I’m home in Canada now for the next three weeks. I will spend the first week in Halifax. Then I’m off to Winnipeg, Manitoba to visit my brother and do a recording with the Canadian Chamber Choir. After that I’ll be back in Halifax again for about a week. I’m glad to be back to the blog after some minor technical difficulties. They are mostly resolved now and I am happy.

I arrived in Halifax on Thursday after a 20 hour door-to-door journey. Man. I’m not a great passenger on a plane because I find the seats make me feel a bit claustrophobic.  I also hate how long it takes to land, taxi, and park up. Let me out already. Anyway, the journey took so long that after about 10 hours in I lost the will to live. Which actually helped because it allowed me to just sit back and enjoy the ride. Learned helplessness is not all bad. Besides, Air Canada has personal in-flight entertainment monitors for each seat now. Which I approve of wholeheartedly. I’m not a sleeper on a plane so it gave me a chance to catch up on some movies. Because I was trapped. And because watching as many movies as I can on Air Canada’s dime makes me feel like I am getting some money back on my flight. What’s that, four movies at €8 a pop in the cinema? I’ve saved €32. Sweet.

I even had the opportunity to watch the Transformers again. But since I would rather snip out my own eyeballs with toenail clippers and scrub the sockets squeaky clean with rusting steel wool, I instead watched Sunshine Cleaning (pretty good), Coraline (not bad), some movie with Joaquin Phoenix and Gwyneth Paltrow (meh- is that guy good looking or not? I feel like he’s supposed to be, but really I’m just not feeling it), and The Affair (good). The last movie had some fairly decent sex scenes, which the guy sitting beside me must have noticed because after awhile he put the movie on for himself. And fast forwarded through it to get to the juicy parts. I guess he forgot I could see his monitor too… Sure I’ll get up so you can go to the bathroom. No, we don’t need to shake hands to introduce ourselves. Let’s make do with a jaunty wave, shall we?  Perhaps you like my moist towelette? Yes indeedy, it sure is nice to meet new people on the plane. I’m going to pretend I’m asleep now.

A small confession is that on my way through various airports on my journey here, I spent most of my time looking for cheap duty-free whisky. Unfortunately it was all pretty expensive.  At least for the Scottish single-malt (which I love).  The thought of three weeks on holiday with no whisky was making me twitch. But when I arrived at my mother’s place and walked through my old bedroom door harps twanged, angels sang, and the light of the lord shone on a bottle of Distiller’s Edition Talisker left over from my last visit with Adam. Praise be.

I went out on Friday in order to get some photos taken to renew my passport. Instead, I ended up buying this ironic hip flask.

Ironic, because I won’t actually be attending my graduation. A small protest on my part (read: they can kiss it if they think they’re getting one more red cent out of me).

The flask was on sale: only $4.99. And half price with engraving! Bargain!

I couldn’t wait to fill it.

Now I can’t wait to empty it!