The Seated View

A little while ago, I started reading a book highly recommended by a friend. I was having trouble – the narrator wasn’t very good. He was speaking way too fast which made it hard to follow the action. I couldn't understand why my friend loved this book (and the narrator) - it sounded awful to me. Then I accidentally discovered that an iPod has two speed settings – normal and fast. Somehow, I’d activated the faster one (remember, some days, I’m blonder than others). Which got me to thinking… if you listened to an abridged book on high speed, would you be able to read War & Peace in an afternoon? According to an article in the New York Times , eyebrows are back! And for the women who have waxed and plucked thin lines to fit into last year’s fashion and who don’t want to wait until they grow out, there are solutions. You can get brow extensions (where tiny hairs are glued to each individual strand of brow hair) or! Brow prosthetics. Which as far as I can tell, ar...

Today is my birthday and blogging will be light, due to... Well. It's my birthday and I intend to do very little but eat yummy things and receive phonecalls from people singing birthday songs in various languages. The festivities started yesterday, with a family party at mor's. Love the background action behind the birthday cake (Annette's applecake - yum). I got the best gift I could have hoped for: a visit with my lovies. Here's Liam comfy with Ken and giggling at his dad. And one of the few non-blurry pictures of Morgan (the kid's never still).

To be filed in the 'oops, I did it again' category: on Monday, almost immediately after publicly stating that things might be getting better, I re-injured myself (must’ve forgotten to knock wood). As the majority of my brain has been busy dealing with pain and/or been heavily medicated, I've been thinking of very little and I'm fairly sure that what has passed for thoughts would not be blog worthy. However, Patti to the rescue! In Monday's comments, she asked for details about my recuperation entertainment materials, so that's going to be today's topic. Books: I've been rereading A Game of Thrones (the first book in A Song of Ice and Fire by George R. R. Martin , a series I've been utterly obsessed with in the past). I'm having the oddest reaction to it. On the one hand, I'm as enthralled as I was the first time I read it. It's a fantastic book, incredibly intricate, well written and the narrator is excellent. On ...

I believe that I may be - knock wood - slowly emerging out from under last week's Cloud o’ Calamity. Last Monday's injury was only the beginning of the deluge (thank you very much for your good wishes), but after this weekend, I have some hope of things starting to turn around (knock wood - can't be said too much). However, things are going to be light and frothy around here this week, as I have placed myself on a rehabilitation schedule that a includes heavy doses of good novels, good movies/TV and very little seriousness. To that end, since there is only four weeks left, I figure it's time for a Big Brother All-Stars update. There has been much complaining on the Internet about Kaysar’s strategy to get rid of the floaters. However, Season Six (S6) came into the house as the only large alliance and they couldn’t win no matter what they did. The fans keep saying how stupid they were not to get rid of Chilltown, but the moment they got rid of Will and Boogie, ...

I hurt myself on Monday. Quite badly. How doesn't matter, the real issue is that there has been some pain involved (if by 'some' you mean 'a whole lot'). However, the point of today's post is not whingeing on about the pain, it's about an experience directly resulting from the pain. To be specific, it's about being stoned out of your gourd on pain medication. I have recently learned if I, when I injure myself, hit it with everything I have, the amount of time it takes to heal shortens. Sometimes. So I did. Monday, I took enough painkillers to stun a horse and was not at all amused to find out that they only took the edge off. Yesterday, however, was another thing entirely. I felt somewhat better when I woke up, but this is often a lie my body tells me and if I believe that, it then wallops me upside the head and I never catch up. So I threw a Tylenol #2 (that's "bigger medication" for me) at it just in case and spent th...

A long time ago, I decide to acquire a cultural veneer. Not actually become cultured , you understand – that might be too much work and then there's the possibility of becoming insufferable and pompous. No, as far as I was concerned, a thin layer of culture which could be donned at required moments would be sufficient. To that end, I purchased a 3-performance subscription to The National Ballet of Canada . Aside from a phenomenal performance of Blue Snake , it turned out that my childhood fascination for ballet had abated. I like modern dance, but traditional ballet left – and leaves - me bored and wishing they’d get off pointe and get on with it already. Unless it’s Mikhail Baryshnikov. I’ve been lucky enough to see him twice and would cheerfully watch him dance anything. (by the way – the fact that I admit to being bored by ballet is a fairly good indication that any culture I might possess is, at most, skindeep) The next year, ballet veneer acquired,...

If you want to be technical, this is actually St. Lawrence Hall , but for one brief moment, it was Robin's clock... (late note: the mystery of who Robin is and why this is his clock is infinitely more entertaining than the truth, so I'll let it remain a mystery)

Good horror is like good sex. It involves the element of surprise and being taken out of your head into the land of purely visceral response. Added to that should be a nicely escalating excitement, interspersed with lulls in the action to take the edge off, which makes it even more intense when things get cranked up another notch. Reading good horror is about losing control not just of yourself, but of what’s happening, the only way to stop the feeling being to put down the book, but by then, the story’s grabbed you so hard that you don’t want it to stop. My point – and I’m pretty sure I had one – is that I have just finished reading The Ruins by Scott Smith and find myself left rather - a-hem - unsatisfied. Before this crosses the line into “cold shower” territory, let me get on with things. But first (I can never say those two words without thinking of the Chenbot – sorry. Obscure Big Brother reference), a warning: there will be spoilers. Neither vague, nor circumsp...