me and the open road, august 2006

dear friends,

today was the day i finally stopped talking and went in and rewrote my G1 test. i am happy to report that i, and the four 16 year olds i wrote with, passed. so, in just 12 months i will be able to take the road test.

jersey turnpike here i come.
cam

the family dog

dear friends,

long time no blog. have been on the road, or rather lots of them. here is the run-down.

one week ago- in montreal, last day at work
today- in trenton
one week from now- in jersey, via montreal (stupid air canada)

in between i have spent nights in princeton, manhattan, and port rowan and traveled through new york, new jersey and pennsylvania. in terms of the road trip i have learned one valuable lesson, there are only two types of songs on the radio-- songs by mariah (desireable) songs not by mariah (undesireable).

i am looking forward to getting back to the trailer and settled in the new homestead and office. looks like i may also become a guardian to a puppy. chris believes that "our family" would be adept at raising one, and that we if nothing else have to be preferable to euthinization. so, we have a trip planned to the adoption place the day after my arrival.

the dial up is killing me. more updates soon.
cam

on the road again

dear friends,



back to trenton by way of toronto on monday,
cam

two good things, two bad things

dear friends,

one good thing is this. princeton is awesome.

one bad thing is this. i had high hopes, but it was underwhelming. i have reached a new level of uppity when i agree with salon.com

back on the subject of good things. i am excited to be staying here

however, another bad thing is this. this is also right down the street from our hotel, which is less unfortunate than you know, being murdered... but also slightly dodgy.

almost home,
cam

63 hours

dear friends,

it is all but decided. in 63 hours i will no longer live in montreal and a visit is not impossible but seems far off. the original plan was to be here next week, but that seems silly when the only reason i *have* to be back is to fufill my role as a data librarian. seeing as how i hate the job and have no need to leave on good terms (no future desire to work as a data librarian, no need for assistance from them etc) and i clearly do no work of value to them beyond being there for the one student a day who visits, it seems prudent for me to leave. this made all the more true by my desire to spend more time with the family before i go, the benefits of driving from jersey to the gta rather than jersey-montreal-gta, and the joys of persnaps seeing some toronto peeps before i go.

but now i have 63 hours to:

- let the data library know i am not coming in on tuesday
- pay my library fines and withdraw from mcgill
- sell or otherwise rid myself of excess furniture and belongings
- pack everything
- say goodbyes
- make astonishing progress on second job project

aaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
cam

the big bang

dear friends,

it is almost two years to the day that i got bangs. for those of you not around in that era, its sorta a long story. i was in chattanooga, i needed to kill some time, i had an "event" to attend the next day, and i was about to start anew in montreal. what better time to get bangs. false. fortunately my hair grows quickly and in about 6 months i no longer had them. i swore i would never do it again.

so, picture it... yesterday, esthetica. my super sweet hairdresser mary, who has given me 3 of the best hair cuts of my life, asks me how i would feel about bangs. mary has the same hair type as me (fine but lots and lots of it) and is a perfectionist, so with visions of hot microbangs in my head, i was like "sure, why not". i mean i have no time to kill, no "events" to attend, and am starting anew in jersey.

why not........... well perhaps i should have remembered that bangs create a look that is somewhere in between the mid 1990s "rachel" and a tegan and sara femme-mullet. i hate it. but mary hugged me and wished me luck in jersey and i couldn't say anything. it's not actually the bangs i hate as they actually look kinda cute when my hair is back... it's just when my hair is down i can't help but feel a little business in the front, party in the back. not that i know what the solution is. i am contemplating just turning it into a bob with bangs... but that is the haircut i (and dorothy hammil) had for most of the early 1980s.

anyway in dramatically less superficial news, optimuslukas has posted pictures from last weekends wimf fun! and, not for fake, that kid with the glasses was a million kinds of adorable.

5 days till the jersey road trip,
cam

week in review

dear friends,

it feels weird to have not posted in so long. i am sort of relying on this blog to act as an external memory device. unloading daily happenings frees much more space for celebrity gossip.

i am still at the data library although contemplating quitting very soon. barring unforseen issues with getting my princeton $ i don't really need the money, and there are a couple of good reasons for me to head to jersey earlier than originally planned. not sure what will go down, but if i am going to try out this new quitting-while-you-are-ahead thing, i may as well go for the dramatic and just stay in jersey next weekend and stop showing up for work. apparently this is the norm anyway, as divorcing-anna has not returned to work, it is currently 2 weeks after her month long vacation.

this is not a very good week in review post. when optimuscrime posts the pictures from wolfisland i will echo with more sentiments of "such!good!times!".

blech,
cam

weekend update part 1: brockville, home of closeted deviants

dear friends,

i write you this morning not from the uncomforts of my data library hovel, but rather from the lovely chateau bagot. en route here i met some interesting people.

1. from montreal to brockville i had the distinct pleasure of overhearing (i forgot pinky at home, gasp!) a twenty year old watertown,ny girl who goes to school in montreal (go humantistic studies!) try to seduce the beer out of the backpacks of a couple of 18 year olds from brockville. some of her approach was tried and true, telling them stories of her lesbian exploits with her travel companion. the other approach was more novel, she was travelling with rats. and, the 18 year olds thought that was pretty rad and tried to hold them (out of the cage!). they were rewarded with rat pee on their hands.... she got enough beer to get trashed enough to dull the pain of meeting up with her conservative parents.

2. a girl who got off in brockville who was covering up her ankle tatoo with concealer

off to get a new health card.
cam

narcicism and seeing the future

dear friends,

in a fit of boredom i did some googling at the data library (actually it started because chris and i are in a bit of a race to find two of our former colleagues... he has to find don brown via google and get in touch and i have to find signe swope... neither task is easy)... but anyway i also googled myself and discovered i have a name twin! and in the future i will wear headbands and i will still wait in line for shows.

ktown here i come,
cam

leaving montreal. short-term. longterm.

dear friends,

left montreal short-term this weekend for a little get-away on the shores of lake erie. some highlights:

* mandy's "little brother" joel deciding my name is sue ellen. mandy et al deciding that is appropriate since sue ellen was a big boozer on dallas. i embrace my dallas name as an alternate personality. carol ann by day, sue ellen by night. among the things sue ellen likes to say "i really want to get in a chair fight". you can take the girl out of trenton, but give her a dallas nickname and you can't take the trenton out of the girl.

* an unsucessful attempt to get into the turkey point hotel, instead going to the craziest kareoke bar ever. avoiding eating a pogo (um, breaded hotdog=ew). almost asking the drunken seventeen year old who needed to take his shirt off before ordering his pogo whether he was afraid of getting ketchup on his nipple.

* some fun times on the boat and tube. a dramatic triple flip exit from the tube. i somehow managed to hang on to the tube long enough for us both to rotate three times in the air. this is not quite as good as hez' dramatic 6 feet in the air exit or joel's face plant. but, witness below:



* my third trip to a p.r. lion's club chicken bbq. i love social capital in action. also i love pie and this year i bought a lovely elderberry pie from a sweet woman who explained to me that elderberries are wild blueberries and they take forever to prepare because they have tiny little stems. this was all extra special because i have never been to the ol' p.r. on a weekend when the chicken bbq wasn't happening. this is the first year that it has been on the civic holiday weekend. i like to think they may have changed it for me.

a big sunburn and a lot of via1 points later i am back in my urban home, but apparently not for long... as i just wrote my last montreal rent cheque and purchased my last monthly metro pass. single tear.

gotta run, workplace ethics kicking in.
cam