Ah…the more days that go by, the harder I try to avoid this job because I know now that way WAY too many moments have passed since the last time I blogged and the idea of getting them all down on paper (figuratively speaking ok course :P) seems somewhat daunting…so instead I will make an attempt at the abridged version! I've just taken a stroll into Whistler village and am sitting in the public library next to the big windows with snow falling outside. It's beautiful. I really can't quite believe that I live here…the past few days have been great, albeit a tad frustrating because my student season pass is blacked out from Christmas to New Years so I've been stuck in the village while everyone else is out on the mountain! But conditions haven't been 100% brilliant anyway, so I'm thinking that by the time I get out there it will be just perfect!

The last week at SFU felt like complete mayhem, to be honest. What with trying to cram in all the last minute partying, goodbyes, move-outs, administrative STUFF (you know, the indefinable "stuff" that just seems to take forever and never goes away and makes you feel like you spend hours of your life doing God knows what), and cramming some delayed exam study in around the edges. The day that Jessie, Helle, and Monica left I felt a little like someone had whacked me over the head with a baseball bat. We'd be out the night before to a town house party that got shut down after a grand total of 30 minutes - woo hoo!!!! Before we bailed and headed back to catch one last episode of SATC together…don't ask me why, but we watched the episode where Carrie leaves for Paris. It was like some cruel form of self-inflicted torture.

The next morning I got up and scrambled to get all the last bits and pieces packed and ready to go and tried hard to hyperventilate when I saw how much stuff there was. I'd been the lucky recipient of everyone's excess stuff, so in addition to my own luggage I had an assortment of kitchen bits and pieces, old magazines, rugs, lamps, etc etc etc. It took 5 trips to get it all out of the building later that night, by the end of it I felt like I had guns of steel!! Haha We met in the dining hall around 11 to say our final farewells…goodbyes, I have discovered, are not fun. You don't wanna not have them because then you feel some strange sense of lacking closure, and yet, they're never ever good. I went and saw Sofia to give her her Christmas card and she gave me a huge hug, which just about set me off, then when the girls had to leave, it was all (as Jessie so hilariously put it) Sailor Moon tears. Tears everywhere, it was ridiculous. Daniel was there and he looked totally overwhelmed by it all. All five of us girls fairly bawling our eyes out.

Anyway, that was that. And after we'd hugged, and hugged again, I helped Veronique with her bags down to the car and then went back to studying. No kidding. Not cool. I had about 3 hours to cram everything I possibly could about adolescent development into my sleep-deprived, overly stressed, pre-occupied brain, and I can say with a fair amount of certainty that it was the most unproductive 3 hours of my life. By the time the exam started I just wanted to get out of that uni, off the mountain, and into a bed I could stay in for a week! I've never written an exam so fast in my life (and all of this would be a little disappointing if the exam had gone, as JL would say, to mushy custard, but in fact I aced it, so I can laugh about it now!). When I escaped, I hauled all my stuff out onto the road, said goodbye to my room, and sat there…for 45 minutes. In minus 3 degree weather. Waiting for a taxi driver who refused to ask for directions. But he arrived eventually and I sat in a daze during the 30 minute transit down town while he told me about a gondola that collapsed at Whistler that day leaving a bunch of people stranded for about 5 hours. 45 minutes on Burnaby mountain was seeming not nearly so bad now.

I got into JL's and low and behold that night the snow started to fall. And fall. And fall. It became pretty clear the next day that I wouldn't be going anywhere. The roads were a nightmare, and I was pretty sick because my body had finally given up and given in to all the attacking viral bugs. I eventually made it up to Whis a few days later in time for one last night out with the Aussie girls, and of course my darling Veronique! We scooted around from Moe Joe's to Tommy Africa's then back to Moe Joe's, and a great night was had by all :) The next morning I met them in the village to say yet another set of goodbyes (really over saying goodbye by now!) before heading home to sleep for nearly 24 hours!

I went back down to Vancouver for a few days over Christmas to spend the time with JL and we had a truly lovely time. Christmas eve morning I woke up to see a world of white. Vancouver had had record amounts of snow overnight, and our plans to head down to Granville Island were quickly abandoned when we realised we'd have a hard enough time getting down to Main Street, let alone all the way down town. We did take a stroll up Main though, picked up some gifts, phone cards, and flowers, before stopping for a coffee on our way home. I had a ball in the snow, fell over a few times, and nearly got buried in it it was so deep! We watched and laughed as brave (or foolish?) people attempted to drive their cars down the back streets…ah silly Vancouverites and their unpreparedness for snow! :P Christmas day we went to a friends of JL's place, Deb, and had a lovely Christmas lunch with the most amazing turkey, cooked inside the teeny tiniest kitchen. It was truly a miracle!

I headed back to Whis a couple of days later and have since then been thinking about fun things like finances. I've scoured the shelves of the local grocery store looking for savings, discounts and specials. And though work was looking to be a bit of a problem, I've managed to score a few jobs in the next few days, which is all I really need each week. Just enough to pay for groceries and going out! So all is well, and I'm catching up with a mate from Perth tonight to head to 80s night at Tommy Africa's - um hello, I live in a village with a club that has a 1980s themed night EVERY WEEK! It's like weekly electric blue!!! That's my kinda heaven :D

I think 2009's gonna be a very good year indeed…

LIVxo