Weeks of MAGIC!

Boy, things have been busy for me in the past couple of weeks. Yes, the writing project is still taking up tons of time. It was supposed to be ready this past week, but plans got revised and scaled up and that basically meant revisiting previous plans and adjusting them accordingly. So, right now I’m figuring it’s gonna be another month or so ’til things are in place enough to start wildly blabbing about.

Aside from that there were two other things that loomed large on my personal radar:

1) Cory Doctorow:
On Thursday, Cory Doctorow of science-fiction authoring and Boing Boing fame came to speak at Simon Fraser University for their annual Leonardo Lecture. It was a riveting and timely speech entitled “The Totalitarian Urge: Total Information Awareness and the Cosmic Billiards” (which is online is audio form here) and the bookstore I am lucky enough to work at, Sophia Books, got to sell books at the event. So it was extremely gratifying to be able to help out and support the career of a writer/social philosopher that I respect very much. Even more gratifying was the fact that he is extremely personable, friendly and down to earth, talking to everyone and making himself available to sign books both before and after the speech. Nice guy.

But the REAL jaw-dropper came the next day when he dropped in to Sophia’s to sign some books for the store and chat. At the end of his visit, he presented my co-worker Sean and I with first draft print-outs of his next book, Little Brother, which he’d finished only two weeks before. THAT is fucking RAD. Categorizing the novel in broad strokes, it’s about the preservation of personal freedoms, hacking and being a teenager today. And it’s good. I was up ’til 5AM last night (this morning) reading it until I was in serious danger of passing out onto it. I’ll have finished it by tonight, and I’ll report back to you more tomorrow.

2) Saturday Morning Cartoon Party:
This is something I’ve been wanting to attend for a few years now but up ’til last weekend I’ve never had the chance (owing mostly to working shitty jobs that demanded I show up on the weekend). Every year, Toren Atkinson–extreme cartoon fan–throws a party wherein everyone shows up early in the morning and watches cartoons for several hours while ingesting all manner of sugary breakfast cereals (pajamas optional). Being the ‘toon fan I am, this year I booked off the date from any other engagements months in advance and Mrs. C and I made our way over to Toren’s house at around 8:15 or so, just in time for an episode of Galaxy Rangers, which was both awful and better than I thought it was going to be (since most things viewed through the rose-coloured glasses of childhood nostalgia are freakin’ AWFUL and you should take pains to avoid revisiting them if you have the chance).

Well, long story short, we were maybe the first to arrive and almost the last to leave (at just after 4PM). Our brains had melted and our guts were churning cauldrons of milk, refined flour and sucrose. I also managed to score a Darkest of the Hillside Thickets shirt I’ve coveted for years, so that was all to the good. In short, excellent times.

The crowning moment though (and I don’t care how sad you think this is), was the fact that after nearly two decades I finally got to satisfy one of my long-term junk food cravings: eating Frankenberry. Those of you who have constant and ready supplies of Frankenberry nearby are probably going, “EEEURGH! Why would you want to?!” Well, because it’s not available up here in Canadia (at least, not the part I live in). Here, it is a legendary foodstuff which apparently once roamed free in our breakfast aisles but was forced into extinction by General Mills. So, since my late teens, every time I went down to the States I’d poke around in supermarkets looking for it (as well as Squirt and Strawberry Powdered Quik–also not available in these parts), to no avail. But what should Toren manage to procure three boxes of? Yes, Manna from, well, not Heaven… maybe Albertson’s. Anyway, I got to toss back a few bowls of the stuff as well as one of Boo-Berry (although no Fruit Brute or Yummy Mummy, because apparently Toren isn’t cool enough to have access to a time machine). It wasn’t legendary tasting; my tastebuds didn’t explode with delight, but it certainly wasn’t bad and it was definitely satisfying. I even got to take a half-box home with me, so when the mood strikes me again I’ll be able to swiftly satisfy the urge.

Lately, there’s also the business of My Teeth:
A lucrative business, if you happen to be in the dentistry profession. The two fillings I got a week or so back cost me a grand total of about $50 or so after isurance kicked in. The four wisdom teeth which are getting extracted at the end of the month will cost about $1800+ upfront (and are probably only covered 50% by insurance). Plus, the two bottom ones are in DEEP, which means I’m recovering for 3-4 days afterward, and because of the scheduling I’ll have to take two days off work, which will cost me on my paycheque. So, yes: painful in a variety of different ways, and all the more ironic for the fact that they’ve never bothered me before.

Oh, and the Dishwasher:
We totally bought this dishwasher (it’s getting delivered later today), because Mrs. C and I are grown-ups now and we don’t have to our chores if we don’t want to. And we don’t want to–we want more time to do other serious grown-up things like watch cartoons.

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