help me believe it's not the real me Yesterday Devin and I headed out for some more exploring of our yet-to-feel-like-home city. There are a lot of areas we haven't been to, so I had it in my head that we should find some "suburbs", get a coffee, and maybe, just maybe, I would try driving "MY" car for only the second time since we've been in town.

As chief navigator, I scoped out a distant neighbourhood that looked like it either was Nepean or was near Nepean. Ottawa has annexed all these surrounding communities, so the maps aren't really clear on where these former towns begin and end. It was definitely suburbia, though, with the cookie-cutter homes looking like every outlying neighbourhood in Calgary, all centered around a commercial zone with box stores and Starbucks. It was amusing to find that this particular Starbucks had NO people in it - in the middle of the day on a Saturday! We settled in with our pumpkin spice lattes to read the newspaper and my new Vanity Fair magazine.

And then we found a quiet neighbourhood and switched places in the car. God, I still really suck at the driving of the non-automatic vehicle. I think I have a little-known special impairment of the brain which prevents switching over to a standard after half of one's life spent driving an automatic. I drove round and round the peaceful little suburb until I was fed up with fending off the panic attack (those four-way stops were killing me). Jesus, you'd think I'd never driven a car before. You have no idea how much I miss my car.

I have another midterm this Tuesday, and then it's crunch time on the paper-writing. Two due next week, followed by another the following week. It's gonna hurt, I think..!  | ¶ 12:27 a.m.