Some mornings, everything trivial is against you so that by the time you have it all sorted out, you're running half an hour behind, sweating, and irritated. Today, this is me. For instance, I over-slept. Not by a lot, but by enough to make me need to hurry. Then I missed the bus. The next bus came seven minutes later, officially making me late, but there was still a chance that I'd make it on time if the lights were in my favour and few people wanted on or off. The lights were not in my favour. None of the lights were in my favour and the bus driver, unlike in Toronto, was not about to run the yellow. So, by the time I arrived at work, I'm a full fifteen minutes behind schedule. I unlocked my office and the laptop was missing. Not in its case. Not put away in a drawer. A mad laptop search is just what I wanted. It wasn't in its cupboard, nor was it with the woman who had it last. Uh oh, not good. Where did I discover it? With another staff member. She wanted me to use the other laptop that is around here somewhere, and I looked at her and said, very sweetly, "But all my stuff is saved on that one."

So, half an hour behind, but I am now successfully in possession of the communal (far moreso than I'd thought) department laptop. And, before I dive into the photographs and presentation files of the Churchill dig site (this would be in regards to my trilobite project that I am working on for the paleontologist), I need to unwind a bit.

Winnipeg is an interesting city. It's large, but not ridiculously so, and is very much broken up into neighbourhoods - far more than Toronto, probably more in line with New York or Philadelphia. Each neighbourhood seems to have a clear boundary, be it a road, like the Pembina Highway, or one of the two winding rivers (some neighbourhoods fit neatly INto a meanderloop, even), and they are all, at least from my still limited observation, quite distinct from each other. It seems a little surprising to me considering how no natural topography breaks it up, no hills, declines, bluffs, or ravines, with the exception of the rivers. It seems the town planners, in the city's infancy, tossed logic to the wind when they designed the roads. Here is a perfectly flat piece of land, perfect for a grid system, and they messed it up ! Sure, there are grids. But they all meet each other at odd angles and main streets radiate from the downtown like a classic spiderweb. It can make getting around a bit confusing, if you're unfamiliar. Maybe that is why people are so friendly; they keep getting lost and realise they have to trust the kindness of others to be set straight.

Now, I shall pour myself a cup of coffee and set about digging through these files and maybe in this next week, something akin to inspiration will strike and suddenly, I'll have an idea of what to write for the museum's record-holding "giant" trilobite. I hope so, because I have already gleaned far more about trilobites than I'd ever wanted, and I might be nearing brain capacity for prehistoric arthropoidal knowledge.