winter boots

I like my roommates.

Mark's a teacher, he just got engaged and he is extremely patient when we make to much noise in the living room after he's gone to bed.

Dan and I go for runs in the park together.  I always seem to go out a bit to fast and he always makes me keep the pace until the very end.

Enoch spent hours painting my room for me . . . just because.

Its been almost two years since I packed my life into two suitcases and moved east.  I moved to a city I had never visited, to a city where I knew no one.  For several months I could count my friends on one hand.  I moved to Toronto in the heart of winter and refused to buy winter boots.  To be honest I'm not really sure why I took that stand.  I think it was because I had never bought them before, in Victoria there is rarely a need, and I balked at the idea of spending my hard earned cash on things I thought were ugly.

That first winter I didn't have enough money to buy snow tires for my car.  I drove across Ontario and Michigan, through Illinois and Wisconsin, Nebraska, Pennsylvania and New York with bald summer tires.  In retrospect it wasn't the smartest of plans, there were a number of occasions I almost ended in a ditch.  I remember the first time I drove through Manhatten that winter, I was just a guy from an island on the west coast of Canada driving through afternoon rush hour traffic trying to get across the Brooklyn bridge without getting killed.

I sat tonight and listened to Nat King Cole and blew smoke rings towards the ceiling.  As the thick smoke from the hookah spun languidly through the air I sank into the couch and thought about my two years.  I thought about what had changed and what I still want to change.  I thought about my roommates and friends and appreciated the risk I took in packing my life up and moving 3 time zones away.

I think its probably time to invest in a pair of good winter boots.