My parents have fled the winter snows to go to Hawaii for a political science conferance for a week, leaving me on my own. Well, I'm not exactly on my own. I go across the street every night to sleep with my parent's friends and colleagues, who are from Romania and have a two year old son named Luc and a big hairy dog who looks like a cross between a bear and a lion. I spent my evening yesterday watching Voyager and trying to answer homework questions about confederation treaties in Canada's ealy history while Luc chased the lionbeardog around the house on a tricycle.
I have not seen my PDA for about a week now. I have drawn three major conclusions as to what may have happened to it.
a) it is somewhere in the vast layered mess which is my room
b) I forgot it in one of my classes and it was picked up by someone who decided not to return it to the office or to me, despite the fact that it says my name all over it and it has a copy of my timetable in it, so they would know exactly where in the school I am at any given time.
c) aliens from beneath Europa, a moon of Jupiter's icy exterior stole my PDA so that they could sample some fine human litterature.
Considering that I am a pretty bad writer, I doubt that c) is the case.
I'm not all too worried about it. Usually when I lose something I start panicking, but at the moment I have some things that are much more important to be stressed over, i.e. my grades, the band recording, and various other projects.
It's not as if there was anything important in my PDA. There were some short stories and poems that I have copies of on my computer, some addresses for people I never send letters to, and some games I never play. In fact, in terms of an organizational device, I found that it took too much organization to carry around my PDA with me to complete the task that the back of my hand and a pen did just fine.
Of course, there is a chance that it will show up yet.
Ozymandias
I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read,
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed,
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look upon my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
Percy Bysshe Shelley
Walking home from the gym today I decided to take the back way home, through the field of snow. The snow has melted slightly and refrozen, so that I could walk on top of it without sinking in. The snow was still about half a metre thick, so it felt a bit weird. Before winter I used to take that path everyday, and now I was seeing it from a higher perspective. It felt like I was floating.
After a very long period of procrastination, I am currently updating my pictures of Ghent for your viewing pleasure.
Tuesday is my absolute least favourite day of the week. Don't ask me why. It just is. (sounds like religious reasoning, doesn't it) I had band today for five hours, and at least three of those hours stunk, like what comes out of the spit valve of a tuba after a frat party.
I'm also giving up all my spare time, which is only about an hour when you factor in practice, school, eating, sleep, and homework, to playing Civilization 2, a really old school turn-based computer game. It's really complex and interesting yet doesn't take up too many computer resources. I'm a pacifist and a secularist, but there's just something really compelling about having a fundamentalist government and forcing your rule on the entire world.
Our school is still a pretty depressing place to be. No one talks except to whisper, no one smiles, people just walk directly to their classes without looking up. Winter Carnival has been postponed indefinately. We laugh, occaisionally, but it feels like we're just fooling ourselves.
All I can think of is why. I didn't know him, but from what I've heard, he had a really nice life. He had tons of friends. He had just gotten back together with his girlfriend. He was a member of the Hockey team that had gone to Ontario for some championship before exams. He had depression, but from what I've heard, he was well on the way to recovery.
I hope that it won't trigger another suicide. If that happens, I think the entire school might break down. I've heard that there were once seven suicides in a year at our school, but that was a really long time ago. I wish that things would get back to normal before anyone else gets hurt.
At my high school, we've recently had two suicides in a month: Evan MacDonald and James McInnis. I didn't know either of them, but it is pretty shocking. The school basically shut down, and everybody was crying. I feel bad because I didn't know them and a lot of my friends are very upset.
Today was the first day of being sixteen. It was pretty much just a regular day, as I expected. It's not like there's some sort of "Sixteenth Birthday Fairy" who comes to impart some mature wisdom when you turn sixteen. I went to stage band, and then I had school- Chemie, Histoire Canadien and Math Adv. 12. I walked home with Pierre and then I read newspapers and watched a few episodes of X as I was unwillingly exposed to the sound of my dad's brass quintet.
I'm having my birthday party tomorrow, but I'm feeling just a little bit sick. I hope that won't affect it.