So we're home at last. The Great Ontario Moosehunt is over, with nary a moose to be seen, except for the ones on the front of the Moosehead beer bottles.
And we didn't even see very many of them.
Not a bear.
Not a moose.
Not a beaver.
Lots of deer though, and squirrels.
And trees of course.
We went horse riding. Or horseback riding as it's called in Canada.
To distinguish it from horse front riding???
WTF?
We found a horse farm that had a nice lady and her husband who got rid of the kids, sold the suburban detached, bought three hundred acres of the Canadian Shield and 22 horses, and built their own cabin out of their own lumber which they got from their own trees which they cut down and milled themselves.
Pretty impressive.
When I say 'got rid of the kids', I mean completed rearing them, not doing away with them of course.
So we had a nice three hour ride through their land, I was on Sass (of course) and Himself was on Doll, Sass' sister. It was his first time on a horse and he did very well.
Now of course, we have to add horses to the future plans (he doesn't understand the concept of feed bills yet, but he'll learn).
Then we had to go back to the hotel, sorry, resort, because I had to go back to work and attend Ontario's Digital Economy conference.
It was okay.
I am truly shocked at how far Canada is lagging behind countries such as Ireland in the digital economy.
Of course, if you have millions of acres of land with trees, and water, and oil, and potash, and copper, and uranium, etc., you don't really need to be up to speed on the new economy.
We watched the bloodbath that is the global financial meltdown on tv a bit and also the Canadian election debates. Which were fun in a sad political junkie kinda way.
Then we had to get back in the car and drive home.
It was the second time in my life I arrived in Nova Scotia at dawn. It is the best way to do it, even if it is exhausting and I am still so tired from the hours and hours in the car.
Twenty two hours later we pulled into Melwood to see the sun out and the neighbours in the yard.
Thankfully we had brought back wine for everyone so we sat in the yard in the sunshine and then we had a big bonfire when it got colder and everyone caught up with what everyone else has been up to in the last two weeks. Some of the previous occupants arrived too to liven things up, and we called Shelley in Manitoba, so nearly everyone was present in some way.
So, laundry, shopping and clean up today, and back to work tomorrow.
Sigh.
Sunday, October 05, 2008
Tuesday, September 30, 2008
The Great Ontario Moosehunt
So Himself and I have traversed Atlantic Canada and Quebec and are now in Ontario.
We're only in the south-eastern part of Ontario, but I still feel like I'm a long way away from home.
#1. Canada is very big. Very very very big. Particularly if you come from a little island on the west coast of Europe.
#2. There are a lot of trees in Canada. And most of them are varying shades of gold, red and orange right now, which makes for a very pretty drive. New Brunswick is just a big Irving tree farm, with the occasional strip of farmland along the St. John river. Himself's ancestor, Daniel, was one of the Loyalist soldiers that helped settle Loyalist refugees along that river in the mid-seventeen hundreds, so we spent most of the hours driving through New Brunswick imagining what it must have been like to fetch up there with a few hand tools and some supplies for the winter.
Not good.
Personally, if I had to live in interior New Brunswick, I would not be a happy camper. The coastal areas are much more interesting.
Having said that, we are on our Great Ontario Moosehunt (I have never seen a moose) and we saw one in New Brunswick.
A lady moose.
But not up close.
#3. For a country with as many trees and swamps and Danger, Moose Ahead signs as I've seen in the last few months, there aren't the dozens of moose lining the roads to ram the Beast as I expected.
The Danger, Moose Ahead signs are particularly funny.
In New Brunswick, the moose on the signs are just standing there, looking at the oncoming cars (note these are yellow road signs with black outlines of moose).
In Quebec, the moose has charged a car side on and squashed the car. Which is unusual because moose generally just loom out of the darkness and stand there while you hit them with your car. (they then fall off their spindly legs and fall through your window). This is a very aggressive and angry moose - perhaps he has lost his cultural funding and is looking for the Tory tour bus to ram?
Speaking of elections, the Liberals have just accused Stephen Harper of copying his homework from John Howard. Highly amusing pre-election mud-slinging stuff. I pity both the poor Liberal staffer who obviously has no life, other than searching the Net for right wing idealogue fuckups, and who stumbled onto the 2003 plagiarism, and the poor Tory staffer who obviously has no job now, who actually lifted the speech and put it into Harper's set-piece on Iraq.
The Great Game continues in the hearts and minds of the Canadian people.
The Great Ontario Moosehunt continues, unabated, in Ontario.
We made it through Montreal and drove to Ottawa in about two hours through flat farmland. Not so many trees. Many many cows and lots of slurry spreaders. As we headed west on the 60, the land became a little more rocky and the trees reappeared.
# 4. The 60 is a very nice highway. I recommend it as a way through Ontario, if you have time to meander along it.
We fetched up in Arnprior, near Ottawa on Sunday night, as our former neighbours seem to have disappeared.
Generally, there's a lot of Jesus worshipping going on in this part of Ontario. I'm not sure if this is the part of Ontario that Alice Munro wrote about, I have a feeling I'm pretty close to it.
Arnprior boasted thirteen churches, one of which has a big lit up-at-night cross on a hill.
We stayed in the Comfort Inn, which was the only hotel, and ate in the Elgin Restaurant, which handily enough was in the hotel.
The special was ribs.
They were so big that we didn't speak for twenty minutes while we ate them.
(I swear I am getting more like a Canadian/ like my paternal relations in my growing inability to eat and talk at the same time. Talking only slows down the eating, doesn't it, and the enjoyment of the food).
Then we staggered back upstairs and lay on the bed which was really not big enough for two people who are used to a king-sized and not used to eating that many ribs in one go.
Then it was 7am and time to get on the road again.
Thankfully, Monday was only a four hour hop through the Ottawa Valley and Algonquin Park to Huntsville where our hotel, sorry resort, is.
Algonquin Park is Canada's oldest provincial park and has been around for about 110 years. It was originally set aside so that logging barons such as JR Booth could log in peace without worrying about prospectors, settlers and the like either moving in, or just plain old setting fire to the trees they had bought at auction.
JR Booth, who was one of the richest men in North America at the time, owned the rights to most of the park. He built a railway through it which is totally overgrown now. In fact, we walked on a trail along the old railway and it was incomprehensible to us that it used to be a railway line.
Then we found an old sleeper under the moss.
Algonquin was lovely and the weather was great, so the railway track trail was a wonderful trek through maple stands and around lakes and more importantly hills (so the seniors couldn't get around it).
No, I'm not being ageist, it's just that having had to walk at funeral pace on a previous trek that promised black spruce bog and moose and gave us bog and moose tracks only, due to the plethora of seniors trundling along the track, we really needed to just stretch out leg muscles that had been in a car for four days.
However, in the Canadian version of the game Himself and I play when driving around Nova Scotia: Spot the Young Person, it would appear that NB, QUE and Ontario are as chock-a-block with seniors and as devoid of young people - apart from in crappy service jobs - as Nova Scotia seems to be.
Maybe rural depopulation is not a NS thing, maybe it's a Canada thing.
There are some lovely little towns in this part of Ontario though; it would be a real shame if they were to die off and people kept drifting towards the GTA.
Anyways, after about 10kms of walking, we still hadn't seen any moose or bear, so we headed back to the car and drove the rest of the way to Deerhurst Resort, near Huntsville.
Typical resort hotel. Overpriced, lots of airs and graces, vast quantities of add-on costs, and when you really get down to it, cheap towels.
I hate cheap towels.
Having said that, we have a lovely room overlooking the lake and the autumn colours are as vivid and bright as you can get here.
Today it has been raining, so we went into Huntsville for food and found the liquor store, which was much better than any Nova Scotia liquor store I have seen yet. It had a massive wine section, with rows of tetra pack wine (for camping) and a great South American section.
It also has a great International Bottled Beer selection - with beer from England, Belgium, Holland, Greece, Slovakia, Czech Republic, Poland, Jamaica, US and many many other countries, some of which I've never seen before.
So we added to Himself's beer bottle collection.
I think it's stopped raining, so maybe we should drag ourselves back out to the car and head off on our moose hunt again this afternoon.
We're only in the south-eastern part of Ontario, but I still feel like I'm a long way away from home.
#1. Canada is very big. Very very very big. Particularly if you come from a little island on the west coast of Europe.
#2. There are a lot of trees in Canada. And most of them are varying shades of gold, red and orange right now, which makes for a very pretty drive. New Brunswick is just a big Irving tree farm, with the occasional strip of farmland along the St. John river. Himself's ancestor, Daniel, was one of the Loyalist soldiers that helped settle Loyalist refugees along that river in the mid-seventeen hundreds, so we spent most of the hours driving through New Brunswick imagining what it must have been like to fetch up there with a few hand tools and some supplies for the winter.
Not good.
Personally, if I had to live in interior New Brunswick, I would not be a happy camper. The coastal areas are much more interesting.
Having said that, we are on our Great Ontario Moosehunt (I have never seen a moose) and we saw one in New Brunswick.
A lady moose.
But not up close.
#3. For a country with as many trees and swamps and Danger, Moose Ahead signs as I've seen in the last few months, there aren't the dozens of moose lining the roads to ram the Beast as I expected.
The Danger, Moose Ahead signs are particularly funny.
In New Brunswick, the moose on the signs are just standing there, looking at the oncoming cars (note these are yellow road signs with black outlines of moose).
In Quebec, the moose has charged a car side on and squashed the car. Which is unusual because moose generally just loom out of the darkness and stand there while you hit them with your car. (they then fall off their spindly legs and fall through your window). This is a very aggressive and angry moose - perhaps he has lost his cultural funding and is looking for the Tory tour bus to ram?
Speaking of elections, the Liberals have just accused Stephen Harper of copying his homework from John Howard. Highly amusing pre-election mud-slinging stuff. I pity both the poor Liberal staffer who obviously has no life, other than searching the Net for right wing idealogue fuckups, and who stumbled onto the 2003 plagiarism, and the poor Tory staffer who obviously has no job now, who actually lifted the speech and put it into Harper's set-piece on Iraq.
The Great Game continues in the hearts and minds of the Canadian people.
The Great Ontario Moosehunt continues, unabated, in Ontario.
We made it through Montreal and drove to Ottawa in about two hours through flat farmland. Not so many trees. Many many cows and lots of slurry spreaders. As we headed west on the 60, the land became a little more rocky and the trees reappeared.
# 4. The 60 is a very nice highway. I recommend it as a way through Ontario, if you have time to meander along it.
We fetched up in Arnprior, near Ottawa on Sunday night, as our former neighbours seem to have disappeared.
Generally, there's a lot of Jesus worshipping going on in this part of Ontario. I'm not sure if this is the part of Ontario that Alice Munro wrote about, I have a feeling I'm pretty close to it.
Arnprior boasted thirteen churches, one of which has a big lit up-at-night cross on a hill.
We stayed in the Comfort Inn, which was the only hotel, and ate in the Elgin Restaurant, which handily enough was in the hotel.
The special was ribs.
They were so big that we didn't speak for twenty minutes while we ate them.
(I swear I am getting more like a Canadian/ like my paternal relations in my growing inability to eat and talk at the same time. Talking only slows down the eating, doesn't it, and the enjoyment of the food).
Then we staggered back upstairs and lay on the bed which was really not big enough for two people who are used to a king-sized and not used to eating that many ribs in one go.
Then it was 7am and time to get on the road again.
Thankfully, Monday was only a four hour hop through the Ottawa Valley and Algonquin Park to Huntsville where our hotel, sorry resort, is.
Algonquin Park is Canada's oldest provincial park and has been around for about 110 years. It was originally set aside so that logging barons such as JR Booth could log in peace without worrying about prospectors, settlers and the like either moving in, or just plain old setting fire to the trees they had bought at auction.
JR Booth, who was one of the richest men in North America at the time, owned the rights to most of the park. He built a railway through it which is totally overgrown now. In fact, we walked on a trail along the old railway and it was incomprehensible to us that it used to be a railway line.
Then we found an old sleeper under the moss.
Algonquin was lovely and the weather was great, so the railway track trail was a wonderful trek through maple stands and around lakes and more importantly hills (so the seniors couldn't get around it).
No, I'm not being ageist, it's just that having had to walk at funeral pace on a previous trek that promised black spruce bog and moose and gave us bog and moose tracks only, due to the plethora of seniors trundling along the track, we really needed to just stretch out leg muscles that had been in a car for four days.
However, in the Canadian version of the game Himself and I play when driving around Nova Scotia: Spot the Young Person, it would appear that NB, QUE and Ontario are as chock-a-block with seniors and as devoid of young people - apart from in crappy service jobs - as Nova Scotia seems to be.
Maybe rural depopulation is not a NS thing, maybe it's a Canada thing.
There are some lovely little towns in this part of Ontario though; it would be a real shame if they were to die off and people kept drifting towards the GTA.
Anyways, after about 10kms of walking, we still hadn't seen any moose or bear, so we headed back to the car and drove the rest of the way to Deerhurst Resort, near Huntsville.
Typical resort hotel. Overpriced, lots of airs and graces, vast quantities of add-on costs, and when you really get down to it, cheap towels.
I hate cheap towels.
Having said that, we have a lovely room overlooking the lake and the autumn colours are as vivid and bright as you can get here.
Today it has been raining, so we went into Huntsville for food and found the liquor store, which was much better than any Nova Scotia liquor store I have seen yet. It had a massive wine section, with rows of tetra pack wine (for camping) and a great South American section.
It also has a great International Bottled Beer selection - with beer from England, Belgium, Holland, Greece, Slovakia, Czech Republic, Poland, Jamaica, US and many many other countries, some of which I've never seen before.
So we added to Himself's beer bottle collection.
I think it's stopped raining, so maybe we should drag ourselves back out to the car and head off on our moose hunt again this afternoon.
Sunday, September 28, 2008
New Brunswick and Quebec
We left Halifax about three pm on Friday and drove to Woodstock. Woodstock, New Brunswick.
Not the cool one.
We drove around a bit and found a Best Western and checked in and then we went to the PUB, the name of which I can't remember.... Himself thinks it may have been the Hometown Pub or something... just let's call it the Good Ole Boys pub... we were the only people in the pub not wearing a baseball cap.
But we had a nice steak each. And they had wine. Hurrah. And beer. The beer was on a special two for one, but the wine was not, no matter how hard I tried with the server who had a very sophisticated two way radio device in his ear, despite the fact that the pub was about the size of a normal pub with about twenty customers in it.
It had four enormous tv screens with the pre-season hockey on it.
I broke the news to Himself that I had decided to be a Canadien fan for the foreseeable.
Himself is a Maple Leaf fan.
He tried to explain that being a Habs fan was not allowed for people who intend to marry him, but I decided that that was stupid.
Like I said in a previous post, we are working our way through the major issues before we wed.
After the enormous steak, our tummies were too stretched to do more than have another couple of two for one beers and then trundle back to the BestWestern for telly and bed.
Up early next morning and onto Quebec city.
We liked Quebec City.
It's like a legoland Prague.
Or Paris, I suppose.
After seven pm, it pretty much shut down of course, being Canadian, but it was our single vacation night where we could let rip so we found a pub and then a restaurant, and then nicely full of (steak again) and beer and wine, we staggered down the Rue St Jean and found Les Yeux Bleues, which was recommended in the Lonely Planet.
It was a small, seedy bar a la Baggot Inn in the eighties, with a few live acts that consisted of French singer/ songwriters that sang two English songs to prove they understood the concept of rock music and then reverted to Quebec pop.
I'm sorry.
The French are great at movies.
They are great at art.
They are great at sculpture.
They are great at all forms of culture.
But put a guitar in their hands and all they can come up with is the effin' theme tune to the Teletubbies.
Everyone sang along raucously.
We met a pair of Boston gals who had driven out of the States for the first time in their lives that day.
We drank a pitcher of beer and staggered home through the drizzle to our dreadful little French hotel room that cost a fortune.
C'est Quebec.
Today, we drove to Montreal, then Ottawa, and now we are just three hours from our destination.
I'm too full of ribs and chocolate to say anything meaningful, so I'll just go to bed now.
1,454 kms and counting
So, we're in our room in our motel in Arnprior, Ontario.
We are lying on the bed groaning in agony because we just ate the best ribs ever followed by the best chocolate cake dessert ever in a little diner in a little town in Nowhere, ONT.
Well, Queenie has managed to drag herself off the bed to put photos up on Facebook and write in the blog.
Himself is still lying on the bed groaning and watching Hurricane Kyle destroy what's left of his house on the island.
Here's a photo from Quebec City, from the Salon de Chasse.
That's the closest to a bear I ever want to get.
WE SAW A MOOSE YESTERDAY.
It was a bit sad, really, we drove the entire length of the interior of New Brunswick, and saw one moose. Well, whizzed past it as I screamed MOOSE, MOOSE, MOOSE.
Hopefully we will see some more tomorrow.
In Algonquin Park.
Which I have wanted to go to since I was about 10 and I saw a documentary on it on the television.
Friday, September 26, 2008
Road Trip time of year
In a big 'screw you' to the forces of recession and oil panic, Queenie and Himself are going on a 4,000 km road trip today.
From Halifax to Quebec, then to Ottawa, hopefully, and down Route 60 through Algonquin Park to Huntsville, Ontario. Queenie has to go to a conference on the digital economy and Himself is going to lay around the posh hotel and go riding on the horses and canoeing in the lake and all sorts of exciting stuff.
He is very excited about being Queenie's 'conference spouse attendee'.
Then we're going to drive home.
The leaves will be turning and there's two ridges of high pressure meeting for a chat right about where we're headed so hopefully we'll have some nice views and some good photos when we're back.
I'm assuming the digital economy conference will be in a wifi hotspot, so maybe there'll even be a blog or two.
Road trip across (approximately one third of) Canada.
Happy happy squirming ensues.
As I said to the Queen Mother last night, we may not even turn the Beast around when the time comes - we may end up in BC - and go shrimp fishing with Justin for the winter.
Farmer Brown, you have been warned. If you see a dirty red car lurking around your street, it'll be us!!
Anyways, stay happy till we're back.
From Halifax to Quebec, then to Ottawa, hopefully, and down Route 60 through Algonquin Park to Huntsville, Ontario. Queenie has to go to a conference on the digital economy and Himself is going to lay around the posh hotel and go riding on the horses and canoeing in the lake and all sorts of exciting stuff.
He is very excited about being Queenie's 'conference spouse attendee'.
Then we're going to drive home.
The leaves will be turning and there's two ridges of high pressure meeting for a chat right about where we're headed so hopefully we'll have some nice views and some good photos when we're back.
I'm assuming the digital economy conference will be in a wifi hotspot, so maybe there'll even be a blog or two.
Road trip across (approximately one third of) Canada.
Happy happy squirming ensues.
As I said to the Queen Mother last night, we may not even turn the Beast around when the time comes - we may end up in BC - and go shrimp fishing with Justin for the winter.
Farmer Brown, you have been warned. If you see a dirty red car lurking around your street, it'll be us!!
Anyways, stay happy till we're back.
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
Waiting for the other shoe to drop
This has to be my favourite jargon phrase ever.
What the hell does it mean?
I mean, I know what it means. It means something bad yet salvageable has happened, but the likkelihood of an escalation is immense, so everyone is just hanging around not making any decisions about anything...
... because they are waiting for the other shoe to drop.
Before I research this, I am going to bet that it has something to do with hanging.
Time passes, while Queenie does the Google thing...
NOPE!! Queenie is wrong. People who are hanged don't have to endure their shoes falling off one by one, which is the visual image she had in her head for this phrase. It apparently has its roots in a vaudeville sketch. From Worldwide Words:
Its source would seem to be the following story. A man comes in late at night to a lodging house, rather the worse for wear. He sits on his bed, drags one shoe off and drops it on the floor. Guiltily remembering everyone around him trying to sleep, he takes the other one off much more carefully and quietly puts in on the floor. He then finishes undressing and gets into bed. Just as he is drifting off to sleep, a shout comes from the man in the room below: “Well, drop the other one then! I can’t sleep, waiting for you to drop the other shoe!”. This may come from music hall or vaudeville, though it would seem that nobody has been able to tie it down more precisely.
Anyways, that's what we're doing in our house, waiting for the other shoe to drop. The fact that we live under the top flat means that that happens at least twice a day, but that's not the shoe I'm talking about.
You learn something every time you log on here, don't you.
What the hell does it mean?
I mean, I know what it means. It means something bad yet salvageable has happened, but the likkelihood of an escalation is immense, so everyone is just hanging around not making any decisions about anything...
... because they are waiting for the other shoe to drop.
Before I research this, I am going to bet that it has something to do with hanging.
Time passes, while Queenie does the Google thing...
NOPE!! Queenie is wrong. People who are hanged don't have to endure their shoes falling off one by one, which is the visual image she had in her head for this phrase. It apparently has its roots in a vaudeville sketch. From Worldwide Words:
Its source would seem to be the following story. A man comes in late at night to a lodging house, rather the worse for wear. He sits on his bed, drags one shoe off and drops it on the floor. Guiltily remembering everyone around him trying to sleep, he takes the other one off much more carefully and quietly puts in on the floor. He then finishes undressing and gets into bed. Just as he is drifting off to sleep, a shout comes from the man in the room below: “Well, drop the other one then! I can’t sleep, waiting for you to drop the other shoe!”. This may come from music hall or vaudeville, though it would seem that nobody has been able to tie it down more precisely.
Anyways, that's what we're doing in our house, waiting for the other shoe to drop. The fact that we live under the top flat means that that happens at least twice a day, but that's not the shoe I'm talking about.
You learn something every time you log on here, don't you.
Wednesday, September 17, 2008
Hump Day, in more ways than one
Today is Wednesday, which means it's hump day of course.
Here's the urban dictionary definition of hump day:
Wednesday, or the hump of the week.
The absolute BEST day of the week, the day of maximum hope that maybe, you might make it out of this week alive. A particularly good hump day can last you the rest of the week, and by Doomday morning (Monday) you survive by anticipating hump day.
Nothing goes wrong on hump day.
Most other days can be defined by hump day.
Tuesday is the day before hump day. Thursday is one day after hump day. Except Friday is WOOOH!!! FREEDOM!!! Day, Saturday is Mostly Hungover day, and Sunday is PreDoom day.
'Xactly.
Today is also 16th September, which means it's hump day of the month too.
And today is the day the moon starts to decline again, which is another hump day.
I like the first one - Wednesday.
The other two, not so much.
I hate months going by. They make me feel old. Not that I feel old, particularly, I have hated months going by since I was a small little princess, not even a Queenie.
It's just one of my little pet hates. Like Sundays at teatime, and Good Friday, and the day after Hallowe'en.
And I'm always sad when the moon starts to die. It must be the primitive in me, afraid that it won't come back.
This month's moon was a wonderful, super-sized, pumpkin-shaped reddish-brown globe in the sky, which was clear for the three days or so it was full.
The harvest moon.
Unfortunately, it was mid-week so we were stuck in the city and didn't get a chance to enjoy it properly.
The one disadvantage of the Melwood garden is that the house blocks the moon. So you have to sit on the front doorstep to look at it.
This week, Dexter Construction is digging up our road, so it' s not very pleasant sitting out there, surrounded by mounds of gravel, and silent machinery, and dirty cars with the taste of dust in our mouths.
So we just waved at the moon as we went in and out of the house.
Hopefully next month's will be just as good.
It usually is.
And then she gets all skinny for the winter.
Here's the urban dictionary definition of hump day:
Wednesday, or the hump of the week.
The absolute BEST day of the week, the day of maximum hope that maybe, you might make it out of this week alive. A particularly good hump day can last you the rest of the week, and by Doomday morning (Monday) you survive by anticipating hump day.
Nothing goes wrong on hump day.
Most other days can be defined by hump day.
Tuesday is the day before hump day. Thursday is one day after hump day. Except Friday is WOOOH!!! FREEDOM!!! Day, Saturday is Mostly Hungover day, and Sunday is PreDoom day.
'Xactly.
Today is also 16th September, which means it's hump day of the month too.
And today is the day the moon starts to decline again, which is another hump day.
I like the first one - Wednesday.
The other two, not so much.
I hate months going by. They make me feel old. Not that I feel old, particularly, I have hated months going by since I was a small little princess, not even a Queenie.
It's just one of my little pet hates. Like Sundays at teatime, and Good Friday, and the day after Hallowe'en.
And I'm always sad when the moon starts to die. It must be the primitive in me, afraid that it won't come back.
This month's moon was a wonderful, super-sized, pumpkin-shaped reddish-brown globe in the sky, which was clear for the three days or so it was full.
The harvest moon.
Unfortunately, it was mid-week so we were stuck in the city and didn't get a chance to enjoy it properly.
The one disadvantage of the Melwood garden is that the house blocks the moon. So you have to sit on the front doorstep to look at it.
This week, Dexter Construction is digging up our road, so it' s not very pleasant sitting out there, surrounded by mounds of gravel, and silent machinery, and dirty cars with the taste of dust in our mouths.
So we just waved at the moon as we went in and out of the house.
Hopefully next month's will be just as good.
It usually is.
And then she gets all skinny for the winter.
Tuesday, September 16, 2008
Bloc Party had a very nice time in Halifax apparently
... and so did we.At their concert.
Which was held in the Marquee Club, which was good, because it meant old arse Queenie and her old arse Himself could sit down and still see everything.
Himself pointed out that yet again, we were the oldest giggers in town. And the band look like they're twelve.
But he agreed they rocked.
And Queenie was most impressed at how tight the set was, and how like their albums they sounded. Which must have been tricky considering all the layering that goes on them.
Another one struck off the list.
Now, if only Radiohead would come here instead of Boston the next time.
Or even after Boston.
After a dry spell over the last couple of years, SonicBoom, whoever they are, and Live Nation are really stepping up to the mark with a series of great gigs in the city recently.
Last night, BP, Kathleen Edwards and Chris Isaak all played the city at the same time.
Hopefully Kathleen will come back soon so we can catch her too.
About time we had some good tunes.
Saturday, September 13, 2008
The Curse of the Cubbyhole
Yes, well, that was a bit of a spell away from the Court, wasn't it. I didn't spend it all eating bacon, I assure you.
What happened was I ate my bacon and eggs and then went to put a load of laundry on. And when I got back, my spot at the computer had been taken by Himself, who was looking at jobs in British Columbia.
"Wages have gone up in BC", he announced.
"You are not going anywhere without me", I reminded him.
"Well, it would be a bit of a hoof home to see Little 'Un anyways."
"Yes, it would."
So I guess we're not going to BC this weekend.
Thank goodness for that.
We're going to Ontario in a couple of weeks and that looks far enough right now.
My world is getting a tad small right now. What with the price of gas and all the airlines in the world going bust. But I'm sure it will change at some point. Although I keep telling myself that inhabiting a small world is not a bad thing. Inhabiting the world you want is the thing, isn't it?
Anyhows, back to In Bruges.
As Farmer Brown said on Facebook, In Bruges is a fuckin' fuckin' fuckin' brilliant film.
It is.
We settled into the couch and put it on and it opened with Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson arriving in Bruges and muttering at each other, the way Irish people do, about whether or not it was nice.
Colin Farrell thought it was crap.
Brendan Gleeson thought it was nice.
They sniped at each other throughout most of the movie, but in that loving way that Irish people do.
I could feel a lump that filled everything from my belly to my heart.
People just don't do that here.
People try to outdo each other with enthusiasm here.
People spend a lot of time and energy being polite and apologetic to each other here about the STOOPIDEST things, and then wonder why they die of stress-related cancers.
I'm going to definitely get a stress-related something or other if I have to do it much longer.
I swear to God, I can't do it anymore.
But at least, after watching In Bruges, I have been reminded that it's okay that I can't do it anymore. I am not crazy. I am not a bad person. I am not stupid. I am not wrong.
I am just a grumpy fuckin' Irish woman, with a penchant for sarcasm when I am in a situation I don't like.
Which is most of the time here.
Unfortunately, that's not going to bode very well for my future integration and the successful duplication at some point in the next few years of my wide Irish social circle.
Life is a tad dull here most of the time. Unless Himself and I have a party. Or Ms Maggie Beach. Everyone turns up to them. But either they don't have parties or they just don't invite us to them.
It's very strange here. I am surrounded by people who never invite us anywhere because we don't know the people who will be there (I know all my Irish readers will totally see the logic in this) and who actually say things like 'why would I want anymore friends? I have my elementary school friends' without a hint of sarcasm.
As I said to a colleague the other day, why would you do that?
I mean, c'mon on, the potential to reinvent yourself is severely limited if your social circle all knew you when you were seven.
I mean, that's why siblings often don't get on, isn't it?
Because one or other of them can't get past that time of life.
I have two good friends who have known me since I was four or younger.
I have another three or four who have known me since I was thirteen.
Everyone else I am proud to call a friend is from the time when I was actually capable of working on my personality to improve it.
Or beyond.
It's not that we don't have friends here in Halifax.
We do.
Good friends.
And thank christ for the island and all the wonderful folks who live there and stick with us through thick and thin.
It's just that we have one friend in this city who is actually from this city.
And he was introduced to us by a neighbour who is a 'come from away'.
And he spent ten years in Alberta.
And he's never invited us to his house.
Ever.
....anyways, enough of that.... enough of feeling sorry for myself and Himself.
I think I am going to buy a copy of In Bruges for every member of my work team and say, I am the Brendan Gleeson character, so just deal with it, okay.
Actually, I think I'll wait until I leave and then do it. So they can remember me fondly.
Which is so important.
In blogpost title-related news, Himself and I decided tonight that the Cubbyhole, which is the small apartment upstairs, has a curse on it.
According to Kitty, the newest occupants have split up.
One of them was doing the nasty on the other, according to the shouting and throwing of things.
And now there's only one inhabitant of the Cubbyhole.
What we know for sure is that our wonderful landlord has been to-ing and fro-ing like a headless chicken all week, banging on the door and leaving notes and stuff like that, so something's up.
There must be rent money involved.
Well, our friends and former neighbours who left to buy a house up the road didn't suffer from the curse.....
.... so maybe they laid it.....
Fess up now, Rescue Guys!!
What happened was I ate my bacon and eggs and then went to put a load of laundry on. And when I got back, my spot at the computer had been taken by Himself, who was looking at jobs in British Columbia.
"Wages have gone up in BC", he announced.
"You are not going anywhere without me", I reminded him.
"Well, it would be a bit of a hoof home to see Little 'Un anyways."
"Yes, it would."
So I guess we're not going to BC this weekend.
Thank goodness for that.
We're going to Ontario in a couple of weeks and that looks far enough right now.
My world is getting a tad small right now. What with the price of gas and all the airlines in the world going bust. But I'm sure it will change at some point. Although I keep telling myself that inhabiting a small world is not a bad thing. Inhabiting the world you want is the thing, isn't it?
Anyhows, back to In Bruges.
As Farmer Brown said on Facebook, In Bruges is a fuckin' fuckin' fuckin' brilliant film.
It is.
We settled into the couch and put it on and it opened with Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson arriving in Bruges and muttering at each other, the way Irish people do, about whether or not it was nice.
Colin Farrell thought it was crap.
Brendan Gleeson thought it was nice.
They sniped at each other throughout most of the movie, but in that loving way that Irish people do.
I could feel a lump that filled everything from my belly to my heart.
People just don't do that here.
People try to outdo each other with enthusiasm here.
People spend a lot of time and energy being polite and apologetic to each other here about the STOOPIDEST things, and then wonder why they die of stress-related cancers.
I'm going to definitely get a stress-related something or other if I have to do it much longer.
I swear to God, I can't do it anymore.
But at least, after watching In Bruges, I have been reminded that it's okay that I can't do it anymore. I am not crazy. I am not a bad person. I am not stupid. I am not wrong.
I am just a grumpy fuckin' Irish woman, with a penchant for sarcasm when I am in a situation I don't like.
Which is most of the time here.
Unfortunately, that's not going to bode very well for my future integration and the successful duplication at some point in the next few years of my wide Irish social circle.
Life is a tad dull here most of the time. Unless Himself and I have a party. Or Ms Maggie Beach. Everyone turns up to them. But either they don't have parties or they just don't invite us to them.
It's very strange here. I am surrounded by people who never invite us anywhere because we don't know the people who will be there (I know all my Irish readers will totally see the logic in this) and who actually say things like 'why would I want anymore friends? I have my elementary school friends' without a hint of sarcasm.
As I said to a colleague the other day, why would you do that?
I mean, c'mon on, the potential to reinvent yourself is severely limited if your social circle all knew you when you were seven.
I mean, that's why siblings often don't get on, isn't it?
Because one or other of them can't get past that time of life.
I have two good friends who have known me since I was four or younger.
I have another three or four who have known me since I was thirteen.
Everyone else I am proud to call a friend is from the time when I was actually capable of working on my personality to improve it.
Or beyond.
It's not that we don't have friends here in Halifax.
We do.
Good friends.
And thank christ for the island and all the wonderful folks who live there and stick with us through thick and thin.
It's just that we have one friend in this city who is actually from this city.
And he was introduced to us by a neighbour who is a 'come from away'.
And he spent ten years in Alberta.
And he's never invited us to his house.
Ever.
....anyways, enough of that.... enough of feeling sorry for myself and Himself.
I think I am going to buy a copy of In Bruges for every member of my work team and say, I am the Brendan Gleeson character, so just deal with it, okay.
Actually, I think I'll wait until I leave and then do it. So they can remember me fondly.
Which is so important.
In blogpost title-related news, Himself and I decided tonight that the Cubbyhole, which is the small apartment upstairs, has a curse on it.
According to Kitty, the newest occupants have split up.
One of them was doing the nasty on the other, according to the shouting and throwing of things.
And now there's only one inhabitant of the Cubbyhole.
What we know for sure is that our wonderful landlord has been to-ing and fro-ing like a headless chicken all week, banging on the door and leaving notes and stuff like that, so something's up.
There must be rent money involved.
Well, our friends and former neighbours who left to buy a house up the road didn't suffer from the curse.....
.... so maybe they laid it.....
Fess up now, Rescue Guys!!
Watching In Bruges in Halifax
Happy, empty, stretching out in front of us morning.
Kitty is gone to work. Little Un is not around this weekend. It's too wet to drive four hours to the island to go mackerel fishing as we had planned.
We are alone at home with nothing to do except stuff we want to do.
Just a matter of remembering what that is then.
First of all, we both slept in until almost ten. Which is unheard of in our house unless you are a teenager.
Second of all, we called the island and extracted ourselves from the fishing expedition.
Then I got myself a nice pot of coffee and read the papers online and tried to make sense of the maze that is the new Facebook interface.
Currently, Himself is bi-locating between the kitchen, where the unhealthy fried breakfast is underway and the living room, where Stephen Harper is standing in the corner rambling on about how a carbon tax would destroy the Ontarian economy. Himself is shouting at his Prime Minister with all the power in his lungs, but it's not working - possibly because Harper is not actually standing in our living room, but on the television which is situated in the corner of our living room.
We were driving home from Blockbusters last night, with In Bruges, of which more anon, when we realised that all the gas stations were wall to wall with queues of cars waiting for gas (with their engines running - what is that about?).
'Shit', said Himself, 'has that hurricane taken out Texas?'
We decided we'd better get gas in case something had gone terribly wrong.
This morning, the front page of the Chronicle Herald announced that the government regulator had used its 'interrupter clause' to increase petrol prices by 13 cents a litre overnight.
I wish someone would explain to me how linking the rise and rise (I mean fall) of pump prices to speculatory activity on the NYSE is the most sensible way to regulate gas prices to reduce rate shock.
Anyhows, we have one car with a full tank of gas and we don't live in Galveston so I suppose we're doing as well as we can expect under the circumstances.
As an Irishwoman, I am used to being gouged for petrol anyways, so I have often felt guilty in the past number of years about how little I pay for it over here in Nova Scotia.
Speaking of being Irish, several times in the last few weeks, a Nova Scotian has sidled up to me at some point during my day and said, 'I watched this great film recently, with Colin Farrell in it. It's called In Bruges. It's about two Irish hitmen in Bruges. Have you seen it? No? You should watch it.'
So we did last night.
Gotta take a short break for brekkie - back in a bit.
Friday, September 12, 2008
In the land of the blind, Julianne Moore is queen.
Himself and I went to the opening night of the Atlantic Film Festival last night.
I was never ever ever going to go to an AFF film again after last year, but someone gave us free tickets to Blindness, which is an adaptation of Jose Saramago's novel of the same name, which I loved.
Then when we got to the Oxford St venue, we realised that AFF seem to have electronically geared themselves up, so perhaps there won't be the same bullshit about seats and queues and tickets that there was last time.
Of course, since it was opening night, we had to sit through more speeches than a GAA annual dinner. However, I particularly liked the Lt. Governor's speech, which was written of course by my friend Lori, who is now her communications advisor and speech writer. And the Chair of the Festival board made a fiery speech in defense of the arts (the federal government cut $60 million in arts funding the week before the election, which is a bit aggressive) in which she used her native Ireland as a shining example of how the arts can be nurtured even in times of chaos and war and recession.
Having spent quite a lot of the Queen Parents money studying Arts Administration and then never actually having a job in the field, that assertion of Ireland's specialness re the arts gave Queenie an opportunity for a long, quiet chuckle.
Maybe she was from the North......
Or maybe she was talking about the tax break for artist income....
Or maybe she just believed everything she read in the New York Times culture section...
I don't know.
Anyway, eventually the speeches ended and Blindness began and it was really great and all the bad reviews on IMDB were wrong.
WRONG, I say.
The producers were there and were obviously very nervous as the film bombed at the TFF.
I think it was re-edited, because they kept going on about how it was a world premiere.
Anyways, whatever they did to it, it worked.
- weird plague sweeps city/ world and everyone goes blind. Early victims are locked into a hospital/ prison type place and have to fend for themselves. Julianne Moore plays the only person who can see - the wife of an opthalmologist who has been incarcerated - she pretends she's blind to accompany him.
The result is a very powerful meditation on how a sudden crisis or change in the conditions under which humanity lives can bring out man's inherent cruelty and desire to dominate a little too quickly for most people's liking.
As Himself said on the way home, a cautionary tale.
Himself is hilarious when we watch apocalyptic movies/ read books like The Road. I get all freaked out and hope it never happens to us/ hope Himself figures out how to survive and tells me what to do. Himself always leans over at some point in the movie and whispers 'they really should get some guns right about now, eh!"
I do hope he knows where to get the afore-mentioned weapons when the end times come.
If that's the plan.
I must say, a lot of the complaints about the movie to date are stoopid, Yankee, 'moral' issues.
Yes, there's lots of random nudity.
Everyone thinks everyone else is blind. So why would one wear clothes if they're lice-infested and filthy?
There's a lot of cruelty, domination and some violence in the movie, but it's brilliantly done, nuanced rather than the bambambambambam of the latest Rambo.
The production design is fantastic. The cinematography is very intimate for most of the film, but it handles 'big city chaos' shots very well.
Julianne Moore acts her little socks off. She should get an Oscar for this role. Mark Ruffalo is pretty good as her husband too.
Fernando Mereilles makes a very good attempt at tackling Saramago's bigger themes of totalitarianism and control, particularly at the beginning of the movie, but it kind of falls off towards the end, whereas my vague memories of the book is that that claustrophobic feeling stays throughout the whole novel.
But that's Saramago for you. I read somewhere that he likes the film.
So did we.
Highly recommended.
Hilariously, after the speechifying about cultural policy, Queenie had her recurring dream again last night, after a long interval. The one where I make the speech on cultural politics to an audience of artists and they all boo.
Some day I will forgive myself for allowing myself to be scared by that day.
I was making a lot of sense.
I was never ever ever going to go to an AFF film again after last year, but someone gave us free tickets to Blindness, which is an adaptation of Jose Saramago's novel of the same name, which I loved.
Then when we got to the Oxford St venue, we realised that AFF seem to have electronically geared themselves up, so perhaps there won't be the same bullshit about seats and queues and tickets that there was last time.
Of course, since it was opening night, we had to sit through more speeches than a GAA annual dinner. However, I particularly liked the Lt. Governor's speech, which was written of course by my friend Lori, who is now her communications advisor and speech writer. And the Chair of the Festival board made a fiery speech in defense of the arts (the federal government cut $60 million in arts funding the week before the election, which is a bit aggressive) in which she used her native Ireland as a shining example of how the arts can be nurtured even in times of chaos and war and recession.
Having spent quite a lot of the Queen Parents money studying Arts Administration and then never actually having a job in the field, that assertion of Ireland's specialness re the arts gave Queenie an opportunity for a long, quiet chuckle.
Maybe she was from the North......
Or maybe she was talking about the tax break for artist income....
Or maybe she just believed everything she read in the New York Times culture section...
I don't know.
Anyway, eventually the speeches ended and Blindness began and it was really great and all the bad reviews on IMDB were wrong.
WRONG, I say.
The producers were there and were obviously very nervous as the film bombed at the TFF.
I think it was re-edited, because they kept going on about how it was a world premiere.
Anyways, whatever they did to it, it worked.
- weird plague sweeps city/ world and everyone goes blind. Early victims are locked into a hospital/ prison type place and have to fend for themselves. Julianne Moore plays the only person who can see - the wife of an opthalmologist who has been incarcerated - she pretends she's blind to accompany him.
The result is a very powerful meditation on how a sudden crisis or change in the conditions under which humanity lives can bring out man's inherent cruelty and desire to dominate a little too quickly for most people's liking.
As Himself said on the way home, a cautionary tale.
Himself is hilarious when we watch apocalyptic movies/ read books like The Road. I get all freaked out and hope it never happens to us/ hope Himself figures out how to survive and tells me what to do. Himself always leans over at some point in the movie and whispers 'they really should get some guns right about now, eh!"
I do hope he knows where to get the afore-mentioned weapons when the end times come.
If that's the plan.
I must say, a lot of the complaints about the movie to date are stoopid, Yankee, 'moral' issues.
Yes, there's lots of random nudity.
Everyone thinks everyone else is blind. So why would one wear clothes if they're lice-infested and filthy?
There's a lot of cruelty, domination and some violence in the movie, but it's brilliantly done, nuanced rather than the bambambambambam of the latest Rambo.
The production design is fantastic. The cinematography is very intimate for most of the film, but it handles 'big city chaos' shots very well.
Julianne Moore acts her little socks off. She should get an Oscar for this role. Mark Ruffalo is pretty good as her husband too.
Fernando Mereilles makes a very good attempt at tackling Saramago's bigger themes of totalitarianism and control, particularly at the beginning of the movie, but it kind of falls off towards the end, whereas my vague memories of the book is that that claustrophobic feeling stays throughout the whole novel.
But that's Saramago for you. I read somewhere that he likes the film.
So did we.
Highly recommended.
Hilariously, after the speechifying about cultural policy, Queenie had her recurring dream again last night, after a long interval. The one where I make the speech on cultural politics to an audience of artists and they all boo.
Some day I will forgive myself for allowing myself to be scared by that day.
I was making a lot of sense.
Thursday, September 11, 2008
Of bread, beets, potatoes and other organic delights
We've hit a new plateau in the attempt to grow/ make/ control what we eat, so Himself and I are feeling a little smug right now.
Firstly, though, we had to get our basic tools organized. After weeks and months of searching, we managed to get a nearly new breadmaker and a nearly new fridge in the same week.
It never rains but it pours nearly new appliances.
The nearly new breadmaker came from Himself's boss, who had bought it for his wife for Christmas. So it was never used. Which is almost new. I arrived home from work one day and there it was on the dining room table, complete with recipe book.
The fridge came from a neighbour up the road and was a little trickier. We had to find a dolly, wheel it up the road, strap the enormous fridge to it, wheel it back down the road (which is being dug up by Dexter Construction right now) and then haul it up two flights of stairs to our apartment.
Gnugh....!
Suffice it to say Himself was on the heavy end and I was on the balance it so it won't fall on my head end.
Himself's arms are still sore from hauling a fridge up the stairs (almost) by himself.
But ah, bliss, lovely newish clean fridge.
Secondly, we started harvesting the garden.
This year is UN Year of the Potato. As an Irishwoman, potatoes are incredibly important to me. Potatoes are what you eat with your dinner. Some days I do rice, but really, if there's no potatoes in my dinner, then I haven't really eaten.
But the potatoes you get in the supermarket are crap. Soapy, soggy, too small, wrong species. It offends me to have to buy them, like a heroin junkie forced to rob for crappy junk (well maybe not that life-destroying, but you get my drift).
So I planted my own this year.
They grew. The stalks died. I waited. Himself adopted his doom and gloom tone and said they'd never work. It rained. It was hot. Flashbacks of my famine folk memories started to assert themselves, but I forced myself. I waited some more.
Monday I dug them up.
Lovely, purple, large piles of potatoes.
WHAT I GREW BY MYSELF.
Words cannot express how smug I felt on Monday evening, arriving back from my tiny urban garden patch with a bucket of potatoes.
And that was just three plants.
Also, the beets are getting big and are really good.
The beans are being harvested (but I have to figure out what to do with them as I don't do beans normally).
The carrots are still growing, but they're looking good.
The garlic has started to grow, finally, so that will be ready for next year.
And our tomatos are finally putting out like healthy well-fed tomato plants should.
The other night, we had a tomato and mozzarella salad, with our own basil in the vinaigrette, stir-fried beef with vegetables from our garden, Lyse' garden and Ms. Maggie Beach's garden, and a rhubarb crumble made with rhubarb from a friend in Cape Breton.
And potatoes of course.
A big shout out to all the potato people in the world in this, their SPECIAL year.
May you finally figure out how to end the blight in your lives!!
Last night, I remembered to buy yeast and made my own bread for the first time in my life.
The Queen Mum used to make bread.
(She used to grow vegetables as well, and recycle everything. In the seventies and eighties, when you did that kind of stuff because there was a RECESSION. Not because it is a lifestyle branding choice.)
Anyhow, I started with the basic white loaf, and put the breadmaker on 'nice smell wafting into the bedroom at six am this morning).
At six am this morning I woke up and sniffed.
OHMYGOD!!
Nice smell wafting into the bedroom.
After Himself got up and put on the organic (caressed gently by a yak somewhere in the mountains before being lovingly cradled into a bag by an upwardly mobile coffee farmer co-operative member with happy, educated, clothed kids who don't know what it was like when mama and pappa were young) coffee beans, the smell coming from the kitchen was better than the best French boulangerie.
It made me remember my first ever (not for Queen Dad) job, back in 1984, when I managed the till in Griffin's Bakery, Main St, Birr.
There's nothing like sitting in bed feeling smug about your ability to produce your own food while drinking coffee and eating warm bread and jam.
Nothing.
Now, how do I go about opening my own coffee plantation??
Firstly, though, we had to get our basic tools organized. After weeks and months of searching, we managed to get a nearly new breadmaker and a nearly new fridge in the same week.
It never rains but it pours nearly new appliances.
The nearly new breadmaker came from Himself's boss, who had bought it for his wife for Christmas. So it was never used. Which is almost new. I arrived home from work one day and there it was on the dining room table, complete with recipe book.
The fridge came from a neighbour up the road and was a little trickier. We had to find a dolly, wheel it up the road, strap the enormous fridge to it, wheel it back down the road (which is being dug up by Dexter Construction right now) and then haul it up two flights of stairs to our apartment.
Gnugh....!
Suffice it to say Himself was on the heavy end and I was on the balance it so it won't fall on my head end.
Himself's arms are still sore from hauling a fridge up the stairs (almost) by himself.
But ah, bliss, lovely newish clean fridge.
Secondly, we started harvesting the garden.
This year is UN Year of the Potato. As an Irishwoman, potatoes are incredibly important to me. Potatoes are what you eat with your dinner. Some days I do rice, but really, if there's no potatoes in my dinner, then I haven't really eaten.
But the potatoes you get in the supermarket are crap. Soapy, soggy, too small, wrong species. It offends me to have to buy them, like a heroin junkie forced to rob for crappy junk (well maybe not that life-destroying, but you get my drift).
So I planted my own this year.
They grew. The stalks died. I waited. Himself adopted his doom and gloom tone and said they'd never work. It rained. It was hot. Flashbacks of my famine folk memories started to assert themselves, but I forced myself. I waited some more.
Monday I dug them up.
Lovely, purple, large piles of potatoes.
WHAT I GREW BY MYSELF.
Words cannot express how smug I felt on Monday evening, arriving back from my tiny urban garden patch with a bucket of potatoes.
And that was just three plants.
Also, the beets are getting big and are really good.
The beans are being harvested (but I have to figure out what to do with them as I don't do beans normally).
The carrots are still growing, but they're looking good.
The garlic has started to grow, finally, so that will be ready for next year.
And our tomatos are finally putting out like healthy well-fed tomato plants should.
The other night, we had a tomato and mozzarella salad, with our own basil in the vinaigrette, stir-fried beef with vegetables from our garden, Lyse' garden and Ms. Maggie Beach's garden, and a rhubarb crumble made with rhubarb from a friend in Cape Breton.
And potatoes of course.
A big shout out to all the potato people in the world in this, their SPECIAL year.
May you finally figure out how to end the blight in your lives!!
Last night, I remembered to buy yeast and made my own bread for the first time in my life.
The Queen Mum used to make bread.
(She used to grow vegetables as well, and recycle everything. In the seventies and eighties, when you did that kind of stuff because there was a RECESSION. Not because it is a lifestyle branding choice.)
Anyhow, I started with the basic white loaf, and put the breadmaker on 'nice smell wafting into the bedroom at six am this morning).
At six am this morning I woke up and sniffed.
OHMYGOD!!
Nice smell wafting into the bedroom.
After Himself got up and put on the organic (caressed gently by a yak somewhere in the mountains before being lovingly cradled into a bag by an upwardly mobile coffee farmer co-operative member with happy, educated, clothed kids who don't know what it was like when mama and pappa were young) coffee beans, the smell coming from the kitchen was better than the best French boulangerie.
It made me remember my first ever (not for Queen Dad) job, back in 1984, when I managed the till in Griffin's Bakery, Main St, Birr.
There's nothing like sitting in bed feeling smug about your ability to produce your own food while drinking coffee and eating warm bread and jam.
Nothing.
Now, how do I go about opening my own coffee plantation??
Sunday, September 07, 2008
Hannah has arrived
As usual, after doing all the stuff the EMO told us to including getting water, Hurricane Hannah turns out to be as fearsome as the prevailing westerlies that affect the score on Ballina rugby pitch on a wet Sunday in February.
Oi!
People in charge of disasters and weather and such!
Get it right, or stop telling me to count my candles.
Oi!
People in charge of disasters and weather and such!
Get it right, or stop telling me to count my candles.
Saturday, September 06, 2008
Hurricane Summer makes way for hurricane season
So, Himself and the Little 'Un have gone mackerel fishing. Kitty has been dispatched to the mall to buy some clothes for the autumn. Low is blaring out of the speakers. Hurricane Hanna has announced her imminent arrival with some rain.
Queenie made everyone go out for the day in the rain, goddammit, because she needed to do some housework in peace.
That's what she said anyway.
PUNY MORTALS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
They fell for it.
Well, there's the fear factor too. Queenie's in that kind of mood lately that when she says I need you all to leave the house so I can do some housework in peace, they do.
It takes forever but.
"I'll clean the bathroom later. You don't gotta do it, Queenie."
"I'll sit here and keep you company for the afternoon."
"Don't you want to come fishin', sweetheart?"
No.
No.
No.
Eventually I convinced them all that housework was what I wanted to do. And by myself. So they all headed off to do their own thing.
Housework, schmousework.
Queenie just wanted them all out of the apartment so she could spend a few hours faffing around pretending like she's the old Queenie still.
The old Queenie.
She disappeared this summer. Caught up in a hurricane and deposited in the Land of Oz, she was.
This is the new Queenie.
All growed up.
About time, I hear some people say.
Probably.
Where are my goddamned ruby slippers, that's what I want to know!
One minute you're cruising along, doing just as you please, and the next you're starring in your very own movie with the Wicked Witch of the West (and East) and the Lion and the Tin Man and Scarecrow and some poxy wizard somewhere in the corner pulling levers and making everything go to hell in a handbasket.
So, Queenie, whatcha do all summer?
Damned if I can remember, the whole thing is a blur.
Let me see.
Well, Colombo opened the summer with a two week visit. We drove to the top of New Brunswick and looked at the mountains of Quebec and slept in a tent.
Then we drove back.
We did other stuff as well, of course, but that's the bit I remember most vividly. We had our first Melwood bonfire of the season too.
------------------------------------
Then Nancy left cos her work was done and Kitty had been hauled into Grade 12, so we took the girls camping to Hubbards.
That was fun.
Not.
Imagine a long narrow field with 147 campsites on it and RVs, camper vans, tents and trucks parked everywhere. Everyone playing their music at top volume. All day.
I thought I was going to lose my mind.
I nearly did.
I yelled at Himself and packed my rucksack and threw it in the car and went to drive home.
Only the battery was dead because the girls had been playing hip hop on the stereo all day.
So I had to stay.
Until Sunday.
Thankfully, when I yell at Himself he pays no heed to me until I calm down.
-----------------------------------
I spent most of June and July going to the dentist.
My teeth are a mess after three years of no medical insurance.
But they're all fixed now.
It took four and a half hours to clean thirty eight years of tartar off my teeth, including up inside my gums.
And none of the four anaesthetic injections they gave me for that part worked.
I tried to meditate and I got through most of it okay.
But eventually, I had to ask them to stop because I couldn't take the pain anymore.
And the hygienist started to cry.
Because her wrist was so sore from digging the tartar off my teeth.
She tells me I'll never have to go through that again.
Good.
--------------------------------------
Himself got divorced in the middle of July.
And we booked our wedding venue for 8th August 2009.
And I woke up one morning shortly after that and thought, I am getting married.
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHH!
Almost everyone I know started telling me how to organize my wedding.
As you can imagine, that went down well with the Queenie.
So I responded by refusing to think/ talk about/ organize my wedding.
So the aaagggghhh factor has subsided slightly.
But we are getting ready together, in our heads and hearts, to be married.
Which feels very grown up and makes me want to run like the wind down the yellow brick road some days.
But we are getting there, piece by piece.
Himself is better at this stuff than me.
Of course, he's had more practice.
Haha.
Both families seem to be genuinely happy about it, though, so that's a big help.
And the kids too.
-------------------------------
Speaking of.
Rearing kids is like having to watch someone play a never-ending game of hockey, using your sanity for a puck and your heart for a net.
At least it's not football. If it were football, there'd be no sin bin, and no sponsor break every 11 minutes.
---------------------------------
We went camping to Bear Cove.
We had a most excellent weekend. All of Himself's brothers and sister, and his sister-in-law turned up, as well as Ms Maggie Beach and some other friends from Halifax. And all our island friends. So we had a massive lobster and crab boil, and a roaring fire and the whales came in and blew at us and the seals.
And Himself went winkle-picking, and boiled a whole pot full, which nobody ate of course. Because nobody had a pin.
Himself and Little 'Un and Robbie have just arrived home, wet, with NO FISH.
Ah well, I got half an hour to myself.
-----------------------------------
We got new neighbours upstairs. Our nutty neighbour and Peter the Lover left at the end of July, and now we have Danny and Venus, who are nice and quiet and friendly and don't have any rows or tantrums or loud showers at three am.
Venus has a Harley and a pink helmet, as well as a cream VW Jetta with pink accessories.
They work on a building crew together.
Which is good because I noticed this morning that their shower is leaking into our hallway.
----------------------------------------
I drove all over Nova Scotia this summer for work.
I went to Queens, Shelburne, Yarmouth (twice), Digby, Cape Breton (twice), Amherst, Kentville, Windsor, Lunenburg and some other places I can't remember.
That's about 5,000 kilometres.
Man, that tired me out.
---------------------------------------
Then Ammonite arrived for a week.
Shopping ensued.
And Ammonite got all the killer killer heels.
She was showing them to Himself one night and he asked whether she wore them when lecturing.
"Yes", said Ammonite, "and a bullet bra."
I thought Himself was going to implode, so completely dumbstruck was he by her response.
Funny.
Not often he's dumbstruck.
We went whale-watching which was probably the one of the high points of the summer for me.
A whole pod of humpbacks hung out with our zodiac for an hour or more, including a frisky calf who kept nudging up to us.
There's something really awe-inspiring, yet peaceful about watching a whale roll to surface one dark eye and take a long, slow look at you.
----------------------------------------
My big mouth got me in trouble at work.
No change there.
Someday, I'll be growed up and that won't happen.
Really.
-------------------------------------------
We spent Labor Day weekend at Long Tusket Lake, deep in the woods.
That's when I found my centre again.
Just us and the loons.
And some nutty French camper van campers that insisted on starting a generator at 6am every morning.
What kind of nutter hauls a camper van deep into the woods and then uses electricity all weekend to shower and shit?
Anyways, it's all over for another year.
Time to tie the canoe down in case Hannah or Ike or Josephine blow it away.
As for Queenie, she almost untied herself in the eye of the storm, and let the hurricane blow her away again.
But she changed her mind.
Queenie made everyone go out for the day in the rain, goddammit, because she needed to do some housework in peace.
That's what she said anyway.
PUNY MORTALS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
They fell for it.
Well, there's the fear factor too. Queenie's in that kind of mood lately that when she says I need you all to leave the house so I can do some housework in peace, they do.
It takes forever but.
"I'll clean the bathroom later. You don't gotta do it, Queenie."
"I'll sit here and keep you company for the afternoon."
"Don't you want to come fishin', sweetheart?"
No.
No.
No.
Eventually I convinced them all that housework was what I wanted to do. And by myself. So they all headed off to do their own thing.
Housework, schmousework.
Queenie just wanted them all out of the apartment so she could spend a few hours faffing around pretending like she's the old Queenie still.
The old Queenie.
She disappeared this summer. Caught up in a hurricane and deposited in the Land of Oz, she was.
This is the new Queenie.
All growed up.
About time, I hear some people say.
Probably.
Where are my goddamned ruby slippers, that's what I want to know!
One minute you're cruising along, doing just as you please, and the next you're starring in your very own movie with the Wicked Witch of the West (and East) and the Lion and the Tin Man and Scarecrow and some poxy wizard somewhere in the corner pulling levers and making everything go to hell in a handbasket.
So, Queenie, whatcha do all summer?
Damned if I can remember, the whole thing is a blur.
Let me see.
Well, Colombo opened the summer with a two week visit. We drove to the top of New Brunswick and looked at the mountains of Quebec and slept in a tent.
Then we drove back.
We did other stuff as well, of course, but that's the bit I remember most vividly. We had our first Melwood bonfire of the season too.
------------------------------------
Then Nancy left cos her work was done and Kitty had been hauled into Grade 12, so we took the girls camping to Hubbards.
That was fun.
Not.
Imagine a long narrow field with 147 campsites on it and RVs, camper vans, tents and trucks parked everywhere. Everyone playing their music at top volume. All day.
I thought I was going to lose my mind.
I nearly did.
I yelled at Himself and packed my rucksack and threw it in the car and went to drive home.
Only the battery was dead because the girls had been playing hip hop on the stereo all day.
So I had to stay.
Until Sunday.
Thankfully, when I yell at Himself he pays no heed to me until I calm down.
-----------------------------------
I spent most of June and July going to the dentist.
My teeth are a mess after three years of no medical insurance.
But they're all fixed now.
It took four and a half hours to clean thirty eight years of tartar off my teeth, including up inside my gums.
And none of the four anaesthetic injections they gave me for that part worked.
I tried to meditate and I got through most of it okay.
But eventually, I had to ask them to stop because I couldn't take the pain anymore.
And the hygienist started to cry.
Because her wrist was so sore from digging the tartar off my teeth.
She tells me I'll never have to go through that again.
Good.
--------------------------------------
Himself got divorced in the middle of July.
And we booked our wedding venue for 8th August 2009.
And I woke up one morning shortly after that and thought, I am getting married.
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHH!
Almost everyone I know started telling me how to organize my wedding.
As you can imagine, that went down well with the Queenie.
So I responded by refusing to think/ talk about/ organize my wedding.
So the aaagggghhh factor has subsided slightly.
But we are getting ready together, in our heads and hearts, to be married.
Which feels very grown up and makes me want to run like the wind down the yellow brick road some days.
But we are getting there, piece by piece.
Himself is better at this stuff than me.
Of course, he's had more practice.
Haha.
Both families seem to be genuinely happy about it, though, so that's a big help.
And the kids too.
-------------------------------
Speaking of.
Rearing kids is like having to watch someone play a never-ending game of hockey, using your sanity for a puck and your heart for a net.
At least it's not football. If it were football, there'd be no sin bin, and no sponsor break every 11 minutes.
---------------------------------
We went camping to Bear Cove.
We had a most excellent weekend. All of Himself's brothers and sister, and his sister-in-law turned up, as well as Ms Maggie Beach and some other friends from Halifax. And all our island friends. So we had a massive lobster and crab boil, and a roaring fire and the whales came in and blew at us and the seals.
And Himself went winkle-picking, and boiled a whole pot full, which nobody ate of course. Because nobody had a pin.
Himself and Little 'Un and Robbie have just arrived home, wet, with NO FISH.
Ah well, I got half an hour to myself.
-----------------------------------
We got new neighbours upstairs. Our nutty neighbour and Peter the Lover left at the end of July, and now we have Danny and Venus, who are nice and quiet and friendly and don't have any rows or tantrums or loud showers at three am.
Venus has a Harley and a pink helmet, as well as a cream VW Jetta with pink accessories.
They work on a building crew together.
Which is good because I noticed this morning that their shower is leaking into our hallway.
----------------------------------------
I drove all over Nova Scotia this summer for work.
I went to Queens, Shelburne, Yarmouth (twice), Digby, Cape Breton (twice), Amherst, Kentville, Windsor, Lunenburg and some other places I can't remember.
That's about 5,000 kilometres.
Man, that tired me out.
---------------------------------------
Then Ammonite arrived for a week.
Shopping ensued.
And Ammonite got all the killer killer heels.
She was showing them to Himself one night and he asked whether she wore them when lecturing.
"Yes", said Ammonite, "and a bullet bra."
I thought Himself was going to implode, so completely dumbstruck was he by her response.
Funny.
Not often he's dumbstruck.
We went whale-watching which was probably the one of the high points of the summer for me.
A whole pod of humpbacks hung out with our zodiac for an hour or more, including a frisky calf who kept nudging up to us.
There's something really awe-inspiring, yet peaceful about watching a whale roll to surface one dark eye and take a long, slow look at you.
----------------------------------------
My big mouth got me in trouble at work.
No change there.
Someday, I'll be growed up and that won't happen.
Really.
-------------------------------------------
We spent Labor Day weekend at Long Tusket Lake, deep in the woods.
That's when I found my centre again.
Just us and the loons.
And some nutty French camper van campers that insisted on starting a generator at 6am every morning.
What kind of nutter hauls a camper van deep into the woods and then uses electricity all weekend to shower and shit?
Anyways, it's all over for another year.
Time to tie the canoe down in case Hannah or Ike or Josephine blow it away.
As for Queenie, she almost untied herself in the eye of the storm, and let the hurricane blow her away again.
But she changed her mind.
Zogby's Walmart voters
Colombo tracked down this blog post about the US elections recently. Pretty good stuff.
http://sweatingthroughfog.blogspot.com/2008/09/some-on-left-understand-palin.html
Although, having burrowed further into his blog, he's a little Christian for me. However, Christians aren't all bad, now are they. There are worse people in the world.
Conservatives for one thing.
http://sweatingthroughfog.blogspot.com/2008/09/some-on-left-understand-palin.html
Although, having burrowed further into his blog, he's a little Christian for me. However, Christians aren't all bad, now are they. There are worse people in the world.
Conservatives for one thing.
Thursday, September 04, 2008
Tuesday, September 02, 2008
Listen, everybody!
Nobody has to move out, you know!
We could all just live here together, you know!
Perhaps you are not able to compromise enough.
Well, you know, if neither of you feel you can move out on your own.
That's fine.
I would hate to think that either of you were dependent on me for money.
I am dependent on you for family.
Because you're my family I share my money with you.
There's a give and take to sharing.
We all give.
And we all take.
But we all have to do both.
It's in the bible.
At least I've been told it is.
I never actually saw it there.
But I digress.
Sharing is good.
I remember telling Gypsy that once or a hundred times.
We could all just live here together, you know!
Perhaps you are not able to compromise enough.
Well, you know, if neither of you feel you can move out on your own.
That's fine.
I would hate to think that either of you were dependent on me for money.
I am dependent on you for family.
Because you're my family I share my money with you.
There's a give and take to sharing.
We all give.
And we all take.
But we all have to do both.
It's in the bible.
At least I've been told it is.
I never actually saw it there.
But I digress.
Sharing is good.
I remember telling Gypsy that once or a hundred times.
Electric City Picnic
While everyone in Ireland was busying recycling 30 per cent of the waste they had brought to Electric Picnic, we were all busy recycling our waste (by putting it in the car to bring home) down at our favourite secret camping spot near New France, Electric City.
Not so other people.
Other people arrived in trucks with camper units attached, set up camp, started generators at 6 am in THE FRIGGIN' MORNING and then left all their rubbish piled in their fire pit.
Other people burned pressure treated wood doused in two stroke oil (IN THE FRIGGIN' WOODS).
People who are from the same place as other people left a campsite on the far side of the lake full of rubbish - including ripped tarpaulins, Mr Noodle packets, and other plastic deitrus scattered around an area that is home to some of the most beautiful and rare toadstools in Nova Scotia.
Some people drove around with no helmets and no respect on 4 wheelers all weekend, frightening the children and ripping up fragile bog roads.
Some people should be taken out and shot.
And if that doesn't work, they should be forced to camp at the Shore Club in Hubbards for the rest of their lives.
Queenie hates it when she travels deep into the woods to camp au natural, to live off grid, to wash in the lake, to chill out and mostly to get away from other people and their noise and mess, and due to the inconsiderate bastard nature of most other people, ends up cleaning up after them.
Having said that, once all that was done, and the weird people in the campers had gone home, and the loons had come back to the lake to hang out near the kids, we had a wonderful weekend.
Not so other people.
Other people arrived in trucks with camper units attached, set up camp, started generators at 6 am in THE FRIGGIN' MORNING and then left all their rubbish piled in their fire pit.
Other people burned pressure treated wood doused in two stroke oil (IN THE FRIGGIN' WOODS).
People who are from the same place as other people left a campsite on the far side of the lake full of rubbish - including ripped tarpaulins, Mr Noodle packets, and other plastic deitrus scattered around an area that is home to some of the most beautiful and rare toadstools in Nova Scotia.
Some people drove around with no helmets and no respect on 4 wheelers all weekend, frightening the children and ripping up fragile bog roads.
Some people should be taken out and shot.
And if that doesn't work, they should be forced to camp at the Shore Club in Hubbards for the rest of their lives.
Queenie hates it when she travels deep into the woods to camp au natural, to live off grid, to wash in the lake, to chill out and mostly to get away from other people and their noise and mess, and due to the inconsiderate bastard nature of most other people, ends up cleaning up after them.
Having said that, once all that was done, and the weird people in the campers had gone home, and the loons had come back to the lake to hang out near the kids, we had a wonderful weekend.
Tuesday, August 19, 2008
Yes, I know I'm a bad Queenie
I do have all kinds of excuses though.
I am kinda busy.
First of all I have the incredibly morphing into a behemoth job that involves lots of travel.
Yes, even in August, when everyone's supposedly asleep at their desk.
Secondly, I have a busy domestic situation right now, that involves lots of hands on action.
Yes, even in August, when everyone's supposedly on vacation and relaxing.
And thirdly, I have company.
Well I do this week.
So that's my excuse for this week.
Right now, I have to get dressed so I can do some work, then drive to Yarmouth, go to a meeting, then drive to Digby to get lobster, then drive back to Halifax, then cook the lobster, then do evening stuff, then collapse.
In a good way of course.
Also, it rained for two weeks in August, so there was a lot of 'damn it's too damp to do anything' action going on.
But I'll try to haul my sorry ass into the blogging saddle again soon.
Ammonite is here for a week. Maybe I can get her to guest blog?!
I am kinda busy.
First of all I have the incredibly morphing into a behemoth job that involves lots of travel.
Yes, even in August, when everyone's supposedly asleep at their desk.
Secondly, I have a busy domestic situation right now, that involves lots of hands on action.
Yes, even in August, when everyone's supposedly on vacation and relaxing.
And thirdly, I have company.
Well I do this week.
So that's my excuse for this week.
Right now, I have to get dressed so I can do some work, then drive to Yarmouth, go to a meeting, then drive to Digby to get lobster, then drive back to Halifax, then cook the lobster, then do evening stuff, then collapse.
In a good way of course.
Also, it rained for two weeks in August, so there was a lot of 'damn it's too damp to do anything' action going on.
But I'll try to haul my sorry ass into the blogging saddle again soon.
Ammonite is here for a week. Maybe I can get her to guest blog?!
Sunday, July 27, 2008
'Tis almost August
I have gone through a period of intense learning.
And now I have woken up and it is almost August.
That invokes a learning from a previous year.
When it is almost August, it is time to prioritise.
The first summer I was here, nobody called.
The second summer I was here, I called everybody.
And it worked.
This summer, they call me.
But it is only for a specific item.
That's this year's learning.
This year's learning for them is....
... the only package is the whole package.
Thanks to my soul mate for the day off.
Thanks babe.
And now I have woken up and it is almost August.
That invokes a learning from a previous year.
When it is almost August, it is time to prioritise.
The first summer I was here, nobody called.
The second summer I was here, I called everybody.
And it worked.
This summer, they call me.
But it is only for a specific item.
That's this year's learning.
This year's learning for them is....
... the only package is the whole package.
Thanks to my soul mate for the day off.
Thanks babe.
Friday, July 25, 2008
Humae Vitae - differing perspectives
From today's Irish Times:
FORTY YEARS ago today, Pope Paul VI issued probably the most controversial encyclical letter in the history of the Catholic Church. In Humanae Vitae, he reaffirmed the Church's official ban on artificial contraception, stunning the Catholic world at a time when there were strong expectations of some easing in the traditional teaching.
I was talking about this subject with some friends last night. Telling them about the Contraceptive Train events that took place in Ireland in the late sixties/ seventies (can't remember the exact date), and one of them told me a story about a couple getting married in Nova Scotia in the sixties.
The woman was Catholic, so they had to go to the priest for the talk.
Same deal in Ireland.
The priest explained the rhythm method to them.
Same deal in Ireland.
The priest then told them that the rhythm method was pretty unreliable, so what they needed to do was go to the doctor and get a pill (which you could get back then) that 'regulated' the rhythm.
NOT the same deal in Ireland.
In Ireland, the priest was too busy telling you that the rhythm method was to be used only for the mystery of procreation.
In other words, you could only use the rhythm method to conceive.
Not to not conceive.
There was no talk of the miracle pill that you could get to regulate your rhythm.
No sirreebob.
If you wanted talk of that, you had to go see that communist-anarchist-sinner, Dr. Paddy Leahy.
Canada... deep in its soul there is an innate decency and respect for the intelligence of its citizens that we didn't have for a long long time in Ireland ...
A country that gives Dr. Henry Morgentaler the Order of Canada for his contribution to society, knowing that a large chunk of citizens will be annoyed about it is a good country.
No wonder half the Irish medical graduates from the sixties moved here to practice.
Medicine that is.
Not the rhythm method.
FORTY YEARS ago today, Pope Paul VI issued probably the most controversial encyclical letter in the history of the Catholic Church. In Humanae Vitae, he reaffirmed the Church's official ban on artificial contraception, stunning the Catholic world at a time when there were strong expectations of some easing in the traditional teaching.
I was talking about this subject with some friends last night. Telling them about the Contraceptive Train events that took place in Ireland in the late sixties/ seventies (can't remember the exact date), and one of them told me a story about a couple getting married in Nova Scotia in the sixties.
The woman was Catholic, so they had to go to the priest for the talk.
Same deal in Ireland.
The priest explained the rhythm method to them.
Same deal in Ireland.
The priest then told them that the rhythm method was pretty unreliable, so what they needed to do was go to the doctor and get a pill (which you could get back then) that 'regulated' the rhythm.
NOT the same deal in Ireland.
In Ireland, the priest was too busy telling you that the rhythm method was to be used only for the mystery of procreation.
In other words, you could only use the rhythm method to conceive.
Not to not conceive.
There was no talk of the miracle pill that you could get to regulate your rhythm.
No sirreebob.
If you wanted talk of that, you had to go see that communist-anarchist-sinner, Dr. Paddy Leahy.
Canada... deep in its soul there is an innate decency and respect for the intelligence of its citizens that we didn't have for a long long time in Ireland ...
A country that gives Dr. Henry Morgentaler the Order of Canada for his contribution to society, knowing that a large chunk of citizens will be annoyed about it is a good country.
No wonder half the Irish medical graduates from the sixties moved here to practice.
Medicine that is.
Not the rhythm method.
Thursday, July 17, 2008
The first day of the rest of our lives
So Himself got divorced yesterday.
For those of you who don't know, or who can't keep track (easy enough), Himself got separated in 2004 and met Queenie in mid-2005. Which proves beyond a shadow of a doubt, despite what certain shes-who-would-be-married-forever say, that Queenie did not wreck anyone's marriage.
No need to get into all that anymore. IT IS OVER.
OVEROVEROVEROVEROVEROVEROVEROVEROVER.
Well, not quite.
The judge granted a divorce and an interim custody order for Little 'Un, and the ridiculous squabbling over the matrimonial assets and liabilities has been delayed for another few months.
Himself got what he wanted.
Queenie is very happy for him.
Queenie is very happy for the other people involved too, because they too get to wake up this morning and enjoy the first day of the rest of their lives.
Everyone deserves to be happy.
Everyone deserves to be left in peace to get on with life.
Maybe that will happen now.
Queenie is happy for the kids, because maybe now the ridiculous chess game in which they have been unhappy pawns for four years is coming to an end.
But mostly, Queenie is happy for herself.
Happy that she stuck it out.
Happy that she didn't give in to the occasional urge to run away from the madness.
Happy that those decisions resulted in a long drive home with her soulmate yesterday watching the load being lifted off his (not inconsiderable) shoulders, and the colour come back into his face, and the lines around his eyes reshape themselves into crinkles as he smiled for the first time in a long time.
Tired today. Soooo tired.
But happy.
For those of you who don't know, or who can't keep track (easy enough), Himself got separated in 2004 and met Queenie in mid-2005. Which proves beyond a shadow of a doubt, despite what certain shes-who-would-be-married-forever say, that Queenie did not wreck anyone's marriage.
No need to get into all that anymore. IT IS OVER.
OVEROVEROVEROVEROVEROVEROVEROVEROVER.
Well, not quite.
The judge granted a divorce and an interim custody order for Little 'Un, and the ridiculous squabbling over the matrimonial assets and liabilities has been delayed for another few months.
Himself got what he wanted.
Queenie is very happy for him.
Queenie is very happy for the other people involved too, because they too get to wake up this morning and enjoy the first day of the rest of their lives.
Everyone deserves to be happy.
Everyone deserves to be left in peace to get on with life.
Maybe that will happen now.
Queenie is happy for the kids, because maybe now the ridiculous chess game in which they have been unhappy pawns for four years is coming to an end.
But mostly, Queenie is happy for herself.
Happy that she stuck it out.
Happy that she didn't give in to the occasional urge to run away from the madness.
Happy that those decisions resulted in a long drive home with her soulmate yesterday watching the load being lifted off his (not inconsiderable) shoulders, and the colour come back into his face, and the lines around his eyes reshape themselves into crinkles as he smiled for the first time in a long time.
Tired today. Soooo tired.
But happy.
Sunday, July 13, 2008
Tuesday, July 08, 2008
You know it's your fourth birthday in a place
when you are listening to the morning radio news show and you know the presenter and then you check your birthday greetings online and you have a message from him saying happy birthday, you old boot.
I'm assuming you mistranslated that from the French for happy birthday you ever-young Queenie.
I am.
Bring it on, world!
I'm assuming you mistranslated that from the French for happy birthday you ever-young Queenie.
I am.
Bring it on, world!
Friday, July 04, 2008
Le Weekend est ici, aujourd'hui, etc.
OHMYGOD, I know there's a recession on in Ireland and all that...
...and I know the weather's crappy and we're having a glorious Canada Day/ Quebec 400 week here in Nova Scotia (but not in Quebec apparently) and all...
... but did you have to punish us by sending Minister Dick Roche over to be your representative at the Quebec celebrations????
Could you not have sent one of the Mary's????
Fragrant, sexy, smart, funny women the pair of them (Coughlan and McAleese I'm talking about).
No, no, no.... we got Dick the Roche.
I was standing in the kitchen last night stirring the lovely salmon in a mushroom, pesto and cream sauce that I was making for dinner, thinking about the lovely week I'd had and the nice long weekend to look forward to, with CBC on in the background blabbering on about how Quebec was the beginning of Canada (thinking there was me thinking it was Annapolis Royal, but how wrong am I, OF COURSE it was Quebec and not Nova Scotia), and how terrible that the $90 million celebrations were washed out (you could hear the rest of Canada sniggering in the blazing sunshine) when, suddenly, I hear THAT VOICE.
At least the Queen Dad got a break from him for a while, I suppose that's the silver lining.
And as Ammonite said on her blog, we don't speak Gaelic in Ireland, we speak English mostly, and a bit of IRISH, seeing as we're from IRELAND.
Anyways, enough of the bitching.
The sun came out on Canada Day and I sat in the yard with Ms Maggie Beach for a while, and then Orc, and then our visitors came round and we had a BBQ and salad made with greens FROM THE GARDEN ALREADY and watched the fireworks round the lake.
Mr. Sun has been blazing down ever since with a good forecast for the weekend and I have today off. Hooray. And so has Himself. More Hooray.
So the canoe will be finished for Queenie's birthday. So I shall get my paddle around the lake.
We painted the canoe white and when it is upside down on its stand it looks like a whale, so we are calling it Moby.
Well, I am calling it Moby and Himself is calling it Moby's Dick.
And everyone has to paint something on it before the end of the summer, so it will be a truly communal canoe.
This week I had to go to Baddeck for two days for work.
Boo hiss.
Imagine having to go to Baddeck for two days, two glorious, hot, still, steamy days in July.
Imagine having to spend a day in a workshop with a crowd of funny, smart Cape Breton women.
Imagine doing that and getting loads of development work done in four hours flat and still having a good time.
And then having to sit on a deck overlooking the Bras d'Or lake eating dinner with said women.
Discussing the nature of love and its little quirks.
One of those great female conversations.
Terrible.
Just terrible.
It was such a pain in the ass.
Really.
I hate my job.
Never mind, I have a three day weekend to recover.
Today is yard day, lots of whipper-snipping and weeding to be done. And then tomorrow is Craig's birthday barbeque, up the hill past Red Chair Man's yard, so that should be fun.
I love the weekends. I love the early morning of the first day of a three day weekend, when Himself and Kitty are still fast asleep and I can potter around on my blog and wait for the day to heat up and not have to worry about anything for a while.
Bliss.
...and I know the weather's crappy and we're having a glorious Canada Day/ Quebec 400 week here in Nova Scotia (but not in Quebec apparently) and all...
... but did you have to punish us by sending Minister Dick Roche over to be your representative at the Quebec celebrations????
Could you not have sent one of the Mary's????
Fragrant, sexy, smart, funny women the pair of them (Coughlan and McAleese I'm talking about).
No, no, no.... we got Dick the Roche.
I was standing in the kitchen last night stirring the lovely salmon in a mushroom, pesto and cream sauce that I was making for dinner, thinking about the lovely week I'd had and the nice long weekend to look forward to, with CBC on in the background blabbering on about how Quebec was the beginning of Canada (thinking there was me thinking it was Annapolis Royal, but how wrong am I, OF COURSE it was Quebec and not Nova Scotia), and how terrible that the $90 million celebrations were washed out (you could hear the rest of Canada sniggering in the blazing sunshine) when, suddenly, I hear THAT VOICE.
At least the Queen Dad got a break from him for a while, I suppose that's the silver lining.
And as Ammonite said on her blog, we don't speak Gaelic in Ireland, we speak English mostly, and a bit of IRISH, seeing as we're from IRELAND.
Anyways, enough of the bitching.
The sun came out on Canada Day and I sat in the yard with Ms Maggie Beach for a while, and then Orc, and then our visitors came round and we had a BBQ and salad made with greens FROM THE GARDEN ALREADY and watched the fireworks round the lake.
Mr. Sun has been blazing down ever since with a good forecast for the weekend and I have today off. Hooray. And so has Himself. More Hooray.
So the canoe will be finished for Queenie's birthday. So I shall get my paddle around the lake.
We painted the canoe white and when it is upside down on its stand it looks like a whale, so we are calling it Moby.
Well, I am calling it Moby and Himself is calling it Moby's Dick.
And everyone has to paint something on it before the end of the summer, so it will be a truly communal canoe.
This week I had to go to Baddeck for two days for work.
Boo hiss.
Imagine having to go to Baddeck for two days, two glorious, hot, still, steamy days in July.
Imagine having to spend a day in a workshop with a crowd of funny, smart Cape Breton women.
Imagine doing that and getting loads of development work done in four hours flat and still having a good time.
And then having to sit on a deck overlooking the Bras d'Or lake eating dinner with said women.
Discussing the nature of love and its little quirks.
One of those great female conversations.
Terrible.
Just terrible.
It was such a pain in the ass.
Really.
I hate my job.
Never mind, I have a three day weekend to recover.
Today is yard day, lots of whipper-snipping and weeding to be done. And then tomorrow is Craig's birthday barbeque, up the hill past Red Chair Man's yard, so that should be fun.
I love the weekends. I love the early morning of the first day of a three day weekend, when Himself and Kitty are still fast asleep and I can potter around on my blog and wait for the day to heat up and not have to worry about anything for a while.
Bliss.
Tuesday, July 01, 2008
The Frequent and Vigorous Quarterly, Issue 2
I picked up a copy of this in a coffee shop in Antigonish months ago, stuck it in the front pocket of my laptop bag, and forgot about it until I was rummaging for something to read on the bus the other day.
It's Issue 2 of a creative writing collective endeavour, which is always a good thing to pick up and read.
Inside the front cover, it states 'our title is derived from The Broom of the System, by David Foster Wallace. Please don't tell and get us into trouble. Instead, read it.'
DFW is all about the importance of ignoring the telly and its malign influence on literature and focusing on earnest self-expression, if I remember The Infinite Jest correctly. I haven't read The Broom of the System, maybe I'll try to find it.
Right so.... earnest self-expression. No telly. Just philosophical thought and literature.
From a group of English students in SFX, by the way.
Switch off your irony button, Queenie, and read on.
I thought some of the stuff was pretty good, actually.
There was a pretty good short story by someone called M Johnston, about a kid in a supermarket who gets one over on the nasty manager. It was funny and well written, which is something Queenie has never managed to pull off.
And there was a poem called The Tibetan Monk which I really liked - interesting theme, really interesting structure, great rhythm. It reminded me of the early poetry of one Gavin Kostick, a heady mix of classical themes and political thought.
Then there was another short story that had its roots in the old Oisin and the land of Tir na nOg myth that I didn't really get, and a transcript of MSN sex talk that we'll just skip over and some very nice photos, particularly one by Philippe Mineau that I really liked, and then I got to Pride of an iPod Generation.
Which I read.
Then I read again.
Then I read again.
And I'm thinking to myself.... if this is David Foster Wallace-inspired then this is not ironic.
And if that is the case, then some gentle teasing of the author is definitely in order.
I hope he doesn't mind.
Yes, of course he was a boy.
But I will start by saying I accept that we were all that young, arrogant in an 'ever-so-slightly tongue-in-cheek kind of way' soldier at one time.
I'm sure you'll all remember those days boys and girls, fellow passengers on the tail end of GenX....?
Circa 1988 - 94.
Round about the time we saw Public Enemy perform on Trinity College cricket pitch.
Anyways, I thought I'd share iPod man's wisdom with you.
"I come from the generation that, like every other generation, has a vivid history full of grand achievements and terrible horrors. I saw the rise of reality tv. I watched slow but sure acceptance of rap music. I was taken aback by horrid terrorist acts. I was even lucky enough to watch the progression of razor blades from one to the oh-so-necessary six bladed razors that are available today."
Well, correct me if I'm wrong but I think Public Enemy playing on the cricket pitch of a four hundred year old university would be defined as 'acceptance'. And I think it happened the year you started Grade Primary, sweetie.
I'm assuming the author was born in or around 1988, if he's iPod Gen.
I think what you might have witnessed was the commercialisation of rap music, dear.
I will grant you reality tv. You are entitled to that terrible horror. I don't remember reality tv when I was growing up. They just had shows called drama, and documentaries, and current affairs programs, and movies, when I was growing up.
I do remember watching an angry mob of Republicans drag two British soldiers out of a car, beat them to a pulp and then shoot them in the head when they drove their car into a funeral procession live on the news one time. But that doesn't really count as reality tv, as nobody had to audition to be in the car.
Also, to be petty about it, I'm pretty sure that guy from Gillette had four blades in his razor when I was growing up.
But I can't be definite. I'd have to ask a guy. Anyways, I think you were probably being ironic.
I thought you weren't supposed to be ironic...
Am I being too mean? I'm not meaning to be. I'm just feeling old and grouchy these days, trapped as I am between baby boomers and GenY, stuck with a dirty planet, rising air travel costs and no friggin' pension to look forward to when the end times come.
Anyways, back to the text...
"Every generation has their moments, we have plenty of history books to remind us of that, but I feel that we, the media-dubbed iPod generation, have done more than what historians will write down. What do you notice when you compare the people your age to those say, ten years your senior? Twenty years? Thirty years?"
According to an article I found on The Times online, the iPod generation is comprised of people under 26 (today). iPod stands for 'insecure, pressured, overtaxed and debt-ridden'.
That's just about everyone I know, when you think about it.
Perhaps the iPods are the generation that are annoyed about it.
Or more accurately, the iPods are the generation that weren't expecting it to be so.
Bless'em.
Nothing like a decade of recession in your teens to give you that edge on expectations.
Thanks, Mr. Haughey*, you served me well in retrospect.
* Mr. Haughey was an Irish PM who lorded it over us all during a recession in the eighties. Subsequently, we found out that he was using other people's money to live like a king. Irish people got very mad when they found out, but then realised that that was the way to go, and so a good chunk of them got on that bandwagon. Consequently, Ireland is facing another recession right now, but it's okay, the economy is structurally sound, so it won't be like the eighties again.
Anyways, I'm sure you're dying to know what our young author sees when he compares himself to us thirty-somethings and forty-somethings...and fifty-somethings. (anyone older is not worth a comparison, I think, or maybe he was straitened by the word count).
"You may not agree with me, but what I see is nothing short of amazing. I see a generation who almost never looks first at race or gender, who (almost unbeknownst to them) have environmentally friendly routines in their everyday lives, and who are extremely accepting of gay and bisexual communities. There are exceptions and there always will be, but when I compare us to a decade prior (that would be me - Queenie), I feel that we are vastly superior in these areas. Now I cannot speak for our generation globally, this is merely a tiny spot on the planetary spectrum, but does that make it any less significant?
And there you were, wondering why Queenie was picking on some poor, inarticulate little X-er.
Queenie don't pick on no one unless they're askin' for it.
And this kid is ASKIN' FORIT!
Only the fact that I still remember once telling the Queen Dad that my generation was very unlucky because all we had was Thatcher and emigration and war, and his generation got to do the sixties, and him laughing his ass off and saying, I did the sixties in rural Ireland, Queenie, and before that I had to do the fifties there, and me then realising that all generations ARE THE SAME in many ways, is keeping the gloves on.
Soon to be global spokesman for the iPod generation-man should not have used the word superior.
What the word 'superior' says to me is that iPod man may not see colour or gender or sexual orientation when he looks at people, but that's because he's too busy counting the wrinkles on people's faces and judging them thus.
Mr. iPod forgets to mention the Queen Parents generation when he was comparing. I remember the Queen Mum making compost, recycling paper, separating waste, making her own bread, growing vegetables and doing all kinds of other 'green' things way back before there was any mention of green, because it saved money and reduced what went into the bin and was healthy and useful, etc.
How would the iPods compare to that, eh?
Take a pass on the gap year round the globe travel and maybe it'll be a 1-1 draw.
Anyways, back to the text...
"I am an optimist, and like Delta Goodrem* says 'I don't see the point in being anything else'. I firmly believe that we are the most accepting, equal and green generation that the world has ever seen. We have the previous generations (and fantastic programs like Degrassi and Captain Planet of course) to thank for that, but we also have ourselves. I hope that you agree with me and I pray that the next generation will be able to say the same."
*Star of Neighbours, for those of you that don't recognise the name, but today's Neighbours, not the Neighbours we watched in the eighties. A sort of modern-day Kylie if you like. Slight bending of the DFW no-telly rule, too, if you ask me.
Yes well, thanks for the nod to us oldarses for our minor role in the production of the superior generation of which you are a proud member, Mr. iPod. I'm not sure it bolsters your earlier points regarding our malign influence on the world, but that's okay. We take our manna where we can get it.
I truly hope you are the most accepting, equal and green generation that the world has ever seen, cos God knows, you're going to have to be...
I also truly hope that you are an inspired fifth columnist within the community of The Frequent and Vigorous Quarterly, and that the point of your piece is to undermine the David Foster Wallacian theory behind the publication.
Otherwise, I'm a heading 'er for the compound right now. Before you tackle me to the ground and put me on an icefloe with all the other old people.
It's Issue 2 of a creative writing collective endeavour, which is always a good thing to pick up and read.
Inside the front cover, it states 'our title is derived from The Broom of the System, by David Foster Wallace. Please don't tell and get us into trouble. Instead, read it.'
DFW is all about the importance of ignoring the telly and its malign influence on literature and focusing on earnest self-expression, if I remember The Infinite Jest correctly. I haven't read The Broom of the System, maybe I'll try to find it.
Right so.... earnest self-expression. No telly. Just philosophical thought and literature.
From a group of English students in SFX, by the way.
Switch off your irony button, Queenie, and read on.
I thought some of the stuff was pretty good, actually.
There was a pretty good short story by someone called M Johnston, about a kid in a supermarket who gets one over on the nasty manager. It was funny and well written, which is something Queenie has never managed to pull off.
And there was a poem called The Tibetan Monk which I really liked - interesting theme, really interesting structure, great rhythm. It reminded me of the early poetry of one Gavin Kostick, a heady mix of classical themes and political thought.
Then there was another short story that had its roots in the old Oisin and the land of Tir na nOg myth that I didn't really get, and a transcript of MSN sex talk that we'll just skip over and some very nice photos, particularly one by Philippe Mineau that I really liked, and then I got to Pride of an iPod Generation.
Which I read.
Then I read again.
Then I read again.
And I'm thinking to myself.... if this is David Foster Wallace-inspired then this is not ironic.
And if that is the case, then some gentle teasing of the author is definitely in order.
I hope he doesn't mind.
Yes, of course he was a boy.
But I will start by saying I accept that we were all that young, arrogant in an 'ever-so-slightly tongue-in-cheek kind of way' soldier at one time.
I'm sure you'll all remember those days boys and girls, fellow passengers on the tail end of GenX....?
Circa 1988 - 94.
Round about the time we saw Public Enemy perform on Trinity College cricket pitch.
Anyways, I thought I'd share iPod man's wisdom with you.
"I come from the generation that, like every other generation, has a vivid history full of grand achievements and terrible horrors. I saw the rise of reality tv. I watched slow but sure acceptance of rap music. I was taken aback by horrid terrorist acts. I was even lucky enough to watch the progression of razor blades from one to the oh-so-necessary six bladed razors that are available today."
Well, correct me if I'm wrong but I think Public Enemy playing on the cricket pitch of a four hundred year old university would be defined as 'acceptance'. And I think it happened the year you started Grade Primary, sweetie.
I'm assuming the author was born in or around 1988, if he's iPod Gen.
I think what you might have witnessed was the commercialisation of rap music, dear.
I will grant you reality tv. You are entitled to that terrible horror. I don't remember reality tv when I was growing up. They just had shows called drama, and documentaries, and current affairs programs, and movies, when I was growing up.
I do remember watching an angry mob of Republicans drag two British soldiers out of a car, beat them to a pulp and then shoot them in the head when they drove their car into a funeral procession live on the news one time. But that doesn't really count as reality tv, as nobody had to audition to be in the car.
Also, to be petty about it, I'm pretty sure that guy from Gillette had four blades in his razor when I was growing up.
But I can't be definite. I'd have to ask a guy. Anyways, I think you were probably being ironic.
I thought you weren't supposed to be ironic...
Am I being too mean? I'm not meaning to be. I'm just feeling old and grouchy these days, trapped as I am between baby boomers and GenY, stuck with a dirty planet, rising air travel costs and no friggin' pension to look forward to when the end times come.
Anyways, back to the text...
"Every generation has their moments, we have plenty of history books to remind us of that, but I feel that we, the media-dubbed iPod generation, have done more than what historians will write down. What do you notice when you compare the people your age to those say, ten years your senior? Twenty years? Thirty years?"
According to an article I found on The Times online, the iPod generation is comprised of people under 26 (today). iPod stands for 'insecure, pressured, overtaxed and debt-ridden'.
That's just about everyone I know, when you think about it.
Perhaps the iPods are the generation that are annoyed about it.
Or more accurately, the iPods are the generation that weren't expecting it to be so.
Bless'em.
Nothing like a decade of recession in your teens to give you that edge on expectations.
Thanks, Mr. Haughey*, you served me well in retrospect.
* Mr. Haughey was an Irish PM who lorded it over us all during a recession in the eighties. Subsequently, we found out that he was using other people's money to live like a king. Irish people got very mad when they found out, but then realised that that was the way to go, and so a good chunk of them got on that bandwagon. Consequently, Ireland is facing another recession right now, but it's okay, the economy is structurally sound, so it won't be like the eighties again.
Anyways, I'm sure you're dying to know what our young author sees when he compares himself to us thirty-somethings and forty-somethings...and fifty-somethings. (anyone older is not worth a comparison, I think, or maybe he was straitened by the word count).
"You may not agree with me, but what I see is nothing short of amazing. I see a generation who almost never looks first at race or gender, who (almost unbeknownst to them) have environmentally friendly routines in their everyday lives, and who are extremely accepting of gay and bisexual communities. There are exceptions and there always will be, but when I compare us to a decade prior (that would be me - Queenie), I feel that we are vastly superior in these areas. Now I cannot speak for our generation globally, this is merely a tiny spot on the planetary spectrum, but does that make it any less significant?
And there you were, wondering why Queenie was picking on some poor, inarticulate little X-er.
Queenie don't pick on no one unless they're askin' for it.
And this kid is ASKIN' FORIT!
Only the fact that I still remember once telling the Queen Dad that my generation was very unlucky because all we had was Thatcher and emigration and war, and his generation got to do the sixties, and him laughing his ass off and saying, I did the sixties in rural Ireland, Queenie, and before that I had to do the fifties there, and me then realising that all generations ARE THE SAME in many ways, is keeping the gloves on.
Soon to be global spokesman for the iPod generation-man should not have used the word superior.
What the word 'superior' says to me is that iPod man may not see colour or gender or sexual orientation when he looks at people, but that's because he's too busy counting the wrinkles on people's faces and judging them thus.
Mr. iPod forgets to mention the Queen Parents generation when he was comparing. I remember the Queen Mum making compost, recycling paper, separating waste, making her own bread, growing vegetables and doing all kinds of other 'green' things way back before there was any mention of green, because it saved money and reduced what went into the bin and was healthy and useful, etc.
How would the iPods compare to that, eh?
Take a pass on the gap year round the globe travel and maybe it'll be a 1-1 draw.
Anyways, back to the text...
"I am an optimist, and like Delta Goodrem* says 'I don't see the point in being anything else'. I firmly believe that we are the most accepting, equal and green generation that the world has ever seen. We have the previous generations (and fantastic programs like Degrassi and Captain Planet of course) to thank for that, but we also have ourselves. I hope that you agree with me and I pray that the next generation will be able to say the same."
*Star of Neighbours, for those of you that don't recognise the name, but today's Neighbours, not the Neighbours we watched in the eighties. A sort of modern-day Kylie if you like. Slight bending of the DFW no-telly rule, too, if you ask me.
Yes well, thanks for the nod to us oldarses for our minor role in the production of the superior generation of which you are a proud member, Mr. iPod. I'm not sure it bolsters your earlier points regarding our malign influence on the world, but that's okay. We take our manna where we can get it.
I truly hope you are the most accepting, equal and green generation that the world has ever seen, cos God knows, you're going to have to be...
I also truly hope that you are an inspired fifth columnist within the community of The Frequent and Vigorous Quarterly, and that the point of your piece is to undermine the David Foster Wallacian theory behind the publication.
Otherwise, I'm a heading 'er for the compound right now. Before you tackle me to the ground and put me on an icefloe with all the other old people.
Wednesday, June 25, 2008
Edward's asking forgiveness again. Much better than permission.
Somebody called Edward, who has a private profile on Blogger.com (bad Edward) linked my blog to Infomonkey.net - Halifax. Then added a comment to my blog saying that he (is it even a he, we don't know, because his profile is private) had done so and if I minded that I should tell him so he can remove it.
I didn't minded, so I never said nothin'. See, I write a blog. Which is on the Internet. Which is like putting your diary in your front window with the page open to the previous day's entry.
Except the sun won't fade the writing on the blog, the way it would fade the writing in the diary.
So anyways, last night I wrote a (for me) totally boring piece on my camping trip to New Brunswick.
Lo and behold, up pops Edward in the comments box again.
Still private is Edward.
Reminding me that he linked me to infomonkey.net - Halifax and that some of what I write is personal, so if I mind to let him know straight away.
Well, yes, everything published here is personal to Queenie, but obviously none of it is private because it is on the Internet, so no I don't mind that you paid the blog the compliment of linking it to infomonkey.net - Halifax.
In fact, I found some other interesting blogs there.
If you write a blog and people link to it, that's good.
However, when I post, my traffic doesn't go up extra due to the link, that's not good.
I'm a great believer in asking forgiveness rather than permission. But, if you are concerned about people getting mad, asking permission in advance would reduce the number of times you have to mail people for forgiveness??!!
I didn't minded, so I never said nothin'. See, I write a blog. Which is on the Internet. Which is like putting your diary in your front window with the page open to the previous day's entry.
Except the sun won't fade the writing on the blog, the way it would fade the writing in the diary.
So anyways, last night I wrote a (for me) totally boring piece on my camping trip to New Brunswick.
Lo and behold, up pops Edward in the comments box again.
Still private is Edward.
Reminding me that he linked me to infomonkey.net - Halifax and that some of what I write is personal, so if I mind to let him know straight away.
Well, yes, everything published here is personal to Queenie, but obviously none of it is private because it is on the Internet, so no I don't mind that you paid the blog the compliment of linking it to infomonkey.net - Halifax.
In fact, I found some other interesting blogs there.
If you write a blog and people link to it, that's good.
However, when I post, my traffic doesn't go up extra due to the link, that's not good.
I'm a great believer in asking forgiveness rather than permission. But, if you are concerned about people getting mad, asking permission in advance would reduce the number of times you have to mail people for forgiveness??!!
Tuesday, June 24, 2008
Sorry about the break... summer's getting busy already
As I said in my last post, Columbo arrived on 9th June for two weeks.
Guests are always a busy time. Well, not that there's extra business, just the fact that there is no lying around thinking about what to blog about time when there are actual friends here.
Not to mention blog time.
This time was particularly busy, as Kitty was doing exams at the same time, so there was coaching and prompting and motivating and of course it'll be fine and there-thereing to be done (having Columbo around helped as she shared the load on that). In addition, it's the start of the summer season so colleagues are coming and going and I generally have to be around in work, as I tend to take vacation in the winter. But still, we got a few days to hit the road and see a little bit of the Maritimes.
We headed off in the sunshine and went north into New Brunswick and got three days great weather, beautiful sunshine and enough wind to make it bearable (but not to get rid of the enormous mosquitos) and camped for two nights in French New Brunswick. Christ the mossies were big. Each morning we awoke at 5.30am to the dawn chorus, after which the sun came up and shone on the three million or so mosquitos circling the tent waiting, waiting, just waiting for us to slip up and open the zip.
A few got into the car and ate me alive the second day. Almost two weeks later, I am still covered in angry red bites all around my ankles.
We spent the first night in Kouchebouguac, a provincial park set on a lagoon about half way up the coast of New Brunswick. The warmest sea water north of Virginia apparently ... I thought that was Pictou County...
About five minutes later we heard a clang as the top was knocked off our saucepan.
So I'm lying there hoping it's not a bear, but there aren't any bear snuffling noises so I hoped not.
More noises.
Eventually I clambered out of the sleeping bag and shone the torch on the cooler.
Nothing.
Next morning we discovered raccoons had opened the cooler, taken out the bananas, peeled them, eaten them and left the skins for us to dispose of.
And they had rolled all the eggs off the camping table to crack them so they could eat the yolks.
And left the shells along with the banana skins.
Raccoons.
Just like teenagers.
Next day we drove the Acadian peninsula and rolled into Caraquet about five, just in time to catch the Acadian living history village.
Nice place, but $15 each is a bit friggin' steep to watch a lot of local people sit around in old clothes pretending to run a farm.
I took careful note of how to make linen clothes from flax.
For the compound.
So we'll have clothes.
We camped just outside Caraquet and headed into town for dinner at the Chocolaterie, which was very nice and then did the fire thing again.
We got an amazing sunset and an amazing sunrise the next morning, over the Choc Choc Mountains in Quebec. That's where we were headed, but I looked at the map and thought about the drive home and we decided not to do it.
Maybe next time...
Still and all, it was nice to see another province for a change.
No moose but.
I'm never going to see a moose.
Guests are always a busy time. Well, not that there's extra business, just the fact that there is no lying around thinking about what to blog about time when there are actual friends here.
Not to mention blog time.
This time was particularly busy, as Kitty was doing exams at the same time, so there was coaching and prompting and motivating and of course it'll be fine and there-thereing to be done (having Columbo around helped as she shared the load on that). In addition, it's the start of the summer season so colleagues are coming and going and I generally have to be around in work, as I tend to take vacation in the winter. But still, we got a few days to hit the road and see a little bit of the Maritimes.
We headed off in the sunshine and went north into New Brunswick and got three days great weather, beautiful sunshine and enough wind to make it bearable (but not to get rid of the enormous mosquitos) and camped for two nights in French New Brunswick. Christ the mossies were big. Each morning we awoke at 5.30am to the dawn chorus, after which the sun came up and shone on the three million or so mosquitos circling the tent waiting, waiting, just waiting for us to slip up and open the zip.
A few got into the car and ate me alive the second day. Almost two weeks later, I am still covered in angry red bites all around my ankles.
We spent the first night in Kouchebouguac, a provincial park set on a lagoon about half way up the coast of New Brunswick. The warmest sea water north of Virginia apparently ... I thought that was Pictou County...
... well they're both in the lee of PEI, so maybe that's what keeps the water warm.
It was nice. Peaceful and the park people left us pretty much alone. We cooked steaks and drank some wine and listened to the wind die down and the birds go to bed and the fire crackle and then we crawled into bed.About five minutes later we heard a clang as the top was knocked off our saucepan.
So I'm lying there hoping it's not a bear, but there aren't any bear snuffling noises so I hoped not.
More noises.
Eventually I clambered out of the sleeping bag and shone the torch on the cooler.
Nothing.
Next morning we discovered raccoons had opened the cooler, taken out the bananas, peeled them, eaten them and left the skins for us to dispose of.
And they had rolled all the eggs off the camping table to crack them so they could eat the yolks.
And left the shells along with the banana skins.
Raccoons.
Just like teenagers.
Next day we drove the Acadian peninsula and rolled into Caraquet about five, just in time to catch the Acadian living history village.
Nice place, but $15 each is a bit friggin' steep to watch a lot of local people sit around in old clothes pretending to run a farm.
I took careful note of how to make linen clothes from flax.
For the compound.
So we'll have clothes.
We camped just outside Caraquet and headed into town for dinner at the Chocolaterie, which was very nice and then did the fire thing again.
We got an amazing sunset and an amazing sunrise the next morning, over the Choc Choc Mountains in Quebec. That's where we were headed, but I looked at the map and thought about the drive home and we decided not to do it.
Maybe next time...
Still and all, it was nice to see another province for a change.
No moose but.
I'm never going to see a moose.
Monday, June 09, 2008
Three years today
I came to Canada three years ago today.
As Yoichi would say (well probably not now as he's probably fluent in English at this stage), as Yoichi would have said three years ago, 'WOW!'
That day three years ago, I stayed with Ammonite and the others in Teach Dusetti the night before I left, and Colombo waved me off at the airport. So it is fitting that Colombo flies in tonight, and that Ammonite is coming to visit in August.
Well, it's probably just a coincidence, but I have decided it is fitting.
Three years.... lots of personal growth... lots of fun... lots of adjusting to a new culture (yes, Nova Scotia is a new culture, it is very different to Ireland)... lots of adjusting to a new work culture... oh yeah...
Lots of heartache...
And I still haven't given up smoking.
Aaghggh!!
I AM JUST GOING TO GIVE THE FRIGGIN' THINGS UP.
I am.
This month.
As Yoichi would say (well probably not now as he's probably fluent in English at this stage), as Yoichi would have said three years ago, 'WOW!'
That day three years ago, I stayed with Ammonite and the others in Teach Dusetti the night before I left, and Colombo waved me off at the airport. So it is fitting that Colombo flies in tonight, and that Ammonite is coming to visit in August.
Well, it's probably just a coincidence, but I have decided it is fitting.
Three years.... lots of personal growth... lots of fun... lots of adjusting to a new culture (yes, Nova Scotia is a new culture, it is very different to Ireland)... lots of adjusting to a new work culture... oh yeah...
Lots of heartache...
And I still haven't given up smoking.
Aaghggh!!
I AM JUST GOING TO GIVE THE FRIGGIN' THINGS UP.
I am.
This month.
Thursday, June 05, 2008
So how do you feel?
The phone rang in work yesterday.
It does ring quite a bit.
I wait to see the number.
Often it is my own. Kitty home from school, bored, wanting to check in. I check in back. We chat a bit. She reconnects then she's happy to wait till quarter past five when one of us is usually home.
Otherwise it's just work usually.
But the phone rang yesterday.
I waited.
Private number.
Ehhhummmmm....
I picked up.
So how do you feel today, Queenie?
It's a woman's voice. It's an older woman. It's a black woman.
Queen.
The other Queenie. Except she's not Queenie. She's just Queen.
Former colleague.
Well, I don't know Queen. How do you feel?
I don't know what to feel, Queenie, that's why I called you.
Well, Queen, I reckon you must be a little bit sad and a little bit excited.
Well, I guess I am. I thought you might know how I feel. How do you feel?
I'm fucking mad, Queen. How in the hell does a smart ass, younger, inexperienced man beat a strong, clever older woman for Presidential candidate, Queen?
I don't know, Queenie.
I guess our time has gone, Queen.
Well, maybe mine anyway, Queenie, you're still young.
But you must be happy, Queen.
I guess I'm excited for the young people, Queenie. I see them all excited and it makes my heart glad.
Yeah, me too.
Shame though...
Yeah...
I'm worried, Queenie, I hear they're going to say something bad about his wife soon.
What?
Something about the church. You know, that's what all those churches are like, Queenie. They all talk like that. It doesn't mean anything. That's how we keep our sanity. You must know. You're from over there.
Over there?
You know what I mean.
Yeah, I know.
I'm worried, Queenie. I'm real worried.
Maybe so, Queen, she looks like a strong woman though.
Maybe.
Sometimes, Queenie, I wonder how strong we've gotta be.
Yeah, I wonder that too.
It does ring quite a bit.
I wait to see the number.
Often it is my own. Kitty home from school, bored, wanting to check in. I check in back. We chat a bit. She reconnects then she's happy to wait till quarter past five when one of us is usually home.
Otherwise it's just work usually.
But the phone rang yesterday.
I waited.
Private number.
Ehhhummmmm....
I picked up.
So how do you feel today, Queenie?
It's a woman's voice. It's an older woman. It's a black woman.
Queen.
The other Queenie. Except she's not Queenie. She's just Queen.
Former colleague.
Well, I don't know Queen. How do you feel?
I don't know what to feel, Queenie, that's why I called you.
Well, Queen, I reckon you must be a little bit sad and a little bit excited.
Well, I guess I am. I thought you might know how I feel. How do you feel?
I'm fucking mad, Queen. How in the hell does a smart ass, younger, inexperienced man beat a strong, clever older woman for Presidential candidate, Queen?
I don't know, Queenie.
I guess our time has gone, Queen.
Well, maybe mine anyway, Queenie, you're still young.
But you must be happy, Queen.
I guess I'm excited for the young people, Queenie. I see them all excited and it makes my heart glad.
Yeah, me too.
Shame though...
Yeah...
I'm worried, Queenie, I hear they're going to say something bad about his wife soon.
What?
Something about the church. You know, that's what all those churches are like, Queenie. They all talk like that. It doesn't mean anything. That's how we keep our sanity. You must know. You're from over there.
Over there?
You know what I mean.
Yeah, I know.
I'm worried, Queenie. I'm real worried.
Maybe so, Queen, she looks like a strong woman though.
Maybe.
Sometimes, Queenie, I wonder how strong we've gotta be.
Yeah, I wonder that too.
To die in your own wee, or on your own wii?
I bet Martin McDonagh never thought there'd be a Wii when he wrote that brilliant passage in A Skull in Connemara about dying in a potty of wee.
I brought Kitty and her friend to see it tonight. A small little company. A rickety stage set up in an abandoned shop. Twenty five people in the audience, scrunched up around the stage. Potting compost and fragments of fake bone flying all over us.
Great.
When the wee bit started, I thought the two girls were going to choke they laughed so much.
Me, I was the only person who laughed at the Eamon Andrew jokes. And the Dana jokes. And the bumpy slides in Leisureland in Galway sketch.
But that was alright.
You're in your own little world in the theatre anyway.
Well done to Obstructed View Plays for taking it on with probably tuppence ha'penny worth of funding. They did a great job of it.
I brought Kitty and her friend to see it tonight. A small little company. A rickety stage set up in an abandoned shop. Twenty five people in the audience, scrunched up around the stage. Potting compost and fragments of fake bone flying all over us.
Great.
When the wee bit started, I thought the two girls were going to choke they laughed so much.
Me, I was the only person who laughed at the Eamon Andrew jokes. And the Dana jokes. And the bumpy slides in Leisureland in Galway sketch.
But that was alright.
You're in your own little world in the theatre anyway.
Well done to Obstructed View Plays for taking it on with probably tuppence ha'penny worth of funding. They did a great job of it.
Wednesday, May 28, 2008
Maxime makes the news in Ireland
Canada's foreign minister has resigned after it emerged that he left secret documents at his then girlfriend's house.
Prime minister Stephen Harper said yesterday he had accepted the resignation of Maxime Bernier, who came under fire in recent weeks after it was reported that his ex-girlfriend had previous relationships with Hells Angels members and links to organised crime.
Prime minister Stephen Harper said yesterday he had accepted the resignation of Maxime Bernier, who came under fire in recent weeks after it was reported that his ex-girlfriend had previous relationships with Hells Angels members and links to organised crime.
I don't know if the Irish Times printed the picture of DE DRESS.
Which is all that Canada is talking about in this case.
Here it is, in case they didn't.
Naturally, it's all about the dress.
That's why you can't see the kerchief hemming at the bottom.
Apparently, Minister Bernier picked THE DRESS to wear on the day he became a minister.
Hence all the interest in Mdme Cuillard.
Ahaa!! My suspicions were founded!!
From today's Irish Times:
THE LEAVING Cert exam has been significantly "dumbed down" and there is evidence of widespread grade inflation, according to a new study of exam grades.
The study, to be published shortly, is the first to track Leaving Cert grades across 24 subjects over almost two decades.
Its key finding is that the number of students gaining A and B grades in many higher-level subjects has nearly doubled since 1991. But the study finds little evidence to support higher academic standards. "In the most recent European-wide OECD/PISA study, there has been no detectable improvement in mathematics, reading and science in Irish 15-year-olds between 2000 and 2006, and so such an explanation of the increased Leaving Certificate results does not hold up."
...
The study concludes: "That there has been massive grade increase in the Leaving Certificate Examination over the period considered is beyond dispute and even a cursory inspection of the data confirms this . . . There is little evidence of higher academic standards. The increase is simply grade inflation - higher grades being awarded more easily."
The survey shows an astonishing increase in the percentage of students gaining Grade A and B (70-100 per cent) in Leaving Cert higher-level papers since 1991.
...
The study also finds that far fewer students are failing Leaving Cert papers. The new study says the grade inflation is all the more remarkable because the number of students opting for higher level has dramatically increased. It notes how "the lowering of standards in the higher-level subjects has driven this increase".
Queenie has suspected for a long time that the Leaving Cert (Irish exam that is similar to the IB) is for pussies these days. Not like when she were a girl, and there was just the one place in college, and you had to lock yourself in your bedroom and study for six hours a night for ten years to get the place.
IF YOU WERE LUCKY and your questions came up.
Having had several arguments with various people about it, Queenie has come round to the point of view that what's good for the child of the eighties is probably not so good for the child of the nineties.
But it's still effing unfair.
Us survivors of the horror that was the LC in the eighties deserve some respect.
We didn't know there was a lucrative future in VJing ahead of us if we failed.
I get no respect in my house.
I am considered weird because I know so much.
And that's just the stuff I mention.
THE LEAVING Cert exam has been significantly "dumbed down" and there is evidence of widespread grade inflation, according to a new study of exam grades.
The study, to be published shortly, is the first to track Leaving Cert grades across 24 subjects over almost two decades.
Its key finding is that the number of students gaining A and B grades in many higher-level subjects has nearly doubled since 1991. But the study finds little evidence to support higher academic standards. "In the most recent European-wide OECD/PISA study, there has been no detectable improvement in mathematics, reading and science in Irish 15-year-olds between 2000 and 2006, and so such an explanation of the increased Leaving Certificate results does not hold up."
...
The study concludes: "That there has been massive grade increase in the Leaving Certificate Examination over the period considered is beyond dispute and even a cursory inspection of the data confirms this . . . There is little evidence of higher academic standards. The increase is simply grade inflation - higher grades being awarded more easily."
The survey shows an astonishing increase in the percentage of students gaining Grade A and B (70-100 per cent) in Leaving Cert higher-level papers since 1991.
...
The study also finds that far fewer students are failing Leaving Cert papers. The new study says the grade inflation is all the more remarkable because the number of students opting for higher level has dramatically increased. It notes how "the lowering of standards in the higher-level subjects has driven this increase".
Queenie has suspected for a long time that the Leaving Cert (Irish exam that is similar to the IB) is for pussies these days. Not like when she were a girl, and there was just the one place in college, and you had to lock yourself in your bedroom and study for six hours a night for ten years to get the place.
IF YOU WERE LUCKY and your questions came up.
Having had several arguments with various people about it, Queenie has come round to the point of view that what's good for the child of the eighties is probably not so good for the child of the nineties.
But it's still effing unfair.
Us survivors of the horror that was the LC in the eighties deserve some respect.
We didn't know there was a lucrative future in VJing ahead of us if we failed.
I get no respect in my house.
I am considered weird because I know so much.
And that's just the stuff I mention.
Saturday, May 24, 2008
You can take a girl out of her homeland....
... but she'll eventually get back to planting potatoes.
Pumpkin, schmumpkin .... The pratai are in the ground.
Won't it be lovely to have my own potatoes, grown by my own hand, to eat this winter.
I wonder could I get Himself to dig me out a root cellar! For all the potatoes and carrots and beets I'm going to have?!
I'm being super-confident this year, which is always a bad thing in gardening.
If he wakes up ever again of course.
Himself and Kitty are both asleep. Have been for a while. So I'm just sitting here with dinner all prepared waiting for hunger pangs to stir them. Also, Scheherazade is coming over for some food (for those of you who don't remember, Scheh is the first friend I made in Halifax and she is from Turkey originally).
I don't know why they are so tired. It's not like we were up to much last night.
We went all the way downstairs last night. That was about as out as we could manage.
We were hanging with Ms Maggie Beach and her friend and I realised that I don't talk about her friend much, even though he's my friend too (except when we play washer toss, when he turns into my sworn enemy forever) so we were discussing blog names for him.
Maggie Beach picked her own blogname. I'm all for letting people choose their own name. Her's is her porn name I think (you pick your middle name and the street you grew up on).
Queenie is Lizzie Oxmantown, which is a stupid porn name. My pole dancer name is worse, it's Midgie Neill. I would so be the pole dancer on the Canadien ad if that was my name.
Anyways, so our friend had to pick his blog name. First of all he decided on RaCy (because he's building a F1 car in his garage at the moment - I kid you not). Then Maggie decided it had to be his porn name. Which turned out to be Johnny Pleasant.
So after we all stopped falling around laughing at the aptness of it as his porn name, he decided he didn't want that, so we did the pole dancer's name thingummy and it turned out to be Teddy Grainger.
So Teddy Grainger it is.
Anyways, Queenie and Ms Beach go up to Teddy's house a few times a week now (and Kitty too), because he's got a home gym in his basement. Right next to the F1 car in his garage, although I think the car was being collected this morning, so no more throbbing house when I'm running myself to a standstill.
We do an hour - run on the treadmill and the cycling thing and the crosstrainer, and Queenie does some yoga stretches, and then we go home to eat dinner and have a glass of wine.
Very healthy.
Well, it is when you consider the alternative.
Queenie had to start working out. It is THAT TIME IN HER THIRTIES.
I do find it terribly boring though.
Anyways, Teddy had to pick his top bands for the greatest band on earth ever competition so he picked The Eagles (that's the Johnny Pleasant side of his personality coming through I think).
I am going to have to organise some kind of structured weekend of listening for us to arrive at some consensus on which band will get the title.
And the exciting news is, Mike and Cate our previous next door neighbours are coming to Halifax for a month this summer!
Much washer toss/ camping/ sitting around talking about librarianship/ drinking of beer/ BBQ-ing will ensue.
You better pick your blog names, then!!
Pumpkin, schmumpkin .... The pratai are in the ground.
Won't it be lovely to have my own potatoes, grown by my own hand, to eat this winter.
I wonder could I get Himself to dig me out a root cellar! For all the potatoes and carrots and beets I'm going to have?!
I'm being super-confident this year, which is always a bad thing in gardening.
If he wakes up ever again of course.
Himself and Kitty are both asleep. Have been for a while. So I'm just sitting here with dinner all prepared waiting for hunger pangs to stir them. Also, Scheherazade is coming over for some food (for those of you who don't remember, Scheh is the first friend I made in Halifax and she is from Turkey originally).
I don't know why they are so tired. It's not like we were up to much last night.
We went all the way downstairs last night. That was about as out as we could manage.
We were hanging with Ms Maggie Beach and her friend and I realised that I don't talk about her friend much, even though he's my friend too (except when we play washer toss, when he turns into my sworn enemy forever) so we were discussing blog names for him.
Maggie Beach picked her own blogname. I'm all for letting people choose their own name. Her's is her porn name I think (you pick your middle name and the street you grew up on).
Queenie is Lizzie Oxmantown, which is a stupid porn name. My pole dancer name is worse, it's Midgie Neill. I would so be the pole dancer on the Canadien ad if that was my name.
Anyways, so our friend had to pick his blog name. First of all he decided on RaCy (because he's building a F1 car in his garage at the moment - I kid you not). Then Maggie decided it had to be his porn name. Which turned out to be Johnny Pleasant.
So after we all stopped falling around laughing at the aptness of it as his porn name, he decided he didn't want that, so we did the pole dancer's name thingummy and it turned out to be Teddy Grainger.
So Teddy Grainger it is.
Anyways, Queenie and Ms Beach go up to Teddy's house a few times a week now (and Kitty too), because he's got a home gym in his basement. Right next to the F1 car in his garage, although I think the car was being collected this morning, so no more throbbing house when I'm running myself to a standstill.
We do an hour - run on the treadmill and the cycling thing and the crosstrainer, and Queenie does some yoga stretches, and then we go home to eat dinner and have a glass of wine.
Very healthy.
Well, it is when you consider the alternative.
Queenie had to start working out. It is THAT TIME IN HER THIRTIES.
I do find it terribly boring though.
Anyways, Teddy had to pick his top bands for the greatest band on earth ever competition so he picked The Eagles (that's the Johnny Pleasant side of his personality coming through I think).
I am going to have to organise some kind of structured weekend of listening for us to arrive at some consensus on which band will get the title.
And the exciting news is, Mike and Cate our previous next door neighbours are coming to Halifax for a month this summer!
Much washer toss/ camping/ sitting around talking about librarianship/ drinking of beer/ BBQ-ing will ensue.
You better pick your blog names, then!!
Friday, May 23, 2008
The wonders of technology
So, I'm browsing my site meter by referrals, and I come across a google search for a friend of mine, Nadia, who is a teacher in Co. Galway, Ireland.
And what do I find only her teacher ratings!!
Found her the most interesting teacher of the lot. Great communicate with us unlike most. I had her for only one year. to this day and a few years have by since. i still remember her lovely perfume.x
Body Shop White Musk if I remember correctly. Although it might have changed. To this day, if I smell it in a shop or a bus, I whip round, expecting to see her.
11/15/06 lovely person even tho she appears scary in the halls.sucha a nice teacher to have especially for the leaving! bcause of her i really like german and am doing it now in college!
I don't think she appears scary. I think she actually is scary. But you're right, she is a lovely person.
3/29/06 can teach a class and listen to what each student has to say aswell as getting everyone to enjoy class
Wow! When I knew her, back in the day, all she did was talk in class! She must have grown up since.
Hilarious. Spot on. But nothing I didn't already know.
What I don't know is, who got from there to here.
Mysterious....
OKAY!! Am leaving now. Honestly.
And what do I find only her teacher ratings!!
Found her the most interesting teacher of the lot. Great communicate with us unlike most. I had her for only one year. to this day and a few years have by since. i still remember her lovely perfume.x
Body Shop White Musk if I remember correctly. Although it might have changed. To this day, if I smell it in a shop or a bus, I whip round, expecting to see her.
11/15/06 lovely person even tho she appears scary in the halls.sucha a nice teacher to have especially for the leaving! bcause of her i really like german and am doing it now in college!
I don't think she appears scary. I think she actually is scary. But you're right, she is a lovely person.
3/29/06 can teach a class and listen to what each student has to say aswell as getting everyone to enjoy class
Wow! When I knew her, back in the day, all she did was talk in class! She must have grown up since.
Hilarious. Spot on. But nothing I didn't already know.
What I don't know is, who got from there to here.
Mysterious....
OKAY!! Am leaving now. Honestly.
Kitty's room
Kitty ate an entire bowl of high fibre cereal without being prompted to before she went to school this morning.
I was in such a state of delighted shock I pretended not to see.
So I didn't see her not put the bowl in the dishwasher.
... Baby steps...
So I washed her white clothes that got make up on them and changed her sheets and made her bed today and *tidied* her room as a thank you for the baby step.
On my day off.
Day off paid work.
Half a bottle of Febreze later... we're all good.
Judging by the smell in the room, a certain familiar Himself in need of a new pair of shoes damp smell, I think she may need a new pair of trainers.
Why, oh why do we have to purchase an entire wardrobe for her every time she comes up here?
Doesn't anyone else ever buy her any clothes??
Silly question.
Forget I asked.
*tidying involves putting everything on the floor into the trunk, less evidence of whatever teenage preening etc activity to see/ despair over when it's done in a scooping motion.
I was in such a state of delighted shock I pretended not to see.
So I didn't see her not put the bowl in the dishwasher.
... Baby steps...
So I washed her white clothes that got make up on them and changed her sheets and made her bed today and *tidied* her room as a thank you for the baby step.
On my day off.
Day off paid work.
Half a bottle of Febreze later... we're all good.
Judging by the smell in the room, a certain familiar Himself in need of a new pair of shoes damp smell, I think she may need a new pair of trainers.
Why, oh why do we have to purchase an entire wardrobe for her every time she comes up here?
Doesn't anyone else ever buy her any clothes??
Silly question.
Forget I asked.
*tidying involves putting everything on the floor into the trunk, less evidence of whatever teenage preening etc activity to see/ despair over when it's done in a scooping motion.
This is the last one - 1001 books you must read before you die 1700s and previous
This is the list that sorts the English Grads out from the boys.
There are 59 books on this list. Queenie has read 19 of them. Mostly because she had to.
OKAY, we're done ruining my blog with lists of books.... onto more useful activities.
Hyperion – Friedrich Hölderlin
The Nun – Denis Diderot
Camilla – Fanny Burney
The Monk – M.G. Lewis
Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The Mysteries of Udolpho – Ann Radcliffe
The Interesting Narrative – Olaudah Equiano
The Adventures of Caleb Williams – William Godwin
Justine – Marquis de Sade Q
Vathek – William Beckford
The 120 Days of Sodom – Marquis de Sade
Cecilia – Fanny Burney
Confessions – Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Dangerous Liaisons – Pierre Choderlos de Laclos
Reveries of a Solitary Walker – Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Evelina – Fanny Burney
The Sorrows of Young Werther – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Humphrey Clinker – Tobias George Smollett Q
The Man of Feeling – Henry Mackenzie
A Sentimental Journey – Laurence Sterne Q
Tristram Shandy – Laurence Sterne Q
The Vicar of Wakefield – Oliver Goldsmith Q
The Castle of Otranto – Horace Walpole
Émile; or, On Education – Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Rameau’s Nephew – Denis Diderot
Julie; or, the New Eloise – Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Rasselas – Samuel Johnson
Candide – Voltaire
The Female Quixote – Charlotte Lennox
Amelia – Henry Fielding Q
Peregrine Pickle – Tobias George Smollett
Fanny Hill – John Cleland
Tom Jones – Henry Fielding Q
Roderick Random – Tobias George Smollett Q
Clarissa – Samuel Richardson Q
Pamela – Samuel Richardson Q
Jacques the Fatalist – Denis Diderot
Memoirs of Martinus Scriblerus – J. Arbuthnot, J. Gay, T. Parnell, A. Pope, J. Swift
Joseph Andrews – Henry Fielding
A Modest Proposal – Jonathan Swift Q
Gulliver’s Travels – Jonathan Swift Q
Roxana – Daniel Defoe
Moll Flanders – Daniel Defoe Q
Love in Excess – Eliza Haywood
Robinson Crusoe – Daniel Defoe Q
A Tale of a Tub – Jonathan Swift
Pre-1700
Oroonoko – Aphra Behn
The Princess of Clèves – Marie-Madelaine Pioche de Lavergne, Comtesse de La Fayette
The Pilgrim’s Progress – John Bunyan
Don Quixote – Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra Q
The Unfortunate Traveller – Thomas Nashe
Euphues: The Anatomy of Wit – John Lyly
Gargantua and Pantagruel – Françoise Rabelais
The Thousand and One Nights – Anonymous Q
The Golden Ass – Lucius Apuleius
Aithiopika – Heliodorus
Chaireas and Kallirhoe – Chariton
Metamorphoses – Ovid Q
Aesop’s Fables – Aesopus Q
There are 59 books on this list. Queenie has read 19 of them. Mostly because she had to.
OKAY, we're done ruining my blog with lists of books.... onto more useful activities.
Hyperion – Friedrich Hölderlin
The Nun – Denis Diderot
Camilla – Fanny Burney
The Monk – M.G. Lewis
Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The Mysteries of Udolpho – Ann Radcliffe
The Interesting Narrative – Olaudah Equiano
The Adventures of Caleb Williams – William Godwin
Justine – Marquis de Sade Q
Vathek – William Beckford
The 120 Days of Sodom – Marquis de Sade
Cecilia – Fanny Burney
Confessions – Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Dangerous Liaisons – Pierre Choderlos de Laclos
Reveries of a Solitary Walker – Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Evelina – Fanny Burney
The Sorrows of Young Werther – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Humphrey Clinker – Tobias George Smollett Q
The Man of Feeling – Henry Mackenzie
A Sentimental Journey – Laurence Sterne Q
Tristram Shandy – Laurence Sterne Q
The Vicar of Wakefield – Oliver Goldsmith Q
The Castle of Otranto – Horace Walpole
Émile; or, On Education – Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Rameau’s Nephew – Denis Diderot
Julie; or, the New Eloise – Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Rasselas – Samuel Johnson
Candide – Voltaire
The Female Quixote – Charlotte Lennox
Amelia – Henry Fielding Q
Peregrine Pickle – Tobias George Smollett
Fanny Hill – John Cleland
Tom Jones – Henry Fielding Q
Roderick Random – Tobias George Smollett Q
Clarissa – Samuel Richardson Q
Pamela – Samuel Richardson Q
Jacques the Fatalist – Denis Diderot
Memoirs of Martinus Scriblerus – J. Arbuthnot, J. Gay, T. Parnell, A. Pope, J. Swift
Joseph Andrews – Henry Fielding
A Modest Proposal – Jonathan Swift Q
Gulliver’s Travels – Jonathan Swift Q
Roxana – Daniel Defoe
Moll Flanders – Daniel Defoe Q
Love in Excess – Eliza Haywood
Robinson Crusoe – Daniel Defoe Q
A Tale of a Tub – Jonathan Swift
Pre-1700
Oroonoko – Aphra Behn
The Princess of Clèves – Marie-Madelaine Pioche de Lavergne, Comtesse de La Fayette
The Pilgrim’s Progress – John Bunyan
Don Quixote – Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra Q
The Unfortunate Traveller – Thomas Nashe
Euphues: The Anatomy of Wit – John Lyly
Gargantua and Pantagruel – Françoise Rabelais
The Thousand and One Nights – Anonymous Q
The Golden Ass – Lucius Apuleius
Aithiopika – Heliodorus
Chaireas and Kallirhoe – Chariton
Metamorphoses – Ovid Q
Aesop’s Fables – Aesopus Q
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