January 31, 2003

We rehearsed the tango sequence this afternoon. When Cynthia put on some tango music, it turned out to be the piece I wanted, which we couldn't find all Tuesday!

Dinner was lasagna.

Started reading The Ill Made Knight.

Dawn taught a group class in waltz twinkles.  Cynthia had been bugging me about my frame earlier, but Dawn thought I had a great frame.

January 30, 2003

Dreamed of trying to remember where in New York Yankee Stadium is. [I'm still not sure!]

My sore throat has eased, so I don't think I'll have to see the doctor.

Went to the Forest Hill library and took out The Once and Future King.  I'm going to read The Ill-Made Knight once I finish Lolita.

Opened a plastic bottle of grape soda and it fizzled all over the counter.  I guess it wasn't cold enough.

For the first time I went to the Thursday night intermediate-level dance lesson.  Sergei was teaching salsa.

Just finished Lolita.  Whatta book!

January 29, 2003

Vacuumed the attic in the morning.

Went shopping.

The new London Review of Books had a review of Christopher Hitchens' Orwell book, as well as one of Gangs of New York.

Dinner was roast chicken.

The acting class was about motivation.  We passed around an invisible ball.  I was in a skit where someone was trying to sell me a house and I wanted to steal the scarf behind her pants.  A minute after she showed me the bedroom, I asked, "Did we see the bedroom?" In another skit a couple of people wanted me and my wife to take care of their cats, and I wanted her to say no for me.  

Then Sean and I did a skit where I was trying to get him to sign a business deal and he wouldn't.  I'm glad he thought of pretending to use a calculator. (He works in a bank.) The whole skit was done with dialogue limited to yes, no, please and thank you.  The teacher liked the way I made one last wordless offer.

January 28, 2003

Showed Dr. Hassan my Mission:  Possible report.  He offered to make a photocopy of it bit I said he might as well keep the original. [I never read it.]

Vacuumed my room for the first time with our new Bissell machine with the transparent container where you can see the dirt whirling around inside.  It beats our old Dirt Devil by miles.  It doesn't make the same annoying noise and it picks up tons of dirt. The air feels lots fresher.  I got a full container removed from the carpet.  Late in the afternoon I moved my bed and vacuumed that part and ended up collecting another container's worth!

Practiced the tango sequence with Cynthia.  We still can't find the music I want to use.  Our next lesson won't be till Friday since some coach is coming in tomorrow.

Dinner was fettucine with pesto sauce, which I made myself.  I went out and got the grated parmesan, along with grapefruit and thousand islands dressing.

Another copy editing class. Shelley says my editing copy in pen shows that I'm confident.

January 27, 2003

Sore throat is persistent.  I can feel one bruise-like spot when I touch the outside on the left. I wanted to see my doctor about it, but she left at 2:00 and I only got there at 2:40.  I'll have to try again Thursday morning.

Finally got around to doing my Copy Editing assignment.  The warning against the phrase "needlessly wordy" appealed to me. (It criticizes itself.)

Dinner was pork chops, plus we finished the crab claws.

Davis did a group class in foxtrot. (Are these social ease classes still worth attending?)

January 26, 2003

Saw Ikiru at the Cinematheque. [A classic existential 1950s movie directed by Akira Kurosawa.] It's a powerful everyman story, especially the part where he remembers his gradual estrangement from his son.

My throat is still pretty dry, and I had a powerful headache in the late afternoon, though it eased during dinner.

We took Donald [my brother] out to dinner at the Red Lobster.  I ordered the crab & lobster special.  Half the crab ended up in the doggy bag.  Finishing it will be an interesting challenge.

January 25, 2003

Didn't get to sleep till almost 05:00!

Baked multigrain bread overnight.

Saw Babes in Arms at a Cinematheque matinee.  It's pretty fun if you enjoy that MGM "Let's put on a show!" silliness.  If Mickey Ronney were around today (wait, he is around!) they'd put him on Prozac.  Judy Garland (sigh) was enormously appealing, though they presented her like a puppy dog who just wants to be liked.  Odd that "My Funny Valentine" was removed from the Broadway score, and that "The Lady Is a Tramp" was reduced to one character's leitmotif.  The minstrel-show number was cut short by a sudden rainstorm. (The gods frown on racist entertainment.)

Dinner was McDonald's.

Rented the About a Boy DVD.  It was pretty cute.  Hugh Grant knows how to play that sort of role like the back of his hand.

January 24, 2003

This time I slept through the night.

Father and I finally went shopping.  We forgot to get Thousand Islands dressing.

Dinner was fresh halibut so undercooked (I think) that I couldn't finish it.  I hope they let me fry it next time.

My energy is still a bit low so I skipped the Friday night group lesson and dance party.

I went to see Femme Fatale, but I'd forgotten that the Festival Cinemas calendar arrays its schedules along a Friday-to-Thursday axis (instead of Sunday to Saturday) so it was actually on Wednesday instead of Thursday.

Reading the part of Lolita where they're travelling all around the USA.  The frustrating thing is that is isn't a novel you can zip through:  I have to read it slowly to appreciate Nabokov's prose.

It's a shame Cynthia doesn't have the time to take an acting course.  I'm sure she'd be good at it:  she has energy, an expressive face, and of course a sense of rhythm.  If I won $100 million in a lottery, I'd marry her so she wouldn't have to work and could just take acting classes.  (But now I'm like Aedh wishing for the cloths of heaven in William Butler Yeats' poem.)

January 23, 2003

Another interrupted night. [I sometimes suffer from insomnia.] I got up at a quarter to noon.

Real brass-monkey weather today.  It's been snowing too.  Father gave me a lift to the subway again.

Had a coaching session with Pat Traymor, who showed as a new rumba routine. Afterward I felt dizzy and Cynthia anxiously asked, "Is there anything I can do?" She's a good friend.

Felt kind of dizzy for the rest of the day, so I took it easy.

Dinner was steak.

Saw a CBC program with a suite of Scottish-style music against the backdrop of Cape Breton history.  It was so slow it was perfect to watch when you're under the weather like me.

Pat Traymor remembered that I have a Ph.D. (It impresses other people--Shelley Robertson is another example--more than it impresses me.) She said all my years of reading have caused me to lean forward.

January 22, 2003

Had trouble sleeping as I sweated out my cold.

Had a dance lesson with Cynthia.  She's eager to hear about my drama course.  The parents are bugging me about how I was going to cut back to one lesson a week. (I will after the February spotlight is over.)

Dinner was roast chicken.

The first drama class was great fun.  We asked each other our favorite song (I said Ian Dury's "Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick" while someone whose name I can't remember said "Chances Are"); food (I said spaghetti, Andrei said caviar); pet (I said John's late dog Theseus, Jenny never had a pet); and movie (I said The Maltese Falcon, Marie-Jose said The Rose, also her favorite song). 

Then we put on tableaus like the bottom of the Eiffel Tower (I held a camera upward) and serenity (I sat in Buddha's lotus position) and cat food (I pretended to be one of two cats crowding a bowl). We were given a topic and all talked at once speaker's corner-style--I wasn't very good at that part.

In the last exercise we pretended to be applicants confident of getting a perfect job but then becoming unsure, sitting in a waiting room for five minutes.  I kind of cheated:  I came in first, then started to become nervous when the others followed.  I couldn't see how we looked but someone said Andrei had perfect comic timing.  Lots to tell Cynthia about. (She'd enjoy the warmups.)

One of my matchmaker.com letters (to BNY) got a response, including a helpful tip about the Canadian Editors Association.

January 21, 2003

Dawn gave me a dance lesson.  It's nice to have a different instructor once in a while.

In the copy editing course we got an assignment involving tightening sentences.

Dinner was spaghetti.  Father made way too much, but I managed to finish it.

Went to a nearby photographer's studio and got some pictures taken to upload at matchmaker.com. [The best of the photos is the one you see in the upper right corner beneath "About me"!]

January 20, 2003

Dreamed of going on a four-day train trip from Sackville [my New Brunswick hometown] with three other people (including one woman); and being unable to find a shirt in the morning; of enjoying a ride in a stretch convertible with about ten people.

Father and I went to look at vacuum cleaners.  I don't care what we get, so long as it isn't as noisy as that horrid Dirt Devil.  I also got some new shirts.

Went to the Hellenic Home for the Aged and read them some stories.  Dora wasn't in so I grouped the old folk around the table myself.  The stories were about the princess in Velazquez' "Meninas"; a Japanese girl who tamed the nightmare-laden sea, leading to the invention of kites; and a Tomson Highway story about Cree boys performing a song and dance to attract caribou.

Went to the library to return the books and found out they have the first Freddy the Pig book.  And I went to the drugstore and got Vanity Fair and Atlantic Monthly (both for Christopher Hitchens) and some white chocolate for Mother.

Dinner was toad in the hole (sausages in mashed potatoes).

Dawn did a salsa lesson.

Finally got around to baking some more bread (rye)

I still feel bad about my departure from the Mission: Possible job-training program.  I wish I could have at least given a better explanation to my Employment Supports case worker.  At any rate my family all think I made the right decision.

January 19, 2003

Started translating a new chapter of Wandering Youth. Or rather, I reviewed the translation I'd already done. [It's a Chinese White propaganda novel from the '50s.  I've translated the first two sections and should continue someday.]

Saw Pedro Almodovar's Talk to Her.  It's a real masterpiece, but you wouldn't like it, Dinah; it's more for grownups.  It's a product of Spanish Catholic culture--among many other thiings, it's about faith.  But it's funnier than the subject (a ballerina and a female matador in comas) would lead you to expect.  I'll bet Cynthia would like it.  Almodovar used to make raucous farces, but recently he's developed a remarkably subtle comic touch.  Tremendous.

In the evening I started the actual translation of the next chapter of Wandering Youth.

January 18, 2003

Dreamed of Cynthia and me carrying a glass bowl  (her right hand and my left) but I was walking too fast for her (guess what that means?); Tony Soprano hiring a man to kill his wife Carmela and giving him pink bullets, but the man didn't know he was walking into a trap.

Completed the assignment in the copy editing course.

Went to the medal ball just southeast of Finch and Bayview.  Don admired the way I dance with all the women.  I came there by bus, but on the way back Reiko and her son gave me a lift to the Bayview subway station, the first time I've been on the Sheppard line.  

I ended up with a big headache.  After I got my certificate, Cynthia kissed me on both cheeks. (She's half-French.)

January 17, 2003

Dreamed of being in an unorthodox museum (a common dream for me).

Went over the review stuff from the copy editing course.

Finished translating An Attempt at Reform.  Dinner was fish in batter and potato croquettes.

At the dance studio Davis was doing a group class in Argentine tango.  There were hardly any intermediate-level dancers, and Reiko and I joined the social-ease level.  Cynthia was wondering why I was all smiles tonight.  It's because I like being with her.  While we were dancing, at one point she asked me what my favorite moment of the evening was, and I said, "Now." I guess I'm feeling foolhardy.

Lolita is an amazing book.  I had to look up "favonian" (like the West Wind, propitious), "nacreous" (like mother-of-pearl) and "nates" (buttocks). [Another word I had to look up was "phocine" (like a seal).]

I posted a quiz in the Mr. Cranky forum for Narc and challenged people to guess the quote [from Lolita] on yesterday's page.  Someone did. [mrcranky.com was a website I spent a lot of time on twenty years ago, where he'd post four faultfinding reviews of new movies every week, and each review had its own forum.]

January 16, 2003

"I was on my knees, and on the point of possessing my darling, when two bearded  brothers, the old man of the sea and his brother, came out of the sea with exclamations of ribald encouragement, and four months later she died of typhus in Corfu"--Lolita

Dreamed of seeing Leo Di Caprio in Catch Me if You Can--not of watching the film in a cinema but actually being in the movie scene, an observer rather than a character.

We went to see Nicholas Nickleby at Canada Square.  It was a handsome production and well cast--especially Christopher Plummer's villainous uncle--but talk about shameless!  Jamie Bell's deathbed scene had me thinking, "Hurry up and die!" (Smike is one of those passive characters who have to die because that's the only way they can do something dramatic.  The book was one of Dicken's first, and lacks the finesse of later works like Great Expectations. [Another character like Smike is Little Nell in Dicken's Old Curiosity Shop.]

Afterward we ate at the Mandarin restaurant nearby. It's always a challenge controlling your appetite at those buffet places.  My fortune cookie said, "Be direct--you'll accomplish more that way." [You can improve a fortune cookie line by adding the words "...in bed"!]

New Harper's had a book review about Benjamin Franklin.

Still no reply from Ardour--she hasn't visited the website yet--but I sent a message to Emma.

January 15, 2003

Went to the Deer Park library and borrowed Lolita. (Dr. Hassan suggested I read a book like that because I hate talking about sex.) Then I went to the Cinematheque HQ and bought only seven tickets.

The parents are talking about subscribing to a book club for the new-member bargain:  five books for a dollar.  I suggested Lincoln's Virtues (which Bill Bryson recommends), Pat Conroy's book about a losing basketball season in his senior year (Allen Barra raved about it at salon.com), and a centennial edition of The Wizard of Oz with the original illustrations!

Lolita is a sly, clever comedy. I noticed the way Nabokov has Humbert Humbert using not-quite perfect English ("inly" instead of "inwardly"), which I think is intentional, not just Nabokov's own imperfections.

In the afternoon we had the coaching session with Daniel Heroux, who laid out a whole tango sequence for the February spotlight. (Lisa asked for the certificate I won, bu I can't find it.) In the evening the group lesson was hustle.  I got so dizzy I couldn't pay attention to Davis.  The line dance was Sergei's Charleston, which I almost mastered.

Dinner was scalloped potatoes and ham.

Dreamed of J.K. Rowling writing a Harry Potter picture book.

January 14, 2003

Dreamed of trying to play the clarinet, but the whole edge of the reed was broken off.

Dr. Hassan says my life is "moving," and suggests I read Lolita. [I did.]

Went shopping.  We got a whole lot of grapefruit.

Had another dance lesson.  We worked on the waltz and rumba sequences for Saturday, and started work on the tango for next month's spotlight.

Funny what can happen by chance.  This morning I was running a bit late so Father kindly drove me to Dr. Hassan.  On the way ther the radio wasn't on the usual channel (680 all news) but on a classical FM station.  And who was on the radio (promoting theatre) but Shelley Robertson?

Tonight I started the copy editing course at Ryerson taught by Shelley Robertson.  Someone heard she was flakey, but I like her.  I told her about the Ph.D.s vs. Ph.D.'s controversy, and she sided with Arianna Huffington against The New York Times.

January 13, 2003

Dreamed of being at a big rally, with everyone raising huge flags of different design; going to a wimp's club (the new big trend) with Father.

Went to the library and picked up three picture books:  The Princess and the Painter (about Velazquez); Tomson Highway's Caribou Song; Sho and the Demons of the Deep. [I was reading to people at the Greek old folk's home.]

Took the plunge and subscribed to matchmaker.com.  I've already sent one letter!

Dinner was lasagna.

The dance studio had a group lesson in mambo.  There were three guys and no girls.  Even the advanced group was only one of each.

Severe sore throat.

January 12, 2003

Dreamed of seeing High Sierra in a color(?) print, with Humphrey Bogart not among the gang appearing in the opening scene, and Ida Lupino wearing jodhpurs.

Father used the gridiron to fry bacon and eggs for lunch.

In the afternoon I saw Gangs of New York.  Dinah, I understand that you think Leo DiCaprio is a dream and you want to grow up to be Cameroon Diaz, but I can understand why your parents won't let you see it.  Anyway, it was a real mess, though Daniel Day-Lewis and Jim Broadbent had entertaining American accents.  I also brought an Alliance Cinemas membership and got a free DVD of The Others.

We were about to eat roast beef for dinner when we found out John and his daughter Rae were coming over. [They're vegans.] They ate pizza later.

In the evening we saw Julia, a fine film about courage, though Jane Fonda didn't really convey Lillian Hellman's anger. [It wasn't really JF's fault--I have a feeling it goes back to LH's notoriously unreliable memoirs.  Roger Ebert's review says that the movie took two fascinating characters and managed to be about neither.]

January 11, 2003

Another headache so it will be a slow day.

Dined on Harvey's hamburgers again.

Rented Unfaithful, a fairly conventional, conservative story with oddly overblown direction by Adrian Lyne. (The wind machine had me saying, "That's enough pathetic fallacy." Ask your English teacher what the term means.) 

But it did have a complex performance by Diane Lane as an unfaithful wife who barely understands what's come over her. Mother said, "That's a problem Dr. Phil couldn't solve!" Richard Gere reminded me of my brother-in-law.

Got registered at match.com.

January 10, 2003

Dreamed of a guy recalling being a waiter at an NDP summer resort.

We finally took the Xmas lights down.

Went to the Mission:  Possible meeting and told them I didn't want to continue.  It was like getting a tooth pulled.  Dinah, I know you can't quit school just because you don't have the right chemistry with your teacher.  But I'm a grownup so it's my responsibility.

Fried the pork chops tonight.

The group dance lesson tonight was the banquera opening. (Which always makes me think of the Banquereau Bank in the marine weather forecasts on CBC radio in the Maritimes!) It was a pretty tough variation.  Dawn would like to give me a lesson soon.  We did a second line dance straight from Cuba, which quickly got the better of me.

Been looking at some of the matchmaker.com profiles.  I realized that most women aren't like me.

Saw some photographs of Father when he was young.

January 9, 2003

Dreamed of being on a ship; starting high school and trying to evade the WWII draft.

Went to Central Tech to confirm my course registration [for an evening drama course]. They gave me a number to phone, but I ran up against a full message box.

Snowing again.

Went to the dance studio, but they've stopped having Thursday afternoon group classes. (I don't blame them, hardly anyone went to them.)

Went to the Ryerson bookstore and brought the proofreading textbooks [for an evening course on copy editing].

The latest Cinematheque schedule arrived!  I'll have to see Ikiru again, but most of the interesting movies conflict with something else.

Read about H.L. Mencken in New York Review.

Headache returned in the evening.

cybersuitors.com is too expensive for membership.  But matchmaker.com looks promising.

January 8, 2003

Dreamed of visiting London and staying at the residence again; a John Woo movie ending with a baby girl who'd witnessed a shootout getting older; Woo telling an actor that filmmakers can't get ahead in Hollywood; visiting a natural phenomenon called Magnetic Hill on the shore near Baddeck, Cape Breton [it's actually near Moncton] and seeing the bridge over the Toronto Strait where St. Peter's Canal is [it's actually in Cape Breton]; a bicycle tour on the Thames up in the Kew area.

Went down to Dufferin Mall to see if I was interested in this overcoat Mother saw, but I wasn't.

The Mission:  Possible people finally called me about the appointment. (Friday at 14:00.) I'll be glad to have it over with.

Fierce headache! (Last stages of the cold?) Had another bath.

Dinner was overcooked salmon and undercooked potatoes.

Had to skip dancing because of my headache.

Saw shameless James Hewitt [the one who wrote the tell-all book about his affair with Princess Diana] on Larry King Live.

January 7, 2003

Dreamed of a movie on TV about a small airplane overloaded with insurance, statistical info; Bob Hope's brood of children (as in The Seven Little Foys, which I haven't seen) researching the reference book he was working on.

Had another dancing lesson.  I wasn't in top form. (Still getting over the cold.) Cynthia always notices when I'm in a lowly mood.

Moira made curried beef for dinner.

The latest New York Review of Books had a Joan Didion article about the post-9/11 orthodoxy.  Quite interesting.  Today I also read a fatuous Andrew Sullivan article at salon.com attacking Didion for avoiding the issues.  IMHO, he got it completely wrong.  He insisted that free speech wasn't endangered, prompting me to send them a letter pointing out that two US newspaper columnists were fired for criticizing Dubya's behavior on the day of 9/11.

The Nation had a music issue, including an article on Motown.

Went to the Fossil & Haggis karaoke and sang "Danny Boy" and "Can't Help Falling in Love." There were so few people that we were singing two songs at a time, but I'm still recovering from the cold and didn't stay for a second pair.

January 6, 2003

Still no cybersuitors messages.  I revealed too much about myself because I didn't know what else to say.  I guess I shouldn't have revealed I have "geek syndrome." But would it have been better to say nothing?

Had my first dancing lesson since the Xmas break. [I was taking ballroom dancing lessons at the Arthur Murray studio in Royal York.] Cynthia [my instructor] says she spent the break eating.

Finished Him Song.  I liked the part where he told his critical wife, "You knew what I was when you got involved with me."

Still worrying about meeting the Mission:  Possible people. [I was taking job training for people on the autism spectrum from them.]

Starting part two--Shakespeare to Milton--of Christopher Hibbert's The English:  A Social History 1066-1945.

Dinner was spaghetti.

January 5, 2003

Dreamed of being visited by a fundamentalist in the morning, and being stuck in  conversation until 1:30.

Still under the weather.  Haven't gone out all day.

Updated to Netscape 7.

No replies to my Cybersuitors message yet.

60 Minutes had a report on The New York Times crossword-puzzle editor Will Shortz. (That survey suggested crossword puzzles as a career option.)

Read 70 pages of Singing My Him Song.

January 4, 2003

Dreamed of travelling on the BC ferry with the big mountains in the background possibly from the jarring background mountains in The Greatest Story Ever Told.

Mother's still unwell. (I heard her coughing last night.)

Rae [John's daughter] came over for a birthday lunch.

Someone from the gas company installed a new shower head and kitchen tap head and some insulation for the hot water heater.

Saw the rest of Greatest Story, along with special features.

Dinner (McDonald's) wasn't till ca. 19:30 due to Father driving Rae home from her party.

Finished the form for my Cybersuitors messages.  Sent out six.

Saw W.C. Fields in It's a Gift.  It's a scream, especially when he folds the ham so it's all on his half [before dividing it with his kid], and smirks.

[This entry is shorter because it was Saturday and both weekend entries share a single page.]

January 3, 2003

Dreamed of being on a cruise and trying to scuba-dive alone from a platform or something, but I wasn't doing it right. Some kids on the shore were making fun of me, and I got mad and called them immature, then somehow got them on my side.  Also dreamed of a cop show like Barney Miller; with the group going on a sea outing with some fishermen; someone got sidetracked from the outing when they found a corpse in the water.

A sore throat to go along with the headache.

It's snowing, so I shovelled the walk. (Is that smart in the middle of snowing?) Also went out, rented a DVD and deposited two cheques.  My balance is now over $2.5K.

Had a bath this afternoon. Hope I'm not getting a cold like the rest of the family.

Dinner was steak.

Saw the first two hours of The Greatest Story Ever Told, also one of the longest.  Bible movies are more about spectacle than religious ideas.  George Stevens took a painterly approach, with static staging and double exposures and relentless awe.  At least he had an interesting lead actor in Max Von Sydow (the existential knight in The Seventh Seal). You can play the spot-the-guest star game:  There's Kojak as Pontius Pilate!

Slate had more to read than usual.

January 2, 2003

Dreamed of taking my parents to lunch in an Upper East Side park, meeting Happy Rockefeller [Nelson Rockefeller's second wife], discussing the Beano [a British comic]; almost leaving a public place (restaurant? karaoke bar?) in bare feet.

Had lunch with Puitak and Gordon (soup, rice, fish, fruitcake), then we went to the ROM and saw the special exhibits of the St. James ossuary ("Rock of ages, cleft for me") and the 1950s haute couture.  

Dinah, you should be glad you didn't live then.  Sure, it's fun to dress up in fancy clothes and look glamorous, maybe even get put on a pedestal.  But imagine being expected to be like that all the time!  I splurged and charged an $85 membership. (We should get Mother one too.)

Another headache.

Read an interview with Leslie Fiedler at salon.com.  I've switched from Level 4 Netscape to Level 6.

When Malachy did that '60s album, they should have had him singing "Did You Ever See?" [He mentions singing that vulgar song to kids at the start of the book.]

Still steeling myself to send the first cybersuitors messages. (There are already a couple of possibilities.)

Dinner was shepherd's pie, only with turkey.  Felt no need to finish the small leftover amount.

January 1st, 2003

Dear Dinah:

I'm starting these letters to you because my shrink is encouraging me to write [I'd started seeing Dr. Hassan a few months earlier], and a diary seemed a good place to start; also because I want to use my grand Arthur Murray pen. [I was taking dance lessons at an Arthur Murray studio, and they gave me a fancy pen.]

Well, last night I dreamed I had this big essay test to write, and figured out a whole structure, but then got distracted by noise; of this TV ad with Jerry Lewis promoting a phone number to call to identify exotic weeds; of house-sitting for [my brother] John, making the first entry here, and coming home to our old Sackville house.

Right now I'm reading Malachy McCourt's Singing My Him Song. (Granted he isn't as good a writer as his brother Frank, but his life was such a train wreck it's perversely fascinating.) I'm also translating August Strindberg's "An Attempt at Reform" into Chinese and Japanese. [It was in a book The World's Best Short Short Stories, with stories half a dozen pages long or less.]

Finally got around to renewing my Mensa and London Goodenough Alumni Canada memberships.

Just saw the Hard Boiled DVD. [Directed by Hong Kong's John Woo.] Real kick-ass action, though the business with the babies was rather shameless. [Some gangsters took over a hospital!] With Chow Yun-fat, the coolest guy in the world.  It's a boy's movie, I'm afraid.  Of course I got another headache.

We ate roast beef, which I don't much like.

Also saw a documentary about Bergman cinematographer Sven Nykvist by his son. Fascinating, but I would have liked more clips from his movies.

I've been borrowing Moira's dumbbells so often she told me to keep them!

There's something desperate in Dubya's insistence that invading Iraq will benefit the US economy.

Joined cybersuitors.com.