I’ve got the whole world in my hand.
Thursday, September 29, 2005 , 12:04 AM
It’s 1AM and I should be in bed, but I’m playing withGoogle Earth. It’s so much fun. For instance, right now I’m looking at my old grade school, Forest Glade Elementary. I’m floating above, looking down on it. The resolution is so good, I can almost see tennis balls on the roof (if kids are still losing tennis balls up there).
You can easily switch locations — like from my school to the palace in Bhagdad, traipsing past the Eiffel Tower, then on to The Forbidden City in China (and we know how much the Chinese government loves the marriage of “internet” and “forbidden”). When you move, you zoom up, up, up, then swoop down, as if you were making incredible leaps. I’ve had a million dreams about being able to do that.
~
Anyway, happy birthday, me. And it is happy: I’ve got a wonderful family, a great home in a beautiful city, meaningful work, and lots of people in my life whom I love. The bit I’m busting to say — the thing I’m not supposed to talk about on here — is that now I’ve got one more in the latter category. And I fancy him rotten.
What do I want for my birthday? Not a lot. I feel pretty grateful.
~
I discovered that I lost a bunch of blog entries somehow, likely in moving between web-hosts. I think it’s a year or two of them. Some of them were pretty sad, though, so off they go like old leaves.
~
Okay, since I’m up, here’s one of those awful internet lists that I told Cosgrove I’d do. As I am my word, here it is:
8 Things Meme
8 things I plan to do before I die:
1. Get frickin’ published.
That’s about it, really. The rest is about present-moment experience. I do have goals, but they’re not desperate validations of my existence or anything, just things I think would be fun, like travelling around with my own room on a cargo ship. Or living in New York City for a summer. Or on an island — Greece or the West Coast of Scotland.
Okay, secret confession (better than this outracing death stuff): I think it would be nice to marry someone. I’ve thought that for a while, and never said it.
8 things I can do:
1. Write.
2. Draw.
3. Speak.
4. Sing.
5. Plan, map, think.
6. Notice details.
7. Be honest.
8. Live without ever being bored.
8 things I cannot do:
1. Drive a car. Well, legally.
2. Parkeur — man, I wish I could do that stuff. But ultimately I’m more interested in spending the time developing my brain.
3. Um, get a boner over a girl?
4. Drink Drambuie ever again (“Philip, hold my hair.”)
5. Make myself be interested in money.
6. Juggle. (And don’t you dare try to make me. I’m happy being a non-juggler, so leave it alone.)
7. Play the piano. Hasn’t really hindered me.
8. Keep a secret. Well, I can. I just don’t like to have them around.
8 things that attract me to the same/opposite sex:
1. Quirky-cute face.
2. Scottish accent.
3. Not afraid to have feelings.
4. Sense of humour.
5. Ambition. (Not about “stuff”, but about realising personal potential.)
6. Solvent.
7. Sane, self-aware.
8. I dunno, same name as me?
8 things I say often:
1. “Sleep-math.” (I’m doing that now. This is way too much work to be fun.)
2. “Polite time.” (The span between when you realise it’s time to go and when you leave.)
3. “Neat.”
4. “Oh, aye.” (Just a few years old, that.)
5. blah blah blah “my editor” blah blah
6. “I’m mostly vegetarian.”
7. [Insert any of the monologues I end up reciting when I’m in Canada in answer to the question “How’s life in Scotland?” I hate doing it, and as a former actor I always make it sound like I’m just thinking of the words, but there are only so many ways to say the same thing.]
8. Rubbish, pants, pavement, jumper, hob, or any of the other zillion words I’m still endeavouring to make my first instinctive choice instead of their Canadian counterpart (cf: garbage, underwear, sidewalk, sweater, stove).
8 celebrity crushes:
1. Oh, I hate our cultural fixation on celebrity. You want celebrity? Okay, here’s Moby expressing it for me: “I have yet to meet a celebrity who is smarter or more interesting than my friends. So I thought to myself, ‘Wouldn’t I rather hang out with them?’”
8 People I want to do this (who probably won’t):
1. I implore you to stop this thing. I’m the guy least likely to do it, yet here I am. Let it stop.
Wee book.
Wednesday, September 21, 2005 , 4:51 PM
My friend Lisa sent me a very useful bit of advice a while back about writing and getting published, and just now I turned it into a tiny book (about 1″ high) with illustrations.
So I’ve done several little craftsy projects today that I’ve been meaning to do for a while. Each one of them went through a dangerous stage where it was nearly ruined. I suppose that’s just part of the process.
With compliments to God.
, 2:08 PM
I just bound The Willies with new corrections in a smaller, pocket-sized format. I chose a wild paper for the case.
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Tiny, tidy — it even has the cover page image this time!
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It’s like a real book.
~
Except that when I was choosing paper for the case-binding, I forgot which pattern I’d chosen for my end-papers — yeech! Otherwise lovely Venetian stock, but… Ah well.
I’ve read that the makers of Persian rugs and Arran sweaters willingly introduce a flaw into the design, because only God can make something perfect — trying to do it ourselves would be an affront to Him. So I’ll pretend that that’s what I’m doing. I am learning, though, and each project turns out a little better than the last.
I’m now out of the smells-so-good-I-want-to-eat-it glue from The Japanese Paper Place. And the brush I’ve been using to spread the glue has started shedding what look like horse pubic hairs. Not good. Happily, I’ve got other glue and other brushes.
WTF dream.
, 10:50 AM
I wonder what kind of day it will be.
Pics of the visiting ‘rents.
Tuesday, September 20, 2005 , 10:20 AM
My mum took a bunch of pictures when she and Dad were here. Here are the ones I copied from her memory card. Warning: Several of them are ‘establishing shots’ of my flat, so she could describe the place to my brother and sister-in-law. No nudity, just furniture; I realise this isn’t really in keeping with the spirit of the Internet.
Second Monday.
, 9:04 AM
Yesterday I got to doodle for work. I love that as an adult I get paid for doing the things that used to get me in trouble at school. The office needed about 25 different icons to visually distinguish our various databases, so they asked me to do some tiny cartoon illustrations. That was fun. I got a request for some additional ones after sending them, and worked on those until 2AM or something silly.
Today is a “crunch-day”, as we say at work: I’ve got to start and finish my first draft of an article. So I’m sitting down, about to get into the recorded telephone conversation I’m working from.
~
Sunday night, FlatmateDave took me out to a new Italian restaurant down on the Dalry Road to talk aboutdoubleZero, which he’d just read. Happily, he’d enjoyed it, or it would have been a pretty strange dinner conversation!
It’s fun that — between this and my bookbinding projects — people in my world are reading my work.
After supper, Dave and I went to a bar near home to spy on FlatmateGeoff, who was on a date. Not only do we live in the Hollywood Sitcom Flat, as Dave pointed out that night, now we’re living out sitcom scenarios. All that was missing was for one of us — for some plot-logic reason — to crawl over to his table and get under it.
The barmaid kept asking us if we wanted anything, because we were leaned so far across the bar (which reminds me that this is a cue for service), but we were actually trying to peer into the mirror there to get a look at how our buddy was doing. We left her to go on with her amazing show of alchemy, burning sugar to melt it into a glass of absinthe, crushing ice with a large pole (no blenders here!), or mashing up mint to make mojitas. I would have been fully impressed, except that Liz brought a counter-full of bar fixings to mine on Saturday and concocted similar things for us to all drink in celebration of Patrick’s birthday. She was masterful, and got us rat-arsed. We went out, and much good-badness followed.
We finally had to confess to this barmaid what we were doing, so she asked us “Oh, who is it?” She pointed at a couple snogging at a back table, “Is it them?” Suddenly we were stricken with shyness or internalised homophobia or something. She continued looking around while we said nothing. She found the only couple-esque table and subtly gestured to our mate. “Is he gay? Is that him?” Yeah, we laughed. She smiled knowingly and nodded at us. Then she went back to her work, and left us to feel like freaks for being less cool about the situation than she was.
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Right. Time to get to work.
Briggs, Myers, Me
Friday, September 16, 2005 , 10:58 PM
My parents have been visiting from Canada for the past week. Until yesterday, I was sleeping on my bedroom floor on a foam mattress. It was surprisingly comfortable, partly because the mat, my spare pillows, and my sleeping bag were comfy. There was something else, though, the feeling of lying like a dog at the foot of the bed where my parents were sleeping.
I love them so.
We do a profiling thing at work called Kolbe, which characterises people’s natural working style. One of the continnua it measures is labelled “Fact Finder”. On a scale from 1 to 10, I think my mum is a 25 Fact Finder. It’s a challenge for me, ’cause I like to think things up and act on them right away. In fact, I map somewhere around the middle across the whole Kolbe profile: I can turn into whatever a team needs, and tend to act like the glue, the mediator who needs everyone to understand each other. This is good, and rare, but it also means that I have limited energy for doing any one thing for a long time. Mom, on the other hand, will plan and plan and plan, at which point I jokingly yell something at her like “Just buy the f*ing ticket!”, then she buys the ticket, and continues weighing the different variables to justify the action.
So sometimes I feel like I’m being awful, getting frustrated at my mum. (Dad, whom I remember as a powerful figure around the house, isn’t really fussed about things like travel plans and takes a back seat. He’s fine with being dragged around, and I suppose I understand that; I’m happy wherever, and amn’t a big activity planner.) But thanks to this system we use at work, I have a context for understanding that we’re just different in this regard, and it’s okay.
I’m on the train, hurtling in the dark from Glasgow to Edinburgh. I went through to meet Mom and Dad, who are visiting with our relatives John and Rosemary for a few days before heading back to Canada. We went to the Alishan, a great Indian restaurant whose owners are friendly with John and Rosemary. This means they always ply us with mounds of colourful tasty food, naan breads the size of elephant ears, and endless rounds of Cobra beer and whisky.
I walked there after working in Glasgow today. I’d travelled through early, and made a point of walking to the Alishan to prove that I have a sense of direction (contrary to the memories my folks have of me from my teens). I was dressed nicely today in a black sportscoat and trousers with a charcoal shirt, looking grown-up and well put together. The long walk took me through lots of Glasgow I’d never seen before, and it was a lovely afternoon.
At one point, I was stopped waiting for a traffic light beside a mother and daughter. The little girl — four or five, tops — was crying the most wounded, guileless, heartfelt sobs. Nothing was wrong in my world, but her pure emotion moved me, and I found my eyes watering up. Then the light changed.
I had a great sleep in my own bed last night. I’d been feeling really stressed the past couple of days. No time to myself, visitors around, lots of work tasks piling up, not getting any creative projects moving, worrying about my advocacy agreement (When does this end? Does it go on forever? Are we getting anything done?) — it was all making me feel crushed.
This is just part of my nature; I recognise that. I can also accept, though, that it doesn’t mean I wasn’t loving my parents’ company. They’re such funny, nice people. And they insisted on playing the parents, supplying meals, paying for entrance fees, and so on. I finally got to go to Holyrood Palace (which I figured wouldn’t be for me, but actually enjoyed), and we had a great day trip up to Pitlochry with Patrick last weekend.
I hugged my mum in the back of John and Rosemary’s car at the train station, and shook my dad’s hand awkwardly from the back seat. I didn’t expect him to get out of the car to get his hug, ’cause that’s not so easy for him these days. He’s not old, but his body has started to be. And now I’m not going to see them until Christmas. But I get to go back to my projects. I don’t like that it’s an either/or split.
We should be arriving soon at Haymarket Station, so I should pack up.
Hey, a whole weekend with nominal plans — ideal! It’s funny that I’m like this. I know not everyone is, and I know it sounds care-less, which is not accurate. Ah well. The people I love know I love them; I do make sure of that.
I know, I know…
Wednesday, September 14, 2005 , 2:32 PM
I haven’t blogged in ages. My parents are visiting town, and I’ve been feeling very stressed about all the things I’ve taken on lately. The Time of Great Simplification lies ahead. I’m sharpening my scythe to make a clearing for new book.
In the meantime, my birthday is coming up. Can someone please, please, pleeeeeeease buy me these?
Aberdeen weekend.
Wednesday, September 07, 2005 , 2:31 PM
I went to Aberdeen this weekend, where I bunked in a noisy, crap hotel on a bed like a trampoline with my mate Philip. Despite the sound of it, I had a great weekend.
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p>Highlights included:
- driving through the landscape of this amazing country, seeing Perth, Arbroath, and Dunottar Castle on the way up
- watching the icky gyrations of a fat, middle-aged singer in a very talented RAWK! band
- drinks in a very stylin’ converted church called Soul
- dancing foolishly in a rubbish gay bar
- meeting Liz’s dad, whom I unilaterally declare an honorary member of the Friday Gang
- spending time with good mates. Patrick and Lizjoined Pip and I on Sunday, and they blogged about the weekend, too.
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p>
