march 10, 2001. Yesterday was intense. It was an intense time of essay writing madness. I've been flirting with the idea of going back to school for my masters, but now I remember how I spent my time during my bachelors: ¼ drinking and having fun, ¼ sleeping, ¼ reading the endless books assigned in my courses, ¼ writing essays. There's a giddy joy from pulling this shit off in the last possible minute (in this case literally: the office closed at 4:30, I handed in the paper at 4:29), but I'm not sure that it's worth the stress and effort. I ended up working side-by-side with Kindred, who also had trouble finding the motivation to finish this paper. It started with a desultory conversation in reading class ("done your case study report?" "no." "me neither.") and it turned into the kind of bonding experience that is academically analogous to being in a war situation together. Okay, the enemy was our own procrastination and lack of focus, but there was still some trench action there. Typing furiously through made-up insights…muttered checks of correct formatting…a final run to the printing centre that left me wheezing like a cow… it was almost glorious. Sweet, in any case. As I said previously, I've been recording my dreams for a class project. (incidentally it's almost a relief to be doing things like this which connect with real lived experience and not living in a rarified academic realm where we only interact with static dead texts). Sometimes my waking experiences become almost dreamlike when they are recounted. Yesterday morning I was in class. We were told to play along to "Pop Goes the Weasel" with various percussion instruments. We decided that Big Sur should be the bush. I had a tambourine, so I was the monkey. They stood around the Big Sur bush and we all sang as I chased Jason the Weasel around the Big Sur bush with my tambourine, skipping as we sang. Each time we sang the song we sang it faster until I stopped skipping & just ran after the Jason the Weasel, hitting my tambourine wildly. Then we discussed the teaching implications of the exercise. Today we left for Halifax at the stroke of noon. We were on a mission to find a decent comic book store so that we could place an order for Ray Fawkes' comic Spookshow #1 in a timely and efficient manner. And as we hurtled down the highway and through the dim drizzle, blasting Stereolab and eating thick wholesome muffins, disaster struck! A huge glob of ice & snow detached itself from the front grill & flew up the front of the van, abducting a windshield wiper on its mad ride over the top. The Boy assured me that this had happened to him before, so we took the next turn-off to Windsor and set off to find a new blade. Well. Since the Boy travels around the area for a living, I assumed that when he said there was a Canadian Tire nearby he knew of what he spoke. After driving slowly through the town with nary a CanTire in sight, we were forced to go to the local wiper district: World of Wipers, Wiper Town, the Wiper Pit, Windshields 'R Us…you know what I'm talking about. (Actually, we just went to Home Hardware. But this version's funnier.) Then there was the long period known as the Age of Frustrated Inactivity, during which the Boy fiddled with the new wiper and the van's wiper mount in vague and ultimately unproductive way. I began to agitate for a visit to the professionals, and he grew more and more adamant in his refusals. I pitched a fit. We went to see the professionals. And under the helpful eye of a very nice attendant who warned us that he "wouldn't want to bend it back that far," the Boy managed to snap the fucking thing on. And we drove on down the road, Stereolab restarted and the world spinning kindly on her axis. By the time we reached the outlying suburbs of Halifax, I was in a cranky mood. Not only had we spent too long in the car at that point, but I was dizzy & carsick from trying to read a tiny road map with little success. I wanted to eat. What's more, I needed to eat to restore my fabled equilibrium. I did not want to go into a decent comic book shop feeling sick & cranky. So when I saw a sushi place, I asked the Boy to find a parking space. I haven't eaten sushi since I left Toronto last summer and I haven't thought about it a single instance of the meantime - heck, I've only had it a handful of times in my entire life - but somehow it seemed like the right thing to do. It felt spontaneous, it felt different, it felt like an adventure. A small adventure because I know that I like sushi, but a significant adventure nonetheless. It was amazing. It's not that the food was heavenly (although it was). And it's not that I was eating out (although I hardly ever do). It's not even that I was particularly hungry (although I was ravenous). It was the thrill of the familiar turned exotic by way of 6 months worth of dreary abstinence. I will never have a plate of sushi that good in Toronto because it's far too easy to come by in that dark glittering city. It put me over the moon with joy, and that's not bad for raw fish. (In fact, it was on the strength of this lunch that the Boy decided to name this day after me. I'm not entirely sure why, but it seemed to make him happy. From now on one day in the second week of March shall be all about me. Happy Amoret Day, everyone.) When it was time to pay our bill & leave, we happily tripped across the street to find a detailed map of the city. The vendor was from Toronto, and he immediately engaged us in happy conversation about the difference between here and there. Coincidence, again. When we opened the map in the car, we found that we only had to drive few minutes and make no turnings to be on the right street. Just like the vendor, we were closer to home than we thought. We got out in a very funky area of the city that's all sharply slanting streets and old tall buildings. The kind of place you would like to explore on a day when the sky is not pouring wet snow down on your head. And the comic book store. Oh, the comic book store. It was like…well, picture my 6 months of deprivation first. Picture month after month of no close friends, no fun things to do and no cool things to covet - which is okay, because we have very little disposable income in the first place. Picture a town crawling in typical Joe & Sally Average college kids, who drink, holler and dance to the most mediocre offerings of recent culture. There is no goth scene. There is no alternative scene. There is just the college bar and shitty R&B music and a bunch of kids in sweatshirts away from home for the first time. Got it? Now: drop me in a comic book store called Strange Adventures that has Futurama lunch boxes. And a soft Delirium doll. And a beautiful goth comic I've never seen before called "Avignon." And the Cthulu plush toy. And Matrix action figures dressed in real PVC. My material lust reached up to choke me. I almost died under the weight of my own covetousness. Fortunately, I had the sense to pick up the collected Books of Magic, drop off my order form for Spookshow and flee before my head exploded with over stimulation. To reach beyond my own cravings pour un moment, the great thing about the visit is not that I've found a whole new bunch of things to need. It's that the guy who took the order looked at the sheet and said that they would probably be ordering this comic anyway. Maybe that's true and maybe it's not, but at least he'll be ordering it now. And while we can't take credit for Ray's voodoo- & candy-fuelled genius, we can take credit for introducing the fruits of it to the east coast. We got in the car to go home shortly after leaving Strange Adventures, because there was really nothing left to do. I mean, there will always be one more thing to do in Halifax, but we were full of bliss for the one day. You should always leave a party when you're still having fun, and the same goes for day trips to the big city. Don't wait until you're cranky & tired & hungry; go when the smell of sushi still lingers on your fingertips and you can't stop smiling. We did. And by doing so we made the afternoon perfect.