Thursday, December 15, 2005 -- 6:34 PM

I'll be Home for Christmas

Now that exams are over, I'm relaxing for a few days before I head home. This involves getting up whenever I want, drinking whenever I want, and reading whatever I want. I've been getting up around eleven, having beer for breakfast, and reading Hemingway's A Movable Feast.

I usually do this at Starbucks, with a nice Christmasy eggnog or gingerbread latte, and watch all the poor saps who have not yet finished with their exams, busy studying and reading things not out of enjoyment, like me, but because they need to learn a whack of information. I doubt if any of them are reading anything as beautifully useless as Hemingway. Old and young ladies convene here to gossip, giggling confidentially to one another – why do they do this? It's a mystery, like their lives, the drama which I cannot understand, but am content to observe. Behind me a woman talks like a true Winnipeger of great things and people that she does not understand. She's a writer, in the same way many are in this city. She's written freelance for the CBC and she enjoys talking about the book she just wrote. She mentions it to an old friend that she sees on her way to sit down with her coffee, and then again later to the person that she came here to meet. She doesn't look much like a writer, or talk much like one.

It's been snowing a lot, which adds to the Christmas spirit here. In a few days I'll leave all of this place behind and get on an airplane back home. It will be good to go home, and it will be good to fly home. Airports are interesting places. They're filled with so much emotion with the excitement of departing on a new adventure, the anticipation of seeing a loved one for the first time in God knows how long, the sadness of leaving them. I'm looking forward to feeling that nostalgia again.

The coffee shop is nearly empty now. Gossip is evidently an afternoon sport, and it's time to find some food.