Category Archives: Weather, Seasons, & Celebrations

Scattershot

Yesterday night was:

– The first thunder/lightning storm of the year. Cool. Very, very cool. (Except when the power cut out for a second or two while my husband was watching the ongoing election coverage. Bad moment.)

– A turning point in Quebec politics as the Liberal party was voted in by a severe majority. Let’s see: my in-laws’ house just increased in value by $20,000; industry will begin to revive; investors will return. My one regret: we don’t own property ourselves. Ah well.

– The last meeting of the Monday night class that I co-teach. There will be plenty of student meetings throughout the summer, and activities planned, but this was really the end of a serious commitment for everyone. Now I devote myself to my Saturday morning class, and the scattered lectures and workshops I will be teaching in the near future, such as the guest lecture I’m giving on modern Celtic Pagan worship at Champlain College this Thursday. I’ve spoken with the teacher, who sounds like a great guy, and I’m looking forward to it. I was a bit at sea about what exactly to focus on — he teaches a humanities class of mythology — but we worked out a basic hour of personal experience talk regarding how I worship, what I do, what I believe in, and so forth. It’s a great opportunity, and promises to be quite the experience.

On Shopping For Clothing That Fits

For years I have purchased clothing based on an extremely outdated pragmatism. Buy them a bit big, then you can grow into them.

This was fine when I was a kid, when I was a teenager. As a teen and in my early twenties I was also much more comfortable wearing clothes that disguised my body slightly – call it a confidence thing if you like. Now that I’m pushing thirty-two, though, buying clothes that don’t fit just doesn’t work as well for me. (MLG’s constant voluntary assurance that I’m a babe helps a lot, too.) I have long legs and a short torso, as well, so shopping for clothes means that 98% of the time, they won’t fit me properly anyway. And since I (unintentionally) lost weight recently, all the clothes that were loose on me are now ridiculously baggy.

When I was looking for something to wear earlier this week, I snapped and saw red. Not a single pair of jeans fits me properly around the waist, which means they sag everywhere else, too. Damn it, it’s spring, and I want to look good. I want to feel like I look good, and jeans that are several sizes too big just don’t cut it.

So after work yesterday I took the metro up to Namur to check out the Le Chateau outlet, where they usually have decent clothing at decent prices.

Well, apart from the truly horrendous music, all their pants were thirty dollars or more. The music eventually chased me out with a headache, so I decided to walk along Jean-Talon to the Village des Valeurs instead. Who knows – maybe there will be something not-so-bad there, I thought, or maybe I’ll pull off an amazing find.

Door number two it was. The prize?

I came out with two very sexy pairs of Levis jeans in perfect condition. And they cost me less than twenty dollars total. If I told you what size they are, you’d lynch me, so suffice it to say that they’re about three sizes smaller than the jeans I’ve been wearing for the past four or five years.

Damn, I look good. And I’m thrifty, to boot.

The State Of Me

Apparently my delight at the rapid vanishment of snow and the onset of spring was premature. We’re supposed to get tons of snow this weekend.

(I have two degrees. If I say ‘vanishment’ is a word, it’s a word. Okay?)

I’ve had a couple of queries regarding my recent decrease in posting. Apart from Blogger publishing then munching that post on the debate and the challenge my husband and I faced in attempting to correct our info on the electoral list, Blogger apparently didn’t publish my April 1 posts. How… amusing. Ahem.

Otherwise, I’ve been writing all week on my laptop, which means I’m not working on my desk computer, which is the one that’s connected to the Wide World of Web. And yes, the writing’s going just fine, thanks for asking. I’ve now finished the second (and final) bonus chapter of my NaNo novel, which needed a couple of plot points tied up. All in all, I’ve pulled off 4, 758 words this week so far, in that bonus chapter and the new chapter of the Great Canadian Novel.

Now, if the sun would just come out, things would seem even cheerier. I’m surrounded by that dull brown light that means precipitation is on the way, and I’ve heard reports varying from fifteen to twenty centimeters of That White Stuff headed our way.

I just want it to be over. Please?

New Article Published!

Urk. When I wasn’t looking, the Owlyblog’s counter passed 10K. How did that happen?

My commentary on Oscar-nominated Lilo & Stitch has been officially web-published, and is up over at the fps site! It’s a five-fold project that looks at all the films nominated for Best Animated Feature Film category this year, each film examined by a different writer in a different light. The project centres around how each Oscar-nominated film stands for something within the animation industry, as opposed to “reviewing” or commenting on “Oscar-worthiness”. It was a really interesting exercise, and I enjoyed it a lot. I thank all the gods out there that Emru responded to the cry of “Who edits the editor?”, so that errors could be corrected and things flowed better. I can fix other people’s writing, but I’m always too involved with my own abstracts and thesis statements to do a final polish on my own work, because I know what I was trying to say all along.

By the way, do you think spring’s finally catching up with the calendar? Winter’s only got another three days, after all.

Shame!

And now, to put aside personal pride, and wallow in shame.

I have completely lost track of the date and the days of the week, and therefore I missed Talyesin’s birthday.

Mea culpa, big brother. So…

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, TAL!!!

I promise to grovel more later. Maybe at Hurley’s, so we can all buy you copious amounts of alcohol over a long period of time, while still drinking responsibly.