Happy holidays to everyone. I wish I could be seeing everyone in person who reads this (or at least all the people I know read regularly). So have a great holiday!

I just finished making sugar cookie batter and starting the egg nog (one for Dwayne & I - yum... - and one for the girls). The cookies should be chilled and ready to roll by the time the girls get back from last minute christmas shopping (and who says the apple doesn't fall far from the tree!)

We're considering seeing LOTR in the next couple of days, but there's also a big rainstorm rolling in and the car doesn't like rain, so we'll play it by ear. I also want to see Gus van Sant's Elephant and Denys Arcand's The Barbarian Invasions, so I'm hoping both of them will continue to play until the new year. We've also got 17 videos from the library to work through, and I've got more books than I can count that I want to read (including one for each book club). The mother-daughter book club is starting a fantasy cycle, so I'm sure there'll be plenty of interesting books to read. Looking forward to it.

It will be nice to do nothing - no pressure - well, at least for a week!

Gonna go for a run since the temp's in the teens. Yeah! Unfortunately, after Christmas it gets nasty cold round here, but I'll take advantage of it till then.

Happy Holidays!

Have finished papers, marking (including flunking a student who really could've passed, he just didn't get it together and hand in the final assignment) and am now starting to relax.

Had lunch today with Dwayne and a friend from school, got some shopping done, got a huge pile of videos to last us for the week. Now just need to go shopping for food and beverages (another commodity that gets ignored during the end of term rush). It will be nice to have nothing serious to do for a while... well, okay, there's lots to do for next term, but I'm gonna try not to think about it for a while yet....

Big push today to try to finish the first paper. I am halfway there - yeah! - but because we've switched to semesters, and because I'm PhD, instructors have assumed that we have more time (and more brains I guess) to say more, so both papers are a good 50% bigger than they would've been last year. And while I never have a problem saying things, it's saying something useful and intelligent that's the problem!

On a positive note, the meeting on Monday went fairly well on both counts. We had our department get together last night, and it was a casual situation in which I took the opportunity (only once, 'cause I didn't want to only talk shop, and we didn't) to ask how the presentation was received by the committee after I left. It seems to have generated some discussion, which is good, though whether anything will actually change is another story. I also had my directed study approved conditionally if I agreed to add 5 additional books to the bibliography. I agreed, but man! am I gonna have lots of reading to do next term!

Still keeping my fingers crossed that my computer keeps working while I finish off these final papers. Keep your fingers crossed for me too!

I have realized I hate the end-of-term-need-to-write-papers-on-short-schedule. I'm glad next term will be my last one for taking classes and the end of term push to finish writing will be over (at least I hope) in my career.

I am trying to put together a directed study (thanks to everyone who provided suggestions for texts to use), but I am also the GSC rep and am bringing an issue before the committee at the next meeting, which will probably be the same one where they will decide whether or not to approve the directed study - an iffy situation at the best of times.

Wish me good luck!

Computer is finally working again (I hope) - it seems to be working better, but being the cynic that I am when it comes to technology, I'm thinking that I'll keep my fingers crossed and be backing up to disc every five minutes for the next little while.

So since nothing much is happening with me, here's news about everybody else...

Dwayne survived his monster certification exam, though he won't know the results for months. He doesn't think he did very well, but I have faith that he did much better than he thinks he did. It was a rather dull thanksgiving weekend with both of us studying our tails off and my computer not working, but it is over, and now that it's gotten really cold here (we're getting a nasty wind from the northwest...hmmm....wondering where THAT might be coming from!), we're all trying to stay indoors as much as possible.

Black ice on the roads yesterday meant that it took very long to get anywhere, but at least on the bus, you don't have to worry about the driving...just the standing around in the cold waiting...

Wrestling season has started again, but Sandy hasn't gone to many practices 'cause she's also stage manager for the high school production this weekend, so she's been spending lots of time on that. Steph's been managing basketball and homework (her math mark on the last report card was a big improvement) and Angie has gotten used to having mom as her piano teacher (though I'm not sure I have! there's been a few times where I've really had to strain to remember correct terminology etc.).

And me? Trying to figure out how I"ll write papers.... not much more.

I feel like an arm has been cut off. I still don't know what's wrong with my computer. I tried wiping it clean hoping it was a soft problem, but it isn't, so I will need to spend money on having someone crack it open. *expletive*

The good news is that I could get it to run for about 15 minutes at a time, so I at least got all the critical files off it, and have only lost minor, incidental data.

The bad news is, I have a project and two substantial papers to write in the next two weeks. And that's gonna be hard to manage without a computer. Yes, I know it's possible, but it's definitely not what I'm used to, and the adjustment will detract from my efficiency. It already has, just in compiling notes from what I've been reading.

My laptop has been making strange noises...distinctly clicking noises that an electronic device should not make - a clock maybe, but a computer no. And now it does not want to work.

I was really hoping I could avoid expensive repair bills this year, since we spent thousands on the car last year.

I'm bummed out about it.

There's nothing else to say.

So I'm flipping through the Boston Globe and a headline jumps out at me: Survivor exposes Saskatchewan police abuse of Indians.

Great, the only Canadian news I get in a major U.S. paper is about bigotry in Saskatchewan. Part of me suspects that the reason they ran the article was only because Saskatchewan is such a weird word - believe me, no one around here has ever heard of it!

My friend Allie is blogging about how she's happy to be Canadian because there's hockey. And I'm from Saskatchewan - what braggin rights do I have here if this is the only thing they know about those of us born in the heart of the Canadian prairies?

Depressing.

Since November is half over, that means that schoolwork is starting to pile up. It's not reached that urgent-need-to-stay-up-all-night stage yet, but the pile of things that I need to read before beginning to write my papers is beginning to grow. And I think I'm becoming more of a perfectionist, because I keep thinking about all the additional things I should do and prepare before beginning to write.

In part, my problem is that I've got a couple of additional things going on that are taking time away from the usual. I'm trying to prepare a proposal for a directed study next term. Not only am I trying to put together a reading list, but I also need to get it approved. Since it's about science fiction AND film, I have my work cut out for me, because the chair of the Grad Studies committee has a relatively negative attitude toward both, especially film. So, the proposal has to look good - but to look good, I have to spend lots of time on it - which means that I'm falling behind in other things.

I'm also writing a language test this Friday in partial fulfillment of the language requirment for my degree. Wish me luck! I'm gonna need it! The more I study for it, the more I realize I really don't know!

*Sigh* So much work... but the good news is, I only have 5 more of those godawful 8 am classes to teach - I definitely am not a morning person and the early morning commute is making me extremely grouchy... not to mention trying to speak coherently in front of a class for 100 minutes at that hour of the morning.

Had to share this giggle. I wish I had some extra Canadian Tire money kicking around, but I thought it was useless and threw it all away when I left! Too bad, I woulda kept it had I known I could get a beer for it!

Went to a hockey game last night. I had mixed loyalties going in - As a Calgarian, I should cheer for whoever is playing against the Oilers, which would mean I'd cheer for the Bruins. However, I was with a group of 12 Edmontonians (so I was slightly outnumbered) and I felt like a patriotic solidarity might be in better order. So, yes, I cheered for the Oilers. (Though on a patriotic note, only one of the Bruins starting lineup was actually from the US - the rest were all born & bred in Canada, though Eastern Canada, so it was more a matchup of Eastern vs. Western Canada played on US soil!)

And they lost.

They deserved to lose 'cause they played like they'd forgotten how to skate or pass, and in the first period only took one shot for every three that the Bruins did, but they came close.

It is a very odd feeling cheering for the away team. There were a few nasty looks from one group nearby when we cheered the second Oiler goal. I actually was glad we were a good sized group. At least they lost, so we weren't a threat.

And speaking of cheering, I know I haven't been to an NHL game for a long time, but since when did it become de rigeur to boo the opposing teams goal? Booing a bad call, a fight, a penalty that doesn't get called, sure, but a goal? After all, if they other team doesn't score, it's a cakewalk, isn't it? and that's no fun to watch. Where's the excitement if your team doesn't have to work hard to win? Seems very unsportsmanlike to me.

In the last two days I have received e-mails from friends who I haven't seen or heard from in over a year. Wow! One was from a friend who has been overseas for the last year, and for whom I did not have a current e-mail address. The other was from some friends who recently began their own company, and have been (understandably) very busy getting it off the ground.

But what a delight! I've been feeling like I'm stuck off at the end of the world and missing everyone from home so very much, and here I hear from old friends who I thought I'd lost touch with.

I am, as I said, delighted!

And on Friday, I learned that good friends are going to have a baby! Yeah! They are gonna be super parents, and I'm excited and happy for them. Their lives are going to change so much, but it's all good...I'm gonna enjoy hearing all about it!

These joys have lifted my homesick spirits.

Comment overheard on the bus from two pretty women with prim smiles, perfect hair and pointy shoes: "He needs to start buying groceries." End of conversation.

Week 9 of the semester is almost over. Which means we're about two thirds of the way through the term. I'm trying not to panic.

So far, most of my teaching work is done. I have two more drafts to comment on, one proposal, two papers to mark, and a final portfolio to review. Sounds like a lot, and it will take a lot of time, but I've done at least that much work already. And it looks like two of my students will likely drop the class before the end of the term because they've missed so many classes and so much of the work, it really would be in their best interests to withdraw.

But my own work is hanging over my head, and that'll just get heavier and heavier as the term goes on. I still have a translation project for medieval lit to start, and I haven't even read all the primary material for both the papers I want to write, let alone the secondary stuff. It wouldn't be too bad a schedule if I hadn't signed up to take the language exam this fall, which means I need to review my Spanish translation skills, which are, much to my dismay, pretty rusty. I spent most of the beginning of the term translating a German text for the professor who I'm helping as a research assistant, and the switch between languages is throwing me off.

The good news is that things seem to be going pretty good for the kids in school. Steph is getting much better marks in math than she was before, and the other two are holding their own, even with all their extracurricular interests. I just signed Angela up for soccer in the spring, so she'll be busy with that in addition to her piano lessons. Speaking of which, they are going better than I thought they would. I've been trying to teach her since I can't really afford to pay anyone, even at the discounted rate that I'm sure I could get from my colleague's wife. I'm sure it would be better for Ange if I could, but for a year or so, I don't think it will hurt her to have an amateur give it a try. So far, so good, but I'm finding myself having to stretch back in memory to try to explain things I haven't thought about myself in twenty years!

So the semester roller coaster is starting to pick up speed (I'm getting tired of this ride!), and I just need to hang on tight, stay focused, and NOT GET SICK! If I get sick, that'll be the end of the workable plan and I'll have to move into panic mode.

Went to school today for the sole purpose of fulfilling my role as PhD rep only to find the meeting cancelled.

Thanks for telling me.

Apparently in an effort to conserve paper, they e-mailed everybody but me.

Three hour round trip in the rain and cold for nothing.

*Big fat raspberry*

Have you ever tried googling yourself? [interesting how this noun has taken on verb-like qualities]

I get more hits under my old name than my new one. I guess that's to be expected, but I think the ones under my new name are overall more impressive. It's funny who else pops up. When I googled my old name, I kept running into a Lietenant commander who has apparently done lots of stuff (there was a soccer player too, but she apparently only played soccer). Under my current name, I kept running across articles about a woman in Ohio who supposedly videotaped a UFO - the weird part is that she also has a daughter named Stephanie! It also comes up on a German site...kinda tickles my fancy.

I suppose I was lucky to find so many legit references because of the unique spelling of my first name (and of my former last name). If you've never tried it, you should!

Had a friend send me a link to the Observer's top 100 books of all time.

The list anticipates a list being compiled by the BBC which will be released later this year, and is mostly comprised of the reading habits/desires of the staff at the Observer. What surprised me was the low number of these I've actually read (23). Though if you include books that I've read by some of the authors, just not the books listed, my number goes up a bit. So, if you're wondering what kind of stuff I like to/have been forced to read, here's the list replicated along with my relationship to each of the books. I may have to change my response to some of these books though if friends recommend the ones I haven't read.

So, what I've actually read, want to read, would never read...

1. Don Quixote Miguel De Cervantes - no attraction there
2. Pilgrim's Progress John Bunyan - read in university
3. Robinson Crusoe Daniel Defoe - ditto
4. Gulliver's Travels Jonathan Swift - ditto
(though I think it might count for extra credit to read the entire thing and not the abbridged version for these two)
5. Tom Jones Henry Fielding - nope
6. Clarissa Samuel Richardson - probably should - it's considered the first novel in English
7. Tristram Shandy Laurence Sterne - nope
8. Dangerous Liaisons Pierre Choderlos De Laclos - not even sure what this one's about... eek!
9. Emma Jane Austen - nope, but I think Pride and Prejudice should count
10. Frankenstein Mary Shelley - at least 3 times!
11. Nightmare Abbey Thomas Love Peacock - nope, but sounds interesting
12. The Black Sheep Honore De Balzac - no interest
13. The Charterhouse of Parma Stendhal - no interest
14. The Count of Monte Cristo Alexandre Dumas - abbridged version, does that count?
15. Sybil Benjamin Disraeli - nope
16. David Copperfield Charles Dickens - it's on a course list for next term....
17. Wuthering Heights Emily Bronte - actually have never read!
18. Jane Eyre Charlotte Bronte - yes, avoided reading it till I was forced to for a course last year and then was surprised to find I liked it!
19. Vanity Fair William Makepeace Thackeray - nope
20. The Scarlet Letter Nathaniel Hawthorne - yep, American Lit
21. Moby-Dick Herman Melville - ditto - ugh! it was WAY too long!
22. Madame Bovary Gustave Flaubert - nope, but sitting on a shelf waiting to be read
23. The Woman in White Wilkie Collins - that reading list for next term again
24. Alice's Adventures In Wonderland Lewis Carroll - yep, liked it
25. Little Women Louisa M. Alcott - nope
26. The Way We Live Now Anthony Trollope - nope
27. Anna Karenina Leo Tolstoy - nope, but sounds a bit interesting
28. Daniel Deronda George Eliot - nope, but I read the 800 page Middlemarch - does that count?
29. The Brothers Karamazov Fyodor Dostoevsky - nope
30. The Portrait of a Lady Henry James - American Lit again
31. Huckleberry Finn Mark Twain - as a kid
32. Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde Robert Louis Stevenson - yes!
33. Three Men in a Boat Jerome K. Jerome - nope
34. The Picture of Dorian Gray Oscar Wilde - yes, loved it
35. The Diary of a Nobody George Grossmith -nope
36. Jude the Obscure Thomas Hardy - yep, it was okay I guess
37. The Riddle of the Sands Erskine Childers - nope
38. The Call of the Wild Jack London - no, can you believe it?
39. Nostromo Joseph Conrad - nope, but I've read The Secret Agent and Heart of Darkness - might count?
40. The Wind in the Willows Kenneth Grahame - no, bad eh?
41. In Search of Lost Time Marcel Proust - nope
42. The Rainbow D. H. Lawrence - nope, but like Lawrence...(I've heard it's juicy, hmmm....)
43. The Good Soldier Ford Madox Ford - nope
44. The Thirty-Nine Steps John Buchan - nope, not sure if I've ever even heard of this one
45. Ulysses James Joyce - on the shelf...the more I hear about it, the more I want to read it
46. Mrs Dalloway Virginia Woolf - nope, no desire to read it either
47. A Passage to India E. M. Forster -nope
48. The Great Gatsby F. Scott Fitzgerald - yes, liked it
49. The Trial Franz Kafka - of course! love Kafka
50. Men Without Women Ernest Hemingway - nope, and probably never will, tried For Whom the Bell Tolls and hated it
51. Journey to the End of the Night Louis-Ferdinand Celine - nope
52. As I Lay Dying William Faulkner - no, probably should though....
53. Brave New World Aldous Huxley - yes! loved it
54. Scoop Evelyn Waugh - nope
55. USA John Dos Passos - ? never heard of it or the author
56. The Big Sleep Raymond Chandler - nope, not a bit detective/mystery fan
57. The Pursuit Of Love Nancy Mitford - nope
58. The Plague Albert Camus - yep, pretty good - read it in a class on Representations of Epidemic in Literature - cool class
59. Nineteen Eighty-Four George Orwell - yes! multiple times (also love animal farm)
60. Malone Dies Samuel Beckett - nope
61. Catcher in the Rye J.D. Salinger - yep, only vague memories of it 'cause it was back in high school - couldn't have impressed me much
62. Wise Blood Flannery O'Connor - nope
63. Charlotte's Web E. B. White - yes, love it
64. The Lord Of The Rings J. R. R. Tolkien - this doesn't even warrant a comment - I had to buy a new copy of the books last year 'cause my old one literally fell apart!
65. Lucky Jim Kingsley Amis - nope, but I like what his son writes...
66. Lord of the Flies William Golding - yep, read it in high school and it spurred a whole season of interest in apocalyptic fiction
67. The Quiet American Graham Greene - nope
68 On the Road Jack Kerouac - no, but this is on a must read sometime list
69. Lolita Vladimir Nabokov - ditto
70. The Tin Drum Gunter Grass - nope, haven't even heard of this one either
71. Things Fall Apart Chinua Achebe - nope, but love the poem (and poet) that the title is borrowed from - Í'd like to read this one
72. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie Muriel Spark -nope
73. To Kill A Mockingbird Harper Lee - yep, read it to help a student I was tutoring... wasn't overly impressed though
74. Catch-22 Joseph Heller - nope
75. Herzog Saul Bellow - nope
76. One Hundred Years of Solitude Gabriel Garcia Marquez - love Marquez, just haven't read this one - it's high on that must read list!
77. Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont Elizabeth Taylor - nope
78. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy John Le Carre - nope
79. Song of Solomon Toni Morrison - hmm...like Morrison, but there are other novels of hers I'd put higher on the list
80. The Bottle Factory Outing Beryl Bainbridge - nope
81. The Executioner's Song Norman Mailer - nope, no interest at all
82. If on a Winter's Night a Traveller Italo Calvino -nope, might be interesting though
83. A Bend in the River V. S. Naipaul - nope
84. Waiting for the Barbarians J.M. Coetzee - nope
85. Housekeeping Marilynne Robinson - nope, haven't heard of this one either
86. Lanark Alasdair Gray - nope, no interest
87. The New York Trilogy Paul Auster - nope
88. The BFG Roald Dahl - love Roald Dahl! Have probably read every one of his books except this one!
89. The Periodic Table Primo Levi - nope, never heard of it before, but sounds interesting though
90. Money Martin Amis - haven't read this one, but i like the author!
91. An Artist of the Floating World Kazuo Ishiguro - nope
92. Oscar And Lucinda Peter Carey -nope, no interest
93. The Book of Laughter and Forgetting Milan Kundera - nope
94. Haroun and the Sea af Stories Salman Rushdie - loved Rushdie's Satanic Verses, probably would put this on a reading list...
95. La Confidential James Ellroy - nope
96. Wise Children Angela Carter - love Angela Carter, haven't read this one though - I've read her revisions of fairy tales (kinda like James Garner's) and liked them alot!
97. Atonement Ian McEwan - nope
98. Northern Lights Philip Pullman - nope, no interest
99. American Pastoral Philip Roth - nope, no interest
100. Austerlitz W. G. Sebald - ? never heard of him or the book

Guess I've got reading to do (whenever I might possibly have the time!

Still not sure what it was I forgot on Saturday. Hope it wasn't important.

Have had an odd weekend. Not that anything odd happened, just that the things that happened seemed to happen in an odd, stretched-out sort of way. I know I worked all weekend, but if you ask me what I did, I honestly don't know if I can account for the whole thing. I know I studied Spanish, read medieval romance and modern poetry, but that amount of work doesn't seem to add up to the amount of weekend I spent working.

It was almost as if I was studying in slow motion - everything taking much longer than it should. Sorta like when you have a nightmare where you're trying to run away from something/someone chasing you, and the harder you try to run, the slower you seem to be going....and you just know that the thing that's chasing you is going to catch you.

And then you wake up.

I don't think I've woken up yet.

Came upstairs to where the computer is to do something but forgot by the time I sat down in front of it. I hate that!

Pretty sure it had something to do with the computer...look something up? write something down? e-mail somebody?

So I'm blogging, though I don't think that was it either...or if it was, I've forgotten what I will blog about!

A few recent posts probably could use some follow-up, so here goes:

I am much more mobile now - although I have not yet gone for a run - and probably won't for another week or so - I feel almost fully healed. Aside from some stiffness in the morning that usually goes away after stretching (and only comes back after marathon reading sessions in which I don't get up for hours) I feel good. I was ready to play basketball with friends yesterday, but we couldn't gather enough people, which I suppose is good since I'm sure I'll be in much better shape next week - they'd better look out!

My computer has been on and running for almost four hours now - and that's much longer than it has been working all week. I have no idea what it was that was shutting it down...and since I have no idea what it was that caused it, or which of the myriad things I did to it in an attempt to fix it actually worked, it will remain to be seen if I have actually fixed it, or this is just a temporary respite.

I also spent four hours poking around under the hood of the car trying to figure out how water was getting into the interior. A wet interior is not life threatening to a car, true, but it is annoying, makes the car smell like wet...dog? kid? upholstery? whatever it smells like, it's not great. And I'm worried that the water will not just flow through the dash harmlessly but will trigger the kind of $2000 meltdown we had last winter. And since winter around here means rain, and lots of it, something needs to be done. I think I found the problem, though I guess I won't know till after the next big rainstorm. If that fixed it, I'll be glad; if not, I'll be annoyed at the waste of time.

I've also had to fix a kitchen cabinet, spray for ants that are invading (though I'm not sure from where), and fix the cheese board (so I could use it for dinner guests last night) this week.

[I really hate being poor and having stuff that is old or doesn't work!]

And of course the Sox blew it. It was really rather amazing - at the bottom of the seventh in the seventh game, they're up three runs and then in the eighth, the Yankees even up the score, they go into overtime and lose the five hour long game! After the disastrous eighth, I went to bed - it was already almost midnight and I had to teach at 8 the next morning - and told Dwayne to only wake me if they won. I woke up at 3 am after a vivid, and particularly realistic dream about being reamed out by my supervisor, but I did not wake up for a Sox win. [insert expletive] I wanted to see them play the Cubs (though they lost too), but even the Marlins would've been cool.

And academically, I still have too much work to do.

Interesting...though I don't think I should quit my day job...

MAJOR STARS

10 names from the US entertainment industry who majored in English literature:

1 Alan Alda
2 Dave Barry
3 Chevy Chase
4 Jodi Foster
5 Chris Isaak
6 Paul Newman
7 Joan Rivers
8 Paul Simon
9 Steven Spielberg
10 Sigourney Weaver

Source: msstate.edu
Compiled at Roddy Lumsden's Vitamin Q site

So nothing much today has gone as planned. And those are even the plans I had to modify yesterday in response to events then. Sometimes I wonder if I should just chuck planning all together...but I'm not sure how you do that without becoming a complete vegetable...and it would drive me nuts anyway - maybe even more nuts that when my plans have to change.

So in my disgust I starting reading favorite blogs...and trying to find the one I was reading when my computer crashed the other day - still haven't found it - mostly 'cause I can't remember what it was called, but it sounded very interesting (and useful along the lines of the last post).

In my random internet wanderings I came across this series of pictures. Before you go there, note: you can change the music by clicking the down arrow in the top right hand corner. They certainly aren't Ansel Adams calibre, but I think these kinds of pictures say something about the choices we make when confronted with the kind of absurdity that the request to shoot a picture proving your camera isn't a bomb inspires in people. I looked at each of them, trying to imagine what the owner/photographer was thinking about as he/she snapped the shot. Some obviously just shot, not caring what was being recorded while others, faced with the demand to shoot a picture, felt the need to compose the shot - some even going so far as posing a subject.

Interesting, in one of those odd sort of ways. I think I'd like to see the rest of them.

Life's getting busy - probably seems busier than it should be 'cause I've gotten the first batch of student papers - always a joy *eye roll*. The one thing I dislike about the drafting process that we employ is when you tell a student to fix something in the first draft and it's still there in the final paper - erghh! I try not to take it personal, but each time I think "I am not making comments on papers because I just have so much damn time to spend doing it, or because I just love doing it - I'm doing it to teach you how to improve your writing!" Usually they pay attention, but it's the ones who need the most help who often refuse to take it. So I keep churning out the feedback and try not to get annoyed when students choose to ignore it - I only hope they return the favor and don't get too annoyed when they only get a C on the paper!

I've been starting to try to imagine a way that I can integrate all my various interests into three relatively coherent avenues of inquiry for the comprehensive exam next year (and the dissertation to follow eventually). I think it's just because it's the beginning of the year, but it might also have something to do a colleague who I greatly respect making ABD in the last few months. And he and I actually are interested in many of the same areas - science fiction, Celtic myth, memorializing in literature - so I guess I figure I need to be just as smart (though my performance on the preliminary comps last year was dismal to say the least, and not an auspicious start). He has managed to integrate many of the areas of interest by forming them all around the theme of memory. So I'm thinking I might be able to do the same thing with myth.

I'm not sure I really want to identify myself as a mythologist anymore than I wanted to be an Arthurian, but it might be a way of holding it all together. I will start to investigate the field to see if it's something I'd like to be working within for the rest of my career. That's the thing that's really starting to hit home with the idea of the comprehensives - they start to mark out a field that you will always be identified with, and I've generally resisted any kind of labelling that would see me aligned primarily with a single genre, period, or theoretical stance. I've been happy to dig into many different areas of inquiry - which provides a fairly broad overview of things, but is also at the same time much too shallow an approach for the dictates of the profession I want to enter.

I hate trying to figure this out! The things I really want to do don't all hang together in a way that will make me marketable in the future, so I need to tie them together in ways that maximize what I want and minimize the outside interference of themes, genres, theoretical or methodological stances etc that I don't want to study. But every time I think I've got it figured, I find something in the plan that I don't like. Ergh!

Too bad there wasn't such a thing as a PhD fairy godmother! I don't want to just get the degree handed to me - I just want a road map!

Our family - I would say entire, but there have been occasional moments when one or more family members have held out - has been watching the progress of the Sox - Yankees match-up over this week. Why do I suddenly find myself watching baseball, when I usually do not more than watch the occasional football game? Good question. Perhaps its just because I'd rather watch it than study, though I think that category is reserved for Queer Eye for the Straight Guy. Perhaps it comes from having met some avid Sox fans who are actually intelligent too - making me wonder what I might be missing. Perhaps its because I'm having students skip class because they can't be bothered to get up in the morning after celebrating a victory the night before - the series dominates the airwaves and newspaper pages of this city. Perhaps because my book club meeting next weekend will potentially be rescheduled or cancelled to accomodate fans who would rather watch the game than read books - what gives with that!? Whatever it is, I've been watching - and will likely continue to watch till they lose.

Game 4 starts in a few minutes...the Sox need to win this one to tie the series back up at 2 and 2...otherwise, the next couple of games will be nailbiters.

Harvard Square stank today - I'd like to say it was a barnyard kind of smell, which it was occasionally, but I've been on farms, and the odor pervading the entire area was not the brand that cows, pigs, chickens etc. produce - it was the kind that only the human animal can produce with its diet rich in fats and carbohydrates. It was, to say the least, disgusting.

Now that we've moved, I don't always go through Harvard; sometimes I go through the next square down, where the bus stop usually smells of the remainders left behind by people who've drank too much the night before. Different brand of odor. Harvard usually ain't as bad, but today - ick! The place is usually pretty cool during the day and only gets dodgy at night, or early in the morning before the square is swept out, but today it had a particular charm.

I couldn't help but mourn the 20 minute ride in my own car, with my own music, to a reserved parking space that I had before I left. Now I travel and hour and a half (one way) through other people's filth in a public conveyance that is frequently pervaded with the same odors. And as the weather turns cool, I'm reminded that those conveyances frequently are not much warmer than the ambient temperature, which means I don't always warm up after my 10 to 15 minute walk to the stop. I suppose this won't matter five years from now. But right now, it's just depressing.

The major preoccupation of my life is still my state of health. I am happy that I have ditched the cane and can walk (mostly) without it. I'm not too bad in running shoes (sneakers in local parlance), but barefoot I am still barely doing better than hobbling. And my relative grace in walking depends on whether I've been sitting for a while, or already walking for a while. It doesn't even take long - sit for an hour, and I can barely move. Walk for five minutes, and I can imagine actually running again in a few weeks. It's a very 'divided' kind of sense of how well I'm recovering.

Other than that, I suppose my academics are benefitting since I'm not out doing anything, or exercising at all, though I'm feeling like I have cabin fever.

We did go out on Friday night over to the house of one of the other Alpha Omega members. Actually, it was this gorgeous loft apartment that looked like slightly lived in showroom, but it was a nice gathering. At one point in the night, it was just four of us around the table. It was the most Canadians I had hung out with since leaving home. Miss lots of people lots.

Older colleagues keep telling me about injuries they sustained months ago (i.e. half a year) that still haven't healed.

I'm depressed.

Perhaps I am breaking the pattern...perhaps I'm just procrastinating doing the things I need to...perhaps this is good...perhaps this is the beginning of the end.

Regardless. I read a writing exercise the other day that said 'base a character on a horoscope', so naturally, I needed to find a horoscope that might be useful for this. So I've been looking at a few.

This was one horocope I found for me for today: Take charge of what's happening to you and join forces with people who want to make similar changes. The people you meet who are struggling to reach similar goals will become lifelong friends.

Here's another: You don't have to explain your actions to those that know you. Newcomers can be classified by how quickly they grasp what's really happening. You love being part of this club.

And another: Although up setting, changes in your domestic situation will be favorable. Take a look at the possibilities of starting a small part time business with friends or relatives. You should visit a friend or relative who hasn't been well.

I've gotta wonder about these - I realize their supposed to be generic, but I find little in them that matches my life. Friend or relative who hasn't been well? Right now I'm the most unwell person I know (at least that I'm aware of). Club? When did I get membership in a club? (was I drunk?) Newcomers? Don't believe I met anyone today who I didn't already know...and don't expect to meet anyone new in the next three hours before I go to sleep. People struggling to meet new goals who will be lifelong friends? Hmmm...I think I already knew that my colleagues would for the most part remain lifelong friends since I get along well with those who I regularly interact with.

And none of these horoscopes mention the fact that I have come into three unanticipated sources of money today: 1) tutoring a student (a connection from a colleague who's moving out of state), 2) a student loan - even though I've maxed out the provincial loan limit, and 3) half a year's CCTB, which I didn't expect to get since I've left the country.

Don't horoscopes usually make a big deal about trying to predict windfalls? Or did my karma slip off into some kind of Taurus- or Aries-zone without me detecting it?

Things to puzzle over.

Good news is they won't have to shoot me like a lame horse! Doc confirms that it looks to only be muscle and maybe a bit of torn tendon, but nothing serious like ligaments (which of course would involve surgery), so I will be up to par again soon. I am still a bit concerned about potential long term effects and whether I will need to change my participation in favorite activities, but PT should go a long way toward helping get me feeling normal again.

And as for my third encounter with the much vaunted American health care system? Hmm...four hours at a clinic, sharing a waiting room with grouchy people, yelling kids, and coughing, hacking wheezers... gee, doesn't seem much different than the system I left.

The difference is I pay $4000 a year for the priviledge!

Not to mention the 45 minutes on the phone and then another 45 in person with the clinic and the insurance company telling them my physician should be an internist, not a pediatrician (who they had me registered with as primary care physician!)

I'm sure there are situations where this system works better, but I have yet to experience them myself.

Got a lovely note from friend yesterday that started with, "I hope this note finds you well". Unfortunately, it doesn't, but the sentiment is still wonderful!

I am officially non-ambulatory and will probably be for a while by the way my leg is looking. Rats! You don't realize what you have till it's gone.

Don't know exactly what it is, just know my leg has let me down for the first time in my life. I'm alternately surprised, worried, and pissed off at it (and myself for getting into this situation). I'm trying not to imagine the worse case scenario that the doctor might give me tomorrow. Keep your fingers crossed for me!

Three coffees and I still feel barely awake. Being in my own classes till 8 at night, then teaching the next morning at 8 is just not enough time for me to feel awake. Particularly when three or more of those twelve hours in between are spent in transit.

I can certainly get as little sleep as I do on Thursday nights and feel with it, but there's something about being in class so late and then so early that taxes my brain. I can never just eat and go to bed when I get home - it takes hours just to wind down enough to sleep, and I think that's the problem. My brain is just too wired still when I get home.

There seems to be a pattern to my blogging: once on the weekend or monday, and a second time half way through the week. Leads me to ask, why? I think the answer falls somewhere within a realm of, 'i think of things to blog about on a regular basis, but when it comes to writing it out, it all seems to trivial and so then i don't do it'. Makes me wonder why I keep doing this...oh yeah, 'cause it's all about me! Feeds my ego.

Though ostensibly it's supposed to be about you who read this, so you know what's going on in my life.

So, what is going on? you ask.

Ange had a good birthday - she seemed to enjoy herself. She had recently watched The Perfect Storm, so we went out to Gloucester for the day - nice town, and we had a good time being all together without at least one of us with our head in a book. She's happy to be reading the 5th Harry Potter now. (Her last literary endeavour - I just have to make a note of this - was The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde - impressive, ain't it?...meanwhile, her mom has joined a book group that will first read Coraline by Neil Gaiman, a YA book...a little backwards perhaps?) But she says she doesn't feel any older yet.

The others? Doing good - Dwayne's kicking ass in his class - top marks! Yes, that intelligent man is with me, thank you very much. Sandy's having problems with tendonitis in her legs, which makes cross-country running problematic, but she's also incredibly stubborn and won't give it up. And the endless hours of math review this summer seem to have paid off for Steph since her academics seem to be going better this year, at least so far.

Experienced my second encounter with the US health care system today.

Anyone who says the American system is better because you get better access to health care is only talking about people who have expensive - and thus comprehensive - medical insurance.

When we arrived last year, we discovered the children needed physicals before they would be admitted to the school - unfortunately this was something we couldn't really prepare for before leaving home, since we had no idea what town/city we'd end up in...so, I was stuck scrambling to get physicals. I located an office in Arlington, which is two towns away, who were taking new patients and were willing to take cash - I made the appointments and prepared to shell out a lot of money. Arlington is a very, very nice town -in fact, I wish I could afford to live there. Their library is a gorgeous, old, but very well maintained, classic kind of marble and stone edifice that's a delight to wander around in, and the rest of the town matches it.

It was a very nice office - helpful staff, understanding about our situation - in fact, when we got there, the receptionist indicated that they had billed the Canadian health care system (in other provinces) before for physicals, and they would try to bill half the cost back to Alberta Health. Yeah! Now the physicals would only cost $200! We went more than once, since we were squeezing the girls in one at a time on a tight timetable before school started, and each time, it was a pleasant experience (except of course for the payment).

This year, Sandy needed her physical updated for school sports, so I made appointments for all three again. This time we were on the plan offered through Dwayne's school. Although the individual coverage offered by both schools cost the same, my school offered spouse/dependent coverage at twice the rate of BU. So, naturally we're on his plan. We got bounced around a bit from health care center to health care center until they found a family provider who was taking new patients. She works in South Boston, a neighborhood I had heard much about, but had never entered before. Aside from getting lost trying to find the place (since it's right next to the Big Dig), I was glad it was daylight. Double-parked, finger waving drivers seem to congregate in this area, and I suspect that all the crazy drivers I've seen elsewhere, actually start out here at the beginning of their day - as if they were part of some kind of crazy dispatch system that assigned each one to a different sector to mess up traffic - "your assignment today is to go into east waltham and make u-turns in the middle of busy streets all day" or "cruise up and down memorial drive in cambridge at erratic speeds that are always at least 10 miles over or under the speed limit". [And yeah, its kinda neat that memorial drive runs along much of the charles on the north side - feels a bit like home.]

So, we finally find this place (and a place to park - I thanked god my car is old and worth very little right then), and although the building itself was nice, the reception staff exhibited the kind of guarded hostility that develops when you are used to dealing with unreasonable people...especially people who don't want to pay money. I know what that feeling is like, and it makes you less friendly, more suspect, and really detracts from the ability to make someone feel welcome in a place of business. I felt like the receptionist was feeling me out for my attitude when I first approached her and that I had to demonstrate that I was a nice person before she really started to work with me on getting the preliminaries done. On top of that, we spent almost an hour sorting out paperwork, making sure we were on the right plan, and making yet more phone calls to confirm that we did have coverage for the services we were about to receive.

Nothing like - here's my AHC card - here's my next of kin - the doctor will see you in a moment.

Although our physician is nice and seems quite competent, the forty-five minute drive (god knows how long it would take on the T!) and neighborhood really detract from the overall experience, and I sincerely hope we never have to access emergency medical services in this city. I suppose if something serious ever happens, I might see the benefits of this system by being able to access health care quicker, but so far, I'm not impressed.

Ive been reading a lot this summer...ahhh, the bliss of reading something that I want to read! It's one of the reasons I'm in a doctoral program in English literature, and yet the irony is that I have so little time to read what I want to by the time I read all the things I have to read! But it's been a nice mix so far.

In fiction, I read A Door into Ocean which was first recommended to me by a friend who could not remember either the title or the author. After having run around to a number of people and places trying to find it, she managed to find the biblio on it and so I bought it to read. When I had first heard about it (back in the mid-nineties) it was out of print, so I was happy to find that it had been reissued. If you're a fan of LeGuin, this is a good one to read. I also read The Eye in the Door, which is the second in a series by Pat Barker. I read the first one last fall for a class, and I think the second one is even better. I know I'm going to keep my eyes open for the third and read it as soon as possible (which unfortunately probably won't happen till Christmas). I also read Timothy Findley's short story collection Dust to Dust; I need not say more, it is Findley in excellent form, as usual.

In non-fiction, after the Sagan, I read King's On Writing, which was interesting in that it was very clear to see how his writing and his philosophy of writing merge. It got me interested in reading other writer's writing about what they've done [maybe I should read Findley's too], to see how that matches their particular style. Dwayne had picked up the audio copy of it from the library for me, and I had tried to get through it and found it boring, but then my friend threw it at my during a visit and said, 'read this' and I'm glad I did give it a try again, 'cause I found it interesting AND useful. I guess I need to stick with print since that's the second time I've had problems getting into an audio book.

We toured the middle school at the beginning of the month, and one thing that struck me about the library was what seemed to be a disproportion between the number of televisions and the number of books on the bookshelves. The library was mid-sized, and there were plenty of shelves, but most of them were very bare. After reading this list of the most frequently challenged books (a.k.a. censored books), I wasn't surprised that there were so few books on the shelves! There are many books on this list that I know I read and enjoyed, many more that, having read them, I cannot imagine why someone might object to them [if they are so subversive, then wouldn't I remember the subversion, or is it supposed to be that subtle?], and many that were on reading lists when I was in elementary/junior high/high school.

There is one on the list, Flowers for Algernon, that I remember was pulled from our reading list by a Jehovah's Witness mother...but it was pulled after they had already been distributed to us, so of course I was doubly determined to read this book to find out what the fuss is about. In fact, after reading this list, I'm thinking I might be missing something by not having read some of those books!

There are quite a few people in the world that have far more time on their hands than I do... but they amuse me. This was one of the most pleasant error pages I've come across, especially when searching for WMD.

But I think this one feels more like the kind of thing I suspect happens to my computer when I'm not looking!

Struggling with the frustration of trying to clear up memory in my computer. It's one of the few things that I know to do when the damn thing stops working like it's supposed to and earlier this morning it stopped in the middle of a print job. Not just stopped printing, but the screen went utterly black and nothing worked at all - had to hard boot it to get it back, and now I'm nervous that something is seriously wrong, even though scans say everything is hunky-dory. [I wonder if that's how it's spelt? I think when it comes to not real words anything goes, so I won't sweat it]

I have the same attitude toward my car and my computer - both are highly useful tools. When they're working fine, I love them; when they're not, I experience both hatred and fear....hatred at their betrayal of my expectations, and fear caused both by the sense of the unknown and my limited knowledge of how they work (I know a few tricks, but they're tricks at best), and the fear that to get them working again is going to cost me mucho dineros.

Good weekend - pretty low key and laid back, but overall pretty good.

It was Dwayne's birthday yesterday, so I took him out to the local comedy club on Saturday night. We thoroughly enjoyed the comedians, who focused much of their acts on the peculiarities of Bostonians...and as a recent emigree, I found their comments highly amusing. I also learnt that I need to find where the cheap places to park downtown are located! Ouch!

We had a good afternoon yesterday, taking the kids to the local park and throwing the frisbee around. It was really nice, something we don't do very often, and for that reason, I found it special. Last weekend when it was raining the whole time, we played TriBond, which was also something we don't do very often, and enjoyed ourselves quite a bit then too (except for Sandy who was desperate by the end of the game with telephone-withdrawal symptoms!)

All this family time got me thinking about the old quality vs. quantity debate...and frankly, debating whether quality or quantity time is better for your kids is a bit like arguing the old nature vs. nurture argument - are good people/bad people/psychopaths born or created? In the nature vs. nurture debate, it's pretty hard to come down on only one side, since there are studies that prove both sides influence the kinds of adults we grow up to become. But in the quality vs. quantity time argument, the debate seems to be a moot point since kids seem to need both. They need their parents to be there when they need them (quantity time) and to leave them alone to grow up and provide those memorable times when everyone gets together, outside the usual routine, and enjoys just being together - no chores, no lectures, no guiding, no counselling, just enjoying being together.

That's the kind of weekend we had.

Consumerism is a life-sucking state of being. I've spent too much time in stores lately between purchasing things we need for the new place, things that need to be repaired, birthdays, back-to-school, and my own book buying.

Most retail outlets just suck the life out of you. Looking at others in the store, do you ever see any joy? No. Mostly you just see vacant expressions, and if you do get an acual expression it's usually a frown, or a worried look. Where is the joy of entertainment - the heartfelt laughter or delight in a good book or movie? Where is the joy of accomplishment in the athlete who has met a self-imposed challenge, won the game, beat their previous record? Where is the intense satisfaction of talking with a good friend?

I'm disliking shopping more and more the older I get...soon I'll be Scrooge all year round!

The girls start school in two more days (and I don't start for another week - yeah!) - Angie moves from elementary to middle school (6-8), so she gets to change schools, even though we were careful to stay in the same area when we moved so they would'nt have to move from one system to another - each town here has its own system, even if that consists of only four schools total. We attended the middle school orientation tonight, and I realized that the beginning of this year stands in sharp contrast to the previous year, at least for me.

Last September, when the girls first went to school, I felt very dissociated from what they were doing - not only was I panicking over the 'homework' that I had in preparing to teach on my own for the very first time, I was unsure about how long we would stay here, uncertain about the quality of education they might be receiving, and frankly, a little self-absorbed in my own difficulty adjusting to the move. I still regret that I managed to lose touch with one friend during that awful time, and have not been able to make contact again. It's not a part of my life I'd like to relive, though if I ever decide to write about someone who loses grip with reality, I think I came close enough that I could see over that edge and would be able to fairly realistically describe it.

[self-edit] I don't want to psychobabble though.

I think I'm kicking myself right now because I feel like I'm stalling out on creating a new syllabus for this year. You'd think that gaining three weeks in changing from quarters last year to semesters this year would be easy, but accommodating the extra work that they want to incorporate into the curriculum will be difficult. The biggest foul-up is the fact that I lose two classes only a couple of weeks apart for Veteran's day (Rememberance Day) and Thanksgiving (last week of November) - and they're near the end of the term. (Columbus day in October falls on the same weekend as Canadian Thanksgiving).

I'm also not looking forward to my own classes - there's not much that interests me that's being offered this term - and next term, there's too much! Ergh! I'll have to do most of my work independently - that's one thing I've had difficulty adjusting to here in this program - I'm really on my own as far as most of my work goes - there's very little guidance regarding my own studies, or even help with adjusting my teaching schedule to the new semester system. Just makes it harder. A friend of mine told me today: "A calm sea does not a good sailor make". Which is true. Which means I'm gonna be a kick ass sailor by the time this is all over!

Been wasting time (and procrastinating on creating new syllabus - ugh) by surfing randomly. It's this kind of random surfing, just following link after link till you end up in some really weird places that's the bane and attraction of the internet. I will go to the pool in a few minutes and soak up the last of the summer's rays (it's supposed to be cloudy for most of the rest of the weekend, and then the pool closes), but before then, I wanted to point to a page I randomly found. I wanted to respond to it, but my response was too big for the comments section, and it's also something that I've been thinking about lately too...amazing how much thinking you have time to do when you're not working!

The link to the byzantine calvinist for August 28th is interesting, particularly the part where the author argues that religious belief and economic 'belief' (a.k.a. theory) are identical and should be treated as such. [read the National Post article - this is one of the reasons I quit subscribing to them long before I left home]

One time, I decided that my sisters and I needed to get away for a weekend together, so we went hiking up to Glacier Lake, just the three of us. Things were going pretty well until the conversation turned to science & religion (if I remember right, the theory of evolution somehow worked it's way in there). They had a bit fight and I felt crappy 'cause I felt like I was stuck in between. I tried to express my view on religion then, but didn't do a very good job, and have thought about it since then. I think I have been able to summarize my thoughts since then and would like to respond to this blog in this way:

I would agree that secularism constitutes a belief system. There is, however, one primary difference between religious belief systems and secular ones, and that is the claim of the former to some form of ultimate truth. This claim requires one to assume that all other belief systems are wrong (because not based on this truth), and thus invalidates all other belief systems as valid beliefs. The secularist recognizes his/her belief as one of many, equally valid (including religious) belief systems. It is the judgement inherent in religious systems that creates a sense that the expression of religious belief is an unfair imposition on others by excluding the possibility that those others may in fact be the ones who are right, something secularists worth their salt are willing to accept.

My neighborhood: Watertown

Not quite how I'd describe it - there doesn't seem to be a category listed for "sweaty, rude blue collar men who think their masculinity is so overpowering that I will 1) make room for their god given right to take as much time and space as they'd like, or 2) swoon".

Maybe they just hang out here and go home to other neighborhoods at night....

Receiving this article from a friend was quite eerie since it brings up a few things I've been thinking about lately - coincidence? Perhaps...

Read it first....
_______

You live next door to a clean-cut, quiet guy. He never plays loud music or throws raucous parties. He doesn't gossip over the fence, just smiles politely and offers you some tomatoes. His lawn is cared-for, his house is neat as a pin and you get the feeling he doesn't always lock his front door.

He wears Dockers. You hardly know he's there. And then one day you discover that he has pot in his basement, spends his weekends at peace marches and that guy you've seen mowing the yard is his spouse. Allow me to introduce Canada.

The Canadians are so quiet that you may have forgotten they're up there, but they've been busy doing some surprising things. It's like discovering that the mice you are dimly aware of in your attic have been building an espresso machine.

Did you realize, for example, that our reliable little tag-along brother never joined the Coalition of the Willing? Canada wasn't willing, as it turns out, to join the fun in Iraq. I can only assume American diner menus weren't angrily changed to include "freedom bacon," because nobody here eats the stuff anyway.

And then there's the wild drug situation: Canadian doctors are authorized to dispense medical marijuana. Parliament is considering legislation that would not exactly legalize marijuana possession, as you may have heard, but would reduce the penalty for possession of under 15 grams to a fine, like a speeding ticket. This is to allow law enforcement to concentrate resources on traffickers; if your garden is full of wasps, it's smarter to go for the nest rather than trying to swat every individual bug. Or, in the United States, bong.

Now, here's the part that I, as an American, can't understand. These poor benighted pinkos are doing everything wrong. They have a drug problem: Marijuana offenses have doubled since 1991. And Canada has strict gun control laws, which means that the criminals must all be heavily armed, the law-abiding civilians helpless and the government on the verge of a massive confiscation campaign. (The laws have been in place since the '70s, but I'm sure the government will get around to the confiscation eventually.)

They don't even have a death penalty! And yet .. nationally, overall crime in Canada has been declining since 1991. Violent crimes fell 13 percent in 2002. Of course, there are still crimes committed with guns -- brought in from the United States, which has become the major illegal weapons supplier for all of North America -- but my theory is that the surge in pot-smoking has rendered most criminals too relaxed to commit violent crimes. They're probably more focused on shoplifting boxes of Ho-Hos from convenience stores. And then there's the most reckless move of all: Just last month, Canada decided to allow and recognize same-sex marriages. Merciful moose, what can they be thinking? Will there be married Mounties (they always get their man!)? Dudley Do-Right was sweet on Nell, not Mel! We must be the only ones who really care about families. Not enough to make sure they all have health insurance, of course, but more than those libertines up north.

This sort of behavior is a clear and present danger to all our stereotypes about Canada. It's supposed to be a cold, wholesome country of polite, beer-drinking hockey players, not founded by freedom-fighters in a bloody revolution but quietly assembled by loyalists and royalists more interested in order and good government than liberty and independence.

But if we are the rugged individualists, why do we spend so much of our time trying to get everyone to march in lockstep? And if Canadians are so reserved and moderate, why are they so progressive about letting people do what they want to?

Canadians are, as a nation, less religious than we are, according to polls. As a result, Canada's government isn't influenced by large, well-organized religious groups and thus has more in common with those of Scandinavia than those of the United States, or, say, Iran. Canada signed the Kyoto global warming treaty, lets 19-year-olds drink, has more of its population living in urban areas and accepts more immigrants per capita than the United States.

These are all things we've been told will wreck our society. But I guess Canadians are different, because theirs seems oddly sound. Like teenagers, we fiercely idolize individual freedom but really demand that everyone be the same. But the Canadians seem more adult -- more secure. They aren't afraid of foreigners. They aren't afraid of homosexuality. Most of all, they're not afraid of each other.

I wonder if America will ever be that cool.

Source: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (PA)
Author: Samantha Bennett
Published: Wednesday, July 30, 2003
Copyright: 2003 PG Publishing
Contact: letters@post-gazette
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I was just thinking the other day about the differences between Canadians and Americans (or at least New Englanders, since there are some distinct differences between the Northeast and the rest of the country). I was hypothesizing to myself that Canada will become more like the U.S. over the next few decades. This thought sprung from my observation that 1) there is no American equivalent of Canadian tire, 2) there are fewer winemaking suppliers here (even though you can actually grow your own grapes in this climate), 3) fabric stores of any kind are hard to find, and ones with a good selection even harder to find, 4) the closest Ikea is in the next state, and 5) there is only one Savers (Value Village) in the greater Boston area. What do these observations say to me? Well, it may be a generalization, but I think there is less of a do-it-yourself kind of attitude here. People seem to be far less interested in creating something themselves than in having someone else hand it to them already put together. The pioneering spirit that still seems to be alive (at least in Western Canada) no longer exists here. Now, I realize this may also be an east-west thing...I'll reserve judgement on the cause, but I think there is a distinct correlation between a fully developed capitalist mentality, and the lack of do-it-yourself, handywork kind of businesses in the area.

What this has to do with the article? Well, I was hypothesizing that this difference is a matter of age - in a younger area, more people do things themselves - in an older culture, there's more desire to let someone else do it, or buy it ready made. If Samantha Bennet is right, then this kind of 'maturity' is actually a regression (of the teenage variety - don't get me started on that one!). The aging of a society (not its population) might produce an attitude that to do it yourself is somehow inferior to paying someone else to do it. [Though of course I accept the very real possibility that the article and I are talking about two very different and unrelated phenomena]

The other thing I had been thinking about was stereotypes. Not a big thing, but I wonder if an article like this just caters to stereotypes on both sides of the border. But then again, I'm not sure that it matters much. I think stereotypes can be very localized phenomena - living just below Quebec, most New Englanders think that Quebecois culture is indicative of Canadian culture in general. Bit of a shock coming from people who live in an equally diverse country. Then again, I'm sure I have stereotypes of my own to dismantle...

I was thinking earlier today that I should blog about something (feeling the pressure to contribute since it's here - the same kind of pressure you feel when the grout grows around the sink or the bills pile up) but wondered what I could possibly blog about.

I've been reading lots lately - non-fiction and fiction - all stuff that isn't on a reading list and it occurred to me that my own internal critique of a book I just read is a bit more sophisticated than it has ever been for any other book before.

I generally produce different categories of non-academic criticism after reading a book: the one, which I share with others includes an overall analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of the book in addition to the general good/bad assessment. The other, my own internal critique, categorizes books simply as: excellent, good, bad. Excellent ones are ones I would read again - if borrowed, I will keep an eye out to buy my own copy; good, I'm glad I read it - it will stay on the bookshelf; and bad, well, sometimes they're salvageable because they've taught me things about bad writing, but mostly I try to forget the details of the story. Before, if I liked a book, I would say to myself, 'good book' and leave it at that, but this time I thought, 'good book, but the ending is disappointing'. And I realized that the qualifier at the end is something new that I felt compelled to add. Not because the book itself required it, but because my own rather simplistic categorization of the book was insufficient. And the sneaking, scary, weird feeling that went with that categorization was the thought 'the ending is disappointing...I could've done better.

It's scary because if I allow myself to start thinking that way, at some point I'm gonna have to belly up to the bar and put my money where my mouth is - I'll have to move from critic to producer. I don't know that I'm ready for that day.

Carl Sagan in The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark writes, "Baseball and soccer have Aztec antecedents. Football is a thinly disguised re-enactment of hunting; we played it before we were human. Lacrosse is an ancient Native American game, and hockey is related to it. But basketball is new. We've been making movies longer than we've been playing basketball...basketball has become - at its best - the paramount synthesis in sport of intelligence, precision, courage, audacity, anticipation, artifice, teamwork, elegance, and grace". He obviously never saw a bunch of English PhD students trying to play the game!

But we have a lot of fun, and we've actually gotten a bit better over the last month of playing. I suppose that isn't saying a whole lot since most of us had a lot of improving to do, but we have gotten a bit better. We keep picking up extras who are much better than most of us (one of our players is very good at the game - he's also tall - so his skill and height really dominate the rest of us, but he's also great at pulling up and giving those of us who aren't so good a chance to shoot, or pass etc.).

Intelligence? Off the court, sure...on, hmmm, I don't know about that. Precision? Those of us who can shoot, sure. Courage? Definitely! Just showing up and playing in public parks shows courage! Audacity? (See courage) Anticipation? See, there's another of those skills that we need to work on...some of us (myself included) still are a bit surprised when the ball ends up in our hands! Artifice? Nope, not good enough for that yet. Teamwork? Yeah, you bet! Best part of the game as far as I'm concerned. Elegance and grace? Nope, at least not for me...at this point, I've managed to fall and/or injure myself at almost every game - But I'm probably the least coordinated of those on the court. Of course Sagan was talking about NBA play, not the kind of game we play, but his point that the game is the most modern of the major games we play and that because of this, it is a game of skill and intelligence is well taken.

Massachusetts, or at least this part of it, has very loud crickets. Even with the windows shut, you can clearly hear them at night.

They certainly sound like crickets, though I'm thinking they might be some kind of cicada or something since they sound so much louder than I'm used to hearing (and I grew up on the prairies!)

I was going to blog about the fact that I hate August since - as a student - I never have any money left that month, but after talking to a friend, I realized what I really wanted to talk about was child custody and visitation rights.

For most of this year I've been able to get on with life and just concentrate on what I have to do and what the girls need from me. They've called their dad quite a few times, though since he and his girlfriend split in March, they have only been able to leave messages and hope he calls back when they're at home (since he doesn't have his own phone). The girls were frustrated many times by this system, but there wasn't much we could do about it and I always said to feel free to call whenever they wanted to - I seldom had to cut an excessively long call short because they seldom talked for very long. Aside from all the frustrations intendent in this, I think things went okay over the year. I know they missed him, but they also had the chance to get to know their stepdad a bit more, and I've been told by other adults who have talked to them about it, that they are feeling pretty comfortable with our new family arrangement.

When we left, I made it clear that I was willing to split the costs of transporting them to see him, but that I expected him to be the first to shell out money (since I'm usually the one doing it). He promised at Christmas, and then during their term break in February to fly them back, but didn't...hence some of the disappointment on the girls' part. What is so frustrating is trying to stay fair and keep my nose out of it, when all I feel like doing is ranting about how unfair it feels when I (with my parents helping for one child) spend money I really don't have (i.e. student loan money that accrues interest as I'm in school) to send them back for a visit to their grandparents, and he gets to waltz in and play daddy as if nothing has ever happened.

I've tried to say that it doesn't matter, that my kids are smart & they'll figure it out on their own, or that I don't need his money - I knew I wasn't going to get anything out of him and I've accepted that I'm the one who provides all. And I know that access and support are supposed to be two entirely separate things, but sometimes I just want to scream about how unfair it feels to be the one providing, and disciplining, and all the other hard things, while he does god knows what and waltzes in like a white knight on a horse.

DAMN!

The thing is, he'll always be their dad, even if they get angry and disappointed at his behaviour and it's really hard to be a grown-up and not care that you get the same level of consideration (and Dwayne of course gets less) as he does even though you do ten times the work. It's always been that way.

One of the most shocking things for me when he left was how little my relationship with the girls, and our lives, seemed to change. I really had been carrying most of the family work anyway, and I didn't feel like my work load (physical, emotional support, social convener etc.) in raising the girls increased. I was still doing the same things, not more, and maybe even less because I had less bs to deal with at the same time. I knew from the start that I wouldn't get much from him either - he paid support for a couple of months, but as soon as it was clear that I wasn't taking him back, it stopped pretty abruptly. And I don't expect to get anything from him in the future. He knows better than to tell me where he lives or works because he knows I can pass that on to MEP, so he trys to stay below their radar.

The whole rant started when I realized that I have a friend who is moving too, but visits will be much more frequent, and they have a much more collaborative arrangement. He cares for his children and it shows. My ex? I really do not understand what goes through his head.

Saw Freddy vs. Jason last night & it was worth it!

I was thoroughly amused by the movie and enjoyed it, even if there were plenty of places where the dialogue dragged a bit. They exploited every Nightmare and Friday movie, and the conjunction of the two provided us with an amusing night.

By far the best part of the experience was the opening night crowd! We went to one of the theatres downtown, so the audience was young (and largely non-caucasian). The audience was really into the movie, with cheers when Freddy & Jason first meet to applause at the end of the final fight scene. The hoots from the guys in the audience when the requisite half-naked co-ed gets axed set the stage, but one of the funniest moments was when the girls behind us said, "oooh, that girl gonna get killed" just when, of course, you knew she was gonna get killed.

Best line? I don't think it's a spoiler... Requisite stoner: "Man! That goalie was pissed!"

Of course, the movie went down much better since we had met friends for drinks before the movie! Not high class, but interesting and even provided some interesting points of analysis for us eggheads (questions of sexuality, politics etc.). If you aren't a fan of the movies or the genre, don't bother going, but if you liked all the previous movies and want to see Freddy go up against Jason, by all means go to it on a cheap night!

The paper is finally finished! Yeah! Nice not to have it hanging over my head. I am never requesting an incomplete mark again - I hate how last term just dragged all the way into the summer.

Now it feels like my summer is rapidly coming to a close.

Actually was able to stay awake till midnight last night after a bball game - usually it wipes me out & I go to bed early. Though we did only play two games yesterday.

The car quit working last week again. Now it is working. How long this will last will be up to the car gods.

Life moves on - I just try to get by.

Like the new look? Thanks Duncan!

Html is one language I certainly do NOT know...though I was wondering if I could make the case with the department that it is a language that would do me just as much good to know as say German, or Latin, or French and they should let me write my language test in it. Then I'd at least feel like I had learned a useful language for the PhD requirements!

I do think I finally figured out how to change the time to EST instead of MST though...not hard, but I'm pretty proud of being able to do it. Did you know that the list I chose from had Swift Current listed? Along with Antigua, Belize, Michigan etc. I thought it rather impressive - Speedy Creek makes the map!

Promised myself I wouldn't do anything enjoyable (including blogging) till I got to 14 pages in this paper, which is about 3/4 of the way through. I did however supervise the children at the pool (the sacrifices one makes as a mother!) before I got to this point, simply because it would've been dark if I'd waited! Sometimes I really am not at all interested in writing something intelligent and it's usually only the impending sense of time passing that motivates me...in other words, the end of the semester approaches. (Speaking of which, it will be fabulous to go back to the semester system - I'm sure the pace will feel much more like what I'm used to than this past year has!) Every time I sit down to write a paper, I do wonder what I'm going to do after I finish my degree, when the expectation is that I write to publish, but I don't have a deadline hanging over my head. What will motivate me then? I'll have to find something that will sufficiently excite me to get over the dread of beginning a project. Maybe the dissertation experience will help me find it...

Speaking of which - congratulations Shea on completing (except for that one paragraph!) your thesis! Yeah!
I think I have a good idea how relieved you feel! Congratuations!

I've been bothered over the last couple of days by something that I did, oh, probably about a month ago without thinking. I said something very off-hand - I didn't even recall saying it until I was told about it by a friend - that really was unthinkingly stereotypical and offensive. And I can't stop thinking about it. I was absolutely shocked to hear that I had done that, and what's more, it has led me to question whether my own self-view is really accurate.

I have always considered myself a unprejudiced and accepting person - I worked at VC and the CFB with all sorts of international students, and even on the one occasion where I didn't handle things too well, it was my temper and frustration, and not a prejudice that got me in trouble. Plus, I knew exactly what I had done wrong the moment I lost it and yelled and apologized to everyone who I had offended right away. And then at CIAS, I was very conscious of diversity and modified the interview questions we used as well as the way I evaluated a candidate's answers to take into account ethnic differences. After all, the way that we interview, and what is considered the appropriate answer to an interview question in North America is very different than the hiring process in other areas of the world. Here we rely heavily on the candidate's responses in the interview and expect them to toot their own horn. In other areas of the world, the recommendation of a former boss, or the employee's resume listing achievements are far more important, and candidates often do not put their best foot forward because what we call 'selling yourself' they see as bragging and bad form.

So what's happened? Why did I say something so horribly unthinking? I've always thought that I'm someone fairly sensitive to my use of language and respect for other people (okay, yes, I know I swear way too much for some people's comfort level, and it's something I've recognized and been trying to change - 'specially when I drive!), so why? I really respect these friends and consider them good friends, but if I am such a bonehead about something like this, how good a friend am I?

After apologizing I was told to forget it - but I can't.
And nothing I can do or say now can take the hurt I caused back.
All I can do is remember.
And know that I'm not as good as I think I am.
I guess that's what regret is for.
But I'm still having problems forgiving myself.

Played basketball again. Enjoyed myself very much, even if my team-mates weren't wowed by my (lack of) prowess. Am starting to wonder however if I am too old/out of shape to start doing this now. I can tell I am going to ache all over tomorrow...at one point I dived and rolled, and now my right hip feels like it belongs to an eighty year old. Maybe I should give it back - somewhere there's a grandmother who's missing a body part!

I do get out and run on a regular basis and I can leg press about 280 lbs., but I seem to get absolutely wiped out by playing basketball. I think I will give it a few more goes before I decide for sure whether I can cut this or not....but I may change my mind after I wake up tomorrow!

The children are home again... I breathe a contented sigh of happiness seeing them again. Didn't realize how much I had missed them till I was eagerly waiting for them to disembark off the plane!

You know you're children are home again when you have to fight for the telephone to make a call!

But it's all good.

I am desperately trying to finish off a paper from last term. I am now down to about ten days, and I've had over two months to do it - long live procrastination! I am just starting to pull myself out of that place where (if you've done this before yourself, you'll know what I mean) you are reading and reading and reading, justifying to yourself that you need to gather more research before beginning to write, but really all you are doing is avoiding sitting down and writing the damn thing. I have to stop reading and start writing. After all, if I write and then find I still need more, then that's the time to head off to the library, not now when I don't need more material, I just need to put that material down on paper.

At least I have finished the biggest part of the marking for class until the end of the term (which, conveniently, is three days after I have to hand my own paper in!) - thank goodness for that!

Saw Macbeth on Boston Common. There were about a dozen of us who met to watch the play. Overall it was an enjoyable experience, though it started getting coldly damp as the evening drew on, and I felt quite chilled by the end of the final act.

Such experiences invite comparison to similar experiences, and I was reminded of other Shakespeare's I've seen recently. Although Shakespeare on the Common was much more professional than the Shakespeare in the Park at Prince's Island, I actually enjoyed my experiences at the latter more. The size of the population here, and the fact that there is obviously much more money poured into the production here than in Calgary meant that the crowd was huge! We arrived in good time, but even then, we were quite far from the stage and missed many of the nuances of the play. I was much closer to the stage the last time I was at Prince's Island, and even though the acting was a bit more amateur (though one of the actor's in the last play I saw also worked for us at ATP), the performance was enjoyable because it was so intimate. When we were groundlings at the Globe (newly rebuilt and only reopened the year before we were there) watching King Lear, I also enjoyed it more because we were experiencing the play much the same way as it would have been enjoyed during its original producation. [Yes, I know there are many differences ranging from the lighting to the attitude of the crowd, but overall, it was faithful in its minimalization of sets, props and costuming]

The setting for this production was war-time, so Macbeth was in uniform as were the rest of the Scotsmen, and Lady Macbeth wore either short or long full skirts; the witches were characterized by long black shawls - to look like gypsies perhaps? The gunshot echoes (yes, some of the sword scenes were updated, though there was still plenty of sword play) made interesting echoes off the surrounding skyscrapers. Made me wonder if they could be confused for the real thing. And the strange man who wandered by sounding like the back-up sound of a large truck adding a sense of the surreal to the play - appropos, I think.

I have come to the conclusion that I like my Shakespeare either utterly groundbreaking (whether it works or not) like the Pericles we saw a few months ago, or intimate like the Mount Royal players in Prince's Island or the Globe in London (as a groundling, having to stand the whole time with actor's making their entrances from among the crowd).

Played basketball yesterday in a game that was much more intense than the moving day one - now I ache all over. Some of the places I ache are places where I want to develop the muscles more, so that's good, but the bizarre ache (which actually started yesterday) is the right bicep...likely from shooting (or the game of frisbee before basketball - another sport I'm not so good at). A few bruises - again, probably from the frisbee more than anything, but we also picked up a sixth player in the park to even out our numbers, and this guy was big! Felt like I just didn't exist a few times when trying to guard him and there was one point where I literally bounced offa him and into one of the other players!

Enjoyed myself thoroughly, but need to get better at the game to really make it interesting.

A year ago today I entered this country, so I thought today might be good day to blog about the experience since at the time, I did not have a blog, and I was in no state to even comment on the process.

A year ago, about this time of day, I was viewing the fantastic beauty of Niagara Falls, but I wasn't as impressed with the spectacle as I think I might have been in a different situation since I was very focused on the big step we were going to take in crossing the border. While I've crossed the Canada-U.S. border many times as a tourist, this would be the first time I had taken a more permanent (yet still of course temporary) step of crossing with the purpose of living here for four or five years. And I was nervous about whether we had all the proper papers etc. Part of that nervousness no doubt had to do with the fact that the reason we had the time to view the falls, and do all the touristy things people do in Niagara, was because we were waiting that morning for our visas to arrive by fedex at the B&B we had stayed at the night before. We were cutting it close! We had also heard horror stories about trucks being ripped apart (I had a complete and extensive inventory of every box inside ours), and of course I was moving with my children, who although I have sole custody, were still going to be leaving one parent behind, and I wasn't sure if that would be a problem. It wasn't at that time, but the next time we went home for a visit, the agent at the New Brunswick/Maine border had a problem with us all having different last names.

Come to think of it, the last time I needed a visa to travel, we did much the same kind of waiting thing. When my family went to Brasil in the seventies, we spent three or four days in a Toronto hotel room waiting for visas from the consulate and hopped on a plane pretty much as soon as we got them (that was a long flight - Toronto to Rio!). Another similarity that hadn't ocurred to me till now was that we arrived in Sao Paulo the night before my dad had to go to work. We arrived in the Boston area the day before Dwayne started classes too.

By the end of the afternoon a year ago, we had waited and been cleared by the INS office and were on our way through upstate New York. We camped along the highway that night, and the next day, I spent much of it on the phone calling places whose ads I had downloaded from craigslist at the public library in Niagara the day before. I drove and dialled while Sandy read out phone numbers and wrote down answers and/or directions. I soon realized what the housing market was like as we drove since many of the places that had advertised the day before, were already taken by the time I was calling the next day. And I imagine the 403 area code of my cell phone put off most of the others who I left messages for. By the time we arrive in Eastern Mass late afternoon of the 31st, we were down to two places - the one we just moved out of, and one out in another community that the landlord said had someone looking at it that evening. Knowing the communities a bit better now, I'm glad we didn't even bother looking at the other place - not only did they likely rent it that night, but it also isn't a great area to live in.

We arrived in Watertown around 5 pm having gotten directions from the landlord, and pieced together those directions with the map. [Rush hour is never a good time to drive a moving truck in an unfamiliar city that has incredibly narrow streets!] We looked at the place, went to the local mall to look for a paper or additional ads, drove back, told them we'd like to take it, pulled out our references, credit report, traveller's cheques, and when they said it all looked good, asked them if we could bunk there for the night (even though the 1st wasn't till the next day). At the time, my predominant feeling was exhaustion and stress, but now that I look back, it must have seemed amusing to the landlord with these crazy Canadians showing up with a moving van full of stuff and landing on their doorstep. He tells me that he loves telling the story of how we, their first tenants (they had just bought the building a couple of months before) arrived. Now that those bad days are over, I enjoy telling the story of how we arrived too, dialing up potential landlords saying 'I'll arrive in town in about three hours, can I come and see the apartment then?' , but it didn't seem funny at the time.

A lot has happened since then, and I can say that I now, finally, feel (mostly) comfortable here.

Was trying to explain to someone ten years younger than me what a 'pigeonhole' was because she had never seen that piece of office equipment/furniture.

Of course this reminded me again of the rate of change in society over the last few decades. Yes, yes, I know it's just the disappearance of pigeonholes that we're talking about here, after all, pigeonholes aren't what you could really call obsolete technology, but it still amazes me that a colleague who's only ten years younger than me has in many ways had a very different experience of the workplace. And my students have an even different view - they grew up with voicemail and e-mail - handwritten phone messages are a thing of the past - even at home!

Makes me feel older than I really am... or maybe I've just been obsessing over passing the 'early thirties' mark into the 'late thirties' one... and my career really has yet to begin. [My inability to accept additional employment/experience outside of my home institution doesn't help make me feel better about getting older and older with fewer and fewer opportunities].

Enought of that - I promise not to talk about age for at least a week!

Life still doesn't feel quite normal yet - and while this move is not a joltingly disturbing as the last one - it certainly has been more disruptive than I would have imagined before it began. Having said that, things are starting to look a little more normal and the box/furniture ratio is decreasing...there are parts of the house that almost look their normal chaotic selves! This move is certainly going to benefit the kids the most. They are the ones who really win out as far as space goes...but all of us will feel like we have a bit more elbow room. Just the fact that you can go to another level where there might only be one other person will help give the impression that you have more room, and that will help a lot when we're trying to study in the middle of winter and you can't escape outside so easily.

Getting near the end of term - which, as usual, is good and bad. Good in that I will soon have a couple of weeks in which I only have to prep for fall, and bad in that I have much to do; lots of student papers to read, and my own paper that I've been putting off with the excuse of the move. I'll have to plan some workdays this week.

Feeling kinda homesick today and I'm not exactly sure why. Maybe just because so much is up in the air with the moving, maybe just 'cause I'm missing the girls some, maybe 'cause I talked to my sister yesterday...I just don't know.

All I know is that I keep thinking about home today. When one of the students in my class who is doing a project on nuclear energy asked me whether there was the same level of fear in Canada as the U.S. about nuclear energy, I of course thought of home. And then when I went to get some lunch and realized that I would get both change and bills back after paying the bill, I missed loonies & toonies (and it sure didn't take me long to get used to change again when we were Nova Scotia earlier). But neither of these things in and of themselves should make me homesick - I have people ask me all the time about Canada, and I've certainly gotten used to dollar bills again (at least I'm old enough to have remembered them in Canada).

Don't know why I'm missing home, but I am. Maybe 'cause I haven't heard from any friends for a long time... I wonder if they still think of me....

Maybe I'm just starting to feel like I'm not going to get ahead here - what with the setbacks I've had in trying to get some extra employment. I applied for a scholarship a month ago - Dwayne heard back from them (unfortuntely he didn't get the scholarship), but they haven't even bothered contacting me. Don't I at least rate a PFO letter?

Big, fat raspberry -

Whew! Moving is almost complete... just the cleanup and a last car load of stuff....and then of course all the unpacking stuff.

Today I am feeling exhausted and sore - mostly from the weekend - I could barely move on Saturday! The computer printer at home decided to stop working (not because it was moved (at least I hope not) but because none of the ink cartridges seem to be working correctly) so I showed up at school almost six hours ago to print out a huge pile of things I needed. I still have another three hours here to put in here with student conferences and then unpacking to do at home. Ugh!

Yesterday was nice though - we took the day off of moving/packing/unpacking things because it was our anniversary and spent the day together exploring more of our new environment - yes, it still feels new and sometimes still a bit strange - topped off with a relaxing meal together...and then went home to find that the printer didn't work! Oh well... it was nice anyway.

The actual day that we set for moving was unbelievably ill-timed and plagued with bad luck. The plan was to pick up the truck late morning, drive out to the warehouse where the piano was stored, pick it up, meet friends at the house to unload that piano (2 and 1/2 hours), meet other friends at the old house to load up all the rest of the furniture, unload at the new house. Sounds simple doesn't it? And I thought we had it fairly well timed....

The problems started on Thursday when we found out we would have to go down to Dwayne's school to sign some papers Friday morning. We allowed an hour and a half for the travel to conduct this ten minute business. We barely made it out in time. We were still on schedule though and actually arrived at the truck rental ten minutes early. Unfortunately for us, there was only one staff member present and a simple pre-booked pick up took forty minutes. I hopped in the truck to drive out to the warehouse only to find that the quarter tank of gas that was supposedly in the truck was something closer to just above empty, and it was a diesel truck so I wasted time trying to find a station with diesel before I ran out of fuel.

Then when I got to the warehouse, there was one guy who was going to load the piano into the truck...which shouldn't have been a problem. But, the truck I was given didn't have an emergency brake, so it would roll away from the platform just enough that the ramp barely extended into the truck and the process now required two guys...and the first guy to go and find another one to offer help. So the loading took longer than expected as well.

And then the piano didn't quite fit through the door - it was a bit too long to take the corner (we're talking an inch or two at the most!).

As we were standing (in the pouring rain - only rain we've had for a week before or since then) with the piano impossibly wedged in the door, the guys who were supposed to deliver the fridge four hours later pulled up. And the laws of physics on this planet just do not allow a piano and a refrigerator through the same door at the same time....'specially when one is wedged in tight. Meanwhile, the second set of friends are waiting at the other house....

I need to be very, very nice to my moving friends for the next little while!

Good karma to the one refrigerator delivery guy (the young one, not the grouchy old guy who just sat in the truck and glared) who actually helped us lift the piano over the stair rail so that we could get it into the house and out of their way - wherever you are, you're a saint!

I even had enough energy left for a game of 21 with two of my mover friends (though my score was PATHETIC! they were both very nice about it).

The hassles were mostly from a businesses I had to deal with - the friends who helped us move made it one of the nicest moving days I have ever had - I think when it comes to moving, as long as you have a few cold ones around for the lull times, it's always a case of the more the merrier and not too many cooks spoiling the soup! Here's to our new home!