Monthly Archives: November 2002

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Catch the twistedness while you can – Lord of the Peeps: The Fellowship of the Peep

You know Peeps – the little marshmallow horrors that emerge around springtime. One of the funniest things ever brought to my attention when I still worked at the F/SF shop was a site devoted to Peep research.

The LOTP site has already moved once. It’s only up to Chapter Four, but it shows promise, having already done the Isildur flashback scene during Gandalf’s research of the Ring at Minas Tirith quite amusingly. The battle at Mount Doom from the Prologue was good for a laugh, too.

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So the bedroom�s now a pale cream colour, and the furniture has been rearranged to create a nicer feel. We like it.

There�s also about a foot of snow out there, which means that my husband is home today, and, coincidentally, snow tires must be put on the car. I just love it when a plan comes together like this. I think Ikea is in our future, too. We need a new stick-and-board shelf to put next to the fireplace for videos and DVDs so we can use the existing stick-and-board shelves for, er, books.

And� this morning when I downloaded my e-mail, I was offered a section editor position on the staff of a new entertainment magazine slated to debut next spring. Paid.

Blink, blink.

And it isn�t even eight-thirty yet.

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Oh, great. Now it’s freezing raining. (What’s the active tense for that, anyway? Without saying something dreadfully formal such as, “Our current precipitation consists of freezing rain”, I mean.)

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Hmm. My site meter seems to be down.

Going to check it out, I discovered some interesting referrals for this owlyblog, such as:

– bad writers (fourth hit out of 1,400,000, alas; this is hardly encouraging for someone who is a writer by profession)
– dip pens
– owl costume pattern
– inflatable pony popped (for which I am number one of only two hits)
– Peek Freans cookies (number 57 of many, many, many – why on earth did they click on me?)
– Alice in Wonderland mythic forest

Unfortunately, when you do a search for “good writers” I’m nowhere to be seen…

Chamber of Secrets response

Quickie review of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets:

1. Geez, I’m glad I don’t go to Hogwarts. Big snakes. Screaming roots. Willow trees that think playing Whack the Student is a jolly time.

2. I so wish I went to Hogwarts! Or at least lived in that world.

Good film – well-paced, good acting, good dialogue, fabulous new set designs. If asked to compare it to the first in the series, I’d say apples and oranges. The first one established the world and characters. This one plunged right in and didn’t really explain anything, expecting you to have read the books, or at least have seen the first film. I like that. Why waste time re-introducing places and people?

I will see it again. Not, however, at the Paramount, although since the copy of the film we were watching snapped (right before the exciting bits) we got vouchers for a complimentary movie ticket, so it’s sort of like we saw it for free; thirteen-fifty is just too pricey. I did it for The Chamber of Secrets on opening night, and I’ll do it for The Two Towers premiere, but that’s all. Any subsequent viewings will be done elsewhere.

Tomorrow, we paint the bedroom. Updates as events warrant.

The Spectacle Quandary

Good news, good news, and bad news.

Good news: I am no longer near-sighted in my left eye! Woo-hoo!

Good news: I have a new prescription that will ease the fatigue I get working with paper, print, and computer screens! Woo-hoo!

Bad news: I need new glasses.

Yes, I could just replace the lenses in my current frames, and I intend to do it. However, I want another pair as well, since I’ve developed a bad habit of taking off my glasses and leaving them next to the computer, which does me no good at all if I’m out watching a movie or something. Today, I discovered that I had evidently blocked the horror that was shopping for new frames two and a half years ago out of my memory. I have a vision: thin black wire-rim frames in a narrow rectangular shape. Does anyone make something even remotely close to this vision? Yes. Sort of. But never, it seems, in a size that fits me. I’m small, okay? I wear small sizes. I know damn well the rest of the world is big, so something labelled average actually translates as too big in my world. I hate, hate, hate shopping for frames. It’s as bad as shopping for new bras. I went to four different shops in two different malls, and nowhere did I see frames that leaped out at me and said, I’m perfect!. Or even, I’d be bearable if I wasn’t a size 10.

Frames are so expensive! Dear gods! A hundred dollars for the lenses, at least one-fifty for the frames — ouch! I refused to even try on any frame that was priced at over $170. That’s sheer insanity. Even so, I have to wait for my next EI cheque to arrive, and then hope that when I go back to the first Lenscrafters I went to, they still have the frames I hated least of all, in a size that can be adjusted down to fit me. (And yes, I even tried the children’s section. Poor kids all have to choose from round and round-ish frames. Round looks horrible on me.)

I need to wear these for any precision work that will be undertaken for any period of time, the optometrist says. Which for me means pretty much everything except making tea or eating. Writing, working, reading, TV or movie watching, sewing. I just need to get into the habit of putting them on in the morning, and remembering to take them off again at night (which, yes, I’ve been forgetting to do, growing so accustomed to wearing them for computer work as I have been, which results in putting my cheek on the pillow and jamming the frames into the side of my nose). Both eyes, I was informed, are astigmatic, so glasses are just an easier solution than contacts, especially since I technically don’t need to have some sort of vision correction on full-time. Yeah, right; live my life for two days and then tell me that my everyday activities aren’t “precision activities”.