Back in NS

Here I am, back in my apartment. My flight was delayed by 4 hours last night, so I got here around 3:15am. While waiting the extra 4 hours at the airport, I read a new book. I bought myself a book and a bookmark to pass the time and to soothe my disappointment. The book I bought was the new one by Joyce Carol Oates, Rape: A Love Story. It is typical Oates, which is awesome. She is one of my favourite contemporary American writers. I wanted to do my thesis on her, but I didn't. Anyway, I highly recommend this book. It's short too, so you should be able to read it in a few hours. It's about a woman who is gang raped and beaten when walking home with her 12 year old daughter on the night of July 4th, 1996. She is left to die, but she survives. It gave me a lot to think about.

I also bought myself 2 magazines for the flight - Jane, which I'd never read before, and Cosmo, which is my guilty pleasure. I was pleasantly surprised by Jane, actually. It touts itself a more intellectual magazine, but I didn't really believe it. However, it definitely is more sophisticated than Cosmo. Not like it's a literary journal or anything, I mean, it's still a magazine, but fewer weird slang words than Cosmo, and the humour is definitely at a higher level.

My flight was delayed because Jetsgo cancelled 2 of its earlier flights and put all of us on this late night flight to fill it up. I'd never had this happen before. I'm not altogether impressed. If I had been planning on taking the earlier flight that arrives in Halifax around 4pm with the intention of taking the bus, I would have been very mad, since a cab is quite a bit more expensive than the bus. As it is, this delay meant that I wasn't able to share a cab back to Wolfville with Ashley as we'd planned, which is unfortunate. I still was able to share my cab, so my fare didn't go up, but she unfortunately had to pay full price. The couple with whom I shared my cab seemed nice. They were glowingly happy because the guy had just proposed to the girl when he got off his plane. (Sidebar: What is it with this matrimonial epidemic? Maybe it's just the Christmas season or something, I don't know, but marriage seems to be all around. Oh well.) I spent the trip back talking to the driver, who was surprisingly interesting. I learned a lot of stuff that I didn't know before, especially about the army.

When I got home, I found that I had done something to my computer that made me not able to use the internet. After freaking out, I tried to fix it myself. 4am is not the best time to be playing with your computer settings, but I eventually got it figured out, so here I am, the next afternoon, posting about my experiences. I still need to unpack (which I'm excited about... it's like Christmas all over again) and go grocery shopping (you can't eat Quaker Oat Squares without milk, or at least, I can't). My plants are all alive, happily. A little droopy, but I've watered them all now, so they should perk up.

You know how all homes have their own particular smell, based in large part on who's living in them? My parents' house smells different now that I don't live there, which is interesting. Last night, when I walked into my apartment, it smelled like it did when I first moved in. It took me back. That smell that belongs to my apartment made me feel like I was home again. It's good to be back.