Weather: rainy today, supposedly sunny tomorrow
Listening to: bass noises from the TV upstairs filtering through the ceiling
Taking a break from: cleaning my room. *sigh*

Oh, I so suck at this.

I do. I know I do. I'm bad. Writing is (theoretically) so important to me, and yet it's the first thing I abandon when time gets scarce. I have yet to figure this problem out and solve it. Bear with me.

The necessary updates:

Spent four years prostrate to the higher mind, got my paper and I was free...
Convocation is an interesting thing. I wasn't expecting it to be important. When my coursework was finally done, my exams written, and my keys turned in for the last time, I pulled away from McMaster campus and knew that I'd never be back there the same way ever again. And at that point, I felt sad, and happy, and wistful, and unfulfilled, and thankful, and relieved, and I figured that was pretty much the gamut of emotions that I'd get. And yet -- it still means something to be fussed up in fancy robes, to be called by name to walk across a stage, to kneel in front of the chancellor to be admitted to a degree, and to be awarded the calligraphied piece of paper that proves that I DID something in the past four years.

Yes, the calligraphy is a computer font these days. That should be an important note of irony for cynical little me, but it isn't, for some reason.

Hey, guess what: I actually AM going to be a doctor.
I was beyond exhausted at the time, but come 11:50 on May 15 when my family returned from our trip, I knew that I was going to have an MD. As it turns out, I'll have it from The University of Western Ontario. I, my friends, am going to be a doctor.

I'm sure 6 months from now, the novelty value of saying that will have worn off...but until then, please forgive me if I repeat it a few times. I'm just trying to work the reality of it through my head after this year of not-knowing.

ITOMSIE
It Turns Out Med School Is Expensive. And I have yet to work out any kind of financial plan for this whole venture. I'm getting incredibly mixed messages from the parents about how much, if any of it, they can finance, and I know that I certainly can't finance it myself. I don't want to put any kind of financial burden on them -- being retired and all -- and I'm willing to incur debt to prevent them from spending all their money on me. But when I try to discuss this with them, all I get is static.

Whatever the case is, I'll definitely be taking care of some of the associated costs of rent, food, utilities, etc. So I need to be careful and save this summer, in a way to which spoilt only-child me is unaccustomed. What can I say. ITOMSIE.

All aboard the Costa Fortuna!
There are things I don't like about cruises in general, and things that I did like about this particular cruise.

Things I don't like: the prepackaged/saran-wrapped way of seeing the world, the tacky shows, the plaster-faced heartiness of the "activators" or cruise staff, the unsettling sense that a metric shitload of food gets wasted every single day, the feeling that, in cruising, I'm doing something so exorbitantly touristy that I fully deserve to get taken on souvenirs.
Things I did like: making friends with other Canadians and our dinner table-mates, hearing tons of different languages (this was an Italian cruise line and carried mostly Europeans), being in a new place every day without having to repack or rush for planes or buses, Carthage, Sidi Bou Said, Aix-en-Provence, Barcelona, the cathedral at Monreale, breakfast served to our cabin, tanning on the open sea, the glitzy 1930s-inspired decor, 7-course meals, feeling glamourous, forgetting all about med school and teaching.

Visitor
Before I left for the cruise, I got an e-mail from Aster -- longtime net friend of mine, owner of guide.subetha.net, fan of Douglas Adams, Douglas Coupland, and the Barenaked Ladies, introducer of Vienna Teng to my regular playlist, and the first person I didn't know IRL to comment on one of my OpenDiary entries -- saying that she was coming to Toronto and would I like to have lunch with her?

Well. Um. Let me think. YES!??!

So we met up face-to-face, and had lunch, and went to Kensington Market. Kensington is normally a pretty awesome place, but it turned out to be a grey, raw and rainy day. (Actually, when she heard about this venture, my mother said "You took a CALIFORNIAN to KENSINGTON MARKET today? Did she freeze? Will she ever come back?") We spent a lot of time taking shelter in a convenient Second Cup.
It was a great day in a lot of ways -- it reminded me of my early online-writing days, and now I can read her blog entries and hear them in her actual voice. It's like another dimension has been added, which is cool.

Deafness is now coming for me a few years earlier than before...
OLP concert. May 16. Seats in the 7th row of the floor. Directly under the speakers. After the first opening act, Julie and I turned to each other and said "Well, my eardrums are dead, how are yours?"
Show = basically good. Raine Maida is equal parts megalomaniac and genius, with a pinch of raving madman thrown in. He'd do things that would rub me the wrong way -- like go off on a political rant in the middle of a song, or walk through the audience saying that he "needs to touch everyone in this crowd" like he's Jesus, or sass off to the security people who are basically there to protect him from legions of psychotic fangirls -- and then come back and completely rock the next song, effectively washing away any hard feelings. So, you know. Whatever. And it was nice to see all the openers onstage with OLP for "Starseed".

As for unnecessary, whimsical and less-bland updates:
I've had plenty of blog-worthy thoughts recently that I haven't blogged about. I will try to talk about some of those as the summer goes on. Going to med school is a great honour and I'm thrilled, but I'm also worried: they don't exactly teach English there, and if I'm going to keep expressing myself in these nonsensical syllables I call 'language', I'm going to have to make a concerted effort to do it. My 'writing' -- whether here, or in my paper journal, or in story and poetry form, whatever -- isn't cute and extracurricular anymore; it's all I have left in that arena. So. It has to become a priority. And if I care enough about it, it will.

I hope that April treated everyone well, that May is being equally kind, and that I'll be back on here sometime before June.

~SQ.