How to Buy A New-To-You-Car

In the most complicated way possible:

1. Complain about your previous vehicle for years. Spend time wishing it would actually CATCH ON FIRE, if at all possible. Let it go to the point your best friend gives that vehicle a silly but accurate nick name. Do this to the point that your significant other decides that a replacement would be the sort of gift that would put him into the husband hall of fame.

2. Have a number of somewhat costly repairs come up and be necessary, none of which are actually expensive enough to warrant replacement.

3. Resign yourself to driving "the Bucket" until the wheels literally fall off while you are driving it. This can, but does not have to be part of an overall attempt to stop complaining about stupid things.

4. Crash said car while out-of-town on a Saturday evening and do a really spectacular job of it, although do not injure yourself or others. (5pm on a Saturday is possibly the worst time to get into an auto accident, particularly if you are 300+ miles from people you know beyond their online handles.) If possible, be travelling with an animal to make obtaining alternate transportation and accommodation particularly convenient.

5. Discover that your insurance company has declared your previous car a "total loss incident." Find out that this isn't, as you had feared, the end of the world, and instead that they will handle this efficiently and seemingly with your best interests in mind.

6. Scrape self out of dead faint on floor due to #5.

7. Go into a tizzy of trying to figure out what the heck you want in a used car. Realize you have no freakin' clue and spend several days dithering about it. If possible, disagree with your significant other about what traits are important in a car. Also, call everyone you've ever met and survey your facebook and twitter peeps in an obscure way that leads to the response "go for the Kermit toaster!"

8. Find useful reference volume that provides some clarity, and helps communicate your values when it comes to a car with your significant other. Discover that such a volume costs only $11 and is in the magazine section of the bookstore.

9. steal underpants.

10. Due to work obligations, be forced to travel an insane distance before completing the process of buying a new car. No stress here.

11. Obtain new vehicle.

12. Profits.

(Pictures and more details as soon as I actually buy something.)

New Year's Wishes

I don't think New Year's Resolutions work. I've been a regular gym goer long enough to see what happens around Valentine's day: 6 weeks after they've been all excited about working out, getting into shape, whatever, over half of those enthusiastic people are no where to be seen.

I also found this year that I didn't really want stuff for Christmas. I have enough and my house is full. What I really wanted was to spend meaningful time with the people I care about. And I got that. Don't get me wrong, there is stuff I want or need in this world, but almost none of it would be rendered more meaningful because a friend or family member spent money on it.

So. For New Year's I have some wishes.

1. I am hoping for a sense of academic direction: lately I've felt a bit aimless and lost in my work. Now that I'm done with classes, I'm hoping that rather than becoming a slug person, watching Mad Men reruns, knitting, and eating pasta in my increasingly dirty apartment, I will instead get excited about my work again, and charge forward in a confident research direction.

2. I am hoping for the possibility of living in the same place as my husband.

3. I would like to spend more time with the people who are important to me.

4. It would be great if one of the multiple conferences I have sent abstracts to will say "yes, please come show us how smart you are."

5. I would like to be more goal directed in my fitness. Things sort of fell to bits after the race back in October, and I would like to get that back, without the burn out that I had in the highest mileage weeks before it. I would also like to have energy and fit better into my pants.

6. I would like to not feel guilty about knitting. Not guilty enough that I am able to start knitting with groups of knitters in London. That would be awesome.

Happy New Year's!

Stuff I Learned Today

1. Irony is only ironic if everyone gets it. While this is a lesson that I learned in the course of reading dense literary/cultural theories of how we communicate in these post-modern times, it is also an important lesson for social networking.

2. Sometimes a day just has to be written off as a research loss. I had 0 attention span today. Indeed 0 seems a bit generous. It was so bad I was afraid I was sucking other people into my black hole of aimlessness.

3. Markers might make everything better. Okay, probably not, but I picked some up nonetheless. These.

4. Just because you get back on the horse doesn't mean it will be easy. Well, in this case, the treadmill. I ran for 1 minute out of every 5 for 30 minutes, and parts of me I forgot I had now hurt.

5. Cold weather is relative: last year we had -40 temps and it seemed unresonable. Today it was -9 C and I thought I might die. But last week it was nearly 10 C, so I feel like I have a valid excuse.

6. This would all seem easier if there was cake. But then, what wouldn't?

I Am Thankful

I've had writer's block, so I am going to try to write a list. That shouldn't be so hard.

I am thankful for the following:

1. Bulk Barn. This place is freaking awesome. Entry to follow, but in preview: they have an entire wall of stuff for decorating cookies! Also Swedish fish, which are, inexplicably, called Finnish fish. (As holiday baking approaches, I will devote a longer entry to the glories of the Bulk Barn. It is truly glorious.)

2. Free WiFi in the airport.

3. The flexibility to travel, despite it being a work day and having heaps of work to do. Sure, I have to write about Shostakovich while I'm visiting with family, but I can.

4. The sort of job where, when I can't find a way to solve a problem, no body gets hurt. Slightly annoyed I can deal with; I need to keep this in mind that the worst that happens if I don't do well, I might annoy or disappoint people who only matter a little to me.

5. Koigu Painter's Palette Premium Merino. I'm knitting a pair of the Nutkin socks and I'm loving them. I'm enthralled by them. I don't want to do anything else. As in, I don't want to do anything else to the point that this is my new diet plan. (Eventually there will be pictures of these.)

6. My health. I may be sidelined from running, but if that's the only sideline I'm on, I'm probably okay.

7. The health of the people I love.

8. Having people I love who support me on this insane adventure. I may occupy my apartment by myself, but I am not alone. I have wonderful friends in London, Nashville and everywhere, an amazing family, and a beautiful husband who may not always understand what I do but always thinks I'll be great at it.

One of my favourite meditations is a simple, but radical statement on gratitude:

"I am grateful for everything. I have everything I need."

I am and I do. In this upcoming season that so often seems more about gluttony and greed rather than goodwill and thanks, I'm going to sit with this mantra more.

Things I've Learned

I've been on this journey to the centre of Ontario for over a year now, and I've learned some stuff:

1. Polite is different from nice. How I didn't know this after living in Nashville for 12 years (where "ma'am"= "f*** off" in some circles), I'm not sure, but something about the fabled politeness of Canadians has brought this point home. Polite means acting appropriately in social situations and saying "thank you" and "pardon me." Nice is meaning it and not adding "f*** off" in your head at the end of it.

2. Public transit is for judging people. Sally and I listened to a conversation on the bus last week that was better than TV.

3. A "double double" is a coffee at Tim Horton's with 2 creams and 2 sugars. I don't care for sugared coffee, and I don't really care for the coffee at Tim's. (Please don't mention this to immigration. They might not let me back in the country next time I leave.)

4. Oprah is obnoxious no matter where you live. I mean, really.

5. Where punctuation goes in relation to quotation marks has nothing to do with the odd and obtuse differences between U.S. English, British English, and Canadian English. It is an issue of which style manual one uses.

6. A "puffio" is: a.) nothing like a panzerotti and b.) a deep-fried calzone. (This may be a Sarnia thing, though)

7. If you give a 17 year old an inch, you lose a mile. If you attempt to treat them like adults, they will fail to live up to expectations. If you treat them like the petulant children they are, they'll whine about that, too.

8. Absence makes the heart grow fonder. It also leads to undone household chores that require a tall person to accomplish. (Maybe this one is just me.)

9. Half-marathons are freakin' hard, but completely worth it.

10. Canada is, like, a completely different country. I'm getting used to it, though.

11. Never wear pretty shoes to walk the roughly 3km home, no matter how nice the day.

Jess Moves Back to Canada

In slow, easy steps:

1. Before the actual moving: I spent most of the last month of my summer vacation at Bliss Yarns, hoping that the lovely Dana would get confused and start giving me paychecks or at least would give me the employee discount on yarn. I also spent a fair amount of time at the Knaughty Knitter, down in the 'Boro.

Because Christmas knitting is well underway (at least in my head), I won't post any pictures of the heartbreakingly beautiful work I have been creating. (Sure, that's a good excuse, ya'll buy that, right?)

2. Packing up my crap. I don't have a photo of how ridiculous my car looked when packed, because frankly, I'm embarrassed. How much stuff do I really need? Yikes!

3. Driving to, oddly, South Haven, Michigan. My folks are on a crazy boat trip, chronicled at Osprey's Adventures, and they happened to be in South Haven, and a nice marina, when I was planning on driving North. I spent about 3 days with them, and they are having a great time, Riley is having a great time, and Calvin had a fantastic time on the boat. He also had a fantastic time escaping the boat, once he got used to it, although unlike his escape attempts in the past, these seemed mischief driven, and not actual attempts to escape into the wild to forage for junk food. One such escape attempt included him wandering down the dock, spotting my dad, and going to sit next to him.

4. Driving from South Haven to Sterling Heights. I stayed at the 'rents place for a couple of days, did some last minute "goin' back to Canada" shopping (I still can't find the tea I love the most in London, so I hit Whole Paycheck when I'm in the States), and had a lovely dinner with my grandparents.

5. The return to Canada, land of universal healthcare, gravy on french fries, and lunatics in the grocery store. (Although it turns out that the odd rudeness in the grocery store and Costco around here is not a generalized Canadianism, it is actually an odd localism. Nonetheless, a Saturday trip to Costco most closely resembles feeding time in the hyena exhibit at the zoo.)

6. Unpacking taking only a day or two, and then the settling in of odd boredom while waiting for classes to start. Work starts Tuesday. Which is good, because I've been looking around thinking "gosh, I've got the weekend, maybe I'll paint the apartment."

One Semester Down

... a bunch more to go.

So I've been in Canada since September. Wow. I haven't been drummed out for not using "U"s where I should and not understanding the metric system. (When I hear on the radio that it is going to be -2 and we'll be getting 4cm of snow, it takes a calculator and 15 minutes to figure out if I should stock up on food and potable water)

I thought I would perhaps sum this up in an entry of lists

Stuff I like about Canada:

1. Knitting. Seriously. Consider my post about the logic of knitting woolly things, but then also, there are tons of great knitters in Canada. London has a bit of a dearth, but I can change that, and I am thinking that I might take part of my spring break and do a knitting pilgrimage around Ontario.
2. Universal health coverage. Note that I might feel differently about it if my broken metatarsals don't heal properly and I have to wait 3-6 months to even see an orthopaedic surgeon, but for now, for me, its working.
   
3. A political system where the above and funding for the arts are just a given in the debates around public policy. It isn't a question of if these things are important or evidence of liberal insanity. They are assumed to be important. If someone questions this in public debate, there is hell to pay.
   
4. A political system with multiple mulligans built in. There is the exercise that was this fall's election, wherein the parliament wasn't working so parliament was dissolved and an election was held. Or the current weirdness wherein the Liberals and the National Democratic Party got together with the help of the Bloc Quebecois to attempt to become the ruling coalition in the parliament. I can't really explain it, but here's the best one I've found so far. In the U.S. if we elect asshats by accident, we're stuck with them for 2-6 years barring seriously illegal conduct.
5. Public transportation that works. And London Transit isn't even that great, according to my friends.
6. Beer. Canadians are a people who take their beer seriously, and I can appreciate that.
   

Stuff I find really funny about Canada, that Canadians think I'm weird for laughing at:

1. How much they love Canada. I'm not just talking about the flags and maple leafs everywhere, although I do find that funny. I'm also talking about the great love that Canadians have for all things Canadian. Indeed, if a Canadian likes something Canadian all she has to say to justify it is "but its Canadian," and I, frequently the lone American in the room, am left saying "but why does that make it good?" I love a band called the Winter Gloves that hail from Quebec, and I can explain that I like them because they've goot a good sound and occasionally cute lyrics. But in Canada, I don't need to use pesky logic. I'm allowed to love them just because they are Canadian.
2. Milk. I know I should let go of this, but how is it not funny when you can buy milk in bags, and sometimes that milk is called "homo milk." I know I'm immature, but it is really funny.
3. The names of the towns in the West. I only hear about these on the CBC, but there are some good ones. There are Moose Jaw, Mozart, and Old Wives Narrows in Saskatchewan, and Alberta has Medicine Hat.

Things that still confuse me a little:

1. There is a code at Tim Horton's that I don't understand. I've heard of this thing called a double double, but since they don't sell cheesebugers, I'm flummoxed. After five minutes of searching Wikapeida, I find that it is a coffee with 2 sugars and 2 creams, but yikes. Do I look like a looser for just asking for such a coffee by its long name?
   
2. The London municipal trash schedule. They come every 8 days, unless there is an intervening civic holiday or an arbitary gap. I just don't get it. They sent me a helpful wall calandar, but it still confuses the heck out of me.
   
3. Canadian politeness. I have found people in Ontario to be kind, polite and decent. As long as I know the rules. If you don't know the rules and screw up, you are a bad person. Now I have always had a theory that people in colder climates are meaner because of the cold... when its cold you can't waste time with niceities. Its the same reason we talk faster. But Canadians do it weird, because on the surface, they are super polite.
   
4. French in the grocery store. I GET IT. Canada is a bilingual country. There is a significant French speaking minority, even in Ontario. I'm just asking the stock people at my local A&P and Loblaws to please put things on shelves English side facing front or at least half and half. It took me way longer than is reasonable to figure out what the heck Gruau is. (Incidentally, it is oatmeal.)

So those are my lists on Canada so far.