Facebook - the new blogger?

I find I post a lot of things on Facebook, now, that in times past I would have put on the blog. I think with being tired and busy, it's easier just to pop a photo onto Facebook straight from my phone, without having to go through the process of adding text into a post window. On the plus side, I've got a lot of photos to save you the trouble of reading! Win-win.

I took the kids to the pool again tonight, and made another stab at the jump shot. Did a little better this time:

This is one of my favourite ways to spend time in the summer - sitting by the pool deck, book in hand, looking up every now and again to count heads, and just steeping in the atmosphere. The kids in the pool are all splashing, calling, yelling, and laughing. The lifeguards, all sun-bronzed skin and sun-bleached hair, take turns plugging their reggae-filled iPods into a huge portable stereo. On the other side of the chain link fence I lean against, swing chains squeak and children run through gravel. Together, there is nothing more soothing: the happy, dreamy, endless noise of summer for me.

Today, I left "I Capture the Castle" at home and instead worked on the gansey vest.

Sometimes I take off my glasses and then everything looks exactly like this photo: the only thing in focus is the wool and the needles.

**
And here is my Dad, who walked in to my kitchen as I was making him dinner last week, and took me literally when I suggested he grab an apron and make himself useful. He chose my daughter's Frosted Cupcake apron, and made himself useful by being hilarious in a number of kitcheny scenes and poses.

This is a complete fake. The only thing he is looking for in the fridge is a photo-op.

Dad is stirring a big bowl of nothing, so fast that his hand is blurry. AWESOME.

A Valid Lifestyle Choice

I don't know if it's my age or if it's my family situation - I have kids so am a little less free in some respects - but in the last couple of years I've noticed a weird trend. I'll be chatting with a friend and she'll say something like "Any plans for the weekend?"

I launch into an excited recitation of all the great stuff I've got lined up, and then there's usually a surprised pause, followed by a polite "Oh!"

These conversations always end up with a weird vibe, so I discreetly asked around, and it seems that any of the following doesn't constitute big plans for the weekend:

- "Making pizza on Friday night, then watching Buffy in my jammies."
- "Doing laundry and making cinnamon buns."
- "...stay at home, maybe rent a movie"
- "Sitting - at home - knitting and listening to podcasts"
- "On Saturday, I'm going to bring a cup of coffee back to bed where I plan to play Freecell on my iPod until the battery is completely drained."
- "Grooming the dog"
- "At home, not getting dressed until Monday. If then."
- "I'm definitely taking a shower at some point."

But these particular people really seem to disrespect my plans. Weird, right?

I guess since their weekends are full of things like winter camping, concerts, half-marathons, mechanical-bull-riding, back-country-ski/camp/summit-climbing, remote fishing lodges, and trips to beautiful beachfront whatnots, maybe their bar is set a little higher than mine.

So, what do you guys think constitutes "plans for the weekend"?

Well, that was fun.

Posting every day was interesting. It encouraged renewed activity among a couple of the family blogs (Ox and Gwen), but it was also a little demanding.

I found that it was easy, once I got started, to "find something to say" every day. It was a struggle at first but quickly became habit. Once I let myself post whatever came into my head, pretty much, no matter how irrelevant or boring, it was simplicity itself. (Wry smile.)

The down side is that it was harder to find time or mental space to post things that were in any way meaningful. Plus the fact that, if I DID write something a little more thought-provoking, or a little longer, it was discouraging to know that it would be pushed down the page within 24 hours, to make room for another bit of inane nonsense.

Another down side is that comments dropped to almost nil, so the whole thing started to feel less like a conversation and more like I was perched on a stage in some dismal back alley bar, doing jazz hands and tap dance, sweating nervously, peering through footlights to find only a few bored, uninterested patrons scattered among mostly-vacant, sticky tables.

Yes, really.

So [bowing], I'm not doing daily posts anymore. And, like many cool things, it might turn out to be all the better for being in the past.

Next post - a little post-Christmas knitting.

My dirty little secret...

...every once in a while, I go to my Google blog reader, see something like "187 new items", and I click "Mark All As Read". Then I shut my laptop and go have a chocolate, feeling Oh, ever so free.

I'm a Card-carrying Bibliophile

All year I've meant to tell you about a great present I got from Dave and Joe: the 2012 Forgotten English Calendar. They sent me a lovely box of things last December and this calendar was tucked into a corner, next to a bunch of gigantic Lindt bars and some books. Every day I peel off a new sheet, and find a funny, interesting bit of trivia regarding an old word or phrase, many of which I have read in old books.

Today's is "bibliomaniac", which is actually quite a current term in some circles. James Donald's Etymological Dictionary of the English Language, 1877 says "One affected by bibliomania, book-madness, or the rage for possession." I realise guiltily that I have been infected with bibliomania in the past. I sometimes - only sometimes, mind you; I am a dedicated reader from way back - feel a restless need to acquire books utterly without regard to their actual reading value.

Here is today's entry from my Forgotten English calendar:

On December 1, 1834, a public auction was begun at Sotheby's in London to sell off about a half-million books from the estate of English bibliomaniac and Member of Parliament Richard Heber (1774-1833). It required more than 200 working days over two years. After stockpiling enormous numbers of English books, his family fortune enabled him to buy up many books in French, Italian, and even Portuguese -- languages he was quite unable to understand -- as well as in Greek and Latin, languages he had learned in childhood.

Surprisingly, Heber's last will never mentioned his collection, although most of his waking hours were devoted not to reading but to the passionate acquisition of private libraries, which were first housed in London and Oxford, then in Paris, Antwerp, Brussels, and Ghent. Henry Peacham's Complete Gentleman (1622) included the counsel, "To desire to have many books, and never to use them, is like a child that will have a candle burning by him all the while he is sleeping."
***
Still - I can understand Crazy Rick's obsession with book ownership. Imagine being able to afford to not only buy up private libraries, but house them in four European cities? What a marvellous thing.

And hey - there are worse things he could have been collecting!

(I have just spent twenty minutes Googling "weird collections" for examples, but now I'm too depressed to link you to any of them.)

A demain!

A dream is a WIIIISH your heart makes!

Sort, dust, scrub, vacuum, scrub, wipe, shake, scrub...I'm Cinderella these days. My sister-in-law emailed me on Monday and asked me how the Christmas preparations were getting on, and with a guilty start I realised that all I had done was buy a package of dominosteine (my all-time favourite bought Christmas treat) and read "How the Grinch Stole Christmas" to my daughter twice.

So, yesterday I dug out the family room, and today I spent the ENTIRE day on my hands and knees cleaning the kids' room. We made an arrangement - I would get it completely clean, and they would be in charge of maintenance...keep it that way until Christmas.

After two long days, though, I might be at the end of my zeal for housekeeping.

Here's what I need: I need two GOOD friends - not just "friends" - to help me out. What we'd do is, we'd start in one house on, say, Monday, and clean the living tar out of it, get it all ready for Christmas. Then we'd all three move on to the next one on Wednesday, and then the final one on Friday. In one week, all of our houses would be done for Christmas.

Here are the reasons it doesn't work when I do it myself:
a) it's boring;
b) it's too easy to sit down and check Facebook "just for ten minutes"; and
c) because all the junk is mine, I'm too invested in it and get discouraged trying to make decisions about it.

My friends would do all the stuff nobody needs to TELL them how to do, like dusting, vacuuming behind furniture, scrubbing kitchen counters, and I could just get on with putting things where they belong. I'd have somebody to talk to, AND I'd be embarrassed to stop.

Too bad I don't have any good friends.
:-(

Pity party! RSVP.

Ho Ho HOLY CRAP that is strong.

First let me tell you I have a special relationship with Starbucks' Eggnog Lattes. I know other places make them, and make them well, but for me there's nothing like the 'buckies.

They're not cheap, though, (budget $5 each) and when you love them as much as I do you can spend upwards of $75 in November and December just on Eggnog Lattes. (!!!)

Enter the Bialetti, the Illy, and the Lucerne. Yowza!

Helpful YouTube Italian dude says mound the grounds: I obey. (Regretted that last tablespoon though.)

Steamin' hot eggnog/milk (2:1) and a frother.

Huge, "Friends"-style 500ml mug, nutmeg grater, and a camera reflection.

Overfilled for that luscious 'nog-foam experience.

Starbucks ornament snowman says "Way to save yourself $5! You cheap bastard."

Ev'y dang thang.

Ack!

Posting every day is going to take some getting used to. Even short, meaningless posts need to be actually written, which takes actual time spent online.

Yesterday I mentioned Christmas. I was feeling a bit smug up until this afternoon, thinking about all the presents I've already made or bought. I opened up my planning document (Yes, I have a Christmas present planning Word doc...every year since 2005) and realised with a shock that I still have my sister, my brother, my Mum and my Dad to take care of.

Whaaaa?!? Since when did finishing ONLY MY KIDS' PRESENTS constitute "I'm nearly done"? I've collected some things together for Mr HSB as well, but I still have some work to do there.

Speaking of Mr HalfSoledBoots, this year, for the first time, I've given him a job. "I need your help," I said - something I never NEVER say - "I am giving your brother, your Dad, and your brother-in-law over to you...you are in charge of deciding what to get them, budgeting it, shopping for it, and getting them to me by December 1 so they can be mailed."

He grunted, so I'm not sure whether the challenge was accepted or not. It could be that, come December first, I might say "So where are these presents?" and he will reply, without looking up from the TV, "I never agreed to that."

The most depressing part is, I would probably come through anyway and, amidst tears and recriminations, go do the shopping myself.

shbake

Out for coffee with Karen last night, she asked me what I had made for dinner. "I sliced up some chicken breast, Shaked and Baked that sucker. Chucked some frozen McCain redskin fries into the oven and stuck a bottle of ketchup on the table, called it done."

"Yum! But I'd be enjoying cinematography all night."

Huh?

Turns out, Shake and Bake gives her super-intense action-adventure dreams. "I wake up completely exhausted."

I nearly fell over laughing.

***
Last weekend my Dad turned 75, and we threw a big, fancy party for him. After all the guests had gone, Oscar Peterson still tickling the ivories on the hi-fi (how's that for history?), my daughter took a turn around the parquet with Dad. It was maybe my favourite moment of the whole party.

Happy Birthday Dad!

Bought meself a new coat.

Deal of the century - $48 at Costco. It's not quite 100% wool, but it's durn close. (I think there's 20% nylon in there.) Also made Elsewhere (i.e., not China) so I'm happy X 2.

Plus, lest we forget - RED! And red is good.

Dear Mute Button

Will you marry me? Only you can stop this rich loudmouth chick from yelling at me every time I'm trying to watch "Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives".

 


 So, yeah - I love you - thanks for everything - keep up the good work.

Shannon + Mute

 2-getha 4-evah

Missed the Saturday dance

Don't really post much anymore.

I was going to do a whole thing where I changed all the lyrics and made it funny and cute, but I couldn't think of a computer-y rhyme for "-ore", so I bailed.

I watched "The Exorcist" the other night. It's an odd choice for me - I don't like horror in general. But it was coming on "Encore Avenue", which is commercial free, and I thought "This movie is a huge part of our culture - maybe I should give it a look."

It was interesting - quite rude actually. Half the horror is just the disgusting things that demon does and says while inhabiting the body of this little girl. I was so worried about it that I Googled Linda Blair to check how old she was when she was asked to say those things. She was 12, but it turns out a grownup said the really bad lines and they just voice-overed it. So that's good.

But any rate, the movie wasn't as scary as I had expected, probably because I turned the volume down to almost nil, and looked away during the worst bits. GREAT ending though.

I kept saying "Aw, poor kid" for the entire two hours.

Knitting a lot but nothing I can show you.

I'm going on a hike tomorrow morning, early...plans are to leave at 7:00 AM. I'll try to remember to bring the camera so I can show you the good bits.

In Retrospect

EDIT: Dave reminded me that my post "Peace be With You" was nominated for Best Blog Post in the Canadian Blog Awards. I squeaked through into Round Two, so if you'd like to vote for me that would be great. (If, of course, you think the other four posts are not as good as mine. You must vote with your conscience, and you only get one shot at each poll.)

-------------

I have been sitting here for forty-five minutes halfheartedly clicking around the web, and I ended up on my own blog to answer the question (asked by myself - the only interested party) of how many New Year's Eve posts I have written.

One!

I'm surprised: I thought it would be more.

I read the post (from 2006, amazingly), then scrolled down to see a photo of my children from Christmas Day five years ago. A five year old and a two year old - how shocking.

As far as recording history goes, this blog isn't much use, is it? I guess the fact that it's public keeps it from having any kind of archival accuracy - I keep my children off the blog, mostly.

But look at this. Christmas week, 2006:

And Christmas week, 2011:

Can we all just sit and marvel for a moment at the lightning-swift passage of time?

A moment is all we have time for, though.

Happy New Year!

Brain Clearly Still Not Working Properly.

Sitting on my lounge of lurgy this morning (thanks for that one, Ames), I was perusing some Facebook posts about the ethics of Islamic justice. Fell down the rabbit hole for about a half hour and then came upon this headline:

Saudi Arabia: Men ‘Behaving Like Women’ Face Flogging

upon which I flinched and said to myself, "Ouch! Imagine being flogged on your face! Oh......oh, wait......oh "face flogging", not face-flogging. Never mind."

Stricken

I write to you today from my couch of pain. I have been slain by a head cold. I have been prostrate for two days, propped up with cushions in a vain attempt to reduce the congestion.

I have that weird sensation of absolute clarity in my actual nose, but with sinuses so completely blocked, so completely pressurized, that my ears are aching and my forehead feels swollen. I feel like my head is gone and I am carrying an aquarium around on my neck. Heavy, sloshy, and slow to respond.

I have a feeling this might be just slightly related to NaNoWriMo -- I often find that, once a stressful deadline has passed, I succumb to whatever virus is currently stalking the town. In this case, it's this stupid cold.

NaNo went well, I think. The word count goal was met, but of course I haven't written "The End" yet...I am about two thirds of the way through. I have a bit of writing, and a lot of editing and reworking still to do. The book, like me, is resting for the remainder of 2011 and will be ready for another hard slog in the New Year.

I haven't started Christmas preparations yet...it feels too early. This is silly because it is only 18 days away. Most of my presents are bought, but I haven't done a scrap of cleaning and no decorating. The one exception is the Advent calendar, which of course has to be done on December 1st no matter HOW little one is in the spirit.

I was reminded of this series of posts by one of my favourite bloggers, and went to look it up for you. Lene posted several photos of her beautiful Advent calendar in December of 2007, and I think of this series every year. I was surprised to find, when I searched for it, that it was so long ago...between one thing and another, these past four years have flown by.

So enjoy Lene's lovely Advent calendar, and think of me with pity, here on my davenport of despair...my sofa of sniffles...my chesterfield of chesty coughs.

S

Arresting the Decay of Language, Cont'd

All right, listen.

There are two ways to say the word "the". You can say "thUH" (short E: phonetically spelled thĕ [the underlining of th indicates it's the "voiced" th, as in "they" - as opposed to the "voiceless" th, as in "throw"]), or you can say "th-EE" (long E: phonetically spelled thē).

Generally speaking, when "the" precedes a word beginning with a consonant (or hard) sound, you would use the short "the", as in this phrase:

The dog ran past the car.


"Thĕ dog ran past thĕ car".

But if "the" precedes a word beginning with a vowel (or soft) sound, you would use the long "the", as in this phrase:

The owl hunted the otter. 


"Thē owl hunted thē otter."

What you'll find, in these troublous times, is that people use only one version of "the" - the one with the short vowel sound "thUH". But if you use a short "the" right before a word that begins with a vowel (osprey, end, abstract), the sounds run together and you end up with a phrase like "the udder" sounding more like "thuhuhdder". Well, obviously that doesn't work: there has to be some kind of delineation between the two vowel sounds.

Enter the glottal stop: Ɂ .

Do you know what a glottal stop is? It's a tiny halt you make in your throat, during speaking, to cut off the flow of air for a split second. It sounds weird, but try saying "thEE udder", and then try saying "thUH udder" and you'll see what I mean...you have to do a glottal stop whether you've heard of it or not. You'd write it "thĕ Ɂ ŭdder".

Well, glottal stops are all very well - nice and technical, and all, but why use them if you don't have to? Why not just use the correct pronunciation of "the"?

Good question.


Thē ĕnd.

If nobody tells you, how can you know?

Dear People of the English-Speaking World:

The word is "normality".

Think about "formal", which is an adjective. Now make it into a noun....did you say to yourself, "formalcy"? No, you did not.

There is no such word as "normalcy". You may have used it yourself, and now you're saying "What? Of course there is!" But don't feel badly; you couldn't have known. It's everywhere - like "impact" used as a verb, as in "Your hydro bill won't really be impacted by that." [im-PAC-ted...yuck]  When, really, if you're not talking about a wisdom tooth or a bowel, don't say "impacted".

You could say "These changes won't really have an impact on your hydro bill."

Is "normalcy" in the dictionary? Sure. So is "LOL", and you won't catch etymologists and grammarians using that, either.

So please practice this: "The English language has to regain some semblance of normality."

You are a person with free will - of course you are. And if you decide to say "The English language has to regain some semblance of normalcy," nobody will arrest you. You just won't have my blessing, that's all.

And really, who cares about that?

Carry on.

Shannon

/conversation

Get this. I was just on the phone with a friend who, when I said "No one offered me any advice," said this to me:

"Shannon, do you know that you present as a person who has it all together?"

Momentarily speechless, I recovered, resorted to Georgette Heyer and replied blankly, "Good God!"

 * * *
Slightly more than five months have passed since Sandy's death. It seems like both a long time and a short time - more long than short. I often find myself feeling as if she belongs to an entirely different lifetime I once had. I wish that one wasn't over.
 * * *
I am knitting nearly every day, trying to finish the Rheingold Wrap. It is now about the same height as I am, so I am awfully close to finishing. I've started cutting fringe for it, to make sure I don't run out of yarn in my attempt to get it as long as possible.
 * * *
Got a nondescript envelope in the mail last week which proved to be four tickets to Cirque du Soleil this summer - Mr WonderfulHSB knows the path to a girl's heart. (Lithesome humans in catsuits, fantastically made up, hurtling through the air while performing death-defying feats of athleticism and grace.) I cannot WAIT.
 * * *
Recovering slowly from a fairly paralysing form of stomach flu that has incapacitated me for the better part of a week. During that time, I watched "Middlemarch", which I don't think was as helpful as it ought to have been.
 * * *
And I am reading Henry James' short stories. I'm not sure how I got to the age of 37 without having read "Daisy Miller" but that omission is now repaired. It was well enough, though I prefer "The Aspern Papers", also new to me, and in the same volume. I don't think I care for James' heroes (possibly better described as "narrators") - they are very wishy-washy.

I said to Lizbon last night, "I don't think I'll have time to blog regularly - I'm too busy." She sighed and said she'd miss me. I thought about the tin can phone and about how little it actually takes to write a post, and said to myself, "Cowboy up."

I've been working on my niece's sweater - fields of white stockinette with zero interest until the button band, which is stranded. I've finished all the pieces except the hood. Work in progress:





And here is the swatch for the colours. I started out with a paler green and a paler pink (you can see them down near the cast-on edge) but they were all wrong - too babyish. The new ones are much better.

Lots of things are going on lately - I was joking to my mom the other day that I feel like I'm manning a crisis hotline. My poor friends are having a terrible time - 2010 is a doozy. I'm managing by careful administration of movies, fiction, alcohol, and stimulants.

Tea, Coffee, Sugar

Lovely stimulants.

something and nothing

I went to see Inception last week. It was odd - a cross between Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, The Matrix, and Vanilla Sky. A pretty good movie, as Hollywood movies go, but sadly the last moment of the film was far, far too obvious and I saw it coming from miles away.

I'm so disappointed when that happens. I want to be totally shocked by the end of a movie, you know? I want to have NO idea. Like Memento, or Shattered. I like books like that, too - books where I can't see It coming: where the writer outsmarts me.

Speaking of books, I have some things to review. I have read a biography of Peter Elliott Trudeau, the entire repertoire of David Eddings, Atlas Shrugged, a bunch of Miss Read books, and a Martha Stewart guide to needlecraft. I feel tempted, here, to give two adjectives for each book and call them reviewed, but instead I'll write proper posts for them. Except the Eddings, because those are old friends, reread for the umpteenth time.

Nearly time for school to start, amazingly.