Augustine, my Augustine

Below, in the centre column, is my to-do list*:

You see why I have been neglecting you? Not that anyone has been pestering me or anything...

Lately, I seem to be busy and a half. It's nuts. I work all night straight, and I still don't get everything done, and what makes it worse is that I'm getting sick of it. While it may seem fun to work sans cesse**, really, I'm kind of getting sick of it. I would rather veg and relax and get to sleep before 1am. The stress of busy has been getting so bad, that Halloween, one of my favourite times of year, has become a hinderance I'd rather be rid of. I don't even have a costume. But I have been a very good girl. I actually spend my spares in the library! Doing homework! Instead of at Dunn's, getting breakfast, or at Rideau, or lying around doing shit all in the airport lounge***.

I did take a break this weekend, on Saturday night. Saturday night was Saunders farm/costume party night. Every October, for a few years now, I get to go to Saunders Farm. I tried to go Thanksgiving weekend, but unfortunately, after the 45 minute drive out there, we discovered that it was closed. So, this weekend was take two. And let me tell you... I had a ton of fun.

Saunders Farm is best done with people who have never been. While I have done most of these attractions many times before, others have not, and it's almost as fun to see what they do. For instance, Jessica turned out to be the highlight of our evening, as she screamed more than anyone I've ever seen as Saunders. I think everyone in the whole place was out to scare her, because everything always happenned to her. I was very impressed with how they've jazzed up the after-dark part. The Hayride has improved, except for the unfortunate decay of the famous T-rex which is so old that he doesn't move forward at the wagon anymore. Bummer, I know.

The best change was the addition of people wandering around as zombies. Are they ever CREEPY! When we went through the new "Field of Screams" I was attacked and chased at the end by one of the zombies. He even chased me out of the maze and across the courtyard, until I bumped into another zombie, who grabbed me. I was so scared I couldn't see straight. Once I got over the scared part, I realized what an awesome job they do. They are always in character, following people, scaring them, staring at you until you look beside you and see a zombie staring at you, and you scream and hide behind your friend's boyfriend... That job is the one reason I wished I lived in Munster -- so I could work at Saunders Farm as a zombie. I'll put that down on my list of dream jobs, right after "dead, rotting corpse" on CSI.

* Other things you can see in this picture include a motivational penguin quote, a silly teacher quote for the Lisgarwrite and my last minute studying for my Tess of the D'Urbervilles test today (which I aced despirte not having read half the book).
**I'm so tired that I can't think of the word in English. It's moments like these that my extensive french training from a very young age can backfire and freak me out.
***No, it's true we have an airport lounge in my school. Same annoying, uncomfortable chairs.

There's a fire just waiting for Fuel

So... maybe I fell off the face of bloggerdom a little bit. For like, a week. It happens. I'm sorry. I hope you will take out any anger and/or frusteration on inanimate objects or irritating coworkers and read my blog despite the emergence of these feelings.

Last week, Kirsten came to live at my house for a week. Kirsten and I have been friends since grade nine and she often spends lots of time at my house with the "normal" family, but she's never officially been staying here longer than one night. Her family is her dad who has lots of issues of his own and is not the nicest or most supportive of fathers. So Kirsten decided she needs to move out for a while, and she needed a place, so, my house it was.

I was pretty worried since she lives mostly rule-free at her house, whereas my house has rules. Real ones with consequences and guilt and everything. I was worried about getting stuck between my mom and my friend. Luckily, Kirsten seemed to have a great time chez moi and her cat allergies only kicked in during her last night here. (I have three cats... Benedryl stays in our medicine drawer at all times. Right... the medecine drawer. That's another story.)

I spent a lot of time during this stay of Kirsten's hanging out with her. To be fair, I did get most of my homework done, I just spent way less time checking my email, and, well, blogging. Instead we listened to music and painted -- Kirsten painted while I failed at painting. I can do trees, but that's pretty much it. I think I'll stick to writing.

The other fun thing that happenned this week was coffeehouse. LEAF organises a sort of planned open mic type event twice a year, and one was last Friday. These are famous for their funny acts, cool people, and general awesomeness. Unfortunately, a big chunk of that awesome jsut graduated, so this coffeehouse was not the best. It has its amazing moments (um... acoustic "Umbrella" by Rhianna? With dancers with umbrellas? Awesome.) but many were less good, mostly caused by the lack of mics that worked (AVAs talent graduated as well).

Most exciting part for ME and therefor for YOU was that I finally fulfilled my dream of being on stage at coffeehouse. I have pictures that would accompany this post if only they did not involve my double chin. But anyway, I read some of my favourite poems. I wore my hot new dress and I got my poet on in a beret and read. Now, these were not MY poems, which is slightly less exciting, but I love them, and it was a reading, so it was exciting for me. I read "Nothing Gold Can Stay" by Robert Frost first, then I read a piece by a very gifted friend of mine, Matt McCarren (McC) called "In These Arms" (one of my favourite poems ever. And it was written by a high school boy. I feel like the world should end now). My last one was an amazing spoken word piece by Ani Difranco called "Fuel". Spoken word is something I'd like to get into more. There's something about it that appeals to me, and my style seems to lend itself well to it, which is exciting because in french class we're having a workship with Oni the Haitian Sensation about writing slam poetry type stuff in French. Magnifique, non?

PS: Dear Ontario: McGuinty? AGAIN? Really guys? Come on.