enfinblue's Bluey (credit to Fifi for the nickname!) Diaryland Diary

"I am seeking, I am striving, I am in it with all my heart." -Vinc3nt V@n Gogh

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The sky is an expanse of grey velvet and in the foreground are Gainsborough trees.

So the last couple of days have been MONUMENTAL for me. (You can never accuse me of lacking enthusiasm :).)

I've accepted probably never running--at least seriously--again. It's as though this catastrophic injury has shone a spotlight on my distorted habits and forced me to face what I've been running from. It's freed up space in my mind for other things.

Actually, interestingly, I was talking to a friend about this last night and he recounted an article that he'd read about older hockey players who told a similar story. In their cases they no longer needed the money, knew they had families that should have been absorbing their energy, etc., but they couldn't yet move on. I'm not a professional hockey player, of course, but my running has been a coccoon that has probably ceased to serve its original purpose: making me truly happy.

Sometimes you have to grow up, I guess.

But speaking of growing up, I must confess that I refuse to do that yet. I was speaking with someone yesterday whose boyfriend recently finished a Ph.D. in Canadian History and who recently finished an M.A. in History herself. I quite like, admire, and trust this woman so the fact that she thinks that I should approach a number of professors with my dissertation data to see about ultimately completing a Ph.D. in Canadian History with it was very encouraging. It's like the clouds parted. I can use my archival and library studies to obtain additional employment during the process as well.

So, there you go. I have fallen completely off my rocker but when you return to first principles all of a sudden everything seems clear and exciting. I just don't want to be someone who gets up every day and isn't in love with what she does.

That is not to say that I don't value the work that I will do in Ottawa for at least this year. Not at all. It's just that I've always known that some of the environmental factors make the fit much less than perfect for me.

There are just so many things that I wish to explore and think about and write and teach about in my life. I don't want to spend forty years in toil without love.

So this is all good. I even felt a glimmer of hope last night that I will someday stop feeling gross and horrible and ugly and unwantable and will then be able to let people into my life.

And all it took was two beers. And a friendly playwright's encouragement.

Tomorrow morning is the ladies' breakfast club. I can't wait.

I was going to write that I've *invented* a new hairstyle with my Edwardian loopy/twisty thing and then I realized that, frankly, it looks a bit like something that Virginia Woolf might have worn. Only maybe slightly less dishevelled. It fits very nicely below a bike helmet, however, which is one of those pesky issues that one struggles with with other updos. It looks rather like this. (Which makes sense, since this was the source of the idea in the first place :).) I'm afraid that with my crooked English nose I look rather like this, too. Virginia and me. Here's a nicer picture of the hair, although the model is, well, a model, and striking from the front. I like that jacket, too. It's kind of different while still eminently suitable for our climate. From that book I'm also going to make this little pochette for my friend (it's a softer purple than the picture would lead one to believe). I hope she likes it.

Oh the trials of a trivial woman.

I attended an interesting lecture today. It was by a patent examiner who has a Ph.D. in plant sciences and who seemed to be particularly brilliant. He was, however, the oddest-looking brilliant man that I think I've ever seen (and I've seen a few). Picture a skinny Yosemite Sam with myriad tattoos, and wearing a sheer shirt unbuttoned to reveal said tattoos. Now picture this look with honking cowboy boots completing it. Oh yeah--he also had a speech impediment.

Odd, but a sweet-seeming man. The thing that these guys never speak about however, is whether the patent system these days actually stifles innovation--I think so, and think it's almost certainly enormously socially wasteful, especially considering the litigation that surrounds it...as with everything else--and has completely outlived the utility it had, like, in fourteenth century guild-ridden Britain. I'm really excited by those open source biotech initiatives that have sprung up in Australia and in the U.S. There are other research commons that are springing up in the medical sciences (e.g. the MS one in Mtl). This trend seems to me to be a phenomenally exciting one. Although one should never get excited about anything, I suspect. I mean, like the guy stated on the radio this weekend, the 18th century anti-slavery movement in Britain-- that included a public boycott of sugar-- occurred in spite of the fact that most people there had never encountered a slave, nor lived off the profits of them. People, in fact, seemed to be able to care en masse about a distant other. How many people die of starvation every day now?

In other exciting news, I must report that the girlfriend of a guy who lives upstairs in my house--I don't think she even pays rent--took it upon herself to move the house garbage cans from the side of the house to THE GARDEN AND DIRECTLY BELOW MY BEDROOM WINDOW this morning!?!?! It's bad enough that when I am in my living room I can occasionally hear them having sex; do I have to wake up to their garbage as well? The odd bit is that I can't see what on earth was wrong with the side-back of the house can placement (it is a very deep house and the cans were not visible from the street without effort). Oh my. Sometimes methinks that people are patently unlikeable.

7:34 p.m. - 2006-06-07

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