Mad Endeavour

Nicked from minimania.

alcohol: Gin and tonics. Guinness. Strongbow cider. Single malt Scotch. (Recent addition) - Misterio Malbec (cheap AND good!)
believe in god?: Believe in something. Perhaps not exactly "God", in the Judeo-Christian sense.
chocolate: Dark and bitter, the bitterer the better... but I have a soft spot for white chocolate as well, even though as it was put in a short play in this spring's Asphalt Jungle, "White chocolate is like -- cheese slices!"
d&d character: I used to play mostly Rangers.
eggs: Perfect in so many ways.
food: Spicy. Complicated. Exploring cultures through food.
gemstone: Amethyst.
hairdresser: I have no hairdresser loyalty; I speed-date hairdressers.
icecream: Currently PC "Cream First" vanilla with chocolate splinters.
jeans: Questionable and torturing item of clothing. Usually Silvers, after lots of tedious failed dressing-room shimmies.
karaoke choice: The only time I ever sang at karaoke, I chose (from a List of Lame) Red Hot Chili Peppers' Under the Bridge. It was in totally the wrong key for me.
i want 100Mb Internet access to my home: I have high-speed at present; it is sufficient.
left or right handed: Right. Except when throwing things; my aim is marginally better (although not good) with my left hand.
music: Lots of everything. I've recently been listening to Sweatshop Union, Ute Lemper and Satie.
nationality: Canadian and British.
operating system: Windows, with aspirations to move to Mac. I'm saving.
perfume: Jo Malone's Wild Fig & Cassis.
my mp3 player is a: Creative Zen 8GB Microphoto. I've also got a Creative Stone for running. The Stone is tetchy.
quest: Creativity and freedom.
rant: Bad spelling, and people who take Twilight seriously.
seafood: Is awesome. I haven't been able to form a real relationship with octopi and squids as food, though.
twitter: Tweetdeck at home. Usually just web.
uncontrollable urge to: Blow everything and go into the wilds.
vice: Laziness.
what i wear to work: Clothing that is far too trendy and peculiar.
x-men character: Storm.
yesterday i: Got up, took pictures of our Civic Square for an ad I'm doing, went to work, went to a piano lesson, came home, had supper, transferred the photos off my camera to a memory stick, lay down "for a minute" and went to sleep. And slept for twelve hours, interrupted only by the Creative Genius coming to bed with a migraine, moaning about it until I sleepily convinced him to take an Advil, going and taking an Advil, doing a Pain Dance around the bed, coming to bed, and begging me to rub his head. Then I fell asleep again.
zodiac sign: A lot of Pisces.

Oh, my word, poor neglected Voxblog, how lonely you have been. I've been... well, unmotivated best describes it. Ah, let's not get into it. Instead, a Meme. This is the Omnivore's Hundred. "Bold what you've eaten, and strike through what you'd never eat." I like food.

1. Venison
2. Nettle tea - I have Women's Issues, and a nice tea of nettles and raspberry leaf, perhaps with some catnip, can be just the thing, if you want to try it.
3. Huevos rancheros - Oh hell yes. There used to be a breakfast place across from the bus station, called Southside Johnny's, run by Mexican immigrants, who served the most awesome all-day huevos ever. Handmade tortillas and their own salsa, people. I still remember it, eighteen years after it closed.
4. Steak tartare
5. Crocodile
6. Black pudding - at my grandparents' house in Ireland. I was twelve. I don't remember much about it.
7. Cheese fondue
8. Carp
9. Borscht - I adore a good borscht, hot or cold. I make a nice one, too.
10. Baba ghanoush - Is there anyone who hasn't had this staple of the appetiser table, these days?
11. Calamari - several times, and I still don't like it.
12. Pho
13. PB&J sandwich
14. Aloo gobi
15. Hot dog from a street cart - ha! Was eating these nightly last week, at the Magnetic North bar in the SAW club. After a show... there with a drink... there was this hot dog vendor... it's midnight...
16. Epoisses "Epoisses what? Oh, cheese." And yes, I have. I remember it being a feature of at least one Cheese Tray from the Fancy Deli, a couple years back.
17. Black truffle - and white, yes.
18. Fruit wine made from something other than grapes - although the first time was hardly a gourmet experience. They sell this blueberry wine in the dépanneurs in Québec. For about two dollars, or at least it was, back in the day of my underage growing up just across the river from le 'Ull. You do not drink said blueberry wine for its fine flavours of cough syrup and grain alcohol.
19. Steamed pork buns
20. Pistachio ice cream
21. Heirloom tomatoes
22. Fresh wild berries
23. Foie gras
24. Rice and beans
25. Brawn, or head cheese
26. Raw Scotch Bonnet pepper - no. I've had a few other raw hot peppers, but think I will pass on the Scotch Bonnet dare.
27. Dulce de leche
28. Oysters - colour me disimpressed
29. Baklava
30. Bagna cauda
31. Wasabi peas
32. Clam chowder in a sourdough bowl
33. Salted lassi
34. Sauerkraut
35. Root beer float
36. Cognac with a fat cigar
37. Clotted cream tea
38. Vodka jelly/Jell-O
39. Gumbo
40. Oxtail
41. Curried goat - I have a dear friend who grew up in Jamaica. He used to make a beautiful curried goat for festive occasions. This makes me sad. He's had a disabling stroke, now.
42. Whole insects
43. Phaal
44. Goat’s milk
45. Malt whisky from a bottle worth £60/$120 or more
46. Fugu
47. Chicken tikka masala
48. Eel
49. Krispy Kreme original glazed doughnut - an exceedingly overrated item, even hot and fresh.
50. Sea urchin
51. Prickly pear
52. Umeboshi
53. Abalone
54. Paneer - I have made my own, too
55. McDonald’s Big Mac Meal
56. Spaetzle
57. Dirty gin martini
58. Beer above 8% ABV
59. Poutine
60. Carob chips
61. S’mores
62. Sweetbreads
63. Kaolin
64. Currywurst
65. Durian - I liked it, too, while everyone else was reeling about making gagging noises.
66. Frogs’ legs
67. Beignets, churros, elephant ears or funnel cake
68. Haggis
69. Fried plantain
70. Chitterlings, or andouillette
71. Gazpacho
72. Caviar and blini
73. Louche absinthe - just last week at MagNorth indeedy.
74. Gjetost, or brunost - I LOVE GJETOST! LOVE!
75. Roadkill
76. Baijiu
77. Hostess Fruit Pie
78. Snail
79. Lapsang souchong
80. Bellini
81. Tom yum
82. Eggs Benedict
83. Pocky
84. Tasting menu at a three-Michelin-star restaurant.
85. Kobe beef
86. Hare
87. Goulash
88. Flowers
89. Horse
90. Criollo chocolate
91. Spam
92. Soft shell crab
93. Rose harissa
94. Catfish
95. Mole poblano
96. Bagel and lox
97. Lobster Thermidor
98. Polenta
99. Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee
100. Snake

The Creative Genius and I have been working hard at rehearsals for Queen Milli of Galt, in which we have the lead roles (the show goes up in February). It's a delightful, if wholly unlikely, romantic tale of lost love, and the director is having plenty of fun with us as real-world lovers cast in "meet-cute" parts.

The CG is playing Edward, Prince of Wales. The part requires, if not authentic Windsor tones, at the very least, a polished upper-class Brit-twit accent. Given that his last experience with British accents was the Sherlock Holmes play, he's intent on doing it right this time. To that end, we went to the library and borrowed three seasons (haven't got to the fourth yet) of Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie's gloriously silly Jeeves and Wooster.

Results: I sound like a pretentious Brit-twit. Ha. See, my father in fact has most of an upper-middle-class British accent, which I caught from him; I didn't really excise it until my twenties (after years of mockery). I'm one of those people who catches accents anyway (I'm always terrified, when speaking to someone with a strong accent, that they're going to turn on me suddenly and accuse me of making fun of them). This was not only immersion, but somewhat natural to me.

It's not good at all. Milli is Canadian, and there are jokes about her Canadian pronunciation in the script!

On the other hand, until as recently as last weekend, the CG's best efforts always sounded, for some reason, rather Cockney—unless he got silly, and imitated the affected lithp of Bertie Wooster's chum Gussie Fink-Nottle. Which, unless the Prince was going to show me his newt (ahem!) wouldn't work at all.

This weekend, we watched nearly all of Season One of Torchwood. (It's wonderful! Deliciously cheesy British science fiction, with hot bisexual alien babes! I'm hooked like a fish.) And—guess what? The CG's mixed Celtic ancestry clearly not only favours him with a romantic lavender pallor and reddish hair, but a vulnerability to the musical tones of Cardiff. Last Sunday's rehearsal featured a great many restarts of his scenes, as every time he opened his mouth, he sounded more richly Welsh.

Stolen from the blogosphere. Things I've done are in the vivid colour. Hey, that's not bad—fifty percent; although I could wish that more of the ones I'd "done" involved XTreme Sport and international travel.

I can't figure out why the "kangaroo meat" one is in black text... ah, well.

01. Bought everyone in the bar a drink
02. Swam with dolphins
03. Climbed a mountain —Ben An, in Scotland. It's not much of a mountain, but still.
04. Taken a Ferrari for a test drive
05. Been inside the Great Pyramid
06. Held a tarantula. Yes! and a whole bunch of lizards! A. and I once held an Exotic Animals birthday party for his nephew. It was awesome.
07. Taken a candlelit bath with someone
08. Said "I love you" and meant it
09. Hugged a tree
10. Bungee jumped
11. Visited Paris
12. Watched a lightning storm at sea
13. Stayed up all night long and saw the sun rise
14. Seen the Northern Lights
15. Gone to a huge sports game
16. Walked the stairs to the top of the leaning Tower of Pisa
17. Grown and eaten your own vegetables
18. Touched an iceberg
19. Slept under the stars. When I was at Clown Farm last year I spent a night in the hammock behind the barn. It was quite something, but very cold. Note to self: hammocks do not keep ass warm, even if you have a blanket over you. 
20. Changed a baby's diaper
21. Taken a trip in a hot air balloon
22. Watched a meteor shower
23. Gotten drunk on champagne
24. Given more than you can afford to charity. Yes, although grinchily enough, it was accidental. I used to have an automatic deduction for Greenpeace coming off my bank account, and once it overdrew my account at a bad moment, and caused me twenty-five dollars in fees.
25. Looked up at the night sky through a telescope
26. Had an uncontrollable giggling fit at the worst possible moment. I would be hard pressed to choose "worst moment" for this. It happens often.
27. Had a food fight
28. Bet on a winning horse
29. Asked out a stranger
30. Had a snowball fight
31. Screamed as loudly as you possibly can
32. Held a lamb
33. Seen a total eclipse
34. Ridden a roller coaster
35. Hit a home run
36. Danced like a fool and didn't care who was looking
37. Adopted an accent for an entire day. My friends and I used to do this regularly in high school, as we wandered about in our vintage hats and dresses and dapper suits. What pretentious prats we were.
38. Actually felt happy about your life, even for just a moment
39. Had two hard drives for your computer. Huh?
40. Visited all 50 states
41. Taken care of someone who was drunk
42. Had amazing friends
43. Danced with a stranger in a foreign country
44. Watched whales
45. Stolen a sign
46. Backpacked in Europe
47. Taken a road-trip
48. Gone rock climbing
49. Taken a midnight walk on the beach
50. Gone sky diving
51. Visited Ireland
52. Been heartbroken longer than you were actually in love
53. In a restaurant, sat at a stranger's table and had a meal with them
54. Visited Japan
55. Milked a cow
56. Alphabetized your CDs
57. Pretended to be a superhero
58. Sung karaoke
59. Lounged around in bed all day
60. Played touch football
61. Gone scuba diving
62. Kissed in the rain
63. Played in the mud
64. Played in the rain
65. Gone to a drive-in theatre
66. Visited the Great Wall of China
67. Started a business
68. Fallen in love and not had your heart broken
69. Toured ancient sites. That's pretty generic.... Not as many as I would have liked.
70. Taken a martial arts class
71. Played D&D for more than 6 hours straight
72. Gotten married
73. Been in a movie. Well, a series of shorts.
74. Crashed a party
75. Gotten divorced
76. Gone without food for 5 days. If not longer. Sigh. Unless black coffee counts as food. Let's not talk about this one any more.
77. Made cookies from scratch
78. Won first prize in a costume contest. Marilyn Monroe, age 17.
79. Ridden a gondola in Venice
80. Gotten a tattoo
81. Rafted the Snake River
82. Been on a television news program as an "expert"
83. Gotten flowers for no reason
84. Performed on stage. And off stage. Frequently.
85. Been to Las Vegas
86. Recorded music
87. Eaten shark
88. Kissed on the first date
89. Gone to Thailand
90. Bought a house
91. Been in a combat zone
92. Buried one/both of your parents
93. Been on a cruise ship
94. Spoken more than one language fluently
95. Performed in Rocky Horror
96. Raised children
97. Followed your favorite band/singer on tour
98. Passed out cold. Frequently. See the bit about "not eating."
99. Taken an exotic bicycle tour in a foreign country
100. Picked up and moved to another city to just start over
101. Walked the Golden Gate Bridge
102. Sang loudly in the car, and didn't stop when you knew someone was looking
103. Had plastic surgery
104. Survived an accident that you shouldn't have survived
105. Wrote articles for a large publication
106. Lost over 100 pounds
107. Held someone while they were having a flashback
108. Piloted an airplane
109. Touched a stingray
110. Broken someone's heart
111. Helped an animal give birth
112. Won money on a TV game show
113. Broken a bone
114. Gone on a photo safari
115. Had a facial part pierced other than your ears. My nose is pierced. I don't wear it any more, now that everyone seems to have had it done.
116. Fired a rifle, shotgun, or pistol
117. Eaten mushrooms that were gathered in the wild. Gathered by ME, too.
118. Ridden a horse
119. Had major surgery
120. Had a snake as a pet
121. Hiked to the bottom of the Grand Canyon
122. Slept for 30 hours in a 48 hour period
123. Visited more foreign countries than U.S. States. I'm not sure actually if this is "yes" or if it counts as an even score.
124. Visited all 7 continents
125. Taken a canoe trip that lasted more than 2 days
126. Eaten kangaroo meat. No, although I've eaten both emu and ostrich.
127. Eaten sushi
128. Had your picture in the newspaper. Wearing silly clothing!
129. Changed someone's mind about something you care deeply about
130. Gone back to school
131. Parasailed
132. Touched a cockroach
133. Eaten fried green tomatoes
134. Read The Iliad and The Odyssey
135. Selected one "important" author who you missed in school, and read. One? What's this "one" business?
136. Killed and prepared an animal for eating
137. Skipped all your school reunions
138. Communicated with someone without sharing a common spoken language
139. Been elected to public office
140. Written your own computer language
141. Thought to yourself that you're living your dream
142. Had to put someone you love into hospice care
143. Built your own PC from parts
144. Sold your own artwork to someone who didn't know you
145. Had a booth at a street fair
146. Dyed your hair
147. Been a DJ
148. Shaved your head
149. Caused a car accident
150. Saved someone's life

Fall is about melancholy. Tattered leaves; crows wheeling under a ragged sky; the dark promise of winter.

I ran across an online gallery today called Ashes and Milk. I nearly sent an email to A. with the link, because the things there made me think of him so strongly. They look like things he would love: simple, beautiful, influenced by natural shapes and sturdy materials. I put the link in, and deleted the email—it meant nothing, except that I thought of him. It might be that he wouldn't like those things any more. Maybe he isn't that person, now.

It is fall. I feel sad lately, and not much like doing anything other than lying on the couch under a quilt with tea and a book, pretending to read. Is there any point to writing, painting, doing? I'm sure there is, but I can't think of it right now.

Yosinori-L1060350

Tatara Zukuri bowl by Yosinori Yamamoto

Kia-GD6-1

Graphite Drawing Six by Kia Neill

I think I'm a little depressed. I've been feeling like shopping a lot, which is always a bad sign. I ordered a large parcel of stuff from sockdreams.com, and am now fully equipped with a selection of chunky over-the-knee socks and stockings, which for some reason I've been preferring over tights lately. Yay socks! Work is still boring, but it's nice to sit there and be bored in a cute pair of OTKs in blue, navy and earth-tone stripes. 1

Anyway, I'm particularly depressed over the election. Normally, I don't vote—I refuse my ballot—because years of working in government have completely disillusioned me about the electoral process and "democracy" in general. However, Stephen Harper's attacks on arts funding got me indignant (right along with Canadian playwright and Artistic Director of the NAC's French Theatre Majdi Wouawad and Québec singer Michel Rivard).

I'm an artist. I know artists. The arts are not a "niche issue", and they certainly aren't about luxe subsidised galas. In the larger context of the OMG! Financial! Meltdown! maybe people are thinking that arts aren't relevant any more. On the contrary. They could be more relevant than ever. Yes, maybe, financial troubles might necessitate cuts to arts funding, along with everything else (cuts to industry funding, anyone?) but it's the dismissive, contemptuous attitude that chaps my sock-exposed thigh region.

Not that it did any good. Both of our regional Liberal incumbents were defeated, by Conservatives.

To which I respond, slack-jawed, WTF? Nobody I know, not my arty hippie flake friends, not my more conventional work acquaintances, nobody, admitted to favouring that bunch. Who was voting for them? Who? (In, I might add, the lowest voter turnout ever.) Way to be apathetic, Canadians.

1 And, you know, an outfit. I haven't lost my mind to the extent of workplace exhibitionism.

I had the last week off, ostensibly in order to rehearse for the Creative Genius's show in our little burg's shiny new Fringe Festival. Had the director been organised, he would have set up a few rehearsals maybe earlier than a week before opening... next time the co-star appears in a show with this particular company, she's going to take over the stage manager role, and in time-honoured SM fashion, push everyone else around indiscriminately - actors, director, costume designer, writer, everyone.

(In case the above is less than clear, the CG and I took on all those roles.)

Anyway, the first Saturday of my week off, the CG had a day-long mascot job. The Monday after was the birthday of one of my relatives, and I constructed a cake and drove an hour and a half to a nearby city for a festive supper. Tuesday the CG had another mascot job, the which he'd forgotten about until his ride knocked on the door, and it was a good thing we were fifteen minutes late in leaving for our intended trip off to our bathroom to rehearse....

Our what? Oh, the show takes place in a public bathroom/changeroom downtown. It's a site-specific Fringe.

Anyhow. Anyhow, we did finally make it to the bathroom, with a rolly bag of props and costumes, and the CG's sister's guitar. In three weeks, he's taught himself about five chords, with which we've constructed the songs in the show...

Songs?

Yes, songs. It's a show about fame, copyright, and artistic property, featuring a cowboy in an adult diaper (Billy Horrible) and a bimbo in a Fantasia hippo skirt (Britney Beautiful). And we sing, much to the distress of our audience - and Billy Horrible plays guitar, to even more distress (the actor playing Billy has taught himself chords, but not how to tune his instrument). The poster says, "Want Music that Abrades the Senses?" so I suppose we've given them fair warning.

Friday was the opening day, and on Friday morning, while the CG was again out performing a brief theatre piece with another company for a health conference, I got a call from my friend, the one who's been housing my last cat Grimmy for the past year. Grimmy had been behaving listlessly for a week, so she took him to the vet. The diagnosis was catastrophic liver failure, and they had put him down.

That put something of a damper on the afternoon's dress rehearsal, but by some miracle, we actually pulled off a reasonable facsimile of a show. It needs considerable tightening, but the framework works, and we're actually using a lot of our combined clown and bouffon practice from the last year. (As I said to someone or other, in my ass-ruffle, a DD bra stuffed with dishcloths, and clip-in extensions of a cheapness that would embarrass a Barbie doll, I'm bouffon in my own body.)

Then, on Saturday morning, my friend picked me up, with Grimmy's refrigerated corpse in the back seat of her car. When she'd called the day before, I asked her two questions: "Do you have a spade?" and "Is Grimmy in the fridge?"

"In the fridge?" she said. "Should he be?"

"Sadly, yes," I said.

We drove out to the quiet hillside where William, Zozo and the Chicken were already returning to the earth. After a little bit of tromping through the underbrush, I found their cairns, off the beaten track in the cedar bush. We set down our burdens. "Where's the spade?" I said.

My friend pulled out... a garden trowel.

We gathered everything up again, tromped back out, and drove to a nearby town, where I purchased a full-size spade. "Are you going to use it again?" my friend said doubtfully.

"Well," I said, "we're not going to be able to bury Grim properly without it, and I guess I owe him a last thirty dollars."

We returned, and I spent a good hour digging a nice deep hole in the heavy clay, getting thoroughly mudded and mosquito-bitten in the process, while my friend went and gathered stones for his cairn. It is a job, digging a grave deep enough just to keep a cat's corpse safe from molestation.

We built a cairn for him, and stuck it all over with incense and candles, and then sat a while looking out over the incredible view down the valley and across the river, saying goodbye to my last cat.

Then we drove back to my place, and my friend dropped me off, and I went round the back to our entrance and found the CG sprawled on the deck surrounded by his market purchases, where he'd been, keyless, for the past three hours.

It's been a week, and now it's over.

I was driving back to work today, after a mid-day appointment. I turned onto one of the two main north(ish) south(ish) arteries, and found myself behind someone who was doing, maybe, forty. Well, we were still in the middle of town... red lights... The car swerved a bit between lanes.

Well, you know, you cut other motorists a bit of slack for "weirdness while moving" -- perhaps their Timmy's overturned, or a child or dog threw up in the back seat, or whatever... However. In combination with the persistent unnaturally low speed... and oo-oop, how the heck did the driver even manage that? It was almost as though the car moved sideways for a minute there... I gripped the steering wheel in an "immediate response" configuration, fell a bit further back (to the indignation of the white Golf behind me, who thought I was the idiot here) and wondered whether this was a case of driving while drunk, or driving while geriatric.

Finally, my unsteady forerunner reached the four-lane split of the road -- the Golf whizzed furiously round us both, followed by some sort of SUV, and I followed (more cautiously, since the car ahead still seemed exceedingly unclear about the lane divisions). Well, the driver was not ninety and peering over the steering wheel -- nor swigging from a bottle of Absolut. Instead, she had a green eyeshade pulled right down over her face, and was peering uncertainly through that. Post-dilation at the optometrist? Incipient retinal detachment? Migraine? I do not know, but take a cab next time, unknown lady, please.

I would like to dress in the manner of these unknown ladies in this Edward Hopper painting, in snazzy little sweaters and jersey skirts, and little close-fitting hats. A little fashion reinvention if you will. It wouldn't take much tweaking to my wardrobe.

You know, if you enter "cloche hat" into the Etsy search, you get over one hundred and fifty pages of results, many of which are not cloche hats at all. Of the ones that are, though, these are quite fabulous.

I can't remember when I've last seen this many rainstorms in a summer.

That, my friends and neighbours, is what you get when you go off gallivanting for a week and forget to empty your kitchen Green Bin. Generations have lived and died, between my departure and my return; whole tribes are happily ensconced, in all their various territories and villages -- Surlafridge, Trashbinville, Cupboard Heights and Sink Valley. They are clever, and only a few have fallen to my cunning trap, consisting of an old yogourt dish filled with cider vinegar, and covered with plastic wrap pierced with a pencil.

I left on Saturday, and met up with the Creative Genius in his temporary digs in Toronto. I'm either about to be rewarded by the fulfilment of one of my fondest fantasies, or punished by the mutilation of same; I'll find out through personal experience next week. I don't see how the vision of the CG strutting around a stage nattily clad in my grandfather's bespoke morning coat alternating with my vintage silk dressing gown 1 could possibly be altogether painful, theatrically speaking, but there are of course so many other levels of possible agony in the wild world of Sherlockian pastiche (see just for starters, Christopher Lee; also, Laurie R. King; also, Guy Ritchie).

He's grown, at the director's request, a set of rust-coloured sideburns for the role, and when not inside a stiff shirt and starched Mornington collar, looks rather amusingly hipsterish. I brought him an early birthday cake (strawberry cake with cream cheese icing and strawberries on top) and we ate that and ran lines and wandered round the Danforth.

Late on Sunday afternoon, I continued on to Ottawa. There, I first watched a lot of television with my brother, culminating during the wolf hour in, I think, something starring Michael Douglas, and slept for the tattered remains of the night rather sordidly on the couch.

The rest of the week involved Fringing, and an overnight jaunt to Merrickville, and the parents' return from Germany. My Fringe experience encompassed four good-to-fantastic shows, balanced by one that was at least seven different kinds of awful 2, which is pretty good odds, I think.

My friend M. and I had a lovely and productive time in Merrickville. Our trip was intended as a Serious Writing Retreat for Maupin, but of course, we had to wander about. Merrickville is one of those quaint Ontario towns full of beautifully-maintained Victorian homes with cottage gardens, and probably the highest concentration of artists I've ever personally experienced. Seriously, there's an entire street that's almost completely lined with in-home studios. We shopped (mostly without buying anything), ate very good local, organic food, and then got down to an intense creative session, which ended up producing about a dozen quality pages.

Our departure the next day was marred by the mysterious disappearance of my keys, which had last been seen when I removed them from my pocket the night before. We searched the room. We emptied and searched our bags. M. went off to check around the path by the canal where we'd walked after supper the previous evening, and I searched the bags again. I tipped my purse (which is not very large, and which I had previously emptied) upside-down, and they fell out. Most peculiar! Ghosts! Pisgies!

Cecilia Bartoli - If You Love Me (Se tu m'ami ), 18th-Century Italian Songs

I left on Sunday, so as to be on time for my singing lesson on Monday. (Alas, AC left a message on my cellphone Sunday afternoon -- he was very sorry, he was at the Montreal Jazz Festival, no singing. And no singing next week either, as he is once again away. A shame, as I'm very keen to get started on some new repertoire, hopefully a something or three from Cecilia Bartoli's selection of 18th century Italian songs, to which I listened incessantly (and howled along to) during all this driving.)

I met the CG in Toronto again, and he took me out to a couple of the final events of the Toronto Festival of Clowns. That finished very late, and I stayed over (imposing on yet another temporary host to the CG's nomadic lifestyle). On Monday, we went to see Wall-E, which is everything everyone said it was, including brilliant, moving, fantastically animated, and offensive to fat people.

Low points included a parking ticket (about which I should call the Toronto parking enforcement office, since I had in fact found a helpful policeman the night I got it, and he wrote me an exemption), and a rather crushing revelation about understood agreements that weren't, resulting in something of a current emotional malaise. And the fruitflies, of course. On the other hand, my copy of the 2008 Rhysling Anthology was nestled in my mailbox when I returned.

Now it's back to daily yoga, raw food, and three days of work (one of which is of course already past), and then another week of theatrical overload.

1 My wardrobe chest and I provided a certain amount of enthusiastic costuming, accompanied by cranky commentary and an introduction to collar studs, both of which appeared to amuse their victim. About that dressing gown... it's a man's dressing gown, rather tailored and longer than most, in dark red textured silk with ribbed silk lapels and cuffs. I bought it back in my early twenties, for around sixty dollars (which was a lot for vintage then, and a lot for me at the time) and wore it daily for several years.

When I saw it, hanging there in my wardrobe trunk, I was utterly surprised. "Where'd this come from?" I'd completely forgotten about the thing. It's perfect Sherlock Holmes material, right down to the various little holes and stains from my wear and tear, and the CG looks devastating in it.

2 Which, I see now on visiting the Fringe site again, won an award. I... uh, okay. There's no accounting for taste, I suppose— possibly mine, although word in the Beer Tent was very mixed when I was there.

AC's singing recital was last night, and my little segment went reasonably well. I wasn't too nervous (and wore flat shoes) so I didn't have last year's problem of shaking knees and a lack of grounding. I was, however, nervous enough that the bits in the passagio (that awkward middle ground of the break) had a tendency to emerge somewhat unsupported. My compensatory technique of taking them right down to the chest voice and going at them from below didn't work too well either, as then of course one is faced with an awkward gear shift back into the head voice when coming up again.

I'm not too terribly upset about it. On the whole, I think it was about the best I can do right now, as my passagio isn't altogether reliable at the moment even when I am completely relaxed. I didn't screw up the timing (my real weak spot) and I listened to the accompanist. My friend J. came out, and she said my voice completely filled the church. "That's what I came to hear," she said. Considering that there were only two other women who truly managed to let it open out like that (and one of them was — oh the pain! — singing slightly flat throughout her piece) it's something.

And an older couple gave me a really nice compliment. "Do you think," the man asked me, "that you would have sung it differently wearing a dress?" I said that I didn't think so. And then he and his wife told me a story of touring the Canadian Opera Company once, and seeing a show in final rehearsal. Everyone had their costumes by then except the leads, whose clothes weren't finished. "And it didn't matter," the gentleman said, "once they started to sing, you forgot what they were wearing. I thought that's what your piece was like." Of course, AC gave me a wonderful introduction, in which he talked about Orfeo ed Euridice, and recapped the story leading up to Orfeo's heartbreaking song. I don't know about the audience, but it helped me a lot.

Eating in the Raw: A Beginner's Guide to Getting Slimmer, Feeling Healthier, and Looking Younger the

And, elsewise—I know you rely on me, Voxy neighbours, to Bring the Flake—so I have to tell you, I've been eating almost completely "raw" for nearly three weeks. I have no particularly elevated motives of morals or "detox" or even weight loss about it; it simply felt like something I wanted to do. I like Carol Alt's book about raw food; she eats things like raw-milk cheese and raw meat and fish, and generally seems to have a happy, relaxed feeling of enjoyment about her food, rather than the more typical raw foodist stance of Body Purity and the Higher Vibrations.

It feels good—after a serious misstep the first day when I didn't eat enough and developed a full-body starvation headache by 2 p.m. (A lot of raw foodists would say to me, I'm sure, "Ah, that's detox, as your cells eliminate the corruption of cooked food!" But no. I know the misery of starvation and crashing blood sugar when I feel it.) I ate several sugary, fatty, glutenous, cooked, impure squares from the breakroom, and felt better within, literally, minutes. Since then, I've been more careful to ensure that I have a plenitude of raw calories in my lunchbag. (Also: a green shake and nothing but fruit for breakfast, purifying to the system though it might possibly be, simply isn't enough to keep my particular metabolism happy. And I know that, raw or not. Whatever else I may eat, or not eat, through the course of a day, a large and sustaining breakfast is essential for me.)

I've been sprouting things in jars, which is very satisfying. Supper as science experiment! I'm trying to stay away from the more complicated raw recipes (and raw junk food, for that matter), in particular purchased dehydrated crackers and things, and the many tempting recipes for luscious raw cakes that are all cashews and agave nectar and such. As it is, I'm still eating too many nuts, and a bit too much dried fruit, 1 but I'm looking on this as an evolving exploration into my body's happiness, not a question of "doing it right". And I'm not necessarily going to get all superior and avoid any contamination of cooked meals with friends or families or beloveds, unless there's some compelling reason to do so.

Mind you, I have noticed, even in this short a time, that a "cooked" meal seems to clog my digestion for hours afterwards in a way raw food doesn't—but there are worse things. I've already been a vegan asshole, and an anorexic asshole, and a body-building asshole, to people over food, and frankly the people should be more important.

So there it is. I'll keep eating raw until I don't want to any more. A typical day, at the moment, is around 70-99% raw (there are still matters of the cups of coffee I allow myself, and a few condiments and spices).

1 Given my assertions immediately following, I should clarify that by saying that I base that judgement purely on the fact that nuts and dried fruit, while tasty going in and satisfying immediately after, also seem to weigh on my system somehow, sometimes to the point of making my stomach feel unpleasantly acidic.