Happy Thanksgiving!

There's a parade on television. At first we thought it was a Thanksgiving day parade, and we were wondering when they started doing Thanksgiving parades in Canada. It turns out, however, that it's really an Oktoberfest parade, which is much less surprising for someone who lived in Waterloo for seven years.

The weekend has been a whirl of social activity. On Friday night, MasseyPrincess and her husband dragged me out to the gay bars with FrenchWriter and AmericanAnglo to take my mind off the upcoming thesis revisions. Lots of fun walking between the bars, less fun in the bars since the music was too loud to allow for conversation and the eye candy just wasn't that impressive.

Saturday night was the long anticipated Alien vs. Pretzel party with my high school friends. During our undergrad years when we were scattered across the country, we got into the habit of getting together on long weekends when we all converged in the city. The habit has stayed with us although most of us have now returned to Toronto to work or attend grad school. It was fun, although I slept through most of Aliens.

We did the big family meal yesterday--a bit smaller than in previous years, but still nice. This has freed up my mother to start taking down the Thanksgiving decorations and putting up the Hallowe'en decorations. The house is now festively decorated with small orange jack-o-lanterns.

Little updates

sunir, I've tried emailing you a couple of times and it bounced. Sorry about the last quesadilla night; we were too busy to show. This week we're thinking of doing improv, and next week back to the usual location. Email me again and I'll send you details.

I finally installed the new router recommended to me by reiber and thoughtfreely (I figured with both of them recommending it, it had to be decent). I'm no longer popping in and out of IM, which makes me (and I suspect everyone on my buddy list) very happy. The new router lets me actually use my wireless g card, which also makes me very happy.

I got a new and functional USB drive last week. There are a few design flaws (e.g. the cap doesn't clip on the other end when it's in use), but it's very tiny and very cute and unlike my old one, actually works, so it also makes me very happy.

If I weren't so stressed about school, I'd be positively ecstatic.