Forwarding address

I've switched platforms again!
I'm going to try WordPress, it seems like there's a little bit more flexibility with design and such, so we'll see how it goes.
You can find me here:
http://kitkatsmeow.wordpress.com/

~K.

A little less swimming, a little more synching

Lesson: keeping five-year-olds afloat in swimming lessons actually keeps you in decent shape.

I've been coaching synchronized swimming for six years; I've been part of a club for 12 years. Being at the pool every week for anywhere from three to six or eight hours is nothing new to me.

It's not like I was in the water for that entire time (though if there was an exhibition coming up, I can think of a couple of times we spent eight hours straight in the pool, desperately trying to nail down a routine last minute) but I'm realizing now it made a difference. Just like the year I coached twin five-year-old girls and would spend about an hour and a half treading water in the deep end apparently made a difference. My knees and hips hated me afterwards, but apparently it made a difference to how in-shape I was.

I haven't really been in the water at all this year since I left the club I've always swam with, but with having weekdays act as my weekends, the pool schedule actually lines up quite nicely and there isn't really a reason I shouldn't be in the water.

Until I went last night and realized how out of shape I am. Understand that doing a full length of the pool completely underwater, without coming up for a breath once is not a challenge for me. Whipkicking hard enough to get my torso completely out of the water in a body boost is nothing new. Spinning upside down and kicking my legs into splits without sinking is something I learned a long long time ago.

Last night, I walked out of the leisure centre and felt like jello. I got into my car and my left hip knotted; even now, if I shift the majority of my weight to my left, it does some complaining.

I don't like this at all. I much prefer some kind of exercise that I can do without, thinking, I guess for lack of better word, or scheduling, I guess — now I'm realizing that the fact I walked 10 blocks to school every day (yes, every day, no matter the weather, except for a couple times in third and fourth year when I knew I'd be at school until four in the morning) also probably played a part as well.

The thing I want to know is, when did exercise become, well, exercise?

Daydreaming

A couple of years ago, someone told me that it was impossible to dream about someone else unless that person gave you (obviously subconsciously) permission to dream about them.

I don't know enough about how dreams and the subconscious work to go any further with that claim, but it's kind of an interesting thought.

Especially when I had a dream last night about two people who have not been a major part of my life for roughly a year — in one case, not part of my life at all for over a year — and the fact that they're both from different areas of my life, so while they were both in my dream, at the same time in the same location, they don't actually know each other.

I find it weird to tell people that I had a dream about them, so I'm not going to use first initials like I normally do — call these two X. and Y. (I almost think there was one more person in my dream, but it's a dream and kind of fuzzy and I can't remember anymore.) I knew X. for about two years and worked closely with him for about two months; I've known Y. for probably about five years and distance is pretty much the thing that means we can't be a more consistent part of each other's lives, though I got to talk to him last week, which was good.

I dreamt I was teching at the theatre — something else I haven't done in just over a year — and X. and Y. were both there. Y. was in the background and interacting with X. more than anything else, but while I was trying to ignore X., X. was determined to get my attention.

I knew I was at the theatre, because obviously that's the only place I've ever tech'd, but the board didn't look like the theatre board — the tower with all the MD cards and everything was in front of me and looked like a bigger version of a VCR (which it definitely doesn't look like in real life) and the board might have been in front of X., who was to the left of me; it looked like we were at the work bench in my dad's garage. Part of the reason I was ignoring X. was because I was missing some CDs (which we also didn't use) and someone told me one of the actors had them, so I had to find those, then when I tried to find the right track, I nearly reset everything. I don't know how to explain it well, but it was kind of at that point, X. was like, if you pay attention to me, I can help you sort this out. So it was like, OK, I guess so — then I turned around from doing something else and he's fiddling away, changing everything from the way I'm used to having things set up, and it's like, what the hell?

The frustrating thing with dreams is there's always parts that you know happened but you can't quite remember — I remember Y. was part of the dream, but I can't remember what exactly he was doing there, and I think someone else (who is from yet another part of my life and has no connection to the other two) was in my dream, but I don't remember who or why.

Though, the good news I guess is that at least it was in English and I haven't had too many problems explaining this dream. When I was in immersion, we though the teachers were joking when they said we'll start to dream in French as we learn more of the language— it's actually true. Even now, sometimes I'll try to explain a dream to a friend, and I'll be stumbling for words before I realize that the reason I'm having problems is because I'm talking in English, to an anglophone friend and the dream was in French.

Shiny things (read: distractions)

The bookshelf is beginning to rule my life. Every time I have some free time, I think, "I have to read." Which, by the way, completely takes the joy out of reading (so I'm trying to avoid that too). And every time I pick up something that is not originally from my bookshelf, I think, "I am never going to get through my bookshelf."

There's a simple solution. I could just go through it and toss the books that are sitting there that I've started and have never finished because they're not up my alley, books that have appeared on my shelf and I've never started them because I have no idea how they got there.

But I don't really want to do that, as long as it's going to take me to do this.

And so it turns out that I'm writing a lot of blog posts about books (and copy editing). What can I say? Some people live with cats, I live with books.

Right now, I've detracted and started reading the Macdonald Hall books, by Gordon Korman, because I was talking with someone about No Coins, Please, and I remembered how much I loved the Macdonald Hall books, with Bruno and Boots.

There's a lot more to the series than I remember, though this is probably because we owned Go Jump in the Pool, and all the other ones would have been borrowed or loaned. Unfortunately, the library didn't have the complete series, so I think I'm missing the first one and one other one, but oh well, I guess. (Another excuse to read them all again later?)

They may be kids' books (they weren't even in the YA section. I definitely had to go to the kids' section to find them) but they're still good for a laugh. I also picked up Losing Joe's Place, which is not part of the Macdonald Hall series but I still love, and I can get through about a book and a half a day, which isn't bad either.

One of the fleeting thoughts I had when I was reading The War with Mr. Wizzle was how much times have changed — besides one other mention in another book that Elmer Drisdale has a computer station, the Magnetronic 515 is the only computer in the book.

In case you haven't figured it out already, I love the fact that I can read these books as an adult and still literally laugh out loud while reading certain parts. Maybe it helps that the books are set in Canada, but these sound like real people, that could have grown up and still be kicking around today. So considering the time warp with the computer, I started thinking — how old would Bruno and Boots and their peers be today? (Not actually that old, when you do the math, in case you were wondering — maybe mid-40s?)

One of the great things about these books is that besides some of the time stamps, like the computers or lack thereof, there isn't really a defining time period of when this was set (the copyrights on the books vary anywhere from 1979 to 1995) — I would have to probably read the first book to be completely sure, but as far as I know, we don't even know how old Bruno and Boots are. My best guess would be 11 or 12, if they were at the boarding school for seven years (there's seven books) and graduated.

But I think I'm thinking way too much about it. They're really fun reads though — so glad I left my bookshelf for another week or so.

Consider this a placeholder

I'm not quite ready for the month to get the best of me yet, but I've had a really long day — I've been up since 4:30 a.m. — and I really need a nap.

That sentence sounds less ridiculous when I remind you that the time change is tonight and soon, it will be quarter to seven, not quarter to eight — not like that's a bad time to crawl into bed though. :) (And, if you were wondering, even though Lloyd is on the provincial border and Saskatchewan doesn't do daylight savings time, the time change does not occur in the middle of the street. The boundary is actually a couple of kilometres to the east still.)

So if I get a couple of hours of sleep and can come back to this before midnight, I will. Otherwise, just consider the following as a placeholder for now.

"It's not that I'm a perfectionist, it's just that I care more than the average bear." – paraphrase of a Facebook status from third-year university.

Edit: Nov. 6
Sometimes, I wish I cared just as much as the average bear (read: journalist/person), not more. It would probably make my life less stressful and a little less busy.

When I'm working with InDesign, our desktop publishing program, I have about a 95 per cent chance of looking at an indent and knowing, just by looking, that it's not set at 0.125, or looking at some copy and knowing there's two spaces after a period, without actually doing anything.

Quite honestly, though it's a handy trick to have when you're copy editing, it's kind of annoying. Because once I find one two-spaces-after-a-period in submitted copy, I have to go back and check all the other beginnings of sentences, because history has shown that if someone does it once, they probably do it every time.

It's really come down to a battle of, who's going to notice? And I don't like that battle at all, one, because I'm going to notice and know I left it without checking it or fixing it, hoping no one would notice. Two, it leaves room for attitude, in that if you don't stick to strict consistency, it leaves room for "Well, I don't feel like double-checking that rule today. (undertone: who's going to notice?)"

I'd asked a couple friends for arguments for and against CP Style awhile ago, and someone made the comment that it's not even about being consistent down the page, but throughout the paper.When I saw G. in Edmonton a couple of weeks ago, he took that even further and said it's about being consistent eight months from now.

Being consistent on a page and through a paper is doable. So is being consistent eight months from now, but like I said, at that point it really becomes a battle of who's going to notice? (Note: my solution is to set up a doable consistency goal so that you don't drive yourself crazy and that your soul dies from all the copy editing mistakes, but I'm still working on setting those guidelines for myself. The other option is to just memorize the entire CP book, and I guess I'm well on my way to doing that too.)

This is that whole caring more than the average bear thing, and being frustrated when people don't even care as much as the average bear. I got a lot of flak about it in third year from someone else in the journalism program, and funny enough, though we both more or less stuck to our guns in that I was going to care more than the average bear and he wanted me to relax a little, we became sort of friends — and I might have relaxed, a little bit, though by now I might have forgotten how to do that (relax).

I'm in this funny in between place where I care more than the average bear, but I'm still far from a perfectionist. When I hear that voice from third year in my head, it helps a little bit with the frustration, but I'm still not sure.  

Losing my voice

It's only Nov. 4, and I almost didn't blog tonight. Part of it is like I said at the beginning, I don't think I have enough interesting things to say to blog more than once or twice a week.

The idea of NaNoWriMo is quantity — 50,000 words in a month. As I understand it, it's just about writing, and getting your thoughts and story lines down on paper (or computer screen). The quality comes later, if you want it to, going through the manuscript completed over a month and actually doing something with it, refining and editing.

I don't know how well that idea translates to NaBloPoMo. I don't want a blog just to be about quantity. The one thing that made me post tonight, however, was the idea that of sheer quantity, eventually something has to be good.

I mentioned earlier that I don't like my writing voice. This is probably because the journalism program I went through — it has since changed since Mount Royal became a university, and when it comes to journalism intakes and degrees and MRU and the Ministry of Advanced Education that's a whole other story in itself — had its focus on straight journalism. We were taught to write a news story, and, as I put it to a instructor at an American school during ACP 2010 in Kentucky, "We have our voices beaten out of us."

He was a little concerned — "Who is beating you?" — but relaxed a little when I explained that it was just that there wasn't a lot of opportunity for us to write editorials or personal journalism, the focus was on straight news stories. Like I said, the program has changed a bit, and if some of the second-year work I edited last year is any indication, more are able to keep their voices, in both good and bad ways. Good in that they have a voice, bad in that sometimes they don't know when to quiet their voice and write straight news.

So I'm posting tonight because I want to find my voice. Even when I'm writing a column, there's times when it sounds too much like a blog, and I have to back up. It's been so long since I've used my voice, it doesn't feel right. It's a little unsure and shaky and I just don't like it.

But maybe by the end of the month I will have found it.

Musical numbers

I originally tried to write this as a column earlier in October, but then the BBM outage happened, and that was a lot more fun to write about. The idea came back to me yesterday though, when I was shooting photos at the Terri Clark concert.

If you're looking for the short version, I tried to sum it up in 140 characters after Alberta Arts days at the beginning of October:

That weekend, I shot three different concerts — U22 musicians working in a songwriting circle, the actual U22 concert, and One More Girl. The thing that I thought was kind of cool was that in all the groups, there was always one musician who looked like they had so much music built up inside of them, and the concert was the only way they knew how to let it out, but they were doing so in an as controlled manner as possible.

Usually, for the bigger name concerts, it's not the main musician who I notice with this trait (not to detract from the main musician, but it's true). In the case of One More Girl, it was their guitar player. I'd actually seen him before, he's a Canadian session artist that had played a Buddy Holly tribute concert in Bonnyville earlier in the summer. (Note: specifically to him, the other cool thing to watch is that he plays left-handed. If you know me, you might know why this is a big deal to me, and it's not the obvious answer, that I'm left-handed.)

But all the musicians – the One More Girl guitar player, Jordan Grant-Kaminski from U22, and the drummer for Terri Clark's band – they all have the same attitude about them.

Like any performer, it feels like they're very aware of the audience, but at the same time, it doesn't really matter. It seems like they would play like this whether there was an audience or not.

In the end though, it comes back to you can literally see how much music they have built up inside of them, and I think that is so so cool. The best example of the three is Grant-Kaminski — when it was his turn to play during the U22 concert — there were four artists in total — he performed on both the piano and the guitar. When he was on the guitar, he really knew how to play the mic. I'd guess he's about 5'10'' or so, and he adjusted the mic accordingly, but as he played, he'd lift himself up on his toes during some notes, only to settle back down and then shift and lift himself up again, as if he just couldn't stay still, the music was that good.

By nature, I'm a fiddly person — after crashing around the office today, dropping some things off my desk and knocking over a mug of water, I was teased that everything around me should be nailed down; I also fell off my chair yesterday, just sitting at my computer — so I guess the other part of it is that I'm slightly jealous these musicians have found a way to channel their energy, and seem so relaxed and laid-back about it.

edited Nov. 5.