House.
Without looking, I'm guessing it's about 80 degrees in the house right now. Guess I was wrong in thinking that burning softwood wouldn't work. Regardless of being covered in a mid-summer sweat, I'm sitting a foot from our new wood-stove (it's a Scan 60 if that means anything) at an angle from which I can fully admire our new metal sculpture of a stairway. The whole house is like one big art installation. I'm not sure I would try to build a house in an unfamiliar location ("What do you mean the nearest concrete contractor is 75 miles away?") while going to school in a different country ever again. A good thing is that the to-do list that pretty much filled a notebook this summer fits on a post it note these days. (wow. those are some blurry photos)
You know how to make a really big room seem like a really small room? Fill it with slip-covered Pottery Barn furniture. A room that was big enough to have thrown a frisbee with Max yesterday (if Max would ever catch a frisbee) is, today, a room for just sitting.
School.
I finally did finish transcribing the dialog for my 5 minute documentary. Forty-one single spaced pages of 12 pt type. 19,834 words and beating Vince, the distant second place finisher over 11,000 words. Piece of Cake, my finished film, probably won't be a Netflix choice anytime soon but I should be be an inspiration to anyone facing a problem they consider unsolvable. I've retained (at least to date) the skills to make a film (with credits that 'roll' at the end like a real movie) and I don't think I've ever been prouder of myself. But even with that, I'm not sure I'm proud enough of myself to go through the process again. It's a good thing that movie making isn't my passion because it certainly isn't my calling.
I hated taking the tests but found that as long as I take the test within 5 minutes of walking into the room, don't talk to anyone, don't let anyone talk to me and avoid all eye contact, that I can get the information sitting on top of my brain onto the paper before it leaks out onto the floor.
With the semester over, I can honestly say that out of the 10 classmates (ages 17-53) I had, not one of them drove my crazy. Seems like there would have been at least one that I wished would never show up for class but there wasn't. No one used Bounce, no one hogged all of the professor's attention, no one thrived on hearing themselves talk, and I was able to ignore the occasional gum smacking.
Nelson.
In mid-November I discovered a utility van parked between two parking meters on Nelson's main street that cut their own organic potatoes and fried them in their very own separate fryer with organic sunflower oil. It drove up everyday at around 11:00 a.m. and pulled away about 7 p.m. The name on the side of the van was 'Bite'. What a cool name. Bright gold, really hot and shimmering with grease (of course they were greasy...they are french fries), twice a day I waited "That will be 8 minutes," for my fries to show up at the van window. Then horrors, the other day when I went to get a picture for you and a large fries for me...they were gone.
Two days later I was moping around hungry when I discovered, tucked away in a teeny little alley, Au Soleil Levant, a teeny little French bakery that makes bread I can eat. Given the choice I'd probably rather have french fries but warm bread works too.
Canada.
It was 1 degree tonight in Canada and one second later we were crossing into the US where it was 34.
Eleven dollars for a tube of extra blue hard wax (SINCE WHEN??) but on the other hand we get Canadian health insurance for 50 dollars a month and Apex, the ski area 10 minutes up and outside of Nelson, has had 3 feet of snow and grooming since mid-November. Plus actually I just realized that even at 11 dollars a tube that I can still ski for around 35 cents a day.
