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It’s dark and dreary. I want it to rain. No, I mean really rain. If it rains then the husband comes home from the terraforming he does, and we get to go on a recon mission for the top-secret costume bits we need instead. (New phrase: “My husband is a terraforming engineer.” We like it and intend to use it until a better one comes along.) I will invoke rain by playing Vivaldi’s Four Seasons.

Note in my in-box this morning: “Oh, and happy mother’s day, cat-mama!” Very kind. My own little furry bratlings woke us up at an insane hour of the a.m. and didn’t care a smidgen about it. The flowers I got were from my in-laws’ garden.

On the menu today: Write. Correct homework and half-complete exams. Review Greco-Roman culture and religion for my lecture tonight. I just discovered two books on my shelves that I didn’t know I had: one on Greek art, and one on Roman art and architecture. Well, all right, I’m sure I knew at one point, but after several moves I had forgotten I owned them.

CURRENTLY READING:
Well, it’s another currently read-past-tense, actually. I just finished the new David Lodge book Thinks… and once again I’m all fired up about writing. Lodge tends to write what he knows – authors and professors – and I associate him with my thesis, so I’m excited about sitting down and producing text once more. Eventually readable, even. Possibly even publishable.

I go through stages where I know I’m good, then long stages where I look at the book industry I work in and think that it’s all futile anyway. Then I remember the thrill of idly flipping through the electronic card catalogue at the university and finding my thesis in not one, but three places. It’s real. It exists. It’s, well, good.

I also go through waves of fiction versus academic analysis. When I wrote for the local Pagan journal I reviewed books with a magical element to them, looked at the systems, the effects, the moral issues and so forth. It was a baby exercise, but it kept me sort of in form. Now I’m seriously considering doing something a little more serious and sending it out with a query to journals. You never know.

Irony

Call from Concordia Sports Medicine last night:

“Hi! It’s about your appointment next Thursday.”

“The seven-thirty?”

“Yes. We’re really sorry – we have to cancel it. Your osetopath just had surgery on her elbows.”

What the heck are you supposed to say to that?

“Argh!”

“Has it been long since your last appointment?”

“Well, about five weeks.”

“Ouch! Any problems?”

“My back is going “crunch” in the middle.”

“That sounds bad. Would you like to see another osteopath?”

“Well… I lived like this for months before I saw someone, so I’m not dying or anything. Tell my doctor to not worry and that she needs to heal just like everyone else. If my back gets really bad I’ll call you.”

“Don’t worry, we’ll shoehorn you in somewhere as soon as you call. Thanks!”

Little do they know that I now have a secret weapon: Excedrin Extra-Strength, with acetaminophen, aspirin and caffeine. Somebody who loves me has family that goes to the US. It was a lovely surprise. That plus finding a nice flat spot in the park so I can simultaneously lie in the sun and realign my spine sounds like a terrific idea.

Speaking of border-crossing, Vanilla Coke makes its new debut of the millennium on Wednesday. You know, I’ve never been to Plattsburgh…

Meh

Laptop modem still not working.

My back is going “crunch” in the middle.

Still haven’t heard about an interview for those teaching posts.

Got my copy of my tax forms back from the tax guy (finally – he had the wrong phone number) and I owe $2.23 to the federal government, and am owed $43 from the provincial. No, I don’t understand either.

I practiced my cello last week (yeah, I’m pretty stunned myself) and got to the point where I could play Beethoven’s first symphony all the way through at half speed. Good thing I practiced, because we three cellos had to play through some very embarrassing bits alone over and over. I was mortified, although I shudder to think what I would have sounded like if I hadn’t practised.

I still have one more day to go before my weekend. It will be a long one.

CURRENTLY READING:
A limited edition hardcover collection of two decades of Charles de Lint’s Christmas chapbooks, all gathered into one volume “in a moment of weakness” as the inside flap says. Very good. Very, very good. Uneven, yes, as they were never intended for true publication, only Christmas gifts for his wife and then a small circle of friends. It’s called Triskell Tales: 22 Years of Chapbooks. The early stuff that I’m still in is about two of his recurrign short story characters called Cerin Songweaver, a harper, and his oak-spirit wife Meran.

I recently reread The Doomsday Book by Connie Willis too. Small print. Periods were difficult to see. Yes, I was wearing my glasses. I remember it being a lighter read than it actually was, less suspenseful, less historical. Odd, that. Then again, I read it over ten years ago. I think I prefer To Say Nothing of the Dog and Passage.

I also read A Long Fatal Love Chase by Louisa May Alcott which is about an innocent young lady whose guardian loses custody of her in a gard game and marries her off to a dashing genleman who turns out to already have an estranged wife. When our heroine discovers this she flees in the night and he pursues her through various cities and false identities. Nice and not-brain-bending for a Monday afternoon in the sun. The word “challenging” certainly would never come up in relation to this book, but it was fun.

This weekend Ursula K Le Guin’s The Lathe of Heaven is up, as my book club is doing it on Tuesday night.

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I woke up this morning with an overwhelming craving for oatmeal cookies. Not just any oatmeal cookies, but the warm, soft-but-crunchy-on-the-rim, size-of-bread-and-butter-plates oatmeal cookies I used to get before homeroom down in my high school cafeteria.

I have no idea where it came from. It was so strong, though, that I detoured and went to the grocery store across from work, looking vainly for something similar. They had bakery oatmeal cookies, but they were too small and looked too hard. So I bought bakery chocolate chunk cookies instead. Fabulous – you can actually taste the sugar and butter – but I’m still a bit wistful.

I’m also dying for sushi, but I bought a lasagna for lunch instead.

Let’s see if I can get through my eleven-hour shift from hell today without a Coke. I had a salad for lunch yesteray and felt virtuous, but then realised at the close fo the day that I’d had two Cokes somehow as well. I go for days without one, then I have two in one day? Eh. No man can plumb the depths of my food cravings (and by man I mean the all-inclusive species thing, not just the gender). I certainly can’t.

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The Witch ≠ User of Technology rule that governs my life strikes again. I tried to connect to the Internet with my laptop and naturally, I’m getting modem errors. This happened last time I changed computers, and when I changed ISPs too.

There’s an oddball theory that runs around which I trip across every once in a while that suggests people who use energy in other ways have difficulty matching their energy to the kind of energies we use in our modern households. This includes things like lightbulbs, toaster ovens, VCRs, and computers.

For some people (read: technopagans) that’s patently ridiculous. For others (read: my husband), it’s not so far off the mark. He can’t even wear a watch without killing it. (Come to think of it, neither can my mother.) It’s got to be something about the electromagnetic field that everyone has (which is simply a product of being a biological machine); exactly what, though, I have no clue.

None of which explains my ability to use computers pretty decently, just not when it comes to connecting to the World Wide Web.

If anyone makes a crack about all things within the universe being a part of the Web anyway, I’ll deck ’em.

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There is no chocolate in this house.

This is a bad thing.

Oh sure, when I go shopping I say, “No, if I have chocolate in the house, I’ll eat it. By not purchasing chocolate, I shall cleverly avoid its consumption.”

Which is all well and good, except on those days when you really would like a bit of chocolate, and have none, and slowly go stir crazy, because damn it, you’re not going to break down and walk across the street to the depanneur.

Birthday List

Things I want for my birthday:

– A good music stand. One with a solid table so when I go to write something on my music it doesn’t bend and slip off. It still needs to be relatively portable, though, so nothing that weighs a ton.
– A new cello bag. Preferable one with backpack straps as well as handles. It’ll need to be waterproof, and have at least 10 or 15 mm of padding. They’re about $100. The bag I have has been well-used for eight years by me and who knows how long before that, and is wearing through. I don’t want it to rip when it shouldn’t (like when I’m carrying it on a bus).

I’ve made an interesting discovery. A few years ago when I replaced the bow that originally came with my cello, I found that it was a 3/4 size. Looking at all the bags that other people use for their cellos at orchestra, I think my bag is a 3/4 size as well, because it barely fits my 4/4 instrument, and a full-size bow won’t fit in the bow pocket and still allow the top flap to fold over.

Just thinking, that’s all.

Editor’s note: No, you haven’t missed her birthday. She’s simply giving you a couple of months advance warning. Isn’t she sweet?