electricland

This weekend I:

• went to choir practice
• found a yarn store new to me just north of where the choir practice was (Bathurst south of St. Clair)
• admired the store's budgie
• bought some perfectly gorgeous rose cotton-silk blend yarn with which I will be making a sweater if I can get my tension sorted out and decipher the pattern (in the round, with short rows interspersed with increases for one's boobs; at least I don't need to worry about that part for a good, oh, foot or so)
• since I had already started spending money, went to Joe's next to the big Loblaw's up there and bought a skirt and a dress and three tops and a set of pyjamas for $86.50 including tax
• discovered that the new lampshades I bought at Ikea do in fact work perfectly well on my bedside lamps now that I've cut down the cardboard bit on the socket so that the bulb can make contact
• banished the old floor lamp with the metal half-cylinder shade and the very harsh light to the yard sale pile in the basement
• discovered what an incredible improvement that made to my bedroom, and wondered why I hadn't done it sooner
• wondered where the other bedside lamp is
• walked Bender (twice)
• saw Fracture
• stayed up way, way, way too late reading The Morning Gift by Eva Ibbotson because I COULD NOT PUT IT DOWN
• wore my new skirt
• went to two family parties
• played badminton with my small cousins
• was urged to visit some other cousins while they're still in Malawi, which kind of makes sense
• ate way, way, way too much
• wondered where the weekend went

So, um, hi. It's me. Still here. Thanksgiving weekend was great once it got started (which would be 4:30 p.m. on Saturday, as I had a class all day). Went up to the cottage, sat in the sun and read a lot, went for a gorgeous walk in the woods by myself. Did not contribute to Thanksgiving dinner beyond buying the turkey (it was a monster and, come to think of it, I didn't get any leftovers -- hmph). Although I did pick up some autumn leaves for the centrepiece.

I was sort of vaguely thinking that life would be calmer in the fall. It's not -- it's just a bit more regimented. As I explained to stilldeepwater yesterday, I currently have Veronica Mars on Tuesdays, Information Architecture course on Wednesdays, and choir on Thursdays. I also try to work, sleep, feed myself, buy groceries, exercise occasionally, and keep myself and my surroundings reasonably clean. In a really good week I manage to get one or two things done on the House. I'm having a little trouble staying motivated at work, but I'm doing OK -- better than I'm doing getting up in the morning, which is a challenge when it's overcast. A touch of SAD may be creeping in. At least I'm still managing to make myself coffee every day. (And I'm still sort of on top of my to-do list some of the time. All hail the power of the tiny notebook!)

At some point I also have to make those 10 Christmas ornaments. I got some books out of the library for inspiration, but haven't cracked them yet. Instead, I've managed to inundate myself with fiction (not that that's a BAD thing). My book policy changed, so anything I think will be a reasonably quick read I just ask to have sent to me right away. Which is cool but results in, um, 26 books out at last count. (Including Song of Unmaking, which I read in one sitting on Saturday -- well, not exactly, because I was outside and had to keep getting up to follow the sun around, but you know what I mean. I keep worrying about those covers though. I can't see her feet, and her clothes are so diaphanous that I worry her shoes match it and she'll get her toes stepped on. I'm having a hard time picturing Valeria in flowing white garments.) (Also Brave New World, which I may not finish -- I started skipping like mad, always a bad sign, and I think I've read enough to get the gist. I am bad, but life is short.)

I've also been going through a YA phase -- Maureen Johnson, Chris Crutcher, Meg Cabot. I don't think I read enough YA when I actually was a YA.

Work: slightly crazy, but I need the pressure, so it's all good.

House: continues, I need to spend some quality time with it. Jen's fridge is arriving tomorrow, finally. Shower continues temperamental. Overhead fan is installed. Washing machine still seems to be working. Updates have been fitful but I'll post them at some point. Housewarming II is November 18, for those of you in the neighbourhood.

One day I shall burst my bud of calm, and blossom into hysteria.

Quite soon now, I imagine. Feeling very unmoored and rudderless and drifting helpless on the stream of Life. What a wonderful thing is metaphor. It's summer. I don't seem to do well when the structure of my life changes. Oh wait -- my life has no structure. Never mind. This too shall pass, I expect.

Didn't want to, but I immolated myself on the altar of family duty for the evening. (Parents had a dinner party.) Actually was quite fun, and the food was good.

And I bought clothes: new jeans (my old pair finally split along the inner thighs, I gotta lose some weight), belt, 2 camisoles with built-in bra, sleeveless top with peacocks and sequins, 2 shirts, fleshtone bra. I think I put roughly as much on my Visa today as I put on it all last month. But at least there's colour in my wardrobe now.

Cousin Jen and I saw Syriana this evening. It's... dense to the point of total opacity. Probably missing the first 5 minutes didn't help our understanding of the plot much, but I'm not sure how much difference it would actually have made. There were an awful lot of vaguely familiar-looking middle-aged white men in it as secondary characters; I recognized William Hurt and Chris Cooper, but failed to recognize Christopher Plummer, and don't think I knew any of the others. I also knew who Alexander Siddig was, although I kept losing track of his character's scummy little brother.

Ran into some other cousins at the theatre. (Observant readers may have noticed that I have a lot of cousins, mostly on my mother's side, or rather, I may have a ton on my father's side as well but I don't know them. No matter what the topic is, in my family we can usually chime in with "I have a cousin who...". Decline of the extended family? Not so much in these parts.)

Caught the lighting of the Olympic flame. I'm always so fond of the Olympics.

This is not as interesting a post as I thought it would be when I started.

I'm not feeling very energetic this morning. I blame this on the Family
Birthday, which was last night (my late grandparents, my mother, my two
uncles and my aunt all have/had birthdays in January and February, so we
do a giant party for everyone). The menu:

Champagne, wine, etc.
Prosciutto and melon
Asparagus
Beef Wellington (made by my aunt) with roast potatoes, carrots, snow peas,
and cherry tomatoes on the side
Pear, walnut, and feta salad
Chocolate cherry cake (made by moi) with vanilla ice cream
Coffee for them as wanted it

Festivities started late and went later, including going through Granny's
jewellery and roughly sharing out the items each of us wanted (some of it
didn't suit any of us, alas -- notably the most valuable piece, which
we're selling, a diamond brooch that probably someone who is into that
kind of vintage jewellery will ADORE). Early on in the proceedings Tilde
got locked out and forgotten, but I found her at the bottom of a rather
tall step around the side of the house, squeaking. She was rather sucky
for the rest of the evening.

Spent most of the weekend prior to this over at my aunt and uncle's and/or
the house. Friday night, cousins' evening out at the Gull and Firkin.
Saturday, the House (me up a ladder shoving Safe 'n' Sound into Jen's
kitchen ceiling, Jen scraping goo off the floor -- quite companionable
really) followed by dinner chez la famille monkeycommando.
Baby is almost half as tall as his mother and very cute. I got to read the
bedtime story. Then drinks at Fitzy's with crankygrrl. Then
back to my aunt and uncle's and an hour or so of working on the extremely
addictive 2000-piece puzzle (the
picture is Raphael's "The School of Athens", a nice mix of regular and
irregular, also HUGE).

Also spent much of Saturday bitching about the truly evil weather, a
mixture of snow and rain in the morning followed by torrential rain most
of the afternoon and evening. Ugh.

Left for book club (Adultery, Richard B. Wright; we all liked it, me more than Clara Callan; there were only three of us there, and Shannie gave Kelly and me fuzzy socks in token of our book-club diehardness -- we were the only three at the last meeting too) before my aunt sent this:

Yesterday for lunch, John and I swanned off for lunch with friends.

Ron and John the Ducts came early in the morning, sized up the situation, consulted with the designer and bought the duct, which is oval. John wired, Dan nailed strips, Stuart and Bill installed drywall on the third floor.

Last night, at the request of Ducts, John, Jen, Mike and I went over and cleared out the basement around the furnace, John set up lights, and then we had supper at Gabby's.*

Today, I went out to lunch with friends--got another assignment. Dan nailed. John disconnected fire alarms, installed thermostat for furnace, moved Ikea** from Jen's middle room, bought telephone wire and was very pleased to find three tapering-sized tape measures for $8.

Cheers all, Helen

*Incidentally, Monday was my aunt's birthday. I think it's quite noble to move boxes around on your birthday and then eat at Gabby's, which while pleasant enough is hardly gourmet cuisine.
**I swear to God, if we had had ANY IDEA the house would take this long we would NEVER have bought our kitchens so soon.

Am quite excited that we have a thermostat.

Went over to aunt & uncle's after book club and watched part of an episode of Hamish Macbeth and 1 episode of Chef! -- my contributions both, glad to see they're appreciated.

Not checking Lavalife tonight. Potential love of my life will need to wait. I guess that's where they got the name from.

So, Friday was my choir concert. More exactly, it was the end-of-term recital for the music school of which my choir is a part. This meant that we were the only adults performing; the other performers were an array of (mostly Asian) small children who were all OMGSOCUTE. Some of them could barely reach the piano keyboard, but they all did their thing -- not that I know much about it, but I thought their pieces were pretty well matched to age and ability, so you'd get one kid doing something very simple with only a couple of hesitations while the next whipped off a little flawless Bach. Which I guess is the point. (They were mostly piano students; we also had one violinist, one vocalist, and the children's choir.) Fun to watch; some were very happy to get up there and bow and do the stage-presence thing, and others sort of dashed back to the audience as soon as they reasonably could.

It was all pretty informal -- before it started our choir spent some time figuring out how to line up to get on and off stage in the right order, and there was a call for audience help moving the piano, and none of us was entirely certain where to sit. We were at St. George the Martyr Anglican Church, which is lovely and a wonderful place to sing. My parents and Jen came and enjoyed themselves very much (at least, they said they did). I think we did well; I spend so much time frantically trying to remember stuff like "OK, breathe like this, aim your voice here, shape the note like this" that it's always hard for me to notice how we're doing while actually in the midst, and it's over terribly fast. But it was fun, as it always is, and it was nice that it was SO relaxed and informal. (Especially compared to Wednesday night, when I did front-of-house for my mother's choir and about 700 people came and the choir alone has to be 200.)

Our program:
Aralo - trad. Georgian
Nana - trad. Georgian
Yedid Nefesh - trad. Jewish
Thula Kizio - trad. Zulu
When the Stars Fall - Stephen Hatfield (with a soloist who hadn't rehearsed with us, but who was incredible)
Shouting, Whispering Sea - Mark Patterson (I think)
Come, Let Us Sing - not sure who the composer is, but it's a fun song which we do with the children's choir (did I mention OMGSOCUTE?)

The rest of the weekend:
Friday night: dinner with parents (Peruvian restaurant); The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe with crankygrrl, which made us both very happy (disclaimer: although I read and enjoyed the books as a child, they weren't and aren't favourites in the same way as, for example, the Swallows and Amazons books -- as a result I don't think I bring as many expectations to the movie as I might otherwise. I enjoyed it very much.)
Saturday: took the dog for a walk; started rereading Pride and Prejudice (necessary to reassure myself that it was still there); went over to the house and swept the floors and watched my new window being installed; got parents to drive me out to the wilds of Scarborough to pick up a package which, it turns out, Canada Post didn't leave at that postal outlet at all; dinner with parents (Swiss Chalet); home; bed.
Sunday: socialized a bit with hosts who have returned from frozen North; more Pride and Prejudice; house, vapour barrier (Jen scraped paint off our heat registers); walked over to aunt & uncle's house, meeting real estate agent along the way (he seems slightly horrified that we aren't living in the house yet); admired newly tidy basement and burgeoning Christmas decorations; copied down selections from posted Christmas wish lists; back home for dinner with Italian family who have been in Canada for 6 weeks and were very sweet but had varying amounts of English. Generally more than my Italian, though. My brain kept trying to default to French and then hauling out Spanish words. It's not like I speak Spanish. However, goodwill got us all through.

Christmas cards written: 1 (today at lunch). I had nearly given myself permission to slack off this year and everything.
Number of people for whom I have finished Christmas shopping: 2. I think. Sorta. It would be more, but I'm waiting for some deliveries.
Number of people for whom I am moderately stumped for a present: 2. Hey, that's not so bad.

hey, I was away, OK?

Yesterday for lunch, Dan, John and I went to Scratch Danial's. Today, John and I were in Barrie.*

Yesterday Dan and John worked on vapour barrier, and plastic plumbing. David and Dan did same today. They also did the pressure test--and it looks like it works!

John paid $50 to the next-door roofers to patch the vent pipe above Robin's bathroom. Roofers say the next door might be going to sell her house. John taught Dan how to do a McKnight park.**

Helen

*Where I gather miss Tilde was a tremendous hit with the nursing home residents.
**You drive on the kerb, but you rarely if ever have to reverse.

Monday was Granny's memorial service/celebration/whatsit. Great party -- they put photos of her at various stages in her life around the room (sadly, none of her skating or playing tennis available -- most odd) and my mum did a fantastic job with the eulogy. And tons of people came out and we reminisced like mad and drank rum and soda.

The ice-cream store did not burn down. It is one building away from the building that burnt, which is not looking so good, although a lot of the antiques actually look OK at a distance. Apparently a lot of other people were also worried, because the ice-cream store was packed. The girl who served my scoop of Bordeaux cherry chocolate in a sugar cone said the fire department didn't let them go into the building until 3 in the afternoon. The burnt-stuff stench is still pretty powerful.

I sat by the reflecting pool in front of City Hall to work on today's Sudoku, which I managed to screw up the first time (it was the 6s, not, as I had previously thought, the 3s and 7s, that did me in). A woman passing with a stroller said "I had to do today's over, too."

I spent most of yesterday helping our taxonomist (we have a taxonomist) create a card-sort test, and most of today working on our fall publication schedule, which has fallen to me. I confess that I am pleased about this, because I love to meddle and I never felt that the e-zine was being run entirely right, and people kept asking me about it anyway. Now it's mine, all mine!

I am unexpectedly going to a wedding in Ottawa, not this weekend but next. I will be going as proxy for my grandmother and parents, who are not going, but also because the bride and groom (another cousin -- told you I had a bunch) thought it was a pity they hadn't invited me. This has meant messing up the schedules of rather a lot of other people, but what the hell. I also need to call my Ottawa friends to see if they can get together and figure out what to wear. I'm at least moderately confident that, having bought three pairs in the last two weeks, I now have enough shoes for this operation.

My sinks and taps and things are ready. I forgot to call the guy back again today, although come to think of it he may still be there. I also called to see how the building permit was coming along, but haven't heard back yet.

I will not be moving this month, which gives me a golden opportunity to clean my apartment.

Veronica Mars is back on CTV Thursdays at 8 (and Sundays at 5), where she should be.

Life, she is pretty good.