You can take the cat out of the yard, but you can't take the yard out of the cat...

Yesterday afternoon Tycho managed to guilt-trip me into letting him outside for as long as I could stand it - about thirty seconds. After that I was too afraid I'd lose him forever so I coaxed him back inside. But I have to admit, he is very handsome out there in the green grass. Now he's very mournful because he's had a taste of the great outdoors and sitting in my bedroom window just isn't cutting it anymore. I'll take him out for a playtime again today. But I'm worried that this is only doing him harm, because once the two of us move into an apartment, there is no outside for him to go to! Poor little gaffer... maybe I can get him a little garden of grass to roll around in indoors...

I'm listening to the first day of the CBC's Canada Reads debates and it's exciting radio! One of their panelists this year is the Weakerthan's frontman John K. Samson, who's defending the book A Complicated Kindness... I love it! I wish I was there in the studio! It makes me so excited! They're doing such good books this year, including a book of poetry, which is interesting, though the guy who just got passed that book (I think Scott Thompson, who is defending Cocksure) said that he didn't like it because "a poem has no business being longer than a page." I'm tempted to write that on my 20th Century exam this year when I get to the question on "The Wasteland." Right now A Complicated Kindness is getting chewed out for being too repetitive... so at the end of today's show they're going to decide which book to vote off the list of five, and by Friday, the book that "all of Canada should read" will be chosen, and I'm reeeeeeeeeeally hoping it will be Joseph Boyden's Three Day Road, which will give my First Summer Selection extra umph.

They've got Susan Musgrave on the panel too, whose writing I know because I read Cargo of Orchids in high school - and she says that while her husband was in the Kingston Pen they gave him a pile of "reject" books from the Kingston library to keep him occupied, and "the reject of the rejects" was Mordecai Richler's Cocksure, which is her reason why it should not graduate to the next round. The best part of this show is it makes me crazy to read everything! And also, they have a LEGITIMATE voting system with panelists who (supposedly) don't cheat - not like Western Reads! Gah, I'm so mad about that... the weakest book defended by the weakest panelists won, only because Sandy, who I talked to after the debate, says that thanks to his USC connections he has a mailing list of 2000 people who he planned to coerce into voting for him... and surprise, his stupid book won. Guh! I soooo wanted Wayson to get it!

Anyway... whoa.... slowly returning to good mood... time to go play outside.