country mouse makes for the city

As some of you may have already heard, I am soon bouncing out of this little town to the "big metropolis" that is Moncton, NB. Just a hop, skip and a five hour drive East on the Trans Canada highway. My heart calls to the East every day, and I continually feel pulled in that direction.

My outlook is different now that I know I'm leaving. I no longer feel the need to "grin and bear it" and I allowing myself to recognize my unhappiness with the situation. I don't like living here, and I'm not entirely satisfied with my job. I don't feel at home, and I don't feel like part of the team here at work, or like I've integrated into the town. I feel like I've been a satellite, absorbing as much information from this planet as possible, but from far far away.

I should explain my transfer. It was not offered to me, so it is not a promotion, per-se. I heard about an un-advertised opening from a dear friend who works at the Moncton Public Library. When she told me I should "express interest" sooner than later if I wanted a shot at it, my sweat pores opened and dispelled all my nervous energy onto my dress shirt in the form of warm salty water. I knew, I just KNEW that I had to . Even though I was 100 percent resigned to finishing my term here in Saint-Basile, was settling in for the grueling winter in the middle of nowhere, making big plans for huge projects at work, despite all this I knew that this was one of those golden opportunities that don't come along very often. Being one who is familiar with a certain amount of negative fate (I am not longer allowed to say that I am "Bad Luck" because it chips at the fragile amount of self confidence I do have), I knew that this was a giant morsel of delicious good luck and I had to it snatch up. I also had a feeling that because I had originally promised to stay here for the full term, "expressing interest in transfer" would potentially cause some hard feelings. So I gathered every ounce of courage, like collecting scattered sequins into a handful sized pile, put on a cardigan to hide my sweat stains and approached my boss for a meeting.

Note about "expressing interest in transfer" This is a biz-talk way of skirting politely around the issue that you would like to leave your current position, but without straight out saying you are leaving. A transfer isn't quitting, but if you are the one asking for it, it is a way of showing that you aren't really satisfied and want out. In my situation I "expressed interest" about a position that was opening in Moncton before I "expressed interest" in a transfer. This way nothing was definite, just "wanted to let you know I maybe, possibly, might be a good candidate for this new position if a transfer is possible" kind of thing. It's tricky!

So the conversation at my meeting went a little something like this:

Mouse: "I don't really know how to begin... "

J: "I already know what you're going to say."

Mouse: "WHAT?"

J: "Yes, I am psychic, and a wonderful caring person, so I am attuned to your needs and desires. I think this is a golden opportunity and that you should go for it."

Mouse: "I just want you to know that you are a wonderful, caring, supportive person, and I enjoy working with you and am in awe of the TS dream-team. I will not leave if it is going to cause a rift, or any kind of drama."

J: "We are accustomed to people coming and going in this region. It will not cause a rift. Go, with my blessing."

Then we hugged. WOW. Right? It turned out she isn't actually psychic (ok so I editorialized the conversation just a bit) but that she had actually spoken with the Regional Director in Moncton who alerted her about how I had "expressed interest."

I will truly miss working for J and can only hope that any boss I have in the future will be half as intuitive and supportive. Note to all bosses! A little positive reinforcement, and a sense of support, goes a really really really long way.

I will miss many things about this place. Probably more tangibly once I am away from it. Nine months isn't a very long time, but it is long enough to get intimate with a town, to grow accustomed to people and places, to find a way to make a life. I feel sad when I think about things I will no longer be able to do, such as bike past a field of sheep and other vast farm lands, or explore trails through reserve land, or along a dirt road to nowhere, or enjoy the overwhelming smell of woodsmoke hanging in the winter air, or revel in the open ended possibilities of a weekend where absolutely nothing is happening.

I think I am good at relocating and quickly adapting to new environments. Since I moved out east four years ago I have moved eight, eight times. This upcoming move to Moncton will be my ninth. I have to say it's getting a bit tiring, all this moving around. It's not that I dislike traveling, not at all. I wish I could do more of that. It's the packing up and relocating of the home-base that grinds one down. Each time I move I feel like pieces of me get left behind. Each time I have less and less (in attempts to make moves easier and faster I try not to accumulate many material things). And maybe it's because I can see my thirtieth birthday on the not-too-distant horizon that I have started to faintly hear my bones calling for a place to settle down, a place to call home. I don't want to feel so scattered any more. I don't want to say for sure that Moncton is destined to be the place where I will finally begin to put down my thirsty, ragged roots, but I do know two things: Saint-Basile is not a place for my roots, and Moncton is a step in the right direction. I can just feel it, East, you know?

It's true the sky was filled with dust and silver
Waves of light across a crooked highway
The ocean in a silver flask
Best get new dreams, these old dreams won't last
This is not your home, leave this place alone
Windy Road.
You said I had the look of a prairie crow, that year when all your friends were married
A gold ring on a leather boot, when all these mean lonely days are through
This is not your home, leave this place alone
Windy Road. ~The Constantines

I believe I will continue to blog, so don't worry you haven't heard the last of me! But I've decided to begin a new blog, for a new phase of my life, which I hope is to be some kind of a journey home.

google and GE's green energy plan

I heard this story on a Quirks and Quarks podcast this morning. Google and GE are teaming up to develop a smart energy plan, and hope to have things up and running by 2030. This story might be old news (it's from 2008), but I think it's cool, and worth a re-post. I've heard a lot of different green energy plans but this one seems the most plausible. It sounds concrete, do-able and like something that will not only get Average Joes on board, but will also support greedy corporations... because you know, green energy is a great and necessary technology, but if current corporations can't see themselves making money in a green future, then green plans probably won't happen without some kind of revolution. In reading and hearing about this Google and GE plan, I can imagine this kind of technology in a not too distant future. Perhaps even in my own future home (in Nova Scotia, with cedar siding and a lake view, fingers crossed). You see, this technology doesn't even seem futuristic, just practical.

And I can already imagine the fun Google and GE are going to have thinking up cute acronyms for their new technology. GOOGE and GEGOO and GREENGOOGE and stuff like that.

Follow this link to read about it on Google's official blog : http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/09/partnering-with-ge-on-clean-energy.html

infinite patterns caused by power outtages (featuring Edgar Allan Poe)

Last night at 9:30 pm the power went out. I was told later that this is actually not an uncommon thing to happen in Saint-Basile, but based on my own experiences of power outages, it is usually something that happens accompanied by high winds, ice or electricity storms. Not for no reason at all on calm, cloudless November nights (you know you live in the country when, for no apparent reason at all... )

At 9:30 I was on the phone with Jamie, boiling water for hot chocolate, watching TV and most of the lights in my house were on. “Most of the lights were on” because, at night it gets very very dark here. There aren’t many street lamps, and not too much traffic. There are no lights surrounding the building that I live in at all. For several irrational reasons when the trains go by at night my imagination runs amok and I invent all kinds of terrifying stories about demon trains, and portals to netherworlds opening,

And the silken sad uncertain rustling of each purple curtain
Thrilled me - filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before;
So that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood repeating

screw energy conservation, for my one little apartment in the country, I like to have all the lights on at night. I was talking on the phone with Jamie and had just finished saying something about my addiction to HGTV when SHUDDER SNAP everything turned off and all I could see was the glowing swirl of the red hot element boiling my water. I definitely squeaked in fright, yes much like a mouse, and completely forgetting that my phone was cordless (hence needs electricity to operate) I implored “Jaimeeeeeee!” into the dead line

Darkness there, and nothing more,

For approximately ten seconds I was terrified.

Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing,
Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before
But the silence was unbroken, and the darkness gave no token,

My fear at this time is not because I am inexperienced with power outages, but is because in all other power outage circumstances I have been in a house full of roommates or at the very least in a city full of people with friends nearby in the same situation. Power outages of yore were cause for happy shrieks, flashlights in faces pretending to be the cops, bar-b-ques... Never completely utterly all by myself in the black deep cold velvety November night in the country. No comforting motor sounds no lights no cars no friends. In all other power outage experiences I have also had a land line, or a cell phone. This time I had neither, and no internet either since that gadget is also wireless. For ten seconds standing in the kitchen with a steaming pot of water a glowing element and a dead phone I was truly shocked and scared! To make matters worse, at that very instant a train began creaking and shaking along the tracks behind the apartment.

Then, thankfully, I felt my wits gather,

Presently my soul grew stronger; hesitating then no longer,

I let my breath out and tried to remember where my lighter was.

After much scrambling and swearing I found my lighter and lit some scented pillar candles (ocean spray, cedar and vanilla). I put them on a plate and finished making my hot chocolate. At that point I was actually starting to feel OK. The candles cast a warm, flickering and comforting light. It was very quiet, it's amazing how much noise you notice when it's suddenly not there, but that was OK too. I left my hot chocolate to cool down, pulled on my parka and my boots and went out the front door to see how many other houses were out. What I saw was truly breathtaking.

Pitch black in every direction. I was holding one of my candles (cedar) and looking around. It was quiet like a church I could see the black silhouettes of houses across the street. Further up the road I could see that the Foyer (though in my darker moments I imagine it is The Asylum) must have some kind of emergency generator because lights were dimly showing through some of the windows. From time to time a car's headlights would fill up the road like a UFO. But best of all was the immense black sky now scattered with stars. Stars that were before drowned in village lights were now piercing Saint-Basile with their cold ancient light.

Back into the chamber turning, all my soul within me burning,

It was incredible and I knew exactly how I wanted to spend the power outage. Edgar Allan Poe and all the demons took a hike and I was happy and excited.

I set up a chair on my balcony and bundled up in my parka, with my hot chocolate. I let the darkness, the quiet and the vast starry tapestry fall over me, like cool silk. I could see not only Orion’s belt, but also his sword and arrows. I could see the yellowy North star, and the little dipper with its cute upside-down ladel. In the center Cassiopeia was more brilliant than ever and on the horizon the crescent shaped Venus was mysterious and blue. I could locate a cluster of stars that I recognized from star gazing in Algonquin park. I like to think of them as the constellation Coma Berenices (Berenices Hair) but I’m not sure they actually are. My Coma Berenices is not too bright because it's very far away, but it's very sparkly. It’s one of those constellations that you can see better if you don’t look directly at it. A lot of stars are like that, you can appreciate them more if you aren’t focusing so hard on trying to see them. If you just let the whole sky wash over you at once you notice so many more stars, patterns and colours than if you try to center them out.

I also saw two shooting stars and in thinking of wishes I was so very very overwhelmed with gratitude for everything. For how hard it is in Saint-Basile and how hard I try to be better, refine myself, fine-tune my life, I’ve sometimes forgotten to be thankful for the way everything has turned out. I’ve been focusing too much on how hard it is, rather than letting all of it just happen. It's when I let go like this that the patterns emerge and my life seems brighter, more sparkly, and my part in something bigger, though usually more difficult to see, becomes apparent. I’m not talking about god, or maybe I am, I always get philosophical like this when I star gaze.

People, including me, are so self important, it’s a wonder the entire industrialized world is stressed out. All of our gadgets are capturing our eyes, drawing them in, forcing us to focus on smaller and more trivial details. Take a minute to shut it all off, and look up and away, realize that we are just tiny organic miracles on a small fuzzy rock floating around and around an average sized sun that has forever been burning inside a galaxy. Only one of billions inside an infinite universe. Now HGTV, computer-sore eyes, worn out work pants, missing out on "the scene," unreliable cars, fitting in at work, "what am I gonna do next year?" doesn’t matter a lick anymore. For me it’s quite beautiful and calming to allow myself to just let go and put faith in the, for lack of a better word, unknown pattern. The one we can’t see unless we look away. Yes I cried, I cry easier these days. You should try it!

I spent the rest of the outage contemplating the infinite and the patterns and reading by candle light under my duvet with the window open just a crack. An hour or two later the power came back on and I called Jamie back. “The power went out…” I said “I thought that was what happened" he said, "what were we talking about?”

You know you live in the country when...

You're excited for your WalMart Portrait Studio appointment.

A "big weekend" is getting groceries, and making a trip to WalMart for craft supplies.

In fact, you notice that WalMart doubles as a place to meet friends, grab some MacDonalds and catch-up.

On a business trip you almost run over a couple of chickens.

On the way to the gym, a pick-up truck with a dead deer tied to the roof is tail-gating you.

On the way back from the gym, a pick-up truck in front of you is obviously being operated by someone who is drunk.

The required men's uniform is levis orange tab jeans, graphic tee or plaid shirt, work boots and a mesh backed hat. The required accessory is a pick-up truck or a jeep with oversized wheels.

You have to "de-spider" your balcony with a broom.

You are no longer afraid, or even all that surprised when you find spiders in your bed, hanging from hangers in your closet, or in the lamp shade.

You've joined a knitting circle.

You know the names of the guys who work at Enterprise Car Rental, the names of the cashiers at the Liquor Store and the name of the gas station attendant.

You know when the afternoon train is scheduled to pass by your work. You are no longer bothered by the way it makes your computer monitor vibrate.

Your work, a public library regional office, is attached to the fire station.

Down the road, the salon is attached to the mechanic.

There is no grocery store, but there is a convenience store to which a butcher is attached.

All of the above have aluminum siding.

Driving at night is dangerous and generally avoided because the only lights on the highways are the yellow flashing lights on the Moose Crossing signs.

Visiting friends and family in other cities and provinces usually requires two days of travel (without a car) and a day of travel with a car.

If you take the greyhound bus you can leave your car in any random parking lot (Dairy Queen, the library) and feel secure about it.

You know that when your car finally bites the dust you are going to park it in one of the many vacant junk lots and move on.

You can see the stars.

found love letters

I love finding notes, lists, book marks and photos that people accidentaly (or not?) leave in donated books. Here's a sweet note that I found today, tucked into a copy of Chicken Soup for the Soul:

Hey!
I picked up your book and read this story it was open too. Kind of reminds me of myself lately. I remember telling you recently that you're the reason I've gotten in such good shape. You didn't believe me but it's true. I want to be like this guy and live till I'm 110 years old because i want to be able to spend as many days with you as possible. that's why I'm working so hard.
I love you!

I hope the woman had a chance to read this before she donated her book to the library!

Earlier this year in a YA novel I found a homemade bookmark, made out of an index card and coloured with pencil crayons. It read:

Sister.
You may be annoying,
you may be a pain,
but with a sister like you,
I do nothing but gain!
I love you.

I can definitely relate to that one! I posted it up on the wall because it reminds me of my own annoying, much loved and missed sisters.

giant pumpkin contest - some snaps

The most people I have seen gathered in one place since I moved here.

I had some hot chocolate, it had real maple syrup in it. When I went back for a second cup that's when the women selling it told me that it was made with goat's milk. She said she didn't want to tell me until I had enjoyed it, in case I turned my nose up. I wouldn't have though! It was so delicious. The milk came from her own goats that she raises

There were 28 giant pumpkins in the competition.

They used a forklift to move them to the scale for weighing.

The champion pumpkin! Weighed 1025 pounds. Maudit! Que c'est une gros gros citrouille.

hiatus

Gentle readers. I apologize for my lengthy hiatus from this blog. Let me see if I can somewhat explain.

I'm conflicted. A big part of me wants to stay optimistic and "play the part" of the young professional just starting her career in a small town, taking all the hurdles in stride and rolling with the punches and all those other cliches about, you know, being strong, adaptable and learning. Readers, you know who you are, many of you are my family, and all I want is to make you proud. The problem is, this "confident and professional" part of me seems to be starting to errode, and underneath it is someone who is bored, lonely, sometimes depressed, misses her friends, her family, the city, yes even *the dreaded scene*. Everthing I willingly chose to leave behind.

THE SCENE!

Sometimes it's hard to write blog entries because I'm searching for the correct tone, one that will impart confidence, a good sense of humour and a gathering of knowledge. So when I think to myself about how it's high time that I wrote a blog entry, and why am I sitting here watching "So you think you can dance: Canada" when I could be doing something productive, I first try and think about exactly what to say, what the theme will be, and what I want to tell YOU. Then I draw blanks. You see, I've already gone over and over all the positives. I repeat them to myself and to others to the point that it's become some kind of a philosophy for why I am even here. Yes the french, yes the tehcnical experience, yes the managerial experience, the cheap housing, the great outdoors, the special projects, the independence. There are only so many blog entries that I can write about these things, and really, who wants to hear about the finickity things I do with our system? Or about the pros and cons of Excel Spreadsheets versus Selection Lists? Or what I learned about doing a public library's inventory? (Or maybe you do, let me know if that's the case...)

I avoid the negatives because I don't want to worry YOU. But they are there, they are inescapable and are perhaps even exaggerated in my solitude. Sometimes I really just want to get the hell out of here.

This past weekend I cracked a little bit and I made a spontaneous trip into Halifax to take part in the Atlantic Film Festival, and to crash at my dear friends A. & E.'s house. I needed to relax, to recoop, to feel part of something again, to remind myself that I am not so completely alone. I spoke with A. about how I had not been keeping up on this blog and I explained how I sometimes felt the need to "play a part" and not reveal everthing that I am feeling. I'm sorry readers, but I believe part of the reason for this is that I know many of you are my family; those that care about me the most, those that worry about me the most. In response to this A. asked me "well what would happen if you were comepletely honest?" I thought about this and I can't quite come up with an answer.

I suppose part of the reason could be because I originally wanted this to be somewhat of a "professional blog." One that would represent my experience in the field, the things that I learned, and something to potentially, one day, share with colleagues. A blog similar to the ones that my mom sends me. I realize now that I don't think that it can be that. OR maybe it will be and I just need to let it evolve into whatever it's going to become. Either way, what I was doing before wasn't working as well as it could have. I think I need to stop trying to force it to take on a certain tone and just be myself when I write. So now I am going to try an experiment and treat this blog more like a journal (though less of a scrawly angsty journal like the one beside my bed) or better yet, like a letter to a friend. I am from now on going to write it less for YOU and more for ME. I think it will be easier to just tell it like it is. Then we will see what happens, then I will have an answer to A.'s question.

So this is what it's like, after five months of being Technical Services Librarian managing a team of three francophone Technical Services Assistants, living and working in a small Acadian town where you have no friends (yet), not much to do, and sometimes worry that you are going crazy.

Country Mouse on her country perch. 

Chuka-chuka (inside joke)

Last week I spent two days in Kedgwick inventorying their library. Inventory usually brings to mind the act of “counting” but this is much more involved, annoying and difficult. It’s more of an analysis, really.

We start out by scanning every item in the library and entering all the barcodes into the computer. Then I generate a report to match all the barcodes with item notices in the catalogue. Usually about four or five things go wrong during this process. Sometimes entire sections have to be scanned again. Luckily we have these nifty chuka-chuka Star Trek tricoder portable scanning devices, so we don’t have to be carting books back and forth to the scanner at the desk. At least that's one step out of about 500 that has been eliminated.

Once the scanning is complete and the first batch of reports is done you realize that two days have gone by and the inventory process isn’t even half over. Back at the regional office I begin the next set of reports that tells me all of the items that, for whatever reason, weren’t scanned. This time around there are 400. FOUR HUNDRED! Somehow that's four hundred books (mostly non-fiction for some mysterious reason) that were missed in our two days of scanning. Yes, sometimes reports lie. That’s why I ran this one several times, in several different ways, and always came up with the same number.

After much tearing out of the hair I decided that it’s going to take a trip back to Kedgwick (1.5 hours in the library-mobile) to pass this hurdle. If I don’t figure out where the 400 books are, and scan them, they will be identified as “missing” when I run the next batch of reports; *shudder* the notorious “Set item to missing" reports.

Ah the life of Technical Services! Some time ago I semi-idolized the Head of Cataloguing and Technical Services woman in the Provincial Office. Now I am realizing that much of her job is running reports, scheduling reports, helping schmucks like me sort out reports that aren’t working, creating new-fangled reports to streamline the collection and basically tearing her hair out all the time, instead of once a week or so, like I do.

On the other hand, I must be some kind of masochist because I get a big geeky thrill out of running a well-oiled report. The report that runs perfectly with all of it's appropriate tags ticked and fields filled makes me leap up and high-five unsuspecting and suprised librarians who are helping me with the inventory (true story). I don't want my readers to get the impression that I dislike my job. It's just that sometimes it's complicated, and really it's the complications that make for interesting posts right? Just like my car. Stay tuned.

found the green river, but still hunting for a swimming hole

This past weekend I biked down a small highway I had not yet explored and ended up in Riviere Verte. The town was almost a mirror image of Saint Basile with its one main road, little Caisse Populaire, little post office, little church with enormous Jesus statue, deserted play ground and elderly neighbours waving to you from their shady porches.

As I got to the end of the town I turned off the road and biked through a farmer's field and nearly fell in THE RIVER! I actually found a way to get to the illusive river that I have admired from afar, but have not actually been able to reach. In previous defeated attempts there were always too many obstacles in the forms of: Weedy vines, sticky mud, swamps, cat-tails, icky icky icky tent caterpillars and relentless black flies (the glands on my neck are perpetually swollen from so many bites on these adventures of mine).

I don't think this is THE Saint John river but I'm fairly certain that it flows into the Saint John. Unfortunately, I'm not sure if it's swimmable. If it is Riviere Verte (which would make sense as that is the name of the town it flows beside) then it's aptly named; green slime covers the bottom of the bed and the banks are surrounded by green fields (which I imagine, makes for a lovely mixture of pesticide and manure run-off). I dipped my foot in, it's quite warm... maybe if I'm desperate enough one day I will take a plunge.

A soft green bed for my tired bike.

The secret road to the river.

multiculturalism

The regional director designated me as the ‘project coordinator’ for the spending of a large donation from governmental body. This means that a) she’s worried that I am getting bored with my job and b) I have to select 12 thousand dollars worth of multicultural books. The intent is to develop a core collection of multicultural resources for kids and young adults in each of our branches. That’s NOT 12 thousand per library (yikes!) that’s 12 thousand for the entire region. Still. Yikes.

She recommended that I try to select books that represent the communities’ multicultural profiles. So I turned to Stats Canada to see what I could see for the HSJ region. Here’s what I discovered:

In Saint Quentin there are 40 Arab people and 10 Korean people.
In Plaster Rock there are 25 Black people.
In Saint-Francois there are 10 Latin American females.
In Florenceville there are 40 S. Asian, 10 Latin American and 10 Arab.
In Saint-Léonard there are 20 Koreans.
In Edmundston (the most “diverse” by far) there are 15 Chinese, 10 S. Asian, 45 Black, 15 Latin American, 10 SE Asian, 15 Arab, 10 Korean and 45 who identified as “multiple visible minority.”
In Grand Falls there are 10 S. Asian, 30 Black, 10 Latin American and 10 SE. Asian.
In Perth-Andover there are no visible minorities.
In Kedgwick there are no visible minorities
In Nackawic there are no visible minorities.
In Hartland there are no visible minorities.

Of course these are small populations, and bear in mind that this is only representative of those people who actually completed the census, and who identify with the fairly broad classification terms supplied by Stats Can. BUT STILL! Compare these “multicultural profiles” to somewhere like Hamilton.

Oh small town life! How you often make me feel like I am wading in a bowl of oatmeal.

In a way, growing up in Southern Ontario I took for granted the variety of people, colours, languages, religions and backgrounds that surrounded me. Even moving to Halifax I was surprised at how “white” it was. Moving here and being suddenly immersed in the strictly Catholic, mostly white population it was as much a type of culture as it would be to move to, say, china-town in Toronto. I am uncomfortable and I feel out of place, and I’m craving something that is blatantly not here.

That’s not to say there isn’t any “culture” in HSJ. Acadian culture is rich, interesting and historical. I’m just not sure that there is “multiculture” which makes this selection project all at once very important, and also kind of elaborate.

always read invitations carefully OR the moncton wedding saga OR country mouse is mortified OR my car exhaust fell off

This past weekend I attended my good friend from library school C.’s wedding. It was in Moncton. I received the invitation a few months ago. I knew this invitation was coming because several girls who were also invited and I had already discussed the weekend’s sleeping arrangements. So when I got it I admired the paper but didn’t actually read it.

Later my friend S. asked me what time I would leave, since the wedding was at 3 pm on Saturday. I told her in that case I would drive down on Saturday morning and meet up with her in Moncton, we could get ready and go over to the wedding together. It wasn’t until I was several hours into my trip that, for whatever reason, I finally read the invitation and almost crashed my car when I realized that I WAS ACTUALLY ONLY INVITED TO THE RECEPTION following the wedding, at 5 pm.

This wouldn’t be such a big deal (just hang out in Moncton and meet up at the reception later on right?) except for the fact that, with much mortification, I remembered a conversation that I had with the bride two weeks prior. I must have been shooting my mouth off a bit, being all giddy and excited for her upcoming big day, when she asked me:

“so you’re coming to the wedding?”

at this point I had already RSVPd so I was a bit confused “yes of course!” I said.

“the wedding and the reception?” she asked, slightly surprised.

“yes! of course!” I said again, and then hugged her and danced around like an imp, or something.

So I’m in my car, on the way to a wedding that I actually invited myself to, trying to decide what to do. Should I go? She IS expecting me now, after all. Or should I just wait around until the reception? Or would that be rude? The last thing I want to do is make her feel bad. After several failed attempts at phoning S. (who was REALLY invited to the wedding) and who is waiting for my arrival, I decide to go to the wedding, and grovel later. For the remainder of the drive I played out several “worst case scenarios” in my head including one where there isn’t a chair for me and I have to stand at the back, beet faced, awkward, overdressed.

Despite my mortification it turned out beautifully. I went as S’s “date” (since her original date RSVPd and then couldn’t make it) and when I apologized to C. later (and thanked her for accommodating me, raved over how beautiful she was, told her how happy I was to have seen her vows) she told me she was glad I was there and would have invited me anyways it was just that she was originally trying to keep the guest list small. Though it’s possible she was only saying this to protect my fragile ego, it seemed like she meant it. I believe she did.

Then we partied partied partied partied. Danced danced danced danced. It was truly a wonderful time and a night to remember. The weather could not have been more perfect for the outdoor event. Two great ideas that I hope to incorporate in my own wedding (one day!) are a) a big white tent strung with lights and lanterns for the meal and the party b) kegs of micro brew and hundreds of bottles of home made wine.

Chapter 2: “Something terrible happened to my exhaust.”

The saga of the Maroon-Mobile aka Battle Star Galactica is seemingly never ending. I really think it might be time to put a brick on the gas pedal and just let it drive itself into the Saint John river (like Battle Star Galactica into the Sun, you know?)

The day after the wedding S. and I decided to take a drive out to the beach. Armed with maps, waters, towels and books we set out on our adventure. It was a beautiful warm and sunny day and we were feeling pretty good about ourselves. I was noticing that my engine was a lot louder than usual but tried to remember what Jamie would tell me, which is “calm down you’re worrying too much.” But the rumbling was gradually accompanied by a terrifying rattling, and when I went over bumps a horrifying CLANG CLANG CLANG just couldn’t be ignored. I was no longer calm.

We found the beach, and despite frayed nerves I made a perfect parallel park. Just as I pulled the emergency brake into place, a crash and a scrape announced that something metallic had fallen from my car onto the road. S. and I looked at each other then climbed out of the car. A quick peek underneath confirmed my suspicious. The exhaust pipe had pretty much crumbled off the car and was hanging there pathetically like a broken limb. Luckily I have CAA *high five* but I needed a better description of the location besides just "the beach." Across the street there were a bunch of trailers gathered on a lot, and a friendly looking group of men and women enjoying the day. We approached with our tails between our legs, said we were having car trouble and needed to call CAA. We asked for the name of the town and street. All I knew was that we were 20 minutes outside of Moncton, on a side road off highway 133.

“What’s wrong with your car?” asked one of the men after a sip of beer, of which I was suddenly jealous.

“Something terrible happened to my exhaust” I said, holding back tears, every special feeling of sunny beach hopefulness rusting over and flaking away. Later S. told me I was “very calm.”

“Well, let me take a look at it” he suggested.

The incredibly nice man got me to drive my car (exhaust pipe scraping along the road, like nails on a black board) onto the lot. He quickly and efficiently tied it back up with some coat hanger. Said that it would make it back to Moncton, and probably to Saint Basile, but that I would have to get it checked out. Said that I could leave the car on the lot while S. and I spent the rest of the day at the beach.

And it turned out to be a perfect day. One of the best. The kindness of strangers reaffirmed, the sketchy-rough, sometimes strange beauty of New Brunswick soaked into every pore, a lot of laughter, an adventure and a story for later.

Battle Star Galactica did make it back to Saint Basile. Muffler dangling precariously, exhaust pipe held on with coat hanger, dripping in the sun, it awaits its fate in my backyard.

it's official, large-print westerns have the best titles, characters and covers

Misfit Lil hides out by Chap O'Keefe
Starring Misfit Lil and Colonel Brook Lexborough

A gunfight too many by Chap O'Keefe
Starring Sheriff Sam Hammond and gun-handy range detective Herb Hopkirk

Montana manhunt by Hank J. Kirby
Starring Rush Bonner

In the name of the gun by Ryan Bodie
Starring Cleveland Kain and Shakespeare Jones

Last man riding by Clayton Nash
Starring Tad Ripley and his Wild Bunch.

The revenge of Iron Eyes by Rory Black
Starring the infamous bounty hunter Iron Eyes (his real name is never revealed)

Lightning at the hanging tree by Mark Falcon
Starring Mike "Lightning" Clancey

The Dakota deal by Dan Claymaker
Starring escaped prisoner John McCallum, gunsligner Frank Chater and Royce Chisholm with his sadistic sidekicks.

Yuma breakout by Jeff Sadler & B.J. Holmes
Starring horseless and down to his last dollar, out-of-work cowpuncher Nahum Crabtree

happy belated birthday

Not much was happening for Canada Day in Edmundston, but that's probably just my spoiled opinion. I actually MISS Halifax's lame fireworks.

Me at work: "Est-ce que la ville va faire des.... heuhhhhhhmmm.... comment dit-on fireworks?"

The answer is no. Not they do not. From 2 pm until about 7 pm there was a rotating crowd of approximately 20 people, mostly parents and their children, gathered downtown under a small tent. There was a clown twisting the most amazing balloon animals I've ever seen (no shots of these because I felt awkward taking pictures of strangers holding balloons) including an octopus with googly eyes, a monkey climbing a palm tree, and a variety of phallic looking hats.


There was a man cooking "Pleuves" and passing them out for free. I THINK they're called pleuves. But I THINK I might be totally wrong about that. I wish I could remember I because they are amazing. I tried them for the first time.


They are basically a big, doughy and kind of soda-y pancake. You pour on butter and sugar or maple syrup, roll it up and devour. Incredible flavour to be experienced. It was the highlight of my Canada day. Please leave a comment if you know the actual name of these fried beauties.

There are these enormous chainsaw folk-art wood sculptures all over the region, and especially in Edmundston. Outside Town Hall there are six to represent all the different makers of the community. I stopped to get some close-ups. I think the amount of detail is incredible. They all have different expressions and features.
The Autochtone.


The Acadian.

The French.

The British.

The Irish (I like his ears.)
And the Scottish. I will post more of these sculptures as I see them. Every once in awhile I will stumble upon another one.

So then I went to look at the dam for a little while, and then I biked home. That was my Canada Day.

Tomorrow I am going for a drive into Quebec City because I feel the need to be on a busy street with tall buildings for at least a day.

Happy Belated Birthday Canada, good night.

photo tour

Welcome to Saint-Basile.

Population 3500 (approx.).
Located in the Republic of Madwaska.
Bordered by the Maliseet First Nation reserve.
7 hours from Halifax, 2 hours from Fredericton, 2 hours from Quebec, 11 hours from Hamilton.

I tried several times to write about this place, explain how I feel about living here, and interpret how these pictures make me feel, but it's hard. I guess I have a love/hate relationship with Saint-Basile and when I try to describe it, it feels strained.

It's undoubtedly beautiful here. The town rests on the banks of the muddy, lazy, dirty old dog Saint John river. It's surrounded by deep and gentle hills. The Saint-Basile graveyard climbs up from two ancient houses that were the first houses of the community. You can still see the original grey stone foundation on them. They date back to the early 1700s. Many of the names on the grave stones, Cyr, Grondin, Pelletier, are ones that exist in plenty in the town's current generations.

Haha. Dead-end indeed.
Saint-Basile is located in Saint John River Valley Bible Belt. Yes, this is a very religous ... to the point of being New-Age... town. The church and the chapel attached to the "Hotel de Dieu" (a retirement home) are by far the biggest buildings in Saint-Basile. I had a conversation with a 15 year old boy about how angels work their good through him. He told me that if I looked up at the Jesus statue on the church with love in my heart, I would have a good day. I have stopped to look at 3-foot tall Mary and Joseph shrine statues blessing well groomed gardens along Rue Principale. At work I can't tell you how many books about angels, spiritual guidance, moral ethereal creatures, religious prophecies and Christian Romance I have catalogued.

I don't know if there's anything to it. But sometimes this place does feel "watched over."



It also seems to be a shrinking town. The funeral home is the only business that would appear to be thriving. Every other building has a "For Rent" sign up and from what I can see it is mainly retirees that live in Saint-Basile.




Yes that trailer does have a satellite dish bolted in to it. I tried to get a closer shot but I didn't want to offend and scare the neighbours who were just around the corner.

There are so many beautiful gardens. The earth is black and fertile. Because Saint-Basile is located in a lush bowl, next to a river, and the summers are temperate with regular rain and sun, green things thrive. I like to watch the man across the street tend to his huge vegetable garden. I recognize cabbages, onions, potatoes and grapes. The Hotel de Dieu has a lovely garden in the back that is open to anyone who wants to walk through it.

If you blink, you will miss this town, so if I pause I can feel privileged that I am here and will get to know it intimately. Life is slow so it is scheduled. It moves evenly and at the pace of the Saint John river. I spent three hours writing this blog (I told you I didn't know what to say) and now I will go for a run. That will be my Saturday. Honestly, I sometimes feel frustrated. It's hard to shake that claustrophobic feeling of being stuck on a remote island, away from my love, my loves, my family, city rhythms, people, anglophones. But I'm also thankful ( and often trying to remind myself to be thankful) for this pocket of time that I have to slow down, and hopefully grow a bit as well... (though I know I will always be short, that's NOT what I mean.)

More pictures to come!

list

Things I didn't know how to do today:

1- Where to put the 2010 Standard Postage Stamp Catalogue Vol. 3. Reference archives? Regular collection? What library? There is only about a million of these catalogues already. I hope they're serials. I love serials.

2- What technical services assitant to give the "Collections contes pour enfants" series now that I've finally decided to catalogue them all as Fiction. Usually "contes," which is "fables" in English, are considered Non-Fiction, and are assigned a Dewey number, whereas stories are considered Fiction. Yes I don't really get it either.

• Peter Pan- Fiction
• Blanche Neige - Non Fiction
• Pretty much any Grimm Brothers tale- Non Fiction

Weird.

This series had some of each so I made an executive decision to keep them all together, which meant making them all Fiction or all Non-Fiction. I chose Fiction because they will circulate better in the children's section as such. BUT now I don't know if I need to put them in with the rest of the flow of books, or if they need special cataloguing treatment. So they're sitting on my cart until I get the courage to ask another question.

3- What libraries to assign all the Patron Requests that I processed. Among requests this round:

• Journal d'un vampire / Lisa Jane Smith;
• various Daniel Steel schmuck;
• quelques really cool looking Bandes Dessinees and;
• Les Conseils de Celestin / Caroline Tresca. See image above. It's a children's picture-book series starring this Angel/Ghost/Kleenex who gives good (albeit boring) advice to a bad-ass kid, Lucas, who is always making the wrong descion.... such as playing games like Who Can Stay Underwater The Longest and Let's Ride Bikes Without Helmets.

day in the life of a trainee

People have been asking me what I do at my job. What did you do today Country Mouse? they ask. Tell me all about your job! They exclaim. Well, I'm afraid that if I give you a "day in the life" break down you're going to be asking yourself WHY in the hell would anyone want to do that for a living? or WOW she must be bored! or WHAT the hell does that even mean anyways? But I'm going to do it anyways, and just pre-empt this by saying; it's not so much the tasks that I enjoy (though I do enjoy some of these tasks) it's the overall feeling of what I am doing. Which is fine tuning a public libraries' catalogue and making sure it can be perfectly accessed. It's behind the scenes work (that I have always seemed to gravitate towards, can you say "wallflower"?) that eventually betters what the public sees on the face of the operation. OKAY shhhhhhhh now here we go.

7:00 alarm goes off hit snooze
7:10 alarm goes off hit snooze
7:30 alarm goes off grumble grumble and get out of bed. Make bed. Yes I always make my bed (though I didn't ALWAYS make my bed). Shower.

7:45 drink Carnation Instant Breakfeast, preferably chocolate flavoured though I have been known to suffer through vanilla. Or eat some kind of cereal. Make tea. Blowdry hair. Get dressed. Try to convince myself I look professional. Put on mascara for good measure.

8:05 walk the 100 metres to work.

8:15-8:30/9:00 check work emails. There are memos, statistics and reminders about upcoming meetings. Usually there are a few about changes that need to be made in our catalogue. If it's something I can change I do so, or if it's something that has to be more indepthly changed in the item's MARC record I may have to alert the regional office. I often make adjustments to call numbers, item locations and item notes. I am still getting the hang of a lot of this so correct me if I'm wrong.

Sometimes there are some emails about changes that need to be made to serials (as in magazines). The TSLs (me) are responsible for generating and upkeeping predictions for the serials in their regions so that each magazine doesn't have to be manually entered into the system. Usually it makes life easier, but sometimes if there is a problem with the predictions it is really tricky to figure out how to correct it because... well... because you have to *predict* what magazines are going to come next. Lots of magazines don't publish on a monthly basis. Some have special and annual issues that come out at the same time every year. Stuff like that. Can you tell that I actually really like this part? I really do. It's like a logic puzzle.

10:00 break time! Smell that coffee. We all gather in the meeting room and I eat my apple, drink my coffee and do my best to keep up with the very entertaining, but very francophone, conversations that occur. Some of the employees play this card game called "Charlemagne" (sp?) which looks kind of like Euchre.

10:15 ish - Noon depending on what needs to get done I will either be receiving orders, which involves entering all the books and their prices into WorkFlows and then designating what library they will be sent to. Or I will be hanging around the back sorting through the weeded books and deciding if they should be removed entirely from the collection, sent back to the library for reassessment, or redistributed to another library (still getting the hang of this). Or I will be sorting through patron requests and ordering the appropriate copies from the appropriate vendor. Or dealing with donations for tax receipts. Or investigating donations in kind, which I think I basically do the same way as donations for tax receipts only without the receipt bit.

Coming up there are also some special projects that I will help out with: the Outreach project, The Inventory project (*mental note* which I have to do some prep for tomorrow) and a large fund to build an ESL/FSL collection that I will be doing selection and ordering for.

Oh. And I was just recently informed that I will be re-vamping the Emergency Preparedness Plan. Which is this big complicated document that outlines how to save the people AND the books if there was a fire, flood or uhhh.. bomb threat or what not. Believe it or not there is a special section that outlines the procedure involved in *leaving someone in the library* in an emergency situation. Like a fire. No joke there is a procedure and a form to fill out if I was ever in a situation where I decided that I couldn't get a person out to safety.

Noon: I walk the 100 metres back to my apartment and chat on the phone with Jamie while I eat either soup, sandwich, leftovers or all three.

13:00 back to work and basically start the whole process all over again.

15:00 more cards, apples and French lessons.

16:30ish home time.

So that is pretty much my day in a nutshell. I wonder if it has satisfied anybody's curiosity or, raised more complicated questions, or put people right to sleep? I'm sure that this time line of events will change as I become more competent at my job. Right now the day is interspersed with me knocking on my boss's door, holding a book saying "Bonjouuuuur... J'ai une AUTRE question... " or emailing A. in Fundy region (she trained me) "Hellllooooo... I have ANOTHER question... " Yes I am definitely learning and changing every day. This time line will mean nothing to me in about three months I guarantee it.

I'm going to my beloved Halifax this weekend. See you when I get back! We'll talk more then.

options

I could take a bus to Fredericton and fly Air Canada to Toronto, then somehow get from Toronto to Hamilton. OR I could take a bus to Moncton and fly WestJet to Hamilton. Either one of these options is going to cost me around 500 dollars.

I could take a bus to Campbellton and then take the VIA to Aldershot. The train ride is around 20 hours geeeeeeeeeeeez! and tickets are around 300 dollars cripes! I could take a Greyhound (bus not dog) all the way from Edmundston to Hamilton. Imagine being on a bus (or dog) for an entire day! An entire precious vacation day. I only get 15 of them but I am thankful that I get even that. Generally I would have to work for six months before receving any vacation.

I could rent a car but that would cost me over 250 dollars plus whatever extra I would have to pay for the kilometers. All onethousandonehundredandfiftytwo of them. It's an 11 hour drive to Hamilton but I think I could do it in 10. I could drive the Maroon Mobile/Battlestar Galactica machine. If it can drive to Halifax and back, surely it could make it to Hamilton, no?

Any option I chose will mean two entire day's worth of traveling (there and back). It pains me to give up vacation days for traveling. Because I only get 15 days of vacation I have (for now) decided that I am going to sulk it through the summer without seeing my family and then take some extra home time over Christmas. Sighhhh...

vocabulaire

Getting accustomed to the New Brunswick francophone world is a lot like having a radio in your head and not quite being right on the station. You can hear bits and peices coming through now and then, and if you fiddle with the dial and concentrate really hard you can pick up a better reception, but oftentimes it is hard to hear through the static. I find the most frustrating part is that in English I think I have a pretty decent vocabulary, but in French, my vocabulary is less than a quarter of what I know in English. It's usually really difficult to explain myself, but I am slowly improving. I'm not afraid of talking to cashiers anymore, I think that's a big step... Here's a sampling of some of the new vocabulary I am trying to cram into my tired brain.

colibri/oiseau mouche: both words mean "hummingbird" though I prefer the first (the second literally translates to "fly bird"). There are about a million of these guys, mostly of the ruby-throated variety, flying around my back yard. I bought and installed a feeder recently and in doing so unwittingly began the Great Hummingbird Civil War of 2009. A few males have established my feeder as their territory and will literally dive-bomb any enemy colibris who cross the invisible border. Even females! And they squeak at each other. I didn't even know hummingbirds made any noise beyond the whirring of their wings. Once when I took down the feeder to bring it in and refill it with sugar water (no food coloring, food coloring is not good for the little birds' digestive systems) the hummingbird I named Chet Baker was flying around my head. It was as if he was perturbed that I was taking away his sweet plastic sugar flower. Chet buzzed around as I untied it and then when I went inside with it he perched on my laundry line and looked imploringly (I swear imploringly!) into the apartment. No word of a lie the little guy then began to sing a small warbly tune of lament. I was pretty much astounded and laughed so hard that I almost cried. He waited on the line, in the rain no less, until I brought it back refilled. I wish you could have seen it.

foyer: this, I'm not entirely sure why, is what they (as in the francophones of this area) call an "elderly-folks home." There is one just up the street from me and for awhile I had no clue what it was. FOYER it said on the big blue sign, and I could see that it was some kind of a religiously themed place to stay. I thought maybe it was an asylum of some sort. I eventually learned this word because the Haut St. Jean Library Region will be the test region for the pilot Outreach project. What will happen is, with the help of a series of computer programs and specialized reports, certain groups of people who for whatever reason aren't able to come to the library can have boxes of books sent to them for borrowing. They will be able to fill out a questionnaire and books of a variety of genres, such as history, true crime, westerns, pet care, will be retrieved from the branches and sent as a package. The Outreach project will benefit foyers, daycares, hospitals etc, you get the idea. *Point of Interest* In English there is a genre called "romance," but there is no French equivalent for this genre name, even though there are plenty of French romance novels. If they are classified as anything, it's usually "emotif" which means "emotional."

garderie: means "daycare." I learned this for the same reason as above.

don: means "donation" and don d'impot (minus accents) means "donation for tax" (or something like that). I've been sorting through hundreds of donated books, where the donator has requested a receipt to be used for their tax purposes. It's a lot of paper work for what ends up being not a lot of money. Some books are worth only 5 or 10 dollars. Others are worth 30 to 40 dollars, but are too old and so aren't accepted into the collection. I was suspicious of one "kindly donator" who gave us dozens of hard cover popular novels. Though the books were mostly from the 90s I did end up acccepting about 300 dollars worth of popular hard covers from this individual to be distributed among the libraries in the region. The list price for these would generally be 30 to 40 dollars, as was indicated on the inside flap. However from time to time I would notice that there was a much lesser price written in pencil on the first page, or a price that had been erased. I was beginning to wonder if this man, thinking he had found a loophole in the system, had purchased a whole lot of second hand books, and then donated them to us for tax receipts.

formation: means "training." Because I am still en formation, I made several mistakes with the dons d'impot.

ouvrage: means .... or at least it is being used to mean "organization" or "planning." As in, the Hackmatack author books tour took a whole lot of "ouvrage" and it wasn't cool when a couple libraries re-arranged their pre-scheduled author talks. Drama!

reunion: means "meeting." So many meetings! The last meeting I was at was a manager's meeting in Grand Falls (Grand Sault) and it was actually really great because I got to meet a lot of people that I had already been conversing with via email. It made me feel proud to finally be able to introduce myself to all the librarians, and to let them know that they can contact me when they encounter problems in the catalogue. I did my best to speak in French, but I was nervous and that makes it even more difficult to get a grip on my vocabulary. Here's how one conversation went:

N: "Oh Beatrice! Bonjour, cette une plaisir de vous connaitre, je suis N.... Nous avons deja fait quel ques correspondances en email."
B: "Oui. Bonne-jou. Cette une play-zeer"
N: "Comment est-que vous trouvez votre travail?"
B: "Uhhh... il y a bow-coup a apprendre. Uhhh... j'aime bow-coup tout le monde que je travail avec. Ils sont.... uhhh... really great... and.... et... je get along with them tray bien."
N: "Votre francais est tres bien Hahahaha"
Other people listening in: "Hahahahaha"
B: "Non. non. non. ce n'est pas encore bien mais je will get better" *crawls under rock*

demeurer: means "to reside." People were always asking "si je demeure" in S.K's apartment. I would always say "Oui. C'est tres jolie" even before I knew what demeurer meant. For awhile I was confusing it with "demarrer" which means to start up. I thought people were asking me if I was starting up in my new apartment. I was confused.

coin: of course means "corner" but it's used as a geographical term. Kind of cool (or not?). At first I had no idea what it meant when someone asked me "Quel coin de Halifax viens-tu?" and I would say "sorry????" which is the international term for "what the hell? speak in English to me please!!" but now I know it means "what part of Halifax do you come from?" I even used it once, asking someone "quel coin de Toronto as-tu viste?" Smooth. *Point of Interest* "coin" is also what francophone ducks say... as in "coin!coin!coin!" instead of "quack!quack!quack!"

pi: pronounced "pee" means "and then." It's kind of a slang word that accents everyone's speech. It's really the francophone equivalent to "like" or "right." It's pretty much impossible not to start saying it, and it has already infected my own conversation.

Ouaiwaiwaiwai: is like "yea yea yea yea." That's the best I could figure to write this amazing word/noise. The "Ouai" can have up to ten "wais" attached to it. It's a way of agreeing with every aspect of what the person is saying, usually when a gossipy story is being told, or when instructions are being imparted. It can even be so prolonged as to interrupt what the person goes on to say next, after the initial agreeance is made. I like it. I use it now too.

That's all for me for now. I'll be in touch! Ouaiwaiwaiwai

mai

I've been sick I've been sick! I'm sorry for not being at blog in so long.

Some highlights from this month:

The marvelous Jamie Gilfoy made myself and Saint Basile sparkle with his presence. He arrived in a humongous Dodge van filled to the brim with loads more of my stuff that had been temporairly stored including my books and MY BED. That night, cradeled by my pillow top mattress, I had the first solid sleep since I moved here. The next morning... *ahem*... afternoon... we drove back to Halifax. Jamie drove the rental Dodge. I drove the Mazda I had been borrowing from Jamie's uncle. Jamie got to listen to stand-up comedy and a wide selection of trance (as well as hip hop, rock and anything in the universe really) music from his rental's satellite radio. I got to listen to ... static mostly... except once in Truro I could pick up two stations, both were new-age country. It didn't even make me cranky. I was too excited to be with Jamie and to be on my way to see my beloved city and friends.

I saw my two best friends get married. Words cannot describe how moving this was for me. I gave a lame speech. For days leading up to the event I was an emotional wreck and on the verge of tears (and the bride was so calm!). For days afterwards, I went over and over the night in my head. It was too much. It was just right.

The Maroon Mobile has been resurrected. Grumbling and smoking from the bowels of the yards of Jesus 2.0 (Jamie's cousin) guarded by the big-headed Hyrda (also known as Blue) the Maroon Mobile rolled out and was back for more. As a birthday present Jamie bestowed me with a second chance at owning a car, in the shape of a new engine. The engine was successfully transplanted and the car is running like an absolute dream. I may or may not have stealthily driven it from Halifax to Saint Basile without plates. Either way it's here and I love it.

I had my 27th birthday. My birthday consisted of me calling in sick to work. Sleeping all day and then driving to Fredericton in the evening. I had a training meeting the next morning. It was the worst birthday ever. NOT because of the training in Fredericton. That was very useful and helped to put my job in context. It was because of the sickness and the driving-ness combined with the sickness. Torture.

Fredericton. I spent less than 12 hours in this very clean city. I slept for 7 of them, got lost twice on my way to the meeting and blew my nose at least 200 times. I met an important technical services figure who's name I had only ever seen in emails, and I got a tour of the provincial office (the provincial public library office). The office was just as I had expected, but the important library figure was the complete opposite of what I had imagined, which was a huge relief actually.

I experienced pink-eye. I always wondered what it would be like. I had a bad sinus cold and was coughing up a whole lot of (insert French accent) "material" . On day three of the cold I wiped my eye and felt some of said "material" come out on to my finger. It was quite disturbing. Under duress (the duress from my concerned boyfriend) I went to the walk in clinic and haltingly explained that some junk was coming out of my eye. The doctor told me I had "conjunctive" to which I replied "grooosssss." Apparently I also had an ear infection. I am much better now and can actually taste food again. Which is wonderful. I was taking it for granted before. I know I will do so again, but for now, there is nothing quite so palatable as a hummus pita with brie and red pepper.

I am learning about how to correct serial catalogue records in WorkFlows (referred to by some as Sirsidynix, or Unicorn, or Symphony, yah it's confusing). P (one of my bosses) was lamenting over the serial predictions for "Women Weekly." He just can't seem to come up with the correct predictions for when the next issues of Women Weekly are set to arrive at the various branches. The issues are supposed to arrive every three weeks, but every month or more librarians are contacting him to complain that so-and-so arrived to soon, or so-and-so arrived late. I hope you all can see the humour in this situation. Get it? WOMEN WEEKLY? I finally had to point it out to P. I don't know if this counts as office sexual harassment or not.

Maybe the above was librarian humour and it's not funny at all. Oh well. I had a good laugh anyways.

There are hummingbirds all over the place in the back fields. I have never seen so many hummingbirds, mostly Ruby Throated, whizzing around like miniature helicopters. I need to take pictures of this phenomenon and of this place in general. You all must be wondering what everything looks like anyways. I will post some, soon, promise.

Nice talking to you! Good night for now.

work

Our offices are attached to Saint Basile's former fire station. The building is literally thirty seconds from my apartment. I walk out the front door, across a small field and I'm there. I leave at 7:59 and I arrive at 8 am. The HSJ employees are very precise about time. Begin work 8:15 sharp. Break 10 am. Lunch 12 pm. Break 3 pm. Drop everything and leave 4:30 pm.

Prior to being a fire station, the building was a a town hall (I notice quite a lot of this building recycling happening. There are plans in the works for our relocation to a building that used to be a police headquarters. This fact was actually front page news.) Because of the building's former designation, my office is up on this hardwood sort of stage in the main room. I have to say it's kind of snooty feeling and I don't know if I like it.

On Tuesday and Wednesday this past week I went with the HSJ regional director and another intern to escort a children's author around to libraries in our region. He was promoting his book "At Vimy Ridge" which was up for a Hackmatack Children's Choice award. We visited three libraries where the author gave very entertaining book talks. The kids were putty in his hands as he described in great detail the horrors of war, including vivid descriptions of the living conditions in trenches (rats and excrement) what happens to a soldiers lungs when he inhales mustard gas (they melt and come out his nose) and exactly how Hitler died (shot himself in the head, there's still a piece of his skull on display in Moscow.)

We stopped at Hartland, which boasts the world's largest covered bridge. Yes, we drove over it. It was .... long and... covered and... made of wood. We stopped in Florenceville, which was so clean and quaint it felt like I had become a porceline figurine, part of an eccentric lady's collection of miniatures. The McCain family reigns over the pristine potato fields and picturesque farms in Florenceville, and we even drove by a museum called "Potato World" but didn't have time to visit. We stopped in Woodstock, which has a beautiful old library with exquisite wood-work, it was most certainly haunted. We finally stopped, and spent the night, in Moncton. The Moncton branch has a new regional director and is undergoing big renovations, reorganization and weeding projects. I managed to snag an ALA promotional poster of Patrick Stewart wearing khakis and holding a Shakespeare book. They were seriously going to throw this gem away! It's now on my fridge.

I spend the rest of the week continuing my training in Saint Basile. I'm picking up the technical side of the job pretty easily, but I'm nervous about having to actually be a manager, and schedule *gulp* monthly meetings with my *sweat* staff and develop *shiver* strategic goals. I know, I know, just be confident. And I am. Every day I call Mr. Jamie and channel some of his business charm before I walk across the field with my coffee. So far so good. It's only you who will ever know how small my feet feel in these manager shoes.

But guess what! It's not all strategic goals and monthly meetings in Saint Basile. Oh no! Up next: what to do for fun in the middle of nowhere, and why the weekends are actually quite nice when there's not much going on. Stay tuned.

mactaquac

I get absurdly happy when I hear or read the word "Mactaquac."
Mactaquac is the name of a community near Fredericton. I think it's quite possibly the best, most wonderful word I have ever heard.

mon apartement

If you take the Rue Prinicpale exit off the Trans Can and drive for about 15 minutes you will enter Saint Basile. Mon apartement is one of eight units in a long blue building that at first glance, looks like a run down motel. All the doors face the road, and you can park a car directly in front of the door.

But when you come inside and up the stairs what you see is a very pretty, well maintained and dare I say "girly" little place. Little, but still by far the biggest place I have ever lived in on my own, and definitely the most grown-up apartment of all the (count,count,count) twelve (!) places I have lived in since moving out of the rent's.

It has fresh paint in each of the rooms. One room is lavender, one room robin's egg blue, one room taupe and the bathroom is pure white. It has an antique-ish light fixture in the hallway. It has a little balcony in the back that looks out onto the train tracks and the lush green hills beyond. It's, well, it's pretty romantic I guess! I feel mysterious and solitary sipping wine, reading french newspapers and trying to figure out what the train schedule is.

I also feel like a squatter. I arrived with only a car full of things. More things will be arriving later thanks to a friend with truck, but even then I know I won't have enough to fill this two-bedroom flat. I'm in the front room, which attaches to the kitchen, sitting in the one chair in the whole place and making good use of the one table. Both items were left for me from the previous renter. I sleep on the floor. My unpacking has consisted of taking things out and spreading them around, basically making a big mess. But I have plans for minimalist decor. I don't really want to acquire any more than what is absolutely necessary. I just have to find a creative way to use each room sparingly.

Uhm, I also have plans for pennies on the train tracks. To be made into some kind of a mobile. Maybe I can have a "mobile room."

Oh! and I also have plans for a dark room (eee!) because my bathroom is absolutely ideal for this purpose. So I'm sure as I begin hanging up prints to dry I will be happy for all the empty space. It's all going to work out nicely I believe. I can't wait for you to come visit me!

getting here

I can do this I can do this I can do this I can do this. I made it! MAN what an ordeal getting here!

I bought a 1994 Toyota Tercel for 850 bucks. Colour: Maroon. Original asking price: 1150. Rebuilt engine (major selling feature) and a rusty body (embarrassment enducing feature). After some car savvy gents approved of the rust bucket I spent some more change getting it ready for the road. I loaded it up to the brim with all my dishes, trinkets, milk crates, used clothes, sleeping bags and other ghetto accoutrements that I had been acquiring in Halifax. I began the seven hour drive to Edmundston, New Brunswick with anticipation. I completed the obligatory cry as I crossed MacDonald bridge and watched the city fade in my rear-view mirror.

I believe the engine started knocking about forty minutes later. I didn't notice right away because the radio was way up. I turned down the radio and my heart sank. The little 4 valver was knocking like a mini hammer rattling around an empty coffee tin! It was rattling like it had an old metallic bee in its bonnet! It was shaking in a way that I just knew was bad bad news. Indeed, less than half an hour later the car came to a wickedly dramatic halt on highway 102. I was out like a shot and down the bank thinking the smoke pouring out of the hood meant it was on fire.

So there I was, ten minutes outside Truro crying into my cell phone as I watched the oil chug and vomit out from beneath the car. Later, the mechanic at the Toyota dealership in Truro informed me that an engine rod had suddenly and violently ejected itself from the machine via the oil pan. Hence the hole in the pan that looked exactly like a bullet had been shot out from the inside.

After spending several mind-numbing hours at the dealership a kind soul arrived in his batmobile-esque Civic to rescue me and all my stuff. I doubled back to HRM where another kind soul offered me the temporary use of a cranky-clutched but otherwise ship-shape Mazda for my second attempt at moving. A third kind soul escorted me around as we readied the Mazda for its trip. Throughout the entire ordeal a long-distance kind soul loved me, talked me down, supported and coached me along. So many kind souls are in my world. As horrendous, sweaty, expensive and stressful getting to St. Basile was, it also helped me remember all the wonderful people I know. Thank you!

Epilogue: Engine officially blown, the Toyota now rests at an impound lot in Truro. I screwed up my courage and called the guy who sold me the lemon. I told him my tale and in not so many words blamed him. "Rebuilt the engine" HA. The culprit offered to help me find another engine. That's fine, so long as he pays for it. If all goes according to plan the aforementioned kind souls will insert the engine into the body, and maybe you haven't heard the last of the old maroon-mobile.