An analog life

Still partying like it's 1999

2006-06-29

Street party!



I came, I saw the nurse who had performed a rather personal exam on me two days before, I ran home in embarrassment.

(Sorry for the indelicate subject matter, but good lord, what are the CHANCES?)

Early mornings = hideously cranky blogger

I'm all smiles and chuckles today. Somehow, without my having opened an attachment in eons, my entire Thunderbird inbox, containing all my emails over the past few years because I'm too dumb to make other folders, has been infected by the Netsky virus and may be lost for good. Cool, eh? I literally just weeks ago spent money buying an update from Symantec, and it regularly scans my folders, and since everything worked yesterday it must have either happened overnight (during which time my computer is not connected to power supplies or the internet) or be due to a new message which I never had a chance to open! I'm baffled. But all the virus program can do is tell me I have a virus. When I try to quarantine, quarantine fails. When I try to delete the infected file, deletion fails. It doesn't allow a manual deletion. I could have figured out just from the fact that my inbox froze up that it was infected. If antivirus programs can't shut the virus out and can't help me deal with it, they are a complete and utter waste of money.

But, again, how did it even get on my computer? I really do not open attachments. I delete anything remotely resembling spam. I've been taking the virus program's recommended actions whenever suspect files pop up. I am ready to rip someone's head off at Norton/Symantec. I actually gnashed my teeth in anger. It takes a lot to make me tooth-gnashing mad!

Of course, this is partly because I worked from 8 am to 7 pm yesterday, and I have to get up at 6:15 am tomorrow to be on a train to London for a conference. I'm tired, and I'm grumpy, and it's only going to get worse. I think Jeff is once again regretting ever agreeing to cohabitate.

And if you've sent me an email in the last little while, to my non-hotmail account, and you never hear back, now you know why!

2006-06-19

My anthem of '87 was 'She's Like The Wind'

I'm watching 'Anthems of the Year 1986-2000' on the middle-aged person's version of music television. 'I Wanna Be Adored' by the Stone Roses was the choice for '89. I think it was my summer anthem of '91, so at least I was only a few years behind. I know there are a few people waiting to hear about all the great shows we've been to, and I'm embarrassed to admit there haven't yet been any. We DID buy concert tickets, but ... (ducks head sheepishly) ... they're for Broken Social Scene. Yes, we came all the way over here to see a Canadian band. We may also see British Sea Power, but since we've already seen them in Toronto, that doesn't really count either. What can I say, Oxford isn't London to start with, most of the bands playing we haven't heard of or have and weren't blown away, or else the show conflicts with something else. Also, I'm old. And on that note, I've been reflecting on my changing attitude toward live music.

The phases of a former music snob’s concert-going life:

Ages 15-16:
Convince someone's older sibling to purchase alcohol months in advance. Get parents to drop you off ten blocks away. Arrive hours early to hang out and hopefully meet some cute boys. Watch opening bands closely, because they could be the next big thing and seeing them BEFORE they were big makes you cool. Then rush the stage when the main act goes on, and watch every minute in adoration. Scream yourself hoarse for an unprecedented fourth encore. Go home and cry yourself to sleep because the object(s) of your affection was/were so close, and your one chance of ever meeting them has passed. Relive the memories for months.

Ages 17-19:
Arrive hours early, but at least now you have driver’s licenses and someone has grudgingly agreed to stay sober (thanks, Chelsea!). Hang out and hopefully meet some cute boys. Watch opening bands closely, because they could be the next big thing and seeing them BEFORE they were big makes you cool. Then rush the stage when the main act goes on, and watch every minute in adoration. Remain standing and cheering for three encores. Hang around afterwards, until the designated driver gets fed up and announces she is leaving NOW. Relive the memories for weeks.

Ages 20-23:
Arrive just before the opening act, jam in as close to the front as you can get, and scrutinize the openers critically. Decide they’re derivative of Sonic Youth or just wanna-be Inspiral Carpets and feel superior. Lose your cool cynicism and go mad for the main act. Stay for the second encore. Afterwards, shrug, say, ‘enh, they were better in ’93.’ Feel superior. Go home and study for your exams because now that school is costing your parents a small fortune you are driven by guilt and fear. Relive the memories until your third consecutive all-nighter to finish those long-put-off essays makes everything that has gone before a blur.

Ages 24-28:
Arrive partway through the openers. Their reviews on Pitchfork Media aren’t that great anyway, so you only want to hear a few songs to know what people are talking about. Enjoy the main act, sing along, tap your foot, have a few drinks. Feel slightly relieved when there is just one encore, since you have to work tomorrow. Analyze the deficiencies of the sound person on the ride home and swear you’re never seeing a band at that venue again because the acoustics are terrible. Relive the memories for a day, since you're seeing two other concerts that same week.

Ages 29-30:
Decide you don’t want to have to stand for more than two hours, and skip the openers. Within minutes of arriving, get irritated by the people around you. Three songs in, realize you are uncomfortably hot and fight to the back to stand near an air vent or open door. Wish you’d brought earplugs because it is LOUD. Suffer from an aching back, try to stretch inconspicuously. Hope that someone in the band will be struck by food poisoning so that there won’t be an encore. When there is an encore, slip out and pride yourself on beating the crowds to the bus and getting home in record time. Relive the memories until your head gratefully hits the pillow. Forget about it entirely.

Age 31:
Go to the symphony instead.

Anyway, I promise to get out there more. Once I catch up on my sleep.

Addendum: Is it as frightening for you as for me that I know the words to 'November Rain'? (an Anthem of '92.) Can't remember my PIN numbers, but can't forget a song I liked for about a week in grade nine. I think that says a lot about my life.

2006-06-16

Life in the fast lane

My goodness, how the time does fly. I don’t seem to be able to get my act together enough to post, since work and the World Cup are consuming my attentions at the moment. There is soccer on TV pretty much all the time right now, and I’m in heaven. Last night I got sucked into ‘A Year in the life of Steven Gerrard’ – my favorite England player (though after last night’s game John Terry is my new hero). Soccer games and soccer documentaries … colour me happy! I am in a bit of a TV power struggle with Jeff, though, and were he not able to go off and watch 24 on his laptop, I'd be watching a lot less footie! I'm trying to get him excited about it, but I think it's a lost cause. Yesterday the receptionists at work wore England shirts and tied flags to their chairs. There was a festive atmosphere all day, and though the game started at 5:00 pm, I’d swear that 95% of the staff had cleared out by 3. What can I say … I love this country!

Some cool things that have happened lately:

I stumbled quite by accident upon J.R.R. Tolkien’s grave in the lovely little cemetery right next to my office.

I’ve found a group of women from work to play soccer with twice a week. It’s the other extreme end of the scale from the first team, so it’s not perfect either. But on the other hand I don’t get so stressed before every bout that severe nausea sets in. There’s no happy medium here! But these people are lovely and I’m having fun. And my knees are much happier.

We got a flyer through the mailbox announcing a street party on our block next weekend, with a screen set up to watch the world cup match, a tug-of-war, a 'beach zone', food and live music. I’m actually pretty excited about it.

I’m starting to get to know people at work and I really like them. It’s funny what a difference that makes in a job. I loved my coworkers at my last job, and was worried I wouldn’t get lucky twice. But what can I say … there are really cool people in publishing wherever you go.

And … in spite of the lack of good shopping, reasonable hours at stores, pharmacies, post offices and banks, and coffee shops open in the evening, Oxford is growing on me. I love that we can bike out to the countryside in 20 minutes, or even walk out to it. There are some stunning villages around. And the city itself can be charming, even with all the tourists pouring in right now. I guess you just get used to the differences, until you don’t really think about them and just get on with your day. Every now and then I get a bout of acute homesickness. But I’m starting to really like living here. Of course, I am susceptible to seasonal affective disorder, so it could just be sunshine-induced mania.

The ideal weekend: an Oxford Saturday ...

... and a London Sunday!


And here's a canal in London, for no reason other than that I once saw a photo of Gwen Stefani going into that floating Chinese restaurant.

2006-06-06

Failing to 'represent' ... again

If you want to find out where the real cultural differences are between Canada and Britain, go to an English pub quiz. It’s like playing the wrong version of Trivial Pursuit – one meant for a totally different generation or something. I normally consider myself rather good at trivia due to my eclectic reading, viewing and surfing habits, but I think I contributed only two correct answers in four rounds last night (Jeff added another one or two). Our British teammates carried the day, and we won! But I felt no pride, only shame at my inability to identify Peter Sutcliffe as the Yorkshire Ripper, William Joyce as Lord Haw Haw, A Touch of Class and Women in Love as the films for which Glenda Jackson won an academy award, Staffa as the Hebridean island on which Fingal’s Cave is located, and Alain Prost as a famous French Formula 1 driver. Even the table of Oxford undergrads near us knew the name of the Yorkshire Ripper, and I’m guessing they were all born in the late 1980s. (My obsession with the Tour de France did, however, provide the name Eddie Merckx for another question.)

The prize was drink vouchers! Lots! And it was fun, and so long as they’ll put up with underperforming Canucks we’ll join the gang again next week. And speaking of gang, did anyone know that the collective noun for elk is a ‘gang’ of elk? I argued that everyone in Canada would just say ‘herd.’ But I’m afraid that to all appearances I officially crapped out on the one question with any Canadian content. Where are the hockey questions? Donuts! Poutine! Leonard Cohen! Louis Riel! Avro Arrow! The seven tribes of the Sioux Nation! Ask me, ask me!

As another example of odd and jarring cultural disconnects, Jeff hasn’t found anyone here familiar with Napoleon Dynamite. Not that it was a great film, but it was so pervasive in Canada that no fewer than three out of nine teams in our Toronto rec soccer league were called ‘The Ligers’ one season. (Which must have been embarrassing for them. How sad.)

Anyway, I have a week to learn about all things British so I can contribute more to next week’s quiz. A good place to start would be football facts, given that the big tourney starts in a matter of days. This past weekend saw a friendly match between England and Jamaica, and everywhere people strung up banners, hung flags from windows, and dressed in England shirts (and in some cases, shorts and socks). Every second house (and every pub) had the game blaring, and on two separate occasions I saw a young man in England colours rushing down the street clutching a bouquet of red and white flowers, perhaps to appease the girlfriend who would be tolerating an afternoon watching the game with the lads. You read one paper and it’s all about how England is fielding the best team in years, and the next will say it’s a motley assortment of cripples, has-beens, and one ludicrously awkward (but endearing) beanpole. Who is right? Time will tell. But I’m hooked, and I just have to find some kindred spirits to watch the games with (since Jeff is possibly the most indifferent football fan EVER).

Q: Youngest player to score in a World Cup?
A: Pele

(But if Theo Walcott pots one for England, he’ll top it!)

Bring on the quiz!

2006-06-03

A ramble in the country

Lots of livestock, tiny old village churches, and blessed, blessed sun.




2006-06-02

The cubicle life

I've never worked in a big office before. The good news is that I have totally lucked out with my coworkers. But anyone can grate on your nerves when you’re proofreading something extremely long and dry and they’ve decided to have all their meetings at their desk that day. Or eat packets of crisps REALLY loudly. Or tap that pen until you want to rip it out of their hands and beat them with it (though I caught myself doing it yesterday while wondering how to define the word ‘exactly’ for people learning English without referring to even trickier words like ‘precisely’ and ‘accurate’ – you try it!). Even the friendly little ‘ding dong’ of Outlook inboxes receiving mail all day long can make me gnash my teeth.

I am also struggling to get used to feeling so visible. Strictly speaking, we’re allowed to use the internet for things like checking personal email accounts on our lunch hour, but my computer screen faces the office door of one of the big cheeses, so I can't bring myself to do anything other than work stuff. I almost hid under my desk to record my voicemail message, because I always redo them twenty-five times until I’m satisfied, and I’d never have lived THAT down if someone overheard. Anyway, like every job there are perks and quirks. On the whole I think I've landed on my feet.

We visited Stratford-upon-Avon last weekend, which is almost as exciting as Stratford, Ontario. Actually, to be honest I was pleasantly surprised by how lovely it was. I was expecting Disneyland-ish faux tudor cottages and screaming kids covered in ice cream. The tour guides, none of whom could have been a day under eighty, scandalized us with tales of Shakespeare’s frolics in London’s red light district and his sonnets to pretty young men. It was great.

Otherwise life hasn't been too exciting, though that's not necessarily a bad thing, I guess. We've discovered some nifty spots in town, such as a Victorian-era museum that Lewis Carroll (Charles Dodgson) took the real Alice to on rainy days. It feels like a curio cabinet of taxidermy, skeletons, and oddities brought back from the travels of colonial Englishmen. No twenty-first-century politically-correct editorializing in these exhibits. There are shrunken heads and critters that were pickled back in the 1700s, still floating in formaldehyde (which apparently needs to be topped up periodically - ick).



Tonight we walked around the Port Meadow after work. It has become my favorite part of Oxford. So easy on the eyes after a day staring at a computer screen.




(The bottom photo is from another day, when we got chased off the meadow by a hailstorm, which you can see in the background.)