Happy Birthday, Bruce!

We hope you have a wonderful day and a happy, successful year ahead.

Love,
Leslie and Zak

Today's thought

(a quotation, of course, since I am so overwhelmed by marking that I can no longer form independent thought...)

"In our cynical world, where suspicion is a necessity, insisting that something is true is not nearly as powerful as suggesting that something might be true." —Thomas King in The Truth About Stories

Only 21 more piles to go...

Happy happy congratulations to us all!

The Alberta Book Awards were presented last night in Calgary, and two Edmonton-area publishing personalities were among the winners.

• Trade Non-Fiction Book of the Year was awarded to Hole’s (Edmonton) for Lois Hole’s Favorite Bulbs: Better Choices, Better Gardens, edited by Jim Hole and Valerie Hole, and published by Bruce K——, publishing manager for Hole's.

• Trade Fiction Book of the Year was awarded to The University of Alberta Press (Edmonton) for An Ark of Koans by E.D. Blodgett and with illustrations by Jacques Brault. (Apparently the jury didn't read the text, because it's a volume of POETRY!). Leslie V——, former managing editor, had acquired the volume for the Press. In a move that shows a startling absence of creativity, An Ark of Koans also won awards for cover design and book design, despite that the designer has now used (and been awarded for using) both designs twice before.

Ah the ironies of the publishing life. In other news, Bruce and I passed our belay checks on Saturday. The walls of the world had better look out!

Must continue marking — I may hit 100 pieces of student work marked in a single day tonight. Sigh. Exam week has begun.

L

It's raining!

It's been a long stretch, but I can see light at last. (Bruce would probably disagree, as it's been a few weeks since he could see the floor of my office.) I have marked pages and pages and pages and pages of student work in the last week. (That's an example of polysyndeton.) I want combat pay! But just two more weeks of school and then final exams start. Then I have a week off and then ... spring session! Or two months off.

The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done; and there is no new thing under the sun. Ecclesiastes 1:9

Or...

That that is, is; that that is not, is not; is that not it?

Went climbing on Saturday. Soon I will be qualified to belay climbers while using an ATC rather than a gri-gri, so we can climb many more interesting routes. And one day perhaps even challenge the wall at the Butterdome (!). Celebrated my parents' move to Skyview on Saturday night. Must go get my "stuff" from the old house one of these days. Walked through the yard on Sunday. So many plants are emerging already: crocuses and tulips, the arctic raspberry, the irises, the violas, the saskatoon. We have about a million new strawberry plants: yum. I planted some new lily of the valley, and the lettuce trough is already out. Soon, soon it will be summer.

Now reading: My Invented Country by Isabel Allende.

Also flipping through the many many free books that come to me in the mail (e.g., This is P.R.: The Realities of Public Relations — doesn't that sound fascinating?). The list of books I want to read is getting longer every day. I'm so grateful for the library! — if only I could get there. Have you noticed the preponderance of blogs by librarians? I think ref-grunt started the trend, but there are dozens of them, most very good. Urm, yeah. Whatever.

OK, that's my break. Back to marking very bad essays on editorial ethics — as if! : )

L