I am back at Favorite Thing Ever this week, writing about the costume drama The Forsyte Saga
I am also wrapping up Quantum Leap recaps pretty quick with Future Boy, Lee Harvey Oswald and soon and finally, Deliver Us from Evil. Did I ever tell you that I also reviewed DD Barant’s Killing Rocks? Those thoughts on the Awesome of DD are here.
Happy Valentine’s Day, all!
I know it’s hearts and flowers day, but on this rainy Vancouver morning, my Favorite Thing Ever is all about beer. Enjoy! And make it last, because I’m taking a couple weeks off FtE.
Once upon a time, I absorbed the following jingle from a Garfield cartoon:
Cats are keen, cats are great, cats are clean, they like your plate.
It’s not exactly Shakespeare, I know, but it can serve as an earworm if you haven’t heard any Madonna lately.
This week’s essay at Favorite Thing Ever was inspired by the memory of my dead cat Buddha, and all the other felines I have known and loved dearly. But since Canada’s true champion number one Cat Fan is the brilliant hard SF author Peter Watts, it is about him too.
It’s possible that somewhere out there is a person who doesn’t know that I have insane true love for Quantum Leap. And so did my dead cat, Buddha. If that’s you, and you want to know more, go here.
I haven’t been blogging much lately. I got some birds up last week from my outing to Vanier Park, with Barb, but posts about writing and the state of my life have been in short supply. One reason is that I temporarily diverted my usual blogging time into revision on an upcoming novel. Another is that I am doing the Quantum Leap rewatches, and a Favorite Thing Ever each week, along with prepping lectures for my Novel III class and writing 8-10 critiques a week for the current Novel II class.
At the same time, some of the bits and pieces of my life have been shifting around a bit, and lots of them haven’t actually settled yet. One example: I’ve always been an early riser, but for the last month and a half I’ve been starting my work day at 6:00 a.m. Another: I’ve been deep in preparations for a choir concert (video footage, including me mangling the word ‘collectivist’ and Badger being lovely and articulate, can be found here). This was my last concert for awhile, as I’m taking a break from singing.
I never quite got a chance to tell you that my birthday trip went down the flush, and I haven’t figured out what the new birthday plan will be. And I took on a new mentoring gig, which–with help from several other little life shifts–discombobulated the stable little Wednesday morning breakfast ritual that has been a mainstay of my and 
Kelly‘s lives since we were twenty-five or so.
There’s been other stuff too, so much of it, some of it with the potential to either be quite big or evaporate in a pfiffle. And I’m like a lot of people, in that uncertainty will never be the topic of an Alyx favorite thing ever column. So there’s been lots of awareness of things unresolved, a resulting bit of tension, and radio silence.
A few things that definitely are going on:
–Kelly and I and Ana are going to the Vancouver Police Museum’s Forensics for Adults program tonight, to do a one-hour workshop on blood spatter. Come on, admit you’re jealous.
–When we first moved to BC and I got chances to experience the Seabus and B.C. Ferries, I started having fabulous seagoing adventure dreams. In these physically improbable scenarios, I often got to drive a ferry as though it was a speedboat, in really fast, really splashy chases. These dreams are so fun. Now that I have been on a cruise, I have cruise dreams too!
–After a couple years of random and unsuccessful attempts to find contact information for her, I have finally managed to reconnect with one of my Clarion instructors, someone I absolutely adore. This has been supernice.
—All my carrots are belong to virtual reality. It used to be that when I achieved some wee personal goal, I’d buy myself a $2-5 packet of sticky notes, or a bowl from someplace like YokoYaya. But now I buy iPod apps! Today I loaded up Vancouver 150, which is a “Hey, Vancouver’s turning 150 so here’s a news and history portal” type thingie. But it was free, and the universe owes me a treat, so if you know of great iTouch apps that are not games, I am always interested.