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Okay, yes, I know. I was rather harsh in my post about the opening ceremonies of the Vancouver Winter Olympics. I'm a cynic; what can I say? And I'm extremely picky and fussy about musical performances and music in general. And the ceremonies gave me a lot to moan about. So I moaned. Maybe even griped.

I went into this whole Winter Olympics thing with a distinctly jaded outlook. I'd been hearing about the lack of snow in Whistler and the possibility of the Blackcomb resort filing for bankruptcy protection, and I started thinking that the whole thing was going to be a major train wreck. To make matters worse, I then read this article by Vancouver's poet laureate Brad Cran stating his reasons for not participating in the Olympic celebrations, and I my blood started to boil a bit. When large corporations start telling people what they can and can't do, I get angry. Real angry.

But the whole corporate thing is fodder for a post of its own. And believe me, I will return to it.

So I wasn't really planning to watch much Olympic coverage. I knew I'd end up seeing at least some of it, because CTV was basically suspending all regular programming except for the news and broadcasting non-stop Olympic coverage for the entire seventeen days of the games. Read the rest of this entry »

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The errant blogger returns. Better late than never, I suppose.

I do have a topic for today, but before I get to it, I feel an odd compulsion to share with you the rather bumpy and circuitous route by which it arrived in my brain. Synapses work in mysterious ways, and this is a fairly good example.

Bear with me here. The link density in this first bit will be rather high.

One of my Twitter friends, who goes by the handle @AliasGrace (and whom I met in person for the first time at PodCamp Halifax two weekends ago), has a blog entitled East Coast by Choice, for which I wrote a guest post three weeks ago. She's had a number of guest posts over the time she's been blogging, the most recent of which, entitled "The Death of Barrington Street?" and written by Paul MacKinnon (Twitter handle @downtownpaul), was a really interesting read.

Paul's post mentioned a number of well-known buildings on Barrington Street, but the one that caught my attention was the Green Lantern building. Now, being the geek that I am (you knew that, right?), you'd think I'd have known Halifax had a Green Lantern building. For some reason, though, I didn't remember the name at all. But, of course, I was tickled by it. So I went to my dear friend Google to see if I could find some pictures.

And find them I did. The Coast (our local artsy/cultural/gritty/emo/freebie newspaper) has an article about the building, complete with historical pics from the time when the building actually housed the Green Lantern restaurant. The building's official name is the Keith building, and it currently houses Pogue Fado, a traditional Irish pub. Nice to know the green is still there, anyway.

Still with me? Good. 'Cause I'll be getting to the point any second now. Read the rest of this entry »

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Well, as this is the sixth of January, the Christmas season is officially over. Today is Ephiphany, at least according to some calendars, and is the first day after the Twelve Days of Christmas (or Christmastide). I had originally thought that Epiphany was the twelfth day of Christmas, but it turns out I counted on my fingers wrong.

[I'll still wait until tomorrow to take my Christmassy banner off the blog.]

Anyway, on to the blopic at hand. On New Year's Day, I started writing what was to be my first post of 2010. It was all about how horrible 2009 had been, and it got rather long. It also ended up containing a lot of really personal stuff and a few passages that I now consider to be bitter whining.

So I decided to sit on it a while, and I've now come to the conclusion that this stream of negativity should not be posted. I no longer have anything against sharing personal stuff on this site, but some of the things I wrote on January 1st really went a bit too far. Read the rest of this entry »

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Okay, so I'm really into Christmas this year. Like, crazily, goofily, wackily into it. I put the tree up before November was over (yes, it's artificial) and put lighted garlands around a couple of the doorways probably a week later. The ornaments have been finding their way onto the tree (and other parts of the abode) in dribs and drabs over the last couple of weeks.

I've even got a lot of my shopping done. This is uncharacteristic of me.

And oh, yeah. I, um, also decorated the blog. Like I said, goofy, wacky…

As the song says, "We need a little Christmas…"

2009 has been, not to put too fine a point on it, The International Year of Crap. Stress, disease, death, and bad news have appeared at every turn. Yes, I exaggerate. Yes, I do it on purpose because… hello… that's what it felt like.

So, Christmas is incredibly important to me this year. I'm going to make the most of the season and basically enjoy the hell out of it. Read the rest of this entry »

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So what's the deal with me anyway?

I embarked on this blogging thing back in August with guns blazing and pedal squashed to the metal. I wrote a blog entry every day for seven weeks without so much as a hiccup (a couple of cheats, but no hiccups). I was on a roll, baby. I was smokin'. I was in the zone. I was—

You get the idea.

And I was professional about the whole thing. I wrote movie reviews, music reviews, book reviews, superhero reviews, and the occasional thoughtful or humorous blurt.

Life was good.

Or was it? Read the rest of this entry »

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The blogging has taken second seat to NaNoWriMo this past month, but that flurry of fictional formulating is now at and end for me. Today is actually the last day of NaNoWriMo, but I finished my story the day before yesterday, with a total word count of 66,333 (a supremely bizarre number, but I'll take it as a good omen). I've submitted my lengthy file to the NaNo website and am a confirmed winner.

Unsuprisingly, this feels incredibly good. First of all, to have written over 66,000 words in twenty-eight days is a major accomplishment. But for me, that wasn't even the best part. The capper for me was actually finishing a novel. I've started novels before; I've even written many, many words and many, many pages of novels before. Three novels, to be exact. But until this very month, I have never before in my life brought a novel-sized story to a full and satisfying ending.

And it all happened rather magically, I must say… Read the rest of this entry »

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Mind the Gap

Sigh…

I just don't think I'm going to be able to cover my tracks this time.

I will confess that I have occasionally missed a day of posting on this blog and have written two posts the following day, backdating one of them. That's cheating, but I did it anyway. I wanted all the calendar squares to be filled in.

This time, I've got nowhere to run and nowhere to hide. I've gone an entire week without writing a post, and though I was tempted to write six or seven posts over a couple of days and backdate them, I just don't think I'm going to be able to manage it.

I was doing so well. Seven weeks without a break. Even with the little cheats, it was still an accomplishment. So, yes, I'm disappointed that this gap has occurred. Read the rest of this entry »

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