::alio!::

What're y'at?

This is my 501st post, by the way.

It was exhausting getting out of the city last night. So incredibly foggy, and flights landing in Ottawa were delayed so much that, after boarding an hour later than expected, our plane sat, fully loaded, another full hour, waiting for our pilots to come into the airport from THEIR flights.

The cool thing is that I haven't gone Air Canada in years, and they've improved. We got some cool beans Brazilian plane, and so we had our own televisions in our seats, with touch screens, and choices of 10 movies, 20 shows, 30 radio stations, and several games and kids' games. It was NEAT.

So we hit St. John's around 2:30 this morning, and, bless her, the Enterprise car lady was waiting there for us.

Chel, you'll be happy to know we are driving a piece of shit Chevy Cobalt, just as bad (if not worse) than the one you had when you stayed with us.

Dad and I got up around 930 and farted around for a bit before heading to Signal Hill, at the top of one side of the Narrows (St. John's is built in a very elongated harbour - more of a fjord, really, and the edges of the harbour are very steep, narrow, and well fortified). Dad slipped on some ice there (fuck it was cold on top of the cliff), and is a little sore, but otherwise is undamaged.

Then we piddled around in the car for a bit to familiarize me with the town before heading to the centre for my meeting on campus. During this time, Dad backed into a truck - no damage to either party - and we discovered that stop signs, street signs, turns, and pretty much all rules of road building and legal driving are optional in St. John's.

Memorial campus looks way bigger than it is, and it's even uglier than Carleton, if such a thing is possible. However, the building I would be in is in an isolated part of campus, right at the tip, overlooking Long Pond. The graduate bar is right next door. Convenient? I think so.

Had a good meeting with W.F. It seems like these guys actually have some say in who gets into the tiny department (that they seem to think is big), so it's good that I'm actually putting a face to my name. Meeting with M.T. and A.C. tomorrow.

We're going to try and hit Cape Spear tomorrow. We tried to go today, but it was snowing so hard that we hit the third mountain and had to turn back. We just couldn't make it up the hill.

After that we did a wee bit of shopping and then we went to the Crow's Nest. This is an exclusive club for officers of the Navy, and my dad and my uncle and my family friends and my great uncle and grandfather and pretty much everyone in my family has been coming to this hole since its inception.

It was a pretty cool experience. We were the only people there for the first two hours and two drinks. But we spent our time talking to Catharine, the bartender, who was from Nottingham. We talked about all kinds of things, then Bob, a retired Army guy, came in and we had another drink. The evening ended when he played us a stirring rendition of the St. Louis Blues on the piano.

We got takeout from Ches's, the best fish and chips in town, and crashed in our room, watching Lara Croft - again.

I'm just gathering enough energy to put all my pics up from today and then it's bed time, folks. Hopefully the weather will be lovely enough to leave town tomorrow. Wish me luck!

Posted by Ally at January 9, 2008 08:13 PM