*thud* That's the sound of my butt hitting my office chair, heavily. So glad to be home.

We're home from Wisconsin & FGC Gathering. This was a terrific week for me, enough to make up for the dorm-room beds, the heat, and the chaotic dining-halls. Among other things ( Read more... )

Zeitgeist says: a bunch of us are worried about where we are, planning for the future, and what comes next. I'm feeling it, and so are at least half a dozen people on my friends-list, especially with that sentence-meme about dissatisfaction and self-doubt going around. I do think firecat has some excellent points, though I'm not going to copy ( Read more... )

What a fun day. How odd it is, that having just concluded I was probably an introvert, in a conversation in frankie_ecap's journal, that I had such an energizing day being unabashedly extroverted ( Read more... )

I really like the word artifice. Not only the word, but qualities behind it- cleverness, craftiness, subtle deception. My fascination with Almodóvar is at least in part a fascination with his statements on artifice.

I think I first decided this while reading Holy Fire by Bruce Sterling, some years back. This book shows the next 75 years' ( Read more... )

Blame America... and oh yeah, the Jews is a review in this week's Globe and Mail Books section, of a new book, Uncouth Nation: Why Europe Dislikes America by Andrei Markovits. The book sounds challenging: how opinion of the US in Europe has been prejudicially negative (giving a number of "damned if you do, damned if you don't" examples, such as ( Read more... )

12:30pm:

I just came from the public library and a seminar by science-fiction author Robert J. Sawyer. He spoke on "Approaching Science Fiction from the Top Down." While I'm not a fiction writer, I'm interested in how the creative process works, and this was a great hour-and-a-half glimpse. Afterward, taking the bus home from downtown, I had the ( Read more... )

Yesterday in Quaker Meeting, someone spoke about walking El Camino de Santiago. He saw wagon-tracks that initially looked like they were in mud, but on inspection, turned out to be worn into the stone. He said they also saw trees that he says were planted over 1,000 years ago. He concluded, "What impact could I have on the world that could last ( Read more... )

Three character traits I would like to work on. I've decided this is a goal for the rest of 2006, that I want to be able to measure real progress. Why post it publicly?

Why not?

( Cut for the non-introspectively minded this morning )

Tonight I had dinner with friends K and J, who just returned from a five month walking pilgrimage through Northern Spain. I missed them while they were gone, one reason being the high quality of conversation we sometimes get to have. Tonight was one of those nights; after dinner we played a quick game of Ticket to Ride followed by a good hour- ( Read more... )

I've added All About My Mother to my list of highly recommended films. If you liked Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, you will probably like this [1]. It's less maniacally funny but it gets humour from unexpected coincidence, people laughing at themselves, and the film's general attitude. There are some great lines lines which are ( Read more... )