How to catch a breath?

Pre-made, because I simply haven't time to write something original but wanted to remind you that I'm still around. Will try to say more soon.

L

Now listening: James Blunt, Back to Bedlam

**

Then Jesus took his disciples up the mountain and gathering them around Him, He taught them, saying:

Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are the meek.
Blessed are they who mourn.
Blessed are the merciful.
Blessed are they who thirst for justice.
Blessed are you when persecuted.
Blessed are you when you suffer.
Be glad and rejoice for your reward is great in heaven.

Then Simon Peter said, "Are we supposed to know this?"
And Andrew said, "Do we have to write this down?"
And James said, "Will we have a test on this?"
And Phillip said, "I don't have any paper."
And Bartholomew said, "Do we have to turn this in?"
And John said, "The other disciples didn't have to learn this."
And Matthew said, "May I go to the bathroom?"

Then one of the Pharisees who was present asked to see Jesus' lesson plan and inquired of Jesus, "Where is your anticipatory set and your objectives in the cognitive domain?"

And Jesus wept.

Herr Harper

Journalists, according to Stephen Harper, should demand nothing of him, according to this story. Accountability? Opposing views? Different values? Surely not in this country!

This is the end of Canada as we knew it. And Canadians will likely give the Conservatives a majority government next time, too, to boot. Sigh. Amsterdam is looking better and better all the time...

L

Wish me luck on my ASAC tomorrow!

pwned!

*wincingly ironic, ya know*

Gave my first and second academic papers on Friday. The first one went fairly well; the second one not quite so. Especially when one of the audience members felt it incumbent upon her to declaim for over ten minutes against my topic, just as I was getting into the meat of my subject — a little frustrating, that. And my technology didn't work because the hotel didn't provide an internet connection. But oh well.

Am teaching a proofreading course next weekend. (SURPRISE! You never know *what* you're going to learn by reading your e-mail.) That'll be easy-peasy after the semester I've had.

Not quite over, that semester I've had. Wednesday, it'll be over. Then convocation on Thursday. Must find a black, long-sleeved gauzy blouse between now and then...

Meanwhile, I have been asked to review another academic article. Yay!

And next week I'm going to start bouldering wearing Roap.

The biggest news of all: Bruce's knee is in excellent shape, healing nicely, flexible and strong. Thanks be to those so due.

Now reading: The Stupidest Angel by Christopher Moore and My Heartbeat by Garret Freyman-Weyr.

Must go mark.

L

PS: Thanks for the beautiful flowers, Bruce! They made the day especially memorable.

Happy Birthday!

Happy birthday, Bruce!

Time to sample from the wisdom of the ages.

• No wise man ever wished to be younger. — Jonathan Swift

• Every man over forty is a scoundrel. — George Bernard Shaw.

• Age is a high price to pay for maturity. — Tom Stoppard

Hmm...

• Let us celebrate the occasion with wine and sweet words. — Plautus

That's it! Here's to remembering birthdays and forgetting ages. Enjoy!

love,
Leslie and Zak

Censorship?

Which ad would you rather see?



Or



Seriously, I want to know. A local publication has refused to run the first ad after a reader complained about the second. I'm not going to tell you what I think just yet. So, in the meantime, please comment (you can do it anonymously, ya know!). See, down there by my signature where it says "comments"? Click there, pass the stupid human test, and leave me your thoughts. I'm counting on you, you know -- I'm giving a presentation on censorship next week! PLEASE!

Thanks.

Love,
Leslie

----------------------> click somewhere over here >>>

The day after the day before

Hmm. It's been a month almost since my last update. A lot happens in a month. In two weeks I'll be presenting at ELAC. It's probably time to write my paper, then. Hmm hmm hmm.

Do you know about You Tube? I suppose I'm possibly the last human with internet to learn about it, but now I have and have squandered a couple of hours watching old Kate Bush vids, including two live takes of "Suspended in Gaffa." I remember trying to work out that routine from the official video, particularly the part with special effects that can't be replicated by a dancer. Thinking about my interpretation and watching Kate's early choreography, I'm satisfied with how it all turned out so many many years ago. The thought of dancing -- or not dancing -- makes me wistful. I wonder if I could book time in one of the studios at JP over the summer. (Well, Brian Webb can do it, so why shouldn't I?) I also watched the alternative promotional video for "Running Up That Hill," which features Kate's band on stage dressed like monks in long brown robes. Kate herself assumes the role of a minister at a pulpit, delivering a passionate oratory in an ankle-length overcoat. In the final seconds of the clip, she takes up a wooden bow, fits an arrow in it, and kneels at the front of the stage, preparing to pierce the sky. Quite beautiful, really, in the post-apocalyptic manner of the mid 1980s.

Just finished a compelling novel called Stay with Me by Garret Freymann-Weyr. The story is very simple -- a sixteen-year-old girl lives through the year after her older sister commits suicide -- but the narrative is strikingly complex and richly ornamented. I recommend this book highly.

School is quietly winding down. Soon it will be May and I will be getting ready to take the chair of my department. Unfortunately, this appointment has turned out to be unexpectedly fraught. One of my colleagues now refuses to speak to me, the current chair is having trouble relinquishing his hold on the department, and another colleague seems intent on getting herself fired and taking me with her. But, on the bright side, I will be travelling to Toronto and Montreal at the end of May, and that destination makes holding on a little longer worthwhile.

Well, I know there's more to say but I need to run off to the grocery. Enjoy your weekend festivities if you're observing. I'll write more one of these days...

L

Ten Years After

Do you remember March 19, 1996? I do. That was the night I saw Heather Nova perform at the Sidetrack Café. She was quite amazing (even live, her voice was pure and clear), but the most memorable part of the night was probably when she told the unusually loud and obnoxious table right in the front of the stage to "shut the #@&% up". (My guests and I were sitting stage right, midway back, in a booth.) She had a cellist as part of her band — too cool!

Incidentally, Heather Nova's new album, Redbird, is currently garnering strong positive reviews. Too bad it hasn't been released in Canada! Instead, it's available only as a rather pricey import.

Went on a bit of a CD binge over the weekend and ended up with, among other items, the 2006 Juno nominees disc. It's quite a good compilation, as those things go (although keep in mind that I have a large shelf of greatest hit / anthology / retrospective discs, so my opinion may not be entirely reliable).

A friend recently remarked that the Arcade Fire disc Funeral is "OK" — OK?!? (Hey, have you heard about the interrobang? Look here... ) Then she told me she preferred the Death Cab for Cutie disc Plans! Sigh. Insert witty Gertrude Stein remark about genius going unrecognized in its own backyard...

Oh, to have hair like Pete Burns, ca. 1987...

Meanwhile ... Happy Spring!

Here's a great new word: pronic. It refers to a number that is the product of two consecutive numbers: for example, 2 (1 x 2), 6 (2 x 3), 12 (3 x 4), 20 (4 X 5), 30 (5 X 6), and so on. There are apparently 99 pronic numbers below 10,000. The synonym for pronic is heteromecic.

(What a great day today is now. We've learned something!)

Ten most recently played songs on iTunes:

1. Hungry Like the Wolf - Duran Duran
2. Bathwater - No Doubt
3. Steppin' Out - Joe Jackson
4. Ain't No Sunshine - Bill Withers
5. Straight from the Heart - Bryan Adams
6. You Spin Me Round (Like A Record) - Dead Or Alive
7. Neighborhood #3 (Power Out) - The Arcade Fire
8. I'm the Only One - Melissa Etheridge
9. Mysterious Ways (remixed) - U2
10. You Can't Hurry Love - Phil Collins

(And now you're covered for tomorrow, too.)

I have too much marking to do. And other stuff too. Think I'll go to sleep now and avoid it all for a few more hours... Did I mention I've almost kicked my little antidepressant addiction? A few more of the dr's wicked tablets and then I'll be back to my normal state of weird. Oh how I've missed my insanity.

"The greatest problem in communication is the illusion that it has been accomplished." — Daniel W. Davenport

Leslie (because the night)

"If the doctor told me I had six minutes to live, I'd type a little faster." —Isaac Asimov

With cat-like tread

OK, OK, so it's been two months since I've written anything here. But you wouldn't believe the other, much more important things I've managed not to do in the interval.

"Remember, people will judge you by your actions, not your intentions. You may have a heart of gold, but so does a hard-boiled egg." — Author Unknown

Ahem. So here's a little update on what's been happening with us lately.

Bruce injured his knee in January and has been forced to rest it for the last two months — which has meant a severely truncated climbing regimen! He's currently awaiting his date with the surgeon, which we hope will be soon, because his work keeps requiring bending and kneeling, less than ideal tasks in his current condition.

Zak is getting ready to register for grade ten, so we've been attending open houses and talking to teachers. With any luck, he'll be able to study Japanese, foods, and drama! (And all the core courses, too, of course.) We'll try to get phys ed out of the way over the summer. Then look out, world!

And me, I keep teaching. Still loving it. This semester is fairly manageable so far; my sections are smaller than they were in the fall, although the courses themselves generate considerably more assignments. But it's easy marking, thankfully. I've had to put my own studies aside for a few months, but I will be giving two presentations at ELAC at the end of April. (Yikes!) I am currently slated to assume responsibilities as Chair of my college department around Victoria Day. Oh, the power. Of course, I must get through my ASAC first... But I got my new business cards today — that's got to be an important sign.


If I had been so lucky as to have a steady mother
Who could talk to me as we are talking now to one another
Who could give me good advice when she discovered I was erring
(Which is just the very favour which on you I am conferring),
My existence would have made a rather interesting idyll,
And I might have lived and died a very decent interwiddle.
This particularly rapid, unintelligible patter
Isn’t generally heard, and if it is it doesn’t matter! — adapted from Gilbert and Sullivan, "Ruddigore"


So, that's what's been happening for the last few weeks. Fairly pedestrian, really. Oh, I should write about my Xmas iPod: 30 GB! 7500 songs! Colour display! Video and digital photo ready! Or my RoadTrip transponder, which allows the iPod to broadcast over my car radio — very cool! (Well, other than my potentially causing great traffic peril while searching for the perfect song and driving, that is.) I'm sure there are many other things I've neglected to write about, but I'll have to do that some other time. I'll be back in the habit soon, I'm sure.

À bientôt!

L

Edmonton: Gateway to the South

"We have already seen that the technology required for coping with extreme cold did not emerge until after anatomically modern humans invaded Europe around 40,000 years ago, and that people did not colonize Siberia until 20,000 years later. Eventually, those early Siberians crossed to Alaska, either by sea across the Bering Strait (only 50 miles wide even today) or else on foot at glacial times when Bering Strait was dry land. The Bering land bridge, during its millennia of intermittent existence, would have been up to a thousand miles wide, covered by open tundra, and easily traversable by people adapted to cold conditions. The land bridge was flooded and became a strait again most recently when sea level rose after around 14,000 B.C. Whether those early Siberians walked or paddled to Alaska, the earliest secure evidence of human presence in Alaska dates from around 12,000 B.C.
Soon thereafter, a north–south ice-free corridor opened in the Canadian ice sheet, permitting the first Alaskans to pass through and come out into the Great Plains around the site of the modern Canadian city of Edmonton. That removed the last serious barrier between Alaska and Patagonia for modern humans. The Edmonton pioneers would have found the Great Plains teeming with game. They would have thrived, increased in numbers, and gradually spread south to occupy the whole hemisphere." — Jared Diamond, Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies.

Happy new year!

I just finished the Diamond book— it's an interesting read but at times a little too pat. However, the issues that he raises about linguistics and literacy have given me some new ideas for my own research, so slogging through 400-plus pages was ultimately worthwhile.

Obviously I'm continuing my pursuit of 100 books a year — in fact, I surpassed my goal in 2005, thanks to an abundance of YA literature. This month's obsession is magazine editors' biographies — there is a surprisingly large number of these! I'm also making some progress with Wicked, but it's going slowly. And I have a film from NFB to review — I'll post a link if my review is published.

On New Year's Day I made a fantastic turkey with rub marinade and no stuffing — wow! I also made homemade pie filling with cherries from our Evans tree — fabulous! The filling went into tarts and a pie (with storebought shells). So perhaps the Evans will be spared to live another year, despite its prolific suckering habit... If not, I hear that Nanking cherries are also quite tasty...

Not much else to tell right now. School starts again in a few days. I'll be back with more to report soon.

looking out,
L

"The human race has one really effective weapon, and that is laughter." — Mark Twain

Solid Advice

A sprinkling of tips to keep you safe this holiday season. Don't let a black cat cross your path, and if you draw the nine of swords, think very carefully about your next step.

"Do not mix products containing bleach with products containing ammonia." — Chemistry 30

"Any man under 30 who is not a liberal has no heart, and any man over 30 who is not a conservative has no brains." —attributed to Sir Winston Churchill

"Mistakes are the usual bridge between inexperience and wisdom." — Phyllis Theroux, essayist, columnist, teacher and author

L

Endurance Marching

Hello hello,

It's the grim time of year now, during which my only strategy is to keep moving forward and refuse to rest. If I sit down, I might not get up again. This year's unusually bad because all my exams have been concentrated at the beginning of the week. Fortunately, though, I have stayed on track with most of my marking, so only one course is looking actually threatening. All my grades should be handed in by next Monday and I will have nothing — nothing! — to worry about for three whole weeks.

In the meantime, I had another review published. Read it here. I also prepared a peer review for Children's Literature in Education earlier in the fall and a reader's report for Oxford University Press in the summer — all good for the CV: only four months until my ASAC!

Anyway, enough of all that. Back to the grind... I'll post again when I emerge.

Leslie

Today's thought: Modern English is the Wal-Mart of languages: convenient, huge, hard to avoid, superficially friendly, and devouring all rivals in its eagerness to expand. — Mark Abley, journalist

A penny for the guy, belatedly

"It is the little bits of things that fret and worry us; we can dodge a elephant, but we can't dodge a fly." - Josh Billings


What if I came knocking

What if I came knocking
on your front door some night?
Would you open the window
and drop me down the key?
What if I came knocking
on your bedpost that same night?
Would you open up your heart
or try to get the best of me?

What if I came knocking
on your brain the next day
and asked for your truth and your love and your honesty?
Would you build up your big walls
and try to hide behind that smile
or would you try to pull the wool right over me?

So what if I came knocking?

So what if I came kicking
and it scared you a little bit
and I came on strong — would you think
that there’s something wrong with me?
Or could it be your fears
of trying something real
or just afraid to touch
a guy like me?

What if I came knocking
on your front door some night?

So let’s just say it worked out
like a storybook dream
and we lived happily ever after
la la la la...

But what if I came crying
after just a few weeks
and said I misread my heart,
this is not really meant to be?

So if you hear some knocking
on your window tonight,
you can bet that it’s probably me.
But let it be known
that we’re just a pair of tumbling dice
and the outcome of these crapshoots
is hard to see.

So what if I came knocking
on your front porch tonight?

— John 'Cougar' Mellencamp

December will be magic again

Hello, hello,

It's been an age since I've written, it seems. Lots has been happening, but most of it is still in process so I shouldn't write about it yet. But here's something I can write about...

***

Kate Bush, Aerial

Despite my earlier anxieties, Aerial arrived without copy protection, so I did not have to fret about whether or not to own a legal copy. I have listened to it now repeatedly and like it better each time. The "album" presentation adopts the metaphor of vinyl, with two "sides" represented by two discs: "A Sea of Honey" and "A Sky of Honey." Both display Kate in fine form, offering a contradictory reflection of the title image: while often fanciful, and even playful, the album is never lacking in substance.

"A Sea of Honey", the first disc, presents seven unrelated songs. The single, "King of the Mountain", is melodic and catchy; when I heard Kate Bush interviewed, she explained that she was trying to imitate Elvis Presley's vocal delivery style — that explanation makes her somewhat indistinct singing through the verses much easier to understand! "Pi" is perhaps one of those "be careful what you wish for" songs — in the past, fans have rashly made statements about being willing to listen to Kate recite the phone book, and that is roughly what she does here, chanting through more than 100 decimal places of pi. Although that description probably elicits shudders, the song itself is quite good (but I still don't like her use of interplay with the chorus, a habit she formed on The Red Shoes). "Bertie" is a beautiful tune with Renaissance instrumentation, but is lyrically very thin. Fans are quite divided over it: some despise it for its embarrassingly honest expression; others admire it for its musicianship. I find it appealing — very listenable, although I would hesitate to sing along with it — and being the mother of an only child myself, I can understand the unabashed adoration Kate declares for her young son. Bah, all you cynics, bah!

"Mrs Bartolozzi" is a puzzling song for me. It's quite powerful but I don't really understand it. Musically, it feels ungrounded; perhaps it will grow on me over the next few months. "How to be Invisible" is likely to be the next single (if there is another single); it's very uptempo and intelligent, although not quite dance floor material. Somehow it feels most like what I expected to hear on this album; perhaps it has the strongest root in the eighties (at least for me). Many fans have likened "Joanni" to a Tori Amos song, and my assessment is similar: it sounds like Kate decided to show singers like Sarah McLachlan and Tori Amos how to write! It is atmospheric and evocative, with lovely little sounds running around in the background, creating a complex listening experience. The most universally well-received song is one that I don't really care for yet: "A Coral Room". To me, it sounds like two underdeveloped song ideas fused. It is emotionally appealing throughout, with some gorgeous musicianship, but it simply doesn't wrench my heart.

One of the reasons I have yet to learn to love "side one" of the album may be that "side two", "A Sky of Honey", is one of the most sumptuous popular recordings I have ever heard. Kate Bush has lost none of her power in her decade away from the business. It is an astonishing creation.

The first four tracks establish the themes for the piece; the nine songs form a cycle or "concept" around the movement of light through a day. The writing is perceptive but a little distant, largely based on experimentation with sound, until track five, "Sunset," on which we hear Kate Bush perform in a jazz idiom that slides gradually into a world music sound. It's brilliant. The next track will either amuse or repulse listeners: Kate sings to bird song — the idea sounds absolutely cracked, but incredibly the performance works. "Somewhere in between" moves into liminal spaces: shadows, the transformation between day and dusk, twilight and starlight — another lovely, complex song with jazz inflections on Kate's mature style.

The centrepiece of the disc is "Nocturn", the longest recording of Kate's career. The song begins with a quiet, warbling vocal and gradually builds into a spectacular mass of voices and instrumentation — I cannot imagine anyone with a pulse being unmoved by the climax of this track. It is also one of the sexiest songs Kate has ever recorded, both lyrically and vocally. The main vocal is bell-pure, while the harmonies are deep and sultry; the instrumentation is intricate and sophisticated. WOW! I have listened to this track dozens of times now, and it gets better with every hearing. The disc finishes with the title track, a high-energy, percussion-heavy performance wrapped around a small number of phrases and Kate's maniacal laughter. I found it bizarre on my first listen, yet it works perfectly to tie the cycle together; the disc couldn't end any other way, musically or thematically.

So, while I've still only lukewarm about disc one, I think disc two is utterly gorgeous. I should mention that both discs flicker with moments reflecting Kate's earlier work, although likely only long-time fans will recognize these little flashes. Vocal touches throughout, aural effects on certain songs, and lyrical concerns give the record a degree of artistic unity generally unseen in popular music. This is a mature, accomplished work — and yet it's clear that Kate Bush had a great deal of fun creating it. It may not be art, but it's as close as a popular form is likely to get, and I really like it.

***

Anyway, this has taken much longer than I intended to write, so I must go. I hope all is well with you! More soon...

Leslie

Now playing: Aerial, of course!
Now reading: Millions of student essays...

Blog Abandonment

So its come to this. I've mostly abandoned this blog for a blog of my own making. In the course of working on my site I installed Wordpress and have since converted all my php pages to wordpress ones. I'm still working on the image archive but I may move that to something else as well. Macblaze may not be fancy but its got all my computer geek stuff and since its running off the Ruby iMac it may be slow, but its surely disposable. I can break it whenever I want...and quite often do. What fascinates me about open source stuff is that it has so much potential for small to medium sized business. If you can't afford your own programmer, there seems to be something out there you can make work--and generally for free. And who would have imagined the cross-platform fluidity. I still hate my PC boxes (mostly cause fixin' them is a b_itch) but it's nice to move from one to another without having to resort to clunky stuff like maclink for translation...or even to have to use completely different software for the same task. Speaking of which... those of you who have two computers on your desk, especially if one's a Mac and one's a windows box, I downloaded a sweet little program called Synergy the other day. Think of it as a software KVM switch without the M. Completely cross platform, it allows me to use the iMac and the PC with the same keyboard and mouse. I still have to use the iMac keyboard to start the software on rebooting but after that I can put them aside. and surf and play games with same keyboard on two different computers. I've been documenting some of my trials and tribulations on Macblaze so check it out if you want to get a sense of what I've been breaking. You'll find some climbing stuiff ther as well and I'm working on a picture of the day type thing for some of the climbing pics. Back to the business thing. Some of the open source stuff like the afore mentioned KVM and WordPress is great and MySql and PHP as well as some stuff like mail servers is simply outstanding. It take some time, and I'll admit the interface of Filemaker is worth paying for, but MySql is powerful, free, multiplatform and totally tuned for the web. I've never really made inroads with Access and I think its unlikely I ever will now that I'm tuned into this open source stuff. Meanwhile I'm typing this in on L's laptop over a wireless connection using a free Widget while I pop back and forth amoungst programs and do a little programming on the Hole's Wordpressweblog. These are all part of the plugin technology that is also going crazy and making things easier and easier to customize. The commercial stuff like Adobe has the possibilities but developers tend to charge an arm and a leg for something to make you life easier. I don't know about you but my workplace finances usually dictate that easier isn't work $$..."Let's save money and do it the hard way" is a more common credo. Anyway, plugins abound inthe open source community and people are generally willing and eager to share their time-saving ideas. Popular stuff like WordPress has literally hundreds of plugins and generally more than a few ways to skin any particular cat. Suffice it to say I can get bonus points at work eveytime I leverage free technology to make the business run smoother. In other worlds, I've reached the pinacle of publishing by being invited to join the BPAA's Executive. We had a meeting in Red Deer last week and I learned something new about human behavior.. or at least was able to articualte soemthing I knew subconciously. People hate to lose. People who lose at one game are loath to let it go and play another. people who thought they were winning have a hard time even admitting that the game was longshot anyway. The Executive spend a lot of time and $$ lobbying the gov't for more support funding for Alberta's book publishers and, as I interpret it, they were played. A lot of positive and encouraging sign led them to hope that our, oh-so-generous Klein government was about to inject fresh cash into our cultural industries and... nothing. Private film projects like Paul Gross's WWI flick got special funding but incredibley successfull and award winning publishers like Red Deer Press are being sold to Eastern interests cause its they only way they can grow. Anyway back to the human nature part. Coming into this cold it seems pretty obvious to me that the Conservatives aren't going to give money to a left-leaning industry like book publishing...what's this reading all about anyway... and they they are very likely to spend lots of visible cash on high profile movies just for the hint of flashing cameras and good press. On top of that, leading Alberta citzens go to the Symphony, see high profile theatre at the Citadel and divide their dollars between the ballet and opera and if they read at all its stuff recommeded by MacLeans or the New Yor Times. They do not read books published by small-time local publishers... no matter how many awards they get. But you see, it was hard for anyone else at the table to fathom it. They had tried so hard and fought the good fight and they had lost...lost? Meanwhile I'm sitting there thinking about what we could do to raise profile or stir up some sh_t. Maybe move into the 20th century with some of the aforementioned open source software. Anything to bide time until a new gov't comes along or Margaret Atwood announces she's marrying Ted Byfield and starting an Alberta-based press specializing in right wing canada lit. God we could rake in the funding with that scenario... I got a few licks in and listened hard to the woeful tales but it stilled seemed to me a lost cause before they started. Course I'm not one to take risks involving government, bureaucracy or an collection of people that number more than 10...never see me at the front of a revolution, no siree. In the end everyone had to accept defeat but those eternal optimists among them still were talking of new plans to fight the total apathy of our government. I guess I'll have to join in because the only thing worse than fighting a losing battle is watching one from the sidelines. What the H, it might be fun if'n no one takes it too seriously. Maybe I'll meet Ralph in a more socail setting than Lois' funeral, invite him over for a brew and expalin just how much I can admire his skill at politick'n and still curse him up one side and down the other for being such a bonehead with my future. I better get off this topic as I can feel L's blood a'boiling... Ciao for now B

Cui bono

Just so you know I'm still more or less in the land of the living. If it was possible for life to be more complicated, it has become so.

Mood a la mode: "Beautiful Ones", Prince; "What Have I Done to Deserve This?", Pet Shop Boys; "I Don't Like Mondays", Boomtown Rats; and "I'll Be There in a Minute", Gowan.

And some thoughts...

"That the birds of worry and care fly over your head — this you cannot change; but that they build nests in your hair — this you can prevent." —Chinese proverb

"Emancipation from the bondage of the soil is no freedom for the tree." —Rabindranath Tagore

C'est tout!
L

Too busy to breathe!

Hello, hello,

Well, after all the excitement of getting my new notebook on Friday, I have spent the weekend feeling fairly flat and uninspired. I seem to have some kind of virus that I just can't shake, so I spent most of Saturday sleeping or trying to sleep. (Looks like I picked the wrong week to quit my meds...) I have a gigantic pile of marking awaiting me, and I spent today working on a paper and a presentation for my own studies. No time for climbing, sadly, but I didn't feel up to it anyway.

In bigger news, the video for "King of the Mountain" is out! Go to www.katebush.com to view it. It's silly and sweet, and Kate looks absolutely beautiful! Oh, just a few more weeks until the release of the complete album...

Back to work!

L

Meet Little Ghost...

...my new iBook, paid for by the college using my professional development funds. Guess I should use it for something professional, or developing, or something. Well, I'm writing — that's professionally relevant!

Giving my first presentation for my English Language Arts course on Monday. Wish me luck, please!

More soon,
L

A New iBook

L's new toy has widgets and that lets me post to the blog without any other interface.

I've been experimenting with Wordpress as well and think it will work fine at work. We will likely move the Enjoygardening site completely over. At home I've been experimenting with Blojsom. See Zak's Blog to see how Blojsom works on my home server and also catch up on Zak's doin's!

All this stuff is basically free for anyone who bothers to figure it all out and the only cost is the server space etc.

Ciao!

Taking climbing for granite

Ouch. Very sore. Last night was the first in the fall Rip and Grip series at VIRG. B and Zak did very well, but I'll leave it to them to talk about that. I myself flashed the first five problems and solved the next two on my second try. I didn't solve problems 8 and 9, but I did try them both five or six times, and after that I was pretty tired, so I just watched the other boulderers. I got my best score ever, though, so I guess all that practice is actually working!

The big entertainment at the Rip and Grip (apart from the event itself, which is incredible fun) comes between the time limit and the announcement of the winners. For about half an hour, some of the top boulderers in the gym play, while the rest of us watch and cheer. If you haven't seen something like this, it's hard to imagine. The boulderers agree to a nearly impossible series of dynos, and then try to get through them. The simultaneous grace and athleticism is astonishing — it is as beautiful as dance and as awesome as lightning. Particularly inspiring is watching them line up to try again and again; some of the guys tried last night's ultimately invicible problem more than a dozen times, most of them having bouldered in the competition for two and a half hours — exhausting! My favourite boulderer is a young guy named Jesse. He is the best boulderer I have ever seen — amazing arms and brilliant technique — but he also has the most encouraging personality. He cheers on every other boulderer with enthusiasm and sincerity. He demonstrates the best of this sport in every way; I have learned a lot from his example.

But that's it for climbing this weekend. Between the holiday, various work commitments, and the gym closure on Monday, there simply isn't time to get back — and I doubt our bodies could survive further punishment anyway. Ow ow ow ow ow.

And anyway, I have cookies to bake for Thanksgiving.

Today's tarot: the lovers — judgement — justice. Hmm. Methinks me better watch out!

Now reading: Literary Theory: An Introduction by Terry Eagleton (again); Villa Incognito by Tom Robbins; Pure by Karen Krossing; and millions and millions of words' worth of homework...

A girl with guns,

L,
NOT solid!

I am proud of me!

Just had my first academic-oriented book review published. This is definitely a CV-worthy event! Meanwhile, my professor has asked me to review one of her articles (informally) before she submits it for academic review. Wow!

Anyway, if you'd like to read my review, you'll find it here. I can only hope there will be more to follow.

Giddily,
L