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Woo-hoo! For all of you out there sitting on the edge of your seats, it was announced in Ottawa this afternoon that the winner of CBC Radio’s Canada Reads! project is In the Skin of a Lion by Michael Ondaatje! Steven Page, lead singer of Barenaked Ladies, nominated this novel as the book that all Canadians should read together over the summer.

Well. That was my excitement for the day.

Tonight I’m off to a top-secret voice test for the spoken dialogue of a computer video game being developed here in Montreal. Oooh… the suspense…

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Your Canada Reads! update:

Last week, they voted out A Stone Angel on Wednesday, A Fine Balance on Thursday, and The Handmaid’s Tale on Friday. I missed today’s debate, which must have been thrilling! I have never read >b>Whylah Falls, but I’ve read Ondaatjie before, and he’s really good. We’ll find out tomorrow which one was voted off, and which one is left to be Canada’s first book in the coast-to-coast book club!

I’m pretty lame, aren’t I?

Well, it could be worse. I could be saying, “Hey, it’s only whatever days till Star Wars: Episode Two comes out!” (Isn’t that sad? I don’t even know how many days it is. I’m usually up on these things. It’s around Victoria Day. I’m not overly concerned about it because I’m not going in the first week anyway.)

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…

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CURRENTLY READING:

A Long Fatal Love Chase, by Louisa May Alcott. I read her novella The Inheritance recently, and I enjoyed it so much that on my way home from HMV (with only a Mozart and a Rossini, under $20, and both for study purposes – I couldn’t find the Bartok at a low enough price) I stopped by the second-hand bookstore across from the metro and picked up two Alcotts, this and another collection of novellas called Behind A Mask (under $10!). If you’ve ever read Little Women, you know the kind of stories Jo writes. Well, Louisa May wrote them as well. These will be perfect bus books – if they last that long…

On Diets, Both Physical And Spiritual

Anyone else ever forget to eat? Or sleep? Sometimes I think so much I forget that I need to fuel the body. I know that thinking uses calories, of course, but not as many as, say, raking lawns or prepping beds for planting.

I just wondered, because yesterday was The Christening of The Elspeth Morrigan (yeah, yeah, tell me about it) and I forgot to eat (a) before we went, and (b) after we got home. I had little nibblies at the reception afterwards, but nothing approaching a meal.

I do this all the time. People make nasty little remarks like, “Oh, so that’s why you’re as tiny as you are.” Well, no, because that has everything to do with my metabolism, not my diet. My diet ranges from prim and proper to grossly indecent: for a week I will crave salads and sandwiches, then the next week I’ll snack on nothing but mini chocolate bars (and that’s all my boss’ fault, for bringing in a five-pound bag of snack-size Oh Henry bars and Caramilk squares and Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups) with the occasional lasagna. This has nothing to do with bingeing; I don’t pay enough attention to what I eat to binge. Working without a set lunch hour makes eating normally difficult as well. I refuse to eat if I’m not hungry, so when I have the opportunity to eat (i.e., it’s quiet on the floor) I don’t, preferring to get as much work done as possible before the hordes descend, which is usually when my stomach starts growling. By the time things quiet down, I’m not hungry any more. (Lose weight – work retail!)

So I don’t eat regularly, and I don’t eat a lot, and what I do eat is on average something that resembles balanced, I suppose, taken over the week.

The Christening: in a beautiful Catholic church (I was last there singing The Messiah with CAMMAC several years ago), with a wacky priest (who was fine for one afternoon but who would drive me nuts if I had to listen to him weekly), and holy water that didn’t melt or burn any of the Pagan contingent who were there to witness the daughter of an occult store owner be baptized. We giggled a lot, particularly when The Morrigan yowled as the priest exorcised her with chrism on her chest. His comment? “Well, she’s got the makings of a fine preacher!” We enthusiastically replied that we would support her in her growing faith thorough all her trials when we were asked in the ceremony, and rolled our eyes at the tacky little sorority t-shirt all the babies got that said “I’m a Christian!” on them (I kid thee not). I always enjoy looking through prayer books to see how a particular sect worships, so I made sure I took a look at the books ranged in the pews. Know what? The first service in it was Christian Initiation. I wonder how many people actually realise that much of the Christian faith is based on universal rituals found cross-culturally in many religions both living and dead. It just got better P.R. along the way. There is such universality to the concepts expressed in various religions that I truly cannot understand why people try to insist that theirs is the Right Way. Religion is about how you view your relationship to the Divine. What gives anyone the right to impose their Way on someone else?

Anyway, it was a wonderful afternoon, and a terrific experience of one of the Catholic Sacraments. I’ve grown so used to universal, non-denominational services that this was a pleasant change.

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Okay – one last thing.

Look what I just found! The photo taken at the Lakeshore Chamber Orchestra January concert is now up on the orchestra web page!

That’s me, front row, second from the right, between our esteemed conductor and artistic director Andr�s (far right) and Morris, our inimitable bassoonist. My stand partner Walter is standing just behind and to the right of me.

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.