Toronto

I love Canada.

Yes, it's cold in Canada and it now requires a passport, but it's hard not to love them. They're all such cute little liberals, with their socialized health care and utter hate for our current administration. They also have the ability to sell cheese made with raw milk and pretty much every restaurant is vegetarian friendly. Excellent.

In reality, I'm starting to look at cities differently now. With all the moving around, I'm starting to fantasize about settling down someplace. With living in the middle of nowhere, I'm definitely fantasizing about nice cities, with good public transport, tall buildings, interesting neighborhoods, ethnic diversity and lots of good food. Toronto, despite being quite cold, does manage to fit the requirements quite well.

Simon managed to catch a bus to Toronto, since plane flights were out of the question and the weather let up enough that I managed to drive up. It really was only Pennsylvania that was bad for driving; by the time I crossed into Canada there wasn't even snow on the side of the road. We wandered the city a lot and were food tourists. They have a great market and a fabulous Science Museum. Buildings were tall and the CN tower was taller. There's even a castle in the bustling 5 million person metropolis. Public transport is frequent, pervasive, and runs 24 hours. Overall, I really liked Toronto, even though there were times when I thought my ears would fall off. Sometimes I think my ears are going to fall off here, and it doesn't have all the other cool points.

I could see spending more time in Toronto sometime in my future. I just need to start saying "eh" a little more.

Stupid F-ing Pennsylvania

I have been planning this long weekend with Simon in Toronto for weeks. I get ten vacation days a year and this is how I was going to spend two of them. I was going to drive up to Buffalo (~125 miles) and pick up Simon, who was going to fly in. We were planning on spending the night there, eating eggplant buffalo wings and enjoying seeing each other after two months absence. Saturday we were planning to see Niagara Falls, then continue on to Toronto. We made reservations at a cute little vegetarian B&B near University of Toronto. I have 4 pages of restaurant suggestions for the vegetarian inclined in Toronto. There's a whole page of things to do, ranging from places to shop to museums and science centers and one really tall tower. It was going to be grand.

Instead, I'm sitting on my couch, rather pissed off at the world. Simon's flight was cancelled. There are none tomorrow, either. His flight was not cancelled until I was outside cell phone reception range, because there is nothing between here and Buffalo. By the time I did get his messages, I had spent 2 hours driving 50 miles in driving snow. I had gotten stuck once and slid around more times than I care to think about. I was so angry when I found out, I had the urge to break all the ears off the chocolate bunnies at the grocery store. I wanted to throw a kicking and screaming tantrum on the floor. Instead, I turned around and spent 2 more hours driving back to my godforsaken tiny town in the middle of nowhere in the driving snow. I was so angry I gorged on junk food all the way back. I was still angry after two hours and tried a five mile run to calm myself.

I'm still angry. I need to get out of here.

Goals

I have been told people are more likely to reach their goals if they are both concrete and public.

1. Become more fit. Running one mile without stopping is good, but running five would be better. I must continue gym membership usage.
2. Eat healthier. More veggies and less processed food stuff. Try to cut back the MSG and salt usage, too.
3. Save money. Living in Pennsylvania is cheap, flying to Cheryl's wedding and taking finance/accounting classes are not. Try to do more of the cheap.
4. Budget. Everything must be entered into the budget worksheet, preferably daily.
5. More writing. That book from November is not going to get any better without a complete rewrite. More short stories, too.
6. More reading. Finish The World is Flat. Read Nickel and Dimed. Find out what else the library has that's worthwhile and read it, too.
7. German. Do the German on CD lessons. All 27 discs.
8. No more store-bought, at-home waxing kits. They are just trouble.
   

That's probably a sufficient number of goals for life right now. Perhaps too many.

Any missing?

Since High School

This week I suddenly decided to take interest in facebook, which resulted in several high school friends asking what I have been up to for the last five years. It's kind of strange to look back.

Five years ago I was preparing to go to Spain to be an au pair to an unknown family. I thought I knew a lot more Spanish than I actually did and was quite hung up on asserting my independence by going. Spain turned out to be a pretty good experience after the first month. The first month, on the other hand, included such highlights as the children refusing to learn my name and crying whenever left with me, almost being taken advantage of, but instead getting brought home, drunk, by the police, and truly understanding how little I understood. It got better.

Since that point there was the whole of college, with some nearly failing out and barely graduating moments. There was toying with the thought of transferring, eventually overcome by laziness and fear. There was getting bored and spending a summer in Costa Rica. There was the semester in Mexico and a lot of classes I'll never use again. There were friends and significant others, drinking and drug use, angsts and joys. How does one really summarize the whole of their college experience, the truly formative years, to someone?

Since college, life has continued and taught me how much college worked and how much it still left me to learn. There has been learning to live anywhere and how to basically be a nomad. I work for the man and it's not entirely disagreeable. Working is just what pays the bills, not actually what I do. I read, I cook, I write, I travel, I hike, but work is just what takes up 40 hours a week. This phase of life will end sometime, too.

It's strange to look back five years at all the little things that made me cry or worry and realize they, for the most part, are unimportant now. It's also strange to realize now much the last 5 years have changed things, changed me. Stranger yet is to think about how it must also have changed all those high school friends. I'm not really certain we know each other anymore, but perhaps we should. At least I think I've gotten better.