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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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pastries and The Art of Drawing

So I should write a short entry!

I'd like it to be Sunday morning, but unfortunately it is Sunday afternoon. I slept in until 10:30 or something like that, and have been on the Internet ever since. Not grreat! :)

The problem is that I truly am a night owl. I went for a run at 11 p.m. last night, along the canal.

And do you know what? I know that I enjoyed that run twice as much as I would have had I done it two hours earlier-- because I was alone.

Such an introvert.

It was lovely. I had a lovely evening last night; and yesterday afternoon, even though I did not buy anything at the bookstore. I need to find a good second-hand bookstore that is not too far away from here. I was at the mega bookstore downtown and you start to realize that your tastes have become somewhat twisted (I'd say rarified but I don't want to flatter myself overly much :)) when you can't find any of the titles on your list in the store.

I have another problem when I'm at the bookstore: I start to think about how much less the book would cost at a second-hand bookstore.

It's weird that I would want to scrimp on books.

Perhaps because I can't do so on other things.

I spent a small fortune on a good pair of lined trousers for work yesterday. I've learned the hard way over the years that you need to consider work clothes to be investments. These pants I'll wear for 5 years at least, so the cost is not so much. It seemed so much yesterday as I bought them though. And I also bought a nice, lined black pencil skirt with beautiful little pockets at the waist. Bonus is that with a nice top it will make nice evening skirt as well as a work piece.

I don't like spending money!!

Or, rather, I wish I made more so that buying work clothes didn't prevent me from making a reasonable monthly donation to my house account.

Though the thing is that the maintenance of a professional appearance will lead to quicker promotions. It's a small component but it still matters. I have enough experience to know this.

I'm babbling. I need to get a gold membership! I took some pictures of my short hair last night and they are not bad. I'd like to post them. Since hte first short hair cut I've had one cut. I let it grow for two months and then got a trim on Tuesday. Unfortunately I told him to keep the top a little bit longer this time and instead he left the middle back a bit too long and cut too much off the top and so the proportions are off. I wish I'd left it at a tiny trim, but oh well. Hair grows! And, really, if I want fashionable I should stop going to see a men's barber who works out of an industrial park. :) But I like him so much and we have such nice chats. And I get such good exercise riding my bike to his shop, and the price is less than half of what I'd pay elsewhere--in fact a third of what I'd pay at a women's salon--of course. :)

The neat thing I'm finding about short hair is that actually because the style grows out quite quickly there's a great deal that one can do to change the proportions, change the look.

The best thing about short hair is that I've realized that indeed short hair suits *me* better. I'm sure I look much prettier with long hair but I *feel* so much more like myself with short hair. It can be sleek and sophisticated but with a shake of the head it can be impish and waifish and girly or by turns sporty. These are all things that feel like me. I like the simplicity and cleanliness of it.

I wish I'd discovered the freedom in short hair before. Honestly, I doubt I'll ever grow it back.

Unfortunately though it is still red. Since I have four or five inches of hair only about two of them are brown... :)

So enough about my hair. I'm quite sure that you're sick of it!

I was meant to ride my bike today and yet I have not made it out of the house. C. and I will do another good running workout at the arboretum tonight, so that is at least something. I've decided that in the interim I am going to go out and buy vegetables and make something glorious to eat. Not sure exactly what. But probably something rustic and Italian and utilizing arugula. And basil. Mmmm, basil. I initially wrote Basil. :) I've never known anyone called Basil. Have you?

When I was running last night I dreamed of running in to the finish in next year's Sun Run. You just never know. I really should wait until I'm 40 and a master; 37 is just as good, however, I suppose. It would be good to go out to Vancouver in the spring and run with the club for a week, get my fill of breathing deeply in the forests. I miss the forests so deeply.

OK. I should shower and head out on the veg quest, read the paper...

You know, I was sitting at the coffee shop a couple of weeks ago reading an Ian McEwan novel and someone asked me an interesting question. They asked me if I was reading through his oeuvre. In general I do not do that, particularly chronologically. I mean, I'd really have to love the author to read through his works from the 1960s and 1970s. I've still not been able to get through all of Margaret Atw00d's Surf@cing, for example, in spite of numerous attempts. It feels so dated.

This feeling is not the same when it comes to authors well-removed from my own time. An example is George Eliot. After reading Middlemarch I felt compelled to read every single word that she had ever written. I tried to do the same with Virginia Woolf although I admit that I got stuck.(I LOATHED To the Lighthouse.)

Anyhow. You're probably quite confused as to why I am writing this. I'm writing this as I felt a strong impulse yesterday to reread all of Somerset Maugham's writings. I loved so many of his books the first time. So I'm going to read them all again. The problem is that half of my books are in my mother's garage and she stubbornly refuses to send them to me (her way of getting me to visit her-- anyone who says that economic theories of parenting and being a child are all bunk should think about the ways in which parents and children negotiate with each other...). :)

I'm truly babbling. So unfortunately all I have on my shelf at the moment is Of Hum@n Bondage. I like that book. Very much. Only I had hoped not to start with it. But other than The Moon and Sixp3nce the bookstore did not have any other of his writings! What kind of a mega-bookstore has a wall of twentieth century classics that is only about 10' by 10'?????

Harrumph. Fully disappointed. :)

Do we as a culture really need so many self-help books, when all the self-help that would ever truly fill us is in literature? (Or in math books. I keep on trying to get myself to read science writings to better inform myself and I always end up in the math section buying books that are essentially philosophies of art and nature. The next book on the agenda is Why Beauty is Truth: Why Symmetry Matters. Who knows when I will get to that...)

So I'll be the one at the Bridgehead sipping dark coffee and reading the paper and then a copy of Of Hum@n Bondage. Whenever I've read Somerset Maugham I've felt as though the answers to the issues of my life are contained therein. I think in part I'm hoping that my receptivity to the answers is different and more suitable now...

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12:33 p.m. - 2007-08-12

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