Ottawa and the LAC

So I am in Ottawa until the end of May for Archival Research at the the National Archives. I've also got a double shot at the Canadian Association of Geographers Conference at Carleton where I'm presenting with the Political Spaces cluster from U of T Geography. Hopefully this will go a little better than my presentation at the AAG in Vegas, but who knows. It's the same speech, but hopefully a different crowd. 

I'm at the house that I'm subletting and all is well enough. The room is nice, the neighbourhood is great. I have one other housemate that I know of - a timid Chinese undergrad from Carleton whose name is Star of all things (I guess her parents had a lot of friends who had already named their little girls 'Wendy') and after giving me the keys and Internet code, she disappeared into her room and closed the door. Not another word from her for the rest of the day. So chances are, I will have a am three weeks of getting a lot of work done without people to talk to or TV to waste my time with. This has its ups and downs...

Star/Wendy has a rabbit that has no name. I find this as bizarre as I do kinda sad, or at least unimaginative. In light of his incessant sniffing and the crazy glean in his eyes when he looks at my as I walk down the stairs, I have decided to name it Sir Sam Hughes, in honour of Canada's first Minister of Militia during World War One. Hughes is the happy looking fellow in the image: in the right light, Hughes has his own rabbit-esq resemblance. This rabbit, like Hughes himself, was kinda crazy (he issued shovels to WWI soldiers that had a giant hole in the middle of it, arguing that it was good for both digging and cover from enemy bullets, tasks which it failed admirably at, no doubt at the cost of many thousands of Canadian soldiers lives before the shovels were removed from the battlefield) and trapped in a theoretical cage of his own making. Both will live rather ignominious lives, I am sure of that.

First day at the Archives tomorrow. Let's see how we do. No doubt better than Sir Sam did at his job...

Until then...