i'll try to be better. i promise

puddlelilies.com / proofreading negates the immediacy of feeling

Category: My Day

  • New computer is go.  As in “go real fast”.  I don’t have everything on it that is meant to be here (files, etc) because I haven’t had time to shift everything over from the old computer yet.  This is due to being busy with dance recital.  I’m still getting used to using the new touchy “mouse” thing that is new to me.  It’s a laptop, my new computer, so it has a touchy “mouse” area for making the cursor move and it’s weird.  I keep zooming instead of shifting the cursor around.  Vexing.  However, the enter key is right where my pinky thinks it should be, so that’s pleasing.  Same for the shift key, and the backspace key — another key I use often.  So far, so good.

    I’m reading “Late Nights on Air” by Elizabeth Hay.  I heard it suggested on the Cross Country Check-up summer book reading show.  As I listened, by eyes slowly shifted to my bookshelf, which happened to hold a copy.  I keep doing other things instead of reading, like dancing in recitals.  I’ll get back to it.

    Simon and Garfunkel has G.D. been postponed again

  • As you can see, I am yet to make my lunches for the week.  Rather, I have yet to finish making them, as I already have chicken sandwiches in the fridge and freezer, and a pot of rice cooling for salad.  “Nice printing,” I now realize, should also have a tick.  Please also note my pretty post-its.

  • I got up this morning just a little later than I have to get up during the week.  Not cool.  Early enough to listen to the early CBC weekend show, with the host who sounds like she’s wearing a poncho and who I still makes me feel angry when I hear her.  In the early morning, before 8am when my computer starts it’s virus check and is mostly unusable for an hour, I researched Shaw vs. Telus for my internet.  I came to no conclusion, save that Telus is cheaper, but this price is negated by the fact that I already have Shaw.  So there.

    I’m trying to make my way through a book that is set in India and is by an Indian author.  This will be a first for me, for, although I have tried in the past, I my attention is never held long enough to finish any sort of english south asian fiction.  I suppose the cure for this would be to read more, get familiar with the voice.  But usually the book are thick,  and I’m daunted that way too.  Even this book (“The Immortals” by Amit Chaudhuri) is only barely holding my attention.  My eyes skim the pages, caught only by interesting words, and the occasional conflict within the plot.  This is not the fault of the book, which is picking it’s way through the lives of a couple of families in Bombay in the early 80s, and there are saris and Hindi and music and lots of good things (class distinctions, a little India/England conflict).  But I’m just dozing through it.  Maybe it’s too quiet!  Maybe it’s loud enough, but for some reason I can’t hear it!

    I was so tired last weekend, I went to bed on Friday night and didn’t get up again until Sunday morning.  Just rested (and ate, I guess I got up for food… and to download Dr. Who) .

    Rock on.

  • Recently read: Wolf Hall (finally; good) and Year of the Flood (also good). Reading these took a lot of time but is no excuse for neglecting my blog. Wolf Hall is thick and meaty and by the end I was almost able to get over the whole thing where almost every “he” written refers to the protagonist, no matter the subject immediately preceding– you know, how it’s supposed to work and how we’re taught. And I didn’t dislike that the author did this: it’s just new to me and I had to get used to it, is all.

    Year of the Flood is a Margaret Atwood-constructed novel, with charming poetry at the start of each section. This reminded me of Alias Grace, which is a novel I enjoy returning to. YotF, however, got a bit intense and stressful-survivory, e.g. The characters having to look after themselves after the end of civilization. I would have appreciated this on a more intellectual level, if I didn’t enjoy the subject very much, better if I wasn’t sick while reading it. On the entertainment level on which I read it, I was just scared and paranoid by the end.

  • I’m in Vancouver this weekend to watch “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat”, with Julie (“fashion Julie”). When she asked me to, she says, it wasn’t so much whether I wanted to go, it was to inform me of the dates and to find out when I would be able to go. That I would be attending was just assumed. This is pretty much how I saw it too.

    Getting here yesterday was pretty easy. Usually on the night before I travel I am excited or antsy, but Thursday night I conked out just after ten p.m., and slept right through, instead of waking up every hour, for example, worried that my alarm was still set. This could have been because I was catching a later ferry than the 9 and so didn’t have to get moving as quick. I actually got up pretty early for a day where I didn’t have to be somewhere by eight o’clock and had time enough for a hearty breakfast (scrambled egg, english muffin, breakfast burrito*).

    Food wasn’t a problem yesterday. As soon as I found Julie we headed downtown and stuffed ourselved with chicken tenders and fancy lemonade (not “fancy” as in “spiked” but mixed with sugary syrups and strawberries). And then we wasted some time at Starbucks, filling us up even more. So Full– and complainey about it too, for little while afterwards.

    I smiled through most of “Joseph.” As suspected, we knew all the words. I forgot about the children’s chorus! And when the brothers brought out their sheep, the sheep were stuffed versions of the counting sheep from the matress ads. And when Joseph was traveling to Egypt and they’re passing direction signs (e.g. Egypt this way, 250 km), one of the signs read “” and then there was a skiier traveling in the opposite direction of Joseph’s crew looking for directions.

    And OMG some creepy drunk guy clawed my upper arm during the bus ride home. This was after he had been nudging me and swearing (I think it was swearing: he was pretty drunk) and I had been ignoring him. “Please don’t touch me,” I suggested to him, which sounds a bit wussy as I type it here, but it wasn’t. I wasn’t scared or anything, just mildly annoyed (personal space, dude, also, don’t touch me.) We got off the bus right then because it was our stop and so I didn’t have to deal with him anymore. But ew.

    *this is a normal frozen burrito eaten at breakfst time

  • I’ve been traveling a lot lately. Out of town twice in two weeks, which is a lot for me. I’m to Vancouver this weekend to watch Joseph with Julie. (!) I’m just waiting, at this moment, for the ferry to dock so I can run run run and get a seat on the bus. It’s my favorite part. Also favorite is that I can buy a daypass for the bus at the giftshop on the ferry. Quite civilized.

  • I almost remember, now, how letting a piece of writing “sit” for a few days makes it better.  I ignored my latest work just from Thursday and even just today (Monday) it doesn’t seem as sucky as I thought it was.  Just needed a little tweaking to make it tolerable, and now I’m going to ignore it for a couple more days.  And it’s so much easier to get rid of those precious paragraphs I thought were so great a few days ago.  It doesn’t fit?  It’s gone!  (Just from this version, of course, I’ll keep it in an earlier draft just in case.  I hate having twinges of memory about previously written stuff that is no longer to be found.  Granted, often I have just imagined that I wrote it down…)

    I got back from Duncan last night.  I took a day there after visiting Nanaimo due to train schedules.  Well, train “schedule” singular as it only runs once a day.  I took a long walk in the mud with my mum– that was through trees, and with the rain, there was a lot of mud.  Around behind the neighborhood through to a huge new development full of huge new houses.  Huge, puffy houses.  I am alternately disgusted that the trees are gone, and craving one of my own.  (These examples, however, were a little too huge.)

    I also read the Globe and Mail which makes for a pleasant day.

  • I’m in Nanaimo! Odd, yes, I suppose: it’s not my usual location. Odder still is that I drove here, despite not enjoying the driving experience at all, and despite not actually owning a vehicle. Hmm, you say to youself, Lindsie, what’s up? Well I’m here to watch Naomi perform in a play, which is important, and train and bus schedules being incredibly ackward, I had to take drastic measures and borrow my mum’s van.

    (How I got to Duncan in order to do this is another story.)

    But I’m here now and Naomi has a pretty dope pad set up. I’ll have a critical review* of the play once I’ve seen it, of course.

    *Probably not very critical.

  • I wrote a new song today:

    Elevator day! Elevator day!

    Today is… elevator day!

    I’m signing this song (in my head) because I have been taking the elevator today. Usually I take the stairs up to the fourth floor. It’s a good workout and saves electricity and etc. They pimp the stairs option a lot here*, “here” being the Health, and Healthy Living building. But the reason I like to take the stairs is because I get claustrophobic in an elevator with too many people in it. I also get motion sickness if the elevator stops more than once on its way.

    *They try to encourage us by having white boards with fun messages on them for us to read as we pass by. There’s also music sometimes. During the Olympics they were playing the Olympic soundtrack and I often felt like a champion as I climbed.

  • MmmmmMMMMMmmmmmmmmmmmm.  This was the sound I was making at work today.  Not because there were yummy things.  It was just because I was feeling uncomfortable and didn’t want to work.  “How do people do this for 30 years?” I asked myself this morning, getting out of bed.  “Going and doing something everyday that they feel largely indifferent towards?”  I didn’t have an answer and I don’t think I’m going to find out.

    Left-over birthday cake!

    I have to finish my floor rug!  Sometime.  Soonish.  I hope.  I’m knitting it so it’s taking a long time.

    This is all I wish to report at this time.