On the walk between Tim Horton’s and my apartment, this poster hangs on the side of one of the buildings:

And every time I find myself wondering which answer the poster expects. A philosophy professor once told me never to use questions in an essay, as the answer the reader wants to give may not be the one you expect to hear.

Considering that the poster hangs on the side of a church, and is advertising something called an Alpha Course, it’s a pretty safe bet that the more-to-life the poster refers to is God, or at least something religious. Now, the website for this program sounds like it’s asking neutral questions—”Does God exist?” for example—as if the program really is trying to answer the question, but looking closer at the material on the site, especially some of the video lectures, it’s quite clear that the answer is going to be “Yes”. No surprise.

Here’s the problem. If the answer to the question on the poster is “yes”, that there is something more to life than “this”, why does the “this” pictured look so appealing? I’m sure there are quite a lot of people who would say that climbing to some high peak and revelling in both that accomplishment and the grand picture of nature laid out before is exactly what life is about. Experiencing the world around us to the fullest. So, no, there is not more to life than these grand adventures. That’s why for the longest time I hoped that the poster was advertising a mountain climbing club or a safari adventure travelling group of some kind.

I understand that they’re probably trying to show off the majesty of God’s creation by using this photo. But surely the point is that there’s more to life than the regular day-to-day stuff that we all live though. That’s what should have been pictured. “Is there more to life than this?” next to some burnt out office worker or some otherwise miserable person. The answer then, is more obivously “yes”, and more people might be inclined to try the course to get more information on the subject.

As it stands, I still look at that picture and think, “No, that actually looks pretty awesome. Where can I sign up for this mountain climbing adventure you promise?” God disappoints yet again.

Every December for the last few years, there’s been a big snowstorm in Montreal. And each time it snows here there’s a jump in my site stats as everybody searches for “montreal snowstorm” and find this photo album I published after the one in 2005. Every time I feel a little guilty that they’re getting old photos of the wrong storm. They aren’t even very good photos.

This year’s storm was particularly good, though, so I’ve taken some new ones. My favourite part has been that the city is being really slow about removing all the snow. It may not be convenient for cars to have to dig parking spaces for themselves, or to have two lanes reduced to one because of some dominating snow banks, but it sure is nice to look at! And fun to climb through! Though I think the official count was somewhere between 30 and 40 centimetres in the main storm, it’s been snowing on and off for a couple weeks in addition to that, and a combination of plows and wind have made some of the snow banks taller than I am. I love it.

Despite my promises of new snow photos just two paragraphs ago, I’m technically supposed to be studying for an exam and writing an astrophysics paper, so that album will have to be added to the waiting list with the rest from 2007. In the meantime, here’s my favourite picture of the bunch, taken in front of McGill’s music building: Queen Victoria’s New Dress.

The following was distilled down from a facebook conversation I had with my sister while sitting in the Burnside computer labs typing up my take home final tonight.

Me: We have libraries that are 24 hours at this time of year. McGillers are a bunch of studious nerds.

Sister: 24 hour libraries?! That’s ridiculous. Nobody should be at a library past like 10pm, that’s what I think. Are McGill students actually called McGillers or did you just make that up? What’s your mascot anyway?

Me: Well, McGillers is a common term. We’re technically “red birds” now. Though, it used to be “red men” for the men’s athletic teams and “martlets” for the women. Our mascot is really a martlet.

Sister: I’ve never even heard of a martlet. It doesn’t sound very threatening. Is it at least some sort of vulture or other big scary bird? Because it sounds like a song bird to me.

Me: Martlets are definitely closer to songbirds than vultures… they’re from some kind of greek myth, which is why nobody has heard of them. They’re birds with no legs, so they can only fly higher and higher (like… higher education… or something inspiringly metaphorical like that… though I don’t see why the little guys can’t just stop flapping their wings, fall to the ground a bit, then start flapping again.)

Sister: What kind of bird doesn’t have legs? This is all very interesting. I think if such a bird actually existed, it would do exactly what you said it would. It wouldn’t be able to just keep flying forever, it would die of exhaustion.

Me: Let’s see. We have 24 hour libraries that people actually use for 24 hours during exam period, and our school mascot, if it actually existed, would die of exhaustion before just sitting down for a bit. Coincidence? I think not.

Theoretically I’m in the midst of writing my philosophy take home exam. In actuality I’m looking to procrastinate. At least I’m in the computer lab. And I’ve even printed off about a dozen astrophysics articles for that other paper I’m writing. I may not have read them yet, but it just looking them up in the first place counts as research. After a few nice diagrams, a respectable list of references, and fiddling with the margins a bit, I’ll have at least 15 pages in no time, right? At least that’s what the professor told us.

In the interests of making sure this post is actually about something somebody might want to read, I give you this tidbit: If you buy twelve cookies at Subway restaurants, it counts as groceries and you don’t have to pay taxes.

Also, I’ve developed a mild obsession with Mario games, so if anybody wants to buy me a Wii or a DS, that’d be awesome. But then again, maybe it’s just this strong desire to procrastinate that’s movitating me with that one.

Ok, ok, back to the grindstone…

I’ve been told that I’m hard to read, that maybe I carry my emotions too deep. But at the same time I remember once, back in grade 11, a friend of mine saying that she had driven past me while I was dancing my way to school. Apparently, put some headphones on me and play a peppy tune and I’ll let loose no matter who’s driving by.

Well, maybe that isn’t a guarantee, but it’s not unheard of. I’m quite sure anybody who happened to see me walking down Broadway to the tune of Turkey Lurkey would have seen a similar sight.

I’ve actually taken up the habit of singing along to my tunes, too. My favourite songs always tend to be those with good melodies, good lyrics, and good to perform. It’s no wonder that my notPod is filled with songs whose lyrics I can muddle along with quite well, and enjoy at the very least humming along with.

I try to catch myself at it, though. I always stop whenever I think somebody might be within earshot, or at least take out the vocals and keep it to a murmur if the street’s busy enough to mask it. But I’ve been noticing that my safety zone is shrinking. Months ago, a tiny dot of a person three blocks away would have been enough for me to snap back to reality. Now, it’s more like when I can see the whites of their eyes. And if I can’t see them, clearly they can’t hear me.

I haven’t gotten any funny looks yet, but I’m pretty sure this is a sign that I’m going to grow up to be one of those crazies on the metro talking (or singing) to himself, iPod or not.

Three o’clock. Three o’clock is always too late or too early for anything you want to do. An off moment in the afternoon. Today it is intolerable.

– from Nausea, by Jean-Paul Sartre

How true it is. This afternoon at three o’clock I was definitely not doing anything I wanted to do—that was about the time I hit the 30 minute mark in the Hour of Power, which from that point forward became the worst erg piece I’ve ever pulled. Though that’s not quite the same feeling of Nausea that Sartre was talking about.

I think my Existentialism professor would be, not disappointed, but slightly uncomfortable, with how I’ve taken to the class. No, I haven’t latched on to everything said by Sartre, Heidegger, de Beauvoir, Fanon, or Camus, but a lot of what existentialism talks about is very seductive. I’ve written that already. The evidence is that, when having conversations that start to draw on philosophy, I start to draw on arguments made by those philosophers. It happened the other day standing in line at Tim Hortons, when the topic turned to racism, and I found myself referencing Fanon. When discussing sexual identity, I tend to think of bad faith. I’ve even used the term “bad faith” in a conversation by accident, and ended up accomplishing nothing but confusing the other person. Oh dear.

Though I must admit, it’s been happening with my other philosophy class as well. Logic and mathematics. Alarm bells still go on whenever someone says “concept”, and I’m getting very particular about defining what exactly the assumptions going into a problem are.

We’re now four days into the exam period. My first and only exam isn’t until the 19th, though in the meantime I have one take home exam (which is much like a 10 page paper) and an astrophysics paper to write. One of these days I’ll start working on them. With proper time management, there’s no reason for me to be in any stress at all this month. Yet, I still always find myself at three o’clock, too late to still be sitting around in pajamas. Too early for the evening workout. Too little time in between to do any work. Hopefully monday, when 7 AM workouts become part of the schedule again, I’ll be able to handle that particular form of nausea a little better.

I wrote last spring that people are better looking in spring. I believed it at the time, but now I’m leaning the other way. People are better looking in the winter.

Maybe it’s just the change of scenery I like. Things are fresh and new, whether it’s because the world is warm, green, and alive again again, or it’s that cold kind of fresh that tickles the inside of your nose on that first breath out the door. People adjusting to that new sense of world is attractive.

Of course I have a soft spot for winter to begin with. I like the snow, I like the cold. I like seeing people bundled up in layer upon layer. A kind of style completely different from the warm weather wear of spring begins to take shape further from the skin. I like this kind of tuque that’s popular this year with the ear flaps. It’s childish and fun. There’s no way to take yourself too seriously wearing a brightly coloured and patterned tuque with floppy ear flaps.

But really I just like getting cosy and warm. You need a good cold winter with plenty of snow on the ground outside to really count as cosy. I keep my apartment a little on the chilly side, opting for blankets and hot chocolate over burning metal coils in the floorboards. There may not be as much of an instant relief from the elements on stepping inside, but oh how sweet it is to settle into the couch under sweaters and blankets a plenty after a long day. I’d be there now if I could.