Corner of Bourbon & Division

I had a fantastic day.

I hadn't spent much time with toughlovemuse and owldaughter in a while, and especially not all together. We had a blast. There were biscuits and muffins, carrot cake preserves and clotted cream, baked brie with onion jam, and tea sandwiches (with the crusts cut off!) and delicious tea. We ate so much food I'm amazed any of us could walk at all at the end of the day.

toughlovemuse got a ton of crocheting done, and I'm sure owldaughter got a ridiculous amount of words written, the way she usually does, and I actually did get a bit of writing in. My computer threw a temper tantrum and decided that it didn't like the electricity at owldaughter's house, so I did most of my work longhand. Not too many words, but it's the first fiction I've written since August, and that was a couple of little things. Before that, I hadn't written since November 15th, 2007. Hopefully I'll be able to turn around this whole slump.

When we weren't working, we chatted and giggled so hard that I had tears in my eyes on occasion. We discussed a huge range of topics, from books to why one would read an author's blog when one hasn't read any of his books. We commiserated with owldaughter about having to provide feedback on truly awful romance novel manuscripts, joked about marauding dairy products, and generally had what is known as a Good Day.

I was going to treat myself to the new James Bond movie tonight, but it was sold out when I tried to buy tickets. It came out today, so I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that the 22:00 show was sold out at 20:30.

Nonetheless, I had a productive —and kind of expensive— evening downtown. I suppose it's a blessing that I didn't get to spend a ton of money on James Bond, because I bought a bunch of books while I was downtown. I've been in the habit of picking up the books in series I like, but often enough I can't find them in order, and so I kind of have random numbers of each series. This drives me nuts, because *cough*slightlyOCD*cough* I can only re-read books in a series by starting them in order and reading from first to last.

Yeah.

Anyway, so I went out and completed a bunch of my incomplete series tonight. I also found a book that I'd been looking for for months so I am feeling smug. Bwah.

foi_nefaste once mentioned that I never talk about books in my LJ, although I am an avid reader, and she's quite right. I am considering making a weekly "feature" in my LJ, a bit like bodhifox's Thankful Thursdays and Tuesday Tune-Ups, in which I'll talk about a book, or many books, or even *gasp* a whole genre. I haven't done anything like a book review or lit. crit. in many, many years, so we'll see if I've forgotten everything or not.

Busy weekend ahead. Then it's back to work on Monday.

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. ;)

Elizabeth Peters is an evil, evil woman. The more I read, the more I want. I got my hands on a copy of "The Falcon At the Portal" and it just about broke my heart in twelve separate pieces. Wah! Nefret! Wah! Ramses! Waaaaaaah!

:::gets stabbed repeatedly in heart by cruel, merciless author:::

I can't begin to imagine how hard it must have been for her to do that to her characters. owldaughter is entirely to blame for my current heartbreak: she introduced me to the series.


In other news, work is work. I have so many things going on these days that I have no time at all to post about them, and more stuff is piling itself on top of that, and yet I still have to wedge sleep in there somewhere. Sleep-deprived!Phnee is not a fun Phnee, let me tell you.

Let's make a grocery list of stuff that's taking place in Phnee's existence these days:

( This got long... )

Anyway, that's what I'm up to these days (and in the near future). I had a lovely chat on the phone with joane and shenlo later on. I looked up their number on canada411.com, since for some reason I didn't have it. I'm not much of a phone person as a rule, but I thought it was high time we have a voice-to-voice conversation as opposed to just an online chat. Not that those aren't a great way of communicating, but sometimes it's nice to hear people's voices on the other end of the line. Also, I got to squee in person about Yet Another Fantasy Gamer Comic, which is all to the good. :)

Now I'm going to bed. Might post a poll about the aforementioned filter first, but then definitely bed. :)

I'm going to bed right after this, promise.

Very fun and productive writing jam with toughlovemuse tonight. One day she will learn not to be polite with me and tell me to shut up when she needs to concentrate. ;) However, I got a fair bit of writing done on my swan story (which still doesn't have a title), and the macaroni and cheese was delicious. Not to mention that chibipunkdemon (at the behest of his lovely wife) made the ultimate sacrifice and went out to the store to buy Fig Newtons. They only had Date Newtons apparently, but it was close enough. Clearly, toughlovemuse has lucked out in her choice of husbands.

The CAM is driving me batshit. 'Nuff said.


My sleep patterns have gone all wonky. Mostly I've been having annoying panic attacks in the middle of the night which prevent me from sleeping properly. I sort of almost wake up, gripped with [insert completely stupid and irrational fear here| and still halfway dreaming, and I stay that way for anywhere from thirty seconds to twenty minutes, until I can wake myself up completely. Then I have to get myself back to sleep properly. Lather, rinse, repeat. Repeat that two or three times a night, and you have yourself some pretty damned broken sleep.

Up until today I was functioning pretty well, but at work today I noticed that my mood swung severely into the "cranky" zone. I was planning on taking a Seroquel tonight, which my meds doc told me I should do if my sleep ever gets way out of whack again, but it tends to knock me out for a very long time, and I got home late tonight. So, rather than either oversleep tomorrow or else be a zombie all day, I shall cross my fingers and hope for a good night's sleep, and if not I shall take the Seroquel tomorrow night.

In other news, I am enjoying "A Feast For Crows" a good deal, although so far I am missing some of my favourite characters, aned other characters I don't care about as much, but about whom I'd still like to hear. Tyrion and Bran and Daenerys and all those folk. I wonder if they'll be in the other half of the book that didn't get published. I really like poor Podrik Payne. He breaks my heart.

Okay. I had more to say, but my brain is melting. Bed.