The Seated View

Having Dinner, Being Dinner . The weekend started early, Thursday evening, to be precise. I am not including it in the weekend because I took Friday off, but for the purposes of being at least mildly entertaining in this post. Ken and I went to dinner and after the kitchen obliterated my grilled salmon into a tiny, charcoaled mess, not only did I get another, perfectly prepared version, it was also free – I presume from the need to assuage the emotional damage and ensure positive PR. Which it certainly did. Go to The Keg on Lower Church Street. They make great food (99% of the time) and when they don’t, they fix it. Afterwards, we wandered through the sultry streets of Toronto and parked ourselves by a fountain for a chat. There, it later became obvious, I served as a buffet for a particularly finicky mosquito, which tasted a sip here and there (right knee, right index finger, right eyelid by the lashline – oh, so attractive – and right eyebrow), leaving just enough of ...

A belated shout-out to Diane of the comments and her mother, who toured Canada this summer. We met at the Market, had lunch and gabbed. Turns out, all three of us talk a lot, so naturally, we hit it off famously. I wish they lived closer. Why are there ads on the movies I rent or buy? One should think that part of the money you shell out for a DVD could go to eliminate ads. Drives me batty. Makes me feel ripped off. On tario has gotten itself a tartan ! Not bad. Apparently, there’ll be an annual Tartan Day and although I’m not Scottish, I do like the burr of the accent – and am nuts about the place itself – so I might go get something suitable to celebrate the day (when I find out when that is - I have a vague impression of sometime in April, but could be wrong). I’ve been looking for an alternative to my soap and because of the accursed asthma, it needed to be unscented. Which turns out to not be as easy to come by as you might think. I bought Dove unscented so...

In September of 1973, I was 11 years old and admitted to the only rehab hospital in Denmark that handled kids with arthritis (and kids and adults with any other rehabilitation needs). To say that it was an awful place is an understatement, but there weren't any other options. I cried for weeks, wandering the halls dressed in the hospital-issued clothing – the ugliest workout gear seen on this earth. Then I learned that crying doesn’t change anything. I’d wear my anorak, too – it was armour from home, from normal, blocking the nightmare. Another part of the protective gear was a book by Nicholas Kalashnikof, called Prince: The Story of a Siberian Stallion (loosely translated from the Danish title). It was the story of the life of a Siberian stallion, lost from his owners, who experiences terrible things, then is found and comes home again. The first time I was in that hospital, I stayed for three months. My memories tell me that the book was always with me, either ...

p.s. No, this hasn't turned into a photoblog - I had a busy weekend. Words will return on Wednesday.

The fuzzy feet are for Barbara or rather, for her Thomas , who also is somewhat hirsute around the paws...

This past week, I accidentally had myself a small film festival, the theme of which can best described as ‘Nasty Boys’. Something that delicious naturally deserves a review. The Matador . This is Pierce Brosnan ’s Anti-Bond, the exact opposite of suave, elegant, principled Good Guy. Brosnan plays a hitman, quickly on his way to a bad case of burnout, who strikes up an unlikely friendship with a businessman, played by Greg Kinnear . Visually, the movie is beautiful, the script is pretty good and it is clear that the two leads are having a blast (no review is complete without mentioning Brosnan's image-shattering strut through a hotel lobby, stomach hanging out, clad only in black Speedos and boots). And I did, too - have a blast, I mean. It was a fun way to spend a couple of hours and I wouldn't hesitate to recommend the movie. The reason my praise is somewhat qualified has a lot to do with Brosnan and who he is. He is Pierce Brosnan and there is no getting away...

In case you've missed it (I think I've only mentioned it once, maybe twice), Big Brother All-Stars has begun. This means that I have entered into my annual summer obsession with watching complete strangers, about whom I have strong opinions, locked in a hamster cage. A cage that this year looks like a 70s decorating nightmare. How obsessed am I? Glad you asked. Every year, after living and breathing the show for about 1½ months, I have a Big Brother dream. This year, I dreamt about them the night after the first episode. And no, I don’t care how pathetic that makes me sound. As I tend to talk (a lot) about my obsessions, it is quite likely that there might be the teensiest bit of spillover onto the blog. Much as I'm tempted to add a weekly BBAS post, discussing – in detail, naturally - everything happening in the Big Brother house, I really will try to keep it down to a dull roar. However! As this is the day after the first eviction, settle in for some ...

I've been thinking about writing a post for a while. It was going to go something like this: I feel like I’m two people. One of me is working very hard to become positive, remain open to possibility and look at what I have instead of what I don't have - after all, the only way to change is by practicing, right? – but having a hard time because it’s constantly fighting the pull of the other part of me. The other me is lost in loss. My motto last year, after I started taking Enbrel, was 'it took a long time to get this fucked up, so it's going to take a long time to heal'. I was going to be patient, take it one step at a time, be all about the baby steps. And it was going pretty well, especially since initially, every day gave me a new thing that I could do again. Then it slowed down to a couple of times a week, then on a regular basis and then sometime last fall, after the whiplash thing happened, I stopped improving and started regressing. In...

On Friday , I was sitting at my desk in front of the open window, enjoying the sounds of early evening - birds, laughing kids, the icecream truck - when I heard the sound of muffled drums. This is not a normal occurrence around here, so I looked out the window. Couldn't see anything, other than a girl running down the street, past my building. So I decided to go check out what surprise life had in store life, half thinking it might be a World Cup related activity, despite my neighbourhood not being overwhelmingly dominated by people from one of the remaining teams. I get down on the street and see a bunch of people down the road a bit. Naturally, I follow. It's a large crowd of young people - at least 50, likely more - many dressed in costumes, many with homemade wings on their back, beating drums, dancing, carrying a big banner (I never caught up enough to see what it said). Other neighbours streamed down the street to join the parade and one had asked what it was about. Rando...

The first time I tried a voice-activated program to write (dictating instead of typing) was years ago, when Ken - who consistently manages to solve my technological problems before I quite know I have them - gave me a program called VoiceXpress . Learning to use it was a bit of an uphill battle. At the end of one particularly intense training session, I went into my e-mail program to send Ken a message about my progress (naturally by dictating it). As I was a tad frustrated, when it came to the subject line I dictated 'damn'. The first indication that the training session had been less than successful was when the word 'Beirut' appeared in the subject line… Whether the program itself wasn't very good - this was in the early days of voice activated doodads - or my computer wasn’t good enough or whether the issue was that, as far as I could figure out, the training required typing when correcting, which seems to indicate that it was geared towards people ...

I’ve just finished reading Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke (also available in paperback). I read the reviews quite a while ago and was looking forward to reading it, although a bit hesitant as it is almost 800 pages (which translates to over 36 hours in audio format) - that's a big investment of time. The book is about the renaissance of magic in England in the early 19th century, starting during the Napoleonic wars. Magic has left Britain long ago, leaving only the theoretical magicians who are unable to actually perform magic. However, a Mr. Norrell is enticed out of seclusion, demonstrates his ability to do quite spectacular magic, making statues talk and raising a woman from the dead. He subsequently hoards the magic, buying up all books about magic in England and blackmailing theoretical magicians into giving it up, leaving him the only magician in England. Some years later, he takes on a pupil - Jonathan Strange - with whom he later has a ...

One of these days, I'll photograph something other than flowers, but not yet... Happy Canada Day to all who celebrate it - have a great long weekend!

The opening act was the Paul James Band and can I just say where have they been all my life ? He/they were absolutely fantastic (and, according to the website, available for weddings – I should think about getting married), played for a good 40 minutes and completely made me forget who I was there to see, which took some doing as I been hero-worshiping this woman for years. Decades, even. I’ve wanted to see her perform live for... well, I can't remember for how long, but it was a fantasy, really – I never thought it'd actually happen. Then one day, purely by coincidence, I saw the ad saying she'd be appearing at the Hummingbird Centre and I rushed out with my trusty credit card and got tickets to see I was nervous. The hype in my head had built this evening up so high there was no way she could live up to it. I was nervous, because the vast majority of performers sound better on the CD then they do in person. I was nervous because I couldn't bear to ...

I saw The DaVinci Code . It is awful. In the beginning, I honestly thought they were using the wrong movie – some sort of revival of a 70’s horror thing. Then I saw that it wasn’t and descended into 2½ hours of movie-hell. Tom Hanks looks singularly constipated throughout, Audrey Tautou is horribly miscast, the script is pedestrian and the only time the screen came alive and held my interest was when Ian McKellen was in a scene, completely stealing the movie out from under everyone, including the director. He was a joy to watch, even as everyone else was reduced to amateur status in comparison. They castrated (sorry, no better word for it) the story and followed the book too closely, when unnecessary. Don’t waste your time. And speaking of movies… I may have mentioned this before – it’s as bit of a soapbox with me – but I’ll take the chance of repeating myself as it’s a natural segue: Just because you can make a movie that’s 2 (or more) hours long, doesn’t ...

Remember the episode of ‘Sex and the City’ in which Miranda buys her own apartment? The one where people keep assuming that she’s married and she has to constantly correct them, saying “it’s just me”? Yeah. That one. One of the reasons I love ‘Sex and the City’ is how wonderfully it reflects life as a single woman in her over-35 or so. Admittedly with a lot more hot men and more fabulous clothes than generally populate my life, but still… Recently, during a very irritating week, I had reason to think of Miranda when on two separate occasions, people assumed I couldn’t be anything but married. Because that’s what you have to be, right? The rant about myths, stereotypes and single women will keep for another day, but the two events need sharing. First, I talk to a company related to another type of TNF blocker, as the Enbrel side effects were getting on my nerves (I’ve since found ways of dealing with them). We talk about my private insurance and the rep asks me if I’m ...

Blogging has taught me many things, chief among them how nice people are. I’m pretty sure that people who don’t blog/read blogs don’t quite get it – they tend to get stuck on the “and you’ve never even met this person, but s/he’s your friend??” thing. Come to think of it, that’s the reaction I’ve received whenever I’ve spoken of internet friends – I started on the net in the early 1990’s and was thought extremely strange (if not outright pathetic) by most people. These days, that boggling of minds seems to have abated a smidge as more and more join the bandwagon, but still… friends? That you’ve never met? How odd. From my end, not so odd. When the technicalities of going out involves advanced planning in terms of transportation, attendant schedules, etc., friendship easily evolves into something non-geographic, something not necessarily requiring face-to-face time. Very few of my friends originated in ‘real life”, many of them still exist purely in the ether of internet...

This post is a multi-purpose one. First, it gets me off the blogging hook relatively easily, as I have a list as long as my arm and entirely too little time in which to be efficient. Second, it panders shamelessly to members of The Other Team (i.e., non-dogpeople) and third… well. It fulfils an obligation to two creatures who got a little huffy about the dogs (“dogs drool, cats rule” was one quote) - my other nephew, Jag (here seen on his favourite perch - photo by a TinkParent) and the mistress of my house. I mentioned last week how much I resent naps. Don’t get me wrong – naps can be wonderful, particularly when they’re a treat. When they are necessary, it gets to be a bit of a drag. I call them my Mandatory Rest Period. However, there is one MRP-related tradtion that always makes me smile. It starts off with Mojo insisting that she lie on my stomach (under the blanket, naturally) to receive an extended cuddle, including vigorous rubbing of ears and occasional wa...

Lately, a few people who have only been exposed to my name in written form have asked me how on earth that’s pronounced. Don’t feel bad – no one on this side of the pond (OK, outside of Denmark) knows how to do it without a quick tutorial. I once read a book – I’ve forgotten which; it had something to do with a dragon and King Arthur - in which the dragon mentioned that Danish wasn’t a language, it was a throat disease. There might be something to that claim. Do all children want another name than the one their parents gave them? I did. Well, sort of - more of a variation on it. I wanted to be Lena, which I thought more exotic and glamourous, not Lene. I wished for it q uite fervently, although I never went so far as to insist people call me that. Instead, they called me Lene - not surprisingly, I suppose. In Denmark, everyone knew how to pronounce it. The first ‘e’ isn’t like an ‘i’, but definitely an ‘e’ and the final ‘e’ is pronounced like the ‘e’ in ‘the’. Cl...