http://www.flickr.com/photos/seamonkeymags/

I forgot my camera at the museum yesterday, so more picture to come later.

Apparently I've only been here for 24 hours?  However, it feels like FOREVER.  SERIOUSLY FOREVER.  This is because I

• met my curator and one of the volunteers, when they picked me up at the airport.  Obviously you know they are very nice, since they did that....and they are.  I also got a cookie from Jan the volunteer.  It was good.  They also told me some of what I was seeing on the ride.  It's gorgeous around here, but I am completely unsurprised.
• Then they took me to the bed and breakfast where I stayed last night, on the house.  It was also really nice, a small little place from 1830.  It just has 3 rooms for guests; which were all full besides me, with a young pediatrician German couple and an old retired couple from PEI.  The owner dude is pretty weird, but nice.  My room was Haystack!  Also breakfast was really good.  Except he kept forgetting about getting people water, but what can you do.
• After that Bonnie and Jan took me to see the place to rent they'd found for me here.  This was not so great, as it is very dirty and not furnished.  However, it's being renovated (floors should be in by Thursday, the guys said), and no one else is living here right now.  So I've got a whole house to myself.  What the hell.
• Then I was left to my own devices, so I wandered around for a little while.  I found the library, which has an internet station on the wall, so I used that for a couple of minutes.  Then I called my parents, and Jacob.
• I figured it would be a good idea to eat something, so I ended up choosing the Mud Creek Grill.  It wasn't a great idea, since I am very very broke and could have used some of that money elsewhere...also I still didn't have much of an appetite, despite only having eaten brunch with Jacob before I left.  Plus I was all by myself...and for some reason the restaurant was totally empty...so that didn't help.  That being said, I had the portobello burger with goat cheese and it was super tasty.  I will go back when I'm hungrier and more moneyed.
• I wandered back towards the b&b, and watched some of Fellowship of the Ring, to help myself feel less lonely.  I passed out at 10pm Ontario time, but didn't sleep that well.  I was still worrying about things I guess.  Mostly due to Yon Crummy House.
• After breakfast (fruit, yogurt, and lemon & blueberry pancakes...yummm) I decided to see what I could furnish my room with for as cheap as humanly possible, and as nearby as humanly possible.  Without a car, it's pretty difficult to find/bring back stuff.
• But!  I bought an air mattress, pillow, sheets/pillowcase, light blanket, camp chair, plastic shelves, plastic containers, plastic bowls (do you see a trend here), and non-plastic cutlery at the Bargain! Shop (that ! is theirs, not mine).  Notably missing right now is more dishware and pots/pans, but that was lower on the list of necessities.  That is what soup and the microwave is for, my friends.  And sandwiches.  Oh, and I also had to waste $7 on a stupid air pump, which is going to take forever but not quite as forever as using my own personal hot air for it.
• As I was not looking forward to an empty gross apartment, I took the opportunity to go see the Old Burying Ground.  I took a ton of pictures, I felt the need to document half of the them.  I think the earliest left is from 1774 or so.  So awesome.
• Then I wandered around the water for 2-3 hours.  Probably my pictures look like crap because it was overcast the whole time, but there will be another opportunity in the next 4 months.
• Soooo I was pretty freakin tired, it was about 4pm by then (Atlantic time).  I needed some food to cover me for the next little while, so I did that.  Then vacuumed my room and started fixing my stuff up where possible.  THEN I turned my computer on and discovered FREE INTERNET.  I don't know where it comes from, but I am using it and I am SO HAPPY.

I still haven't eaten or pumped up the bed, which I suppose I should do.  And I know that was wayyyy tl;dr.  But that is why it feels like it's been a week.

I "packed up" all of my crud (read: kinda threw into boxes and bags and when really desperate threw it out despite feeling horrible about doing so) and I am now ensconced in Jacob's apartment.  I managed to smash him upside the head with Gossamer but it was not due to him telling me too many times that I have too much stuff.  Surprisingly...

It's slowly getting put away, and cleaning has been happening as well.  My allergies are much, much better just from getting rid of his couch.  Ok, and from the cleaning that has been happening.  That is also extremely helpful.

I'm settling in, with my laptop all set up for internet and my books on the shelves.  It will be hard to leave in 6 more days.  But at least when I come back it will feel like my home too.

My apartment in Hull is almost rented out.  Barring any more problems -- the application and credit check for these people just needs to be done, and I'm quite sure they'll be ok with that.  Guy paid July's rent already, so unless one of them chopped holes into a former apartment and bought a Ferrari with a credit card then never paid the bills, I think it should be fine.  Here's hoping, anyway.

My bosses at Randall house want to come pick me up at the airport, and they are looking for a place for me to rent.  That is awesome and I am tickled with the Maritimes already!

Also, man, I can't believe I'm stuck with a lousy cat that likes to chew wires.  I thought I was free of that when my bunny left!  And at least Geronimo didn't have a gross wet nose.  Relic is cute but yeeeeuch.

After the letdown of Edmonton, I got a call today offering me a 4 month job here.  She said they hoped I could start July 2nd, but that was pushing things a bit.  However, after giving myself a headache panicking over everything I need to do and my severe lack of funding....I booked my flight for July 5th.

I'm lucky I have Jacob and my parents to help me out (as I suck and require lots of it).  But 4 months of getting paid will be nice, I will be able to put a bit of a dent in some debt.  But the mercenary aspect aside, it will be an interesting experience.  It sort of sounds like I'll have free rein to do whatever improvements I can manage.

Plus, I adore the fact that I'll be living in a place with such a long history.  They've got a cemetery dating back to the 18th century!  I freaking love cemeteries.  No foolin.

I'm excited about this.

Didn't get the Edmonton internship.  While I was torn about it anyway, I'm still very disappointed.  I really need good experience if I plan on staying in this field.  Also I need money if I plan on paying my rent.

So, time to print out some resumes and apply to Shoppers.  They are looking for a merchandiser.  Yay.

Oh nerts, I think I am getting sick.  I'm not overly surprised, since I haven't been sleeping well and have been worrying incessantly about the possibility of having to pack up all my junk, move it to Jacob's, then immediately move to Edmonton or Nova Scotia.  I've had interviews for an internship in the former city, and a job in the latter province.  I'd have to be gone for 6 or 4 months respectively, if I get one of these jobs.

While I need a job, and something new is always good, AND experience is integral to careerity -- it would be hard to be away from Jacob.  I guess that's life, anyway.  And at least it would mean that I'd probably have more luck finding something in Ottawa afterwards.

Really I should stop worrying about it until I know if I got one of the jobs.  Usually I'm not much for stressing out over things.

Twilight is terrible.  Terribly written, terribly wrong in every sense.

However!  It is hilarious.  If you have a masochistic love for absurdity and bad pop culture, Twilight might be for you.  It has given me hours and hours of pleasure.  It's an excellent go-to when feeling sad!

Now, the books are an order of magnitude worse than the movie; the movie at least distills the crazy into something that isn't a billion pages of cooing over how beautiful Edward is.  Even the characters turned out a little more enjoyable and human.  And it kind of has a plot!

Nevertheless it's not a good movie in any sense other than being an awesome crackfest.  And oh I love it.  There are little glistening sounds at the big reveal:



Sparkly vampires.  SPARKLY VAMPIRES THAT PLAY BASEBALL.  If you don't find the concept of sparkly vampires with poorly-applied white makeup playing bad CGI baseball funny....I am chagrined.

I'm reasonably solitary by nature.  I don't tend to make close, real friends easily.  I've spent tons of time by myself over the years (notably, for most of my university career).  That doesn't mean I like to be friendless and alone...

In Peterborough, I had the good fortune to make two very good lifelong friends.  But now of course we're in different cities, so here I am in yet another place with no friends.  Even worse than that, I am unemployed right now, so I don't get any human contact there; and I have a completely empty apartment.  Nobody at all to keep me company here either.

It gets lonely.

My family is nice and chock-full of heart problems, so it doesn't hurt for me to want to be in decent shape.  That doesn't mean I have been historically.

But just over a year ago I bought a bike.  I hadn't been on a bike since approximately grade 9, at a certain point I didn't really enjoy it.  We lived in the middle of nowhere so I couldn't even use it to go anywhere as it was just too far away.  I ended up buying a bike because the buses in Peterborough blew and I figured that as much as I hated biking, it couldn't be worse than the buses.

Much to my surprise, I liked it.  It's so much faster than walking...!  It's useful!

Moving to Hull just cemented that.  It's a lot easier to get around without a vehicle when you have a bike.  And it's fun.  I really love all the trails here.  I've found tadpoles, I've seen rabbits, herons, deer, all sorts of birds, groundhogs....

Then I left the bike at Jacob's cause I had to go to an interview and suddenly I felt stuck.  Bummer.  Need to go steal it back.

In other news, riding a bike has given me some stamina (which I have been incredibly lacking before, even when in decent shape), so I can go running!  I'm up to 3k so far.  This is a big deal to me.

I haven't used my lj as a place to write about stuff and junk for years and years.  Which is detrimental to how I DO use it, cause I occasionally get turned down by communities who think I am a troll.  Boo-urns.

I got the text today that Jacob buzzed his head and shaved his beard.  Oh noes!  I was really enjoying beardy men!  I am wondering how strange and unrecognizable it will seem.  Also he will have an upper lip unencumbered with moustache...!  Oh boy the kissing will be different.

The main impetus to actually writing something today is due to my severe, rampant procrastination.  I have to finish the next step in my internship application to CCI today.  But I just can't get myself working on it.  Perhaps the beard-removal will be the motivation I need.  If I don't finish this by the afternoon, I cannot go see facial-hair-free boyfriend...


(What would I do without you, GIS)

British old guys are the greatest thing ever. I don't know why they're all crazy, but man, it makes for interesting times.

An old couple came in, looking for suits, and somehow the old guy said something about being 94, so Lubna got all impressed and asked him what his "secret" was.

So he says: sex

And right there, I'm totally gone...I almost ended up on the floor, I was laughing so hard.

During this conversation, I'm ringing something up for some Filipino woman. He's saying this, and she looks SO disgusted.

And I'm laaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaughing.

Lubna goes to help the old woman, and the guy says to me "you always need to tell them something that'll shock them when they ask that question."

So I say "yeah, I think you managed it for that woman..."

I'm taking English Words. It's interesting.
So far I've learned that people are goofy and thought "pease" was plural, so they dropped the end to be "pea". Of course, it wasn't actually plural, but what do repressed peasants know? "I'm sorry, old woman." "I'm not a woman!"

Slippery, slime, slither, sly: you never think of it (I don't, at least), but they all relate to the same sort of frictionless things. Strange how that sort of thing works out.

Same with flutter, float, fluff, fly: light sort of words.

Also, Old English used "en" for plurals. So you'd have shoe and shoen, house and housen, etc etc. But then French came along and brought in their fancy "s" ending for plurals. Even so, the irregular words that we have are remnants from the original "en" plurals. Like ox and oxen, instead of oxes. I wondered about oak and oaken, but didn't ask. Presumably, it could have meant "lots of oak trees", back in the day.

Oh yeah, and the French nobles had all of their fancy words for things, like:

French ---> Loser peasants
Beef -----> cow
Mutton ---> sheep
Mansion --> house

And because of the damn French and so forth, we have three levels of synonyms.

Basic --> French (literary) --> Latin (learned)

holy --> sacred ----> consecrated
ask ---> question --> interrogate

And I didn't realize that xianity was only introduced around the 5th century. I have no idea why, since I know it wasn't very concrete around earlier on, but still. It's JESUS! He should be all over!

It's a live journal. And what will they think of next?