A globally-warmed Christmas

The twenty-five to thirty inches of snow we got last weekend are almost gone and I can't help feeling sad about it. I can hear the rain pounding on the rooftop and on the pavement not far beyond my bedroom window as it travels along its direct course from heavens to ground--it is the sound of my child-like hope for a white Christmas disappearing. Flurries on the 24th just won't satisfy.

What happens to a post deferred?

I know, I know: my promised update is long-overdue.

Perhaps you'll forgive me some when I say that I've been busy doing some freelance writing. And perhaps you'll forgive me a little more when I say that when I haven't been writing, I've been busy securing more freelance work and trying to get some full-time editing/proofreading work. And perhaps all feelings of annoyance will dissipate when I say that since the freelance work hasn't been enough for me to support myself while I look for said editing/proofreading work and since the now-five-month-long search for an editing gig has significantly depleted my savings, I've had to look for a part-time job on top of everything else.

Forgive my long absence and tardy return. I'm hoping that this post is the beginning of this blog's rebirth.

Thanks so much for all your patience.

Boastful.

Thanks to Cristy at two peas, no pod for the link.

To those of you who still may be interested in this blog: I hope to resume posting at some point this coming week. I still don't feel quite like myself, but I'm starting to feel up to doing the things I love. And that's got to be the first step towards feeling like oneself again, right?

Not going to be posting for a while. My grandfather, to whom I felt very close, has died.

New Additions

Some of you may have noticed a few changes to my blogroll. Since the beginning of this month, I have added exactly twelve blogs.

- PopPolitics, which features posts on popular culture and politics (hence the blog's name), can be found under News and Views. This is a homecoming of sorts for this link, as I used to read PopPolitics regularly, but stopped--and consequently removed the link--when I got busy with grad school. I'm glad to be able to read it once again!;
- Lisa's Kitchen, a local vegetarian food blog, has been added to my list of Compassionate/Conscientious Living blogs;
- Under Friends and Favourites, you can find Truth & Beauty, Right this Moment, unrepentant old hippie, Thimble, the little knittin' kittin, and Agent Bedhead, the latter which I found via my beloved Pajiba, and the five former--with the exception of Thimble, which I found via BUST magazine--I found through Blogger interest searches. Most recently, I joined the blogging community Twenty Something Bloggers, through which I found Six Exits, GenPink, temporary madness, and memoirs of a 'gee--all which can also be found under Friends and Favourites.

Please check them all out!

And while you do that, I'm off to look over some freelance stuff and call my editor...

Bits and Bites

- I've got some freelance work. It's unpaid, but I'm looking at it as an opportunity for me to build a portfolio of my published writing. Also, since it's for a magazine that's just getting off the ground, I'm hopeful that once it starts to build a base of subscribers, my unpaid work will lead to paid work;

- It's no secret that I love the comic strip "Non Sequitur." I find this strip, which ran last week, especially good;

- I am very disappointed in the Cleveland Indians;

- I am FINALLY more than half-way through the baby blanket I'm knitting! I'm really hoping it will be ready for shower I have to attend in a week and a half. If not, I can always take a picture of the work-in-progress and slip it in the card; and

- I saw Elizabeth: The Golden Age on Friday night. While the acting was almost uniformly fantastic (there was the odd scenery-chewing exception), I've got to say that I was disappointed in the heavy-handedness of the direction towards the end: excusably obvious symbolism (i.e. the floor-size map of Western Europe in Elizabeth's war room--Elizabeth sits on England, protecting it from models of the Spanish and Spanish-allied forces) gives way to the inexcusable (i.e. Elizabeth in angelic white, arms outstretched; crosses from Spanish ships tumbling through the turbulent sea; Spanish clergy literally turning their backs on Philip; etc.,) What's more, the script feels a little unfocused. I can't help feeling that in Elizabeth: The Golden Age, the human drama that was at the heart of all the political intrigue in Elizabeth seems watered down; there would have been better ways of showing the alienating effects of leadership than fabricating a rather unbelievable Elizabeth-Raleigh-Bess love triangle. Don't get me wrong: Cate Blanchett is as wonderful as always. But is it too much to ask that the human drama arise from the actual history?! And couldn't we at least have had more of Samantha Morton's Mary Stuart? Maybe it's just that I've been so looking forward to this film for the past nine years that I was bound to be disappointed?

EDIT: Brian D. Johnson, who reviews Elizabeth: The Golden Age for Maclean's, would appear to agree with me:

Fictionalizing history is a noble literary crime that goes back to Shakespeare and Homer. The real issue arises when it makes the drama feel inauthentic. And some of The Golden Age's more opulent excesses -- from its torrid score to its painterly vistas of a digital armada -- have a counterfeit ring.

But the cast keeps it real. [...].

Blanchett, meanwhile, is magnificent. There's an emotional translucence in her pale chameleon features. The intelligence is visible. You can see moods play across her face like wind on water: fear, whimsy, flirtation, suspicion, calculation, rage -- and iron resolve. [...].

Read the whole review here.

R.I.P. Joey Bishop

The most underrated--and last surviving--member of The Rat Pack has died.

Missed it!

Even though I bookmarked the site, I missed Blog Action Day, which was--as many of you know--this past Monday. I blame it, at least in part, on my post-interview exhaustion.

I had originally wanted to write a new post to mark the day, but since it is now Thursday and since I have convocation tomorrow and knitting and reading to do tonight, I've decided to highlight a couple earlier entries that take as their theme environmental sustainability:

- On January 28, 2007, I wrote about why I became a vegetarian in a post entitled "What I mean when I say 'environmental sustainability';" and

- On June 30, 2007, I continued in the environmental-sustainability-vegetarianism vein with help from an AlterNet article by Tyghe Trimble.

For other eco-thoughts inspired by Blog Action Day or otherwise, see Veggie Chic, WorldCentric, and TreeHugger.

Notes on an October Saturday

I feel very accomplished today.

I baked my weekly loaf of spelt bread, and I read the newspaper and a bit from Frankenstein while taking a leisurely brunch. And that was just the A.M.!

This afternoon, I did a bit of writing here and houseware-related dreaming over here (when I have more money, I am buying this sheet set in merlot--it will pick up the dark, reddish pinks in my quilt quite nicely, I think); washed dishes; researched area-based vegetarian blogs and organizations (I had some luck in the blogs department, but not much else); and made curried butternut squash soup for dinner.

Finally, this evening found me reading a little more Frankenstein and preparing for Monday morning's job interview.

I think I shall sleep well tonight!

October

I love this time of year. I always have.

As a child, October meant that the air was finally cool enough for me to wear the smart sweaters and woolen skirts, the back-to-school clothes my mother had bought me back in August when I was dreaming of clean notebooks, freshly sharpened pencil crayons, and a reprieve from the summer humidity. October meant my mom's baked goods, new wooly mittens and a hearty soup luncheon bought at our church's bazaar, and piles of coloured leaves primed for leaping into.

As a teenager, October meant high school football. It meant the homecoming dance at which I could model a new dress while dancing until dizzy with my girlfriends. It meant lazily curling up in a late-afternoon sunbeam to read or to try to tackle whatever homework had been assigned that night.

As an adult, October means leaving the windows open until the temperature in the house drops below seventy-two degrees Fahrenheit and then curling up in the wing-chair or in my cocoon of a bed to read until all hours of the night. It means Christmas knitting projects in full-swing, baking of my own, and long walks through wooded areas alive with harvest and early migration.

Above all, for my adult self October means change--of temperature, of leaves, of diet--but also constancy, for October, more than any other month, is ripe with all the meanings and associations it has ever held for me.