After spending a week split between London, Edinburgh and Amsterdam, Ottawa looked... different. Like the sun was hitting it on a different angle than it usually does, and turning things a different colour than they normally are. I remember the same odd sort of sensation, a subtle unfamiliarity with a land so familiar, when I came home from a ( Read more... )

Life's been pretty good. My parents were over to visit for the weekend. We took in a few museums, but mostly just rested and relaxed. Dad and I did some crosswords and sudoku puzzles. Mom and I played video games (by which I mean she watched me play Ico and Sly Cooper). It was great to just hang out with them. Sometimes I do feel like I moved ( Read more... )

I just finished reading The Alchemist, by Paulo Coelho. It was recommended to me by allethaen and Asteria. I highly recommend it. It's deceptively simple, and carries important lessons, but there are also layers of depth I haven't remotely begun to consider yet. I'm glad I bought it, rather than just borrowing it from the library, because I'll ( Read more... )

On TV and in the stories, every pub is a community gathering place, and every bartender doubles as a personal counsellor. It's an enticing notion. It's also, as near as I can tell from personal experience, false. The only socializing I've seen at pubs is within the groups that arrived together, and the friendliest a bartender or waiter/waitress ( Read more... )

None of us really know what we're looking for, until we've found it, do we? It does tend to make the search a bit more difficult.