What to do next...

I finally finished my essay writing, and now am once again free.

Not that it really kept me from doing anything to begin with. I'd get up, do nothing until I felt awake enough, then sit in front of my computer randomly looking at the following: CNN, BBC, porn, JSTOR research archives, porn, Microsoft Word, JSTOR and porn.

The life of a student is so fulfilling.

Every semester I promise myself to get more organized about essay writing. I'm not bad at doing the work at all, but I get very unmotivated when I actually sit down to get busy. When I'm not attempting work, my stomach stays slightly constricted and makes me aware that I have a pressing deadline to meet, and that walking around the house is not helping me research the French resistance during World War II.

So every semester, after I push the pencil as far as possible, I resign myself to the need for change. But change never happens...I think part of the reason that is, simply is because I don't know any other way. We don't get taught how to structure our time, how to research and start writing short bits weeks in advance. Besides, I never like writing the same thing that long, I much prefer to sit down and hammer it out, at least 1200 words a day. I 'spose if I even do an 'essay outline' next time, that'll help me know what the hell I'm doing.

Also, it wasn't very fun to have parents around while you're writing an essay. First time I'd experienced that, and I'm not looking to repeat it. When I'm living at school, nobody asks you several times a day how your essay is progressing...we all just complain about it, nobody needs to ask anybody. Plus I have the freedom to disappear for hours without eating, working madly while I have a creative streak.

Now that it's over, I feel at a loss for activity. Strange as it sounds, I enjoyed mentally exercising myself, and now that it's over my empty days seem even more monotonous. I live in mortal fear that I'm misusing my last month of utter freedom, but when I think, "What else should I be doing?" I draw blanks.

I had to take my paperwork to the post office, because this professor doesn't want emailed assignments...for some reason. So I got to spend $7.84 on priority mail to have it delivered by tomorrow morning. What a waste of money, considering he could get them all in his e-mail for free.

The highlight of the trip to the post office was feasting my eyes on a very cute and suspectly gay guy walking across the road from where I stood. He looked to be mid-20's, average height, light brown hair, wearing jeans (an obvious sign in these parts during summer), and a flattering green shirt that clung close to his body. I stared openly at him for several beats as he and his companion, a blonde girl, walked by. First time I've laid eyes on anyone from around here that set my gaydar flickering.

Oh, and I finished Harry Potter finally, nearly vomiting from the cliched epilogue...but whatever, Rowling is practically God, she can do whatever she wants in this world and nobody's going to complain too hard.

Well, now that that excitement's over...

Sonofabitch...

It is Monday, July 23.

This is the third day the new Harry Potter book has been available.

My copy was ordered June 15.

It has still not arrived.

Shitty.

I'm now faced with the ever-growing threat of finding out what happens before I actually get to read it. Several friends have already finished it, or are well on their way to doing so. And I haven't even gotten my copy yet.

Now I curse Indigo Books, the Canadian version of Barnes & Noble, because they have failed me. The reasoning for my anger is twofold. I ordered two books, both of which had not been 'published' when I placed the order. The other title was 'Lean, Mean Thirteen' by the hilarious Janet Evanovich. Shocking even to me, it arrived in my mailbox on the day of release, having been mailed a few days before. I was very pleased, and expected similar results with Harry Potter.

So this morning I waited patiently for the mailman to drive by the house. I bounded down the driveway, dizzy with anticipation. Ripping open the mailbox door, I stared in at a few bills and the local paper. No book.

Instantly I went online to check my order's status. Indigo's web page says the order is 'awaiting processing'. Whhhaaat? This was supposed to be boxed up and mailed by now!!!

The ultimate piss-off (and second reason) is the fact that I interrupted tradition by purchasing it online. For the last two books, it has been a bizarre circumstance that I was always at a friend's party on the evening of the release. One year, I mentioned that the book was going on sale, and that it'd be funny for a bunch of tipsy teens to crash the local bookstore's midnight release party to get our copies.

Even funnier, I ended up loading the car full of people to head to the bookstore. We all got our copies, but didn't start reading until the next afternoon thanks to a blinding hangover (ahh youthful indiscretion...).

So it happened that on Friday night I was at a friend's house party, with some of the very same people who picked up the other books in past years. I didn't bother saying anything since my copy was supposedly tucked into Friday's mail and would arrive this morning for my reading pleasure.

But no book has arrived.

Now I've got to censor everything from conversations with friends to my Internet surfing for fear of another "Snape kills Dumbledore!" fiasco.

Sonofabitch. I want my book!

Pass...

I got to take a trip to the Ministry of Transportation yesterday.

It was 5 short years ago (holy shit, that was 5 years ago!) that I got my license. Here in Ontario, we have a graduated licensing system, so when I was 16 I wrote my G1 test and started driving with 'supervision'. The next step was 8 months later, when I did my first driving test, passing my G2. I could drive by myself with no restrictions (except no blood-alcohol count allowed).

My license expires in September, and to keep from loosing it, I had to take yet another driving test to confirm that indeed I can drive. So I got the great pleasure of doing my final road test and solidifying myself as a fully licensed driver.

I arrived well in advance, sat in my car and listened to the radio, trying to keep my mind from psyching myself out too badly. When my examiner arrived, I thought I was screwed. She was a little over 5 feet tall, short hair and a serious face, and looked to be wearing army-issue pants. In retrospect, she looked like she belonged marching across the deck of an aircraft carrier, not across a parking lot to administer a driving test.

She arrived at my window and without a smile said, "Steve, turn on your left indicator."

Well, good morning to you! And here I was thinking if I'm friendly to her, it won't be so stupidly formal.

We ran through all the lights on the car, then she got settled in to the passenger seat. A moment later and we were on our way, my hands choking the steering wheel at 10 and 2, eyes darting from mirror to road and back to mirror. Honestly, I think it's safer to drive casually rather than with such 'attentiveness', because it felt like I spent more time looking behind me than I did to see what I was driving into in front of me.

The test took far longer than expected, roughly 25 minutes. I had left the radio on it's lowest volume setting, and she didn't ask me to turn it off, which helped break the monotony of the exercise. We were driving down a quiet residential street, when a police cruiser rounded the corner in front of me and sped down the middle of the street. I got to demonstrate my keen driving skills, signaling and pulling off to the curb to let the emergency vehicle pass us by.

"That wasn't very nice of him," commented the examiner. I tried to make light of the situation, but my comment fell into an uncomfortable silence. Apparently only She may talk.

I was almost finished, when she asked me to do an emergency stop. I signaled, did the mirror check thing, and was angling myself to the curb while at the same time fumbling for the 4-way flasher knob, which is conveniently hidden under the steering wheel.

"You're going to hit the curb," was all she said.

Then it happened, just as I was rolling to a stop, my wheel tapped the side of the curb.

Shit.

"Well," she said, in the same voice she'd used the entire time. "Seems like we found ourselves in our own 'emergency'."

I nervously sucked in breath, reviewing in my mind if hitting the curb means an automatic failure or not. We resumed and finished the test. In the Test Centre lot, she pulled a sheet from her clipboard and handed it to me.

"You passed," she said, and slung herself out of the door.

I happily took my paperwork into the office, where I was informed that even though I had passed, I still have to renew my license in September, and get a new picture taken. And for the low price of $60, I could have it done that very morning, while I was dressed in rumpled clothes with three days worth of growth on my face!

Ultimately I passed on the new photo, opting to do it in August when I actually tried to look nice for it. After all, this is my usual identification, and I don't want to look like an insane, sleep deprived maniac. The way my license is right now, I look, well, 16 years old, and it's been rejected several times recently because people just don't believe I'm the same person. Well, duh, there's a big difference between a 16-year-old and a 20-year-old.

I now have to wait pensively by the mailbox for my new G license to arrive, and have my official driving career begin.

Alone again (naturally)...

I got up before the sun this morning, packed up the car, and hit the road.

A short time later, and I'd unloaded my parents at the airport. Hurrah! I'm free! See, they've gone on vacation (without me, the bastards...) and I'm now all by my lonesome for the next 2 weeks.

Theoretically this is all good. I've got the place to myself, and have no interuptions or distractions. I can walk around naked all day! I can jerk off whenever, wherever. I can even *gasp* have sex! Truly it should be a glorious time.

Actually I'm really looking forward to being 'on my own' again. I went grocery shopping today and grabbed a bunch of stuff I like, and I'm planning on actually living by some sort of schedualed timeframe while they're away. Part of the reason for that is the amount of things I have to do around here as replacements for them. All the chores they do on a daily basis fall to me now...not that I'm going to be doing them all, or as frequently as they would, but there's enough to keep me busy. Hell, even cutting grass and watering gardens takes hours.

In my fantasy world, I was setting up all sorts of great scenarios for my two weeks. All the people I would have over, the parties I could throw, the general freedoms of having only you between your four walls. Then tonight, as I sat eating dinner, I started realizing that things maybe weren't as straightforward as they had seemed. People who I was expecting to be in town aren't, my friendship with Ashley puzzles me ever since coming out to her (I worry that she's just not as good with it as she's let on, even though Laura says its fine), and I'm worried and a little disappointed because I don't have any plans for the Canada Day long weekend. It just feels a little like all the conversations about how excited we were that summer was upon us have led to nothing of great importance happening. I guess now that I have the opportunity I should try and turn that around, take the initiative.

Having some spare time has left me time to waste checking in on friends at school. And of course that's always interesting, especially when it seems like everyone is starting some hot summer romance recently. I've lost track of the number of people who are now seeing someone or in relationships. I guess people have been caught up in Pride fever and are shagging like jackrabbits. Well, the gay ones anyway. The straights are keeping up though, I must admit...but honestly, this is almost summer, isn't the big relationship boom supposed to start in the spring?

Hrm, and Pride. Laura declared the other day that we should go down (well, now it's 'should have' gone down) to Pride in Toronto. I mulled it over for about 3 seconds before saying, "Why?"

"Because, you're supposed to have Pride. Now that you're coming out and all, you should be comfortable in showing that side of yourself."

Thats all fine and well, but it's not like I have strong ties to the gay community as yet. Hell, I don't really have any gay friends. It'd make more sense if I went with at least a few other homos, not just me and my friends from home. Besides, I have very mixed feelings about the whole Pride Parade thing anyway.

It's such a multi-headed beast. On one hand sure, lets celebrate that we have the ablilty to celebrate being whatever sexual orientation you are. Secondly, it's great to show that there is such a community in exsistance, and that mainstream attitudes are not only accepting but embracing the fact that homosexuals exsist outside of bad comedy films.

But where it gets a little dicey for me is the whole over-corporatization and overselling of the event. Is it really necessary to parade around to raise awareness about the GLBT community anymore? I mean, everyone knows about it now, it's no longer a secret! That said, the parade should focus more on social issues, such as the AIDS crisis, and less on the "We're Here, We're Queer" mentality.

Add on top of that the fact that, in order to sell the Queer community as not being at odds or a three-headed mutant dog compared to the straight world, organizers get hot guys dressed in underwear or less to spray each other with water guns and frolic in an outward show of overt sexuality? Do we really need to scare the straights half to death with the idea that these homosexuals are acutally having sex with one another? It just seems to me a little contradictory to on one hand to try and draw the inclusiveness of the 21st century from the very sexually segregated imagery of party boys hosing each other down on floats.

(And yes, I do realize that the entire Parade is not as much fun as these floats are.)

Oh well, maybe by next year I'll have stronger reasons to attend. For now I have to get some beauty sleep for tomorrow night's Stevie Nicks concert (yay!), and plan the intricate details of a dinner party I'll try and have next week. See, I'm showing my pride after all!

Smacks of summer...

Well, I guess summer is here.

The temperature is high, the sun is out, the grass is green... all the telltale signs that indeed summer is upon us are here.

Seems that I'm at the stage in my life that I'm re-evaluating practically everything. This weekend I did many summerish things, including BBQ-ing, a trip to the beach, an afternoon at a friend's pool, and a disappointingly sugary bottle of California Zinfindel. But after it's all over, I'm looking back and realizing I don't have that tingle of "It's summer!" like I used to.

Not that I mind being off school, or a change of scenery from the city, or the great weather. All of those things are amazingly excellent. For instance, tonight I just sat on the deck with a great cup of tea and enjoyed the sounds and smells of the season. I would by no means be able to do that after mid-October, so I'm taking it while I can get it.

But there's the part of me, perhaps the dying flashes of childhood, that makes me wonder if I'm using my summer as best I can. Granted, there are many moons of it to go, but nothing I've done so far has stirred the summer spirit I used to have in my young years. Then, when I think back, it wasn't very exciting then. I guess the real fun was being out of school, home with your parents, helping garden and getting to stay up late and not go to the bus stop the next morning. But there it was, the blissful innocence of summers long past that still make me smile.

Of course, when I ask my friends about what they're doing this summer, I get very similar responses to my own. Hell, half the time I'm out with them anyway, so what I'm doing, they're doing too. So is this it? Once you get to that age, summer is just a happy season because you get more daylight hours, warm temperatures, and the chance to BBQ your dinner instead of baking it?

Not that I don't see the joys of all of those things! But when I think about the 'stereotypical' Hollywood teen summer, I guess I wonder how many people are actually surf instructors who also play in bar bands and drive convertables. Or the one where the young protagonist moves to a resort community for the summer, forming close and life-changing friendships with their fellow employees, all the while making deep discoveries about themselves and living life to it's fullest potential.

I don't know. Maybe I'll just throw a dinner party and we'll all get really pissed.