Dreamed of being in a room in London with a guy reading in a Slavic language; reading a new issue of The Nation on the front steps of the Mount Allison University athletic centre; seeing a transcript of British and American leaders in a press conference commenting on an Israeli police pronouncement, "That's aud![sic]"; comparing it to John Wayne's True Grit line "The hogs must have dragged him!" (explaining in the courtroom why the body of an outlaw he'd been hunting turned up in a position that suggested Wayne had shot him in the back); Billy Bob Thornton playing a convict.
Slept almost till noon.
Went shopping.
Finally got around to reading the Donald Duck comic. ("From tiny minds, scary ideas grow...")
Dreamed of reading a drive-in cinema schedule with a movie featuring Steve Martin as a giant octopus; a tour group visiting an old castle with my dance teacher Cynthia explaining about the lavatories.
At McClelland & Stewart I spent the whole day proofreading the Screech Owls book. I've done the bulk of Murder at the Winter Games, which is about the team coming to play in a tournament in Utah when the captain of the Hollywood team, son of a big star, gets kidnapped. Our heroes trace the kidnappers to an underground tunnel system and figure out that they killed a guy by stabbing him in the heart with an icicle. I ate sukiyaki for lunch in Village by the Grange.
Father spent all day driving John to a place near the Michigan border and back. I went out and got KFC for dinner for Mother and me.
Had the last Creative Writing class. Mr. Campbell read us two Chekhov stories. My story, courtesy of Mother, went over pretty well.
Didn't get much sleep last night. I felt sleepy in the afternoon. Glad I only had to combine the job trial and the night-school class during this week.
Dreamed of driving a car along a road covered with tall grass and running over a man sleeping in the sun, who was slightly hurt; getting a mouthful from him about how I was a terrible driver (I've never learned to drive); after getting driving lessons from him and just before being picked up by my parents, saying to him, "I may learn to drive, but chances are you'll continue to be a little prick!"
In the morning there was snow on the ground.
My first day at McClelland & Stewart was very interesting. In the morning I compared the pages of On Six Continents with the galley version. (I found a couple of mistakes that the copy editor had missed!) That book's a memoir by Lieutenant-Governor James Bartleman, about his years in the foreign service. He was all over the place in his time.
In the afternoon I checked the table of contents and index of an anthology of poems by a poet called MoKay. then I compared the galley to the manuscrip for a book in the Screech Owls series, juvenile novels about a hockey team who solve mysteries.
Didn't have time to go home for dinner so I ate West Indian fast food in Village by the Grange.
Went to the last opera rehearsal for this term. In January we start rehearsals on the stage!
Dreamed of Is Harry on the Boat? (a smutty British tourism comedy series set in the Mediterranean, which I've never watched more than a few minutes of) but set in the Caribbean and starring Catherine Zeta-Jones; a movie of the novel Moby-Dick.
Woke up in the middle of the night and thought about the Middle East conflict. I feel sheer disgust at the Bush Administration's blunders and dishonesty. Even when they do the right thing, they do it at the wrong time, in a disastrously wrong way. Then they fall back on self-serving soundbites like "They hate freedom!"
It was warm in the morning, then it got cold all at once.
Went to see Dr. Hassan in the afternoon. Afterward I bought a Donald Duck comic at the nearby comics store. (They threw in a Classics Illustrated Junior comic book of the fairy tale "The Pearl Princess." I was late getting back because the TTC was slow.
Dinner was the rest of the pork roast.
Finished The Book of Merlyn and started Larry McMurtry's Lonesome Dove.
Saw The Weather Underground at the Carlton, a documentary about the radical group that set off bombs in the early 1970s. I would have liked to know more about how they came to dominate a big faction of the collapsing Students for a Democratic Society.
Went to the opera fundraiser in the afternoon. (It was held at the Columbus Centre.) I saved their skins by going out to buy a hundred plastic cups just beforehand. We sang the famous sextet from Lucia and the wedding number from Don Giovanni. There were also a lot of solos and duets and stuff. We brought a surfeit of pastry, and afterward I was able to save most of my gingerbread and take some other stuff home. (The pie made a mess!)
Dinner was spaghetti.
Felt worn out in the evening. (All that standing at the fundraiser...)
Started reading Abraham Lincoln: A Documentary Portrait (a collection of his letters and other writing) while waiting for the computer to boot.
