We’re over the “first weekend alone” two-day hump. Thankfully, it wasn’t all that taxing: it could have been a lot worse, and could have featured a lot more of that knee-hugging, weeping and preservative-laden-dessert-bingeing mentioned in #001. But my Saturday was saved by one man: Adam, my favourite fluffy Jewish Knight In Shining Blue Plaid Cowboy Shirt.
The man known to the Internet as A. Frayn was on a two-week road trip through the Maritimes, living out of his car and spending days at a time in Haligonian record stores. Somehow my showing up coincided with his leaving; he had to be back IT-ing on the following Monday, but he assured me he could just hang out with me all day Saturday and then pull an all-nighter for the drive back home. I wasn’t about to doubt his road trip planning judgment. Plus, I was lonely, okay? If homeboy wants to drive out to New Brunswick to hang out, I’m not gonna argue.
And so passed some of the more surreal hours of my friendship with Adam, other than that time we were both riding the subway without our pants. We made our way uptown, ate at a greasy spoon Ruhee recommended (and after eating at Fran’s in Toronto so many times, it’s kind of refreshing having lunch at a place where you an actually expect the spoons to be greasy), and searched the neighbourhood for my new work and signs of sentient human life. After an entire summer of tromping up and down those steep Maritime hills, I’m gonna have legs like the mountain-dwelling folks in my grandparents’ part of the Italian Alps, as well as that suspicious bounce in their step that lets the flatlanders know exactly what part of the area these people are from.
My extensive whining about how far the UNBSJ is from my place of work led a slew of people to suggest I get myself a bike, an idea that had been rolling around in my head since I wrote a story on cyclists and commuting for my freelance writing class this year. “What better way to see a new city?” I thought. “I’ll be freed from transit strikes, sparsely scheduled buses, and having to transfer eighteen bajillion times and getting stranded at some freezing cold intersection way out in the boonies for 45 minutes at a stretch!” So I persuaded Adam to escort me Canadian Tire, which (as my sources for that freelance story told me) is pretty much the worst place to go if you’re serious about riding a bike. Since the otherwise dreamy clearance-bin Schwinn I was ogling looked like a death trap, and the salesguy probably couldn’t have told me what a helmet was for, we just went to Wal-Mart, where I blew all my bike funds on stuff I actually needed.
I now have cookware ($10 frying pan, lime-green spatula, saucepan that the label actually said was “excellent for macaroni and cheese”) that I can use in the residence kitchen, which I have yet to actually find. I asked Nat-Next-Door (yep, there’s a Natalie in B107) where it was, and she said she, too, had heard of its existence. It’s like the Ogopogo. Or the Room of Requirement. Maybe I just need to run a few laps around the floor while thinking about Kraft Dinner, and it will materialize.
At any rate, a Wal-Mart – particularly a Wal-Mart in New Brunswick – was the last place I would ever have expected to see Adam, but that somehow made the severe suckitude of having to do all the settling-in, buying-eating-utensils housekeeping stuff all over again that much more fun. After that we headed on home, watched Conchords, and ordered Pizza Hut (in a middle digit raise to the great university-spurning by the city’s pizza companies that I endured the evening before). I was completely set for Saturday to be terrible – the first day out is often the worst, when you’ve got no idea where to go or how to get there and just want to stay holed up in your 6×10 bedroom, because at least you know where everything is in there. The homesickness was kept at bay to a great degree, considering I had one really excellent bit of Ontario right there with me. In a sweet western shirt.
Took the bus uptown today on my own. Thankfully, the bus that picks me up ten feet from my front door deposits me four or five blocks from the paper. I recognized the shopping centres and City Hall from yesterday, but managed to spend a little extra time in King’s Square and the adjoining old cemetery, getting acquainted with some eroded tombstones and a fountain with beaver-shaped statues on. The city centre apparently shuts down on Sundays, but other than that, I think we’re gonna get on just fine.
Classy purchase of the day:
