All this and WiFi too

I love trains. You get to see stuff you can't see from the road. Judging from the vista out my window, from my regular VIA station out to Fallowfield Ottawa is mostly warehouses and semi-industrial backlots, plus a scrapyard and a bunch of fields, with a few lovely little homes thrown in here and there. And a wide, gorgeous, slow-flowing river passing through it.

Passed by Billings Bridge transit station and it was distinctly weird to look down and see commuters gathered there to take the bus I took every morning for most of my articles, while I rode past in the train that I had looked up to see every morning.

I'm all settled in for the next four hours in my cozy little seat, books to read, stuff to research, a story to write, and I've even got WiFi on here, though it's slower than a pig :/

Just hope it's not a wasted trip. After jumping through all the hoops to be a lawyer in Ontario you still have to go and Sign the Rolls and then get your papers. Both things need to be done in Toronto, ten days apart. Why? Because Toronto is the only city in Ontario as far as the Law Society of Upper Canada is concerned. So there shouldn't be any problem getting there, because where else would you be? I mean, every. single. time. I call them, at some point it comes out that I am in fact not from Toronto and it's always a huge surprise to them. Eg, "You can't send that by e-mail; we need an original copy. Why don't you just drop by the office?"

"Um, that won't work. I'm in Ottawa."

"Ottawa?! Oh! Um... huh. I dunno, then. Let me go talk to my supervisor."

It's like it's always the first time they've ever had to deal with someone not from Toronto. Like they need to get an expert to deal with my special non-Torontonian situation. Some of them even pause for a moment after they repeat "Ottawa?" and I swear they must have some sort of list next to their desks that says "The following places are not suburbs of Toronto: Ajax, Belleville, Gananoque..." and they're looking up "Otawa/Odawa." They have not yet asked me "How do you spell that?" but I'm sure that's just coincidence.

Ah well. At least I'm not driving all the way, or taking a bus :)

Watching Eastern Ontario speed past

Ooh, pretty. Fields and forests and marshes and occasional farmhouses, oh my.

Holy wow the under-seat storage space is huge.

Wow, the Brockville station is tiny

It's like the Avonlea station where Anne of Green Gables was dropped off.

OK, no it's not. But it's smaller than the little Cape Cod airport in Wings.

Kingston!

Hi! It's been way too long. Funny to think I spent longer living there than Justin has spent living at all. Went for four years, stayed for eleven.

Just up the hill is the house where Justin was born. Our first home, which we bought at a bank sale and spent the next four years healing from the damage done by previous tenants and ignored by the slumlord. The floors were a general mess, the wall colour was cat-puke off-white, the sheer volume of nails was staggering (we figured instead of using closet, they just nailed their clothes to the wall), and the living room carpet had a huge stain of black grease. We figured some previous tenant probably stored his motorcycle in the living room, and worked on it there. Ugh.

It's the house where we got married, had both of our kids, and where Chris finished his medical school. Did a lot of living there.

I wonder what it looks like now.

OMG that's the Queens Shuttle! Cool!

OK, leaving Kingston now.

WiFi again! Cool!

• 1:16: Arriving at Union Station. Pssst: don’t stand there gaping like the little kid in Witness.
  
  
• 1:30: First impression of Osgoode Hall: Holy COW is that what LSUC buys with lawyer money? No wonder everyone’s pissed. You could house a medium-sized Upper Canada village in there.
  
  Oh. I guess it’s also the Court of Appeal and other stuff. Never mind!
  
  Still pretty posh, though.
  
  
• 1:35: You don’t have my legal name on record.
  
  Funny, you didn’t have it when I started law school, so I had to send it to you, then you didn’t have it when I finished the professionalism course so I sent you another one, then you didn’t have it three weeks ago so I sent another copy... what, does it have teflon or something?
  
  And how smart was I, to make sure to bring my citizenship card in case I encountered this precise problem? It’s got a name I haven’t used since I was twelve, and a face I haven’t used since I was ten, but it’s the only thing y’all will take so go me for bringing it. Just glad I didn’t have to dig out my parents’ birth certificates as well.
  
  Nice ladies behind the counter very apologetic and scurrying around to file my citizenship card (for the fourth time) and so sorry for the inconvenience. And I’m all Sweetie, I don’t care, I’m just happy this is doable. My nightmare was that I’d have to go back to Ottawa to get you my parents’ marriage records, get them notarized and bring them back personally. You’re telling me the card is on file (again!) and I can sign the Rolls and get my package and go home? I LOVE YOU. You just made my day.
  
  
• 1:45: Well, there we go. Back to Union Station. Walking through downtown Toronto gazing at the huge skyscrapers and astounding conflagration of names that include the words “Financial,” “Investments,” “International,” “Corporate,” and “Bespoke.” I am struck by how many of my classmates at Ottawa U started out saying they wanted to help people and work for Lawyers Without Borders and ended up competing fiercely to get into Bay Street law firms that pepper the landscape I am traveling through. And for no reason I can divine, the phrase that pops in my mind is “in the belly of the Beast.” Oh and “OMG get me OUT.”
  
  
• 2:00: There’s all these banners flying around for TIFF. Which amuses me, ‘cause that’s the acronym used by the Toronto International Film Festival too. I wonder what kind of investment firm/bank/museum/ultra-trendy store has the same initials, and whether people ever get confused between them and the film festival. I walk past one banner and peer at more closely, curious as to what the letters stand for. There it is: “Toronto International Film Festival.”
  
  ::ahem::
  
  
• 3:00: Going down into the belly of another beast, I’m downstairs at The Eatery (sounds more posh when you give it capitals) where there’s a Tim Hortons staffed entirely by south-east Asians, and Sandwich Box staffed by Mediterranean-looking folks, and an Opa! Souvlaki of Greece staffed entirely by people speaking Japanese. Nobody’s behind the counter at Szechuan Express. I can hear my father’s voice suggesting that perhaps they’re Latinos, as it is, after all, siesta time.
  
  Is it OK to make stereotyping jokes about your own ethnic group? I'm of two minds over this.
  
  
• So. 2.5 hours before my train departs for Ottawa. What shall I do?

Homeward Bound!

Back on the train. Did some window-shopping, lost a miso soup and found it, going home, all set to be Called next week.

Dude

That was seriously awful French there. Technically correct, in that I think he was reading from VIA's "welcome/bienvenue" blurb card, but the dipthongs and rolled anglo-r's were painful. "Bone-joor may-damms ay mon-soors, byanvuhnoo a bore VIA noomerow dee-sweet."

Tabarnacle, dude. Rein in that Ottawa Valley twang a bit, seel-voo-play.

Missing blue

One of the things I miss about living in Kingston is that I no longer get to see Lake Ontario. Eleven years I spent seeing it almost every day, because my life revolved around Queen's University (lakefront) or Bath Institution (a forty-minute drive away, hugging the lake all the way). I miss it.

::waving at Lake Ontario:: Hello Lake! Love you! Miss you!

Should look up the distance between Kingston & the US and Denmark & Sweden. Justin and I just read Number the Stars, set during WWII in Denmark, where the heroine goes to her fisherman uncle's house and looks across the water and sees Sweden. I only ever saw the US when I worked the border crossing at Wolfe Island.



I have a piece of origfic story that's been sitting on my hard drive for years and will probably never get off of it, partly set on Titan, Saturn's largest moon and the largest satellite in the solar system. I've always been fascinated by Titan because it's (I think) the only satellite with an atmosphere (although I think one or more of the Galilean moons may also have atmospheres) and it has a plentiful substance in solid, liquid and gaseous form, which many scientists believe is necessary for life to exist. On Earth it's water and on Titan it's methane, so it's possible Titan could have life that's evolved using methane as a building block. So, possibly stinky life, but life nonetheless.

Anyway, the whole "life is possible" thing isn't the part that interests me, in part because Titan's also intensely cold so any life that evolved there would no doubt want to have nothing to do with fire creatures like us. The part that interests me is that Titan also has weather, and an interesting topology consisting of more than just "high rocky ground," "low rocky ground" and "hole." It's also got lakes. One of them is named Ontario Lacus.

See? It wasn't a non-sequitur at all :) :)

?

I am watching Sex and the City without sound, on the laptop of the lady across the aisle. It's not that she's too far away; it's that passengers are asked to please wear listening devices if they're going to watch or listen to anything, so as not to disturb their fellow passengers.

She doesn't have earphones, so she's just got the sound turned off. She seems to be enjoying it anyway, but it's missing something for me.

Home.

Bed. Sleep.