I don't live here, it's just a timeshare.

A Dangerous Pasttime

2010-07-22T21:05:42Z

Sometimes I feel like Gaston from the Disney Beauty and the Beast movie. Just in that one scene though.

Leaving me alone to think for more than about five minutes is generally not a good thing. Thinking turns to over-thinking, which turns to reclusion, which leads to depression, which leaves me more time to think, and then my period starts, which blows the rest of the month to hell.

I have difficulty introspecting productively.

bilingual bonus: Toronto this week

2010-06-25T12:39:07Z

Cette semaine, le centre-ville de Toronto se rassembla comme un labyrinthe pour les rongeurs qui soient utilise pour les expériences scientifiques. Il y a une clôture massive sur chacun des rues. Toutes les intersections ont leurs propres foules de policiers et d'autres types sécuritaires. J'ai vu des policiers de plusieurs gendarmeries que juste celui de Toronto; les policiers de Montréal, du Gendarmerie Royal, et même la Sureté de l'Ontario sont ici, en incluant tous les gendarmeries de les régions autour de nous. C'est effrayant, spécialement quand ils vous demandent de voir vos cartes d'identité juste car vous soyez en le secteur. La plupart de les places que moi et mes collègues passerons notre temps libres sont fermés, et les restes sont inondé par des gendarmes. Les seules automobiles sur les rues sont des voitures de polices, et les limousines qu'ils escortent. C'était Benjamin Franklin qui a dit <> On n'a pas de sens de liberté cette semaine, ni sureté quoique tous les gendarmes du monde soient la.

Je travail pour un fournisseur de service d'internet, avec un bureau au centre-ville. Avec le sommet ce fin de semaine, c'est assez difficile de voyage de chez moi jusqu'au bureau à cause de tous les bouleversements du TTC. La plupart des gens travaillent chez eux, mais on besoin quelqu'un à bureau en cas d'une panne de service pour nos clients. Je suis située tous prés, donc, j'ai décidé de marcher de mon appartement en Parkdale au bureau chaque matin cette semaine, et de retourner en même façon chaque soir.

Car que le temps cette semaine est à la même fois chaud et orageux, c'était nécessaire de porter des vêtements légers et confortables. Les forces sécuritaires du sommet ont nous dit de nous habillons détracté, pour qu'on nous ne présentons comme des cibles pour les manifestants. Ils n'ont pas mentionné comment d'éviter deviner cible pour les policiers, par contre! Évidemment, nous ne sommes pas capable de marcher 4 kilomètres en portons costume de ville et des talons haut. Donc, j'ai porté comme vous me voyez aujourd'hui: t-shirt, pantalons informels, et des baskets. C'était tellement différent au centre-ville tandis que tous les avocats et financiers ont laissé leurs costumes -- les gens qui sont habillés en façon plus cérémonieux sont les policiers. C'était nécessaire d'avoir avec toi tout le temps un parapluie, à cause des orages. La météo chez Toronto est assez bipolaire cette semaine, lorsqu'on a du pluie et soleil en même dix minutes.

Mon bureau est vraiment tranquille, au moins. Sur notre niveau il y a juste moi et mon gérant. Il a passé la journée en large regarder le match d'Italie et Slovénie ce matin. Usuellement, dans notre bureau placer en façon ouverte, avec cinq gens au téléphone avec des clients et encore dix plus qui parlent entre eux-autres, c'est bruyante. Je n'ai jamais été harceler par des gendarmes cette semaine, bien que j'entende beaucoup de plaintes des autres gens qui travaillent et vivent au centre-ville. C'est chanceux, mais j'aurai été plus contente lorsque tous les dignitaires étrangers et les nôtres seront retournés chez eux.

I couldn't find a good Godfather quote, but I'm sure one's out there.

2010-05-31T16:11:04Z

I was going to write about the weird relationships in my family. Since seeing a large pack of them last week, it's been on my mind. I had a talk with my father about la famiglia this weekend, as they've been weighing on his mind as well, and decided he would would not be well-served by such a post. Which is a shame, because every family has a few great trainwrecks, which certainly makes for entertaining reading (not to mention entertaining writing!). I realised though, it would be a bad idea for similar reasons to why blogging about work would be a bad idea.

I don't blog about work for a couple of reasons:

1) It's unprofessional.
Well, mostly. I firmly believe that it is possible to blog about your job in a professional way, but too many people think 'blogging about work' translates as 'rant about my coworkers and customers and company policy', which is Not Professional.

2) It's a good way to get fired.
Even if you do blog in a restrained and slander/libel-free manner, a lot of companies get a little knee-jerk and will start handing out the warnings and pink-slips at the first hint of work-related bloggery.

3) It keeps work on my mind too much.
It's hard to let go of my shift at the end of the day when I'm thinking it all over to turn into a blog post. I firmly believe that the business world in general, and the IT industry specifically, are totally dysfunctional in the sense that people are expected to be available and ready to think about work and take calls about work and answer e-mails all the damn time, which is crazy. I turn my phone off when I'm not on call and actively avoid my email and so on, so why would I hamstring my efforts to leave work at the office by ruminating over my day for my blog? It just amplifies the cycle of stress that is a full time job.

That said, a list of reasons not to blog about my family, or at least keep the skeletons in the back of the closet:

1) We will sound completely crazy.
What I said about every family having a few great trainwrecks? Yeah. And some of those are because the family patriarchs/matriarchs came over from their respective old countries at a difficult time for the whole damn world (Great Depression), and were therefore kind of neurotic about some things. Some of those are because we're a family of incredibly mulish individuals (Italian Catholic? Check. Irish Catholic? Check. Add seemingly innocuous remark. Stir. Enjoy your family feud.). And some of it's just the crap that happens when people grow up together. But without the context of "Yes, my aunt does these incredibly bizarre things, but let's keep in mind these incidents happened 15 years apart", I would be making my family look a lot more 'Days of Our Lives' than is really warranted.

2) These are not all my secrets.
Despite the fact that this is my family we're talking about, and I therefore have a certain proprietary interest, privacy counts. And while I can decide for myself what that means for my relationships (and have generally erred on the side of caution), I can't make that call for the rest of family.

3) See what I said above about the mulish, crazy, family feud thing. I'm kind of a black sheep, but that won't save me from the social equivalent of black roses and a horse's head in my bed.

Note: None of this prevents me bitching about Boyfriend's poor time management skills.

I need a rocking chair and a lawn.

2010-05-27T16:58:03Z

The gentlemen (and I use the term loosely) in my office are watching and rewatching a video of a spanish matador getting gored. I have so far passed on taking a gander at this, despite the fact that the guy lives. I'm against bull-fighting; bloodsports involving the torture of dumb animals to satisfy somebody's idea of machismo are cruel and pointless. On the other, more immediately relevant hand, I'm also against watching this matador's karma in action over and over again. Modern culture's tendency to come over all voyeuristic about anything gory creeps me right the fuck out (see also: reasons I have not watched any of the Saw movies).

Can anyone explain to me what's so great about splatter flicks and the whole Grand Guignol style of art? Wikipedia tells me the original Grand Guignol playhouse closed after the horrors of World War II made it clear that what happened on the stage was all too possible in real life as well, and suddenly people were no longer entertained by it. There's a comment to be made there, I'm sure of it. It seems that a lot of people these days have the ability to divorce what they're watching from the fact that it's happening to a real person. Back to our gored matador, what I was hearing from the other side of the office sounded more awed than horrified, with repeated mention of how hilarious and cool it was.

Is something wrong here, or am I just squeamish? I lean towards the former, but I am, as always, open to the idea that I may be wrong.

Life persists in some form or another

2010-05-25T16:25:24Z

Hello, internet! It has been far too long since we've spoken. And since I've slept in my own bed (prior to last night, it had been eight days since that happened). Other things I have let slide this week include laundry (it's all at Boyfriend's from my being home for 36 hours in the middle of this week), exercise (sore hip, ahoy), and checking my work email. That particular project took me about an hour and a half this morning. It's down to a mostly manageable size now, but still needs proper sorting.

What I've been doing instead has been criss-crossing the U.S.A./Canada border and trying to keep certain of my relatives sane, certain others playing nice, and trying to hide from other relatives who haven't seen me in about a decade and whose first reaction to seeing me is to hug me so hard my head feels like it's about to separate from my spine. Italian women: both incredibly bony and terrifyingly strong. On the other hand, some of the slightly more reserved relatives were a huge comfort, especially the aunt and uncle who put up my mother and me for the weekend of the funeral.

My aunt has been safely laid to rest in a memorial cemetery in Rochester. She and her husband had always planned to retire there, near her sister, and my uncle decided since she'd gone to so much trouble to get to Rochester before she fell ill (including talking herself and her daughter across the border after forgetting their passports), in Rochester she would stay. The funeral itself was typically funereal, and my famously unreactive facade crumbles like wet gingerbread once we hit the church aisle, so you all can probably fill in the blanks for how that part of the weekend was.

Next items on my omphaloskeptical blogging agenda: weird family relationships, learning how to drive, and why my kitchen is too small.

In a hurry.

2010-05-17T22:34:54Z

I am all in favour of punctuality, but my aunt's determination to beat every deadline the doctors gave her was excessive, even for me. When her condition was originally diagnosed, we were expecting surgery and several months of chemo- or radiation therapy. When I made my plans to come to Rochester, the family was preparing for several weeks in the hospital. At the time of my arrival, she had just been moved into palliative care and wasn't expected to last more than a few days. At 6.45 pm last night, she stopped breathing, and an hour later her heart finally stopped. Her room was full of family and friends at all times, and one of us was always holding her hand. My aunt did not die alone.

Today was spent hammering out the details of the funeral. No one seems to want to say the word 'funeral'; every one refers to the 'service'. No one wants to say Nora died, it's 'passed'. My father and my other aunt are no real help right now; Dad is keeping everything very close to his vest, and Aunt M has opinions and preferences on everything but can't make up her mind on anything. My uncle just wants to get it over with. I've been forced to override the surviving siblings a few times since they can't or won't agree, to tell my uncle he's making the right decision, just so he can make a decision. There's a lot of noise about what Nora would have wanted, but I think really she would have wanted us to get the funeral over with as decently and calmly as possible, so her husband and children can start figuring out what to do next.

As evidence that life goes on, despite the horrible vagaries of fate: on Friday morning my manager's wife gave birth to their first child. And while standing outside my uncle R's house this morning having a cigarette, I startled a duck out of a bed of ferns. Upon closer inspection, I discovered a nest of duck eggs in the bed. I have to remember to warn uncle R it's there.

Bad news.

2010-05-16T21:39:32Z

Sorry for the radio silence. Just a few hours after my last post, I found out that one of my aunts, my father's youngest sister, has developed a brain tumour. It was discovered while she was visiting my father's other sister in Rochester. Thankfully, tumour-free aunt is an RN working at URMC and got her looked at right away. She was in surgery Wednesday night, 48 hours after diagnosis. The surgery was not a rousing success; the surgeon was unable to remove as much of the tumour as he'd hoped. The biopsy results came through this morning. The tumour is a stage four glioblastoma multiforme. A quick trawl of the internet overmind informs us this is not good news.

I'm on my way south to Rochester. Since my relatives clearly do not have the good taste to develop life-threatening conditions in the country of my birth*, it's a good thing I got a passport a few years for a trip to Texas. I believe my driver's licence is of the 'enhanced' type that allows one to cross the Canada/U.S.A. border by land, but a passport is so unambiguous. Of course, according to some stories, customs officials can find ambiguity in anything if they feel like pulling one off to the side for more detailed interrogation, but as a white female with no discernably foreign accent I'm pretty low on the list of suspected terrorist profiles.

This is very different from my usual travels. I've made the trip between Toronto and Montreal so many times that I recognise the bumps in the road and the bits of the Canadian Shield that stick up beside the 401 where the ice doesn't melt until weeks after the trees are leafy again. I'm on the Amtrak 'Maple Leaf' train, which once a day runs from Union Station in Toronto to New York, New York, and all points in between. This particular route crosses the border at Niagara Falls, which I've driven to a few times (Boyfriend's mother lives there), but don't know all that well. The scenery is beautiful, even the man-made bits. I saw a swan just outside of Oakville, paddling calmly through a smallish piece of wetland. The view as the train crossed the lake from Burlington to Hamilton is startling: a triangular bay fanning out from the train's crossing point, with heavy forest on the north side and tall industrial buildings on the south. The water was criss-crossed with canoers and kayakers bridging the gap between nature and civilisation. Some people can never leave well enough alone, however: midway between Hamilton and St Catharines, I passed a grey board fence with the directive 'Smoke Weed' helpfully chalked on it.

I don't know how long it will be before I have internet access again - the Amtrak train, while equipped with adequate power outlets, is distressingly lacking in wifi. I'm staying with a friend of my aunt's just around the corner from her, and although wifi would be very nice there, i've learned not to expect it from households without members under a certain age. I'm sure I'll be able to find a coffee shop or similar in the area though, and at worst the hospital will probably have something.

I'm travelling business class; it was a cheap upgrade, only 13 dollars each way. Complimentary coffee and so much legroom I don't know what to do with myself. I'm not kidding. My legs are just barely long enough to reach the footrest on the back of the seat in front of me. This would comfortably accomodate even the ex-husband, who as I've mentioned before is freakishly tall. Even the regular Economy-class seats are like this; Amtrak is way ahead of ViaRail in this regard. Cheaper too. The trip to Rochester costs about two-thirds what a trip to Montreal does. Unfortunately, the baggage racks over the seats are not nearly as well designed. I've hit my head three times already getting up, which is a new experience for me. At last I know what it's like to be tall!

We'll be coming up to the customs stop soon, so I'm going to sign off. I don't know when I'll get the chance to post this, but everything I write this week will be posted separately and in order, just as if I'd had internet access when it was written.

*This is black humour. It's how I get through the day. I am not really this insensitive. I suspect none of my family will appreciate it though, so I gotta let it out somewheres.

Experience is the name everyone gives to their mistakes

2010-05-12T19:30:50Z

Update on my hip:

Although I was skeptical, and yes, downright derisive on the whole yoga thing, I admit I was wrong. My left hip, which three weeks ago hurt whenever I moved and often when I didn't, now twinges only sporadically. Mostly when I have ignored my little Outlook pop-up reminding me to get the hell out of my chair occasionally.

In addition to the yoga, I've been eating better (no soda, no fast food), and walking more. This appears to be paying off: the Wii claims I've lost two kilos since I started and Boyfriend and I both agree that I'm starting to look thinner. And frankly, the numbers could triple for all I care as long as my clothes fit (getting there) and I can climb all the stairs at work without getting out of breath (not yet). Still, progress being made, which makes it that much easier to continue, and even try harder!

Speaking of Boyfriend and I agreeing on things, we may have finally put our collective finger on the fundamental disconnect between his sense of time and mine. Good thing too, because we had a wonderful argument about it on Sunday afternoon, that involved me shouting at him, hanging up on him, and then throwing the phone across the room. Ah, love. Turns out when he gives me a time, he's giving me an ETD, not an ETA. I cannot for the life of me figure why he thought I'd care about time of departure instead of time of arrival, but realising we've been talking at cross-purposes on the subject means we can now start communicating properly. Hurrah!

Glory is fleeting, but obscurity is forever.

2010-05-12T00:33:25Z

Twitter is simply awash with Star Trek alumni. It's a geek girl's dream. I have a feed list on Twitter called 'omgfangirl', for following all those people that I can never ever meet in real life. I can never meet these people because if I did, I would certain to embarrass both of us, what with the stuttering and stammering and turning red as a tomato. It's possible I'd squeal, faint, or burst into tears.

Fame is weird. Especially fame on something like Twitter. Unless someone's taken steps to make themselves private, everything they post can be seen even by by people they're not following. You all know this, of course, the three people who read my blog, but let's record it for posterity all the same.

Twitter allows a false sense of intimacy with these celebrities. I'm just a nobody, but now I know when Levar Burton is sitting down for a pint, and which restaurant is Brent Spiner's favourite. I'll never meet these people, but now I know what they have for breakfast. It's jarring. It's like a form of reverse narcissism: "I'm not famous, but I know all about those who are!"

And yet, I can't help myself. Fangirlitis. It's a killer. And now I'm wondering why all my favorite British actors don't have blogs and websites and Twitter feeds. Although there is a guy who's reserved a username should Sir Patrick Stewart ever feel moved to join.

Singing vegetables and other puppets

2010-05-10T21:23:33Z

I like reading zenhabits, particularly the most recent post about living kindfully and mindfully. Basically, do no harm and try to do good.

I have a slightly different way of phrasing the sentiment: You have to live with yourself for the rest of your life. No one wants to live with an asshole. Don't be an asshole. It's snappy, kind of like the seatbelt PSAs with the crash test dummies.

Or maybe I just have an unjustified nostalgia for stuff from the 80s. I also remember all the words to the song about putting stuff that's not food in your mouth from 'Concerned Children's Advertisers' and the Canadian government. Most of the stuff from that era and earlier, like the Schoolhouse Rock jingles, was pretty catchy.

On the other hand, if you're confronted by a singing beet, you've probably already eaten something you shouldn't.

I have wood for sheep

2010-05-09T14:12:11Z

Board games are becoming a lost art. In this age of computers and video games and binge drinking, a board game night sounds a bit camp, and frankly, lame. Board games are for little kids.

I tend to disagree, and thankfully, so do a number of my friends and family. An entire shelf of my linen closet is devoted to board games. Visiting my mother involves endless games of Scrabble (Nana was a professional librarian. Her daughter raised an English major. Go figure). Parties with my favorite group of nerds will often, after we've gotten all the heavy drinking mostly out of the way, end with us setting up a Settlers board.

Last night two friends of mine from college* invited me over for a board game night. We ordered pizza, and I got to teach them how to play Settlers. Despite being a bit complicated to set up, the game mechanics are quite simple and they were sucked in quickly. Mwahaha. They then taught me how to play a game called Red November which, yes, is probably a Hunt for Red October joke. Although I think that movie lacked a kraken.

Board games are a great social activity, better than clubbing or movies. They encourage real socialisation (as opposed to 'socialising' with people in a place where you can't talk, or in the case of clubs, can't hear). The initial financial investment is relatively low, and they'll last forever if you're careful about collecting all the pieces when the game is over. A couple of board games and a few bottles of wine and finger food, and you've got the makings of a party. They encourage friendly competitiveness (Settlers) and/or cooperative play (Red November). Settlers' resource-trading aspect also has infinite potential for terrible puns, as in the title.

Let's hear it for board games.

* The migratory habits of Montreal ex-pats are interesting. I should probably write about that at some point.

Linguistic mumblings

2010-05-08T12:16:41Z

I started writing a long post and realised that in order to do the topic justice, I'm going to have to spend several hours, or maybe even a few days, writing and editing. Today I'm going to blather on about French class for a bit, just so Ryan knows I haven't fallen off the wagon again.

This semester is level 5 for me. From of the course description:

"This course is designed for those who have completed two intermediate level courses (Level III and Level IV) or have equivalent language skills. You expand your ability to function in spoken French. You learn grammatical structures and idiomatic expressions and gain an understanding of the cultural etiquette for real-world situations. By course end, you will be able to speak more correctly and precisely, make more complex comparisons, give advice on social issues, analyze and synthesize situations."

Having spent 15 years in Montreal, working with the general public, I've pretty much got a handle on the day-to-day interactions. I can discuss the weather, what a jerk that guy who cut me off is, sell you a set of bed linens, and walk you through fixing your computer over the phone. I cannot write in French to save my life; my spelling is atrocious, and the subtleties of verb tenses beyond basic past, present, and future are entirely lost on me. Also, the whole masculine/feminine noun thing, which is what happens when you move from a language with a neutral pronoun for inanimate objects to one that assigns an arbitrary gender to everything. In English, kids ask why the sky is blue. I once had a conversation with a francophone ex-boyfriend at three o'clock in the morning about why the sky is a boy.

In the last class I took, the professor was not very interested in covering grammar, preferring to focus on conversation and vocabulary. This class's professor is big on grammar though. We spent the entire first class on indirect pronouns, and which type of sentence requires which class of pronoun, where in the sentence it goes depending whether it's a direct or indirect object, and so on. I didn't even cover this stuff in English is school. Of course, in English it's fairly instinctive for me, but it also means I often have trouble explaining why something's phrased the way it is, which can become problematic since I speak to a lot of people for whom English is a second language.

There are only six people in the class, meaning that I won't be able to escape actually talking. My fear of strangers is sometimes crippling, especially in performance-based situations, but with only seven people in the room it is impossible for me to escape notice. This class is basically tailor-made to focus on my weak points. It's going to be a good eight weeks.

Victims of the Grand Moff

2010-05-06T10:53:59Z

Steven Moffat is a bloody genius criminal bastard.

Back in the third season of the new series of Doctor Who, there was an episode called 'Blink'. This introduced the Weeping Angels, possibly the creepiest horror movies creatures I have ever seen. Stone statues of winged angels, with their hands covering their faces. Perfectly normal stone statues -- as long as you're looking at them. As the episode title implies, when you blink, they move, and damnably fast, too.

In their introduction, they were the universe's greatest assassins. They would steal people's lifetimes, which is not the same as killing them. Instead, the victims were sent back in time, to life out their lives before they were born. I know, makes no sense, but wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey ball and all that. Moffat's not one to abandon a good spine-chiller just because it's nonsensical. Apparently that wasn't scary enough, because now in season five they actually kill people.

The Time of Angels and Flesh and Stone has them crawling out of television screens a la Ringu, screwing with Amy's head by trying to turn her into an angel, stealing the voices of the marines whose necks they've snapped, and slowly turning from decaying featureless statues to the fully-detailed Angels we've come to know and fear. I spent much of the first episode clinging to Boyfriend in mild terror. The second episode shows the angels moving on screen for the first time, which was also incredibly creepy, and then they all get sucked into a crack in time. Great for the angels, but I spent the entire night having dreams about one of them having been missed, and pulling people into stone walls to make them like it.

On the less creepy side of things, my next level French class starts tonight, and Boyfriend's enrolled for his first one, also tonight. I'm so proud of him I could just burst.

Attention, genus Anarae: I am not running a resort.

2010-05-05T12:00:00Z

As part of my ongoing effort to streamline my life and settle in a routine, this post was written on Tuesday evening, lying in bed with my netbook (assuming this works correctly, it will be published wednesday at 8 am). I'll need to post a photo of it one of these days; it was an early birthday present from Boyfriend, and has green stripes. A netbook keyboard is quite small, taking some getting used to. The wrist braces aren't helping any, I must admit. I suffer from either RSI or CTS, I'm not entirely sure which, and it doesn't really matter. The upshot is that my wrists were killing me today, and now I'm wearing the hated braces. They're clunky and clumsy and by doing their jobs make it hard to type, and of course they've got velcro all over them so when I wear them to sleep I'm constantly catching them on the duvet cover. It's enough to make me consider amputation.

It's that time of year in Toronto: bug season. The damn things are everywhere. I don't even know what kind of bug they are, they look sort of like fruit flies but less round and not red. They don't appear to bite or sting or anything like that, but they are small enough to get through window screens, and so I occasionally wake up to a bug mural in the bedroom and have to fish them out of my toothbrush mug in the washroom. Mostly though, they just hang out on the outside of the screen, which I periodically flick to watch them jump and scatter; they have a sort of symbiotic relationship with the scary giant spiders that live on my apartment building, in that getting caught on the spiderweb appears to be their only purpose in life. It's spider season now too, by the way, and those suckers are friggin' huge. It's the attack of the giant radioactive spiders from a planet near Mars, for the whole summer. I'll have to try and get pictures of them too. Thankfully, the ones inside the apartment are the usual tiny pencil-eraser sized spiders - they freak me out, but after the first couple of horror movie gasps, I'm capable of grabbing a paper towel and squishing the little beasts. The ones on the balcony, however, have abdomens the size of a dime, and frighteningly sharp and pointy legs that bring the total arachnid area up to approximately loony sized. I'm probably exaggerating, but not by much. I make Boyfriend head out there with a broom before I set foot on the balcony in summer.

The link of the day is Logo Design Love, a blog devoted entirely to logos. The post that caught my eye is the evolution of the Batman logo. I'm not in any way a graphic artist or advertiser, but I'm always fascinated by how it works, especially the more subtle iterations. Apparently there's something like 40 airlines that use variations on the theme of birds enclosed by a circle.

Hmm. I wonder, if I start feeding pigeons on my balcony, will they eat the spiders? The cure may be worse than the disease.

The Doctor? Doctor who?

2010-05-04T16:34:59Z

I know I'm way behind the rest of the world, but I just this Sunday watched the rest of the season 4 specials of Doctor Who, David Tennant's last gasp, and the first two of Matt Smith. I really love Doctor Who, as an idea; it's the culmination of every hope you ever had in childhood, that an ordinary blue box is really a door to a world of wonders. When I was a child, having read too many fantasy novels, I used to draw doors in chalk everywhere (and once, in paint, on the side of our house. My father was Not Pleased. But most of the books I'd read were his, and I think he understood, a little. I got off pretty easy, anyways). I was always hoping that this time the door would become real, and I could open it and go somewhere better, where all the boring bits of life got taken out. Which is basically Doctor Who, where the Doctor walks through his magic door and into another excitingly catastrophic day, because he just skips over the dull ones. Eleven (new new new Doctor) actually says this at one point in his second episode, I can't remember the exact words, but it was something like "Tomorrow's an exciting day! Well, they all are for me, I skip the ones that aren't."

The evolution of the new Doctors is interesting. Nine was the survivor, the one who was so guilty over being the only one left, and it wasn't until he saved Rose and killed himself in the process that he was finally able to leave that guilt behind. Ten moved past the survivor's guilt to dealing with the actual logistics of being a species of one, trying to figure out the balance between loneliness and killing his hearts with companions that are so fragile and short-lived. Easier with one, for him, but without a foil and a sounding board he went off the rails into megalomania, every time. He recognises this flaw in himself, but only after he's shattered the latest fragile thing, and never does quite find that balance.

Eleven's still new, and therefore hard to pin down, but Matt Smith's got that dose of cheerfully brilliant insanity that makes the Doctor so wonderful, all the time. In his first meeting with the new companion, Amy Pond (who is played by Karen Gillan, a smoking hot redhead with a wonderful Scots accent and I want to hug her and play with her hair) as a child, he mentions he hasn't any relatives, even an aunt, and they both agree that he's lucky. Seeing in the last Tennant episode what the Time Lords had become during the time war, they're probably right. Timothy Dalton as Rassilon (he's the eleventh and twelfth photos, if you scroll down) does not look like he's a lot of fun at Christmas dinner. So far though, I suspect Eleven's going to be the doctor who finally embraces his onliness, and finally builds himself a real family out of Companions, instead of holding them at arms' length and whittering on about how they crumble and die on him all the time. Seriously, Ten, considering your own tendency to kill off your incarnations way before their time, you're one to talk.

I've got the first two-parter of the season waiting for me at home. Can't wait to watch it.

In other news, I need to figure out how to work the blogging into the routine. Clearly, trying to cram it into spare time at work is not working out so hot.