Shopping: Achievement Unlocked!

Well, I now own a Canada Goose parka and some serious snow boots. Thank you, internet, for making that a painless process (painless in that I found everything I needed and it was shipped to me! painful in that I spent, well, a lot of money getting outfitted -- but investment pieces, blah blah blah, and, seriously, the quality of these items? through the roof).

As they say, winter is coming.

And because this is precisely the sort of thing I wished I could find when I set out to looking at gear for the serious cold, here is what I am wearing in the above picture:

Women's Expedition Parka (by Canada Goose), Medium

I ordered this from Altitude Sports in Montreal, after going to a store in the city to make sure a medium is the right size. If you buy a lifetime membership with Altitude Sports ($25), you save 5% on all purchases... which means that it was $40 dollars under the list price ($795 before tax), so I saved about $15. This may not sound like much, but I get that 5% for the rest of my life, and there's free shipping in Canada, and free returns for new members. SO. DEAL! Also, for sizing purposes, I would usually wear a small jacket -- I'm about a S/M shirt (the average M shirt is usually a bit baggy on me) and a size 6-8 pant. The medium is plenty big on me. I can comfortably layer underneath -- by which I mean a bulky sweatshirt and a medium-weight jacket with room to spare. Any bigger and I'd be swimming.

Men's Glacier Boots (by Sorel), Size 8

I ordered these guys straight from Sorel. They're rated for -70C! I usually wear a woman's 9, so the men's 8 is plenty big -- but not too big. They're clunky boots with great tread and rumour has it they last for about 20 years. Considering that a pair of winter boots usually costs, at minimum, $100 and will last for maybe two seasons, and these were $140, I can't complain.

I have one week left of coursework in my B.Ed., which is both thrilling and somewhat terrifying. I just filled out the paperwork for teacher certification today (and paid the province for printing me off that fancy card); I've been picking away on updating my online professional presence; I've attended a workshop on resume-building. This past week I went to see my students perform a play (spectacular!) and realized that, in a week's time, I'll be back to teaching. And the processes are in motion that mean that I will, in very short order, be certified to teach -- for real. It is, as I said, thrilling to know that I'll finally be doing what I want to do, but it's scary to be leaving the familiarity of the post-secondary schooling world. This is my seventh straight year in post-secondary studies. I am very much ready to move on, but it's always a bit of a challenge to leave what's familiar behind.

This is a theme, of course, you can expect to come up again, as I will definitely be leaving the familiar behind come March. At least now we know I won't die the moment I step off of the plane! Nakurmiik, cold weather gear!