Short on words but not on shots. May 11-14 I visited my friend Nathan in the Pacific Northwest. D6 lifers may recall my visit to him last year, when he lived in Tacoma. He now lives in Seattle. I was met off the bus from the airport with squeals and glee by my old Minneapolis pal now Seattle resident Andy. Later that night I hunted down Nathan, and early-morning Friday we skipped the country for Vancouver. The main purpose of our visit was for me to check out the University of British Columbia campus, my 98 percented positive home for the next two years as I pursue a master’s degree in library science.

That’s right. Canada done gonna make me a real, live librarian. Situated on a peninsula, twenty minutes from downtown, the UBC campus looks like a national forest, complete with a Japanese garden, snow-capped mountains on the horizon, and a clothing-optional (read: nude) beach. I’ll slobber on about how much I’m going to miss Minneapolis and the Midwest and all that they’ve done for and to me (…not to mention friends and family…) in the coming months, when later becomes now and the real unequivocal. In the meantime, marvel at our adventures!

Upon my return to Minneapolis was the third annual Goth Prom. In an unfortunate turn, my great friend and former roommate Anna was struck with violent food poisoning. Plans of reviving old times of gussying up and gothing out were replaced by web searches on Whether Or Not Someone Is Actually About To Die. She recovered and arrived to prom much later in the night (hooray!) but not until after I had already left (nooooes!). It was still fun, but no Goth Prom web gallery this year—just a few sly pictures of me alone in my apartment, despairing like a proper goth should.

The new downtown Minneapolis Public Central Library opened last Satuday. It is the bomb times a thousand. I’d been skeptical for months as the structure on the outside grew more gruesome—inside it is fabulous, and now the whole is making me fond. Methinks they stole some of the Heart of the Beast May Day Parade costumes—they certainly stole the families of bouncy kids. (Oo! And the May Day Parade was fun, too.) I’ll have to conduct usability tests later—it was too busy to do much but pick my jaw off the floor, wade through the looters in the DVD aisles, and stumble upon a card catalogue of recipes, including Hillary Clinton’s chocolate chip cookies. Mmmm-K.

Uptown street artist 27 rocks my world. I’m listening to Modest Mouse’s the moon & antarctica. It makes me weepy.