Fall into life.

Someone just wrote me an email with the question, "so has anything new, boring or wonderful fallen into your life lately?" This is the perfect question. How-are-you-good's binary opposite. I love how it recognizes that the good, the bad and the ugly that are all equally exciting in the process of living. I love that it makes reference to extremes rather than neutrality. I love how it highlights individual moments, situations, and experiences rather than general wellbeing. I love how it celebrates chance, spontaneity and serendipity by suggesting that events and things "fall" into life. I love that all these components make the question very answerable, and encourage the answer to enter into the realm of conversation.

I love that I know people who ask me questions like these.

So I extend the question to you: has anything new, boring or wonderful fallen into your life lately?

kate

ps. check out DreamNow for more info on the exploits of the questioner in question.

share-ation

When I hear, do or see something nice, or lovely, or beautiful, my immediate reaction is to want to share it. The difficulty is how exactly to get the person who I'm sharing my excitement with to acutally share the excitement. This problem is exacerbated by the fact that I often get very excited (to the point of chills) about things I can't quite put my finger on. Last night I got excited about an inpromptu private art show in my room when the combination of the tree outside my window and the fire truck with its lights flashing across the road projected a perfect, if decidedly abstract, video instilation on my wall. In my mind the "artist" was attempting to illustrate the seemingly seamless co-existance of man-made and natural objects that combine to make a city larger than the sum of its parts. Or today, when reading Focus in the Saturday Globe, I got all tingly about members of the Chinese diaspora in Canada returning to China to pursue a new/old life. How do I try to get you to feel those tingles if I have no idea what they were about? Yet, I desperatly want you to. I think that somewhere deep down, I want someone to be lucky enough to experience life as I do.

Kate "Clean Clothes" Jongbloed

A moment of happiness, a moment of elation. During the time I spent in Scarborough today, a washer miraculously appeared in our kitchen! It's ugly and bootleg, and who knows where it came from and when its function will be replaced with our own functioning washer, but for right now I'm just exctatic at the prospect of clean underwear! clean socks! more vetement choice! I had resorted to a new value village wardrobe every week to get over this hump of non-laundry (I calculated and figured it would only be about twice as expensive as using the laundromat, and it would be money more lastingly spent in the long run as I would still wear the new clothes after our washer was returned in full working order, and it had the bonus of minimizing my insatiable appetite for clothes shopping.), but now the long loved staples will be back in rotation!

So, I'm currently in a mad rush to get as many loads done before my competition for washer access returns in the form of roommates. I figure I can at least get two or three loads through, and also get first dibs on the drying racks, which will certainly not go far given the amount of dirty laundry that will get clean tonight! I can just picture a gloriously messy house, covered top to bottom, on every available drying space, with our assorted styles and style mistakes!

Hurrah!

Yo

I think that fall is my favourite season. I always go in for transition, although I tend not to deal with it very well. Fall is one of those times that catches up (or slows down) to fit my state of mind. I feel like a cozy and solitary but on the go person most of the time, and fall is that time of year. You bundle up to go out, but still go out. Everything feels so alive, and the weather is perfect for my favourite new look: old man chic. Thank you value village for your trench coats and wool pants. Anyway, I must go and enjoy my season. Peace.

The Prodigy

Tee hee. JF just bought me the new Prodigy cd and it rocks my world. I had tried to strategically line up for the listening station at HMV without cramping the guy's style who was on it, or pressure him to leave. So, I threw the earphones of another station on, so I wouldn't look like I was loitering. Alas, in the time it took me to do that, the switch had happened and I had missed my chance. When I finally got it, I shook my booty right there in the store! Hurrah!

Funny how the cd case is so so so similar to the new Basement Jaxx. Anyway, hurrah for owning cds, as I don't unless someone gives them to me!

This cd is good for an emotional day. I'm a bit up and down today, as one of my roommates left for BC today, I'm about to head back to Toronto, and it doesn't feel that i've got everything figured out (like a bed???). Also, it's sad to leave this wonderful wonderful city...not only am I leaving it behind, but the part of me that is Montreal- because that is definitly not university. Anyway, from my perspective change is always good. Dan Cownden who came to visit us this summer here said that it's best to leave anything, or stop eating anything, just before you get sick of it.

Love Kate

PS- HAPPY BIRTHDAY KATE!!!

La Vie

I've been living real life lately. School often feels like a hiatus. Time has stopped for a moment, and you have to get through this stage before times begins again. Even high school felt more like real life. But, since I've only got one assignment to do before finals, and everyone else is overwhelmed, I am just living. My real life activities include coffee breaks, knitting, dishes, vaccuming, novel reading, painting and corresponding with people left uncorresponded.

Every once in a while I get a whelm (as opposed to an overwhelm) of remembering Victoria. The most common type is thinking about the restaurants and cafes. I miss Eugenes, Pagliacci's, Paradiso, The Wooden Shoe, and Caffe Fantastico- I know I could find similar places here, but I haven't and it's frustrating. Lately, though, I've started missing people. I miss the connections I had with people that I haven't found here. People that I can talk to about anything, and nothing feels conditional. Here, there is a strange dynamic. None of us feel totally comfortable with our situtations, and therefore everything feels a little unstable, including friendships. I think that's why they say that the friends you make at university are the friends that you'll have forever: if you can get through this time of tumult and insecurity together, you can get through anything.

A Short List of Favourites

I am going through a phase of overwhelming joy for certain smallish things. My list keeps getting longer, which is fantastic. Three cheers for perpetual adventure.

1) Nothing Compares to You by Sinead O'Conner
2) Yellow Tail Chardonnay
3) Pointy boots with raggedy ass jeans
4) The Onion
5) Yarmulke

I've also got a list of things I'm looking forward to, other than daily life in general:

1) Tremblant next weekend, plus a little Ottawa action.
2) Montreal for the summer, with the one and only Zim
2.5) Perhaps insert a bout of summer language bursary program here
3) Living in Toronto proper starting September
4) The Netherlands for Christmas 2004
5) Surprise Reading week 2005
6) IDS Coop placement September 2005

That's a long way in the future, but mutha fucka.
Hoof.

The best is that there will be so much unscheduled adventure in between that I don't even know about yet! Perhaps visits to Coburg and Cambridge? Halifax?

I am the luckiest girl in the world. Seriously.

Fantastic Smith

The Marvel of Saturday: I have worked on Saturdays for so long that I am still in awe when I have an entire saturday free. It's the kind of day when you feel like anything is possible, the week's over but the next one is nowhere near starting! It's 1:22 now, and I've written a midterm, worked out, done my laundry, and am ready to enjoy the rest of the day with my fabulous fabulous roommates.

Yes, I did purposely move into a fab fab roomie blog, as it seems to be the theme of the week. But while the others are mourning the end to F6, I say bullshit. We still have to be bridesmaids at each other's weddings! This won't end anytime soon. I heart dancing, cooking and clothing with you girls.

In other news, my fav. ab workout: The Onion (credit to Sean for introducing us).

But, I should go and enjoy the presence of my roomies instead of just writing about them!

Holla Back

What is really Fabulous Fabulous is how Fabulous Fabulous has taken off. I love it. It's always been my goal to penetrate and integrate. Legacizing, and I'm only 20.

Listening: Be Careful of My Heart, by Tracey Chapman

Reading: Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates, by Tom Robbins (thanks Sean)

Breathing: carefully

Thinking: 1000 thoughts a second, as per the usue. Wouldn't it be nice if they were useful?

Blog Karma Returns

And today, just because of my previously mentioned blog karma, I have had one of my specific questions answered. Today in Environment and Development, Tony Price basically answered for me the research question that I've got to tackle for an upcoming paper in his class. Thank you Tony, but it's a bit sketchy really...I can't just regurgetate everything that he's said.

Oh, and Jamaica tickets arrived by courier today. Two fabulouses in one moment: getting something from a courier and getting tickets for Jamaica!

Carpe Gingerale

When you blog it, it will come.

I was telling my friend Sean today (fabulous fabulous) that something good happens to me about ever 20 minutes. Hugh Grant in About A Boy divides the day into thirty minute blocks, and my mum suggests that one should reevaluate one's emotions approximately every 20 seconds, but twenty minutes is my measure. This morning, I was woken up with bacon, eggs and toast in bed, prepared by my fabulous fabulous roommate Kate. And then about twenty minutes later (give or take a couple of hours), I found a flight to Jamaica for $399. I had six twenty minute sections while in International Health Policy, and learned something new and fabulous fabulous (FF) during each block. And then afterwards, I ran into FF Sean who clued me into the fact that if I stuck around for about 20 minutes, I would find myself presented with an array of FF free food, presented to me in celebration of the incoming new principal of our school. It was well worth the 20 minute wait, primarily due to the bries, the tortellini, the sushi and the ghurkins. And then, right before my very eyes, I found a can of gingerale. The essence of serendipity. In the words of my FF roommate Mel, I decided to Carpe Gingerale.

Chilean deli fights

Four day weekends are fanstastic because you can fill them up to the brim with fantastic things to do and they have more space than you ever possibly imagine...wait, they obviously don't, according to the decided lack of homework I accomplished this weekend. But I'm happy, and not too far behind, so that's what counts right?

This weekend had lots of varied elements of things that I really like: cute boys, Kensington Market, deli time, chilean wine and girl talk, bagels and lox, subways, pilates, L6, fake fur hats, bollywood, more subway, homemade Turkish food, "family" time, and laundry out the ying yang. Honerable mention goes to pillowfights, romantic comedy, a World Bank report on HIV/Aids in Africa and clean sheets.

Thank you so so so much to Saniye and the Yilmaz's for the tumble dryer and plethora of new tastes. Thank you thank you thank you!

Oh, and who the f**k is Bob?

Filibusters and Quagmires

Home sick from work, and before I retreat into the terry cloth goodness that is my bed, let me jot something down about my perpetual selfcentredness. Please...if I'm being too egotistical any time (because there has been plenty of things stroking my ego lately), just tell me to snap out of it.

BLOG's are fantastically universal, unless one is reading something about something so unfortunatly specific that you need to have spent your life researching the topic in order to understand the entries of the obsessed. But, in general, one can always relate to them. It even goes farther than that- one can always read into a blog post and start thinking that the blogger is writing about them. It happens to me all the time. Someone will start talking about someone causing drama (unspecifically) at a party that I was at, and then I think it's me. Or, I can write a blog about postponing converstations and a fellow blogger can write a reply post, without seeking clarification that the post was relevant to our relationship. But, at the same time, sometimes you just know. You're just absolutely sure that it's about you, and then you can smile that you're worth being electronically documented, even if there are no names mentioned.

Random ramblings

I hate it when people come over and I'm sitting infront of the tv.

I love it when I go out and say hi to over 100 people. Or maybe it sometimes just seems that way.

I love how I can get four very very different presents for my birthday, from four very different people, who all got together and made me the best birthday ever. Cheers to my new bible, the bottle of rum, the blackeyed peas cd, and my new handcuffs, and hurray for decorations when I woke up in the morning, pancakes for breakfast, and a birthday cake.

Yay for telephone firsts, like when I got my first voice mail message, and my first call waiting.

Hallelujah for boys, and a couple more cheers for men, and some specific thanks to my fab fab roommates, and Jen who held my head.

I love how I don't have math tomorrow at 8am

Pilates is fun. We're going through a phase. Line up to see my developing abs.

And peace.