Fourth Wall

Sunday, May 18, 2008

New Blog

I've talked to a few of you about this (and I've been thinking about it for a year or so), but la de da da, I'm moving to a new blog... you can find it here.

Check there for recipes, knitting, and general playing-house-ness. I've had a good time here, but it was high time for a change. At the very least the title was off, as I'm no longer planning on being a playwright.

Saturday, May 17, 2008

I AM SO BORED.

I'm still sick, I have no fun reading, and there isn't even a deck of cards in this apartment. How do I entertain myself through another day sick abed, without poking KB every five minutes to say, "I'm BORED!"?

ADDENDUM: So far I have completed a NY Times (Daily) Crossword in like 20 minutes, eaten a candy bar that was annoying me because it disturbed the symmetry of my desk drawer, and poked KB about a gazillion times. His internal organs depend on you!

Thursday, May 15, 2008

Three Thoughts

Yes, I'm running a fever. (But all those blood tests they did came back fine.) Yes, KB thinks I'm safely in bed resting. No, I can't sleep.

Those weren't the three thoughts.

1). I've been missing my sewing machine of late, and this store isn't helping. The great deterrent to pursuing my sewing any further has been the hideous prints that prevail at the craft store closest to my sewing machine (The JoAnn's in Daly City, CA)... these prints may inspire me. Or they would, if I had money. Goldfish!

2) Heather, when I'm not sick we should make these mini pies in-a-jar. Somehow they remind me of you. Complicated fiddly desserts = Heather? Perhaps.

3) Celticist Roommate has gone home to study Greek, teach Latin, and decide what to do with her life. I envy her courage to defer her decision for a year, and I already miss her terribly. I was just going through old papers from last term, and found a bunch of old quotes from when we were just getting to know one another. Kels, these are for you:

Michael: Alice, have you heard of Cthulu?
Alice: Yes...
Michael: Have you heard of Fiddler on the Roof?
Kelly: Go on...

Peter: (on The Lion in Winter) It takes place at Christmas... and there's family tension, and backstabbing...
Kelly: I like Christmas! And backstabbing!

Alice: (trying to watch a playoff game on the mlb.com website) Baseball will not be as interesting when androids rule the world.

(As Alice prepares for KB to come over to make pancakes-- an event we now consider the first date-- Kelly pages through her 1960's cookbook, The Vegetarian Epicure. She finds a picture of a man and woman making pancakes.)
Kelly: Look! It's you and Tristan... only you're both better looking.
Alice: I'm so glad I'm better looking than a line drawing from the '60s.

Kelly: (On pick-up lines) "I like that book too... let's make out!"

Monday, May 12, 2008

One Other Thing

For those of you in Toronto, I'm reading at a service for the 635th anniversary of Julian of Norwich's "showings" at Church of the Redeemer on Bloor & Avenue. (7:00 pm, Tuesday May 13.) The service has been arranged by one of my professors, and it consists of a talk on the visions, a reading of the complete short text, and some hymns.

I told him I had experience as a lector and he gave me some long bits. Now I'm going to go try to feel better enough that I don't throw up/faint at the lectern.

Sunday, May 11, 2008

Radio Silence

More procrastinating on the Chicago Trip post, mostly because I've been sick in three distinct ways and Tristan's grandmother has passed away, so things are up in the air. In the madness I have misplaced the cable/lace sock I was knitting in Chicago, although I admit I haven't had time to go to library lost & found to ask about it. I'm waiting until my undergraduate friend is working circulation so that I don't need to explain to a stranger why I'm looking for a knitting project in the library.

I don't expect to be around for about a week; there's too much else to be done, and I plan on putting some of the energy I use here into non-audience-driven writing projects.

Wednesday, May 07, 2008

There's a long post about Chicago coming, but for now I'd just like to share today's revelation and the destruction of a childhood assumption: Chronicle Books has nothing to do with the S.F. Chronicle.

That is all. You may now laugh at me.

Sunday, April 27, 2008

I wrote a longish blog-post this morning with an involved joke involving my addiction to medical blogs, police codes, leash laws, and the 19 year old emo boys ("The Mini Mariachis") living across the hall. We had been having recycling wars with them of late, as we overheard them telling potential subletters, "yeah, we just put extra stuff in theirs. They never do it to us, so it's okay."

Thus ensued a few weeks of me sneaking out to leave presents of tampon boxes, nylon cases, etc. in their recycling bin. Minor victory was achieved when I heard one say to the other,

"Dude, is that yours?"
"Nah."
"Dude, man, that's totally yours."

ANYWAY, earlier this week I went out to put laundry in the wash and discovered that they had, in fact, piled their recycling bins and a broken desk chair ON TOP of ours in order to create space for moving. Never mind the plenty of other possible places to move your recycling bins... like, oh, inside? One of them caught me, in my PJs, starting to take a picture of it for the blog. Celticist Roommate and Italian History roommate both fled the scene and left me to a) scold him and b) die a thousand deaths.

As of about 5:00 this afternoon, however, the post I was writing is no longer applicable for the last boy has moved out and we now have female subletters across the hall. At about the same time of day they were BLASTING "I Would Do Anything For Love" which, while it always reminds me of how Colin & Nora got engaged, is nevertheless quite distressing.

I will have to leave the roommates to update me on the first week with the new neighbors, however, as I am running away to Chicago and will not be back until May 5th.

Too bad the boys moved out, though. Now what am I going to do with my horde of Tampax boxes?



PS: I woke up yesterday and overheard the two roommates discussing a surprise Toronto Transit strike. "Well, thank goodness I don't need to go to the airport anytime soon," I thought to myself. Then, promptly: "Crap. Chicago." But legislature met on Sunday and ordered them back to work, so it should be fine.

PPS: Happy Easter to those of you on the Orthodox calendar!