Crisp!

Behold, the fruit of my labours this week! (get it? apple crisp! fruit!)
The last three days would be impossible to describe without these three words: desk, school, desk. I've managed to blitz through a brow-sweating amount of work in order to clear the path for this weekend's partyfest in Waterloo/Dundalk, and managed to work in the Jen-inspired procrastibake that you see above! I also switched my blog over to beta, which sounds all techno-savvy but really blogger bullied me into it with their constant pop-up questions, and it turned out to be an easy swtich which promises to make template changes easier. That means that this christmas there's gonna be some changes 'round here! New year, new blog! Same old Megan!

For now, though, packing for this weekend. Not an easy task, my darling dears. Thanks to recent boot/shoe/coat purchases, I spend a good minute or two every weekday morning pacing the length of my wee vestibule, summoning the muses of footwear and outdoor clothing to inspire that day's look. Of course, the rest of my clothes are all pretty standard Megan staples (although the skirts have been retired for the season), so once the fun outer stuff is shed the "day's look" is fairly predictable. Montreal has not shaped me with its sticky fashion fingers yet! But once I get my hands on some fun-money, that might change. Or I might just get sucked into the stanley st. bookstores again... if I could eat, wear, and live inside books, I'd never worry. I'm so happy that Vincent Lam won this year's Giller Prize, althought it would have been neat to see Carol Windley's collection of stories win, too, since the Globe & Mail dissed it on the weekend. (It wasn't a full-out diss, but they said something to effect of it belonging to "Canada's canon of ten years ago," which I resent! mostly because that's the fear I have of my own stories... the same people also dismissed Lam's book, saying he's "too new on the scene" to be worthy of a Giller, pffft... I'll show you new!) Anyway, I heard Vincent Lam talking to a reporter after the award was announced, and he said that he was writing his stories while working as the doctor on a cruise ship, and Lo! who should be a passenger on that cruise ship but Margaret Atwood? (unwilled visual: Margaret Atwood on a deck chair, sporting a bikini! ahhh! Out, out damn spot!)... so Atwood read his piece and loved it and signed him up with DoubleDay. Next stop: Giller Prize. Hooray for the underdog!

Off to bed now. Tycho has a new favourite toy: ball of paper tied to a string. Hopefully this will be enough to keep him occupied during the next three days, which will, sadly, be lonely for him... little dude! I will miss you, T!

(Aside: next week I have to teach my students The Thomas Gray poem called "Ode on the Death of a Favourite Cat." I honestly don't know if I'm going to be able to do it. I remember Joel Faflak, UWO professor extraordinaire of lit crit, sometimes choking up while he talked to us about Fitzgerald... but that was because of the sublimity in the last few lines of Gatsby, not because he was thinking of his little cat at home who may or may not be mortal!)