Category Archives: Cyberspace & Technology

Blogger Insider

Kate sent me her Blogger Insider questions, and I actually answered them the day I got them. All but the last one, that is, which I’ve been mulling over. In true Autumn fashion, I’ve not directly answered it, but sort of answered beside it. Here you are:

1. What’s the most bizarre instrument you can play (e.g. musical saw, noseflute, etc.)?

Caveat Number One: I’m boring. Caveat Number Two: I rarely have the urge to try something unconventional. Hence, I think the most exotic instrument I play is the harp. And I certainly don’t play it often or well. It’s big, heavy, and hurts my back.

I bought a tambourine recently; that’s a bit odd. Isn’t it?

2. What’s your favorite spot in Canada?

Sigh. Prince Edward Island. It’s so tiny I thought I might be able to get away with saying the whole province, but if I have to be more specific, Cavendish Beach. But it has to be deserted. Just me, sun, red sand, waves, and a good book. Sigh once more.

3. What’s your favorite comic book and why?

Argh. Tell me to pick a favourite child, why don’t you. Currently: Promethea. Overall? Dunno. Depends on my mood.

4. Who’s your favorite fiction author and comic book author?

Why are you making me do this? Fiction. Hmm. Who do I buy instantly in hardcover? Connie Willis, Neil Gaiman, Timothy Findley. Dead people who don’t have anything new coming out but I’d buy in hardcover if they were still publishing: Robertson Davies, Charlotte Bronte.

Comic books? A tie between Neil Gaiman and Alan Moore. (According to my shelf of graphic novels.)

5. What’s your favorite song in “Once More With Feeling,” the “Buffy” musical episode?

“R.I.P” stuck in my head the first time I saw it, but upon listening to it over and over, I find Xander and Anya’s song “I’ll Never Tell” is really quite well-written and performed, and is the one that keeps popping up in my brain when I’m distracted.

6. What’s your favorite opera?

Mozart’s Don Giovanni. Followed by a three-way-tie between Donizetti’s La Fille du Regiment, Rossini’s La Cenerentola, and Il Barbiere di Siviglia. (The latter for its delicious mezzo-soprano role, and for the act one finale, if nothing else!)

7. If you could move anywhere in the world, where would it be?

The Borderlands, Scotland.

8. Who’s the one character you can’t stand to see when watching a “Star Wars” movie?

Old series or new series?

New series: Threepio is rapidly rising up the list in the new series. Jar-Jar, of course.
Old series: Boba Fett. Honestly. He’s so overrated. Ep2 sort of redeemed him for me, though. His dad was at least cool. (His action figure is certainly the best one. Is it just me or are the SW:Ep2 figures below standard?)

9. What are your top three totally irrational pet peeves?

Firstly, someone who shall remain nameless putting a margarine container, with the barest sheen of margarine along the bottom of it, back into the fridge. (“I didn’t finish it!”) Actually, that nameless someone putting anything back in the fridge or cupboard with only crumbs or drops left in it.

Secondly, not writing something down on the shopping list if you’ve finished it (or, all right, almost finished it). I don’t eat often, but when I do, I like to have all the fixings there. This will drive me directly to Axe-Murderer status, do not pass Go, do not collect $200.

Thirdly, people standing behind me. In a related vein, people reading over my shoulder. Or, people standing in front of me and conversing with sunglasses on. I hate not being able to see people, and if I can see them, I have to be able to see their eyes.

I have more, if you’d like them. Such as bad editing in a published book. Stupid spelling mistakes. (Especially in my own work, when I’ve proof-read and run a spell-check.) People adopting American short-cut spelling such as lite and donut, and believing that it’s the right way to spell something. Shall I go on?

10. If you could perform any piece of music to a large audience by yourself, what piece would it be?

Ha! Assuming I could perform it with any sort of technical capability and emotional interpretation, pretty much anything by Bach. I remind you all of Caveat Number One (I’m boring), and add the following footnote: as much as I adore performing, I prefer chamber work with a few others. Solo is so… alone. You have nothing to interact with. So actually, my dream would be playing cello in a string quartet program of Beethoven’s String Quartet opus 132 in A minor, followed by Ravel’s String Quartet in F. Rather than performing solo, I enjoy hearing how my line intertwines with a few others. I also enjoy singing quartets or trios more than I enjoy singing alone.

There you have it.

Jean, darling that she is, brought me a whole new bottle of my Secret Weapon from her trip to Plattsburg last weekend. Now I have a bottle for home, and a bottle with a few left to keep at work. No Vanilla Coke, though. She says she’ll try again next trip. Curses! Foiled!

Synchronicity

Cool! At this very moment, when I went to check my blog, Stephen’s Chirographum was in my BlogSnob box.

I love coincidence.

Now if I could only get rid of the sudden striking pain through the right side of my brain…

CURRENTLY READING:
Again, I finished the book before I could blog it: Salamander by Thomas Wharton. I have a soft spot for Canadian literature – it was my secondary focus through my BA and MA – and I enjoy trying new authors. Wharton has an interesting style. Very readable, once you get past the complete abandonment of quotation marks. The story begins in the ruins of a sacked town, as an officer rides through the streets slowly. He catches movement inside a destroyed bookshop and investigates, discovering a young woman, methodically going through the debris, and ends up talking to her about reading. She tells him a four-part tale about what stories might lie between the unopened green sealskin covers of a small book she has rescued, a wonderful technique for launching the reader into the book proper. The story is partially fairy tale, partially magical realism (think Umberto Eco crossed with… well, Umberto Eco, actually), wandering through Italy, Egypt, London, China, all over various seas and oceans, involves pirates, music, automatons, acrobats, and the secret, hidden Library of Alexandria. It revolves around a printer who is summoned to an odd mechanical castle in Europe to create the ultimate riddle book. He falls in love with the daughter of the house, then is imprisoned for almost two decades, eventually freed by his daughter, who then quests for her long-vanished mother while her father (now slightly mad) travels with her, still seeking to fulfil his mandate of creating a book which can simultaneously contain everything and nothing. I love stories like this because you get the paradox of a printed book talking about the printing of books; the text becomes the very subject examined, bringing an odd insight juxtaposed with the difficulty of seperating the book you’re reading from the book being written about.

My bus-book at the moment is a mystery called Harm None by M.R. Sellers, who has transgressed unforgivably in my opinion: he can’t use “its” and “it’s” correctly. Ever. I’m reading it because it’s an occult mystery written by a witch, and I also like to support small-press literature whenever I can. So far (a few chapters in) the story is fine, but this irritating grammatical error trips me up every time. There are others, and some bad sentence structure, and an over-reliance on description – all amateur errors, so I’m being very open-minded as I go through it. If I’d been let at this manuscript before it had been published, though, it would be different, let me tell you.

Joy!

Well, well, well.

I remember this feeling. I think it’s called “having fun in life”.

MLG not only (a) handed me a laptop with the words “Happy Birthday” on Saturday, he also (b) reminded me that I have a finished novel tucked away somewhere, and (c) by complete dumb luck managed to link some dreams I’ve been having recently with some short stories and scenes I’d scribbled down a few years ago. I spent most of yesterday loading the chapters of my book onto the new laptop, re-reading some old short fiction, and generally being impressed with myself. It takes a lot to impress me with my own work; I’m a really tough critic.

So I have all this creative writing, some ideas ready to be worked on, and a laptop. Hmm. One plus one plus one equals…

He also pointed out to me that sitting down to practice the cello is just a matter of self-discipline. Now, I’ve already been working on the self-discipline thing, doing meditation and devotions in the mornings which take up about forty minutes. That plus washing up, dressing, and breakfast (yes, I know, what a novel concept) pretty much cover my two hours of being up before I leave, but maybe I can squeeze in half an hour of practice on one particular bit of music, like the irritating staccato runs in the opening movement of Beethoven’s first symphony.

Friends like this are good to have. They prove to you that you’ve accomplished some pretty terrific stuff in your lifetime, that you’re not as much of a loser as you thought you were, and that life is pretty good.

In addition, I’ve made a pact with a friend: when our tax returns come in, we’ll buy inexpensive bows to begin some archery exercise with. Once or twice a week, nice and early in the morning, we’ll meet down at the football field and work on shooting straight. Maybe by the end of the summer we can think about using targets.

Fun stuff. Not just work. Work was pretty much taking up all the important time I had. Now, what with this application for the teaching positions (no, nothing yet), I’m starting to shift focus to other things. Things that make me happy, as opposed to taking up my time because they have to. And I refuse to obsess about scheduling. Scheduling fun time defeats the purpose.

Present And Accounted For

That’s it. I have arrived.

If you search “owl” and “cello” on Google, I’m your first hit.

Oddly enough, “Autumn” and “cello” doesn’t pull me up at all in the top 100 hits. Hmm.

But if you search “Lakeshore Chamber Orchestra”, I’m the ninth hit – and the nineteenth. The LCO web site doesn’t show up at all in the top 100.

The mystical workings of search engines are beyond this simple Pagan owl worshipper…

The IntraWeb

The strangest thing just happened to me. I was double-checking my blog page after fiddling with the template, and the banner at the top caught my eye. I recently uninstalled my ad-blocking software, so these are new to me. Normally they are pesky. This banner was bright yellow and advertised some place called Central Booking, with a catch-phrase of Read Like Crazy. Hmm, I said, listened to the Force murmuring in my inner ear, and clicked on the banner – something which I never do.

I discovered something rather cool. A whole community of people like me who think books are important, and who like to talk about them. Check it out.

Imagine. A banner for reading, popping up on my web log. I love my life.

That earthquake I posted about at ten to seven registered as a 5.5, and was felt from Niagara to Quebec City, from the northern US to the Laurentians. Nice to know I wasn’t just dreaming. (Hmmm – I was awake before six-thirty, and the earth moved. Coincidence? You decide.)

Well, it’s 7:30. I think I’ll go away now. Maybe a nice bath with a book. Then breakfast. Then HMV. Once home again, I will (gasp!) practice. My husband and I have made an agreement: we have a whiteboard divided into two columns by the instruments. Every time one of us practices we’ll log the date and time on the board. At the end of the month, we’ll add them up. This is an overt attempt to shame each other into practicing more. I have an eight-year head start, but I am graciously waiving that in the interests of fair play. (Ye gods – have I actually been playing the cello for just shy of eight years? Goodness.) I’m looking forward to the creative excuses he will come up with to explain his lack of chanter-playing.

Sleeping On It

Well, sleeping on it does work! I wrote last night’s post on-line (a no-no I usually avoid by composing in Word and copying it over) and my computer froze as soon as I hit the “Publish” button. Argh! Was it lost? Was it trapped in cyber-space, awaiting my secret Jedi powers to free it?

After half an hour of trying to un-freeze the unit I gave up. If it was gone, it was supposed to be gone, and my earlier post was to stand as to my musings on Eric’s sudden passing. I checked this morning, and voila! My post!

Orchestra tonight – I’m so anti-Bizet that I pulled out my CD and my music this weekend and listened to it over and over, then played the opening bit. Or, I tried. Then I played with the Schubert symphony for a while. Much more satisfying. This marks the first time I’ve touched my cello between rehearsals in, um, five months. Gulp.

Woke up this morning to a delightful bit of Renaissance lute music from a CD called “Lute Music for Witches and Alchemists”. Now I have to own it. Hey, I’m supposed to be enjoying life more consciously now, right?

Spring

Okay. It’s getting to be Spring. (Not that we’ve actually had a Winter here in Montreal, but still.) The new cars are coming out, and I’m becoming itchy.

Spring’s a car kind of season, the way Fall’s the time of year when we look at babies and dogs. We were watching TV the other day and a wonderful ad for the PT Cruiser came on — the one that talks nostalgically about Hot Wheels and how cool they were, and how nifty the loop-de-loop flexible track was. My husband said, “I had that exact set,” then sighed, shook his head, and said, “They’re aiming this commercial right at me, and every guy my age.” For the past year or so I’ve been drooling over the Chrysler PT Cruisers myself; they’re just so classy. My eye was also caught by the new Chrysler Crossfire they unveiled at the recent Auto Show. (Since they merged with Daimler, Chrysler’s vehicle designs have really improved!). Now, however — ah, now. My fealty belongs to another. I passed a billboard the other day — a quiet, elegant, silver-grey tone billboard with a vaguely familiar silhouette on it.

They’re making Minis again.

I adore Minis. It has something to do with the ridiculous smallness of them. I’m fond of small things — I’m a small thing myself. My family had an ancient dull red Mini as a second car when I was a kid, and it was terrific: it had a woodgrain dashboard with all of three dials on it. You could reach into the trunk from the front, through the back seat. And it was missing part of the floor; my father had to put a board over it. It was a clunker, and I loved it. It was enough to get us around when the other car was unavailable. Okay, so the brakes failed a few times; so there was more rust than body. It was cool!

It dropped in the traces one day, a front wheel coming off as my dad drove down the highway. That was the beginning of the end. I think my parents sold it to a scrap dealer for a whole fifty dollars.

Now — now… I, too, could have a Mini.

Highly Amusing Fact #1: My husband is built like a rugby player.

Highly Amusing Fact #2: I play the cello.

Highly Amusing Fact #3: They’re quoting top speed of the regular Mini Cooper at 200 KPH. With an acceleration from 0-100 KPH of 9.2 seconds on four cylinders.

So, if you’re looking for the perfect birthday present for me — and you’ve got a handful of months to save up for it! — you can buy me a Mini Cooper in British Racing Green.