nori's nash summary:

wednesday, 19 january: flight supposed to leave at 1945h. thomas calls at around 1730h to tell me that due to freezing rain, the highway from the edmonton airport to the city may be closed and that i should call him when i get in to let him know what's up. check the flight information website, which claims that the flight has been delayed to depart at 2022h. check ama website, which says that the highway is extremely dangerous. refresh. highway is closed. fuck. sweetie says that he can see if he can convince his parents to pick me up via the back roads with chains on the tires. i leave the house at about 1815h.

hop on the 98 b-line at around 1835h. sit on one of the bench seats. dude across from me is trying to read life of pi, but there is someone sitting next to him talking to him. i can't see him because my line of sight is blocked by a girl standing in the aisle.

"yeah, you know? i got a $300 a day habit. i'm tryin' to get healthy, man."

dude reading is visibly disturbed. "uh...good luck with that," he says.

girl in the aisle gets off the bus. that's when i see that the guy behind her is actually smoking a crack pipe -- on a bus -- and blowing out the window. he gets off at the next stop. dude reading understandably sketched out.

"can you fucking believe that!?" i hear from another dude at the back of the bus. "i've never seen that in my life!"

"what happened?" asked this rather imperceptive man sitting in the corner.

"if he hadn't been blowing out the window, i would have clocked him and thrown him off the bus myself!"

"what happened?" the man repeated.

"he was smoking crack! i work in the downtown eastside. i see that kind of shit all the time, but never on the bus! what does he think this is, the skytrain?"

yes.

i eventually get off the bus and catch the connection to the airport. get to the desk.

"i'm supposed to fly to edmonton."

"that flight's been cancelled. but you're confirmed for the 945h flight tomorrow morning."

"there's nothing earlier?"

"well, there is a 7am flight, but it's full. you can come at 6am and try for a standby seat."

pout.

"are you sure i can't get a seat on the 7am flight?"

checks. "oh. things must have changed. okay, you're confirmed for the 7am. be here at 6 at the latest."

head home. call thomas with the news that he'd have to postpone my talk. spend the rest of the evening trying to sleep but not succeeding, then just giving up and watching television.

***

thursday, 20 january (my sweetie's birthday): get up at 500h. look around at the ridiculous renovation mess in the apartment and contemplate whether i should eat something. i'm not hungry, but i know i'll be ill if i don't eat something. decide against it and just pack a bunch of arrowroot cookies and ginger candies. call a cab. head to the airport.

fly to edmonton and cab it to the hotel. am late for my own talk by 20 minutes.

try to check in. they don't have a reservation for me. find thomas. get my t-shirt and registration package to discover that my name had been misspelled on the name tag. try to check in under that name while bizzak promises me a new name tag. head into the room to find the personal effects of at least two others. wonder whom i'm rooming with.

see ET, whom i haven't seen in years. she looks fabulous. also run into other old friends.

see doug southam's documentary photo session. it is excellent. conclude that it is an unfortunate coincidence that the cancer lady's last name is tarbox.

see paula simons's session on opinion writing. she's extremely fun and articulate. miss opinion writing.

meet my roommates, AC and KH, who both seem pretty solid.

hear buzz that people were disappointed that i didn't give my session today. begin to worry that everyone's expectations are too high.

spend evening editing and trying to get some reading done for jmax's tech class, but too tired.

***

friday, 21 january: get up to have breakfast up in la ronde. lose my roommates but find basil sitting with someone i don't know. ask to join them, introduce myself to the dude with longish greasy-looking hair. midway through my meal, basil gets up and leaves. other dude is weird.

"have you seen van helsing?"

and

"i could talk some more if you want."

he tells me he wanted to go to my talk, but since it's been rescheduled to 11, he can't see it.

pity.

i dick around in the tech room for an hour and print out some handouts for my talk. find myself with nothing else to do and just sit around getting progressively more nervous. head to my session room, wait for people to file in...

give my talk. it goes okay, i guess. there are roughly 50 people there -- not a bad turnout -- and i'm hoping they didn't all leave disappointed. a few people come and chat after my talk, which i take to be a good sign, although they're almost all weirdos. one chunky nerd asked me where he could find magazines to write for.

what?

i find out he's from the quill, and it all makes sense. i tell him to contact the mmpa and that seems to satisfy him, but he continues to talk to me about assinine things.

i go to RB's talk. that boy sure knows how to sell himself.

see one of ron johnson's many presentations. similar to what he had last year. don't learn much, but it's still good.

give my second talk. about a dozen people show up -- more than i expected. "since we're a smaller group, i want this to be more of a round-table. why don't you throw questions at me and let me know what you want to get out of this session?"

silence.

okay...

i talk about the lunatic society and robert maxwell and eventually, they start asking me questions, most of which i seem to be able to answer to their satisfaction.

evening: lewis lapham.

also, meet dmac's mom.

yes. lewis lapham. an engaging talk, as expected, but he doesn't say anything i don't expect him to say. get gag rule and 30 satires and have them signed. "is there outrage that we simply don't hear about up here?" i ask him.

"no. there's no outrage. i've tried hard to find it."

watch napoleon dynamite with dmac, HT and AL.

chat with bizzak.

go to bed.

***

saturday, 22 january: wake up to our fourth roommate, whom i haven't met, showering. she emerges, i introduce myself. she is a small unassuming asian girl.

head upstairs to breakfast, which, disappointingly, consists merely of fruit and pastries. eat a blueberry danish and a bowl of fruit salad. am joined by DL and LB.

go downstairs and run into SL. feel obligated to go see his talk. it's okay -- raises some issues that i hadn't thought about -- but his malappropisms and use of the word 'utilize' make my eyes roll.

see CB's talk on alt weeklies. see HA in the audience and chat with her for a bit. make fun of KO for having to introduce CB and encourage her to introduce him as her boyfriend. JC is also there. he is the shit.

see therese kehler talk about freelancing. she is, as roommate KH puts it, "abrasive and borderline rude." her advice is sort of inconsistent and not terribly helpful -- "i hated this pitch. and your pitch is the most important. it's your chance to make a good first impression...but we ran the story anyway"; "never write in the first person. but here are some cases where it worked"; "this was a terrible article. but i rewrote it and ran it anyway" -- leading me to think, ah...this is why ed is the way it is.

ken alexander's talk. glad i went, but his answers to the questions are somewhat disappointing. he doesn't seem to have much of an idea of the walrus's mandate, identity or audience. having a forum for canada's writers and readers is fine and good, but not having an easily articulated purpose just makes failure more likely. i won't be shocked if the magazine folds within five years.

meet the parents for dinner. they pick me up and we eat at pearl river. yum. there, a man comes and says hi to my dad, shakes his hand and mine, and asks my dad a few questions that he stumbles in answering. when the man leaves, my dad says "this is embarassing...i don't know who he is."

it takes the three of us a good ten minutes to figure it out, but we finally do -- it's old neighbours of ours who moved about three years ago. glad they don't understand cantonese...

head home after dinner, where i find my christmas present from my sweetie -- a the cheat sweatshirt -- which had taken until just the last week to arrive. i pack all of the crap we'd forgotten in edmonton after our visit over christmas and promptly fall asleep for two hours. alone in my old bed. sweet.

get dropped off at the hotel, where i pack up. things don't quite fit, but i cram as best as i can. head down to see dmac, find him in the tech room. we sit and talk for a long time...but we are interrupted. we will have to recapitulate later. anyway, we are interrupted by a group of his friends, who are up from banff and dropped by to say hi to him.

later on, we're joined by HT, and while the three of us are obviously engaged in conversation, AK comes along and sits down, attempting to join in on our rather personal discussion. we try subtle hints to get him to go away, while he gives us not-so-subtle hints to vote for him in the cup presidential election. we tell him none of us are voting, and he says "you can still read my position paper even if you're not voting."

go away, AK. you're not charismatic.

head toward the elevators, where i am flagged down by my roommates, who infom me that there is "action" happening in our hotel room thanks to the fourth girl. apparently, KH and AC walked in to find her and a dude partially clothed. they hadn't even chained the door or hung a 'do not disturb' sign on the door.

"oh sorry...uh...we'll give you some time," says KH, meaning, of course, "we'll give you some time to get dressed and compose yourselves," not "we'll give you some time to finish having sex." but as soon as they walk out the door, they hear the door chain being latched.

the three of us are sexiled.

"how long should we give them?" AC asks. KH just wants to get to bed. we eventually go back up, knock on the door, and roughly ten minutes later, hear (from another room down the hall) someone leave our room. i ascertain that it's safe enough to retrieve my sweatshirt, do, and head back downstairs to chill with dmac and HT, who are on safety. we sit until about 0330h and get to bed.

***

sunday, 23 january: wake up, finish packing, and eat brunch, which is a bizarre hodgepodge of food -- ravioli, waffles, salmon and eggs benedict?

head to HT and ZBP's session about queer journalism. a freak from the gleaner keeps interjecting. otherwise, it is a fine session.

get driven to the airport by thomas. will miss him till i see him next.