We went to the monkey/lion/three-legged jaguar place (no one cares about the parrots) yesterday. We saw no animals, but we did see a big forest with thin wire fencing around it and a bunch of signs basically telling us to go away. Amazing! Finally, this place is picking up a little.

Mixi woke me up to cuddle at 9 this morning. She's getting fatter by the day, but no less bitchy. I like her.

My diet lately consists of coffee and peanut butter cups.

I just saw an accident on the 406. Well, I saw the aftermath, and it gave me a giant headache because of my road paranoia and the fact that this happened about a minute ahead of where I was. I've never seen that highway come to a screeching halt; it took me completely by surprise when I had to brake hard and slow right down to 0. I won't describe the accident scene here. I hope the person was all right.

A Cigarette in Bed; or a Cookie, for Non-Smokers

It was a very gloom-and-doom weekend at the island, at least as much as an island on the border of Ontario and Quebec can be gloom-doomy. Allow me for a moment to be more specific: The sky spent a lot of time pissing down rain.

One bad omen was a horrible accident that had happened on the 400S the morning we departed for the island; a tractor trailer and a small car collided, spilling 400 litres of diesel on the highway and killing at least one person. The cars on the highway crept along for four kilometres, which took approximately one hour and forty-five minutes to clear. People were getting out of their cars, walking up and down the highway. Cars took a half hour to catch up with some of the walking temporary non-passengers. It was a sad sight when we finally could see it. By that time, there was no longer a 'teetering' tractor trailer balanced on the center guardrail as the traffic reports had suggested. Just a kind of banged up looking transport truck, a severely messed up guardrail, and a burned-out shell of a Mazda which had been cut apart to pull someone out. Horrifying.

After what became a staggering nine-hour drive, we arrived at Tee Lake. By this point I had re-read about a quarter of Timequake and remembered for about the fiftieth time why I have this affinity for the late Kurt Vonnegut's twisted cynicism. And yes, the piss-rain. We braved the weather, though. The lot of us:

• Took a billion pictures of frogs (even at one point seeing one frog eat another... wtf)
• Saw the incredible mountains and lakes from a lookout point in Ville-Marie and on the drive to it
  
• Drove all the way to Algonquin and saw some beautiful scenery but no moose (good thing Miklos loves to drive so!)
• Light-painted to our hearts' content on the dock by night after the lake had further filled itself with almost a foot of the previous night's precipitation.
  

It was only on the last night that my body was eaten to bits by vicious Quebecois mosquitoes. Fine holiday fun, regardless of dreary weather. And after a giant drive home, we've got two more days before we head up to my family's cottage, which I've not seen in a year. I'm excited. Hopefully less rain, yes?

Real Estate... Agent Maaaan

Tonight:

• Investigated area of fire I noticed happening last night between Towpath Rd. and Highway 406
• While investigating, observing the hollow area that seemed to lie beyond the otherwise apparent forest and noting the overpowering smell of something burned, we almost took a nosedive off the side of the road and into a creek lying a good distance below the level of the road
• 30 minutes later, avoided near-collision with both a raccoon and a guardrail (kudos to Miklos's fancy footwork there; AAPEX Driving Academy served at least one of us well)
• Saw about a billion more kamikaze raccoons while driving (one, dead with its back freshly ripped out... ew, man; leave that shit alone, turkey buzzards), as well as some (live) kitties

So, an eventful night in all, but you might be able to see why we opted to drive around no longer.

You know maps are antiquated when...

I had a pretty good day.

It started off with missing class and ended off with a silly prank and a skinny Avondale kid awkwardly reading off a map and making the lot of us laugh at his nerdiness.

[Ah, so much you would've enjoyed. Why does everything strike me that way now?]

The test went great. At least I plan to think so until I get the results back. And I got 100% on an assignment from last week. And I think I'm going to teach the class how to play with flashlights and long shutters for my training exercise. Yep, that's some useful training right there.

And I'm full of ands. I'm just so glad to be here. Or something.

Foxy Brown

I keep seeing my fox, running around in that field on that same road. I love that little guy (or girl). By "keep" I mean that I've now seen him (/her) twice on drives with Miki. I want to hug that fox. This time I noticed his (/her) eyes glowing in the pitch black from god knows how far away. So far away, that Miklos did not believe me at first. But then I proved, as I am wont to do, that I am the coolest with the best vision yet again, when he finally realized I was right and there was a fox behind us in that field again. I rule. So does that fox.

I want a pet fox.

Oh, and good results for the first test of the year.

Bad results for my car. Not that it's been diagnosed professionally yet (if ever), but she is not looking too good. I miss you, car.