Life After Potter(mania)

This "Harry Potter Lost in the Medieval Times Gift Shoppe " cover isn't piquing my interest either.

So, the latest, and final, Harry Potter came out today, in case you somehow missed the hype in the media. Or the legions of duelling articles: "Potter is a bit of magical storytelling that has turned our children into readers" vs. "Potter is crap that will make our children terrible writers and worse, awful people". Or the confounding stuffed puppet Sorting Hats, I noticed at Chapters, surely one of the few secondary characters/objects to get the full plush puppet treatment since the stuffed "Gabbin' Jacob Marley Doorknob" of 1843.

I have my copy, but I realized months ago, when it was time to pre-order, that I didn't care all that much. I started reading Potter when I was 11, and now, almost twenty, Harry has been a cultural phenomenon that has dominated almost a decade of my life. In spite of the naysayers like my Dad, who was convinced that the Potter craze had "blown its wad".... after the release of Goblet of Fire. I had always been excited about Potter. Not to the point where I would write fanfic, or make fanart, or worse- make fanart depicting lewd acts between Snape and Harry where you think Harry has rabies. But that ain't rabies, baby. Just to the point where I'd wait for the postman to come the day of the release, rip off the packaging and close myself off from the world for a few hours. Then, I would re-read parts for comfort, keen on the idea that a world existed seemingly designed by an eccentric uncle, with about twelve stores in the whole world and no damn Wal-Marts. Although the idea of being able to buy club-sized packages of beetle eyes is amusing. I even liked the smell of the books.

But... something has changed. I bought my copy this year at a drugstore, at the same time as deodorant and dish soap. I've only made my way about half-way through the book, and didn't mind leaving to see Hairspray with my mom. It's not that I've grown out of them, since I think that attitude is pretentious, and furthermore that you don't need to grow out of fantasy. Maybe we've just grown apart. But I'll still wear my Harry Potter scarf with pride. After all, I am a Ravenclaw.

The Many Faces of My Spinning

When I was going through that rough patch a few months back, I made a few lists of Goals I Had In Life (yes, avec capitalization). There were themes. Goals I Had For Travel, Goals I Had For My Career, Goals For This Funny Little Thing Called Love, etc. And one for knitting, currently closer to completion than any of my other lists including Goals For The Week of May 13. The knitting goals ranged from knitting a fair isle sweater, to designing my own pattern. One of them was to learn how to spin, and when the lovely ScarletMote held a workshop a few weeks ago, I got to cross another goal off the list.

Attempt at Yarn, #1
Involves: Libertina Yarns Merino top, hand-dyed by ScarletMote . Plied with green thread. Aren't the colours she picked lovely? Is it top? Seriously, my spinning lingo is limited.
Resembles: The stool of Puff the Magic Dragon with gastrointestinal distress.

Attempt at Yarn, #2
Involves: Libertina Yarns Merino top, 2-ply.
Resembles: Primitive yarn found preserved in an African Cave.

Attempt at Yarn, #3
Involves: Un-dyed Merino Roving
Resembles: Thick and thin art yarn that would be sold at 35$/a skein.

Attempt at Yarn, #4
Involves: Un-dyed Merino Roving
Resembles: Yarn. Success! All flaws, including some very slapdash repair of breaks during plying, are behind the outer layer of yarn. Almost there.

I know this entry is 2 days late, but I've had an exceptionally busy week, a week when it seems like I have three things, or more, to run around to after work. For example, last Wednesday I worked until 4, gave blood, practiced driving, and went to see Waitress with an acquaintance. I'm also working on my sockpal's socks. Unfortunately, last Tuesday I realized that the heel, with the row gauge I was getting, would fit a knee better. I had knit lovely, cabled, Tensor Knee Supports. So, I dutifully ripped back until a few rows of the heel were gone. They are lovely, but everything else is stagnant.

GOALS I HAVE FOR TOMORROW
-locate a tape measure, and make sure I take an accurate measure of my feet this time, so my Sockpal doesn't have to deal with my idiocy any longer.
-practice parallel parking so I don't look sloshed
- make a pie

Up Yours, Hypothalamus!

The last few weeks have been a series of annoyances and mistakes, somewhere along the spectrum of the banal.

Which is why I thank God that tea and Roy Orbison's music are both readily available. Roy Orbison reminds me that things could be worse, and tea makes me believe that things are just about to get better. I've finally righted all of the knitting wrongs I made, and am caught up with e-mails, bills, and all the rest of my many annoyances.

Speaking of e-mails: for a few months, I was convinced that those nonsense Spam e-mails were really secret codes some mysterious (but wealthy!) figure was sending to me. Really, I had just read The Westing Game and other kids caper books too much as a kid, and was desperate for adventure. Which... would be a good excuse if I had been twelve. But I was eighteen. Finally, a computer geek I had a passing acquaintance with loudly and publicly informed me that they were just Spam after I had printed them all out and spent months trying to decode what Karamazov had to do with stock tips.

And further embarrassments: For many years, I had a long-standing, and secret, crush on a certain boy in high school.

Well, I thought it was a secret, until I found out that a middle-aged woman I worked with at work knew who he was. Which means either my mom told her, which is bad enough, or worse- the crush's mom knows! Which means he knows! Forgive me for being unbearably high school about the whole thing, but he was much better-looking, more popular, and more athletic than I was. And taller. Oh, how very much taller. Even though I'm way past it now, it would still be embarrassing to the pimply teen aged girl that lives in us all, in my case, in the monstrous zit right between my eyebrows.

So, I was hanging out with some high school friends last Thursday, when we ran into a raving bitch working the late shift at the local all-night grocer's. This led to a conversation about how you never seem to run into the people you want to see again, and I said that I wanted to run into the ex-crush, to see if he was worth all the hormones I wasted on him. Well, the next day, I was walking with my Dad downtown. When, out of his native habitat sprung the Exus-Crushinus, in a family herd of mother and brother. I didn't say hi. I didn't wave. I didn't even make eye contact. Instead, I abruptly turned to my Dad, and launched into a rapid twelve point discussion of my hatred for Mondays. I narrowly avoided whiplash and a collision with a pole. I finally went into the bank to withdraw some money, and as I stabbed my PIN into the keypad, I wondered if maturity would ever catch up with puberty.

Tomorrow, I promise to talk about the spinning and the tank top graveyard. I can even make the girl guide hand thing, and there will be sockpal news! Yay.

Happy Indepence Day, American Swine! Here are your socks!

Just kidding my Southern brethren, I love you all. Especially my most beloved Midwest room mate, who has sadly abandoned our continent to have fun in Europe. I'm not madly jealous, oh no. See, I even finished her socks, because I'm a nice person like that.

I also finished my Mom's socks, which, in spite of being lovely, foamy, soft things I grew to hate after the nearly two months (heh) it took me to knit them. They became my lazy project, the thing I did a few rows of here and there while watching a movie or going somewhere in the car. Which, would seem like a recipe for completion, but it's really a recipe for ennui. Anyway, belated Mother's Day present: finally completed.
On the needles: my much-delayed Sockpal socks. Brigit, in Colinette Jitterbug. Let's hope these go quicker than my Mom's socks, so I won't be known as a total flake. Although, I kind of don't want to part with these. The deep shadings of blue, the vaguely Celtic feel... No! I refuse to give in! The socks will go to my sockpal, and they better damn well fit. But maybe if they don't... would it be too outré to send a SAS envelope in the package, just in case?

So, at work these people bring around random crap every now and then for you to purchase. Usually it involves a mildly frightening singing stuffed animal. This month featured a canine Barry White in a cummerbund. You start ordering one thing, and then to get the special deal on the cheaply-made discount item, you get more, until you have the singing animal lulling you to bed with its tinny song. I know. It happened to me this month. It started off innocuously enough. I was still a little burnt out from spending Canada Day in London (Ontario, alack), and decided I wanted a Sudoku. And then I saw a gardening book my mother would like. And well, I was just a few bucks short of making the rolling cooler, apparently for those days when lifting mid-sized soft cooler just seems too damn hard.
So, I bought the "Mapquest" road map atlas. Now, my brain may be feeble, but road atlas of North America + rolling cooler= road trip, yes? My arithmetic is correct, no? Road trip to Mexico with friends sounds fun to me. Margaritas, ahoy.

Tomorrow: Misadventures in Spinning and the Tank Top Chronicles.

Donna Martin Graduates; My Brother Follows

Sorry, another hiatus was undertaken. My beloved elder brother, the one who shot me in the face with a pellet gun and tackled a fellow football player who was heckling me, graduated from Carleton University today, and I simply had to go down and see my brother. I'm completely, un-ironically, proud of my brother today. He worked hard for this, and seeing him walk across the stage, handsome in his gown, and both older and younger than he's been in a long time... I got a little sad. My brother's moving on, moving up, moving out- and I wish him all the best.

As a fitting reward for a day of warm and fuzzy sisterly feelings, I came home to a message on the answering machine from John, the guy who's sub-letting our apartment in Montreal. The phone and Internet were down there, and he was sure that I had forgotten to pay the bills. Which, of course, sent me into twitches and tics, since I had made sure to pay of both bills. I don't even have a choice about paying my Internet bill! Bell invasively charges it directly to my credit card! After I ate an emergency donut, I checked my e-mail, and John had checked with Bell and both bills were paid in full. But I'm still vexed and annoyed, because I feel like it still reflects badly on me somehow, even though it is the work of that demon, Bell. And now there are no more donuts.

Bell strikes again.

Sunday Evening Blather

I would like to write that a bunch of exciting things happened in my whirlwind week without blogging, but the sad truth is that it was just work. There was my regular job as book bitch chez board office, and then my extracurricular activity of feeding the neighbour's cats and taking care of the house. One of the cats, Jade, is obese and toothless. She's my favorite, since we both have a thing for Bill Kurtis, and she'll cuddle up on the couch with me whenever American Justice is on. The other cat, Higgins, hates me. He has to be kept indoors when I'm cat-sitting, and blames me for this state. So, he pretty much just sits in front of the door, angrily meowing and plotting my death. That's right, my week was full of death threats from cats, and books.

Saturday was dull. The monthly summer vacation verbal throw down with the parents occurred like clockwork. I finished The Contract With God Trilogy, and thought about cleaning my room. One skein of Manos was wound into a ball, and I decided that was enough cleaning as I kicked a pile of books and magazines out of my way to the bed and the abandoned book on Canadian History I had checked out of the library.

By Sunday, I decided I had enough of the humdrum, and went to see the new Crystal building at the Royal Ontario Museum. I went with my design-keen buddy Ginger, so I could have a professional opinion, when mine are more of the "it's purdy" strain. The project has been somewhat controversial since Liebeskind won the design competition, with many people worrying that it wouldn't be practical, or wouldn't work with the charming old buildings of the ROM. The first projections I saw were a little shocking- it kind of looked like the ROM was being by integrated by the alien Crystlaaar, from Delta X-9. But I remembered all the times when a reviled sketch becomes a beloved icon on the skyline, and decided to shut up until I saw the thing in person. Well, I did. And I can report that I like it... initially. The interplay between the old building and the new is well-done, and the union between the two is much more harmonious than it is in pictures. Some parts, like cheap-looking plywood boards and noisy metal grates, looked worn or unfinished, but maybe there's still some work to be done. The silhouette on street level is stunning. However, I have a few reservations. I'm worried that the building will overwhelm the contents of the museum, since it's so distinctive- but with only one real exhibit installed it's hard to call right now. I'd also like to know how easy it is to work around the space (as the tour guide said, there are no right angles), when displaying collections, especially as accumulation inevitably occurs. And finally, I want to wait and see how the building will weather. I know they've probably spent millions testing it, and coming up with solutions for making a building that's 25% glass survive cranky Toronto winters, but the real proof comes in the middle of January ten years from now. Otherwise, shine on, you crazy crystal.

4 More Days of Stupidity: The Stupid Plague

Somewhere, I believe some supreme being looked up, and thought: "What Protagitron really needs right now is a case of mysterious hives."

I'm beginning to think that yesterday's enigmatic bruise and today's hives are the first few salvos in a series of signs designed to make me into a 21st century prophet. Tomorrow my nose will fall off, the next day Guelph will be consumed in a storm of brimstone and ash, and after that... three more terrible things will come to pass.

And I say unto this supreme being: I am not worthy. I can barely analyze the neo-conservative undertones of Rambo: First Blood Pt. 2. These things are just making me confused and irritable. Pick some one else, O Being, you won't regret it.

The mysterious hives came after my first day of work. I'm back at the same place I'm at every summer. Today, I was weeding books from libraries. It's not a terribly difficult job. The books titled "The Indian Children of North America", or "African Conquests" with a bunch of white dudes shooting an elephant from a boat, are tossed, for example. The worst part of the job is the dust. When you handle old, unused books for a while, your hands turn black with grime and dry out, leaving one looking like a wee Cockney street urchin. Of course, these days instead of being paid a tuppence a bun, you're more likely to be beaten into submission by frenzied parents wielding a bottle of Purell.

The Stupid Week: Stupid Injuries

I went to meet up with some old friends (and their new friends) for Ultimate Frisbee and a Barbecue. I read Strangers on a Train instead of moving, because I'm allergic to sweat. My doctor just refuses to believe me. Anyway, despite remaining as immobile and lichen-like as possible, I woke up this morning with a sizable bruise on my leg. It doesn't hurt that much, it's just perplexing. Where did it come from? How did it get there? And what kind of story can I come up to explain it and impress my peers?

Something that's resolutely non-stupid are the pair of Jaywalkers I'm working on. The yarn is Regia 4-ply in "Calgary", and the colours remind me of the buckets of Gerber daisies you see outside of florists. Which is a good thing, because the recipient adores Gerber daisies. Ding ding ding, the lucky recipient is my beloved roommate. Although, she's making time in Italy and England this summer, while I'm a prisoner in my hometown, a place where bus ads about workplace safety are taken down because one mother found them too graphic, and the fight over the pesticide ban limps on. Clearly, I deserve the damn socks. Screw you, my beloved Minnesotan!

Alright, I'm being too hard on Guelph. The knitting store is nice, the people are fine, and the farmer's market is reassuringly crunchy. Also, the good salsa is close by. I still wouldn't say no to a rescue team though.

Stupid Animals and Annoying Broken Hearts

I am fickle, I am selfish. I spoil my dog, and let my houseplants die. It made me angry would no one would adopt my foster cat, Oliver, but when I found out that somebody had it made me sad. Last semester, the Semester of Heck, I felt like Oliver. Nobody wanted him; nobody seemed to want me either. The thing was, he was hardly a perfect cat. His personality was somewhere between "dog" and "chubby stoner", but all his bizarre habits and quirks became my favourite things. He was my cat, and the longer no one wanted to adopt him, the more attached to him I became. For many reasons I had to go home for the summer, and for a handful I couldn't take him with me.

I tried to find him a home, but I guess I'll admit that part of me didn't want him to be adopted. I figured that if no one had wanted him from January to April, what was another four months? I'd save up money, cut myself off from the yarn stores and the book stores, and adopt the fat cat myself. It lasted for a month, and then I found out that someone had adopted him. Logically, I want to be happy. Someone wants him, he doesn't have to wait another three months for a home, his new place is probably bigger and nicer than our apartment. That's what my lovely and more balance room mate says. I try to tell myself that too. But I was selfish, and I wanted him for myself. Relationships with pets are a funny thing- they're supposed to be easier to work then ones with humans, particularly since they can't talk. But there are those funny times when they seem like something more, when it seems like a dog or cat can read your mind. You're probably reading too much into some dumb beast that's rolling around in some the remains of some other dumb beast while you have all these silly thoughts, but whatever. It works. Oliver was like that for me. I hope his new home loves him, takes care of him, and lets him wake them up at four in the morning by a paw to the head. And that they don't let him get too skinny. That was one of the things I liked best about him.

Stupid June

I just realized something today- my family doesn't communicate in full sentences. Instead, we grunt and mumble, and occasionally shout a few key words. I feel like we're regressing, and millenia from now, as the rest of humanity flits around in flying cars, with porn jacked into my heads, the terribly inbred descendants of my family will still be shuffling around our brick house, grunting out directives to each other, incredibly stunted and hairy. Like today:

Me: *mumble mumble* I BRING BAGS.
Mom: *grunts*
Me: Bags in BIG BAG.
Mom: *grunts*
Me: What?
Mom: If you have time *mumble* put bags AWAY. I need. *grunt* Bathroom.
Me: Okay.