Sideways

I've always had trouble fantasising. Whenever I try to come up with a story, I can only think up snippets. I'll think up one scene and not be able to progress it to the next. I can come up with a number of disconnected scenes, but there's no flow. I also get stuck on the scenes I do have, going over them again and again. It's like when you have a song stuck in your head, it's just that one line or two, repeated.

I used to be better at it, back when I was doing a lot worse than I am now. Back when I took shelter in my head, I could lie there for hours, thinking, 'til my limbs went cold.

Another thing that gets in the way is the direction I am facing while I think. I'll do my best to describe this...

If I happen to change position while I'm visualizing, the image(s) remain in the same orientation. For example, If I were to be looking straight ahead, then crooked my head to the side, the image from before would appear sideways in my mind; it did not change its position. Just like when you look at a picture, computer screen, etc., if you turn sideways, that image will now appear sideways. You are the one who has moved, not the object.

It's like my mental images are physically removed from me...

Jumble Gym [Update]

I was at Casablanca Books trying to sell Latin textbooks from the 60's the other day. A trio of nerds was there, looking at graphic novels. These weren't the stereotypical uber-nerds one usually thinks upon hearing the word 'nerd', nor the more subtle enthusiast of nerdy things, like myself (think flamboyantly gay compared to simply gay). No, these were the pretentious nerds. They speak in their own manner, a sort of drawl, similar to pretending to be bored. They say things like, "that's alarmism at it's best," and chortle (but not audibly, their faces smug...so, hardly chortling at all) at their brilliance. Great fun.

There was a Canadian antiques road show in town last week. I brought in my WWII RCAF snowshoes, worth $250 (but they're a part of history so I'm keeping them), as well as a mystery box I got at an antiques store.

I had no idea what this box was used for. I can only find one mention of the company online, and it's for a door mail box patent. What was held in place by the swivel? What was the slot and the hole for?

The appraisers did not know, either.

UPDATE: I showed this to a friend of mine who is a jeweller. He immediately told me what it was for: it would have held a beam scale. When in use, the beam would have been stuck into that little hole, using the box as a base. Each of the 2 compartments would have held one of the pans. The beam, weights, and other bits would have been arranged neatly alongside the pans. He suggested the box is from the 1940's.

Portals 3

Today was my last (hopefully) optometrist appointment for a long time. They still don't know what caused the injury in the first place, but the treatment seems to have healed nearly all of the damage. I will continue with the drops, but I no longer have to use the ointment.

I had the same doctor and intern as last time, as well as the intern from the time before that. He just wanted to sit in to see how my case had progressed, as he had never seen my type of problem before. I'm glad I could help him further his education.

Portals 2

I went back to the optometrist for a follow-up. This doctor did not see that I had REC (recurrent corneal erosion). I suggested it was IFCE (infrequent corneal erosion), but he said that the technical term was OIAW (once in a while). I am to continue with the ointment, as well as some more viscous eye drops.
The doctor hopes that the treatment will stop me from having any further attacks. Of course, we won't really be sure for months...I'll believe it once I've been fine for half a year.

Cobalt

Last month, I went rockhounding up in the Cobalt area, 140 km north of North Bay. I went with my Great Uncle and 3 members of my rock club. The 3 other members go there often, looking for silver. Cobalt and the surrounding area was famous for the amount of silver hauled out of the numerous mines. The weather was miserable, so we were collecting in the rain for most of trip.

We stayed at a hunting camp just south of Cobalt, on the shore of Lake Temiskaming. You could see Quebec on the other side. There are mine shafts all over the place, many of which haven't been capped, or even marked off with fencing. You have to watch where you step, lest you fall down a few hundred feet. We collected at old abandoned mine sites here and there, including some of the famous and most successful ones in the area known as Silver Centre.

I was lent a metal detector, set to ignore iron, but still pick up silver and other metals. I found a pop tab on the beach. One foot beneath the surface. Through clay. I did find some samples of silver and other minerals. I found a lot of cobaltite (silver in colour) and bright pink erythrite (which cobaltite decays into). There was also a lot of nickeline (coppery-silver in colour) and annabergite, a bright sea green mineral (the decayed form of nickeline). I found a few good pieces of silver, too.

I explored a bit around the Keeley and Frontier mines, right along the most abundant discovery of silver: the Wood's Vein. The concrete foundation of the old refining plant is sill there, and I found a couple of iron mill balls. There was a lot of really pretty creamy-pink calcite around the Keeley's ore dumps, and some lovely black rock with olive green veins.

Before heading back home, we stopped in at the mining museum in Cobalt. They had many, many high-grade samples of silver, from huge cut slabs, to fine naturally-formed wires. The mayoral chain of office was on display, too. It's made of a number of large (~4"x 2") rough discs (organically shaped) of solid silver!

Portals

For over a year now, I've been having eye problems. On numerous occasions I have woken up in the morning in agony. I have the most excruciating pain in my right eye. I'm not sure how to describe it. I know that the pain is on the front of the eye, under the upper lid. I've never been scratched there, but I assume it feels similar.

All my attempts to alleviate this pain do not help. Rubbing it, trying to hold it open, trying to hold it shut, warm damp cloths, cool damp cloths -nothing works. I'm extremely light sensitive during these attacks, making it unbearable to open my eye more than a slit when a light is on.

The extreme pain lasts about 10-15 minutes, after which time it begins to dull and move to the sides and back of the eye. The aching lasts for a few hours, sometimes for the rest of the day.

One week ago, I experienced the worst one yet. I got in to see the optometrist the day after. They could not find anything wrong. My eye was apparently perfectly healthy. It happened again this morning, and I managed to get in for an emergency appointment. I had hoped that by being checked out while the pain was still present they might find something.

I don't know if it was because I was checked so soon after the attack, but they found something this time. My cornea has an excess of water, and in certain spots one of the layers of my eye is not anchored to the layer beneath. I am to start using eye drops and an ointment to fix these problems. It is uncertain whether or not these are the cause of the attacks.

I return for a follow-up appointment in two weeks.

Doors Open 9

This past weekend was the 9th annual Doors Open event in Waterloo Region. I had planned out all of the sites Mom and I would visit, but of course we did not get to see them all (the sites are only open from 10am-5pm -not enough time to see everything).

We started off at the AirBoss rubber plant, which is just down the street from us (and looks a lot like Midgar). Our group saw hundreds of skids stacked with sheets of rubber to be sent to various companies. The tour guide showed us one of the mixers and passed around a block of natural rubber. The plant ships worldwide.

We next went to the Kitchener-Wilmot Hydro station (also right near our house). Mom went up 60 ft in the air one of their bucket cranes. The displays inside were fairly boring, such as collection of usage meters (including the smart meters introduced by THE TAX MAN! Dalton McGuinty), different types of cables, and the ever popular diorama of the many ways a person can be electrocuted (with the awful grating buzzers).

The Communitech Hub was a huge letdown. The tour consisted of walking past a bunch of closed doors to offices, a giant role of snow fence in the courtyard being passed-off as "art" (they specifically had some international "artist" fly in to do it), and a lounge full of modern furniture where the hip young minds do whatever it is that they do. The only reason I had wanted to go there was to see the HIVE, a virtual immersion room using funky green glasses. Basically, a holodeck. It was temporarily out of operation.

Next was the Ratz-Bechtel Funeral Home. It was nice to get to see more of the building, and without my dead father or grandfather on display. The staircase up to the tower was beautifully-carved oak. There was a lovely little office in the tower on the second floor. We weren't allowed in the top floor of the tower, which is an attic.

Of all the sites open this year, I most wanted to see the newly-opened Sorbara Law, located in the Seagram (and later Bauer) Estate. I had been wanting to see the inside for years, well before Sorbara bought the abandoned building. I even suggested it be added to the list of future sites on the survey handed out at last year's Doors Open. The new owners did a terrific job on the restoration, keeping nearly all of the wood panelling and fireplaces. Every bench opened up for storage space, including one hidden comnpartment going straight to the basement, where they may have hid alcohol during Prohibition. There were all sorts of wonderful window alcoves, too.

From there, we went to Cambridge for the last few sites on our list.

I wanted to see Grandview Public School, soon to be demolished. The interior was like any other school built in the 1920's, cozy, with nice ironwork on the railings. The exterior had a number of relief panels of grotesques doing learning-related activities. The entrance had a rope motif surrounding the jamb, with the provincial emblem at the roof's peak. All of these decorative features will be saved and incorporated into the new school, thankfully.

We next visited the Col. J.A. McIntosh, DSO, ED Armoury, home of the Royal Highland Fusiliers of Canada. The interior is remarkably well-preserved. There were knives, guns, bayonets, and swords (lots of Scottish broadswords) on display. The reserve members there were quite friendly. There was also an empty vending machine, the sign taped to it saying, "CATCHES ON FIRE WHEN PLUGGED IN".

Our last stop was Central Presbyterian Church. The sanctuary had patterned red carpet and a balcony with golden floral facing. The main reason to go was to see inside the bell tower. There was a little door to the side, from which the cupola could be reached via a narrow plank, only the plaster of the ceiling to either side. We only got to go inside the first floor of the tower. The man overseeing the area had to leave before we had a chance to climb the ladder to actually see the bells.

We stopped in a couple little antiques stores afterwards, and I bought a small (non-antique) dagger from Pakistan. Good for a fantasy costume.

BANG!

On the way home from a concert last week, I saw something hanging from a power line in front of the apartment building across from my house. It was a strand of something, glittering as it blew in the wind. I could also hear an electrical buzzing. I showed it to my mother, and she suggested it may have been the magnetic tape from a VHS. There was an intermittent blue-white spark where it touched the power line, accompanied by the buzzing noises (similar to the sound a bug zapper makes).

We weren't entirely sure what to do about it. Do you call the police? Or the Electricians Guild? About five or ten minutes after we went inside, there was a cacophonous BUZZ, the outside flashed blue-white, and we were plunged into darkness. It was quite startling. The entire street was pitch black.

The power came back a couple minutes later.

Chamber Music

The first concert I ever went to was at the Music Room (the K-W Chamber Music Society) in October of 2008. I had recently taken an interest in classical music, and my friend, Lois, treated me to a series of concerts. The Aviv String Quartet was performing all 15 of Shostakovich's String Quartets. I had never seen (or heard-Shostakovich is pretty insane/dark) anything like it before. It was fascinating to watch them play their instruments, especially the cello, fingers dancing frantically over the strings.

Concerts at the Music Room are held in the living room on the upper floor of the organizers' own house. It is a lovely atmosphere. It seats about 85 people, positioned around the floor space accorded to the musicians. The audience is just feet away from the performers -the way chamber music is meant to be played. The room is high-ceilinged, with wood beams, a fireplace faced with cobblestone, and various interesting artworks.

After the last concert of the Shostakovich cycle, a party was held at the house of my friend Leslie's boyfriend (she usually helps set things up). This was also coincidentally my first real party. I was able to meet the musicians -all very nice people, especially the cellist, Rachel Mercer.

I have been back for many concerts since then. They manage to hold some world-class performers. Till Fellner, an amazing pianist from Austria, came a number of times to play all of Beethoven's sonatas. I made sure to be there when he played Sonata No.23 'Appassionata', my favourite piece of classical music (thanks to Anne Rice, who inspired me to listen to it due to the large part it played in 'The Vampire Armand'). It is such a tempestuous work, and hearing it live was exhilarating; my heart was pounding.

I also try to go any time Rachel Mercer is there. In 2009 she won the privilege from the Canada Council to play the 1696 'Bonjour' Stradivarius cello for 3 years (it is insured for nearly $8 million). I saw her play in early 2010, and she let me touch it!

See Sarah McLachlan Live: Check!

Another goal fulfilled. I had been waiting for years for her to come back to Kitchener, ever since I discovered her music 14 years ago. She is my absolute favourite singer. She has such a powerful voice, and tends toward the dark. Like myself, the most depressing music makes her the happiest.

The concert was great. She brought some fellow singer/songwriters to perform with her: Melissa McClelland and her husband, Luke Doucet. They each played a few of their own songs. Sarah played a number of her newer songs as well as the greats. I did not care what else was played, as long as she did 'Possession'. I have the live version on iTunes and wanted to see her do it. It was incredible; she really held that last note forever. I am so glad I was able to see her perform.

Psidaprazam

Possible side effects may include:
dry mouth, fatigue, nausea, heart palpitations, rash, hives, blisters, welts, hair loss, blindness, difficulty breathing, liver failure, aphasia, mania, depression, shivers, hysteria, phobias, uncontrollable laughter, facial ticks, restlessness, paralysis, racing thoughts, paranoia, low blood pressure, anemia, an abnormal amount of somersaulting, voracious apatite, decreased apatite, hallucinations, migraines, obsessions, compulsions, spontaneous dance, monotonous voice, atheism, pantheism, excessive complimenting, lip syncing, foreign accent syndrome, aggressiveness, agreeableness, lack of depth perception, development of alternate personalities, bleeding, kleptomania, death, memory loss, abuse of metaphors, and torture.

I went out to buy a new laptop today. On the way to the bus stop, I could hear bagpipes being played. At Future Shop, I met a very talkative 11th grader who wanted to go into politics. He plans to be Prime Minister, and do a much better job than Harperor Palpatine. On the bus ride home, the ceiling lights leaked a pale blue liquid on me. There was also a girl who fit the stereotypical description of a prostitute: overdone makeup, fishnets, etc. Upon exiting the bus, a man swerved on his bike to avoid running into me. In a cascade of mishaps, he crashed over onto his side, and upon righting himself, dropped his bag of beer cans, which exploded, spraying beer all over the sidewalk.

Help

I have been encouraged by my therapist to ask these questions, despite the fear of alienating people.

Friendships have always been a source of pain and frustration for me. I have lost many friends, the reasons for which are unknown to me; they just kinda went away. I would (I thought) be a good friend, initiating conversations, plans. It seemed I always ended up doing all the 'work' in the friendship, however. Eventually I would hear less and less from them...I've learned to give up trying to keep a friendship going after a certain amount of time. Friendships need participation from both sides, right?

More and more I wonder if I am the problem. Is it that I keep choosing the wrong kinds of people? In that case, why? Is it that I'm too negative? I think that I am more positive when in the company of friends. Perhaps it is due to my AS. Not always responding appropriately (physically), missing various social cues "neurotypicals" take for granted, could be off-putting? I truly do not know.

I am not trying to complain. I just would like to know what I am doing wrong (if anything) so I can begin to work on it.

The Persistence of My Memory

My memory has always been a source of pride. I've always been able to recall vast amounts of (mostly useless) information. It stretches far into the past, and encompasses all the senses. I can remember things like everyone I've ever had a crush on, conversations I had years ago, where/how I learned a particular word, and many scenes from my early childhood. My earliest memory is of having my picture taken by a professional photographer. I was 2 and a half months old.

One of the things which makes me most proud is from when I was in YAP. For my psychological evaluation, one section required me to briefly study a key of symbols, each assigned a number. I then had to write the corresponding number under each symbol, doing this for as many symbols on the page within a time limit. Kathy Lawrence, who administered the evaluation, said she'd never seen anyone complete that much of the sheet.

My memory has been failing me lately, however. I've been forgetting things. I asked a friend if he had moved into a new apartment yet, completely forgetting that he had already told me he did a month or two before, even showed my where it was on a map. I had been going through my Magic: The Gathering cards, and realized that I was missing a large number. I no longer had a few of the cards I used to great success against my opponents. The more I looked into this, the more I noticed what was missing. I used to have an entire artifact-themed deck, most of which is just...gone. I'm sure it's possible that I tried to sell a number of cards, after I had to stop playing because I became obsessed with it. I should remember having done this, though.

This is very troubling for me. It scares me, losing my greatest asset.

The other night, Mom told me that we had once been in one of those old-fashioned elevators with the grates you close before ascending/descending. I should remember something like this. Her mention of it didn't even trigger the memory that should be there; I'm taking her word for it.

Meleagris gallopavo!

Last week I tracked a large dinosaur. I went out for a walk and found her on the sidewalk a few houses down the row. I followed her around for a bit, taking pictures, before she flew off across the street into a wooded area. I now know wild turkeys can fly. I tried to find her, searching through the trees, to no avail.

I decided to go to the park then, where I found her tracks, as well as at least one other bird's. The tracks went back and forth all over a large part of the park. It seems a dog had been chasing them through the baseball diamond as well.

I wonder what they were doing in the city?

Entire Passenger Load of Bus Found Asphyxiated

I was able to cross off a few things from my bucket list this past week. Mom and I went to the Elmira Maple Syrup Festival for the first time. We'd both always wanted to go for the toffee made by pouring the syrup into snow. The toffee wasn't bad (painfully sweet, though), but it took over an hour of waiting to get it. Their toffee delivery system was unorganized. There was no line up; everyone just crowded around the small pen, and toffee was handed out randomly, making it so that someone who showed up 30 minutes after you could even get theirs before you did. It wasn't worth the wait, in my opinion.

I also tried deep-fried Mars Bar for the first time: SO good-better than regular Mars Bar. There was an antiques show, in which I was close to checking off a third item from my list. Someday, I want to own a fire grenade (filled with carbon tetrachloride), and there were two of them at one of the tables. I had never beheld one in person before. They're quite heavy, despite the glass being not much thicker than a light bulb's. One was gorgeous, with a lovely metal bracket for mounting it on the wall. I had forgotten how dangerous they could be until he mentioned it (they work by sucking all the oxygen out of the area once smashed); I put it down after that. I didn't get it because I didn't have a secure way of transporting it home, and Mom would have been uncomfortable having it in the house. As it turned out, the bus ride back to Waterloo was packed; I had to stand the entire way back. I'm quite proud of my mother, however. She imagined me bringing the grenade aboard and dropping it, killing everyone inside; it made her laugh. I can just imagine the authorities finding the bus full of dead passengers, thinking it's some sort of bio-terrorist attack. She's becoming more like me as time passes; this is not a good thing for her.

Before leaving the town, I bought a bottle of maple syrup (so much better than normal syrup), as well as a block of lovely extra old white cheddar for only $2.00!

Dinosaur Sculptor

The lecture at this month's gem club meeting was incredible. Mark Rehkopf, an artist from St Jacobs, talked about his career making dinosaur sculptures. He started off working on a T. rex for a Discovery Channel special. He has built sculptures for museums all over North America, and done fossil reconstructions as well. He did the Diplodocus outside of Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh, the mastodons outside Indiana State Museum, and various dinosaurs in Chinese museums. He's worked on the blue whale hanging in the American Museum of Natural History. He even did the Chasmosaurs and Daspletosaurs (not T. rexes, it turns out) at the Nature Museum in Ottawa. He showed us his hidden signatures, such as in the hair folds of a mastodon and the Great Red Spot of Jupiter. He talked of building an animatronic Triceratops for Universal Studios Park, and the Jurassic Park: Lost World travelling exhibit.

At the end of the talk, he pulled out a couple pieces actually used in the film: a raptor claw, and a chunk of skin from the T. rex's neck. I actually got to touch a piece of Jurassic Park. I became very sad afterwards, and couldn't stop crying once I left. I know it had something to do with touching a part of my favourite film, but I have no idea why this would make me so sad.

Neighbours

My neighbours are an interesting bunch. There's the grandmother, who caused a bit of a ruckuss a few months back. We kept hearing a squawking from next door. Mom thought maybe they had a parrot; I thought it was someone possessed by demons. The noise continued for a couple of weeks, and eventually we were able to hear unintelligible muttering mixed with the squawks, confirming my suspicions. She was taken away to the hospitable one night, squawking at the paramedics. She no longer squawked after she returned home. Word through the grapevine is that she has passed away recently.

The children, who must be in their late teens, early 20's, get into violent arguments, threatening to kill one another. I've often seen cars pull up late at night, the son (or father) going out to them briefly. The parents are often heard late into the night, drunkenly partying (our walls are paper-thin).

One night, as I was trying to sleep, another fight broke out. There was screaming and crying, and shortly after, the daughter and a friend went outside. The girl was sobbing/angrily slurring (my window has gaps in the seams which allow noise in even more than the walls) about how she hated her father. Her friend was telling her that she shouldn't put up with this anymore, "hitting her so hard she bled, cleaning up the blood, before hitting her again." Every once in a while, the son would step out to yell at her, she telling him off each time. She drunkenly spewed about how her father "works during the day to make money to do cocaine the rest of the time,'' that he was the one who got her "hooked on heroin." At one point, the father stepped out, yelling at her to come back inside. She refused, saying she was going to "go die in the snow," that her death would be "on his hands." She wandered off, though she seemed to only be walking in circles around the block.

The police arrived shortly after, though all they did was ask a couple questions and leave, seemingly satisfied.

Scar

I have a scar on my right elbow. The story of how I got it reads something like a children's book in its repetitiveness.

When I was in grade 1 I fell off my bike, ripping up my elbow. Mom made a bandage of toilet paper and tape, for we didn't have any band aids big enough. All was fine until I tried to remove it later; it had fused with the scab. I was forced to re-open the wound to get the bandage off. We eventually got it to scab over without band aids. Later that week in school, I was playing on the jungle gym during recess. I jumped off a platform, but landed on my elbow. The wound of course tore open, making a bloody mess of my jacket. I had to go to the office to get the gash cleaned up; they even washed my jacket. Later in the week, my class was downfield for gym. It had recently rained, and the ground was incredibly muddy. We were running laps when I slipped, landing on my elbow, and tearing it open yet again.

Within only a week, I had managed to rip open my elbow 4 times.

Old Age: -2 Str, Dex, and Con; +1 Int, Wis, and Cha

I don't dread getting old. I'd love to look distinguished with grey hair, or if I lose my hair, to have wigs of hairstyles I never could have achieved with what I previously had. While bad knees, back problems, etc. will be unpleasant, I look forward to using an awesome cane. Intricately-carved, with stones and metal fittings...Probably more than one, depending on the occasion.

Ottawa

I recently spent a week with my uncle in Ottawa. I'd been experiencing a lot of anxiety the past couple months, going stir crazy. This was a big step for me; I've never gone a a big trip by myself before. It was terrifying and exciting. I gained a ton of XP (I believe I even levelled-up). On the bus ride there, I had a burst of initiative and struck up a conversation with the traveller who sat beside me. Laura and I talked all the way to Ottawa, and I now have a new friend!

My uncle and his fiancée worked during the day most of the week, so I was on my own to explore the city. I had come with a list of things I wanted to see, mostly museums. They have a special admissions "passport", which gets you into 9 museums in the area for only $35. Ottawa is a lovely city. There are statues around every corner (sadly, a dying art these days), the architecture of even the most mundane buildings, such as apartments, has style, intricate brick work. The transit system is highly efficient (unlike the rubbish they call public transportation here in KW), with double-length buses connected in the middle by a swivel device which looks like an accordion. Everything is bilingual. You see people holding hands all over, including many gay couples. I found there were a great many beautiful people there, too (I think it's from the mixture of French).

I first went to Parliament Hill. There was a free tour of Centre Block, which is simply gorgeous, but at only half an hour, it was quite rushed. The Library of Parliament, which I had wanted to see most, did not disappoint. There's something so appealing to me about circular libraries. The observation floor of the Peace Tower, just under the clock, afforded a grand view of the city. All 3 buildings of Parliament are built of various types of stone symbolic to Canada. At the back of the Hill is a small sanctuary for the stray cats in the area; they come and go as they please, paying little attention to the humans.

I went with my uncle to Little Ray's Reptile Zoo, a reptile sanctuary, on the outskirts of town. They take in discarded pets. We got to see bearded dragons, a rat snake, and alligators being fed. We also got to touch a wood turtle, a tiny possum, an albino Burmese python, and hold an emperor scorpion. The scorpion was neat. They don't feel like spiders, which barely touch you as they walk on you; their pointed legs press firmly into your hand. Along with numerous reptiles, there were also many amphibians, a number of arachnids, 2 skunks, a macaw, and a group of marmosets. The marmosets would sometimes watch you, mirroring your head movements (if they paused long enough from zipping around their enclosure, anyway). Ray's had some great warning signs: "if you put your fingers in the macaw's cage, it will bite you" and "if you throw something into the alligators' pen, we will make you go in and retrieve it'.

I also went with my uncle to the Canada Aviation and Space Museum. Kids got to ride around in pedal cars shaped like planes; it looked fun. We saw some lovely aircraft, including parts of the Avro Arrow, a Harrier (one of my favourites), a Spitfire, a Lancaster Bomber, a Sopwith Camel, and the Messerschmitt Kommet. There was a model display which explained how First World War fighters were able to fire their machine guns through the propeller.

My uncle's fiancée and I went to the Canadian Museum of Civilization in Gatineau, Quebec, just across the canal. Taflemusik, a group my violin teacher had played with, was holding a concert in the great hall. There was a postal gallery, with some neat things like how people would hollow out loaves of bread to smuggle alcohol in the mail. There was also a lot of native art and artifacts, including metal swords (I didn't know they had those). The main display was a trip of Canada throughout its history. It was like wandering through a town, there was so much to see. It started with the arrival of the Vikings and kept going. We wandered through the town gates into military forts, early homes, shops, churches, whaling operations, an oil rig, on and on. We weren't sure it would ever end. Everywhere you turned there was something else. There was a child's coffin in the window of the furniture/undertaker's shop. Behind the Ukrainian church was an outhouse; if you tried to open the door, someone would shout, "hey!" There was a store selling all sorts of neat things, like a banjo for $20. The Chinese dry cleaner's had a wax man at a counter having a conversation with another man behind a clothes line (his silhouette, washing laundry, was projected onto the hanging sheet). Numerous times we stepped out from a building onto a cobblestone street, the stores and lamp posts changing appearance as the times progressed. The ceiling was made up of a number of canvas pieces, lit dark blue as we entered the exhibit, and becoming pink/orange as we neared the end. The top floor consisted of mini galleries devoted to influential Canadians.

I met up with Laura and we went to the Canadian Museum of Nature. They had a live black widow spider (another thing crossed off my bucket list)! The marine gallery had a blue whale skeleton, various sea creatures, and an aquarium of pretty fish. There was also smokey quartz the size of my head with 500 thousand year-old water trapped inside (this is known as enhydro). To get to the top floor we had to ascend a glass tower built onto the front of the castle-like museum. A short glass walkway connected the two. Terrifying. The mineral gallery was superb. Though smaller than the ROM's, it had the same touchscreen technology for each display case. There were a lot of meteorites, some absolutely gorgeous garnets and dioptase, and many minerals I've never heard of before. The security guard there was quite knowledgeable, even telling us of his own experiences visiting mines up north. Apparently you can bring in your specimens to be identified by their geologists! There was an activity area across the hall where kids could earn points to trade in for mineral, fossil, or insect specimens. The most valuable treasures cost 100 points, and points could be accumulated over many visits to the museum. I was jealous; some of the gems they had would have cost me quite a bit to buy in a store. The bird gallery had many species I want to see in the wild some day, including swallows and ravens. The dinosaur gallery was great. It had a life-size diorama of 2 Daspletosaurs attacking a heard of Chasmosaurs. The skeletons included a Carnotaurus and a Dromaeosaurus. I was very impressed with this museum. The cafe was reasonably-priced, with delicious food. I had a potato and curry soup which was not overdone with the curry. The gift shop had the best selection of gems of any other museum. I got many affordable specimens of minerals not already in my collection, including the very rare weloganite.

I left Ottawa early because I felt I was about to get sick (I didn't), but it was an incredible trip.

Hospitable

Yesterday I went to the hospital (Saint Mary's Emerge has such better wait times) because I noticed a huge increase in the number of bubbles, squiggles, and specks of light in my vision. My doctor told me to get this checked out if it were to happen. I was only 5 minutes away from the hospital at the time, so I headed over, and was transferred from Triage (where I learned from a conversation I overheard that the smallest shark is the Dwarf Shark) to Minor Treatment in 15 minutes. The man I followed in was holding a dish towel on his head, his hair matted with blood. I found out later that he had fallen an hit his head; he got 15 stitches. I was seen within 3 hours. The doctor didn't see anything immediately wrong, but he referred me to an ophthalmologist. I was told it would take over a week to hear from their office. They called me today -my appointment is tomorrow morning! I'm not sure whether my getting in SO soon is a good or bad thing...

P.S. I've been meaning to mention my alarm clock. My mother got me a neat rolling alarm clock for Christmas. The screen and buttons give it the appearance of a ridiculously happy face. It seems to take delight in waking me, as it rolls around on its wheels and spins on its axle.

Big Brother

Sometime after my father died, I started going out with a Big Brother. Martin seemed like a nice guy. We went to movies, he got me lots of things, and encouraged me to start reading adult-sized novels and write stories. He was tough on me, though. If I became upset at something, or was scared to try something, he would put me down, saying things like "are you a mouse or a man?" When I would start to cry, he would just become angrier. Eventually I couldn't take it anymore, his abuse was occurring nearly every time we went out, and I refused to see him again.

A few days ago, I was grocery shopping with Mom, and we ran into him. I hate having to interact with people from my past; I like to keep them there. I shook his hand, politely chatting with him. He was all reminiscent about our model building projects. I don't know if he remembered hurting me. I can never tell with this sort of thing. The encounter rattled me a little.

J-Mas

I went out for dinner with my mother to Ye's Sushi for my 22nd birthday. I hate fish, and was hoping there would be other types of food (yay adventure!); there was. It was all-you-can-eat and we sampled various dishes. I tried shitake mushroom, just to say that I have (it was disgusting, like all other mushrooms). I ordered the bacon-wrapped bamboo (asparagus that I actually liked) twice, and for dessert I had a divine mango mousse, with a lengthy wait for the mango aftertaste. I agreed to let Mom tell the staff it was my birthday, but they only sing for you if you have a group of at least 4 people. Throughout our meal, a stern man in all black, Ye, I assume, patrolled the dining area. There was also a daisho, sparkling sayas, behind the cash register. I wonder if they're real...

It was a good day. Then after midnight I vomited. Twice. For the first time since I had to drink charcoal, nearly 4 years ago. I'm not sure if if was due the food, or from the migraine I had. I'd forgotten how awful it feels to wretch.

The House that Burned Down

The House that Burned Down was the second house I've lived in; it was a brick house on Weber Street. We moved there when I was quite young, around 4 years old. The day we arrived is one of my fondest memories. It was a sunny summer day, the lavender-coloured lilacs which lined the side of the driveway giving off their lovely scent. On the wooden porch to the side of the door, we had a large vase filled with dried, long-stalked thistles. The backyard was quite long (to my small mind, anyway). The chain link fence on the left side was lined with rose bushes, and a swing made from rope and a big white pail hung from the tree on the right. I used that swing once to get away from an army of fire ants. There was a tree fort built onto a stump in the back corner; it didn't get much use, and eventually became a ruins. My father had a vegetable garden out back, which I would sometimes help him with (by eating the veggies- the raw broccoli was amazing, as was the rhubarb).

I lived there for about two years, just prior to starting kindergarten, before my parents split up and my mother, sister and I moved into the co-op. My sister and I visited my father every other weekend. One night, my father was washing a bunch of kale to give to friends. He went out back, leaving the tap running; the sink overflowed, flooding the kitchen. I stood on a chair yelling for him. This may have also been the night we were nearly scared to death watching the Gooey Gus episode of Ghost Writer...My father often took us to McDonald's, and we'd sit out back on the picnic table in the summer, playing with the happy meal toys (which still came in a box).

At some point, my father's girlfriend was varnishing a dresser or something, and the house caught fire. She said she didn't know what happened, though she was a smoker, and none too bright...Regardless, no one was hurt, but the house was destroyed. We got to see it being demolished with the wrecking ball. My father set up lawn chairs across the street; it was pretty cool.

My father lived in a couple of places on that same street, across from the spot where the house used to be. He turned the entire plot in a garden. The garden, I believe, was taken care of for a little while after his death, though the spot has sat empty for years now. I went there a few years ago, and a piece of the rope was still tied to the tree.