It strikes me that I have not written a real blog post in a while: in fact looking more closely the last non-meme post that I have written was from February 10. Now, unless I'm somehow even more sleep deprived than I think I am right now, a fair number of things have happened since the tenth of this month about which I will comment.
One of my dearest friends has left the country to teach English overseas. I still find it hard to believe just how far away she has gone, especially since she left the day I returned from my trip to Winnipeg (more about Winnipeg later). Nonetheless, for serendipitous reasons, I was able to attend her going away party, where I met a tonne (okay, so not a literal tonne, but you get the gist of what I'm trying to say) of absolutely excellent people. It was a good night for many people (myself included). Probably my favorite Friday the 13th on record, even though I did work from 7am-3pm that day.
Valentines began with a wonderful breakfast goodbye to Jackie at the Upper Crust restaurant. All together it was an amazingly great day though I definitely hadn't had enough sleep for ease of packing when it came to that evening and time to prepare for my trip to Winnipeg for DCON.
Sunday's flight to Winnipeg was delayed… but otherwise it was good. I arrived safe and sound and met up with Tracy and Louis pretty immediately. Spencer's family made great hosts and we got to do all sorts of sightseeing in Winnipeg:
Manitoba Museum (which I really enjoyed!), Festival de Voyageurs, The Forks, Skating on the Red River, Louis Riel's Grave, St. Boniface Cathedral, the University of Manitoba, etc. It was overall a great sightseeing experience. I so wish we had a skating rink like the Red River (the longest in the world!)… such fun! We went 2.5km at least, round trip!
And fun too! DDR, karaoke, tobogganing, snow-hill climbing, snow maze navigating, box-numbering (with a Sharpie), etc. And of course what was called We-Can's Wild Whopper of a Virgin Wassail. And really great food (French Canadian/Metis, and the whole gamut of more regular fare). I had a great time!
And the flight home was perfectly on time. Andrew's dad was generous enough to give me a ride home from the airport (and we had an excellent late lunch).
I still haven't unpacked but whatever. I'm back to working 7am shifts… and CLEARLY not getting enough sleep… but I'm not actually complaining about this fact.
Oh, and my souvenir from Winnipeg is this wonderful pair of mittens that are actually really warm and stylish. It's odd, but I keep buying mittens on my travels, first San Diego, and now Winnipeg… odd, isn't it?