Month: October 2006

This is totally my life

I totally changed my background. How it makes me laugh!

What else? Nothing. I’m working on Tiny String 3 now because I’ll be doing other stuff in November.

I had ballet this morning and my teacher there said I have nice technique. I am super-pleased. I am also superpleased that I get to go to my second weekly ballet class on Thursday. I haven’t had two ballet classes in a week since the first week of classes in Sept. The good news though is that I missed them for work, where I make money and start to feel useful.

You can probably tell this is procrastination-while-I-should-be-writing banter.

1) Yet another name I am probably not allowed to name my future child:

Ella Menno

Especially if her (or his?) last name was to be something like Peacock or Peabody.
Thus joining “Hemmingway” and “Cuddlebunny”.

2) I have a tiny cut on my finger just below my cuticle. It hurts, not so much that it is a hindrance, but itchy and annoying.

In the summer I was using this forum to compare and contrast the sucession of books that I had been reading. I did not mean to stop, and that I stopped does not mean that I stopped reading, although my progress in doing so slowed. The reason I stopped relating my reading experiences was that I started reading “The Baroque Cycle” by Neal Stephanson. Being a series of books, of course they relate to one another, and I was not about to tell you how the first one ran into the second ran into the third. Duh, I say.

About the last volume, however, I will now write about, since i have just recently (40 minutes ago) finished reading it.

The first time I read The System of the World was at Xmas time (2004) when I happened to be sick, and could therefore dedicate my entire days to reading. This last time, the second time I have read it, took perhaps a month. This means that I have had time to put it down and think about things inbetween readings. This only means that I can’t remember what happened at the beginning of this book, confusing lots with what happened in the other two. I do remember these two things:

1) That on page 200, the first words on the page, at the begining of a new paragraph even, are the words “two hundred”.

2)That this is what makes reading 2500 or so pages worth while:

“Several boxes were needed to contain the entire Hanging-Suit. By the time Jack first saw it, they’d all been gone through by the gaolers, to make sure that no shivs, pistols, saws, or Infernal Devices were wrapped up in the finery. So all was in disarray, all blotched with grimy hand-prints. And yet the inherent majesty of the Hanging-Suit was in no way diminished.

“The innermost of the Hanging-Suit’s three layers– the part that touches Jack– comprises white drawers of Egyptian cotton, white hose of Turkish silk, and a shirt made from enough fine white Irish linen to keep a company of Foot in tourniquets and bandages through a brief foreign war. And it must be understood that the adjective ‘white’ here means a true, blinding salt-white, and not the dirty beige that passes for white in poorly illuminated textile markets.

“The next layer comprises a pair of breeches, a long-skirted waistcoat, and a coat. All of these are in metallic hues. As a matter of fact, Jack’s pretty sure that they are literally made out of metal. The waistcoat seems to be cloth-of-gold. The breeches and coat are silver. All of the buttons are golden, which Jack takes to mean that, like counterfiet guineas, they are lumps of solder, cleverly jacketed in whispers of gold. But when he bites one, it bites back. Only faint impressions are left by his [false] teeth, and he can see no trace of gray in them– no evidence of base metal underlying the gold. These buttons were made by pouring molten metal into a mold, so each one bears the same imprint: a figure too tiny and involved for Jack’s eyes to make out in the dimness of his Castle apartment.

“The third layer– what comes into contact with the dirt of the world– consists of black leather shoes with silver buckles; a cape, purple on the outside, lined with fur, and hemmed and piped and bebuttoned with additional silver and gold; and a white periwig.”

Guess what! I just got to work five days in a row! Hooray for me. I won’t usually get to do that. So. Good.

I got my second pay stub yesterday. It made me happy. I’m no longer in training so I got a raise.

At the end of the trailer for the new movie “Marie Antoinette” the announcer informs us that it is based on a true story. Opposed to the fictional Marie Antoinette? Or did we all forget about her in the great memory sweep of ’97?

“Real men don’t wear crocheted hats.”
–Mum

I got to that point in a new job where all I feel I am doing is making mistakes. That was yesterday. Now instead of being calm and semi-confident going in, I am nervous again. “New job syndrome”. Anyway. Half way through my week and I won’t be working four days in a row very much.

I feel car sick and all I’ve been doing is sitting!

I found the last bunch of grapes on the vine yesterday. “Sweet Mother!” I exclaimed, for it was jumbo in size. I have now eaten them all. I like grapes from the vine, and also ones from the store (however they are grown– I don’t know.)

I just realized that I have been “bopping” my head a little vigourously. And maybe that’s why I feel carsick. My head doesn’t like bopping, but the music is so boppable! Maybe I’ll do tap-step-ballchanges instead. (I will miss tap this week due to work. This saddens me but not too much since I didn’t get my regular shifts this weekend due to no one being on campus because of Thanksgiving.)

I’m not allowd to look in the mirror when I go into the washroom anymore. The reason is that I am too silly. I usually make funny faces at myself whenever I go into the washroom, for whatever reason. Lately, however, I have been just weird, or overly silly. Now I am restriced to making only serious faces or standing so that I can’t see myself when I wash my hands.