Entry the Second

Well... yesterday was a little too busy what with the transfer from one B&B to another, as well as the first full day of the conference, and then today I try returning to The Biscuit Eater only to find it closed, as they apparently are every Tuesday (which I found odd - why not Monday?). So I go over to the Cheesecake Gallery, which I had been told also had a hotspot, only to find that closed as well. I asked around and no one else in town seems to have a public hotspot, so here I am in the Saltspray Café, estranged from network.

Oooh, feel the drama.

Oh, well. I'll just type this up today and pop it into the blog tomorrow.

Yesterday began bright and early with the alarm sounding at 7:15 (which translates to 5:15 for my Manitoban brain), and I had a nice breakfast with the Nisbetts, who had just arrived sometime on Sunday for the conference as well. They were vegetarians, Carol (our host at Pleasant Dreams) told me, so I opted for a tomato omelette just in case bacon would put them off of breakfast. Then I showered quickly before shoving all my stuff back into the suitcase to take off to Three Thistles before the morning worship started at 9:00. The workshops started at 10:30; I opted into the one called Wonder of Words (you must be Wondering Why), since we were limited to one option. I did want to go to the one about missions as well, but y'know. Priorities. Anyway, this particular workshop, or Focused Interaction Group as the leaders insisted on saying (which brought about lots of puns about figs), was evidently the right choice. Yesterday we did some exercises on metaphors, and today we wrote about a still life the leader had set up as well as a writeup on some event or place from our memory that involved all five senses, not just sight, as most are prone to using sight exclusively in a description without realising it. I'd worked past this issue already, since Tiana and I had engaged ourselves in a mahvellous little exploration of a character we had stricken blind. Heh heh heh. Quite on purpose. This exercise was fun anyway, since I chose the event in which I fell backwards off of a trampoline and got winded in the process. I can't remember how long ago that was, but it's still quite vivid...

Bed & breakfast beds always seem just a little too hard. Either that, or quite rather too hard. Even the ones we visited as a family when we were travelling between BC and MB.

I haven't gotten a straight night's sleep since I arrived here. I've woken up two to four times per night for no immediately apparent reason, both at Pleasant Dreams and Three Thistles. Lots of dreams, none distinctly pleasant that I can remember, just the usual weirdness. But that's okay. I feel rested enough, even if I'm still acting oddly. Bonus with Three Thistles, though, is that the bed in the room Chanterelle, where I'm in, is a queen, whereas the beds in Pleasant Dreams were singles. And also rather high off the ground. I was wondering if I'd wake up on the floor sometime, but I never did end up rolling off.

Anyway, back to Monday. After the workshops were over (about 12:30), this chowder lunch thingie was taking place in the fire/bingo hall for us. I arrived somewhat early since our workshop was a bit quicker to wrap up than some others, got my chowder (oh so good chowder... yummmmmmmmmmm), and sat down. A little while later, a girl whom I guess to be roughly my own age, probably one or two older from what I deduced during the conversation, sat down across from me and the rest of lunch passed quickly as we started talking it up right away and hardly stopped. Very easy to talk with. She introduced herself as Ruth, from the Guelph Vineyard in Ontario, and I met a couple of her friends who came over to sit with us as well.

On an unrelated note, my caesar salad just arrived. Mmm. For the uninformed, I have this thing with sampling caesar salads almost everywhere I go. This one is good.

Back to Monday lunch. I mentioned in the conversation that I was going to have to rely on the bus ride back to Halifax to catch my plane, and therefore I would have to miss the last workshop. Lo and behold, Ruth said she thought her family had an extra seat in their rented vehicle, and they were going to be driving into Halifax to catch their 3:00 pm plane, so she told me she'd ask her parents if I could hitch a ride instead of taking the bus in which leaves at 10:35 in the morning. Woo! So if that works, that'll definitely be nice. I'll have to see.

After that, I went and crashed at Three Thistles. Sorta. I just sort of lay there in a half-asleep state, then got up to head back over to the conference's evening stuff at 6:00, and returned at around 10. Stuff ensued which I think I shall keep to myself. I've been making use of the drawing book I got recently, anyhow. It's so much easier to draw as worship. Ideas flow so much better, and it obviously feels a lot more rewarding to draw for God than myself. This morning was also good in that way...

Anyhow, I dropped by the liquor store on the way back to the B&B. No, no, don't get any ideas. I just wanted a breezer to help get myself cooled off. And also because they are good. I saw little bottles of Newfie screech by the counter and picked it up to take a look. It's imported from Jamaica, apparently, which struck me as curious. But I can make a return trip if anyone lets me know they want some Nova Scotia Jamaican Newfie screech. I bet they don't sell that combination at home.

When I returned to the B&B, however, I found myself in a situation. As soon as I sat down on the bed and pulled the breezer out of the long, skinny brown paper bag, I realised: I had no bottle opener, and the cap on the breezer was most assuredly not a twist cap.

Crud.

I sat there in thought for a moment before looking around the room to see if anything offered itself to assist me. Fat chance. I took the little red repair kit thing to open it up and see if a bottle opener had magically appeared inside it somewhere along the way. No dice.

I can just hear your probable thought now: Why doesn't she just go and ask for a bottle opener? Is it really that hard?

Well, really. I travelled to Nova Scotia for the first time by myself just to ask for a stupid bottle opener? Not a chance. Where's the fun in that, anyway?

The shoulder strap that could clip onto my laptop bag had metal rings on either end that were rectangular in nature, and so I tried my luck with these, attempting to pry the cap off. But they weren't wide enough to give me the leverage I needed. Foiled again, I sat back on the bed to think some more, then I went and took the glass bottle I'd brought along, which still was half-filled with cranberry grape juice. The juice itself did not interest me at the moment, however. I pounded the hapless little cap with the bottom of the bottle, just hard enough to dent it nicely, then tried again with the metal rings on the bag's shoulder strap, and this time I won (note the dented cap and emptiness of bottle).



The following pictures will probably only be funny to those who are fairly well-acquainted with typical internet abbreviations and/or chatspeak. I was only disappointed that it wasn't LOL Atlantic instead, but I'll live.





In my wanderings back from Saltspray Café (yes, that's right, I got back to the B&B without you finding out... hah! I'm so good!), I discovered a chocolate shop.

Oh noes.

I exerted wonderful self-control, however, and only bought two little chocolates (which were locally made) and four of those candy stick things (not locally made - apparently they came from Pennsylvania). The chocolates had filling... one of them was mocha and the other peanut butter.



I don't think it will take any great stretch of the imagination to figure out why the chocolates and one of the candy sticks are not present in the picture. Alas that the chocolate would melt on the way home if I tried bringing some along. But I can't say that I'm sorry I couldn't share them. X3

That was a smug grin, for the unaware.

Oh, yes. I almost forgot. Rik Berry was of course doing his thing... there's a painting of a ship I have yet to take a picture of, but here's what he did the first night, explaining that the guy in the picture doubled as a match that's just being lit. Yes, the matchhead is his rear end. Sans the funny bit, though, this painting's great.



Also, last evening during the worship circle thing that went until 10:00, they had some instruments that anyone could use, the majority of them being percussion instruments of one kind or another. I found a drummish... type... thing... Well, whatever it was, it made a cool sound. So after doing a little drawing, I joined into the pulsating beat and got a little enthusiastic. This thing happens only once every four years, you know? The bruise doesn't hurt that much today, though.



Okay... it's 5:36. Just about time to wrap this up. Good, because I was running out of things to ramble about anyway. Well, not really. I just remembered some others, but that's all right. I'll have a number of hours in the airport tomorrow either way to fill in the blanks as I see fit.

Ciao!