One Sweet Year

As I write this, there are only a few hours left of 2009.  At this time last year, I was celebrating the end of 2008 more than I was the beginning of what would turn out to be an excellent year.  I guess hindsight is 20/20.  Oh sure, there have been days where chasing a lorazepam with a couple glasses of wine was required.....but all in all, I'd say this has been a good year for us here at Magic Lantern.

Tonight we will toast to a new year - to what we hope will bring to fruition the opportunity born in 2009.  And on that note, I must go pour myself a glass of champagne.

Happy new year everyone!

Boxing Day

I love boxing day.  It's always such a relief after the stress and excitement of Christmas.

We had a nice, quiet day at home with good friends and good food.  (Healthy, vegan food - I made sure of it.  It's amazing how badly my body reacts to being stuffed with butter, cheese, and turkey for a few days in a row!!)

Needless to say, I was camera crazy all day long...

New Toy

Merry Christmas everyone!  Santa was VERY good to me this year.  Here are some highlights from the day, and, well - see if you can guess what he brought!

Beautiful table..

The happy (newly engaged!) couple.

Mistletoe.
Turkey.

Cameras. 

My adorable husband.

The kids!

Good times were had by all.

SO MUCH FOOD!

Relaxing after the rush...

Buried Treasure

I am a superstitious woman.  So superstitious, in fact, that I flat out refused to wear the beautiful  jacket I received for Christmas two years ago for the entirety of last winter.  The reason is slightly embarrassing, but I finally feel the need to come clean and this feels like as good an outlet as any.  The thing is, the winter-spring of 2007-08 was the absolute worst time of my life, and somehow putting on the jacket I wore so frequently during that period just seemed wrong.  Though I never openly acknowledged it, I think I feared that wearing the coat would bring bad luck.  That and it just reminded me of how consistently awful I felt for 5+ months.

I am happy report, however, that since that time my life has progressively improved.  Slowly, I regained the confidence (and sanity!) I lost while employed in an absolutely terrible work place, and, tentatively at first, I began to re-introduce the jacket into my life.  

Then, while fishing through the pockets the other day, I came across my old iPod - something I thought I had lost a long time ago!!  I have to admit I was a little scared to listen to it - this record of what I was listening to while going through sheer hell.  Yet today I finally worked up the courage and plugged in my headphones.  Turns out, I was listening to quite a bit of Amy Winehouse at the time, as well as retro '90s and Coldplay.  Usually nothing brings back memories like music, but somehow I managed to say relatively composed for the first half hour or so.  Then, the song "High Hopes" by Frank Sinatra came on, and I completely broke down.  I remembered putting it on the iPod at the time as a source of comfort; it's a song that reminds me of childhood, and contains a comforting message that I hoped would make me feel better.  

Anyway, I'm glad I made myself listen.  All in all it was an extremely cathartic experience.  Painful, yes.  But also necessary, in order to attain the last bit of closure I needed to put that time behind me.

Happy Solstice!

Even though it's after midnight and therefore not solstice anymore.  Well, all the more reason to celebrate, I suppose, because the sun will officially be "reborn" today.

Steve and I celebrated by having a candlelit dinner and listening to earthy music.  I must say, it was a nice break from the Christmas rush.  

That said, I've been baking like crazy all day long.  My last batch of cookies is finally in the oven, and the house smells like ginger and cinnamon - what a wonderful, comforting smell combination!

More Pretty Holiday Pics

I've been a little short on energy lately.  The excessive darkness and the stress of the holiday season can make for an draining combination, and all I seem to want to do is sleep.  Thank god for beautiful photos like these.  

 

All are from Abby Try Again, except the last one which is from here.

Cold Beauty

There's really so much work I should be doing right now...but am feeling all depressed by the cold, and can feel a nasty migraine coming on.  These pictures, by Simple Tess, helped cheer me up some.  They make me remember that winter can actually be quite beautiful.  Well, at least the holiday season aesthetic part.  And assuming I don't actually have to go outside to admire it.

Review: Brothers

Going to see the movie Brothers on Friday night was admittedly a bit of a compromise between my choice of Everything's Fine and Steve's Invictus.  (No, I don't actually expect Everything's Fine to blow me away - I just find DeNiro generally charming in heartwarming comedies!  So shoot me!!)  

Anyway, I'm sure glad we made the compromise because Brothers is actually really good.  It tells of a marine named Sam, (Toby Maguire) who is taken prisoner by the Taliban while stationed in Afghanistan.  While there he is tortured, and forced to do the unthinkable - kill one of his own men.  As a result, Sam becomes deeply scarred and mentally unstable.  Meanwhile back at home, Sam's family is told he has been killed.  His black sheep brother, Tommy, played by Jake Gyllenhaal, has recently been released from prison.  He redeems himself by stepping in to help out Sam's wife, Grace, (Natalie Portman) and her two young daughters.  Just when things are beginning to regain some degree of normalcy, the family is notified that Sam has in fact survived.  Heartbreaking awkwardness ensues when Sam returns home a changed man, resulting in a powerful, effective climax that stops just short of becoming melodramatic.

It could be argued that this film takes itself a little too seriously in parts, but personally I think the subject matter warrants it.  I've always said I'd rather beg for money on the street for a living than join the military, and this movie epitomizes why.  It might be politically incorrect to say that, but it's the truth.  In this time of war for our country and theirs, we hear ever so much about how important it is to "support our troops," etc.  For many, "supporting the troops" seems to be synonymous with "supporting the war."  In my mind, Brothers does an excellent job of separating the troops from the war, and portraying the downright scary philosophy behind the Marine Corps (trained killing machines - !?)  Spine-chilling, if you ask me.

Review: Omega Fitness Club

Way back in the spring, I saw gym called Omega Fitness Club open up about two minutes from my house.  At the time, I was in a phase where I didn't even want to think about gyms;  having been a member of one "torture chamber" or another since I was fifteen years old, I got to a point last year around this time where I was sick and tired of feeling obligated to work out 3-4 times a week.  I had also discovered yoga, and found it to be a much more rewarding fitness experience.  Although my love for yoga has not dwindled, I am in a much different place in my life than I was last year; most of the writing/reporting/editing work I do now can be done on my own time, and I am not by nature the 9-5 type.  I am at my best between about 7pm and 1am, and that's usually when I can be found working.  Oh god I'm rambling again.  Let's just say I don't always have time in the evenings to drive 20+ minutes to yoga, spend an hour and a half there, drive 20+ minutes back, and spend 45 more minutes showering and drying my hair.

That and I'm absolutely terrified of the beach that awaits me in Jamaica in three months time.  Nothing tones my lower half like hot yoga - I love how it tones without building bulk - but alas I fear that I will turn into a blob of flab over the holiday season and subsequent winter if I do not find a way to keep active.

Thus I decided to look into Omega Fit Club.  I went in yesterday not really knowing what to expect.  But - wow!  What a beautiful gym - or club, as they prefer you to call it.  It's far and away the cleanest "gym" I've ever seen, with top-of-the-line equipment (each machine includes a touch screen TV you can hook your iPod up to), award winning fitness classes (similar to the ones at Goodlife but better, I am told), and some cool-sounding extra services (like an infrared sauna and hydrotherapy).  

Omega is the only fitness place in Kingston that offers an exclusive, limited membership.  This means that only a certain number of people can join, and they try to stay clear of "unpleasant characters."  Hmmm...I have to admit being told this bothered me a little.  What if I'm not beautiful enough to be a member here, I thought, what if I'm deemed an "unpleasant character."  As it turns out, though, the people they try to discourage are the gross steroid types - by having no free weights above 90 lbs - and the "Playboy bunnies" - not sure what this means, exactly, but I'm pretty sure I'm not one.  In a nutshell, I get the idea they're looking for clients who are interested in a healthy lifestyle instead a perfect body.  Which I can appreciate.  Although having a perfect body would be nice too...

Anyway, I had my first workout there last night, and it was actually quite a pleasant experience.  Because they limit membership, the club is never overcrowded, which is a bit of a relief after certain other places I've belonged to.  I even tried this new type of machine called "the wave", which was a huge challenge but kind of fun at the same time.  I haven't tried any classes or services yet, but I have high hopes - and this post is way too long for anything else anyway!!!

Review: The Almost Moon

Alright, this review is going to be a little tough.  I so wanted to like this book - it's been SUCH a long time since I've read anything that blew me away, let alone something I felt deserved a rave review.  Anymore it seems I'm either not able to get through books, able to get through them but left with nothing to say, or frustrated by certain aspects of them. 

 The Almost Moon by Alice Sebold opens with this sentence:  "When all is said and done, killing my mother came easily."  Groan.  Unless this book were a comedy, or even laced with a comic tone (it is neither) a sentence like this, in my opinion, has little place opening a novel.  Thus from the beginning, I was skeptical - but still hopeful that Almost Moon might win me over in the end.  So I persevered.  

Of course, the novel tells of a woman, Helen, who murders her Alzheimer's-stricken mother, Clair, after a particularly grueling day of elder care.  Is Sebold trying to tap into humanity's deepest, darkest desires, I wondered?  To haunt those caring for aged parents with the knowledge that they secretly want to murder the parents and re-claim their freedom?  Could this simply be yet another version of the old Electra thing?

As it turns out, however, Helen spends the rest of the book "justifying" her actions by appealing to her difficult childhood; she was forced to endure the mental illness of both her parents, and finally her father's suicide.  I guess this is supposed to supply ambiguity by implying Helen's own mental illness?  But other than the initial murder, and her thoughts of suicide at the end of the novel (right before she's caught by the police, no less) there is little evidence that this is the case.  To be honest, I still can't figure out what this book is supposed to be "saying."  Its grave tone and subject matter suggest that it must be trying to "say" something, but what exactly that is remains a mystery.  "Families are complicated;" "mother-daughter relationships are especially complicated."  Ok, sure.  Is that it?

I wanted to like this book so badly.  I remember thoroughly enjoying The Lovely Bones.  Have I really turned into that big of a snob?  No, I don't think I ever would have loved this book.  The bottom line is, it's...well...sort of boring.  But it tries to be profound by making insightful comments on the nature of humanity.  Unfortunately, it ends up coming off as disjointed and flighty.

I think I'll have to follow this one by re-reading something I know I love, because this is just getting ridiculous!  

Wow.

That was a busy week.  One of the many highlights was this hat.  Isn't it divine?

Next week, thankfully, will not be so insane.  I may even have enough time to sleep for six hours straight.  What a concept!!!

Down on the Farm

Oh I just love farms don't you?  Today I went out to the Perry's farm near Harrowsmith for a story about turkeys - birds that define the phrase "so ugly they're cute."  

I just try not to think about the fact that they'll all be dead in less than a month!

I Love Sydenham!

Today I ventured out to Sydenham to take some photos of the Santa Clause parade.  Some of the floats were quite amusing - and I mean that in the best possible way!  Here are some highlights, for your viewing pleasure.

Ok there's nothing funny about this first picture - I just thought this kid was adorable.

Confused Plant

I took this photo today, on November 26th.  In Kingston.  I cannot for the life of me decide whether this is a good thing or a bad thing.  The good thing is, the fact that this kind of plant can still survive means that I can still comfortably spend an extended length of time outside.  And the bad thing....well....global warming and such.  I know that in the big picture this is overall a negative development.  But I HATE winter!!  Always have, always will.  So I choose to be happy about this poor, confused little thing.

If you can't beat em...

I've done it folks - I've finally jumped on the Twilight bandwagon.  I sincerely hope that doesn't diminish your opinion of me.  You see, somewhere inside me still lurks the awkward, bookish, fourteen-year-old girl I once was, and she's a little resentful that these novels didn't come out twelve years ago.  I've managed to suppress her for years now, but alas she has teamed up with the side of me that has of late been craving something unashamedly escapist.  As a result, I finally caved tonight and bought the first book in the series.  I hope to finish it before seeing New Moon tomorrow with my dear friend Liz.  Judging by how addictive the first 300 pages have been, I don't think that'll be much of a problem...

Smile

Wow - I can't believe it's been over a week since I last posted!!!  I've been so busy - either working or in Toronto sans computer.  I also can't believe it's almost the holiday season - and also almost winter!   (Boooo...).

I've felt like crap lately, to be perfectly honest.  Being this busy inevitably means eating badly and virtually no yoga.  I'm hoping to turn things around tomorrow, despite the mountains of work I need to conquer before Monday.  In the mean time, this photo (from here) cheered me up some.  It reminds me of the trip to Jamaica I have coming up in the relatively near future.  I've always wanted to travel somewhere south in the middle of winter, and now I'll finally have a chance to do so!

Review: Her Fearful Symmetry

Even though I wasn't totally blown away by The Time Traveler's Wife, I was for some reason extremely eager to read Audrey Niffenegger's new book, Her Fearful Symmetry.  I enjoyed The Time Traveler's Wife for its creativity and imagination; it reminded me of how it felt to read a book as a child - to become entirely engrossed in a fictional world that on the surface is very similar to ours, yet contains certain intriguing yet ultimately unsettling impossibilities.  Her Fearful Symmetry is similarly engrossing, and kept me reading into the wee small hours of the morning.

The novel tells of two sets of twins:  Edie and Elspeth, who are estranged, and Edie's daughters Julia and Valentina.  At the beginning of the book, Elspeth dies of cancer and leaves her nieces all she has, including her flat in London which features a breathtaking view of Highgate cemetery.  The plot thickens when Julia and Valentina arrive in London and become acquainted with the other residents of the building: Elspeth's lover Robert; Martin, a highly intelligent obsessive compulsive disorder sufferer who refuses to leave his apartment; and Elspeth's ghost, who haunts her her old apartment.  Her Fearful Symmetry is a novel about being trapped, and the many different ways in which a person can be held back and subsequently set free.  In many respects it is truly mesmerizing, and has the potential to be a profound, insightful story.  Up until about three quarters of the way through, I was literally bursting with excitement anticipating what was going to come next.

That said, the I found the ending of this novel a little disappointing.  The last 100 pages are full of contrived twists that would have been predictable had they not been so utterly convenient (for the author) and unlikely, even within the supernatural world of the book.  Maybe I was being overly optimistic, but I wanted MORE from this novel.  I'm in the mood lately to be awestruck by something, and was hoping to find it here.  Sigh...on to the next...

Review: Where The Wild Things Are

Last weekend I FINALLY got around to seeing Where the Wild Things Are - a movie I had been anticipating for many, many months.  Ever since I saw the stills for it last March, I knew this movie was a must see, and in the eye candy department it certainly did not disappoint.  Everything is beautifully crystal clear, and it's a pleasure to lose yourself in Spike Jonze's mythical world of wild things.  

Over the past few weeks I've read a lot of reviews of this movie, I suppose in an attempt to live vicariously through those who had seen it to make up for the fact that I had not.  Many reviewers seem to insinuate that it's somehow wrong to turn a 20-page picture book with very little text into a 90 minute movie.  Personally, I don't see anything wrong with it at all.  Every idea has to start somewhere, and the book itself is at least as much about the illustrations as it is about the written story.  Thus with its largely visual focus, you can hardly say the movie misrepresents the book.  Where the Wild Things Are is a story about imagination, and the ability of humans, particularly children, to recreate dream worlds when they feel out of place in the real one - to escape to an alternate reality that caters to their every whim.

Which brings me to the thing that really annoyed me about this movie: the main character, Max, is a terrible child with whom I found it very difficult to sympathize.  I could deal with him being a little self-absorbed (hey, what kid isn't?) but to throw a tantrum and bite his poor mother when she has her boyfriend over for dinner after an awful day at work?  And trash his sister's room just because she wants to hang out with her friends instead of him?  Max looks to be about ten years old, certainly old enough to know better than to misbehave in such immature ways.  A re-reading of the book reminded me that Max is similarly awful in the original version (duh - he's a "wild thing"), but I still found it to be a bit excessive.  Then he goes to the land of the wild things, is crowned king, and is allowed to do whatever he wants.  Even though he proves to be an ineffective king, the wild things still love him and are upset when he leaves.  THEN to top it all off, when he returns home his mother is so relieved he's back that she gives him an enormous piece of chocolate cake for dinner, forgoing the vegetables Max was complaining about having to eat earlier.  The last scene features Max scarfing down the cake at the kitchen table while his mother sits next to him, head in hands, looking thoroughly exhausted and defeated.  

Is it wrong that I wanted to physically harm this child?  Maybe so, because I could not find a single review that mentioned this aspect of the film.  I realize that the whole point of the movie is for Max to be self-indulgent, and that such self-indulgence is part of the magic of childhood.  Yet as visually beautiful as this film is, my main feeling upon leaving the theatre was dread at the thought of ever having children!

Rushing the Season (Yet Again)

I realize it's way too early to be talking about Christmas, but rushing seasons seems to be the theme of Magic Lantern lately so I figured I'd continue with it.  Personally I love the aesthetic, if not the stress of the holiday season.  These photos by Jo Tyler exemplify exactly how I would decorate my house for Christmas, if time, money, and space were not factors.

P.S.  I have sooooo much I want to write about - don't be surprised if I bombard the blog with excessive posting these next few days.