Corner of Bourbon & Division

Especially when you haven't done much writing in months. Capricornucopia is coming along, but very slowly. Mostly I'm having trouble pulling it all together. With any luck and a bit of perseverance I'll be able to get it to work, although I will confess to not feeling super excited about it this year, for reasons I've detailed already. More people have cancelled or declined since then, which is further demoralizing.

Still, I'm at least entertaining myself by trying to work in as many Hamilton references as I can manage. I am late to the Hamilton party, but I have been listening to it in the car for the past few weeks, and it's every bit as great as everyone has been saying it is.

I hope to come back with a longer post tomorrow or maybe Sunday, once Capricornucopia has come and gone. I do try to get a report written up every year, even if it's a relatively brief one, so I will make an effort this year to be diligent about it and be detailed, if events warrant it.

I'm heading in early in order to have breakfast with my parents, too, so that will be nice. I haven't seen them in person since Christmas, and a lot has happened in the interim. My mother has gotten into the alarming habit of falling. She's going to be eighty in March, and her balance isn't too great, on top of the arthritis in her hip. Ten days ago or so she took a header into a window at a grocery store, and came out of it with a goose egg on her forehead and two black eyes. I already gave her a really hard time for not going directly to the emergency room to be checked for a concussion, and we all got lucky this time, as there's no lasting harm other than the bruising. I wish she weren't so stubborn and would at least use a cane when she goes out, but arguing with her is like trying to melt an iceberg with a Zippo. I'll have another go at her tomorrow over breakfast, at least.

On that note, I should get back to writing my script. It's not going to write itself, unfortunately.

I haven't thought of a good title for this post yet. With any luck one will come to me before I have to hit "post" at the end. I don't think I've ever posted an untitled entry here, though doubtless many of my titles have been unimaginative or along the lines of "I can't think of a title." The more things change, I guess...

I was awake for half the night, mostly just worrying about everything. Hadn't done that in a few months, but I guess there's no time like the present. :P

So, yeah, I am even more tired than usual today. One day, I might not be tired. Today is not that day.

I've hit a rough patch with my writing. ( Long-winded explanation behind the cut )

Anyway, on to even more depressing stuff. Québec is having elections! Again! Whee! /o\

I am so glad I no longer have to vote in this province, but I'm still going to get the brunt of all the election nonsense anyway. I still live here part of the time, after all, and Ottawa is close enough that we get all of the Québec news. We have to monitor the news at work anyway, so instead of the Commission Charbonneau all the time (which was so depressing it made me want to slit my wrists), now it'll be Québec elections all the time. *sigh* At least it's only three weeks. I don't understand how Americans do it, it must be like being in a constant state of siege, constantly having elections going on. I'd be exhausted.

My main beef with the political parties in Québec is that it truly feels like there are no good leftist options anymore. The PQ is theoretically to the left, but as my favourite joke goes: "Ils clignotent à gauche, mais ils virent à droite." (They signal left, but turn right instead. It's funnier before translation, trust me.) They're also racist and bigoted and hate the anglo community and insist on being fucking separatists. I can't. I won't vote Liberal, because they're corrupt and on top of that I don't agree with 95% of their economic policies, not to mention that they're basically Conservatives who've taken on the Liberal title. That leaves the CAQ, who are so far to the right (by local standards) that it makes me a little sick, and Québec Solidaire, who are leftists but also separatists and who don't appear to have viable economic policies anyway.

*throws up hands*

Bah.

Politics make me hate everything.

In better news, luvenditti is coming for a visit today, which means that pdaughter has made chocolate chip cookies! That was after the Banoffee Pie that she made on Monday. Nothing beats coming home to extraordinary baked goods, let me tell you. Delicious.

How is the time going by so quickly? I swear, it feels like it was Christmas yesterday.

Because I'd been sent on training courses the past two weeks, it's actually been a while since I worked a full night shift, and so it's sort of kicking my ass this time around. It's a little frightening how quickly I readjust to a daytime schedule. I am not a night owl, never have been. I enjoy going to bed by 22:00 (23:00 at the latest) and getting up around 07:00. That's what my body does naturally, after a few weeks of time off. I don't need an alarm, that's the way my circadian rhythms roll. Of course, this almost never happens, because I rarely have time off, and when I do it's not long enough for my body to reset completely, so unless I set an alarm (or Bean wakes me, or whatever), then I can easily sleep in way past 07:00.

I got a bit of writing done last night, which was nice. It wasn't on any of my current projects, but it was nice to at least get some fiction down on the screen. Perhaps tonight, if work remains quiet, I'll actually manage to work on one of my big projects for the year. It'd be nice to produce something I can get paid for at some point. This month, due to money that we're expecting not coming in for a while yet, things are very very tight. Tight to the point of making me worry if I'll have enough money for gas to get back to Montreal on Monday.

I tried doing the 2nd job thing last year, but as it turns out my memory of hating everything about translating was completely accurate. Much like the last time I did it for a living, it ratcheted up my anxiety to near-unbearable levels. So, that's out. I'm at a loss of what I can do to earn extra income (aside from writing, because while I know it CAN be a source of income, I'm a long ways away from getting anything published. I'd have to finish one of my projects, for one thing), because translation is essentially my one other marketable skill. I do know how to edit & proofread, but I have no formal training and no background to speak of (beta-ing fanfiction doesn't count, pretty sure).

If I worked a different kind of job, I could take on part-time work somewhere. Working a retail/service job would be fine, for what I need. The problem is that my schedule simply won't allow for that. I'd never be able to give my second boss a clear idea of when I'd be available. Also, I'd never be reliably free on nights or weekends, which is when a lot of part-time jobs want people to work. Argh.

Right, moving on.

In unrelated but hilarious news, J. K. Rowling, who refuses to shut up and let her art be art, has come on record as saying she now regrets putting Hermione and Ron together, stating that she did it for personal reasons at the time, but that now "distance has given [her] perspective," and she thinks they're terrible for each other. The internet has re-exploded back into Harry/Hermione vs Ron/Hermione ship wars, seven years later, and mostly I think someone should shove Rowling into a cupboard until she can learn to hold her tongue. I say this with love, and as someone who never had a pony in this particular race. My own love for Harry Potter fell very much in the gen. category, and while the Harry/Ginny thing felt forced, I never much cared one way or another.

A Twitter friend suggested taking Harry Potter away from her now, like taking a drunk's car keys away before they hurt themselves.

"I'm not done."

"We think you've had enough."

"But the relationship between--"

"No. C'mon, let's go let's get you home. You'll feel better in the morning."

"I SHOULD'VE DONE IT DIFFERENTLY!"

"Shh, it's okay, just a few more stairs."

*J.K. Rowling throws up more opinions on the carpet before being put to bed*

Today was Power Point Day. Much like last week I ended up learning quite a lot. Oddly I learned less than I did last week, mostly because this week was truly a beginner-level PPT course and last week we covered more advanced topics in Word. That being said, I did learn what I was hoping to learn, namely how to make bullet points and other stuff in PPT do the fancy twirling/fading/sliding/flashing thing. I am now reasonably sure that I can pull off a decent, if somewhat basic, Power Point presentation if I have to.

I bought myself a new notebook today. The one I have carried around with me since 2008 is battered beyond recognition and is falling apart. So I have been transcribing the information in it that's still relevant, and leaving the rest behind. I'm a little sad at "losing" that stuff, which is weird since it's mostly phone numbers that are horribly out of date and grocery lists and to-do lists from years ago, but it feels like I'm tossing away part of my history. Of course that's not true, but I'm feeling a little twinge nonetheless. I'm also not transcribing some of the longer quotes I had in there before. For one thing, I haven't looked at them in a while, and for another, they are easily found elsewhere if I truly need to read/use them again.

The new notebook is also a little more compact, which means it fits better in my purse. So hooray for that!

I got some writing done, too, which was nice. I came home from my class, puttered for a while, did some cleaning/dishes, and then buckled down and wrote about 800 words of fan fiction. It's nice to be slowly getting back into the swing of writing, even if I don't have as much time as I'd like to devote to it these days. I also finished writing the outline of the novel I'd like to complete this year, and either tonight or tomorrow I shall transcribe it into Scrivener to see if that helps me get a sense of how it's working out. I've never been much of an outliner, but I'm beginning more and more to see that outlining is beneficial for my stories, to prevent me from meandering off into why-is-section-even-here-it-should-be-purged-and-burned territory with my writing.

Speaking of devoting time to stuff, I remembered today to do a 5-minute mindfulness exercise. I have an app on my phone that has 5, 10, 15, 20, 30 and 40 minute meditations, and right now they're a good way to keep my mind a little more focussed than my trying to do it all on my own. I'm starting with 5 minutes a day, and I'll see how it goes from there.

I have been remiss about answering everyone's comments in previous posts, but I want you to know I do read them all and appreciate every single one!

Work has put me in a mandatory Word class today. I wasn't too thrilled, because it means getting home later than I normally would, and as it's the week of Capricornucopia it's extremely inconvenient.

That being said, I'm actually learning a lot of small things that are going to end up making my life a lot easier in the long run. Re-learning how to use tabs for the best effect possible, how to make tables, and most importantly the art of numbered lists and bulleted lists. I'd been fumbling my way through all of these things before, mostly by trial and error, and now I am confident that I'll be able to go forward with a whole lot less screwing around in my documents.

So I can safely say that I have learned something new today, which means the day wasn't wasted! I am especially excited about the lists, because I use those a lot, especially when I'm writing story outlines.

In other news, I have finished writing the outline of the novel I started last year. I'm hoping to start the actual writing next week when I get back to Ottawa, maybe.

I'm not sure it's worth updating if I feel as though I have nothing to say, but then that's the kind of thinking that made me stop posting to LiveJournal completely, so maybe I will blather on witlessly for a while.

Tomorrow I shall make a quick Christmas recap post. For some reason, on the computer at work, the LiveJournal interface is absolute crap no matter which browser I use. I get weird overlapping white windows that prevent me from seeing drop-down menus (like for selecting a mood or a userpic) and the tag selection box, and whenever I try to add in pictures it doesn't show me the code at all. So I'm at once perplexed and annoyed and have no idea how to fix it. At least on my own computer these things don't happen. So tomorrow there will be a more picture-ful entry with details about Christmas.

Overall we had a great day yesterday. I was up first at 7:00 in order to take a shower, and pdaughter got up at the same time. Bean was up 15 minutes later, so she was able to capture his reaction to the Christmas tree and all the presents on film. The morning was spent very pleasantly opening presents, and pdaughter's father showed up around 9:30 or 10:00 to make the gathering complete. Unfortunately I had to leave for work by 1pm, but the morning made it well worth it. I'm just sad I wasn't able to stay longer to watch Bean play with his new toys.

Work, thankfully enough, has been pretty quiet. I've been finishing up the Soopar Seekrit Prodgikt, which, as some of you know, was the 4th Doctor's scarf, which I was making for pdaughter for Christmas. I'm busily weaving in ends, and once that's done I need to attach the tassels. This has to be by far the longest project I've ever worked on, including the Baby Blanket of Doom of 2009. Thus far, because I am a slow knitter, I think I've put about 70 hours of work into this thing.

( Boring planning stuff behind the cut )

So the metro got closed for emergency reasons today, forcing me to walk much of the way to work.

My first thought? ZOMBIES!

Good thing I'm writing the sequel to the zombie novel this year, eh?

Okay, so Day 2 of Humping the Camel is here.

Also, Midnight Crossroads has the latest installment of "Beyond the Pale," and "Conflation" will go up on Thursday.

Dear Muse,

Thank you for visiting, it was very nice. However, did you really have to keep me up until 03:00? Yes, I know I'm on vacation, and I know that I'm a grown-up and should know when to go to bed, and it's not *quite* like you twisted my arm, but for the love of Pete!

Anyway, yes. Thanks for the visit, I had a great time.

Love,

Me

I've been too busy to post. I keep telling myself that I should write posts in here that aren't "here's what I did while I wasn't posting" entries, but I never seem to get around to writing those meaningful, insightful entries. I rather think that I don't have any to write. I've lost the knack of writing analytical text ever since I left university. Besides, I don't know that I'd want to inflict my essay-writing skills on my beleaguered flist, as I seem to recall that I bored myself silly with my own academic writing. I remembered wondering who would ever want to read such dry stuff as I was able to produce. It's not that it wasn't good —it was just really, really dry going.

Anyway, I've had a busy couple of weeks.
I saw an old friend of mine from high school last Saturday, although we didn't have much time to actually catch up as he had to go back to his office right after lunch (he's a lawyer). We did have a nice chat, and wandered through Atwater Market before he had to go, and it was really nice to see him again. Of all my friends in high school (of which there admittedly weren't many), he was the one with whom I got along the best. We're supposed to meet up again at some point in the near future, which ought to be nice. After that I got treated to a lovely private concert in the living room of some family friends, and spent the afternoon and better part of the evening making slightly awkward small talk with three roomfuls of people I didn't know and with whom I had nothing in common. Still, the concert was quite nice. The violinist was a young man, somewhere between nineteen and twenty-one, and he's quite promising. His playing was very adept, although it lacked depth and intonation, but with time I'm guessing he'll turn out quite well.

Sunday was spent hiding from the world recovering from that stupid migraine which started late on Saturday. Annoying in the extreme, as it was a gorgeous day out.

Monday was a writing jam with owldaughter, in which I got more writing done in one morning than I had in the past four weeks combined. I'm finally getting back into my ongoing YA novel, and I'd like to have it finished by the end of the year. I might "cheat" and make finishing it my NaNoWriMo project for this year. Either that or I'll write another horror novel, since they appear to write themselves for me.

I forget what I did on Tuesday, but I do remember that I had to be out of the house stupidly early to do it. That's probably why I don't remember: I was still half-asleep. ;)

I met up with ai731 on Wednesday morning, and she taught me the mysteries of canning. It's a really fun process, I assume more fun because there were two of us. We went through about three-quarters of the 20lb bag of apples I'd picked, and made apple sauce, apple butter (so very yummmy!) and an apple cake based on her grandmother's recipe, which was so very very delicious that I brought it to work with me so that I wouldn't be tempted to eat the entire thing by myself. I brought half to work, and ai731 kept the other half, naturally. I had to abandon ship just before the end of the session, as I had to go to work, and I just received the last three jars of apple sauce last night. I am very pleased with how the whole thing turned out.

Thursday was spent driving my mother around so she could get some errands done without spending the whole day doing it. Since she doesn't drive, and generally gets around pretty slowly anyway, it's easier for her if I occasionally spend a morning driving her around, and I don't mind doing it in the slightest. I tend to lose my mind if I spend too much time with my parents, but a couple of times a week is enough for me to keep my sanity.

Friday's Ubisoft lunch got canceled for me due to the (not unexpected) passing of my great-aunt Margot at the age of 93. I have very fond memories of her, and of going to her apartment in the Linton for a New Year's Day luncheon every year until I was about eight or nine. After that she moved to a smaller place (I believe it was a residence for relatively independent retired folk who only needed minimal amounts of help to get through the day), and she became a little too frail to be able to put on the spread she really wanted to. None of her three daughters ever kept up with the tradition, and so I sort of lost track of her for a while. We still saw her at the larger family gatherings, but it wasn't really the same.

The funeral itself was interrupted when my cousin Ophelie (the youngest of all the cousins, and one of the two cousins near my age with whom I actually keep up and get along) suffered some kind of seizure or syncope in the middle of the service. She was sitting right next to my father, and the next thing we knew she had turned a horrid shade of green, her eyes rolled back in her head, and she slumped forward. Luckily my aunt (not Ophelie's mother, but another aunt) is a nurse and took over immediately. I was rather grateful not to have to step in and apply my limited first aid skills to the situation. Someone produced a cell phone (a blackberry, I think) and called 911. I spent most of the time keeping people from crowding around, and reassuring people that no, it wasn't taking as long as they thought for the ambulance to get there. I timed it, see, and it took nine minutes from the moment the call was placed to the time the paramedics got there. In times of crisis, people's perception of how quickly time elapses gets seriously distorted.

My mother spoke to my cousin yesterday, as well as my aunt. Ophelie is doing okay, as it turns out, but she's going to have to see a neurologist, as her symptoms were quite alarming (swelling in the throat, stiffening of the extremities, extremely elevated heartrate, etc.). My mother, in true keeping with her nature, has invited her to dinner next Sunday.

After the funeral I took my mother to Juliette & Chocolat for lunch. Egads, it should be illegal to make chocolate that good. I have rarely had anything quite that sinful. I must go back.

Yesterday I got shanghaied by my parents into helping them shop for appliances. God help me. The less said about that, the better. The day improved immeasurably by the time I got to luvenditti's for dinner, and had a wonderful time with all my friends, chatting about movies and books and games and food and all the usual things we end up talking about at these events. I borrowed the movie "Clue" and watched it last night: it's a great deal of fun.

All right, the rest of my day beckons. More updates when I have something to say. ;)