Because of a schedule shuffle, I got home early today. Which means that I can make one last valiant effort to hit my personal NaNo goal for this year.
I have my thinking cap on, so off I go!
(Cross-posted to my NaNoWriMo blog; link to the left)
Michael Schaub remembers the Pogues at Bookslut.
I love the Pogues, especially their cover of the Rolling Stone’s Honky Tonk Women, and their version of Wild Rover they did with Soldat Louis. For me, the Christmas season doesn’t start until I hear Fairytale in New York on the radio. I was disappointed when Shane MacGowan left the band, and wasn’t fond of his new project, Shane MacGowan and the Popes.
A (sort of) reunion would be cool.
…mostly, it involved vegging. In front of the computer. Ostensibly, I was working on my NaNo story, which I did make some headway on. I won’t be hitting 50,000 words by Tuesday night, and it was a nice fantasy of mine, believing that I would get anywhere close to that, seeing as November is generally a hectic month for me. If I hit 25,000 words, I’ll be happy.
I also managed to make it to church on Saturday night (I’m a Liberal-Cynical Catholic). Somehow, every year I manage to make it to the first Advent mass, and then miss everything else until Christmas. But it was good that I made it out, if only that I now realize there’s only roughly four weeks ’till Christmas. It’s a nice church, and even though the priest’s attempts at humour sometimes fall flat, I don’t get the overwhelming urge to stand up and argue with him during the homily.
It snowed. Then it rained. Rained some more. And then it snowed again. Right now, I think it’s just windy. I know this because I’ve discvered that there’s a draft around my balcony door. I have some rags that I can stuff into the cracks.
Aaaaand…. it’s back to work tomorrow. Bother, as Pooh would say.
Last night, Karen, Karen’s friend Kris(tina), fellow-Dal-alumni-and-Sudbury-resident Lise and I went to see Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason. It was okay - there were a few genuinely funny bits - like the fountain scene and the scene where she teaches the women in the Thai jail to sing “Like a Virgin” - but overall, it was kind of “meh.” I don’t generally “do” chick flicks because they annoy the bejezus out of me, but the group of us were going slightly stir crazy and wanted to see a movie. It wasn’t that I didn’t like it, but I don’t think I need to see it again or even read the book now.
The previews were long and slightly dull. Here’s what I thought (because I know you want to know what I was thinking) :
Additionally, I was floored - nay, shocked! - to discover that Karen’s a fan of the Blade movies. So we are most certainly going to see Blade: Trinity when it comes out. We did the Lame White Girl Posse knuckle-tap-thing to seal the plan. (It was at this point Kris and Lise began to question the wisdom of being seen in public with us.) I think we all agreed that Ocean’s Twelve looks like fun, the poster for the new Star Wars film is cool, and that Johnny Depp will be a very interesting Willy Wonka.
Afterwards, we retired to Tim Hortons, where Kris got scared by an extra-smiley chocolate chip smile cookie (it was seriously freaky).
(* For the Canadians - have you seen the new Bell commercial where the guy looses oranges down the stairs and two girls help him pick them up, and then he holds the subway door open for the old lady - the “pay it forward” concept commercial? From now on, start calling it the “pick up an orange, get a toy” commercial. ‘Cause, that’s what it comes down to, really.)
Well, the lineup for the fourth Canada Reads contest has been announced. The competitors are as follows:
(Thanks to Bookninja for bringing this to my attention. I’m sure the list of books being debated on Radio-Canada is on the CBC web site somewhere, but I found the list in the Bookninja forums - the list includes Life of Pi, The Handmaid’s Tale, and Un dimanche à la piscine de Kigali (Sunday at the Pool in Kilgali))
Once again, it will be hosted by Bill Richardson. He’s not as good as Mary Walsh was, but I liked him the last two times. The whole thing gets underway on February 21st.
I received the coolest early Christmas present today at work. Robin, a former co-worker, sent me a Dashboard Jesus - it’s a plastic Jesus figurine on a spring that you can mount on the dashboard of your car. Currently, he’s sitting atop my television, looking down at my computer and making sure that I don’t surf for porn or use bad language. Thanks Robin! I love it!
Apparently, Jude Law has been named People’s Sexiest Man of the Year. My reaction - meh. I thought he was fabulous in eXistZ, but I haven’t seen anything else he’s been in. Besides, I find him prettier than I find him sexy. It’s not so much, “Wow - he’s dreamy!” as it is “Wow - I’d kill for those cheekbones!”
And after being up really late every night last week and this weekend, consuming vats of coffee, and helping Karen move, I’m exhausted. I’m so tired it’s not funny. (And, somewhere, Karen is reading this and hollering, “Whaddaya mean, you’re tired? I’m the one who moved!” And she’s right - she has much more to be tired about than I do. But this is my blog, so I get to be more tired than her - at least here.)
Right. Normal and coherent posting should resume at some point after the weekend. It’s not that I won’t post before then - I just can’t guarantee that it will not be rambling and incoherent, much like this one has been.
For the last…. 3 hours? Yup - 3 hours, I’ve sat here tinkering with my links (to see the full list of links, click on “Click Here to View” in the left column.) See, I wasn’t really happy with it because it meant that I had to maintain two Bloglines accounts - one for my personal use and one for the blogroll on this blog. The problems with this included:
So… wait, I’ll back up a sec…
Allow me to slip into geek mode for a sec. Anyone who isn’t interested can go get a drink or a snack or something - this won’t take long.
The Blogger template that I’m using as the basis for this uses CSS, which stands for Cascading Style Sheet. It’s a way of formatting everything, from background colour to underline style, in one place. For example, if I were using plain HTML and wanted all the section headers to be a different font, colour and/or size than the rest of the font on the page, I would have to tell it the font, colour, and/or size every time I wanted to add a header. With CSS, I can tell it that whenever I use header tags, I want them to be a certain font, colour, and size. It saves room in the body of the source code, because all the formatting info is in one spot. It also guarantees that if you change the formatting for, say, underlining, it’s changed everywhere, and not just in the places you remembered to tell it be dotted as opposed to solid.
You’re back already? No, this won’t take much longer - can you go change the CD? Thanks.
Anyways. The nice thing about CSS is that, since it’s all together and in one place, it can be stored in a separate file and linked to in the source code. Which is what I did. The file for the CSS for this page is stored off-site, which freed up some screen-space. (It doesn’t take up actual memory. But since the code was quite long, I had to scroll through a massive amount of stuff to get to where I wanted to edit anything - which was usually the Reading section.)
So now I have more screen-space to play with. Which is why I decided to change how I linked to other blogs and web sites. (Okay, you can come back now. I’m out of geek mode.)
(And to the real geeks reading this - leave me comments if I’ve FUBAR’d the explanations in any way, shape, or form.)
Now the links are right there on the page. Yes, it’s a lot longer than the snippet of javascript which Bloglines gives you for your blogroll, and updating it means poking at the raw code with a stick, and it takes up a load of space. However, the benefit for me is that it’s easier to add blogs and such that don’t have RSS-feeds, and it gets rid of the little advert at the end of each of the lists. (Bloglines is useful, and I love it, don’t get me wrong!)
The benefit for the people whose sites I’ve linked to is that if they search for sites that link back to their sites, mine will show up. So that’s one more person linking to them and giving them notoriety, and the fame and fortune and everything that goes with it.
As to the links themselves…
Aaaaand…. it’s taken me another hour to write this up. Sheesh. For now, or at least until I redo everything, this is how it’s going to stand.
One of the things I did manage to accomplish this week was to break up with my annonymous online journal. I started it last year, and was pretty good about keeping it up. However, the posting interface was clunky and limited, and I would sometimes have problems getting to it at all. I’d outgrown it, but wanted to make a clean break so that the last post people would see would explain why it was so hopelessly out-of-date. I’m not going to link back to it, since a) I don’t post there anymore, and b) it was meant to be annonymous. It’s not that I posted nasty things about people there, but I’d rather just let it go.
So, anyways, here’s what people will see when they go look at my old journal. May it rest in peace.
Sit down, we need to talk
I know that no good ever comes of conversations that start with “sit down we need to talk.” Some of the worst conversations I’ve had started out like that.
But I need to tell you something, something that you’re not going to want to hear. [Name of service], we’ve been great together, and I appreciate everything you’ve done for me - namely, get me writing on a regular basis. But I’m sure you’ve noticed that I haven’t been around for a while. My last post was in September - and that was a while ago. I know you’ve been wondering where I’ve been and why I’ve been so distant and uncommunicative. You’re not going to like this.
I’ve found someone else.
There - I’ve said it. It wasn’t easy, but you deserved to know. I’ve been seeing this other blog since August… yes, I know - we were still together then, and I was cheating on you. But you have to understand - I grew, and I needed more than you could give me. This other blog has challenged me to do things I couldn’t do here, like learn CSS. I couldn’t tell people about you, because you were supposed to be an annonymous thing, so no one (except for a very few people) knew who I really was. Now, I feel like I can be myself, because it’s all out in the open.
I’m so grateful for what we had, but it’s time I moved on. Thanks for everything, and I hope that you’ll find someone else. In fact, I know there are others out there who would love to have you. Go, be with the ones you love.
Good-bye ;(
Man, it’s been a busy week. I woke up this morning convinced it was Sunday, and was only marginally happy to realize it was actually Saturday. Wait - I was happy that it was Saturday because my Pepe was coming to visit. I think Thursday night I was home, but I did some of the laundry, so was distracted. But I’ve been on the go every other night.
The happiest part is that Karen is finally all moved into her new apartment! Naturally, it piss-poured rain all morning until the last load arrived, and it stopped. Pretty much all the boxes and small things had gone over Tuesday and Friday, so it was mostly furniture today. When I left this afternoon, quite a bit of unpacking had been accomplished. It was at the stage when there’s boxes and packing materials and knick-knack all over the place, but everyone is asking her where things go and there’s so much going on that it’s hard to finish anything. Hopefully, she got out to get groceries sometime this evening.
Pepe came up this afternoon to take me out for supper. Yes - that’s right. He drove for 6 and a half hours to take me out for supper, and will be heading to Guelph tomorrow morning to have supper with Denise. Isn’t that sweet? It was fun - he and my grandmother came over around 4:30, and we sat around and chatted for a while, and then went out for supper. We had to wait for a while, but it was worth it. After supper, they dropped me off. (Right - they also brought a bag of stuff I had asked Mom to send me, plus a few surprises! A Nativity set from 10,000 villages! A cheddar and broccoli rice mix! Yeah… Not so much a surprise as a “Huh?”)
And apologies for not posting that much this week. All my writing has suffered this week, due to a deadly combo of lack of sleep and caffeine overdose.
The grade 8 teacher from my Mom’s school who was coaching the boy’s vollyball tournament yesterday. Apparently “The Smasher” was overheard yelling:
“BOYS! GRAB YOUR BALLS AND PUT THEM IN DEEP!”
And, knowing him, he probably wasn’t even aware of what he said.
