O Canada

Every January I come to Canada, and every January I get hit with a blizzard or blinding cold. The Canadians then look at me and earnestly proclaim, “It’s been such a mild winter until now” and “This weather is unusual.” I haven’t decided if this attitude is a country-wide effort to convince the gullible American that Canada has a temperate climate, or if they are just eternal optimists.

So here I am in Toronto, and it’s -14C (that’s 7F). I helped out with running a conference this weekend, then tacked on an extra day to visit Andrew’s cousin, who lives nearby. I arranged for a late flight this afternoon so I’d have time to do a bit of touristing. This hasn’t worked out quite as I planned, as it turns out the city is closed on Mondays. My cousin-in-law and her husband spent last evening suggesting a dozen or so tourist attractions, and then discovering that each was closed closed today. I completely support the right for every worker to have days off, I just wish they’d stagger them a bit. Toronto is the fourth-largest city in North America, but my sight-seeing options basically came down to shopping malls or a shoe museum.

For the record, the shoe museum was much better than you might expect. They had reconstructed shoes from prehistoric times, and lots of indigenous footwear, so it was the history of the world through shoes. Did you know you can make shoes from fish skin?

Catching my breath

My holiday season was super low-key this year. During Thanksgiving, my parents came to visit and we bought takeout from Whole Foods, and for Christmas I visit my parents and cooked a very simple meal - grilled steak for them, mushroom and goat tart for me. I didn't hold my annual Christmas party, and I minimized giving gifts. This was a well-needed break, because writing grant proposals used up all of my energy in October through December.

Now things are back to normal at work, and I'm doing a bunch of home projects. I'm working on three simultaneously, and they are all about 90% done. I seem to be following my father's example, where you complete one project to not-quite-done, then move on to the next. Maybe we have a fear of success? I jest, of course. For me, at least, the last tiny details are usually cosmetic and I'm always more interested in making things work than making the pretty. I love *having* pretty things, but I'm not very good at *constructing* pretty things. In any case, as soon as I complete any of the projects, they'll end up on the blog.

On a totally separate note, for the first time ever, an animal at my house received mail. I was so tickled I read the entire postcard  from Taiwan out loud to Wesley the cat.