Saturday.

Day one of vacation: reading (finished ‘Half Portions‘ by Edna Ferber), reading (started ‘Don Quixote‘) and watching episodes of ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’ (starting season two this evening) while knitting.

Heavenly.

We nommed and we nommed.

The Friday sandwich was thwarted: the sandwich place was closed for repairs and maintenance (I double checked the health inspection reports for the city, and no, it wasn’t shut down for vermin or something of the like). Jocelyn was meeting me for dinner, so we shifted gears and went to the Oriental Peking Palace.

Standard selections. We opted for spring rolls, dumplings, lemon chicken, fried rice…and decided we’d be adventurous and order one strange sounding thing without asking any questions.

Deep fried sesame shrimps toast. Frankly, a thousand times more delicious than I could have predicted.

We nommed, and we nommed, and we drank many tiny little cups of Chinese tea, and then we sighed, and leaned back, and decided that our lives were forever changed by the shrimps toast.

And then Jocelyn went home, and I ambled on back to the apartment…

…to begin SEVENTEEN DAYS OF VACATION, BABY!!

Awesome.

So, Fiction Daily featured ‘Wei and the Penis Bin’ for their story of the day. How cool is it that?

Don’t forget to keep duking the vote for the story. If you’ve voted…heck, vote again! Vote at work! Vote on your phone! Vote, people, vote!

In other awesome news, the short film project is back on. I shall be googling ‘how to write a screenplay’ tonight. More details as I have ‘em…but for now:

SQUEEEEEEEEE!!!

And that was Wednesday.

At least it’s Wednesday. I trooped in to work this morning and spent several hours catching up on emails and whatnot – this despite checking my email on Tuesday night, which I did to see if a pregnant crony had finally had her baby.

She hadn’t, though she did very early this morning, though I think 3am is still the dead of night. She called me this morning to tell me, positively euphoric. Downright giddy. It was funny to listen to her giggling about it.

There’s still time to vote for my short story, and you can definitely vote more than once. I mean, I have, so why can’t you?

And that, folks, was Wednesday. I’m going to spend the evening knitting and watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer just because I can (and because I have no homework!).

Tuesday.

The four day weekend has done wonders: finished the term paper, finished knitting a scarf, finished reading a book…it’s been nice. I watched some movies – Avatar, Fragments, and Julie and Julia. The first two were okay; the last not so much.

I have three days of work this week, and then I’m back on vacation for fourteen days. I have a feeling I’ll probably wish I’d just taken the full three weeks off, but this should help keep the workload a little bit more balanced for my return.

There’s still time to vote for the Bartleby-Snopes story of the month. Mine’s the one with genitalia in the title. Somebody’s left a comment on the poll about it being sophomoric. I’m not sure I agree with that. Juvenile, maybe. But sophomoric? Dang! Can’t win ‘em all, I guess.

Anyhoo. The poll seems to reset its cookies once a day, so you can vote again, if you like. And vote often. That Ron Yates dude has a thirty vote lead on me.

Such was Tuesday.

Wei and the Penis Bin: William Gibson said it was good and I squee-d with delight.

So. You know that term paper? The one I’ve been kvetching about for weeks? It’s done. I finished it and I handed that sucker in, and it’s over. My next course doesn’t start until September 6ish, so I’m on vacation – officially, not just loafing now – until then. Hurray! I’m off today and tomorrow, and head back to work for three days, and then I’m off for two glorious, blessed weeks.

Also? My short story, Wei and the Penis Bin, was put up on Bartleby-Snopes. Yeah. Go read it. It’s not as naughty as it sounds.

The best part, though? I twittered to William Gibson about it, since it was his link to a photo essay that got me going on the story.

HE TWITTERED BACK.

And he liked the story.

Swoon.

And when I eagerly replied that I thought I would frame the tweet – or perhaps immortalize it in cross-stitch – he replied AGAIN: “Get it bronzed!“.

Will do.

If you have a moment, I hope you’ll read the story. There’s a voting button at the bottom of the list of entries for story of the month; if you like it…?

Enjoy. I really liked the image of Flesh Forward – so much so that I think I’ll probably end up returning to it, at some point – and I had fun with the story.

River of Light.

So the ‘River of Light’ ran last night. It’s part of a series of art projects and installations around the city meant to celebrate the Bow River. Laurent Louyer and Creatmosphere put on the River of Light, and I have to say: it was the crowning achievement of the week. Five hundred lit spheres (nobody’s sure if we should call them orbs or spheres) were released into the Bow River starting at Edworthy Park, and floated a good seven and a half kilometres down to Prince’s Island Park.

I decided to clamber down to the small island in the river – there’s a bit of a land bridge to it, and I thought there wouldn’t be too many people there. Boy, was I wrong.

I should have left earlier, because all the comfortable logs and rocks were gone, and I didn’t think to bring a festival chair with me. I found a spot (and ended up moving to a different spot, after discovering that I was sitting next to the world’s most obnoxious kid) and settled in.

There were a lot of people up by the bridge, and live drumming, too.

(sorry – that one is a bit shaky. Mosquitoes.)

The spheres were dropped from the middle of the bridge and guided by kayakers. They didn’t seem all that impressive at first – still too light to really see how they were illuminated. But as darkness fell, they began to glow.

I really think the kayakers were having fun. And it was fun to watch them slipping through the spheres in the dark, calling to each other.

It was really quite something. The mosquitoes were out in force, and I had to giggle at the horrified shrieks of some teenagers when they realized that there weren’t birds swooping around overhead, but bats. I stayed until the last of the spheres had disappeared around the bend of the river, and then I went to find my way back up onto the park path. Let me tell you, the island at night is a bit harder to navigate than it is at dusk. I’d brought a flashlight, thankfully, and I found a little trail through the middle of the bushes. A lot of people were skirting around the edge of the shore, though.

Not a good idea. For as much as the river was supposed to be a part of last night’s project, it certainly made sure that we knew it was there. In the dark, there was an anguished wail: “I lost my shoe!”

And then, even more piteous (followed by a splash): “Oh, no…the river!”

The river, indeed. Thanks for a good night, Creatmosphere (and Bow River). You brought a lot of happiness to a lot of people last night.

And more smoke.

Yup. Still with the smoke. There’s some cautiously optimistic talk of the wind shifting and some rain to get rid of it, but I’m not hearing much in the way of “oh, we’ll have those forest fires put out soon.” I have a feeling it’s going to take a while for everything to get sorted out.

So. Four day weekend. I’m very pleased with it, even if my eyes are scratchy. Coughing a bit, too – me and the cat are feeling rather wheezy. I’m working on the last of the term paper today (hurray!).

The River of Light thing is this evening, too, so I’ll be heading out to see it. I had hoped to go downtown to get my iPod battery replaced (there are people who do this, it seems, without you having to go to an Apple store and send your beloved pod away…) but between the smoke and the term paper, it seemed like a better idea to stay in. I think I’ll be doing that next weekend – because next weekend, I’ll be on vacation FOR REALS!

Hokay. Going to finish that term paper now.

Still smoky.

Still very, very smoky outside. I started taking my steroid inhaler again: good for the asthma, better still for crazy dreams.

I’ve got Monday and Tuesday off, so this is a four day weekend for me. Four day weekend! Hurray! What I’ll be doing? Finishing the term paper.

And finish it, I shall. I think the edits are finished; just need to type them in. The conclusion and the introduction need to be rewritten, but that’s not such a problem. I’d like to have the paper finished by Saturday and then leave it for a few days – but I’ll probably be so ready to be done with it that I’ll hand it in before the weekend is through.

I went for my Friday sandwich, of course. The sulky sandwich girls have accepted me as one of own, I think – possibly because I tip my change into the tip jar. I once worked there – briefly, as a sulky sandwich girl – and I was telling them today about how hot it used to be. “No air conditioning,” I said.

“Oh, my god,” she said. “That’s, like, awful.”

Oh, it was.

How glad I am that the days of being a sulky sandwich girl are well behind me. I work hard at what I do now, but I don’t risk my fingertips with dull knives or scald myself with steam – though the photocopier can be a bit vicious at times. It wasn’t an awful job, but I’ll admit that I wasn’t all that good as a sulky sandwich girl, and I still feel a bit apologetic, thinking about the many mediocre sandwiches I served. I wasn’t half bad at cappucinos, but I never did learn to make designs in the foam.

It was a short-lived career for me. I abandoned it to become a towel girl at a health club, which I was marginally better at doing.

Those were the days.

I’m going to stay in this weekend and watch the smoke (and do the dratted term paper).

Hello, smoke.

Dear British Columbia,

Kindly retrieve your forest fire smoke; it’s in our front lawn again. We’re sure the campfire-like smell is delightful to some, but it’s getting hard to see across the road up in Edmonton and Calgary feels that it’s had enough. Red Deer isn’t talking about it, but that’s Red Deer for you.

As compensation, we demand that you send us your finest tomatoes and cucumbers. We will also accept radishes but not broccoflower. In return, we will continue making gasoline so that you can continue to zip about on your scooters (that is what West Van people do for fun, isn’t it?).

Sincerely and with kind regards,
Alberta