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Having a big fancy job doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s always full of big-fancy and exciting things during the day. I’ve just spent the past workday sitting in a conference about the “new face” of the publishing industry. It’s interesting, for sure, when it’s interesting — if you know what I mean — but when things like that are boring, my goodness are they booorrriiinnngggg.

I spend more time thinking about how smart people stay smart by attending lots of these things, but then I wonder if any jackass can become a motivational speaker just by setting up a web site and calling themselves so…

Anyway, on a more exciting note. I started my poetry class on Tuesday night. It’s always fun to start a class, and especially continuing education classes where people are there because they have a love for the subject matter. Oh, and it doesn’t hurt that the teacher is hot — like, totally, wish-he-was my poet boyfriend, smoking, drinking, walking stereotype of hot smart guy, hot.

Now I wish that my poems didn’t totally suck and that they weren’t so bloody self-involved. If anyone wants to read them and tell me otherwise (wink wink) let me know because I’m suffering from a crippling sense of self-doubt this week about everything in my writing life.

…I found this: Farmzone.com. Isn’t it cool?

I’m sorry, but if knowing the fact that there’s 0% chance of precipitation makes me geek then bring on the nerd love because goodness, gracious me I love a good, interesting map!

Oh yeah, Google satellite maps are cool all right, but they won’t tell me that the “Gusts” are 25 km/hour. How neat is that?

Oh, Sophie Kinsella, you are like popcorn, light and airy, able to finish quickly and easily, enjoyable but don’t stick around long. I read most of Can You Keep A Secret on the plane to NYC and the rest that night in my hotel, but forgot to include it yesterday.

Why oh why do I enjoy reading books that are like movies on the page these days? It’s the whole chick lit genre that’s got me so stumped. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again here for the record: I’m convinced chick lit is the Harlequin of my generation. I read these books the same way my mother read romance novels: quickly and efficiently, where all the plots blend into one, where all the media/publishing/magazine jobs blur and all the characters, unlike Lee from Prep, are hidden beauties, and all the men are gorgeous and rich, of course. Where does this life exist?

Let’s start a faction to write real chick lit, oh, wait, it already exists, doesn’t it? In the voices of Toews and others who don’t see romance as a means of escaping the fact that you still need a plot that you can’t poke a hole the size of an elephant through and character development for a novel to, well, be a bloody novel.

So I’m up to what, 20 now for the year? I finished The Second Summer of the Sisterhood and Girls in Pants: The Third Summer of the Sisterhood. Ann Brashares books are like the WB, only on the page. They’re full of angst ridden but spicy teenagers who are strong willed and independent, but still tender and troubled. Perfect for a girl who can’t seem to focus on the television but really misses One Tree Hill. Highly recommended girlie reading; I can’t wait for the movie — honestly.

I also finished J.M. Coetzee’s Elizabeth Costello, which I felt was not one of his better books. Coetzee’s one of my favourite writers. One of the writers where I’ll only read one of his books every couple of years because I’m afraid of running out and if I don’t have his words in my life, it’s just not the same. But this book was too heady, told from a very strange perspective and in a very odd manner — not that his books have ever had a straight forward sense of narrative, but I just couldn’t get into it at all.

Finally, I read a fabulous book yesterday called Prep by Curtis Sittenfeld. It’s a book that’s doing gangbusters in the US, but I don’t know if the buzz has carried its way up here yet or not. In tone it’s kind of like Catcher in the Rye or, more recently, A Complicated Kindness, but it’s not as well-written as Toews novel. It’s an engaging story about a complex yet perfectly ordinary girl who pushes herself to attend boarding school. It’s a coming of age tale that haunts you after you’ve finished reading, but only because you know some daft Hollywood producer’s going to come along and decide they’ll make a movie out of it and fail miserably.

So this past weekend the Rock and Roll Boyfriend played in a series of shows with The Weakerthans, where he’s an auxillary member. So after a fabulous time spending two days in NYC, I dove right into a Band Girlfriend weekend of lots of shows, lots of loud music and even more beer (well, not that much beer because I’m on lots of meds for the disease).

The Constantines are the Canadian rock band — while The Weakerthans will always be the love of my life; the Cons are equated to that awesome drunk sex you have at the end of a long, great night with the really hot boy you’ve had a crush on forever.

I managed to drag my tired ass to all three night shows: Thursday, Friday and Saturday, even though by the end I was pretty sure my bronchitis was back and I was dead sick by Sunday afternoon.

There’s something about a rock and roll show the way everything can be just right: they’ll play your favourite song; the beer will be cold enough and stay cold; the people will all be happy to be there and no one will be obnoxious; and that good feeling stays with you forever. Well, at least until the next morning when you’ve got a wicked hangover and have decided you’re dying because your chest is infected once again and you’re mad because the disease is controlling your life instead of the other way around.

Oh, and did I mention that all of my rock and roll crushes now begin with the letter “W”? The keyboard player from the Cons with his twist-tie legs and boundless energy is named Will; and the lead singer from Cuff the Duke, scrawny and penniless with a new record coming out in the next couple months is Wayne. Ah, to be ten years younger and not an old rock widow with grey hair and too much cellulite on her ass.

Talk about the whirlwind. I left Wednesday morning at 5.08 AM, got back Thursday evening at 9.30 PM, and spent almost 36 glorious hours in New York City. We stayed at Flatotel, which my friend Wing Chun informed me, was where they filmed the first season of America’s Next Top Model. The room was amazing. The hotel was right in midtown Manhattan within walking distance of Times Square, and how amazing is it just to drive past the East River on the FDR (is that right?) with the sun shining, with the windows of the yellow cab rolled down, with the sights of the traffic floating in and out of the lanes like sea gulls on Lake Ontario, and with the idea that for just a moment, walking with the group of people from the NY office, that people might mistake me for a native New Yorker.

We spent most of Wednesday in meetings, and then raced in a cab downtown to buy tickets from the half-price ticket booth for a Broadway show, which may seem utterly tourist of us, but hell, it’s the Great White Way people? We ended up seeing Twyla Tharp’s Movin’ Out, which unlike Momma Mia, is all dance; no cheesy dialogue and no corny storylines made to fit into the music. Instead, Billy Joel’s music seems to fit seemlessly because the choreography is so good. I was really hesitant to see it, but was absolutely amazed it was so moving.

I spent the first years of my life dancing, and did it all through high school; and when I see it there in such a perfect form (the musical is a magical blend of modern, jazz, ballet and Broadway dance) that it makes my heart ache just a little bit for sore toes and knees and thighs and hard work and sweat and all kinds of other good stuff.

After the show, we went to Jamba Juice, and then to sleep at the hotel. The next day I managed to squeeze in some shopping at J Crew (yee-haa!). And then bam! we’re back on a plane and back in Toronto. And the weather was ten degrees cooler, which made me miss NYC even more.

Tomorrow we’re going to NYC for business. It’s my first business trip ever, and I feel like a heroine in a Sophie Kinsella book.

Should be interesting. Shoes anyone?

…If only it would turn into spring. We were hoping. We were holding out hope. But today it snowed for the fifth month in a row here in Toronto. I think Winnipeg is having better weather.

Turns out the world isn’t just mourning the death of the Pope, but the weather seems to be doing a pretty good job of it as well.

It’s interesting to see the world’s reaction to his death, considering, and I mean no ill-intent here, but the man’s been on death’s door for quite some time now, and it’s divine grace that he lasted this long. I mean, really.

Our house is still a project. The basement is full of crap, broken walls, broken toilets, a bathtub, insulation — oh, and the scariest thing ever, at some point before we moved in, mice had eaten almost entirely through the biggest power wire in the house. So, hurrah for fixer-uppers. I never thought I’d hate the house I bought, but right now, I’m hating it and so much more.

Did I mention the fact that it’s April. And it’s still SNOWING.

Oh, and I went to a really shitty seminar yesterday and that just put me in a pissy mood that seemed to continue all weekend.

Where all you want to do is be by yourself but your house is full of people and work won’t stop and you’re tired of the world going to hell in a handbasket.

Things to do:

1. Take the One Tonne Challenge.

It’s not that hard. But it is that hard.

2. Look what’s happening to our glaciers. That’s what useless driving and wasted energy is doing to the most beautiful places in Canada.

3. Use cold water to do your laundry. But you know, this begs the question that if it really doesn’t make a difference, why do we need cold-specific laundry detergent? Is it better for the environment? Is it cleaner, use less fossil fuels? If it’s always been more energy-efficient to use cold water, why are people just realizing it today?

4. Stop throwing away things. Use a broom, not a Swiffer. Buy a wooden cutting board, don’t throw them away. Re-use your baggies, invest in Tupperware, eat your leftovers…oh, I could go on but I’m feeling like I’m lecturing, and no one wants to hear some cranky girl nag the general public on some stupid blog that no one’s even reading.

I’m in the middle of two books, am back at work, and am experiencing the joys of everyday life — doing dishes, making dinner, cleaning the house. Maybe I shouldn’t complain so much about being sick.

Feeling better also means surfing the Internet, which can be good or can be bad, the labyrinth of sites all leading you different places. Here’s where I travelled today:

1. Do I think Leonard Cohen should win the Nobel Prize? Um, that’s a hard one to have an opinion about, I read and loved Beautiful Losers, but haven’t read any of his poetry, but do enjoy his music — but a Nobel Prize? It’s an interesting proposition. And that whole Buddhist monk thing he did, hot. Is that shallow of me?

Oh and some previous winners: Toni Morrison, J.M. Coeztee, Nadine Gordimer, Saul Bellow, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Samuel Beckett, shall I go on?

2. Does this woman not have a job? Who reads 4 books in a day, I could barely manage 4 books in a week. But still, quite the title, the competitive side of me would love to start a challenge where I, or someone I know, has a comparable amount of reviews on Amazon.ca.

3. Yay for writers! Maybe we can finally move away from the conception that online writers are hacks and content should always be free. Too bad it’s an American lawsuit…now I can’t charge all those crazy web sites and kids that stole various articles from the History Television site when I was writing it.

4. Some fancy-schmancy dude is making it his personal ambition to debunk and cut apart Microsoft Word’s grammar check. But I do kind of agree it’s for writers who already understand the basics of grammar, but shouldn’t it be begging the question more so why kids aren’t be taught grammar anymore and are therefore looking to an automated program to just “fix” their problems? Enough complaining about Microsoft, start complaining about the education system. And while you’re at it, buy a copy of Eats, Shoots and Leaves.

5. What a lovely blog from writer Michael Winter. But the comments are kind of annoying. It’s one thing for the writer to write entries as such, poetic, flowing, lyrical, etc., but quite another for Joe Blow to feel like he can comment in the same fashion. Holy pretentious Batman.