etc.

Of August. Of turning thirty-one. Of becoming a university professor (har!). Of planting Black-Eyed Susans. Of being alternately hot and cold. Of obsessing over my sensible new shoes. Of entertaining friends. Of making Sweeping Changes.

I’ve updated things a bit around here (rss-readers, pop on over): a new banner, a refreshed palette, a new tagline. I feel like I am on the verge and on the verge is a good place to be. Good, good.

Feast of St. Ignatius of Loyola to-day, patron saint of soldiers and reader of worldly fiction. I know this because I am an erstwhile student of hagiography and also because I found a widget for my Dashboard that spits out saints of the day right onto my desktop. How delightfully secular!

The Purge of Friday Afternoon started in good earnest but ground to a premature halt on account of The Worst Allergy Attack of All Time. It was terrible, I can’t remember ever sneezing that much in such a short time span. Ever. Sad that I have to take an antihistamine to clean this house. Sad and ridiculous.

But, whatever. Let’s not talk about that anymore. Let’s talk, instead, about the films we’ve watched lately.

• The World According to Bush ****
• The Matador ***1/2
• Goodnight, and Good Luck ****
• Over the Hedge ***
• Lady in the Water **1/2
• Proof ***
• Fear **
• Monster-in-Law **

Two trips to the theatre in this batch, for Over the Hedge and Lady in the Water, neither of which were particularly good or recommended. The Matador was oddly entertaining, Goodnight, and Good Luck and The World According to Bush were brilliant, and the rest I barely remember. This weekend has been about The Alien Quadrilogy, which we own and which we’ve watched countless times before, I can never get enough of all four of those films.

Updated later: I almost forgot that we rented Final Destination 3 on Friday night. A fabulous dead-teenager-movie! Three stars.

Hello, Friday. The mister and I returned yesterday from a 2.5 day road trip to London, Ontario, where I spent 2.5 minutes introducing the course I’m teaching to a roomful of MLIS students, and where we spent the rest of our time tooling around campus and town, rediscovering some of our old haunts (we both graduated from Western and haven’t been back in nine years). More pictures here.

And now, pardon me, but I am off to turn this house upside-down, with broom and dustpan in one hand, and garbage bags in the other. I am determined to rid us of the junk and detritus that has been piling in our corners for too long, making me feel generally bogged down and sick with unease. Onward!

I finished working on my course syllabus late yesterday so I spent the last of my Sunday hours curled up in bed with this book. I had reached about a quarter of the way through when I climbed into bed but I knew, just a few pages on, that I would press on until I hit the back cover. Elsewhere is one of those books that takes ahold of you, burrows in, and refuses to allow you to stop turning the pages. It’s about Liz, a fifteen year-old girl who gets hit by a car while riding her bike to the Mall to help her friend Zooey pick out a prom dress (YA? You guessed it). Most of the narrative takes place in Liz’s afterlife (“elsewhere”) where she is forced to confront what it means to have her life end abruptly (“I’ll never get my driver’s license, never go to Prom, never get into college” etc.) and never see her friends and family again. It’s smart and funny and paints as interesting (and inviting!) a picture of the afterlife as I’ve ever read. Thanks for blogging about this book, Moni! And keep the YA recommendations coming.

Hmmm, did you see that weirdness? That was some weird weirdness. In case you happened to miss it, here’s what happened: this website refused to load for most of to-day. Then, about five hours ago, it loaded again, but with an odd array of mysql error messages at the top of the page. I restored to 3 day-old version of the database, and now all appears well. I think I might have inadvertently discovered the upside of not updating this blog in 7 days!

I might not have discovered the weirdness at all if I wasn’t tyring to post a book review 5 hours ago. If all goes well, that book review should appear momentarily. Anticipate!

I’ve been binging on pistachios recently. For no reason at all, I bought a large handful from the bulk bin at an organics shop in our neighbourhood a few days ago. I’ve never been a pistachio fan, but that day, they beckoned to me from the nut corral and I picked up a few. I’ve been snacking on them with reckless abandon ever since, I’ve got the calluses on both thumbs to prove it. Odd. But good.

The truth, friends, is that I haven’t sewn a stitch in 7 days (my apologies to those waiting for birds!). Instead, I’ve been reading a whole lot and planning & plotting the course. I’m attending an info session next week, the purpose of which is to introduce new courses to the students, and I’d really, really like to have a finalized syllabus to give them. Complete with reading list, assignments, and due dates. I’m not sure I’ll get there (to a finalized syllabus, that is), but I’ll definitely get close. If I can manage to hammer down the assignments and due dates (and percentage worth), I’ll be happy. I don’t think they’ll be too cut up about not having a complete reading list. Hopefully.

Andrea reports having her knitting mojo back and I think I do too. Not sure what it is (perhaps August being on the horizon? Closely followed by September?) but as soon as I saw KnittinK’s progress on Lady Eleanor, I knew I was ready to assume entrelac duty. Meanwhile, it’s 35°C outside and I have a substantial heft of wool/silk on my lap. Summer knitting would be all but impossible without air conditioning, wouldn’t it?

Back to the birds this past weekend. You might recall that I made the first set of “birds on a wire” out of bright cotton prints, and while I liked them well enough, I went for more of a folksy feel with these fellas. I think the combination of wool fabric and vintage cotton bits did the trick. Here they are hanging in the corner of my studio minutes before they were boxed up and dropped in the mail (click for a decent-sized image!):

This bunch is headed to Seattle for Plush You II. I’ve got a few more in the works for the shop, stay tuned! Having said that, this is probably a good time to mention that I set up a mailing list over on the shop site if you’d like to be notified when fresh goodies get posted. I’ve got 5 lonely souls on the list at the moment and they might like some company. Just sayin’.

Last weekend, I sent the mister to the video store to rent Goodnight, and Goodluck, Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, and The Snow Walker. He came home with 16 Blocks, Freedomland, Water, and Match Point.

I think we might have a communication issue.

Turns out, I really liked 50% of what he brought home (not so much with the other 50%). We’ve watched a few more movies since then (I can’t believe we’ve watched this many movies in a week, 4-day weekend or not), here they are in order of rating:

• Water ****
• Match Point ****
• Kiss Kiss Bang Bang ***½
• I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead ***½
• Elephant ***
• Freedomland ***
• 16 Blocks ***
• Firewall **½
• When a Stranger Calls *½
• The Hills Have Eyes *

Guess what? Things are getting accomplished. I’ve been back at work for three days and I’ve been a whirling dervish of accomplishment. The course is well on its way, my work to-do list has been whittled down to a shadow of its former self, there are all of four (FOUR!) messages in my inbox, and I’m starting in on the longer-term projects that have been sidelined for months & months in favour of all the other little stuff.

Damn!

I’m embarassed to tell you how excited I am about Big Brother: All Stars. Not embarassed enough, however. Have you seen who was voted in? Step back, quality teevee straight ahead, friends.

Remember The Plan? It didn’t work. My time off ended up being a lot less structured and a lot more haphazard. I did a lot of thinking and planning for the course, but I don’t have a lot to show for it, which sort of makes me feel like I wasted 10 days, but I really didn’t (did I?). And the afternoon crafting part of The Plan? Not much on that front either.

I’m back to work to-morrow and, guess what? I think I’ll get more done when I’m not getting 10-hours of sleep every night, when I don’t wake up to seemingly endless hours stretched out before me, when I have brief pockets of time and I can’t afford to waste a single minute. That’s when I am most productive, I’ve always known that, so I really shouldn’t be surprised that the past ten days have been a struggle for motivation.

So, yes it’s going to get busy, and yes I’m going to be harried, but I’ll bet you I’ll be accomplishing things! Oh yes, I’ll be accomplishing things!

I had better be accomplishing things.