Latest BuffyRewatch and Move Ephemera

Buffy’s back from the dead this week on my weekly rewatch, which means I have two to go. Two seasons, that is. I’m headed into the grimmer stuff now, but remember these latter seasons as still having had some hysterically funny lines and character moments; I’m looking forward to rediscovering those.

The process of moving has turned out to be rather endless in terms of fiddly paperwork details. Connecting up people we pay–like our insurer, for example, and our RRSP guys–to the new bank accounts has been a mind-numbingly dull and rather tedious process. Yesterday I realized our old condo manager had taken our strata fees out of the Vancouver bank account, as usual, so I’m also chasing a refund, with the very kind assistance of our realtor.

I also have a pile of receipts waiting to be data entered so I can figure out how much we actually spent moving. This is important and exciting because when you relocate more than 40 km for work reasons, you get to write a whole whacking chunk of things off your taxes.

So, if you ever heave yourself halfway across the country, give yourself a generous dicking-around allowance, timewise. And consider the tax return, if it comes together, your pay for this fun temporary job.

Enough with the boring details! Here is a dog photo, sort of, that I found very cute.

Saturday in Montreal

Going to Montreal to see Camille Alexa and Claude Lalumiere made for a nice break from the paperstorm. (The Megabus we took there was twelve hours of horrible, though: next time, we train.) And this weekend we have an embarassment of riches to choose from: there’s a tall ship festival, a literary event, Luminato, in the park ’round the corner, and with luck we’ll find time to see Joss Ado About Nothing. (Much Ado about Joss Things?”

What are you up to?

Material girls miss their coffee frother…

The Spartan Life: Now that we’ve been doing without all our worldly possessions since the 14th, I have begun to miss a few things:

–Roger the milk frother. Though I can nuke milk to the desired warmth for my tea-drinking, I prefer the touch of Roger. Also my veggie steamer and the strainer.
–Small tables and plant stands to put things on. Having everything sitting on the floor does get old.
–Oddly, more of all the things we actually have: I look forward to again having more than 2-3 forks, plates, dresses, and pairs of undies.

Seen through a footbridge, our friend the CN Tower. #yyz #toronto

Yoga with Live Music: Yesterday Kelly and I headed off to Downward Dog to try their 1/2 class. We had the idea that this class was pronounced “One Half” and was the halfway point between the (wonderful, awesome!) Beginner/prep classes we’ve been taking and Level One. Rumor has it that L1 is super-hard!

It turns out that 1/2 means “One Two”–it’s the halfway point between Level One and Two! From this I reached three epiphanies in rapid succession: OMG, OMG, I’m gonna die, followed by Holy Shit I survived that, man I am a Yoga Stud and, finally–after I looked up the class definitions and realized we were in something that might have been termed 1.5, Odds are good I could probably do actual Level One once a week.

Grief Makes You Dumb: A lot of my mental bandwidth is taken up with Grandma-related thoughts. Much of what’s left is getting antsy over the fact that I haven’t written any fiction since the 15th. The latter situation will get addressed tomorrow. So if you ask me for something in the near and get a less than useful response, like “Noodles!” just dumb down the question and try again.

F. Scott Fitzgerald makes you dumb too: The Great Gatsby was a very pretty disappointment. Everyone seemed emotionally flat except Tom Buchanan, and there’s no way to get behind him. Also, Toby Maguire may win the Me Award for simperiest narrator ever.

Some of us get evil twins, Buffy gets a perky twin

slayerI’m up to “Intervention” on the Buffy Rewatch.

Plas related to our relocation are coming along. We have firmed up locations and dates for services, arranged some important banking and medical stuff, and acquired a bed. (Our frame is busted and isn’t coming with. Anyone want a pristine queen-sized futon?) Tomorrow the Frog Boxes arrive and we start packing.

I am obsessing over the bird checklist at the Leslie Street Spit. There will be owl photos.

In the midst of this, my mother-in-law is in town, which is super-delightful! We’re cat-sitting for friends for a bunch of days. And we are saying a lot of goodbyes. Holy crap do I know a lot of people in this neighborhood.

Girlfriend Testing on the #BuffyRewatch on @tordotcom

slayerWay back when I was watching BtVS the first time through, I thought “I was Made To Love You” was the saddest damned thing I’d ever seen. Then, of course, “The Body” aired the following week.

I’m hoping that as the show gets grimmer, the rewatches will get funnier. Because, really, it’s tougher to say silly things about the nigh-perfect episodes, and out-funnying the funny ones is tough too. But the actual watching–some of it is going to be very grim, especially as I hit S6.

Main Guy’s Bumpy… Must Be Tuesday

We’re moving into more of a discussion of Spuffy with my essay on “Crush” on the Buffy rewatch now.

As with any series of columns, there’s some lead time in play here. “Crush” is the rewatch that’s on Tor right now; this past week I’ve watched “The Body” and “Forever.” I’ve been to a lot of family funerals in the period between the initial airing of these episodes and this month, and it made the experience of reviewing them more intense. I am really looking forward to getting a little distance from the tragedies of season five. I’d be looking forward to it even more if a lot of what happens in S6 and S7 wasn’t so grim. Still… musical episode soonish!