December 21, 2005
A little bit of proof that the world is a good place
Yesterday we received a Christmas card from Northern Ireland that our friend forgot to stamp!
December 21, 2005
The Eskimo Way
Christmas has eaten our social life in the most delightful way. We’re busy every day and even double-booked some. And enjoying days spent doing exactly what we want. Chocolate has become perhaps too dear a friend however. We will have to be chary. Just finished “The Pursuit of Love” by the right hilarious Nancy Mitford, and onto a Penelope Lively book. Quite happily busy with a story of my own. And the world is a winter wonderland.
December 16, 2005
Break out the good china
There is something a bit awful about being on vacation from a job you mostly hate. Every day spent brings you closer to returning there, you’re so exhausted from hating your job that you can’t be bothered to do anything. It’s like vacation is a small window in your prison wall, and they let you look out from it once in awhile. But when you’re on vacation from school, it’s another matter altogether. A brief reprieve from a life that’s usually remarkably pleasant, and then you throw yourself into high gear and vow to do all the things you’ve been putting off for months. Like spending whole days reading. And then you do your Christmas baking (because you’re a wife and you’re obligated), and you finish off the Christmas cards and you can relax and do what you like, knowing there is nothing else you should be doing. And the snow doesn’t signs of stopping, but you’ve got some corn for popping. And you’re entertaining nearly every day next week. Break out the good china. Or at least you would if you had good china. Today is party preparations- mainly consisting of floor scrubbing. My essay was handed in at two p.m. yesterday. Christmas vacation when you’re a student is a lot like standing on a mountaintop.
Another run of “Spring Comes Suddenly” is now available (or will be as soon as I bind them, which will be today). These have green covers but are equally lovely as the last, and are practically being given away for the low low price of $5.
Now reading “Play It As It Lays” by Joan Didion. She is profiled in today’s Guardian. UK women of the year. I’m getting all my federal election coverage from the Conservative Youth Blog (link via Live Free Or Die) but they haven’t updated in days! There is however a photo of Stephen Harper wearing a hoodie. And no jacket! It can’t be. They must have just pasted his head upon someone else’s body.
December 13, 2005
The best 1095 days ever
To three years of Pickle Me This in love on three continents, through thick and thin (not to mention fat and thin), and with many more to come.
December 13, 2005
Knowledge Gaps
I was stunned yesterday by a woman in the bookstore who was perhaps ten years older than me and who, as I overheard, was not ashamed to admit that she didn’t know during which years the Second World War had been fought.
However I do not know if my Christmas tree is a spruce or a pine (though I am pretty sure it’s not a maple) and I don’t know if my own ignorance is any less troubling.
December 13, 2005
York is the new New York
Oh Toronto, Toronto. That sweet snow-coated city that so called me home is the centre of the universe. The literary universe at least. Vanity Fair says so.
December 11, 2005
Gleanings
More McSweeneys pop song correspondences, A LETTER TO ELTON JOHN FROM THE OFFICE OF THE NASA ADMINISTRATOR. A sample: ‘After demanding data from you for days, you were only able to offer this insight: “Mars ain’t the kind of place to raise your kids. In fact, it’s cold as hell. And there’s no one there to raise them if you did.” First off, if you did what? That doesn’t even make sense. Secondly, we did not send you up there to evaluate whether Mars is fit for human habitation or child rearing. Thirdly, your mission was not even going to Mars.'” On a lifetime spent with books. How Woolfian: how to read a book. And no federal election coverage, because it’s so damn boring!
Essay WordCount: 2300
December 11, 2005
Oh Tenenbaum, you're a wild and crazy guy
The end of a long fiasco. I wasted last evening needles in hand, watching “Bounce” starring the legendary Paltrow and Affleck. We went shopping this morning and found nothing we needed. Downtown Toronto is devoid of nanaimo bar ingredients. Someone has stolen all the bolts from the Christmas tree stands at WalMart and of course we were actually in WalMart. All the trees were either bundled or the Charlie Brown Special at the store near our house. We finally located a stand at the local mom and pop, and took our chances on a bundled tree. (We swore we would love it no matter how it turned out). Still no nanaimos though. And of course I haven’t even started my essay (though I have written the title and my name and that’s a start technically) but perhaps now I can concentrate on it. Christmas is officially here at Pickle Me This! See below for our freshly knit stockings and our rather lovely tree (which doesn’t yet have anything atop it but there will be time).
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Now reading “Pearls in Vinegar” by Heather Mallick, which I am enjoying but only because I am obsessed with Heather Mallick. Those without Mallick obsessions would be far from interested. I also read “Negotiating with the Dead: A Writer on Writing” by Margaret Atwood (which I could pretend pertained to my essay) which was good. And finally reading “A Fine Old Conflict” by Jessica Mitford, which is odd because I haven’t read a Mitford bio since the Mitford obsession of 2003 and I feel as though I have gone back in time.
Now preparing for our Christmas party. If I haven’t invited you, considered yourself invited anyway. There is going to be a lot of food! Paul and Bronwyn are coming home this week, Bronwyn with her Alex and Paul sans his lovely girl so we’ll have to console him (with a lot of food!).
December 7, 2005
I am a librartarian
I think the library is the closest I’ll ever get to undertanding what it must be like to be conservative in our time, to look about and see all the values you hold dear thrown by the wayside, moral decline in the name of progress. It’s absolutely heartbreaking.
Exams are nearly upon us at the University of Toronto, and consequently the libraries are teeming with scholarly hordes violating those sacred places. The carrels are cracking with candy wrappers and buzzing with cell-phones, the stacks are full of books people continue to write in, the computers are occupied with people on instant messenger, the student lounge echoes throughout the entire building, wireless access fails for five minutes and all hell breaks loose. In my job, when I inform students that they should not be eating in the library or speaking on their phones, never does anyone apologise and realise the error of their ways (unsurprisingly, as they are eating with “No Eating”/”No Cell Phones” signs staring them in the face), or even just apologise. Instead they tell me to fuck off, either with words or their facial expressions.
I believe passionately that libraries are sacred places, and in sacred places we don’t eat and drink, and our cell-phones don’t ring. We don’t talk above whispers, we don’t scratch our initials into furniture. I believe that people who keep overdue books are immoral and undermining the foundations of our society. When the librarian tells you to shush, you shush my friend. You are in a house of godliness.
But alas, no one else seems to think so. The old road is rapidly fading.
December 5, 2005
Hobby Time
I finished my first Christmas stocking tonight, and though far from perfect it resembles a Christmas stocking. Ya ta!
