Preludes And Nocturnes

Jim just phoned to say he got in to nyc okay. Started opening a letter as we talked. Read out to me the letter TELLING US JIM IS APPROVED FOR IMMIGRATION!!!!

Yes, we got through Stage Two (the 4-15mos stage) in 6 weeks! over Christmas!

This is the passport request where we get the stuff and the stamps and the stuff!!! The next time Jim arrives on Canadian soil (carpet?) he will be allowed to stay for longer than EVER BEFORE!

I am so happy. But I am also so exhausted. Oh yeah, and PMSing as well. HA!

hee!!

Thank you for the good thoughts and hugs. I’m feeling rather horrid so clicking on here and reading the comments helps.

What else helps are the people sending me notes about cool rub-ons they’re finding in their neck of the woods! I think you’ll all understand that right now thinking about my craft makes me happy. Thinking about many other things makes me not happy. So, craft is good.

Jim left this morning. I mean really, could this week suck any more? I’m eating chocolate in my office avoiding replying to management emails.

God I’m a downer.

But on the upside, Julia - Yes, please buy me some of the cool/cute rub-ons you found.  I’ll phone you tonight. xoxo

Not great guys.  Not laid off, but restructured.  And a job I really really liked is potentially turned into a job I don’t know if I could stick with it.  I’m very sad.

Well, we shall see how things go today. Advising has been called to the principal’s president’s office at 12:30, research and graduate studies at noon, admin assistants at 3, etc…

I have theorised they will have someone with a big bucket of red paint and will mark Xs on people as they walk in - every third person or something very logical like that.

On the upside, Jim has said that if I get the axe today I should just go with him tomorrow back to nyc and we can spend Valentine’s and our anniversary together. Oh yeah, because to make things even better Jim leaves tomorrow morning to go back as he’s teaching a couple courses in nyc and the washington DC area.

I’m not a happy monkey.

And that craft cart? Sold out. BUMMER! I found them online so if I can’t get them in the next few weeks I might order. This one here is the 6 drawer or here is the 3 drawer. How sweet are they!!

Thanks to everyone for the really nice comments about the job situation. Muchas hugs and kisses.

Mom: oh, I was looking at your flickr site and your cards look great…

me: thanks!

Mom: …those pictures you have up right now of your rings..

me: yep

Mom: are they new, or?

me: yep, I just took them.

Mom: so, is there something new with your rings?

me: no, I just took them

Mom: … just because…?

me: I was taking pictures of my cards and then got distracted by my rings.

Mom: so you thought you’d then just take pictures of your rings so people could see them.

me: well yeah

Mom: so..

me: nothing new, just pictures of my rings. Who doesn’t want to look at pictures of my rings!!

Mom: so people would just want to have new pictures of your rings every few months to just look at them?

me: …

me: I know bettie will like them *pout*

Mom: *shakes her head at me over the phone*

It happened very logically:

Lalalaaaa, taking pictures of my cards. Oh, what’s that? My rings?

Why yes! They do look very pretty!

Yes, they do sparkle and shine!

Yes, I am a dork.

I have asked my mom to look for these specific rub-ons (hee! rub) at London Drugs because my store here has them on for $2.99 a package and I bought them out. I have actually realised that finding good rub-ons is difficult. One might even say that a good rub-on is hard to find. Or something like that. I was super excited as the one dollar store here has a KaBILLION of them.

All crap.

And I mean HORRID crap! Cheesy little cutsy barfy cheap looking rub-ons. And even my beloved craft-store’s collection is obviously geared towards the “scrapbooking” crowd (which, um, can be okay but it really isn’t my thing). I don’t want cutsy sayings, I don’t want anything about praising jebus, and I don’t want cartoons.

So yeah, I realised that the first two packets of rub-ons I ever bought might just be the only two packets of rub-ons I’ll ever like. And I bought them out at my local London Drugs. So now I’m asking my mom to check her store to see if they have any. And I thought I’ve give her pictures because I described them, but, well yeah.

To see what I’m doing with those rub-ons, here’s a couple of my cards I’ve made over the past few days/weeks:

And this is one of my quilling cards. Is soo cute!

Thanks mom!!

So yeah, the uni is in an uproar as there might be some massive-ish layoffs announced next week (and then possibly being implimented/re-announced with tweaking/whatever over the next year). Depending on how you look at things I might be at risk or I might not or I might be at risk in August when my job goes perm. full time rather than term or whatever. I feel horrid as some friend are really quite worried and they have kids and homes and, well, I have a husband and a cat. So really, I’m feeling okay.

The twiggling nagging feeling comes about with the fact that I want to go spend oooodles* of money this weekend on craft stuff. Carmen told me about this Iris cart at Costco that has these perfect little paper holder containers in it and I WANT IT! I also need to go spend $30 at my other craft store because then I get the $20 gift card (er, for spending $200 in three months). This would usually mortify me (the spending of $200 in three months), but I started my new craft in Nov so that includes a fair bit of start-up stuff and also stuff Leone bought.

*ooodles of money = about $80

On the super fun side: two people have requested to buy some of my cards!  YAY!

Funny story -

store clerk: “oh and if you spend $200 in three months…”

me: “you STAGE AN INTERVENTION!”

other customer: *kills herself laughing*

store clerk: *looks slightly pissed*

Ha!

I got Mouse’s link to work!!!  ALL BY MYSELF!!

Now if someone could tell my why my links don’t show up on my main page?  But if you click on comments you can then see all my sidebar stuff.

Well, Marissa certainly knows my love of bodice-rippers as I do remember us spending the better part of one summer plotting out our own that we were going to write. Marissa, I’m still pretty much going with our classic authors - Johanna Lindsey, Julie Garwood, and that other one I always forget the name of until I’m looking over the books at Value Village… Plus anything that looks cheesy and historical and fun. This includes a more contemporary setting for The Sex Diet by Rhonda Nelson. Thanks to Laura for that one!

Allison, I’ve not yet read “As the Crow Flies” because I found it really cheap once ($5.99) and didn’t buy it so now I’m pissed at myself and refusing to pay th $22 or whatever it is for the one at the store. But I think it will be on my list for the next few months.

I think I’ll try Leone’s recommendation soon as I just finished The Birth of Venus last night. GOOD BOOK! Interesting side note: I always link to the cover/version I read.

Julia, I totally want the new Kay book. I strategically always leave one of his books unread until the next comes out - so this means I can go read The Last Light of the Sun now and hope that Coles puts Ysabel on their discount display in the next few months.

And Christine - I LOVED The Wall. I was reading it over Christmas and mentioned to my mom how good it was. I went out for coffee, came back that afternoon, and mom was 1/4 of the way into it. This is when I picked up The Glass Castle so I could let her finish The Wall (you don’t take a book away from mom when she’s enjoying it). So she finishes it a day and a half later and then spent the rest of Christmas poking me saying “finish The Wall so we can talk about it!” - we both just loved it so thank you so much for the recommendation those months ago!

All in all, an excellent year of reading!

Edited to add the Monica Hughes book - but most likely I’ll just need to do a special post of “books of 2006 I remembered later”. 

This past year was the first full year I’ve not been in school since, er… 1979? HOLY CRAP! And regardless of whether I was doing part-time undergrad, thesis-avoidance, or whatever, school always finds a way to tickle the back of your brain with all that you should be doing rather than reading that new book by Guy Gavriel Kay.

 

In my first official year out of school, I got some good reading done. Some is not worth mentioning (as my dear Laura knows, I do have a love of cheesy bodice-rippers especially if quirky or historical); those I shall not give you any lists. But I can always recommend an author or two if you are wondering. So now on to the ones I will most certainly recommend:

Novels

 Sailing to Sarantium (The Sarantine Mosaic, Book 1) – Guy Gavriel Kay

 Lord of Emperors (The Sarantine Mosaic, Book 2) – Guy Gavriel Kay

I love Guy Gavriel Kay.  I love how he takes a historical time/place and then weaves in these characters and these events that just grab you and make you cry and you love them all and what’s going to happen!!! Very much with the small lives in extraordinary circumstances.  And draws together mulitple story lines and manages to make you care/understand them all at the same time - even if they are at odds with one another.  This particular series deals with an artisan who is requested at Court to do his mosaic thing (that he does so well).  But the thing is that the Court is the conquoring country and his is the lesser country ruled by a young queen.  One man, small life, big players, amazing story.

 

 The Time Traveler’s Wife – Audrey Niffenegger

Haven’t you read this yet?  Go read it.  NOW, hurry!!  Is not sci-fi, but it does have time travel.  Nope, I don’t know how she does it - but she does it so well.  I found myself thinking about these characters months and months later.  And it will have you flipping back and forth in the book seeing how various timelines meet up.  Awesome.

 

 Tipping the Velvet – Sarah Waters

This has one of the best lines ever.  When the main character is starting to realise that she wants *something* from this woman she’s befriended (but she’s not sure what) and she begins to think of her often and daydream and it is all so sweet and makes my heart beat faster for her.  And the friend is fancy and a star and the main character works at her father’s store shelling oysters and she worries about being pretty enough or something, and she is worried that she smells like the oysters on her hands and the singer, the star, replies “oh, you smell like a mermaid!”. Swoon.

 

The Glass Castle– Jeannette Wall

This TRUE STORY(!) starts with main character wondering if she were overdressed for a party as her taxi streams uptown NYC.  She looks out the window and sees her mother digging through a dumpster, and she turns around and goes back home.  This book kills me, but not in A Fine Balance kind of way (eek!).  It is horrid - but funny.  It made me laugh and love the characters, but still have moments where I’m furious at her parents and just think they cannot be real.

It traces Jeanette’s childhood with four kids and parents who don’t like the beaten path.  The parents can be so endearing, but you want to scream and strangle them at the same time.  I thought it was pretend (some use the word ‘fiction’ here) until talking to mom and saying “could you imagine real people like this!!” and she was like “jenn, this is a memoir”.  Oh.

 

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I want to actually post this, so let’s call this part one and figure I’ll do another post or two for the rest.  Here they are, though, should you be making a list

• Middlesex - Jeffrey Eugenides 
• The Red Tent – Anita Diamant
• A Complicated Kindness – Miriam Toews
• Sunshine – Robin McKinley
• Fall On Your Knees – Ann-Marie MacDonald
• The Wall – Marlen Haushofer, Translated by Shaun Whiteside.  
• The Keeper of the Isis Light - Monica Hughes (Edited to add)

Books of Essays

• Reading Sex and the City
• Finding Serenity
• Five Seasons of Angel

 

In Progress at the end of the year:

• Fray – Graphic Novel – Joss Whedon
• Serentity – Graphic Novel – Joss Whedon
• Blink – non-fiction – Malcolm Gladwell