Yes, a bad pun starts the blog. It’s October, vacation is over, long receded into memory. Overall, like any vacation it wasn’t long enough. It was long, and longer than most people get, but fuck it – I can be greedy. It started with my parents, it’s been about three and half years since I saw them. Now retired, they’ve moved on from Labrador and are living in small town Saskatchewan. I arrived after Dad finished planting his garden, and left before the veg came out of the ground. We checked out the Big Muddy, Saskatchewan’s Badlands, and I got to see the town where my father grew up. This was my second time in Saskatchewan, I was too young to remember the first though it has become family lore. Long story short, I caused a fire in one of my relatives basements because I was sticking paper airplanes in the furnace to light their tips on fire. I remember thinking it looked cool throwing them around. There’s a certain disconnect between action and consequence at that age.

Anyways coming back to present, my parents and I also went to Drumheller, for a two day trip to catch the sights. They dropped me off in Calgary so I could visit one of friends from uni days. We checked out the Rockies and got a hike in at Lake Louise.  I got a day in Edmonton with a good friend from Korea before heading back to Saskatchewan for a couple of final days with the folks.

From Regina, I flew out to see my younger sister in Toronto and got to spend a few days with her. We checked out a play – War horse which was quite good. Seeing the actors handling the puppets was a little jarring at first but after a few minutes the puppetry is so good that you accept and suspend disbelief. The highlight of Toronto for me though was Koreatown. I miss Korea a lot. It wasn’t all good times of course but I feel like I made the most it. We had a few Korean meals, and while it was good, there is no substitute for the real thing. D, my little sister (it’s worth noting that all my friend’s/family’s names get either stripped to one letter or mashed into a single entity – ScoMar and Jola would understand) even tried one of my favorites, Sun-dubu jiggae (soft tofu stew). I told the waitress that D don’t eat meat, but I also forgot you have to be a little more specific. When the stew arrived there were squid tentacles in it, Old D wouldn’t have gone near it but New D gave the soup a couple of careful sips to placate me. And I was placated. If you’re a vegetarian in a korean restaurant, you can always tell the waitress ‘kogi-wa hae-mul mokji-an-ay-yo’. Translated it means ‘I don’t eat meat or seafood’. Toronto, like Saskatchewan and Alberta were not long enough.

I arrived in Halifax to meet K at the end of July to find her pretty well situated and ready for school. We had a lovely and lazy month together. One great discovery was that I may not actually be allergic to cats! I had no troubles with Gizmo, our precocious and high-strung feline. Thinking back to Korea, it would seem like the biggest problem I was having was probably the mold in our apartment. K told me there was mold on the wall where the bed was pressed up against it as well as mold behind the bookshelf in my office. It makes sense as I’ve been pretty much asthma free since I came to Doha with exception of the cat-sitting gig I took over one of the breaks, although I was already sick before I started cat sitting. Who knows, for now I’ll take the path of denial and continue inflicting my affections on poor little Gizmo. I got to spend some time with K’s family, her parents and JeTree. And I also got to see my older sister and her family. My nieces and nephew are grown up now. My oldest niece wasn’t even a teenager the last time I saw her, now she’s in her mid-twenties. Days may seem long but years can certainly fly by. K and I also got to reconnect with one of our couple friends, JoLa. Trivia night at the Rogues Roost is a blast, and anyone who lives in Halifax should do it often. The month K and I had together again was not enough time, before too long I was again Doha-bound. There are a few people I would have liked to see but didn’t get the chance to visit ChriNam in Newfoundland as well as a couple of friends in New Brunswick. Hopefully next time.

I’ve been back in the desert for just over a month now. I made the decision early on to relax, so I left the MA stuff mostly unattended. I occasionally read a little here and there but for the most part I simply enjoyed the time off. In retrospect this was a mistake. September was hellish. The school I work at provides accommodations for the teachers and the lease on the building I was living expired mid-September. The school, having been aware of this since last April still managed to mis-handle things and now myself and 50 other school employees have been living out of a hotel for the last month. Between the jet-lag, the move and the paper, I was fit to be tied. But one way or another the paper got done. I’m looking forward to this weekend and having a nice long sleep. It’ll be the first good sleep I’ve had since coming back to the desert.