← Me.
Actual recent photo!
Today is [was] my birthday!
Yayyyyy! Happy Birthday To Me!
What did I do on my birthday?
Ummm….. → WORKED!

The sun sank, and they both felt its final shudder of warmth.
Turning, he looked into her eyes.
“I feel as though you are the one I have waited for, all my life. And now you are here.”
“I’m not even sure if I believe in such a thing,” she whispered.

Wow! I’ve had the most relaxing weekend
Ever. While winter has been frosting the
Windows and filling the driveway, my
Friend and I have been lazing about
In the hot-tub talking, reminiscing
About so many things. Listening
To a lot of terrific music. Also
Just generally catching up
With each other. Eating
And laughing 2 much.
At one point, I even
Wrote a poem, &

1. The last compliment I got was from my husband; he/she said I was doing great on a project I have undertaken.
2. I'm reading The Septembers of Shiraz by Dalia Sofer.
3. I woke up today and thought T.G.I.F!!!!!!!

Yesterday I was a dog.
Today I'm a dog.
Tomorrow I'll probably still be a dog.
[Sigh!]
There's so little hope for advancement.
-- Snoopy –

Have a great Wednesday!

Can someone, anyone out there, please tell me how it can already be the month of March?
No, seriously, though. In a matter of hours, it will be MARCH!
March?
What the hell happened to February?
Am I going senile? Did I sleep through January or something?
Even with the extra day here, the 29th, I’m sorry, but something seems mightily askew!
Why does it feel like I was just back home not so long ago, for Christmas?
Is this just a classic symptom of old age?
Is the rest of this year going to be just as fleeting?
According to Robert Frost… perhaps…. perhaps it is!

The sun was warm but the wind was chill,


OK, let’s be serious here for about three minutes.
I AM THE WORLD’S WORST COOK!
Don’t even try to compete with me on this!
I CAN’T COOK STUFF!
And I’m OK with this.

Inspired by what Dorothy at Of Books And Bicycles did with her Nov.7th posting, I am going to do a meme-thing involving the letters of my blogname.
Here is the criteria, the rationale, the raison d’etre:

Your absence has gone through me
Like thread through a needle.
Everything I do is stitched with its color.
-- W.S. Merwin –

Absence sometimes makes the heart grow ANGRIER, I say!
I have so missed being able to blog, and to converse with my great blog-friends.
But I think I am back in business now!
The MAC is fixed!

Have a great Thursday!
**********

Just wondering…
Have you ever gotten involved with a book like for instance

Sex is something I really don't understand too hot. You never know where the hell you are. I keep making up these sex rules for myself, and then I break them right away. Last year I made a rule that I was going to quit horsing around with girls that, deep down, gave me a pain in the ass.

This morning, I received a personal email from a very astute Salingerian aficianado regarding my allusion to Salingerism in yesterday’s blog entitled I Like Airports.
In there, [and thinking myself witty as hell at the time of composition] I had said → I replied, as Holden Caulfield might have done, by saying, “Who doesn’t?”

Toilet Paper

This morning, elbows on knees
I gazed at a roll of it,
Wondering what the ancients did.
Long ago. Way before toilets even.
And which came first, the toilet
Or the paper?

All we really know is that
Everywhere, ubiquitously,
There is some -- or so we hope.
But it is even beyond hope.

In doctor’s waiting-rooms, a decade or two ago, the tedium would have been relieved with quiet background music: sentimental songs from Broadway, popular classics like Vivaldi’s Four Seasons. Nowadays, however, one hears only the thudding, mechanical music favoured by the young. Their cowed elders bear it without protest: faute de mieux it has become their music too.

-- Montreal --

Some of you may be wondering where I was all weekend.
The Bookpuddle has been silent of its usual ripples.
Montreal.
That’s where I was… oh yes, now I remember.
Montreal is a nutso place!
And while there, I discovered something I had not known about this city.
[Girlfriends, listen up. →] Montreal has the largest interconnected underground shopping system in the entire world.
That’s right. Not just Canada.
No.

Looking Behind

I

Especially on quiet, satiated evenings it will happen.
Walking down the street I will suddenly stop
And turn toward a sense of myself approaching me.
Not of being followed or stalked, but quite the opposite.
The impossibility of pursuit. As though I alone exist
And my steady apparition.

II

Chris Neil celebrates his game-winning goal, Nov.10, 2007.

In Grade 3, Neil’s principal asked him what he was going to be when he grew up. “I’m going to play in the NHL,” said Neil.

Blackwing

Poison lies in wait, not about
To fill three trumpets with spit
While someone beats a drum. Not
Quite. It knows to tread softly up

← Why is this man smiling?

I’ll tell you why!
He’s smiling because he just found out he can buy that mansion that is twice the size of his current mansion!

It's that time of the year again when Major League Baseball hands out its annual awards. On Monday, the first two awards will be announced, and that is the AL and NL Rookie of the Year awards.
Here are my choices for the awards and the days they will be announced:

Nov. 12: AL Rookie of the Year: Dustin Pedroia
NL Rookie of the Year: Ryan Braun

It was such an awesome surprise to come home after work, well, after Starbucks, after work… and find something crammed into my mailbox in the lobby. I saw the return address and wondered, “Hmmm… what would that Torontonian Nutbar be sending l’il ol’ me?”
← It’s her new book, and it’s really great.

I could not wait. I ripped into the package there in the elevator.
Let me introduce you [as if you don’t already know who I am talking about] to the coolest chick in blogland → Patricia Storms.

Life has loveliness to sell,
All beautiful and splendid things,
Blue waves whitened on a cliff,
Soaring fire that sways and sings,
And children's faces looking up

Potato chips are about my only real vice, when it comes to junk food. Don't do candy bars. Don't drink pop.
Unless hamburgers are counted as junk food…. which to me would seem sort of a bit blasphemous, since I am convinced that hamburgers are proof of the existence of God.
I could live quite happily on a planet that had only hamburgers, as food.
I wish that all hamburgers were as large as the cows they came from.
They are made from cows, aren’t they?

Well, here I am on the final leg of my holidays.
Still visiting. Still having fun. Still eating.
But come Monday, it is back to the coal mines for me. Tomorrow I will be boarding a plane and flying back home. Back to my meowing Jack, and the snowbanks I left behind in Ottawa.
At the end of each year I like to reflect upon the books I have read over the past 12 months. I reminisce about each one and see which come to the forefront as being especially memorable and worthwhile.

Interviewer: What do you do about writer's block?

Let Me Kiss Your Tongue

What happened next, I love.
No questions. You did not hesitate.
Someone may have had something to ask.
But, oh. Dearest.
In that certain darkness, my eyelashes playing horizon
Drinking, drank up the spectacle of that glistening muscle
Emerging from your full-wet lips,
On my sentence.
No clarification.

The Fellowship: The Untold Story of Frank Lloyd Wright & The Taliesin Fellowship
By Roger Friedland & Harold Zellman.

I hate being too busy.
Really hate it.
And lately I feel that I have been too busy to write anything about the great books I am reading.
For instance, I just finished reading Ken Follett’s World Without End.
Loved it. Did I write about it? No.
Before that, Laura Kipnis’s The Female Thing: Dirt, Envy, Sex, Vulnerability.
Terrific book. Did I write about it?
NO!

Tonight I finished reading a terrific book.
A Widow For One Year, by John Irving.
I am not kidding, I think that Irving is perhaps thee most entertaining and engaging of authors that I have encountered in a long while.
A wonderful storyteller. I could listen to him forever.
For most true readers, Irving is not exactly a new discovery. For me, however, he is relatively a new find.
While reading this book in several coffee-shops, I’ve noticed that the majority of people that have seen its easily recognizable cover have felt the need to comment, along the lines of the following:
“Oh, that’s a good one, huh? Are you enjoying it?”
Or…