Shrouded in warmth and whiteness

Vancouver, it appears, is my blogging black hole, into which all desire for scattershot internet communication of the blog variety gets sucked up, never to return. Of course, an over-busy schedule and facebook updates as a surrogate communication device don't help...

In any case, I'm now watching the snow-pocalypse from 13 floors up in a Toronto apartment, looking out over the Don Valley. Or, trying to, since I can't really see anything through the roaring snow. Biku sleeps in the next room, the lamp casts a warm glow on the pieces of my current sewing project (amazingly, I'm actually doing a sewing project of my own, under the watchful eye of Biku-sempai), and I'm swathed in a towel and feeling clean and well moisturized from my leisurely shower. Life is good, and spending time with Biku makes me happy. Very happy.

It's been a tough semester, but a good one. I love my courses and my friends and all that I'm learning in Vancouver, but one of the things I learned this semester was what life's like when you're feeling blue. Blue, as in really sad for no reason. A combination of several stressful factors got me to a place where I didn't want to get out of bed in the morning, let alone care about courses or even (on really bad days) cook anything. It's mostly gone away now, but I've got a much different outlook on life and the time I need to carve out for myself. The time I need to take to be sad and to be alone, so that I may have time and energy to also be out among awesome friends having fun. It's a balance, and I'm still getting it right.

Into this climate breaks Christmas holidays, which I appreciate more than ever now, for many reasons. Thanks to the generosity of family, I get to not only spend almost three weeks in Ontario, I also get to go out to Halifax -- when I can't really afford travel to either place. While others must work right through the holidays I can sleep in and spend lots of leisurely time with those I love -- a fabulous privilege.
And, some random guy was flirting with me at swing dancing, which is always nice for the ego (even if he was bizarre and kind of socially awkward).

So there y'are. In the great taxonomy of blogging, I suppose I fall under the category "Blogs massively when in a foreign country, never blogs when far away in her own country, blogs only when happy and home and having a lazy morning".

Merry Christmas!