Point of Reference

When we last left our intrepid author, she was happily snuggling down in sunny Florida while bemoaning the careless misplacement of her luggage by the airline that made her wait one extra day to get out of the cold.

I'm back in the cold now, and Toronto has gone waaay cold to welcome me back. (Or at least I'm told that it wasn't this cold before I got here.) I did finally get my luggage, in Gainesville, five days after we checked it in Toronto. Apparently they failed to realize we'd been rerouted and flew it to our original destination. I discovered later that one of the reasons for the delay (after they finally found our luggage) was that when American handed it off to Continental to deliver to Gainesville, they forgot to hand off our contact information. Thus, when the luggage arrived in Gainesville, they had no idea how to contact us other than the Toronto phone number on my luggage tag. Of course, since we'd never given that number to anyone at American, I didn't bother checking those messages.

At any rate, all's well that ends well. I'm glad we were visiting B's family rather than staying in a hotel, sinced it meant B could borrow clothing from his brother and we could both make frequent and free use of the washing machines. (Free laundry is still a luxury to me...)

The rest of the trip was great. We went Busch Gardens with B's brother and his brother's girlfriend, and rode the new rollercoaster with its ninety degree drop. We did Christmas with B's family, and his parents gave me a lovely scarf. (I was a little worried about all of the gifts I had ordered for B arriving in time--and rightfully so, since one of them wasn't there when we arrived. Fortunately, despite an email warning me that it had shipped late and wouldn't arrive until January 24th, the finaly gift--a computer remote control--arrived the day before we left.) We walked along the beach. We hung out, watching movies and playing board games. We B, his brother, and his brother's friends watched an incredible amount of college football (something that's nearly non-existent in Canada), and I learned enough of the rules to follow along when I bothered looking up from my computer.

Now I'm back to marking, but I'm much more relaxed than before I left. Which is good, since this term's going to be work-intensive. But the, aren't they all?

I was supposed to be basking in the Florida sunshine today, and instead I'm still trapped in the snow and ice of Toronto. (Well, okay, it's actually not that cold in Toronto right now--about -6 Celsius with windchill, and northern Florida gets close to 0 at night--but it's the principle of the thing. Plus the palm trees! And the lack of snow! And psyching myself up for a trip that didn't happen.

My sad but short tale is that B and I scheduled to fly out at 11:55am. At the time neared and the boarding call didn't come, we checked the screen and discovered we'd been bumped an hour. Okay, no problem. Well, a small problem, because the waiting room was waaay too small for the number of planes departing and we couldn't get a seat, but that's a minor problem. Then 12:55 hit, and we still hadn't boarded. Instead, we were informed that our plane had experienced a small smoke problem, and mechanics were taking a look at it. The next two hours were spent standing the waiting room, listening to repeated assurances that it wouldn't be long now, and unable leave for food or chairs for fear that they'd board the plane while we were gone.

At 3:00, they finally gave up on the repairs and cancelled the flight. B and I lined up to rebook, only to discover, when we got to the counter, that there were no available flights today to anywhere in northern Florida. None. And no compensation for our lost day, of course. (They did offer to fly us to Miami, landing at midnight, and leaving us with only an eight hour drive to B's parents' house!)

So now we're stuck in Toronto another night, and B gets one day less with his family, and we're going to try again tomorrow morning. And I'm really, really not happy with USAirways.

B and I went out for supper last night along College Street. The restaurant we went to was heartbreakingly empty; we were literally the only customers there, and probably wouldn't have gone in ourselves if we hadn't been there before and knew the food was decent. (And the food was decent, though sadly, they'd changed their menu and the French onion soup that had drawn us there in the first place wasn't being offered.)

As depressing as an empty restaurant must be for the owners, I've discovered there can be advantages for the patron in the form of extra-attentive service. As B was finishing his meal and I was still only half finished my beef medallions and clearly slowing, our waiter popped over and asked if everything was okay. When I confirmed that the problem was a waning appetite and not the quality of the food, he suggested that if I wasn't going to finish my meal, it would make an excellent sandwich the next day, as that cut works very well cold. He added that he'd put in some extra roasted red peppers for me when he wrapped it up, as those work particularly well on the sandwich.

When I finally gave up on the food, he came over to clear our plates, and asked if I'd like him to slice the beef, since he had some sharp knives on hand. Once he was done that, he just went ahead and made the whole sandwich for me, with lovely crusty bread and roasted red peppers, and packaged it all up nicely.

Mmm, steak sandwich with roasted red peppers.

Tonight was Networks Discussion Night II. Three of the invited members couldn't be there, leaving only five of us to discuss. It was a bit small, but as I'm terribly fond of all of the people who did make it, I didn't mind. (I don't dislike the absentees, I just don't know them as well.) We talked a bit about isolation, and the recent discovery that mean and median size of American core discussion groups seem to have shrunk a little over the past twenty years, leaving the U.S. with an unfortunate number of people who apparently don't talk to anyone. Lots of debate about why the change and whether people are feeling unfilled and where they're going instead and whether it might apply to Canada too. It was a short meeting too, which was nice. Tomorrow, I have a long RA meeting and an almost-as-long student government meeting, Wednesday a TA meeting, and then I'm done! Well, apart from all of the work I haven't been able to do over the past 2 1/2 weeks while I've been in meetings and job talks.

In other news, as part of my only remaining hobby, I'd like to try making potato and leek soup this weekend. Anyone have any good recipes?

I finished my last yoga class last night. It got off to a slow start, but by the end, I was starting to see signs of increased flexibility in my hamstrings. And I suspect it's good for my spine. Overall, though, I didn't fall in love with it the way some of my friends have. The sign up for next term is December 8th, and I'm trying to decide whether I should sign up again, or sign up for the lessons being offered in my department starting in December (and pay $7 a class instead of $6, with the convenience of doing the lessons here rather than across campus), or whether I should drop yoga and hibernate for the winter. Or possibly take up something else, like pilates or salsa dancing.

I've spent the past 3 1/2 hours coding blogs, and I am slowly going crazy. Or maybe the craziness is coming from the fact that all I've eaten today is one bowl of instant oatmeal and two granola bars.

One hour and ten minutes until B returns from the gym and we can go home and eat supper.

We finally managed to book tickets at a reasonable price where reasonable = less than $1000 total. We're flying to Orlando (and then driving to either Gainesville or Tallahassee) on December 26th, and returning to Toronto on January 5th.

On the minus side, this means I'll be missing out on most of the holiday festivities with friends. On the plus side, even northern Florida is a hell of a lot warmer than Toronto in December/January. I'm actually not sure which B is looking forward to more--seeing his family or the warm weather.

B and I are trying to buy tickets to Florida, and it's proving to be an exercise of immense frustration. What typically happens is that we go on to Travelocity or Expedia, and search for flights to various cities, and eventually find what looks to be the lowest ticket price we're going to get in the post-Christmas rush. And we click on it to buy. And we get a message like this:

We're sorry, the price of this flight has changed from C$440.91 to C$1,071.14

$440 to $1071. Incredible.

B is unhappy that I keep calling him B on here, but he hasn't suggested an alternate name, and doesn't want me linking to his now defunct web journal (which he apparently only established to further a bond with me in our pre-dating days). So, does anyone have a good name for him?

(I was planning to limit this to the people who've actually met him, but I've decided to open it to everyone. Ply me with suggestions. If he doesn't like 'em, I'll tell him to come up with his own.)

If it helps, it's nearly 3am here and we're mostly still up because of him. He appears to be working still; I, clearly, am not. Though I was up until five minutes ago.

It's been a lovely, quiet, cold, rainy weekend here in Toronto. On Friday night, I stayed home with my roommate and watched The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants--a movie that we both wanted to see that we didn't think we'd be able to convince our respective partners to see. (I don't have anything against renting a video--or going to the theatre--by myself, but it is fun to watch with someone else.) It was a good choice; well-acted and touching, but fairly light. The only downside of the evening was my desperate chili craving which I failed to fulfill because for the first time ever, the local Tim Horton's was not serving chili.

On Saturday I worked out, and then came over to B's house. We worked for a bit, and then made chili (yay!), baked Toll House chocolate chip cookies (with Hershey instead of Toll House chips, because they don't seem to sell the latter in Canada), and watched X-Men. Today we've been hanging out and working, me in the living room and him in the kitchen. Occasionally one of us wanders over to the other to check in and muss up their hair. (Okay, mostly I've been wandering over to him, because the cookies are all in the kitchen.)

I finally decided to take the plunge and switch to contact lenses. I resisted up til now because of the squickiness of touching my eye, but convenience has won out and now I'm thinking of all the things I'll be able to do: Running without my glasses sliding down my face! Wearing sunglasses when going out! Actually being able to see what my new frames look like before I buy them! Hmm...I think that's about it; really, when sitting in front of the computer all day, it doesn't matter all that much whether you wear glasses or contacts.

It's very strange to walk around without glasses for the first time since I was 12. It feels like everything ought to be blurry because I don't have glasses on, and so it's a shock when I'm actually able to see things.

I guess the next step, at some point, will be surgery, which the optometrist recommended. However, since that's fairly expensive and I'm still a poor student, it'll be a while before I'm in a position to seriously consider it.