May 28th, 22:10 | new dice, old books, new home

So this weekend's Garage Sale Of Champions was a success -- yours truly scored all sorts of niftyness, including yarn for a knitting project (5 skeins! $3! Holy crap cheap!), a book about All Types Of Womanly Crafts, cute-as-all-get-out kitchen books that are magnetic and meant to be stuck on the fridge, and some paperbacks because, let's face it, hi, my name's lilephyte, and I'm a Used Book-aholic.

One of said books I picked up was The Handmaid's Tale which, like many of Atwood's novels, I was pretty sure I'd read before, but can't remember anything about. I think I'm wrong in this case though, as I read half of it on the bus back home, and it didn't seem particularly familiar, which is nice. (There's nothing that's frustrating in quite the same way as getting 30 pages into a book, realizing you've read it before, and only half-remembering the story; you're left in that weird limbo where you don't really want to keep reading, because you've already read it, but you also can't quite remember what happened, so you feel you should. Or maybe that's just me.)

Anyway, so I tore through about half the book in between my naps on the bus, which was the warmest bus I have ever travelled on. I was actually sweating at one point. Planes, busses and trains are all freezing, in my experience, so today's journey was quite the novelty in that respect.

The result of the over-heatedness, the sporadic sleep, and the reading, however, left me in a very weird headstate when I alighted at home. I'd forgotten that I get that way everytime I read any of Atwood's novels: my inner narration gets weird and introspective, more abstract, more Margaret Atwood, basically. I wouldn't list the woman as one of my favourite authors, but I'll be the first to admit that she's definitely got her own voice and that it makes an impression, on me anyway. The entire subway ride home from the bus station, I was listening to myself narrate my journey, half-thinking thoughts I wish I were usually deep enough to think, half-wondering who in the fuck was suddenly narrating in my head because, jeez louise, there was no way that was me talking, was there? Seriously?

All in all, a fairly weird experience. Not out-of-body, more like stranger-in-head, if that makes any more sense. It was a weird whimsical end to the day, a pretty good cap to a fantastic weekend of sunshine, and Getting Stuff Sorted.

The Boy and I had pretty much decided on an apartment building in Chinatown, and the visit to the place did nothing to dissuade us. (I'll admit that I was a little weirded out by their hallway air freshener (apple-cinnamon my ASS), but the place was swanky. It's gorgeous.) The locations is fantastic; I can't tell you how happy I was to be sitting there eating pho and listening to the Cantonese conversations around me. It reminded me of how I felt when I found the bubble tea place in Kingston, and just sat there eating the brick toast and just absorbing the Cantonese; it was the first time I'd stopped feeling homesick in months.

Of course, later on, he also found a split-level loft which is now making us doubt our choice. (Warning: the photos aren't very descriptive) That one's in a different part of the city, but is sufficiently swank that I'm sure I could be consoled about that. We'll see.

Other highlights of the weekend included me finally replacing my gaming dice (although I still mourn the loss of the original set, and am secretly hoping to find them again), not being able to finish even half of Nickel's Celine Dion cake (which is fucking huge, let me tell you), and getting to wander around eating berries and ice cream in the sunshine as though it were summer.

Have I said it yet this year? This summer is going to change my life. (For one thing, I'm totally going to remember how to knit after this.) I can't wait.

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