Wolseley Mayhem

The neighborhood I live in is called Wolseley and it is very close to the University of Winnipeg, which yes is very convenient for me (and likely will seem like a real blessing once the winter kicks in). However it also means that in the past week this cute, peaceful, tree lined street has become home to many first year university students eager to embrace their newfound freedom wholeheartedly.

I noticed something fishy was going on when I saw a group of at least 5 boys (I can't bring myself to call 18 yr. old's men) attempting to move their beds into the house via a small second floor window, in the house directly across the street from us. I suppose they were having trouble snaking the beds through the staircases of the house and felt that this was a good strategy. It was quite a comedy to witness as they hoisted bed after bed up through the windows... as you can tell I still have copious amounts of time on my hands (school doesn't start until next week and I have yet to locate a job) to engage in people watching. Any way this house of boys likes to PARTY. They had a party on Sunday night which was loud but I barely noticed as I stumbled into bed slightly intoxicated and totally exhausted that night ( recall the 'Times Changed' night) and then they had another party which was of an even greater volume last night.

Last night I did not go out. I did however get into a slight bit of a homesick mood which I tried to stave off by chatting to Jackie on the phone, reading and going to bed early-ish. Unfortunately my homesick mood made me very vulnerable to irritation and very prone to hardcore insomnia... the party, composed of what sounded like about sixty first year, hormone ridden/ alcohol soaked kids, did not help this matter. At about 12 am I turned off the light and tuned into a epic auditory experience. From my bed I experienced all phases of the party, first I experienced the tamer sounds of an acoustic guitar sing along, followed by the sounds of a stereo and voices getting louder and louder as the booze bottles no doubt got emptier and emptier, then I heard a lot of sex jokes and sex references and girls feigning disgust and boys chuckling at their cleverness or whatever, then I listened to about a half an hour of skate board tricks... directly below my window (gotta love the sound of boards slamming the pavement over and over again). And in no time at all the fights started (I was anxiously awaiting them... knowing that they meant it would all be over soon), first their was a fight between two girls which involved a long session of one girl pretending to be a baby to the other girl repeating "wa wa wa" in a remarkably obnoxious voice over and over again, and then of course there were the requisite fights between the couples... fights that don't need explanation as I am sure you can all imagine them down to the most minute details. Yeah, so sleep didn't really greet this homesick gal till 'round 3:30 am which was pretty unfortunate considering this morning was my first official day as a Graduate Student as I had an orientation session at 9am!!

Although I feel like I should report on it, in truth there is little to say about the grad orientation. It was overall fairly standard and boring procedure, just about the various services on campus, etc. It is remarkably non- techy university, I can't even look at my schedule on line and the library staff came to the orientation to give a special announcement: they now offer an online database!!! What were they doing before? How did people do research? So curious and charming and slightly disconcerting.

On a final note, I would like to mention that I purchased a single (plastic) bottle of local Manitoba beer tonight (accompanied by Dane, as apparently it is too dangerous to wander around alone at night in this area) at an off sales venue. The venue is housed in a motel which is also a pawn shop and a chinese food restaurant. The vendor is protected by a piece of bullet proof glass. Need I say more.

Nighty night.