam live with me is that my cat hates him. Like HATES him. She is so sweet and friendly and affectionate with me - well really, way too affectionate in that she doesn't leave me alone and gets angry if I don't pay her enough attention, but still super sweet - that at first I almost didn't believe him about how she's been acting when he's home alone with her. Adam's still looking for jobs here (what a great time for it, I know!), so he's been at home all day while I'm at work. Which apparently is not going over so well with Spice. Turns out she's a complete and total bitch to him. She swipes and yowls and hisses at him if he tries to pet her or play with her, or sometimes if he just walks too close to her when he's moving around the apartment. She will sit under the couch or bed, and swipe at his feet when he walks by. The only time she lets him near her is when I'm there, and even then she still hates him half the time. And he's been working really hard to try and get her to like him - we took her to the vet about a month ago, and the vet recommended using food as an incentive to get her to trust and like Adam. Like she gets treats if she lets him pet her, etc. Except she's really nice while he's giving her treats, and then the minute he stops she just gets aggressive again. The other day he got down on the floor to try and play with her, and she swiped at his face! It a dog was being aggressive like that, it would not be safe to keep. I know she's just a cat, but that kind of physical aggression is not acceptable.

And then two days ago I discovered that she has been peeing outside of her litter box again, but in a place where it's obviously not a bladder problem (when it's something wrong physically, she just pees right outside of the litter box). This time she has been peeing right where my feet sit when I'm sitting on the couch. Which is very clearly a statement to me. I'm pretty sure that she's been doing it when I occasionally lock her out of the bedrooms in the morning when she's being too loud and whiny and I'm just trying to sleep. It didn't used to be a problem if I did it, but I guess now maybe she's seeing it as picking Adam over her? Either way, clearly the peeing is unacceptable. And I also think it's even worse that I'm gone all day than before (I mean, she hated it before, but now I'm leaving her alone with Adam I think she hates that even more).

The thing is, yeah, maybe she'd get used to Adam eventually. But am I going to have to go through this every time I get a pet? If we have visitors? If the routine changes? If we move? I have tried everything with her, short of Prozac (I've decided I am not paying that kind of money to drug a cat, when I'm not even sure about drugging people for depression!). I have had this cat for almost 2 and a half years now, and things have not really gotten any better. In many ways I love her, but the irritation and frustration has taken over and I can't really stand having her around that much anymore. Which is making the situation worse, because she can tell.

So I'm really, really hoping that I'm going to be able to find a new home for her. She would be an absolutely amazing pet for an older person or couple with a steady routine, because then she'd be getting lots of attention and not having things shaken up for her. She is sweet and loving and adorable, and an incredible cuddler. But our personalities and needs in life are clearly not compatible, and I like to believe that I have done everything that a responsible pet owner can do to try and accommodate the needs of her/his pet. Now I just have to try and find somewhere where she will be happier. And I will be happier. And Adam will be WAY happier!

Let's hear it for procrastination!!

2009-03-02T10:28:00.002-05:00

Because let's face it, only procrastination can explain why my last post was in April of 2008. Really, I have had nothing exciting going on in my life for the past 10 months that required a little updating for those of my friends left who still read this thing? (Note to self: that number is probably a big fat ZERO as I'm sure they've all gotten tired of checking for updates and seeing nothing yet again).

Very quick summary:

- I finished law school in April, graduated in June.
- Took the Bar Admission exams (worst exams ever - I studied 10 hours a day for weeks, and still didn't even get through all of the materials before the tests. Thank goodness for open book exams and indices!). Bar exams were May-June, course was June-July.
- My Dad had a heart attack (very mild, no worries) in China, came back to Canada about a month later. Is now working in London teaching English to college kids, and attempting to bring his Chinese wife over (yup, I have a Chinese step-mom and step-brother, both of whom I have never met).
- As soon as the course was over (literally, the same day), I headed up to Ottawa to look for housing. VERY last minute, considering I was moving to Ottawa one month later. How did that work out for me? Surprisingly well, all things considering. I now live right downtown, about a 5 minute walk from work, in a pretty nice apartment for a pretty good rent. It was the Adam guarantee - if he guarantees something will work out, it just will.
- Subletted one furnished place for the month of August, about 10 minutes from work (couldn't get the 5-minute from work apartment until Sept. 1), then moved. Spent 3 days without furniture, dishes, etc., sleeping on an air mattress, before I was able to movers to bring my things from storage (yay for attempting to move on the first weekend in September... oh, right, students!)
- Started my articling position on Aug. 11th, scared s*%#less and convinced I would hate it. Turns out it's fairly fun and I really like it, and sometimes even love it. Huh, who saw that coming?!
- Sept - Dec = work, worky work work.
- Christmas was spent at my mom and step-dad's place in Northern Ontario, with Adam and the parents and my sister and her boyfriend. It was a great, very relaxing holiday, especially when we set up the dual x-boxes, or had 'family band' time with Guitar Hero. I am a kick-ass drummer, apparently. You know, in not-real-life.
- In December, Adam finished his 2nd degree. While he hasn't actually done the ceremony yet (and I'm sure he won't be attending anyway), he has now officially completed his schooling, and has ended up with a Bachelor of Computer Science, and a Bachelor of Physical Sciences - Physics major. I like to brag. :D
- ATTENTION BIG NEWS: as of mid-January, 2009, Adam and I now live together. That's right folks, after almost 6 years of being together, we now live together. I'm sure we'll be getting married sometime in the next 10... haha. No seriously, no rush for that next step folks! I'm still trying to figure out how to get my cat and my boyfriend to not hate each other... baby steps.
- Am still enjoying articles. Starting to consider where (in terms of city and law firm) I want to apply as an associate. My firm now is definitely my first choice, but unfortunately due to the economy things are not looking good for hire-back. There are many other firms, and some government departments, where I would be happy to start off my 'associate-ness', though, so I'm looking into that and will be sending out applications shortly. Oh, the joy of the job process!
- Will be called to the Bar in June of 2009, then will officially be a lawyer! Woot! Apparently my entire family has been invited to a family gathering in celebration. Overdone, perhaps, but it's very sweet that they're all so excited for me! :)
- Um, I think that's all of my catch-up. Maybe I'll post more often. Or maybe not. On a day-to-day basis, my life is monotonous at best.

10 DAYS!!!!!!!!!!

2008-04-07T14:35:00.001-04:00

Seriously people, 10 freaking days and I am done law school. Woot.

That is all.

On the path to realising a life-long dream!!!

2008-03-26T16:02:00.002-04:00

And no, I'm not talking about graduating law school and becoming a lawyer, although that technically would also be applicable. But right now I'm thinking of something that is, at the moment at least, WAY more exciting to me: I have tickets (along with my mother and sister) to see LEONARD COHEN in June. Yeah. For those of you who are not fans, and who maybe don't realise the magnitude of this, Leonard Cohen has not toured for about 15 years. He pretty much once vowed to never tour again, and the only reason he's doing it now is because his old manager basically stole of all his money. So the poor man now has to go out and work instead of relaxing in his late 70's. Very sad for him, but so, so, SO ridiculously happy for me. I never thought I would have this opportunity. I grew up listening to Leonard Cohen, and loving everything he'd ever sung or wrote. The man is a Canadian hero/legend/god. He has helped to shape the culture of our country. And I am going to see him live, in a fairly small venue, in less than 3 months. I know I've just tried, but words cannot actually express the excitement and disbelief that I am feeling right now.

I had originally gotten tickets for the show on June 3rd, because that was the only show that was planned when the tickets went on sale. Then the next day I had a panic attack when I figured out that June 4th is the date of my 2nd Bar Admission exam. But I had decided I was going to go to the concert anyway, because I can write a Bar exam again, but I can't see Leonard Cohen again (at least very likely not). And THEN... fate smiled on me. Okay, I don't actually believe in that stuff, but this situation could potentially have made me believe in it! They created another show on the 4th. So I got tickets for that, in the hopes that I would be able to sell the tickets for the show on the 3rd, and I did sell them the very next day to some of my family members. Everything worked out so perfectly, it's actually a little creepy... but I am NOT complaining!!!!!! :D

That's the only thing worth writing about right now, partly because it's pretty much the only thing going on in my life that's at all interesting to others, and partly because no other news compares to this - at least to me.

That's all folks! :)

Cuba - Reading Week 2008

2008-02-18T00:03:00.017-05:00

All right, now comes the obligatory 'I went to Cuba and here are pictures to prove it!' post. I'm going to keep it short and sweet... at least I'll try!

I went with 3 of my friends from law school, and I think we picked a great group - no quarrelling and getting on each other's nerves at all. We stayed at the Occidental Grand, at the Playa (Beach) Turquesa, near Holguin. The resort was absolutely beautiful. Rather than being one large hotel, it was a series of villas with about 8 - 10 rooms per villa, plus the main buildings, lobby, restaurant, etc.

Here's a picture of one of the villas (they all looked exactly the same, but I could get a better angle of this one than of our specific villa)

The resort had a series of 5 or 6 pools, starting at the top and each cascading into the next, kind of like a really long waterfall. The beach at the hotel was absolutely beautiful, and restricted solely to our resort. The pools were also amazing to sit by. One pool had a little island with a tree in the middle, and it was a wading pool, and by the edge it was so shallow that the lounge chairs could be placed in the water. SO relaxing!

Here's a partial view from the beach (yay for photo stitch function!)

And a couple pictures of the pools:

The food was pretty good, especially at some of the a la carte restaurants (there were 5 a la cartes, and we were allowed to eat at all 5 included in the all-inclusive, but only once each). There was also the main buffet area, where we ate breakfast and most lunches. I'm not going to put pictures of those because really, who cares?!

The rooms were very cute and cozy - which makes them sound small, but they weren't - and had the best balconies, with the most comfy lounge chairs, ever.

There were also lots of very fun excursions to go on, to explore the area and do activities. We went on the Catamaran excursion, where we took a bus to a Catamaran, Catamaran to a snorkelling area, then went to an aquarium area and swam with dolphins, then had a very delicious lunch and took the Catamaran back and the bus back to our hotel.

A couple of days later, we did the 'Country See Excursion': we were picked up at our hotel in jeeps, drove to a little town close by where we got to tour a cigar factory (no pictures of the inside allowed, though), then drove to a local farm where we got to drink coffee that was as fresh as it possibly can be and eat a mid-morning snack of a variety of fresh (coconut, pineapple, banana, grapefruit, fresh honey, sugar cane, etc. - just picked that morning). After the farm, we drove to a horse ranch, where we went horse-back riding. After that, we drove to the marina (same one where we caught the Catamaran) and went jet-skiing. Then we had a yummy lunch, and drove back to the hotel. It was a long day: left at 8:30, back at about 4. Our guides wanted to take us to Holguin to show us the night-life in Cuba, since it was our last night there, and while they were very nice and it would have been fun to go, my one friend was really sick (she'd gotten bronchitis while we were there) and didn't feel like it, plus one of the guides had (unwelcomely) fallen in love with another one of my friends, so we passed on that opportunity!

These are the jeeps that we drove around in for the day - we were lucky and got to have a guide driving us. His name was Orlando, and he spoke excellent English and knew a lot about Cuban economics and politics, so he told us a great deal about his country... it was very interesting, and much better than just driving our own jeep and worrying about hitting the millions of potholes!

Fruit:
Horse-back riding:

I didn't take any pictures of jet-skiing, because I didn't want to take my camera out on the water! But I do have a picture of the marina employee who took me out on the jet-ski, when they found out that I didn't want to drive myself:

The guy on the left (the older gentleman) is the guy who took me out - he spoke literally no English, and I spoke very little Spanish, but we got along just fine, and I had more fun with him than I would have alone, since he wasn't scared to go after the big waves! The guy on the right is one of our guides, Ariel - the one who had a bit of a thing for my one friend.

Here's a picture of the 3 us of (our 4th friend was back at the hotel sick), and our two guides - from the left: Ariel, Jo, Jan (I'm just giving short names on purpose), me, and Orlando. Fun day!

Those are all the important pictures to show. I also have most of my pictures up on facebook, and I'll probably create a yahoo or photobucket album, so if anyone wants to see more, just let me know!

Anyway, Cuba was amazing, and our resort was fantastic - I would highly recommend both! Oh, and I also got to buy some great Cuban cigars for WAY less than you'd spend in Canada, so that was good too! :)

So very sad, and a loss to the artistic community

2008-01-22T19:13:00.000-05:00

Maybe it's weird that I'm blogging about two people that I have never known. But I do believe that (certain) actors contribute in an important way to society, and this week we lost two of them, so I felt that I should at least mention it.

Brad Renfro passed away a few days ago. He was in one of my favourite movies of all time (The Cure), but also in a bunch of excellent movies like The Client, Apt Pupil, Tom and Huck. He was a great actor. And yet another child actor down the tubes!

Of course, the second one wasn't even a child actor, just another example of what Hollywood somehow manages to do to people - Heath Ledger. This one is even harder to believe, because whatever substance abuse problems he had he managed to keep on the down-low - until today, of course.

Anyway, RIP to both of them, they deserved to be remembered for their art.

It's a brand new year!!

2008-01-19T11:54:00.001-05:00

It is a brand new year. Not that you'd know it by looking at my life. You would think that being in law school would make my life exciting, or at least interesting. You would be SO very wrong. Don't get me wrong, I still love law school (at least, I love learning about the law). But it just feels so very repetitive and everydayish. I don't write in this blog because I have absolutely nothing to say that anyone wants to hear about. I don't email or call people, because I have nothing new and exciting or interesting to tell them. Hell, I even only talk to Adam like twice a week, because I don't even have enough going on in my life to talk to my boyfriend about!

I got my grades back from the fall semester, and I got my very first C range grade of law school (a C+). I'd totally had this hope of getting through all of law school with no C range grades, and that hope was squashed. And of course it had to be squashed by the worst professor I've ever had in my entire post-secondary career. No, I'm not saying that because of the mark he gave me. I'm pretty sure the entire class eviscerated him in the course evaluations back in November - I know I for sure did (and since he didn't see those remarks until after the exam, unfortunately I can't blame it on that!). I've never had a professor who actually taught in the form of asking questions, which he then never actually answered. Seriously. The majority of his slides would ask questions. Usually professors do that so they can initiate class discussion, and then will tell you the answers. But apparently that made entirely too much sense for this guy. Why answer the questions for the class? It's not like law students are paying ridiculous amounts of money to be taught the law, right? No, no, we're apparently paying ridiculous amounts of money to teach ourselves the law. At least according to this dude! Anyway, needless to say I'm bitter about this mark. I could have taken it better if it were more my fault, like I just hadn't understood or hadn't studied enough. But having it be at least partly someone else's fault and not being able to do anything about it is frustrating. But since there's nothing I can do about it, I just have to work extra hard now to make sure I graduate with at least a B+ average still, so that I can still do my LL.M. down the line.

My other grades were good. I actually got an A- in a really hard course, which I wasn't expecting, so I was very pleased about that. I really shouldn't complain, because I'm sure there are very few law students who don't get at least one C range grade in their 3 years of law school. Plus obviously I am aware that in the grand scheme of things, on a scale of 1 to 100 of how much things in your life can suck, this would be about 0.5. And that may even be too high.

In other news, um, nothing. I'm taking a course this semester that I really like: biotech law. It's so interesting, and it's taught by the prof I work for who I really like and respect, so really it can't go wrong. I just take this one course for the month of January (one aspect of my law school that I really like is the special January term), then our regular Spring semester starts after reading week.

OH MY GOD. I can't believe I almost forgot about reading week. I'm complaining about how nothing in my life is exciting, but two days ago I booked a trip, along with 3 of my friends, to Cuba, for the first week of February! How frigging exciting is that? I'm seriously going to quit my whining right now, cause I'm a doofus for forgetting that I'm going to get to do something so seriously awesome. I have never had a trip with the girls, and I think this one is going to be absolutely amazing. Another friend of ours was in the same place over the Christmas vacation, and she LOVED it, so I'm really excited. There's swimming with the dolphins, and horseback riding, and snorkelling/scuba diving, and really nice beaches. And warm. My god, I will be looking forward to that, since winter came in with a vengeance this week! It would have been nice to do another trip with Adam, but I'm sure I'll have plenty of time for that, and I'm really looking forward to hanging out with the girls on the beach.

Okay, I think that's it. I suddenly have no more energy to write, so this post is over. Woot.

Very quick update

2007-12-01T09:22:00.000-05:00

I am studying for exams. Will be done on the 13th, then I'm sure I'll send up yet another totally boring blog to let you all know how I'm doing and what's up for the holidays. Will likely be in Ottawa sometime the week after exams to check out housing possibilities, so will be contacting anyone still left there (oh right, it's just you Ky! :P).

That's it, that's all, wish me luck! Oh, did I mention these are probably the very last school exams I will ever write (with the exception of the Bar exams, of course)? Yeah, all paper courses next semester. Woot!!

BTW....

2007-10-22T19:14:00.001-04:00

By the way, I know this is months and months after the fact, but I realised recently that when I posted my pics from my trip to the Bahamas, I missed one of them, one which I think is one of the more interesting ones....

So, I know that just looking at the picture it doesn't seem very interesting, until you figure out what that little fish is. And trust me, it's not actually that little. It's a barracuda, although I didn't know at the time, and I also didn't know that you're not supposed to wear jewellery while snorkelling since barracuda will go after anything flashy. I swam up nice and close to this guy (I know you can't tell I'm that close from the pic, but I was probably about 15 feet away), then realised it was bigger than I thought and creepy, so swam in the other direction. Then a few days later when Adam and I were doing a tour of the aquarium at Atlantis, the guy giving us the tour told us all this stuff about barracudas, and I realised that's what I'd seen!! Scary!!!

Nothing doin'....

2007-10-22T18:55:00.000-04:00

So, I decided that I should update because people are asking me what's new in my life. The only problem, is that there isn't really all that much to update.

Panda, my little bunny, has gone to a new home (not the one in the sky, the one in Orillia with my best friend) because my allergies got too bad. Luckily my best friend (herein referred to as 'M') was looking for a new little animal anyway, so it was pretty much perfect timing. And apparently Panda's even getting along with the cats in the new home, so at least she gets some friends and stuff too, rather than having my wimpy cat be scared of her all the time!

Um, what else? I got bangs. Like real bangs, right across the forehead. I've been trying to take a picture to show people, but the pictures that I take of myself keep looking like I'm sucking in my cheeks, so I'm going to have to get someone else to do it, I guess. But I really, REALLY love them. And Adam does too, which is nice especially since I was scared he wouldn't!

Hmm... went home for Thanksgiving with Adam and my sister, which was so nice because Adam had SO much homework and he worked all weekend, but he offered to go with me (and therefore be able to take his car instead of busing/renting a car) because he knew how much I wanted to go home. Plus it was nice to have him there along with the family. Thanksgiving weekend was yummy yummy, especially since my mum is such a fantastic cook and baker - I was so spoiled all weekend!

The next weekend I was in Montreal for a Conference on the Prevention of Genocide. It was so incredibly interesting, amazing speakers, really made me think and taught me about some things that I didn't really even know were going on in the world. Plus I got to visit Montreal for the first time (I don't count driving through on my way to Warped Tour a few years ago). I LOVE LOVE LOVE that city!! I seriously felt like I was back in Europe again, the atmosphere is so cosmopolitan and so laidback. I was really wanting to work there, after being there for the weekend - even looked to see if the firm I'm working for next year has an office in Montreal that does IP (they do). But then someone pointed out that Montreal's the place you want to be able to go to for fun and relaxation, and that working there might actually ruin it because you'd have negative associations with work (although hopefully work won't actually give me negative associations, but you know what I mean!). And I think that's a good point. And I will be very, very close to Montreal when I'm in Ottawa, so maybe on the rare occasions when I get weekends off I'll head over - wouldn't that be nice??!! Ottawa friends, if you're around, I'm down for it! :D

This past weekend, my mum was down visiting, and since it was her birthday last week my sister and I took her out for sushi on Thursday night, which isn't exactly something she gets to do often considering where she lives!! Then Friday during the day, while my sister was at work, my mum and I wandered around Kensington Market, had some delicious vegan/gluten-free food (woohoo for all my dietary restrictions!), and then Friday night while my sister was at a meeting mum and I went to see The Elephant Man (thanks to tickets comped for my sister!). The play was okay... the acting of some of the people, especially the main guy, was phenomenal, but I think the directing really made it way too cheesy and over-dramatic. Although that may also have been a result of the time in which the script was written, we didn't really know. But either way, it was fun to get to do something like that with my mother. Then after the show, mum went back to my sister's and I went up to Adam's for the night, since he was in town. We watched a very interesting and slightly creepy show on spiders, which believe it or not actually did a pretty good job of making them seem like cool little creatures instead of terrifying beasts, then went to sleep cause I was so tired. I basically just slept at his house and then went back downtown the next morning, because I wanted to spend as much time as I could with my mum while she was down. We wandered around downtown, went to a cool photo display, then headed up to my Aunt's for a visit. And that was this past weekend.

I know, I know, my life is fascinating. I've been reading everyone else's blogs, and mine really are nothing compared considering where everyone else is hanging out, but if you want to know what's up with me this is it - NADA!! Ah well, it's a fairly relaxing last year of school before the intensity of articling starts, so that's awesome.

Anyway, that's it and that's all. If I get a good pic of me with the bangs I'll post it, otherwise I'm out until my next incredibly boring post!!

Huh

2007-08-24T10:34:00.001-04:00

Note: I edited out the name of the firm I'll be working in (see the red font), because I don't think that anyone on the internet needs to see it. But for those of you who know me, you've already either seen the name, talked about it with me at other times, or can contact me to ask. :)

So I just signed in, to see that my last post was posted on May 12 or something. Do I suck at posting, or what? (Although to be fair, I think it was even before that that most of the people who will read this posted so I guess I'm not that bad :p)

The problem is, I really don't have that much exciting to update. I guess the biggest and most important thing is that I got an articling position, starting next August. I know, it's totally crazy that the whole articling position search happens this summer, when we don't even start working until next summer. But that's the legal profession for you - nothing if not a big fan of ridiculous, extensive rules!

So I'm going to be working at a firm in Ottawa, and I'm really, really excited about it. I only applied to a couple of firms in Ottawa, because I didn't know if I really wanted to go to that city (even though I do love it there and have family there) and, yes I'll be honest, be that far away from Adam. So to be completely honest, I was kind of looking at that interview (it was my first one) as a 'practice one', and I almost even cancelled! But thank frigging goodness I decided to go, because the minute I got there I could tell that I would like it. The people were so laid-back and non-pretentious (trust me, I've been at enough firms in downtown Toronto to recognise the difference!), even though it's a huge firm and the Ottawa office is actually the national headquarters. This is a perfect example of the firm in Ottawa: the building they're in is on Elgin, just a few blocks from the Parliament buildings, all that stuff, so they have every reason to be pretentious. But I walked into that building in a full business suit, and people in the building (not in the firm, but still) were looking at me funny for being so dressed up! You go into a building of a Bay Street firm in Toronto, not wearing a suit, and people will look at you funny! So I immediately felt comfortable.

Then, the interview was so much fun. There was a lot of laughing and joking, and the people were SO nice. I met with the Director of Student Affairs (she is so nice, it's incredible, but also I think one of those no-nonsense people, which I totally appreciate!), and the head partner of their IP section (Intellectual property - as in what I want to do for the rest of my life, probably), and another partner from that section, and an associate from that section. So I'm taking that to mean that they're pretty much hiring me to work in the IP area, although I'll still have to do a rotation in the 'business law' and 'advocacy' areas as well. We also talked almost exclusively about IP (when we were talking about law stuff), so that was a big sign too that that's what they want me for. They have a really good IP department, especially since the Ottawa office is their national office, so it'll be an amazing experience for me to be able to learn the ropes there!

I managed to convince them that I wasn't a huge Toronto person, which is true, but I think everyone says that so they don't necessarily believe it. I would be completely content to not ever work in Toronto, although I probably will end up there eventually down the road. But I have no aching desire to be one of the Bay Street folks, and Ottawa is a seriously beautiful city (although I guess I don't really have to say that to most of the people who will read this!).

So yeah, basically, I'm excited! Next spring I will graduate, hopefully with honours (which I will need when I decide to go back and do my Masters and PhD), then I will do the Bar Licensing examinations for May, June and July, then in August I will move to Ottawa and start the practical side of learning to be a lawyer! And none of my Ottawa friends will be there anymore, which sucks, and a few of my family members won't be there anymore because they've moved to Guelph (haha, kind of ironic, so close to Toronto), but I still have some family and friends there, so I'm sure I'll have fun. Oh, and a girl in my class at law school is working there this summer (at the same firm), and is staying for articling, and I really like her, so that'll be fun!

So that's my big news.

The other big, exciting thing that happened to me this summer didn't actually happen to me, I just got to witness it. My best friend from back home got married! And I got to be the Maid of Honour!! It was SOO much fun, and one of the best weddings I've ever been to. It was pretty informal and laid-back (that's twice I've used that word in one posting!), but very pretty, and everything went pretty much exactly as the bride and groom wanted, which is amazing and rare!

I'm not going to post pictures of the wedding on here (except for one), because they're all posted on my facebook and those of you who don't have access to that can just contact me if you want to see pictures. But I am going to post one of me and the bride:

Isn't she a beautiful bride?? I love the colour combination of the yellow and the pink. So Melissa, and so pretty! Anyway, it was a lot of fun, the whole weekend, and I am SO, SO glad that I got to be there for it.

Other that than, I really have no news. I've been working on my golf game (I now own my own clubs, gloves, tees, balls, and golf bag - yes, I'm becoming a true yuppie), and I'm getting better although obviously I still suck. But considering now I've played about 10 games of golf in my entire life, I think I'm pretty good for that little experience! But yes, I do still suck. I play with Adam mostly, which is good because I don't feel any pressure then, and he's really good about helping when I want help but saying nothing when I don't - he would be such a good teacher, if he didn't dislike kids so much! hahaha.... But yeah, I actually really enjoy playing golf, which is kind of strange since I don't like any other sports, but I guess golf is a different enough sport that someone like me can still be good at it (someday...).

Mmmmm... yup, that's about it. I spent my summer doing a fairly small amount of work, since the professor I was researching for was away most of the summer and didn't have much for me to do. I still got paid the whole time, which I was feeling guilty about until I remembered that I pay $12,000 a year for tuition, and the school is paying me for my summer work since it's work study, so I say to hell with the guilt! So mostly I spent a lot of time watching tv, playing on the computer (and yet I still didn't manage to blog), and travelling to Guelph and/or Toronto to see my man. I also got to go home a few times, which was nice, since usually it's a once-a-summer trip to see my parents. But my sister has a boyfriend who lives up there now (since last September, actually), so she wants to go up a lot, and when the two of us rent a car it's the same price or even a bit less than taking the greyhound.

Okay, so now that really is it. If I think of anything else interesting (although maybe this isn't even interesting!), I'll write it, but I doubt I will!

Snorkelling!!

2007-05-12T23:33:00.000-04:00

I know, it's been just a little too long, but I finally got my scanner up and running, so I thought that I would at long last post the pictures I took while I was snorkelling in the Bahamas. Here they are - well, at least a few, I'm not posting all of them so if you want to see more let me know. But these will pretty much give the idea. (See the post a while ago for the actual description of what happened during snorkelling).

PS - as you'll see, since the underwater camera I bought for the day was obviously not of great quality, the colour in the pictures isn't anywhere near as amazing as it was in reality. So just multiply all the colours times like 100, and you'll get a better idea!

Some neat-looking coral, at the first dive site.

A bunch of fish, including one really bright blue one at the bottom of the photo - again, the picture just does not give it justice.

If you look closely at the fish in this picture, you can see that it had a very colourful tail. If you'd seen it in real life, the number of colours on one little fish's tail would have blown you away!

I think this picture hopefully gives a better idea of how brightly blue that one type of fish was.

Another picture of a bunch of fish.

This is the only picture I took at the second dive site, because I wanted a picture of the plane (it's a movie prop, used in Jaws 4), but otherwise the fish were all the same kind. There were supposed to be Eagle rays there, but I didn't see any.

So here are the sharks that I dove with!! The lighter coloured fish are just regular fish, they were only about a foot long but look a lot bigger because they were so close. The sharks were about 8-10 feet away. You can see the rope that the dive/bait box was dangling from in the center of the picture.

Here's another picture of the sharks, when the bait box was first lowered and they were still all just interested in that. You can see the bait box in the bottom left of the picture.

Here's one more picture of the sharks. I left the yellow thing in the corner of the picture, because it's the rope that we had to hang on to while we were in the water, so I wanted that showing.

This is the sharks after the bait box was taken out (after we came out of the water!). You can tell they didn't like that the bait box was gone, because they're all right at the top of the water which apparently they don't usually do - they just had followed it right out of the water.

And here's the sharks when the guys started throwing the fish off the boat. That was the only time I really felt scared, when I saw them all frenzied. Even though I had just been in the water with them, I did not want to get anywhere close to the edge of that boat!!!

See, I told you this post would be less depressing than the one before this one!

Warning: extremely depressing

2007-05-12T19:43:00.000-04:00

I've been putting off doing this post forever, but it needs to be done because it's a little bit too important to not let people know what's been going on with my life.

On April 5, my ex-boyfriend and good friend Chris Catling was killed in a car accident, just about an hour east of Sault Ste. Marie. His best friend, Jeff Beach, was also killed in the accident. No wrongdoing on anyone's part, just terrible northern Ontario winter weather, as always.

This means that of the 3 serious boyfriends I've had in my life, men that I have actually loved, 2 of them have been killed in car accidents. And that's enough to give a girl paranoia, as I'm sure you can imagine, so of course now every time Adam drives anywhere I make him call me to let me know he got there safely!!

Chris was a brave soldier who really wanted to go fight in Afghanistan, and who was doing really well with his course in the air force. He had really grown up and was being incredibly successful with his life goals. He loved his family, especially his niece and nephew. He was a great guy who loved to have a good time, and who wanted to always make sure that the people around him had a good time too. And I have to admit that it was nice to know that there was someone out there who loved me so much, even years later (besides Adam, obviously!). He did have a girlfriend, though, who he was serious about and loved very much, and was planning on moving to Alberta with when he got sent to the base there. The feelings that he had for me (and that I had for him, too, to a certain extent) were more based on just caring for each other, but I think we both knew that we would never work as a couple for many reasons.

I heard about it on the 6th, and I went home on the Sunday, the 8th. Jeff and Chris' wake and funeral were done together, which is nice since they were so close. The funeral was a full military affair, with the bagpipes and everything, which would have meant so much to Chris because he loved being a part of the Canadian military. It was so hard to see Chris' family looking so sad, and it was also hard because it also brought back all the memories from when my other ex, Mike Barker, was killed in a car accident in 1999. But I went with my friend Robert, who I had met Chris through, so it was nice that we had each other for support.

Since then, it's been strange, because it's almost getting more realistic and sad for me as time goes by, because I didn't see him or talk to him everyday, but I would talk to him about once a week on msn. I keep signing in to hotmail and half expecting to have an email from him, which is weird. I made myself delete him from my msn, because I felt like I had to kick in the reality of it, but I really didn't want to because it just made the whole thing so final. But I do feel like one good thing came out of this: I think that I finally dealt with my feelings over Mike's accident! I know it's strange, but I don't think I ever really dealt with that properly - I couldn't even make myself say the words 'he died', I would say 'fatal car accident', or maybe even 'passed away', but that was as close as I could get. So dealing with those emotions is probably a good thing for me, although obviously I wish that it wouldn't have come about in that way!

Anyway, sorry to write such a depressing post, but I had to do it. Now I'll post some pictures of him, just a few.

This is a picture of Chris and my friend Robert, when I was in OAC (when Chris and I were dating). I know he looks like he was about 12, but I promise he was only 9 months younger than me.

Here's me and Chris at the Eaket Christmas Formal, winter 2000. Awwwww.

And here's Chris (on the right) and his friend Gord (on the left), in their fatigues.

All right, that's all. I promise the next post will be happier.

Spice the Cat

2007-03-31T10:39:00.000-04:00

So I'm pretty sure I've blogged about my new kitty a few times already, but I don't think I've put up any pictures. So here's my new little kitten. She's not really a kitten, she's probably almost 2 years old now. But she still acts like a kitten! She lives with me while I'm at school, not at home with my parents, which is nice (although sometimes she's pretty freaking annoying but that's okay).

Anyway, here's Spice:

This last picture is my favourite, because she's totally sticking her tongue out at me - how rude!

Christmas time is here!

2007-03-27T17:45:00.001-04:00

Well, actually Christmas time was here about 3 months ago, as we all know, but as we also all know I'm lazy, so I haven't posted about it yet. So I'm going to do one super quick post today, because there's really not enough exciting about it to to more than one blog.

Two days after Adam and I got back from the Bahamas, we drove up to my parents' place. My sister and her boyfriend, Fred (yes, I did mention that my sister is dating Fred, right? Weird.. but surprisingly normal at the same time, after all) were already there. Luckily, a couple of years ago my parents joined up with a couple they're friends with to build a new cabin, and it's winterised (unlike the rest of our cabins), so that's where Adam and I and my sister and Fred were staying. It's also where we set up the Christmas tree, did Christmas supper, etc.

Adam and I arrived Christmas Eve, and my parents had been nice enough to wait to decorate the Christmas tree until we got there, which was awesome. So we did the traditional decorating of the tree, put up decorations around the cabin, etc. and it was really nice. We had the 'faux-fire' going, but also had a 'fire' going on on the TV (b/c the dish had some channel that just showed a fire burning - I know, we're dorks). And we listed to Christmas and Chanukkah music that I downloaded, and it was good times. Mum had made 'wassail' (like spiced Hot Apple Cider) that was sooo good, although not spiked unfortunately. ;) Just kidding.

The next morning we all got up, and when Mum and Mikey came down we opened up all of our stockings, which were ridiculously full. Then we had an excellent breakfast, then it was time for presents - of which there was seriously a ridiculous amount. But hey, isn't that what Christmas is all about? :p (hahaha...) Presents took a couple of hours to unwrap, because we do it in turns one by one so we can all see what everyone got. My parents got Adam a deep-frier for chicken wings, because Mikey had refused to get the vegetable steamer that I had recommended because he said that veggie-steamers aren't 'manly' enough for one guy to give to another. Men and their rules, eh?! I got a bunch of good stuff, as did we all, although I'd already gotten my biggest present before my trip to the Bahamas - my new camera!! I also got these amazing Bose speakers for my iPod from my parents (mostly my step-dad, I'm assuming, since my mum wouldn't know what to get in that area). He always knows what to get, it's amazing! Adam and I had agreed not to get each other presents, since we'd already spent so much on our trip. But Fred got my sister a personalised canoe paddle, which was beautiful, and so cute because that's so them! My mum got my step-dad like the best toy helicopter you can get, which was crazy cool and realistic looking. And my mum got lots of good books and some really awesome art supplies from Mikey. And we all got a bunch of smaller stuff, so we all had a great Christmas overall!

Then it was time for a quick lunch before we started making Christmas dinner (and the boys started playing with their new toys, of course). Christmas dinner was super yummy, and it was so much fun to have me, Robin and Mum in the kitchen making things. I know, so uber-traditional to have the girls cooking and the boys playing, but whatever, it was fun!

The rest of the night we just hung around in the cabin, listened to music, talked, watched TV, etc. - very relaxing. The next day Fred's parents came by for a visit (b/c they're also really good friends with my parents), so that was nice, and they stayed for dinner. The day after that, Adam and I went with Mikey down to the gun range to do some shooting, since Adam had never done anything like that. He was pretty good at it for a beginner! And it was nice to have Mikey and Adam do some 'guy stuff' together too. :) That afternoon our family friends Amber and her mum Marlene came to visit, which was great cause I hadn't seem them for forever. Then that night (or maybe the next, I don't remember for sure) we had a big bonfire with a whole bunch of guests, and got to see the Rawns, and watch some old home movies of when we were kids, and it was all lots of fun.

And then Adam and I went back on the 28th, and hung around T.O. (and I went back to London for a couple of days), then celebrated New Years' Eve at his cousin's (and his cousin's girlfriend's) place, which was laidback just the way we like it!

So that's all I'm going to write about Christmas. I'm also sharing a Christmas 2006 album on here, so click on that baby if you want to see pics. Now I'm all caught up!!!

Christmas 2006

2007-03-27T17:43:00.000-04:00

Photobucket Album

No news is... bad news, in this case.

2007-03-24T23:42:00.000-04:00

Yes, it's taken me 3 days to update this since finding out, but on Thursday I found out that I'm not getting an interview at that firm in Toronto. So I'll be in London again working for my prof, which is good cause I do like the job and I like him, but sucky cause it would have been fun to live with my sister in T.O. and make lotsa moolah. Ah well, I'll just have to rack up debt some more - I'm so good at it, I might as well not waste what talents I have! ;)

Anyway, that's all, just thought I'd let you all know.

On a plus side, my mum and her best friend (who is also my sister's boyfriend's mother) are down this weekend to see my sister's play (she was awesome in it, as per usual) and get their Christmas present massages. We just watched To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar; they hadn't seen it, and I knew they'd love it. What a great girls' night! :D

Update. And by update, I mean letting you all know there's nothing exciting going on in my life.

2007-03-21T16:57:00.000-04:00

Hey all, as you can clearly see from the subject line, my life is unexciting. School (nothing exciting), work (for the prof I worked for the past summer still - interesting to me but no one else), and boy (again, interesting to me but no one else). That's all that my life consists of. I'm waiting to hear from one firm about a summer job, so will definitely update when I know what's going on with that.

We (the law school) did have our Career Fair yesterday, and my roomie and I who both applied to this one firm got taken out for dinner by the 2 women (and we were the only ones who got taken out), so that was pretty cool. They'll be contacting people this week or next about interviews, so we'll see what's the what. If not, I'll probably end up working with the prof again, which is cool cause I like him and like the work.

And yeah, that's about it. I know it's entirely unexciting, but I thought that I should at least let you all know that I'm still alive. Oh, went to St. Patty's Day party at Adam's place cause it was also Owen's b-day. Blah blah blah, drunken idiots, etc. Woot. Entirely not my scene, but that's fine. And went for a makeup lesson at the Clinique counter on the following Sunday, which was super helpful. Seriously, a makeup lesson is the most exciting part of my life right now. Again, woot.

So yeah, if I think of anything else I'll update again, but otherwise, hi and goodbye!

One last goodbye to Precious

2007-03-01T08:20:00.000-05:00

This past tuesday, the 26th, my cat Precious (who I have had since September of 1996) was put down. About a week earlier my mother had finally taken her to the vet, because she was having a hard time grooming herself and wasn't eating much. The vet found a mass under her tongue, gave my mother antiobiotics to give to Precious, and told my mother to come back in a week to see how things had gone. My mother went back Tuesday, and they found that the cancer had spread throughout her mouth, so they decided to put her down. Luckily (?) my mother had been pretty sure that was going to be the result, because Precious was eating even less and kind of hiding, which is what animals tend to do when they know they're going to die. So Tuesday morning I called home and got to say goodbye to Precious over the phone, and tell her what an amazing cat she had been and how much I was going to miss her.

Precious (I know it's a ridiculous name, but I was 14 and I got her because my previous cat had just been run over by a car and killed the week before, so give me a break) was a great cat. She always knew when something was wrong and would run up to comfort me. She slept with me every single night in my water bed (without ever once puncturing it!) until I went away to university. When I first brought her back from the Humane Society, she would bring me her catch of the day of mice, squirrels, birds, etc. - until she brought one home that was still alive and I made it clear that I didn't really like it!! She had this cute little thing that I taught her to do, where she would dip her paw into a glass of milk, shake very daintily (I didn't teach her that part, obviously), and then lick all the milk off ever so cutely because she was such a prissy little thing. And when it was raining or snowy, she'd walk so that every single time she picked up one of her feet, she'd shake it to get the wet off. And her tabby colouring on top and white underneath and on her legs, combined with her long fur, made it look like she was always wearing bloomers, so she looked extra dainty and prissy when doing stuff like that. But she was also a tough cat who spent a lot of time outdoors hunting, and who never once fell victim to a natural predator, so she definitely wasn't really that much of a priss! She had that 'cat attitude' that cat lovers know and adore; she was usually willing to let you pet her, and was pretty friendly, but she was very demanding when she wanted to be petted, and if you took your hand away before she was done with you you'd (very gently) be getting claws in the back of your hand!

When I went away to university I was sad because I knew I couldn't take her with me, and that even if I'd been living somewhere where I could have pets, she'd be totally unhappy living anywhere but the country. So I was worried for a while that she would think that I had abandoned her. But eventually (and it took just the right amount of time), she and my step-dad adopted each other. So every time I would go home to visit she would still be happy to see me and cuddle with me the whole visit, but I got to be happy knowing that she had someone else who could be 'her person'. And she would sleep in my parents' bed with them every night, and if my step-dad for some reason went to bed later than usual, she would come out and meow at him to let him know that it was bedtime. She was a cute, smart, wonderful, loving cat, and there won't ever be another one like her.

Now, I haven't posted this until today, because very sadly the mother of a good friend of mine passed away on Monday, and so I have obviously been preoccupied with that. In fact, I even feel a little guilty writing this whole big blog and being so sad over my cat when losing a mother is obviously so much harder and more horrible. But I loved Precious very much, and she was my 'baby' for over 10 years, so I think she deserves this. I'm just going to post a couple of pictures of her, to show just how cute and sweet she was.

This is Precious lying in a cardboard shoe box - she always loved laying in them for some reason.

Here's Precious chilling out by the window, basking in the sun.

This is a funny picture of her yawning - I love that my mum got her at just the right moment!

Here's one of Precious and Mikey this past Christmas - Mikey is her other 'person', and I'm so glad that they ended up adopting each other!

And here's another picture of Precious at this past Christmas, with our beautiful Christmas tree in the background. She had a great time with us. We had Christmas in the new luxury cabin, which luckily is winterised. That's where Adam and I and Robin and her boyfriend stayed (I will probably be doing a post on it soon), and also where we had the tree, the present-opening, and Christmas dinner. Precious would come down with Mum and Mikey every morning, and go back up with them at night, and get to be smack in the middle of all the action getting lots of affection all day. A pretty good last Christmas for a kitty!!

This last picture I'm going to post is my favourite one of Precious of all time.

Goodbye Precious. I loved you very much. I have Spice (my kitty with me now) and Panda (my bunny), but I will always remember you and love you. Thank you for being such an amazing cat.

My very last day in the Bahamas... retold amost 2 months later!

2007-02-14T15:02:00.000-05:00

All right, so this is the last post of the last day of the Bahamas trip, finally! Of course, I've done significantly better on this trip than on my European trip, so I should congratulate myself on that at least I guess!

In my last post, I put up pictures of the landscaping in the Atlantis waterpark, to give you an idea of what it looked like, what kind of swimming there was, etc. But I noticed that I didn't really have any pictures of the pools, just of the beach. You can see all the pictures of the swimming pool, including the big waterslide that we went down and the slide that went through the predator pool, if you go to the Atlantis website. Just go to the photo gallery, then to the 'Activities' pictures, and you can see it all. I was going to get the pictures from the website, but they have the whole privacy thing going on, and I didn't feel like going in and viewing source and all that, so if you want to see you can look for yourself!

So today, I'm going to put up the pictures of the Marine habitat, with all of its cute and awesome creatures! Like I said in my last post, we went and looked at the waterpark first, so that I could take pictures. Then we went and had lunch (some very yummy pizza at the pizza place at Atlantis), went back to our hotel room to change into our bathing suits, and drop off my camera and other valuables since we had our bracelets showing we'd paid for the waterpark and that would be all we'd need, then headed back to do a tour of the Marine habitat then actually go swimming in the waterpark. We'd been told that there was going to be a tour of the Marine habitat at a certain time, but when we showed up there had been a switch shift, and the new people said there wasn't a tour scheduled. I was pretty disappointed for a second, because I really wanted to do the tour and hear all the cool facts, but then one of the women called a guy over and asked him if he could take us around. So we ended up getting our very own personal tour of the habitat, which was even better! The guy knew SO much about all the fish - I know that's their job, but it was still really impressive and very interesting. He also explained all the decorations and how the hotel had created all of this stuff based on the Atlantis myth, how they thought the machines and everything had been used in the Atlantis culture, etc. I know it's not really really, and that it's a myth at the most, but it was still really neat to hear about!

The Marine habitat was in a series of tunnels, walking through from one end to the other, and also going through themed rooms showing inventions, machines, etc. that were thought to have been used by the people of Atlantis. Along the way were the various aquariums with the different fish, the pictures of which you can see below...

This is one of the regular-sized stingrays. You know, the kind that killed the Crocodile Hunter!

This wee little guy is a bonnethead shark. Looks like a mini hammerhead (was about a foot and a half long), but apparently is the only shark (or maybe there's one other, I can't remember) that doesn't need to be moving all the time to have water flowing through the gills or whatever. This shark just sits on the sand, sensing prey along the bottom of the water.

These are mini stingrays, each about a foot and a half in wingspan. They're apparently the one type of rays that live in flocks, so there would be a whole bunch swimming around together in the habitat - pretty cute!

These fish were pretty cool. The silver ones are so thin that they are the only fish not affected by the tides/currents - they can just keep swimming through! And the brown coloured guy was all coloured and scaled on one side, and plain on the other, and both eyes were on the coloured side. Very weird-looking!

Here's a picture of one of the Eagle rays, about 6 feet wingspan I think. The spotting colour on them is really pretty.

Here's a closer-up picture. Sorry about the flash reflection!

This is a goliath grouper. These guys are fascinating! He was about4 feet long, and I think like half a ton or something! They're so big that they can't really swim, so to hunt they let out a sonic boom (seriously!) to sense the fish around them, then they suck it all in!

Here's a picture (I know, not a very good one) of the hammerhead sharks, the ones that were under the rope tunnel in the picture in my last post. I think there were about 4 or 5 altogether in their little pond.

This little guy is a lionfish (from Deuce Bigalow, if any of you recall). Beautiful, but poisonous to humans! Well, and other predators of course. Again, sorry about the reflection of the flash.

This is the only even remotely decent picture that I managed to get of the most awesome (in the true sense of the word) part of the Marine Habitat - Zeus, the Manta Ray. His wingspan was 14 feet, which means that they're going to have to release him soon because at 15 feet he'll be too big for the Habitat. Adam and I were just standing by one of the glass windows, listening to the tour guide speak about the different fish, and then all of a sudden this massive thing swooped around the corner. I believe that I eloquently said "Holy Shit, what is that!?". Since this is the only picture I have of him, and it obviously does not even remotely do him justice, I thought I'd post a few pictures of manta rays that I found on the web.

From Wikipedia.

This picture on the right of the black and white manta is from this website, which has some great pictures of mantas, and information about them as well.

Basically, manta rays are one of the coolest animals in the whole entire animal kingdom, as far as I'm concerned!

This is the predator tunnel. You could walk through, and you were completely surrounded by sharks, barracudas, and other predator fish. Which apparently never eat each other. I guess cause they're fed regularly, so why hunt each other and put all that effort in if you don't have to!

This is a sawtooth shark. When Adam and I first saw it, we were walking around outside above the aquarium (like in the pictures from the last post), and we saw it swimming around in a pond beside the hammerhead shark pond. Except that all we could see was this giant shadow of a terrifyingly shaped creature, and I was totally creeped out. Once I finally saw what it was it was less creepy, but it's still a scary-looking fish!

This was how close you would get to the sharks if you were walking through the predator tunnel. They could see you through the fiberglass or whatever it was, and they'd stare at you and swim straight towards you until they hit the glass. An interesting experience, knowing something's trying to eat you!

Here's a Caribbean reef shark in the predator tunnel. This is the same kind of shark that I swam with when we went snorkelling.

And here's a picture of a barracuda. If ever do get the snorkelling pictures scanned and posted, you'll see why I'm pretty sure that I did see a barracuda when we were snorkelling. It was funny, because when we saw this guy, the tour guide told us that barracudas stalk their prey, and that while you rarely run into them when snorkelling, it's important to remove any shiny jewellery because that will catch their eye and make them think you're a fish. Too bad we didn't know that at the time that we went snorkelling!! Oh well, obviously it ended up okay, but when I realised later that we were probably being stalked by a barracuda, that's a shivery little feeling to get!

As my last picture to post, I will put this one of the predator feeding time. You can see the guy in his wetsuit, just little, at the back of the picture. The dark area under the water is the path where he walks out, to throw fish into the water so that all the predators come up and eat. I also have a video of it, that you can see here.

So that's all of my photos! As for the waterpark photos, there are also some really good pictures of the Marine Habitat at the Atlantis website, so check that out if you'd like some other cool pictures.

After we did the tour of the Marine Habitat, we went swimming, went down the waterslides that I talked about in my last post, and spent a bit of time lying on the beach chairs at the manmade beach. A very fun and relaxing day, in all. That night we had dinner at the buffet, and I took some last minute pictures of the beach and hotel area, so that I could show everyone. I've already posted those pictures in previous posts. After dinner we walked around the Marina Village again, and pretty much just relaxed, and also did some packing up of course.

The next morning, we got up and had our breakfast buffet, then finished packing up all of our stuff. I went down and got our tickets for the Charter bus back to the airport. We left the hotel at 11:30 am, I think (I don't completely remember), and the ride back to the airport took about half an hour. The Bahamas airport, like I mentioned before, is pretty small and dinky. We had to wait about half an hour or so in line, but then we were checked in. After another about half an hour we'd gone through security (the security measures weren't exactly reassuring, let me tell you!), and we had about an hour and a half to sit in the very small waiting area until it was time to board. When we boarded, we walked right out of the waiting room, through the one door leading out, and walked across the tarmac to the stairs going up to the plane! Then we were on board, and starting (on time!) on our trip back to cold, cold Canada. The flight took about 3 and a half hours, going through security and everything was fast because they didn't really stop us at all, since our declarations were way below the maximum spending for a week, and then Jack (Adam's brother) picked us up at the airport and we were home! Well, Adam's home in Thornhill at least. It was a little depressing to be back in the cold after our gorgeous week in the Bahamas, but also nice to be back in familiar territory, too.

And that is the end of our Bahamas adventure!

Bahamas Days 6 and 7

2007-02-04T18:45:00.000-05:00

So on Tuesday, the day after we went to Ardastra, we mostly just hung out and relaxed. We were going to go to the Atlantis waterpark, but it wasn't super sunny out, and we went and checked the weather network on the internet to see what the next day was going to be like, and it was supposed to be a lot warmer and sunnier. So we just went over to the Atlantis to see what the deal was (we could either get just the pass for the Marine Habitat, or a pass for that and the waterpark area). Once we figured out that it was a pretty good deal to get the pass for both, we went and hung out around the Marina area, had some Starbucks, relaxed on the beach, (I) had a couple of drinks, etc. Nothing exciting at all, and it was fabulous! :P I think that that may have been the night that we walked all the way around the path by the Marina, but I'm not entirely sure. Relaxing time tends to all kind of blend together!

The next day, Wednesday, was our last day, and the weather was absolutely beautiful - perfect for spending the day swimming and walking around and enjoying outside. We got up, had our breakfast buffet, then headed over to Atlantis to get our passes. We decided to do the Marine Habitat first, so that I could take pictures without having to worry about my camera getting wet or leaving it while we were swimming. We walked around the waterpark very first, so that I could take pictures of all of that to show everyone. So here's a bunch of the outside waterpark/beach area.
Here's a picture of me and Adam, with the Atlantis Royal Towers behind us. That bridge room between the two towers is the Michael Jackson room, which I talked about in a previous post.

This is a picture of the Atlantis Coral towers, and just some of the waterpark area - that water is actually part of the Marine Habitat, I think where the sting rays were.

Here's the whole wide view of the manmade beach in the waterpark. It's SO nice and pretty, and the water is actually attached to the ocean and comes in through a canal that they made - it's just the beach itself that they made.

This is one of my favourite pictures of the landscaping in the waterpark area. I loved that the landscape was so beautiful - even though it was obviously all planted, it was still native flora of the Bahamas, and it looked like the landscaping everywhere else, so it didn't feel artificial. The water is more sting ray area.

This is one of the really nice waterways in the waterpark - again, artificial in that it was planted and manmade, but still so nice anyway!

This is Adam leaning over the bridge that goes over the canal where the water from the ocean comes into the manmade beach. They had so many fun watertoys, including these huge paddleboats with gigantic (like seriouly 5 feet in diameter) wheels, so that you were paddling to turn the wheels. We were going to try it, but then ended up not doing it, which was too bad because it would have been neat! You could also rent those bike things that you could ride along the bottom of the ocean, which I talked about before in one of my previous posts, that Adam and I were going to do instead of snorkelling.

This is the big waterslide thing in the waterpark. It looked like a huge pyramid type thing. There were two waterslides on each side. One side was more for little kids and people who didn't want to do super steep rides. The other side (the side not shown in the picture) had a crazy steep slide that was just a regular slide, then they also had one that you could go down in single or doubles watertubes, and when you got to the bottom of the slide part you would actually ride through a clear plastic tube that went through - get this - the shark/predator area!!! So you were sitting on this tub, drifting through the water, and all around us were sharks swimming around. That was pretty damn cool. I wish I could have brought my camera when we went down that, but obviously I didn't want to get it wet!

This is the rope bridge in the waterpark, which you had to take to walk over the pond with the hammerhead sharks. It was rickety and swingy, which made it fun cause it was just a tiny bit dangerous feeling. Of course, the part that it actually went over was really shallow and the sharks probably couldn't have actually swam into, but still!

This is another picture of the waterslide structure, but unfortunately you can't see the waterslides we went down (we did the shark one and the super steep one - which I almost chickened out of doing, but made myself!). But it shows how cool the whole thing looked.

So that's all the waterpark/landscape pictures. I have a whole bunch of pictures of the Marine Habitat, but I'm going to post those in the next one because it's just way too many pictures altogether!

Ardastra Zoo and Gardens cont...

2007-01-31T17:28:00.000-05:00

So, yesterday I posted most of the cool pictures of animals and plants and things that I took while Adam and I were at the Ardastra Zoo and Gardens in Nassau. However, there are two experiences in particular that were super cool while we were there, but I didn't have room in my previous post to put in even more pictures, along with a video!

So the first cool thing that they have at the Zoo is that you can go into the Lorry Parrot cage, and actually feed the parrots. You can donate $ (but you don't have to), and the feeder gives you pieces of apple, and the parrots fly to you and land and then you feed them the apples. We were lucky that we showed up at one of the feeding times, because I really wanted to do it. Adam stayed outside the cage, once again (I love that I'm braver than my boyfriend :P), and took pictures of me feeding the birdies. So here are a couple, through the bars of their cage unfortunately, but still fun!

The bird that landed on me stayed on my head the whole time, and every time that I dropped the apple piece he would squawk very loudly until I picked it back up and continued feeding him (or her, I really don't actually know). It was pretty cute, even though usually I'm not the hugest fan of birds. The only bad thing was that he dropped tiny apple pieces all over my head, so Adam had to spend a couple minutes after I got out of the cage picking them out - I felt like those monkeys that pick bugs off of each other! But it was still a really neat experience.

The other cool thing that they have at Ardastra is the Marching Flamingoes. These flamingoes have actually been trained to march on vocal command from their trainer, and it's really cool to watch!

Here's a picture of the flamingo arena, before the flock was brought in:
The two pictures below are of the flamingoes posing, after their show. The trainer took one person out of each of the sections around the arena, and had them pose for pictures with the trainer. You could really tell that these flamingoes were made for entertaining, because they really posed!

The next picture is of one of the marching flamingoes. There were two flocks of flamingoes at the Ardastra Zoo and Gardens - one that marches, and one that's a breeding flock (because this type is endangered, supposedly). The marching flock wanders free-range around the Zoo, but the breeding flock are (understandably) kept behind a barrier. This guy below was part of the marching flock, but he was bound and determined that he was going to get in with the breeding flock - I guess he'd heard they were easy! :p
Next picture is of the flamingoes actually marching. Also, here is the link to the video that I took of them (I love my new camera!), where you can actually hear the trainer giving the commands.
And as a cute little ending, here's a picture of me and Adam that I actually really like. Usually at least one of us manages to look completely retarded in a picture of us, but this one actually turned out not too badly!
Next post I'll start posting pictures of our day at the Atlantis Waterpark and Marine Habitat. Also, there are a couple more pictures of our day at the Zoo, so if anyone wants to see I can send an email with the link to my Yahoo Photos album.

Lata!

"We're going to the zoo, zoo, zoo, How about you, you, you?"

2007-01-30T16:17:00.000-05:00

So, on the Monday (the 18th), we decided that it was a great day to go to the local zoo that I'd found out about on the internet: Ardastra Zoo and Gardens. It was a gorgeous, sunny day, but not too hot - perfect for wandering around outside looking at cool animals! So after eating breakfast and putting together a little travel pack (Adam found out the hard way this trip that it is imperative that I am always close to a washroom, and that I always have protein-rich food to snack on), we got one of the hotel doormen to hail a taxi for us - there are always a couple waiting in front of every major hotel - and headed off to the zoo. It was about a 15 minute drive, and cost us about $11, which really wasn't too bad! When we got to the zoo, it was apparent pretty quickly that this wasn't going to be the typical North American zoo. It was very small, very informal (!) and very 'wild'. I guess that was partly because it was also the 'Gardens', so part of the fun was getting to be surrounded by natural flora as well as fauna.

We paid (don't remember how much, but extremely cheap), and went on inside. I'd been looking the zoo up on the internet the day before, and had seen a list of all the creatures that were there. I didn't realize at the time, but quickly came to realise when we got to the zoo, and that many of those creatures weren't actually kept in cages or display areas, but were actually just wild, hanging around! The first thing that made us realise this was that right when we walked in, there was a parrot just hanging out on a little personalised (or animalised) perch, with no cage around. Which made me a little nervous, because there was also a sign saying something along the lines that parrots can be aggressive, so don't try to touch them. Interesting safety measures!
The second thing that made us figure out that not all the animals were caged is when we walked around a corner in the path (very narrow, grassy pathways - few of the pathways were paved, so it was sometimes even hard to tell if it was a pathway for visitors or just for employees), and encountered this gal:
Yeah, that's a Vietnamese pot-bellied pig. She was just lying right by the side of the path (the whitish part to the very left of her are the stones on the edge of the path). What you can't tell from this picture is how big she was, cause she looks all cute and tiny in the picture. Not so much in real life. She was about 4 feet long, and I have no idea how many pounds but just imagine how big if that pig was that long! We walked by her empty cage later and learned that her name is Lulubelle. Slightly more dainty than she is, wouldn't you say!?

EDIT: also, I figured out that not all the animals were in cages because on the website they'd had a whole bunch of insects and spiders listed, and yet they didn't actually have any in the zoo... turned out that those were all just native insects, and native spiders which were living in the many spiderwebs to be found around the zoo!!

(Back to the original post) Using the map that we were given when we entered the zoo, we managed to make sure that we saw all of the animals in the cages. I'm just going to post the pictures of them, so you can see the different animals we saw.
Here's a serval. Yeah, I'd never heard of that either. Some fairly small wildcat, pretty cute!

These jaguars were being so cute and cuddly. I know it kind of looks like they're mating, but I'm pretty sure they were actually mom and baby, because of the way they were behaving the rest of the time (see the licking picture).

Aw, look at those lazy little lemurs (I love alliteration).

This is a caiman (sp?), cute little fella.

This iguana just looked so relaxed and content, I was envious!

These were the only 2 parrots in the whole zoo who were in a cage. By the extreme aggressiveness that this guy showed, I'm assuming it's because they didn't do well being out around people!

There were also some domestic animals in the zoo, not really sure why, and you could even buy food pellets and feed them. There were 2 of those sheep and 3 little goats altogether, and they were adorable!!

Like I mentioned above, the zoo was also the Gardens, so it was beautifully landscaped, in a very natural, wild way. Here are some pictures of some of the plants and landscaping around the place:

This tree to the right is some kind of palm tree, I don't remember what it was called, but you can see how tall it was by the 2 people beside it.

There were waterways like this all around the park, with a bunch of cute little ducks, and some beautiful black swans. Well, I thought they were beautiful until I ran out of food to give them, and one attacked me!

Here's some more of the pretty scenery at the gardens, I don't know what the flowering tree is called, but it was very colourful!

All right, I think that this is enough pictures for this entry, but there are still the 2 coolest things about our day at the zoo that I need to tell about, so I'll do another entry about it soon.

I'm so bored I can't be bothered to do anything... it truly is a paradox

2007-01-27T21:35:00.000-05:00

Okay, well, so I'm stuck here in this craptastic city because it's my school's reading week, and all my friends are out doing fun travelling, and Adam is crazy busy with about a million really important assignments, and my sister is out of town visiting her boyfriend. So I'm pretty much just entertaining myself. Anyway, because of that, I am super bored (as the name would suggest), and for some reason that means that I have no motivation to do anything.

Anyway, I finally convinced myself that continuing to update this thing is a good way to entertain myself. That and watch Men in Black I and II one after the other. Nothing wrong with 4 and a half hours of Will Smith, let me tell you! But I digress.

So, the next day after the snorkelling, Sunday, we did nothing but relax, which was awesome. Wandered around the marina village a little (did I mention how much I loved that place?), had lunch at a really good deli place at the Atlantis, laid on the beach, just basically relaxed. Crazy that you can spend an entire day doing nothing worth relating, but I guess that's kind of the whole point of vacation, right?

Since this day doesn't really have any stories to relate, I thought that I would post some pictures of the Atlantis Marina, just to give you an idea of the crazy big 'boats' that were hanging around.

This is the view from the drive-up circle at the main towers of the Atlantis. I love the Christmas tree against the backdrop of tropicalness!

A nice bit boat, and the Atlantis condo complex behind it. The walkway around the marina went all the way along in front of the condo and around to the right of it. Adam and I walked the whole pathway one night - it was so beautiful, and you could see in the windows of the yachts, which was very cool.

Here's the walkway into the Marina Village (and to the Marina itself, to the right just after the wreathed colums).

This was one of the largest yachts we saw, which I'm pretty sure was in the movie Casino Royale, if you look closely. The picture really doesn't do it justice, the thing was just ridiculously huge!

Anyway, that's really it for now. Next post will be about Monday, when we went to the zoo/gardens in Nassau. Lots of pictures to come the next time, that's for sure!

I am SO BRAVE!!!

2007-01-25T17:16:00.000-05:00

So, our 2nd full day there was Saturday. I got up nice and early once again, went out on the balcony to read again. It was so nice to just sit out there in the warmth, totally relaxed, and know that I had nothing to do! Adam eventually got up just before 10, and we went downstairs to get the breakfast buffet before it closed at 10. Then we did some wandering around until noon, when our bus for the snorkelling trip was supposed to come and pick us up.

The bus got there just a little late (the Bahamians really are a laidback bunch!), and we all loaded in - there were about 4 or 5 other people from our hotel going too. After about a half an hour, we arrived at the Stuart's Cove Marina, where we would be starting out. Adam and I went in to the shop, filled out all the forms ("if you die, no one can sue us"!), and bought some extra mouthpieces. Honestly, for $3, who wouldn't buy brand new mouthpieces for the snorkels... cause otherwise, eww....! We all piled onto the boat, about 20 of us and 2 of the workers. They were pretty young, but it was apparent fairly soon that they really knew what they were doing, which made me feel better. They handed out all of our equipment, and then we started out on the ocean. It was pretty windy on the boat, which looked kind of like one of those smaller fishing boats, but big enough that people can do deep-sea fishing off of. There were two stories so that you could go up on the roof if you wanted, but I was feeling a little nervous at that point so I decided to stay down where it was nice and safe! The ride was only about 15 or 20 minutes out to the first site, so it wasn't too long at all before we got to start!

The first site that we went to had a really big area of reef pretty close to the surface, which was great since we were just snorkelling and obviously couldn't go too far below the surface. There were SO many fish, and they were so incredibly colourful! And they would swim all around you, it was so neat. But one thing I noticed was that I would be completely and totally surrounded by fish, and they would be really, really close to me, but I could never actually touch them - they would always just swim out of reach. Which was too bad. But oh well. And at one point, I'm pretty sure that I saw a barracuda out in the open water. I do have a picture, but like I said in my last post I took the snorkelling pictures on a disposable camera, so I still have to develop them.

The Stuart's Cove guys stayed on the boat to watch out for things, and they were also throwing fish food into the water, so that if you swam where they threw the food you'd be so surrounded by fish that you couldn't even see around you. It was pretty cool. At first I was a little nervous, and the first 30 seconds or so I had that shortness of breath that I get every time I snorkel, but eventually I was fine, and then I started really, really enjoying it. In fact, I started to wish that we'd decided to scuba dive instead, because I wanted so much to dive down to the reef, check out all of the fish, and really get in there! For the first couple of minutes I tried to stay near Adam, because it is a little nerve-wracking to be out in the open ocean. But then I just started swimming all over the place - well, within the area we were told was safe, which was a pretty big area. After about 30 minutes, they called us back onto the boat so that we could go to the 2nd dive site.

The boat ride was only about 10 minutes, then we were at the next dive site. Apparently this site is the place where almost all underwater scenes in movies are shot, including Jaws and Pirates of the Caribbean. There was even an airplane that had been sunk there from Jaws 4 as a prop, which I got a picture of. It's supposed to be a really good place to see sting rays, the Eagle rays and one other kind, but I didn't get to see any, unfortunately. So that dive site wasn't too exciting, because it wasn't near too much reef so there weren't very many small fish, and like I said, I didn't see any rays. But it was still neat to see the props and know that movies had been filmed there! Again, after about 30 minutes they brought us back onto the boat, to head for the last and final dive site - the best part of the day!!

So we got to the 3rd dive site, and the guys started to load a bait box into the water, because at this site we were going to be diving with... duh duh duh... SHARKS!!!!! Oh yeah, that's right. The kind of sharks that were there were Caribbean reef sharks, which the dive guys told us were only scavengers, that would respond only to the dying vibrations of fish. Well, that turned out to not exactly be true, as I found out later when I looked on the internet (don't worry, no one found out the hard way!), but they do respond to vibrations of fear, etc., which is why the dive guys told us they were scavengers, so we wouldn't be too afraid. Also obviously the bait box full of fish kept their attention towards the ocean floor, so they really didn't care about us. And every website I looked at also said that they're not an aggressive species of shark, and will only get aggressive if they feel cornered.

The people who decided to swim with the sharks went in to the water, but we had to all stay hanging on to this big thick rope that they had hung off the back of the boat. The sharks were about 5 - 7 feet long, I think, and usually stayed toward the bottom of the ocean, so about 15 or 20 feet away. But some of them did come closer, just to kind of give us a look, and I have one picture of a shark like 9-10 feet away from me!! It was pretty crazy, let me tell you! But also incredibly cool, and because the guys had said the sharks were scavengers, I wasn't even nervous. But that didn't help Adam - he decided to stay on the boat. He said it was because he was watching to make sure nothing happened to me, but I think we all know that I'm just way braver than him! :P

We stayed in the water about 10 minutes, during which I got a couple of pretty cool photos, one showing just how many sharks there were (at least 2 dozen!). One guys had a real digital camera, the Olympus one that you can take underwater, and he dropped it and one of the sharks ate it!! I felt really bad for him, he was so upset.

Then they brought us all back onto the boat, and brought the dive box onto the boat. Then, they took the fish out of the bait box and threw it into the water, so that all the sharks came up to the surface to feed!! That was also extremely cool, and a little scary to see them feeding, too. I got some neat pictures of that too.

When that was done, we headed back to their marina. All in all, we were gone about 2 hours. Plus the ride there and back to the hotel, was about 3 hours altogether. Not too bad for $58 (including a brand-spanking-new mouthpiece, of course)!. So that was pretty much the coolest thing I'd ever done, I think. I mean obviously, I swam with freaking sharks!!!!

When we got back to the marina, we changed in the washrooms, then got back onto one of the buses. The buses got pretty crammed, because they picked up and dropped off from all of the hotels in the area. And those Bahamians, they're kind of crazy drivers - they don't exactly love to use their turn signals. However, we got back safely to the hotel, just in time to have a shower before heading down to dinner at one of the specialty restaurants (oh yeah, I'd also gotten up and made the booking for the specialty restaurant that morning, before Adam got up). That night we just went out for a walk around the hotel, relaxed a little. The day had pretty much tired us out, so we then just went up to the room, hung out, watched some tv, and of course as always I fell asleep at like midnight at the latest.

So that was my day of being adventurous. I know it's not a HUGE deal, but for me it's pretty crazy, cause I think we all know I'm a wuss! Anyway, that's all for now. I know I didn't put up any pics, but I just don't have any! I will post them as soon as I get them scanned, hopefully this weekend.

Hope you enjoyed hearing about my adventure!

Pretty, pretty pictures!

2007-01-10T15:39:00.000-05:00

I would just like to apologize first for putting so many pictures in here. I know it can take a while to download for some people, but I don't really know how to do it otherwise, and frankly I just can't be bothered. So here goes...

On the morning of our first full day there, I woke up nice and early, probably around 7:30 or so. Partly because I’d been getting up that early for my exams at 9, and partly because I’d gone to bed so early the night before. Instead of going down, I decided to sit out on our little balcony and read for a while, which was very relaxing. We had requested an ocean-view room, which we did get – sort of. We technically looked directly across at the back of one of the Coral Towers of the Atlantis, but to the right was the ocean, so we had a good view from the balcony as long as we turned to the right a little. I read and relaxed for a while, then had a shower, and by that time Adam was awake. We went down and got breakfast at the buffet, which was decent-enough food. Here are some pictures of the eating area in the hotel:

This is one end of the waiting area, where hotel guests would wait for the specialty restaurants to open (they had specific times for dinner sittings, and you had to reserve those times every morning for whichever specialty restaurant you wanted).

The other end of the waiting room for the dining area.

Here is another Junkanoo figure decorating the buffet area.

Here is the outdoor eating area at the hotel, which was attached to the area where the lunch buffet was served. The pool, and the walkway down to the beach, is to the left.

After breakfast, we had our ‘introductory meeting’ at 10, where the SunQuest representative told us about a bunch of different activities and tours and things we could do while we were there. There were a couple of things that interested us particularly: there’s a company called Stuart's Cove that does snorkelling, scuba diving, and has these things that are kind of like little mopeds (they call them SUBs), that have a glass bubble that your head goes in, and you ride along a couple of feet along the bottom of the ocean floor. That looked really, really awesome, but it was $110 for 45 minutes, whereas the snorkelling was $55 for a 3 hour tour, so for the price we figured the snorkelling was a better bet. I wanted to go snorkelling first, and then if we decided to we could go scuba diving later, but I wanted to kind of get used to things first. So after the meeting, which only lasted about half an hour, we went and got some more information about the snorkelling from the SunQuest representative about reserving a snorkelling trip.

Once we decided that we definitely wanted to go, we had to go get some money from the Atlantis hotel (that's where the closest bank machine was) to book the trip. So we decided it was a perfect time to explore the Atlantis while we were getting some money. We walked over to the Beach Towers, the part of Atlantis closest to us, and followed the signs through the hotel.

These are two pictures of sculptures from the Atlantis casino. I know it's all based on the myth of the lost city of Atlantis, but I'm not 100% sure exactly what these represent. I mean, obviously the Earth and the Sun, but I'm not sure why they relate specifically to Atlantis, and everything in the hotel is supposed to relate directly to the myth. Anyway, they were neat sculpture thingies.

After we got our moolah, we headed back to our hotel, but on the way we decided to go outside through one of the Atlantis doors, and do a little more exploring. And that's when we discovered the absolute best part of the entire island: Marina Village. I don't remember if I mentioned it in my last post, I don't think so, but I loved this little place SO much. It had all these adorable little shops (and some expensive ones, because it is Paradise Island after all), and cute little restaurants. And it also had Starbucks, which I will not deny definitely helped in my love of it. But that definitely wasn't the best part. It was so colourful, and adorable, and Christmas calypso music was playing constantly. It was just so pretty. I guess words can't really do justice, so I'm going to post some pictures, but I'm pretty sure that they won't do it justice either since I'm obviously not a photographer!

Look at those pretty palm trees and colourful buildings! And so many happy people!

And this little area was made even better by the fact that it was right by the Atlantis Marina, which had HUGE, gorgeous boats parked in it. But I'm not going to post those pictures today, because there's quite a few and I think I've already put in enough for today!

After we went back to our hotel, we booked our snorkelling trip for the next day, then had some lunch. The rest of the day we just kind of lazed around, went back to the Marina Village for lunch, explored the hotel a little, etc. - nothing exciting, just taking it easy and relaxing! We ate supper at the buffet again because we hadn't known about making reservations that morning, then went up to the room and hung out, and went to bed fairly early again.

And that's all for now, folks. Tomorrow I'll post some pics of the Atlantis Marina, and tell you about my snorkelling adventure. I won't be able to post pictures of that, unfortunately, because I bought a disposable underwater camera to go snorkelling and didn't bring my camera along - I was way too worried about taking it near water, after just having got it a few days before!

Feeling cold? This post'll warm you up! (Or just make you realize how miserable Canadian winters are)

2007-01-04T20:25:00.000-05:00

I'm just diving right into this baby...

I wrote my last exam, Income Tax, on the 12th, the Tuesday. It was a great way to finish exams, because it was by far the hardest, and it felt the best to have it done. That afternoon I got my eyebrows waxed (they actually have some shape now!) and then a bunch of us went out for a celebratory dinner at the Keg, which was fun. The next day was for relaxing and getting ready to leave, because I was taking the train to Toronto that night.

I left on the 7:20pm train to Toronto on the 13th, and took the subway from Union to Sheppard, where I was going to visit Adam’s brother and sister-in-law, and their brand-spanking new baby girl, Sophia. She is absolutely beautiful, I must say. It is very exciting to be a ‘quasi-aunt’, as I call myself. Hopefully this well let me get a little more comfortable with children – i.e. not absolutely terrified of them!

Adam and I stayed there for a couple of hours, then went back to his parents’ place. We still had a bunch of preparations to do, so we ended up not getting to sleep until about 3 or 4 in the morning, which was pretty stupid considering we had to be up at 7am, and leave the house at 7:30. We called the taxi the night before to make sure that they would be there for 7:30, because we had to be at the airport by 8:30. After WAY too few hours of sleep, we were awake and on our way to the airport – getting a lecture on the way from the cabbie about the negatives of flat rates (bulls**t if you ask me!). When we got there, the Canjet line wasn’t even open yet, because we were there at about 8 am, earlier than we had expected. So we got to sit around and have a bite to eat at least before lining up. Even when we did line up, there was only one flight of probably about 100 people that Canjet was dealing with that morning, so the line went really quickly. We had out e-tickets and everything already too, so that was nice and easy. Then it was time for 2 hours of waiting in the waiting area. Luckily the plane boarded and left right on time, which was nice – the necessary waiting is bad enough, without having to wait even longer when they’re late!

The flight didn’t go too badly, it was only about 3 and a half hours which really isn’t too long. They even served a little meal – I couldn’t eat the meat sandwich, of course, but I traded my sandwich for Adam’s veggies, so it was all good. It’s nice to travel with someone for some things! :P We landed pretty much right on schedule, and just looking out the window I was SO excited, because it looked crazy warm. Although not too picturesque at the airport; Bahamas airport isn’t exactly the picture of a nice, clean, safe airport, but what are you gonna do, right?

As soon as we got there and picked up our luggage, which went really quickly because obviously there weren’t too many flights going in and out of Nassau, we went outside and caught the bus to the Riu hotel. Most of the people on our plane were going to the same place, because everyone on Canjet was travelling through SunQuest vacations (since Canjet now only does Charter flights - don't actually fly it, by the way... nothing bad happened, per se, but I did concentrate on that plane staying in the air the whole way!). We just followed the crowd and jumped onto one of the buses, which were included in the all-inclusive rate – nice not to have to worry about getting Bahamian money and paying taxi drivers right away!

The drive to the hotel was interesting. The driver told us he was going to take the ‘back way’ because the traffic in downtown Nassau was terrible as a result of the Junkanoo parade going on. We still got to drive through the city a little bit, which really didn’t seem like a city at all, much more like a small town, but I guess we only ever saw parts of it. All the buildings are made out of the same material, which looks basically like sand/stucco (and I’m guessing that’s pretty much what it is). Very colourful buildings, which was neat. But a lot of poverty, which was kind of depressing, especially once the tour bus drove over the bridge to Paradise Island, which is the exact opposite of poverty!

The island was essentially made for tourists – I’m pretty sure the entire island is actually man-made, or at least significant portions of it. Our hotel was right beside the Beach Towers of the Atlantis hotel. For those of you who don’t know about the Atlantis hotel, follow the link (if you follow any of the links in this post), because it’s a very interesting, amazing place. If you see the ‘bridge room’ in the Royal Towers, that room is owned by Michael Jackson (he’s a shareholder in the hotel) and runs at about $25,000/night – and you have to stay for a minimum of a week. Of course, it also includes a butler and maids and is some ridiculously large number of hundreds of square feet or something, so I guess for the price it’s worth it if you can afford it!

After about half an hour, the bus pulled up to the hotel - this was our first view of it:

Check-in at the hotel (the Riu Hotel Paradise Island) was pretty fast and painless. We piled our luggage along one side of the lobby, and went into one of the boardrooms to sign in and get our bracelets (Riu only does all-inclusive, I think, because every guest there seemed to have one). They had the drinks lined up for us as we came in to the hotel, which was cool, although I didn’t have one because they looked a little too sickly sweet for me.

15 minutes later we were up in our room, on the 8^th floor, right across from the elevators (very convenient). We ended up being giving a king-sized bed, which we had requested but wasn’t guaranteed, and which I was very grateful for. Unless you have shared a bed with a 6’4” bed-and-blanket-hog, you do not fully appreciate the wonderfulness of the king-sized bed, let me tell you!

We unpacked quickly, changed into some beach wear (the jeans and sweatshirts we’d left Canada in weren’t exactly temperature-appropriate!), and by ~5pm we were headed out to explore the beach a little. The second we started walking down the stairs from the pool area to the beach, Adam was approached by a Bahamian guy wanting to know if we wanted to rent a jet-ski. When Adam said ‘not right now’, the guy then wanted to know if he wanted any weed. We had seriously not actually even set foot on the sand yet. Does Adam just draw that kind of attention? Does he give off a ‘I’m a pothead’ vibe? Or did they just figure we were about the right age for it? I don’t know, but it was funny as hell! He said no, of course (no, really, I wasn’t about to get put in Bahamian jail thank you very much!).

We headed up the beach towards the Atlantis hotel, and walked as far along there as we could. The sand was absolutely beautiful, and were right on the ocean – except for one little island a little ways straight out, it was ocean as far as the eye could see! Pretty windy, but definitely beautiful and a gorgeous walk, especially in the evening.

Here's a couple of views of the beach:

Here's a view to the left, down towards Atlantis

View to the right

View straight out from Riu

After we got back from our walk, we decided to check out the supper buffet, see how the food really was. Unfortunately, it was not quite up to our expectations, but to be fair both Adam and I (especially Adam) have fairly high standards when it comes to food, so probably most people would think it was quite satisfactory. It was good, it just wasn’t as good as we had expected and hoped it would be. But there was at least plenty for me to eat, which I had been worried about, especially since I knew there would obviously be a lot of seafood and I was worried their idea of ‘vegetarianism’ would include seafood, which it often does in places like that.

Junkanoo figure and buffet to the left, eating area above. That eating area is where the buffet dinner and the breakfast buffet were served. The lunch buffet was served in a different area, where one of the specialty restaurant was located for dinnertime (the outdoor eating area, which I'll post a picture of in the next blog, was attached to the lunchtime eating area).

After dinner we explored the pool area a little bit, but we were so tired from having no sleep and travelling all day that we pretty much just went up to the room and watched tv, and fell asleep probably around 10, 10:30. I know, we’re such exciting travellers!

All right, that's all I'm posting for now, because my internet at home has a 100mb upload limit/day (I know, total ass), and I'm afraid I'm getting close and I want internet still tonight!

Catching up

2006-11-07T13:51:00.000-05:00

Okay, so it's been forever since I've updated this thing, and I really feel like I should let everyone know what's going on with my life.

1) Jobs

So first of all, the law school had the OCI's (off-campus interviews) on Oct. 17th. I ended up getting an interview with 5 firms, including 3 IP boutique firms and my top choice firm, Gilbert's (all from Toronto). The OCI's are a crazy day, filled with 17 minute long interviews, and about half of 2nd year class at my school goes in for interviews, and something like 100 firms from Toronto come in. So I thought that my interviews went fairly well, at least with a few of them. October 27th was the day where we got calls from the firms to tell us if we were getting a call-back for November interviews, and I unfortunately did not get any call-backs. But don't worry, I was too disappointed, because only something like 25% of 2nd year students actually get law firms jobs, so it's really not a big deal. Plus I can apply for all the smaller firms in January/February, and I can also still work for my IP prof again next summer hopefully, so I'll have a job doing some kind of law regardless.

My one roommate got 1 interview, and my other roommate is an all-star and got like 10 offers, but only ended up taking 7 November interviews. She seriously is an All-Star and she was the most nervous going into OCI's!

So they're both in Toronto this Monday to Wednesday doing Toronto interviews at the actual firms, and I have the apartment to myself! So that's what's been going on in terms of jobs, at least so far. I will update more about all that in January when I start applying again.

2) Health

So I recently had some health worries - at the beginning of September, I started working out more often and more intensely than I really had before. Beginning of October, I started having chest pain and tightness, and naturally because of my heart surgery when I was young I started getting worried. So I went to the doctor on campus, and had echograms and electrocardiograms and a pulmonary holter (wires taped to my chest and attached to a little box that recorded my heart beats) and finally got a cardiologist appointment, and after all that (and a lot of worrying and stress!) figured out that whatever it was, it wasn't my heart, and I didn't need to worry about anything. That was just last Thursday (Nov. 2nd) that I found out that it was no worries, so I had about 3 weeks of worrying that I would maybe have to have heart surgery again or something!
But now everything is okay, nothing to worry about, I can go back to working out. So it's all good!

3) Concerts

A couple of weeks ago, I went to a Pink Floyd Tribute concert. The band was really good, pretty much as close to Floyd as you could get without being Floyd. But there's something about it being the real band, who created and originally played the music, that makes a concert so much more amazing. The tribute concert just kind of felt like I was listening to the music being played really loudly - the band was pretty much irrelevant, which was too bad.
Plus it didn't help that it was like 2 hours of standing in a bad neighbourhood of T.O., with a rough crowd!! Let's just say Adam and I may have stood out a tad... ;)

This past Saturday, however, I had an entirely different concert experience - ELTON JOHN!!!! It was by far my best concert experience yet. I know I keep saying that, but Elton John is a musical legend, and so incredibly talented, and he plays the piano which makes me love him even more. He played for almost 3 hours straight, and the only break he took was at the end, when he went off-stage for about 5 minutes then came back for a 2-song encore. No intermission, nothing! It was absolutely amazing. I actually started crying when he first came out and started playing, because it was just so intense to see a musician/artist like that, playing, in person. Nothing compares, let me tell you!
And we went because it was my step-dad's birthday present, so it was my sister and I, and our mum and step-dad. He loved it, which was really nice. My parents aren't so big on downtown Toronto, but it was kind of fun to show them around, take them on the subway, etc.

So that was concert experience since my last updating. This month I am also going to see Guns 'n Roses again (well, really Axle Rose and a bunch of musicians who aren't Guns 'n Roses, but good enough), and I'm also going to see a LEAFS GAME!!! And the best part is that the Leafs that night will be playing New Jersey, and New Jersey happens to have Adam's favourite goalie of all time (Brodeur). So unless I manage to jinx it, Adam will finally get to see his favourite goalie in action! I went online the minute the tickets went on sale, so I actually got them for the real price, only $50 each. Not great seats, of course, but cheap and we can see what's going on, and that's good enough for me!
I'll let you know about how those two things go, don't you worry! I'll also let you know if Axle is till rocking the leather pants and the same 3 stage/dance moves... hehe.

4) Kitty

So I'm finally getting a cat, picking it up tonight. Turns out (very fatefully!) that the very building manager who I had to go to, to get permission for having a cat in the building when I thought I was adopting from the London Humane Society, is moving and can't bring her cat along with her. I ended up not being able to adopt from the Humane Society because apparently the one in London doesn't give animals to students, because statistically students tend to bring animals back at the end of the school year. That's ass, in my personal opinion! I was going to go to Toronto Humane Society, because I know they would give me a kitty, but then my building manager put up a poster about her cat, and I jumped on the offer! Ironically, she got the cat from the London Humane Society... hehe, I outsmarted those bastards! :D

So the cat is all black, she's a year and a half old, and her name is Spice (isn't that cute?!). I'm really hoping that she'll like me, and get along with bunny, at least eventually. She's a little shy apparently, I only met her very briefly last Thursday and she spent most of that time hiding under the bed, but I'm sure that when she gets used to me and my roomies she'll be fine.

So finally after years of waiting I will have my very own cat!

5) Travelling

I don't know if I actually wrote about this before, but Adam and I are going to the Bahamas in December!! We got our payments all paid up in time, so we are officially going. I am so frigging excited, I can't believe that I finally convinced him to spend the money and to travel, but we're going, and it's going to be amazing. If anyone wants to know where exactly we're going, send me an email, and I'll be happy to tell you all about it! ;)

Conclusion

I love that I organized this posting like this, I am such a frigging nerd sometimes. Anyway, that's all the important things that have been going on in my life the last 2 months. Now you're all caught up. Everything in-between is just me going to school, working on assignments, visiting Adam. Really nothing exciting at all, which is why I really don't update on a regular basis. Although I would like to be done my posting on my last trip before I go on my next one, but that's not looking so good right now!

Ta ta for now!

Unfortunately, mentally incapable people are common

2006-09-25T14:28:00.000-04:00

That title doesn't have anything to do with this post - it's just a quote from the professor of the class that I'm in right now. Civ Pro has the potential to be interesting. Too bad the professor is (hopefully) a much better litigator than a professor. I am including a picture that will hopefully give you an idea of how my Civ Pro lectures by this prof are structured:

PS - NOT an exaggeration. It's a damn good thing this prof is cute - and he is very cute!
(Edit: finally got the g-damn picture to go in the centre, like I wanted - is anyone else having issues with actually getting their pictures to upload into their text?)

Also, just for an exciting update, I am going to see ELTON JOHN in November!!!! (I thought pink was an appropriate colour to use there). And the coolest part is that I'm going with my sister, mum, and step-dad, for my step-dad's birthday. It's going to be so much fun! I've never gone to a big concert with my parents, and my step-dad really likes Elton John (well, we all do), so it'll be a really good time, I think.

This past weekend I went to my first 'humanistic' service for Rosh Hashanah - very interesting, although since it was at 10:30 am on a Saturday morning, I did have a strong urge to nod off. But it was neat to see how they deal with celebrating that whole holiday, without praying or worshiping or anything. It's really all just about celebrating this Jewish history, and the Jewish people - pretty cool, actually! I can see that that type of thing is something that I would enjoy getting involved with, and I definitely agreed with a lot of the values that were discussed during the service. I did feel bad for Adam - he definitely didn't want to be there, but he was being a good son, so that was nice.

I also had breakfast this past Sunday with my mum, my sister, and my sister's apparent boyfriend - someone who my family has known pretty much since my sister and I were about 4 and 2. Which is weird. Also, I dated him, and he was my first kiss (in gr. 6, though, doesn't really count). There is absolutely no kind of jealousy, I'm just having a serious problem with figuring out how my sister can actually look at him in that kind of way - not as any insult to him, but just because we've known him for so long, and he's just, you know, him. Anyway, breakfast was awkward, and my sister hates it that I think it's so weird. Hopefully everything will work out, cause right now it's just a bad scene.

The good part about the breakfast was seeing my mum and my sister together. The 3 of us got to spend the afternoon together, and we went to the Word on the Street literary festival in Toronto, and it was really nice to get to hang out. My mum's visiting my sister now, and she's coming to my place on Tuesday evening, so it's going to be a good week!! I'm going to get a KITTY, and a keyboard that plays like a piano (finally!), and get to watch Top Model with a bunch of my friends and my mother, which will be interesting and fun!

Anyway, that's really all I have to say at this point, so I'm going to publish this and then do another entry soon about the next part of my trip - although not necessarily right now, but it's coming!

Are we there yet?

2006-09-16T10:16:00.000-04:00

I was last speaking about the cute little rest/picnic areas on the island... here's a picture of one, which is also one of my most favourite pictures of our whole trip. I hope that this picture gets across how beautiful the whole island is. And I would definitely recommend looking it up on Wikipedia, to get an idea of the history and stuff - it's pretty cool!

I don't have a picture of the lane of eucalyptus trees, or the swamp, which is too bad because both were beautiful. What I do have is a little picture of part of this cute, tiny little cemetery that was on the island. The littlest cemetery I have ever seen. It was about 10 feet x 20 feet, and very old. I don't know if I mentioned this before, but there is actually a village on the island, and people still live there (although that's the part where tourists aren't allowed to go). So I guess the cemetery is for them - either way, it was adorable. Which may sound like a weird description for a cemetery, but it really did apply. This is one of the crosses in the cemetery - you can tell it's really old! And then there's one more picture of a view from the island, as we were coming back to catch the ferry back to Cannes.

On our way back, while we were waiting for the ferry, Robin and I each got a sandwich, and we were sitting down on a bench by the quay, and these birds kept walking around us and trying to get food. Unfortunately, Robin had to delete the pictures because she was running out of space, but it was really cute. There was one little seagull, he had a lot of character for a little bird - I know, everyone hates seagulls, but he was my little friend, and he kept us entertained while we were waiting.

So then we took the ferry back to Cannes, went to pick up our stuff at the hostel (and it was still all there!), and went off to the train station on our way to Cinque Terre - which ended up being even more beautiful than Cannes! But that is a story for another day...

This is one way to get through Income Tax class...

2006-09-15T14:04:00.000-04:00

From now on I'm just going to delve right into the stories about the trip, cause I'm tired of doing intros. So no more niceties.

So my sister and I were walking along the beach on l'Île de Sainte-Marguerite, looking out over the Mediterranean Sea, and all the big, beautiful boats that were parked between the island and Cannes. Here is a picture of me wandering along the beach (my sister took it from far back so that we could get the view in there too):

Look at that boat in the background, isn't it beautiful?!

So as my sister and I rounded the Northwestern shore, we got an even better view, because now we were looking out over the water, without Cannes right across the bay.

I'm going to include a picture of a map of the island, so that you can get an idea of where we were when different pictures were taken:

The red dot (Northwestern side) is where the ferry from Cannes dropped us off.. Cannes is north of this map. Robin and I starated walking along the white path (and then along the beach) westwards. The next couple pictures are of the very western point of the island.

You can still see the land across the bay a little here, but we were starting to get to see an 'unblocked view'. The shore along here was really beautiful, very rocky with lots of really pretty plants - SO 'naturey' compared to what we'd been used to in Lyon and Cannes. Also, there were lots of ruins here, because a bunch of viewing post type things had been on this point, because it was such a good look-out area.

This was our attempt at getting both of us in a picture, and also getting a view from the island. Didn't really work so much, but I still really like it as a picture of the two of us (even if I am wearing my 'bug glasses'!).

So we kept going along that path, and basically covered all of the white path parts that you can see in the picture above, that are on the western half of the island. The variety of flora on that island was incredible. In one area there was a swamp, (the blue in the middle of the western part), and then just a little more to the east was a whole lane of eucalyptus trees that had been planted there a while ago. On the point on the southern side of the western half, that you can see on the map, was a really nice little lookout point with a bit of a disply of the different types of plants that you could see on the island. There were also a lot of really nice little picnicking and rest areas (which was good because it was uber hot!).

Back and better than ever

2006-09-14T15:08:00.000-04:00

Well, here we are, ready to delve into the adventures of l'Île de Sainte-Marguerite . I'm in class - Company Law to be exact - but I have taken all the notes on the stuff that the prof is talking about (aren't I a good student!) so I'm going to do this instead.

So after Robin and I got off the boat, everyone spread out to head off to the areas of the island which we found most interesting. As I mentioned in a previous post, the island and its attractions were really well marked, so it was easy to figure out in which direction Robin and I wanted to go. We decided to walk along the edge of the island, because it was such a beautiful view over the water, as you can see in these pictures:

After a while, we realized that it was silly to be walking along a path when we could be walking right along (or in) the water, so we took off our shoes and waded along the edge of the water. Which was amazing, because the water was nice and cool (but not too cold), and it was just incredible to be wading in the Mediterranean Sea!

Of course, we gave that up fairly quickly when we discovered that the stones on the beach were a little too sharp for walking on, so we put our shoes back on, but still walked along the beach because it was just too pretty not to. Here's a picture of me walking along the beach - Robin took it from fairly back so that we could get the view in, too.

Okay, so I keep running into this problem that I can put a few pictures in a post, and then it's stops putting them in. So my new theory is that only so many pictures are allowed per post. So unfortunately for you all, I'm going to have to split this trip up into even more posts. But I promise there will be pretty pictures to make it worth your while!

We interrupt this program....

2006-09-09T11:45:00.000-04:00

Hi all. Okay, everything has finally calmed down and sorted itself out sufficiently for me to continue my tales of the voyage. However, I thought that I should update first, because there have been some interesting things going on with me in the last week or so. So, first, my two roommates moved in this past weekend (of the 1st). They are two of my good friends from first year law. We officially took over the apartment in May, but I was the only one of the three of us living there for the summer (one of my roommates had a really nice subletter, so at least I wasn't living alone all summer) because the other two roomies were in Toronto. But now we're all moved in, and I no longer am living alone, which is nice. And so far it's going pretty well, we're having fun, and our other friends are coming over a lot because that way they're guaranteed to hang with three of us. So it's cool beans. Plus our apartment, if I do say so myself, is awesome. Undergrad friends, you are more than welcome to come visit at anytime! This past week was also the first week of school, starting on Tuesday. I am taking two not-really interesting classes, Civil Procedure and Income Taxation (but they are required), and two interesting classes, Intellectual Property and Company Law. IP is interesting because of the subject matter and because of the prof (who happens to be the prof that I worked for officially this summer, the one who was on sabbatical and who I met on Sept. 1 for the first time in person). Company Law is interesting probably mostly because of the prof, although I can't say for sure because we've really only had one class, and it was just an intro class. But he's hilarious (not intentionally, but because he's just so dry and sarcastic, and very 'unique'), and that makes things interesting, so it's all good. Plus he's like an expert of international renown in the area of Property Law, so that's pretty cool. Income tax, like I said, is not very interesting, but the prof is this kind of dorky guy who thinks it's incredibly interesting, so that should make it somewhat better than it could be otherwise. And the Civ Pro guy is a hot lawyer from Toronto who wears nice suits, so at least there's some eye candy going on! ;)

Most importantly, this week was also the week that applications went in for Toronto OCI's (Off-Campus Interviews). All of the students in Canada, basically, who are in second year law and who are interested in working in Toronto, apply for these second year summer jobs with the law firms in Toronto who are participating. So obviously, only about 25% of second year law students actually get summer law firm jobs, because hello, literally thousands of applications may be received by some firms.

I will be totally okay if I don't get a summer job in general, because I'm very sure that I can just work again for one of the two profs whom I worked for this past summer, which is also really good experience. However, my absolute top choice firm only hires its articling students from its summer students, because it's really small, and it only hires as many summering students as it would want to have articling students, and it makes sure those students are people who they want to become associate lawyers. So I'll be disappointed if I don't get in with them this summer, obviously, because that will mean I will have to wait until I am an associate lawyer, and then pester them with applications until they hire me. Which is fine, I can do that, but it would be way more awesome to get in with them this upcoming summer, because I really, really want to work for them, and they're incredible, and it would be like I had already arrived at where I want to end up! But anyway, we'll see, and everything will work out the way it should, I'm sure. Oh yeah, and about the applications, I stupidly for some reason did not realize that we needed to include copies of our official first-year law transcripts as well as our undergrad transcripts (I don't know why we can't just do print-outs, since they only want copies of the official one anyway, but whatever), so I didn't order them in time. The applications were due to be given to our Career Services Office at noon on Wednesday, and I didn't order my transcript until Tuesday morning, and it takes 2 - 3 days processing, so I had to mail the applications myself. So instead of paying $1/application to the school, I paid ~$7.00/application to the post office. Since there were 14 applications, you do the math of what that stupid mistake cost me! :p But I mailed them off, and they'll be there in time, and it's all good, so it was worth it.

Oh, I guess that the above thing was most important in terms of impacting the rest of my life, but this next topic is most important in terms of awesomeness. I went to see TOM PETTY and the HEARTBREAKERS last night, and it was one of the most amazing concert experiences of my life.
That guy and that band put on an incredible show, let me tell you! He played almost all hits, even though he has a new album out, called "Highway Companion". Which, judging by the few songs that he did play from the album, and the reviews I've heard, is just as amazing as everything else he's ever done!
That's what I really liked about it (well, definitely not all that I liked, but it impressed me), is that he knew enough to know that his new album would sell because he's amazing and has so many fans, so he knew he didn't need to promote it too much, and he knew that his fans would want to hear the classic stuff. So it was just super awesome. I was on the lawn at the Molson Ampitheatre, and there were about 20 of us in the group, and the entire lawn was packed (as were the seats), and everyone stood the whole time, because there was just so much energy! And the whole stadium was singing along to pretty much every song, except his new ones. And at one point, he actually had the audience sing the chorus while he did other kind of background singing. It was the chorus "I'm learning to fly/But I ain't got wings/Coming down/Is the hardest thing". It was SO COOL!!!!! Okay, that sounded really teenagery, but it's hard to describe the feeling of awesomeness in listening to thousands of people sing the same thing and be 'united', I guess, in this feeling of incredibleness and excitement. See? That's cheesy. SO COOL is less cheesy. Although the unitedness is true. Anyway... at the end, it started to absolutely pour rain, and it was lightning, but the vast majority of the people on the lawn stayed right 'til the end, which is a supreme tribute to Tom Petty, I think. We got totally and completely soaked, but it was totally and completely worth it. And it was definitely a misadventure, which of course is the best kind of adventure!

I also got to buy some merchandise on the way in... I bought the shirt on top for my step-dad, since he couldn't go to the concert and he loves Tom Petty, and the shirt on the bottom for me:

Oh, before the concert, I got to go downtown to visit my sister's place. This is the place that I found for her and her friend, when I spent a half-day in Toronto, going around to different places and calling my sister to tell her about them. She would then call her friend who was in London, England at the time, to tell her about the places. It was a whole big thing. But I found them this 3-bedroom apartment, which is actually the top 2 floors of a house, near College & Bathurst. And it was grimy at the time because it was three guys living there, but my sister's friend's parents repainted, and the girls cleaned it all up (sister and her friend found another person to take the 3rd bedroom), and now it looks really nice. So I'm glad that I got to see it yesterday. After I saw my sister's place, we went and met Ange, and went shopping - yay!! I got a comfy cozy fleece zip-up at Winners, and some socks, and an awesome purse that is Hush Puppies (did you know they made bags? Cause I didn't!) and I think it's absolutely beautiful. I also bought two of those new 'ITEC' bras from La Senza, so we'll see how that works out. Anyway, shopping was fun, and I got to spend a whole day with Ange who I never get to see (although I never get to see any of you anymore, do I?). So that was fun.

Okay, I think that may be everything I need to update about. So next time I'm on I will continue the European trip saga, I promise!

The saga continues... l'Île de Sainte-Marguerite

2006-08-23T13:24:00.001-04:00

Bonjour là!! So I haven't updated for a couple of days, but I was at Adam's cottage and it was super slow (woohoo for dial-up), so I couldn't. Now Adam and I are at my parents' place, relaxing and chilling and hanging out, and Adam's getting to 'bond' with my parents (haha) so all is good with the world.

So, I will continue my France/Italy saga.

Oh, I should add a very important note: All photos are taken by My Sister Robin, unless they have only her in them, in which case they are taken by me (or unless noted otherwise). I figured she should probably get her credit for them, because God knows I sure don't take pictures, and I definitely don't take good ones!

Okay then... so Robin and I finally got to the place where the ferries left from, and after a little confusion (of not realizing that l'Île de Sainte-Marguerite actually was one of les Îles des Lerins) we got our tickets and went on board, with those charming French men who I mentioned last time. On the way over on the ferry (it was only about a 10, 15 minute ride), we got these two guys to take our picture, so that we could have at least one picture of the two us not actually taken by one of us!

Yes, I just absolutely love this 'chubby' picture of me. Oh well, what are you doing to do, eh?

So once the ferry arrived at the island, we all loaded off, and everyone set out on their own to explore the island. It was really well marked, with maps and signs everywhere, and the maps showed the different things to see on the island. Basically that made it really easy to figure out where you wanted to go, what you wanted to see, and how to get there (and how to get back to the ferry!). The ferry left about every hours for the next few hours, so we had a lot of time before we had to be back, which was good.

Side note: I put this aside for a couple hours, because my computer was wonky, but I fixed it, so we're good to go! Just wanted to say that to explain why I haven't updated before this today.

Another side note: apparently my computer is totally fixed, except for its unwillingness to put up any more pictures on blogspot. So it's a no go for today, folks, and possibly for the rest of the week, because it may be my parents' satellite signal.

So see you all next week! :(

As Sean Penn once said... "Whoa!"

2006-08-17T18:33:00.000-04:00

That's right, I'm writing a post for the second time in like 2 days. Don't have a heart attack now, folks! I love blogspot so much I can't even begin to explain, I can't believe that I didn't switch earlier than this. But now I've learned my lesson!!

So where was I... Oh yeah, finishing up Lyon. Yeah, so we jumped onto the train in Lyon, headed for a (much shorter) ride to Cannes. Arriving the day after the Film Festival, of course - just our luck. When we first got to the train station in Cannes, we had a little bit of a problem finding our hostel because we were thinking that it was going to be more confusing than it actually was. Turns out all of the hostels are right in the area around the train station, which is awesome and easy. We got there late enough, about 10 pm, that we had to sign in at the 'sister hostel' down the street, but that was super easy and then we were in our room and set to go out exploring - and eating! We wandered around for quite a while. The weather was so warm and nice, and the city was so pretty, and it was not at all in the dirty area like in Lyon, which was awesome because we felt totally safe. The hostels also happen to be basically right in/beside the nice shopping areas of Cannes, which meant we got to walk around and at least do some window shopping, and see all the beautiful clothes we couldn't afford. Plus it was cool because the signs and everything for the Film Festival were still up, which you can see in this picture:

It is just unbelievable how much nicer this area was than the hostel area of Lyon!! Keep that in mind, folks!

We eventually found a little bar/restaurant where we had just a light meal, since their restaurant was mostly closed. It was one of those super sophisticated little places, so we felt a little 'gauche' (especially cause the French are just too damn cool), but it was still really nice.

Then finally we went back to bed for the night. Oh, we also managed to find an internet place practically across the road from our hostel, which was awesome because Robin could upload all her digital pictures there, and I could charge my ipod, plus check our email, and the prices were super good! I highly recommend Cannes - it is so made for tourists, without being tacky or over-peopled. Plus there are freaking palm trees - sweet!

So the next morning, after a bit of arguing about timing, etc., we decided that we could pass on spending the day in Monaco (we were going to just spend the day there, then go on that night to our next overnight stop in Cinque Terre, Italy), because we really wanted more time in Cannes. It was just way too beautiful, and it was the first time that I really, really felt like I was in a different country (and continent!) because of the palm trees and the incredible weather. Paris had kind of felt a little like Montreal - obviously cooler and older and more full of history, but at least the same kind of feel, if that makes any sense.

So we spoke to the woman at our hostel as we were checking out, and learned that we could 'check' our baggage at the sister hostel (the one we'd checked into the night before) - of course, 'checking' our baggage ended up just meaning leaving it under a table in the restaurant room of the hostel, but since all of our valuables were with us and they promised there would be employees around all the time, we decided to take our chances. Cause man, let me tell you, those bags are freaking heavy!!! When we were carrying them around at the Louvre in Paris, they were so heavy that we didn't even want to do much walking, which obviously was a waste of being at the Louvre! So we didn't want that to happen again.

The woman at our hostel had recommended going down towards the beach and harbour, and then taking a ferry across to les Îles des Lerins. Here's a travelling tip for all you backpackers and tourists out there: LISTEN TO WHAT THE LOCALS RECOMMEND!!! Every time we asked for recommendations on our trip, we ended up having an absolutely awesome experience.

The walk down to the harbour area was incredible, because it was SO beautiful and sunny and warm, and there were people out but everyone was just wandering around and relaxing, so it was a really friendly atmosphere. And the good thing about the festival being over was that the crazy crowds were gone, so it wasn't too busy anywhere.

Here's an example of how gorgeously tropical Cannes was while we were there:

Isn't that building beautiful, with the palm trees in front of it?! I'm pretty sure those were fancy-dancy apartments that rich people and celebrities stay in when they come - there was a lot of that in the harbour area, obviously, because that's right where the festival takes places.

Here's a picture of the Film Festival headquarters - they still had all the signs and stages up, and were just in the process of starting to take it all down, so we were lucky enough to get pictures of what it would have looked like.

(That's me in the foreground there - just a cool tourist, hanging out at the beach in Cannes.. lol).

After we walked around there for a little while, and stopped at a cute little tourist shop to buy some really nice postcards, we kept walking towards the actual harbour part of the harbour, where all the boats are kept.

Up on the hill to the right of us, behind those buildings, was this really neat old building:

Isn't that cool? You can see all those buildings in the picture of the harbour, and it looks all cityish, and then right behind it is this old, old building. Also, all the little houses up on the hill (you can kind of see it a little to the left of the building) were that old style, with the shingled roofs, like you'd expect to see in Spain and stuff. Very pretty. Apparently it's all like that on the outskirts of Cannes - if we'd had a car, it would have been really neat to drive around and explore all of that, but oh well - next time!

So we gradually made our way down the harbour towards the ferries, stopping a LOT to look at all of the beautiful boats (and yachts!) that were in the harbour. Man, that must be the life, let me tell you!

Eventually we made our way down and bought our tickets to the ferry. The boat guys were very cute and french and flirted with us ever so charmingly (I believe it was something along the lines of 'ah, madamoiselles, we always enjoying having beautiful women on our ship', but in french of course - honestly, how do you not 'teehee' and blush to something like that even if it is such a line!).

So at this point I am going to stop for the day, because our time on l'Île de Sainte-Marguerite (the main island of les Îles des Lerins) is a whole separate adventure in and of itself, and deserves a good retelling. And this entry is already pretty long!

Well I hope I'm impressing you all with my actual updating (haha), and hopefully I will get to tell about our adventures on l'Île de Sainte-Marguerite soon!

Dirtay

2006-08-15T21:05:00.000-04:00

Well folks, I think it's about time to welcome a new member to the blogspot world! That's right, while you may previously have seen me in the 'comments' area of other blogs, I am venturing into a whole new area, mainly because trying to put images up on Livejournal sucks ass!!

So, here goes... I am going to attempt to continue my Europe trip postings that were started in Livejournal (yeah, I know, a bit late, but oh well). So let's see how this all works out, shall we?

The last time we spoke, I had just finished up my sister's and my adventures in Paris. That evening, after le Louvre, she and I hopped on the (slow and every-town-stopping) train to Lyon. We arrived quite late that night, about 10 pm. I had printed out a map of the area where the hotel was located. At least, that's what the map was supposed to show. After we got there, we figured out that it was actually the most useless map ever - mostly because it turned out to be completely wrong. Sister and I spent about 10 minutes standing in the subway station (we did at least manage to get from the train station to the subway station closest to the hotel), looking at the map, looking at a map of the area that was on the wall in the station, and generally apparently looking very confused. We were finally recognized by a cute young man (does that make me sound old?) who came over and offered to help us. Unfortunately, because our map was so crappy (and as I mentioned before WRONG), he couldn't help us. So then he took us over to his supervisor, who turned out to be originally from Montreal. So between the young guy and the supervisor, we eventually got onto the right road to go to the hotel - mostly because they walked us out of the station, around the corner and pretty much halfway down the road until we could see the sign for the hotel!! They were so nice and sweet, and we were definitely appreciating the fact that you're just more likely to get help if you're two young girls travelling together!

So we walked the rest of the way to the hotel, realizing that this maybe wasn't the greatest area of the town. We got to the hotel and checked in, and realized that maybe this wasn't the nicest hotel in town. It wasn't bad, really, at least not dirty or anything, but it was definitely the most dingy and tacky of all the places we stayed in. By this time we were absolutely starving, and there were no restaurants on the street we were on at all. There was a (very) little grocery store on the corner, which we went into, but at first I didn't see anything, and I really wanted a meal, so I convinced Robin that we should walk for a while to find a restaurant that was still open. BAD IDEA STEPHANIE!! Yeah, turns out that that 'impression' that it wasn't the nicest part of town was true. We walked for about 30 seconds and encountered way too many creepy guys - and I mean really, really creepy, and scary, and saying rude and obscene comments, and looking at us in that way that all girls recognize and shudder over. We just about ran back to the grocery store where at least the proprietor looked like a nice old man. That was definitely the scariest part of our whole trip, because these guys looked like they were either going to rape us or ask how much we were charging (and then rape us). Seriously. So we just got some bread and cheese and fruit, and went back to eat in the hotel room. Oh, and I don't have any photos of this part, because we were trying as hard as possible to not look like tourists in that neighbourhood!

The hotel room was actually kind of fun, because we sat around in our underwear and ate and giggled about the experience (now that it was over), and it was a little relaxing after going constantly in Paris. And sorry to any males (or sorry, not just males, anyone potentially interested) reading this, we also don't have any pictures of this. :P

So the next day was a whole lot better. We packed up and went to the train station, where we were able to store our baggage (after going through some fairly intense security measures just to put our bags in lockers!) so that we could wander around Lyon for the couple of hours that we had until we left for Cannes. We went to the 'Traveler Info' office, where an absolutely adorable old man told us about Vieux Lyon, the best part of Lyon to explore, and gave us a map and directions and everything. He was so sweet and nice, I wanted him to be my grandpa! So we headed out to the bus stop, but it was taking so long and it was nice out (because it had finally decided to stop raining), so we decided to walk.

There were some absolutely beautiful buildings along the way. Here's a picture that shows how pretty some of them are:

This image on the right, above, is an old church in Vieux Lyon. Isn't it pretty??!

This kind of architecture was everywhere in Vieux Lyon - an absolutely beautiful part of the city!

And here are some pictures of a big plaza in Vieux Lyon - plazas are huge in Europe, or at least they were in France and Italy. Well, in Italy it's called a 'piazza', and in France it was 'esplanade'.

So we walked around Vieux Lyon for a while, did a little shopping. We stopped into an electronics store, because I was convinced that I could find some electrial outlet adapters, since my sister had insisted that I bring along my hair dryer and she would bring her adapters, but then she decided to throw them out at the airport because her luggage was overweight!! (I was a little annoyed, I'm not going to lie, but I thought I controlled it fairly well). The electronics store didn't have them, and I never did manage to find any. :( We also stopped at a little convenience store type thing, to buy stamps and postcards - people were so friendly, everywhere we went! The lady helped us figure out what kind of stamps we needed, and told us where the postcard was, and everything.

Then we went to this absolutely adorable little restaurant on this cute little street full of adorable restaurants. It had really traditional French food, and the waiter ended up recommending stuff, including the yummy wine that we had. It was so nice, plus we were lucky because it decided to rain again, but right as were deciding to go in, and it finished just as we were finishing up our meal! Then it was nice for the rest of the day. We did a little more wandering and shopping (my sister bought a beautiful pair of nude leather heels, and I went into the Ferrari store but didn't buy anything), then walked back towards the train station.

Here's one last picture of Lyon, of Robin and I on the bridge across the le Rhône. The view was so beautiful, and we really wanted a picture of the two of us, but there wasn't really anyone else walking around, so we had to take it ourselves. This was the only one that worked out okay:

I know Robin and I look like dorks, but isn't the view absolutely beautiful!! The sky and the water were both so incredibly blue, even though it had just been raining. And you can see the other bridge in the background, that's what the bridge we're on looked like too.

PS - I'm wearing those huge sunglasses of Robin's (and Robin's wearing mine) because my contacts got messed up and I couldn't wear them, and it was so bright that I had to wear sunglasses, and those sunglasses fit over my glasses so I could still see too. I look funny, but my eyes didn't fry! ;)

So we walked back to the train station, got into a big fight because Robin wanted to show me some Indian songs that her friend had put on a cd for her, and I listened to one and then said something about not needing to hear more because they all sound the same (yeah, I know, it sounds worse than what I meant though), and then of course we made up and got on our train.

So that was Lyon, and next episode will be CANNES!!!

See you soon,

Steph

PS - I know that these entries are pretty much boring, but I figure that now it's recorded so that I can remember, and if people are interested they can read it, and otherwise you can just skim and look at pictures! :)