etc.

No posts until this cold goes away. It feels like my sinuses have got up and started walking around inside my head. With all that activity, it hurts to think. Bleagh. On the upside, I’m getting lots of reading done.

Thanks to all who provided suggestions for the London list via comments and email. I’ll compile a complete list closer to the time of departure. Keep those clever suggestions coming.

Such a big city in nine days deserves a list, so here is a list of things we want to do/see while in London. If there’s something I’ve missed, be a champ and let me know, would you? It’s Michael’s first time, so all the touristy haunts are a must, and we’ve obviously had no problem tracking them down. Now we’re looking for the off-the-beaten-path suggestions, the ones that will allow us to indulge our inherent flaneur-ness and whisper, rather than scream, “this is London.” Be creative. And thanks.

• British Library
• University of London Library
• London Eye
• The Missing Voice [thanks Ash]
• Markets
• Museum of London
• The British Museum
• National Gallery
• National Portrait Gallery
• Tate Britain and Tate Modern
• Victoria and Albert Museum
• Hampstead Heath
• Highgate Cemetary
• Tower of London
• Buckingham Palace
• Kew Gardens

Had a lovely time in Ann Arbor this past weekend at a friend’s wedding. The drive down was fairly uneventful, which was a nice surprise considering the strict border laws that were just implemented the day we left.

On Saturday morning Michael forcibly dragged me on his “competitive shop” to J.C.Penney, KB Toys and Sears, where I offered my opinion on various Bratz and Diva Stars dolls, and then on Sunday, I forcibly dragged him to three libraries at the University of Michigan, where we took pictures of the pretty old buildings and autumn leaves, and where he helped me gather handfulls of library publications. It’s a good thing I like toys and he likes libraries, because our marriage would be on shaky ground if we didn’t.

I’ve finished reading A Short History of Wine and would recommend it highly to anyone who has a remote interest in the history of the noble grape and how viticulture and vinification have been impacted by major historical events. I’ve read that a couple of reviewers have criticised it on the basis of its eurocentricism, and the fact that the new world is not equitably represented, so that is something to keep in mind if new world wine is your main interest. If it isn’t, then this account is probably unequaled.

I am not a collector of things. In fact I can barely get my head around the collecting mentality (much to chagrin of my husband, a man who scours the city for garage and rummage sales every summer weekend in search of I don’t know what, and I don’t think he knows either, but he’ll know it when he sees it). I am very much against the amassing of things, and if you ask my family, they will confirm that I go through a household purge at least once a year, riding myself of the growing quantity of stuff, the byproduct of modern living I think, that eventually floats to the surface like a whole lot of suffocating flotsam and jetsam.

And I’ve never really been a gadget person, I’ve always preferred one multitasking piece of equipment over many single-task ones, which is why my recent yearning for several computer and personal peripherals has caught me somewhat off guard. While sifting through junkmail yesterday (definitely flotsam), I came across the Radio Shack flyer, one that usually goes from the landing, where our mail is dropped, straight to the recycling bin. But this time I brought it in, lay it down on the coffee table and sat in front of it with a cup of tea and pencil and circled about 20 things, some of which include:

• a digital camera
• a webcam
• a zip drive
• CD burner
• MP3 player

I’d be willing to pay a decent krona or two for a single piece of equipment out there that can take digital photographs, post them to my website, zip my files, burn CDs and play my MP3s. And if it can boil up a nice pot of Earl Grey and spontaneously lay waste to incoming and resident flotsam and jetsam, I’ll add a few more kronor to that offer.

It turns out that I am allergic to my cat. Not both of them, just the one. It could be either of them, so we’re not going to start pointing any fingers. One cat I can do. Two apparently I can’t.

We got Sebastian in June of this year. Around the same time, I started noticing some laboured breathing issues. At first we blamed the nasty smog cloud that hangs over Toronto from around June to September each year, making breathing a generally unsavoury activity, and illiciting poor air quality warnings from Environment Canada practically daily. But then October rolled around and with it came the sweet, crisp, autumn air we all love, and I had to start thinking up more creative excuses for the shortness of breath and excruciating heaviness of the general lung area, even though I knew deep down that it was all probably due to an allergic reaction to the overwhelmingly concentrated felineness of our little apartment.

So I went to see my doctor and underwent a whole battery of tests (blood work, ECG, chest x-ray, etc. yes, even more radiation, dammit) and she put me on inhalers for a week which made the lung weariness go away and I’ve started to remember what it was like not to have to think about breathing. The results came in yesterday and she confirmed that deep down suspicion that I am indeed allergic to having two cats. Of course a new home is not an option (unless it’s a new home for me), so our bedroom has been declared a dander-free zone, and I am trying to ween myself off the inhalers. If that works, we’re home free. If not, I’m on Advair for as long as Heidi and Sebastian live out their natural lives, and I’ve been advised by my doctor to consider the joys of owning budgerigars thereafter.

To her I say: breathing is overrated.

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We found a phenomenal deal online for nine nights at a lovely hotel in London, so our plans to rough it on this trip have happily been ixnayed, and we haven’t even had to loosen the purse strings. Did life just cost more before the Internet?

My latest submissions to the pseudodictionary have been accepted: blogogler and baggety-bagged. While there is certainly nothing wrong with blogogling, I am happy to say that I have convinced at least two readers to quit it and start their own blogs already. I am currently working on at least three other blogoglers. You know who you are.

Damn I’ve been busy with the site this week. I’m working on converting all my global stylesheets to linked ones. The more than 100 pages on this site, complete with their global CSS info, is why this project has been put off for so very long. I’m about 75% there. Big contended sigh of relief and general feelings of accomplishment around to-morrow-ish.

I’ve decided that I’ve had enough with pop-up javascript windows for my images and all the wrestling I’ve had to do to make my captions look decent. Enter s t i l l l i f e s, the photoblog. It’s where all my pictures will go from now on.