Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow

This is my home, and I miss it like crazy, every day.


It used to amuse me, but now it makes me want to strangle people here in California, when I tell them I'm going home to "Canada" for Christmas, and they get this horrified look on their face and say something like, "But it so cold there!"

I used to laugh because when people speak in clichés I find it funny, but after the hundredth time or so, it starts to wear. It makes me wonder, do you people have no concept of home? Whatever place you call home, is it really the weather that evokes nostalgia?

Or could it be (wondered the Grinch) if home means just a little bit more...

Home is where your heart is. That's a cliché, too, and anyway, I left my heart in San Francisco. Home is where the people you love, and who love you, are, and I don't have any of those here, so I'm going home.

I'm going home for a whole month, and I'm taking Pinky with me.

I have a return ticket, but a whole lot can happen in a month.

Someone Left the Cake Out in the Rain

The other day I posted on Facebook that I was baking muffins, and immediately my high school boyfriend, Rex, commented, "You're being metaphorical, right?"

He knows me well, even still, and though I enjoy the reputation I have among my friends as a non-cook, because that way they feed me, if truth be told (not that it need be, here) I can cook. And bake.

I recently started baking muffins on a regular basis, because I've given up trying to find real muffins in this land sans Tim Hortons. Chocolate chips, lemon goo, raisins (I hate raisins!)... if they're crammed with sweet stuff they're not muffins, they're cupcakes! So I make huge batches of batter filled with bran, and oats, and anything else grainy I can find at Trader Joes, and I bake me three dozen or so muffins and eat them for breakfast for two weeks.

I only set off the fire alarm once.

They Storm the Crease Like Bumble Bees

I was at the Leafs game at the Shark Tank last Tuesday night when, seconds after the first Sharks goal, I felt my pocket vibrate. It was a text message from Rochester. He'd gotten the tickets for me, really good ones, at the end where the Leafs would be shooting two of the three periods.

"So how's that working out for you?" it read.

I texted back: "Fuck off :)"

"Hey, I took time out of my class to inquire...some people got no gratitude!" he texted back right away. I love how he capitalized and punctuated his text messages. I mean the fact that he did, not the manner in which he did.

I texted back: "Fuck off :)"

I thought that would be all I'd hear from him until later that night, when I'd get back to our Facebook Scrabble game. I mean, he was in a class, an evening class, and they usually run from 6:00 until 9:00. It was the reason he wasn't at the game himself. But the text messages kept coming.

After the third goal: "Ouch, eh?"

And after the shorthanded goal: "Ooh, a shorty! (That's what she said...)"

There's a rule in comedy that it is the persistence of the inappropriate behaviour that makes it funny. It's why we laugh at Wile E. Coyote. Kevin Smith, being interviewed about the success of his movie, Clerks, said, "Three times is funny." In the middle of the movie an old man who comes into the convenience store and asks to use the bathroom. Then goes away, comes back and asks for toilet paper, the soft kind. Then goes away, comes back a third time and asks for a magazine. A porno mag, that is.

So I texted Rochester for the third time: "Fuck off. :-)"

Oh, and yes, that's Molson Canadian on tap. They brought it in special, and it was only available in a couple of places in the stadium. The funniest thing about it, though, was that they called it a "premium beer" and charged a premium for it.

I went back three times.

One Night In Bankok

Is about all my Director spent over there, before embarking on his hike into the mountains, and by hike I mean the kind you need a Sherpa for. Somewhere over there in Tibet, or wherever the Himalayans are; I don't know the geography so well; don't care.

I'm just bitter because he chose the middle of the semester, in the middle of a budget crisis, to take this month-long vacation to find his zen. Whatever that is. Before he decamped to the monastery, though, he was able to communicate via his Blackberry to the office, to direct the cuts. The ones I told you about here.

He came back last week, finally, and just before Thanksgiving sent us all this email. Brace yourself, you might barf. I sure did:

"Colleagues: It's good to be back at my desk after an exceptional trip. Being tangentially a part of the coronation of the King of Bhutan is a once in a (reincarnated) lifetime experience. But even in a Himalayan monastery I was still thinking about you. I read about the budget cuts on the front page of the International Herald Tribune while eating breakfast in Bangkok. So it's big news. Fortunately I was able to communicate back here enough to monitor the situation and continue wrestling with these tough decisions.

Today I finally received some preliminary budget numbers. It does nothing to offset the dire situation, but our numbers should allow some schedule corrections and the possible reinstatement of a few of the recent cuts. Shortly after the holiday, I should also find out about some anticipated one-time money rewarding us for growth, probably for the last time.

As for the future, it's a whole new paradigm in California higher education, but with Thanksgiving on the other side of today's rain, I'd like to express a few things I'm grateful for:

For faculty and staff that care very deeply about this School and what's best for our students. I've been touched by your understanding and selflessness. For great students, as evidenced by the graduate presentations Monday evening. For the comforts and security of living here, despite the sour economy. For my soon-to-be-born grandson, coming into the world at a time when a new day dawns in American history. For the impermanence of everything negative.

Happy Thanksgiving."

End quote. Begin barfing.