October 8th, 2007
Meme answers
1. First car you drove and where you went.
Ford Taurus, and technically the first time I drove I went in a small circle in a parking lot at ignition speed. The first time I drove alone as a licenced driver, I went to the county line, because I could.
2. Favourite name for a boy.
Jacob
3. What are the basic components of lasagna, according to you?
Noodles, ricotta cheese, tomatoy-oniony sauce, spinach!!
4. What could make you move, this month, to another country?
Very very hard for me to imagine. Some sort of constellation of money and love, I guess: I’d have to be able to afford to do it, and I’d have to be going with someone I liked enough to know I wouldn’t hate the new place.
5. Farthest you’ve ever gone on foot?
From the Danforth to midtown.
6. I would never have a bird for a pet because a bird in the house is bad luck.
7. Favourite kind of gum / reason why you hate all gum.
Extra Bubblemint (that I know of–there are yet flavours undiscovered!)
8. Favourite name for a girl.
Emma? Sarah? Rebecca? I like “a” names.
9. Worst tv show you’ve ever liked (that you’ll admit to).
Pigsty? Ned and Stacy?
10. What’s your best party trick?
Shoulder stands, double-jointed toes, the subjunctive.
11. Gun to your head: get a non-ear piercing—where?
Nose. I’ve always thought those are cute, actually–I just worry about job intereviews. And snot.
12. What’s your strength you always brag about in job interviews?
Takes direction well. And enthusiasm!!!!
13. What song is in your head? Dead by My Chemical Romance
14. Why do you live in the place you live?
It was a very convenient commute two jobs ago, and then not so much for the last two years, and then good again for this one. Finally, inertia pays off.
15. Expensive useless item you’d be embarrassed to own, yet sorta wish you did?
Lululemon Groove apns
16. Last charity you gave to?
United Way.
17. After you take your laundry out of the drier, what do you do with it?
Throw it on the couch in wrinkle-minimizing formation until it starts to bother me, or someone comes over, or I wear everything.
18. What was the last conversation you had about?
Borges.
These last ones are oldies from past surveys, but I always want to know and, hey, we’re all evolving.
19. What’s the best thing you can cook?
Still egg curry. I guess I’m actually not evolving. (note to those who didn’t read previous memes: this egg curry has nothing to do with the real one that people eat in India, or anywhere other than my appartment. I invented it in 1999 when I read Jhumpra Lahiri’s “Third and Final Continent” and some of those characters ate egg curry. It was an amazing story, and egg curry sounded really delicious. I had no recipe, so I just thought really hard about it, and invented one. Later I got a recipe and I was very very wrong, but I can’t switch–too addicted to my wrongness.)
20. What are you wearing right now?
Um, this is bad, I just came from the gym: white sockettes, blue basketball shorts, purple t-shirt that I got in 1991, yellow terry headband that I got in 1989, glasses, earrings, braces. This is about as bad as i could possibly look without some sort of disease, I think.
I gave you blood blood / gallons of the stuff
October 6th, 2007
13 days, plus thanks!
Soon, the mystery will be solved as to whether I am a poor enunciator because of jaw deformity/orthodontia/surgical recovery, or simply sloppiness. Even if the latter, I imagine I can solve it somehow, possibly with a book or else elecution lessons in the manner of Anne Shirley and also my mother when, as a child, she developed a Brooklyn accent (due to growing up in Brooklyn) and her midwestern mother wouldn’t stand for it. My point is, once the braces are off, I’ll be able to get to work on this issue.
I am thankful for this possibility, and many other things, like how it is now Thanksgiving weekend and within the hour I am headed to the tiny town from whence I sprang. This evening I shall visit the house of my friend Mary, a house for which she and her husband have been hoping, pining, scrimping and saving for five years now. I have a vague idea what it looks like, but whatever it is, I know it’s a dream house, and I am thankful I get to see it tonight!
And lots of other things. More soon!
All the yellow roses on her wedding cake
RR
October 4th, 2007
15 days!
P. invited me to make caramel apples with her and I. for Hallowe’en and while if this were another year, I likely could’ve—and would’ve—found some way to get around the orthodontia to participate, I am *much* more excited to be planning to eat my caramel apple off a *stick*, the way it was intended. And now, because I am bored, a list of other foods that come on sticks:
–lollipops
–popsicles, fudgesicles, creamsicles, the whole sicle -family
–pogos ( I think there is another, non-branded name for those cornbread coated hotdogs on sticks, but I forget it—anyone?
–souvlaki/kebabs (is there a difference? If so, is the difference that souvlaki is just meat, but kebabs have a bunch of things in a festive pattern?
–those big chunks of pineapple you can get in Chinese markets on sticks
–caramel and candy apples, the whole apples-covered-in-goo family
–toasted marshmallows
–sometimes chocolate-covered marshmallows in fun shapes, especially around Hallowe’en
–I think the corn-on-the-cob you get at street fests comes with little stick-like handles
That’s all I can think of – anybody else?
Down on the corner / out in the street
RR
October 3rd, 2007
Memery
Remember back in university, when every fall everyone sent around little questionnaires to all their friends with semi-inane, semi-entertaining queries for you to read their answers to and then answer yourself and forward to all *your* friends. And it was actually a sort of clever concept, except by Christmas exams you’d be getting sick of answering “bacon bits or croutons” and there’d be a million little forwarding arrows all over the emails, and so the thing would die out until the next fall, until graduation from undergrad, when it died out entirely.
Well, not at Rose-coloured it didn’t. I love these, but you’ve got to keep it interesting—I write a new one every year. Not that mine are necessarily fascinating, but at least they’re novel. And I really am very nosy—even if you aren’t thrilled, consider filling one of these out and either commenting it (below) or putting a link in my comment box to where you are posting it, just to entertain me! I really really want to know—to the extent that I won’t post my own answers for a while, so as not to colour the sample.
Let the inanity begin!
1. First car you drove and where you went.
2. Favourite name for a boy.
3. What are the basic components of lasagna, according to you?
4. What could make you move, this month, to another country?
5. Farthest you’ve ever gone on foot (in measurements or by landmark—ie from the Danforth to midtown).
6. I would never have a … for a pet because …
7. Favourite kind of gum / reason why you hate all gum.
8. Favourite name for a girl.
9. Worst tv show you’ve ever liked (that you’ll admit to).
10. What’s your best party trick?
11. Gun to your head: get a non-ear piercing—where?
12. What’s your strength you always brag about in job interviews?
13. What song is in your head?
14. Why do you live in the place you live?
15. Expensive useless item you’d be embarrassed to own, yet sorta wish you did?
16. Last charity you gave to?
17. After you take your laundry out of the drier, what do you do with it?
18. What was the last conversation you had about?
These last ones are oldies from past surveys, but I always want to know and, hey, we’re all evolving.
19. What’s the best thing you can cook?
20. What are you wearing right now?
16 Days
AMT reminded me last night of one of the most excellent perks of the potential post-brace world: gum! Remember three years ago, before I found out my jaw was doomed, when I used to be a pack-a-day girl? And even after my orthodontist banned me, but before I got the braces, whenever someone offered around a pack after dinner, I’d guiltily take a piece and savour it with glee? (sidebar: offering gum around after dinner is *so* our generation, isn’t it? catch anyone over 35 doing that!) Remember when I used to try every new variety of gum that came on the market? Well, probably you don’t, but I did… My last big hit was Extra Bubblemint, back in good old 2004, but I hear the gum industry has grown by leaps and bounds without me. At lunch, I was expounding upon my plans, and someone told me there is *chocolate gum* now. They said it’s horrid, and it does sound so, but I will soon try some and know for myself. Hypothesis and experimentation, baby–that’s what it is all about!
If I can. I suppose there is a small possibility that my orthodontist is going to tell me that my jaw is still too fragile for frivolous chewing. But I figure even if he does, I can still have the occasional piece, just as long as I don’t overtax myself. Right?
Gum gum gum gum gum.
Your aspirations for shreds
October 2nd, 2007
Countdown!
For those not keeping track (yes, I know, that’s everybody but me) there are only seventeen days left until the great Becky Brace-off 2007! This experience is ten to fifteen years later than everyone else had it (it could be worse: I could’ve had them on that whole time!) but I’m still really really really excited. Hence this countdown, wherein I shall enumerate all the very good things I am looking forward to doing braceless. This is something of a list of complaints about things I can’t do now, I suppose, but with a rose-coloured angle. I think. Well, anyways, so far I’m planning on:
Eating an apple while jauntily walking down the street
Smiling broadly without feeling one iota of self-consciousness
Kissing someone without feeling the tips of the brackets dig into my lips
Eating corn on the cob
Flossing my teeth late at night when I’m groggy and unable to concentrate very hard
Crunching a hard candy
Posing for my grad pictures
More to come, I’m sure.
I hate the ending myself / but it started with an all right scene
RR
October 1st, 2007
Thinking aloud
There is a sign up at my work, presumably leftover from a project wherein it would’ve made sense, that says, “Think aloud.” Which is a really useful strategy if you are trying to learn to solve algebraic equations involving who has more apples or when the train from Pittsburgh will crash into the one from Toledo, but probably the exact opposite of what I should be doing. I should *never* think aloud—I talk too much as it is, and though it seems impossible, I actually don’t say *quite* everything I think.
AMT, our lady of the great lack-of-internet-presence, coined the incredibly useful term “exterior monologue” to describe the series of loosely connected neural firings that purport to be “a story” but are in fact leading nowhere except to the point where the speaker runs out of breath. If you are as amusing as AMT, I think it is perfectly all right to tell “stories” that end “And then it was now.” But I studiously try (and thus far fail) to avoid it myself.
This is not some self-deprecating rant about how I think I’m uninteresting—gah, I’m fascinating, obviously. It just really really helps my interesting factor to have a point! A thesis, if you will—I’m wicked good at five-paragraph essays. This is probably part of the same internal mechanism that causes me to learn best in a classroom, work best in an office, perform best on a deadline. Excess freedom is a problem for me, I think.
Which is something of a challenge in blogging, wherein the inherent structure is nothing *but* freedom. Three pages of anti-transit ranting? One word obscenity posts? A list of the contents of your fridge? Sure, whatever. Whatever whatever.
Most of the better blogs impose some sort of structure on themselves, however loose—cultural criticism, reviews, chronicles of a given project, etc., etc. There are few bloggers that can remain fascinating on the “this is what I did today” topic with no larger theme at all. Which is something the team here at Rose-coloured is struggling with. Besides being a fun forum and a good way to let you know about the publications and performances of me and my friends, what is this blog *about*? Huh.
You know who *did* write a wonderful “what I did today” blog? Michael Winter. I won’t be adding this one to the links list, I guess, since it’s no longer being updated, but as it was completely non-topical, you could go read all the back-posts right now and it would be fine and fun. He was blogging in support of his last book, The Big Why, but the prose on the blog is always just the fine tiny details MW writes anywhere, lovely. His new novel, The Architects Are Here is launching this week, under what is one of the better titles I have ever heard, and I am excited. I have no idea what it’s about, though, so once again this post has rambled off. But yeah, Michael Winter=beautiful writer (also a nice human and shockingly tall; he was my teacher once and I was in awe.)
Strike a violent pose
RR
September 28th, 2007
Spinny
I’m a little manic today, possibly due to the fact that I had an extra coffee at the United Way coffee hour, or that I’m celebrating that it is Friday, or that I’m on the eve of super-exciting class reunion tomorrow and a theme-party (hobos!) tonight. Also possibly due to a bus ride of extreme awfulness this morning, wherein as I ran to the stop most of a bottle of soda leaked out into my bag, and spent the ride soggy and self-conscious, also sad about the wasted soda (good thing I bought two. I’m drinking the second one now, because of course I need way more caffeine). Now that my pants have dried, I have a new lease on life!!
I’ve pretty much had it with making sense, which is a fairly unfortunate state of mind to be writing blog posts in. What I really want to do is take a lap around the building and then lie down for a while. Which I might actually do. I’ll keep you posted.
The book of love is long and boring
RR
September 26th, 2007
Writing and Healing
Today’s mail brought me a copy of Ars Medica, a journal put out by the medical community in Toronto about the intersection of creativity and health care. It contains a wealth of fiction and non-fiction, personal essays and poetry, an interview between Margaret Atwood and Vincent Lam, and yes, a short story by me, called “At the End of Breath.” It’s a good looking journal, but a bit hard to get–order through the website above (and at right) or else come over to my place and read mine. Or be a health care professional–I think those might be your only options. Or just kvell to yourself, “Hey, Rose-coloured published a new story!” and then put it out of your mind. Just wanted to let you know!
I’ll dig a tunnel / from my window to yours
RR
Buy the book: