It snowed last night. Just a couple of inches, enough to freshly coat everything in white. Perfect and beautiful.

I went out today. Didn't have to; didn't really need anything, although my mom wanted a bottle of wine so I braved the liquor store. It wasn't as crazy as I was expecting. michak, you know the one near you, in the back corner by the Baskin Robbins? I had to go there on Christmas Eve one year and it was bloody ridiculous. People lined up around the corner of the building and a rent-a-cop regulating how many were allowed inside at a time. O_o Alcohol is clearly part of the Canadian holiday tradition, lol.

But the mall was the same way: busy, not crazy. Christmas Eve in Nova Scotia lacks the frantic consumerism that characterises the day in Ontario, the few times that I've needed to go somewhere that day. And I eventually ended up in Chapters, curled up in an armchair by the fireplace with a magazine and a latté, for about an hour and a half of sheer loveliness. (Btw, the 2006 Writer's Digest Yearbook has a good list of websites, but most everything else is geared towards articles/freelancing; fairly useless for novelists.)

On my way out, I put in the mellower Warm Firelight, Wine & Friends holiday CD I made a couple of years ago, b/c I wanted to listen to a couple of the songs at full volume while in the car, as it's difficult to do so in the house. And I just kept driving, right past my exit and well beyond. I can't really afford long drives anymore (gas is too expensive), and taking a long drive on a badly-lit highway at twilight is generally a bad idea when you can't see that well because you can't stop fucking crying, but I just needed the time and space alone and in my car is really the only time I ever get that. Because I finally figured out what my problem's been with Christmas this year: I'm homesick. My cousin enclosed this photo of my niece in my card. She's so adorable and she looks so much like he and I both did as little kids, and I haven't seen her in person since she was six months old. Which is the last time I saw any of the rest of my family, on my way back from California at Easter in 2004. No one came up this summer and I miss everyone. I miss the city, too. I know I can breathe here and I'm happy and I'm making a life for myself, but sometimes I want to run back to Toronto where people don't make random conversation with strangers and I can shop any day of the week even if there's nothing I want to buy and I can get a perfect damn strawberry-banana-mango smoothie on Yonge Street.

Meh, I'm always emo at Christmas and it irritates me. Going to go eat dinner and try not to mope. *rolls eyes*

I had a lovely, lovely day yesterday. I had the house all to myself in the morning after I picked up my car, so I could turn up the stereo and dance around, and then I went out to run some errands and stuff. The optometrist's office will call me on Monday to let me know if they can get a replacement part for my glasses - the manufacturer was closed, of course - and she shrinkwrapped the arm to the frames. It's pretty cool actually; you totally can't see it, unlike the original emergency fix of Scotch tape lol. And it was so cute: there's a dance academy right next door and there was a ballet class of maybe 7-9 year old girls, all in bright pink leotards and pale pink tights. Sooooo sweet and nostalgic for me. I couldn't remember where it was that my dad mentioned seeing that before and having flashbacks to picking me up at Rita's after class, lol. And then, b/c I'm rarely in that mall and I forgot they even had a Music World, I checked for the CD I've been looking for since freaking May b/c it's a habit to check all stores I come across now, and they had it! O_o Okay, so it IS another example of non-existant impulse control but I can't quite bring myself to feel guilty about it, lol. It was too exciting. So I'm the proud owner of Green Day's 1,039/Smoothed Out Slappy Hours now. :D

It was a gorgeous day, warm sun and decent temperature. I haven't been out to Peggy's Cove since before gas prices skyrocketed but they just dropped below a dollar so I felt relatively justified in driving out there yesterday, especially since as anticipated it began raining like a mofo today and that's supposed to continue all week. Damn Wilma. So I went for a lovely long drive with my new CD turned way up and the window open. <--This is where the artfully dishevelled part comes in, lol. I'd left the house with my hair still wet and it wind-dried to what was actually a good just-fucked look. No way anyone's fingers would be getting through it - it took me a while to comb it out later lol - but good hair days are always nice! So I sat on the rocks for a while at the Cove, just breathing it in and settling, and then drove back.

Didn't feel like going home yet so I went to Chapters, got a latté at Starbucks, found a chair and sat down to read the writing magazine that I'd wanted the other day but did not buy. It had some really good stuff in it. I had to laugh at the main article that had caught my eye, though, about sentence diagramming. The writer was laying out a technique to diagram sentences so that you could look at where the extra verbiage was and streamline your writing. Excellent thought, but she was talking about it being a way for non-linguists to figure it out and I literally giggled sitting there, b/c of course I know perfectly well how to do a proper fullblown sentence tree. I haven't done one in a while, but when you're in a linguistics programme it's kind of the equivalent of your times tables - it gets hammered into your head hard and early.

Anyway, it's always wonderful to just lose yourself in reading something, and it really was a good issue - wish I could recall the title, b/c it was NOT Writer's Digest lol. So I finished my coffee and went home, and later on settled in to catch up online, check over homework, read fanfic and all that good stuff. And a wonderful guy on the Idiot Club forum had allowed me to use some of his monthly downloads on eMusic.com so I was puttering around on there and choosing what I wanted. They have soooooooo much that I would LOVE to get and it seems to be a really awesome set-up. It's totally legit, affiliated with allmusic.com, and it has a database of over 600,000 independent label songs in high-quality MP3 format, of all genres. (cookie2697, there are a bazillion indie rock tunes. ;-)) The Basic subscription is US$9.99/month, for 40 downloads a month. I can't think of a better deal than that for legal downloads! Once I get some money behind me again I will definitely be signing up. There's a free trial as well, if anyone else is interested. :-)

So that was my very long day, lol. About the only thing I didn't really do that I consider soul-soothing (usually) is write, but I'm sort of getting somewhere in that direction. It's just not something that anyone here is probably going to want to see, lol. And it will be surreal in the extreme to post in a different fandom, I expect. Oh, and as for today, yuck. I woke up to grey pre-dawn light at NOON and it hasn't improved. But homemade spaghetti sauce is a day-brighterner. :-)

Not like that should be a surprise. I spent thirty-five dollars that I do not have today, on a latté, this year's Starbucks Halloween bear and SPIN magazine. Funny, I put down the writing mag that I quite wanted and thought I'd just peek at music before I left, and there it was. Never mind that I already have scans of the relevant pages, lol. Although truthfully, the History of Indie Rock article is what made me decide to pick it up. And damn, these bears are getting to be one expensive collection!! But they're so cuuuuuute. :-D

Going to the movies tomorrow night, to see either Elizabethtown or In Her Shoes - depends on what time we make it there. The late show doesn't tend to be that late here, which is a bit of an issue when you work til 9 pm. But we need to get Julie out of the house, and Cass is on a mission to feed me donairs. Once I've crossed that line I'll let you know wtf they actually ARE, lol. Sort of like gyros wraps with sub sauce, from what I can tell...

On the Julie-out-of-house thing, her marriage is kind of imploding. Which I wish I could say I hadn't seen coming a mile away, but she's 24 and he's 22. Lol, he and I basically politely ignore each other whenever there's a group function, which is I suspect partly b/c he doesn't approve of me on a superficial level (not hot enough to hang w/her) but more b/c I haven't done anything to particularly dampen the vibes that I do not like him. I have not liked him since the first time I *saw* him, before I even offically met him, and I haven't liked the way he's treated Julie even before this insanity. But she's been off work all week b/c she's a mess, and I seriously want to kick something really fucking hard. Preferably his head. I tried to stay neutral when it all started b/c it sort of mirrors what happened with A and I, with him being "too friendly" with a female friend, and with me not liking Matt on top of that I was too close to my own memories to even make an attempt at unbiased advice. Now, of course, I wish I'd tried harder but I doubt anything I did would have made any difference. All I can do is be there for her now. Therefore, chick night.

Bah, and Christine reminded Cass of her other mission concerning me, which I thought I had successfully deflected thanks to the donair virginity lol. It was back when we were all gussied up for Rock Star day - btw, the one photo we got is absolutely useless. You can't even tell who WE are, let alone who we were supposed to be. Anyway, so we were talking about the whole fuck-me pants thing b/c of Cass's skintight pleather and she decided that she should find me a guy. She looked quite evil stating it too, what with the devilish smile and piles of black eyeliner LOL, and I was like, oh shit. Today, the military police office across the parking lot was apparently having some kind of formal event b/c there were lots of guys in dress uniform. Christine saw them when she went across to Tim's for coffee and mentioned it to Cass, but I didn't let her drag me out that way on our break, lol. God that's all I need! Yes, I'm totally ready and interested in dating - I daresay anticipatory, even, which is something I haven't felt for eons in that area - but the idea of my 22-year-old friend trying to set me up scares the crap out of me! LOLOL

Hmm. There was more, but it's flitted off into the sunset. Oh well.