february 6, 2001. Slow & tired day today. There was supposed to be a horrible life-threatening blizzard today, but as of press time it has yet to blizz. Consequently I had to go to my morning class, although my afternoon class was cancelled. I'd be happier about this if I hadn't gotten the Boy to drop me off in the afternoon - only to turn around & walk up the hill again when I saw the cancellation sign on the door. I've spent the last 2 hours sulking in bed, but it doesn't seem to have helped my mood. I suppose I should've taken a nap instead of re-reading Harry Potter. Be that as it may... The real reason I'm so wiped out today is that I was out socializing late last night. (I know, I can hardly believe it either.) My fellow literature majors & I have a presentation to present on Friday morning, and we had an evening meeting in a local coffeehouse despite the fact that the Anti-Stephen claims to be pathologically afraid of coffeehouses. The cast was as follows: Big Sur, the snowboarder & Kerouac enthusiast of the group Flower, the intelligent & sensitive Sporty Spice of the group who was running late after volleyball practise the Anti-Stephen a large chocolate chip cookie myself. In addition to this tally, I had brought materials that turned out to be useless. (After an hour of discussion, nobody wanted to use my stuff & the picture of "La Belle Dame" had become wet a couple of times). Needless to say, when you get a bunch of English majors to plan something open-ended, it gets a bit giggly ("Let's ask them what kind of tree they feel like." I said deadpan to Flower, who laughed. "That's such a good idea!" said Big Sur.) We had ploughed through most of the organizing in an hour or so, ending up with a small script that used symbols instead of names (again, my strange idea of humour.) After this, we - um - diverged. When the Anti-Stephen jokingly asked Flower to drive him to the liquor store, she said that she would be happy to. So we went to the liquor store. And then they were curious about the Boy (the mysterious legal mate in the shadowy background of my educational pursuits), so we went back to our house to pick him up. Then we went to the Anti-Stephen's house. At the house of the Anti-Stephen there was drinkin' & smokin' all-night long. the anti-stephen indicates a painting on the wall: "That? That's an original Barry." "How can you tell?" said big sur. "It says 'Barry' right there." Well, it wasn't all-night long: Flower folded at midnight & we hopped into her car to get a lift home. And there wasn't enough booze on hand to get us more than comfortably buzzed. But it was a damn good time nonetheless. We talked & talked & talked, the kind of talk built on obscurities & odd humour. It's the kind of talk I miss most from home. We played songs from the Anti-Stephen's large store of vinyl, singing along sporadically to Dylan, Waits, Young, Cave, Barrett & Jefferson Airplane. We wrote a pass-along poem that is the height of silliness but all the more perfect for it. And we smoked. Good lord, did we ever smoke. I only had one cigarette, but Flower & the Anti-Stephen were chain smoking for about 3 hours and there was one point when all five of us were puffing away. This morning I couldn't get over how much my clothes reeked - and after all my time in the Garden (and all my time hanging around Poet), you'd think I'd be acclimatized to the thick sick smell of yesterday's vanished smoke. Nope. It was very comfortable & very interesting; two things I've greatly missed about Toronto. Everybody just adored the Boy, which pleased me. I know objectively that he's very likeable, still, I get surprised when people just fall for him. The only bad part was getting up in the morning for class. I was damn cranky hearing the news that all Nova Scotia schools were closed for the day - it seems that teacher's colleges could follow suit.