Category Archives: True Stories

Anecdotes from my past and present.

2014, I’m watching you….

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I don’t go in much for New Year’s Resolutions, but I said to Kelly a few days ago, and only half-jokingly: “I’m gonna make a pact with the invisible sky fairy. Nobody dies on us this year, and we’ll start working on being less morbid.”

Because there have been a lot of funerals for us, since 2005, and damn but I’m tired. Though as you may have noticed, I find cemeteries pretty.

Since then, I’ve got an e-mail that Grandma’s husband Bert’s doing not so well, and one of K’s cousins is in hospital with pneumonia. Maybe I’ll have to swing the other way and get myself a Morticia gown. And nine extra inches of height in the legs to pull it off.

Sleepy Time on the #BuffyRewatch

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This week’s essay is called “My Sire can Beat Up Your Sire.”

The holiday here was very low-key. We talked about going to movies, and didn’t. We ate out a couple times, and ate in a lot. There was a Walking Dead marathon that took us through the first season but hasn’t drawn us back yet. This may be a show I have to watch fast, in big chunks–it was perfectly good snack food, but also seemed a little boring.

I spent a stunning amount of the holiday period unconscious. Slept in a half-dozen times, and followed up some of that decadence with naps. The conclusion I’m left with is that after gone through a very intense spring, a cross-country relocation, the exploration of a new city and the cancelling of our summer vacation, it’s possible I was tired.

Which isn’t any kind of “poor me” lament. Quite the contrary. The sleeping was delightful, in every sense a gift. In the stretch of years since Dad died, remaining konked out past the hour of five in the morning has been just about impossible. Somehow in the move to Toronto, I’ve found a new rhythm that feels closer to right. Hurrah for that!

So I’m rested, and I am looking forward to getting back to my regular routines and writing/teaching/reviewing schedule soon. I hope this finds you all in a similar state of renewal and anticipation.

True Dua Conversations about Hannibal

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imageSo the thing you have to know to understand this is that the building whose exterior “plays” Hannibal’s office on Hannibal is a single block away from Kelly’s office. That’s right: Chez the Cannibal is just around the corner from her workplace.

K: What do you want to watch now?
A: I’m kind of into the Hannibal rewatch.
K: We might have to stop partway. I’m pretty tired.
A: That’s okay. We know where it’s going.
K: Hannibal. ‘Cause he’s my neighbor.
A: (singing). Would you be my neighbor?
K: OMG Yes!
A: He does kind of dress like…
K: Mr. Rogers! Yes!

And yes, we’re more or less sober.

And on that note, best holiday wishes to you each and every one.

Latest Buffy Rewatch, and a fun fact about me

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The latest Buffy Rewatch is up at Tor.com – it covers “Conversations with Dead People,” which I suspect you’ll all agree is one of the better S7 episodes.

I am at home cooking and working on the next Buffy essay (I’m on “Potential”) and I have my Schmaltz playlist on. The dictionary definition of schmaltzy is “excessively sentimental,” and I don’t know if all of my choices qualify, but I will admit, publicly, that Barry Manilow’s “Can’t Smile Without You” is on it. Essentially they’re songs that make me feel sentimental.

So, I’m puttering around chopping veggies and the Eagles come on, with “New Kid in Town,” a song that’s been making me emo since the Seventies. And it occurred to me, in a distant way, that the lion’s share of my listening brain takes the one lyric: “Great expectations/everybody’s watching you,” literally. It’s as if in mid-song the narrator breaks off to personally address a Masterpiece Theater version of Great Expectations, to say “Hey, there. We’re tuning in. All of us. Just FYI.”

Yeah, so that happened.

Another thing that’s happened, as some of you may have heard, was that we got some freezing rain in Toronto. Here’s a picture:

Metabloggage (Toronto Day 203)

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imageI want to get back into a more regular habit of updating you all about things going on in my life, but Life has been thwarty. Much of what I might write here, if I could, would be storytelling about other people: “I did X with person Y, and they did this unusual thing, and I felt this way about it!”

I cannot help but think the answer is to get back into taking pictures. This all but stopped when I got into the busiest part of my teaching quarter, but I will take it up again as I move into the last weeks of Novel 1.

In the meantime, a few things you may or may not know:

Self-care: I took an Intro to Self Massage from David Bruni at Downward Dog Yoga Studio, and it was pretty damned glorious.

Entertainment: Kelly and I saw Eddie Izzard live at Massey Hall with a bunch of friends. It was our third time seeing him, and he was hysterically funny.

House Plants: Though we have in the past eschewed all holiday decorating, I bought a small Norfolk pine and hung some brass-colored holiday balls on it. It came with a red bird on a stick; I don’t know why. I then posted the photo on Instagram, as is my wont:

We also bought a string of LED lights for our deck.

I characterized this burst of seasonal activity to a friend, thusly: “For us, this is like normal people stepping up from the usual holiday decorating and going Full-on Martha.”

Anyway. A week or so after the sad little Chuckie Brown tree photo went out to the Intertubes, one of my favorite students sent our little red bird a mate. (The gold blob is the new bird.) You know who you are, and we thank you!