On my way to the local office of Bereaved Families of Ontario after work, where I rummaged around in their lending library for some books to take home. When I attended my peer meeting last week, there was a session in progress so I wasn’t able to browse through their titles. I nabbed two in short order this evening and filled in the check-out cards. Books are on loan for a month, but I borrowed smallish copies I’m hoping to zip through.

The air is crisp these days, but I prefer this temperature to the stifling humidity of summertime. I have an overactive circulation system that heats me up like an insta-furnace; the cooler climes suit me just fine.

One week ago I ended up in a French conversation class at the library in Cabbagetown right after work. I left the office after 6 o’clock, and phoned a neighbour from my apartment building to follow up on a chat we had one day a few weeks ago while we were walking out the front door. I surprised her by my friendliness; she said people in our building aren’t very friendly unless they’re dog owners meeting other dog owners.

“What is this?” she exclaimed last night. “You have to be with a dog to get treated like a human???”

I know exactly what she’s talking about. When I’m walking Gigi, people in the elevator are warmer and chattier. It’s like having a baby in the elevator — people get all gooey and gushy.

Anyway, so I was in French class last week because my neighbour invited me to go, which placed me in a group of strangers speaking entirely in French for the first hour and English in the second. Although I had a pretty good idea of what they were saying in French, when my turn came to speak, nothing came out! All I could do was make fish impersonations with my mouth — open, close, open, close. I was handed a sheet with French questions on one side, English translations on the other, and I managed to only flip the page back and forth, skimming the French side for the easiest way to formulate an answer for this random question:

Etes vous frileux / frileuse?

I couldn’t very well just say “oui” or “non” — I had to elaborate!

My group (my neighbour was in the other group) consisted of either native French speakers — from Bordeaux, Burundi, and Belgium — or native English speakers who were already fairly conversant in French but needed the practice. That left me high and dry at the lower end of the francophone spectrum and waiting desperately for the egg timer to go off so we’d switch over to English and I would stop gaping like a guppy.

The focus, now in English, switched over to convincing the guys from Burundi and Bordeaux that the best way to survive their first winter in Toronto is to get outdoors — dress warmly, learn to ice skate, and take in fresh outside air. Someone else explained what “cabin fever” means, and made suggestions on how to avoid it. I hope we all of us newcomers do OK this winter!

In other news, I got a call from the Canadian Warplane Heritage Museum today saying that they have to do some training in the DC-3 on Saturday, and would I like a ride that day in the Beech Expeditor instead? or wait one more week to fly in the DC-3? I told them I was anticipating the DC-3, so I’ll stick with that and wait the extra week.