February 14, 2003

Got up at 8:03.

The parents and Moira went to Kingston, so I'll be on my own for a couple of days. (They left one of their suitcases behind.)

Went to the library to take out a William Anderson biography of Laura Ingalls Wilder.  It's written for a child's reading level, so Puitak should like it.  I also glanced at the latest issue of Premiere.

Afterward I went to the video store to see if I could find something I wouldn't rent when there are others around, but I couldn't.

Davis taught a rumba class. There were few people so they had one class, together instead of the usual three.  There were only about a dozen people at the dance party, including teachers.  Natalia was back for the first time since Christmas.  She was vacationing in the United Arab Emirates!

Finished Freddy Goes to Florida.  Walter R. Brooks was quite a clever writer.

My translation of the Chinese novel is speeding ahead.  The Communist Party is out to recruit the student heroine, and using the whole Qinghua University student body to that end. (Seems like a paranoia fantasy.)

February 13, 2003

Got up at 9:39.

Dreamed of being on a train just starting and unable to find a seat.

Moira and I went to see The Bay of Love and Sorrows at the Carleton.  I was mainly interested in the setting:  New Brunswick in the early '70s--the time and place of my youth--but it was a pretty effective drama on its own. [They showed the film on the CBC too.  I want to read David Adams Richards' novel someday!]

Afterward we had Thai fast food at a place in College Park.

Davis taught another salsa class.  Half the studio has gone to Montreal for the big competition there.  Rita and I were the only students for this class. (Rita's OK, but she's a bit hard to lead.) Afterward I told Dawn Moira had said that while most of us dancers look like we've learned their steps, she looks like she's just doing them.  She said, "She's so sweet!" When Davis speeded up the salsa, I said "Ramming speed!" [A reference to the galley sequence in Ben-Hur.] Davis actually got it!

Read over 80 pages of Freddy Goes to Florida.

February 12, 2003

"Bang, bang-bingle BOOM! went the thunder"--Freddy Goes to Florida

Got up at 9:13.

Dreamed of a longer version of Brideshead Revisited (like the original wasn't already pretty long); the place where our New Brunswick cottage was [near the eastern end of the border with Nova Scotia] now being a city with paved streets; wanting to leave that town, but my clothes were missing; staying at the Casinorama hotel and seeing Montreal Canadiens and Lionel Richie in the elevators; early Warner Brothers cartoons in colour [this was before they really introduced colour] about an orchestra, in the Disney Silly Symphonies style.

Went shopping.  There were out of Cheerios again.

Another headache.

Dinner was pork chops (which I fried).

In the acting class we did sketches using gibberish. (I did one as coach of a losing team at halftime). Then I played Frankenstein's monster coming to life, being rejected by the Bride and wailing.  I was also in groups doing Italian opera (I did a duet with one woman, dumped her for another, and got stabbed in the back), a WWII submarine movie, and a western. (I was born once and died twice.)

Another group did a soap opera in which a man makes love to three women in turn, who fight, then make love to each other. Our teacher said it was like Italian porn!  And some people did a skit of astronauts exploring space, and I thought they were hippies getting stoned!

February 11, 2003

Dreamed of the south side of the quarry [we lived near one when I was growing up in Sackville, N.B.] (And got a  stiff right shoulder.)

Got up at 7:34.

Finished The Ill Made Knight on the way back from Dr. Hassan.  It's a surprisingly funny work.  I was hopting to borrow a juvenile biography of Laura Ingalls Wilder, but I couldn't find it.  Instead I borrowed Freddy Goes to Florida, the first book in Walter R. Brooks' Freddy the Pig series.

Dinner was stew.

After the copy editing class, I mentioned to Shelley two things that bugged me in The New York Times.  One was the Chile correspondent dismissing pre-Pinochet Chile as "a backward banana republic." Besides being ignorant, "banana republic" was an offensive cliche, "backward" was redundant (all banana republics are backward) and the whole phrase was rhetorical journalism better suited to The Toronto Sun or The New York Post.

The other thing was a report that parenthetically referred to Mumia abu-Jamal as "a Philadelphia activist who killed a policeman" instead of "convicted of killing." [That may be the normal procedure, but the article itself was about people challenging his conviction!] Shelley said, "You'll make a good copy editor, James."

Catherine Zeta Jones: "This is not about money.  This is absolutely not about money!" (Methinks thou dost protest too much.)

Dawn was very well dressed in a black & grey combination.

February 10, 2003

Dreamed of being outside the McDonald's restaurant in Amherst, N.S.

Got up at 8:59.

Cynthia and I went over the rumba routine Pat taught us.  I volunteered for the next formation.

Dinner was roast chicken.  For dessert we had the strawberries Puitak brought over Friday night.

In the evening Davis taught a salsa class.  Not much happening today, is there?

February 9, 2003

Got up at 10:38.

Went to the Royal to see Frida, but it turned out that the schedule had contained a mistake and it was another movie.

Still a headache.  Father suggested it's from the high pressure system.

We had dinner at the Ethiopian restaurant The Queen of Sheba with Donald, John and his daughters.  Nice and spicy.

Saw the second part of Lonesome Dove.

February 8, 2003

Got up at 10:22.

John and Rae come over for lunch.  We had spaghetti.

Fierce headache.  I had to have a bath.

Dinner was risotto with jumbo scallops, which Moira cooked. I didn't come close to finishing it.  I've just never liked risotto.

We rented the DVD of Douglas Sirk's Imitation of Life.  It was unintentionally funny.  The first scene already had me imagining the Carol Burnett version.  Notice that in '50s movies a woman had to choose between work and marriage, and couldn't have both. (This is one of the movies that Todd Haynes' Far From Heaven was a reworking of.)

Spent hours online looking up the comic books Swing With Scooter and The Two-Gun Kid.