What A Week

I can barely believe that it's Saturday again. The week flew by at light speed and I haven't even been home long enough (other than sleeping) to update anything. So, because today should be spent writing so I have something to send my mentor by the end of the weekend, I'm updated via a quickie list. Had I had time this week, all of these would have been separate entries, so I apologize for the brevity.

1. This was the week of author events through work. I attended four of them in three days. The first, a forum to launch Michael Chettleburgh's Young Thugs, was very interesting. I even learned that there were Irish gangs in Toronto in 1850. Another thing for my list to investigate because I think it would make a cool story. Then I went to two different events for Daniel Handler: a Lemony Snicket cocktail party, and an event at the Andy Pool Hall to celebrate his novel Adverbs. But my favourite was the underground club party for Richard Flanagan, author of The Unknown Terrorist, where Russell Smith mildly insulted me before carrying on his way and doing a superb on stage interview with the author, who, by the way, read Chekhov as preparation for writing about the women in his novel. That made me want to take him out for dinner and listen to him wax philosophical for hours.

2. Gilmore Girls is over. I managed to watch the last episode but only after begging my RRHB to remember to tape it before he went off to his second job on Tuesday. I was chatting over email with Kate who pointed out that it's actually kind of ironic to see every single episode of a show and then forget to tape the very last one. She's right, but I was just so busy this week that a number of things slipped my mind. I felt very ho-hum about the finale. Even though the show has absolutely gotten off track as of late, I'm still not 100% convinced it should have been over. And how they dealt with both of the relationships, Luke and Logan, was ridiculous. Regardless, it's one less hour of television I'll have to keep up with in the fall.

3. I finished reading Chantal Simmons's Stuck in Downward Dog. I got a little teary at the end, and it was refreshing to read a chicklit novel where 'getting the boy' wasn't the central focus of the story. I liked how the book was more about a journey for the character into herself versus a more stereotypical journey into the right relationship. Anyway, that's book #33 for the year. I'm also halfway through about a half-dozen other books that I'm hoping to finish this weekend up north while my brother and RRHB are watching Pan's Labyrinth.

4. Yesterday afternoon, our summer hours started. I had some work to finish up so I didn't leave right at 1:30 PM, but I did manage to make it to an afternoon show of Away From Her, Sarah Polley's directorial debut. Based on Alice Munro's story "The Bear Came Down the Mountain," I felt like it was a solid adaptation, if Polley did take some liberties with the story's point of view and tended to sentimentalize where the author had been tack-sharp. I found some aspects of the film a bit overly dramatic but Gordon Pinsent and Julie Christie were just so good that I was willing to overlook the bits of the movie that just felt too forced. Grant reading "The Cinnamon Peeler's Wife" really? Regardless of how much I love that poem, the can lit overtures in the film were a little, well, eye roll inducing. But I don't want that to deflect from the fact that Away From Her is a film I would highly recommend as counter programming to the glut of American multiplex blockbusters hitting the streets every week or two.

5. I saw yet another specialist this week about some lady problems I've been having. Needless to say, a lot of what I'm experiencing is probably a side effect of the methotrexate, which doesn't make it any easier to take. I'm also getting frustrated because I can't seem to loose a single pound. Eating better, riding my bike, dance class, pilates, and still over the course of the last few months, I am the same chubby -bloated sick-looking girl I was when I started. I'm very frustrated about all of that but I have to say that if it's the medicine at least I know that I'll be off of it in the next six-to-eight months and maybe then the weight will start coming off. I can't stand looking at pictures of myself though, which is annoying because everyone and their uncle seems to update Facebook with a million different albums. Anyway. I really liked this doctor very much and feel like she'll be extremely helpful when it comes to this particular problem that won't seem to go away. I have to say that even now that the disease is in remission technically, I'm dead sick of all the treatments. It's been three years of different medications, difficult side effects, and I'm just plain tired of it all. And the mood swings with everything else combined has just about caught me by the fray of my last rope.