Category Archives: Weather, Seasons, & Celebrations

Hail, Saint Jerome!

Since no one else is going to say it:

Today is the feast-day of Saint Jerome, patron saint of librarians.

Here’s to those brave souls who deal with people who don’t know their alphabets or can’t read signs that plainly indicate that books are not to be reshelved, and who are the keepers of worlds of wonder.

Here’s to those men and women who seek to add to their collections in order to offer the greatest range of knowledge to seekers.

And here’s to those moms and dads who read to their kids, encouraging a life-long love for literature and a thirst for story.

Hip hip hurrah!

Out Of It

I’m waiting for my chicken cacciatore to thicken so that I can bring it over to the Harvest potluck we’re attending tonight. Let’s hope it goes better than the rest of the weekend has, because wow, have I been out of it.

Let’s see: While talking, I’ve been trailing off into silence, losing my train of thought. Not what you want to have happen when you teach four classes in three days. (Mercury in retrograde? Ah. Check.) I also have the attention span of an adolescent gnat. I’ve been battling headaches as well, which I’m certain is connected to the pressure yo-yoing up and down. At least I slept soundly last night. My incapability to sustain a coherent thought likely explains my horrendous no-no in the supermarket this afternoon, where I saw my goddaughter and reached for her without announcing my presence first, probably scaring her poor mother to death. I would never, never do something like that while thinking straight.

I did, however, manage to remember everything I needed to pick up in the store. Wonders will never cease.

We’re tidying and vacuuming while the stew thickens, too, because we have a couple of friends coming over for tea tomorrow night. The cats are nowhere to be seen, of course. While we’re out tonight they will undoubtedly shed fur with joyous abandon, rendering the whole exercise completely futile. Ah, well. At least we made the effort.

I’ll go check on that cacciatore. So far, this recipe is a definite keeper. (It’s from the October issue of Martha Stewart Living, which I picked up solely because it had pumpkin owls on the cover. Turns out it has terrific cookie recipes as well as this cacciatore recipe.)

I’m going, I’m going…

Briefly

Despite my quiet monitor, dual hard drives and new cordless ergonomic keyboard, I’m still having anti-computer issues, so here’s a summary of Life in General:

Regarding that ergo keyboard: things are just a bit off, and I keep hitting odd buttons, which creates situations where I have to go back and delete or re-type. My arms and shoulders are happy, though.

I think the US publisher still hasn’t received my press packet and NDA. I’m mildly stressed, and I can’t locate the tracking tag that the post office gave me. My desk has been cleaned a couple of times, new equipment has been installed, and the apartment has been thrown into turmoil twice over the last week for various reasons, so it could be anywhere (except the places I’ve looked, apparently), or even thrown out.

My doctor is so pleased with how things are going that I no longer have to see her monthly. We’re down to quarterly.

For some reason, now that the weather is tolerable, my allergies are hitting hard and fast. Thank the gods for Reactin.

The Kim Possible DVD contains four episodes only. Fortunately they were all episodes I hadn’t seen, so I loved it from start to finish. I’ve enjoyed later episodes from the first season more, though.

The new electric baseboard heaters were finally installed yesterday. The wire they used is bright red, to indicate that it’s a live wire. The landlady wanted the cheapest and fastest labour possible, so the wire is just stapled to the ceiling as opposed to set behind baseboards or fished through the ceiling. It looks terrible, and the electrician agrees. We call them our apartment go-fast stripes.

First classes of all three sessions went well over the weekend. It feels like we’re right back in the swing of things, as if we never had a summer break.

I found two second-hand books I’d been looking for. Hurrah!

Enough!

Dutiful Daughter

Here I am, in Toronto. My parents were in mock miff that there was no new blog post this morning, so here. Never let it be said that I don’t fulfil my parents’ expectations.

A nice, uneventful trip from Mtl to T.O. last night; for once, it wasn’t raining. The OPP were out in force, though, as it’s a holiday weekend and the end of the month, so it took us a bit longer to get here than usual. A spectacular sunset and a fingernail’s curve of a glowing moon made up for it, though.

I had a cafe mocha for the first time on the way. Nice, but I’ll save it for days when I want coffee instead of cappucchino. It’s not quite as sweet.

Apparently my mother made deliberate mention of my “alternative religious choice” when my grandmother was down last week. She noticed a book on reincarnation my mother was reading and it turns out that she’s a firm believer in the phenomenon. It seemed like the appropriate time to bring up the deep dark family secret, so Mum began to explain the whole living with awareness thing until finally she just used the W-word. My grandmother seemed quite interested in the whole concept and agreed with several of the principles. Apparently “the Sight” has cropped up in the family line before. Go figure. That’s something I never would have known about if that particular book of my mother’s hadn’t been on the coffee table. So there — the deep dark family secret is out, and its turns out not to be such a dark subject after all.

Lovely weather down here – sunny with cloudy periods, a nice twenty-ish degrees… and absolutely no schedule to stick to. Lovely, I tell you.

Status Check

Since my mother addressed an e-mail to her Darling Lost Daughter this morning, methinks ’tis time for another Update.

Status: Warm. I think I have pulse, too. That’s good, right?

Detailed Status: I lost my sense of humour somewhere along the way a couple of days ago. If found, please return it; it’s lonely. Also, I am moving into An Anti-Social Phase (TM). It’s not that I don’t love you, it’s just that after two weeks of a wonderful high, I’m cocooning.

Good Things: My hair is behaving. The humidity has broken.

Bad Things: My cats are insane and pains in the neck. Especially the one who thinks the waterbowl is her personal playground.

Synchronicitous Events: I had a wonderful history of the qabala class on Saturday afternoon led by one of my students. While I know the basics of the qabala, I knew nothing about the history of the thing. A day later, I was reading a book which took a side trip and addressed qabala history, both mystical and factual. It was nice to (a) refresh the info I learned on Saturday, and (b) feel smug because I already knew it.

Irritating Events: You may remember the day over a month ago when my radiators were finally torn from their moorings after an earlier false start. Guess what? The electric heaters were scheduled to go in a couple of weeks ago; the electrician never showed up. Today, he was scheduled to show up first thing in the morning. If you check the time stamp, it’s just past eleven. I’m staying home today instead of going in to work just so that the electrician can do his thing. If he does not show up again, I Will Have Blood For This.

Something You Ought To Have Guessed: I picked up The Two Towers DVD yesterday. I know, I know; we’ll own the extended edition too. But not for another three months or so, and we only saw this one twice in the theatres.

More Something You Ought To Have Guessed: I will so be in attendance for the nine-hour LOTR extended marathon in theatres this December. Join me?

Overheard on the Radio News: Mars is “just 56 million miles away.” It’s all relative, you know?

I’m immersed in writing stories and reviews for the next three days. Then I’m in Toronto for Labour Day weekend, visiting my parents. Combined with my Anti-Social Phase (TM), this means you won’t hear a lot from me. Unless, of course, something happens for which I must rant or rejoice.