I spent these past 12 days at my family's cottage in the Kawarthas. Much of my time was devoted to diligent work on the painting visible above. Other activities included daily swimming; writing; games of Trivial Pursuit, Slang Teasers (aka Balderdash), and Monopoly; a 1000 piece puzzle assembled by half a dozen collaborators; heated conversations about physics, grammatical mood, and the photocarcinogenic components of sunblock.
And, of course, reading.
I didn't devote myself to reading a single text, and so regrettably finished nothing -- rather, I dipped in and out of a multitude of novels and non-fictions, frequently reading passages aloud to my companions (a behavior they tolerated gracefully). I'd like to share with you a series of excerpts, many of which I did blurt out aloud or mark with a little dogear at the corner of the page.
I like to think that it betrays something of my thinking patterns that, when they are ordered carefully, each of the separately selected quotations shows thematic linkage to the quotation following it.
( Read more... )
2) figure out what to make of life.
3) find love.
4) write lab report.
- the roman alphabet
- metric
- the Milky Way
- public school? (flawed but beneficial)
- circulatory, nervous etc. (ie. Major Organ)
- take notes about writing systems
- compose sentences about syntax
- think about neurology (we will, anyway, in a later quarter)
- discuss cells while being completely composed of cells.
- Plot devices - some are acceptable and necessary, some are not. Chekov's gun - obviously cool. Along the same vein, foreshadowing is positive, sometimes. But Deus Ex Machina, eavesdropping, these ones? Not so fantastic. What makes a good plot device...? How much is execution?
- What is the difference between a good TV show and a soap...? How is this related to *above*, how is this related to the dialogue and acting...?
- How realistic should dialogue be...? How much should be said through words, through actions, through narrative...?
- What is worth reading?
To Do
- Heisenburg
- learning to drive in reverse
- family reunion in Belleville
- Comedy Inc. filming (VIP)
- writers' working vacation in Uxbridge with Kevin Fortnum
- three new shirts, one swanky headband
- three new books (A Long Way Down, Postcards from the Brain Museum, Before the Fallout)
- Ratatouille, a Tale of Two Sisters & Superbad with
![[info]](http://stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
emilystar - new haircut
- red pea soup at the Real Jerk
- Coffee Porter from Mill Street Brewery
Bad Things
- weird guy in Belleville
- one hangover
- missed out on selling a painting
- course enrollment issues
- kicked out of crews/tango
- karaoke? (depends who you ask, I guess)
- $28 dollars in bank
This week I made 20 dollars more than I did last week, so I bought myself three books (more accurately: myself two; a friend one), coming in under the twenty mark.
{
For myself:
Einstein's Dreams - Alan Lightman
Last Orders - Graham Swift
For a friend:
Rescue - Nicolas Sparks
}
I am pleased with my purchasing, though I considered several other worthy ventures costing only $20:
- treating self to four (4) Tankhouse Ales.
- seeing Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix twice in theaters.
- printing 500 b&w 8.5x11 photocopies
- printing 100 digital photos (glossy, borderless, 4x6)
- posting thirty six standard size letters.
Yes, it is the last Harry Potter ever.
You bet I'm going to re-read the series before the release date of July 21st.
No, I am not ashamed. Why should anyone be?
My start time was 9:00 this (July 12th) morning.
(my original start time was August 1999 - that was eight years ago)
Harry Potter and the ...
| Philosopher's Stone | (76,944 words) | |
| Prisoner of Azkaban | (107,253 words) | |
| Goblet of Fire | (190,637 words) | |
| Order of the Phoenix | (257,045 words) | |
| Half-blood Prince | (168,923 words) | |
| | |
EDIT: please note - mischief managed.
- Sonia
- Lisa
- Shelly
Hope that clears things up.
An excellent meme courtesy of Julie Wilson (her 'note' was on facebook).
HOW: Type "[your first name] likes to" into Google. Post the first ten hits.
Since I go by Alix or Alixandra alternately, I decided five hits from each would be appropriate BUT "Alixandra likes to" yielded zero hits. That makes me a little bit happy.
"Alix likes to" yielded six hits. So here they are, but I've changed them to Alixandra. Ah-ha! Now there is a chance that "Alixandra likes to" will have hits and that they will be exactly the same as "Alix likes to" because I am one person. This, of course, will only occur if Google picks up this entry. Be a poet, Google, you've done it before.
| 1 | Alixandra likes to post jokes on our door a lot, so she printed it up and wrote ‘My Roommate Natalie’ on it. |
| 2 | Diva Alixandra likes to scare herself silly by jumping out of planes, tearing down canyons and driving fast cars. |
| 3 | i just have very bad grammer on here as alixandra likes to point out all the time |
| 4 | I've mentioned before that Alixandra likes to sing. |
| 5 | Alixandra likes to walk in her new shoes, Alixandra is trying to escape. |
| 6 | Alixandra likes to say that her mother always assumed it was about Muriel's mother. |
I tag all of you who thought of the apostrophe engine at least once while you read this (& of course anyone who actually feels inclined to do it)
~
Secretly I was dreading the presentation of the paper, not the writing of it, but the presentation did not go as badly as expected. There are several reasons for this, in chronological order:
- I had a creative science teacher in middle school.
- A few days ago my mother unpacked the groceries and showed me the over-sized granny smith that had come in a bag with other, smaller specimens. This particular apple was the size of a softball.
- Last night, circa 2am, I had a vague recollection of something my middle school science teacher had shown me. I was able to google a description of it, with some difficulty, by switching up my search terms until I found the right ones and scrolling carefully.
- In the morning I remembered the huge apple. I also chose a butter knife because I thought its presence would be less offensive.
- I was towards the end of the class, presenting after we had already sat through two hours of presentations.
- No one expected me to pull out a gargantuan, possibly GMed, granny smith apple and cut it into quarters and eighths in the middle of my presentation. (Shock factor earned me laughs).
- The dullness of the butter knife - the cutting process was messy and noisy.
- this was a lab. Where food is prohibited.
- gesturing with a [butter] knife in one's hand gives the illusion of confidence.
1) neglect to write the assignment. skip my presentation period. this is university. no one is going to bother be about it - I will be docked a mere 3.8% of my final grade and that will be the end of it.
2) write/create something that is clearly well researched and well composed but is clearly not an essay.
The second one is the more challenging of the two, and more interesting. I already have a canvas which adds a tidy conceptual aspect - water belongs to everyone; so does art. (EDIT: also, people on either side of the issue see their side as the right one to be on, though everyone is looking at the same world - I can play on that, too, because poetry is by nature available to interpretation (as is nature), though I'm not sure how I might play yet)
there are two dilemmas:
i) I would feel bad handing such a thing in to my poor TA for marking. she studies insects.
and perhaps most cripplingly
ii) I can't think of a physical format for it that could display research & good writing but is also more interesting than a collection of fragments collaged onto a canvas.
sigh. if you have any suggestions, I've got until tuesday noonish to pull this off. otherwise I resort to option 1) or even possibly write the damn thing.
- white tea
- CN Rail passes
- novels
- the College Car
- respiration
-chloraseptic lozenge (cherry flavour)
-cheerios
8:30-10:00 // transit & calculus
-lemon-mint tea
-Tea for the Tillerman - Cat Stevens
10:00-12:00 // residence of friends
-2 tylenols
-lemon-blueberry tea
12:00-1:00 // chemistry
-peach spice tea
1:00-1:50 // transit
-ginger-mint tea
-Mona Bone Jakon - Cat Stevens
1:50-6:00 // home
-lemon-chamomile tea
-2 ibuprofen
-pomegranate green & white tea
-chili&rice
6:00-7:00 // transit
-chloraseptic lozenge (cherry flavour)
7:00-12:00 // De Grassi House
-2 beer
-"Toronto's least favourite cult band [Full Clip Orchestra] makes another return for another show alongside some incredible, young Toronto punk rock and ska talent."
1:00 // bed
-1 pint of water
- for biology lectures the powerpoint slides are available before hand, on the internet. this way, they can be printed off & notes can be taken directly on the slides. everyone does this. maybe 800 people. maybe more. the slides are grouped, six slides per page. this means, every six slides, 800 pages turn. If the flapping of a butterfly’s wings in Brazil could cause a tornado in Texas, what are the possibilities awoken by 800 bio150 student turning the page?
- I am in a fairly competitive program, in a fairly competitive university. even the cork boards are competitive. in sidney smith I put up posters for the knives out submission call monday night. these were covered over by tuesday afternoon.
- in many ways, u of t is better for me than windsor. the way that I appreciate most & daily is that I get to come home to my own bed every night & it doesn't take four hours.
- the french language, when spoken, reminds me of traveling by train & plane because it is there I hear announcements and destinations given in french and english.
- my current biology lecturer has a slight french accent.
a) the Golden Compass, Philip Pullman;
b) the Wave Theory of Angels, Alison MacLeod;
c) Her Absense this Wanderer, Rachel Zolf;
d) Handwriting, Michael Ondaatje;
e) Searoad the Chronicles of Klatsand, Ursula Le Guin;
f) High Fidelity, Nick Hornby
a), b) and f) are novels
c) and d) are poetry
e) is a collection of short stories
f) is also my favorite movie
I own one copy of each of these, excepting c) and a).
as for c): L. owns a copy, which I have read. I keep meaning to aquire one, but I am attached to the copy I read originally. In fact, the copies of each of these books which I own are the copies I read originally, except a).
as for a): the copy I read orginally was a hardcover from the library, having the Eric Rohmann cover. I later bought a box set of the trilogy in softcover, illustrated by Rohmann (I also have a french language copy with this same cover). The first copy of a) I owned was soft cover, illustrated by Eric Peterson. I also own copies with covers by:
Steven Rawlings (I managed to get the whole trilogy by him, actually, second hand.)
Erika Meltzer O'Rourke (Lettering by Lilly Lee)
"Black Sheep" (I'm especially proud of getting my hands on this copy, as it is titled "Northern Lights" and is from the UK. I would like one of these or these)
congratulations, you read the whole post. or skimmed to the end.
It usually goes like this.
"If I finish:
1.
2.
3.
if I do not achieve this, but tommorow I catch up & also do:
4.
5. Masteringphysics
then I can write."
It's possible. but not if I keep making entries in livejournal.
EDIT: I should mention that my point in this post is, if I scheduled even an hour a day for writing I would definitely get to write & wouldn't lose that much time. however, I can't seem to do this. my inability might have something to do with the fact that I have a realistic idea of how likely it is I will stop after an hour.
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