Live Wire in the Bathtub

Maps

2008-10-07T21:27:00.000-02:30

www.parisbythethroat.blogspot.com

New adventure, new blog.

I DID IT

2008-05-03T01:01:00.001-02:30

Look out, Timothy - there's a new neighbour coming to town.

Anyone want to split on a Colorado road trip next week? If you need an excuse:

2008-04-29T15:24:00.000-02:30

Take me to the riot! Or don't.

2008-04-26T10:51:00.004-02:30

I meant to add in last night's post that I was safe at home during the Montreal "riot" after the Habs won on Monday. I filched this photo of Ste. Catharine St. from someone else. I could hear the celebrations all the way from here, and I live an hour's walk from downtown! I remember having a twinge of regret that I wasn't down there too, being a bandwagon fan and all... but when those two hours of cheering and car honking evolved into two hours of sirens, I felt a little better.

Click here for a photo blog about the riot. Perfect example of how terrifying the "mob mentality" can be. If only we could get people to put that kind of enthusiasm and outrage behind an actual cause, like human rights. Also, if the Habs make it to the final round, I'm insuring my apartment and leaving town until it's over.

Coming to a toothpaste commercial near you

2008-04-25T23:04:00.007-02:30

One of these girls is in the middle of a 6-month hike of the Appalachians. One is working for one of the world's largest media companies. Two are about to become masters. Another is inches away from becoming a world-famous DJ.

Kind of cool, no?

My friend Marko "defended" his novel to the academic committee this week ("It's written in sentences! I swear!") and he invited a few of us to witness the proceedings. This was a rare and welcome experience, because most MAers understandably seal off their committee defense to the public, opting instead to invite everyone to the post-defense celebratory drink-off. The closest I've ever come to seeing how an actual defense works was sitting in the hallway outside the interrogation room - I mean, conference room - and holding the defender's hand while her committee deliberated. Thanks to Marko and his novel Mongrel (check bookstores in the coming weeks - or, at least, library shelves at Concordia), I now know what happens behind those closed doors. I watched him defend his 65,000-word achievement to the committee, and I just kept thinking, isn't this amazing? Isn't it amazing that a bunch of us have decided to spend two+ years, several thousand dollars, and a few hundred brain cells, all for the end goal of having a novel under our belts? (NB: very uncomforatble, lots of papercuts to the abdomen).

Things I have been doing lately, in lieu of blogging (because what would be an out-of-the-blue blog post, without a litany of excuses for not updating?):

1. Writing a novel. I don't even have to say thing-that-rhymes-with-hovel anymore, because it's very nearly complete! It has a beginning and a middle! And characters! Isn't that the basic criteria?

2. Watching archaic episodes of "My So-Called Life." See that TV screen? That's Claire Danes, circa 1994.

3. Celebrating Rocky McRockstar's birthday:

4. Having my first summer feast of ice cream, thanks to Elise (please, just hook me up to a chocolate-flavoured IV for the next four months):

5. And, finally, learning how to be blissfully undignified - a lesson that could benefit everyone. Especially if your name is Tycho and you have a fondness for licking your nether regions and eating any crawling thing that is smaller than a dime. Earwigs! Yum!

We be chillin'

2008-04-12T20:36:00.002-02:30

I am trying to write my last university paper. Seriously, I am trying. Can I be blamed if most of my efforts devolve into searching YouTube for old 80s cartoons? I'm sure that relates to the intertextuality of Canadian war literature somehow. It hasn't helped that most of my energy has been sopped up by some sort of disgusting cocktail of various winter germs. Luckily I live with the world champion of all-day sleeping, so I'm in good company as I attempt to rest away the lingering ick (or smother it with a steady diet of toast and honey). Almost back to normal. Once this horrid paper is finished I will turn my full attention to putting the final touches (read: the entire ending) on my thesis before the guillotine drops on May 1st, after which I have only to wait for the jury (reading committee) to summon me to my own defense. Oh! I just remembered! I have to write another paper for a conference at the end of May. This is exactly how my brain has been behaving lately: it lets me rationalize and prioritize until I think that everything's do-able and under control, and then it goes, "Whoops! Forgot about this other BIG HUGE NEAR-IMPOSSIBLE TASK! My bad!"

I check my mailbox every day for news about what my future might be. I'm trying hard to remember that my life may never again be quite this unpredictable, and that I should appreciate it and embrace the twists, but.... that sort of appreciation takes the kind of concentration that I can't often muster.

And in the meantime, I entertain D while he entertains his own various potential futures...

That photo pretty much sums up how we're both feeling these days. Just throw some pillows over me and wake me up when it's July.

At least there have been sightings of buds on the trees around Montreal. That's something! Not to mention the frequent sightings of the most perfect, kissable little pink toes ever. Maybe I could write an essay about degrees of cuteness in kitties.... A+ for sure.

HYSTERICAL IS THE NEW CALM

2008-03-31T00:07:00.003-02:30

My brain has been taken over by little dudes in hard hats waving picket signs which read GET TO WORK. They always appear around this time, the end of the university term, and this year they've each been issued a police whistle which they're not afraid to use. They get extra agitated when I do things like draw shapes on the window, look up random celebrities on IMDB, or... write blogs. Hence the current dry spell. Back when the madness stops!

A Youtube video worth 1,000 words

2008-03-12T22:03:00.001-02:30

And, in case you haven't seen it yet, the original:

Montreal Under Siege

2008-03-09T23:38:00.014-02:30

Took a walk yesterday and did my best to aestheticize the effects of our latest winter storm and ignore the fact that we're already ten days into March and I still have to wear my giant winter boots.

Ever since it became a near-certainty in my mind that I'd be leaving Montreal by the end of this summer, I inevitably started seeing it through nostalgic eyes. I think there is this giant, bright red switch in my brain with a sign above it that reads "EXECUTE SENTIMENTALITY: USE WITH CAUTION," and some devilish little nymph is having a rave up there, flicking switches without discretion. Which would explain why I get weepy while I'm waiting for my bus, because dammit, I'm only going to have 127 more chances to wait for that bus before it's all over! I miss that bus stop already! The same happened in London before I took off after my undergrad. I even started feeling attached to that grimy little apartment that I sublet for the last couple of months.

As for Montreal: I've begun to totally love the way that my grocery store never has fresh produce, and the sidewalks are never clear, and the kid above me never stops running in circles while flinging all of her toys onto her floor/my ceiling. I will even miss the tow trucks with their dying-animal sirens! What will I do without those things! But seriously, I will miss, with heart-squeezing immensity, the view from my bedroom window, where I have probably accumulated 10,000,000+ hours of daydream time over the last year and a half. One day I would like to write some sort of personal essay about all the bedroom windows I have stared out of in my life. They are all unforgettable! At Gascon, I stare at the clotheslines and watch the old couple hobble up and down their deck and hear my neighbour start up his massive diesel truck twelve times a day. Where does he go??? I'll never learn the answer to that question, because I'M LEAVING! This little alley, the Gascon universe, will continue to fill with snow every winter and garbage - er, flowers - every spring, long after I've left. Someone else will look out of this window, and curse that kid upstairs, and wait half an hour for the bus, and track questionable smells in the kitchen, and fish around the toilet tank for the faulty chain. There will be no more pitter-patter of Tycho feet in this apartment! Actually, that's a moot point, since he hasn't done much pittering OR pattering lately. More accurately: there will be no more heavy snoring of Tycho in this apartment! I can't bear to think about it. On the other hand, I can't wait to start the next adventure. Why must I always be such a melodramatic contradiction!

Soon I will explain how I came to spend about five seconds at a hotel in Ottawa this weekend, long enough for this to happen:

Oh, and this:

Actually, I'm not really sure how that one happened.

fearin' no pooch!

2008-03-05T22:59:00.007-03:30

The past few days have been 100% consumed by WRITING LIKE A FIEND to make up for a weekend of total indulgence. Montreal's Dearest, Darlingest Viv is leaving soon to hike the ENTIRE APPALACHIAN TRAIL over the next six months (suddenly air guitar 3x/week doesn't seem so exercise-y), and Saturday was her goodbye bash (even though a series of unfortunate events have prevented her from leaving until after easter). In the true spirit of sending Viv out with a flourish, we kept the party going long after she was sensible enough to go home, and consequently Sunday was spent moving very, very slowly around my brain, prodding here and there with a long stick. It kind of weakens me to think of living on in Montreal without V, so my words here are brief but heartfelt: I will miss you, Sugar Sister! Please don't attach your GPS device to a squirrel! That little red dot on our computer screens will be all we have to cling to!

So you know how I cooked that lasagna last week after having a thesis-related crisis? Well now I am being punished for my evil procrastinating ways! I have eaten lasanga twenty times a day for the last century and I still have barely made a dent in the pan!!! I am in a lasagna purgatory (ha, the first time I spelled that I wrote pugatory. I wish!). I dream lasagna! I see lasagna! I taste lasagna! I AM SO SICK OF LASAGNA! 18 x 9 inches are too many inches for me!!! The worst part is that I switched pork for beef when I was making it, which was not a smart switch, although I saved $0.78. That's three gumballs! Three gumballs and then BACK TO THE FRIDGE BECAUSE THERE'S STILL MORE LASAGNA!

Ok... feeling kind of self-conscious here since apparently no one cares what I had for lunch. But I can't help ranting about this because my pop culture radar tells me that having a big lasagna AND a big orange cat should be a no-brainer, but T has shown very little interest! I guess he knows better than to get involved in my messes. Also, what's funnier than a big orange cat who eats lasagna? THE BIG ORANGE CAT'S CONSPICUOUS ABSENCE! If you haven't already gotten one of The E-mails about it, then I highly recommend that you go discover Garfield Minus Garfield - you won't regret it. And while you read... perhaps some lasagna? I have extra.

Speaking of cats, if you haven't already seen the LOLCat Bible Translation, then you might as well cancel all your appointments and hunker down RIGHT NOW, especially if you are at all schooled in general LOLSpeak!

I iz in teh valli of dogz, fearin no pooch,
bcz Ceiling Cat iz besied me rubbin' mah ears, an it maek me so kumfy. (Psalm 23)

All right, see this picture?

See how my hair is all wavy & nice? I want my hair to look like THAT at will, without too much work. Right now I have two hair looks: straight and up. Actually three, if you want to add my "just had a shower, too lazy for products" Gorgon look. I recently asked D if my hair looks sexy that way and he paused and said, "sometimes." Very diplomatic, that guy. I think my hair looked the way it does in the photo because I had spent hours out in the sun and the summer breeze. Sadly, those aren't conditions that I can willfully reproduce! Help!

-- Off to contemplate baldness

Love That Cat.

2008-03-02T23:11:00.002-03:30

Skipped air-guitar class today... feeling all pent-up silly as a result

2008-02-29T16:54:00.010-03:30

It tickles me pink whenever I read a reviewer say something like, "this was the [best/worst/longest/etc.] book to cross my desk all year!" Get it? Little book with legs? Waiting for the light to turn green so he can cross the desk? Dum-dee-dum, don't mind me?

I have decided that I would like to have a job which requires that things regularly cross my desk, and that I say so in the newspaper. I picture sitting smugly at some top-floor office-building bureau, in a wing-tipped chair, stroking a very magisterial lap-cat who condescends to open one eye when my assistants knock shyly at the door. The only thing to "cross my desk" these days is Tycho, who always aborts his crossing right in the middle because he decides that the computer keyboard is a good place to park his sizeable hind quarters and begin a thorough grooming, starting with the butt area. That's not good for anybody to see, least of all the A to L keys on my keyboard, and some of the punctuation keys as well, which get the brunt of the - er - brunt whenever T squashes down on my computer.

OH NO HERE HE COMES!!!

ASSDFHJFGDHLKJH;FGDLHKKL;,.,;K.,JHKJFGLHKJFGLKHJDFLKG,F;'HJ,.GH;'.'..;,L;

Clean butts all around.

!!!1!!!!!!

Because I cannot add numbers together, AND I cannot use the cut/paste Word function properly, I just discovered that I have 30 pages less of my thesis written than I thought I did. You'd think this would prompt me to write BETTER FASTER LONGER, but instead it prompted me to cook a lasagna from scratch. And somehow I feel better.....

BECAUSE IT'S NOT A REAL BLOG IF THERE ISN'T A CAT:
I keep having elaborate dreams about losing Tycho. I blame this news story, which pulverizes my tender little heart like the raw organ that it is and tosses it to hungry wolves. In "real" life (it's all relative) I don't often have to take T outside of the apartment, but when I do, it takes EVERY OUNCE OF WILLPOWER to resist opening his cage door on the metro just to see if my wittle fuzzy-wuzzy kitten-mitten cutie pie is all right in there. If he ever escaped from his cage he would be a little orange dustcloud, like the Tazmanian Devil, leaving a trail of destruction on on his way to freedom. In my dreams I am always somewhere worrisome, like a war zone, or maybe in the shadow of a tsunami wave, or outside of a huge, burning building. Sometimes D is there, being all "you can't go back into that burning building! It's going to collapse any second!", which dream-Megan interprets as "The building's about to collapse! Move faster! Dive under that smoldering pile of lumber and LOOK FOR THE CAT! QUICKLY!!!!" Very stressful nights, these.

Usually I wake up and T is sitting next to my shoulder, staring at me, making those chirpy throat noises because it's 3am and that's feeding time right? And usually when he sees that my eyes are open his pupils swell to paranormal size and he pounces on my face. Logical reaction, apparently, if you're a Tycho. I try to trump my feelings of pain and discomfort at such moments with my feelings of relief that he is not actually about to suffer some terrible dream-fate, but that doesn't always work...which is why I move his bed into the bathroom at night. That's the only door in the apartment that closes firmly enough to contain him.

Buddy!

Other news: to turn completely unselfish motives into a self-PR pitch, listen to this! I AM FRIENDS WITH A SUPERHERO! Doesn't that suit me? She might even wear a cape if I ask her to.

BEDTIME PHOTO (in more ways than one?):

Try as I might, I can't quite explain this picture. Worth 1,000 words, right?

-- Off to tempt fate with a little more lasagna in my belly

Because there will always be more

2008-02-23T21:57:00.007-03:30

Miracle of miracles, I've actually managed to get a whole lotta reading done over the past reading week! I am still committed to my goal of devouring my library, and the gears are huffing at full speed. Technically, it's not really a goal, since there's no deadline or M.O.... and I keep making false progress by re-reading certain books, instead of turning to new ones. You know how that goes... some environmental or emotional trigger inexplicably drives you to a certain novel or collection that has kept you company in the past.

The weather seems to be a trigger for me, when it comes to old, familiar books. On late-winter days when the wind is cool but has soft edges, and the sidewalks are dry, and people are flapping their bathroom mats against the railing of their stoops to get all the bits of kitty litter out, I always crave The Way I Found Her, by Rose Tremain. It reminds me of Paris, even though I read it long before going there. I borrowed it from my Aunt Mary, who keeps a wonderfully loose and shaggy library of incredible books, squeezed onto a few shelves in the narrow hallway of her Toronto apartment. It seems to me that I used to be in that apartment often, and I read that novel lying on her couch with her cat Daisy watching me warily from another chair. I know that I was fourteen and felt like momentous things were going in my life (I was partially right), and that it was spring, which explains the weather connection.

A few months ago I found a copy of it for sale at a used bookstore downtown, but then I had one of my "responsible spending" attacks and put it back on the shelf. About twenty seconds later the bookstore went out of business. I guess I could just order a copy, but that's not the point - the craving is almost better than the book itself.

I'd already read Housekeeping and Mean Boy when I picked them off my shelf this week, but I re-read them anyway. I had a lot less patience for Housekeeping this time around, but re-reading Mean Boy was illuminating - it's about a league of creative writing students and the self-important English faculty members who alternately teach, coddle, and neglect them. Since reading it three years ago, mostly while lying in the grass on UC hill at Western with the very eyes of the English faculty staring down at me from the tower, my frame of reference for who those characters are has completely changed. I guess personal experience really does colour the way you receive other people's fictions! Who knew?

Other news:
Thanks to Ingrid, I now have good reason to toss out all of my "flimsy excuses" and just go ahead and get a dog. Or maybe two of them?

I'm thinking that maybe, when cardio is over .... action-figure yoga?

And lastly... ever since Viv snapped it 24 hours ago, this picture has been making me laugh out loud (LOL, guys!):

I don't even know what chris & I were looking at. An empty wine bottle maybe?

--Off to restock the cabinet

It's better on top

2008-02-21T21:10:00.011-03:30

So if you were a middle-aged, washed-up wannabe-rich-guy, walking through a cornfield in the moonlight trying to find an old woman with a failing mind who has wandered away from home, and you come across a couple of hooligans who are trying to burn down the abandoned farmhouse that you were hoping to sell to a bunch of urban investors looking for a hunting lodge, what would you do?

That's the question I have been trying to answer all afternoon, sitting here at my desk while Tycho makes wheezy noises in the armchair and my thesis deadline prances closer with every wasted minute.

Guys? It turns out that writing is HARD.

It's at least as hard as scrambling through fifty feet of snow to get to the top of Mt. Royal which, like writing, requires a stuck-out tongue if any kind of progress is going to be made (look closely):

Had Jen, Mark, and Maggie here for the weekend, and when we weren't eating, laughing, or doing acrobatics on my bed (NOT WHAT YOU THINK), we were taking turns being human toboggans, which is what necessitated our wilderness climb on the mountain. Why Maggie is awesome, in a nutshell:

Jen: Oh no. Three girls and a Mark. One small toboggan.
Megan: Does not compute!!!
Mark: We will have to take turns.
Meanwhile, Maggie has already climbed on, and is gesturing for us to quit our unnecessary hen-pecking and just get the heck on board. So we did! Minus Mark, who stayed behind as the generous pusher-offer and picture-taker.

The Before shot:
And, inevitably, the After:

As if having Maggie around to entertain us wasn't enough, we got tickets to go see a taping of the CBC comedy show The Debaters, which was gut-bustingly hilarious. Listen to CBC this Saturday at 6:30pm and you'll hear the four of us trying to make as many unique laughing noises as we can in order to be distinguishable on the radio.

As is usual for me, the experience of being "close" to CBC was thrilling. We got there early enough to get a table at the front of the bar, snug against the stage, and who should be sitting right next to me, holding up signs for Debaters host Steve Patterson to interpret as he ran the show, but Dagmar Kaffanke-Nunn!!! If that means something to you then please let me hug you - we belong together. I guess it's mostly nostalgia, but I get this nerdy little spine-tingle whenever I spy the CBC Montreal tower on my way downtown. Maybe one day I'll be able to tell them that during a job interview! "You guys make me feel all warm and fuzzy! Please, please, pleeeeease hire me!" Groveling always works for situations like that, right?

As for Mix-master T, he is glad to have the apartment to himself again. When there are too many people around he develops this worried look on his face, like he's afraid that someone might leave with his favourite sleepin' chair, or that we might forget to constantly pet him and goo over his cuteness. He's also the kind of guy who hates having his busy routine disrupted. Luckily order has been restored, and he can get right back on schedule:

-- Off to kindle some flames

CAN'T SLEEP CLOWNS WILL EAT ME

2008-02-16T01:15:00.007-03:30

Well, we did it! We, the Sugar Sisters, finally got ourselves together and had the sleepover that we have been discussing since we squinted at each other for the first time across the rim of a beer glass and declared ourselves an official posse. Needless to say, the sleepover consisted of not much sleep, thanks to the Mack truck that delivered five hundred pounds of sugar to Claudine's doorstep at midnight, and also to the endless supply of 70s-and-80s musicals on hand. Ladies, Grease is the word! Especially when you've got an equal amount of grocery-store wine and homemade birthday cake flaming through your bloodstream!!!

The cakes (because there were more than one) were all thanks to Val, who kindly arranged for her birthday to fall almost exactly on the date of our sleepover!

Is that a YAWN that I see? On the right?? Blasphemy! Thou shalt not yawn at a sleepover!!! Admittedly, the yawner is Christina, who, excepting Claudine, is the only one among us with an actual JOB that requires her to be somewhere at some ridiculous hour every weekday morning. Why do people sign up for those things when they could be somewhere like Concordia, where classes are never scheduled before 1pm? One of the myriad ways that the world baffles me.

At the sleepover we tried to be as girlie as possible, with make-up, hair, and pedicure stations set up in Clau's living room, the way we used to have exercise stations set up in the gym in grade school. I even forgot that I wanted to challenge the bravest among us to a Mario Kart rally, because my brain was taken over by the Makeup Fairy (aka Courtney) who insisted that I MUST HAVE SMOKEY EYES THIS MINUTE! SMOKEY EYES FOREVER!!!!

You'll notice from this picture that no amount of makeup expertise on Court's part could undo the wine-teeth damage caused by two hours of imbibing. I am convinced that the only reason anybody ever drinks white wine is that it is the only wine-alternative to looking like a freshly satisfied vampire after glass #2.

Alas, the good times could not last forever. Thank goodness that our dear (but male) friend Jean-Marc didn't actually perform the 3am panty raid he had been threatening, because all he would have found was something like this:

The sleepover happened a couple of weeks ago, and I'm sorry I haven't been updating very regularly since then. I keep hanging out near my bookshelves at home, running my fingers along the spines of the dozens of books that I own but haven't read, whispering empty promises about how I'll be less busy in a week or two and will be able to work my way through their staggering numbers. I think that owning a whole tipsy bookshelf of novels you haven't read yet (without even counting the stack beside your bed, or the pile that's growing exponentially on top of your desk) is a very hopeful act. It means that you keep collecting books and, hence, keep hoping that one day you'll have the sort of life in which you can read all the time, at random, from whichever volume suits your fancy. I keep thinking that that sort of life is arranging itself in my immediate future, and all I have to do is send this one last email, or work this one last afternoon at school, or finish this one last paper. But it never seems to work out that way!

Other news: Visit from the handsome D-dawg last weekend. The only part of the visit I can discuss in a forum frequented by my mom and other adults who think that I am upstanding (sorry, adults) is the part where we went skating, which was incredibly cold and incredibly hot at the same time. Observe the hotness!

Valentines' Day: I spent the first few hours of Feb. 14th wandering a lecture hall, watching for wandering eyes among the students of English 260, who were writing their midterms. Spending two hours watching as students sigh and slouch and doodle little five-pointed stars in the margins of their exam booklets makes you almost hope for a cheater or two, just to spice things up. Jon, the prof I work for, joked about how the least little eye twitch from a student makes all the TAs in the room stand a little straighter and watch a little more closely.

IN A WORLD WHERE EYES WERE MEANT TO LOOK STRAIGHT DOWN AT EXAM PAPERS, ONE STUDENT DARED TO BE DIFFERENT...

I had a movie date with Viv and Jean-Marc on the afternoon of Feb. 14th, which was threatened when I went to the wrong damn movie theatre to meet them, and only realized it after waiting there for fifteen minutes and wondering impatiently why they were both so late. A lot of running and a conveniently-timed metro train got me to the right theatre just in time for the start of STEP UP 2: THE STREETS, which was a hilarious and hilariously bad movie - but I loved it, because I was sitting with two of the best people in Montreal, who were eating cinnamon hearts with me and counting on their fingers the number of clichés spouting onscreen. I have to admit, for Viv's sake, that the dancing in that movie was pretty darn amazing, though they must have spent their entire budget on the choreography because they could obviously only afford a team of drunken monkeys to write the script.

After the movie came my Thursday night ritual: go to Jean-Marc's house, plant my butt on his couch, and watch Lost on his roommate's HD television. Doubtlessly I will blog about the Lost-watching experience at JM's, with a troop of others who are as addicted to Matthew Fox's - er - the show's overall excitement. For now, though, I am at home, waiting for Jen & Mark and their/my friend Maggie to show up from Toronto for a weekend of good times among good friends. I just got a text message from them saying that have crossed in Qc, so they'll be here soon!

2008-02-01T17:52:00.001-03:30

HAPPINESS IS....

...invisible guitar at 80's night!

because TERRIFIC starts with T

2008-01-19T23:31:00.000-03:30

A Tycho post, by request!

Tycho likes to toast himself under my desk lamp while I'm sitting here toiling away. He does it methodically, section by section... he starts with the butt, then moves up to the midsection, and finally roasts his head. He gets pretty hot, too! I have one of those Ikea lights that will melt the erasure clean off a pencile (I've tried it - doesn't smell good). Once he's decently stoned, T will stagger down onto my lap and lie like a lump on a stump until my legs lose all feeling below the knee and I heave him onto the radiator.

By this point he's completely CATatonic (!!!) and can only manage a half-hearted, slow-motion swipe at my hand as I tug on his ears (they're so soft and velvety!). I wonder if it's a fire hazard to have a big fuzzy bundle of fur baking away on the radiator all afternoon? I'm not too worried. I think his drool could put out some pretty big blazes.

Because I should be writing an essay

2008-01-17T21:37:00.000-03:30

Cute tastes good.

Do you ever wonder what your life would be like if represented in cold numbers? Maybe it's the political statistics that are trickling into my subconscious from radio reports about the American primaries... but lately I've been wishing I could have someone total up certain features of my life and hand them to me in a spiral-bound report. Examples: how often do I kiss Tycho on the top of his head in an average week? Or how many times a semester do I miss my metro stop because of an absorbing book/podcast? Or how many exclamation marks have I used in emails over the past year ?

I did manage to get my hands on a few stats - and they are actually kind of embarrassing. But, for the sake of procrastination.....

Number of novels I have on my bookshelves: 385
Number of novels I have on my bookshelves which I have read: 115

I haven't even read a third of my own collection! And yet every time I walk by Chapters on Ste. Catherine, or one of the endless used bookshops near Concordia, it's like there's a giant magnetic (megan-netic?) force pulling me in. And then pulling my wallet out of my pocket.

To be fair, some of those books I have read TWICE or maybe even THREE TIMES. And one of the books I've read is Ulysses, which counts for at least three novels. And Les Mis is in there too, which should also count for three. But still... don't you think I should take a year off just to read? I wonder if there's a government grant for that....

I often think excitedly that, since I'll be done university this spring, I'll suddenly have infinite time to read whatever/whenever I want. I have a vague feeling, though, that I might be idealizing the future... not that I've ever done THAT before.

Sigh.

Things I've eaten in the past week that haven't contained sugar: well, I can only thing of one definite example.....

Girls Who Park in Cars

2008-01-11T20:29:00.000-03:30

[Push play to see the video, as long as you have an updated Flash]

Oh, Wally! I lost count of how many times this video made me laugh out loud. If only I had seen it in high school. It would have saved me from all kinds of social missteps! Especially all those dreadful times that I forgot to do my hair and nails!!! It's nice to see, also, that my habit of making brownies every five seconds is a good one. I just hope that the boys I offer brownies to don't get the wrong idea. I only park in cars with one specific boy!

Okay, so, back in Montreal now! Everything is grand, and it's fantastic to be back on this magic island - though I have a rumbly in my tumbly (like Winnie), and it's called "I MISS THE HOLIDAYS". I miss being in Waterloo with Bronwyn and Adam and Mom - and a full wine rack. I miss baking at 186 Oxford. I miss spilling drinks at Jen & Mark's apartment. I miss toasting my rear section at the woodstove in Ian and Ingrid's house! And I miss waking up with a dog, a cat, and a kid in my bed! And losing at "Streik" (a game played with dice and math skills). Seriously, 9-year-old Linnea is scary-good at a game that, to the rest of us, is almost all luck. In all fairness, it's hard to compete when Linnea's around, because she is a champion. Observe her game face! Total intimidation.

I learned countless things from enjoying concentrated Linnea time over the holidays, and there aren't enough hours left in the day to relay them all - from how to build a Webkinbz empire to how to properly break ice blocks over your head to how to have fun even though it's 7am - she's got it all down. Most of all, though, I learned the importance of wardrobe. Not in an obsessive, fashionista kind of way. More in a "how to dress for the occasion" kind of way. Example? Check this out:

See those pants she's wearing? Those aren't just any pants. Those are ALADDIN pants. They puff out from the waist and are perfect for riding imaginary magic carpets. Why is she wearing them at that precise moment? Because the Aladdin stage adaptation was playing on TV that night, naturally. See what I mean? It's amazing. At another moment in the week Ian and Ingrid were flying about the house, attempting (with the sort of frantic energy that anyone in charge of organizing a family for a timely departure will understand) to leave for a family to-do in another town - and there stood Linnea, perfectly calm, wondering aloud to the dog whether or not there would be snow where they were going, and consequently whether or not she should bring her snowsuit. I think we could all learn something from the serenity and sensibility of Linnea's measured consideration amidst the chaos. It could even be interpreted as an extended metaphor about life: always ask yourself if there will be snow where you're going, and dress appropriately!

Other Ontario fun-ness, in no particular order...

Homemade poutine and mini-burgers!

Homemade love(liness)!

A man and his kitteh:

Also over the holidays: December 27th, 2007, was the official "Negaversary" for Jen & Mark - exactly a year from that date they will marry, and those of us lucky enough to be there will crowd an open bar in their honour. To celebrate the Negaversary, the two wedding parties got together and, in 9(?)-year-old Talon's words, "deposed a toast" to the beauties. Some of the evening, in pictoral form:

Observe Jen's hotness! But don't get any ideas... she's practically married.

Trying to have a moment with Jen, while she tries to have a moment with her camera.

Michael steals the wooly sweater which I stole from Bronwyn... oh no! when will the thieving end!
Bridesmaid bonding:

We hope that if Mark ever has children, he will know which end is up...

I will be back soon. In the meantime, here is what Tycho looked like within an hour of our arrival "home" in Montreal (dude had been waiting for weeks to get his basket chair back):

Attention Men! Get out yer carving knives! Christmas is nigh!

2007-12-25T12:39:00.000-03:30

Hope everyone in the blogosphere is having a fantastical day today!

Beasts of the Holidays

2007-12-24T18:48:00.001-03:30

Quick Christmas Eve post, because after today I anticipate being in a food coma for several days and unable to move my fingers quickly enough to type anything worthwhile!

The best part of these holidays is that I'm getting to see plenty of important folks in plenty of different places, and the best part about THAT is that these folks come with their own menagerie of lovable beasts, and I get to shmooze with them all. I was especially lucky while staying with dear friends in Dundalk, because two particularly cuddly beasts shared my bed, my writing space, and often my imaginary conversations while I had the house to myself.
Behold Tia, the best pooch you could ever meet:

And Casey, toothless and all the more endearing because of it!

Later on, got to shmooze with Blackmore's bunch of furry friends at a small soirée in London. They are a particular breed (Russian Blue, maybe?) that has especially thick, soft fur (you wouldn't believe how soft) and flat faces - as D says, they look like toys! Little furry toys that slay me with their cuteness!!!

And, of course, in Waterloo are the two most infamous kitties around, not only because Thistle (the grey one) has the longest toes in feline history (seriously) and Whisper meows like she's a chain-smoking lil old lady, but because they are wee terrors whom I defy you to resist kissing and cuddling (though they hate that). Buddies!

And, of course, to keep the scales balanced: my handsome little orange dude, the incontestable darling of my widening world! He's staying at my mom's while I'm busy with all of these other shenanigans, and as far as I can tell, he loves it. He complains when Mom gets up at 5am every day, though. Definitely not a schedule he's used to!!!

I was planning to post a lot more, but behold! It is 6:20pm already and there is a Christmas Eve to be celebrated. Stay tuned! Many more pictures need your perusal and they are coming soon!

Brief teaser:

making gingerbread houses with the girls in Montreal:

making a gingerbread house with the girls in Dundalk:

and, deliciously last, making Christmas cupcakes with my boy in London:

Happy Christmas, all!

Much ado about a birthday

2007-11-18T00:43:00.002-03:30

I've been meaning to post this forEVER, but since school has been a bit of a crazy ride lately, all other aspects of life (blogging, writing, playing with T.... showering...) got sidelined. BUT now that all the essays are handed in, seminars taught, professors appeased, I can finally relax a little bit! So here is the original post I created a couple of weeks ago, but didn't have time to clean up & post:

I'm twenty-four now! So far, this is the oldest that I've ever been! In tribute to my new even-numbered, divisible-by-twelve age category, and because I want to deny that the birthday fun is over now that the day has passed, I present you with the Boss Birthday Blog! ("boss," in this case, refers to cool/awesome/terrific, as in, "it's raining chocolate? that's boss!").

This year's birthday was incredibly fun because it was pooled together with three other November birthdays, and thus the Scorpio Party was born; with my Toronto posse and a certain well-coiffed Londonite in town for the weekend, and with the intrepid Jean-Marc and his fearless roommates as hosts, Christina, Courntey, Antonella and I were treated to a night of padded egos and delicious baked goods. Not to mention some incredible gifts, bone-crushing hugs, cheap drinks, and tipsy dancing!

Without further ado and in no particular order, I bring you twenty-four reasons why it feels SO GOOD to turn twenty four!

1. Not too old for Teletubby cake, courtesy of Jiggity-M, the best host ever and certainly the best judge of cake designs the world has known:

2. Old enough to eat cake without getting it all over my face; young enough to still wish cake was an acceptable breakfast food.

1985:

2007:

3. Five years into legal drinking age, I am finally patient enough to develop a somewhat refined taste, thanks to Derek's birthday wine-tasting school:

I was never a big drinker in high school, or even the summer after high school when I was surrounded by teenage bingers at the go-kart track, but I certainly remember my very first ever alcoholic drink. It was a Mike's Hard Lemonade, which I thought was very edgy. I forget how old I was, but it was in the ballpark of fourteen (oh my gosh, ten years ago!), and I was at a field party out behind the Gott water-bottling plant near Feversham. We were all sitting on those lounger deck-chairs that someone had dragged all the way back there from the Gott house, and we had a fire going, right there on the edge of one of the Gott ponds. There was a lot of swimming going on which, as the night wore on, evolved into some skinny dipping and people stealing other people's clothes. I didn't participate in that part but I remember the moment of realization that I wasn't at a 2L-of-Pepsi kind of party. I also remember wondering what would happen if someone got sick in the pond. Would the results end up bottled and sold in vending machines? Anyway, it was Mike's Hard that night, and the only thing I remember clearly is falling asleep far too early to be cool, and waking up far too hungover to doubt that I had passed out of a version of innocence that I didn't even know was under threat. So, ten years on, I'll toast all the members of the Mike's Hard "girlie drink" family, and thank my stars that I've since graduated into the more prestigious class of wine drinkers - even if my wine of choice is $8, and comes from the grocery store (except for the odd contribution from a thoughtful boyfriend who is tired of being given a glass of the stuff each time he visits).

4. Not too old to play in the leaves!

5. At twenty-four, I finally know that to make decent brownies, you must ignore the Baker's Chocolate instructions, which invite you to melt the chocolate and butter together in the microwave. Thanks to Jen, the older and wiser of our pair, I've learned that all kinds of horrifying things will happen if you do that: uneven blending of ingredients, burnt and boiling butter, meltage of the mixing bowl, and general unpleasantness. Double-boiler melting is the ticket!

Here is what Jen & I produced for the Scorpio party, after I learned this hard lesson (not to mention the lesson that one tube of pink icing is not enough for sufficient decoration)

6. I know when it's time for protein! Oh, rubber chicken... why must you smell so fowl?

7. Serious one, so consider skipping if you're only here for the laughs: at 24, I think I have really learned how to make and maintain some of the best friendships I have ever had. Montreal has been kind of me, but these ladies of mine, the Swingin' Sugar Sisters as they've come to be known, the ones who I've gotten to know over the past year and half and who have become some of the most important people to me, have been fantastic beyond words. So, instead of words, a photo montage demonstrating, I hope, the generosity and dedication of these friends of mine. I could never possibly get enough of their company!

8. I've... finally learned how to dance?

That might be a bit of a stretch, but I've definitely learned how to have fun at a bar, and I mean REAL fun, not the kind of "bar fun" that I indulged in during my undergrad, especially during first year. Back then, I lived in the "Zoo," and my best in-residence pal started dating the drummer of the band that played in the basement of the "in" club that year. So we got to skip the line, which was a big deal back then (and I can't deny that I had a bit of a swagger as we were given the ol' nod by the bouncer, in front of everyone who had been waiting for ages to go in). Now I know that picking the emptiest bars, and going with the maximum amount of friends, and not caring who is drinking and who isn't, who is dancing and who is lounging on the [suspiciously-stained] couches, who is coupled up and who is going solo... THAT'S the way to have fun at a bar. Also, $3 beers and the patented Megan one-finger-in-the-air dance move. I'll show you sometime.

9. 24 is the year will I will see Jen & Mark, my all-time-favourite non-blood-related couple, two of my best friends and most dedicated allies, tie the knot!

Some random Jen & Mark memories:

10. I now definitely know the importance of smelling the flowers - and of making sure that the lads who send them to me are made aware of their awesomeness!

From Captial D:

From the J-Dawg:

11. I am currently addicted to the new Stars album. This detail doesn't obviously fit into this list, but it ties into a larger idea: 24 will be another year of new music, and who knows what kind of discoveries will be involved. I'm hoping 24 will also involve some sort of long road trip, with good music playing the entire way. Over the past weeks of essay-writing I've been listening to a lot of Explosions in the Sky/The Album Leaf/Sigur Ros, mellow background-sound kind of stuff, and now I'm SO ready to turn up the volume and get a Gascon Ave. dance party going on. Get the juices flowing again. I found out today that my tri-weekly cardio class is now OVER (I thought there was another week left), so the onus is on me to stir up my own cardio fun - which will, of course, involve loud music.
So, 24: another year of musical memories.

12. It was only once I turned 24 that I went to my FIRST EVER big-city Santa Claus parade. There were floats! There were costumes! There were little kids on their daddies' shoulders!

There were even little elves, who might not have been SO happy to have been dragged out of bed on a cold Saturday morning and made to stand outside for a couple of hours, just to wach Santa trundle past and then turn home:

But I think going out for breakfast was a good incentive!

Giving kids a healthy dose of consumerist cravings with generic superhero enthusiasm:

Bob the Builder has seen better days... and we're concerned about that G.I. Joe in his toolbelt. Hey kids, who wants a little military-industrial complex for Christmas??

13. At 24 years old, I am finally able to say that I've read Ulysses! And, in a related note, that I finally went to Dublin! I guess that latter event happened while I was still 23, but the bragging about it takes place at 24, so it counts.

14. I'm now old enough to feel a bit more legitimate in teaching undergraduates, but still young enough to benefit from Montreal's under-25 dirt-cheap metro pass!

15. Old enough to know how to play pool; young enough to know all the different ways to play with pool cues:

16. Old enough to have moved on from grade school; young enough to have kept the best of grade school alive:

17. Twenty-four years of loving my world. Examples:

Mom!

Derek!

Tycho!

Pizza!

18 & 19 (they count as one) - 24 is going to be exciting: it's the year I leave university (maybe for good!), the year that I head out into the "real" world, and - possibly - the year that I move this show to France! Or somewhere, at least... but, for the sake of having an exciting placeholder, I'll say France.

20. If everything works out, this will be the year that I go see my first ever NHL game! It's all up to Jordan and his ticket-buying skills, but I have faith that it will happen...

21. 24 will be the year that I FINALLY sort through the closet/storage space in the basement of this building, which contains piles and piles of stuff that I seem to have dragged with me from Dundalk to London to Montreal. I get gut-wrenches whenever I think of getting rid of even ONE of those old photos, notes passed in high school classes, journals full of adolescent pining, mix-tapes made from songs recorded off the radio... what do people DO with all of that stuff? Wherever I go this year, I don't think I'll be able to take it all with me. Maybe now that my sister has an actual house, with an actual basement, I can take some recourse in that department. But a lot of that stuff is already in my Grandma's basement. Bits and pieces of me spread out in various family homes... feels strange. But I have this cumbersome sense of all the literal baggage I've been pulling along since leaving home, and I'm looking forward to dealing with that, getting lighter, becoming more free.

I also realize that I have a lot of other stuff that will need getting rid of this year, like the old couch in my living room that I brought here from Woodward, where it had been rescued from a curbside rubbage-heap. It's such an old, ugly couch, with no legs (I've got it up on bricks), and Lord help you if you lift one of the cushions to look at what's festering under there... but I've got so many memories attached to that couch! And to pretty much every single other thing that I own! Oy, sometimes my endless capacity for nostalgia is a bit debilitating.

22. This is the year that I will finish my first novel! Or rather, the first complete draft of my first novel. Who knows how long the whole process will take. But, thanks to Concordia and their uncanny ability to get famous Canadian writers to come and visit us, I got to hang out with Miriam Toews this morning! She wrote A Complicated Kindness, which got lots of press when it came out... I remember hanging up a poster at the UWO bookstore once that had her face on it, and the giant slogan: CANADA NEEDS MORE MIRIAM TOEWS. I looked at that poster everyday when I went to work and kept thinking, "One day, Canada will need more of ME!"

Miriam was SO fantastic, and definitely rebooted my thesis-writing drive, so I'm ready to get back at it. She was just so hilarious and encouraging and spontaneous and, well, fashionable... I wanted to stay in the same room with her all day. Two hours didn't feel like enough.

Here she is!
23. I am that much closer to expanding the Megan-Tycho family:

24. With a Scorpio party to kick off this age, and a fantastic Christmas holiday to look forward to, not to mention all of the unpredictable adventures that await: 24 is going to be exciting, and I just can't wait to find out what it will entail!!!!

The Megan Show Goes Global!

2007-11-04T19:59:00.001-03:30

Conquered Belgium! Owned Dublin! Took over Europe! Why the super-colonial language, Meg? It must be all of that 18th-Century literature I'm choking down for my TA class. I just got back from my transatlantic jaunt, and am finally over jet lag and back-to-reality blues (which didn't last long, because I've got a pretty killer reality going on here). On my final day in Leuven, before leaving for Dublin, the organizers of the conference I was attending took us on a tour of the city, which was very impressive! Lots of oldness! The above picture is taken in the courtyard of what used to be a very cloistered residence for female students of the university, who were closely watched by a band of fierce nuns (or so my imagination has styled them), and who were absolutely forbidden from any kind of socializing with men. Naturally, a potent mix of romantic helplessness and gallant misadventure on the part of university men ensued! Apparently one guy managed to get himself a priest's robe and bluffed his way into the women's residence on a dare. He was discovered and expelled, and thus became a legendary hero! Lucky thing. Around the boundary of the women's residence is a tall fence, and just outside the fence is a massive old tree, which these yearning young men named the Tree of Sorrow, because some of its branches reached over the women's side of the fence, which reminded them of their own unfair banishment. Oh, the pathos! This story inspired a passionate speech from our tour guide, lamenting the crassness and lack of mystery between young men and women in today's world - which was funny because as she spoke I noticed one of the guys on the tour slip his hand into the butt-pocket of the girl next to him. How crass!

Leuven itself is a city full of amusing contraditions. Behold, in all its Gothic glory, the city hall:

And just in front, in all of its glory... giant blue paper-maché dog?

Alluring and artistic, if slightly anorexic:

... vs. beetle impaled on a giant sewing needle?!

Dublin had its own variety of amusement. Like this sign! Whatever you do, don't look down or you'll sink! Jesus, this one's for you...

Donut?

As far as culinary experience goes, I give it to you in brief:
Belgium in a word = chocolate (the rumours are true!)
Ireland in a word = Guinness (though not quite a Megan-favourite...)

Now that I'm back, I'm joining the resounding chorus of "is it seriously November already???" Yes, resounding chorus, yes it is. I can't believe that school will be done in four weeks! I feel like I'm in one of those animated movie montages where the pages of a calendar are flying off the wall and the seasons outside a window are whipping through summer, fall, winter. Anticipated emotional reaction to the end of this semester: relief at being done with TAing for a while (too much 18th-C satire for me), triumph at having read (and somewhat understood) Ulysses, indifference to being done my workshop class (though next week Miriam Teows is going to be visiting, which is admittedly pretty cool. I can't wait to ask her about slaughtering chickens!), nervous excitement about getting reacquainted with my half-finished thesis (we've become strangers these last months), and intermittent bouts of anxiety at being one semester closer to having to make up my mind about next year. ANNND of course, excitement about Christmas in Bronwyn and Adam's new digs! For the first time in a while I will sleep in a bed on Christmas Eve (instead of on a basement couch - though that had its own brand of romanticism), and B has already staked out a spot for the Christmas tree in their mansion of a house. Mansion! (At least by Findlay/Brock/Hancock standards.) The Montreal Santa Claus Parade is on Nov. 17th and I've already pressured at least one person into going with me! Thanks, V! I wish I knew some little kids in Montreal who I could take along. Maybe I should put an ad in the personals: Mommy-wannabe grad student seeks 3-10 yr. old escort to Santa Claus Parade. Would that be a weird thing to do?

Non-sequitor photo op:

After a little heckling...

2007-09-23T22:25:00.001-02:30

Woof, it's been a while, hasn't it. I have to stop doing this to myself.

Here's some news: No PhD for Meg next year. I'm trotting off into the world to see what I'm made of in a non-academic context. Last night I was at a party celebrating the recent graduation of two fellow MAers who are facing their first autumn without school in twenty straight years, and we all felt a little queasy about the prospect of kicking off these comforting blankets and groping for something new. (Wait, how did that bed metaphor sneak in there? I must be tired...) I don't know what next year will be, or where it will be, or what I'll do when I get there. Perhaps I'll have more time for blogging! Oh my! Also I may have to pawn all of my furniture to keep Tycho and I fed, but I'll be "living" - so they say, air quotes and all - so I hope it'll be worth the anxiety I'm feeling about it now. Another thing is that I can't bring myself to apply for any doctoral scholarships right now. I can't deny that this factor has played a major part in this quasi-decision. I'm going to apply for travel visas now, instead of for SSHRC grants!

Here's some other news: the latest lecture I've been putting together for my RA job is about the potato famine in nineteenth-Century Ireland, and while poking around for resources on the net I came across this disturbing little site. I mean... seriously? Cartoony perspectives of the famine narrated by a smiling, bouncy rubber ball? "Hey kids! Guess how many people died during the potato famine? Almost a million! Now let's play!" Ahhh!!! I don't even know where to begin! Then again, after a day of putting this presentation together, I was feeling a little .. well... overwhelmed by tragedy, and this site made me laugh sardonically - which still counts as laughing, right? But still... a bouncy rubber ball?? Really?

I am now two hundred pages into Ulysses! Only eight hundred more to go!!! And the best part is that I think I am more or less understanding more or less some of it... though as I read I have two reference books open around me. One is for Tycho to sleep on (wisdom by osmosis), the other is for consultation about every other sentence or so. I wish Jian Ghomeshi of CBC was still doing his Ulysses reading challenge on the air, but I've missed that by about a year. Now he's on to doing popstar interviews, INCLUDING interviews with famous-people-I-used-to-know. Well, there's only been one of those so far, but it was a good one - you can still download the podcast if you want to hear it! Just go here! her live performances are amazing. I knew Basia during my time at Western, though never well - she was a regular at CHRW while Jen and I were DJing there, and a fellow English student, and a generally adorable and friendly person who I would see at parties, though I can't really claim any connection to her now ... especially since she's become a sought-after musician! Go, Basia! I do remember once sitting on the ratty old couch in the CHRW office and talking to her about her plans to take the summer off and just focus on songwriting. That was maybe three years ago... and look what happened! Explosion! I hope she is the type to google herself so that she finds this (although by now she probably has staff to do that for her. Say hi to Basia for me, Staff!)

Speaking of great people, and also of Jen, guess who I talked to today from Africa! it was great to have some real-time Jen, all the way from the other side of the world. She's still busy saving people's vision and chasing the odd freakishly-large spider from her bed, but soon we'll have her back!

And finally, before I crash, an update on everyone's favourite little orange dude: Tycho has been patiently putting up with a serious diet plan these days. Same food, but a lot less of it. As long as I feed him at the same time every day - and it's impossible not to, because he starts campaigning well before the designated time - he doesn't seem to mind how MUCH I feed him. I've noticed that his middle section doesn't sway quite so much when he walks, so maybe it's having an effect. Look out for some tabloid-worthy Before and Afters soon. I've also been getting more and more courageous about letting him outside. When I first moved here, he was only allowed out on his leash. Then no leash, but me standing right next to him. Now? I open the kitchen door and let him scamper out while I do the dishes or something! Sometimes he pokes his head in and gives a little chirp, like, Are you coming? And whenever I go out, he runs up to me like he has some very important secret to tell me and he'll burst if he doesn't get to tell it in the next five seconds. The neighbours are amused. I noticed that they've asked what his name is - twice - without every having asked for mine. And I think it's wonderful!

Need some bloggin fiber, to keep me regular

2007-09-02T18:24:00.000-02:30

Life has been exciting for the T lately, if not always comfortable. By now I've told this story to nearly all who will listen, in some cases twice... but the short version is that my little orange man got some sort of swelling in his mouth which might have been a bug bite, might have been an infected cut, and might have been my hypochondriactive imagination - but the vet ruled out that last option, based on what little she could see of Tycho's mouth while he was thrashing and spitting and howling upon the exam table. He's going back on Tuesday to be tranquilized and examined more closely, and in the meantime I've been poking little white pills down his throat twice a day, which seem to be doing the trick. The swelling is gone and he's eating again... but I'm still going to take him in for the "tranks" on Tuesday, since the vet recommended he get a teeth cleaning while he's under, and experience has shown that I'm a sucker when it comes to vets telling me to spend money on stuff. I hate the thought of trundling him off again to that place that he seems to hate so vehemently (strange, considering he was entirely indifferent to the vet's office in London). The whole excursion is made almost worse by the fact that Tycho actually likes snoozing in his carry box, so that I feel intensely deceitful when I sneak up on him while he's in there snoring away and shut the little cage door and carry him away to what {for him} must feel like indefinite doom and despair. Luckily for both of us, this Tuesday he will be knocked right out for most of the day and I will be absorbed in a rigorous itinerary of back-to-schoolness, so hopefully the day will pass quickly for both of us and we will soon be back in the apartment, making our peace with each other and rolling the change that still remains in the Tycho Fix-Me Fund jar. Send prayers!

This morning Tycho and I were lolling about the back alley, a regular custom as long as the days stay nice, when all of a sudden he went into stalker pose - tail puffed, stomach to the ground, low growl in the throat - because Lo, another cat that approacheth! I feared a hissy fit and bundled up my little guy, which was not easy (I think he felt insulted in that "don't embarrass me in front of the cool kids, mom!" kind of way), and managed to get him inside. The other cat came up onto the stoop and I watched her from the window (I dunno, looked like a "her" to me)... she was all skin and bones, kind of matted and sad-looking, and she sat down next to my planter and sort of looked around with the cat version of bewilderment. At that moment the radio was playing this mournful Wailin Jennies song, and I'm not ashamed to admit that I got a little weepy, standing there looking out at that presumably homeless, hungry cat while my own pampered little cream puff snuffled around his food dish inside. The scene inspired deep thoughts about the state of the world and such. I wonder how Tycho would feel about a new sibling... to be honest, I think I would adopt another cat in a heartbeat, except that I know I can't afford a second set of vet bills, especially vet bills for an off-the-street cat.

BUT reliable sources (thanks Jenn!) have recently confirmed that there is a pug puppy for sale at the Atwater pet store... I am trying to resist but every cell in my body is reaching out...

So, school. Year two of being a grad student. Last night at a bar I had the weird experience of running into a student I taught last semester, only now he's about to start his MA in my program, so we may very well become actual classmates this year. Grad school certainly does blur some student/teacher lines in interesting ways, and that's just one example... I remember being told that once you bump from undergrad to graduate school, relationships with profs tend to become less authoritative and more collegial, and sometimes downright friendly. I was pretty good friends with a handful of profs at Western (Blackmore being the ultimate shining example), but I do notice a difference now, mostly in the way I am suddenly trusted with important tasks... so far this summer I've helped one former prof to find an apartment in Montreal, and another to find a babysitter, as just two examples. And in turn they've helped me kick up decent funds for my trip to Belgium. We're all winners in grad school!

NON-SEQUITOR

To be filed under "random trivia," here's the chicken coop at my uncle's farm, from which I may or may not have pushed my cousin when we eight years old and playing "Darkwing Duck" (ie. shouting "Let's Get Dangerous" and jumping from the roof). Family folklore says I pushed her, but I maintain that I was on the ground when she jumped and somehow landed head-first on the ground. Looking back, her dive was probably quite acrobatic, had either of us been in a position to admire such things. Instead, though, we both stared with part fascination and part horror at her snapped arm, and then she went screaming off to hide in the drive shed and I went screaming off to get an adult. After that I was crazy with envy, because she got to wear a cast. In fact part of me still feels a little short-changed that I managed to slip through childhood without every getting to wear a cast and enjoying the subsequent attention and sympathy, not to mention the notoriety of having survived some sort of adventure. Instead I am just the cousin who may or may not have pushed the other cousin off the roof. Perhaps no one will ever know for sure what happened... no one except God, and some chickens!

2007-08-09T00:01:00.001-02:30

Very quick post, because I am scrambling to get all my ducks in a row before heading to Ontario for a week... I just can't stay away from that place! Anyway, I'm feeling in a contageously good mood, AND one of my neighbours - the one whose wife just had a baby boy, named Arthur - is sitting out on his deck playing guitar and singing "I Will Survive" and the hilariousness of it all is too much. Once I've posted this, Tycho and I are going to go outside to groove!

This is more of a photo post, documenting a small slice of the awesomeness that was last Sunday.... it began with a hike up the mountain with two of my best girls, then was filled in the middle with some home repair (courtesy of V), bubble-blowing and, for some, ice-cream-eating... and then it ended with a coincidental encounter in La Fontaine and a spontaneous excursion to see a free outdoor ballet show! Love it on the Mount!

The mountain:

The bubbles:

The Dude:

And the park, in evening:

That's all for now, folks!

In Which Tycho Takes a Bath (and expresses his displeasure)

2007-08-03T22:26:00.001-02:30

There he is, my little orange puff pastry, fuming at the gills because I dunked him in the bathtub a few times to get off the outermost layer of engine grease that he acquired during The Adventure last week. He is such a funny guy: clearly, having a bath was not a ride up pleasure mountain for him, but instead of the claws-out fangs-bared no-mercy struggle I was bracing for, he just sat miserably in the inch or so of water I had prepared, and surrendered himself to the ordeal. Now and then he made a pathetic little mewling noise and licked my wrist as I scrubbed. It was a good technique, I'll give him that! I got him in and out as fast as I could because he just seemed so gosh-darned sad. Then he sat on the floor exactly as pictured above and looked dejectedly up at me while I fussed and took pictures. Little buddy! Thus ends the final chapter of his Great Escape. I have since taken him out on his leash, and he seems no different, except that the heat has dramatically reduced his bird-catching abilities. These abilities were quite scant to begin with, and generally involved a half-hearted lunge and an I'll-get-you-next-time glare, but lately he doesn't even bother to arrange himself into stalking mode. I guess it's just too darned hot. All he wants to do is lie in the shade under the stoop, within batting distance of a patch of weeds. Still, he complains loudly when I gather him up to go inside. I feel for the little poopster. These are hot days for a guy who has to wear a fur coat 24/7 and who is afraid of fans.

The truth is, I don't think Tycho would escape again, even if he had the opportunity. He hardly has enough energy to wake me up his usual three times a night.
This is what summer looks like for some cats:
Adventure! Hunting! Stealth! Exploration! Intrigue!

This is what summer looks like for T:

Too hot to roll over. He just opens his mouth and lets me drop kibbles in, and the odd gulp of ice water. And I oblige!

Every now and then someone or something reminds me that people actually DO faithfully check this blog, and such a reminder came my way today, so I'm feeling encouraged. Thanks!

Back in Montreal now after a brief Ontario run-around, and in a week I'm off again for more. This is fun for me, but bad news for T-bone, who stays alone in this hot apartment with only daily check-ins from my kind friends to keep him company. I feel pretty awful about that. I hope it's true that animals can't tell if you've been gone five minutes or five days, but I have a feeling that's a lie made up by people who want other people to stop worrying out loud about their pets while on vacation.

Wow! This post was all about Tycho (again)! Why stop now?

TYCHO vs. FLY

Kapow! Sometimes I call him the Terminator. Other times, like on garbage night when certain little sandy boxes are cleaned out, he is the Turdinator. I think he's proud of both names.

Anyone want to be a live-in sitter for Tycho in a couple of weeks while I'm off? Did I make a good sell?

I would like to conclude this brief post with a shout out out out to Jen & Mark, currently still tromping around Europe on their own great adventure, but somehow still taking the time to send some postcards out which makes me so happy! Go gnome, go! Cross that ocean!
xo

What once was lost has now been found... and is a whole lot dirtier

2007-07-21T13:03:00.001-02:30

Okay, so, I've decided to initiate my return to blogging with a hair-raising tale of adventure and suspense! This story begins with a fish... a rather smelly fish... that was bought at the Loblaws down the street from me by a group of well-meaning Martha Stewart wannabes who vetoed my suggestion that we just order pizza and proceeded instead to carve this giant fish at my kitchen table. I took pictures of the whole event, but then inadvertently deleted them! I'm grumpy about that because they would have been good fodder for blogging. This fish had its eyeballs still in, it had fins and a tail, it had everything! In short, it still looked like a fish, and I generally try to avoid eating anything that looks like the animal it once was. Any vegetarians who read this are now judging me harshly (I can feel your rays of contempt!), but I can't help my need for carnivorous denial.

So I was very wary about this fish. It was placed in a baking dish full of salt (about 5 pounds worth, I'd say, and kosher salt at that so we were all feeling a little blessed that night), scattered over with lemons, and baked at 400 degrees. I spent this entire time eating baguette dipped in balsamic vinegar, thinking it would probably be the only thing I'd enjoy that night, so I'd better fill up.

The point of this story is not that the fish smelled bad (it actually hardly smelled at all, what with being covered over with another 5 pounds of salt so that it was in a little salt igloo), or that it tasted bad (it was, admittedly, quite delicious), but that the oven heated up my apartment to about ten million degrees above bearable, and these faux Martha Stewarts who had taken over my kitchen were actually all big burly boys and I was afraid they would fall over from heat stroke and I'd be helpless to drag their 200-lb bodies out into the fresh air. So I had no choice but to lock Tycho up in the bathroom, which was insulting to him because he thought the temperature was just fine and, being an odd little creature, didn't give a hoot that there was raw fish lying all over the place and really just wanted everyone to pet him and never stop. BUT my poor little man got stuck in the bathroom so that Marko, Michael, and their friend Mark from Toronto who was in charge of the whole enterprise could prop open the stoop door and get some relief.

So from everyone's perspective (except Tycho's) it was a wonderful night in the end: good food, fireworks down at the water that we could see from my street (it was Canada's turn to compete in the international competition, and I can't even begin to describe how impressive it was), and then several hours of playing pool not too badly at the place around the corner. We were even forward thinking enough to deposit the bag of fish remains in a public garbage bin so that my apartment wouldn't fill up with toxic fumes. The next day I realized the single error in our ways: because the stoop door had been open for so long, my whole apartment was a-hummin' with flies. Millions of them! Big and fat and dirty! I spent so long trying to control the fly population in my place... Tycho helped some, and got some extra nutrients as a result (aren't flies high in protein?)... and at one point I noticed a whole colony of them crawling over the window screen in my bedroom. So I slid open the screen and was satisfied to see most of them drift back outside, without the rolled-newspaper mass killing that had happened previously... and then... my near-fatal error... I forgot to close the screen.

That was yesterday evening. I got home ridiculously late last night from an evening that deserves a whole other blog entry, and, feeling deserving of a long sleep, I said goodnight to the T-bone and stuffed my ears with those foamy plugs to guard against the little three-year-old stomper who has moved in above me. When I finally woke up it was almost 10:30am... and I thought, that's weird, usually by about 9am Tycho is having a party on the bed next to me, a little tornado of excitement that no ear plugs could ever block out. And I thought I could hear muffled sounds of distress, so I staggered over the window and looked out. All I could see was my neighbour across the alley, who was waving her arms at me! When I went over and opened the stoop door, a little orange dagger shot inside and disappeared in the bedroom.

Tycho! He escaped! I forgot to close the screen on the window and sometime in the night he lept to freedom! The very thought makes me wince, because there's a pretty significant drop between window and alley... plus he's never been outside without a leash... plus he's just so little and cute and vulnerable! What if he got lost? What if he got in a fight with one of those scrappers that I see hanging around? What if he... gasp... tried to cross Sherbrooke St and didn't make it? My poor little buddy! But he is safe now. My neighbour watched him strut up and down the alley a few times, king of kings, until he lost his nerve and started howling on my stoop. She said he had been at it for almost an hour and she was about to come over and knock! Poor little dude! I was deaf to his tormented cries! What kind of a mother am I?! He was so hungry when he came in. He's also dirty as hell, and smells like a car engine. Seriously, it looks like he's wearing stage makeup for a part in Les Miserables. I don't know what to do with him... leave him a couple of days and see if he cleans the dirt off himself? But I've already noticed little sooty footprints everywhere, and even though I have stolen Derek's navy blue bedsheets and made them my own, there are plenty of other opportunities for Tycho to visibly dirty up this apartment. Especially when he does that thing where he dips his paws in the toilet and then walks on every white surface he can find. But I'm just so glad he's okay! And I'm glad I didn't have to endure any moments of knowing he was missing. And I'm extra, extra glad that he remembered where he lives! All these stoops look the same, but he came right back to ours... part of me thinks, hmm, maybe it's time to let him roam outside on his own a little more... but that is a small, small part. Most of me thinks OH MY GOODNESS MUST PUT HIM ON LOCKDOWN AND SMOTHER HIM WITH KISSES. mmmmmmm machine-oil kisses.

I think I'd better buy some kitty shampoo. This is worse than those days when he'd escape into the Woodward basement and make a bed in the coal. To demonstrate, here he is before his adventure began - note the gleaming white apron, good posture, every strand of fur in its place:

And here he is, as of five minutes ago:

Oy! Doesn't it look like he must have had quite the adventure? It reminds me of Mr. Lee, or even of Jeff, though Tycho didn't bring home any decapitated rodents. He seems to be very grateful to be inside again, but I'm wondering how long it will take for the memory of being free to develop a rosy glow. Will he no longer be satisfied with sitting in a patch of alley weeds on the end of his leash, while I look fondly on? You can take the cat out of the wild, but you can't take the wild out of the cat... oh whatever, Tycho is so small and squishy, how could he ever fend for himself? I must protect him! Little dude!

And I also must give him a bath. I've never done this before, so I don't know how he'll react. I hope I don't lose an eyeball!

Montreal continues to be grand, and I'm sorry I haven't been blogging. It's mostly because life here as picked up speed since school let out, and I hardly now what I'm doing half the time, because there are so many birthdays to celebrate and jobs to finish and songs to dance to! But I hope you're still checking in once in a while!

I am in ur bedz, stealing your zzz's

2007-06-26T22:51:00.001-02:30

Everyone must read and enjoy this website! Enjoy it like cereal: every morning, with some milk. I am campaigning to get Tycho on it. So far I've learned that my captioning skills need work, and that I don't know how to resize photos. Check out at least a dozen of the photos on this website before you pass judgement. And when you do pass judgement, only tell me about it if it's to say "OH MY GOOD YOU'RE RIGHT SO FUNNY!" Any other opinion will be disregarded, fingers-in-ears-and-humming-show-tunes style.

it's been a while, so here is a brief recap of STUFF THAT HAS HAPPENED!

Stuff #1
That's my stoop! And those are eleven people! And after this picture, I shepherded them all into my bedroom, where... we played Taboo. You may be disappointed by the end of that sentence, but don't be! Taboo is full of excitement and anticipation and movement and ... sweat... with that many people crowded on a bed, things are bound to get a bit hot.

For the rest of those photos, you will have to join facebook! Mwahahahaha!!!

Stuff 2.

Completed my duties at the L-shaped desk of the Irish Centre, since the regular dude I was filling in for is now back from Ireland and has reclaimed his captain's chair. I only mention that the desk I worked at was L-shaped because that was a "first" for me - having one wing of the desk computer-and-jar-of-pens-and-pencils related, and the other wing for all of my papers and folders and pictures of Tycho and various effects of organized chaos. There seemed something so grown up about that kind of system. The wing of the L that stuck out from the wall faced the door to the Centre, so if anyone came in, they could have a chair across for me at the desk, and I could feel all secretarial and important! Sadly, no one came in the entire month that I was there, except for my boss. But still! Secretarial and important! Such a rush!

Maybe it's because my job with the Irish Centre is now under renovations, or because I'm realizing that I've hit the theoretical halfway point in my MA degree, or just because I've always got to have something to worry and obsess over, but I've been thinking a lot lately (much more than is necessary!) about the whole WHAT TO DO LATER question. More school? "Real" (ugh, hate that term) world jobbing? Seat-of-my-pants global exploration? Once in a while I try to pick apart the knots in my stomach by actually looking into concrete possibilities, which is what lead me to find this video:

I can't decide if I really want to work at the CBC, or if I just really want to want to work at the CBC. Is it always good to stick your hands into something that you love, and that other people seem to be taking care of just fine? I spent most of Sunday on a greyhound bus (see number three) and heard Stuart McLean explaining his zigzagging path that finally lead him to the CBC, and for a while that filled me with relief. Zigzags are definitely ahead for me and if I knew I'd end up writing stories for CBC radio, I'd zig and zag until the cows come home! But I guess the point is that you don't get to know such things until after they've happened. I also have this idea to be some sort of staff member on a cruise line. I picture Breaker High, with a salary, and lots of breaks to hang out on tropical beaches. Sometimes I get so worried about all of this biz-natch about What Next that I work myself into a really ridiculous state of anxiety. I just don't like all the variables that factor in.

BUT ALL THE SAME, this summer is distracting me nicely from my neuroses most of time, which brings me to NUMBER THREE

I went to Whitby this past weekend to give my best girl (pictured, middle) a bear hug before her departure to lands unknown! Scotland, Poland, Belgium, Germany, and then the real kicker: Ghana, Africa, where she will work with Unite for Sight to bring vision to as many people as she can! It's like the Iron Chef, only... the Iron Eye Doctor. I could go on, but she will probably do a better job of reportage... and if you keep an eye on her blog, maybe you'll be treated with travel updates now and then!

OTHER NEWS

* My attempts to become a pool shark are slowly paying off. I am getting more and more consistent, and not just consistently bad either! I always felt like my university experience has been just slightly compromised by my lack of pool skills, and it's a relief to finally remedy that situation. There is something about leaning on a cue in a low-lit bar and looking sternly at the pool table that is just so cool...

* New favourite place to drink smoothies: Cafe Planete on Mont-Royal, where my dearest friend Christina is chief barrista (is that how you spell that?) and where I can tap away at my writing with scheduled breaks for gossip and gorging.

* Apparently it got up to 40 degrees today with the humidity. Luckily I was tripping along in my hot-day clothes without much worry, but it did occur to me that weather like this must be pretty awful for some people. And also for Tycho! He splays out on the cool wood floor as though it's his only hope of avoiding heat stroke. If only V wasn't allergic, and then I could take him over to her air-conditioned pad for play dates to give him some relief! For now, though, the best thing for it is to take him out on his leash, because his disgust with the heat is trumped by his love of eating grass. Buddy!

This post is dedicated to Jen, whose infinite knowledge of music/good travel deals/MCAT facts/ophthamology is unmatchable

2007-06-13T22:08:00.001-02:30

Lesson from Tycho: if you can't get yourself to the beach, get the beach to yourself! With all the litter that he tends to scatter over the floor when he not-so-daintily digs himself some real estate in the littler box, Tycho has effectively created himself a beach scene in the bathroom, where he spends most of his time. Here he is, cooling his hide in the "swimming pool":

The growing number of bug bites on my legs are proportionally matched to the increasing amount of fun that is going down in the M-dot these days. I've spent so much time in various parks and mountain trails over the past few days... including after-dark time, like on Saturday night, when a small party of us tried to make our way down the mountain trails with the remains of a birthday BBQ strapped to our backs, and only our combined cell phones' glow as light... it was one of those excursions that can now be classified as "a fun adventure," but might just as well have turned out to be "a really terrible idea." But we made it through the dark, dark woods and back under the safety net of street lights and and road signs without incident!

I'm so excited for this summer... on Sunday night I was sitting with a small crowd in a bar on St. Laurent (which is one of those a-buzzin night life streets), with my elbow on the railing that divided our spot with the sidewalk, waving down fellow Concordians who happened to stroll past and feeling so good that if I could have channelled Tycho at that moment I would have expressed myself by dropping to the floor and wiggling around on my back. And things just keep getting better: tomorrow Derek arrives, Claudine's finished thesis is celebrated, and the weekend kicks in with jazz, picnics, and a board game party hosted by yours truly. Plus: only a week to go and I'll be done my office-desky work at the Irish Centre, which, honestly, is a fact that stirs both elation and nostalgia. Elation because it's not easy to sit in that office, plugging away at officey jobs, while the huge picture windows display the outside world in all its thirty-degree sunshiney glory... nostalgia because I am notoriously good at missing things that aren't even over yet, and I think I'll miss the daily structure and sense of gratification that having a regular job gives me. But I've been straining against every seam since school ended, and having more time to myself will only mean good things in the writing department, so rock on!

To those keeping track, my pool skills are improving! I've taken a single lesson, and already I'm a shark. On Sunday I sunk two balls in a row and they were both ones I was supposed to sink! Really, though, I'm just in it for the innate coolness of standing around, leaning on a pool cue.

On an unrelated note, I heard on the CBC today that if you put together how much each individual hair on your head grows in a single day, it would add up to thirty-five meters! Derek says if I believe that then MIT taught me nothing about the media. But it was the CBC! And it was the six o'clock news! I refuse to believe they are capable of factual error or manipulation. This report came about because of the Fifth International Congress of Hair Research happening right now. I think it's harder to believe that such a congress exists than that there is thirty-five meters of action happening on your scalp today!

The Age of Growing Older

2007-06-08T22:31:00.000-02:30

So last time the D-man was here in Montreal, we were getting ready to go out and meet another couple for dinner at a restaurant, and D observed how "grown up" that felt... like we had graduated from the stage of sloppy, spontaneous dinners to that of carefully arranged rendez-vous' with other busy people. (Of course, all of that "grown up" feeling was a bit eroded when we got to the restaurant and saw the giant and very well-endowed mannequin sporting short shorts in its street window). Anyway, lately I've been doing things like throwing dinner parties, and going to see my acting friends perform, and working in an office, and having glasses of wine with dinner... all which seem like very grown-up things. This is good because lately I've been causing myself some anxiety (I always find a way), this time about a mystical place called the "real world" that supposedly exists after school is over and the next thing begins (which might happen as soon as a year from now!). And it has recently dawned on me: a lot of my night tremors about the "real world" come from the fear that I won't know how to make friends in it! I'm so used to rooting out friends in a university setting ... I know how it works, and I'm good at it! I mean, you start a university degree, and it's like all your friends are already there, just waiting for the magic to happen! There are invitations to parties! And gossip clusters in the TA office! Drinks after class! Air guitar every other day! Society meetings and conference planning and literary discussions! Do all of those things exist outside of university? Of course they do! But try telling that to my 3am brain that always starts missing things before they're even over! Stupid 3am brain. I guess the thing I always forget is that the friends I have now, in university, aren't going to vaporize the minute we fall exhausted onto the floor after defending our thesis(es). They will last for a long time! Especially my posse of ladies! Last weekend, said posse spent all of Saturday afternoon and evening guzzling smoothies and eating baked goods and introducing each other to great movies (as in, OH MY GOD YOU HAVEN'T SEEN THAT?! WE'RE RENTING IT RIGHT NOW!!!), and at the end of it all I came home with a belly full of love... love, and brownies...

Me after my first tentative sip of the coconutty, supersweet, deliciously cold Megan vodka special:

Ah man, enough nonsensical ranting... I really just wanted to put up this picture of Tycho hanging out in his apartment, but felt like I had to pad this post with some actual text. But anyway, here he is! Look at him! So chill and polkadotty.

This summer in Montreal is off to a great start, and it looks especially good from where I am perched right now. Thesis is garnering support from influential corners (namely, my supervisor), office job is going suspiciously well (I still feel like I'm constantly on the verge of forgetting to do something really important), I'm going to a BBQ on top of the mountain tomorrow evening and the weather is supposed to be fiiiiiine, then Sunday is more time with the ladies (see above), and, best of all, D arrives in Montreal on Thursday! I feel like it could stay Friday night forever and I would be happy, with so many things to look forward to... but I know it won't last forever... especially because the shenanigans of this week have left me so tired that I feel like my eyes are on fire. Jen, I need some help with my eyes! They burn!

Speaking of Jen, she made an incredible discovery that is seriously messing with my whole perspecitve: visit this website and experience the joy!

Oh yes, and if any of you want a copy of the chapbook, let me know! They're $12... I wish I could give them out for free... but apparently it's important to "break even." I'll sign it for you, though! :)

A new era is blooming!

2007-05-31T19:10:00.000-02:30

The Delirium Press chapbook launch was Sunday night, which means now I am officially in print form! And I cost $12! The night doubled as the launch of Headlight, an anthology of writing by proud Concordians, which also tucked away a story of mine. Now when people say, "so, you're a writer? Have you published anything?" I don't have to say "OH MY GOD RUNAWAY HERD OF ELEPHANTS!" and run in the opposite direction. So good!

And speaking of elephants... here is a picture of two ducks that I took on my way downtown to watch the hockey game last night. The male duck was all "Take your eyes of my prize!" and swimming around to protect his lady friend from me. The scene made me all choked up and homesick!

So I'm working at the Irish Centre now, which is in a building at the top of a hill not far from Concordia, and every time I walk up there I feel like I'm approaching some enchanted fortress that's guarded by dragons. I half expect to come across a piranha-filled moat on my way up (witness episode 2 of Clone High). Not that the Centre's building looks like an enchanted fortress (you'd have to go to McGill for that), but it's quite guarded, if not necessarily by dragons... the doors are locked, and can only be open by those lucky few holding a Jack Bauer-esque electronic card or the security guard. This all has something to do with the Jewish Library being housed somewhere in there, and some sort of riot that happened in the 70's, but I don't know the details. Anyway, so I feel like the security guard and I share an understanding, and it's a little brightness to start off some scary afternoons. He is filling in for the regular security guard who is on sick leave, and I am filling in for the regular Irish Centre dude who is on holidays, so both of us are a little bewildered at all times. Today, my first day flying solo in the office, there were about five million deliveries made to the Centre before I even got there. Together the guard and I fumbled our way through them ("what exactly is an invoice, anyway?") and all was well. I think I ran a tight ship for the afternoon. Tomorrow... I might emerge covered with piranhas! Time will tell.

The New Pornographers have a new album coming out in August and today I heard the first single! It's so great, and for some reason that singer's voice reminds me with force of walking to class at UWO in the fall. you can hear it here! (wouldn't it be creepy if it gave you the same memory? especially if you never even went to UWO!)

In other news...

In Which Megan Updates, And You Decide Not To Give Up On Her

2007-05-22T22:34:00.000-02:30

Okay, here's the deal: I spent so much time uploading pictures to this blog update that now I am intensely tired of this computer screen and I need a break! So this will be a low-text (but HIGH-EXCITEMENT) blog post. It's a pleasure to be back in the cypersphere after a long holiday... I've spent the last month or so traipsing around Ontario and ostensibly readjusting to Motown, and it's been grand.

I NOW PRESENT YOU WITH SOME PHOTOGRAPHIC PROOF OF GRANDNESS

In Whitby, where she has settled until Poland & Africa steal her away from us, Jen baked a pie:

...which Mark and I (and sometimes Indy the Dog) gratefully consumed.

Keeping us entertained and out of trouble for two days was hard on Jen. WE LOVE YOU

One more thing about Whitby: it is close to Oshawa! And here is something about Oshawa that you may not know: they have a used CD store which sold me a DVD of Darkwing Duck episodes for $20! Behold, Mark contemplates his disbelief/envy that I was able to score such a deal:

I also spent some good time at the fella's house in London, where televisions were smashed with sledgehammers (in the "safety" of the backyard... sorry no photographic proof for that one), where House was adored, where UWO was visited, and where we got all dolled up for the town:
(notice the sledgehammer in my beloved's hand... there's your proof!)

I spent some time in Waterloo, too, with my darling mother, sister, and (for the last bit) my equally darling bro-law... so much happened! The Amy Millan show in the 'loo (the city, not the other place), catching up with Meredith and McDreamy, and lots and lots and LOTS of jogging (which bronwyn did with her Runner's Choice posse, while I waited in a coffee shop). We also had a dinner party! Bronwyn made nearly all of the delicious food, coolly handled the "fire" incident, and kept us all quite happy... all while Mr. Bronwyn was gallivanting around in the mountains. So if she looks a little stressed in this picture, cut her some slack (and take a look at those pizzas, daaaaaaaaamn):

Did I mention that she made the desserts? I ate two...

Feline news from Waterloo:

WHISPER LOLLED

And Thistle tried to steal other people's men, like the "lady of the night" that she is!

(unbeknownst to bronwyn & adam, when they adopted Thistle from the Humane Society they also adopted half a dozen peanut-sized Little Thistles bulging in her uterus!)

Other journeys...
I also took off for Ye Olde Family Farm with my mom, which, as always, was tremendously serene and restorative... and full of deliciousness!

Got to hang out with my Grams, who was once my faithful companion during many summer holidays in my childhood AND during the summer between high school and university, which I spent living at the farm and working at the Go Karts down the road. What a summer... what a Grandma...

Mom & I drifted back to Waterloo via Dundalk, where I got to see my D-town folks and sashay around a leafy backyard with my surrogate lil' sis, who gets more beautiful & talented every time I see her (I must remember to tell her so):

We did everything... we ate delicious homemade hummus, we did cartwheels, we played fetch with Tia (our other family member of the canine persuasion), we swung on swings, we studied gardens, and we even made our very own bags!

(Can you guess whose is whose?)

oy... and how do you expect me to readjust to Quebec after all of that Ontario goodness?! I'll admit, it does help that my return to Montreal was buffered by D's company, but now I must face reality! Lucky for me, reality is pretty kind, and not too far divorced from fantasy: I get to spend a lot of time writing, a lot of time walking (especially since the metro strike, which began today and made me feel even happier about my choice not to buy a metro pass this month), and a lot of time hanging out in parks! Here is one of said parks, which I meander through on my way to work most days:

Okay folks, it is wayyyyyyy past my bedtime, and I must turn in. I have more to say so stay tuned! I am back and full of updates! And, if you have time to kill, you should sign up for Bloglines!

And that is enough exclamationing for one post.

TYCHO SLEEPS WITH HIS LIL PINK TOES IN THE AIR

lady and the tramps

2007-04-17T00:06:00.000-02:30

Well well! It appears I have successfully completed my first year of post-grad study! I'm halfway to being a Master! Now all I have to do is write a book... and take some classes... and appear smart to the masses. But I can rhyme and that's already half the battle.

Funny, the end of classes & essays hasn't really meant the end of madness... but now "madness" involves good laughs and long grocery lists and bubble baths and loud music, instead of Microsoft Word and a pot of coffee.

(I don't actually drink coffee, but it's kind of a romantic idea, so I'll throw it in there)

T & I are getting excited because mom comes to visit the day after tomorrow! I have been telling T over and over that he must clean up his little toy soldiers that are scattered everywhere, and if he could please start pooping poops that aren't quite so smelly, we'd all sleep a little better. So far neither has happened. Still smelly Tycho poops, still soliders everywhere. It's a metaphor for the state of the world, I think. Tycho's way of taking a stand.

Or should I say, a squat...

[caption: "This one's for you, Bush!" *poot*]

SO
in less than a week I will be in Ontario... seeing family, seeing boyfriend, seeing Jenfriend, seeing dundalkfriends... I am going to have to get me some mean shades for all of that brightness!

I spent most of tonight blissfully sprawled out in that big old armchair that used to be Adam's family's, thinking, man, wherever I end up going after Montreal, it has to be somewhere where I can ship big old armchairs. I don't think I could survive without this thing, especially since The Great Furniture Rearrangement. T couldn't live without The Chair either. Whever I come home from school I can hear him meowing mournfully on the other side of the door, but there's always a T-shaped warm spot in the blankets on The Chair, so I know he has been sleeping until the moment he heard my keys, regardless of his insistence that he has been starving for hours and thought he was near death.

Off to finish this wine and sweep up some more tumbleweeds of T-fur!

Almost over...

2007-04-12T00:10:00.000-02:30

One more essay to go, and then it's Ontario-or-bust for a good wee holiday! This week ends with a Friday the 13th, so I am sweating to get this puppy off the presses and into the drop box before that, for good luck. But if I don't, that's okay, because this Friday also happens to be the birthday of a very important not-so-little girl, who is not only a track star, a public speaking star, and a many-many-other-things star, but also happens to be my surrogate little sis and thus is quite important to me! So I think this Friday will be lucky for everyone, especially her. Happy almost-your-birthday, Linnea!

In the meantime, the paper-sweating continues, but to crack a momentary fissure of relief here is a picture of two cute lil pipsqueaks who share my DNA! (aren't they lucky?) (Actually, the real reason they are lucky is that they just had a big European holiday with Mommy & Daddy. Padma, if you keep taking them to all of these cool places with you, what are they going to do to rebel when they graduate from high school? "Come on Rishi, we're free, let's go backpacking around Europe!" "Nah, it's been done. Let's just go to med school.")

Just in time for Easter, Tycho practices his best "bunny rabbit"

2007-04-02T23:53:00.000-02:30

Skintense (a post of complaints)

2007-04-01T22:48:00.000-02:30

Back for yet another Sunday evening post!

I am currently feeling annoyed - mostly because of taxes. I try not to let them get to me, but they always do! Somehow my shoddy record-keeping skills has made it appear as though I have a $16,000 surplus. If that was true, why am I worried about not having enough work this summer?!

I am also annoyed at facial cleaning products, and their lack of working on my skin. If anyone has a solution to the year-long breakout that's been having a party on my face, do share! I've tried everything! Maybe the key is just not to try, but a girl can only take so much passive-aggressive skin therapy before an artillery of foam washes and deep cleansers and alcohol rubs and moisture creams is lathered into action. I have never been engaged in such a long-standing stalemate with my complexion before. It baffles me. Is it from stress and the consequent spectacle of hormones? Doubtful - if anything, Concordia is less stressful than Western, and now I even have a giant double bed that affords me long, luxurious sleeps, so I can't imagine what little hormonal misfits are parading around in my system, thinking they know what's what. I just hope this little problem "clears up" soon, but that's what I've been hoping since September, so I'm starting to wave the white flag (aka Neutrogena Oil-free Cleansing Cloth). Mom is coming to visit soon and we're planning on getting facials together, so hopefully that will be a good step forward... maybe I've just been watching too much Degrassi lately and am starting to get Junior High sympathy skin. Although, really, for a show so boastful about its uninhibited honesty about teenagedom, there are suspiciously few skin crises happening. Pregnancy, drugs, divorce, all admittedly unpleasant businesses for a teenager - but what about that devastating moment when you get out of bed and count five new friends in white hats on your chin alone? And it's your day to give a presentation in biology about foot diseases? And that guy who once dedicated El Scorcho to you at a coffee house will be there in the back row, smirking? (possibly based on a true story)
When you're caught in a moment like that as a teenager, it's hard to imagine anything worse.

Luckily, when you're caught in a moment like that as a 20-something career student, you can hide yourself in cover-up and skip off to a tea party with your friends, knowing everyone will be too polite to say anything, and the boy who you'd mind seeing such a crop is off in another province and has a kind memory. I was lucky enough to be such a girl yesterday, and spent the afternoon at Faye's apartment with several other beauties, each of us wearing a fancy dress and picking through the selection of tea that we had each brought, sampling everything we could and listening to classical music and eating cucumber sandwiches as though that was what we did every Saturday. I skipped putting sugar in my tea (another of my theories about Skin of Death = too much sugar in diet) and found out that I actually like it that way. Plus it was so beautiful outside that I got to walk home, which was nice except for the 500 times I had to stop and find a bathroom along the way (all that tea... who woulda thought...). I have some nice pictures from the day but we were all a little scantily clad as per Faye's instructions, so it's perhaps not in good taste to post them here. Use your imagination! And if you do, give me clear, flawless skin! It's what God intended.

I know one guy who doesn't give a hoot about complexion, and thusly has a lot to teach me. And he looks like this!

This post is dedicated to Mary R., without whom there would be no Jen

2007-03-25T23:38:00.000-02:30

OH...MY...GOSH
I don't even think I remember how to use this thing. Apologies for the lack of contact lately... Tycho and I took an extended holiday to Antarctica and only just got back, jet-lagged and parched, and Tycho is cranky because all of his pictures of the penguins came out like radioactive-white windscapes. I told you to change the exposure, Tycho! Anyway, we decided that going to see that penguins at the Biodome down the street is much less complicated, except one of the Lynx cats in the boreal forest exhibit was making eyes at T-dot last time so I need to be careful. ANYHOW we got back to find a gift waiting for us, from my dear friend and Tycho's dear auntie, who commissioned Loblaw's to put together this little piece of porcelain love:

Yup, that's Tycho's handsome mug... on a handsome mug. If you are a loyal Livewire reader, you might be aptly reminded of this picture:

Immense thanks to Jen and her artistic abilities, and to Loblaw's and it's ... uh... PhotoLab abilities. Jen, you are awesome and we both love you to the tips of our tails!

So, life has been nuts lately ... I haven't even had a chance to read other people's blogs, which is kind of a treat in a way, because I just checked Bloglines and see that there is an immense amount of catching-up for me to do, including THREE updates from Jen since I was last in this interwub space. Concordia just pulled off its annual graduate literature conference, and while my actual role in it was quite small (set up the lunch, eat the lunch) I still felt exhausted by it all. It was pretty great to spend all that time with my M-town crowd, though, and we capped off the brain-fest with a bit of a cheese'n'gravy foodfest:

Mark of Jen'n'Mark, I'm posting that poutine picture just for you! It's like porno for the tastebuds.

There was also a big celebratory end-of-year creative reading at the Buddhi Bar (which was pretty much the greatest place to read ever, thanks to its crazy, unclassifiable decor and basement-in-That-70s-Show feeling), and that was incredibly fun, and I got to pretend I was Virginia Woolf for a while, minus the pesky madness bit.

In other news, SCHOOL IS ALMOST OVER which is just about the strangest thing to think about. Every time I remember that I'm teetering on the very furthest edge of my first MA year, I get nervous little electric shocks up and down my spine. Many words have yet to be written and spoken before I can collapse back into my feather duvet and pronounce round one all over, but come Easter classes will be finished and summer will be here for me! And what a summer it'll be; I've recently picked up a gig as a slush-pile reader at Maisonneuve magazine, and I'm still doing the research thing, and the TA thing, and just the general, undefinable Megan thing ... those are a lot of things. Tycho, as usual, is doing his thing with impressive determination, which right now looks like this:

(look closely, that is some poor student's essay upon which he is drooling)

Also, I will cap this first-in-a-long-time entry with a wee bit of news... and for the sake of modesty, said bit of news will be communicated in photo form (with the help of a couple of tongues, which is appropriate, all things considered):

LOOK JEN IT IS 11:40 ON SUNDAY NIGHT WHICH MEANS I POSTED DURING THE WEEKEND JUST LIKE I SAID I WOULD WHOOOO!!!

One more thing: in addition to the dedication at the top of this blog, I would also like to extend a shout-out to my Auntie Helen, who got worried and called my mom when I didn't post for a long time. Oh man, I wish I was going home at Easter to see everyone! Eat some ham and hug some hugs for my sake, okay?

Back soon... I promise.

And then there were two...

2007-02-25T19:28:00.000-03:30

Well, my apartment is always a little bit vacant, with just T and I to occupy a 3 /12 (in Ontariospeak, that means a "one bedroom")... but now it seems emptier than ever, because it just spent the last three days stuffed full of rowdy, romping Ontarians (four of them, to be exact) and I felt like I was completely in my element. Everyone making drinks, making food, making conversation, making music (not in a dirty way), and, for about 4% of the time, making ZZZ's. Jen & Mark were here for the weekend, it being our annual Winterlympic time (though we forfeited skiing due to the threat of broken bones and the reality of broken budgets), and then to our mix we added my dear old Woodward roommate Dawson, who was travelling through town with his/my friend Elodie, both in need of a place to crash. So we all squeezed in here for two days/nights! Now I am extremely exhausted, barely able to see the keys... and I owe a bunch of emails.... and somehow I woke up one morning this weekend and realized that I had JOINED FACEBOOK the night before, in a moment of weak judgement and strong skills of persuasion from Jen. If you don't know what facebook is, GOOD! STAY AWAY!!! people always warned me it would take over my life, and people are right. I suddenly have a burning urge to "check my wall," and until this weekend I didn't even know what that meant. Plus, I've only been on for about three days, and already I'm behind on facebook goings-on.

Anyway - thought I would post some pics, so that all y'all who are faithful blog checkers won't be disappointed too often.

Here is the menage-a-quatre that I hosted this weekend (thank goodness I upgraded from a single bed this year):

Good times, good times... a pleasure to see Daws again, and to get to know Elodie, and, of course, to do the "Jen & Mark" thing, which is one of my all-time favourite things to do in the whole world:

We spent some time all together just chilling in my apartment with the T-man, who officially has a crush on Jen (and would hate to know that I was announcing it to the world, but luckily he can't read yet). The minute Jen sat down, Tycho shyly but coyly crawled up beside her, and she remained his prefer lap throughout the weekend. What a ladies' man! Observe:

And, even though there were ten of us spending Saturday night together on the town, we managed to get an unreserved table at L'Academie (vrrrry delicious montreal spot) after waiting only about 1/2hr out in the Montreal cold!

And, of course, this morning was the "Mark In Montreal Breakfast Special": poutine from Steamies.
It was so sad to see them all go... Jen & Mark back to T-dot, Dawson & Elodie on to the second half of their road trip to Boston. Still, I am in dire need of some serious rest, so I suppose it's for the best that there will only be one of me sleeping in my bed tonight.... well, one of me and a cat.... and thus ends Reading Week 2007, which actually involved a surprising amount of reading from Monday to Friday... and a surprising amount of shenanigans on both weekends!
Last weekend, of course, was "Quebec City With The Girls," generously and graciously hosted by Claudine's wonderful mom and dad, who cooked delicious things for us, including crepes for breakfast, expertly flipped in the air for our pleasure:

We did and saw EVERYTHING... including giant plastic Bonhommes....

Sugar on snow.... (apparently I am seriously lacking in the "how to roll a good syrup popsicle" department):

We even went tobogganing, right in the middle of the city! You can see Chateau Frontenac in the distance, from the top of the hill.... all four of us squished onto a toboggan, which, let me tell you, would be a great way to break the ice if you were ever out on a hot but uncomfortable date and happened to pass by a giant ice track like this one. I mean, people have to straddle other people... legs and arms are going everywhere... there's no room for shyness. Plus, you get the thrill of rocketing down among throngs of tourists aboard a wooden sled! I'm amazed that I had never done it before....

You must pick your sled very carefully, with attention paid to aerodynamic qualities and the wetness of the cushion thingy that you will be forced to sit on...

Next, climb the mountain!

Observe: beautiful view of Chateau Frontenac (which will happily distract you from what you are about to attempt).

To celebrate our survival of the Great Toboggan Ride, we followed Clau to a fabulous bar, where many drinks and jokes were consumed at a feverish pace...

.... and there may or may not have been 3am poutine involved....

Oh look! There's my wallet on the tray! Poor old wallet... it has been sadly lost... along with all of my ID cards. I will spare you the tearful story and say only that I am a newfound master of "keeping my cool," and also that I am now in the possession of a brand new wallet, which the wonderful Jen fashioned for me out of duct tape and plastic container lids. I may still be without any form of identity at all, but two things make me happy:

(1) new duct tape wallet, made by Jen

(2) the fact that I have never once been ID'd in montreal! let's hope that trend continues while I replace everything....

Also, I HAVE GOOOOOOOOD NEWS and if you've made it all the way through this blog entry, this is your reward! Even though it's more of a reward for me... but here it is: I may be enough of a dope to loose my wallet (I am convinced it was stolen, and not lost, because you may not believe this but I have been quite good at not leaving it places over the past few months)... well, the good news is that despite being a dope who loses things, I am also enough of a writer that I AM GETTING A CHAPBOOK PUBLISHED WHOOOOO!!!

I submitted a story to a contest, it won, and now Delirium Press is turning it into a chapbook! The launch is in April, and the BEST PART OF ALL is that Steven Heighton is also having a chapbook launched at the same time by Delirium, and he is one of MY FAVOURITE CANADIAN AUTHOR EVERRRRR. He wrote The Shadow Boxer, which is possibly the most emotionally potent and personal book that I've ever read. I read it towards the end of my teenage years, and that book gave me that little nudge out of one era and into another, just what I needed. I can't believe I'm going to meet Steven Heighton, eat with him, give a reading with him! Every time I remember, a balloon full of confetti explodes in my stomach.

In other great young-artist news, my darling, dearest friend Mark (of Rouen - Edmonton - Vancouver fame, not of Jen & Mark fame) is now starring in a short film put together by his acting school and directed by some awesome director (I forget which one - from Smallville maybe?) ... and you can watch the trailer! He is the one who looks like this:

And the trailer looks like this:

And that is all from my world right now.... but only because I have to sleep or I might be in terrible shape! Bon nuit!

Happy Heart Day!

2007-02-14T19:31:00.000-03:30

For Valentine's Day, I gave myself... a job! At least, I hope I did. I had a job interview at a bookstore today and managed to keep my slightly-out-of-control feeling confined to my guts, so that my face showed only poise and control. This is a skill I learned from hanging out with Derek. Go go gadget poker face! I really, really want this job, and I really, really think I'd be good at it, so ... fingers crossed!

Tonight I am hanging out with my special T-Dot Valentine. We plan on chasing some plastic soldiers, curling up in some comfy basket chairs, and purring the night away.

...and my peg leg's gone all weird.

2007-02-12T22:30:00.000-03:30

I hear we're supposed to get a dumping of snow this week, so today might've been one of the last days for me to get a good look at Ol' Betsy on my way to school. I have heard about past winters when she was buried up to her ears in snow drifts. But I am beginning to be just a bit suspicious of other people's horror stories about the ferocity of Montreal winters ... not that I think anybody is lying, but come on, I was completely hyped up for daily Mt.Everest-ish treks, with ice picks in my boots and ski goggles on my face and only a 50% of making it home from school with all my digits still attached. So far I have managed to get by quite fine with the simplest adjustments to my usual attire ... a pair of long underwear under jeans, an extra pair of socks, a hat knitted by Jen's mom. Tycho has also been dealing quite well by adding just the slightest bit of insulation to his fine frame, and by staying close to the radiators.

Speaking of being warm.... Jen, Mark, & Megan's Annual Winter Adventure Weekend is coming up! Past such weekends have lead to all sorts of thrilling, swilling emotions - excitement, exhilaration, inebriation, and my favourites: heart-stopping panic followed by sweet, sweet relief. This year, for the first time ever, J&M are migrating to Montreal for Winter Adventures! Dudes, I was in Parc La Fontaine yesterday, and I don't want to build this up for you too much, but - people were sledding! People were sliding! People were having adventures! Soon we will be one of them!

This year, to take full advantage of the new location of Central Command (aka my apartment), we are going to go skiing, probably here, though I have been slacking off a bit in the researching-best-rates department.

Here is a taste of last year, to put us in the mood!

Le Ski:

Le Skate:

Le Mark:

And, for a laugh, remember this little mishap?

In other news... there may be a rumour floating around that some policemen were at my apartment on Friday night, but don't let that change your squeaky-clean opinion of me - unless it's a good change. I MIGHT have been having a bit of a party. I MIGHT have been playing my music a little too loud. But it was only 10:30! And it was good music! Doesn't that count for something? In crappy French I told the cops that I am from a farm where we can blast our music all the time and no one is around to hear, and I think my smooth talking got me out of a ticket. That, and the fact that when they busted down my door, all they found were a bunch of wide-eyed, candy-eating, harmless-looking students sitting around a board game. Not exactly the action they were expecting, I'll bet. Still I'm hoping this means that word will get around Concordia that I throw good parties, and maybe that means I'll get invited to good parties!

Speaking of good parties, lots of really good writing- and career-related things are happening (or have the potential to happen in the next little while), but I am only telling you this to tantalize you, because I am under an oath of secrecy on one thing, and am under an oath of don't-jinx-this on the other ... but it will all be revealed over the next few days. So stay tuned!

Something else to report: next week is reading week, which is kicking off with a trip to Quebec City avec mes filles! I will eat beaver tales, buy souvenirs, and fantasize about being a princess in the Chateau Frontenac (even though I know it's not that kind of a chateau). And there will be plenty of pictures to show for it, I'm sure.

Tons and tons and tons of work to do in the meantime, just like everyone else. Sorry for the sporadic blogging. You'll all thank me when I actually manage to graduate!

Here is a hilarious video for your trouble, which might make you feel better about all the complaining that most people (I am a perfect example!) tend to do this time of year...

2007-02-07T21:52:00.000-03:30

OOOOOH blog how I've missed you.
It's time we hung out again, you and I. I miss your words and the way you give me a sense of accomplishment for doing something other than school. I also like how you let me worry at my life like a favourite bone! Unfortunately I have just used up most of my allotted procrasti-time for the day by filling out Jen's curs-ed email quiztionaire (which I abandoned halfway through in favour of blog - though I suppose I could combine the two...)

ANYWAY my point is this is brief, dear blog, but I wanted to let you know that I haven't forgotten you. I have been busy and for this I am deeply, forehead-touches-the-floor-in-a-bow sorry.

THINGS THAT HAVE HAPPENED IN MEGAN-LAND

thing the first - Camera Obscura with Dan-Vi, who I like to call Dan-Very-Cool, when she's not listening. Or even when she is!

thing the second - read three books: Hawthorne's The Scarlett Letter (thank goodness that's over), Urquhart's Away (a weird mix of absorbing/annoying, depending on my mood and whether or not I was reading while squished up in the back of the 24 bus, trying not to catch anyone's cough on the back of my neck), and, for old time young-adult's sake, Phyllis Naylor's The Fear Place. I have a whole bundle of "preteen" books that I just love - they provide a good, solid two hours' entertainment and fondly remind me of public school book fairs and those little newsprint book order pages we'd get in grade 6-8, full of books like Friendship Quiz Book and What Is Happening To My Body? (a question that still sometimes perplexes me).

thing the third - workshopped (yes, that's a verb) Chapter One of the Officious Grad Project That Starts With An N and Rhymes With Hovel ... and it went over quite well. Beer was consumed as a congratulatory result.

thing the fourth - I WALKED INTO A DOOR (yes, you heard it right) and severely damaged my nose. It was a little blue for a while and now it clicks every time I touch the bridge. Is that bad?

thing the fifth - helped my friend Michael and company to move several heavy (oh so heavy!) boxes of books from the post office to his digs. It was a very gendered enterprise - my job was to bake brownies, hold open doors, and drink beer. And offer helpful suggestions. I think I performed well.

thing the sixth - this one is IN THE FUTURE! friday night is Gascon Games Night #2 ... which means Tycho and I have to turn this place into party central for the ladies who are coming over expecting fun and tacos.

thing the seventh - helped Derek move... from a distance. Happy new house, D-dog!

Okay, I am officially out of time, must be off to other things (like listening to Outfront and eating chocolate cupcakes).

THINGS THAT HAVE HAPPENED IN TYCHO-LAND:

yup. that pretty much sums it up for him.

The sun makes everything extra cold

2007-01-26T19:42:00.000-03:30

Yesterday on the bus there were two little wee kiddos behind me eating ice cream cones, and the not-quite-as-little one was wisely explaining to the very-very-little one that ice cream is a good thing to eat right now, because during the winter the sun makes everything extra cold. The very-very-little one, evidently tired of his Mr. Know-It-All big brother, just said "I know that already."

Right now I am trying to decide whether or not to apply for a job as a composition teacher next year and my mind is going in circles! As such, I will do the ol' pro/con approach...

Prose
I would have my verrrry own class to teach! Composition class is for undergrad students who flunk the English Comprehension Test and need to improve their writing skills before they can go on... so it's basically ESL taught by grad students... I would get a list of thirty students and just run with it! Make my own syllabus, design my own assignments, make up fun holidays like Semicolon Tuesday and Comma Splice Friday. And if I find myself kicked out the door of Concordia at the end of this MA stint with nothing but God's accusing finger and disembodied movie-trailer voice saying, "Thou shalt go forth and get a job!" - well, I'll be qualified up the wazoo to teach ESL somewhere. And, of course, a nice side benefit to the whole thing is that I'll make some serious bling!

Connnn(stantines?)
I won't be a TA anymore! I'll be teaching grammar instead of literature - and that seems very blah-y to me, except that I can see the importance of it, especially after marking essays by students who got the green light on the comp test and are supposedly a-okay in the grammar/essay-writing department. (Disclaimer: in case any of my students read this, you are all awesome, and I blame shoddy high school instruction for any grammar mishaps) ... Oh yes, and the marking - I will have tons and tons and tons. Not to mention the amount of time it would take to just set up the course in the first place. My friend V is teaching it this semester... her class is every Thursday night... so basically, from Wednesday morning to 9pm Thursday, we all know better than to ask if she wants to "just hang out." So I would be signing up for a serious time commitment. After this year is over I'll still have two academic classes to take (and my thesis to write), but I'm thinking that maybe I can take one (or possibly even two!) academics over the summer, which would free up next year for workshops and writing. Which means it might be conceivable to teach a class like Comp. But then again, I'm hoping to keep on as an RA, hopefully with Manish... AND I always have this feeling that I'm constantly trying to get extraneous work out of the way, all the reading/writing/thinking for my academic classes and the TA and RA jobs, so that I can get down to what I'm really here for: the writing! It's like running underwater, or running through snow drifts, or just plain running with shoes that are ten sizes too big. Clumsy and slow! So I'd rather not have a "clumsy and slow" year next year. I want it to be a graceful and productive year! Teaching a Comp class could make me feel productive and empowered and experienced, but it could also make me feel overwhelmed and frustrated and exhausted. I guess, realistically, it would probably make me feel all of those things all at once in a big, alcoholic cocktail of contradictory feelings.

But I LOVE contradictory feelings! They have shaped me into the girl I am today.

SO, in conclusion... I don't know what to do! Of course, the decision isn't all mine. I'd have to apply and actually get hired! So maybe all of this grinding brain activity is for naught, since I think there's tough competition for those positions... plus, if I did teach that class, I'd have to curb my use of the ellipsis, and I just don't know if I'm ready for that kind of sacrifice...

Other things on my mind: finding a job for the summer, and finding a new apartment, and finding a way to read these millions of books that I want to read, and and and... but I think this is pretty much everybody's situation right now, more of less. I'm not complaining, just ... ruminating!

Which is why tonight Tycho and I are going to make a pizza, rent some movies, and chill the heck out. Last night was Elise's big birthday shindig, and the night before that was Thursday Fun at mad hatter's, and this Monday night is the CAMERA OBSCURA concert (whoooeee!!!), so - this is the weekend of deep breaths, lots of work, and - hopefully - long sleeps.

THAT'S ALL!

Tycho waits for dinner:

Nothing Deleuze!

2007-01-25T00:05:00.001-03:30

"A great book is always the inverse of another book that could only be written in the soul, with silence and blood."
-Gilles Deleuze, Essays Critical and Clinical

Well, I'm officially buried up to my patootie in Deleuze-related books for my RA job, and I'm starting to figure out the subtle in's and out's of the little caché of Deleuzian scholars - there are about a dozen of them travelling in a pack, always appearing on each other's acknowledgements page with words like "wonderful" and "inspiring" and "truly great." It's like starting at a new high school and having to figure out who belongs to the the in-crowd. I wonder if these guys all hang out together? I wonder what their cocktail conversations are like?
"This is such a great event! Are you having fun?"
"I prefer to think of it as a demystifying encounter. And by 'you' do you mean my desubjectified self with a multiplicity of self-others hovering around me in a cloud? I can never be sure."
"Hey guys, is this wine transcendental or what!!"

In other news, my Derrida/Alistair MacLeod abstract got accepted for the McGill Grad Conference, so I'll be presenting my paper in March! No doubt they were curious about that odd combo of names. Truth is, I'm curious too! I hope I can figure out exactly what I was talking about before I am forced to answer questions on the subject... yeeps... I'm afraid Deleuze and Derrida are getting all sloshed together in my head, like one of those overtly disgusting slushies at the 7/11. The truth is I don't think those guys liked each other very much. In fact, I think Deleuze refuted everything Derrida said, point by point. Why do they seem so interchangeable in my brain? Proof, I guess, that I can talk the talk, but can't think the think. Yet!

On a completely unrelated (but just as important) note...

Right now, Tycho is doing this:

Which makes me think of this:

It is important to laugh (and look at a cat) at least once a day! Certain studies say so.

Brought to you by the letter P

2007-01-23T10:48:00.000-03:30

Pig in a blanket:

Pug in a pig!

"I've been reading many books on tape"

2007-01-20T23:05:00.000-03:30

I have a new post in my head, and soon it will be a new post IN MY BLOG! thank you loyal readers for sticking by - think of it this way: every day that goes by without a new post is worth three pages of brilliant fiction in my new novel! Which would you rather have, half-wit blog or full-wit manuscript? If you want a big, meaty Megan-novel then you might have to accept a wee bit of blogger absenteeism. If you are really upset by this, at least prepare yourself a decent meal before breaking down!

The project is slowly coming... I should add, incidentally, that my definition of "slowly" has evolved from "things which aren't as fast as window shopping on a sunny day with nothing to do" to "things which aren't as fast as continental drift." This is partly because of the sort of week I just had, which has buoyed me up to incalculable degrees, but has also floated me away (to keep with the marine metaphor) from work I might possibly have been doing. Not that I'm complaining! This week I saw a play (Macbeth at McGill! It was McCreepy!), saw a movie (Clive in "Children of Men," obviously), saw an art show and a new part of my neighbourhood as a consequence, saw my old CHRW friend Khoa who was in town for a day, and saw the bottom of several pitchers of ale after workshop... my eyes are all sawed out!

Tycho would like to step in at this point and post a brief photo essay he put together today, entitled "How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Cardboard."

Back to Megan!
Another thing I saw was the end of this week was Last House of Ulster by Charles Foran for my Irish Lit class, which I just finished today in great anticipation of Charles' visit to our seminar on Monday! This is an added bonus (about #429) of school in Montreal: people actually pass through town and want to talk! Famous people! Writerly people!
Anyway, the book itself was a pretty grim, though not dispassionate view of Belfast's 20th C. history. I'm worried about writing more because I've already had one experience of an author googling himself and finding my blog - maybe I'll have more thoughts about it after Monday's class! BUT one of the things that occurred to me as I was sifting through my mental pile of possible New Years' commitments was that it would be neat to actually keep track of all the books I read this year. I always start out trying to do that, but usually taper off sometime around March. By the time August comes around I can't even remember what I read two weeks prior. My friend Vicky gave me a neat little writer's notebook for Christmas, so I have started using that to this end. BUT I will also begin my commitment here, in a public space, as a sign of true dedication!
So far this year, besides the Foran novel, I have read...

Rotten Kids, an unpublished manuscript by my friend and fellow Concordian Marko Sijan (who is reading tomorrow night at Blizzart's on St. Laurent, so if you're in Montreal and it's not tomorrow night yet, you should come!)

Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott (which I've already spent much time talking about in here, I think)

Bel Canto by Ann Patchett, which everyone should read. I got it for Christmas from the lovely double-I's of grey county and Linnea (who puts the L in DUNDALK), and it is just a beautiful novel, with so many of those moments where the book kind of drops into your lap while you stare out the bus window for a moment, just trying to come to terms with all the emotions you hadn't expected to be feeling so early in the day.

In Our Time by Ernest Hemingway, about which I will only say "it's for the class I'm teaching!" and leave it at that because who knows how many of my students have googled me and are reading this right now. Don't read my blog! Read the course texts!!!

The Scarlett Letter by Hawthorne (ditto) (okay, I've actually only started this one, but it will be done in the next few days!!!)

Snow Country by Yasunari Kawabata, for my cross-genre workshop. A deeply meditative, lyrical novel set in the Japanese countryside, which is apparently one of the snowiest places on earth! It's not long, I read it last Sunday all smooshed up with Tycho on the couch while it snowed like mad outside the window, a very surreal experience!

Novel of Breathtaking Beauty and Unprecedented Genius, by Megan Findlay. Destined to be a bestseller, need I say more?

And, of course, there is the on-going project of Les Miserables, which has been somewhat stalled because of the whole "reading for school arrggg arggg" thing, but I go back to it for a page or two in bed each night, and hopefully I will start getting bigger chunks of time for that sort of devouring as the semester goes on and I figure out a good rhythm!

Oy I just checked an have a new email from Jen, in which she laments the fact that she has promised to read NO MORE BOOKS unless they have titles like "Biology For Doctors" or "Phantastic Physics" until MCATS are over! Ack, Jen, I admire your discipline and have complete faith in your MCAT skills. In the meantime, though, I am mailing you the Javier Marias book because how else will you spend your time on the subway to & from work? A girl needs daily rewards to keep her mind sharp and thirsty!!!

A good way to start the morning...

2007-01-14T11:37:00.000-03:30

... is with a picture like this!

Especially if you're Jen, because then you have two people gazing lovingly at you... or maybe about to tickle you... where is that hand going, Mark???

Just had one of "those" nights, where Tycho was spinning with boundless energy and I was thrashing about in the sheets with many miles of emotional head-roads to travel before sleep. Neither of us slept for long before the other woke him up. This is bad news not only because the head-roads are still there and I'm feeling the wobbling effects, but moreover (English word) because I have to read like a maniac today (since yesterday was lost to writing a "perfect paragraph," as I have not yet mastered the very very useful art of what Anne Lamott calls "shitty first drafts").... and reading is difficult if I'm the least bit distracted or tired. This is where it's helpful to know there are 25 students waiting to grill me on the details of a text and I'd better know it or else risk the total loss of an authority I cherish so much! It's a fragile line already, I cannot risk it.

must go begin.

How I feel while writing...

2007-01-11T14:09:00.000-03:30

I'm alternating between feelings of extreme excitement to extreme concentration to extreme dizziness on a minute-by-minute cycle as I begin the oh-so-tentative early stages of writing my thesis. Anne Lamott is kind of a prop for me right now, because this book is really, really good and is making me feel just the slightest bit less crazy for wanting to spend all my time chasing after a novel, road-runner-and-coyote style. Also she says this about creative writing workshops, which I find despairingly accurate - although, as a side note, I've been pretty lucky with writing groups in my short career thus far, at Western and Humber and now Concordia, because there have always been a few people who prop them up. Still, I think she's got it mostly right:

At best, they will say that the story would work better if you rewrote it in the past tense, unless it is already in the past tense, in which case they will suggest the present, or that you should try writing in the first person or, if it is in the first person, in the third. At worst, they will suggest that you have no visible talent whatsoever and should not bother writing anything ever again, even your name.

She's also got it right when she talks about the fact that when you're writing, "You feel not only totally alone but also that everyone else is at a party." This is the REAL reason why writing groups are essential: not so much for actual criticism and editorial support, but more for basic, old-fashioned MENTAL HEALTH. Example: I am able to work well today and (hopefully) tomorrow because I'm going to a party tomorrow night which I happen to know will be frequented by many writers attempting the very same thing as me. We will drink our beer and ask each other how it's going, delicately and in an undercover-spy sort of way. And we will all feel relieved that, at least for the moment, no one will be expecting us to be at our desks churning out page after page of sparkling prose for next week's workshop.

Anyway, I happen to be feeling quite good about it all today, and Tycho is a giant help because he has spent all morning sleeping first on the radiator here beside me, which warms him up to t0asty degrees, then on my lap, which warms ME up to toasty degrees. As a muse, he is quite perfect. I think perhaps he will be chiefly recognized in my acknowledgements.
"And, most especially, thanks to Tycho - who kept me company, kept me warm, and kept me awake at three a.m., when my best ideas struck."

Is that a MOUNTAIN in your city?

2007-01-07T20:42:00.000-03:30

Went up the mountain again! This time it was on a full belly of Chez Cora chocolate crepes (thanks Jordan!) and with a full troupe of MTL lovelies, and something about seeing the city from above was, as always, a deeply sublime experience, especially when laughing so hard that I very nearly toppled over the edge. Four of us (the princess posse) went up and came back down older, wiser, and slightly achy in the joints... but ready for the first day of school! Which was today!

SO I have this little bottle of "blemish cream" (sounds lovely, I know) which I didn't know I had until a desperate search through my things-that-won't-fit-in-the-bathroom-cabinet shoebox - a search motivated by the unexplained phenomena of blemishes (I prefer to call them "spots," sounds less disease-ridden and reminds me of cute little puppies which makes me smile and forget about said "spots") AND also motivated by my swiss-cheese brain which let me forget my "usual" stuff in Ontario. ANYWAY this morning I get out that little wee bottle and am grimly uncapping the vile stuff for its daily application when, without apparent cause, the whole bottle jumps from my hands, takes an unlikely course through the air (is there a wind current in my bathroom? I never noticed) and lands neatly in the toilet! Then it totally slips from sight, right into the bowels (ha) of the plumbing! What does that mean?! Was God like, "pffft, enough of this crap! Yoink!" ...because that's what it seemed like! Anyway I am happy to be rid of the stuff, it was the early cause of a vicious skin-battle cycle, I could tell. Better to be free of such concerns. Until, at least, I manage to recover what I left in Ontario...

Other news of the world:
1. Jordan & Erin are back safe & sound from their flying/hiking/gambling adventure in the USofA
2. Edmonton-Mark is once again Edmonton-Mark-in-Vancouver (world order restored)
3. Someone who may or may not be my sister may or may not be going to South Africa this summer... but you didn't hear that here

OH ALSO, I bought tickets to see Camera Obscura on Jan 29th, with the dogged hope that I will find someone suitable to come with me! Criteria: must be full of beans, must love the live shows, must know where the Sala Rossa is (because I sure don't!).
Now accepting resumes!

My So-Called Adventure, Take 2

2007-01-02T23:50:00.000-03:30

"Your aunt's a very lucky woman, Angelica, because she has two lives; she has the life she's leading, and also the book she's writing. This makes her very fortunate indeed."
-Vanessa Bell talking about Vigrinia Woolf in The Hours

I'm back in the Montreal machine! I hope this thing works...

Megan Rock

2006-12-31T15:51:00.000-03:30

Last night, blearily half-awake in some unidentifiable hour of the morning, I somehow got this image in my mind of a tiny, subterranean population - like the Fraggles - who have somehow rigged up a tiny, subterranean movie screen that projects dreams from the minds of the people above - they have several different minds in circulation.

And I imagined that each time the tiny, subterranean guy running the show announced to them all that they would be watching my dreams that night, they would all throw up their arms and give out squeaky little cries of excitement, because my mind gives the best shows!

Seriously, I have some wild dreams - they frolic and romp through all the best of dream territory in a wonderfully irrational performance of wish fulfilment, superpowers, forbidden love, time travel, narrow escapes, immortality, fear, satisfaction... there is no rhyme or reason, only action.

Sometimes I have semi-lucid moments in my dreams where I realize that I can take advantage of what's happening, and other times I have embarrassing or incriminating dreams about people who I then have to face the next day, feeling at once shy and triumphant that they made a cameo in my unconscious and will never be the wiser. I have bad dreams and good, dreams I remember for ages (there was one I had over and over when I was a kid that I still remember so clearly, especially when I wind up my little tugboat music box and listen to it), and other dreams that I remember less and less the more I try to concentrate on them.

And I always, always, no matter what I try to do to alter it, wake up around 3 or 4am to go to the bathroom - but it isn't a simple, clean wake-up and go-back-to-sleep event... having to pee is always a big event in my dreams, sometimes it reaches emergency levels until I gradually wake up and enough lights flicker on in my brain to tell me in which direction I need to stumble.

EXAMPLE last night I had a dream that, out of desperation, I got a job as a cashier at the Provigo grocery store near my apartment in Montreal. I was being trained by someone about my age, and she was getting increasingly frustrated with me because I couldn't remember any of the French names for the produce (probably related to my ongoing anxiety on behalf of cashiers everywhere - how do they remember all those codes?), and my line-up was getting so long that it snaked up and down every single aisle in the store, and people were shouting French curses at me ("sacre poutin!"), and I was also getting more and more worried because I really had to pee but could not foresee an easy exit from the situation... then, slowly, right on cue, gradual wake-up until whoa! I'm in my bed! Have to pee!

Thus concludes my rant on dreaming.

Tonight is New Years' Eve! Well, I guess all day has been New Years' Eve, but tonight it really gets saluted with all the partying that happens. I am stomach-tingling excited!

(ps - had a great party for Mom last night ... it was a smashing hit of the highest quality, and everything tasted delicious, and everyone was merry! I don't know how any of that could have triggered my Provigo dream, but... who knows what wee nightmares my unconscious cooks up through the day to spoon into my too-willing brain at night).

Move over, Jesus...

2006-12-30T11:57:00.000-03:30

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, DARLING MOM!

Special blog post today, since it is a vrrrrrrrrrrrry important birthday for a vrrrrrrrrry important person! We have everything prepared... wise men (Tycho, Adam), shepherds (I distinctly remember the feeling of gooey sheep raisins accidentally squashed under bare feet on the farm), cute animals lowing their heads, and gifts galore. Only problem is that it's a little overcast so I hope everyone can find their way here! We are having a BBQ... this seemed like a good idea last week when the weather was warm and there was no snow in sight. Now there's a cold blast each time the door is opened. I told Adam that steak just doesn't taste the same if it's not BBQ'd by someone in shorts and sandals but he seemed gently dismissive of my urging. Anyway, Hawaiian shirts or not, we will have a fun party tonight and that's what matters! And there will be CAKE! I think everyone knows how I feel about cake...

I am using Bronwyn's laptop since mine is currently commissioned to churn out dance tunes while this day takes shape.... and soooooo... without being too snoopy I will root around and see if there are fun photos in here that I can post!

Oooh oooh, here is a recent one... this is a small faction of the Hancock clan out for a leisurely calorie-burning stroll after Boxing Day dinner this year... usually this means a meandering walk through the woods at the back of the farm, nothing too strenuous, but this year things got serious... don't ask why, but we picked the beach! It is difficult to push around our family when we have an idea about something, and as we lolled about the house with belly-fulls of food I bet someone just said, "you know what would be great right now? The beach." And before I knew it I was stuffed in a car heading for the shore, weather be damned.

If the many bodies in our family somehow merged into a single superperson who decided to place a personal ad, I wonder what it would say? "My perfect date would be a cozy winter day of barbecuing and walking on the beach. Want to get frosty with me?"

WHICH REMINDS ME I saw this book for sale whilst I was Christmas shopping, and now I wish I had bought it for someone (who could then lend it to me). I spent a good while lingering in the bookshop, smoldering hot inside my furry coat (I wasn't on the freezing beach, you see - not my natural environment, being a Hancock and all) and having a chuckle. It's worth owning for the title alone!

Okay, must run, there is a whirring of activity around me, and if I sit here any longer I'm afraid resentment will build against me. Plus, Jen & Mark are stopping in today on their way to Windsor, so excitement is building inside these walls! Let's go!

Christmassage!

2006-12-25T16:33:00.001-03:30

It's Christmas day, whoooeee-boy! I am amusing myself with bloggish endeavors beside the Christmas tree, having drifted away from the feast preparations going on in the kitchen - I can handle cutting up the bread chunks for stuffing, but when it comes to the act of stuffing itself, I'd rather be scarce. I realize that possible future situations (trying to win a dare...trying to be a wife...) might require me to stuff bread chunks up a chicken's wazoo, but for now I'll pass off the task to the more experienced members of the family (like my mom, currently mixing a whiskey and soda as she prepares for the task - see? she has stuffed countless chickens over the years, and still requires liquid courage for the job! Not easy!). I did stick around long enough to have a laugh over the recipe book Mom's using, and has used for the last thirty years, called "Cooking Canada's Turkey" (thank you, Canadian Turkey Marketing Agency - many Christmases would be crippled without you!) ... it is amusing for its frank description of turkey grades (Canada Grade C: "many pin feathers and prominent dicolorations" - mmmmm) and, more endearingly, its gender-specific instructions. Page 13 appeals for men to read carefully and includes this little-known bit of turkey trivia:

Many men claim carving is a chore they would rather forego. However, when a man is adept at it he delights in displaying his skill [side note: not limited to turkey carving]. A little practice following these 6 easy steps will turn a "hacker" into a "carver".

Bronwyn and Adam are currently off at the Brock Christmas shindig while mom and I are home studying up on how to be carvers (in the inconvenient absence of a man). B & A should get back in the next couple of hours, when the Christmas gift-opening goodness will resume (having already begun this morning with the opening of the stockings - or rather, last night, with the opening of the traditional pajama presents). Last night we arrived perfectly late for the Christmas Eve service at A & B's church - in time for singing carols and watching excited little kids squirm in their seats, but late enough that the whole things was satisfyingly brief and we were back home with our Bailey's, homemade pizza, and A Christmas Story lickety-split. Right now I am so full of honeycomb and Corn Pops (also tradition) that I think I might bust. Mom and I have already managed to pop over to her apartment down the street where Tycho is staying. He was studiously listening to the Queen's message but was easily distracted by the Christmas presents we brought for him - a catnip lizard and laser beam toy (in the hope of tricking him into exercising). Tycho survived his trip here on the train from Montreal, and was quite pleased to be met at Union station by his uncle Adam and dear friends Jen & Mark. Poor little dude! Now he is safe and sound, tucked in with my mom, where the two of them are steadily spoiling each other - mom gets up at the crack of dawn to feed him (something that he longs for - but never gets - at home in Montreal), and in return he keeps her bed warm at night and her nativity scene fur-covered and kicked all over the place in the day. A perfect relationship!

T ready for the train:

And, arrived:

I've been trying as best I can to split my time between B & A's place - and their two fantastic (though devilish) cats - and little T. He doesn't seem to suffering, though ... two minutes after this next picture was taken he abandoned me for his new preferred lap - Mom's. I am in equal parts relieved and put-out by how well Tycho adjusts to new people & places. Isn't he the least bit homesick for the little nest we have together in Montreal? Isn't he the least bit anxious at being separated from me over these few weeks??? Aren't I his irreplaceable momma???

In other news, the holidays have been delicious so far! I spent the first week of Operation Ontario spinning about in a mad tornado that felt vaguely like London - very little sleep, very much shmoozing, a whole lot of hugging and relieved homesickness. Thanks to Sara & Scott for the generous surrendering of their living room floor throughout the week, where I threw down my weary bones at the end of each day - now that I'm in Waterloo I get to enjoy the exact reverse: more time spent in pajamas than street clothes, nearly all 27 episodes of Gray's Anatomy S2 watched, several kinds of cookies baked and countless presents wrapped and currently waiting under the tree. Several knot-inducing questions hover over my head (most pressing: how on earth will I get all this stuff - and a cat - home to Montreal on the train?), but for now, and for the rest of this week, I will delay these anxieties and steep myself in holiday goodness. And I will resume blogging!

Happy Christmas, to those of you into that sort of thing... and Happy Snowflake Day to the rest of you!

[warning: this video is potentially offensive and most definitely full of CH antics! It is meant for harmless entertainment only!] [Nork!!!]

Tycho does his morning exercises

2006-12-09T09:47:00.000-03:30

Well! T are I are ready to take off for Toronto today! I gave T some catnip this morning so that he could burn off some energy (I hope) before hunkering down in his cat box for a few hours! The only problem is that we have to leave in a few minutes, and he's still wired... I thought he'd crash after an hour but he's currently flipping around on the floor like he's got the willies. Hopefully he's just excited about Christmas!

This is quick because I need to pack up my computer! I might not be in a blogg-able state for a little while, since my journey is taking me through London before finally ending in Waterloo, so things could get crazy... see you on the other side! Think good thoughts for T on the train today!

White snow... white squirrels... okay.

2006-12-06T22:36:00.000-03:30

Photo blog only for you tonight, since my EYES ARE FALLING OUT OF MY HEAD and I have to go pop them back in. Seriously, I'm so tired I feel nauseous. But it's the best kind of tired, because it comes from several straight days of late nights, early mornings, and deep, dead sleeps in between. I keep writing different sentences and then deleting them because I'm too tired for this right now. Tomorrow and Friday are going to be the craziest days of this whole week, so I'd better call up the reserves (which means bust into that Froot Loops box that I got for $2.39 at the IGA last week!). I've been consistently eating fruit, veggies, and meat for the last week (and a chocolate every day from the advent calendar), trying to keep energy high. I'm getting desperate now, though. Also I'm having a wee party here on Friday night which promises to involve ridiculous amounts of junk food, judging by the emails that have been circulating in the last couple of days. Nothing like a sugar high to end this week with a bang! And then a sugar hangover on the train the next morning... oy...

Anyway... this photo blog has a suspicious number of words in it already so I will reign myself in. It's already 9:17 and I promised myself bed (or at least bath&book) by 9pm! That's how dead I am. This evening I invigilated an English comprehension exam for new students, and you'd think that would be a nice, easy time to get some marking done and perhaps a wee, head-on-arms nap, but noooo... it was a "drop in" exam... so students were streaming in and out the whole four hours, and I had to keep track of who arrived when and kick them out when their time was up... luckily I got paid for doing it so you all get Christmas presents this year! Also there was a delightful woman working with me, an ESL teacher herself, and we spent some time reminiscing about last year's Canada Reads debate. Always great to find a fellow CBC addict!

ON SUNDAY i did my reading... which went amazingly, ridiculously, side-splittingly well... but more importantly... it snowed! I was holed up for most of the day before the reading working on my India Lit essay (which I handed in on Monday, praise the lord). I took a break at lunch though to walk through Parc La Fontaine because it was just too darn beautiful to stay inside! Hence the photo essay:

Notice the bright orange path marker poles in that photo of La Fontaine???? Those things are higher than my shoulder! Is this what I need to be prepared for?

White squirrel!

Brown squirrel (for equal representation)!

Tycho, who had declined my invitation to come for a walk in the park because he had "some serious zzz's to catch" (his line), heard he missed out on the squirrel parade and bites my toe in frustration:

Right now I'm listening to the organ-y part in Beirut's "After the Curtain" and it's blending so seamlessly with my mood that I have to wonder if that song has existed all this time just waiting for this one moment to arrive. five minutes from now on the CD, Midlake will be playing and the feeling will only be a memory immortalized by my blog. but right now it's REAL as all these tumbleweeds of tycho fur!

SLEEEEEEP!

Procrasti-post

2006-12-02T23:16:00.000-03:30

oy oy my lovelies, sorry posting has been sporadic at best lately but y'all have to remember that it's crunch time in the land of students! When I haven't been writing/marking/researching, I've been sipping wine in fine jazz establishments and nodding my head appreciatively to an obscure and satisfying beat while my eyes narrow into self-satisfied slits. On Monday last week my friend Gwen was in town so I took her to Upstairs which is where M&M&C&V&I went for my birthday, and it turned out that there's a big difference between sitting in the back of the bar by the fish tank and sitting up at the front near the band.
Basic conversation:
Me: Is it too loud?
Gwen: WHAT?
Me: Too loud??
G: *lifting wine glass* Yeah, delicious!

Gwen hails from my Grey County days, where she was one of my many brilliant high school teachers and the one who catapulted me across the ocean to Rouen when I was in grade 11. Talking to her really made me homesick for the old Grey, if only because I miss living somewhere where virtually ever single person has some sort of two- or three-degree separation (at most) from everybody else. Kind of stifling when you're a teenager, but when you're submerged out here in a massive city of countless numbers, that kind of thing can really scream its absence.

Last night, after an epic journey to school for the Colloquium meeting (get your abstracts in, you English types!) and a satisfactory reward of fries and $2 beer, Claudine & I went to see Stuart McLean, which was incredibly, unbelievably good. I think a lot of it had to do with my whole big nostalgia trip about it all, but Claudine had a great time too, and she'd never even heard of him before! Anyway, it was just great... there was such a festive feeling about it all... and Stuart does a lot more hopping and spinning and hand-waving while he talks then you'd think from hearing him on CBC. I wanted to take him home with me so that I could prop him up in my kitchen and let him tell me stories all day long. The whole show lasted for almost three hours - who knew! On the radio it's only an hour long. It all happened in a massive theater where there were probably a thousand people... [warning: those of you on the Hancock family email circuit will already have heard this part]. Stuart had CDs to give away, so he said "one's for the youngest person here tonight, and one's for the oldest." Just from audience people shouting and waving, it was sorted out that the youngest person present was a five-month-old baby in the balcony and the eldest was a 97-year-old woman who was also in the balcony and who had the lungs to shout her love to Stuart, who blushed accordingly. I hope when I'm 97 I still go to shows like that too, and shout my undying love to CBC celebs without a bit of embarrassment!

Tomorrow night is my public reading... lots of things have to happen before that... such as essay finishing and laundry washing and beer drinking! s'gonna be crazy day.

Whenever I pick up a book (and many have been picked up recently, in the tornado-storm of my bedroom where an essay on feminist Indian literature is sputtering into being) I always read the acknowledgements first, planning, maybe, for when it's time to write my own acknowledgements in my own [first] book. There are some incredibly touching things said in the acknowledgements of otherwise boring blah-books about politics and such (I am tired of reading these books insted of reading novels), and such words add humanity to the stark pages; today I found one that I want to steal for myself. And I will! At the end of a long list of specific thank yous & gratitudes (this friend, that friend, my editor, my family, etc), the author wrote:

"A part of the self lies buried in every piece one writes. Thanks to all those who helped the other parts to endure."

*gasp*
I wonder if a part of my self is buried in this essay? Hopefully it's a part that I didn't really want anyway. Like the zit-making part. Or the always-losing-things part. Or the always-calling-long-distance-without-using-a-phone-card part. I never learn!

Here is a great song/creepy video to usher in the night.

I would go out tonight, but I haven't got a stitch to wear

2006-11-25T20:43:00.000-03:30

white & bright!

2006-11-25T15:33:00.000-03:30

I went to the dentist yesterday, a small triumph in my world (especially because the doctor said she could tell that I floss!)... but got a stern talking-to about the vigor of my brushing sessions. Apparently I'm too much of an elbow-greaser when it comes to my pearlies... I always applied the same principle to my teeth as I do to my frying pans: the harder you scrub, the cleaner they'll be! Apparently I need to amend that to "the harder you scrub, the more they'll disappear." Gentless in tooth brushing does not come to me naturally, though! If I don't pay attention while I do it, I usually end up getting absorbed by something else (like Tycho's shenanigans) while my brush gets all mashed to heck between my teeth. That's probably why I have to replace my brush every two weeks or so. Not any more though! Gentleness from hereon in to save my teeth and my dental budget!!!

(after the dentist I saw "Stranger Than Fiction," which was SO GOOD, even if it didn't make sense one little bit... and there was a lot of tooth brushing in it! I was like, "No, Will Ferrell, no! It's supposed to be up and down, not side to side!")

Megan after a crummy workshop... (and a Tycho story)

2006-11-22T22:15:00.000-03:30

Sitting in the McGill library right now, looking across their campus which is all decked out with Christmas lights—quite pretty, but makes me ache for Western, with the lights on the massive trees in front of UC. I can see the giant cross way up on the mountain though, which, I have to say, is a one-up on Western.

I got punched up in my writing workshop today. Not badly, and not that I didn’t deserve it—I handed in a lazy piece, an unpolished piece, a piece that some editor of whichever lit mag I sent it to is folding into airplanes, with his yellow fingers and a grisly laugh. I want to reach across time and space and pluck it back, file it away, move on. It’s funny how quickly a work you thought was decent, was passable, was worthwhile can fall several rungs on the ladder without you even noticing. I didn’t even want this piece to get workshopped by the time today came around. I just wasn’t in the mood, and I knew what would happen. I’m putting together a new work right now that is surprising me, that I want to shake in the air and say “No, guys! Forget that one! THIS is me!” Too late this time, though. Workshops are a tough business! Harder than any academic class I’ve had, by farrrrr. Imagine having a child, loving him, raising him the best you can—teaching him how to talk, how to behave, how to make decisions, how to brush his hair—and then on his eighth birthday you plunk him down in front of a committee of your peers who poke and prod him and peer down his throat and in his ears and ask him to perform all kinds of acrobatics while they tap their pencils on their pursed lips and take furious notes. In the end, you’re given a summary: nose too big, armpits smelly, can’t dance the tango, poor judge of character, hair not blonde/curly/shiny enough, too friendly, too naive, too much of a charmer, too timid. Afterwards you wobble out of there and wonder what you’ll do with this failure of a kid. Try to throw the engines in reverse and undo eight years of work? Give him away to a childless couple? Let him wander off on his own to see what the rest of the world thinks of him? Throw him away??

For my India class, I’m writing an essay on a novel whose eight-year-old protagonist is assured by her mother that her future husband will search the world with a candle until he finds her. Well – I’ll search the world with my word processor until I find my breakthrough story! And in the meantime, Brutopia calls, where I can sit with the other writers and rehash today's workshop. I hope Tycho is not worried that I'm not home yet...

...speaking of Tycho, he was making hella noise in the kitchen this morning while I was just waking up, crashing chairs around and chirping and just causing a general caffufle, and finally I went out to invesitage and discovered that he had a sticky note stuck to his foot that no amount of kicking and flailing could get off! Poor little dude! Poor little dude's paws!

Tee-off T's Me Off!!!

2006-11-19T20:44:00.000-03:30

This post is in response to the news story in this weekend's Globe & Mail about the Russian (I can hear you snickering, Jen) cosmonaut who is collaborating with a Toronto golf club maker to tee off... in outer space. Apparently, during a space walk set for Wednesday, Mikhail Tyurin "plans to use a 6-iron [first thing that doesn't make sense to me] to knock a lightweight golf ball off a tee placed on top of the Russian docking port at the International Space Station [second thing that doesn't make sense to me]."

I think this is a crazy idea! To explain why, here is a visual demonstration:

PLUS

EQUALS

Translation: golf + outer space = OUTER SPACE DISASTER!

Apparently NASA "held up the golf shot for months while safety experts pored over possible flight paths for the ball to make sure it would not head back toward the station as a dangerous bit of orbital debris." Does that really make everyone feel safe? I mean, isn't outer space the place where we still don't know 99.9% of what goes on? Is it really a good idea to send useless crap up there just for the sake of a TV commercial?

I don't know a lot about golf balls, except that they are dimpled to make them fly faster (I think) and that they are to thank for the wonderful activity that is golf-cart driving... in the two or three times that I've actually been on a golf course (not counting mini-golf, which is a whole different bucket of balls) I got immense pleasure from driving a golf cart in loop-dee-loops around trees and people and flags and other convenient obstacles. This countered the displeasure I got from only being able to hit the ball once every ten or twelve swings, and even then it was usually only a grazing of the ball that result in a plop-plop-rollll of four or five measly feet. (This does not include my driving range experiences, which have been considerably more successful. Perhaps without the distraction of the golf cart I am better able to focus on my swing. Listen to me! "Focus on my swing!" That's what the professionals say.)

Anyway, the point of this rant is to say that I'm fairly sure that the universe doesn't need any more human garbage floating around in it that isn't supposed to be there, especially for a reason as lame as publicity. Who knows what could happen! Example: Unpredictable, floating debris in my backpack is responsible for gouging out the pupils of the cat on my wallet.

I just realized how violent that sentence sounds until you get to the last three words. Sorry! Oh... and sorry for the pun in the title. The internet needs more bad writers just as much as outer space needs more orbiting garbage - my bad.

Hey, Everybody!

2006-11-19T00:37:00.000-03:30

It's me! I'm not MIA... well, I was, but now I'm back, after nearly seven straight days of birthday action, beginning outside Union Station on Friday and ending Thursday night (er, Friday morning?) at a bar on St. Catherine St in Montreal. Thank you SSHRC for giving me the means, and thank you Korova for giving me the venue. And thank you, people of my life. 23 will be a year of happiness, made all the more happy for its passing moments of doubt.
Stay tuned!

On the agenda for the next two weeks: polishing up some BRILLIANT FICTION and then reading it to whoever shows at Blizzart's on December 3rd. All of this in preparation for my debut on the bookshelves of stores across the country, nestled right up close to Timothy Findley (date-and novel-TBA). I think it's my sacred duty to keep the calibre of genius on his shelf at a steady high, and Concordia is one more foothold on the way up! By supplying me with beer, fascinating people, and truckloads of snow, Montreal is going to be my muse this winter. My IV of heartbreaking truth, straight to the veins. My long distance phone bill. My damp pant cuffs dragging in the snow, mind buzzing too fast to notice or care. Montreal, t'es tellement froid, mais t'as de la gloire. On y va!

Twenty-three years of eating cake!

2006-11-14T00:01:00.000-03:30

I am waiting until midnight to post this blog!

first blog as a 23-yr-old whoooo yowza!!!

A fabulous weekend has just passed, wherein I went "home" (so hard to pin down that wily word these days) and enjoyed a happy drive with my dearest friend Derek, a magnificent meal with M/B/A/D/A, and pretty much the best Saturday of all time heading back to Dundalk and seeing The Sound of Music on the good ol' Dundalk Little Theater stage, starring the beautiful, the talented, and the beautifully talented Ingrid who then hosted an equally beautiful (and talented) soiree afterwards, avec handsome husband and equally handsome stepson Noah. Walking from the Town Hall to Ingrid and Ian's place reminded me of how much I miss Dundalk, and want to live there again. I could hardly believe, when we drove into town, that it was all still there; the Farm Supplies store where I once timidly handed over a resume (and didn't get the job), the train tracks where I went for countless walks with my dear old dog Meg (and Ingrid with dear not-so-old Tia), the lion statue that I used to climb on in the parkette... I know it would never be the same if I moved back there one day, but at least it would be more the same than anywhere else. Being somewhere that familiar then returning to somewhere this strange is like slipping from hot to cold weather in seconds. Causes anxiety, shivers, nosebleeds. Each time I'm in Dundalk again I notice one or two small differences, and eventually those differences will be too overwhelming, and that's what I'm worried about! The critical mass of difference! This time I noticed that the Smoke Shop is now called the Daisy Mart... this is both bad (ahhhh! change! cover your eyes!) and good (now the short story I just wrote isn't quite as much of a blatant copy of my hometown). Other things remain the same, though, like the giant outdoor mural of the Last Supper painted on the side of the Smoke-Shop-Turned-Daisy Mart. These are the details I'll cling to as I make my too-infrequent trips back, sniffing around for roots with my scent on them like a ribby dog.

On a completely unrelated note... Here is Bronwyn's floating head - and a lot of booze! (Is there a connection??)

And here is some cake!!! And some Derek!

And, because he is devastatingly handsome (especially after our brief separation), here is a Tycho from precisely one minute ago. I am also celebrating his birthday now, since I don't know when his actual birthday is (but don't tell him that!!!)

So - nearly midnight now, and I'm nearly asleep ... OH MY GOD I'M GETTING OLD! I feel like I need to do something memorable right now. Something to mark my last moments as a 22-year-old. In the hours before I turned thirteen (back in the Dunalk years!) I wrote a letter to my future sixteen-year-old self listing all the things I hoped to make happen in those three intermittent years. I sealed the letter and taped it to the underside of a dresser drawer and tried to forget what was on it, which apparently worked, because now, ten years later, the only thing I remember writing for sure was something like "Have my first true kiss." And look what happened! My high school should have been wrapped in caution tape. Tonight on the CBC Review I heard Shelagh Rogers interviewing Margaret Atwood, and they were laughing about the hyperbolic torment of high school romances. Atwood was trying to make the point that we change our personal histories as we grow older, and now we laugh about our very first break-up which, at the time, made us cry and write sad, solipsisitic poetry for weeks (secretly Megan thinks: who's laughing?). Then Shelagh Rogers said that she was always the one getting dumped, never the one doing the dumping! Aw! I wanted to give her a hug! Although if I had been standing there in the studio, arms open, I might have had a moment of reconsideration because Shelagh is all snifflysick right now. I might have offerred her a Kleenex instead. Atwood was her usual self, quite eager to talk about how much she hates interviews while clearly enjoying herself at the same time. If I have to hear Atwood's long and boring explication of that LongPen thingymajigger (which was an entirely uninvited explication, and I think I even sensed something like impatience in Shelagh's raspy voice) one more time... and this isn't just jealous-talk! Atwood seriously drives me crazy in-person-on-the-radio. My grams, the most well-read person I know by a long shot and a long-time Atwood opposer, would probably agree (and be glad that I'm done with my mad-about-Cat's Eye stage). I just wish she would add some cadence to her voice, learn to be patient with her admirers, and stop mentioning every second how incredibly busy she is with her world-wide book tours!!!! Hm - maybe this is jealousy talking. I suppose she's just being who she is, and that's a good thing. But Alice Munro is still better, in-person-on-the-radio and in writing. In fact, if you want to hear her, you can go here and subscribe in iTunes. There's an interview with her & Shelagh Rogers from October 18th! Alice Munro, why can't you fit in my pocket so I can take you everywhere with me?

Okay... better go get busy with being 23! I'm going to spend tomorrow in happy bliss, just Tycho and I and some really good books... Thursday is when the requisite party happens, so if you are a Montrealite and want to join us on the town, let me know and I will email you the details!

That's all! This is Megan, signing out for the last time as a 22-year-old! See you when I'm older!

Crisp!

2006-11-09T22:25:00.000-03:30

Behold, the fruit of my labours this week! (get it? apple crisp! fruit!)
The last three days would be impossible to describe without these three words: desk, school, desk. I've managed to blitz through a brow-sweating amount of work in order to clear the path for this weekend's partyfest in Waterloo/Dundalk, and managed to work in the Jen-inspired procrastibake that you see above! I also switched my blog over to beta, which sounds all techno-savvy but really blogger bullied me into it with their constant pop-up questions, and it turned out to be an easy swtich which promises to make template changes easier. That means that this christmas there's gonna be some changes 'round here! New year, new blog! Same old Megan!

For now, though, packing for this weekend. Not an easy task, my darling dears. Thanks to recent boot/shoe/coat purchases, I spend a good minute or two every weekday morning pacing the length of my wee vestibule, summoning the muses of footwear and outdoor clothing to inspire that day's look. Of course, the rest of my clothes are all pretty standard Megan staples (although the skirts have been retired for the season), so once the fun outer stuff is shed the "day's look" is fairly predictable. Montreal has not shaped me with its sticky fashion fingers yet! But once I get my hands on some fun-money, that might change. Or I might just get sucked into the stanley st. bookstores again... if I could eat, wear, and live inside books, I'd never worry. I'm so happy that Vincent Lam won this year's Giller Prize, althought it would have been neat to see Carol Windley's collection of stories win, too, since the Globe & Mail dissed it on the weekend. (It wasn't a full-out diss, but they said something to effect of it belonging to "Canada's canon of ten years ago," which I resent! mostly because that's the fear I have of my own stories... the same people also dismissed Lam's book, saying he's "too new on the scene" to be worthy of a Giller, pffft... I'll show you new!) Anyway, I heard Vincent Lam talking to a reporter after the award was announced, and he said that he was writing his stories while working as the doctor on a cruise ship, and Lo! who should be a passenger on that cruise ship but Margaret Atwood? (unwilled visual: Margaret Atwood on a deck chair, sporting a bikini! ahhh! Out, out damn spot!)... so Atwood read his piece and loved it and signed him up with DoubleDay. Next stop: Giller Prize. Hooray for the underdog!

Off to bed now. Tycho has a new favourite toy: ball of paper tied to a string. Hopefully this will be enough to keep him occupied during the next three days, which will, sadly, be lonely for him... little dude! I will miss you, T!

(Aside: next week I have to teach my students The Thomas Gray poem called "Ode on the Death of a Favourite Cat." I honestly don't know if I'm going to be able to do it. I remember Joel Faflak, UWO professor extraordinaire of lit crit, sometimes choking up while he talked to us about Fitzgerald... but that was because of the sublimity in the last few lines of Gatsby, not because he was thinking of his little cat at home who may or may not be mortal!)

Friendships, Relationships... All those ships.

2006-11-02T23:26:00.000-03:30

Things I learned today:

1. French word for splash? Plouf!!!! Say it. Right now. Out loud. Plouf! Tycho is now Tycho-Plouf.

2. John Wayne Gacy Jr. was a serial killer! I always thought he was a hockey player. Now that Sufjan Stevens song is so much creepier!

3. The Science of Sleep is beautiful, and so are we. All of us!

Dear stomach: please digest all this candy and I'll never ask for anything ever again.

2006-11-01T22:09:00.000-03:30

you can't really tell, but Spongebob is wearing a beret on his giant square head, and is going by his French name: "Bob L'éponge carrée". And I won a prize for my "Cloudy with a chance of rain" costume!

It feels funny posting pictures of people who don't even know that I have a blog... is that unethical? Will they find out that I've done this and come after me? Or... stop inviting me to their parties??? Unlikely! But still. I just don't know how you're supposed to spread the word about having a blog. It seems like a narcissistic thing to do. "Hey! What's up? Think your day could use some more Megan? Well - got a pen? Here's a website entirely devoted to her!" I have to admit, I have done a little google-sleuthing on some my favourite people here, and have found one or two blogs which I now read on the sly. Then I feel smug when I'm around them, because they don't know that I have insider information. I let this slip once to my friend Kasper, whose story from a million years ago is published on a website that I found thanks to google gods. The only reason I told him that I had done some searching on his name is that (1) inhibitions were low (and bar tabs were high) and (2) the website that was publishing the story had a little postscript that asked anyone who knew Kasper to please let them know, because they were trying to find him. I thought it was my moral duty to point this out to him! He was very good about it, and only marginally creeped out. But I think he should be flattered. Imagine someone being intrigued enough by you that they are willing to sift through a pile of junky search results in the hopes that they'll find some secret "in" on your life! And besides, as people have often (with the best intentions) pointed out to me, if you put something on the Interwubs, you obviously want people to read it. And whether you admit it or not you probably hope (like me!) that people will do a little grunt work to uncover your secret caché of ramblings! It's like all those famous people who "accidentally" kept amazing diaries which got published after their death (think LM Montgomery, or Kurt Cobain, Susanna Moodie, and about a gazillion others). I'm SURE that these people never once thought, hmmm, I wonder if this will get published someday? I will try and make it as interesting/obscure/controversial/______ as possible, just in case!!!

This is all tied into that question about whether it's possible to write something down without any expectation or hope of someone, other than you, reading it. Admit it! That journal you're keeping? You hope that someone will read it one day, right? Even if it's full of incriminating evidence of your secret life or embarrassing confessions about your private habits... I don't believe you if you say you're only writing it for therapy. I use the "therapy" excuse a lot to explain away the annoyance of that big, pulpy stack of Hilroys sagging on my closet shelf. It's therapy, man! And it's true that my journal-writing peaks when something especially difficult is happening in my life. But really, there's an impulse that is largely informed by the drive to create a legend of the self... a record of existence, an "I Was Here" sticky note left to identify the Megan-shaped hole in the universe for future people to sift through. I want someone to read those someday. Not now! Oh lordy, NOT NOW!!!! but someday. That's why I keep them! Otherwise, I'd write them "for therapy" and then burn them in some kind of therapeutic fire ceremony while reciting therapeutic chants to the stars. I'd have more room in my closet and less emotional baggage staring me in the face. But I like my emotional baggage and I want someone else to know about it someday! Screw therapy and emotional well-being! I want to be interesting!

This has turned into an unwieldy rant, all to say that blogging is rather strange and egotistical (and public) practice, and it's hard to know how to handle that sometimes!

Ah well, soldier ahead. It's sometimes very strange straddling London life and all of its various twists and connections and Montreal life, squeaky-new and still largely unfamiliar. Y'all know me well, while these folks here in M-town continue to know only the bits that I accidentally-on-purpose let out in the open. Unless, of course, they googled me and have been reading this all along! In which case - hi, dudes! It's okay! I probably googled your name, too!

Meanwhile, back on the ranch, D's pumpkin-carving abilities continue to astound, year after year...

Friends With Jens

2006-10-29T21:09:00.000-03:30

Things I have, now that the weekend is over:
-a feeling of sadness, because Jen & Mark are out there on the freeway somewhere, heading towards Toronto
-a feeling of happiness, because I just had one of the greatest, most renewing, most laugh-filled weekends EVERRRRRRRR
-a new taste for coffee liqueur
-a new appreciation for my vision, and a new admiration for those wh0 must go without (more on that later!)
-3D glasses ... from watching this on Saturday afternoon, while an indefinable substance fell over Montreal (is it rain? is it snow? is it God jostling His frothy cappuccino while he reaches for a pain-au-chocolat?)
-tons and tons and tons of delicious, beautifully imperfect, crunchy vegetables from a fabulous adventure to the Jean-Talon Farmer's Market this aft
-new tall boots that make teacher noises on uncarpeted floors! new winter coat avec furry, cold-proof collar!
-a tasteful souvenir from the Flying-J at Napanee
-some blow (this kind, not the other kind)
-a renewed love for two of my best people.

Saturday night deserves a specific mention of its own... Here is a fairly accurate artistic portrayal of what the dinner looked like at O.Noir:

We arrived there (after briefly waiting out the rain in what we later realized was the door to a ... um... well, let's just say the light that guided us to said doorway hummed from a three-foot-tall pair of neon legs), and made our way into the dimly-lit lobby where a charming bartender explained the "rules" - order your food while you're still in the light of the lobby, lock your gear away in one of the cupboards provided, turn off your cell phones, etc... and then we were introduced to our waiter who lead us conga-line style through the thick double curtains and into the pitch black dining room. All the waiters and waitresses working in the dining room are 50-90% visually impaired (as explained by the bartender earlier), and they do an amazing job. It was truly incredible. Before we went into the darkness Jen pointed out a floor plan framed behind the bar, so we got a quick glimpse of the dining room's layout - I think it was essentially one loooong room, with tables close to the wall on either side and a wide aisle down the middle. The servers moving around and between the tables kept tabs on each other by any kind of call they felt like - some clapped, some called "Attention! Attention!", one even meowed as she went between kitchen and guests (at least, I assume that was her route ... who knows!). Our waiter helped us find & conquer our chairs, and we gradually realized that we were sitting in a row across from another couple, who sounded about our age (and one of whom was also a Megan! That can get confusing in the dark). I was hoping we'd meet them in the light afterwards but we didn't end up leaving at the same time... plus it's kind of cool knowing someone based on words only. Maybe I'll overhear them on the Metro sometime and be like, "hey, are you the people from the dark?" It could be the beginning to a good story!

The possibilities for any kind of thing happening at that place are endless - dirty deeds, dangerous deeds, desperate deeds would all be a piece of cake for the right (or wrong?) people! No wonder they make you lock everything up before you go in. There were some very happy, loud people somewhere to our right and we all had theories about what was going on at their table in the dark. Along with our incognito cohorts, we scared each other with made-up horror movie scenarios... imagine the police questioning afterwards? "I swear, officer, I didn't see a thing!" Mark scared us further by GETTING OUT OF HIS CHAIR and sneaking about in the dark. I had a fork in each hand and was ready to jab at whatever touched me but luckily he was seated again before the waiter came with wine. Every time he arrived with something new for us he'd let us know he was there with a very polite "Sorry?" and then help us adjust to whatever he put down. "Sorry? Your wine." And my hands would be found, lifted, and placed around the cool bowl of a wine glass. When he brought our food dishes he waited patiently while we groped for our wine glasses and lifted them safely out of the way. An added fun feature of O.Noir is that you can order food described on the menu, or (feeling brave) you can order their "surprise" dishes! Mark & Jen ordered both a surprise appetizer & surprise entree, while I stuck with a known entree - chicken & eggplant - and ordered a surprise dessert. Everything was sososooooo delicious, probably a combination of no sight/good cooks. The surprise appetizer for J&M was pacific salmon, and their entree turned out to be some sort of combination of all the entrees on the menu. The surprise desert was a raspberry/mango custard! It would have been fun to see it all after we had eaten it, to find out if our mental images of what we were fumbling with were accurate. To reward ourselves for having re-emerged onto the street without food or wine stains on our laps we went for some raspberry beer and, eventually, some Donnie Darko & popcorn back at my (fully lit) apartment.

What a weekend... time now for a bit or recuperation, then bed, then back to life.
JenandmarkImissyouuuu!!!!

Boyfriends, Girlfriends, Old Friends

2006-10-28T02:04:00.000-02:30

Currently: half watching Love Actually, half waiting for Jen & Mark to arrive!!! Things I have baked/cooked/stirred today: chocolate chip banana muffins, pumpkin whoopie pies, chili (all on my kitchen table), and several vodka high balls (all in my stomach). I just watched the bit in Love Actually where the secret orchestra stands up and plays an impromptu "Love Is All You Need" for the bride & groom. Note to my future Best Man, if I happen to know him already (I'm fairly certain I already know my Best Lady): BIG points for arranging the very same thing at my "someday" wedding! If Keira Knightely gets it, why not moi? I don't care about originality... I just want four trumpeters sitting in a row behind the groom's family waiting for their cue! I guess I also want a groom who I'll love until my last day, but that much is already factored into the fantasy. If I know my future groom already: look out! You're in for one giant wedding bill!!!! But won't it be worth it? I mean, come on! IMPROMPTU TRUMPETERS! (plus: super awesome bride!!!!)

Today was an exceptionally beautiful day in Montreal... high-definition sunlight angling between the buildings, which I happen to know because I went downtown to meet a friend for lunch. (Aside to Bronwyn and Adam: there is a Zyng restaurant right beside Concordia! I can't believe I never noticed it before! I was just walking down the street, saying "damn, it's too bad that Zyng is all the way down at St. Denis cuz that would be the perfect place to go!" and then WHOOOO there as a Zyng right in front of us! AND THEY HAVE A LUNCH SPECIAL! FOR SEVEN DOLLARS!!! There was a beam of dusty sunlight and the hum of angels... definitely a divine intervention on my lunch plans)

Radio Announcer: Best shag you ever had?
Billy Mack: Brittany Spears.
RA: Really?!
BM: No, I'm just kidding. She was rubbish.

Okay, what else.... got a massive inspiration today for a potential submission to the next Delirium Press line of chapbooks. It was the fall-on-your-knees-and-be-grateful kind of inspiration that came somewhere between the old Stanley Street bookshops and the wheeze of the 24 Sherbrooke bus. The Dilirium deadline is sometime in December so I'll need to reel off a masterpiece in the next couple of weeks to give me enough time for acceptable proofreads. Although I guess that if it's a masterpiece, the proofreading is only for show. (not to say that I don't value you, oh valuable proofreaders!)

Movie update: now comes the scene with the Norah Jones Turn Me On song ... I seriously need to get that song. Someday.

Today, whilst milling about on my own downtown, not quite feeling up to returning home to face TA planning, I wandered around the Stanley St bookshops near Concordia. I started with Chapters and harassed my friend Kasper for a while, who just got hired a couple of weeks ago so he's still all green and diligent. The instant I mentioned a book he was looking it up and telling me what floor it was on! that's service. He was all about straightening and shelving and dusting! Made me feel homesick for my old digs at the UWO store where my dear London family is currently toiling with the pre-Christmas, post-midterm crowd. I sashayed over to the used bookstores after that, which is where I picked up The True History of the Kelly Gang (which I've wanted to read for quite a while...). Who knows when I'll get to it. I just finished Outside the Dog Museum by Jonathan Carroll, which turned out to be a very philosophical mind game that kept me preoccupied during all the blank moments of a day: bus riding, elevator waiting, sleep building (thanks to Stephen Cribar, my all-time favourite boss/friend/recommender of good books). I still have D's Zen of Motorcycle Maintenance to ponder through (don't think I've forgotten!), which I'm even more excited about now that my philosophical appetite is whetted! (whet? Whetted? why???)

Love Actually is about to reach that moment that is probably one of my favourites in the movie, where the poor wretched Best Man is hating himself out in the street while the Dido song is playing. I think it's a crazy girl moment - we all want to have a boy writhing over us in an alley somewhere with Dido playing in the background. Admit it! We do!!! It's awful, but soooo true! That's what makes this movie so great, and so hated by 99% of the population. It sums up the so-called "romantic crisis" of the privileged upper-middle-class of our place & time! As for the movie at this moment, I just want to yell at the guy. Dude, Keira Knightley is waiting for you in your friggin living room! How wretched do you have to be???

I hope no one reading this who has thought highly of me until now suddenly changes their mind about my intellectual credibility because of my weakness for romantic comedy. I'm still the same person I was to you yesterday! Remember that! Dear god, remember!!!

JENnMARK in less than one hour!!!!

The Postal Service...

2006-10-26T14:12:00.000-02:30

...is more than just good listenin' for shloopy love-worn tracks!

Things Tycho & I have received in the mail in the last week:

1. Halloween package from mom (containing candies, bats, and a Walrus!) (magazine, not animal)
2. Halloween card from Jen's parents, Mary & John! (containing picture of Tycho as I've never seen him before!)
3. Card from my grandma ... which I am saving for the right time to open!
3. Package from my old friend/high school teacher Gwen (containing a book & lovely/loving letter!)
4. Package from my dad (containing something gift-wrapped which I will resist opening until the 14th!)
5. Bust magazine! (containing delicious reads)

The packages from Gwen & my dad arrived coincidentally at the same time, delivered personally to my door by a FedEx dude and an XpressPost dude respectively. I wanted them to duke it out at my door so that I could officiate and then congratulate the winner ("you are the last post!") but they were far too gentlemanly.

And soon something else is going to come through my door... and that something else iiiis... JEN'N'MARK! this means a special trip to the SAQ/grocery store tonight to stock up on goodies, pumpkin-based and otherwise. This also means we will finally crack open the giant Kahlua bucket that Jen's mom gave me when I moved! Feeling extra good right now because I've been working extra much over the past few days to clear the slate for the weekend. I'm not quite where I should be yet (due to getting inexplicably sucked into the underground mall yesterday - some days I am just not strong enough to withstand its pull!) but I'm close to being on top of things. I've still got some viable work hours left before their arrival so I'd better get to it... by the time they get here I will be ready for a good looooong break!

that is all for now!

damn.

2006-10-23T21:58:00.000-02:30

As yet the new city seemed forbidden to me, and the strange
unpersuadable landscape darkened as though I didn't exist.
Even the nearest Things didn't care whether I understood them.

-Rainer Maria Rilke, "The Vast Night"

Target Practice!

2006-10-22T21:48:00.000-02:30

T and I received a surprise package in the mail this week, packed full of our favourite things: candy and fake bats. I gave Tycho the bats (he has destroyed one and sleeps cuddled against another - who knows what his criteria is) and kept the candy for myself! Tycho, always taught not to gobble food from strangers (and not fully understanding the postal system) did a thorough investigation of the candies before deeming them safe and letting me indulge.

Brunch today with Marko of the parents-who-used-to-be-gangsters Marko, you'd know him if you saw him. We made crepes, which turned out marvellously well, and spiked smoothies (ditto on marvellosity, especially with the classic Megan steep tilt to the bottle), and even managed to run fast enough from my house to downtown to catch Marie Antoinette (the movie, not the girl.) Disappointment: the New Order song I have come to love wasn't actually in the movie. Un-disappointment: a Strokes song was in it! And it was a pageant, full of candy-for-the-eyes sort of goodness, if a little dull in terms of plot. Now I can imagine that every vehicle I'm in is a horse and carriage. This used to happen a lot as a kid, this easy bleeding of movie life into real life after seeing a particularly mesmerizing film. Doors to bedrooms became doors to secret bedrooms, creek beds became moors (as talked about in the Secret Garden movie, though I never fully understood what a moor was), and ordinary vehicles became horse-drawn carriages. The difference was that I had a bright yellow school bus whisking me off to kindergarten. These days I have a big grey bus jostling me to graduate seminars. It will be a test of the invisible faculties to say the least!

Horse-drawn carriages sound good right now actually, since they might actually operate for a dependable period of time. I am feeling pouty about technology because in the past three weeks these are the things that have crapped out in my apartment:
1) microwave
2) iPod
3) printer
Argh!!! Mom reminded me that these things happen in threes and I hope she's right! I got a new microwave already, and I can handle not having an iPod for a while, but not having a printer is really bad news - especially since I just spent $80 buying a new ink thingy! AND double-especially because I already had to ship this printer off once before to get it repaired. (note: that repair may or may not have been my fault, something to do with melting a transparency sheet inside, but I don't know how that would cause a whole system shut-down, come on). This time though the printer got jammed, for reals, through no fault of my own. I gutted it as always and pulled out the bad piece of paper, put it back together, and never got contact again. It's like my printer just shrugged its shoulders and gave up. Maybe it's sort of like an organ transplant, and the new ink thingy I got for it is getting rejected by the printer. I've tried everything. I even called Future Shop (baaaaaad idea). So tomorrow I will go downtown and (a) drop off my iPod at a UPS store to go back to Apple and (b) drop off my printer at Future Shop to go back to purgatory for a month or two. talk about URGH! especially because essay season is coming up! At least I finished printing out all the comments for my students' latest assignments already, AND printed out my latest workshop piece. Maybe that's what did it! The totall heart-stopping genius of my writing was just too much for my printer to handle, and it was all like, "Whoa man, my ink is not worthy! Abort! Abort!!" I will try printing a really bad story stolen from diary.com or something.

Nope, still not working.

Any suggestions before I take it back tomorrow morning? Because I'd reeeeeeally like to not have to take it back. That would be super helpful and probably deserving of a batch of cookies sent in your direction.

This morning I was out in the alley with Tycho when Jen & Mark called! So Tycho enjoyed an extra-long walk, and Megan enjoyed an extra-long "what's up!" with her Toronto syndicate. GOOD NEWS! They are both coming to visit this weekend! I knew it all along but now it seems extra exciting, since I've actually talked to both of them. Yay guys, you're coming!!!! We're going to eat in the dark! AND I got a little wee on-sale blender today, so we can make Kahlua mudshakes that Jen's mom gave me as a housewarming present! whooop.

Also, soon I will go home to Waterloo/Dundalk for the fastest trip ever (two days!) during which I will see important people: family, D, other [Dundalk] family... And I'm going to see THIS live & in person, starring a Dundalkian who is very near & dear to me:

I want to pick peaches off the cherry tree!

2006-10-19T19:26:00.000-02:30

What does that even mean!? Perhaps only Boy Least Likely To will ever know. But I will continue to watch their video over and over to try and figure it out, because it's THE CUTEST VIDEO EVER. my favourite is the bunny (?) playing the drum. he got rhythm!

[disclaimer: this video might be slightly cuter. thanks, d!]

Okay, ten minutes until my delicious, homemade pizza is done, so here is a blog in ten minutes or less! And of course, we will start with the man of every hour. Here is a public service announcement to anyone who has a feline at home...

THIS IS YOUR CAT:

THIS IS YOUR CAT ON DRUGS!!!

I gave Tycho some catnip this morning and he just about exploded with enthusiasm. seriously! He had a total manic fit!!! I think he suspects me of trying to hoard the catnip all to myself because every time I got close to him while he still had a little sprinkling of the stuff he kind of wrapped his front paws around it in a protective sort of way, and gave me the evil eye. And what an eye! Look at those pupils! He got the post-high munchies big time afterwards, and started eating my plant, which took a lot of effort since said plant hangs from a hook on the ceiling.

Other news:

My friend Ben, who is a bike messenger in Montreal, got hit by a car and broke his arm! ouch! but now he gets a new bike! yay!

Jen is moving [someday] to Montreal! (says Megan)

My sister is going to San Fransisco to present a paper! (says my sister)

And... what else... I've been feeling better and better about the Concordia social scene lately. Still a little [country bumkin] fish in a big pond, but little fishes sometimes get invited to the best parties! I haven't connected with anyone enough to create a new email folder (a sure sign of importance), but I have had some very, very good times, and feel confident that many more such times lie ahead.
Also, there is an unending stream of fascinating people to get to know... last night at Brutopia (which now has chocolate beer - Jen, pay attention!), I met a girl who works for an ice cream flavour company! Said company does just what their name suggests... they peddle new ice cream flavours to potential ice cream manufacturers! I thought things like that only existed in Who-ville.

ONLY TWO
MORE
MONTHS
WHOOOO!!!!

that is all I can say at the moment, since my pizza is ready!

Friend of My LaserJet

2006-10-16T22:58:00.000-02:30

Here is a picture of the most handsome dude in Montreal, possibly even the world, taken about thirty seconds ago:

LOOK AT THAT FACE
I wish I could just squeeze him right now! Oh wait, I can! BECAUSE HE LIVES WITH ME!!!

Today: sat down with Dr. Manish Sharma, my official RA (Ridiculously Awesome) boss for the coming year. I'm going to be working for him on his new academic project, which he told me all about today. This meeting involved, on my part, a lot of solemn head-nodding and saying things like, "Hmmm, yes, I see." But seriously, I understood most of what he was describing to me (I *think* that, very broadly speaking, he is planning on taking contemporary lit theory and philosophy and using it to reexamine Old English texts)... and even if it does seem a little beyond me at this point, he was just so darned enthusiastic about it all that I got caught up in it too, and now I feel really excited. Whoooo, Deleuze in the house! (apparently most of my grunt work will involve reading lots and lots of this guy). Manish has never had an RA before, and I've never been an RA before, but we both agreed to make it a learning adventure (because those are the best kind of adventures, after all!). He was all, "I just got a SSHRC so now I can hire an assistant!" and I was all, "Dude, I just got a SSHRC, too! Where's my monkey?"

I start in November. Very exciting.

So, in other news, the story I've been working lately (which has shouldered aside all the other work I should be doing right now) was originally supposed to be about ten pages long, but it has since swollen like a hammered thumb to an unwieldy thirty, and still going. I seem to have taken to heart Patrick McCabe's advice of "writing it all" on the first draft, without regard to the personal editing impulse. I'm worried that I have not only disregarded my personal editing impulse, but have actually squashed it altogether, for good! I'm also worried about how much it's going to cost me to photocopy this mess for everyone in my workshop. I seem to have a rapport with the dudes at the copy center though, since I'm in there jamming up their machines nearly every day, so maybe I can get a deal. Anyway, now I need to come up with a title. I am resentful of Alice Munro for already having a story called Friend of My Youth. That is such a good title and now my brain keeps thinking for a while and then saying, "I know! How about Friend of My Youth?" And I am all "Urrrgh that's already taken, remember?!" And my brain is all, "Oh yeah, my bad." Then, five minutes later, the same thing! Once in a while I get, "I know! How about Love of a Good Woman?" Which doesn't even bear any relevance to my story. Grrr, brain. Grrr, brilliant Alice Munro. Grrrr, lack of personal editing skills.

Yay, tycho!

The World This Morning

2006-10-14T10:54:00.000-02:30

Bronwyn likes Adam...

Megan likes porridge...

Tycho likes bumming around!

Things I predict will happen today:
1. I'll accidentally sleep in longer than I meant to (already happened)
2. I'll eat a banana (currently happening)
3. I'll have a furious debate with myself about whether or not to put real clothes on and go out to get the G&M... likely I'll decide not to (yay pajamas!)
4. I'll finish a new story
4.5 I'll get all snuggly-warm with Tycho in the basket chair whilst finishing said new story (it's raining outside, perfect writing weather)
5. I'll make chicken fried rice for dinner
6. I'll scrutinize my face in the mirror, and decide it's a pretty good face
7. I'll go to Katie's party!
8. I'll run like mad down Sherbrooke to catch the last metro home at 1:16am exactly

That's all!
The rest is between God and my inbox!

Snakes on a Blog!

2006-10-12T00:31:00.000-02:30

This guy lives twenty minutes away from my apartment... at the Montreal Biodome! If he ever escapes, Tycho's in trouble. Bronwyn and Adam and I went to visit him and his other zoo buddies last week... there were many screaming children... and many screaming birds! It was hard to tell who was who. There was also a bat cave (I steered clear).

We saw penguins!

And one of these!

And a couple of those!

We also saw some more uniquely Montreal sights during their visit... like horses with ear muffs...

And pretty parks...

And poutine...

And... repulsive plaster-of-paris statues of Habs fans?!

I even introduced B&A to the wonders of Brutopia and its raspberry beer!

To work off the threat of beer gut, we went on a military march up the mountain... which was amazingly cool (and we met lots of dogs!). Since when do big teeming cities have giant, preserved forests right in their middle? Answer: since MONTREAL!

So tomorrow night is the chapbook launch! I'm not sure why I'm so excited about it - maybe because I expect the readings to be really good - and also because I'm proud to have been a part of the whole chapbook-making process, albeit a small part in which I didn't really have any concept of what I was actually doing. The girls in charge were all, "Fold this, glue that, eat some soup!" and I was all, "Yes ma'am!" So it will be interesting to see the final product, and definitely beneficial to have a good Montreal night under my belt to kick off my return after the long weekend. So far, since I got back, it's been grind-grind-grind... and not in the clubby/dancey kind of way! Ew. More in the WRITE LIKE A MANIAC AND MEAN IT! kind of way. That's okay though, because I have a nice smattering of social events coming up to keep me from getting too pale and nervous in my own bubble. Example: faculty "wine from a box" shin-dig at the grad lounge next week. It's like speed dating, but instead of looking for men, I'm looking for thesis supervisors! Much safer, in my opinion.