Friday, March 9, 2007

Wow. There goes another week. They truly do zoom by at a remarkable pace, once they get going, of course. Now it's only 5-1/2 weeks until the end of the semester, and only 7 to grad. Sweet.

Speaking of grad, one of the problems with going to school in a place like Three Hills--as lovely as it is--is that there is a distinct lack of suitable venues. I remember my sister's grad ceremony from TWU last spring: it was held in a really nice church and had an air of class about it because of the setting. Grad for me this spring will be very different--we're having it in our gym. It reminds me of graduating from high school, when the grad ceremony was held in the Ladner arena. Silly.

In a way, it makes me feel just a bit ripped-off. Silly, right? I know. But still, I feel like I've worked hard over the course of this past decade to come to the point where I'm doing this walk, and now it's going to happen in a gym. The momentous nature of the occasion surely warrants a suitably grandiose setting. I'd even be okay with a semi-nice setting that wasn't a gym. For some reason, basketball hoops hanging in the background aren't congruous with class for me.

Oh well. When you've waited as long as I have to graduate, you take that stupid piece of paper and get the heck out of town as soon as possible. Man, that's going to feel good.

Furthermore, the next 5-1/2 weeks will go by a lot more quickly if we keep getting the weather we've been getting the past two days. Beautiful again today; I found out that it got up to 10 degrees yesterday, and I'm sure the result will be similar today. Although I didn't actually leave the house today (he realizes at 9:00 as he sits before the computer in his pyjamas), wife and son did, and it was beautiful. I enjoyed the day vicariously; they actually lived it.

Things just seem so much better when you can go outside without worrying that exposed skin will freeze in 30 seconds or less. In fact, Steph was saying that there were actually townies out today, milling about on the sidewalks and talking to each other (but not to lowly peebs like us), instead of walking with determination and chins buried in chests, as if the act of looking forward would freeze eyelashes to eyeballs. It was nice to see the community come back to life after a long winter.

You don't really realize the degree to which winter forces isolation upon you until you're out of it. And I never really noticed it, considering my classes are always populated with the same faces, albeit in various stages of college sleeplessness (all self-inflicted, I'm afraid). It's funny for me to see the haggard faces in the mornings, and for some reason I'm unsympathetic to the plight of being awake all night to write a paper. Something tells me that you didn't have to be up all night, but you made that choice when you chose to spend your time doing other things. Profs don't just spring 12-page papers on you the day before. Man, don't I sound like an old man, eh? Well, screw the establishment, and all! Yeah! Down with the man! Does that provide balance?

Anyway. When you live your life for six months without really having any interaction with another human being outside of your home and the people who take your money at the grocery store, it's a little lonely. When winter sets in and the streets are deserted, there's no way to avoid feeling like somehow everyone got a memo that you didn't get, and the memo said, "Get out of town, now!" It's a strange feeling, and one that is totally foreign to us having grown up on the temperate west coast, where even the coldest day (which is only -5, really) still brings people out running. Here, the world goes into hibernation in November and doesn't rouse itself until March. It's interesting, that's for certain.

Of course, the thaw brings with it its own set of problems, the biggest of which is the flooding. Again, I never thought about this having grown up on the coast--where a "big thaw" is losing the skimmer of snow on your lawn--but when three feet of crystalline water suddenly becomes liquid again, there are some problems. The snow melts in odd patterns, with the already-melted stuff running down crevasses in the partially-melted stuff, creating a mess of slush and mud, which is from the tons of "sand" they've dropped on the roads over the winter. And I'm sorry, but let's just stop calling it sand, shall we? Sand is fine and granular. This stuff is chunky and full of rocks.

Inevitably, all the run-off buts up at some point against another firmly-entrenched bank of snow (such as the one on my lawn), and has to divert. Unfortunately, at that point there are just a whole lot of little streams vying for the same space, and thus those streams turn into vast muddy lakes, the majority of which accumulate in convenient walking areas, such as sidewalks. Problem.

In fact, the flooding was so bad today that several streets were completely closed, including one that Steph needed to walk down to get to the weekly play group that she and Theo attend (the play is mostly for the kids, but I think that the moms get involved, too), causing a last-minute change of route.

The problem is that when you get home, your shoes are dripping with muddy water, which you then track into your front entry, making it disgusting and uninviting. Fortunately, we have those rubber shoe mats in the "closet," and the carpet in the front hall is covered with that plastic runner stuff that looks like what you put your office chair on so that it can wheel around, only thinner. You know the stuff I'm talking about. With that down, the carpet doesn't get wet, but man, that plastic gets pretty disgusting after a while.

Not that I'm complaining, which I did enough of when the weather was cold. This, as they say, is a good problem to have; one that I'd rather have than the problem of exposed skin freezing instantly. But if I didn't write about it, how would I fill the space that you have come to expect me to fill?

Speaking of filling space, I think I've done my share of that for today, and, in fact, for this week. We've got an exciting weekend planned, including a possible trip back to Airdrie to pick up the stuff we forgot to get last week (and return something we bought and didn't need), a new church adventure (we still haven't decided where we're attending this week--ooh, the suspense!), and actually going over to someone's house for dinner. I know, it's amazing but we actually have friends. Seven weeks before we leave, mind, but still, it's a victory. What's better is that they're cooking us traditional Indian food (he's Indian), but the white boy less-spicy variety to accommodate the sensitive palate of yours truly. Plus, she's teaching Steph how to make it from scratch, which should be fun. They also have a new baby (Steph met the wife at the aforementioned play group), which should be cool for Theo. As for us guys, well, we'll probably end up sitting there staring at each other blankly. Or maybe we'll talk. About sports. Or cars. Any other stereotypes?

Right, so off I go. To bed shortly. Yes, it's 9:20. Big deal. We usually read in bed--well, okay, I do kakuro puzzles, which are a variation on the sudoku model--so it's not like it's lights-out time now. Besides, it's my early day tomorrow, and I need to be refreshed and full of vim and vigour. Or just rested enough so as to not fall dead asleep in the middle of class. Awkward.

Thanks for coming by this week. See you Monday.