The nest just got fuller

Headed to Kingston today with the SUV to pick up Alex and the stuff he's collected over 4 years at Queens. Luckily, he had no furniture that needed to come home today, but he still managed to fill all the cargo space with bags and boxes, lamps and computer equipment. He left a few things there to bring back next week when he's there for a couple of days of work.

We had Dim Sum for lunch at a new resto on Princess Street and his housemate Jerry joined us. He'd helped out with loading the stuff and is a friendly, interesting guy with a good sense of humour.

The so-called ghetto looked pretty bad today, with trash all over various yards, furniture strewn on lawns, and porches piled high with stuff coming in or going out of the houses. I feel sorry for "regular" residents of the city, and by that I mean non-students, who have to put up with this unsightly mess. It's the end of the regular school year as well as garbage night, so it's pretty crazy.

I could be looking at the past through rose-colored glasses, but I have no recollection of this kind of behavior back in the early 80s when I lived there. First, I don't think many of us had that much stuff. We sold, donated, or gave away things we no longer wanted. We bagged what little trash we generated. The disrespect shown for the city and other residents is appalling.

It's great to have Alex here for the summer. He's starting his graduate program next month and is looking for work that will permit him to move out on his own. The four of us had dinner together and discussed possibilities for a summer vacation together. My boys are now 21 and 18, men really. It's stunning to live together and realize that we produced them.

From the divine to the devil

The Divine

I used to publish a Sunday Choral Report detailing what we sang in my church choir. When we returned to Canada five years ago, we were lucky to land in a parish with a fabulous organist and traditional choir at the 11:30 am mass. We rehearse from 10-11:15 on Sunday mornings in preparation for that mass, so there's no weeknight rehearsal which is best for a choir made up of  professional singers and musicians (who sing)  as well as strong amateurs.

Our organist/director has a love of the Renaissance so we often sing from that era. This  morning was no exception. For the offertory we sang Nigra sum sed formosa filia Jerusalem by Tomás Luis de Victoria. The first line of text (originally from Song of Solomon) replaces the singular filliae (daughters) with filia (daughter) pointing to Mary. The full (English) text is as follows:

I am a dark-skinned but comely daughter of Jerusalem,
Therefore have I pleased the Lord
And he has brought me into his chamber
And said to me: arise my love and come.
For now the winter is past, the rain is over and gone,
The flowers have appeared in our land,
The time of pruning is come.

Chanticleer performs it here.

During Communion we sang Homo Quidam in a setting by Jean Mouton. I cannot find a recording to share, but the text is translated as:

Certain man organized a great dinner and sent his servant at the hour of dinner so that he said to his guests to come: Because everything is prepared.Come to eat my bread and to drink my wine that I prepared for you.

Quite an appropriate Communion hymn.

The Devil

After mass, I travelled south to my my monthly book club meeting where we shared our thoughts onGone Girlby Gillian Flynn. [No spoilers follow.] A psychological thriller featuring an arguably evil protagonist, I personally found it both hard to put down and necessary to set aside as the tension rose. Themes of marriage, life in the big-city vs. small-town South, the fate of print journalism and the impact of the 24-hour news cycle and quest to be first with "the" story were all present and considered by the group. While the book was rated on average 8/10 with a small range (7-9), differences of opinion were expressed about the protagonist's mental state and motivation for the events detailed in the novel. We all loved her plotting (with some debate over how much closure the ending achieved), her sense of humour, and agreed that we'd all see the movie together when it comes out. We had one new member today, and a couple of usual members were absent, but the discussion was excellent. It topped the Amazon.ca Best Pick for 2012list.

On my drive home, I considered my descent from the divinity of the mass and the music we sang, to the discussion of evil and how it comes into a person, a marriage, and a world. On arriving home, I was greeted by my husband sitting on the porch with the papers, a whisky, and a cigar, the first time we've had our furniture out on the deck this spring. Life in the middle seems pretty ok.

New Name and Home!

New Name

After (sort of) randomly deciding to restart blogging yesterday, I chose Domestic Bliss: The Empty Nest as my new blog name. A bit of a misnomer because the nest will in fact be getting fuller over the summer but, you know, I'm working with that goal in mind. I've read that introverts don't suffer from empty nest syndrome and I'm pretty sure that despite how much I adore my boys, life will be quieter (and less messy) when they're gone.

The blog has a new, possibly likely temporary look. It's sitting in a different place, but that shouldn't make a substantive difference to my readers, if there are any left.

Skip down to next section if you're not interested in the nuts and bolts of blogging.

I was greeted with the news that my blogging platform (Posterous) would be no more after April 30. Posterous was bought by Twitter a while ago so I guess this was inevitable, but I hadn't been blogging and thought no more about it.

Until they told me that I had to back up my blog by April 30 or it would be gone.

I had used the Google platform Blogger in the past and that archive was still around, so I decided to simply move my Posterous blog back to Blogger and integrate it with my old blog

Except that it wasn't that simple.

After some extensive googling, it seemed that the only reasonable way to do this was to move my Posterous blog to Wordpress, and then from there to Blogger. This involved setting up a (temporary) Wordpress blog, various stages of importing and exporting files, and then presto! Oh wait. I had to fiddle with my domain host and make sure that the new blog had the same name. But by just after midnight last night, I had it.

Start reading here, if you left me there for a moment.

Bottom line for you, my readers. If you were receiving emailed posts from my old blog, you will need to sign up again (see box to the right). Except for my mom. I took the liberty of signing her up myself.

Some of my posts will duplicate material that I post on Facebook. I have some readers who have not joined the borg Facebook so I like to share with them too. Feel free to delete without reading.

If you just liked to visit, my blog address has stayed the same: blog.berkman.ca

If you want to add me to your feed reader, you know what to do.

Seven Quick Takes Friday

1. Oh look! My computer remembered my password to log into my blogging site. It's been a long time, but perhaps spring is pushing me to get back in the game, so to speak.

2. It will be a busy summer. Boy number one has written his last undergraduate exam and will be coming home from Queens next week. Boy number two is aching to get outta town, but he has to finish grade 12. He'll be at McGill in the music performance program next year, and already has an apartment and a roomate. So we'll have them both through the summer no doubt, and that may try our patience at times, but we're hoping for payback of an empty nest in the fall.

3. I need to get my ass in shape. Seriously. I may be at a personal worst weight-wise at the moment. Am considering getting a hipster city bike if I can find a decent one for a reasonable price. Must also ramp up the walking. With no dog in the house, I have little motivation to get outside and just cruise the 'hood. 

4. I have a couple of house projects launching: we are in the process of swapping my office and our dining room. The latter will go into half the living room, and the former will now be in the room off our kitchen. I want to make these pseudo-built-in bookcases to fit one wall:

 

Source: ikeahackers.net via Janet on Pinterest

 

We also need a new mattress, which is the best time to upgrade to a king bed. Every time we sleep in a king in a hotel, we remark how much better sleep we get. I've found the mattress I think I want and now need to find a bed to put it on. I kinda like this one:

Source: westelm.com via Janet on Pinterest

 

5. I picked up this book when I was placing an amazon order the other day. It was written in 1959 and I'd seen a review of it somewhere. It's rather retro, but still has some excellent advice for women today.

6. I learned how to create a form using Google Drive this week. My book club needed to vote on a book for our summer "big read" and I had the feeling that previous in-person discussions were kind of difficult to manage. The votes are coming in and it looks like the chosen book will be.... not telling! I'll announce it at our meeting this Sunday.

7. If you're a friend on Facebook, you've probably seen some of these items already. I'll need to figure out how to keep the blog fresh with new content, but this is at least a start. Sorry it's been so long. 

 

 

Toronto International Film Festival starts this week....

...and I'm getting ready.

After a bit of a bumpy ticket-purchasing ride, with a lot of my top picks off-sale due to my cheapness is buying a discounted Daytime Pack, I still have a pretty awesome schedule over the 10-day Festival. Zouheir is taking a few days off so that he can get to more of the screenings this year.

This Thursday, I'm seeing a live reading of American Beauty, to be directed by Jason Reitman. Actors are being announced by Reitman on Twitter and so far, we have  (as reported by Toronto Life):  

• Adam Driver (Lena Dunham’s creepy boyfriend from Girls) as the neighbour’s son Ricky Fitts (played by Wes Bentley in the film)
• Toronto’s Sarah Gadon as Angela, the teenage object of Lester Burnham’s (Kevin Spacey) lust (played by Mena Suvari in the film)
• Nick Kroll as Buddy (played by Peter Gallagher in the film)

Gadon is probably best known in her role of Emma Jung in A Dangerous Method.

On Friday we'll see a couple of documentaries:

• The Gatekeepers, summarized on TIFF site: 

In an unprecedented and candid series of interviews, six former heads of the Shin Bet — Israel's intelligence and security agency — speak about their role in Israel's decades-long counterterrorism campaign, discussing their controversial methods and whether the ends ultimately justify the means.

Apparently, there will be two (former?) generals in attendance.

• Stories We Tell, by Sarah Polley, her "personal tale of family secrets."

On Saturday, we're looking forward to screenings of Hotel Transylvania, Inch'Allah, and The Attack. The first is an animated feature with a star-studded cast. The second two examine the Palestinian question in the West Bank. There are quite a few films set in the Middle East at this years festival and we're hoping to see most of them.

More to come.

#photoadayaug - #food - Nachos with spicy beef at my local.

Taken at Pheasant & Firkin

#photoadayaug - #food - Nachos with spicy beef at my local.

Taken at Pheasant & Firkin

Fanado...what's it all about?

Probably the best way to understand it is to watch this brief video featuring Margaret Atwood.
Fanado (pronounced like "fanatic" but ending with "doe") is a way to bring fans and artists together remotely. Some of you may have heard about (or experienced) Atwood's Long Pen technology, a concept she developed to enable her to sign books at a distance. Fanado takes this technology one step further in combining video capability permitting you to chat with the artist and record the interaction including the autograph. Fanado Mobile will make this possible with digital media, anywhere, anytime.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lyEfvIKetBg]
Using IndieGoGo, Fanado set out to collect $85,000 via crowd-sourced funding, and I was excited to play a (small) role in this. They collected almost $95,000 with 389 funders by the deadline and so the project is a go!
My first "perk" is this badge that I display proudly.

#photoadayaug - #ready - the rice, that is!

(Mini-)Book Review: Two novellas by Francoise Sagan

 

COUVERTURE DU PARIS MATCH N°2889 : FRANCOISE SAGAN UNE VIE (Photo credit: Patrick Peccatte)

Bonjour Tristesse by Françoise Sagan
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

After half-watching a documentary about the life of Francoise Sagan (it was in French, so I only caught about half the info), I decided to have a got at some of her work.

Bonjour Tristesse was her first book, published when she was 19. It was a media sensation for its sexual themes, but it made her name (and a lot of money). A short work, I found it rather juvenile in its language, but a well-crafted story, a novella really. That being said, I was reading it in translation so I leave it to readers of the original French to set me straight.

I liked it enough to move on to her second (also short) work, A Certain Smile.

 

A Certain Smile: A Novel by Françoise Sagan
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I read this immediately after Sagan's first work (Bonjour Tristesse) and much preferred it. The writing seems much more mature, although it was written only two years later.

Bored with her studies and boyfriend, Dominique sets out on a flirtation-turned-affair with his uncle. Sagan, who was the same age as her protagonist, writes convincingly and with authority, and the emotional tide feels very true-to-life.

Recommended.

View all my reviews

 

(Mini-)Book Review: Girls in White Dresses by Jennifer Close

Girls in White Dresses by Jennifer Close
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This book didn't really hang together for me. The story of a group of 20-something young women, it felt like a music video, kind of choppy, and brusquely spliced together. That being said, it kept me reading. The individual story arcs were interesting, but there were five of them and none felt really resolved. It's going into the give-away pile.

View all my reviews

#photoadayaug - #arrow - hands of time

#photoadayaug - #simple - white lace curtains moving with the breeze

#photoadayaug - #spoon - Native Cdn piece, gift when we left Canada

#photoadayaug - #purple - my favorite colour, but have virtually none in my house.

#photoadayaug - #ring for cooking eggs!

#photoadayaug - #Glasses

#photoadayaug - #8oclock - porridge in the rice cooker, with maple syrup and cream!

Antipasto Pasta Salad - a family fave.

This is an easy summer side that can be thrown together quickly.

Cook 8 oz medium shell pasta, and then rinse in cold water.

In a large bowl, throw together cubed salami and provolone or havarti cheese (1/2 lb each), 1-1/2 cups halved cherry tomatoes, some pitted olives, green pepper strips, sliced pimiento, artichoke hearts, or anything else that you like (banana peppers? yum!). Add pasta and combine with 1 cup of your favorite homemade or store-bought Italian salad dressing (I like Newman's Own Family Italian.) Chill before serving.

My teen boys eat this as a snack.

#photoadayaug - #Writing - #Arabic script on tray