Still in the Children's Library and still having fun.

Two events of note occurred today:

1. I had Shreddies and apple juice for breakfast for the first time in almost a week. A week without Shreddies!! I can't even remember the last time I went that long without Shreddies. I enjoy swallowing immensely.

2. My practicum started today, and I did not throw up on anyone! I knew I was going to be reading stories on the trolley bus, but I thought it was going to be during the afternoon and I'd have a chance to buy some Gravol at lunch. Unfortunately, the bus trip was scheduled for 10am, so I had to embark sans Gravol. I got to read about three stories (including the classic If You Give a Mouse a Cookie) before I became extremely nauseous. When we got to the mall the librarian who was with me took me to Zellers to buy Gravol. I barely made it back downtown. The bus route was all over the place and the roads were slippery from the snow. Thankfully, after realizing how miserable I was, the librarians told me I can concentrate on other programming activities for the rest of my time. On Monday I get to do a performance of the Billy Goats Gruff with puppets!

So last Thursday afternoon, as I struggled to stuff everything I would need for the summer into my suitcases, I decided I'd leave my ski jacket liner and my winter boots in Halifax to save space. After all, I though, how much snow are we really going to get in April?

After I got home on Friday afternoon, I had a conversation with my mother about the outbreak of mumps in Halifax and how awful it would be to get sick during the final crunch of the semester.

Saturday night it started to storm. It snowed until Sunday night. There was more snow for Easter than there was for Christmas.

In the wee hours of Saturday night I woke up with a throat so sore I could barely swallow. By morning my face resembled a chipmunk's and I had a fever. It looked like I had the mumps. Thankfully when I went to the doctor on Monday it turned out to be a bacterial infection of some sort and the antibiotics he gave me started to clear it up right away. This meant I did not have to be quarantined for nine days (hurray!), but I wasn't able to start my practicum on Tuesday either (boo).

The moral of the story is that Murphy's Law will get you every time. In fact, although I am pretty much better and get to start my practicum tomorrow, it's supposed to storm again tomorrow night.

In other news, I have a job in a library in Charlottetown for the summer! I don't want to put details here, but anyone who wants to know more can email me.

There are days when you're just so grateful for something someone has done for you, when you don't know what you would have done without their help, and today is one of those days. The person is my brother. I came within seconds of a full-out meltdown last night and he stayed up with me until 2am to fix a computer problem I had no idea how to solve. All I can say is thank goodness for computer genius brothers.

SIM party tonight; home tomorrow.

As requested, here is a photo of the giant birthday penguin. Isn't he fantastic?

Thankfully, the theme of this post will not be Adventures With Fire. In fact, I haven't really done anything that interesting since the middle of March. Right now my days are mostly filled with assignments, assignments, and more assignments, and in just two weeks I will be one-half of a professional librarian! My practicum starts on April 10 in the children's department of the library I used as a kid, which is pretty exciting as well. Some of the planned activities sound pretty cool, plus I'll get to organize some of my own. This also means I get to come home for at least a few weeks!!

I had a lovely birthday last weekend. Friday night there was a potluck dinner with an insane amount of delicious food and three kinds of cake! Drew and Dee were busy in my kitchen all afternoon, so there was chocolate cake for Vinny and white cake with pink icing and sprinkles for me and then Shannon brought DQ cake as well. I am now also the proud owner of a gigantic stuffed penguin. Plus I got to wear a tiara!


Mayhem will ensue on Monday when Dee and Emily move a bunch of their stuff into my place to be stored for the summer. Thankfully space isn't an issue, but I'm trying to get some things organized now so there will be less mess to worry about later. Since Dee's bed and belongings will be here, Dee herself is also going to stay for a few days until she heads back to Winnipeg for the summer. Happily, the other end of the storage bargain means Liam and I will have people to help us clean and move in August!

Welcome to another installment of Roseanne's Adventures with Fire.

Last night, at about 3:30am, I was awakened by a ringing noise. Assuming it was my alarm clock, I hit snooze and rolled over to go back to sleep. As the ringing continued, I groggily realized it was actually the fire alarm going off and that hitting snooze was not going to make it stop. I stumbled out of bed, found a pair of socks and a sweater, put on my parka, and hoofed it down five flights of stairs.

The lobby was filled with the yellow dust from a fire extinguisher, and everyone was huddled on the sidewalk. It wasn't long before three fire trucks, an ambulance, and four police cars were parked out front. I don't even know what happened, but it was a very cold and windy hour before we were allowed back into our apartments.

Like I said before, I'm starting to be a little perturbed at the attraction that seems to exist between me and fire alarms.

In other news, Liam arrives tomorrow to spend the weekend and the SIM St. Paddy's Day party is tomorrow night. Hurrah for socializing!

I wish I could tell you I've been doing something exciting while my blog has been AWOL, but unfortunately I've mostly been hunkered down doing incredible amounts of homework. Thankfully nothing has reached the panic level of the 24-hour literature review, but that doesn't really make for exciting blogging either.

On another note, my youngest brother finally got his license last week (yes, procrastination is a family trait). Now all the Gauthier kids can drive! Woot!

Tonight I managed to turn a frozen pizza black. The last time I baked a frozen pizza I accidentally dropped it into my oven upside down. I'd say my karma might be trying to save me from junk food, except I'm still eating an obscene amount of chocolate.

Is it me, or are buildings more likely to catch on fire when I'm around?

I just got home from a long day at school and I wasn't even in my apartment for ten minutes when the fire alarm went off. I trooped outside with everyone else to stand in the cold, listening to people talk about how smoky it was on the seventh floor and crossing my fingers that nothing was actually burning. Turns out there was a kitchen fire on Floor 7 that was extinguished pretty quickly, but still set off the alarms. On the plus side now I know the smoke detectors in this building work...

Seriously though, that's two fires in Waterloo and now one in Halifax. I don't know how I feel about this trend. I know my mother won't like it.

All my assignments for the week have finally been submitted. I have mopped the kitchen floor and found the source of the funny smell in my kitchen. I am currently watching The Daily Show and eating my midnight bowl of Shreddies. I am ready to go home.

The next time I complain about how much work I have to do, someone please remind me of the past twenty-four hours.

With three assignments due this week, one each for Monday through Wednesday, I spent my weekend holed up in my apartment with the Black Baby. Things were going well: I sent in a research proposal, wrote a draft of a management paper, and almost finished my literature review.

Then, yesterday afternoon, Dee and I decided that maybe we should double-check our research question for the literature review with our prof. Unfortunately, during this meeting we realized we had approached our project from the absolutely, positively wrong angle. Unfortunately, this also meant that even though each of us had an almost completed 8 page paper, we were going to have to start all over again. From scratch. Two newly-researched papers were going to be due in twenty-four hours.

This was the scene at about 11pm.

I have never, ever cut it so close on an assignment before. We researched and wrote until I fell asleep at 4am. Dee was up until 5am. We skipped class Monday evening, but had to be at school at 8:30 this morning. After class we went back to my place and worked until our next class at 2:30. We handed in our papers on our break. Here's post-paper:


My hands are shaking and I feel like I'm drunk. I still have another paper to finish, but I just can't face doing any more work today. Time for some leftover pizza and nothingness.

Some random updates...

Dee came over the other week and made the best corn chowder I've ever tasted.

I finally realized why my contacts weren't working right - I was putting the left one in the right eye and vice versa.

Lynda was here for a very brief visit this weekend. It was lovely to see her (as it always is), but unfortunately she had to miss the Pirate Party at Fenwick on Saturday night.

This is as ferocious as I can look. In other words, not too ferocious at all. There was lots of dancing and eating of cupcakes and yohoho-ing and all the other things at which pirates excel.

And now back to homework.

Congratulations to Katie and Dave who announced last night they're getting married in August! There's nothing I love more than happy people, and they are definitely the happiest I've seen in a while.

Lynda and Rosey’s Fantabulous Skating Adventures: Day 1

Senior Women’s Short Program
Lynda: The women’s short program brought us the return of the lovely Cynthia Phaneuf to national skating. She has been working her way back from an injury, and word on the street was she was not quite at the top of her game. She put down a charming performance which featured gorgeous arm movements and lovely musical expression. It wasn’t technically brilliant, but it put her in good position for the free skate. We saw her sitting with her mom before skating and then we saw her warming up across the rink. FYI: she has Betty Boop skate guard covers
Rosey: The highlight of the women’s short was Lesley Hawker’s solid skate. It’s always great to see hard work rewarded, and Lesley was clearly delighted by the crowd’s response to her performance – she got the only standing ovation of the evening.

NOTE: Part way through the afternoon we realized we had the BEST SEATS EVER when both Victor Kraatz and Brian Orser sat in the section in front of us. The conversation went something like this:
Rosey nudges Lynda: “Holy crap, that’s Victor Kraatz!”

Ten minutes later Lynda nudges Rosey: “Oh my God, that’s Brian Orser!”

Ten minutes after that Rosey says to Lynda: “Is it just me, or is the BMO Bear flirting with us?”


Senior Pairs’ Short Program
Lynda: Hometown favourites Brodeur and Mattatall brought the crowd to their feet with their spirited short program, despite the fact that their death spiral slid away from them. They were pretty decent considering that this is their first year together, and she has never skated pairs before. Give them time, and they might be pretty good.
Rosey: Lynda told me I was going to love Dube and Davison, and was she ever right. Watching them skate is like eating Lindt chocolates (the really creamy ones that come in the red wrappers). As they entered their death spiral, Davison cradled Dube’s head in one hand and I fell in love. There are few things in skating I adore more than beautiful death spirals.
Lynda: So, we were slightly creeped out by the brother/sister Moscovitches. First of all, she’s only 13, but she looks like she’s 22. And I certainly would not want either of my brothers grabbing me in the places that he was grabbing her. That being said, they did have lovely unison in their side by side pair spins, which is something that all the other pairs failed to accomplish.
Rosey: And finally, we both noticed that 14 year old Rachel Kirkland bears an amazing resemblance to Dee, except she’s even smaller! (And we didn’t know that was possible!) She’s so teeny that her partner looked like he was scared he was going to break her.

Some very obnoxious younger skaters sat behind us for the pairs’ short program. At first we didn’t know who they were, we just knew they were opinionated. One of them was making fun of a pairs skater who was bigger than average, saying, “His arm’s the size of my leg!” An annoyed Lynda leaned into Rosey and commented, “Actually, his arm’s the size of that guy’s big mouth.”

For Day 2's adventures, including a run-in with a rain storm, see Lynda’s blog.

Lynda and I have been putting in some hardcore time at the Canadian Figure Skating Championships over the past two days. We've had some adventures - some good, some hilariously bad. There will definitely be a lengthy post from both of us after the men's and pairs' long programs today, but in the meantime, look how close we were to Brian freakin' Orser!!!

While doing some reading for my Research Methods class, I came across this exercise on the efficiency of language (ie. having one word that signifies an entire concept) in my textbook:

"Imagine, for a moment, that you are driving along a country road. To your left you see something with the following characteristics:
~Black and white in colour, in a splotchy pattern;
~Covered with a short, bristly substance;
~Appended at one end by an object similar in appearance to a paintbrush;
~Appended at the other end by a lumpy thing with four pointy objects sticking upward (two soft and floppy, two hard and curved around);
~Held up from the ground by four spindly sticks, two at each end."

That's so easy, I thought. Obviously it's a skunk that's been run over and has all four of its legs sticking up in the air! It's black and white and has a tail and you see dead skunks near the road all the time at home!

Needless to say, I felt pretty dumb when I read the next sentence: "Unless you were born yesterday, you would almost certainly identify the object as a cow." Then I read the list to Liam and he guessed that the animal being described was a zebra, and I felt better.

Some days I wonder how I managed to get into graduate school....

After a Christmas vacation with a rocky start and a happier end, I'm back in happening Halifax.

Classes started Wednesday, but I've only had two and a half so far. My class tonight was cut short when the power went out on campus. Oddly enough, when I got back to my apartment, only one block away, my building still had electricity. Dee and I took it as an omen we should eat the leftover ice cream cake in my freezer in case I did lose power later and the precious cake melted.

Liam came back to Halifax with me to ease the transition from home to away, and Lynda arrived Friday night for the Oliver! Extravaganza. After a Saturday spent at the Halifax Shopping Centre (I got the most gorgeous red cushions for my couch!), Dee, Lou, and I took in Oliver! at the Neptune Theatre. I thoroughly enjoyed myself. The live version of this show is a million times better than the movie. Now I just need to find a way to work the phrases, "I'm reviewing the situation" and "Pip, pip, cheerio, be back soon" into my conversations.

Liam and Lynda left on Sunday, but now that I'm getting back into the swing of things I'll have plenty to occupy myself with. First YA class is tomorrow!!!

Christmas Eve - this is my favourite night of the entire year. My house smells like cookies and bread sticks. The Christmas tree is covered in shiny baubles and presents in red and green paper are oozing out from under its bottom branches. An elderly gentleman cat is snoring among the boxes; he loves Christmas too. Another cat, this one with a twitchy tail and perky whiskers, is curled up on the rocking chair. In half an hour they'll probably be chasing each other through the presents. Christmas carols are playing on the radio in the kitchen, and my dad is in such a good mood about finishing his shopping he hasn't told my mother to "turn down that awful, schmaltzy racket" or drowned out CBC with blues music. One brother is home and later on we'll all pile into the car to pick up the other brother. Then we'll drive around, looking at Christmas lights, "bickering" over who's taking up too much room in the back seat. Once we come home, we'll hang up our stockings by the chimney with care and nestle into our beds while visions of sugar plums dance in our heads. Merry Christmas everyone!

I'm home! The driving was touch-and-go yesterday, but we made it.

We did make a rest stop just outside Oxford. The Cobequid Pass was nasty - it was freezing raining and snowing and we couldn't see more than a few feet of the road ahead. After passing an SUV upside down in the ditch and nearly being pushed off the road by an eighteen-wheeler that whizzed past at twice the speed of all the other vehicles on the highway (most of which had their four-way flashers on), Mom decided she wanted to get off the highway until a snowplow had been by. What really made me laugh was that the eighteen-wheeler was an ice cream truck: Now, I'm an ice cream fan and all, but really, who needs ice cream that badly during a snow storm?

Anyway, I've been enjoying cuddling with my cats and playing Stephen's new Wii. Tomorrow my family is putting up our decorations. Time for Christmas!