I got drunk at book club.

Well, that's not exactly true.  I got tipsy at book club, and I haven't had that much to drink in the last few weeks, so it felt like much more than it was.  Our club is called "Read Between the Wines," after all.

We read Race Against Time.

Most of the club disagreed with my (admittedly somewhat radical, but probably true) notions about pharmaceutical companies and governments and such.  And that's fine; I don't need people to agree with me.  I do need them not to frown and cross their arms because clearly I am some kind of weird hippie.  Hee.  Actually I didn't mind because the person who was doing that is ridiculously nice otherwise.  I expected to be in the minority.  I expected that my particular club would be mostly made up of people who didn't have the kind of background I do on Africa (thanks to Ethan) or AIDS (thanks to my insatiable thirst for information).  I tended to wonder whether most of the people in the room have even been tested, which is not a pejorative thing, I just wondered how close it hit home.

I really like these women, and I'm glad that when it came time to drop the book and move on to topics as varied as who brings wine next time and bikini waxing, we really dropped it and everyone relaxed.

But I wonder how different the conversation would have been in Cambridge.  I'm so desperately spoiled in that way. 

Next meeting, back to fiction, oddly enough a book that takes place in part in Cambridge.  Hee.  Fiction good.

I've had a bunch of conversations lately about what people do and don't eat - vegetarians, Muslims, and of course, Jews.  Growing up in a committed but not uber-observant Jewish household, I was never forbidden from eating pork or shellfish or cheeseburgers, but somehow I grew into a dislike of pork.

I don't know whether was psychological, a precursor to my sensitive stomach (which really only reared its ugly head in the summer of traumatic 2001 after dinner at the 99 - seriously!), or what, but after a certain point in my youth I never liked bacon or ham, and roast pork made me queasy, and sausage made me out-and-out sick.

Until now.

See, I'm married to a Filipino.

It is now 100% impossible to avoid pork.  It's in the soup, it's in the noodles, and sometimes it's even in the chicken.  And I'm beginning to like it.  One of our "aunties" - not related exactly, but nearly - makes this ham...and it surprises the heck out of me every single time, but I always want more.

If there is some sort of a hell, I'm going there anyway, so I suppose it doesn't matter.

I just don't think I'll ever get used to seeing the snout on the table.

Tonight we venture to IKEA in order to procure a Billy.  Show of hands: who's got a Billy, or six?  We have a little area set into the wall where we plan to put Billy, and I will fill him with the four boxes of books in the middle of our living room floor.  Thereafter, people can come to our apartment again.  At least soon.  There's a bit more to do.

We have had mixed experiences with IKEA furniture.  Our dresser, otherwise known as Hemnes, was fairly easy to put together.  Our large bookcase unit, Expedit, however - nightmare.

However, in my Berkman days, I put together, with the help of coworkers, a slew of Billys for our library space, so I feel confident that we will not be up all night wishing for a third person to kick the thing into submission.  That was a few years ago - Berkman moved into its current space in Baker House in summer 2002.  Boy, was that a fun project, by the way, but good experience for sure.

I just have to go on faith that IKEA has not changed the Billy construction method.

Now that I have my books, they must be displayed - must show off my literary chops.  Must show people who have no idea that I ever did theatre that I used to read plays almost exclusively.  Must remind myself that I have had a whole life before coming here.  And of course, must read.  I have book club tomorrow so am focused on one book right now, but after that, I shall binge on what we found at the Book City sale.  I'll leave the Klingon dictionary to Joey.  But need input.  Need it.

Since the building was going to be near to uninhabitable today, I decided to spend most of it someplace else.

First, Joey took me to the bank, where we opened a nice account for me, gave him access to that, and gave me access to his account.  So very married!

Then I came back here to do my job for a little while and to fill out some forms for a later errand.

Lunch with Joey next - we just went to the place half a block south of his office.  It's so nice to get out in the middle of the day.

Then, to the fabulous Dufferin Mall, where I applied (using the forms I'd filled out earlier) for my first Social Insurance Number.  It's kind of like a Social Security Number, but it isn't used for security or any of the other dumb ways US entities end up using SSNs as far as I can tell.  I hear your SIN is pretty much your own business except for work, unemployment (called Employment Insurance here) and pension stuff.

Picked up a little giftie for a little cousin while there.

A productive and enjoyable day of getting more and more settled in Canada but I guess I should do some work now.  Hope that was fascinating, hehehe.  Perhaps tomorrow I shall blog a trip to IKEA we plan to make - we need a new bookshelf to accommodate the mass of reading material sitting in the middle of our living room floor...

Our building is turning off the water at 9am, so I'm not sticking around the whole day to wish I could wash my hands.  I'll blog later.

Do you have any idea how many people are going to be walking around all dirty today?  This is a big building.

Crazy morning in Redheadland - lots of work to do - I'll discuss work in a post soon, I promise.  I just wanted to say a brief word.

It's the first day of spring, as you know.

It's currently -5 degrees Celsius here in Toronto.  Which translates in Fahrenheit to not nearly enough degrees for the first day of spring - something like 24.

I miss warm.  My spring and summer clothes are much more exciting than my winter ones, except of course the emergency funeral blazer which is a good post all by itself, I'll write that one of these days.

When it's warm, I will be better at the whole going outside thing.  I will walk to Fresh and Wild to buy rice vinegar just because I can.  I will not stay inside all day and dream about spray-painting things on the walls just to make them less white.  I will get my Vitamin D from the sun and not from a supplement.

Who wants to meet for lunch when it's above freezing?