On: caught in act.

On: Old old old.

On: Struck

It has been a goal of mine to catch a lightning strike on "film" for a while now. Go me!

On: fireworks.

On: newness.

Another term is over, a great sigh of releif. My first university year is complete, and in many ways a success. I look forward to next year, but at the moment I look forward more to the free time that I will be enjoying until the end of April. Fun with friends, relaxation and sewing, time with parents, Nox and house sitting in the country are all in my near future and are joyously welcomed in place of essays and tests and my horrible religions of the east teacher. This is not to mention the glorious changes that are occurring outside. The grass is green now, buds are jumping out of trees and it seems like the flowers are everywhere. This has been the shortest winter my life has ever seen, when early December the snow wasn’t sticking to the ground yet and in March spring had arrived.

I hope that I have more classes next year that I enjoy as much as my classical mythology class and my EVIL class. Classical mythology was wonderful because I could enjoy an hour of story time three days a week, there were too many names to remember though. EVIL was special in all sorts of ways, it being a religious studies class applying religious theories to systemic ‘evil’ and the ‘evil’ that occurs in modernity. Having a somewhat unconventional religious upbringing and a...certain distaste for Christianity, morality and religion have always been very separate in my mind. I feel that I now have a more balanced perspective of religiosity and I know a bit more about some current issues of capitalism, free trade, consumerism and production, human rights, the environment and animal husbandry. The teacher was really fantastic as well. She’s a new hero of mine.

On Wednesday I sat my last exam (in EVIL), then when I came home I ate and redressed and made bubble mix. Eating doesn’t take much time at the moment, as I had a stomach bug and spent Monday throwing up. I had no idea that bulimia was so effective; I lost five pounds in an afternoon. Nox and I walked downtown to meet Kelly-M-Ehm at the concrete garden that the city built outside of the mall to “rejuvenate” the downtown core. Somehow they hadn’t considered the possibility that skateboarders would live there in swarms, which I think is wonderful. I love watching people fall down.

I found a newspaper that had gotten hold of the news that I had been out “inspecting student areas” again. Har har. They should keep out of my personal life. M was on the cover as well, with a picture from the play that she was in. We blew bubbles from the steps and watched people fall over. We all agree that a bubble party with veggie dyed bubble water and bikes and things would be a lot of fun.

I would like to note that my makeup in these pictures may appear yellow and blue and matte, however it the 3-D world it was bright green and blue and shimmery because I wanted to match the bubbles.

On the way home Nox and I found a toilet on the side of the road. I sat down to read my newspaper and relieve myself, and a fellow exited the house looking at me and said “you’d better not be taking a dump.”

Well. Oops.

Since then I have been sewing, playing the banjulele, reading and more. I finished the two books that I didn’t get to read for my English classes, 1984 and Generation X. I had forgotten how many interesting ideas came to me from my reading of Generation X in high school. It was a good revisit.

On: springing.

On: party for love.

This weekend I went with my parents to my cousins buck n doe. It was a hot weekend, going into the 20’s, which I have never experienced this early in the year. The poor weather is all confuzzled. We saw the Mennonites getting out of church, and we stopped at house #6666 which I’ve always meant to do.

When we got to my parents house Dad took me for a ride on his new motorcycle, it was glorious. I am strongly leaning towards getting a motorcycle license and getting myself a bike- I just can’t stand to be stuck in the city all summer when I could be on back roads and in abandoned houses and running through cornfields and climbing trees. It’s so green there and so grey here.

Then Dad and Nox and I went back to Shandi’s house to have a look around. Someone has come to strip off the countertops, and the bricks along the back wall have nearly all crumbled off. I’m not sure how it has degenerated so much. I guess that the owner found it too much trouble to rent it out, and now it is far too damaged to do so.

While we were there some women were out riding their horses, and came up the laneway when they saw Basko. There is a door on the second floor that opens onto the roof, so Dad leaned out and confirmed that the dog was ours. “I probably look like I live here” he said to me, and looked in a mirror “Oh, yeah, I look pretty weird. I should have said ‘Come in, we’ll have some tea! What year is it?”

Then we set off to the buck n doe, another beautiful drive. When we got there we went to the park because Pontius P and I had slept there while on our cross South-western Ontario bike trip, and I wanted to reminisce. A nice girl hung out with us our first night. We told her that we wanted to sleep, and showed her our sub terra sleeping pavilion. She came back later-2 AM?- with cookies and played us some songs on her guitar. We didn’t get a lot of sleep that night. The next day we met some drunk punks swimming in the river. One of them asked where we were going, then told us about his adventures in hitchhiking. Then asked where we were going, and told us about his adventures in hitchhiking. I think he smoked too much.

Shortly thereafter a family in spandex bike suits with a baby holster started chatting with us. “on a long trip? You should drink Gatorade.” “What? Why?” “It replenishes your electrolytes.” We laughed and biked off into the sun.

This time we ate a picnic and threw sticks for the fur ball. Later we checked my parents into their hotel room and my things/Nox’s things into my other cousin’s house. We walked around sommore and I threw rocks at/for the dog: he is in a complicated relationship with rocks and likes to catch them in his mouth. If he finds one too big to pick up then he barks at it instead.

The sunset was incredible, but my Samsung ultra wide doesn’t like to take pictures of the sky. Its light balance isn’t very good (I need to play with the manual settings some) and if doesn’t like to focus on anything so insubstantial as clouds, so my canon is still the better for sky shots.

Dad declared “I am going to get drunk as fuck tonight!” and he bought us our first round of drinks. We played a lot of pool, all rounds of which I lost, excepting the very last one. Apparently I need to be drunk enough, then I can win. As the party got going nobody was dancing, so Dad and Nox and I went out and got the party started. As more people arrived it got going. Dad was awful popular with the ladies. This town is a total Hicksville, and as it was Easter Friday and the event was held in a bar, it was the only one open. The place was packed by the time we left, which is great for my cousin/his bride to be. I was happy that no one talked to me. Two fights happened.

My favorite part was how short all the men were. Nox is 6 foot 3 and the pool table was right beside the mens room: when Nox bent over to shoot pool guys would walk by to pee and be the same height as him. All the women were regular weight, but about half of the men were quite short. One of my cousin’s friends commented on Nox’s resemblance to the guy from Korn.

The next day we drove back to my parents house, and on the way we drove through a marshy forest stretch and the spring peepers were thunderous loud. One didn’t even notice that I was there, 1 mm away from his face taking pictures. I guess he needed his coffee after sleeping all winter.

Nox and I chilled, reading on the front porch. I drank sage tea and chatted with mom.

Then back to the city.

On: the solstice.

Sunset, sunrise and a cat on the longest night of the year.

On: watching a sunset.

On: coins.

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