Go Look Up Babel... Now

So cold! The weather has morphed from the loving calm that sailed through the beginning of the week to this she-demon force that rails wind and rain upon us. I'm watching the weather from my desk through the side doors and I do not want to leave here to go to class. The rain is falling in a sheet at a 45 degree angle. A 45 degree sheet, I stress! I have no umbrella. Is class all that essential in the long run, I ask you? I think not. But, we're discussing Babel today in Russian. He is quite the trip - funny and morbidly depressing all at the same time. Isaac Babel, go look him up. Right now. (I can see you not moving. Shoo!) For him, I will head out into this - it's not as though I don't like rain. It's nice to wander in when it's warm and lovely to listen to at all seasons indoors - but it's cold. I don't want to walk in it, just listen to it - especially since I'm going to get dripping wet and then have to squelch through class. Sorry, this is becoming perilously close to a whine. I will close before I descend into a sulk or - horrors! - a whinge.

Chocolate... Yum (WOL)

So-late. Must-keep-eyes-open... (snoozing sounds) Work and school have taken a dislike to me lately - I might need to sacrifice a chocolate cake to them this weekend to get back in their good graces. Yum, with lemon icing. No, strawberry! Well, maybe lemon... I'll get back to you on that decision. I just struggled home after my late class on Japanese literature. It went pretty well, I loved the book for this week. It's called The Broken Commandment and it's absolutely beautiful prose. He was heavily influenced by the French naturalists while he was writing it, so not only is the story captivating, you get an incredibly detailed and lovely image of the world that Segawa is moving through. For those of us without the luck to have ever been to Hokkaido, it makes you feel almost as though you have seen those mountains and valleys - and that you desperately want to return. I also learned quite a bit about the class system in Japan during the Meiji, which was fascinating all on it's own. There's my recommendation for your week: chocolate cake and The Broken Commandment - go forth and indulge!

Catsday (WOL)

Today was a great day - despite even having to get up at six in the morning. After work and classes, I went out to lunch with the Best Roommate Ever (BRE) at this new Asian restaurant in town and then we went out to the Second Chance Animal Shelter and played with the kitties for a couple of hours! They're so cute and nearly all of them were lovable. There were a couple who were very, "Right, well you can talk to me, but there will be no petting - I'm not sure you're worthy." Very dignified cats, they were. Then there were several kittens who went mad when they discovered that there were new playmates and the cats who really just wanted to take over our laps and be snuggled to death. Very relaxing. I was all over fur when we left, but I definitely want to make time to go back. There are kits in need of cuddling - how can I resist?

Doors and Doors

Yipes! Sorry about so many Written Off-Line posts at once, but it was quite the busy week. Well except Sunday - but I wasn't driving to campus to post blogs on my day off! I love you, but not that much.

On a completely unrealted note, I decided today that I like side doors. Front doors make you feel majestic, of course, expecially if they're ornate in some fashion. Side doors, however, seem as though they are letting you in on a secret, giving part of themseves to you as a gift. You 'enter' a front door, but you can 'slip in' through the side. Much friendlier, don't you think?

Dozy Days (WOL)

Today has been a very homebody day. I didn't have to work (Hallelujah!), so I just curled up in bed with all the books I needed to read - and maybe a few I didn't, heehee - and luxuriated the day away. I still didn't get all the reading I needed to done, it piles up so fast, but I feel so much happier and relaxed. Truly books are mana for my soul. Yay Sundays!

At Dusk (WOL)

The sky was perfect tonight at the very first touch of dusk. The clear blue sky with smokes of white almost-clouds gleaming proudly, as the darker fingertips of dusky-gray began to steal around the curling edges of the sky. I love the word 'dusk.' It's a very different thing than 'twilight' or 'sunset.'

Coming Up Roses (WOL)

My headphones gave up the ghost a few weeks ago and fell all to pieces. They had a good, long life - for headphones - and I mourned them appropriately. I went looking for a new pair today at Walgreens and finally managed to find the perfect pair. I'm picky with headphones. I don't want normal ones that smash your hair down and I don't want earbuds (OW!), I like the ones with the ear pieces all by themselves. Surprizingly scarce, they are. But I found them! Anyway, Walgreens already had all of their Valentines stuff up (big surprize) so I went to cuddle a few of the bears. What should I find instead? Candles. I'm always susceptible to candles, but these went one step further. Rose-scented candles. Real ones, that actually smell as close to a rose as you can get without being creeped out, rather then the main lot of supposedly rose-scented candles clearly made by someone who had never smelled a rose in his life. Or did so only with a very strong head-cold. I gave in to them almost immediately and they are now decorating my bookcase. I know that when I feel low, all I will have to do is go by and inhale to feel straight-away transported to a rose garden. And who can feel unhappy surrounded by roses?

Yoga Daze (WOL)

Yoga was excruciating today. I'm afraid that I'm never going to have much else to say on Tuesdays and Thursdays, when I'm dealing with the aftermath of my reckless Mondays and Wednesdays - it's so very much in the forefront of my mind. Not to mention my arms, my legs, my neck, my abs...

Happy as a Sunday (WOL)

Have you ever wondered about the phrase 'a month of Sundays' ? I heard it today and it has been plaguing me. Does it mean a month with all the normal Sundays in it - if so, why not just say a month? Or is it thirty Sundays, which would be what - seven, eight months? Doe sthat seem likely? Hyperbole, I know. It's just a phrase, but when you think about them do phrases ever make sense? 'Happy as a clam' - how can clams be happy?! Even if they were, how do we know they are all the time happier than your average human being? These things frustrate me... and take over brain space that should be concentrating on my growing mountain of reading. Oops.

Never Say Never

I hate being cold. This is no surprise to anyone who knows me or has read too many of my blogs. Yet I realised today, as I marched towards the bus freezing my nose off, that I never feel so vibrantly alive as I do in the cold. The shape of my lungs as the ice slips through them, the curve of my nose, the arch of my cheekbones reddening in the cold, my fingers and toes and ears tingling down to the marrow, everything seems immediate.

I hate being cold, but I think I might miss it if I could never be cold again.

This Post Brought to You By the Color 'Green'

I managed to finish off And Then today, which did end as unhappily as I predicted. I think. It's somewhat hard to tell. It all ends in a swirl of red, which I took to mean that he had a) committed suicide b) been killed while in delirium or c) gone mad. Unless there's some other interpretation I'm missing, I count this as an unhappy ending. My favorite, of the options given, is that he was killed in his delirium. I don't think he had enoguh gumption to actually commit suicide, but dying would be an infinitely kinder death to him than continuing to live, mad or not. Plus, there was a mention in the book that it was only acceptable to read about a character who had flouted society for love and like them if they wound up dying in the end. Despite not knowing how much I actually liked the main character, it would be very poetic if that quote came full circle.

I talked to a friend today who has just come back from field research in Mexico. Apparently they camped in an active volcano for over two weeks while they examined the wildlife in the area. If you said, Pardon me? when you read that, then you are in line with my reaction precisely. He explained that it was generally only mild activity - boulders, small lava flows - and that other scientists had been watching for the big explosion that's due to arrive, so they were never in danger. I, of course, was still stuck somewhere around small lava flows. Yet I bravely moved past and listened to how beautiful the area was; it did sound nice, he was in the southern part of Mexico in a tropical forest high up on the lip of the volcano. The only drawback, he admitted, was that every single plant fought back and tried to stick them.

I would like to see a rainforest, though preferably not one in a volcano. I can almost imagine how very green it must be, but not quite because while it's easy to focus on how green one leaf must be, it's harder to get the perspective on an entire glade greener than anything I've ever seen. Still, the 'almost' is a very pretty picture, taken nearly entirely from Alabama forests. When I moved to Alabama from my southern Idaho desert, I decided that green was going to be one of new favorite colors right along with blue when we drove into the very first forest. It would be hard to be indifferent to green living down there, it surrounds you so completely. In the summer, I swear you could have drowned in green, if you weren't so busy trying to figure out what joker had switched out all of the air for water when you weren't looking.

To See or Not to See (WOL)

Entry for 01/20:
I was very ambitious today, to make up for yesterday I think, and completely rearranged the living room. When I moved in I only had a vague idea of how I wanted things to be, so the furniture mostly stayed where we carried it in, which was the most ridiculous setup. It was a configuration that actually managed to work against every available light. At the desk I faced away from the lights, in the chair I couldn't even acknowledge a light to face away from. Now everything is greedy of light, which is just the way it ought to be.

I'm trying to convince myself that buying reading glasses does not mean that I'm getting older or that I'm doomed to go blind by the time I'm fifty-two. I read somewhere that reading with your regular glasses or contacts in, if you're nearsighted, can actually cause your vision to worsen, which would explain my steadily decaying eyesight. I'm not about to pop my contacts out everytime I read during the day, but I generally wear glasses at home, so I could just switch between the two. Yet, is this not a sign that the end is, if not near, at least approaching? I can see myself now wandering around looking for the other pair of glasses that are neatly perched on top of my head. Forgetting to switch glasses and thinking that my eyesight has failed completely already. I'll be the stereotype of an old woman with glasses - all at the age of twenty-one!

But I think I'm going to do it. Anything for my eyes, I can't imagine not being able to see one day, I've always had a horror of it. The grim spectre seems to be getting closer, too. My glasses were late getting in at the doctor's, so my parents had to send them to me. Well, apparently they tried them on before they sent them. Over the phone, they said they were trying to see how they would look on, but that they couldn't see anything through them and that I was halfway to blind! I know they exaggerate, but it was an unpleasant thrill up my spine. They both wear glasses themselves and, when I used to play the game of 'Let's Trade Glasses!' (Did anyone else play that in elementary school?) my parents' were the ones that always made me dizzy. I used to put my mother's on, when I was sent to find them from where ever she had set them down, and pretend that I was exploring a strange, new world until I would start to feel nautious.

It's sad to think that I can't go back to that world anymore.

Unhappily Ever After (WOL)

Entry for 01/19:
Today is for certain a lazy day. I'm just going to sit about and read my heart out until I have to work. Right now I'm trying to blaze my way through And Then by Soseki. It started out fine, it's slow and philosophical, but I don't mind those type of books so long as the philsophy is sound and the scenery beautiful. Both were just as they ought to be and I was perfectly fine wandering through the life of a character who has no ambition nor inclination to have a sound opinion on anything, when I suddenly walked into the middle of a love triangle and everything has gone downhill since. I dislike sad endings and I know this is going to have one, I just know it. Hence, progression on the novel has slowed considerably.

I'm also reading through a stack of futurist poetry for my Russian lit course, and a bit of proletariat poems as well, which is interesting. Sort of. Some of the poems just basically say, "Yay new order! We rule!," which isn't very exciting to read, but the authors with a pinch of creativity to them are quite good. I've also learned that the first sci-fi novel was written in Russia during this period. It's called We by Zamyatin and it's fascinating, though I'm nearly sure already that it's going to have a sad ending, too.

Why can't they let there be a bit of happiness in the world? There's enough sadness in reality. If book-people can't even contrive happy endings what does that say for the luck of the rest of us?

Seasons (WOL)

My internet connection went yet again and I only came to campus to work this weekend, so I wound up writing my entries offline again. From now on, I think, I'll just put (WOL) in the heading. It's really just to keep it straight in my own head, anyway. That way you won't have to read a preface to everyone of my articles, eh?

Entry for 01/18:
Last day of the first week, finally. It seems so hard to believe that at the end of the semester I'll look back and say, 'It all went so fast!' Right now it seems as though the next sixteen weeks stretch out indefinitely. Not that it's altogether a bad thing. While I'm anxious to have my BA over with - and how weird it is, to think of myself as a BA, it seems I should have to be much more sensible then - I am somewhat ambivalent about life 'on the other side.' If I had something to look forward to it might be different, but June looks just like a question mark from my January perspective.

I find winter such an easy time to have melancholy reflections. It's much harder to concern yourself with the fate of the world on a spring evening, when you can smell the rain in the breeze and the earth looks as though someone brushed a film of green-ness over everything. Winter, though, however beautiful it may seem by turns, is very dark. The sky is mostly pearly-gray and the trees arch black-lacy fingers strikingly against the air; colors are muted and everything seems to slip into sepia tones. I feel certain that the writers of books that claim to be 'reality' and are definitely depressive must have written them all of a wintertime. How could it be possible to write them on a May afternoon!

Limerick Day!

In Oklahoma once was a girl,
Who had short hair with nary a curl,
The wind with a snap
Abducted her cap
Then made it nod to her with a twirl.

Weather Wise

I hate not having an internet connection all my own. Sigh. Once more here's what I wrote yesterday, but didn't get to post.

Post for 01/16:

The weather's turned bitter on us out here. This weekend it was as a fair maiden smiling upon os, but the maiden suddenly has a raging hate on and I am so, so cold. I'm not sure what the temperature is, but I don't think it would matter, it's that wind. It had a two-pronged attack this wind. First, wraps around you in constant tiny gustlings so that you never have a chance to get warmer and then, once weakened, it throws sharp and lengthy waves of cold air against you, stripping away any little pockets of warmth you might still possess. It is a sneaky wind, sly thing, and I don't want to have to leave my cozy, warm abode for my evening class. It's certain to sneak along behind me and freeze everything.

And So It Begins

My first day of classes went. The professors are engaging, the subjects (today was Logic and Survey of Russian Literature after 1917) are interesting, but I sense... I sense... a whole lot of reading in my future. Which is my fault, I know, but these things are hard to rationalize when your bookcase is threatening armed mutiny.

Still today was just basic intro stuff: you're in the right place, if you're a slacker get out, here's what you're graded on, and now for a brief introduction... though I am impressed that the Russian prof managed to shove all of Russia's history before 1917 into one lecture. My hand is holding a grudge, however. That woman talks so fast! Practically before my pen was uncapped, Russia's Eastern Slavs had been influenced by the Vikings, invaded the Byzantine empire, and converted to Christianity gaining a written language.

Despite my initial fears, the Russian texts don't weigh more than a block of cement, mainly I think because we're not look at the age of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky. There is one, however, that looks quite intimidating - moreover because I've yet to meet a Russian novel with a happy ending.

Logic (so far) seems much easier. I even have my first deductive argument right here! :

If Sunny does not begin the Russian text now < Sunny will rend her garments and gnash her teeth later
Sunny is petrified of the Russian text
There is rending and gnashing in Sunny's future

Nothing. Literally.

I've only got three minutes before I have to dash to a meeting - which I forgot about until two minutes ago. I have nothing to say moreover, I have nothing to say that sould be said in three minutes. Well, I mean, I guess nothing could be said in three minutes easily. Unless, of course, it were one of those 'meaningful' nothings. You know, like you read in books. Pregnant pauses, charged silences, electric moments. Those probably take more than three minutes. Well, maybe not a pregnant pause. A pause seems to indicate, by the 'pause' definition, less than three minutes. Otherwise it would be a pregnant 'moment' or a pregnant 'interval.' Have you ever wondered about the use of pregnant in that case. I mean I guess it could be a pause 'full of' something, but literally it seems to be a pause 'in a prolonged gestation period that will bear forth a child in less than nine months depending on how big the pause is at the present moment.' Which I suppose could work, but it would take more than the nonexistent three minutes I haven't got left to figure it out. Toodles folks!

A Post That Basically Says Nothing

Yesterday, the internet connection that I've been, um, 'borrowing' at home went kaput, but I wrote down my blogpost instead! I shall not fail at my quest so early in the year, at least in August I could feel some sense of accomplishment. Post 13 would just be sad.

My post for 01/13:

So I got news back today that an opportunity that I've been working on since late November might be bearing fruit. I'd like to tell what it is, but I'm absolutely terrified of jinxing it. I know it's silly, but I haven't told anyone about it yet. Over Christmas break, I kept thinking that maybe I should mention it to my parents or Redhead, but I just couldn't do it. What if I told them and then it didn't pan out? I would spend quite a few nights wondering if it would have gone better had I kept it a secret.

Besides, this way if it doesn't work out, I won't have to deal with them sympathizing with me. I know they mean well, but I'd rather just forget about it and move on. In any case, he said that he would hopefully have news within the next two weeks, so when I get word, I'll pass it along to you! Then I'll reference this post and it'll be like the end of a mystery story when you go 'Oh, that's who dunnit!' Except, of course, no one had to get murdered for my story. At least, I hope not.

To Arms!

Today was a day of perils, my friends.

I got home from work quite hungry, as it was one of those inconvenient shifts that leves you not hungry enough to eat lunch before you go in and positively starving by the time you get out and ready for an early dinner. Surveying my kitchen and noting, by the fact that the alcohol is beginning to outnumber the actual food, that I need to get to a grocery, I decided to make a morningside burger, a furger if you will.

My baking sheet was in the dish washer, so I flipped a baking pan over to use the bottom, a tried and true method. :) So I popped it in the oven, flipped it at the half-way point, and lined up the onions and cheese like little condimental soldiers in happy anticipation. The timer went off and I went to take it out when I discovered that I wasn't able to grip the pan through the pot holders in a way that gave me enough leverage to get the pan out.

It was a mighty stuggle. I tried pulling the rack out, but it stuck after an inch. Pushing it back in slid the pan further into the oven. Me:0 Pan:1 I attempted again to get a grip on the sides or even the underside of the pan to slip it out, but all I managed to do was slide off the edges pushing the pan a little forwards or backwards each time. Me:0 Pan:2 Giving in, I settled for slowly inching the pan towards the edges of the rack. As the pan neared the edge, however, it made one last desperate gambit which resulted in my arm meeting the top of the oven. Me: -32 Pan:350 Degrees, that is.

After leaving my wrist under the cold tap until it went numb, I valiently returned to the fray and managed to liberate my furger. Settled between two slices of bread, covered in onion and cheese, it looked the very picture of defeat. I ate my dinner with the smug satisfaction of the victorious.

Vents and Venting

I called the apartment office this morning for maintenance help because my thermostat wouldn't turn the heat on until I would flick it to fan and then back to auto. Which was fine, except that I had to do that every time it kicked off or it would never turn back on. Mornings were very, very chilly.

They were very nice, sent out not one, but two maintenance men who replaced the thermostat and were fiddling with wires when I left to head to work.

I got home tonight to discover that the house was cold. No problem, I thought, they muct just have turned the setting down low to save me money.

Nope.

Set on 75, the thermometer also read 75, but I was shivering while still in my coat. Well, thought I, guess this themostat has problems taking an accurate reading, I'll call that in tomorrow. So I turned up the setting to kick the heater in.

Fifteen minutes later, I stomp to the front of the thermostat again and glare. Flick it to fan. Listen to the whirr of air. Click it back to heat. Wait. Voila! Heat.

So now, not only do I have the problem I had when I woke up this morning, I have a brand new one because I called someone to fix my original problem. Is this irony or just pathetic?

I'm going to go curl up under several blankets and sulk with a book of Sudoku now. And hot tea.

Anticipation

Ah, the last weekend approaches before the start of classes. I'm trying to bask in my free time before it all goes dwindling rapidly down the pipes. This is the point where I'm still convinced I will have all the books read and papers written and tests studied for weeks in advance. If you turn weeks into hours, you have my goals by mid-semester, and by tweaking those hours (with a big, red pen) into 'ever! before class! come on, woman, work!' you have my mantra as the semester draws to a close. You would think that, if I could predict it, I could change it, huh? But it never quite works out. It doesn't help that procrastinating is my middle name. Yes, it took quite a while as a child to work out how to spell that - too many n's, I think.

I'm off to sloth about with a book. I need to get all my reading-of-choice in before the semester starts. I always find it ironic that no English major that I know ever really has the time to do much free-reading. It's a sad, sad lot.

Tonight, Tonight!

Apparently I have no life. How do I know this, you ask? Quite easily. When I went to fix the muffler, they also replaced the bulb in my right headlight, which had gone out. I didn't even know. Why, you ask? Because I haven't been out after dark since I got back. And that, my friends, is a sad commentary on the state of my life. In by dusk! It's like back when I was a kid, trying to make it home from the park before it got dark enough that the streetlights came on. I did a lot more running back in those days. :)

So, in order to test the workability of my new headlight, I'm going out tonight. I refuse to spend another night camped out with hot tea and a book. Though, y'know, I did just get some new ones from the used bookstore.... books, not tea, that is. Hmm..

No! No, I refuse to feel like a maiden aunt. Which is pretty much how I felt when I had to confess to the garage attendent that I had no idea when the light had gone out because I lack social skills. Or, at least, that's how I assume he interpreted it. So, I am going out! Where, I don't quite know yet...

(Oh, extra-special bonus points for whoever knows what song the sparse blog-title comes from. Here's a hint, the whole line goes: "Tonight, tonight, it all began tonight." Yes, very helpful, I'm sure.)

Ramblings

'Tis the season to be hiring - for my boss anyway. Which means it's the season for me to be training. I don't mind it too much so long as the people are nice and interested in doing a good job, which they always are on the whole. With one rather notable exception who still makes my vision skew towards red. Yes, he is still working with us. Why? Not an earthly clue, but clearly he has some pull with divine intervention because I was ready to chuck him out after the first day. Cretin.

Ahem. But let us not dwell. It generally leads to incohate muttering of also-red-tinged words.

I find it amazing every time I train how much of what I do I never actually think about. It's like I walk around working with my head somewhere off in the distance, because whenever I'm trying to tell someone what to do in a shift I find myself having to actually walk through it and thinking things like, "Do I do this? Really?" or "Wow, I can't remember walking over here every day. Have I seen that picture before?"

So I was remembering, as I set up training times, of somewhere off in the fuzzy past when I was learning under the previous library assistant. It was winter, of course, because things are always fuzzy when they happen in winter. I think it's all the steam of winter - defrosting over a heater, the fog on glasses as you walk through doors, breaths in the cold air. My point was, however, that there was a time when I seriously thought about everything that I don't think about now, which is just strange when you consider it. When did I move from thinking, "Okay, first sort the book tags, then run these to the Dean's office. Next, shelf read this section. Alright, then go the the Reserves..." to "Hm, I wonder if these shoes were the best idea, maybe I should stick to normal flats. But the boots are so cute! Still, too many stairs. I need to run by the bookstore after my shift..." The mind is a funny thing.

Mainly I wonder if I was better at this before I got good at it. Which probably doesn't make a whole lot of sense, but I still wonder.

Have You Heard the One

My library shift today felt like a joke. A really bad one.

It began with, "A farmer, a midget, and a Japanese woman walked into a library..."

And ended with me not being able to help any of them, because the farmer couldn't understand (in a southern monotone which I had never heard before and is absolutely excruciating in the long-term, which this conversation was) why I had banned him from Yahoo Backgammon.

The midget couldn't understand (in a perfectly normal voice, but one that continued long, long past the need for me to hear him restate his problem again. and again.) why I couldn't take his money for the printers (rather than the Copy Center downstairs, which I told him about three times).

And the Japanese woman, I finally figured out, couldn't understand (loudly; her's was a pretty short discussion, just at a high volume; now I understand how people in other countries feel when Americans travel and insist on speaking loudly and slowly in English as though that helps; mental note to self: never, never do this - it is monstrously annoying) why I couldn't give her a bus sticker.

I know I sit under a sign that says 'Information,' but I thought it would be generally understood that meant 'Library Information.' I don't run Yahoo, the printers, or the bus service - now leave me alone!

And yes, they did all come at me at the same time. I feel like I should have been mixing a martini while I talked. And then drinking it. Quickly.

Go East, Young Woman

I got a phone call from my mother this evening, after she took a trip to Michael's with my father:

Mum: ... and all of the Christmas stuff was half-off! I picked up some things I knew you would like.

Me: (already suspicious) Well, that was sweet of you.

Mum: Yes, there were ornaments all over the walls, and they're easy to make. I picked out ones that only need a glue gun, which I have. I thought that they would make great presents for the baskets next year. And they're crafty! I'm sure you'll have fun making them for me.

Me: ... for you?

Mum: Well, you can make them for you as well.

My father didn't help much, when he got ahold of the phone:

Me: How could you take her to Michael's? Do not let her go near the Hobby Lobby sales. Tell her the car is tired.

Dad: She'd just walk. Look upon it like outsourcing.

Me: ...

Dad: She's like a major company outsourcing the raw materials to be turned into a finished product and mailed back. You're a link in the corporate chain. Like China. Or Thailand.

Me: You take my mother to Michael's and then try to make me feel better by calling me China?

Dad: Or Thailand.

Me: Let me know before she sends the box out. So I can actually move to China. Or Thailand. Without a forwarding address.

Ghost in my Head

Luckily I had two days off in a row, to make up for my wasted, muffler-filled yesterday. So today I played a new computer game. Yes, I do consider that a better day. Toss up between cooling my heels for three hours while my car is gutted and then weeping bitter tears over my credit card or shouting furiously at my computer because I don't know what I'm doing? Despite similar levels of frustration, I'll take the computer. At least I can wear sweatpants, drink hot tea, and cuddle under blankets while my anger mounts.

So the game. For awhile I've been killing my spare time playing Elite Force. Yes, that is the Star Trek Voyager game and no, you may not mock me for my Trek-love. You've never wanted to blast off into space, explore strange new worlds, and bond with a group of people who could all, eerily, sell beauty products in their downtime? I thought so.

But I did not play Elite Force today. I found a new game while I was shopping over the holidays called 'Ghost in the Sheet,' which appealed to my love of both humor and the macabre. Simutaneously, even. It begins wonderfully. You're dead. (Well, wonderfully may have been the wrong word.) You head towards the light and through the tunnel, only to discover that you are now part of a dead bureaucracy and, moreover, you're the last rung on the ladder. In fact, you don't even have a rung yet, you're hanging on to the bottom, trying to hold onto your sheet. As low-man on the totum pole, you're sent out to an abandoned factory to figure out what went wrong. It would be creepy if you didn't spend a great deal of time chuckling over the quips.

So far, so good. Until. Has anyone ever played 'Myst'? If you have, then you know where this is going. It's a great game, as long as you're progressing forward. It drives people to drink, however, when they get stuck wandering in aimless circles for hours because they can't solve the latest puzzle or, even worse, they can't find the latest puzzle. 'Ghost,' my friends is the new 'Myst.' There is already a decrease in the vodka in my freezer. Don't judge until you've played it. I managed to kill the sole survivor of the - whatever - that I set loose again in the factory and now I'm wandering aimlessly around Hall A. Losing. My. Mind.

Still, I'm determined to get out of that bloody Hall A before I give up and uninstall. And return to Elite Force. At least when I'm confused there I can always start blowing up aliens with my phaser. It's very cathartic.

Muffled

Ode to the flipping muffler that caused me to spend my day off at a Midas, not to mention being out two hundred dollars, rather than hibernating indoors.

Oh muffler fair,
how could you dare
disintegrate on me?

Now I am poor,
flat broke once more,
and out the service fee.

But should you choose
once more to lose
your core integrity.

Your number now
is called, I vow:
I have a warranty!

Nor Wind, Nor Rain, Nor Lack of Heater

I hate being cold. With every fiber of my being. When I told my parents that I was considering going to Boston for college, they laughed and laughed while imagining me refusing to attend classes on the principle that if water has the good sense to become ice at a certain temperature we should probably have the common sense to stay indoors. One of the numbers on my pro-con list of moving to Oklahoma was: It's got to be warmer than Illinois. Why do I mention this, you ask?

The heater at work stopped working yesterday.

Yes, indeed, I went to work early in the morning yesterday, refused to take off my coat in the Reference office for that shift, then kicked the mini space heater up to dangerous levels at the Information desk, and finally - in an act that clearly represents my bravery and dedication - I went back to work this morning. A workplace that has no heat.

No. Heat.

I begin wearing my heavy coat in September. I have three sets of gloves/scarves/hats that I have been known to wear all at the same time. My only problem with my first roommate? My sincere belief that she was part polar bear as illustrated by our tussles over the thermostat. My father claims that if he set me on fire at noon on a humid day, I would still complain of a draft. When the southern baptists at my old high school would tell me that we were all going to hell, my favorite quip was that at least I would finally be warm.

I'm still thawing as I huddle under two blankets with a cup of gingerbread coffee at my feet. The spirit is mildly willing to brave these conditions, but it's easily hounded to death by the flesh smashing it over the head with a placard that reads "The hell are we doing here, woman?! It's cold!" My pay stub cannot compete with a profane placard.

I have the day off tomorrow, which is good because I'm not sure I could make myself enter a building again that doesn't inspire one to remove any layers. Though, I should probably stop looking for prospective jobs in Chicago - any place called the Windy City is most likely a bad sign. I wonder how the book editing biz is in New Mexico?

Atwood Rides Again

I finished Cat's Eye at work this morning - why, yes, it was quite the busy shift - and it was disquieting. Primarily, I think, because Atwood was playing with circular themes. As I read, images, phrases, people, kept circling through the scenes; events that occured one way at a certain point came back and played out differently again. Completed, it was as though I was looking at one of those spiral-graph toy pictures. The ones where you clamped the piece of paper inside and then ran your pencil round and round the different designs until you emerged with a sheet that looked like a cross between a Christmas snowflake and blueprints for a gear. Unless the paper slipped, and then it came out as a young child's scribblings of a mountian or trees or the sun. The brilliance of Atwood is that at times it looks as though she's slipped, that her pencil has gone careening after an errant tree, but then the picture joggles and steps back later and you see that there's an even larger circle that needed that tree to connect.

Is this rambling? It seems like rambling - confused and elated, which is how I finished the book. Then, as I was conveniently already in a library and had an hour left of my shift, I looked up 'Atwood, Margaret.' Now I'm reading Alias Grace. If Cat's Eye was playing with circles, this one is a play on forms. Already, I've flipped from narrative to poems, letters to drawings, newsprint. I don't have a grasp yet on what else she is playing with, my shift ended too soon for once, but I'm already intrigued. I like a writer who is having as much fun writing a work as I am reading it.

As there's already been a murder and an insane asylum in the book, I don't think I'm improving my 2008 vibes too much. For that, a happy note: I noticed this morning, as I was shivering and attempting to speed up the car's defrosting by the powers of my eyes burning through the steering wheel alone, that ice is not really solid. When it's forming, I mean. Goodness knows it's solid enough when you're trying to peel it off of a car. It forms, though, from little snowflakes of ice, chips of water that splay across the surface until they meet another frozen pattern and another. Then they all, apparently, form a union and fight for the right to never leave the window of your car. Things are so much prettier alone.

Day One... Of 365. Oh Dear.

Happy New Year!

Seeing as NaBloPoMo went so well - all eight of my posts - I thought I should expand my horizons. So I've joined the Blog 365 group. This is Day 1 and, hey, I'm posting! Clearly I'm off to a good start.

The holidays are finally over. I love seeing my parents and friends, but there just comes that point when you begin to comtemplate the padded walls of an institution with longing just because you'd get to be alone - and then you know it's time to go back to real life. Or get yourself committed, but that is expensive and I would have to quit my job. So, here I am back in my nice, quiet apartment.

I discovered this weekend that Margaret Atwood apparently wrote more books after The Handmaid's Tale. Why I didn't know this before, I have no excuse for, but I do now and Cat's Eye has become my obsession. There's something sweetly depressing about the book. Elaine is so vivid, so very real, and I'm not sure how my heart can sink any lower as I keep reading. Her story isn't a tragedy, it's a reality, which I think is what makes it sad - and also sweet. Like poison. You read what she sees, what she experiences through her perceptions, which gloss over the reality of what happens with the reality of what she feels at the time, then you are suddenly doused all at once with her realisations of the reality she obscured from herself. It happens over and again, as she ages and thinks that who she thought she was at a time is not who she was or is or can be, but it's a cold shock every time. I want it to be over, I want to piece all the fragments of her life together so that I know the totality of who she has become, what she has pieced together from her life, but I don't want it to end. Part of this is Elaine, but another is Atwood's language, her descriptors, the way she has of describing an object, a smell, a sound, in a way that sounds strange, but is perfectly right. There is verse in her prose.

And so I begin 2008 by describing a depressing novel. I certainly hope this is not some sort of prediction for the year. Just in case: fuzzy kittens! warm mugs of tea! soft robes and good books and smiles! There. That ought to brighten up my future just a bit.