Category Archives: Diary

Grumblings About Store Reorganization

My posts have become infrequent because, well, there just hasn’t been much going on in my head, really. Most of my time is spent sleeping or reading or rearranging that last pile of boxes to look smaller, somehow. I appear to have developed a need for a mid-afternoon nap, which is slightly embarrassing although not surprising after three weeks of sick and insomnia and moving. I think my body has taken the bit between the teeth and is now setting its own sleep-rules, denying my conscious mind of any input. I can’t seem to focus on work for any long period of time, and I think I’m undergoing an enforced vacation imposed by psyche and physical body alike.

It’s kind of a relief, actually.

I went downtown today to HMV to pick up a couple of recordings to help me out as I practice for orchestra, because I’m getting really frustrated. When I got there, I spent time upstairs in the relaxing classical section, bought the required CDs (three for $20, I feel so smug) then went downstairs to the basement to cast a quick eye over the soundtracks.

They’ve moved everything around. Again.

It made me grumpy, although the terrible, awful, horrible music they were playing might have had something to do with that as well. Then, I thought I’d check on the new DVDs releases, since it’s been forever since I’ve been in HMV, but the massive DVD section had somehow shrunk to a measly two displays and that little room once devoted to film is now acid. I walked around it in disbelief – what, had they decided to stop selling DVDs or something? – and finally went back upstairs to the main level, where I discovered that they had moved the DVD section there, so unsuspecting clients walk right smack into the stuff (unless, of course, you avoid the main floor like the plague, as I do, and head right upstairs for jazz and classical.). I walked through it to get my bearings and saw way, way too many movies I wanted to own in among the 2-for-$30 stickers. I was trying to decide which two to whittle my vast list down to when I realised my folly and made my escape into the clear cold morning. If I trip across a couple of hundred dollars, I know where I’m going.

I’ll just have to bring a guide with me, because they no doubt will have hidden what I want from me between now and then.

In Which She Rages Against The Injustice Of The System

Oh, I’m just livid.

My student loan payment goes through on the first of the month. Since the first of March was on a weekend, it went through on the Monday instead.

Turns out that I was fourteen cents short of my payment. Fourteen cents.

They NSFd me to the tune of $25.

I’m livid because in the past, internal transfers like this have dipped below the zero mark with no penalty, up to about five dollars in the negative. It hasn’t happened with any kind of frequency, because I’m really careful with my loan payments; maybe twice. This time, though, for some reason, for fourteen cents, they decided to penalise me for $25.

Livid, I tell you. Livid.

A Wrinkle In Geography

Just remembered something nifty that tilted my world a bit this weekend.

NDG is currently the playground of a film crew shooting a movie called Wicker Park, as you well know if you’re an NDG resident and have been rerouted, or have been forced to find somewhere else to park because your street has been taken up by Star Suites and generators and eighteen-wheeler rigs stuffed full of equipment. On Friday around five PM, my husband drove me over to the Royal Bank on the corner of Sherbrooke and Hingston so I could cash a cheque and put gas in the car.

Except it wasn’t the corner of Sherbrooke and Hingston when we got there. It was the corner of two other streets. There was a US Postal box on the corner, and a City of Chicago trash bin, and a bunch of US newspaper boxes strewn about. That little triangular park had a new “Keep Chicago’s Parks Clean” sign up. And my bank wasn’t my bank. It had a huge green sign both out front and over the door, and it certainly didn’t say Royal Bank; it had a series of initials instead in gold lettering.

It certainly felt odd to walk up those steps and go inside. It was as if I had crossed some odd teleportation line, or passed through a twist in earth energy between my new apartment and the bank, and landed in Chicago. (Except Chicago is currently experiencing much nicer weather at nine degrees Celcius, as opposed to our minus ten. It’s March tenth; it’s more than time for spring. Damn groundhogs.) Anyways, it makes you wonder if there’s something odd about Sherbrooke Street – if you drive east along it from Cavendish to Hingston, you get Montreal; but if you drive west along it from Decarie at just the precise time on a Friday afternoon, you inexplicably end up in Chicago.

Fanciful, perhaps. Do remember that I worked in a F/SF bookstore for four years, though.

Update

More updates for people who believe that we’re dead:

Yes, we now have a phone, but our electricity keeps popping on and off because they’re rewiring the building. I really don’t feel confident about turning the computer on when I can’t predict when the power will next vanish. So, infrequent blogging, even less frequent e-mail.

I went to the doctor yesterday, and I have been officially diagnosed with an infection of the respiratory tract following a nasty bout of the flu. I’m on antibiotics. So, everyone who kept nagging me to go see the doctor can now stop. (It’s okay, I know that you were doing it because you love me.) I even made a follow-up appointment for next Friday. Aren’t I good? (And now poorer as well. Forty-three dollars for a five-day run of antibiotics? This is one of the reasons why I don’t go to the doctor that frequently – I can’t afford it.)

Today I tackle the office area, where the last hold-out of boxes looms. I’m afraid I’m going to have to throw out a lot of sewing stuff – large scraps, old material, etc – and just keep the storage Tupperware of necessities. I hate throwing scraps out. Granted, I haven’t used most of them in three years, but still… it’s the loss of potential that I feel most keenly when I have to do something like this.

I Call A Do-Over

Well. Wasn’t that not fun.

You know, I really, really don’t want to go into detail, but that was the worst move I’ve ever been involved in. Being ill and missing three key people from our standard moving team which resulted in not all our stuff getting here was a large part of it, but the icing on the cake was having our phone line at the old place disconnected before 7 AM on March 1, and not having a phone line at all in the new place until 11 AM on March 4. Yes, that’s today. Gods bless the cheerful, accomplished and all-round-nice-guy Gilles Lavallee who came to double-check on the wiring after the first Bell technician came by yesterday and pronounced our entire apartment’s phone wiring dead, with the necessity of installing completely new wiring from the bottom up. Gilles found the sole live wire in the whole nest of ancient phone wires and reconnected us to the world.

I relapsed into bed with coughing and fever yesterday afternoon, and that’s where I’m headed again right after I take a warm bath. For those who are curious, having seen the three square feet we had to move around in here immediately post-move on Saturday afternoon, the place is three-quarters unpacked. Yes, I am a goddess. (Okay, the drive to restore order to my life probably contributed to my collapse again yesterday, but damn it, at least I have living space now.) This is officially a beautiful apartment. It will be even more beautiful without the pile of boxes in the dining room/office area, and when I have somewhere to put knives, forks, and spoons in the kitchen.

Okay. We’re here. That’s all I really needed to tell you. And that we didn’t have a phone for three days, so it’s not that we were ignoring you, we just, well, didn’t hear the phone ring. Not being connected and all.

Sigh. I’m going to take that bath now. And a handful of Advil, because I’m out of my wonder syrup that lets me sleep and not have a headache and stop coughing.

Insomnia: Good For Catching Up On Reading

One thing that insomnia and being so sick for the past week has given me is lots of time to read. I finally finished The Winter King by Bernard Cornwell; I also finally finished Perdido Street Station by China Mieville. Both are excellent books, they just took me a lot longer to read than I expected. Both were loans from other people, too, so I really felt bad. Both were really densely written, which contributed to the long read. Perdido Street Station was nasty and dark and so damn well written that I will willingly plunge into The Scar once winter is officially over and I no longer feel like brooding, moping, or otherwise indulging in winter-connected depression. (There should be a warning label on Mieville’s books that reads, ‘Caution – Do Not Read During SAD Season If You Are Prone To Moodiness’.) As for Cornwell, I really, really have to be in a particular mood to read his work: namely, in a mood to appreciate logic and war maneuvers while simultaneously being actively interested in Arthurian characters. That’s a rather rare mood for me.

I also read an advance copy of Kiss of Shadows by Laurell K Hamilton that’s been sitting on my shelf since, um, mid 2000 or something. Anyway, it’s highly ironic that it was an advance copy, because not only has the book itself been released in hardcover in the meantime, but also in paperback, and the sequel was released in hardcover with its paperback publication imminent, as well. (March 4, as a matter of fact, so if nothing in my collection appeals to me when I start hunting for something new to read, I know what I’ll be buying.)

I picked up Dianne Day’s Strange Files of Fremont Jones Wednesday night when I was wide awake, and it was good. So’s the sequel, Fire and Fog, which I finished today while taking a break from packing. Nice little historical crime books, with your standard independent female protagonist. I have a third in my possession, but like other crime series that my mother sends to me once she’s read them, it appears to be missing a few books in-between. Mum picks some up at the shop and reads others through the library, so when I get the series they often look a bit like Swiss cheese – you know, volume 1, 2, 4, 7 and 8. Insisting on reading books in sequence is one of those delightful character traits that make me so lovable, so I’ll be hunting through second-hand shops for these ones. (A day’s read contained within a light crime novel is not worth the $10 purchased new, in my not-so-humble opinion. And it’s my blog, after all, so my opinion doesn’t have to be concerned about humilty, now, does it.)

I have an entire box devoted to Books Which I Have Not Yet Read, so I don’t have to go hunting once we’re in the new apartment. So very clever of me. Probably pointless, though, since as I unpack I look through my books, and I will likely find dozens I suddenly must re-read immediately.

Apparently it’s gearing up to be a lovely day tomorrow, with a high of +2 degrees. That’s reassuring.

In Which The Boxes Win

Well, so much for feeling better. You wouldn’t think that packing takes up so much energy, but it evidently does because now I can’t even lift a box to shift it into the full pile. I’ve been working for an hour and I’ve hit wobbly already.

Damn, this is frustrating.