le journal de wendy lehar

Three weeks of class are done already, meaning that the semester is one quarter over!  Almost there.  Sort of.

Finally had poutine today, yay!  Hoping to watch the US presidential debate tonight, should be good for a laugh.  Or recoiling in horror, one of the two.

It’s still surprisingly nice here, hope it lasts a few more months.  I’m sure it will.  But I think I’m getting a cold already:(  Break out the legwarmers.

So here I am back at my desk trying to avoid any form of homework.  Have had one week of class; web system design seems like it will be the most useful.  Government information, on the other hand, more like grade 8 redux.  I’ve been doing lots of shopping and partying before the real work, as it tends to do, starts.  Also, I started working at the McGill Geographic Information Center, so I am a GIS pseudo-specialist.  Pseudo because it’s really hard to remember where to find stuff in a collection where 80% of the material is uncatalogued:(  Anyway, here goes.  Hope to come out alive in 7 months.

Packing.  Ugh.  Back to Montreal in a day and a bit.  Worked my last day at the library today, yay!  Will miss everyone lots!  Okay, not the spitting guy or the masturbator or “I had a bad reaction to a hot dog…”  Will update my condition soon, presumably after mass consumption of poutine.

Ok, I haven’t posted in a long time. Facebook has taken over. Back to school, and finally doing some work after 3 weeks. Doing lots of touristy stuff around Montreal, including eating the famous Schwartz’s smoked meat. With a giant pickle, mmm… And cherry soda. So good. A group of us went to the Biodome, where they have a bunch of animals in different ecosystems, including penguins!! Very cute and swimmy. I might go hang out in the tropical area to keep warm. Move in with the monkeys. This weekend we went skating at the Old Port; it’s an outdoor rink next to the river. It was very pretty, best of all there’s the winter bar right next to the rink! It’s in an igloo tent thing, and you can go in with your skates on! We had hot chocolate with maple whiskey (yum!) and hot cherry ale (not so good, but at least I can say I tried it). “Study” break in 3 1/2 weeks!

So it’s officially winter in Montreal.  Which apparently means that it rains ice.  I may have suffered puncture wounds.  On the upside, I get to wear long underwear every day!  Yes!!

Luckily, I will be coming home soon.  New Zealand is off, alas our dollar has not gone up compared to NZ$.  So it’s turkey and stuffing for me!  Three more weeks and I’ll be done exams.

If I don’t catalogue myself to death.

  (not the actual poutine I ate)

I finally had poutine on Friday night, at this cool cafe called “Shed”.  It was the best night of my life.  The poutine was so amazing.  Luckily I shared it with someone or I would probably be in cardiac arrest right now.  I went with a bunch of library people, and afterwards we went to this bar called “Brewtopia”.  They had lots of cool kinds of beer, I had Raspberry Blonde beer and Apricot wheat beer, both very good.  They also have Chocolate Stout, which I tried and liked; it has a hint of bitter dark chocolate flavour.  So now I can buy the t shirt I saw that has a picture of poutine and says “Poutine c’est bon!” 

On Saturday I went with a bunch of library people to the McGill Redmen football game.  Doesn’t “library people” make it sound like we are some kind of sub-species of human?  But it’s so much simpler than saying “the other students in my Library Information Studies program”.  Anyway, the football games are at the Molson Stadium where the Alouettes play.  It wasn’t the most thrilling game, although there was a band that played whenever we got a touchdown.  Which wasn’t that often, seeing as we lost.  The cheerleaders were also somewhat disappointing.  They didn’t even have pompoms!  It’s been very warm and humid this weekend, feeling like 30 degrees. 

I don’t have class on Mondays; today I have to stay home all day and wait for my new desk to be delivered from Staples, or “Bureau en Gros” as it’s called here.  I am now a pro at assembling IKEA furniture.  Today I put up new curtains and installed new shelves in the bathroom.  This week I resolve to start doing homework.  Really.  Grad school is really hard.  [Insert sarcasm here]

I got a new job yesterday, working at the Schulich library of Engineering and Physical Sciences.  It’s just crappy paging, and the pay is really bad.  I’ll be doing the night shift on Thursdays, just 6 hours a week.  Thus my new idea for survival: to become a subject for scientific research.

 There are quite a few studies that anyone can volunteer for on the McGill classifieds website.  I’ve inquired about joining the word recognition experiment, hid and head speech study (?), and the music listening study.  If I had sperm I would definately donate some for the sperm motility study.  Actually it seems that having a penis pays pretty well, as there are quite a few studies on measuring male arousal.

I’m officially a McGill student!  So of course when I go to get my student card it never occurs to me that I’m going to get my picture taken.  Then I’m thinking, oh well, it’s only good for a year.  But it’s 4 years!  Urgh.  Oh well.  No one really sees it.  Except you people.

So here’s my progress so far on the upcoming move to Montreal, aka library science nerd school.  I’ve booked my flight (Sept.2), found a place just off campus, got my (pathetically small) student loan, and applied for leave from work.  I still have to choose my courses, but not much is getting done amongst all the Harry Potter madness.  I’m not really excited about going yet, mostly because I’m leaving McDivey and the ninja dog behind.