hi, i'm lucas. long time reader, first time poster. i usually use capital letters in my emails (as well as lowercase ones) but i think messages written entirely in lowercase are kind of endearing, so i thought i'd give it a shot on my first outing, in a rather obvious attempt to curry your collective favour. it's hard, actually. i keep typing capitals by mistake. i've never written before becuase i've never really felt the itch to share my life with the world (though i do enjoy reading about your lives very much), but today was just such a wonderful day i decided that i had to relive it by writing it down. so now you'll get to live through it too. my day started by getting up extra early so i could head down to the art college and register for the intro photo class. i just finished my degree at dalhousie university (in halifax, nova scotia, where i live), and i decided that after four and a half years of computer science i really needed to do something totally different: photography! also, most of my friends go to the art college, so i already know my way around pretty well. today was the first day of registration for non-degree students, and i was sure there would be a line, so i got there extra early. i would have been there even earlier, but a major snowstorm happened to be going on, which made halifax's normally unreliable public transit system completely unpredictable, and very, very slow. still, i managed to get into my class! i was number eighteen, and there was a twenty person limit, so i just made it in. i'm so excited! i actually went to the first class last week, even though i wasn't yet registered, and it was really fun. totally unlike all the classes i had a dal. let me tell you about dalhousie's computer science department. it's completely stereotypical, just like a bad movie. the classes tend to be 99% nerds, and not fun, entertaining nerds. they're bad, annoying nerds. and there are almost no girls. the average dal class has 50%-60% female students. computer science classes are lucky to get 10%. so, when i arrived at my photo class last week to find not only fun, interesting people, but actual, real, live girls, i was very happy. but back to my day. the middle part was fairly uneventful, though certainly not bad. now that i've finished my degree i'm working at two computer help desk-type jobs at dal, and they were both pretty dead today, due to the ongoing storm. as i left the second job, headed for home, i ran into the girl who works at the front desk, who told me that a tall, pretty girl with curly hair and colourful clothes had stopped by that morning looking for me. she also said that this girl intended to return tomorrow, so hopefully i'll get to find out who it was (though i already have a pretty good idea). mysteries are fun. so are girls. and mysterious girls are great. when i got home i received three very nice phone calls. the first was from a new friend, who is moving away next week. we've only just started to get to know each other, but we've already become pretty good friends. she seemed a little worried that we'd lose touch when she moved, so i reassurred her that i definitely want to stay her friend, even if our friendship can only continue through the phone and email. anyway, we mostly just talk to each other, so it really doesn't matter what cities we happen to be in when we do that. in fact, i'm looking forward to writing her long letters. she's a very smart and thoughtful girl. she also told me two other things. 1: apparently there have been rumors going around that we're dating! we both found that pretty funny, especially considering her imminent departure. it would suck to fall in love with someone who was moving away in a week. 2: she told me that really enjoys talking to me, and that i'm a good listener. she said that she thinks i'm a good friend. that made me feel very good. the second phone call was from another friend who i hadn't talked to in a long time. so we talked for about and hour and caught up with each others lives. the third phone call was from another friend of mine, who said that he and his roommates were going to take advantage of the enormous snowfall by going sledding on citadel hill, and that i should come along. so i did. when the four of us got to the hill (at around 10:30pm) we found that thirty or fourty other people had had the same idea. it was like a big sledding party. i recognised many of the others (halifax is a small place), and everyone was incredibly friendly. we were all cheering each other on when someone had a good run down the hill, and there was much swapping of vehicles. we had come equipped with four crazy carpets (thin, malleable rectangles of plastic with handles, for those of you from warmer climes), and a two-person toboggan. we took a couple of turns with the toboggan before letting others use it. then we got to play with our crazy carpets, as well as various other sleds discs, snowboards, and whatever else people had brought out, while the toboggan did the rounds. i think practically everyone got a chance to use it at least once. the atmosphere on the hill was really fun, friendly, and inviting. everyone was having fun, and we all wanted to share the fun with everyone else. after about an hour people started to leave, so my friend and i decided to take one last tandem ride down the hill on the toboggan, him in front, me in back. the snow was now packed very well, which allowed us to reach speeds unattainable in any of our previous runs. just as we were reaching the bottom of the slope, whooping and hollering with excitement, my feet got themselves caught on a lump on the ground. according to one of our friends who was observing from nearby, it looked like i had activated some sort of ejection seat. i very quickly launched from a reclined sitting position to a fully erect standing position, hovering about a foot over where the toboggan had passed just moments ago, and then continued my foreward rotation, landing face first in the snow, with my arms outstretched in front of me, as if i were reaching for the now quite distant sled. i laid there for quite a while. after that, my right leg felt kind of twitchy and painful, so i decided to call it a night and retired to a nearby friend's house, who had also been sledding, and who had been thoughtful enough to prepare hot chocolate, wine, and pasta for those returning from the hill. it was very nice to change into my warm, dry clothes, which i had brought with me, and sit and chat while consuming yummy, hot foods. what a fun night. and not a capital letter to be found. lucas dambergs llat@hotmail.com halifax, nova scotia, canada "against stupidity, the gods themselves contend in vain." -friedrich schiller, 1759-1805 ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com +----------------------------------------------------------------------+ +---+ Brought to you by the undead Sinister mailing list +---+ To send to the list mail "sinister@missprint.org". 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