Red boots for Leslie!

Shopping by telephone is much too easy. My boots are coming on Friday! Yipee!

Notes to self

1. Don't drink Vanilla Coke during Distilled Prose.
2. 21 hours in the classroom plus 7 office hours is very different from 15 hours in the classroom plus 5 office hours.
3. The Academic Integrity Assessment Committee could not possibly be as Orwellian as it sounds.

Now reading: Unless by Carol Shields and Uncle Tungsten by Oliver Sacks. And an eternity of student writing.

Having been chided for not blogging...

So Happy 2004! I hope all is bright and beautiful for you. I am typing from my gorgeous new desktop, which is part of my big Xmas present from Bruce. I have lovely new office furniture — and have lost my excuse for piling messes of paper on the floor. However, my natural piling instinct asserted itself quickly and a perfectly good clutter is beginning to form. And I have plants in my office now! In charming pots! Life is pretty puddle-wonderful.

I also received many other wonderful presents, including clothing, books, sweets, and frilly knickers. Oh and for my birthday I received bath soap and perfume, hence the references to smell in the boys' earlier post.

We had my birthday dinner at The Unheardof, where I ate caribou! It was amazing. I have been a surprising carnivore lately: on New Year's Eve I ordered and ate a "baseball" sirloin, which is a very large piece of meat, roughly the size of a softball. And tuna steak for Christmas Eve dinner. And sushi anytime: if you want to be my friend, offer me raw fish and seaweed.

My teaching schedule this semester is kinda strange. I teach nine hours on Mondays, six hours on Fridays, three hours on Tuesdays and on Thursdays, and I have Wednesdays off. If you're counting, that makes seven courses, when the standard is five. Don't bother lecturing me; people have already told me volubly how bad and wrong the situation is. But watch this space for continuing news of my triumphs!

What else? We saw Return of the King last week and I was impressed. I got a Dead or Alive remix compilation and have been living all eighties all the time for the last few days. It's especially good in the car, driving to school. I read a stack of books over the break, including Bless the Beasts and Children, To Kill a Mockingbird, and Cold Mountain (but no, I haven't seen the movie and I can't think that I will, given my reading and the rating: I'm too queasy!). I dressed up like a pirate from Xmas dinner at my aunt's house and like a back-up singer for ABBA for Bruce's Xmas party. I found a store that I love love love: Bohemian fashion.

Passages of purple prose deleted. Past ten now, so must fly. I think I kept Kate out too late! Vanilla-bean hot chocolate is tasty but very very sweet. Good thing I skipped supper. Talk to you soon!

l

Happy Birthday Leslie!

And no...we don't think you smell.

As these waining moments of the palindromic age slowly pass by we wish you all the best in the new era of Leslie-dom. All our love, thoughts and hope are reserved just for you on this special day.

Love Bruce and Zak

You may already be a millionaire

In the midst of consumerism — amid the noise and haste, so to speak — remember to consider all you already possess: the love of your friends, the kisses of your beloved, the smiles you have given and received. How many times? Only you can know.

now leaving the vinyl age,
L

Today's thought

Don't take life so serious, son — it ain't no how permanent. —Walt Kelly

Snow Plough for Rent?

Ignored the blizzard warnings. Refused to buy a shovel or snowboots. Am currently snowed in. It may be a week before I can dig myself out. No worries, though — I am well provisioned with vitamins, tea, and chocolate. But if you want to send one of those doggies with a keg full of rum ...

Back to abnormal after final exams.

L
"to love another person is to see the face of God"

Visit homestarr runner for a laugh...

Leslie and Zak especially dissolve over Stong Bad's kid's book and the fangorious devouring...

Some people...sheesh

Work is work... Spring Gardening is almost gone. Some $^%#-wad decided to switch my poinsettia so I'm sulking-- stupid *&^*'s!

Anyway sigh

Last day of November ... aiiiiieeee!

My best trick today: Running the end of my cart into a cosmetics display at the Save-on Foods. Urg. Shrieking "Eeeks!" at the appropriate moment. The woman passing in the other direction giggling appreciatively. After quickly picking up and rolling away, vowing never to shop at Save-On on a Sunday again.

Big sigh of relief: Active Voice/La voix active is DONE! Thank you Bruce for persevering in the face of obstacles and amateurs.

Now reading: Island, a collection of short stories by Alistair MacLeod. Very good. Sister Crazy by Emma Richler. Feels uncomfortably, intentionally constructed to be read as biography-based fiction. Conflict, Action and Suspense by William Noble, in preparation for next semester's Distilled Prose class.

Today I like: Tea! Apple crisp (I made a delicious dish for supper). Stevie Nicks' wardrobe. Cotton tights. The glittery night that leaves me ageless, timeless.

Today I dislike: The speed of light. Being late. Running out of time. Beholdenness. Laundry pile replenishing every week! Bad reviews of records I'm looking forward to hearing.

The I-Tunes says... And you dream you're free but you'll awake / too much too late, too much too late — Berlin, "Like Flames" ... Long ago it must be, I have a photograph / Preserve your memories, they’re all that’s left you — Simon and Garfunkel, "Bookends"

And then from the sublime to the ridiculous: "Don't Go Breakin' My Heart" — Elton John with Kiki Dee ... Heavy — ain't it heavy?

Leslie

Fondly remembering Thumper's mother's advice...

Take a tortuous journey through the fecund valleys of the heart. Green in the silky honey light. Brass at noon. Creeping pink at dawn. Low-slung and humble in the early evening, running up to the solstice. Red and full in mid afternoon, pulling hard around the trees; deep in dense shade warmed by fingers of light. Find that image.

Life is bigger than you, and you are not me ... I thought that I heard you laughing / I thought that I heard you sing / I think I thought I saw you try ... But that was just a dream ...

blah.
L

Paintin' the bathroom red

Ah, adventures in home contracting. We're painting the main-floor powder room a lovely shade of cranberry. In such a small room, everything now seems faintly pink, so we no longer have concerns about the trim, or the linoleum, or the hand towels, or even the door, matching. There's just a vaguely ominous red glow radiating from the hallway...

Things the retail industry doesn't tell you about do-it-yourself renovations (and that I, as the daughter of a handyman, should have known):

• That painting even the smallest room in the house will require sixty dollars' worth of paint.
• That no matter what projects you have completed in the past, you do not have the correct tools to complete this job without at least two trips to the hardware store.
• That dark colours are strangely incoherent when concentrated and in no way resemble the two-by-three-inch chip you fell in love with at the paint counter.
• That eggshell is not flat.
• That the phrase "it dries darker" is the industry's code phrase for "you've been had".

Good thing we like electric-neon-raspberry. Maybe we should try a coat of black on the red before we apply the next gallon?

Next project: walls in the basement. Perhaps we'll wait for the winter holidays before buying the drywall... What's that about hiring people to do this stuff?

PS: If we can, we'll post a picture of the finished project ... if it is ever finished.

Thoughts for today

Don't believe in excess
Success is to give
Don't believe in riches
But you should see where I live
I...I believe in love

merci a U2!

Today...

sigh!

Man is a political creature and all politics are created by man (that's the generic, non-gender specific man...). Gosh, if people would quit feeling threatened by everything and just focus on getting the job done, then more things would get done...less people would worry about it and life would be a box of chocolate-covered cherries...no surprise at all!

Have I had a stressful day? Yes-in-dee-dee. It never fails to amaze me that some people can go through life with no inkling of the political reality of going through life...I sure can't. Just when I think I figured out the players, someone rewrites the script and I get caught up in the dramatic action. Don't they realize that I work backstage? Acting is for actors... I just wanna build things.

Go see Amadeus at the Citadel. Peter Shaffer is brilliant, the actors are brillianter and the gestalt is brilliantest. Theatre the way its supposed to be.

Sigh... B

P.S. Go Here for a flash political commentary to make you giggle.

Is this lame or what? My mind is in desperate need of freeing, so while I'm out finding a mental purgative, please read my recent review of an important editorial tool, the Chicago Manual of Style. I wrote this review for Active Voice, the newsletter of the Editors' Association of Canada. I will update with a more personal entry soon, I promise! — L


The fifteenth edition of the Chicago Manual of Style has finally arrived. It’s been only a decade since the publication of Chicago 14, but editorial processes have changed so dramatically in the interval that the need for a new edition has been keenly felt. With roughly fifty more pages than its predecessor, Chicago 15 answers many editors’ hopes and pleas.

Updates to accommodate electronic publishing and desktop technology were widely expected, and the editors delivered. Chicago 15 provides extensive detail on how to cite electronic materials and includes a succinct overview of considerations for citation, a list that should prove valuable to editors and authors alike. It also acknowledges emerging technologies such as digital bluelines and electronic books, and discusses their specific handling. Another major addition is extensive coverage of journal preparation. Rather than being slushed into book production, journals are treated as a distinct form with particular needs and timelines.

The other big feature of Chicago 15 is the chapter on grammar and usage, and several early reviews have focussed on it. I must confess that I, as a grammar instructor, was drawn immediately to these pages to see how didactic Chicago might have become.

I was pleasantly surprised to find a thorough yet accessible and largely descriptive discussion of American grammar. No Miss Thistlebottom here: the chapter is solid but thoughtful. Take for example its ruling on the split infinitive: "it is now widely acknowledged that adverbs sometimes justifiably separate the to from the principal verb"—a clear statement that is neither permissive nor absolute.

The usage section is similarly thoughtful. Its "glossary of troublesome expressions" breaks out commonly confused words and phrases, such as adverse and averse, convince and persuade, but also extends to some subtler distinctions, such as obtuse versus abstruse or mistreatment versus maltreatment. It also gestures briefly to considerations of bias-free language and includes a helpful list of prepositional idioms.

One change that does not entirely satisfy me is the relegation of production matters to an appendix (albeit a lengthy one). Here too is the new home of the former glossary of technical terms, now reduced to a list of key production terms. Certainly the continuing advance of technology makes the detailed discussion of prepress issues difficult, and in this age of specialization, production editors without design training are increasingly rare. But surely editors—especially new editors—need more than a superficial understanding of the processes that turn an edited manuscript into a bound publication. Perhaps by the time the next edition of Chicago is published, technology will have stabilized sufficiently to permit more leisurely consideration of production and printing issues.

Numerous strengths compensate for any perceived weaknesses, however. The table of contents has been expanded for clarity, and the bibliography has been reorganized and updated. All numbered paragraphs have descriptive headings to allow editors to evaluate content quickly. And the style section—the core of Chicago—remains largely unchanged, though expanded. Margaret D.F. Mahan notes in her preface, "As for the rules that many of us either know or know how to look up, we have changed only a few, and mainly those that have never caught on." This is probably one of the greatest achievements of Chicago 15: that it has provided guidelines for tackling the new and unfamiliar without removing what is familiar and valuable.

One other subtle, yet entirely effective, change deserves mention. The moderate use of a second colour throughout gives the book a softer, more accessible feel, rendering it authoritative, not authoritarian. In short, Chicago Manual of Style remains the essential guide to editing and publishing. Plan to add the new edition to your editorial bookshelf soon.

Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep...

Well, at least it's better than the other message: "The number you have dialled is not in service..."

Did you have a happy Hallowe'en? I did, but I ate too many mini chocolate bars. My parents are back from the West Coast now, I think. I am almost caught up on my marking. Thankfully November is much less demanding for marking than October was. Other than the grammar exam next Friday. Oh and the grammar exam on Monday. And the critical research projects. And the second set of essays for advanced grammar. And ... Sagittarius is ruled by the planet Jupiter, which has many many moons. Maybe that explains something.

Started watching Little Big Man last night because I have never seen it before (although it's one of B's favourites). We had to stop partway through because I couldn't see the television any longer. The film made me ashamed to have been born. How can anyone ever hope to escape our collective guilt for the genocide that has been perpetrated in the name of the future? Anyway, I will hope to watch the rest tonight. An amazing film thus far.

Must run now. Is that Citizens for the Preservation of Paper I hear calling?

love,
Leslie

That beeping tone you hear is just my life ringing busy — sorry to be such an infrequent blogger lately. I could continue with this telephone metaphor and talk about work putting my life on hold, but that's probably enough. Anyway, please check back soon! Meanwhile, I'm off to teach a weekend course ... Don't you just love the end of Daylight Saving Time? I can't wait for that extra hour of delicious SLEEP! —L

I've been one poor correspondent and I've been too too hard to find, but that doesn't mean you ain't been on my mind ...

The hollow-eyed truth of others' vision

Today's karmic assignments

a) The purpose of literature, since none of us will live more than once in this consciousness, is to see the world as others see it. At times, introspective conversation will do the same thing. Have you ever been staggered by what another person has told you about his/her perception of an event in your life? Write an infinite number of words about the inadequacy of a moment to express years of contemplation. Support your claims with evidence from dreams and phantasms.

b) Given that reality is subjectively constructed, answer the time-honoured question, What is truth? No points will be given for positivist claims.

c) Find the character in literature to whom your friends are most likely to compare you. Excavate the problematics of that character, and then excise it from collective consciousness. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.

Notes about food

1. My raspberry canes are still fruiting today, October 12, despite several nights of freezing temperatures. I have never eaten raspberries so late in the season. I should probably explain that this variety of raspberry will fruit on first-year wood if the season is long enough — which it rarely is in this part of the country. There is nothing like the taste of a fresh raspberry in October.

2. The other night we made garden potatoes with garlic, rosemary, and dill (and sea salt and black pepper). We roasted them with olive oil in a hot oven. They were almost as good as the truffle-oil mashed potatoes Bruce had at the Macdonald Hotel a few years ago (well, maybe not quite THAT good). But yummy!

3. On Friday Christina fed us hand-caught BC salmon that had been smoked in maple with honey. Certain foods remind me of why people actually enjoy eating, and this was one of them.

In all, it's been a good week for food.

Meanwhile...
• I am writing midterm exams for three courses: ENGL 111, PROW 100, and PROW 200. There are two PROW 200 sections writing ten days apart, necessitating two exams. My brains are bubbling with bad grammar and forty-minute essay questions.

• I got my convocation notice! I will (not) be crossing the stage on Thursday, November 20. (I have a class...)

• I got my tax documents from Canada Trust. Now maybe Revenue Canada will stop harassing me.

• Peter liked my proposal for PROW 235, Applied Editing. Now we need only get it approved by the higher-ups so I can start teaching it. I think it will be a great course! Perhaps as early as next September?

Today I like: October. Peanut butter cookies (which I should make for Thanksgiving dinner —peanuts are a New World food, aren't they?). Wolves. Blueberries. Forgetfulness (tell me again).

Today I dislike: Hotmail. Busybodies. Conformity. A failure of the collective imagination. Missing proofreading errors on exams!

OK, that was my break. Back to the grey-matter mine!

the third-person Leslie

The intellectual life of machines?

This is what the Surrealist Compliment Generator told me when I visited it today. I don't know whether I'm impressed or afraid!

"Legions of Communists worship your robust cannabalism of Capitalists clad in junk mail suits."

Just back from rock climbing, so my forearms aren't into typing much. Got a small job from an old academic acquaintance — yay! Must mark tomorrow. Thank goodness for Thanksgiving.

laV en violette

The woman I really am

• I'll be post-feminist in the post-patriarchy.

• If logic prevailed, men would ride sidesaddle.

• I think; therefore, I am dangerous.

• If I can't dance, I don't want to be part of your revolution. —Emma Goldman

• If you're not outraged, you're not paying attention.

• There is no flag large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people. —Howard Zinn

• We must be the change we wish to see in the world. —Gandhi

• The most violent element in society is ignorance. —Emma Goldman

• When will our consciences grow so tender that we will act to prevent human misery rather than avenge it? —Eleanor Roosevelt

• War is not healthy for children and other living things.

• Let me say, at the risk of seeming ridiculous, that the true revolutionary is guided by great feelings of love. —Che Guevara

• Your heart is a muscle the size of your fist: Keep loving, keep fighting.