Cultural Weekend.

I have hot hands and hot feet. First over-heated digits and palms of the season. Spring is swaggering in like a dog in the sun. Here you come, here you come. Tongues are wagging. Everyone is panting in this unfamiliar heat. Heat! There is heat and humidity in the air in Winnipeg! Cycling has been so exciting lately; everyone has taken to the streets. There is clapping every where I turn. People are rejoicing with their hands on the sidewalk, in their cars, in their short shorts and beside me and mine in the First Balcony.

What clapping last night! A monster of a room filled with exactly what it was designed for. Clapping. Last night Mitch and Jillian took me to see Carmen for my birthday. I had never been to the opera before. Carmen, what skirts you have. What extension on your leg. I couldn't stop staring at her, she was beautiful. The operatic French being belted out over the hundreds of heads below my spot only buoyed my spirits for the inevitable move to Montreal. What conversation. I was taken with the main characters, their voices surprisingly complimentary (obviously, I was surprised with my own delight in harmony), I was enraptured with the set design and the classic colors. I added set design to my list. Everyone was fancy in their own way. What ways! The woman wearing the coral satin prom dress and the mini backpack stole the show. Exiting the portals for intermissionl felt like leaping upstream with hundreds of slippery-backed Winnipeg salmon in a river of finery.

Side note: get off your cellphone when you are riding your bicycle on Donald you turd. Some guy just cycled past my spot by the window at the coffee shop in my new neighborhood. I am bare foot, hot after riding home from having coffee with Rebecca. There are so many teens out! I sometimes forget what it was like to be a teen in the springtime and then I walk through Osborne Village and remember.

It has been a cultural weekend. What a birthday! An impromptu dinner at Lo's, a fancy dinner with my beauty, a party with my friends, breakfast in the morning light, warm air on bare shoulders, the opera with my beauties, midnight grocery shopping with JF, waking up singing, breakfast for two with dark, dark coffee, cleaning in the afternoon light, listening to all the records I will miss up in the north, expensive water with Rebecca, Vietnamese with my family.

Tie a ribbon around your _ _ _ _ (neck, knee, hair) for me and sing whatever strikes you. 24 has been very nice so far and someone just slipped old Shins on in here. An old friend filling my ears. "Making tea in my underwear", makes me think of Yosh. Speaking of old friends, for my birthday I was reacquainted with a Nikon F3 camera body (thanks mum and dad; perfect gift), something I had been looking for for a while since the death of my last one last Spring. And here we are, together again. Her welcomed weight is familiar in my hands and I can't stop taking photos.

I leave in twelve days. Twelve days of Christmas. I cleaned my house in my work boots today and thought of Rags, and Liza, and Lisa, and Birdman, and Loco and JJ. Soon girls, soon.

Everyone, be well.
Megan