"So long, Farewell, auf Wiedersehen, good night! I have to go and leave this pretty sight!"

Goodbye little crappy ass shoebox of an apartment!

Finished my exams on Friday. I wasn't quite as relieved as I thought I would be. I can only attribute it to the fact that I'm not home in Calgary yet. I'm in that sort of post-last-final-exam daze and denial stage where it hasn't quite sunk in yet that you are FREE.

I am packing and moving out of my apartment today into a lovely single bedroom suite on the other side of my buidling. My landlord showed it to me before my anatomy final and I was so excited about it that I'm sure I bombed anatomy. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

It's got a lovely view of the outside world (not to some crappy ass courtyard where creepy guy across from me can stare at me while I'm cooking and changing), and it actually has a living room and kitchen that are SEPARATE from my bedroom. Oh, and it has a coat closet so I don't need to throw my jacket over my dinner table chair or couch anymore!!! And I can store my shoes somewhere besides where I keep all my clothes and underwear!

As you can see from the picture above, my bed (the green and white checkered thing on the right are my pillows and blankies. Gosh, did I just use the juvenile term 'blankies'? shoot me now) is right in the middle of my apartment. I lived all year in a bachelor's suite which is ironically smaller than my parent's new swimming pool. This means that my bed is about two feet from my couch which is two feet from my kitchen.

Next year, Ranger will have his very own living room to run around in and I won't have to put up with his incessant chewing at 4am. I'm more excited than I can express.

In other news, I watched Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy on Saturday and have had the "so long and thanks for all the fish" song stuck in my head ever since. I must say that hte movie was only so-so and a bit slow in parts. Nonetheless, I enjoyed it.

I also watched "House of Flying Daggers" which was another so-so and somewhat slow movie. Apparently, when the film premiered in Hong Kong, everyone in the audience booed. Ebert and Roeper and many other critics in North America gave it a two thumbs way up. My theory is that it is ever so much nicer when you don't know what they're saying! Seeing as I only understood 50% of it, I was somewhere inbetween the North American and Hong Kong critics and thought it was so-so.

Anyhow, must go pack now. I had no cardboard boxes to pack in so I went across the street to the pharmacy to beg for some an htey told me to check out back in their recycling dumpster. So I was dumpster diving in the back alley (I was literally diving as I was too short to just go on tippy toe and I had to half jump into the bloody dumpster) and I was wearing my ratty winter jacket and worn out runners and carrying a few squished cardboard boxes. I'm sure the many people going by were saying to their kids, "poor gal, didn't make it through vet school. See? That's what happens when you don't study."

It was sad. And in the end, the biggest box I could find from the pharmacy was a box that was used to ship Playtex tampons. I took it. A girl's gotta put her cooking pots somewhere. *shudders*

Ok. Enough! must go pack! Carpe diem!!!

-Vivian "getting the hell away from all them yahoos here" Lau

PS: I realise there are more yahoos in Alberta, but a girl can dream.