Princess

Ten years on, I still find myself wondering sometimes what things would be like if this lady was still with us.

A Letter in the Post

Today, I opened my mailbox to discover that, amongst the bills and flyers and other junk, a letter had been delivered for me. A real letter: stamped, addressed by hand and printed on thick, cream-coloured stationery. A letter containing greetings and news from someone I have not heard from in quite a while - my old flatmate, from when I lived in England, a decade ago.

In this age of electronic mail and instant messaging, receiving a letter in the post (without it even being a holiday) is such an unusual occurrence that I thought it bloggable. Strange, isn't it? And a little sad, also. I used to be a great letter-writer. While I still make it a priority to keep in touch with my friends and share news, I now do it almost exclusively in an electronic format. Only at Christmastime do I revert to paper again, and even then, my letters are always laser-printed - all that handwriting would kill me.

Did people have more time in the past for keeping in touch with friends through letters? Or were priorities simply different? All I know for sure is that the impermanent character of electronic communication will be the bane of future historians. It's partly why I'm so reluctant to chuck out letters I receive now, no matter how inconsequential they may seem.

Recent Reading

Went to Toronto this past weekend, to attend a family wedding. Had a good time, and the trip was made all the nicer by being bookended by Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, which I read on the plane there and back. I've been trying to prolong my reading of it over the past two weeks, to extract every last bit of magic...but by the last 300 pages, I couldn't resist plunging ahead. Fantastic read - and the odd non sequitur aside, a very worthy end to a splendid series.

Other things I've read recently:

• The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield - just finished this a few weeks ago, courtesy of a recommendation from a certain online book club. Loved it. Unputdownable stuff - not an epic work of literature or anything, but a compelling page-turner. How could I resist a tale of an eccentric aristocratic family, feral twins, a governess with a secret, and a decrepit stately home hidden deep in the English countryside? A caveat, however - this is a book for autumn/winter reading (it's set during November, December and January).
• Eragon by Christopher Paolini - I was quite excited to start this and find out what all the fuss has been about, but...eh. As J. told me, this is basically just middling fantasy fiction for teenagers. I'm sure I'd have loved it half a lifetime ago, but the adult me struggled to finish it. Worst thing is, I was given this as part of a box set, along with the sequel, Eldest. Who knows when I'll get around to that one - though Eragon improved towards the end, so perhaps there's hope.
• War of the Unknown Warriors: Memories of Britain, 1939-45 by David Souden - my sister-in-law actually gave me this for Christmas, but I only just got around to reading it recently. It's published by the National Trust, which is always a safe bet for me, of course. I really enjoyed this book, which chronicled the use of historic houses and estates in Britain during the Second World War, when so many of them were requisitioned by the government for use as hospitals, schools, military training sites, etc. Lots of photographs and reminiscences of people who lived in them during the war years...fascinating stuff. One of the illustrations was of this brilliant poster, produced by the Ministry of Food - I must copy it to put up in my kitchen. Love it!

Upcoming Shows

Trying to decide, this week, whether I should get tickets for a couple of shows coming up in September. On the 14th, Metric are going to be here. I'm not sure how much I like them (I need to make a point of listening to some more of their stuff, in my ample spare time), but the cognoscenti are certainly all abuzz. I wouldn't dither, except that they're playing the Cunard Centre downtown - a new venue which is all general admission, I believe. And there are very few bands I like enough to put up with the prospect of being pushed and shoved all night by drunken college kids.

The die may already be cast, however. Looks like A. will be buggering off out of town again for two weeks in September, to do another army course in Kingston. So unless I can convince a friend to come with, I don't think I'll be seeing Metric this time around. They'll be back, though - they're Canadian, after all.

A show which I may well try to see on September 11th is Loreena McKennitt at the Rebecca Cohn. I actually saw her live once before, at the Cohn in 1994, and I was enraptured by her. At the time I thought she was this mystical, pre-Raphaelite lady...but in the years since, I don't think she's progressed all that much, artistically. Her latest album, An Ancient Muse, strikes me as a bit of a pretentious re-tread of The Mask and Mirror and The Visit. Still, it would probably be an enjoyable show - and one I'd be quite happy to attend solo, if need be.

Cirque du Soleil

This afternoon, I went to see Cirque du Soleil live, for the first time. They are doing nine performances of their 'Saltimbanco' show in town this week, all of which sold out in a flash. I was lucky enough to find someone (via Facebook Marketplace!) who was looking to resell their tickets at face value, so I snapped them up.

What an amazing show - such a riot of colour (and just what I needed, as I was feeling a bit glum). The clowns, the acrobats, the jugglers, the musicians, the dancers, the contortionists, the mimes...everything. Best of all, in my opinion, were the bungee trapeze artists, who closed the show and were quite simply breathtaking. I found a video of them over on You Tube here, but of course it just doesn't compare to seeing it right in front of you. I felt like I was flying with them!

Hooray!

The shed reno is finally finished! The concrete foundation was poured earlier this week and the final inspection was yesterday. This morning the builders came back one last time to backfill around the site. Now, the work of landscaping can begin.

For today, though, I'm just happy to have gotten my dining room back. All the junk that's been stored in it since the beginning of June got moved back out to the shed tonight. And not a minute too soon, because I've got my cleaning man coming in tomorrow. Yah!

Doctor Who

Man, the latest incarnation of Doctor Who keeps going from strength to strength. We're halfway through the third series now, and tonight's episode "Human Nature" was gripping stuff - set in an English boarding school in 1913, with the Doctor (in human guise) serving as the Headmaster. I can't imagine that anyone but the Brits could meld historical costume drama and science fiction, and not end up with a laughable mess.

Victoriana and spaceships? How completely awesome is that?!

Venezuela Travelogue

My Venezuela travelogue is now posted, and can be found here. I've also got an accompanying album of photos over on Flickr, here.

You may notice that in the sidebar of this page, on the left, there is now a new category, 'Places to Go'. As this blog is now, in effect, my personal home page (do people even use such quaint terminology anymore?), I've provided direct links from here to the various travelogues I've composed in the past.

Building Work: Day 2

On Monday, the builders returned with a concrete mixer in tow. They poured the footings for the new shed foundations in the morning.

Now, we just have to wait for a city inspector to turn up, before they can carry on.

On Repelling Vile Blogspam

My fellow Venezuelan traveller MF has a blog of his own, which I'm finding very entertaining. I giggled and cringed in equal measures at his latest blog post, on dealing with that half-gibberish, half-pornographic spam we're all subjected to these days. Hilarious. You can read it here - though be warned: by its very nature, 'tis vulgar. ;-)

*edit* Feh, it seems to have disappeared. Too naughty by half, mayhap?

Holiday Sunday

Beautiful, warm sunny day today, so we decided to take advantage and head out to Tantallon for the afternoon. Spent a couple of hours on my in-laws' sailboat, out on St. Margaret's Bay, which was extremely nice (we'd originally planned to go out yesterday, but it was too foggy).

At dinnertime, we headed down the coast to Hubbards, and went to the Shore Club there. I was thinking last week that I couldn't remember the last time I've had a lobster supper. The Shore Club has been doing them for decades, and it's quite famous, so I thought it was high time we checked it out. It turned out to be really good. I snarfed down a pile of mussels and a modestly-sized canner, after hitting the salad bar and before tucking into blueberry shortcake for dessert. I must say, though, it was probably the fanciest lobster supper I've ever been to, and quite touristy. Though that's perhaps not saying much, when you grow up with lobster suppers served off styrofoam plates at community fire halls, as the norm.

I think we'll have to make it a regular summertime event. Scrummo!

Building Work: Day 1

The builders put in an 11-hour day today. They jacked the shed up onto wooden supports, and excavated all around with a digger:


They'll be back with the concrete guy at the beginning of next week, to pour the footings for the foundation. After that, a city inspector has to come along and check the work before they continue.

So, the front of my property is an absolute mess right now. But I don't mind. At least the work's begun!

At Last!

Unbelieveable! This morning at about twenty past seven, a truck pulled into our driveway, and three builders got out. They're actually starting WORK on our shed today!

*does happy homeowner dance*

After we got back from our trip, A. called the owner of the business we'd contracted to do our shed repairs, to complain about the fact that seven weeks on, his employee still hadn't turned up to start the work he said he'd do. Within a week, the owner had some different guys call out to us and quote for the job. We eagerly accepted - and not only are they actually starting the work today, when they said they would, but their quotation was $1,000 cheaper than the other guy. Yay!

I imagine the job will take a couple of weeks to complete, as inspectors have to come out and approve various stages of the work. But apparently today the guys are planning to lift the shed itself, move it slightly, and dig trenches for the new foundation.

Seriously, once this is all over, I think we're going to report the first guy we hired to the Better Business Bureau or something. Absolutely ridiculous, that delay.

Blogger No Likey Facebook

A few weeks ago, I set up my Facebook account to start importing my blog posts, as notes. Thought I was all clever...until the imports just stopped one day. Emailed Facebook and got a gobbledegook response which basically said, "Not our prob...go ask Blogger". After digging around the various Blogger help fora this morning, it appears that this is a wider problem that Blogger hasn't fixed yet.

So I guess I'll disable the blog import to Facebook, for now. And this little conundrum will be added to the list of reasons why I should maybe look into finding another platform to host my blog.