While

...I'm not grey-haired and bare, I am brown-haired and bearable. Well, I'm bearable most of the time. Not so much, perhaps, when I've written something to my satisfaction. Then I've been known to email close writer friends to share my glee. This usually involves describing my celebratory food. Today, for instance, I celebrated with a bowl of Cream of Wheat with a few raisins, cinnamon and some freshly grated nutmeg. It doesn't get better than that.

Finally

...the perfect paper on which to write my poems. Free verse.

Be sure to read

..."Abandonment and After: On Editing Poetry" by Robyn Sarah in the latest issue of The New Quarterly, Number 100. It should be required reading for poets, especially those who think they might end up sitting at a table with me in the foreseeable future. I'm sure I'll go on about it for a while. Be prepared.

I had a good day of writing

...but it's far too early to tell if it was a day of good writing. At times when I paused to give my hand a wee rest, I thought about my pen. It's hard to believe that Bic Biros sell at a rate of 57 pens per second. I wonder how fast my Papermate Flexgrip Ultra goes? Pretty fast I'd say, going by my output today. By day's end I'd tacked a few more pages on the wall. I'm especially pleased with the last little poem that popped out of me. It makes me giggle like a fool when I read it. H laughed when I read it to him. So, if nothing else, I had fun. The smile on my face right now looks much like this.


Actually, the fun began this morning. Instead of starting my day by reading poetry like I usually do, I attended a reading by Elizabeth Bachinsky. I suspect that's what influenced the tone of my last poem.

'Tis the season

I never thought I'd eat cake

...in a ballroom, but it actually happened on Thursday at the welcoming reception for Robert Currie, Saskatchewan's new Poet Laureate. I stood within feet of the cake table and I caught an occasional glimpse of the lovely trays of cake as I chatted away with people, but I never did reach the table. H loaded his plate with cake a few times, the icing of each square licked by the chandelier. He gave me a few of his squares. Very few.

The event was impressive. After the official ceremony and before the ballroom and the cake, Tracy Hamon gave H and I a quick tour of the second floor of Government House. Tracy can now be heard over at AuthorsAloud. What a great site.

On our way to Regina for the reception I saw a culvert that I just had to photograph, so there I was standing in the ditch, clad in a skirt, waving on the traffic that had slowed down to gawk. As I was shooting, a huge cat started across the ice, meowing all the way.


We took off before the cat got too close. I spent the rest of the trip shining my shoes and picking weeds out of my tights.

Last night I finished

...The Good Bacteria and today I started Stumbling in the Bloom. When I finish it I'll have read all the poetry books on the GG shortlist. This is the first year I've made a point of reading all the titles prior to the awards. I did this mainly because until now I was not familiar with the work of four of the five poets. Of course I'll pick a winner, just for fun, but I'll keep that between me and the cat.

And, just for fun, I've been checking out archaeological digs. I've always wanted to work at a dig. I blame Indiana Jones. Anyhow, I took a close look at the Wadi ath-Thamad project. It really appeals to me.

Speaking of fun, I hope to see some of you at the welcoming reception for Robert Currie, Saskatchewan's new Poet Laureate, at Government House on Thursday. I hope the weather cooperates.

This morning I spent some time

...looking at my mess of bookmarks. Since I'm not fond of long lists at the best of times, I was mighty tempted to delete the whole works and start again. I did finally tackle the list of writing sites. I gave some thought to a post I'd read on Maud as I pruned my list of general litblogs back drastically. Many of them link to the same stories, many of which I've already read in the Globe, the Guardian, CBC, BBC, etc. While I was pruning, I noticed that I've been moving away from general litblogs and spending more time reading more personal accounts of the literary scene. Friends aside, my current favourites include Bloggamooga, Eyewear, Hassenpfeffer and Lemon Hound. I don't know these people, but their blogs have enough of a narrative to keep me engaged.

The view from my office window this morning

...was bright with yesterday's snowfall. I was sitting by the window, finishing Elizabeth Bachinsky's Home of Sudden Service when the grouse stopped by.

I love this time of year. While the squirrels have finished caching pine cones and mushrooms for the winter, I'm still stocking up on reading material. I just ordered a few more books. The titles came out of a recent conversation. Now I might have enough books to get me through the longest cold spell.

A xylothek

...is a wooden library. As I looked at the images, I thought about an article I read this morning titled "None so blind as those too sophisticated to see" which looks at critical theory and its use in our approach to art. Then I thought about the way art is used over at wood s lot, a site that always gives a stirring look at the world. Of course that's where I came across the xylothek in the first place. Then I grabbed the OED and looked up give.

I then told H how I wish I had an image to give to this post. H left without a word and came back with a pair of snowshoes.


H proceeded to give me stories about the snowshoes. How his dad had bought them in the 1930s when he was 13. How he paid 50 cents for them. How he gave them to H when H was a boy. As I looked at one of the snowshoes through the viewfinder, I could see them both. Their parkas. The frosted hoods. The breaths. The circle of willow. The rabbit tracks. Fox tracks. Coyote tracks. The deer. The porcupine looking down from a branch. Watching them come and go.

This post

...is one of the 1.3 million posts that bloggers will make today. Multiply that by readers and you have a serious amount of reading going on. Mind you, I received a couple calls since Corner Gas aired on Monday. I didn't see the show. Anyhow, the calls came from people who don't visit my blog, but they reassured me by saying no one visits Hank's blog either.

Today I learned that the look on the moon's face is due to gas.

We made it home

...safely last night. The Hanson Lake Road is beautiful at night, but eerie. Add snow and ice and it can be a nightmare. I did my best to distract myself. For example, as I was eating some cold vegetarian pizza, I eyed the CD player and told H it would be nice if when I hit Eject a tray would pop out on which I'd plop a slice of pizza. Instead of hitting Play, I'd press Heat. The pizza would slide in and sit on the engine for a minute and then pop back out, nice and warm.

After that I decided I'd try to capture the night. H was busy driving, so I was on my own with the camera settings. This is a curve sign.



And today I took a pic of the new books that I brought back from Saskatoon.


I actually won the bottom two on Sunday at the Saskatchewan Book Awards 14th Annual Shortlist Reading Brunch. The event was excellent, as were the readers. I remembered to take Jennifer Still's book along from home to have it signed, but I neglected to pack Marie Elyse St. George's and a couple others. Argh. I like my books signed.

I just listened

...to Leona Theis read from The Art of Salvage over at AuthorsAloud. What a pleasure. I read and posted about The Art of Salvage back in August. It's great to sit here on this fine snowy day, drinking tea, eating carrots and hummus studded with toasted pine nuts while listening to Leona read. AuthorsAloud is a wonderful site.

And

...here I thought most people are ok with grammatical proscriptions. But I guess that's not the case. I love how Zwicky compares the prosody of however and but.

It's snowing. Our yard is white, the street slippery. This morning I woke up in the middle of what sounded like a Star Wars battle scene, but it was just a yard full of Evening Grosbeaks scrapping over food. What a hellish racket.


I spent the rest of the morning watching the birds, watching it snow, and reading, reading, reading. I also checked out the description of The Tree of Meaning: Thirteen Talks, a new book by Robert Bringhurst that I was given the heads-up about recently. It's now at the top of my shopping list. And I checked out the cupcakes that Amy sent me.

Speaking of cake, I hope to run into some of you at the sweets table at the Saskatchewan Book Awards 14th Annual Shortlist Reading Brunch in Saskatoon on Sunday. I'm looking forward to it. Last year's brunch was fantastic.