Making Good Time

We went to see the New Haven Christmas tree being lit up today. It looked amazing - it is a GIANT tree all covered with lights top to bottom. Very cool.

The ceremony, however... well, let's just say it was hosted by Ronald McDonald. Welcome to America, I guess.

They had a lot of stuff for kids, including rides on hilarious sort of giant stuffed animals on wheels (might post a pic later if I get around to it) and sleigh rides. The kids seemed to be loving it though. A lot of them looked like kids who might not get a lot of extras under normal circumstances so that was nice.

We then hit up the Yale Art Gallery, which has just reopened (and was promising refreshments, otherwise probably would have skipped!) Just sort of casually strewn with van Goghs and lots of other cool stuff - I will definitely have to go back when my blood sugar isn't so low.

Have been exhausted and burnt out all week, probably because of my slightly crazy weekend. Hired my car on Thursday morning and drove drove drove all the way up to Guelph (only stopped twice! Made good time!) which was about ten hours. Sort of forgot to eat though, so that was a bit bad at the end. Luckily Nicola is awesome and fed me delicious leek and potato soup before sorting me out a bed on her couch.

Spent Friday busily getting an international drivers license (so chintzy! It is just a square of cardboard with a photo of me with my eyes half-shut!) and two new bank accounts and meeting with my former supervisor and various people in the lab and generally running around like a mad thing. Then that night went out with some Nicola people and on Saturday emptied the storage unit and loaded up the car. I sold my futon to Nicola when I left and gave her everything else. It was very odd visiting a friend and recognizing the entire kitchen, the glasses, the kettle, the bathroom towels... and now of course I have to buy all new ones, but I couldn't take them back. Wish I'd known I was staying on the East Coast! oh well.

Anyway, Nicola suddenly decided she was going to buy a bed and asked if I wanted my futon back. I said, there is no way we are fitting a double-thick futon and frame in a Volkswagen Jetta. She said, sure, we can do it, come on! So we tried... we somehow managed to wedge the frame in diagonally behind the driver's seat across over into the front passenger's. There was no way the mattress would fit. I was going to give up but we somehow managed to tie it down with twine in quarters and shove it in the trunk (required jumping up and down on it a few times to get it to go in!) So now I had six or seven Rubbermaids and boxes that certainly wouldn't fit. So we unpacked them all, shoved everything in garbage bags and WEDGED it bodily in wherever it would fit. Then I went to the lab and got all the stuff I left there (two boxes, whoops) and tied everything down with twine. It was a sight to behold.

Nicola, bedless, ended up staying at her boyfriends for a few nights. Whoops. I am excited to have something to sit on, though.

Anyway, the drive was rainy (like sheets of water pouring down - luckily it wasn't below freezing or I would not have been going anywhere) and the border guard just waved me through (whew!) Unfortunately I had to wait in a queue for an hour because the guy on the way in had screwed up my paperwork, but should now be good. Everything was fine until I got to Connecticut, which was crazy as usual, and got a bit lost on the way into New Haven, then unpacked all my stuff and took Helena grocery shopping while we had the car. And was SO TIRED. But it is all done and slowly being unpacked (as best I can with very few shelves/hangers!) and I should get over this exhaustion soon...