It's the year 2010 (but not for long!)

One morning in early December 2003 I woke up extremely relieved and glad to discover that it was in fact still 2003. I had just had a dream in which it was already 2004, and in my dream I was so sad because I had loved 2003 (particularly its fall) so much and I didn't want it to be over yet. December is an odd month in that way - it's usually a lot of fun and a good way to end the year; but it's also bittersweet because the year is ending, and even if there's lots to look forward to in the new year, it can still be sad saying goodbye.

I like songs that mention dates; that set themselves squarely in a certain period, such that whenever you listen to that song later you're taken back. The best two examples I can think of are Mariah Carey's Cruise Control which starts with Damian Marley (who was featured on that song) saying "2008...Watch It!" and then Mariah comes in. I love that because whenever I listen to that song now (or have listened to it since it came out) I always think about a. the first time I ever heard it in A.'s old apt in Kansas City in April 2008 and b. all those times that April and May I repeatedly listened to it. On their latest cd which they released in May 2010, Broken Social Scene has a song called "Water in Hell" which contains the line "It's the year 2010" - which I also love. It's so perfect right now... but in just a few days it won't apply anymore! Though it will still be cool to listen to it in years to come and look back nostalgically on 2010.

Though I usually spend a fair bit of time throughout the month of December thinking about the year ahead, I haven't had plans on New Year's Eve since I was 18 - 8 years ago! I like staying home, which is probably why one of my favourite scenes in the L-Word was from an episode in Season 5 when the power went out in LA causing Bette and Tina to get stuck in an elevator en route to their therapist's office. Stranded (at least for a little while) they proceed to sit facing each other, both leaning against opposite walls of the elevator, and discuss why they are good together and what their relationship would be like if they got back together. One of the points Tina makes is that they both like staying home on New Year's Eve. I loved that point! It's not that I don't think a relationship could work if one person loves partying on New Year's and the other likes staying home, but I do think it's easier if both people agree!

I cared a lot (read too much) about New Year's Eve in high school, and always had to be going to a party or doing something with friends because I felt like such a loser if I didn't. A guy at my high school, A.S.R. always went to the movies on New Year's Eve with his mom and her friend. However, they could never agree on which movie to go see, so each of them went to their own, all starting around the same time so they could arrive and leave the theater together. Even though I thought that was super cool, I still felt the urgent need to be doing something with friends. Happily, I now no longer care if other people think I'm a loser (and fortunately, I know they don't) and so I do what I like best and stay home. I'm not sure exactly why I don't like going out on New Year's though since I love champagne and like fireworks - two essential components of the evening. It's also not that I don't like socializing. I enjoy having or attending dinner parties or bigger parties for that matter. Maybe, and I think this is probably the best explanation, it's the hype that surrounds the evening. There seems to be a lot of pressure to have a good time. It's not just a regular party or evening out, it's New Year's Eve !!!! (the exclamation marks are essential!) and everyone must have a fabulous time, or else, it is implied, the year is off to a bad start. All that said, if all my best friends happened to be in the same place on New Year's Eve, of course I'd want to get together with them and of course I'd stay awake until midnight. But when I'm just at home or on vacation with my parents, I like having a glass of champagne with dinner, another with dessert, and then getting into bed with my book, going to sleep in one year and waking up in another.

A bookworm's favourite place

I have always loved being surrounded by stacks & shelves of books, be it in bookstores, libraries or my bedroom in Toronto. Sometimes I think that in the future house I eventually live in I want to have a library, like those old-fashioned country estates in the English countryside that I've only ever seen in movies or read about in books always seem to have. But then I think that it's really better to have books spread out across every room of the house.

The libraries on the Berkeley campus were the best, and will always be my favourites! I like the law library at McGill. It's pretty nice and some of the rooms have huge windows which is great. But nothing will replace the Berkeley libraries. During finals time I used to love studying at different libraries throughout campus because the main libraries got too busy. My favourite was the business library followed by the music library. But during the regular semester, I stuck to Doe (side note: to this day my most favourite public bathroom is in Doe. It was always clean, had windows overlooking this main part of campus, and had the best, biggest and most flattering mirrors!). L and I would go to the library together all the time. We were among the small group of (proudly) nerdy students who were standing outside the front doors before 1 pm on Sundays waiting for the campanile to strike 1 pm, for the doors to open and for our studying to begin! I liked both the main and east reading rooms on the second floor of Doe. They were very grand, and distinguished, but still comfortable. But L. and I also loved studying in the stacks which went floors underground. Throughout the fall of 2004 when we both lived on northside, L. and I went to Doe together several nights a week. We especially loved being there on the nights C.M. worked (he was a check-out clerk) and we'd hear his voice reaching through the intercom that went throughout the whole library announcing the closing of the circulation desk at Doe (at 9 pm) but assuring us that the library remained open for studying until 2 am (although we usually left by 10 pm anyway). C.M. lived at my co-op and was an all-round super cool and attractive guy who L. and I both had crushes on despite his having a girlfriend. My favourite part of our evenings at Doe was always our walks home. We were happy because we'd accomplished some good studying and then we could just talk and laugh about other things. The following fall (of 2005) I missed L. (who was still in Santiago) the most the nights I studied at Doe, especially when someone else's voice would announce the circulation desk's closing time. C.M. had graduated (and presumably gone on to bigger and better things), L. was enjoying springtime (my favourite season, which I had missed that year due to my being in Santiago then too!) near the bottom of the world, and I walked home from the library on those dark fall nights missing how things used to be.

My love of libraries extends to city public library systems as well. At the end of July 2006 I went to New York for the weekend to visit N. who was there for the summer. I got in mid-morning on the Friday but N. was at work until 5 pm. I had originally planned to just walk around and maybe go to a museum but the bus I took in to Manhattan from La Guardia dropped me off in front of the New York Public Library. Fueled by both curiosity and a desire to keep reading my book - Julia Alvarez's In the Time of the Butterflies (if you haven't read it, you should!) I went in. After finding a reading room which reminded me of the East Reading Room of Doe, I sat down, read my book and occasionally looked up either to people-watch or to admiringly think about what a beautiful library it was. I emerged 3 hours later back into the bright afternoon sunshine feeling happier than when I'd gone in that morning. I've been back to New York twice since then but haven't gone to the library either time, being too busy shopping, walking, talking, visiting cupcake shops etc. But I don't mind; the library fit the circumstances of that July day perfectly, and I feel certain I'll one day go back.

Last fall after moving back to Toronto I discovered the awesomeness that is the Toronto Public Library system. There are so many branches all over the city, and two within easy walking distance from my house. Aside from checking out Red Hot Chili Pepper's Anthony Kiedis' memoir Scar Tissue (at M.'s recommendation!) one winter break while I was still at Berkeley, I hadn't gone into/used the TPL in years. Back when I was 13/14 I regularly visited the library to check out Baby Sitters Club books. But after I stopped reading those, I didn't use the library that much. I've always liked owning books just because I do re-read books from time to time, and because, as I wrote above, I like being surrounded by books. But last fall I started using it again. First because I needed a few books to help me with my classes at Seneca, and then because I started using it for books I wanted to read but just didn't want to own or buy. (Usually kind of trashy books like embarrassing to admit but Tori Spelling's autobiography, and then some other books I'd heard about and thought sounded good but wasn't committed to buying.) It was also very nice to discover that all of the TPL branches I've been in are very busy. Even in the middle of a weekday there are lots of people reading, using the computers etc. The TPL is actually one of the things I miss most about Toronto.

For this post I googled quotes about libraries and Jorge Luis Borges' was my favourite: "I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library." That is a version of paradise I would definitely love to visit.

Missing American Thanksgiving

So while I only officially celebrated American Thanksgiving on the actual day (my aunt hosts a Thanksgiving dinner on the following Saturday in Annapolis, Maryland which I've gone to a few times, and am going to this year) once while living in the States (and even then we didn't have turkey or cranberry sauce or pie) it's one of things I miss most about living there. For starters, Thursday is my favourite day of the week and so I like that American Thanksgiving is always on that day. But more than that, I like its position at the end of November. Canadian Thanksgiving being on the second Monday in October just seems too early. It's too close to Labour Day to really need that holiday, and then it's so long to go without a holiday between Thanksgiving and Christmas. C. told me how his mom hated how close American Thanksgiving is to Christmas because she felt a lot of stress and pressure with two big family gatherings so close together, wanted to make them as successful as possible, etc. I can definitely see the (potentially limitless) possibilities for stress, but I actually like how American Thanksgiving kicks off this whole month long holiday period. It's a great way to end the year!

What I miss most though is actually a feeling, or a specific time period, more than anything else. Case in point: American Thanksgiving in Austin was never anywhere near as amazing as American Thanksgiving in Berkeley. Thanksgiving in Berkeley meant parties the Saturday before (where something monumentous, or so it definitely seemed to 19/20 year old me always happened) and red eye plane rides and the end of the semester in sight (which was always bittersweet). I loved going home to Toronto, and thus not even being in the US for Thanksgiving, and recharging for 4 days and then coming back ready to take on finals and enjoy all the fun that always encompassed December in Berkeley. So while it never (at least I don't think so) meant for me all the things it means to Americans, it was still something I looked forward to every year. I also think it says something that in a lot of ways November was my favourite month in Berkeley (tied with December and June, and then followed by March), which is odd, because it's one of my least favourite months everywhere else I've ever lived.

When I became good friends and started hanging out a lot with K. and her sister my last semester/June in Berkeley, they told me about how a few days before real American Thanksgiving they always have Friends Thanksgiving where they celebrate with their friends. I love that and it made me sad I didn't become friends with them until it was too late for me to go to it too! It's always fun to hang out with family on holidays but I think celebrating with friends is great too. N. and her roommates at the time hosted a big Thanksgiving dinner my last year in Berkeley exactly a week in advance and it was very cool - lots of food, lots of drinks, everyone in a good mood. It was more like a party in that there were too many people to have a sit down dinner but I think it was actually better that way.

In the vein of friends and Thanksgiving going well together, in 2008 I decided I better stay in the US for actual Thanksgiving day and celebrate it with one of my friends as after that year I wasn't going to live there anymore. So I went to Salt Lake City to spend it with S. It was great! While we didn't have the traditional food, we did spend a long time cooking (after watching movies all morning which was also really fun!)sweet potatoes, cauliflower, carrot cake, and S.'s best ever spanakopita, and just talking, lounging (I wore leggings all day) and hanging out. It seemed like even without the turkey and the trimmings we still got the basics of Thanksgiving - good food and even better company! - down pat.

So while I can't really say I miss American Thanksgiving as a holiday per se (which is actually a bit of a problem as I feel, in general, that I have way less holiday spirit of any kind than I used to; but that, I suppose, is a topic for another post... :)it makes me nostalgic for a very happy time and place in my life.

Sunday Blues

One Sunday back in June 2007 I was writing in my diary in a cafe near the Pantheon in Paris when I got a text from my friend S. asking me to meet her in the Luxembourg Gardens. When we met up she explained she had a very bad case of the 'Sunday blues' and needed to get out and do something. I saw S. again the next summer when I was back in France, and she explained to me that her Sunday blues had gotten so bad the fall of 2007 (by which time I was sadly no longer in Paris) that she'd started going out drinking every Sunday, mostly only managing to push her blues to Monday.

Though I'd never heard the term 'Sunday blues' before that June day with S., it definitely resonated with me. I have a complicated relationship with Sunday in that my feelings towards it have gone through so many stages. Sometimes I love(d) it, other times I hate(d) it. Since I was a kid though, I have always loved the feeling of Sunday night when Monday is a holiday - that is one of the best feelings! Sundays are always romanticized in songs - a time to laze around in bed and enjoy the fact that it's still the weekend. But somehow the songs always make it sound better than it usually is. Although, all last winter and spring I liked Sundays. They were relaxing, and fun. I could sleep in, take a long time reading the newspaper, do whatever I felt like... And even though I usually did do some work for my Monday classes, I really enjoyed going to work, and didn't feel that much pressure so even when I had work to do on Sundays it was never this really stressful thing. In fact, my Sundays were like the painting below (which I love, and which I have a card of currently on the wall behind my kitchen table in my apt), which is called Sundays at La Rochelle. That woman looks like the epitome of relaxed and like she is very much enjoying her Sunday.

Since September however, Sundays have become quite tough. Truth be told, I've had a bad (and recurring) case of the Sunday blues. The other night C. mentioned how he's been suffering from the 'Sunday Night Crazies' (I love variations on the same thing!) and it actually, though I definitely emphasize with him, made me feel better that I'm not the only person feeling a bit crazy. I've tried to do things to improve my mood like talk on the phone or read the NY Times Style section online but the feeling won't go away. It's very persistent, and has made me really dislike Sundays here. This Sunday I'm determined to go to the library as I feel that sitting around my apt has not been helping. In any event, I'm hoping that it's just a phase and that I'll get out of it soon. At least there's only about a month left in the semester and in the winter, my Monday schedule is much more agreeable than my Mondays are this semester. I've also decided that this Sunday coming up (and the ones to follow) I need to make a conscious effort to look at the woman at La Rochelle on the card on my wall and try to absorb some of her Sunday calming vibe.

An Apple A Day

Even though I eat apples year round, it does feel especially good to eat them in the fall knowing I could potentially be eating ones I picked myself. E. and I went apple picking last year and it was my first time going in forever. It was really fun! Orchards are very calming and lovely places: the rows upon rows of fruit trees, the greenery, the fresh air. When I visited S. in New Hampshire way back in July 2003 we went for a few walks in this orchard near her house and it made me feel like I was in a L.M. Montgomery novel. It would be so pleasant to get to walk in an orchard on a regular basis. In July 2005, I visited my friend M., who I first met in Berkeley in Fall 2004 when he was a Brazilian exchange student, in his little town of Fraiburgo in southern Brazil, which is known as the 'Land of Apples' because they grow so many apples there. M. was an agricultural engineer (or something like that...) for this big company that owned many of the orchards in Fraiburgo. It was their winter, and he had to check on the apples (really just buds I think) twice a day. So I went along with him in his little car, driving throughout the orchard making sure all the apples were okay. Afterward we went to a barbeque with people from his work and this nice woman who also worked there gave me some Pink Lady (which she pronounced laid-gee) apples to eat. They were very good, even for non-McIntosh apples. As far as jobs go, M.'s seemed great if you like agriculture and apples and being outside. And I love the idea of one's whole job being centered around apples.

Though I like the names of different apples like Red Delicious (I think that was Snow White's favourite!) and Golden Delicious, I only love to eat one type: McIntosh. I will also eat Pink Lady, if McIntosh aren't available, but even those pale in comparison to my love for McIntosh. It's a bit odd to passionately love the taste of one apple, but not like the taste of others. But that's just the way it goes sometimes. I eat a McIntosh almost every day with some cheese. Apples & cheese are an amazing combination, and one I never get sick of!

Apples are also the only fruit I don't like cooked (making them the opposite of cauliflower and broccoli, which I love cooked but won't eat raw). I wish I could like apple pie as it's such a traditional, popular, feel good food. But I just don't. Although L. once told me that a diner in Florida she was at served her a slice of cheddar cheese with her piece of apple pie. I just did a little googling on the issue, and apparently that's quite popular in both New England and the midwest. So now my new food/travel goal is to find a diner the next time I'm in any of those places and hopefully find apple pie on the menu. I'd be willing to put aside my dislike and eat that one piece if it came with a slice of cheddar cheese.

A Tale of Three Cities

Every city has their symbol - something the rest of the world can identify them with. Some are easy, like San Francisco and the Golden Gate Bridge; but others - like New York, is it the Statue of Liberty? The Empire State Building? London, Big Ben or the Tower Bridge? - are more difficult. My two favourite cities in the world both, in my opinion, have easily identifiable symbols - Paris and the Eiffel Tower, and Toronto and the CN Tower. I don't know what people actually from Montreal would say is the symbol for their city, but in the short time I've been here I've identified the cross at the top of Mount Royal as my symbol.

Even though I was suffering from jetlag and a fair bit of nervousness over how everything would pan out in the coming months, some of my very favourite memories of Paris are of those first days I spent there in January 2007. I was a just turned 23 year old (an age I had always thought (and still do!) is so cool!), and more than anything I was so happy to be in Paris. I couldn't believe I was actually there, and that something I had thought about for so long had finally happened. That first week I spent an irordinate amount of time staring out the huge windows (really sliding doors) of the family friends' apt I was staying at, watching the sky over Paris and the Eiffel Tower. The family friends lived a little outside Paris, with an amazing view of the city from their fifth floor apt. My first night there I was sitting at the dining table on the internet, occasionally looking up and out from my emails, when the Eiffel Tower started sparkling. I didn't know it did that! I knew it lit up at night but the sparkles were new! (And they are incredible! The sparkling happens for the first 5-10 minutes of each hour (and one good thing about the winter is that it sparkles more) and it never failed to be exciting.) Sitting and staring out at lovely or happy views is one of the most relaxing things to do. At that apt, I liked thinking about all sorts of things, with Paris and the Eiffel Tower as a backdrop to my thoughts. Whenever I'm in Paris, I always feel thrilled whenever I see the Eiffel Tower from different parts of the city. I love the view of it from Place de la Concorde, or any of the bridges over the Seine, or from near the Pantheon. Or the really far away views of it from the 19th or 20th arrondissements. The best is when I am just walking along, and then out of nowhere I get a glimpse of the Eiffel Tower; always a highlight of my day.


The same goes for the CN Tower - I love seeing it from different parts of the city. My favourite view is looking at it from the east, but I also like how I can see it all the way down Yonge Street when I'm walking to Eglinton Station. Or like with the Eiffel Tower, it's fun to be surprised by it. I went running down by the lake a few times in the spring, and it'd be fun to be running along and then suddenly see it in front of me. Seeing it from a plane is also very cool. The CN Tower gets lit up in all different colours at night too - some nights red or purple or green. I've grown up with the CN Tower, and probably because you can see it from all over it, it really represents Toronto to me in some ways. Driving home along the 401 from the airport to my house, the CN Tower is visible (albeit it appears very small) so whenever I come back from somewhere else, it's one of the first things I see, and confirms to me that I'm home. When I move back to Toronto, I really want to live somewhere from where I can see the CN Tower, and spend lots of time staring out at it and thinking.

I like the big mountain in the middle of Montreal a lot. It's particularly nice right now as all the leaves have changed colour and so it's a canvas of reds, oranges, and yellows. I suspect it will look pretty in the winter too. I can see the cross at the top from my apt, and as is clear from what I wrote above, I love looking out windows at well-known symbols. The cross is also lit up at night (my favourite time to look at it) and, I am sure, enjoys watching over the city from high above.

This Serious Moonlight

So one night last week just after turning off my light to go to sleep I was delighted to discover that I could see the (nearly full) moon from my bed here. Lying in bed looking at the moon is one of my very favourite things to do and it brought me back to the days when I lived on Hilgard in Berkeley and fell asleep and woke up right next to a big window. Each night I watched the planes fly overhead, and some nights I'd get to enjoy seeing the world through the glow of moonlight. One morning that fall I woke up to see this huge glowing slightly pink moon setting in the early morning light. That morning remains one of my favourite memories of the apartment.

Berkeley was an especially good place for moon viewing, particularly among urban environments. Due to the lack of skyscrapers and tall buildings in general, the sky always appeared more visible, and closer, and it just seemed easier to see the moon. The full moon rising huge and yellow behind the Berkeley hills (and the fall full moons were always the brightest and best of the whole year) continue to be highlights of my time there. In Toronto, my views of the moon are more easily obscured by buildings or trees. Although I love the view of the full (or nearly) moon from the windows in my front door. It often does get blocked by trees, so those glimpses of it are always exciting. Happily Montreal, or at least my neighbourhood, also seems to be great for moon watching.

A bit of a cliché to be sure, but I've loved the moon for as long as I can remember. Growing up I adored Kit Pearson's Looking at the Moon. I read that book so many times even today I could probably recite entire passages from it. One of the ideas in that book, which I now know is a common one but seemed really novel to a 12 year old me, is how no matter where people are in the world, they see the same moon. I never get tired of that idea, or think it's cheesy or silly.

Sometimes I think I like the full moon best (just because it's the brightest, most romantic etc) but it always makes me really happy to see a crescent moon in the sky, especially right after a few moonless nights. When C. and I went to Iguazu Falls on the border of Argentina and Brazil five years ago, we learned that while usually access to the falls is prohibited at night, when there is a full moon the falls are open. I became determined then, and am still determined now, to one day go back there on a full moon. Seeing the moon (preferably full, or nearly) over any body of water (especially lakes and oceans) is one of my favourite ways of seeing it.

The idea of the moon as a person is also cool. I have a magnet on the fridge of 'La Luna' (see picture below) and she is clearly female and has very pretty bright green eyes. The moon in the other picture below appears male to me, although I guess it could go either way. Mostly that picture just makes me think how great it would be to play on a tire swing attached to the moon. It's fun in images to see the moon as a person but I never think of it as being either male or female when seeing it in the sky. Instead, it's just this mysterious, though familiar, object looking down on us. Something bright and familiar I can see no matter where I go.