The armdale rotary

Apparently our little rotary that takes us around and around taking our very life in our hands - giving us views of both suburbia schtick and the wonderful water, has been immortalized in both song and in haiku poetry.

Jen Grant has a nice little song (that cbc loves to play often) called dreamer - hear it here
http://www.myspace.com/jenngrant1. you can pick out her line about the rotary and chocolate lake.

It has made it into wikipedia which documents the ongoing controversy over whether it is a rotary or a roundabout. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armdale_traffic_circle

Pics of the place can be seen here http://www.thegreatness.com/old/rotary.html but does not do the ocean view justice. I think it is because we like to complain about this oddity and the traffic snarls it entails - but we forget to look out at the water and the sky and the birds - every day I try to remember to look so that I can remember it when we leave.

1 degree of separation

For a long time now I have thought that everyone and anyone in Ottawa is simply 1 degree of separation away from anyone else. Apparently that applies to other places and people too.

We had our neighbours over for dinner last night. Lorraine also happens to be Mike's collegue from work and best of all she is straight from Ireland. C for some reason thinks that she is a vampire but I think she is lovely with that wonderful accent.

Anyways I always start asking questions about all things Irish and showed her this pic (here) of the place I'd like to move to if I had all the money in the world (apparently it is in county Kerry). And we started talking about U2 and Sinead and apparently Lorraine says that Dublin used to be so small that you would go out to someone's place and find out it was owned by some rock star or another. When Bono had his affair with that singer from the Corr's (said with utter distaste I might add). Everyone there was mad at him like he was their naughty son. and Sinead was the black sheep daughter. How funny - a country so small that everyone feels familial with everyone else. Oddly enough Lorraine was telling Mike how she loved her visit to Kingston, Ont. and really loved this little pub called something goat - and I stared at her and unzipped my fleece to show her the T shirt from that very pub. How is that for coincidence.

I mentioned to her how I really loved my time in Galway and she said how when she landed in Halifax she took a look at the harbour and said - yes this looks very much like Galway. No wonder I like this place. I had forgotten about my mouse pad of the photo of multi- coloured houses overlooking the harbour I took so many years ago.

perhaps this "new scotland" is actually just 1 degree of separation from Ireland.

The day after

So we had a take home final exam this weekend, that was due on Monday at 9 am.

Of course I didn't leave enough time to get it printed and had to dash to the university print shop - only to realize that I had not brought my memory stick. It's now 8:55 am. and the clock is ticking.

Fortunately I see one of my classmates, a lovely guy named Shawn, with a lovely Newfoundland accent to boot. I love folks from Newfoundland. Logic tells me that there are likely bad apples from there too but if someone with a thick Newfoundland accent told me this was a stickup I don't think I'd believe them.

So Shawn lends me his stick and jokes that I should leave my answers on for him since he is writing it the next day. Ha ha.... It's 9:05 and I sprint the last flight of stairs to get it to the prof.
All is ok! yay! I am free.

My brain is now empty... quiet.... there is no huge pang of guilt. I am suddenly not wrestling down the rising sense of panic as I have been for the last 6 months.

People have a hard time adjusting to things when a major distraction disappears. Back in my brief theatre school days the players would all become a bit depressed once a play ended, they just didn't know what to do with themselves.

My friend and classmate Stephanie revealed to me today that she became concerned over her relationship with her boyfriend - it just seemed so pressing this weekend. And when did you finish exams I asked? Friday. Ha! there's you answer I said knowingly like the jowly old know it all that I have become.

And for me? did I go home and commune with ... the dogs I guess? no way! I went shopping.

But at times like these I never go shopping in a little way noooooo that would be too easy. No pair of manolo blahnics for this woman.

Nope I went car and house shopping.

Ok I didn't actually buy anything but I did take a Volvo CX70 for a test drive. (or some darn number - who cares really. It was clean and the radio, lights, and wipers worked and the interior wasn't cracked and falling apart, and it had a DVD for the kids.) And I promised to phone the car salesman back right after dinner.

And then I found the perfect house in Wakefield - lovely old 1875 farm house with 5 bedrooms and 3 bathrooms on 2 acres of land, 5 minutes walk from the town.

Already I could see me driving my newish volvo up to my rural estate that I would fill with perrenial gardens, soccer field, koi pond, vegetable patch, and fruit orchard.

I probably would have phoned the real estate agents but it was already midnight and even they don't work that late.

And suddenly it was 6:30 this morning when my boy jumped out of bed to play a video game on the computer, and i needed to turn the computer on for him, and as I was thinking about the computer.....

DAMN I LEFT MY ANSWERS ON SHAWN'S STICK!!!

a new chapter

It is now April. My how time has flown!

Somehow time warped between November and now - each day being terribly terribly long, but the months being far too short.

My intake of Nova Scotian culture ebbed to a low - the world consisted of school, school, work, kids. I sometimes raised my head from the computer to notice what a mess the house was but that too was just an annoying distraction.

I became superstitious about blog writing - somehow time spent on this would give me bad academic karma.

I noticed a distinct correlation between the feeling one gets when they run long distance marathons and doing assignments and exams. "I can't do this and I am going to fail" started to sound like a maudlin mantra - and no one believed me anyways.

But now here we are - it is over! I have (hopefully) successfully completed 5 courses and can now move on to the directed study course and thesis! Wow! last year at this time it was all just a pipe dream.

There were highlights - one of my favourite was showing up for one of my classes and my professor started to talk about a great study on performance of water efficient toilets - I could not help myself, I had to take credit for CMHC on this one.

I also got to give a lecture one day. Basically it is an hour long presentation - which I actually really really enjoyed. But that is because I am a blabbermouth.

I never did enjoy the integration and chemistry mass balancing in the water quality course and ultimately I realized that no amount of banging my head against the proverbial wall was going to make me a smarty pants in this area - the adage fits appropriately here "grant me the courage to change the things I can, the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, and the wisdom to know the difference".