nutter cat

Sherry has rediscovered my summer purse. For some reason the straps (which are like soft rope) are driving him crazy, like they're made of catnip. He sits and rubs his cheeks on them for 10 minutes at a time.

Convention Fail... pity us, Mr T Sock Monkey

Friend Mae and I have invented Convention Fail... not on purpose.

When I sent her the notice about Worldcon coming to town, she didn't pay it no mind cause she thought it was only sci fi. She only realized a couple days ago that Neil Gaiman will be there. "I told her: Not just there, he's the headline act! Fool!" I didn't call her a fool.

But I'm a big fool too! This morning Fernando told me that Connie Willis is signing books tomorrow morning.

For those Not Informed, Connie Willis is in my Top 10 Authors of All Time faves list.

I was sure he was teasing me, and made him show me in the convention booklet. And then I looked through and realized she's giving all sorts of events! Not that I'd go to the whole convention just for those, but if I'd known in advance I could have taken off whichever one day looked best to me. You can go for one day for about $89, or you can go for 3 hours for $20. I'll probably go for 3 hours and take in one of her talks.

Pretty sure, however, that I will not be capable of getting downtown for 9 AM, before my later evening shift on Sunday, to go to:

4-014 Sun/Dim 9:00 1hr
P-516AB Literature in English
The History Builders
Edward James, Jo Walton, Sarah Mick-
lem, Connie Willis
Why do authors such as Patrick O’Brian,
Jane Austen, Georgette Heyer appeal so
much to SF readers?

For those Not Informed Jane Austen and Georgette Heyer are in my top authors list too! (Though I loved them before I ever came to sci fi... so maybe this talk will be meaningless to me. ...Maybe Fernando can go and secretly record it for me.)

The Story of Me: In Grandparents

Growing up I had 3 grandparents. I'll have to save the stories about Gramma and Grampa (my dad's parents) for another day, cause this is already going to be long and self-indulgent. I'm going to talk about my Poppa Ryan (my mom's dad.)

My mother's mother died before we were born, from breast cancer. Now... these grandparents were no saints either. My grandfather (or "Poppa" as we called him, to distinguish him from Grampa) was an alcoholic, and messed up as a father in many ways. When I got older I saw more and more of his faults of course. But we lived in separate cities most of my life, so when he did pass away I could easily forget the negative and beatify him. He was THE PERFECT GRANDFATHER.

My mother and her dad.

My grandfather started life on a farm, and somehow worked his way round to English Lit professor at the University of Alberta, and had a distinguished career there. He was in school at Berkeley at one point, and somewhere in there WWII interrupted his schooling. His PhD actually came as an honorary degree from Concordia.



He turned out to be a pretty elegant, worldly chap. He was sleek and fit (swam every day), knew his way around the kitchen, had a home full of books, and decorated with Exotic Artefacts (and fake grapes.)

Here's the fireplace.
My mother has just had my brother.
She is, like, 17? 18 years old? Shiver.

He would take me and/or my brother to the Faculty Club for lunch, which seemed like an Exceedingly Elegant and Tasteful place to have lunch. It was just a cafeteria, but we would sit with the other old professors, and bask in the attention of being The Wonderful Grandchildren.

He was very witty, and would tell great stories and jokes. He had big wooden masks on his bedroom wall (my brother has them now), and a kimono given to him by the wife of the Japanese ambassador, and a nice 1940s tuxedo and bowler hat (which he gave me), and a REAL HULA SKIRT. I would stand at his closet and just stare, gap-mouthed, at this huge grass skirt. I lurved that skirt. He also had a statue of frolicking satyr in his livingroom, which was the butt of many jokes, and which we all loved. Also there were fake grapes, which for some reason I also loved.

I didn't tell you about the blocks.
The Blocks. That he made and we lurved.

He was the first person I knew to own a microwave oven. And he had a freezer full of meat pies and fruit pies from his neighbor's bakery. If you went down into the basement, it was another world. My Uncle the Underachiever lived there. It was ugly and cigaretty, but this was where the old 70s porn mags were to be found.

Poppa had a cat named Pizzicato. He was a lovely Siamese, but not very friendly (which I hated because I lurved the kittitude). My bro and I later learned it was probably because he was getting high with the Underachieving Uncle and had likely fried his brain cells.

I would stay in the flowery room. It had a huge window, and flowered bedsheet curtains, which have so imprinted themselves on me that not only do I now own them, but I will never want a bedroom in any other colours than pale blue and mauve. This is also where the Canterbury Tale pictures were hung (which I now have.) My grandfather was so good at telling The Wife of Bath's prologue.

At the end of the hall was the room my brother stayed in. There was a portrait of some great or great-great grandmother, but somehow both Pablo and I misunderstood that it was our grandmother (which shows we knew nothing about fashion), and therefore formed an out-of-proportion sentimental attachment to it.

A lot of my memories come from one particular summer when I was staying with my mum (I lived in another province), but she had to work so I'd stay with my grandfather during the day. He would set me up with scrap paper for drawing and writing stories on, and then he would leave me to amuse myself, checking up periodically to bring me a cup of hot carob, or take me to the Faculty Club. This is when I really got into THE BOOKS. There were books all over the house. I had finally discovered the cupboard full of books in the boy bedroom, and I clearly remember sitting there, partly playing with my Barbie, and partly poring over Oscar Wilde's Salome, and histories of Pompeii and the Roman games.

That was when my grandfather dug out an old copy of Oscar's collected plays, and my Life Was Changed Forever. He also gave me my first Shakespeares. My Dante with the Doré illustrations. The Plays Pleasant of Bernard Shaw. And my first copy of Cyrano de Bergerac.

We didn't watch much TV there, but I recall a little MASH while waiting for him to make supper. He also had the old Bill Cosby albums (of young Cosby), which we memorized.

I have no memories of my grandfather ever showing annoyance with me, or seeming to be tired of my company. It's pretty cool to have ONE person in your life of whom you can make such a claim. I'm sure my brother has the same impression.

And all this is to say... that if there is one ideal home in my mind, it's my grandfather's house. I couldn't be happier than if I owned that exact house (but um NOT in Edmonton), with all its original furnishings. In my memory it's a sort of Museum of An Idealized Childhood, and the birthplace of my love for literature. Unfortunately my mother had to redecorate it in order to sell it, and I don't think she has Before pictures. In any case, so many of the things I love or hate about homes come from that house--it totally formed my taste.

The patio. Me eating corn, my cousin in chair.
I liked my cousin. Don't know where he is now.
Maybe robbing banks.
I believe that's his dad in the pic, the Overachieving Brother,
not the Underachieving one. But I could be wrong.

Couple things I liked today (in home land)

First three pics are the same house.

Big, view-ish deck.
My grandmother had a big deck on one of the homes she
had when I was growing up. One night my dad and I
slept out there and watched the Northern Lights filling
up the entire sky.

High ceilings--always kinda fun right?
They seem glamorous.

Patio with Adirondak chairs.
My grandfather's patio looked a little like this.

Bright kitchen with a door leading to the deck.
Of course... to get this "oh I casually leave the door open
while preparing a chick pea salad" effect, I'd have to let
the cats out. Which I couldn't. Unless said deck
is fenced in.

I got the heebies! I mean the jeebies! Come on and do the heebie-jeebie dance.

Alright, today we're going to talk about Things I Don't Like in a home.

I don't mind a small bathroom, or a small kitchen that extends into a dining area. But I've realized that what really gives me the heebie-jeebies is spaces that remind me of apartment living. While the simple act of moving across the country will cut down on the amount of stuff we own, Fernando and I will never be people who live a sparse, zen-like existence.

For example, I have a shelf of tools in the hallway just outside my bedroom, and I will always have such a shelf cause I'm a do-it-myself-er. (I have another shelf-worth of paint and crafting tools, which were hidden in the broom closet until F appropriated the closet, and now my brooms and buckets and paint have been scattered to the 4 corners of the earth.) I am tired of having to store my tools in a hallway, or a closet. I want a garage dammit! Or a utility room!

We also have 3 cat boxes to help keep the peace (you should have the same number of cat boxes as you have cats, +1. We are minus a +1.) In a spread-out home I could get these damned things out of the way!

Here we have an example of a cramped little living room.
I am not working full-time so I can afford a place
where I bump my shins against the coffee table when I get up
to answer the phone.

The other thing that reminds me of apartment living
is long rooms. They're really hard to do anything with.
Look at this! What the hell? I'd have to turn it into
a wardrobe or something. Definitely not an office.

This is the kind of narrow livingroom I have right now
(and have always had in apartments.) It's hard to
decorate / place the furniture.
It's not a deal-breaker, but spleuh.
This is why I shiver when people suggest
we get a condo. OWN a crappy apartment??!!!

Long cramped kitchen, no light.

Ah! Ah! I'm suffocating!

Eep! Eep!

Something else I don't like: useless corners.
What's the point of how this condo is built?
All you can put there is a bookcase, and why the
hell do I want a bookcase in the middle of nowhere?
For the books I don't like?

Carpeting.
3 cats.
Hairballs.

Fireplaces.
For the most part, I think they're just plain ugly.
And take up wall space that could be dedicated to...
Books! Or art!
(This one is art on fireplace - even worse.)

I'm really not that fussy. Except about the overall space. The space is the #1 priority. But there you have some of the Things That Make Me Go Blehhhh.