Owls' Court

Silly Net Quizzes, or, Six Of One, Half a Dozen of Another

Tripped across another one of those wretched quizzes. I have been so good for so long, but I broke down and clicked radio buttons and discovered that I am...

Er. Okay. Half of me, maybe. I checked out the other possible answers and found my other half, which, fittingly enough, happens to be...


See? That's why net quizzes can be so disappointing. They only take part of you into account.

Silly net quizzes.

Defending My Stand

Thanks to my circle of friends who bought me the Uber-Music-Stand last summer for my birthday, I am happily equipped for home practice and concerts. No one, I thought, would ever have a stand like mine. (Mainly because no one else would be enough of a loon to cart the six-ton thing around. But I digress.) Solid and sturdy, with a beautiful shiny black desk that folds out to both sides, creating space enough to lay out an entire string quartet if I so desired. Adieu, page turning! Of course, adieu to page turning at home, not at concerts; we're usually packed in like little musical sardines, so there's no room for my Uber-Stand to achieve its full wingspan in public.

Well, at our last concert, I set up my Uber-Stand and went downstairs to stash my coat. When I came back, a second violinist was walking away with it.

"Hey! Hey!" I said. "That's my stand!"

We argued about it for a moment, then I convinced her that it was mine and off she went in a bad mood to locate hers, which she had just bought. (Someone had put it behind the door. Go figure.) So, with my beloved Uber-Stand back in my possession, I then and there resolved to find some way to identify it as mine forever and ever.

As of yesterday, I now have sparkly Harry Potter Hedwig owly stickers to put on it in a relatively inconspicuous place. Heck, I've had one on my laptop since I got it; why shouldn't I put some on my music stand too?

No one will try to claim it as theirs now. No, sir.

Bits and Pieces

I woke up last night and my head was brimming with ideas for stories and novels. I marvelled and cheerfully went back to sleep, anticipating waking up the next morning to The First Day Of The Rest Of My Life Never Having To Dig For A Story Idea Again.

Of course, when I awoke, I remembered the part about my head brimming with ideas, but not the ideas themselves. I could have kicked something.

On Tara's website, she mentions developing a Life Mission Statement for herself. That idea (okay, that and all the delightfully funky little owlies) reached deep inside me and ripped something awake in a rather painful fashion. For the past year, I've been struggling to figure out why I've been unhappy, and what I want out of life that can/will bring contentment. Perhaps a mission statement is what I need. Nothing so structured as a five-year plan; goodness, no. Instead, I want a personal manifesto that inspires me.

So far, I know it will include the exististence of cats in my life, sharing company with my lovely god-daughter who brings tears to my eyes, music (both listening and making), feeling the sun on my face regularly, encouraging freckles, laughter, art (appreciation and perception), believing that I have something to share with the world at large, love on every single level I can think of, and a perpetually renewed joy in the sequencing of language in various ways.

Needs work, I know. And specifics. I have to fit warm bubble baths in there somewhere, too.

Ye gods - when did

Ye gods - when did it get to be three days until the release of X2?

Wrist Problems

My right wrist has been inflamed for a couple of days, and it hurts when I type or use my mouse. I just finished editing a thirty-page document that was time-sensitive and a pleasure to edit, but I'm now pretty useless for most of the things I usually do, like typing, writing, and playing the cello.

Yesterday, I heard that a friend got a light tablet and stylus to use in place of a mouse, and it's an attractive thought. So's an ergonomic keyboard at this point. I'm using a rolled-up towel to rest my wrist on, but the mouse keeps bumping into it. After I post this I think I'll take a walk, which requires no wrist work at all.

I've been seized with the extremely odd desire to write verse lately. Not that I'm being inspired with poetry, I just want to be writing it. This is extremely frustrating.

I slept for ten hours last night. I think I'm officially back on track.

Dance On The Sidewalk

Another friend has launched a web site! This one is called Dance on the Sidewalk, and showcases Tara's wonderful line of what she calls functional art: hand-decorated furniture and trompe-l'oeuil work.

The best part about it? There are little owlies everywhere. Anyone who uses owlies on their business cards is automatically inducted into the newly-formed Owldaughter Guild (the inner workings of which I'll figure out someday later). Muah-hah-hah!

Well, today is the day

Well, today is the day Roo heads out into the wild North American yonder on her MA pilgrimage, gathering hard data, soft data, experience, and mileage to collate into some sort of coherent report in order to graduate. The cool part: she's studying the SF community phenomenon by attending F/SF conventions all summer. The drawback: she's studying the SF community phenomenon by attending F/SF conventions all summer. One con is fun; two's okay, if they're well spaced apart. If, however, you've at any time ever been involved with the SF community, you might have some inkling of how homocidal she's likely to be by the time September rolls around.

Good luck, Roo! Safe trip! I wish you infinite patience, and may your sense of humour remain intact!

Midnight Cello

See, it's times like this, when it's quarter to one in the morning (oh, lord), when I wish that I had one of those silent Yamaha electric cellos, so I could plug in a set of earphones and practice without waking anyone up.

Two AA batteries not included, of course. And you have to supply your own headphones. But I'd never have to worry about people kicking my cello on the bus again, or fielding dumb comments about the big guitar that I'm carrying, now, would I.

Carrying an amp around with me might be problematic, though. I already have enough trouble with the full-size classic acoustic cello and a music stand.

Cotton Candy and Sunny Days

Yes, folks, another cheerful novel from Margaret Atwood, Canada's doyenne of sunshine and lollipops....

(It's just a trend I've noticed in Atwood's themes. No offence intended towards people who wrote their Masters theses on Atwood novels, of course.)

Good gods - it's tomorrow.

Good gods - it's tomorrow.

Nope. Still not sleepy. Terribly

Nope. Still not sleepy.

Terribly thirsty, though.

I spent much of Friday moving things around - books, furniture, stuff like that - and by doubling up books on most of my shelves, I managed to not only find place for the stacks of books on the floor, but empty half a shelf. Just look at that, I thought to myself, all pleased. Now I have room for the books that will no doubtedly come my way throughout the next months. To celebrate, I stopped by the secondhand bookstore before heading out to the pub for various birthday celebrations, and wouldn't you just know, in the philosophy/mythology section I found five books that I had to own. I mean honestly, a hand-bound copy of Joseph Campbell's The Mythic Image? I teach this stuff, for heaven's sake, how can I pass that up? And the book on creation myths around the world? And an original mass-market edition of Harner's Way of the Shaman?

Needless to say, that half-shelf is no longer empty. But I'm still thrifty and virtuous - I paid less than thirty dollars for the lot of them. These days, the Campbell alone sells for about seventy-five dollars.

Already it brims with Post-It notes, ready for lecturing. (This is proof of my geekiness too, isn't it, Skippy.)

The Brunching Shuttlecocks may have

The Brunching Shuttlecocks may have slowed down a bit, but damn, this is funny:

The Apathetic Online Journal Entry Generator

Why use up precious time thinking of witty things to type into your web log? Use this handy-dandy entry generator to...

Wait a minute. Don't most of us use these things as work-avoidance tactics? We turn to them with the intent to waste time.

Restless

The past couple of days have been odd. I've been restless, moody, terribly social, terribly anti-social... I'm not quite sure what's going on, but I'd like it to settle down. I slept a grand total of two and a half hours last night, then had a staff meeting this morning, managed to completely forget my god-daughter's birthday family gathering this afternoon, arrived at said gathering with the hatchings of a migraine, left quietly two hours later, came home and hid under the covers for two hours of solid, blissful sleep. It got rid of the headache, but now I'm awake and my sleep schedule is even further off-kilter.

I'm now reading Virginia Woolf's diaries, and I'm incredibly gratified to learn that if she wrote between fifty and two hundred fifty words per day, she considered herself successful (well, as successful as someone that self-critical can feel; perhaps 'on-schedule' would be a better term to use). If I pull off a minimum of two thousand per day, then, I'm doing just fine. Mind you, I entertain absolutely no notions that I'm any sort of a Virginia Woolf. None whatsoever. So no one needs to get nervous when I'm around water.

Cellohenge!

Look! Cellohenge!

Evidently I need more sleep. Or perhaps I slept too much.

New Music

So, orchestra last night, and we got new music (a necessity, since we handed back all the old stuff after that smashing concert). We're doing the Peer Gynt suite, Haydn's Military symphony, and Beethoven's Prometheus overture. Not bad - at least, nothing I looked at and went "eep!" at tenor clef or evil sixteenth note passages by an idealistic pianist. (Okay, the Mendelssohn might have gone well at the concert, but that doesn't mean I'm not bitter about the months of failure before that.)

Walter and I were the only two cellists there last night, which meant that (a) we occupied the first and second chairs, and (b) we got to be stand partners again, which I've really missed. It was slightly harrowing, because we were sight-reading things we'd never seen before, but we pulled it off really well, expect for one place in the Haydn where we had a three-bar compressed rest whose numeral looked like an eight.

All in all, a spectacular night, and we were pretty damn proud of ourselves. Two celli holding their own against twenty violins, a wind section and some violas. There were places where we were supposed to play divisi, too, which is where half the celli play onepart and the other half play the second part. With only two instruments, of course, that means one of you is carrying an entire line on your own. We pulled it off, and were heard. Go us.

And I wrote 2,693 words of the Great Canadian Novel yesterday afternoon when Ceri came over to work. I am wonderful. Yay me!

Now I must scurry to work through the - snow? Argh!

Oakville Update

We had glorious weather all weekend in Oakville until a wonderful thunderstorm during Sunday dinner (mmm, rack of lamb). I saw my grandmother from the west coast, old family friends, and all in all enjoyed a lovely trip. I wish we could have spent another day or so with my parents, but both my husband and I have to work today.

I managed to get a thousand words or so written on Saturday afternoon, too. I'd been dithering about a chapter in the Great Canadian Novel, unsure about how to handle the next step (or, rather, to choose what the next step should be from a pool of four different events). I plunged in and finished the chapter, and even started the next one.

And then, I crashed. Why, you ask? I picked up a secondhand hardcover copy of Michale Cunningham's The Hours. When I read work like this, I wonder why I even bother. (Yes, yes, I know: different styles, all kinds to make a world, different tastes in readership, blah blah blah. I'm sharing. Be quiet.) I despair of ever becoming capable of painting word and thought, of arranging language to convey a depth of emotion with only a few words.

I've read scraps of Virginia Woolf's journals, and she too uses sparse language, and yet conveys something so much larger than what the words say. Is that what genius is? Everything I read of mine seems mawkish and heavy-handed (though not as heavy-handed as some of the published stuff I've read, thank all the gods), no longer as airy and bright as it seemed when I set it down. I've ordered a copy of Woolf's journal so I can read the whole thing, not to further depress myself, but to try to understand how it is that she manages to succeed at what she does, even in her own private notes.

When I moved I found a humour coloumn that I'd clipped from the English department newsletter during my BA. It's an "Ask Your Author Agony Column".

There are several witty samples of what various authors might have responded ("Get your archetypes straightened out," recommends Robertson Davies), but here's Virginia Woolf's imagined response:

Life's just a series of brief miracles. This comment was meant to be fun, but it says something important. Juxtaposing the words "just", "brief" and "miracle" creates a tension that Woolf's work displays as well. How can something be "just" a miracle? Is it a miracle because it's brief? Shouldn't miracles, by definition, be life-changing? Or is it our observation of the miracle and how we choose to be changed by it that defines it as brief or enduring? If they're brief, is it the knowledge that life is made up of miracles that keeps us going?

More people should see the miracles around them, however brief. And more people should remember that life is a series of miracles; we just have to find them.

College Lecture

My first ever seminar taught at CEGEP went terrifically well. I was blessed with forty attentive Champlain College students who made eye contact, smiled, and asked questions, some of whom even thanked me personally afterwards. I always forget how young CEGEP students are; they’re almost half my age (let’s not dwell on that for too long, shall we?).

The problem, of course, is trying to narrow down one’s sphere of knowledge to an hour and ten minutes of lecture. What do you leave in? What do you abandon? What concepts are important? How can you explain them simply enough that they will understand, but in enough detail that the depth of the concept isn’t lost? Do you have to present X other concepts first in order to make the final concept understandable?

I know I gave them a lot of information, but they all kept up with me. I mixed my personal experiences and choices in with technical stuff so that they’d have a balance of the two. All in all, I think I managed to prove to them that yes, there are still people out there who live their lives inspired by the same beliefs and principles held by the ancient Celts, which was the point of my guest lecture.

I’d love to do it again. Heck, I’d love to teach a full-semester course on alternative spirituality. I hope they enjoyed it as much as I did.

Spring Fever

The four-legs are tearing around like mad things this morning. Major spring/cabin fever, apparently. They're not quite making the turns in the kitchen and they're bashing into each other, which is rather amusing.

I'm out of it and dizzy today. So out of it, in fact, that I tried to reheat three slices of pizza in the oven for lunch, and baked them to a crisp. Convinced that I evidently shouldn't try to assemble anything to eat that required heat or sharp objects somewhere in the process of preparation, I scanned my fridge and my pantry without success. Then I saw the bowl of apples and decided to have one. The first bite convinced me that I had wanted an apple all along and the lack of culinary focus was in fact a godsend.

Go figure.

Well, well - look who

Well, well - look who I found tucked away in a comment? Seems as if someone else has fallen victim to the weblog bug.

Bunny Burrow: More Trees, Less War.

And she thought no one would read it. Surprise!

Yesterday Night Was: - The

- The first thunder/lightning storm of the year. Cool. Very, very cool. (Except when the power cut out for a second or two while my husband was watching the ongoing election coverage. Bad moment.)

- A turning point in Quebec politics as the Liberal party was voted in by a severe majority. Let's see: my in-laws' house just increased in value by $20,000; industry will begin to revive; investors will return. My one regret: we don't own property ourselves. Ah well.

- The last meeting of the Monday night class that I co-teach. There will be plenty of student meetings throughout the summer, and activities planned, but this was really the end of a serious commitment for everyone. Now I devote myself to my Saturday morning class, and the scattered lectures and workshops I will be teaching in the near future, such as the guest lecture I'm giving on modern Celtic Pagan worship at Champlain College this Thursday. I've spoken with the teacher, who sounds like a great guy, and I'm looking forward to it. I was a bit at sea about what exactly to focus on -- he teaches a humanities class of mythology -- but we worked out a basic hour of personal experience talk regarding how I worship, what I do, what I believe in, and so forth. It's a great opportunity, and promises to be quite the experience.

Exercise Your Civil Rights -- If You Can

I’ve been hearing terrible reports of people with no idea where they’re to vote today, stemming from an incomplete distribution of reminder cards with the address of their pertinent polling station. The only reason I know where to go is because I caught sight of a pile of plastic-covered cards tucked into the stack of flyers by the front door of our building. I always wonder if mix-ups like this, or the incredibly long time it took my husband and I to change our address on the voters’ list (and they still weren’t certain it would work) are deliberate. And I always wonder what percentage of the citizenship will actually make the effort to go vote. My personal opinion is that it’s a right and a responsibility – I mean, I live here, so I ought to at least pretend I have a say in how the place is run – and if you ignore it, then you really shouldn’t be allowed to complain when the people who end up in power start doing stupid things. Because, you know, they will.

Concert Post-Mortem etc

I had an absolutely smashing concert last night, attended by friends whom I hadn’t known were going to be there. Apart from not being thrilled about half the selection of music, I enjoyed myself immensely. It was decided that rather than using the traditional concert seating, the viola section and the cello section should switch, putting the violas on the outside and the cello players between them and the wind players in the centre. I think it worked quite well, and I hope we stick with it.

I know I’ve complained about the Mendelssohn for months, but it came off beautifully. Pretty much everything did; there were no major or minor disasters, although the music was technically challenging. The pieces were mostly crowd-pleasers, and the audience certainly seemed pleased. I’m pleased to say that the only place I lost my focus was in the Brahms Hungarian Dances.

During a concert, I’m living in the moment to such an extent that it’s always a surprise when it’s over. Now I’m stuck humming the last piece on the program (Strauss, who’s not my favourite composer by a long shot, damn it all), defiantly pleased that I can pack away most of the music, sad to leave other pieces (such as the overture to Mozart’s Don Giovanni, which I have always adored; playing it in concert fulfilled one of my life-long dreams). It was an enjoyable evening, followed by coffee and doughnuts at our place and a darned good sleep.

I wonder what we’ll be playing next, for the Canada Day concert.

My private seminar on Friday night was lots of fun, too. Whenever I teach a basic class, I wonder if I'm just rehashing stuff they already know, but I'm always told that no, I'm filling in blanks and connecting dots for them and they're terribly grateful for being shown the whole picture. I suppose I lose perspective a bit, having studied all this for eight years or so. Anyway, lots of fun, yummy food and wine, and we'll definitely do it again. Also on the class-subject, some of my current Saturday morning students have asked me to put together a meditation class for them. I feel a fuzzy inside when things like this happen - you know, sort of, "You like me! You really like me! And you evidently think that I'm a good teacher!" I also appear to be inspiring students to create their own one-session workshops to share with other students, which flatters me beyond belief. I never, ever thought that I'd be An Example someday. Never. Now I feel like I have to live up to it, somehow. Okay, yes, evidently I believe that I'm a passable teacher, or I wouldn't keep on doing it; but a compliment like this always surprises me, for some reason.

New Clothes

For years I have purchased clothing based on an extremely outdated pragmatism. Buy them a bit big, then you can grow into them.

This was fine when I was a kid, when I was a teenager. As a teen and in my early twenties I was also much more comfortable wearing clothes that disguised my body slightly - call it a confidence thing if you like. Now that I'm pushing thirty-two, though, buying clothes that don't fit just doesn't work as well for me. (MLG's constant voluntary assurance that I'm a babe helps a lot, too.) I have long legs and a short torso, as well, so shopping for clothes means that 98% of the time, they won't fit me properly anyway. And since I (unintentionally) lost weight recently, all the clothes that were loose on me are now ridiculously baggy.

When I was looking for something to wear earlier this week, I snapped and saw red. Not a single pair of jeans fits me properly around the waist, which means they sag everywhere else, too. Damn it, it's spring, and I want to look good. I want to feel like I look good, and jeans that are several sizes too big just don't cut it.

So after work yesterday I took the metro up to Namur to check out the Le Chateau outlet, where they usually have decent clothing at decent prices.

Well, apart from the truly horrendous music, all their pants were thirty dollars or more. The music eventually chased me out with a headache, so I decided to walk along Jean-Talon to the Village des Valeurs instead. Who knows - maybe there will be something not-so-bad there, I thought, or maybe I'll pull off an amazing find.

Door number two it was. The prize?

I came out with two very sexy pairs of Levis jeans in perfect condition. And they cost me less than twenty dollars total. If I told you what size they are, you'd lynch me, so suffice it to say that they're about three sizes smaller than the jeans I've been wearing for the past four or five years.

Damn, I look good. And I'm thrifty, to boot.

There. This is a bit

There. This is a bit easier on the eyes, no?

Well, I like it, anyway. A bit more spring-like. Delicate greens.

Okay, now I'm really going to sit down and read. For real and for true.

I am so virtuous. So

I am so virtuous. So very, very virtuous.

Another two hours of work accomplished. That's a total of five hours today! (Hey, if you are aware in any shape or form of my track record lately, you too would be cheering. Raise the roof! Raise it!)

I'll polish it up tomorrow and send it off. Now, I'm going to kick back and go read some Jungian analysis of fairy-tales. (Yeah, well, I find it interesting, so there.)

Insurance Frustration

It had to happen. I should have known.

Today is the day that my husband's health benefits plan kicks in. Three months of employment (and paying into the plan of course) and congratulations, you now only have to pay a 20% deductible for prescription drugs and other fun stuff.

I've been holding on to a recent prescription slip for a week or so, waiting for this day. So after three hours of work at the computer this morning (aren't I good?) I put on my coat and off I went to the pharmacy, to fill my first month of prescription, hurrah!

I handed in the slip, along with my shiny new benefits card, and hung around waiting for my name to be called. Now, if the truth must be told, I was a bit nervous. I've had problems with benefit cards before. What if they didn't flip the switch or unflag the account or whatever it is that they do at the health insurance office? What if there's some kind of problem? No, no, I said to myself; stop creating things to worry about. You checked online yesterday, and everything was fine. Plus your husband verified with Human Resources at work to make sure everything would be operational as of April 8.

Well, the pharmacist called me over and said, "You claim has been refused."

Heart plummets into stomach. I knew it, I knew it, I knew it.

"Why?"

"They say you're not listed under this policy."

Sigh.

"We checked this yesterday. I'm on the plan."

She must have seen me gritting my teeth, because she said, "Well, we'll try again." She called the insurance people and talked to them for about five minutes before they discovered together that I'm the second person listed on the plan (duh - my husband is the first), so they had to type in a 02 somewhere instead of a 01. (I'd like to take this moment to point out that the 02 is plainly printed on my card. I know, because I looked when she gave it back to me.)

At this point I stopped listening as relief washed over me. Everything was going to be fine. I'd get my prescription and go home.

Except it wasn't fine. The pharmacist came back to me and said, "The insurance people tried to run the claim through while I was on the phone, but the network went down, so we can't do it right now. Can you come back later?"

Heck, why not. I'm having so much fun here that I can't wait to come back for more.

"I'll call you when their system is back up and we've completed the claim," she said. "I'll let you know the moment it's ready."

"Why not," I said, "I'm in the neighbourhood tonight anyway."

Then I took the bus to another pharmacy to pick up a parcel, and got flak from a supercilious postal worker because my slip said I could pick up my parcel after one o'clock, and it was twelve forty-five. (How was I supposed to know what time it was? I don't wear a watch, and there wasn't a clock anywhere around. All I knew was that I had left home a long time ago and spent much too long in a pharmacy in west NDG before trekking into Westmount for this damned parcel.)

He'd look much more attractive as a rock. Or a hatstand. He had that kind of personality.

It seems to be that kind of day. I can take great comfort in the three hours of work I did this morning, though. Yep. Something to be proud of.

"Intense fighting in Baghdad this

"Intense fighting in Baghdad this morning," says the news anchor on CBC Radio.

As opposed to the half-hearted diplomatic negotiations that were happening before today, I presume.

Hold Me Back

I'm collecting information on the books that are coming out within the next few months within one of my fields of specialisation, and at Amazon I made a sickening discovery.

Out of all the decent books out there on witchcraft and the occult, I am horrified -- no, that's not quite right; shocked? dismayed? spitting mad? -- that the top-selling book in that category is The Book of Shadows: The Unofficial Charmed Companion.

So help me Gods.

You know, in every interview I do, I'm asked my opinion on shows like Charmed and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. My response? "Hey, I'm a huge Buffy fan. But Willow's not Wiccan, and what she does isn't real magic." If they press me about Charmed, I usually say something about Wicca 90210 and heavily stress the 90210 part, because Charmed has even less Wicca in it than Buffy does.

These shows, and films like The Craft and Practical Magic, are double-edged blades. On one hand, they introduce a whole new crop of people to the idea that people who practice a discipline like magic aren't, by definition, automatically evil, which is great. On the other hand, they're an incredibly inaccurate portrayal of the path. Wicca's about spirituality and responsibility, not spells, demons, and warlocks (don't even get me started on that inaccuracy).

This is why I still do interviews with students, for newspapers and on radio, and why I continually write articles. I'm trying to raise the general level of awareness out there. And most of the time, people walk away with a better idea of what it's all about. Sometimes, though, you just can't get through to them, and they walk away determined to find "a real witch" who will teach them how to change their hair colour without the aid of L'Oreal.

It's not easy. I've chosen to teach and educate on this path, though, and if this is how I'm being called to serve, then this is what I'll keep on doing. However, if you ever feel inspired to do a bit of reading on Wicca, please, please ignore the sales ranks at Amazon. Read anything by Doreen Valiente, and Vivianne Crowley, and Gerald Gardner. Or read something like Essential Wicca by Paul Tuitlean and Estelle Daniels, or Scott Cunningham's Wicca- A Guide for the Solitary Practitioner. But for the sake of all that's intelligent, stay away from books that purport to be about spirituality and use pop TV shows as source material.

My skin feels all crawly. I'm going to go make more tea.

And Why, Exactly, Should I do This For You?

There was a knock on my door yesterday morning at about eleven-thirty. I opened it to find a young woman with a dog standing in the hall.

"Hi," she said with a smile. "I used to live in this apartment. I don't suppose you have any mail for me?"

Now, we moved in thirty-eight days ago. The apartment was empty for a month before that for renovations.

"Er, no," I said. "We've been writing `Return to Sender - Moved- No Forwarding Address' on them all."

"Did you get any mail today?"

"Well, I'll put some shoes on and I'll check," I said. We went downstairs, and sure enough, there was a GST cheque for her in my mailbox.

"Oh, great!" she said. "Listen, if you get any more of may mail, can you just give it to Dale in apartment one? I'll stop by for it every once in a while. I'll be changing my address soon, I promise."

Thirty-eight days, plus a month. Now, I don't know about you, but when I move, I use that handy-dandy mail forwarding service which the Post Office provides for a nominal fee. The previous tenant's mail that we have rejected included several government forms, parcel pick-up slips, school documentation marked `Time-Sensitive', and personal letters.

I so do not understand people like this. Call me crazy, but I see it as my responsibility to ensure that I still receive my mail, to let the various organisations and offices know that I've moved. My husband says that some people don't want their mail to follow them, that it's an easy way out of responsibility for them. Granted, there have been times I've changed my phone number and deliberately not given certain people my new number, but that's a slightly different matter.

I just don't get it.

Journaling About Writing

I've been reading Caitlín R. Kiernan's blog on writing Low Red Moon journal every day for a while now, ever since Ceri posted the first reference to it a couple of months ago. It's interesting to see how a published author feels about the day-to-day process of writing, editing, proof-reading, and the other minutiae of the writing life.

Today, on the craft of writing, she says, "[T]o put it another way, yes Samm, it is always difficult.

Except, sometimes, it's really difficult.

When it's easy, it's only because you're not doing it right."

Sigh. You know, there are those days when things flow. Then, there are the days where you feel like you're hacking your way through a textual jungle of snarled storylines and crossed characters, and you have absolutely not a single spark of imagination, and it's work.

Damn it, though, it's work you'd rather be doing more than anything else in the world. Even when you cry, and growl, and tear up notes, and re-write an entire day's pages. It's work you must do; you don't have the choice. You write, or you shrivel up and blow away in the wind.

Some days, that makes me cranky. Actually, it makes me cranky most days. If I ignore it, it gets worse. So if I make myself pound words out, then at least I'll have the grudging satisfaction of having a word count to write down in my log book, which does much to stave off the snarl-inducing feelings of guilt if I defiantly ignore my laptop.

Emerging from the Anti-Social Chrysalis

I've been going through an avoid-the-phone phase, but today all three times when the phone rang, I picked it up. I managed to have an hour-long chat with Elim, and another hour-long chat with t! later on, and in between I spoke to my husband for a total of seven minutes. And then, tonight, my oldest friend came over for tea and a chat about art, which sort of evolved into a general talk about life and love and dreams. It's been a good day.

The only vaguely bad thing so far has been my discovery that I cannot burn ten-inch tapers on the lower shelf of our new mantel. At least, not until they've been reduced to seven-inch tapers by being burned somewhere else first. I've covered the smell of barely-scorched paint by burning frankincense resin. Otherwise, the candles look lovely in front of the huge mirror (which I had to polish again today - how do so many fingerprints end up on it?), which reflects the candleflames beautifully, creating a lovely glow in the living room.

I spent today unpacking the fragile things I own, like my irreplaceable signed Royal Doulton Coalport figures, our masks, and the tiny also-irreplaceable collectibles passed on to me throughout my life. We now have things hanging on the walls of the bedroom, so it doesn't feel so sterile any more, which is a relief. We're almost there; it's almost home.

A mere thirty-five days after

A mere thirty-five days after it was packed, I have located the recharger for my cell phone.

I rejoice.

PotPourri

Apparently my delight at the rapid vanishment of snow and the onset of spring was premature. We're supposed to get tons of snow this weekend.

(I have two degrees. If I say 'vanishment' is a word, it's a word. Okay?)

I've had a couple of queries regarding my recent decrease in posting. Apart from Blogger publishing then munching that post on the debate and the challenge my husband and I faced in attempting to correct our info on the electoral list, Blogger apparently didn't publish my April 1 posts. How... amusing. Ahem.

Otherwise, I've been writing all week on my laptop, which means I'm not working on my desk computer, which is the one that's connected to the Wide World of Web. And yes, the writing's going just fine, thanks for asking. I've now finished the second (and final) bonus chapter of my NaNo novel, which needed a couple of plot points tied up. All in all, I've pulled off 4, 758 words this week so far, in that bonus chapter and the new chapter of the Great Canadian Novel.

Now, if the sun would just come out, things would seem even cheerier. I'm surrounded by that dull brown light that means precipitation is on the way, and I've heard reports varying from fifteen to twenty centimeters of That White Stuff headed our way.

I just want it to be over. Please?

Hmm. A medium-length post on

Hmm. A medium-length post on last night's debate and the problems we had changing our info on the electoral list appears to have vanished. If I were paranoid, I might be suspicious.

I've been working with my

I've been working with my doctor regarding my sleep problems, and she asked me to start keeping a dream diary. Now, I've always been one of those people who rarely remembers dreams. I figured this would be amusing and wouldn't take up that much time.

Well. Haven't I dreamed pages and pages worth of notes to write each morning since I began? And haven't all my dreams been vivid and detailed?

Someone somewhere is laughing at me, I think.