Just got back from Toronto this morning! Strangely, my $130, 3-day tryst to the city was more refreshing and rejuvinating than my $1100+ vacation to Mexico. Again, this must be a state-of-mind affair.

I was damn busy in Toronto; I arrived in the late evening Sunday, exhausted, so we didn't do much of anything that night. On Monday, Sarah had homework to do and i still wasn't happy with the speech I was to present the following day. We worked for a while, then went shopping in the Kensington market.
(where I lost my horsefucking polarized Spy sunglasses. I didn't buy anything, but I managed to LOSE something. Ass-bangles, all around)

THEN, my favorite part of my trip. As soon as I had booked the specifics of my travel, I randomly facebooked everyone I know who lives in the GTA and told them I'd be at Sneaky Dees on Monday night... I expected maybe a few people to stop by. To my continuing delight, I was greeted by many familiar faces from completely different branches of my life; someone from elementary school, graduate school, Top of the World, MEXICO, random internet guy...! Super fun. The fact that nobody knows each other but everyone knows me necessarily puts me in the center of attention, where I'm happiest. I had a great night.

That pleasant evening was capped off by the worst night's sleep I've ever had. Sarah and Dave's cats decided my sleeping body was a fun jungle-gym for overnight acrobatics. Good thing the conference was swimming in coffee. Coffee and Foucault and biopower and boring. The mind does wierd things when sufficiently bored for a sustained amount of time... I'll elaborate on this point in person, upon request.

After the conference we went for Korean food with some more familiar Ottawa faces and played tetris until we passed out. I think I can say with certainty that I saw a good 80% of people I know in Toronto, which is pretty good for just 2 days plus conference! We had every intention of getting up super-early this morning to have breakfast out before I got on my 9:30 train, but the cats were good> so we slept well> so we didn't want to get up. I didn't have to sit next to anybody on the trainride home, so that was nice.

What did I do for the 5 hour ride?.... I know a certain pair of mittens that will be meeting happy hands pretty soon!

Aha! Motivation! In 2 forms;

1- picked up both versions of Night of the Living Dead, the new Dawn of the Dead and Land of the Dead on DVD. If I immerse myself in this undead world, my thesis I will write.

2- Got an email from the Carleton listserv about a call for papers for a conference in Mtl on community. I get a million of these calls for papers every week, but I think I might actually apply to this one. It says it's looking especially for manifestations of globalized community as represented in art or literature. Movies isn't that far off. I think I could make a good case. I'll write up an abstract by January.

3- Signed up with Angelfire and got my domain name to fwd there. I also added a cool background, but it says something about myspacelayouts down the side. It needs a look of work, and my html/web-building skills need a lot of tweaking, but at least it's started. At least the $$ I paid for undeadclothing.ca now goes somewhere. Even if all there is is a background image, a link to this blog and the words "coming soon".

Zombies this morning, work tonight.