Sims, Winter, and the Pace of Life

So, in order to avoid doing actual work lately, I've taken to playing the Sims. The Sims is like playing with dolls, except culturally acceptable for adults.You make a wee person (a Sim) , and, I quote, "make your Sim inspired by satisfying their needs!". Keeping them fed, watered, etc, is only the beginning. In a truly Maslow-esque sliding scale from use of a toilet to human affection, Sims allows you to find shadow fulfillment by achieving goals as simple as washing and as complex as getting a job and contributing to your simulated community. At the moment, I'm building a school for my Sims to work in, and the loading takes a full hour (unless I want to spend life points, which I don't), so I'm now killing time doing actual things in lieu of playing the Sims.

So, a  short word about hibernation.

It was, if only briefly, -44 this morning, and is still over -30 now. I decided (sensibly, in my opinion) to forgo the outdoors, and clean my home instead. When I saw the frost on the inside of my doorknob, my decision was reinforced. I am ensconced in fleece, the kettle is on, and I will email my assignment to school. It is days like this that I regret the world can't be expected to simply shut down, in order to resume business as usual at a later, warmer, date. Hang global interconnectedness. It's cold out! Stay home with your family; watch a movie; enjoy the fun in attempting to coax your pet outdoors. I know, I know- Emergency services, international trade, real life, the usual... Still, the thought of life at a more directly impacted by nature pace appeals to me greatly. Working in fits and starts, as time and light allows, works for me. Perhaps its the whole circadian effect coupled with northern climes, but if you get three feet of snow and a sub 30 snap, it's completely acceptable to me to put a closed sign up. We should all be able to understand. Over-regulation, like bureaucracy, is efficient in theory but tiresome and meddling in practice.

For the rest of my day, I will be cleaning, putting together a new bed, enjoying my slippers, tea, and books, and yes- playing house with my Sims. Two of them now have a "budding relationship", and I look forward to making them "be romantic" at each other until they start dating. It's practically selective breeding, and my need for absolute environmental control is nicely stroked.

Everyone in Northern Ontario- Enjoy your cold, cold day!

Cabbage Rolls and Sisterhood

My last week has mostly been filled with debauchery and board games. My sister's westward departure certainly needed a weeks worth of proper send-off, so the days were largely defined by  gin, puns, and old movies while the nights rolled on with music, wine, and too much food. Trivial Pursuit with sister, partner and parents turned into larger discussion of evolving pop culture, as all games of Trivial Pursuit must do. There must be an unlocked bit of brain that responds during play, turning Monopoly into chaos or communism and Risk to all-out domestic war. Clue, I suspect, leads to surly substance abuse and Chess to Mad-Science level rivalry.

We ended, as we began in August when she arrived, by spending the day making enough Cabbage Rolls for our shared households to last the winter and eating pasta for supper. (To fill her with something carbacious and lasting to fortify her night long bus ride). Between her school semester and my adjusting to living with a partner, I feel like I didn't get to see her as we usually manage, and that frets me a little. I have suspected for some time that ever since I turned twenty, my life began quietly gathering speed that will only increase as I age. You recall elementary school took a decade? How summers sprawled on for ages? The month of December lasted for a year?

My Christmas this year snapped up out of nowhere, shook my hand briefly, and was gone just as it arrived. New Years was barely a hat-tip.

It's been well over a year now that at any given day, at any given moment, I will always have something else I need to do. Need  to start, need to finish, need to make an appointment for. I wonder if it will take until I retire to have days of blissful nothing, even if only temporarily. Work and school take up time, though they aren't the biggest challenges. Working in my own goals between them can be trickiest.

After she's home for a few months, my sister will be leaving again for her own trip around the world, less than a year from when I returned from mine. My friends are graduating, some of them wanting to start businesses, some of them selling paintings, some of them working, and catching up with shows on days off. It seems like so many of my acquaintance wandered into adulthood en masse, many of us surprised by it, thinking we'd already been here awhile. I find I value time more, and despite having less of it that usual, my time with my sister was very well spent, particularly if you note the bottle count and volume of dim sum consumed.

A Happy Journey to you, Hayley, and Happy Journeys to anyone currently on a road of their making.

Coffee

I have tried mine black,
with 1, 2, and skim
and in diabetically iced confections
artfully swirled.

Vietnamese-
Cool, condensed heaven.
 and Turkish,
Dark silty froth
in hot tin.

I like my coffee
in China teacups,
with gilt scalloping
and just enough roses.

Where my book rests,
I will find
Vanilla cream and
Sun on the table.

Good morning.

New Years Retributions

My usual handful of New Year plans this round included more sleep, less internet, and another blog.
This blog was to contain updates of my productivity (of course I will surely, with more sleep and less internet, learn French, finish a novel, and maintain a household and 4.0) along with projects, poetry, and assorted opinions.

As usual, New Years resulted in a week of half-hearted attempts to introduce the idea, pushing papers and notebooks around my workspace, and the creeping malevolence of self-loathing with a side of guilt.

To combat this, to hell with form, and here’s the intro:

I’m blogging again. You can find my former Travel Blog at http://whereimat-shannonleigh.blogspot.ca/. It covers my seventeen week globe-trotting experience which prompted my complete 180° life change, where I now find myself:

1) Moved out of my family home
2) Co-authoring a book with a another local student
3) Working on an independent volume of poetry to be self-published hopefully by this time next year
4) Learning to speak a second language, and
5) Coming out of a change and stress induced fog that settled on me shortly after I arrived back in Canada.

These things will hopefully be expedited by my cutting down my use of casual internet to two hours a week. Online research is permitted at school and at the library, but web-comics and Facebook are sharply curtailed, and I have rid myself of the cursed Stumbleupon bar, probably gaining myself a few extra years of mental life in the process.

So, some of the categories you will be seeing here are Poetry, Things I Wish I’d Said
8-Tracking (Reviews and shout outs of various playlists from 8Tracks.com) and
General Brain Draining.

All these things are floating around, needing to be cataloged. Hence, Head Space.

There. Done.

Only eleven days late.