So, I was kindly informed yesterday that I’m out of NaBloPoMo. Considering I’d skipped a couple of posts last week, I suppose it was overdue. Well, boo.
What was I doing when I wasn’t posting in my blog as much as I said I would? Why, I thought you would never ask.
- Friday, October 10 – newmindspace‘s Night Lights event, where they strung up twinkly little LED lights on balloons tethered into the grass of King’s College Circle with nails. (Pictures much better than the ones that came out of my cellphone are available on the nightlights tag on Flickr.) Saw lots of people I remember from other newmindspace events and met some new people too, most of whose names I’ve since forgotten (but I do recall a friend of Kelly’s who had the name Quinn as a last name, Alex, and Melanie). I also talked briefly for a guy who was juggling 3 luminscent balls changing colours in the dark – they were quite fun! And we had a nice discussion about juggling, with him explaining briefly the concept of kinesthesia to me (aka proprioception).I was joined by Sacha and Jed halfway through, and we decided to relieve my poor extremities with some indoor heating, coffee and talk. When we rejoined an hour and a half later, the larger lights were still up, but the smaller ones had been taken down, probably because they were getting tangled in the wind and because people were walking into them. I wondered whether they had all flown away – many already had, what with all those shivering hands in the dark trying to tie balloons together. The ecological impact of those flat cell batteries, plastic cases and white LEDs upon the land is a bit icky to think of; but later on in the evening, we saw people walking around with the balloon LEDs, so I think they just gave them away. The lights also had cute ‘newmindspace’ stickers on them. (As a digression – have I mentioned how fabu their branding is? This is coming up on the third event I’ve attended of theirs and have had a blast at every one of their events, like Queen of Hearts, Flight of Fancy and Capture the Flag; which I guess qualifies me as a bit of an enthusiast at this point. I should remember to ask for my buttons already too – they’ve gotten lost in the mail.)
Sacha and I left Jed at King’s College Circle to hit Queen Street West where Simon, Shane and Lara were at Everest having post-event reflection on a talk led by Deepak Chopra. Five-person group introspective conversation ensued. Then I went home and had the first heart-to-heart conversation with my brother ever in 22 years of having a brother. Don’t tell him I told you that.
- Saturday, November 11 – I attended the Remembrance Day ceremonies at the Old City Hall in Toronto. The colour part was impressive, as were the bands. I couldn’t hear the address by David Miller because I was standing way off to the side, and the sound just bounced around the brick buildings into a generalized sound rather than distinct speech; and it also started raining again just as he spoke, so the sound of opening umbrellas drowned out that sound anyway. Oh, and I wore a skirt, so the cold got to me a bit before the end, and I ducked into the Saturday morning retail eternity that is Eaton Centre. (I wondered if the tourists knew what was happening. The revolving doors were like the membrane to another universe.)Am I just showing my proximity to high-school age-ness–I could have sworn that Remembrance Day is a sombre occasion, so there is not supposed to be any applause; yet people were clapping when the color party was entering and at the conclusion of some of the hymns. Can someone tell me if this is just typical for non-secondary school ceremonies, or if people were misled by lone clappers in the crowd who didn’t know? It wasn’t printed in the programs, so I’m assuming that it’s just not practiced or enforced.
The next week is going to see me talking to a whole bunch of people for my SCD 401 project. I talked to my Tutor Marker the other day, so I have a better sense of what her expectations are for this manual – it is basically a distilled series of “lessons” illustrated by references to specific cases that a community organization could pick up and make tangible use of. I’d figured as much, which means that presentation, brevity and clarity of messages (maybe even headings, lists and diagrams) will be helpful if not paramount. I often think of essay writing as the coordinated process of casting a wide net for a bunch of knowledge, then sorting out what comes back into a loosely-coordinated yet cohesive pile of paragraphs, held into a delicate structure by citations, headings and sheer force of will on my part.
You know I’ve been out of school for a while when I say I’m looking forward to it.
