The Chelsea Chamber

Election Day/ The Weekend/ Househunting

Ottawa, recently hit by many varied forms of precipitation and temperatures, is now both snowy and icy. Though the slushy streets are presently devoid of tension and excitement, this chilly capital will, as of tonight, have a new government residing within it.Hope you've all voted, because if you haven't you have no right to complain about the government from now until the next election! So go out (now!) and do your civic duty, exercise your democratic rights, and give your opinion. Today is one day that the government has to listen to us.

So here I am, indulging in some undeserved procrastination and updating The Chamber. Considering how relatively unproductive I've been, my life has been fairly busy of late.

Tyler and Mike came up to Ottawa this past weekend. Amanda and I made a cake for Tyler, which we ate on Friday night. The cake was cherry chip with cream cheese icing, dusted in chocolate, and it was ever so yummy. A guy in my poetry class totally didn't believe me when my answer to the question "What are you doing after class?" was "Baking a cake." If the cake had not been for Tyler I might have considered bringing him a slice, but then why should such doubt merit confectionary reward? In any case, we baked the cake using the 90U kitchens (we have a stove in our kitchen here but not an oven), which was fun. Funnier, though, was Mandi dropping three raw eggs on our floor; thankfully only two broke. I wish that this demonstration of utter grace on her part was an isolated incident, but less than 24 hours later she managed to empty an entire box of powdered laundry detergent onto our carpet and into Tyler's shoe. Oh Mandi, how I love you. You are a great roommate and an endless source of entertainment.

Anyways, friday night was uneventful. We ate dinner in the common room with floor people and later on went to Andrew's to watch some Family Guy. Saturday we all slept in and managed to be a full half hour late meeting Mike and Cassie at the Rideau Centre. That wasn't my fault. Anyways, so the six of us (Ian, Mike, Tyler, Cassie, Mandi, and myself) ran around the Rideau Centre for a while, then we all came back to Thompson to chill for a while before a whole herd of us went to Don Cherry's to watch the game. I won't claim to be any kind of an expert on hockey, but I can say with utmost certainty that the Leafs got owned by the Sens that night. Our large group was mostly comprised of very vocal leafs fans; poor Curtis was certainly a minority as a Sens fan. Waseem was hilarious in his too-snug jersey, and more hilarious still while he was hitting on the scantily-clad sorority girls sporting Leafs apparel at the next table. Waseem, you're a true ladies' man. Most of us left before the game was officially over, because it was obvious that there was little argument as to who had won.

An hour or so later we left Thompson to catch the bus and meet up with Amanda's cousin Clay (who is super-cool, by the way) and head off to Le Bop. Clay's method of going to Hull, however, consisted of walking from where we met him at the war museum through the bitter cold and the icy wind. I no longer held it against him after I regained feeling in my face, but Andrew was lucky to have taken a cab and met us there later. Needless to say we took a cab home at the night's end. Le Bop was crowded that night but I think we all had a quality time. Mandi, Tyler, Cassie, Mike, and Ian left a little bit ahead of Clay, Andrew, Curtis, and I, so we cabbed back to Rideau Street where Clay could catch a bus back to Kanata. Rideau is fairly lively after 2am. The wait for his bus involved our first experience with shawarmas (I'm an official resident of Ottawa now that I've appreciated the Heaven that is a shawarma, I'm told) and running into Andrew's English prof in McDonald's around 2:30. We all agreed that that was pretty random and rather awkward. After we saw Mandi's cousin off and ran into a few more random people, the three of us walked back to campus. Both Andrew and I were still pretty awake, though, so we watched The Negotiator. Kevin Spacey is awesome, however I don't think I'll ever get over The Life of David Gale.

Needless to say, I was pretty tired at our delicious floor breakfast ('Ante Meridiem Chaw & Glutch'- we love you Ahmed and Veronica) that started at 11am. It was worth getting out of bed for though. It was as yummy as the caf's new (chocolate, banana, and coconut) cream pies, which are positively sock-rocking! Tyler came to the breakfast but Ian did not, for which we are very dissappointed in him, after being declared an honorary floor member too! Tyler left shortly thereafter, and we napped and read the afternoon away, until the time came to go see another house.

Now, I could write an endlessly long post about Househunting alone. The deliberations and discussions are still in progress, but I'll just satisfy myself with telling of a few of the valuable lessons we have learned so far:

Mission to DiscountRez: never put Ian in charge of finding directions to a place. You'll find yourself standing beside the Transitway while he looks around blankly and laughs as if he had expected the house to fall from the sky. Thankfully we ran into a nice guy who actually lived at the place we were looking at; turns out it wasn't complicated or very far away at all, but the bottom line is never delegate. The rez itself was pretty cool.

489 Maclaren: if you like Mandi, Ian, Justin, Curtis, Nabeela, or myself, say a prayer of thanks that we got out of this place alive. Ok, I exaggerate, but to any uOttawa kids who are reading this: 489 Maclaren is the crappiest place in the history of housing, and we decided that the landlady probably routinely eats her tenants. She could make more money if she rented the place out as a horror movie set... she could even star in the movie, she's a natural talent.

475 Catherine Street: this was easily the best place we've seen so far. The interesting experience here did not actually involve going to see the house or the house at all, it happened afterwards. Amanda had to call the cops on some crazy (likely homeless) guy who was violently screaming at and threatening a lady in a bus shelter outside a Harvey's. That was a weird and unnerving experience, but hearing Mandi recount how the Emergency Services operator asked her, "Do you need fire, ambulance, or po?" is pretty funny. "Po"?! Well, it all worked out in the end.

I have a lot to do and it is getting later than I had intended. Mandi and Ian are leaving in a few hours to go to the Leafs vs. Sens game... hopefully the Leafs don't get bent over a desk (pardon the metaphor) like on Saturday, because Mandi and Ian will both very dissappointed. However, no matter what the outcome, my spiderplant is still flowering and that makes me happy. It almost makes me less bitter at my poetry prof for assigning a two page 'essay' that is worth 15% of my mark. Two pages!? I could write twenty on this topic! Anyways, that is due on Wednesday, so I've got to get cracking and finish that up.

Farzana and Bedouin Soundclash on Friday!

Exit Chelsea, Stage Left.

posted by Unknown @ 4:53 PM