February 8, 2010

Posted by Lindsie under My Day
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I meant to clean the bathroom and do laundry this weekend. I did neither of these things. You may think that this results in a ’stinky Lindsie’ and you may be correct: I am immune.

I heard there was an Olympic protest downtown on Saturday- the bus driver explained to us that she (or he, I couldn’t tell) would have to detour on to Blanshard since Douglas was blocked. I got off before that, anyway. I am annoyed at Olympic protests since the whole torch relay incident in October. Not opposed to them, just annoyed.

 

February 2, 2010

Posted by Lindsie under Duncan, My Day, Telly
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Funny Story

I started knitting again in October. I then started buying knitting supplies, needles and etc. When I told my mum about this, she said not to buy any more needles! Because she had a box in the storage room I could have! I had mostly been buying the connected cable needles, anyway, and the box of knitting needles in the storage room pre-date this concept, as well as me. I don’t think I remember my mum knitting anything for so long as I’ve been around, but she did knit things before that. The big blue and green blanket that was in the TV room in the basement of the Port Alice house. Apparently, a hat for my dad. The box of knitting needles included three generations of supplies, from my great-grandma, my grandma, and my mum. When I was home at Xmas time, I felt that this box was something that I should now have. It is very satisfying, for example, using the double-pointed needles that my great-grandma used to knit socks.

However. When I was home at Xmas, my mum found out about a book called “The Friday Night Knitting Club”. She didn’t find out about it from me, but I had meant to mention it. I’d just forgotten about it. Anyway, I ordered it from the library for her (mostly to show off how I could hack into dad’s library account due to him having his library number and password attached to the computer monitor… no one seemed to have noticed this though). When she read it a little while after I left with all of the knitting needles, she was inspired to start knitting again, and had to get some of her equipment back from me to do it. Neither of us thought that she would knit again so didn’t think twice about me taking everything with me.

When I was home this weekend me and mum watched all her TV shows and knitted. It was lovely and restful. She made dishcloths (because she needs dishcloths and I made her one at Xmas and she liked it) and I made the second fingerless mitt of a pair (I made it twice because I messed up on the first try). We watched a “Bones” and a “Mentalist” and a “Lie to Me” and some other stuff.

Funny Story #2

While we were watching a “Law and Order” franchise show on the Mystery Channel, Dad called up Shaw and cancelled it (like he was planning and had to do before the end of the day which was the last day of the month). The service stopped just as we were going to find out who-dunnit at the end of the show Note: cancelling digi-channels is very quick.

 

January 29, 2010

Posted by Lindsie under Duncan, My Day
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I went to buy my train ticket yesterday by actually going to the “station” on Pandora. Only when I got there, a couple of people were using the agent to plan their cross Canada adventure. I stood there 15 – 20 minutes before the second agent decided this was too long to wait and stopped talking to her friend help me. This was just as the other agent was finishing up so it wasn’t all that helpful.

Karma

Standing in line, waiting to get on the train, an annoying child asking questions in a squeaky voice was queued beside me. ‘Please let him sit at the other end of the train’ I thought to myself. But no, he and his dad are right beside me. Lesson learned: indifference is key.

 

January 26, 2010

Posted by Lindsie under Dance
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There’s something that’s been bugging me for a while. In dance class (yes! this is a dance class story. Surprise.) In dance class there are two dancers who are super flexible, super enthusiastic but who have no control and no technique, and somehow they always gravitate towards me in class. One day, one of them, the girl one, did an arabesque or battement or something to the back and nearly kicked me in the face. I felt the wind. Actually, that’s happened twice. Today the boy one kicked me in the hand– this was kindof my fault since I had my arm out. The boy one kicks everyone though so I don’t take in personally. The girl one is always really close to me, and/or in my way so I have to teedle out of her way to prevent her kicking me/me landing on her. The boy one also practices whatever we are working on in the gap times in class, flinging his limbs and almost whacking people as he does so. Scary.

 

January 16, 2010

Posted by Lindsie under My Day
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I’m at the doctor clinic again. It’s beginning to feel almost homey here. Today I’m going to inqire about my dry, scaley hands. They have been dry and scaley for a few months but only lately have begun to itch so hard I’ve woken in the night to scratch. Also, I’ve had people notice and comment on them.

The clinic is populated by different peope on the weekend. The staff I mean. Well I guess I always have a different doctor, but the receptionist is a young man who is very thourough, telling me where I am in the scheme of patients waiting for the doctor. The receptionist on weekdays (when I am usually here) is flakey and wastes time with innane small talk with everyone and can’t seem to multi-task. I have grown discerning in my medical professionals.

PS. There is also soothing CBC classical playing, instead of annoying soft pop Nellie Furtado/Celine Dion radio that is usually on.

 

January 11, 2010

Posted by Lindsie under Sleep Dreams
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I dreamt I was knitting and every time I would get to the end of a row, instead of just flipping over the work to start a new row, I would wake up and roll over. I slept weird last night.

 

January 10, 2010

Posted by Lindsie under Books, My Day
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I can’t believe that my bathroom was appropriately cleaned the day that my toilet wouldn’t flush and I had to have the landlord fix it for me. Very fortuitous. P.S. My toilet flushes now.

Review # 1
I just finished “The Golden Mean” by Annabel Lyon. It’s about this guy who lives in the ancient Greek times, who is assigned to tutor Alexander (the Great as that character will be known later in history, but that hasn’t happened yet in this book), and who studied with Plato. Only the name of this guy isn’t actually given in the book until the afterward, and then only in the second paragraph (twice). (And I guess it’s mentioned on the jacket blurb, which is always a spoiler, anyway.) But then, the main narrative is in the first person, so having his name pointed out isn’t necessary. There is a writing conceit in this book where “hints” of needed details or plot points are given before the actual details or plot points are described. Annoying at first, where I think I’ve missed something and read back a few paragraphs only to not find anything until a few lines after the “hints” are given. Then I found it sly and subtle (and something I do not want to adopt myself– I don’t need to prove to my reader that I am smarter then them since I know more about what is going on than in my story they do.)

Review # 2: Avatar (IN 3D!)
“Just sit back and enjoy the ride,” I had to keep telling myself, as the plot became clear, and the scenes where we got to “know” the “new world” and the “budding romantic relationship” stretched longer than I found comfortable. For the most part, I listened to myself. My favorite parts were the little particles of stuff that seemed to come right out of the screen that I reached out to swat away! (I LOVE 3D)

Review #3
I cleaned my house up last week and for the most part it is still very tidy. I’m quite proud of myself. (Except for the pile of the weekend Globe and Mail that is spread out on the floor beside my chair.)

 

January 2, 2010

Posted by Lindsie under Books, My Day
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I, Lindsie, cleaned my house today.  This included using the vaccuume.  I feel like this is an annual event, but I’m sure it is not.  It has been a while, however, since I used the vaccuumme.  I discovered that I think I need, despite the misuse, a new vacuume, as this one was old when I got it and it starts to smell like burning after using it for a while.  I even checked the rolly thing on the bottom to see if there was something caught.  I will put vacume on my like of things to save for and buy (I use it three times a year so I have time for this).

My dad gave me a cedar trunk for xmas and I have put bed linens and craft supplies in it.  It’s a big trunk.  And my sheets are going to smell like cedar.

I have spent the three days before this moping around, which is something one has to do on occasion, but I’ve stopped doing that now (thus the cleaning of the house) and I hope the moping feelings stay away for awhile as I find them annoying and not the best use of my holiday days, but oh well.

I stayed up late for two reasons last night: a) I had tea tea around 5 and b)Return of the Jedi was on TV and I had a strange urge to watch it.  It was the new one, though, so the Ewok song at the end was wrong.  I wasn’t vexed as I might be, but the new song isn’t as celebratory as the old one.  I have the old one somewhere in my cache of songs so I can find it and listen to it if I really want to.

I have knit one fingerless glove.  I have noticed a problem with knitting gloves ( and this will apply to any kind of glove) which is that once you finish one, you have to make another,  and that other one has to match and stuff?  WTF, I say.  Only I don’t say what it stands for, I pronounce the letters, and cross my arms in front of me, and hope I have enough yarn left for the other glove as I wasn’t really paying attention, and I accidently read the pattern wrong so I’ve used more yarn than is called for just in making the one.

Also annoying is the 800 page book I have out from the library as a “fast read” that has to be returned after only a week.  There’s no way I’m going to finish it.  It’s dense and takes me 1/2 to read just a couple of pages.  I exaggerate, but it’s not going to happen.

 

December 24, 2009

Posted by Lindsie under Clever
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Happy Holidays, Everyone.  Following is my Christmas letter for the year for you to enjoy (if you can bear the patience of downloading it– it’s a PDF)

Lindsie’s Xmas Letter 2009

 

December 22, 2009

Posted by Lindsie under Books
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I’m reading “Wolf Hall” by Hilary Mantel (that’s MaNtel, Susan – I was telling Susan about it and couldn’t remember the author’s name, despite having spent much time gazing at the front cover). I don’t know if I will be able to finish it before the due date as it’s due Monday and I may not be in town then due to Xmas holidays. And of course (duh) I can’t just renew it as it’s got a waiting list.

Now that I have all that off my chest I can make a couple comments. The first is that this is a gorgeous book. Mmm. Lovely prose I just want to sink into – like a thick feather duvet or chocolate cake. Perfect, thick and warm midwinter reading.

The second thing I’ll note is that the author has crazy fun with her pronouns. The thing’s in third person, and she totally uses her “he”s like one might use “I” when writing in first person. It’s a little confusing at first, because unlike first person, where there is only one “I”, in third person there is usually more than one “he” and the author only occasionally gives you a “he, Cromwell” to denote who is saying or doing what. For the most part you have to remind yourself that the “he”s coming out of the random blue denote the main character (Thomas Cromwell). For a while you’ll do this, but then you’ll forget about it, and you’ll reread the sentence before, because you’ll think you’ve missed the denoting proper noun. But you didn’t, and you’ll giggle to yourself because you’ve never read anything like this and you feel clever for figuring it out (eventually, and then again because you forgot).

Oh, and Thomas Cromwell hung out with Henry the Eighth, and details of the time period are slipped in meticulously, as are those entertaining historical anecdotes regarding the people involved. Good fun good fun.

I also like Cromwell’s (or the author’s, or society’s) opinion of Anne B (or at least how is is written):
“At New Year he had given Anne a present of silver forks with handles of rock crystal. He hopes she will use them to eat with, not to stick in people.”

 

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