The upshot...

Well, it's all over. It's amazing how a person can spend months building up to a certain day and then feel slightly bereft, because a day is only 24 hours no matter how you shake it.
Ed Formal is over and I feel bereft. Not in a weepy, unhappy kind of way, just in a gently missing kind of way.
The evening was AMAZING; from an organizer's point of view, it could not have gone any better. Dinner wasn't right on schedule but everyone got to eat, so there were no complaints; the music was good even though the DJ didn't stick to the playlist I gave him, and the professional photographer took hundreds of pictures. Both Don Dippo, the Associate Dean of Education and Steve Sedran, FESA's president, gave great speeches despite the lack of attention coming from one particular side of the room. Even the seating plans were relatively uneventful, again with the exception of one particular site.
We sold raffle tickets and gave away some gorgeous prizes, photos from the school in Kenya we support as well as several pieces of African art, and finally, everyone was very vocal in how much they enjoyed themselves.
On a sad note, there were a number of thefts committed at the event, one of them involving my own faithful pink Kodak V803 digital camera, so bye-bye pictures. My friends have been super about sharing their pictures with me, but it's not the same. I'm eyeing a Canon SD1200IS (yes, the one from the commercial with Avril Lavigne) as a replacement, but I'm going to have to cut into my Europe fund to get it. I can't go to Europe without a camera, after all.
There will be more pictures eventually, but for now I have to focus on my last 3 days of placement, my final evaluation, applying to more boards and cleaning my disgusting sty of a bedroom.

Forever in blue,

-Laur

Won't you please, please, please let me get what I want

I feel like I've been waiting for this day forever. Everything that I've been doing for FESA since January has been geared toward May 15th, and in 20 minutes...well, it will be May 15th.
In the words of Penny Lane in Almost Famous, "It's all happening".
Tomorrow night Ed Formal 2009 will coalesce into red and black sparkle and shine, a ballroom full of music, lights and 500 people will spread out before me and I will be, for one brief evening, sitting on top of the world.
I hope it's amazing.
Won't you please, please, please let me get what I want.

-Laur

P.S. Grey's Anatomy just broke my heart.

Someday I'll fly away

I'm going to Europe this summer. Isn't that just awesome?
Here is the trip I'm going on: European Highlights. I'll see England (but I'll be arriving 5 days in advance so I can take my time), France, Italy, Germany and the Netherlands before coming back to London for an evening and flying home the next day.
I'm so, so excited. I think it's going to be so much fun!
Here are some pictures of some of the places I'm going to see:

Take me to the riot...

because I'd rather be there than anywhere near here.
Been doing everything not to be doing what I should be.
My brain feels explosive and mushy.
Do I hate William? Maybe, but I would not like to.
Now to revisit the words and the lives of people that I find
less
than
fascinating.



These are the sacrifices we make for life. I'm doing my best, my god, I'm doing my best.

-Laur

Ottawa Opulence

So, went to Ottawa last weekend, and a what a fine time it was! I got to see the Parliament buildings, a LTTE (Tamil Tigers) demonstration at said Parliament buildings, went to visit my lovely, wonderful great Aunt Mary, and saw inside the dreaded apartment of one of my oldest and dearest friends. And he has a cat named Bogart who is stone deaf. The very fact that he has a cat amazes me, because he's inherently a dog person. Who woulda thunk it?
To your left we have a great shot of the Tamil Tigers and their flags in front of Parliament. They were pretty peaceful, but Canada considers them terrorists. Hmm.
Tea and cookies with Aunt Mary in the sunroom.






Shap and Bogey. SO CUTENESS! He clearly adores this cat. He would shove his face in the cat's nose and yell "Don't love me, Dan, don't love me!" Priceless.

Ottawaaaaaaah

I'm going to Ottawa on Friday for the first time since high school. I think high school, at least. Probably 7 years, I'm just going over it with Mom now.
I actually really like Ottawa. I used to go there a lot as a kid because my mom's best friend Julia and her family live there. I like the old-world feel of Ottawa, and I like the museums. Parliament doesn't really float my boat or anything, but the history of the place and of my country I definitely enjoy.
I look forward to taking pictures this weekend, even if the weather isn't nice. If it's really cold I'll probably limit my movement to places that I can catch a bus back to Julia's house. They live in Barhaven, a suburb of Ottawa that isn't exactly close to the downtown core.
Anyways, I'm excited to get away for a weekend. I haven't been away for real (longer than a day trip, I mean) since I went to the cottage over Labour Day weekend and I think this will be good for my head.

-Laur

Springtime in the shadows

Lately I've forgotten about a lot of the things that I enjoy. I feel like I'm constantly struggling to keep up with just about all the normal everyday things I usually do around now. Maybe it's because my body feels like I should be gearing up for a teaching block, or exams. But this year is an anomaly, and neither of those things will be happening.
A lot of stuff has happened since I last blogged. For example, I returned to class from after exams. I did a presentation, the last of the academic-Arts class ones this year, on Austin Clarke's Love and Sweet Food and Stuart Hall's "Cultural Identity and Diaspora". I wrote my first essay for Inspiration, and was once again published in EDible News. I also got my convocation dates, and for 24 hours freaked right out about what was to be done.
We're having a big 85th birthday party for my awesome Gramma in Edmonton during the last weekend in June. It worked out really well because Mom would be done school, I would be done the AQ course I thought I was taking (more on that later) and Auntie Brenda would have been all moved home from Russia. The date was set for Sunday June 28th and it was going to be great. Auntie Bren bought our tickets using Aeroplan miles from Thursday the 25th to July 1st so we could all have some time together to visit; Auntie Reta, Uncle Jim and Maggie are coming over from Vancouver Island for the party so it would be the first time my mom and uncle had seen each other since we interred my grampa's ashes 7 years ago. I had been told convocation wouldn't be until July because of the messed up year, so we thought everything would be fine.
Well, turns out the powers that be at York managed to organize some tomfoolery and made the convocation ceremonies start on June 24th. My BA ceremony is on June 26th and my BEd ceremony, the one that is really important to me, is on June 29th. I would be in Edmonton over the whole convocation period. Crap.
After those 24 excruciating hours were up, everything had been rearranged. The party is now on Saturday June 27th and Mom and I fly back to Toronto on the red-eye flight on Monday morning. We'll sleep, shower, do our hair and makeup, and drive to school for 1:30 so I can get robed and put into the procession; the ceremony begins at 3:30, and we're invited to the Faculty of Education graduates reception afterward. Gramma, who was originally supposed to attend, will no longer be coming; it's too much excitement for her in too short a time and what if some of the out-of-towners stick around for a while after the party? It's not fair, of course, but it's what's right.
So like I said, I've forgotten about a lot of the things that I enjoy. This craziness has sucked all the fun right out of me, until last week when I randomly created the above image in Inspiration class during a particularly uninspiring discussion on plagiarism. I love to mess around with pictures and I thought the contrast between sunlight and shadows, caught on an afternoon in the watery spring sunshine, was particularly captivating. I also went out with friends for someone's birthday this weekend and my face hurts from laughing.
There is a light at the end of the tunnel, kids.

-Laur