PaulettePlanet’s Neighborhood

mcco12

Early winter weekend

Quiet days. Mildly depressed as I always seem to be every November what with a long cold winter ahead of us. 


It doesn't help that nearly everyone we know is traveling or making plans to: I&C are headed to France for two weeks, M just got back from Peru, C is in Berlin (we have Mac for two weeks), JP is in Japan, and R just got back from Hawaii. Even C&J are off to Italy in the spring.

And we're stuck here for the time being, facing a cold & bleak Quebec winter. Sigh.

I shouldn't complain. We've made a lot of sacrifices the last few years and it's been well worth it. And the end is in sight: just one more winter and we will just about have it set up so that we can leave every winter from now on. Or nearly every winter.

I think this is partly just job boredom. It comes in waves and because I've been doing a new part of a project, learning a new software system, I could distract myself for the past few months. But I guess I'm over that. Anyway, it's fine, another new project starting next month so that'll get me through a chunk of winter. Hopefully.

Thank God for friends. Last night M was working, so I went over to I&C's and we hung out in their kitchen chatting until late, then ordered Indian take out and watched "Good Night and Good Luck." Then, since I had missed the last train, I decided to forgo the taxi ride and I walked home from Point-St-Charles -- it took over an hour. But it was nice, walking over the canal in the moonlight, through downtown and past the throngs of drunk McGill and Concordia students, up St-Denis and through the Plateau. What a great way to spend a Friday night.

OK to work now. I've got a full day in front of this computer to get through, then a big dinner tonight around the corner that I am not really looking forward to.







1 comment Tags: weekends, plateau, montreal
mcco12

Today. Right now:

I want this life:



4 comments
Team Vox

The Amazon Conduit is Fixed

Go forth and fill your libraries with media.

Seriously, thanks to everyone for being so amazing and patient. You are the reason I love Vox.

~daisy


16 comments Tags: bug fixes, amazon conduit
mcco12

making jack o'lanterns

IMG_0297
IMG_0297

Post a comment Tags: halloween
Team Vox

Amazon Conduit Update

I was just told that the Amazon Conduit will be fixed by tomorrow. I will post here as soon as I get word that it's back up and running.

I know this has been frustrating and I am sorry there wasn't more I could do to make it less so. I really appreciate your patience though.

Cheers,

daisy



17 comments Tags: bug fixes, amazon conduit
mcco12

Update

M's immigration is done! We got a letter, zipped into the office and they gave him his little stamp of approval. Whew, what a relief. Nearly two years of waiting. It'll be mid-December before he can actually LEAVE the country (we have to have his PR card in-hand first), but it's officially FINISHED and he is now a permanent resident. Thank you, Canada (and Quebec)!


It feels a bit anticlimactic after being a bit stressed about this for so long. I guess it's because we are tight money-wise now until we get all the renovations on our place done so we still can't really take any major trips in the near future.

Now I can start my paperwork to apply for Canada citizenship. It'll take a while, too, but I should be able to travel until it's done. So it won't hold us up like his application has.

Let's see. VERY busy week this week. Worked 14 hours all day every day since Monday. Why does everything come due the same week? Good news is, after Sunday, things should calm down a bit (well, in my lexicon that means I'll go back to just working 8 hour days every day!).

Shouldn't be a major weekend: dinner tomorrow with some friends and a birthday party (two, actually) on Sunday. 

Reading an excellent book right now, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, which everyone has been talking about the past year. I was skeptical (any book on NYT bestseller list I am usually dubious about), but I stood at the bookstore and zipped through the first chapter standing in the aisle. A good sign. Been slow going just because I'm so busy, but it's a great read so far.

Friday! We were supposed to have the baby all night but her mom called and said she was staying home tonight. So now I have an open Friday night! I could go out but I think I'm just gonna go rent a couple of movies, buy a couple of beers and chill out on my own...





4 comments Tags: updates, snippets
mcco12

A list...

of all the short stories that have been ruined by the YEARS of bad English comp papers I have read. 


"A Rose for Emily" by William Faulkner
"Story of an Hour" by Kate Chopin
"The Yellow Wallpaper" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
"The Lottery" by Shirley Jackson
"The Glass Menagerie" by Tennessee Williams (OK, not a short story but a play).
"Hill Like White Elephants" by Ernest Hemingway

I will never be able to read any of these stories and their plot structures, characters, symbols, aspects of their imagery, and tone will be seared into my brain until the day I die. If I ran my own college, I would ban all teachers from assigning all of these works to students.

The other day a student came to me with, surprise, an essay by David Sedaris that he was being asked to write about. I just about fell over dead and told myself that if I ever met that textbook writer, I would shake his hand!


1 comment Tags: work, teaching, writing, short stories, college composition
mcco12

Haha.

Epic-fail-prophecy-fail
Epic-fail-prophecy-fail

1 comment Tags: funny pics
Team Vox

Amazon Conduit: Update

Bad news. As many of you have probably noticed, the Amazon Conduit was not fixed in the last week's release. Unfortunately, there was an undetected bug that is preventing the conduit from working.

We are working on this bug fix and hope to have the Conduit back up and running this week.

I will keep you posted.

Thank you for being so patient.

~daisy

22 comments Tags: bug fixes, amazon conduit
mcco12

Another movie post

I know all I do lately is write about movies, but I've been trying to see one nearly every day with the film festival going on (AND another one starting in two weeks!).


Saw one this afternoon which I really loved. It was a Finnish movie (I've never seen a Finnish movie I didn't love), called Kaski in Finnish (translated as "Tears of April" which doesn't quite sound right to me, but what do I know). Set in 1918 during Finland's Civil War, it is an interesting and complex film, solid (and beautiful) actors, gorgeous scenery, music which was the perfect complement to the action on screen. War is hell and this movie certainly tries in its small way to capture it, but what I love about seeing movies like this one is how a whole new chapter of history opens up to me: I didn't even know Finland HAD a civil war (basically it was sucked into the chaos of the Russian Revolution) much less how brutal it was. The story focuses on the stories of two people as they negotiate the dangers all around them.

I do love to hear the Finnish language, too. I don't speak a word of it obviously but it sounds so soft and musical.

GREAT film.


1 comment Tags: cinema, finnish cinema