these are not my walls

This is how you know I am the most observant person in the world:

Tonight, I heard sirens outside my building.

This is not, in and of itself, unusual; we live on a relatively major road, and the firehouse is just a couple of doors down. Not a day goes by that we don't hear a cop car or an ambulance go shrieking by and, less frequently, a firetruck.

(Less frequently because we live on a one-way street, and the firehouse is up the street from us. Or down the street, depending on how *you* use the terms "up" and "down". Point is, you cannot legally drive from the firehouse to our building without going on a few other streets and making some right-hand turns first.)

A few minutes later, I glance outside and notice what appears to be flashing lights. So, I mosey on over to my balcony and glance around to see who's got the cops breaking down their door.

There are four - FOUR! - firetrucks parked outside my building. Like, ladder trucks. Plus one fire department SUV.

I don't see any flames or smoke, so I'm looking up and down my street to see where the fire fighters are headed. Which is when I notice that the door to my building is stuck open, and there are fire fighters coming in and out. In full turnout gear.

Uh...

I mean, I didn't hear our fire alarm go off, I didn't smell smoke, NOTHING.

So I head on down and ask a fire fighter what's going on. It appears that someone went to sleep with a pot on their stove, their unit filled with smoke, their smoke alarm went off, and a neighbour called 9-1-1. And 4 firetrucks responded.

I can't decide if they genuinely thought that kind of response was required, or if they were all just a little bored and figured it wasn't that far to go, anyway, so they might as well check it out.

I hear the fire fighters gave her a huge lecture, though, so I guess she won't be doing that again.

Ouch!

This has been a busy time in our household. I think I saw Alex, like, 3 times this past week. Including one time we met for about 5 minutes in the post-work/pre-rehearsal time slot.

At least we don't have enough time to get bored of each other?

Yeah, that's the ticket.

Alex is teaching a course this semester, although he refuses to wear a tweed sports jacket with elbow patches. Harumph. He had to write up a mid-term for them, and although he WANTED to, he didn't ACTUALLY invite one of his actor friends to come to the midterm and, five minutes in, slam the exam down and yell "THIS IS BULLSHIT!" (or some variation thereof) and leave.

People, that's maturity for you.

He just came off the run-up to a Vaudeville show when he launched into rehearsals for Cyclone. When that show winds down, he'll be gearing up for Vaudeville again.

And to think I was ever worried about uprooting him to Victoria??

We did get to do a show together, on Monday night: VEC TV. When Wes first envisioned the show, he planned to get video submissions from around town, and have the audience vote on which show got 'picked up' for the next episode. Seems like a cool idea, right? He's done it successfully in other cities, and Victoria appears to have a relatively thriving local film scene.

Unfortunately, it appears that Wes has run into some difficulty hooking up with the local scene. The PTB are not into VEC TV - I don't know if they consider it too lowbrow? Or if they don't like something they don't have control over? - so he has received a whopping single film submission to date.

What we've been doing at the shows, instead, is playing old episodes of T.J. Hooker, without the sound, and having actors/improvisers to the voices and the sound effects. Last show we threw in an episode of Growing Pains for good measure. It is hilarious fun for US, but to be honest I'm not sure how entertaining it is for the (sadly, relatively meagre) audience that shows up.

We also had an Impromaniacs show on Thursday night (just me, Alex had rehearsal - well, not just me, there were other Impromaniacs), which went...not as badly as I feared. There were fun moments for sure.

And that's all I'm going to say about that.

Tonight, we have another show, which yay! we get to do together.

Then that's it for a bit (other than our regular weekly workshops.) For me, anyway. It's freakin' exhausting, I tell you.

Oh, no, wait, one more: on March 5th, me and three other women are doing a show at the Loudspeaker Festival, some kind of women's festival that is showing up on the VEC website as a slam poetry festival. Granted, I'm not the contact person between us and the festival organizers, but I'm pretty sure it's clear to them that we're improvisers. If they're expecting spoken word poetry, it's going to be kind of hilarious.

Which, I suppose, might at least entertain the audience...

In work-related news, I finished up my probation on Friday! At least, according to *my* math, I did, and everyone's just taking my word for it. There haven't been any problems, so I guess nobody was bothering to keep track. If I'd realized, I would've told them it ended weeks ago! :P

Anyways, I'm officially hired FOREVER now. And I can take vacation! Woohoo! To celebrate, I'm heading off to get a massage this morning. That seems appropriate, yes? We recently got new extended health plans at work, wherein there are 5 options and everyone gets to choose the one best suited for them. I took the one where you get unlimited massages after paying a minor deductible. :) I compensated by dropping the orthodontic part of the dentist plan and the higher life insurance (dude, Alex can take care of himself!), so it works out to about the same premiums. Heh.

I've been doing youth court for the last week, and I have one more week in youth court to go until the woman who's supposed to be doing it comes back from maternity leave (the woman who was regularly covering for her retired at the end of January.) Yeah, it's not my bag. If I wanted to do social work, I wouldn't've gone to law school, yo.

What else? I have my first appearance in Supreme Court (B.C., not Canada) at the beginning of March. I think I have to robe up. This'll be the first time since my call ceremony. I hope I don't faint from the heat; those things are not terribly breathable.

And...uh...I think that's it. Maybe I'll work on decreasing the pigsty factor in our abode.

Or read. :)

I went to Saltspring (or, if you prefer, Salt Spring) Island on Tuesday. Not for vacation - although it is a great vacation spot - but for work. Once a month they have criminal courts at the Ganges courthouse, so everyone - lawyers, judge, sheriff, court clerks - ferries over from Vancouver Island and we hold court for a day.

Usually, as quickly as possible, so everyone can catch the earliest possible ferry home. :)

Anyway, I went with a senior Crown a couple of times as an articled student, and this time I went as *the* Crown, and brought our current articled student with me. Which is kind of hilarious - I am in no way senior enough to be supervising some poor student - but the list was really short, and we didn't think anything much was going to happen, so no big deal.

I picked him up on the way to the 9 a.m. ferry, we hopped over on a short 35-minute ferry ride, and made good time on the 14 km drive to the courthouse. We were there in plenty of time for the 10 a.m. start time (and, in fact, beat the judge - who'd been on our same ferry.)

This is basically what Saltspring looked like when we got there:



Only a little less sunny.

We hold court, it only goes for about 2 1/2 hours - there'd been one trial scheduled, but defence counsel successfully applied for an adjournment - and then we exit the courthouse for the drive back to the ferry.

This is basically what Saltspring looked like when we got out of the courthouse:



And that's only a slight exaggeration (though it is a picture taken by someone else, of somewhere else.) Also, what that latter photo doesn't show is that the snow was still falling. And the snow on the highway was fresher.

Yeah. We were in my little Echo, with it's worn-out-and-to-be-replaced-as-soon-as-the-new-ones-we-ordered-arrive all season tires.

Which wouldn't really be *that* much of a problem - go slow, don't slam on the brakes - except for three things:

1) Saltspring is not exactly flat.





2) Saltspring has no sand or salt trucks, at least not that we are aware of. We did see two trucks go by with what were likely intended to be snow plows on the front, but the plows were at least 2 - 3" off the ground, and had no discernible impact on the precipitation on the road.

3) There were lots of other cars on the road, driven by people who (also) had no real idea what they were doing. So the go slow, no stopping thing was kind of problematic. And there were people riding our ass.

The articled student had to get out and push a van that was almost sideways on the road at one point, and finally got her going - just long enough for her to slide sideways a few hundred metres later, causing me to have to hit the brakes (too hard, dammit!) and slide sideways ourselves. Unlike the van driver, I steered into the skid, so we ended up on part of the shoulder and not actually in the ditch.

At which point I made our articled student drive. Did I mention he grew up in NWT? Yeah.

45 minutes after leaving the courthouse, he got us safely into the ferry terminal - not a scratch or dent on the car, and I only had to get out (in my suit!) and push us up over one hill - and my muscles slowly started to de-clench from their adrenaline-fuelled lockdown.

Yeah, still not a big fan of driving in slidey snow. Man, you flip one truck off one snow highway, and it lives in your psyche forever!

We caught an early enough ferry that we could've gone into the office when we made it back to (completely snow-free) Victoria, but we both said fuck it. I mean, really; we'd put in a full day's work, I think.

I went home and went to bed. :)

Look! My sister is famous!

I don't consider myself an expert on U.S. constitutional law, but I don't think a write-in campaign will have much impact on a judicial ruling. Unfortunately.


"Fidelity": Don't Divorce... from Courage Campaign on Vimeo.

Yeah, I cried.

Thank you all for your kind words.

I've decided we don't, after all, have to sell our place and move to make sure I never run into these people again. Even I can't take avoidance that far!

In other news, tonight I went back to my alma mater to "help out" a colleague who teaches Advocacy there. They were doing some exercises tonight - how to enter exhibits in a trial - and the more senior lawyer who was supposed to go and supervise one small group dropped out at the last minute. And I'm just a girl who can't say no.

So, I offered the group the benefit of my 5 months of experience and gave them feedback and answered questions. Note: I am pretty confident I answered at least some of their questions in a less than completely accurate manner. Luckily for them, it's a pass/fail course. :)

Tomorrow night, Alex and I are going to go see two shows at the Metro Theatre. After a long day in remand court, I'm just hoping I stay awake.

Then, on Saturday, I'm going to learn all about how a kiss is a fist your mouth makes. Which is possibly my most favouritest atomic show title ever.

Then, on Sunday is the time vis ze sprockets ven ve SLEEP!

There was a knock at our door yesterday afternoon, which is unusual - people have to buzz to get in our building, and though we know many of the people in our building to say "hi" to, it's not like we hang out with them or anything. But I'm on the strata council again, so I thought it might be someone with a problem.

In a sense, I was correct; turns out, the problem was me.

See, on Friday I drove my car to work (to deliver the precious cake*), and when I drove home a car drove into the garage through the open gate (that I'd opened) behind me. Then the driver of that car followed me through the open garage door (that I'd unlocked) into the building. Neither of these things is terribly unusual, and it made sense timing-wise. But the guy didn't look familiar to me, and we've had a few break-ins recently, so I sucked it up and started a conversation with him.

If you know me, and know how much I hate making conversation with strangers, I think you can imagine how painfully awkward that was for me.

Basically, I said hi, and asked him if he was new to the building because I didn't think I'd seen him before. Turns out he's been in the building for over a year - hi, I'm an asshole - and then we stood at (and then in) the elevator and made awkward conversation - as you do with neighbours - until I escaped to my apartment.

Or at least, *I* thought we made awkward conversation. Based on the complaint his wife made about me to the Strata Council president, *he* thought I grilled him with intrusive and inappropriate questions.

So yesterday afternoon I got a talking to about how, while it was perfectly fine for me to ask him about living in the building, I should not have gone any further with my questioning. I don't recall asking any more questions, but whatever. I think the poor strata council president felt almost as uncomfortable as I did, having this conversation, but I'm willing to bet it was a tad less humiliating for him.

So there goes that foray into community-building. Guess I'll just return to my much more comfortable hermit ways. It's not like *our* apartment ever gets broken into...


*Erica: the leaving-then-not-leaving girl had planned to take a month off between this job and her new job, and had scheduled a trip; the head honchos at our job told her to go ahead and take her trip, which is why she's going to be gone for a month. And sorry if I've been going on about her/this forever; I didn't realise I had!!