BLAZE

The going water and the gone

It's February. Two weeks to Reading Break. Hanging on, hanging on. Have you heard about miasma theory? Or Cryptosporidium? Editors end up with brains full of intellectual litter. This morning I dreamed that I had to appear before a committee to defend the connection between my employment history and my proposed academic interests. It was going badly when I, gratefully, woke up.

• I remember the cake I ordered for my mother's fortieth birthday. It was vanilla with chocolate icing, decorated with pink and yellow roses and green writing that read "Happy Bar Mitzvah, Irving" (from a long-standing family joke about getting the wrong cake for various purposes). Mr Wright, who made it, was distinctly puzzled by my request but stepped up gamely. It was a delicious, hideous cake. As for most other things, we have no photographs of it.

• Long-time Edmontonians: Do you remember Shaky's Pizza in the Meadowlark area? I do. This would be circa 1975. A restaurant that made fabulous thin-crust pizza and had a viewing area for little ones. Long, long, long gone, of course.

• Highland dance: 1975. Interpretive dance: 1985. Dancing Queen: 1977. Flashdance: 1983. As Splashdown says, "Time was a line that the mind could bend."

• Have you seen that obnoxious McDonald's commercial involving stay-at-home moms and their baby ballerina daughters? Il me fait vomir! Especially the closing shots of the "mommies" getting squishy watching the male dancer in the next studio doing his warm-ups. (Wow! Look at all those participials!) Harrumph! Give me a goalie any day.

Sigh. Still waiting for my Jensen Interceptor CD. Maybe tomorrow. Still cold outside. Going to Stones in His Pockets this afternoon. Lots of movies I want to see — lately I have a bee in my bonnet about seeing movies. Even though the theatre experience for Return of the King was less than stellar. Eh bien. Sorry this doesn't make sense: it's kinda like someone poured a coke on the soundboard of my mind. But not exactly. Will try again soon.

L