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Fluffy snow. I love snow in the way I love lakes in the morning and deep flat rivers: it is still and alive and huge.
High temp today, here: 0. Dewpoint then: -4. High dewpoint: -4.
High temp today in TO: 3. Dewpoint then: -3. High dewpont: -3.
I've been thinking (you'd be amazed how much I've been thinking, though not as much as about whether I should keep Alexander Steen, or take a chance on Mikko Koivu) that maybe I should start keeping track of low temperatures, in honour of the season. I just don't know. It's a problem.
What was I going to say?
I walked in the door of the Greyhound station this morning and there was wailing. A very small child in a stroller, wailing, parked outside the rope for the ticket line. I walked around the stroller, and there, sprawled on the floor, was Elmo. I stopped. I peered at Elmo. I peered at the small wailing child. I quickly inferred a causal relationship. I pondered possible negative consequences of picking up Elmo--I might, somehow, contaminate it; you never know. (Could some other child have dropped Elmo? No other children are wailing.) The only thing to do is pick Elmo up and give him to the wailing child.
I pick up Elmo, and look at the child.
The child ceases to wail. The child beams. The child is radiant.
I hand Elmo to the child. The child clutches it dearly. The worst thing that ever happened is over. The child is holding on to the best thing that ever happened.
On the way back, started reading The Hours. What else is there to do, eh? Funny thing: Clarissa Vaughn sees a plastic shopping bag floating in the air, and thinks about what Richard would say, about how awful it is, about how it will land in the sea and a turtle that would have lived to be 100 years old will mistake it for a jellyfish and eat it and die. I thought, this sounds way too much like a (weirdly gratuitous) shot at American Beauty (or, you know, at a credulous take on American Beauty) not to be a shot at American Beauty. But: American Beauty came out two years after The Hours.
Anyway. The Hours seems, unfortunately, like one of those books. You know, one of those books, that people write, and people read, and it's very nice, and who cares. It seems (I'm only 28 pages in, and possibly not in the best of moods (though attentive readers will note that the best of my moods is something like "sleepy")) like an imitation of a book--which is the thing about all those books, that people write, and people read; they all seem like imitations of books, and they may be very nice, but who cares--which may seem like an odd complaint to make about a book which is supposed to be an imitation of a book ... sort of. But, you know, if an imitation isn't pitch-perfect, then it's just an imitation.
(A lot of Canadian TV shows strike me as imitations of TV shows. Well, probably most American TV shows are imitations of TV shows too, but I just don't bother paying attention to them. Da Vinci's Inquest, though, I think, may be an extraordinarily good imitation of a TV show.)
Ah, yes, now I remember what I was going to say:
What's worse than everyone wanting to talk about your dissertation--"wanting" in a very loose sense, for the sake of conversation--is everyone wanting to talk about your job search. It's just like ... a lot of the, what, dozen years before I became a doctoral student. Oh, that again....
I think, by now, we're probably past my grandfather clipping help wanted ads looking for forklift drivers. But, you know, I'm really not sure.
High temp today, here: 0. Dewpoint then: -4. High dewpoint: -4.
High temp today in TO: 3. Dewpoint then: -3. High dewpont: -3.
I've been thinking (you'd be amazed how much I've been thinking, though not as much as about whether I should keep Alexander Steen, or take a chance on Mikko Koivu) that maybe I should start keeping track of low temperatures, in honour of the season. I just don't know. It's a problem.
What was I going to say?
I walked in the door of the Greyhound station this morning and there was wailing. A very small child in a stroller, wailing, parked outside the rope for the ticket line. I walked around the stroller, and there, sprawled on the floor, was Elmo. I stopped. I peered at Elmo. I peered at the small wailing child. I quickly inferred a causal relationship. I pondered possible negative consequences of picking up Elmo--I might, somehow, contaminate it; you never know. (Could some other child have dropped Elmo? No other children are wailing.) The only thing to do is pick Elmo up and give him to the wailing child.
I pick up Elmo, and look at the child.
The child ceases to wail. The child beams. The child is radiant.
I hand Elmo to the child. The child clutches it dearly. The worst thing that ever happened is over. The child is holding on to the best thing that ever happened.
On the way back, started reading The Hours. What else is there to do, eh? Funny thing: Clarissa Vaughn sees a plastic shopping bag floating in the air, and thinks about what Richard would say, about how awful it is, about how it will land in the sea and a turtle that would have lived to be 100 years old will mistake it for a jellyfish and eat it and die. I thought, this sounds way too much like a (weirdly gratuitous) shot at American Beauty (or, you know, at a credulous take on American Beauty) not to be a shot at American Beauty. But: American Beauty came out two years after The Hours.
Anyway. The Hours seems, unfortunately, like one of those books. You know, one of those books, that people write, and people read, and it's very nice, and who cares. It seems (I'm only 28 pages in, and possibly not in the best of moods (though attentive readers will note that the best of my moods is something like "sleepy")) like an imitation of a book--which is the thing about all those books, that people write, and people read; they all seem like imitations of books, and they may be very nice, but who cares--which may seem like an odd complaint to make about a book which is supposed to be an imitation of a book ... sort of. But, you know, if an imitation isn't pitch-perfect, then it's just an imitation.
(A lot of Canadian TV shows strike me as imitations of TV shows. Well, probably most American TV shows are imitations of TV shows too, but I just don't bother paying attention to them. Da Vinci's Inquest, though, I think, may be an extraordinarily good imitation of a TV show.)
Ah, yes, now I remember what I was going to say:
What's worse than everyone wanting to talk about your dissertation--"wanting" in a very loose sense, for the sake of conversation--is everyone wanting to talk about your job search. It's just like ... a lot of the, what, dozen years before I became a doctoral student. Oh, that again....
I think, by now, we're probably past my grandfather clipping help wanted ads looking for forklift drivers. But, you know, I'm really not sure.
