Sea Cucumbers is squishy.

Much as I had misgivings at some points, it turns out that the two buses and rather unpleasant industrial park walk it takes to get from Geoff's apartment to the Bedford Institute of Oceanography is totally worth it. I got to poke/pick up live lobsters, crabs, sea urchins, starfish, lumpfish (actually not as ugly as they sound -- the one I played with was a very pretty deep purple due to mating season), and my personal favourite, the sea cucumber. While the sea cucumber is not any pretty colour or shape, it does have the dubious evolutionary advantage of being able to expel its own internal organs when under threat.

Don't worry, the organs grow back, and I certainly didn't cause any of the sea cucmbers that much distress today -- I just gently stroked his very silky back/tummy/side/whatever while he undulated and sucked water in and out. Which, as far as I can tell, is all sea cucumbers ever do.

I also saw a couple of freak lobsters (one, who was missing the DNA for producing green pigment, was a lovely shade of blue) and a halibut who, while ugly as sin, was quite endearingly playful. He spat water at the guide as he tried to tell us things, at which point the guide absentmindedly put his hand in the water to scratch the fish's belly (which was what he wanted apparently).

I've also been to the Art Gallery, wandered around downtown Halifax looking at churches and getting myself lost every two minutes, and been to the Citadel (ancient engineers were very, very smart) for some lovely views and some good ol' nationalistic history.

Also, I've watched two very soothing (some would say boring, but I liked them) french language movies -- Denys Arcand's "Decline of the American Empire" and a documentary called "To Be and to Have".

And I've got the theme music from Katamari Damacy stuck in my head.

Hurray for the sun! (also, perogies)

Had a fabulous day today -- I woke up to find the sun shining and a hot summer's day to greet me.

We packed a lunch and went out to Point Pleasant Park to see the ocean and stick my feet in it (no matter how old I get, I can never seem to remember about how I will get my wet, sandy feet back in my shoes until after they're already wet). We walked around in our new running shoes (bought cheap yesterday during a sale) and then went back up to downtown Halifax to see the best comics store ever (Strange Adventures, which has an amusingly low door and a great big section of alternative comics right up front), have some ice cream, and pick up Meghan's 16 books which were on hold at the library. She is my new hero, especially since she's read about 5 books in the 3 days I've been here.

Then we made perogies for dinner, a long and intensive process which involved much discussion about the best way to roll out the dough (rolling pin or hand stretching?), the best way to seal the perogies (fork or fingers?) and the best way to eat them (boiled or boiled&fryed). Boiled and fried won hands down, and Geoff and I once again proved that we really are siblings by eating way too many not-quite-ready perogies and then lying around groaning after eating several plates of delicious really-done perogies.

Halifax in late summer...

...Is surprisingly cold. It's a pants-and-long-shirt day here, with low-hanging, scudding clouds and little occasional drops of rain. I'm having a bit of an inward day, having just read 'Blankets' (absolutely fabulous graphic novel about first love, growing up in a fundamentalist Christian home, and winter in the country) and having to face the realisation that my comfortable summer groove of life (in Kingston, with Catherine and Brier) has ended and I must go back into the world of school and worry about the future and my awkward attempts to continue to influence QCF now that I am no longer president.

I realise that my mood is entirely influenced by these thoughts, plus my continuing tiredness and the rather sad material I've read in the last day or two (Palestine, by Joe Sacco, and Blankets). On many days, a rainy, cloudy morning would make me happy with the thought of hot tea, a blanket and a good book.

I know this isn't a long-term mood because I had a great day yesterday. Geoff woke me up to say the pancakes were almost done (the best way to wake up, in my book), Geoff and Meghan and I went shopping for food, and then Geoff and I embarked on an afternoon tour of Dalhousie, Halifax downtown, and the harbour. We didn't do anything other than wander around, but just seeing a new city, getting situated in it, and watching an enourmous container tanker come in to the harbour to unload its cargo was great fun. My feet ached by the time we got on a bus to get home, but returning to unread comic books, a cat who was rapidly becoming comfortable with me, homemade pizza, and a very bizarre little computer game called Katamari Damacy quickly made my blisters fade into the background.

I also know this isn't a long term mood because I feel better just typing this all out. And just realizing now that I've managed to type this whole post on an ergonomic keyboard which, yesterday, felt like an alien being under my hands, determined to thwart me. Take that, new technology!

I miss the CBC

It makes me sad every morning when I turn on the radio and don't hear Tom Allen's lovely voice telling some silly story about a composer. I hadn't realized how much I depended upon the state-sponsored media of this particular country until it was gone.

Wow.

There is a woman out on Lake Ontario right now. She has been out there since Monday morning. That's more than 48 hours in the water.

No, she's not dead. Nor is she in trouble, although she may well be crazy. Her name is Vicki Keith and she's a marathon swimmer who, at 44, has decided to break her own world record by swimming 80 kilometres from Picton to Kingston. She's getting people to donate money so that the Kingston YMCA can build a new swimming pool with better handicapped access for Keith's swim team, the Penguins, who are children with disabilities (www.penguinscanfly.ca).

It's absolutely amazing. She hasn't slept, she hasn't gotten out of the water, she's not wearing a wet suit (it's against marathon swimming rules), she only eats chicken soup and peanut butter every two hours or so, and she spent most of the last night hallucinating and not actually making any progress in her swim because of a strong headwind and metre-high waves. She's expected to lose 20 pounds during her swim.

Did I mention she's doing the butterfly? Yes, that hardest stroke of all, the one that my friend Catherine (who's been on more than a few swim teams herself) swam for 100 metres and felt like she was going to drown. That's the stroke Vicki Keith's been doing for two days now.

So that's my story. Everything I do today (coil internet cords in residence, eat lunch, return library books, watch tv, pack for leaving Kingston, feel sorry for myself) I do with the image in my head of an exhausted 44 year old woman butterflying across Lake Ontario to raise money for kids.

Now I'm really angry

Having just gotten really frustrated and depressed because my best friend told me she's been having money problems lately (plus my own long internal battle about having money versus doing what I want and screwing the consequences), I've decided I don't like money.

It forces people to take jobs they don't like, to stay at jobs they hate, and it causes everyone to have that awful feeling like someone's just punched you in the stomach when you realize you don't have enough of it. Money (or more specifically, lack thereof) is the dream-killer. Money breaks up relationships quicker than anything else will. Money causes people to hurt other people all the world around.

Yes, I agree that thin, lightweight money is easier than lugging gold bars around, and certainly easier than having to lug cows around in a barter system. But money has become the end, when once (far too long ago) it was the convenient means to an end.

The problem here is I don't have a solution. I can't make anyone else's money problems go away, any more than I can solve my own. I can't free myself from a money system, since I don't really see any practical alternative. And I can't stop feeling like someone's punched me in the stomach.

(N.B. I'm now angrier than ever, since I just had to delete and re-post this message, since some random spam blogger (yes, they're on blog sites now!) decided to post some long and incomprehensible advertisement about how to make money. argh.)

And the winner for dumbest title for a literary article is....

"An Orange Stuff'd with Cloves: Bayesian Baroque Rehearsed"

What does that even mean?! Personally, I think it's actually a secret spy code.