Days like today

Some days... are not good days.

Some days, even when you have accomplished things — good things — all you can feel is the weight of the things that you haven't done pressing down on you.

Today was one of those days. You know how sometimes when people ask you if you're able to see the light at the end of the tunnel yet? And if that light is likely to be a train?


Sometimes I think the damn light is just unplugged.

So, let's have some pictures that make me happy.


Bullwinkle, is that you?


Only the finest severed heads will do here.

And finally, for Lady S:


They're not daffodils, but they sure are fantastic, no?

Today sucked balls. Let's try again tomorrow, shall we?

For the record...

...next week, I am going to start my lecture off with the following announcement:

"Good evening everyone. If you happen to notice that my fly is open, or that my blouse or dress has come unbuttoned, feel free to raise your hand and tell me RIGHT AWAY. The code phrase is knickerbocker.Thank you."

Well, at least I was wearing my fancy knickers and not some old filthy ones pulled out of the dirty clothes. Or better yet, a pair with something tacky like "aim here" printed on them.

#awesomesauce #thisdaygetsbetterbythehour #fuckmylife

...and miles to go, but I'm sleeping anyhow.

My concrete ivory tower, Robarts Library, University of Toronto, Feb. 18, 2011.

I keep promising myself I will blog more. It's my only non-academic writing outlet.

And then I think to myself: Do you really need another distraction from academic writing right now?

Probably not.

It's entirely possible I'm kidding myself that I'm actually making progress. Today, it feels like I haven't made a bit of progress in months. Realistically, I know that's not the case, but it's overwhelming to even think about how much there still is to do. Frankly, I'm at the point where this dissertation thing just isn't fun.

Lady S, if you're reading this, I'm kidding. Actually, I'm having a blast. I write enthusiastically eight hours a day and every morning I wake up chirpy and energized, ready to sit down and write some more. I am a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar.*

It appears I don't have a lot to say, really, so here are some more pictures, taken with my very manual camera.


Helpful cat... is not all that helpful, actually. Taken by MrJ. He also put the scarf on the cat, who doesn't seem to mind. Don't ask me, I just work here.


Humber River under the Dundas bridge, Toronto, Feb. 28, 2011. The figure against the pillar on the far bank is graffiti.


My Neighbour's Totoro, a most wonderful snowman near my house. He did have ears, but I hadn't quite mastered how much fits in the frame on this setting yet.


Urban Wisdom

*Spoilers for the movie 'Serenity': The guy who says this quote gets a long wooden spear through the chest and becomes all deadified on the word 'soar'. Take that as you will.

Summer Daze (the non-sequitur, abbreviated version)

This blog will resume shortly.

Note to self: Knitting a large wool sweater during a July heatwave is stupid. Stop it.

Note to self 2: I will finish this fucking tunic before leaving for Pennsic on Friday. It's only been on the go for three years, and I would like to wear it next week.

Note to self 3: I will write up and email this fucking article review before I finish that fucking tunic before leaving for Pennsic on Friday.

Note to self 4: A day when I have to clean up cat barf twice before noon is just taking the piss.

How is your summer going?

Ask not what we do to history; ask what history does to us*

Some days, I think, should simply be re-written. Forgotten. Pages removed from The Book and dropped into the fire.

I tried to explain this to a Librarian once, and was threatened with excommunication and confiscation of all of my library cards for being a heretic. Librarians can be scary.

Mind you, some days, I want to be a Librarian too. "Fear me," I would say, and others would tremble as they handed their books back. Naturally, I would only use my Super Seekrit Reference-Finding Powers and my Mighty Data Mining Decoder Ring for good. Also, my cape would look suspiciously like a lace shawl.

Obviously, I digress.

I think what The Librarian didn't understand is that I wasn't implying that it was only the bad days that should be forgotten.

History is tomorrow's spoilers. "Doomed to repeat itself if forgotten" and all that.

On those days when it seems like there is nothing new in the world, nothing exciting that can make me want to do, to create, I curse my inconveniently good memory and beg to forget something that made me insanely happy so that I can rediscover it and be insanely happy about it again.

It's a slippery slope, I know. Remember that episode of Fantasy Island, where the couple wanted to fall in love again, so they were made to forget each other and they almost hooked up with the wrong people? I know I'm the sum of my experiences, of my history, and I like who I am, and I wouldn't erase a part of that. To quote a truth from an otherwise unfortunate movie, "I need my pain!"** Eventually, something else comes along that brings me joy again. I hold out for those moments, because if I lost hope in them, I would surely go crazy.

But still, there are some days...

...some days when I wonder if in order to experience true joy again, we first need to forget what it was like.


*A musing on the pendant What We Do To History, made by elisem.

**And just what does God need with a Starship, anyhow?

"Even when it's approaching torture, I've got my routine"

A year ago today, I had a Very Bad Day. It wasn't that kind of bad, if you understand my meaning. No one was in physical danger. But it was still bad.

Friends helped. Family helped. Talking helped. Medicine helped.

Things are better today.

And yet there is something I still struggle with, a lingering leftover from That Day. I have still not written the thing I was working on when I had my Very Bad Day. I fight with it, I poke around at it, I write a little and then I stop. And the next day, it starts again. Some days I give up completely and walk away. Sometimes it's for weeks at a time.

This has been going on far too long.

It's not that the thing I'm writing is hard - well, OK, actually it is hard, and it's supposed to be hard - but I've done things that are much harder in the past. This one, though, is linked to the Very Bad Day, and until I get through it, That Day will always be there, hanging over me. And more to the point, if I don't finish it in the very near future, I will be willfully, intentionally shooting myself in the foot, sacrificing years of work and time on my part and many others' because I had a Very Bad Day that I'm afraid to face again.

All the flowers have fallen from the magnolia tree out back, and it is fully, lushly green. Nature waits for no one, not even for me to find a way to write the thing I was supposed to have written before that last flower fell. So, I will pick up again from yet another missed deadline, and keep plugging.

The innernets, though, has a wicked sense of humour. As I was sitting here wasting time this evening, surfing the endless seas of YouTube, thinking about what I should be doing while I was doing anything but, thinking about one year ago today, and promises, and magnolia trees, this song came up unexpectedly, randomly, and I knew it was right (repeated lyrics edited):

----------------------------------
Oh, for the sake of momentum
I've allowed my fears to get larger than life
And it's brought me to my current agendum
Whereupon I deny fulfillment has yet to arrive

And I know life is getting shorter
I can't bring myself to set the scene
Even when it's approaching torture
I've got my routine

Oh, for the sake of momentum
Even though I agree with that stuff about seizing the day
But I hate to think of effort expended
All those minutes and days and hours
I have frittered away.

But I can't confront the doubts I have
I can't admit that maybe the past was bad
And so, for the sake of momentum
I'm condemning the future to death
So it can match the past.

- Aimee Mann, "Momentum" (from the Magnolia soundtrack)

Avoidance strategies for the well-entrenched

Another of my peers successfully passed their Big D proposal through the department recently, making, I think, four in as many weeks, and more if you count the last several months. Every time someone who has been here a couple years less than I have completes this ritual (a 40-minute presentation to all faculty and graduate students in the department followed by an open question period), I simultaneously feel joy for them, and a sense of impending doom at my own lack of progress.

To that end, I made a pact with Lady S recently. Two weeks from the date of our last meeting, on a Wednesday, I am honour-bound to give her what revisions I have completed on the Big D proposal so far. We'll call this date "D-Day," for lack of a better euphamism.

I can't help but think this was an insane thing to agree to, and yet Lady S and I both know that this is the only way anything will possibly happen.

It doesn't have to be done, or even done right, which is a good thing, because I don't think I can do that. It just has to be something turned in, something which has addressed a significant number of her comments from a year ago. Not all of them. Some of them. Just... progress of some kind. And that I can do.

Since agreeing to this about 10 days ago, I have, of course, done nothing on it. I've fiddled around with the course I'm teaching, wasting a lot of time on things that don't require half as much effort.

I once again ripped out several rows on the double-knit hat from hell. Somehow the last time I picked it up, I knitting around the circle in the wrong direction, and chaos ensued a couple rounds later. Given that we're over halfway through March, I think it's safe to say that DH won't be getting the dratted thing this winter.

I have, however, finished knitting for secret projects #1 and #2, and begun to dive into #3 in earnest:


Finished bits of Secret Project #1 and #2

I've been combing wool and making rovings from seemingly bottomles supply of Dorset Cross fleece. These are for a beginner drop spinning class I'll be giving on April 4 (after D-Day).



I plan to make 10 spindle kits and roughly 200 combed roving nests for the classes, so that each kit contains about 60 grams of roving. 9 nests down, 191 to go. Hrm. Might have to break out the weapons-grade 5-pitch English combs next weekend and speed things up a little there. Here is one of the experimental drop spindles, made from recycled CDs, rubber washers, a dowl, an eye hook and superglue. It spins surprisingly well, so at least that's all good.



I even managed to finish a long-term editing job (4+ years) in its entirety. The final book is uploaded and available to order. Tell me THAT'S not some serious avoidance going on right there.

And now here we are. Saturday. It's warm and sunny in my kitchen. All day is mine, and all day tomorrow. DH is happily getting in some long-overdue game time (actually, he's snoring while the game plays on without him. Shhh!), I'm dressed, awake, have coffee and a full stomach, and it's time to start getting this thing together.

Ready now? One, two...


Say cheese. Prewrapped processed slices preferred, thanks.

We've lived here over a year? No way.

I'm not exactly sure what happened to this last year. It definitely doesn't feel like we've lived in our house for over a year. It really didn't feel like it last week when I was down in the basement digging through boxes looking for something that I hadn't seen in, well, a year, unearthing a whole lot of other things I hadn't seen in... um... a year, and thinking, "Holy crap! We have to start unpacking some of this stuff!" And then I started sneezing profusely, and I realized that all the boxes and bags were covered in a not-insignificant amount of dust, and I had to come back upstairs and sit down with a glass of iced tea, a cookie and contemplate The Year That Was.


Unsurprisingly, I found it upstairs in the living room, in full view in a bag on a bookshelf that I've walked past every day for a year. The Cube is never far away in my house.

Ten minutes later, after I'd messed it up and solved it three times to prove to myself I could, I was being poked by a cat, the phone was ringing, my email was beeping and I had forgotten all about the hole in time that was last year. This was home for me as soon as my husband, cats, knitting, bed and the computers were moved in. In that order. I might as well have always been here. I don't know if it's home for DH yet, but he takes a little longer to warm up to these things than I do. He keeps saying, "It's getting there." I suspect it won't really be home to him until we do something major, like renovate the kitchen, which will come in time.

This past week, I naturally should have been preparing for my second-ever lecture today - this is the first time I've been the course instructor (i.e. head honcho) for a course, and I have 200+ students and no fewer than eight minions teaching assistants to organize. They're all great and experienced, though, I'm very lucky. I, however, have been knitting and weaving instead. I'm mostly finished with my part for one super-seekrit joint project:


Brighter is better!

I'm working up a swatch for another:


Reversible cables without a cable needle, a slight revision of this pattern. Because I am a masochist, apparently.

And I've gotten well underway on a third project, which is also super-seekrit, but not joint.


Why, yes, that is the yellow yarn that was taking the form of yarn barf in the last post. Thanks for noticing!

Emails have been piling up from students who have conflicts with this and questions about that (some of which are answered on the syllabus, but let's not tell them that, OK?), my course website is barely adequate, and I only just got access to the enrollment lists because someone higher up fixed it for me today. One of my TAs is on the other side of the world and wasn't able to get a flight back in time for the first tutorial today (though she certainly did try - and there was someone to cover it, but it makes a good course instructor story, no?). Another TA flew into town late last night and had a solid case of jetlag for the first tutorial, poor thing. It would be nice if I started the next lecture before the day I have to give it - that hasn't happened yet for the first two lectures, which, apparently, I pulled out of my ass with a great deal of support and shared course materials. I owe Lady S an email, and I have a goal of doing some work on the Big D Proposal before the end of the week.

But those are all tomorrow's issues.

Tonight, I can relax in the knowledge that my second lecture, by some miracle, did not suck, my inbox is temporarily empty, and I'm mostly on top of the things I can control. I will weave a little, and attack cables a little, and enjoy being... home.

Weaving post soon.