Should be sleepin'

But wanna be bloggin'
I only took three days off, and the huge number of must-answer emails in my mailbox when I returned was almost overwhelming. Remind self to never take vacation days prior to a deadline on a call for articles. I made it through all of them, but many I answered so briefly and then shifted to my "other inbox" in order to deal with them more thoroughly tomorrow. That's boring: why am I writing about email?
I bought new sneakers: Saucony, with green accents. They are so cushiony and bouncy and were on sale! With the mileage I clock each week walking to work and dog-walking, I need to buy quality sneakers that will help me keep a bounce in my step. I walked in them to work and dog-walked today and they required no breaking-in, so I know they fit well. And they're mesh, for summer coolness; does that mean I can buy a warmer pair for walking in the late autumn? I recommend this brand: they have an arch support, are not too high around the Achilles tendon, and cushiony there too around the ankle, so comfy.
I'm just writing to write, in order to get into the habit of doing this more often, and delaying going to bed. Some nights I don't want to go to bed, well that's rare for me actually, but some nights I just don't want to finish with the day, even if I'm just reading or surfing online. Tonight is one of those nights.
But I have a lot to look forward to tomorrow: it's a part-day at work so I leave early; I might get to have lunch with a bud; the weather is supposed to be spectacular; I'm planning to buy special pizza toppings and make a luscious pie; maybe I'll sing a little while my D. is away golfing with the neighbours. Ooh, sounds like a plan, better hit the rack (naval talk) and catch some zzz's so I'm rested enough to enjoy Friday!

It's all new to me

This afternoon, my D. and I went to a local paint-your-own ceramics studio. I had tried this crafty pastime when I was a kid, thanks to my mom's interest in it, but I hadn't pursued it, and I haven't tried it since. At this franchise place, you don't have to clean the greenware, which was tedious, and the bisque is fired once, ready for painting. You draw the design on with pencil, or trace with graphite paper, and then you paint, paint, paint. I tried an octopus on a salad plate. Then they dip-glaze for you, which was another tedious task back in the old days when I first tried ceramics because you had to paint on the glaze. My D. did a cereal bowl. We get to go back on Saturday and pick up our creations. We could stay in the place and draw and paint all afternoon, no rushing; it was pleasant and creative, and it was fun to concentrate on something that wasn't related to work. The studio is called Crock-A-Doodle.

This outing is another adventure in my year of trying new things, which started in January with my first karaoke outing. Now I am a complete karaoke addict, and will probably go tonight, if I can drag my D. with me: they have it at a pizza restaurant right around the corner, how convenient is that!? I've included a pic of me at a karaoke night out, singing Pink's "So What" song. I can't sing well, but I really get into the songs! I'm enjoying 'raoke so much that I even bought karaoke games for our home Xbox 360 system. That's great fun too.


I also have been attending English Country Dancing with a few friends, which is the type featured in those movie adaptations of all those Jane Austen novels. It's really fun, and two hours per session for only $6 each time we go. I go with a fellow Austen aficionado and a couple others whom we've managed to hook. The music is so sweet and the people are so nice, and the dance figures are great fun.


For the first time, I went to see a famous sci fi writer at a bookstore. I heard Robert Sawyer talk about the future, and that was amazing. I went to a food & drink fest in Hamilton with a fellow foodie, and after I thought, why have I never gone to one of those before? It was really fun and TASTY!


I made a new friend too, tried some new cooking recipes, went to a cooking party at the neighbour's house, mixed a couple new cocktail recipes, tried chocolate beer (delicious!), attended a webinar, went to a PhD defense, hosted a potluck lunch at work, started a facebook group page for the journal, learned some new Google online apps ... this list is getting long! Yay! New things!


It all started with a friend encouraging me to try karaoke, and thanks to her I have rediscovered what it means to enjoy living, to have a passion for something outside myself, to share enthusiasm about life's little joys with other people.


About a year before that first karaoke outing, I actually asked a friend of mine in all seriousness if it were possible for a human to die of boredom. Thank goodness my joie de vivre resurfaced in time to avoid death by disuse.

A new poem, silliness

After Work


Paisley fractals of clouds wisp across the sky.
Two gulls, a thousand miles from the nearest salt water,
wheel on summer updrafts.
The heat of the day seeps from the deck boards
into my back:
too lazy to retrieve a wicker chair from the garage.
What conjunction of humidity, temperature, and wind
permits the creation of pointy fractal clouds?


I praise and bless the conjunction of flavours
in my tequila fruit punch,
spiked with sparkling juice imported from Italy,
which is surrounded by salt water.
"Fractal clouds" ...
the phrase bangs on my brain until I go inside and write it down.

Too hot

I had ordered green curry at several places in the past year or so, and had enjoyed the hot bite mixed with Thai basil and coconut milk. I was not prepared for the Limeridge Mall Thai Express's version of green curry: the woman at the cash register warned me it was hot when I placed my order, but I was naive. The first bite made me choke, and I almost spit my food out on the table! Note to self, in future when the staff person says, "It's hot," take her word for it. Luckily for me, we had ordered a bowl of TomYum soup too, which came with enough noodles to re-roof my garage (I really couldn't think of a better metaphor there; I have over-eater's brain right now). My D. was eating a large portion of veggie pad thai, and looking at the gigantic bowl of soup, so he said I could eat that if my meal was too hot.
I really hate to waste food, so I choked down some of my Green Curry chicken and a few vegetables, but the rice was soaked in the sauce. I warned my D. about the heat, but I guess he didn't really believe me; after listening to me complain with every bite, he grabbed some saucy rice, the worst part for heat, and ate it; he couldn't speak and almost spit it out. "My nose is running, my eyes are watering, I feel hot all over, and I only had one bite; how are you eating that?" "I don't know," I choked, blowing some air past him. "Oh, please don't breathe at me like that, the air is even stinging my eyes!" he winced.
After a few more bites, I gave up and launched into the noodle soup. The broth made the hot spices in my mouth spread around even more, so I had another jolt of that heat before it finally started to get washed away into my stomach. I recommend the TomYum soup, for veggies and value for your money, but so many noodles that I think we could have shared the one serving and been satisfied. But, watch out for the green curry at that particular Thai Express.

After lunch, my D. usually likes a sweet treat, and we were dangerously close to a Cinnabon. Thanks to the escalators, it was a relatively short trip from the food court, so we made the detour to get him his sweet-fix. And, oh my gosh they now serve cupcakes: they're beautiful and the flavours are fun too, including cinnamon and carrot cake. I bought a cinnamon cupcake to take home for later. The reason I'm describing this is because I wanted to write about my D.'s enjoyment of his Cinnabon on the way home in the car. I have never seen or heard another human enjoy eating something that much before in my life. "Is the smacking sound during each chew absolutely necessary?" I asked, after listening to it for a few moments. He was almost non-verbal with sugary ecstasy: "oommm, yeah." "Okay, just so I know," I said. A few oohs and ahs and sighs later, an "Ouch" escaped his lips. "What was that?" I asked. "It's still hot in the middle," he gurgled through sticky-coated lips that were descending toward the box in search of more goodness. But he sure wasn't complaining about the hotness, fresh out of the oven, just sublime, I could tell by the noises he was making. He swiped out the icing from the bottom of the box with his fingers after the last crumbs of dough were gone, and said, "Ooogh, darn." "What?" I thought maybe he had spilled some on the car seat or something. "It's all gone." He sounded so sad. I told him that I enjoyed listening to him eat it with such gusto. I never thought dessert could make me laugh so much; that Cinnabon nosh was immensely entertaining.

To garden or not to garden

This year I chose not to garden; after a couple debacles with the dog in the backyard -- see my post about one incident -- I had already determined that buying plants for the back was a waste of money. I did transplant a giant overgrown sedum to the front yard, to save my dog from her fetish for snapping at stinging insects because flowering sedum really attracts bees.
I also shared some overgrown plants with a friend, and I trimmed back the overly enthusiastic grapevine once or twice, but now I've given up. Maybe it's just too hot this week, or maybe I'm sick of trying to rewind the water hose that bends the opposite way no matter which way I turn or twist it, or maybe I'm just supremely lazy (likely that option), but this summer I had no real desire to excavate an area and try a new planting. I have many perennials that are doing all right, so they've filled in the available areas. If I had wanted to garden this year, I would have had to dig out an area covered in thick knotted grass, and I must be the weakest person in Canada, because excavating one little spot takes me all afternoon. I saved some money with my lack of interest in gardening this year, but I do sort of miss the adventure of picking something at the garden gallery store, planting it and tending it and watching what it turns into ... or watching it get shredded by the dog or eaten by slugs. Yes, I made the right choice this year; now, I just have to accept that choice and move on.
One thing I did learn this year, while tending my perennials, is that I must remind myself while doing a clipping project or weeding, or watering, or raking, or trimming, that I must leave energy for the cleanup part of the project. That has been an important lesson for me; not leaving detritus from a project lying around is crucial for my self-respect. Last fall I clipped a huge section of the grapevine away from the fence, and was so exhausted that I left the pile of vines in the middle of the yard until snow fell; then I was too darn lazy to pick them up and try to bind them and tie them into a manageable bale. Luckily, my long-suffering husband helped me with them this spring and a helpful neighbour took them to the transfer station in his truck for us. He's so nice! That pile of vines and its six-month sojourn in my backyard was an important lesson for me: I remembered it every time I started a project, and I have not left a pile behind yet this year. Yet, I say "yet" because I'm sure if I get any crazy ideas about working in the garden in this heat that I'll run out of gas and leave another mound of weeds or clippings lying about until the temperature changes.

A friend's vegetable garden makes me yearn to be ambitious, and hearing my parents talk about their wondrous food-growing landscape in their backyard almost inspires me to try something modest; but I remember the dog and my absence of fence-building ability, and my general lack of wanting to work hard at anything lately, and I resign myself to begging for excess zucchini or tomatoes from people I know who have gardens. I did that today, actually, while talking to someone about her garden, maybe that conversation will bear fruit/veg. Just call me the punster.

Film subgenres

On Canada Day, a blessed holiday in the middle of the week, I watched one of my favourite movies again for about the 8th time: The Fifth Element. Bruce Willis is not my favourite actor, but he appeals to me in this sci fi movie, wherein I also happen to enjoy the storyline and directing so much that I don't really notice the Bruce but accept him as his character. And his recent  movie called Surrogates was way better than I thought it would be; that's not saying it was great or anything, just way better than a lot of actioner sci fi pics lately. Beyond the amazing production design and the Jean-Paul Gaultier costumes (orange is an important colour in the movie, which is why I keep putting those links in orange), a main reason that I enjoy The Fifth Element so much is for the comedy: I always laugh so hard when Korben, the main character, has these terribly annoying phone conversations with his mother while he's in the middle of getting fired or trying to save the world. Many of my favourite flicks fit snugly into the subgenre of comedy sci fi, such as Galaxy Quest, Evolution, Buckaroo Banzai, Repo Man, and Dude Where's My Car? (several others too). It's not a huge subgenre, but it's highly entertaining.
Subgenres guide me at the video store: I need the mash-up, the combo, because sticking too closely to one genre will likely lose me about halfway through the 90+ minutes of the average drama. Some of my favourite movies wedge themselves into the horror genre, but I don't actually like horror movies. Labelling films and filing them on certain shelves aids people who choose which movies to watch by their box artwork. I scan the horror shelves and read the blurbs on the back of the boxes just in case there's a new horror/sci fi (a la Alien, another fav) or comedy/sci fi (Evil Dead or Tremors are classics in that subgenre, although Abbott and Costello really nailed the comedy/horror movie in the 40s and 50s) that I missed because it went straight to DVD.
Many of my favs of all time are horror/sci fi, the ultimate action mashup, and if some comedic moments are slipped in at odd times, I'm in heaven. The Alien series is probably the best; I have watched Pitch Black with Vin Diesel about a dozen times, and I try to get everybody I know to watch it too. A little known and undervalued mid-nineties pic called Screamers grabs my attention every time it's on tv, and it certainly doesn't hurt that Peter Weller is the star.
Another subgenre I like lately is the zombie story, as all my friends know. Writing about the movie mashups has made me desperate to watch the new Zombieland. I think I must go buy some beer right now and rent that movie.