Final Week

I have gained some (actually a considerable amount) of weight over the last month or so. I have decided that I need to seriously evaluate my activity level and diet. I will be starting the Curves Diet again and follow it religiously. This means not drinking for the first week (Stage One) but I don't know if I want to give it up all together again. Either way I'm not going to worry about it until this weekend, especially since a bunch of us are going out for Teri's birthday on Friday. I'm going to have a few more days of food and booze fun then I need to get serious about what I'm eating.

Missing My Kitty

Have Litter Box, Will Travel
Binx packed up in the SUV leaving Ottawa, Summer 2010

WOTS Was Wonderful

After a very very long day, I am sitting down and reflecting on the last 17 hours. It was an amazing experience to witness first-hand the inner workings of a huge Toronto festival. I was on site starting before the break of dawn until well after sunset. There is great news to report: The Word On The Street went off without a hitch, and thankfully got treated to a beautiful sunny day.

I have been writing reviews for WOTS Blog and I go into the office to visit, hang out, and help Kristen on occasion. However, I was actually hired for the day as Kristen's production assistant. I was given a walkie-talkie, which made my week. The area was divided into zones so our team had 6 other walkie-talkies and our own channel to communicate on - which was good because we (I) had no trouble filling the air time. I also got to drive around in a golf cart for a couple hours which was quite a relief after walking back and for across Queen's Park seven times within the first hour I was on site.

Being a production assistant meant that I was the direct line for the 24 volunteers Kristen had for the Exhibiting team, so that I could screen questions and concerns. This meant that Kristen had to coordinate all the large issues and spent the day trying to work her way around to personally checking on each of the over 250 exhibitors. She did an incredible job. I have watched her work on/with this festival for over a year now and she is obviously very dedicated and very talented. However, today I got to see someone who I feel rose beyond intelligent, elegant, and hard working and became almost superhuman. There are no words for how well she did today. Everyone involved should be very proud, it was a truly magnificent event.

Hello?

This is a new post!

(Yes, this is all I can sum up from the deep recesses of my tired mind. I promise to put up something slightly more inspired soon. I would love to claim that it stems from the fact that comments have been a tad sparse lately and lay some of the blame on you, the readers, - but that would not be true. I just have a tad of a blog-writers-block at the moment.)

WOTS Review #2

You can see more of my Toronto Book Awards posts on the WOTS blog. The second book I did was Étienne’s Alphabet which really was an amazing read.
- See it featured HERE
- See it reviewed HERE

Always Running

I set a goal and I met that goal! Today was the 2011 Canada Army Run and I wanted to run the whole thing. I ran in the 5km race. I set the "run the whole time" goal every time. Both in 2008 and 2009 when I did the Army Run I wanted to not walk at all (I didn't do the 2010 race last year.) However, it never happened - I always had to stop to spend a bit of time walking. Even when I was training up for the 2008 and 2009 races, and going for 6km jogs, I always walked for a portion.

Between the 5km and the Half-Marathon, 16,000 people took part in the race this year. This is much more than last year and way more than the other years when we ran it before. This year I ran with my mom instead of doing it apart. Her pace is slower than mine and by keeping with her I am able to run for longer. She has never run a race and had to walk; she was worried that for this race she might have to. We decided to run together to help me stay running and to make sure she didn't stop either. And it worked!!

My time was pretty good too, seeing that I did a terrible job training this time and thought that the race would kill me. However, it felt good. I am very happy with it!

My Canada Army Run Results
2008 -- 44:22:0
2009 -- 39:09:6
2011 -- 39:30:0 (And no walking!!)

Interesting Feature

Facebook adds strange new features to the right hand panel of their website. The most annoying one of course is the "suggested friends" one. Basically they provide names of people who have a lot of common friends, usually you have made the conscious choice not to add them as a Facebook friend. For a while they were putting up old tagged photos of friends, which was nice but sometimes confusing. I thought one picture had been recently taken and someone had gone on a trip, when I commented on the picture without really looking at all the details I was later informed that the picture was years old. Anyway, the new one provides you with what your status update was on this date in the past:Well Facebook, now that song is stuck in my head again, 2 years later! It is funny to look back at it though, you can also click and see the comments left on the status updates as well. So far this is the best little feature that Facebook has come up with. Mind you, my updates in this instance are odd, they might sometimes be depressing to see again. But still, better than the "suggested friends."

Almost Moved In

My New Chair!

Sitting In Bed - Looking At My New Chair

My parents visited me in Toronto recently and helped me continue to set up my bedroom here. (Yes, I moved in over a year ago.) While they were here I bought a chair to go in my room, I love it. The purple pattern along the back and bottom is actually a scarf that Heather bought for me in England; I will miss wearing it this winter since it looked really good with my wool coat - but I looks great on the chair. You may also notice an awesome bookshelf behind it filled with leather bound books, more on those another time.

WOTS Review #1

My first actual review is up now on the WOTS blog. Seriously the book was incredible! I read it so quickly. As soon as I was done my mother borrowed it and trumped my impressive two day reading by finishing it in an afternoon. Check out what I say about Alissa York’s Fauna HERE.

Quote Of The Day

"If you can't explain it to a six year old, you don't understand it yourself."
— Albert Einstein

Ford's Funding Cuts

Will September 19th be the date of the death of The Arts in Toronto?
That is the date of the city’s executive committee meeting where a proposal suggesting massive arts funding cuts is planned to be presented.

The purpose was prepared in response to a request from Mayor Rob Ford’s office by city manager Joe Pennachetti. If passed by city council, the plan would eliminate more than $6 million of annual funding that goes directly to 10 of the city’s top arts organizations.

But there is hope -- There are other options under consideration. Ford agreed there would be no cuts to the arts in order to get his arts advisor Jeff Melanson to work for him. “I can’t imagine city council would approve drastic cuts,” says Melanson, who has been the mayor’s adviser since November 2010. “And if it did happen, I would feel betrayed.”City council also gave its blessing earlier this year to a long-term culture plan calling for the city to increase its arts funding.

But there this is less hope -- These days Melanson has little contact with the mayor; at the end of this month he will leave Toronto and his job as co-CEO of the National Ballet School to take a job at the Banff Centre.

The purposed funding to be cut is different from that of the Toronto Arts Council. The council hands out $10 million in arts grants from the city, but the $6 million in the proposal, for the top arts groups in the city, comes directly from city hall.

For example
Canadian Opera Company: $1,317,015
National Ballet of Canada: $1,148,600
Toronto Symphony Orchestra: $1,134,036
TIFF: $800,000
AGO: $540,000
Caribana: $494,190
Luminato: $200,000
National Ballet School: $137,332
Gardiner Museum of Ceramic Art: $135,980
Pride Toronto: $123,807

I am interested to see how this story develops over the upcoming 10 days and am worried about the outcome of September 19th's meeting.

"my blog contradicts"

From Tube Sock Army by Kim Duff.
The following was originally published by LINEbooks, Burnaby, BC.
Copyright 2008 Kim Duff.

my cultural production

today:
processing produced culture.
                               purchase

my local politik
is in the digital massification of


this is also a love poem:
a romantic notion of
globality
mired in the move sequence
distance.

IM's and comments
posted on my pages
my profiles
locally produced
globally disseminated

            the mailer daemon sent me a message
             to tell me my message was undeliverable

I am writing this email
to tell you that today I became postmodern
in a postgeographical sense

because there are no maps
  for these territories

                        my blog contradicts what
                        my myspace profile
                        suggests.

dispersed identity
I am not to you what I am to them
                    identity
                    makeshift and posted
                    ephemerally temporal

                                            post-spatial?

I thieved these ideas
from the emissary of time.
a sickness called nostalgia

                           we logged in
                           and timed out
mediated
your cultural production
budged in line
and took the last moment:

wedged in at
the moment of blame
working out connections
at the crux of biography and production

                          the claustrophobia
                          of urban capitalists
                          pushes us further

                                    desires for need.


trappings trapped
in an architectural scale of time
we exist in the riffing off
of Banana Republic khakis and
coffee.

                     coffee and khakis.

the ceiling of online banks
pushes my banking needs
into a nighttime obsession
checking balances against
checks bouncing
a metronome of debts
we flow in
whisper

your password softly

WOTS Featuring Fauna

Looks like I'm posted more on the WOTS blog than here at the moment.
Check out the next one HERE.

Pros & Cons of Tims

I worked my first shift at Tim Horton's this morning. Yes, I have returned to the food-service industry after quite a few years away. It fits well with being a TA and finishing my MRP. Here is a quick Pro & Con list from my first day:

Cons
-Slip resistant shoes are really ugly
-Waking up at 4am for a 5am shift
-Sore feet from standing all day
-Carb temptations
-Doesn't pay particularly well
-Working weekends

Pros
-Fast paced, won't get bored too quickly
-Co-workers seem really great
-Location is very close to home
-I'm pretty good at it
-Canadian company
-Lots to learn

WOTS Again

Another post I did is up at The Word On The Street blog...

Check it out HERE

Here Again

I still need to work on my MRP so have to register for the Fall 2011 semester at Ryerson. I never finish degrees in time. 6 years to do my a 4 year undergrad and it looks like 4 semesters to do a 3 semester Masters. I doesn't quite feel like I'm starting a new year of school. It feels a bit like purgatory, not in a horrible way or anything though. I have no classes but am still going to be a TA. Things are starting to roll out though: TA orientation, lecture schedules, meetings with professors, new books, etc.