Till Now

[rfmcdonald]

I had a pleasant enough Thursday evening, and stayed inside on my bed after getting back from the library, watching television. The new episode of Angel was entertaining; I also saw a silly horror movie, number 8 in its series, that focused on the guy with the hockey mask.

It was an exceptionally comfortable bed, and I had a good sleep.





I got up at 8:30, and after a shower I went down to an excellent breakfast. It began with fresh fruit, then was followed by bacon with eggs and a tomato slice, and finally toast with a variety of excellent jams. Fortified, I left just before 10 o'clock for the Queen's campus. I was, and remain, quite impressed by the campus, with its magnificent array of limestone buildings.

I stopped by the on-campus art gallery to pick up a map before I circled around the southwestern quadrant of the campus (mainly residential) and went up Lower University and University avenus towards the Stauffer Library, the main library on the campus for students of the arts and humanities. (Queen's has a dozen different libraries, roughly one for each faculty.) I was, again, favourably impressed by the library's modernity and its extensive periodical collections.

I met Pak Wei there at 11 o'clock. We went first to the student centre on campus, a well-trafficked building home to bookstores, cafés, and the like, and then went back down University to the Agnes Etherington Art Centre. They had an exhibition by the Toronto art collective General Idea, most famous for their AIDS graphic; I didn't like their postmodern queer take, though, which seemed too centreless and superficial. I much prefered the extensive collection of early Canadian landscapes, their 16th and 17th century Netherlandish paintings of morals, and an intruiging multimedia exploration of a specific point on Kingston's coast in 1600, 1800, and 2000. (There was also a small collection of African art.)

Afterwards, we went over to Bellevue House, where John A. MacDonald lived unhappily for some years in the late 1840s in Kingston (first his son John, then his wife Isabella, died there). It was sparsely furnished just as it was in real life, but it was attractive nonetheless. We then walked east along Lake Ontario, past Murney tower (built in the mid-19th century as a defense against the Americans) and continued into the downtown.

We ate at the Silver Wok restaurant off of Princess; I'd ordered wonton soup, one spring and one egg roll, and sweet and sour Cantonese pork with chicken-fried rice. (I couldn't finish the chicken-fried rice and took it with me.) Walking further up Princess, the main attractions were commercial: I'd bought a reprint of the first four Traveller RPG aliens books, Ronald Wright's book Travels Among the Maya, and a book on the problems of researching the Spanish presence in North America. From there, we went down to Ontario Street to try some White Mountain Ice Cream (I tried the vanilla-lover's vanilla), and then up to the Sleepless Goat café. We finally part at 6:10, after more than seven hours of walking.

I stayed in Friday evening, feet sore and desiring to watch television. The notable highlight was the Buffy episode "New Moon Rising", in which Willow came out to Buffy. That was highly realistic:

BUFFY: (smiling) Oh my god. I can't believe it. (Pause) Okay, I'm all with
the woo-hoo here, and you're not.
WILLOW: No, there's "woo" and, and "hoo." But there's "uh-oh," and... "why
now?" And... it's complicated.
BUFFY: Why complicated?
WILLOW: (sighs, steels herself) It's complicated... because of Tara.
BUFFY: (frowns) You mean Tara has a crush on Oz? No.
(The clue-by-four hits Buffy.)
BUFFY: Oh!
(Willow gives a nervous smile.)
(Buffy stands up.)
BUFFY: Oh. Um... well... that's great. You know, I mean, I think Tara's a,
a really great girl, Will.

Ah, if only I could ever be in a like position to choose between Oz and Tara. Eh bien.

Afterwards, I repacked. My only problem was that I thought I'd lost one of my disposable cameras, but that turned out not to be the case.





Today has really been an anti-climax. I got up at 9:30, had another breakfast, and then took a cab to the VIA station in Kingston an hour and a half early. The train went smoothly, though it went with a few stops en route. On arrival at Union Station, I got on the subway up to Queen's Park and then on the streetcar west to Augusta, got my room, and just went walking. I'll be meeting up with Craig at the Timothy's at Church and Alexander at 7 o'clock, but everything's otherwise open.