See? Medieval legly goodness. And it was all for Marc. (The look on his face under the hat that makes him look like an apothecary says it all, don’t you think?)

I love these boots. They are my Jedi boots. They lace all the way up the front. I really don’t wear them often, but when I do, I feel amazing. Bring on the Dark Side! I’ll challenge it and preserve order and justice in the galaxy! Even in a medieval mini!

Happy Very Last Day of Work, Mum!

I heard the geese flying overhead last night and this morning as I lay awake in bed. It’s fall.

I also know it’s fall because my overwhelming desire to move furniture around is still running high. We switched a couple of pictures around last night in an attempt to assuage it. The pictures look great, but I still want to rearrange sofas and tables and beds and desks for some reason. I think it’s connected to the Ikea urge, somehow; you know, that cocooning concept that revolves around the subconscious knowledge that you’ll be stuck inside most of winter so you might as well create the ideal nest to be trapped in.

I picked up that CD I had ordered four months ago from HMV, and it’s wonderful. I still find it a little odd that I, the woman who claims she doesn’t enjoy Mozart all that much, special-ordered a Mozart CD. Looking back over my orchestra-related blog entries, I can see that I enjoy playing Mozart as well. Perhaps I should upgrade my Mozartean value judgement from “indifferent” to “reluctant enjoyment of certain pieces”?

Even in death, Andr�s continues to educate me musically. I sang three hymns in Latvian this afternoon. Interesting language; sort of a cross between Swedish and Ukranian.

No, don�t ask me what I sang. I have an odd linguistic talent that enables me to read a foreign language and make it sound like I know how to speak it. I don�t know how I do it; it involves accents somehow, though. I�m just good with words. It�s all in how it sounds to the ear.

Funerals are strange. If you want a seat, you have to arrive early, but no one wants to talk, so you sit in silence for ages until the family arrives. There are never enough seats (except at Eric�s funeral this spring; there was plenty of room in the synagogue, but that was the only funeral I�ve been to that had adequate seating), so people stand in the side aisles and at the back of the church. I�ve been paranoid about being late for funerals ever since the funeral of one of my best friends in my first year of university, where I arrived right on time and had to stand in a crowd at the back of the church, so today we arrived forty minutes early.

This service was one of the nicest I�ve been to. Even though Andr�s was taken from us so suddenly, the congregation was there to honour him, not for consolation. I wish more funerals could be as this one was: a commemoration instead of grieving. Yes, death is always a shock; yes, we are left, bereft and confused; but in the end, it is ourselves we weep for. If we gather, it should be to celebrate the deceased�s life and accomplishments. Mourning our loss always seems so selfish, somehow, when set against the brilliance and joy of the days and years lived by someone we all loved and respected.

I love the way my circle of friends counts down to Hallowe’en as most people count down to Christmas.

(And it even has nothing to do with the fact that a large chunk of the aforementioned circle is Pagan.)

Proof of my good taste:

Ingredient listing for Cadbury Dairy Milk chocolate bar: Milk Chocolate (sugar, milk ingredients, cocoa butter, unsweetened chocolate, soya lecithin, natural and artificial flavour).

Ingredient listing for a Neilson Jersey Milk chocolate bar: Condensed milk, sugar, cocoa butter, unsweetened chocolate, butter oil, soya lecithin, natural flavour.

No wonder I prefer Jersey Milk bars. They don’t add fake chocolate flavour to it. And what the heck is a “milk ingredient” anyway?

No, don’t tell me. I don’t want to know.

It’s over. My acclaimed return to the stage of retail (a limited-run engagement) is finished. I’m back in retirement.

Body count: zero. I’m still alive; customers are still alive; no co-workers were harmed during the course of this encore performance.

I learned a lot from this past week. The primary thing, of course, is that I was absolutely right to leave retail. There were other things, too, though, that put a few worries to rest. For example, it confirmed that the reason I left sales after eleven years is completely due to the customers, and not the actual work of running a bookstore. It also confirmed that I enjoy teaching more than working retail (not a surprise, but nice to know). And this week also proved to me that no one resents my departure from the store, and everyone really enjoyed having me back. Okay, so I’m insecure: I was worried about what management and staff really thought of me. You know how you have those sort of acquaintances where you don’t see them for a while and you run into them, and they’re distant and you wonder if you were ever truly friends? I was tremendously afraid people would be distant, proving to me once and for all that I was nobody special. Everyone was thrilled to see me, however, sharing news and making lunch dates, and I frequently heard comments to the tune of, “It’s so good to have you back.”

After work I taught a two-hour introductory survey of divination methods last night, and it went just swimmingly. I knew I was teaching it, of course, and I had all my handwritten notes in a notebook (written on a GO train in July, if I remember correctly), but it didn’t sink in until the end of the day on Wednesday thanks to the chance comment of a client. I realised that I hadn’t truly prepared the class, and as this would be the first time I was teaching it, I needed something a little more substantial than three 5 x 7″ pages of notes. So home I went, weary from a day of work, and spent my anniversary evening in front of the computer while my husband watched TV. My usual practice is to think about the new class for a few days, then sit down the day I am to teach it and type out the scribbled notes that have accumulated over those days of thought. Well, I completely forgot that I was working the day I’d be teaching this new workshop, and that I’d have to do it some other way, which unfortunately ended up with the two of us in separate rooms for two hours, and then falling into bed from exhaustion.

The workshop was a success, however, and I can add it to my roster of classes to offer again. I think perhaps another reason the knowledge that I had to prepare it slipped my mind can be attributed to the fact that my past three or four classes have been cancelled due to lack of registration. It makes sense; September is back-to-school month, and eighty percent of my class attendees are university students, who at this point are still settling in. The last thing on their minds is registering for extracurricular workshops! Looking at the registration book last night, though, I observed that October is already looking better, much to my pleasure.

I find teaching to be an odd experience. So much of it takes place out of the classroom, before the students even get there. When I develop a new workshop, I’m working in a vacuum; other than having a topic that has been generated due to observation of client interest in the store, there’s nothing to indicate the outline at all. I decide the direction, what information to give, what information to discard, the format, the books and web sites to recommend for further research, the exercises, and so forth. Alone at home, out of context, I always create a workshop that seems flat and about half an hour long. In action, though, it always springs to life and ends up pushing the two-hour time frame. The sweetest part, however, is the unsolicited thanks I get from excited students at the end of a class. When I then ask if this is what they were looking for, if it was what they expected when they signed up, inevitably I get an enthusiastic confirmation, and I can breathe a sigh of relief. I always ask if they have any suggestions of information they think I should add, areas we didn’t cover, which I think is an essential part of the teacher-student dynamic. It’s a dialogue, after all; as one of my Liberal Arts professors used to say, pounding his fist on the long table about which twenty of us were sitting, “This is a seminar, not a lecture!” A teacher who doesn’t listen to his/her students is a teacher who will quickly become unpopular and out of touch with the demographic to which s/he is contracted to communicate.

Enough about work. I intended to sleep in this morning, but after a week of getting up early here I am, awake and thinking. At least I’m in bed with my laptop. My plans for the day involve reading books, listening to music while doing nothing much, a bit of sewing, and maybe catching a bus downtown to stop by HMV to pick up a CD that I ordered in June which has finally arrived, and possibly that new shirt that I saw a week or two ago as well. Tonight, the company of good friends at a party; tomorrow, teaching in the morning and the memorial service for Andr�s in the afternoon. And on Sunday, my husband and I will finally be able to appreciate one another’s company and celebrate our wedding anniversary.