Saturday nights are the hardest night of the week in terms of loneliness. For much of the week, I'm too tired and too busy to think much about home. Sure, there are moments where I feel my isolation keenly, but not like on a Saturday night. Maybe it's the fact that I'm relaxed, taking it easy... patterns of behaviour years old are broken. Saturday nights were nights for one of many things: hanging out with a video or movie on television with Mom, Dungeons & Dragons with the gang, or a date night with the boyfriend. Well, last night I got to experience D&D with a new and very different group, that doesn't really help my feelings of missing my friends back home. I have no TV and, well, no boyfriend here to cuddle up with. I don't even have a cat.

I miss people very much. I miss contact and love and things like that. I'm happy enough out here in the wilds of Canada's frontier lands and I know I'll make a good life for myself here. I have a job that is so far incredibly satisfying, and I'm connected to the world by many forms of media, but still, contact. Eventually, I'll be used to this place and it won't matter so much, but home is where the heart is, and mainly, that's a long way east.

Anyway, soon enough, I'll be heading to Dawson City for the Short Film Festival up there. That will be a strange and new experience and I'm looking forward to it. The folk up in Dawson seem really cool and quite with-it considering it's a town of something like 500 people in the winter and totally remote. Some in Whitehorse say Dawson is far more enjoyable and exciting than this city is. I guess I'll find out ! Then, the day after I return from the Film Fest, I'm off on a plane to Vancouver and then to Wales, via Amsterdam (ya, weird connector, I know). I'm looking forward to that trip even more. Not only will I visit with one of my very closest friends, I'll also get to head up to Leicester to participate in a learned conference hosted by the Uni of Leicester's Museum Studies Department. Gah, I can't wait ! This promises to be a very exciting month.

So, you can see how I can be filled with conflicting emotions about this whole living-in-Whitehorse thing. It doesn't change my strong desire to make a visit home in August, but with a car I'll need to buy and whatnot, I can't really see a way to afford it right now. Well, we'll see, we'll see.

I'm babbling. I guess I'll stop now and save you from any further ramblings.