Beloved MacBook has been out of commission for some weeks now, and thus, my blogging has ground to a halt. It's driving me nuts that the extent of my ability to update my site has been confined to tweets sent from my iPhone, because as we all know, I like to say a little more than what I can fit into 140 characters. In fact, I find it impossible to say anything in 140 characters. Sigh.
So, this one illicit blog for now and then I'll go back to waiting for Apple to fix MacBook.
Life is slowly settling into a routine. The construction at Woodwards continues apace, which means, whether I like it or not, I'm awake at 6 when the generators start and the construction team arrives outside my window. They tend to go like stink until 11 pm at night, but the progress seems, well, glacial. I'm not sure why everything is taking so long, in terms of construction at the SFU School of Contemporary Arts and the Community Arts Space.
It's a bit disorienting to suddenly have, well, a life. I go to work, I come home at a reasonable hour, and still have time in the evenings to spend time with friends and family. And, um, I don't work on the weekends. I feel guilty about it. But, I don't actually have to. So...hopefully the guilt will abate soon.
Filling my suddenly deliciously free evenings and weekends has not been hard. I've painted two walls in my house, haunted second hand and vintage stores to pick out just the right, 60's era, Don-Draperesque furnishings, baked (!), cooked, visited with family, gone to movies (see Fantastic Mr. Fox, it's delightful), met friends at Muzi for tea, read books (finally got my limited edition copy of Robert J. Wiersema's The World More Full of Weeping, which I highly recommend), and gone for wanders around downtown, to see what's changed and what hasn't. I bought a Christmas tree and decorated it with my mom and my aunties. I have had some crazy nights out as well, to the Eastside Culture Crawl, to see Lady Gaga's Monster Ball tour, and to the good ol' Freequeency Top 40 drag show at the Odyssey (which was, now that I think of it, uncannily similar to the Monster Ball)...
Keeping busy has staved off the worst of the inevitable homesickness I knew I would feel for London once the euphoria of being home wore off, despite how challenging and unhappy the recent months (well, year and a half) there were. I know, without a doubt, that it is healthiest for me to be here, in Vancouver. That doesn't mean that I don't miss London, or miss the best parts of it, anyway. Of course I don't miss the stress of the work, the loneliness of being so far from friends and family, and the day-to-day grind of living and working in London. But I miss flirting with Billy on the Thamesclipper on my way to work, I miss slipping out for coffee at Taylor Street Baristas with Tony, I miss being part of a team of brilliant, hilarious, caring associates who I looked forward to seeing every day, I miss starting to chatter at my office-mate David at 10 am and not stopping until I left in the evenings, I miss seeing trashy movies at Piccadilly with Ben, meeting Mike and Dorota for dinner and a good gossip in Mayfair, scouring the Internet for cheap theatre tickets, and visiting my beloved markets. So, despite knowing that I've made the right decision, I still dream of London, waking up in the morning and feeling its loss.
On the few nights when I'm not headed out to see someone or do something, I've settled into the routine of coming home, cooking dinner, doing laundry, and watching Ghost Whisperer. I know, I know. It's trash. It's horrible. It's Jennifer Love Hewitt. My mind knows all these things, and yet, every night, I flick it on while I bang the pots and pans together, while the laundry swirls around, machine humming happily in the background, and every night, inevitably, I cry my eyes out at the conclusion where somebody goes into the light. Every. Time. It's ridiculous. I told my aunt this last week, when I went to her house for a family dinner. She said, "That's a pretty sad comment on your life, that you go home and cry all night." Maybe it is. I think it's great that I get to go home, period. And the crying, well, it's cathartic. Maybe I'm crying out all the frustration and loneliness of the past 18 months, the anger at myself for going in the first place, and the anger at myself for not making it work. All I know is, right now, today, I'm happy. And if I needed to have a good Melinda Gordon-induced cry to get here, well, that's fine by me.
So, this one illicit blog for now and then I'll go back to waiting for Apple to fix MacBook.
Life is slowly settling into a routine. The construction at Woodwards continues apace, which means, whether I like it or not, I'm awake at 6 when the generators start and the construction team arrives outside my window. They tend to go like stink until 11 pm at night, but the progress seems, well, glacial. I'm not sure why everything is taking so long, in terms of construction at the SFU School of Contemporary Arts and the Community Arts Space.
It's a bit disorienting to suddenly have, well, a life. I go to work, I come home at a reasonable hour, and still have time in the evenings to spend time with friends and family. And, um, I don't work on the weekends. I feel guilty about it. But, I don't actually have to. So...hopefully the guilt will abate soon.
Filling my suddenly deliciously free evenings and weekends has not been hard. I've painted two walls in my house, haunted second hand and vintage stores to pick out just the right, 60's era, Don-Draperesque furnishings, baked (!), cooked, visited with family, gone to movies (see Fantastic Mr. Fox, it's delightful), met friends at Muzi for tea, read books (finally got my limited edition copy of Robert J. Wiersema's The World More Full of Weeping, which I highly recommend), and gone for wanders around downtown, to see what's changed and what hasn't. I bought a Christmas tree and decorated it with my mom and my aunties. I have had some crazy nights out as well, to the Eastside Culture Crawl, to see Lady Gaga's Monster Ball tour, and to the good ol' Freequeency Top 40 drag show at the Odyssey (which was, now that I think of it, uncannily similar to the Monster Ball)...
Keeping busy has staved off the worst of the inevitable homesickness I knew I would feel for London once the euphoria of being home wore off, despite how challenging and unhappy the recent months (well, year and a half) there were. I know, without a doubt, that it is healthiest for me to be here, in Vancouver. That doesn't mean that I don't miss London, or miss the best parts of it, anyway. Of course I don't miss the stress of the work, the loneliness of being so far from friends and family, and the day-to-day grind of living and working in London. But I miss flirting with Billy on the Thamesclipper on my way to work, I miss slipping out for coffee at Taylor Street Baristas with Tony, I miss being part of a team of brilliant, hilarious, caring associates who I looked forward to seeing every day, I miss starting to chatter at my office-mate David at 10 am and not stopping until I left in the evenings, I miss seeing trashy movies at Piccadilly with Ben, meeting Mike and Dorota for dinner and a good gossip in Mayfair, scouring the Internet for cheap theatre tickets, and visiting my beloved markets. So, despite knowing that I've made the right decision, I still dream of London, waking up in the morning and feeling its loss.
On the few nights when I'm not headed out to see someone or do something, I've settled into the routine of coming home, cooking dinner, doing laundry, and watching Ghost Whisperer. I know, I know. It's trash. It's horrible. It's Jennifer Love Hewitt. My mind knows all these things, and yet, every night, I flick it on while I bang the pots and pans together, while the laundry swirls around, machine humming happily in the background, and every night, inevitably, I cry my eyes out at the conclusion where somebody goes into the light. Every. Time. It's ridiculous. I told my aunt this last week, when I went to her house for a family dinner. She said, "That's a pretty sad comment on your life, that you go home and cry all night." Maybe it is. I think it's great that I get to go home, period. And the crying, well, it's cathartic. Maybe I'm crying out all the frustration and loneliness of the past 18 months, the anger at myself for going in the first place, and the anger at myself for not making it work. All I know is, right now, today, I'm happy. And if I needed to have a good Melinda Gordon-induced cry to get here, well, that's fine by me.