About Alyx Dellamonica

After twenty-two years in Vancouver, B.C., I've recently moved to Toronto Ontario, where I make my living writing science fiction and fantasy; I also review books and teach writing online at UCLA. I'm a legally married lesbian, a coffee snob, and I wake up at an appallingly early hour.

Toronto day 76

Kelly and I went to a book launch for Ryan North’s Choose Your Own Adventure Hamlet graphic novel, To Be or Not To Be on Monday. It was a massive event–the signing was happening outside a pub, and across the street, people were getting their pictures taken in quasi-Elizabethan dress. At some point a three-man theater troupe did a fifteen-minute version of Hamlet which was pretty hilarious.

(It was odd, too, because the other play we’ve been to since arriving here was also a literary adaptation where a couple people played all the roles, this time of Pride and Prejudice.)

The last week or so has held a pleasing mix of delights: I am poking away on two short stories at once. I am not sure where either of them is going, but that’s part of the fun. I am back at the mentoring gig as of yesterday and am so glad to have resumed that part of my life and routine. My current Creating Universes students are chatty and engaged, passionate about SF books, and a thoroughgoing delight. I had lunch with Peter Watts yesterday, have hung out with my sister a couple times, and am looking forward to the next ChiZine reading at Augusta House.

There has been lots of yoga, and there will be more tonight.

The coming weekend is a long weekend, just as it is in B.C., and we’re going to check out the Simcoe Day festivities at Fort York, for no better reason than that it’s a ten minute walk from our place.

Happy August, everyone!

Let’s get musical (musical!) on the #Buffyrewatch

slayerOnce More, With Feeling” is without a doubt a contender for the BtVS episode I’ve seen the most. The other things on the ballot would be “Hush,” “The Zeppo” and “Dopplegangland.”

When Kelly turned 38, we rented the Pacific Cinematheque theater in Vancouver and showed it, along with “Hush.” We issued an open invitation to all of Vancouver fandom; I’d say about 150 people turned up to sing along. Many of those were from the choir now known as Out in Harmony, so it was an especially tuneful singalong even though the theater’s acoustics were quite bad.

We have the soundtrack. We sing it on road trip. You probably do, too.

All of which is a rather long-winded way of saying that I’m maybe a season and a half from the end of this rewatch. Which is thoroughly amazing to me, and makes me want to ask whether anyone else has a long-term project on the go whose end is, perhaps, heaving into view.

Toronto Day 64 – The Skunk Made It!

Happy news: the construction workers from the other day watched my skunk friend successfully use our improvised bridge to climb out of the fountain. They also told me Animal Control had showed up a short time later, ready to ride to the rescue. I was very pleased to hear it, and was also rather delighted that the bricklaying dudes cared enough to keep an eye on the little guy and update me.

We had a full-on thunderstorm last night, for hours, and it was spectacular. I expected it to be more amazing than watching the heat lightning over the Sierra Nevadas, and it was. I hadn’t expected it to compete with prairie thunderstorms for sheer noise, drama and staying power. But, in fact, it was flashing and booming most dramatically for hours on end.

I couldn’t quite get ’round to looking up how to do a long lightning-catching exposure on my camera–though I will, at some point–but this was one of the many amazing cloud formations we glimpsed while watching it all unfold:

Summer storm clouds

Thunderstorms were one of the things I missed about Alberta, all those years ago when we left. It is extremely nice to have them back.

Our view of the sky is bounded by the courtyard of our building, which gives us a very Rear Window perspective on the nearest neighbors. Last night as we were staring out at the thunder we could see several folks out on their decks, doing the same thing. We can also see straight into the building’s party room, so we were able to watch people setting up for a birthday celebration. It was quite the operation, since they had to ferry stuff in and out of the building in the downpour.

There’s excellent sky and people-watching here, in other words.

Toronto Day 62

photo by Kelly Robson

photo by Kelly Robson

When we moved to Toronto I got more diligent about checking in using Yelp, using the app to track the various cafes and restaurants Kelly and I have been trying out. It’s less true now than it was, but in our first few weeks here I was often sitting in a perfectly nice joint with no real clue as to where I was.

And then, when I would get the I wanna go back to that place, where was that place? itch, I didn’t have to try to remember its address–which would be impossible. Or even its name–honestly, that’d be pretty unlikely. The incomparable Sense Appeal was, until I looked it up, “that place with the black and white bags that I posted on Instagram.” But I didn’t have to know! I just scrolled through my check-ins until the answer turned up, in red and white, complete with map. Turns out it was less than a kilometer from the house.

I am apparently the only Yelper currently active in the West Queen West area, though. Eight weeks of trying to track my own movements has netted me a handful of Dukedoms, on just about every place I’ve been more than twice. True, I’d been auditioning a lot of coffee houses, looking for the all important remote work site, but still!

Speaking of apps, the one that counts the number of days I’ve been here would also like you all to know it’s 160 days until December 25th.

Toronto seems to have more work-at-cafe culture than Vancouver. A lot of places are jammed with computer-using busy people by as early as ten, and there’s a very serious air about it.

Also, they seem to think you should be tall. One of the reason for all the auditioning was I kept finding perfectly nice places whose tabletops were too high for me to either write long hand or safely type.

Seriously! In the end, I had to go to MEC and buy an inflatable camping pillow. Which I now carry in my portable office along with all my other carp! How crazed is that?