H3
I don't know how I managed to be placed in the best floor of the best house at the best residence at McGill. Nothing in my track record indicates such a brilliant amount of luck, but I did. Our floor is quickly becoming quite the institution. It seems to be made up of the perfect combination of kindness, cynicism, guitars, extremely inappropriate humor, banana mush, bad ideas, and gin. Coming to our tiny, postered, duct-taped hovel after a long day is starting to feel like coming home.
The prevalence of bicycles
My little red trash-picked beauty with its milk crate in back is not out of place here in the slightest. The bikes are everywhere. Around campus and Montreal, it is de riguer to see businessmen and little chic French girls and scientists and kids and parents zooming around on their beautiful machines. Coming to class I see bikes chained to all available surfaces and some of the unavailable ones. In a small way, it gives me hope for humanity.
The tunnel between Stewart and MacIntyre
My favourite library on campus is the Ossler Medical History library - it has really cool architecture and no one goes there because it's filled with books like "La Historia de la Neurologia" (32 volumes in fact, all in Spanish, all lovingly bound and stored away to gather dust.) The tunnel that leads to the MacIntyre (where Ossler is) is a spacy boxy futuristic hollow that is almost always completely deserted. Furthermore, the acoustics of the place mean that if one walks loudly, the halls reverberate with a crazy booming cacophony. If, hypothetically, upon realizing this, one starts stomping up and down, it sounds like all of MacIntyre, nay the world, is crashing down around one's ears.
The nordic team
The nordic team deserves its own post. A member for nary a week, I am already in love with it. We are a varsity sport who, instead of receiving an office like the rest of the varsity sports, resides literally in a broom closet under the stairs (I am, in fact, turning into Harry Potter) with about 30 pairs of sharp bamboo sticks. We bitch about klister and run really fast. There is also the prospect of red spandex in the near future. Love.
Juice boxes
For takeout lunch, we get juice boxes. This completes my morning every morning.
Longboarding
I recently started stealing a friend's longboard out at night and promptly made the decision to not eat, be clothed, or drink for months if necessary in order to procure one. I suck, and I look like a fool, I'm sure, but I don't care. I haven't enjoyed the raw movement of something this much since I started climbing.
Doing shots of Emergen-C with my roommate in order to ward off disease and cold and a familiar throbbing sensation. Emergen-C in general is sometimes pretty foul and only to be drunk on climbing trips and in the rain at Teeter's when it's really the only thing to do other than cry, but my parents accidentally bought me "Lite Emergen-C with joint supplement". It crossed the line from passably foul to epically bad - bitter, sour, sandlike, a distressing colour, in short all the ingredients for a really horrendous time. The sensation itself isn't pleasant, but it really is the single best way to prevent colds and other ailments, so all is for the best, and it's worthwhile just because it's so bad. Especially when the the "Here's to" song is sung while doing so.
