Ok, ok, so as hard as leaving is (I didn't cry this time! Progress!) I'm actually rather glad to be back in Waskaganish. Miiight be heading out Monday for a week in Ottawa/North Bay/Mtl. Trying to get out of it to work on... well, work, but if not, c'est pas la fin du monde.
Slept til 1:48 PM. Travelling by plane, even without a time zone difference, kills me.
Goodnight, cyberspace
Oh, what a sketchy airplane. If you don't believe me, google image search: interior, beech 1900. They actually, after the 2nd stop, made all of us in the back get up and sit in the front to balance out the weight, as the luggage is in the back end, much like a car trunk.
My keys (which I lost in the bathroom of the Granby mall yesterday) turned up at security today. I won't have to break & enter my own home on Thursday afternoon.
It seems weird to think I'll be skiing Wednesday night, and at pottery in Wask on Thursday night. I've gotten used to it being a day, day and a half trek to get from Here to There (or vice versa), that makes flying direct feel a little surreal.
I probably won't be home until Easter/Goose Break, ergo 3.5 months. Trying to stock up on fun, skiing, and essential items. I've discovered you can pretty much order anything online through Amazon... if only I could get a credit card, alas.
Not taking my skis... but hoping to get in a few days of skiing during the ski trip if all works out... debating having my skis shipped by Canada Post later this winter. We all know by now that, regardless if I'm up North or in Shefford, Canada Post has a personal vendetta against me, and are hellbent on losing/near destroying 3/4ths of my mail. I find it more comical and funny than anything at this point...
Bed time.
First blog post of 2011.
I love a new year, in its first days. It's all shiny, and new, full of unknown.
What will happen? Will I lose my car keys, and house keys for both North and South? Wait, I already did that today at the mall...
Not much to report. Much shopping, all has been shipped North. When it arrives, I'll post pictures of my new favorite decoration items.
I swapped in the giant Eiffel Tower for a more transportable reasonable one.
Not that, of course, a giant metal Eiffel Tower is ever either of those criteria, I suppose.
A few last days of freedom from work and stress.
Not that getting everything ready to head back, and fretting over term 2 marks is relaxing.
I'm fine with going back to Waskaganish for another 4 month stretch... I do, however, have a ball of stress and dread whenever I think of work, teaching, math, etc. Reading facebook statuses assures me that other teacher friends are living a similar heartattack waiting to happen...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1D5PtyrewSs
Goodbye, 2010. Finally, the hours left on the calendar are dwindling down, and a fickle, topsy-turvy, roller coaster of a year grinds to a close. At first I thought that I would be ecstatic and not a bit nostalgic or sad to see it fade into history. And then, of course, I thought back: my first year in Becket (there will be more when I'm living in Mtl again, bien sur), finally getting to say goodbye to McGill, new people, finally achieving a tiny smidgeon of financial stability for the first time... ever. New emotions, new places, and a few happy pilgrammages to the old places that remain important, and good (Maine, evidemment).
There were, as any roller coaster has, the low points, as well, sometimes accompanied by a high speed downhill slope in a rattling wooden cart . I don't feel like enumerating them. Live, learn, forward motion.
I still love amusement parks. I learned; some people, places, experiences, routines are now farther away, distance and emotionally, others are closer despite the distance. The future, after a year like this, doesn't seem nearly as scary as it did if I rewind to one revolution around the sun ago.
2009 ended and 2010 started in Montreal, with friends and yahtzee... it seems an eternity since we (attempted) to howl out Auld Lang Syne at midnight while toasting champagne in mayson jars. People change, people move, people drift. Sometimes they come back, sometimes they don't. Sometimes, like now, you just have to wait and see what time reveals. Carpe diem, so they say.
Tonight will be spent in Granby dancing out the remaining minutes of another year with my favorite girls, after an afternoon on the slopes of Ski Mont Shefford (post tomorrow or the 2nd, promis!)
Alors, on danse.
Happy New Year to all.
Spent the day at Ski Mont Shefford. Which is, for the less ski-savvy, or non-Townshippers that might frequent my blog, a ski hill that closed in 2006.
That being said, I discovered last winter, first with Tom (see: torn meniscus), and later with Jess that the fact that it is closed is only a slight deterrent. Sure, there aren't any lifts to the top, nor is there a base or any grooming being done. There are, on the overwhelmingly positive side: no tourists, no lines, and an entire mountain of fresh, fluffy powder to play on in privacy. All, quite literally, in my backyard.
My love of ski hills and love of abandoned places aside, I will return here until it inevitably gets too grown up to ski, board, or crazy carpet down. We have a few good years left, though. (And, if the rumours are true, if the environmental issues ever get solved the owner, a Shefford mountain skiier and not developer, praise Ullr, does intend to re-open someday in a hypothethical future).
This mountain is, in many ways, the mythical paradise of my childhood. Not that everything was rosy. I can still remember laying my first ever tracks on alpine skis on this trail in '94. I also remember that I thoroughly did NOT enjoy this sport. Actually, mental images of beating my phys ed teacher over the head with the oversized straight-cut 1990s neon skis flashed through my mind, as did throwing my boots into the woods, and sitting by the fireplace in the chalet all day. Abandon ship.
Tears for Fears, the smell of Hubba Bubba, and memories of All-Sport (preferably grape) all elicit memories of this place. While dear old Glen mountain (perhaps later this week, or when I come visit in March) has a its share of legends, nostalgics, facebook groups, newspaper articles, and die-hards anxiously awaiting the day it may re-open someday, and a book on its history, Shefford has nothing. Except those who remember it as a slightly archaic, quirky place with its fair share of stories.
Quelques images....
I'm faced with the dilemma: how to lug a 3 foot high Eiffel Tower made out of metal back to Waskaganish., with a ridiculously small luggage allowance?
Had I purchased this before the 23rd, when I first saw it, and shipped it with the moving van, it would have made a great deal of sense.
Now, I have a box load of stuff I will probably have to mail to myself, that I found/bought/received/remembered after that point in time.
