september 4, 2001. Today I went into the library to get a copy of "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" I was pretty casual about it. It seemed like an easy enough mission: find Edward Albee's most famous play in a university library. Little did I remember that I was... The catalogue 'puters were all taken up by a herd of frosh who are no doubt fine people when taken on an individual basis, yet in a flock they irritated the hell out of me. I went straight to a librarian. "Normally I'd do this myself, but..." I indicated the herd of frosh. She nodded in understanding, and began to type in the search criteria. I lolled in the seat, not thinking about much in particular. Until I found out that it wasn't there. I don't mean that it wasn't on the shelf. I mean that they didn't even have a citation for it in the catalogue. "What?!" She smiled sheepishly. "It may have been damaged and never replaced," she offered timidly. "Would you like to put in an interlibrary loan request?" I smirked. "Have you taken the ILL Skills test?" she asked gently. And then I remembered about the campus' stupid, stupid initiative: everyone who wanted to use an interlibrary loan had to take a test on citations to prove that they understood what they were asking for. Having no choice, I sat and completed a 5-page multiple choice quiz about titles, authors, type of material, what have you. All because I wanted to read "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" Obviously, the universe was trying to tell me something. She took my test and gave me a blank comment card. "I'll go through this while you, uh, suggest that they buy a copy." Recalling the spirit of Fung commentary, I wrote my missive in block caps, adding 'for the love of god!' in the last line. "Fung Spice is people! We're eating people! / For the love of God, give us more Fung Spice!" Another series of rapids in my Hicksville life, successfully portaged. It's been a busy day of orientation. Everyone's a mix of happy, frustrated, bored, tired, pregnant (well, just Josie) and happy to see one another. I got to tell my crazy shaman prostitute story a couple of times, to mixed response. After mentioning my new corset, Petra looked to one side and muttered "God, I've missed Amoret." And the great thing was that she absolutely meant it. On the way up the hill, Josie & I had a short, intense chat about pregnancy, womanhood, the Marquis de Sade, student poverty and life in general as we shopped for office supplies and chilli ingredients. (Sometime between comparing student organizers and looking for chilli spices, I promised to arrange a "baby celebration" for the education students, but I'll worry about that later.) The idea of pre-prepared spices seemed to bother her quite a bit. "I don't usually buy chilli spices," she cautioned me as we cruised through the spice aisle. "It's just that they make the chilli good and I don't have the time to..." she trailed off. "Josie, I'm not going to report you to the Real Woman's Council, okay? We eat meat that comes out of a box, for Christ's sake." This seemed to reassure her. All in all it was a very good afternoon. I've decided that I'm not going to pursue overt social goals this year, which will reduce some of the stress I felt last year as the invisible girl. I feel rather transparent now; but then I'm still in a bit of a love hang-over. Coming back from such an intense experience in Toronto, where I was welcomed back into so many hearts and arms and homes, I feel a mild but persistent depression and a reduced desire to pretend that my social life begins and ends in the Good Ship Education. But I'm tired, physically and emotionally. I miss home quite a bit. I miss Scherezade and St. Stephen and Morgan making me laugh until I writhed uncontrollably. I miss dancing with Stacy & Jesse. I miss Dirk being on the other end of the phone or the other end of the table, alternately cranky, sweet and hilarious; often all three. I miss Little Spider's quiet concern. I miss going to bed after hours of sweaty, smoky dancing & getting up after 5 hours of sleep, feeling happy because I got to do it all again that night. I miss makeup melting down my face and my friends telling me how beautiful I look. I miss good pizza. I miss my parents' good humour and complete generosity. I miss Ian's psychofrenetic Ian-ness. I miss good music. I miss adventures. I miss good smells and funky stores and random goths. I miss my suddenly-older cousins. And I can't complain, because I missed the Boy so much while I was there, and I missed our bed and our big house. I missed clean air & fresh food. I even missed Ceilidh a little bit (but keep it a secret, because she'll get a swollen noggin.) I have a horrid premonition that Nova Scotia has also sunk hooks into me, and that I'll spend the rest of my life feeling torn between two places that offer opposite things. Oh well. I'll always have summer vacation. That's the best time to be here anyway. this time 3 years ago: we ran to each other with arms outstretched just like sappy people in a slow motion romantic sequence